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Part 1: The Invocation of Annapūrṇā and the Path of Awareness Āśram means come and work. We all come here to the āśram, we gather here. We practice yoga, but with that we also do somewhat of sevā. Come. Because sevā dharma, paramo dharma. Sevā dharma is the highest dharma. So when we are here, when we clean, when we do anything, it all has some result. We are going to come here; this will be a beautiful restaurant. But the most important thing is the person who is cooking here. Because he or she, with which bhāva they are making it, that is very important. Otherwise, in the morning, they have a fight, and then they come, and she goes into the restaurant. Then your anger, we all will eat. So, the food, everything around us, we all hold these special energies. You can feel the energy in the space where there is positivity, where there is truth, and where there is dharma. These places just hold that energy. It doesn’t matter what was here before, what not, but once the energy, the light, the divine light of Mahāprabhujī is lit, then that whole place is lit because of all of us. And because this is going to be a restaurant, we did already the Guru Pūjan, but now you all close your eyes and I will sing the Annapūrṇā Stotra. Annapūrṇā Stotra is to invoke the goddess Annapūrṇā, who is the Devī for food. When we sing the bhojan mantra, when we sing the mantra before eating, what do we sing? Annapūrṇe, sadāpūrṇe, no? There is always some energy which we can invoke, or how to invoke that god or goddess into that space. Like in our meditation, we invoke Gurudeva. When we are in some new space, we invoke Lakṣmī Devī to come and bless us with wealth. So because this space is a restaurant, Annapūrṇā Devī is blessed. And before any god or goddess is invoked, you always invoke Gajānanjī, which means Gaṇeśjī. Sudhāṃśo Kavināśakarakam, Namāmi Vighneśvarapādapaṅkajam Nityānandakarī Varābhayakarī, Saundarya Ratnākarī, Nirdhūtākhila Gaurapāvanakarī Pratyakṣa Māheśvarī Kāśī Purādhīśvarī Mātānnapūrṇeśvarī nānāratna vicitra bhūṣaṇakārī, hemāmbarā ḍambarī, muktāhāra vilamba mānavilāsat, vakṣobha kumbhāntakrī, kāśmīra guruvāsita ruci karī, kāśīpura dhīśvarī, bhikṣāṃ dehi kṛpāvambhanakarī, mātānnapūrṇeśvarī Yogānandakarī ripukṣayakarī dharmārthanisthākarī candrārkanalabhāsanā laharī trilokyarakṣākarī Kailāsa Calakandarālayā Kari Gaurī Umā Śaṅkarī Kaumārī Nigama Artha Gocara Kari Auṃkārābhijākṣarī Mokṣal Dvārakā Pāṭa Pāṭa Nalārī Kāśī Purādhīśvarī Śrī Viśveśa Manaḥ Prasādana Kare, Kāśī Purādhiśvarī, Bhikṣāṃ Dehi Kṛpāvalambana Kare, Mātā Annapūrṇeśvarī, Urvī Sarvajaneśvarī Bhagavatī, Mātā Annapūrṇeśvarī Veṇī Nīna Samāna Kuntalā Hari Nityāna Dhaneśvarī Sarvānandakarī Dṛśaṃ Śubhakarī Kāśīpurādheśvarī Bhikṣāṃ Dehi Kṛpāvalambanakarī Mātā Annapūrṇeśvarī Bhikṣāṁ Dehi Kṛpāvalambanakarī, Mātā Annapūrṇeśvarī, Devī Sarvavicitra Ratnaracitā, Dākṣāyaṇī Sundarī, Vāma Svādupayodharāpriyakarī, Saubhāgya Māheśvarī Bhikṣāṁ Bhīṣṭakarī Daśa Śubhakarī Kāśī Purādhiśvarī Bhikṣāṁ Dehi Kṛpāvalambanakarī Mātā Annapūrṇeśvarī Kṣatrā Trāṇa Karī, Mahābhaya Karī, Mātā Kṛpā Sāgarī, Sākṣān Mokṣa Karī, Sadāśiva Karī, Viśveśvarī Śrīdharī Dakṣa Krandha Karī Nirāmaya Karī, Kāśī Pura Dhīśvarī, Bhikṣāṃ Dehī Kṛpāvalambana Karī, Mātā Annapūrṇeśvarī Annapūrṇe Sadāpūrṇe Śaṅkara Prāṇa Vallabhe Jñāneśvarī Rāghava Siddhārthaṃ Bhikṣāṃ Dehi Ca Pārvatī Mātā Ca Pārvatī Devī Pitā Devo Maheśvaraḥ Bāndhavāḥ Śiva Bhaktāśca Svadeśo Bhuvanatrayam So, it means, O Mother Annapūrṇā, the one who always gives us happiness and the one who always gives all what we need, who is holding or who has decorated herself with all different types of jewelry, all different types of stones, everything. The one who removes all the sins from all the bhaktas. And you are the Svayam, the God herself, the Goddess herself. The one who stays in the Himalayas, and she is the queen of Kāśī Pura, and the whole world is supplied by her grace. All the grains which you get is because of her grace. And please grace us, and please bless us with your kṛpā, with your blessings. So, in this way, Bhagavad Gītā, Śaṅkarācārya Jī, in many different ways, created different, different ślokas, different, different stotras for different devīs and gods and goddesses. And in this way, Śaṅkarācārya Jī created various things that we sang and listened to, to various gods and goddesses. Because we believe that every god or goddess, or everyone who is up in the astral world, in the cosmic world, they all get something from our prayers, they all get something from the bhajans, they all get something. And so we believe that all the goddesses, gods, or all those who live in the astral or cosmic world receive something from our prayers or from our singing of bhajans. When we invoke certain energies within our consciousness, and we align those energies with the different chakras which they are representing, and when they flow with that alignment, and when we are consciously aware of that alignment, when it is done with awareness, when we are aware that, "Okay, now I am working with this, now I am going here, now I am going there," if we are not aware about it and we experience or we feel certain energies, and without awareness, then it just goes. But when we sit and we invoke them, and they come and they align inside, then you will feel that divine