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Good evening, everybody. Praṇām Swāmījī. Welcome to this small but beautiful Yoga in Daily Life Center in New York. It is my honor to make a short introduction and to present our master and founder of Yoga in Daily Life. Since I have this honor, I will put it a little bit into a personal perspective, if you allow me. Swāmījī is not just a yoga teacher, but a genuine spiritual master from India, which has a rich spiritual teaching and philosophy. As far as I know, our Swāmījī is a kind of special master. I have been in this field for 21 years, and I have studied many books of yogic masters and teachers; there is no one like Swāmījī. First of all, he brings the knowledge to us firsthand, the original one. We are not receiving second-hand instructions. As far as I know, no spiritual master gives lectures almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for many, many years. For a few years, I was waiting for Swāmījī to take a break, but he never took a break. Swāmījī has many disciples all over the world. To be a disciple of a spiritual master means that somehow you recognize your highest spiritual guide in your life. Not only are you a practitioner of yoga, but somehow one realizes that this teaching can bring one to the realization of human life. Some of us recognized Swāmījī as our spiritual master and our ultimate guide. This is the tradition in India, which is ancient and has been happening for thousands of years. Again, here our spiritual master is a kind of special, because he does not put any demands on his disciples. We have never been told that, Swāmījī, as far as I remember. But somehow we value this very much. You do not require anybody to do something, to give something, and you do not oblige anybody. Nobody has any obligations towards Swāmījī. And even that one thing is hard. So I feel very privileged to be here. Thank you to the organizers who organized this event. Thank you, Swāmījī, for being with us and giving us the original wisdom of India and its spiritual school. Hari Om. Śāntiḥ, Śāntiḥ. Good evening, dear brothers and sisters. It is nice to be here with you this evening, and thank you to our dear sister Kṛpā Devī and Dayāpurī and all their friends who make it possible that once a year I come and visit your center. Thank you, Professor Dayāpurī, for your introduction full of flowers. When I was driving here, our dear Muktānanda informed me, or he told me, about the present direction in which yoga is going. Most people understand and take yoga just for physical training, which is also correct, true. But it is not only that, what we call yoga. A few decades ago, when I came for the first time to Europe and to America, other people did not know what yoga is. Many were comparing yoga to a fakir who is sitting on iron needles, or sitting near the fire, or hanging on a tree upside down, or sitting with twisted legs in lotus pose. That was the imagination of the people: what can yoga be? Then, around 1980, or maybe before, about 1975 or something, there was the so-called hippie time. People were thinking yoga means smoking, growing very long hair, not washing anymore, and hanging here and there in the streets, or singing and dancing and doing nothing. So, you know this Bhajan. They call it, Americans used to call it, the hippie movement. So whenever I came to America, people said, "You are also a hippie." I said, "I don’t know, what do you mean?" Then, around 1985, between 80 and 85, there was a very well-known or famous yogī. The jogging system came; people were jogging and doing sports and things like this. So at that time, they discovered that yogīs are healthy and have good concentration. So the joggers and the skiers in the mountains began to practice yoga. Yes, many of them became champions. So that was the door, or the bridge, through which yoga entered people’s minds. It is true that if you practice yoga, you will have good concentration, you will have good health, and you will lead a comfortable, healthy life. At the beginning of the century, there was a spiritual movement, and they compared yoga with spirituality, and that is growing day by day. But then again, it came that somehow people have no time to go to the temples or to the church. For all that time, people would go to the temple or to the church to pray and meditate a little. It was giving them a kind of contentment and peace. Now, when they come to yoga, they have these feelings of happiness, contentment, peace, and physical well-being. Therefore, yoga has now become more or less a subject of well-being, physical health, and anti-stress management. That’s good. It’s not bad. It’s very good. Because in Āyurveda—now Āyurveda came too—and in the West, Āyurveda and this meditation for spirituality were introduced by one great yogī called Maharishi Mahesh Yogī. Did you hear about him? Maharishi Mahesh Yogī sent his trained people to America for introducing Āyurveda, the most ancient medical system. Then he developed the meditations, and after, also the Gāndharva Veda, the sound therapy, meditation with sound and music. Also, his many disciples, sitar players, used to come and move everywhere. So it got into the people; there was a very scientific proof of that. I would say that Maharishi Mahesh Yogī gave to the world many beautiful things. Unfortunately, he passed away some years ago. Then there was one great master in Ṛṣikeś in India. His name was Swami Sivananda, and many of you have heard about Swami Sivananda. He was a great master. He had many disciples, and a few of them came