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Part 1: Glimpses of Grace: Personal Reflections from a Spiritual Gathering Thank you to our Paramparā and Avatārpūrī Jī for being here, and to all the Swāmīs and disciples from all over Europe—mainly, I guess, at this moment—and maybe watching by webcast around the world. As you can see, I don’t have a lot of practice in this. It’s a blessed day to be here in the presence of such divine energy. Coming from Australia, which is at least a twenty-four-hour flight away, and to arrive and immediately feel you can be yourself, surrounded by like-minded brothers and sisters, with spiritual guidance and divine blessings. Of course, theoretically, this is always within us. But it is truly special and an extra gift to actually be swimming in it. Australia is a beautiful country and continent. I went there as a young person over thirty-eight years ago. I didn’t know Swāmījī then; he was already very busy in your countries, but I knew nothing about it. Still, he managed to find me. When I met Swāmījī in 1999, I knew that now my life could find fulfillment. However, Swāmījī only came to Australia once a year, and sometimes not even that, but usually once a year. I knew that wasn’t enough for me, so I made a habit of coming to India or Europe every holiday. Thanks to God for that, I know so many of you and feel part of this family. Even though we live “down under,” as they say—well, you are “down under” from Australia, and this is down under; Australia is down under from you! And he said, “No, I have a job for you. Come back to Sunshine Coast.” So I did, and he found a job for me. I started the Yoga in Daily Life Sunshine Coast Center with a couple of people, not much help, and I put all my love, energy, and everything into that. And with Swāmījī’s visits—life-changing almost every time—he gave guidance on everything from the colour of the walls to ensuring the karma yogīs were fed. And the beautiful satsaṅgs, where we were just like in heaven. It was the fuel for my karma yoga, I have to say. I used to say, one second of Swāmījī’s smile, energy, or attention would keep me going for months—being there for the students, growing the ashram, making sure everything worked. It’s a very practical way of surrendering yourself to the Divine, because you have to let go of your own problems, your own ego, your own worries—you simply don’t have time for them. So Swāmījī’s blessings when he gives you work—or in this case now, our Avatārpūrī Jī, who just said to me, “You better talk something”—it’s a way for us to grow, to be part of everything. I thank you all for being here. And to grow together—coming here again after six years, it feels like everybody has grown, like everybody is lighter. There is a lot of harmony; it feels more harmonious, smooth, and really wonderful. I feel surrounded by beautiful people. And he said, “It is happening, believe me, it’s happening.” So when you have a little distance, in time and miles, and you come back, there is something different in a good way. And I feel that’s all I want to say for now. Thank you very much for the opportunity—and the warning. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān kī jai! Avatārpūrī Jī responded, “This is good, I like it. Because I will be talking for six weeks, so in the morning sessions I will find people. I learned from the best, you know. At least she had three minutes to prepare. Swāmījī usually just says, ‘You.’ So I’m keeping the tradition. So now you. So hurry on.” Another devotee then shared: “So, what can I say now? First of all, thank you for this opportunity to the great Paramparā, and this great successor in the Paramparā, Avatārpūrī Jī, for giving us the chance to grow through spiritual engagement. And as Holī Gurujī always said, ‘All in one and one in all.’ So we are all in one and one in all. Anyway, what came to mind is a little story about how I came to Swāmījī and Yoga in Daily Life. I was a young student, studying law and also sports—which you can’t see now, but in those days it was there. Somehow, a wish arose to attend philosophy courses, and I had many discussions with friends and professors. I found a book that spoke about the relationship between a master and his disciple—it was from Swami Muktānanda. Bolo to od Swāmīho Muktānandī. And I said to myself, ‘This is what I want.’ The search began in my mind. I had a strong wish to find a real, original Indian guru. Believe me or not, the very next day after that wish arose, I saw a placard at the university in Salzburg: ‘Seminar with a real original Indian guru in Goldegg.’ And of course, I booked that seminar. And who do you think was the leader? I was a bit surprised by how the disciples were behaving, but anyway, I was deeply impressed by Swāmījī. There would be another funny story, but I won’t talk too long. I went to him, just as Avatārpūrī Jī is sitting here now, and asked, ‘Swāmījī, I’m looking for a guru. What shall I do?’ And very lovingly, very kindly, he said, ‘If you like, you can also come to me.’ He gave me the choice, of course. And since then, I have been a disciple of Swāmījī. This was in 1988—quite a long time. My first teacher in Salzburg, since Swāmījī was in Vienna then, was Swami Premānandajī. I had the great opportunity to be a disciple also of Swami Premānandajī. After a year he went to India, and I came more and more into the Yoga in Daily Life Society. And now we are here, and I hope it will continue as long as possible. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān kī jai! Thank you.” A third devotee began: “Hari Om. Praṇām, dear Avatārpūrī Jī. Praṇām to all our masters and Viśvagurū Jī. I think he is with us here. Whenever I am in Strilky, I see him walking; he is with us. There are so many memories. I am not so good in English, excuse me. So many pictures come to mind. But the first memory I have is connected with our holy lineage and what we do in our groups. When I was little, growing up in a small village in the Black Forest, Germany, with my family, the whole village was Christian. I loved to go to church. I loved to pray and speak with Jesus. My grandmother, my mother, and the family showed me how to pray. But as I grew older, in the challenging teenage years—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—I became very interested in politics, religion, and how to do things. I didn’t know how, but I saw that people did not know how to live in peace, friendliness, and love. During my teenage years, I did a lot of things—I went to discotheques, sometimes skipped school, had heartbreaks with friends, and things like that. Then suddenly, in a deep moment—not the best moment of my life, but I think it was a very important moment—a thought arose. I was twenty or twenty-one. The thought came: Why am I not living two thousand years ago with Jesus? I had never before imagined that it could be. But in that moment, in that thought, it was as if: Yes, it could be. There is something more going on. I had many roles. I became an occupational therapist. I studied for five, six, seven more years. I started doing yoga because at my work as an occupational therapist, my boss was giving me a very hard time. I felt I had to do something—I couldn’t stand it. A good friend said to me, ‘Why not practice yoga?’ I had never heard that word before. When I did yoga, the teacher was so nice and sweet, and I thought she could not tell me she had a master. But when I talked with friends, I learned that she goes to the Czech Republic, where she can do yoga all day long. I was very happy about that. And she told me, ‘There is Swāmījī and something more.’ I was not so interested that there was someone behind it. But when I took the train to Vienna, I felt something had changed. I smoked my last cigarette. I arrived in Vienna, and we went to the ashram on Enkelstrasse. She kindly opened the door, and it felt so great, so smooth and fine to enter the room of the āśram where the yoga practice was held. I saw the picture, the hall, and something special happened. I was searching for a particular colour—a red colour, but it wasn’t red, not yellow, not orange. I didn’t know. Then, behind the corner, I saw an orange flag. When I saw that flag, I thought, ‘Yes, this is the colour, the colour I was looking for.’ And when we went by bus to Zlín, with Indian music playing, I felt we were driving on clouds. Pozdravil mě. When the week began, I was a thirsty soul, so thirsty. I was drinking in all spiritual things, all the energy. I would get up at five o’clock to meditate, to pray, to practice āsanas and prāṇāyāma. When I entered the breakfast hall—with all the windows, much like here, immersed in nature—everything was so full of… I cannot describe it—it was like love, a nice, warm-hearted feeling. I thought, ‘It’s like with Jesus. Jesus does these things.’ Every day, every moment, every step with Swāmījī—sitting in the meadow, walking through the forest—it was, oh, it was like being with Swāmījī. So after five days I was so impressed, and I also received a mantra and was with him. When I came to the next seminar in Hamburg, I received mantra dīkṣā in Salzburg. That was the next step, and step by step, every month I attended a seminar. And the main point that changed my life happened at the second seminar. I went to Swāmījī with ten questions…” Part 2: Gurudev’s Ever-Present Guidance: Embracing the Testing Period I asked him something about my life. And after that, I asked, “Can I have some duty?” He told me, “Yes, you can. You can make a yoga center.” I was a little shocked, because it was to be in Karlsruhe, near where I live. But I thought to myself, yes, yes, sometime it will be like that. After three years, I went to Karlsruhe. Yet I also had a wish to be nearer to Swāmījī or in another country. So things moved on, and questions came from Swāmījī about going to Klagenfurt, in Austria, to make an ashram. When I said yes, it was like a film—the moment when you are going to death, maybe that’s how it is. Everyone inside my heart was saying, “Yes, I can go; yes, I can go; yes, I can go.” And in one second I could say yes, I can go. I am so thankful for this. Now it’s been twenty-seven years. We were in Vienna sometimes, and I met Hari. Now we are a couple. And now we can make it a little smoother than before and live more peacefully and run the ashram. Thank you very much. This is Swāmījī’s pādukās from India, which I brought with me. These are Swāmījī’s topānkīs, or ślapkīs, which I brought from India. Every satsaṅg, I will burn incense and place it here, so you can take darśan afterwards. And now I travel with them, and wherever I go, they go with me. So you are most welcome later to come for darśan and to take darśan of them. Now we do Mānasik Pūjā. Asmatāchārya Paryantaṁ Vande Guru Paramparāṁ. Guru Brahmā, Guru Viṣṇu, Guru Devo, Guru Sākṣāt Parabrahma. Tasmai Śrī Gurave Namaḥ. Please close your eyes. Imagine Gurudev sitting right in front of you on his beautiful āsana. We are all walking into the hall, and Gurudev is already present there. He is saying, “Come here, my dear.” We all go for darśan. It can be in the hall, or it can be in your house, where he is sitting and you are going for darśan. You have your pūjā plate ready with the tilaka and the mālā and everything. We are doing the first pādukā pūjā, which means we are doing the pūjā of his lotus feet. With the ring finger on the right hand, you dip your finger in the tilak and then put the tilak on him. Sahasra Nāmne Puruṣāya Śāśvate, Sahasra Koṭi Yogadhāriṇe, Namaḥ Namaḥ Kamala Nābhāya, Namaste Jalasaṅhāriṇe, Namaste Keśavānanda, Vāsudeva Namostute, Vāsānāth Vāsudevasya, Vasutāṁ Bhavanātrayaṁ Sarvabhūta Nivāso Śiva Sudhevā Namostute. Now you put the mālā on him. Na na sugandha puṣpāṇi yathā kālod bhavāni ca, puṣpāñjale ramayadatta gṛhāṇa parameśvara. Now we light the dīpak. Dīpa Jyoti Parabrahma Dīpaṁ Sarve Mohanam, Dīpanaṁ Sajanam Sarvaṁ Sandhyā Dīpaṁ Sarva Satyam. Now we do Āratī. Guruṁ Brahmā, Guruṁ Viṣṇu, Guruṁ Devo Maheśvaraḥ, Guruḥ Sākṣāt Parabrahma, Tasmai Śrī Guruve Namaḥ. Now we have the opportunity to sit in front of him. And we do one mālā. Now you will go to the kitchen and bring food for Gurudev—the food that you all prepared with your own hands, full of love—and then you will serve it to him. In India, we call it mānvar; that means you continue serving and giving more, and even if he says no, you still try to give more. After he is done with food, we wash his hands. And then we thank Gurudev for coming. We make praṇām to him, touching his lotus feet. And he places his hand on your head and blesses all of us, for he is the most merciful, most gracious, most amazing Gurudev we have, and we are very lucky and blessed to have him. He tells us that we are his and he is ours. He resides in all our hearts; he is always within us, with us, around us, everywhere. Sometimes the times may feel hard for us, but we should know that he is always there, like an umbrella protecting us. We are in that bubble of protection, so that nothing can happen to us. Nāhaṁ Kartā Prabhuḥ Kartā Mahāprabhuḥ Kartā He Kevalaṁ Śānti, Śānti, Śāntiḥ. The power of mantra is very powerful. You can open your eyes. We can also do the mantra just by mānasika in our mind, ajapa, continuous. But our mind is very cañcal, very restless, always running around. That’s why we use the mālā to remind us of what we are doing. And the energy in the mālā, because it is blessed by Gurudev, is very powerful. That’s why I feel very blessed to be wearing and using now Gurudev’s mālā, which he gave me last month. It is full of his tapasyā, of his whole life, which he has done, and that is always going to be present there, always with us. That’s why I say Gurudev is always present with us. We are always searching, always wondering where to find him, where to find him inside our hearts. We always search outside, but when we search inside, then we will truly see. And whenever we want, we just close our eyes, and we can have his darśan, talk to him, and get our answers. But many times, we just close our eyes and try to find an answer or ask a question of him, and somehow, from somewhere, we get an answer in one way or another. This means that he is always listening to all of us. Even in his silence nowadays, there is always some meaning there. And we are very blessed that for so many years we had the opportunity to listen to him. There are many ṛṣis and sādhus who just sit in a cave, meditate, and do tapasyā all their lives without speaking a single word. So we can see how blessed we are that we got—some of you thirty, forty, fifty, twenty-five years—of his satsaṅgs, his talking. And even now, when there are not many words, still the essence is always there: his presence, his blessings. Even today, though there are no words anymore, the essence of his presence, of his blessing, is