light, which is much more greater. When we do our sādhanā, when we do our meditation, many times we say, "We saw this," or we had darśana of Gurudeva, or we had darśana of whatever. It’s not that we are just imagining, but it is that our energies are so aligned, and that we are, with devoted mind, invoking those certain energies, those certain paramparā or whatever, and they really appear. Why? Because of the dṛḍha niścaya, because of the determination. The determination, when we have a certain determination to do something, then that becomes successful. So when we are meditating and we have that longing for seeing Gurudeva, or the longing to awaken certain things within us, then we will have so many internal things which will be distracting us, just that we do not achieve that. Because there is always negative and positive, and the negative energies are always going to be much more stronger, much more evident than the positive energies. So when we are trying to achieve something good, when we are trying to go towards, to do something good, us as human beings, our brains, that no matter what happens, I am going to do this. Then there are no forces which can stop us from doing anything. For example, if now they are opening a restaurant, they have the determination that, no matter what happens, we are going to run it. And until there is no greed, and until there is no jealousy, then that purity shines. Most of the time it happens that we reach a certain level when we are working, and then we start getting jealous that, oh no, that other restaurant is better, this is better. Or the greed will start growing within us. I wish I had more. I wish I would earn more. Because we all have certain goals in our lives that we need to achieve: this and this and this. You can be living any type of life, but if you are aligned with awareness, then automatically that life becomes spiritual when we remove that ahaṃ, that means that I, that ego. Inside our body, inside our mind, there is so much negativity, so much dirt, so much dust, so much everything. But then our sādhanā, our prayers, our bhajans, our internal growth, that clears all that fog, which is gathering over that layer by layer. When you all were having closed eyes and I was chanting the mantra, did you feel different energy in the room? That is because the mantras, these chants, hold these energies, and it can be felt by us. And that’s why when we practice certain sādhanās, if we do our mālā, then that purification helps inside us by ourselves. But we need to put in the effort. We need to put in some work into it. The only thing is, we need to put some effort and work into it. Because the only thing which they will serve, which will be instant, will be instant coffee. There is no instant enlightenment. There is no instant free from all the problems. Problems will come and problems will go, because we are the creator of them. So we can also be the destroyer of our problems. Our mind is more than capable enough to deal with all the problems which we create. And communication is very important, to talk about problems. If not with others, then with yourself. Question everything. When you are sitting in meditation, question it: Why am I doing this? What am I doing in my life? Just keep on questioning until you are either out of questions or you are out of answers. And you will see that so many answers will open up. Because all the answers are hidden within ourselves. The kṛpā, the blessings, the grace, the protection we have. We don’t need to be worried about things, because what did we sing? Terī Satguru Rakelā Jā Cintāmatā Karaṇā, which means Satguru Dev is protecting us. There is that layer which will be there. But still, we need to do the effort. Why? Prečo? Because "terī bitī umara hari nāma abhinava," which means your life, our life, we all do not know how long our life is. Our life is very unpredictable. We never know when, what will happen. We are here now. We don’t know where we will be in half an hour. And sing this name, because we only have this life. This life is very precious, but it’s very easy to waste it. Every day we are wasting, God knows how many minutes, how many hours. Out of 24 hours, 6 to 10 hours we sleep. Two hours, let’s say, for all our meals, and six hours for gossip, no? Because without the juice, you know, it’s impossible to live. Even if there is nothing, we will find something to do. We’ll call someone whom we don’t ever talk to. If we are so bored, we’ll call them: "Hello, what’s up, what’s going on?" Instead of that, we go within. Because talking to someone else, yes, it will give us some happiness, it will give us some peace for a certain period of time. But when we go within and we talk to ourselves and start asking questions, then we will progress, because we will start getting answers to them. Anyhow, our mind, our brain is very fast, running a lot. Restless, without any peace. Then we distract our mind to feel that peace. Either we do something very exciting, very thrilling, to bring up the adrenaline. Or we go into a black dive cave where we don’t want to meet anyone, we don’t want to see anyone. That is also a type of destruction. But we try not to see life as it really is. Because there is some fear inside. There is some stress inside. There are some experiences there which hold us back. Part 