to the West. They brought then classical yoga, very nice classical yoga, with spirituality, balanced, and that was very scientifically designed, and people liked it. But you know, every master, even masters have their time, the length of their life, and they go. Now, yoga has become commercial, and when it becomes commercial, then quality suffers. Where there is quality, there should be no compromise. But who can say that you are practicing wrong, or another is practicing correct? This evening, the subject given to me is the awakening of consciousness through the practice of yoga and daily life. Consciousness is something which is with us all the time. There are different levels of consciousness. Gautama Buddha, the prince Buddha, was a Hindu. His father was a Hindu king, and he was also Hindu. Buddha, when he got enlightenment, then we used to call him Buddha. Bodhi means the intellect, and bodha means the knowledge. So the enlightened person is called Buddha. His teachings, his thoughts, people accepted them, and they didn’t call him Siddhartha; they gave him the name Buddha. Bodha, the enlightened one. Buddha led a very simple life, a vegetarian, and through meditation, he achieved great things. Now, when the Buddha got enlightenment, he wrote that he went from the present consciousness, from where he was at a higher level, back to the stone. He follows his development, so from the enlightenment back until the stone. And again, from the stone, the metal, or the minerals, the plants, the corals, the animals in the water, birds, animals, and humans. And then from human consciousness. This was a development, or a development of the consciousness, from the very beginning until here. We are dwelling every day between the levels of three consciousnesses: unconscious, subconscious, and conscious. Unconsciousness is that dormant consciousness in which our abilities or our talents are dormant. That is a storeroom from the past life where our destiny is also dormant, our destiny. After that comes the subconsciousness, and our subconsciousness, which begins from our life in the mother’s body, includes everything we have experienced in the past, while consciousness is what we are aware of now. I am speaking, and you are receiving through your jñāna-indriyas, two jñāna-indriyas. One is called cakṣu, the eyes, and the second is called śravaṇa, the hearing. These are our two jñāna-indriyas. Jñāna-indriyas means the senses of knowledge. They are receiving now. Like this camera, the lens of the camera is taking all the views that are in front of it without making any differences. This camera is recording my flower garland, the crystal garland, the Rudrākṣa garland, each petal of the flower, the microphone, and everything. So, it is very alert and very correct. Similarly, our two jñāna-indriyas, these two senses, listening and looking. It takes the picture, and the memory goes to the memory. So, when one second has passed, even a quarter second has passed, that is in our subconsciousness. And what will be after coming? There are two qualities. One is the future, and one is the past. Our future is governed by the past. This is very important to know. Our future is governed by our past qualities, karmas, or those tendencies in the form of experiences. The subconscious is stored in the subconscious. My grandmaster Bhagavan Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Mahāprabhujī said, "Past is past. Don’t waste your time thinking about the past. That will bring you, if you will think, maybe happiness or maybe sadness. The present is not here, so don’t dream about the future, which is not here. Do not dream of the future, but be conscious, alert, and aware of the present situation." Our present situation, if you cannot balance in your intellect, in your brain, then it can destroy you, harm many, or it can help you. Now, that information which we recorded in our subconsciousness should be filtered with your intelligence, with that kind of intellect which filters all negative and keeps only the positive. It is believed there is one; it’s called a swan, and that swan is one couple, and that couple lives somewhere in Mansarovar Lake. Mansarovar Lake is in India, Tibet, where Mount Kailash is. Near Mount Kailash is the very beautiful, big Lake Mansarovar. You cannot see them. If you can see them, you are the luckiest one. And it is in that Paramahaṁsa we call them, Paramahaṁsa. If you give them milk and water mixed together, they will drink the milk and they will leave the water out. So now, this is the example: a wise person will filter the negative qualities from the past and present you with the most beautiful, pure qualities. If we are not wise, if we have no knowledge, vivekā, then we will vomit out. It is said you will vomit. When one begins to talk and bring out the negative qualities and put them into the world, that means that person’s brain activity, in both hemispheres, does not coordinate equally. Once you are very emotional, you begin to weep even while talking, or once you are very angry, hot, and especially that child did not get a mother’s breast feeding. So similarly, my dear, this is in the subconsciousness, many things, and then it becomes a problem, and we don’t know what the problem is. And then we go to the doctor, and the doctor tells us he is psychic. And then you come home and look in the mirror, oh God, I am psychic. Yeah, what should a poor doctor tell you? Because he doesn’t know how your subconsciousness is. Or who will your master tell you what is in your subconsciousness? So, through meditation and