still present. We don’t think, “Oh, now what’s with Gurudev—he’s not well, or this or that.” The human body is the human body; it has to function in that way. But whatever happens, happens for a reason, and Gurudev from the beginning was always telling us about how things are. Gurudev always says, “Gurujī is always, Holy Gurujī is always present.” In the same way, for us, Swāmījī is always present. When you go to the Kathu Āśram in Nāgur, that banyan tree of Mahāprabhujī, you can still feel his energy there. In the same way, in this beautiful Strīlky Āśram, every tree, every path, everywhere you can feel Swāmījī. This was his tapasyā, where he did his tapasyā, where he was with all of his family, our family—with all of you. And you can see the magic he did: he converted a pig house into nice accommodation for us. Ganga or Sangam was a pig house? Ganga, yeah. So accommodation, you see, but it was a kauś—a pig house. So you can see the miracles: Swāmījī transformed the stable for the pig into the beautiful house that is Gaṅgā Halā. It is said that the Gurudev is the one who can make the king a beggar or a beggar a king. But we don’t need to be kings or queens or beggars. We just need to be good bhaktas, which we all are. Everything is in his hands. And we should never feel that his presence is not there, or his blessings are not there, now. Because I also feel that, you know, our whole lives we were so much involved with all the small details: “Swāmījī, can I go from Jadan to the Jadan village?” Or “Swāmījī, I want to go here,” or “Swāmījī, I want to buy this,” or “Swāmījī, I want new clothes.” Every small detail—not only me, all of us—had so many, let’s say, stupid questions. And from that, you can see how patient he was: loving, caring. I heard people asking him, “Swāmījī, which color socks should I wear?” And he didn’t get angry and lose himself, no. He was always there for everyone, and he is still there for everyone. Just because he is not talking doesn’t mean he is not there. You ask the same questions in your mind, and you will still get the answers. For me, I personally feel like now it’s a testing period—at least for me, and I think for all of us. He is saying, “Now I will be silent and watch how these crazy people do what.” In Jadan, we have absolutely no clue what to do, and he is just sitting. I believe this problem we don’t have only in Jadan; we have it in all our ashrams now. And maybe outside you don’t see any expressions, but inside he is laughing and saying, “Look at these guys.” But I also know that he won’t let us mess up in life. That much trust we should have in him—that he is always there to protect us and to save us from falling into some black, dark hole. He wants to see if our viveka will make us walk to that hole, or if our viveka will manage to skip it, because he has been guiding us and teaching us our whole lives how to use viveka. He just wants to see if our viveka will lead us to that black hole, or if we are able to go around it. And yet, even if we start going into that hole, he will still hold our hands and protect us from going there. So I feel personally, for me at least, that this is a testing period. And for me also, that I can—I don’t know if it’s, I wouldn’t call it freedom, but let’s say a period for me to get to know all of my family, and for all of you to get to know me, and something like that. That’s how I’m taking it personally; how you take it is up to you. Trust me, when I was younger, I used to think, “Oh, so much fun for Swāmījī—flying here, flying there, traveling to new places, this and that.” Now I realize, okay. Not so easy. And this very interesting question also started to come to me now. It goes on. But whenever I say, “Nāhaṁ kartā Prabhuḥ kartā, Mahāprabhuḥ kartā he kevalam,” you deal with it. I’m just your servant, I’m just the—how do you call it—the instrument, and he has the strings. I’m the puppet, and he pulls the strings, and I just work however he wants. So just have faith in me, and we will, all together, move forward. And sometimes when you see me as a normal twenty-five-year-old boy, that’s also normal, okay? Me, no guru—there’s only one guru. I’m the same as all of you, so if I’m running around here eating pizza, normally, no problem. When I sit here, then it’s flowing. When I’m outside of here, then it’s me and the normal world, okay? So it’s not like I’m becoming a guru or anything, no. Gurudev is the Guru, that’s why I brought this, so that you don’t touch my feet; you touch here. You all are very good yogīs; you know how to sit straight. I like back support, that’s why I sit here. The Guru is always going to be Gurudev, not me. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai, Hindu Dharm Samrāṭ Paramahaṃsvāmī Śrī Mādhvānanda Purī Jī, Siddhapurudeva Bhagavān Kī Jai, Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṃsvāmī Śrī Maheśvarānanda Purī Jī, Gurudeva Kī Jai, Haraṇaṃava Pārvatī Pate Hara Hara Mahādeva Śambho Jai.