2: The Illusion of Reality and the Path to the True Self There are things which scare us a bit, which stop us from moving ahead, but we need to understand that these are just barriers stopping us from growing. They are not real. Most things are not real. The only thing that is real is you—the inner you, the true self. Only that Ātmā is real. Nothing else. This body is not real. This world which we live in is not real. It is all the delusion of the world, and we are living in that illusion, and we are part of that illusory story. The mental capacity is to go much further than we think, but we are just stuck in this web, that spider web of illusion. Did we ever try to discover something past that? Did we ever try to look further? You heard that—OK, this is the goal. Did you ever try to think what is after that? Question. Question yourself. Any time, just go deeper and deeper and deeper until you become questionless. Because our mind thinks it is very limited, but it is unlimited. This mind has the capability to create, to destroy, to make everything peaceful, to make everything nice, or to make everything as the world will. But do we want to do that? Do we not want to do that? That is in our own hands. If we choose that we want to be in peace and love and compassion, we can. If we choose that we want to be in hatred and anger, if that is what we wish, no one can force us to do anything. It is always our choice. If we want to do something, if we don’t want to do something, no one will pressure us. Do your mālā. No one will say, meditate. Once someone tries meditation, once someone tries mālā, once someone tries these things and they feel that change, then automatically you have that curiosity to grow, to expand. Until you don’t try, nothing happens. But we are always too scared to try anything. If we don’t try, we don’t move. Many times, to learn how to ride a bicycle, you fell down, you scraped your knees, your elbows. If we don’t try, if we just give up, then we won’t be able to experience anything. The same is with meditation, the same is with yoga. We achieve a certain observation, we go to a certain visualization, we see certain things moving. But we don’t go further than that. We just stop there. We say, "OK, we saw it, that’s it, done." But go until you find that source. You can take hours or you can take seconds. You can see everything in a millisecond or in lifetimes, but it is just how dedicated we are towards whatever we are trying to achieve. If we are in school, colleges, we are dedicated to study, we are dedicated to do certain things, we will. In the same way we are dedicated to work, we will work. If we are dedicated to play, we will play. But dedication and awareness are very important. And awareness in the sense: we have so many thoughts. Do we observe the thoughts which come and go in our mind? There are thoughts which might be from today. There might be thoughts from the past. Do we ever observe that—OK, this thought came from something that happened today? This thought came from something that happened in the past? That all depends on observation, awareness. You should say, "Oh, okay, this thought is from here. Okay, now what to do with this thought?" Can this thought be processed? Can it be solved? Go deeper and deeper into that. After you differentiate from which place that thought came from, where can you put it? And it doesn’t matter if another thought, another thing comes up; try to first figure out, solve this one, move on to the next one. But you need to be aware—aware that you know when a thought comes, when you can be thoughtless, which thought comes when, and what can be done with that thought. Too many thoughts in one sentence. Yes. You need to be aware from where the thought comes, where the thought goes, what can be done with the thought, and what is the purpose of the thought even coming in our mind. And once we manage to learn how to work with our thoughts, we will be more in peace, because our restlessness comes because of our too many thoughts. But when we have control over our thoughts, when we have that rein on—not rain, but the rein for the horses—on the thoughts, then we can control it. And then we can go deeper and deeper and discover many things in our dream state, suṣupti, or jāgrati, or any state. And when we are very deep in meditation, we can let aside all the thoughts. And when we remove everything, and then when that merges, then you can feel many, many meditations. But then we see either a certain light, a certain color. And then we get very excited. And then we try to recreate that scenario in our next meditation, and then we want to go further in the next meditation, but then we don’t manage. Any guesses why? Any guesses? No, anything else? We want it. We want many things. Expectation. We had an expectation that, okay, last time I saw this, now I want to reach this and go further. So, how many did it happen to when we started meditating? No one. Nikomu? Or you, no one saw any colors yet? Which one? OK. Happened to me in the beginning. So what? A čo? So, we expect that, okay, now this, now something more. But we never thought, maybe there is some other experience which we can have in our meditation. Or maybe we don’t need to experience anything in our meditation. We just need to focus on our breath and have the