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Be careful, several things can mislead you

The mind's tyranny enslaves us to predictable cycles of suffering. We recognize its patterns yet remain powerless against its next specific creation. Addiction illustrates this bondage, where a promise of reform is broken by evening, driven by the mind's companions: greed, selfishness, and desire. These forces equate producing alcohol to producing drugs, with devastating societal consequences. This condition originates from Kali Yuga's entry into human consciousness, where money became god. The mind's destructive potential is a dormant fire within, like a volcano under snow; when awakened, it melts all resistance. We remain slaves to its cravings until death, where the mind departs only to await the next life.

"Kali Yuga entered our mind as greediness, selfishness, and desires."

"This mind will turn you into ashes."

Filming location: Vép, Hungary

We know what the mind has done to us. We know the situations in which it repeatedly places us, and the situation we are in now because of it. We even know the kinds of situations it will create in the future. Yet, we still do not know what specific situation our mind will create next. Consider an alcoholic. When completely drunk, they promise themselves and others, "I will never drink again." Yet, by evening, they are reaching for the bottle again. Alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs. More people are killed because of it; it is the leading cause of road accidents. It breaks apart marriages and creates unhappy children who cannot get a proper education. The condition of the alcoholic is the same as that of a person addicted to opium or any other drug. Therefore, producing alcohol means producing and supplying drugs. You know this, yet you still do it—producing and consuming—because of this mind. Because this mind has good friends: greediness, selfishness, and desires. The greediness, desire, and selfishness for money. Long ago, there was a king named King Pṛṣat. This was the time when the Tretā Yuga changed into the Kali Yuga—the change of the yugas. This is the real millennium, which changes the atmosphere of the entire universe. It is the changing of the constellations. This is a beautiful mathematics that counts billions of years: one mantra, yuga, days, kalpas, and so on. At the time when King Pariśad was there, Kali Yuga came and asked the king to give him a place. The king asked, "Who are you?" "I am Kali Yuga." "And what is your specialty?" "All that is happening now in the saṃsāra. This is the specialty of Kali Yuga: your way of thinking, your attitude, all relations, fighting for money, position, wars—all of it." The king said, "Then you have no place in my kingdom." Kali Yuga replied, "You cannot stop me. I will come. But it would be nice if you could freely give me some little place on this planet." "What is this little place?" asked the king. "Something which is very rare. I do not want your whole kingdom, all your land, your oceans, your mountains." "Then tell me, what is it? Gold? It is very rare. You can hardly see it anywhere." "Okay," said Kali Yuga. And Kali Yuga entered into the king, into the consciousness of the king, and everything became gold, shining. Thus, it is said that in Kali Yuga, money is God. Gold is God. But Kali Yuga is slowly expanding more and more. We have forgotten the roots of the human race, the roots of humanity and human life, because that Kali Yuga entered our mind as greediness, selfishness, and desires. That is all that plays in our mind, and we are slaves to it. As long as you are friends with this—with greediness, selfishness, ego, desires, and longing—you will not be happy. This mind will kill us. This mind is like a dormant fire in wood. It is dormant; you do not feel it. But within the wood, there is fire completely. The more quantity in the wood, the more the fire. What we call fuel: the more quantity in alcohol, the more fire. The more quantity in anger, the more fire. The more quantity in desires, the more fire. That fire is dormant, but when it awakens, you can walk on the mountains. There is snow, and you can go skiing. But underneath is a volcano, and you know when the volcano awakens, solid stones begin to melt and flow like water. So when the anger of the volcano awakens, or the anger and desire of the volcano awakens in us, we have no more power to face it. This dormant fire, which is in the wood, when it awakes, it will burn and turn the wood into ash. Then it, too, will disappear. Similarly, this mind will turn you into ashes. When will you be free of your mind? When you pick up ash in the crematorium. Then the mind will tell you, "Bye-bye, bye-bye. See you. See you. I am just like an ass. How will you see me again? I am waiting for you in the next life."

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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