through exercises, we can truncalize and clean it, and develop our intellect so that our consciousness again comes to purity. And then we should not dream for the future, but we should work for the future. You are hungry and sitting alone at home. You have nobody, but don’t dream that somebody will buy the food and bring it here. So it is said, better do it yourself, self-service. Therefore, for the future, to build our better future, we have to pray. If you believe or not, prayers will definitely help us very much. We shall meditate, and of course, we shall exercise. So, Yoga in Daily Life is designed in such a way that we have all in this one book, what you have, the "Yoga in Daily Life" book: harmony of body, mind, and soul. Luckily, you have a very nice teacher here, Kṛpā Devī, and she is, I think, practicing every day. I envy her because she is such a nice lady, and I always feel that way when I stand with her and she says, "My yoga master." My yoga teacher, and then I am a little bit ashamed to stand here. So you are lucky that you have such great yogīs, yoga teachers, also the Dayāpurī husband. And who is teaching more here, from you? Muktānanda, very good. Muktānanda means the bliss of liberation. And then there is one very little darling, you know, the Anna, and she is a very, very good, very good one. Yes, Anna, I am talking about you, yes. You are a very good girl, yes. So, I mean, the awakening of consciousness, or the development or unfoldment of consciousness, through the practice of yoga. So, do not take yoga only for good, for your figure, and that’s all. But it is, you are modeling your own life and own destiny. You take in your hands, of course, ultimately it is in the hands of God, and my grand grand master used to say, God takes upon Himself, or the master takes upon himself, the destiny of the devotees. So whatever the disciples do, the master takes on his head. He said, "Yes, I will take it on my shoulder." And so, whatever we did, we go to God and say, "God, please forgive us." What does that mean? Yes, God takes all our mistakes upon Himself. That we, His children, can live peacefully and happily. Āsanas, physical exercises, prāṇāyāma, breath exercises. Breath exercises will help you to balance both hemispheres and keep your brain healthy, because they supply a lot of oxygen. They balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, which will balance our hemispheric activities, and you will be very happy. And after that, when you meditate, meditate on the center. So when you are meditating on the here, where the tilak is, you are centering your concentration; then both waves or activities of the brain centralize and balance. And then you come to your heart and filter all your feelings in the heart. If there is anything negative, I will purify it. That will make us holy. So it is not that I will give you the blessing and you will be holy, you know. Then I will also give blessings myself here like this, you know, every day. I will be holy, I will be holy, I will be holy. It cannot be like that. Blessing comes, of course. Blessing will come from that. Mother’s blessing is important, father’s blessing is important, and brother’s and sister’s blessing is very important. The neighbor’s blessing, everyone’s blessing is very good. Even the blessing of the enemy is the best, but the anger of an enemy is the worst. So it is said, we call, "Forgive me, please." And in other languages we say, "Bless me, please." So blessing, blessing has a very important role. Śrī Śrī... Three very important jñānendriyas are very, very powerful, and therefore they need strong control. These are three horses, very wild ones. So, I will tell a little story and then finish. One man had a toothache, and he went to eat somewhere. He was eating, and some piece of food from some vegetables got stuck in. Now, the tongue, it’s the tongue’s duty, the dharma of the tongue, to clean like this, no? So the tongue is always going there to take it away, but the tooth had a pain. Both of the teeth had a pain, and they said to the tongue, "Please don’t touch me, it hurts." Tongue goes there. Say, "Please don’t touch." Again, afterwards, again the tongue goes, and they were all angry. He said, "Don’t touch me, otherwise, you know, I will bite you, and within no time we can destroy you. Be careful, you are living between us. Okay, we know. We have to work, and you are enjoying the taste, you know. Okay, even if we disregard that, you are always disturbing." He said, "Yes, thanks." He said, "You are talking to destroy me." He said, "Yes, thanks." He said, "Don’t be proud of your being here with me." He said, "Why? If I say one wrong word, you all will be out." So that’s it. So we need here very good control. And also here, otherwise, your most beautiful work, spiritual work, everything can be destroyed through this negative listening, hearing. So God protect us from kusanga. And also these visions. One saint said, "God gave you the eyes to have darśan." Darśan means always seeing the holy things. And you see the holy in everyone; don’t see the negative in it. So, the awakening of consciousness, or the unfoldment of consciousness, comes through the practice of yoga and their life. I would suggest you read further in this book, Hidden Powers in Humans. I don’t know if it is available here, but next time when I come, you can ask me questions. So, thank you very much for listening, and welcome once more. God bless you. Na’haṁ kartā prabhu dīpa kartā, Mahāprabhujī dīpa kartā he kevalam. Oṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ...