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Om Bole Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai, Śrī Śrī Dev Puruṣa Mahādeva Kī Jai, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṃśrī Svāmī Māravānandapurajī Mahārāj Kī Jai, Viśva Guru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṃśrī Svāmī Maheśvarānandapurajī Satguru Dev Kī Jai Om. Hari Om. Swāmījī is in Jodhpur today, so I will bring the satsaṅg to a more mundane level, as one can only speak of what is present on the day. For me today, that is school. Tomorrow is the 30th, and on the 1st of July, the new school year begins. At the moment, it is chaos. In typical Rajasthani fashion, the government released the textbooks today, because school starts in two days—so there is plenty of time. But somehow we must manage to get them first. The last month and a half have been summer holidays, so all our school buses have been under repair. There is work going on in the school, repairs that could not be done during the year. Some things in the building are still being finished, and some will continue to be finished for a long time to come. I once asked a wealthy, capable man in Jaipur who had built a beautiful house why he had left parts of it unpainted. He said, "You should never finish your house, or else there is no reason to do anything more." I think we will never finish the school; there always seems to be something additional that needs to be done. I want to speak about our school. It has been a long journey, continuously changing. Even the last few weeks have seen subtle but complete shifts in its picture. It started very small, with 120 primary students. Slowly it has built up; this year, for the first time, we will have over 1,400 students, and it is very full. Lines of people are already trying to get admission for their children. We now also have a college, where the first students graduated this year with Bachelor of Arts degrees. It is quite a transformation. Something very small but very significant happened yesterday regarding how the school functions. A boy from the 12th class, whose board exam results came two weeks ago, also sat the all-India engineering entrance exam—a competitive exam taken by over a million students—just one week after his finals. He achieved a rank of 2500 in all of India, meaning he can select almost any college in Rajasthan. This is amazing for him, but it is significant for the school. Everyone has noticed. It is many parents' dream for their children to achieve this, but they usually have no chance, as apart from passing school, they need expensive coaching courses and must sacrifice years. When they see that our education can enable a student to do it straight away, they become very excited. That is great because it means the children are getting something tangible from their education. But for me, what is more important is at the other end. When we started the school, for the first four or five years, we had to prove to parents it was worth sending their children here. I understand there is a government school in every village, but I would not call them schools, as education does not happen there; teachers often do not come or teach. Parents want to send their children where they will get something. Initially, the only way to gain their confidence was to be good within the system as they know it. I do not particularly like that system; it is about discipline and stuffing information to be memorized and written in exams. We had to compromise. But when results like this boy's come, even from just one student, it makes a difference. It means parents trust that the school can make it happen. Then you can start to teach how you want, especially at the primary level. It means a transformation. We have, in the last two years, already begun to do what I would call education at the primary level—not just memorizing. It starts to change very much. Because we now have the chance and the parents' trust, it happens. They see the result and realize it is really good to do it that way. It is like a snowball; it keeps progressing. For instance, last year before the school year, I was with the primary teachers discussing kindergarten. We were looking at alphabet charts. In English, you have A for apple, B for ball. In Hindi, there is the same. These charts are ready-made in shops. But our children do not speak Hindi; they speak the local dialect, Marwari. Looking through the Hindi chart, half the words they do not know. So we started to make a chart in Marwari. The letters are the same, but the words differ. For example, the first letter is for 'ānara' (pomegranate), but in Marwari they call it 'dharam'. My understanding of the word "understanding" is that you have to stand underneath someone to grasp what they are thinking. You have to be down. If you want jñāna from Swāmījī, you must sit below him so it can flow down. If you want to understand a child, you must get to their level. Sit on the floor with them. Imagine a child on their first day of school. The teacher says "A" is for apple, but the picture is of a dog. The child would think, "Who is this crazy person?" That is the reality for that child if you show 'ānara' for a picture they know as 'dharam'. We went through the whole chart; there were other items that simply do not exist in the villages here. You cannot explain a letter by associating it with the ocean or snow to a Rajasthani child in the desert who has never seen them. The teachers sat for two days and drew their own charts. The rule was that everything on the chart had to be always available in any village in this area. Our children come from villages with a very simple, beautiful, stark, and harsh life. Many do not have electricity, or if they do, it is off half the time. When education is relevant to that life, it goes more easily; you want to understand it. We then started with mathematics. I do not think our children in their first years are interested in calculating the cost of five metres of cloth at the market. There is no cloth shop in their villages. They may go to Pali once a month. So we made mathematics relevant to village life: farming, agriculture, animals, milk, harvesting, water, guests coming, feeding them, making chapatis—how much flour is needed? I hope they can take what they learn home and say, "Mātājī, if we have this many people and so many chapatis each, we need this much flour." That clicks in the brain. You start to use the subjects; that makes education alive. It is about thinking, applying, and learning—not just memorizing times tables and writing them in an exam. In the beginning, if we took steps to do other things—go outside, teach practically about the environment, or not follow the textbook—parents would get nervous. Now they are more relaxed. This ashram is made for learning. There are so many things here to learn from for every subject. We take them on walks on the mountain to see different trees, count things, learn about water and cleanliness. It can all be practical. As time goes on, we can move more in that direction. We might even send senior students to learn practical applications of mathematics by looking at the engineering in the āśram, or accounting in the context of our gosala. For me, that is learning; that is education. My point is that things like that one boy's result prove to parents it is not a loss of time to have a less regimented education. They gain the confidence to let go a little and let actual teaching happen. Our students come from about 21 or 22 villages; I have lost count. Last year, 23 more villages asked us to pick up their children, but we cannot manage. We are full; we have no more buses. If you see the classrooms, there is no place to sit. Last year, one 11th class had 63 students. At 45, we said, "No more," but parents insisted, "They will sit outside, in the doorway, but they must come." Some rooms in the new part were about to be finished, so they could fit, though squashed. It is a miracle of the children's discipline that such a large class can be managed. In my high school, teachers would have been in shock with over thirty students. Here it works; they all pay attention. It is beautiful to see. I love this story that shows where some children come from. We had a boy in first class. The teacher said, "You have to see his pencil." It was very short, and he was still using it. He was from a very poor family. I gave him another pencil and kept supplying him afterwards. He was six or seven, losing his teeth. For security, so no one would steal it, he kept the pencil jammed in the gap in his teeth when not using it. After showing me, he put it back. We had to talk about hygiene, but it shows we come from different worlds. I do not think even the sponsors can fully appreciate how much difference it makes to these children's lives and futures. I wrote a story on the blog about a boy in a village when a UN officer came from Delhi to establish a small school. The officer proudly told the boy, "We're going to make a school in your village." The boy said, "I don't want your school. We want the school that officer went to—the school that gives an opportunity to get a job, to make something of oneself, to go to college, graduate, do further studies, to open up the future." That is what we try to make. Sometimes we succeed; sometimes we learn and start again. That is the aim: to open up the future for the students. We already have students in some of the best colleges. One in Udaipur passed a competitive exam straight out of school last year. A few more passed at the second level of engineering exams. This boy's result this year is really big, and people know it is special. I do not like competition, but when it helps parents relax, trust, and see this as an opportunity, then you can really start to work. It is encouraging and special. Apart from that, for these children to have their education in an ashram, with Swāmījī giving darśan and satsaṅg, with that different atmosphere, is a special opportunity. They learn yoga. They learn more about the environment than in any other school here. They learn to deal with people from different cultures, as karma yogīs come from Europe and elsewhere to teach English. It is special for them. We have also had children from overseas study here. It is special for those overseas children to see how different it is, to be part of it, and to see how quickly they are accepted into the group, the friendship there. In the last months before school finished, another thing happened. The primary school children started to take real pride in the area around their school. They began decorating it, making pictures and patterns from broken bits of tiles and bricks left over from the ongoing construction. They made beautiful things: Dīpakas, welcoming signs, trees, village scenes, houses, symbols of welcome. It kept happening. We talked about the earthquake in Japan in March. The children went out and made more pictures for the children and people in Japan. The idea was that something beautiful can be made from rubble, from that which seems broken or useless. A beautiful thought. The next level is college. This year, the college started its second course in computer programming. So we will have Arts and this computer applications course. As with the primary and secondary school, it takes a while to get going, then interest grows fast. The first few years saw 20-30 students joining each year. This year, the rush has started; probably over 100 students will join in the first year alone. The special thing about the ashram for college is that girls feel safe to study here. One of the biggest problems in secondary education in Pali district, and in India, is that in the college atmosphere, girls often feel threatened in their personal safety. Here, parents say, "I am happy to send my girl to this college because I know there will be discipline and they will be safe." That is really special. If the ashram were not here, they would not go to college. They might study by correspondence, but not have a regular college education. This applies to almost every village around, and also to Sojat and Marwar. In Pali, there is a girls' college, but in Sanskrit or Pali, that facility is not there. So we offer something special. Although in school we have more boys than girls—a general trend in senior school in India—in college we have many more girls than boys. Swāmījī arranged to maintain discipline in the college with one simple rule: the boys must wear a dhoti. We keep a uniform. Boys who go to college to party and make trouble are not prepared to wear one, so they do not come, and we are happy. They can go elsewhere. The boys who seriously want to study come. In the second year of the college, one of our students got the top mark in Arts among all colleges affiliated with our university—over 300 colleges. He is a beautiful kid who will graduate this year; we await his final results. These boys have the chance to study here without the peer pressure to "live college life" and forget study. Because the notorious boys do not come, the girls feel free to come. We do not need a separate girls' college because the boys who come are serious about study, so the girls feel safe. On the 1st of July, school starts. There will be a lot of noise again. About 110 boys will stay in the hostel in the ashram. The mornings will be louder; they will start their Sanskrit śloka at 6 a.m., then have yoga classes. In the evening, they will sing bhajans with about twenty dholaks playing at once. It is a very different atmosphere, a great energy. As I said a few weeks ago, to those who are helping, who give any support: thank you so much. You cannot imagine how much difference you make to these children and the life in front of them. One more piece of news from this week, which the students do not know yet: our college has just been accepted by the United Nations as one of the colleges recognized for promoting education in rural areas. It is special. Jai Om.