awareness. That’s it. We don’t focus on things; let things just come and go. Don’t put any limitations. Don’t put that—okay, this is the goal I’m trying to achieve in my meditation. Let it be boundless. Let there be no boundaries. Let it go where it goes. But just be aware of the presence of that Guru Tattva in our heart. Some may say you meditate too hard, and you go somewhere, and you can’t come back. That only happens if there are expectations. If there is purity in heart, if there is surrenderness, then the protection is there. But if there are expectations of achieving something and something miraculous to happen, not going to happen. But when we let things go and let things be and work in their own natural speed, many things open up. But for that, faith is important. Not blind faith, but faith. Trust in the process and patience. Because as I said, the only thing they will be cooking is instant coffee. Rest all takes time. Spiritual development can take lives. But one thing is good: we have a human life. Because eating, sleeping, and reproducing, animals can also do. We are humans, so we got a chance to experience something which they can’t. We got a chance to awaken certain things which are able to be unlocked by us. But for that, we have Gurudeva to guide us. We have him to show the right path and the way. But the person who has to walk that way is us. If you have Google Maps, you can see the map and reach the location. But how many times did it happen that Google Maps was wrong and you did not reach the exact location? But if you have someone who knows this place, who climbed that same mountain, and you have that person with you, then with this help you can reach much quicker, much easier, without getting lost by Google Maps. So in the same way, the Guru is that guide who shows us the path, and to show us that this Ātmā and that Paramātmā can unite and become one. Did anyone think what happens when the Ātmā and Paramātmā unite and merge? When this light unites with that bigger light, and they all merge together, then? Potom? Then what? Huh? Happiness. Šťastí. Good answer. Dobrá odpoveď. But then what? Do we lose us, like this Ātmā which goes up? Then when we merge, is this me lost? So that "me" becomes one with that. And then? No rebirth, no nothing, right? That and me becomes us, no? So, that’s why we need to try to find out and dig deeper. We will get the answers. We don’t need anyone to tell us the answers. We know everything. Gurudev just shows us with the lamp, the light, and then it glows up and we see it. And then all the external happinesses don’t affect us, all the external unhappinesses don’t affect us. But very important is the chant, the name of the mantra of the Gurudeva. It is very important to sing this mantra of Guru Deva. Pakṣī paṅkabhīna, hastī dantabhīna, anāṛī kantabhīna. Did you see a bird without wings? No. So in the same way, pakṣī pakṣābhina, hastī dantābhina, or an elephant without tusks. In the same way, humans, without a wife having a kid, in the same way, us humans, without the chant of the Lord, it’s the same. A well without water. And the sky without the moon, or the soil without rain, and trees without fruits, in the same way, us humans without the name of the Lord. Reina Chandabhina Mandira Deepabhina. The body, this body without eyes; if we wouldn’t have eyes, we wouldn’t see. And a temple without a lamp. If there is no lamp, if there is a candle, a beautiful smelling candle in the shape of a lotus or something, lying in the middle of the house, but it’s not lit, what is it? It’s decoration. But when it’s lit, then it’s a candle, and then it’s a Dīpak. So in the same way, we have that decorative candle within all of us. But then we get mantra, and then that decorative lamp is lit, and there is that shining within our hearts. Just as paṇḍita veda vihīnā, in the same way as paṇḍitas, as great scholars, are without knowledge, in the same way as humans without the name. Kāma, Krodha, Madhloba, Niharo, Irsha, Choro, Bhaktajana Kāma, Krodha, Madhloba, Aṅghar, which means ego, jealousy, envy, anger, lust, jealousy. This all we remove, and Irsha, Choro, please leave that greed, all of us, because for us our neighbor’s garden is always going to be greener. Don’t think that anyone is ours in this world. We are there for you forever. Someone says, "We are there for you forever." Yes, forever in this life. We came with no one, we will leave with no one. The only thing that will go with us is our deeds. So, if you need a chair, we have chairs. Until now, it’s okay? Very good. See, yogīs. No knee pain, they can sit peacefully. Very good. You see, here we have a great yogī. So, this life is very unpredictable, but we are too attached to things, to objects, to emotions, to so many things. And when we let go of all the surrounding things and just focus on ourselves as we truly are, when we have santoṣa, contentment from what we have, and we are happy with what we have, and we lose that wish of gaining more and more and more, then our sādhanā is slightly fruitful. We need to be okay with everything and anything that we have. Because neither this is the reality, nor that is the reality. Only Satchitānanda Rūpa, para. This Satchitānanda, that’s it. You get that bliss. You are one with that bliss, that’s it. Alar Pokyal Ibatta Satchitānanda Pokyal Ibatto.