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It is crucial that one does not create ambition. A person who creates ambition is never successful. You can plant a tree; it will grow, but it will not bear fruit. You can buy a cow, but it will not give milk. So you may do some exercises, some sādhanā, but the result of that will be very distant if there is no Gurū Kṛpā and if there is ambition. We need Gurū Kṛpā. This Kṛpā is very hard to understand, especially for the Western mind. What we call faithfulness is lost nowadays from people's minds. People do not understand at all what faithfulness means. They ask themselves, "What do I get from this?" or "Why should I be?" And there, everything is lost. You cannot experience the beauty and the golden benefit of faithfulness, just as a blind person cannot experience colors. Because their mind is not steady, they have ambitions. And when the mind is not steady and ambition is there, there is no perfection. There is a story about Lord Śiva and a Rākṣasa, a devil. The devil wanted to become immortal, so that he would never die and no one could kill him. He came to Lord Śiva and said, "Lord, I am your great devotee. Please bless me with immortality." Śiva said, "That is not possible. In this way you cannot get immortality, and you do not even know what immortality is. You cannot be physically immortal." Then the Rākṣasa said, "Please bless me with one siddhi: on whose head I put my hand, they will burn." Śiva said, "Okay, that I can give you because you were practicing tapasyā for so long." So Śiva blessed him. Now the Rākṣasa said, "I want to try if you have really given me the siddhi or not. There is nobody here, so I have to try on you." He wanted to kill Śiva. Well, Śiva left from there. He escaped. It is his own power which he gave; this power could destroy him too. So it is your own words, your own promises, your kind deeds that can also disturb you. Śiva ran away, and the Rākṣasa was running behind him through the Himalayas, up and down through the hills. Suddenly there was a beautiful cave, and Śiva ran into it. Viṣṇu was sitting there. Viṣṇu got up and greeted Śiva, saying, "My Lord, how gracious I am, how fortunate I am that you came and gave me your darśan. But my Lord, you look a little nervous today." Śiva replied, "Yes, my Lord Viṣṇu, it is so." You know, the Īṣṭa Devatā of Viṣṇu is Śiva, and the Īṣṭa Devatā of Śiva is Viṣṇu. There is no difference between them. Some people think Viṣṇu is the highest; others are semi-gods. There is no 'semi'. God is God. Fire is fire, whether it is a volcano or a small flame. Fire is fire. God is God. A human is human. An animal is an animal. A soul is a soul. Life is life. Śiva told the story to Viṣṇu. Viṣṇu said, "Oh, well, Lord, no problem. I will solve this. You relax and drink tea. I am coming." Viṣṇu went out and dematerialized in the form of a beautiful girl, a dancer, dressed like a dancer and dancing on a rock. The Rākṣasa's lungs were not strong enough from running, so he stopped for a few minutes to rest. Suddenly he saw the girl dancing. He asked, "Have you seen Śiva? Which direction did he run?" She said, "I do not know. Śiva does not interest me. But I have a great interest in you. You look beautiful. Would you like to dance with me?" The Rākṣasa thought, "Oh, let poor Śiva go. I will enjoy dancing with her." He came near to dance. She said, "Do you know how to dance?" He said, "No." She said, "Then you stand on that rock, and I am on this rock. I will show you, and you will learn what I am doing." So she was dancing like this, and he was copying her, like this and like that. As he danced, the Rākṣasa put his hand on his own head, and he burned; he destroyed himself. Because it did not matter on whose head he put his hand—it would burn and explode. If he put his hand on anyone's head, that person would burn to ashes. These are ambitions: you long for some perfection, you want to have siddhis and demonstrate them. That will ruin us and will not help us to be successful. Therefore, proceed slowly, step by step, and be faithful. Be faithful to your sādhanā, be faithful to your friends, be faithful to yourself, be faithful to your master, and be faithful to your disciples. There is something in between this that is indescribable. The intellect will not understand it; intellect cannot describe it. It is a matter of feeling the functions and that it functions in it. Therefore, Kuṇḍalinī and Chakra energies are such that you cannot describe them, because everyone has different experiences with this. Everyone has different feelings, and every individual has different visions. Now, which is right? Five blind people went to see an elephant. A man brought an elephant to a village, and all the people went to see how it looked. Five blind people also went. One came and touched the legs. "Oh, an elephant means pillars." One went and touched the trunk, feeling the hole from which warm air came. "Oh, the elephant is a warm water hose." The third one was touching the tail. "An elephant means a rope." The fourth one was touching the big belly. "It is a tank; an elephant is a tank." The fifth one was touching the ear. He said, "Oh, it is something like a big plate." They returned to the village where people were talking about how beautiful and nice the elephant was. The blind people said, "That is not the truth. An elephant is nothing but pillars." The second said, "Only a water hose." The third said, "You are wrong; it is only a rope." The fourth said, "No, no, no, this is a big tank." All of them were right, and none of them was right. Every individual has different experiences; every person has his own experiences. But the true, ultimate reality is one. And you can know that reality only through faithfulness, through that which we call gratitude. Recording location: Czech Republic, Prague, Weekend seminar