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As you may have noticed, Swāmījī constantly speaks about the purpose of our lives, and this bhajan is excellent for reminding us of the essentials. It emphasizes this in a very beautiful way. First Verse O Lord, merciful one, I pray to you. Please help me, help me now. Bestow that mercy on me, that this life may not just pass away without any sense, like so many lives before. I have become the slave of my mind, and I don’t even know what it is doing all the time. I couldn’t achieve anything until now. This mind is just acting of its own accord. I was always attached to the world, longing for enjoyments and possessions. Day and night I sought only my own interest; I never sought others’. Hoping to find happiness somewhere, I went through so many disappointments, troubles, and pain. This is the way I was living my days until now. I just wasted my life. Second Verse O Gurudev, please awaken me. Awaken me in such a way that I will never, never fall asleep again. I want to become a selfless lover. Oh Lord, please fill my heart with such pure love that my only desire is to love you, to realize you. Let me overcome all worries and fears, which are rooted in attachment, ignorance, and the feeling of guilt. Third Verse Lord, please give me the right abilities. I am alone, not able to do anything. Nāhaṁ kartā, please act through me so that all my actions become selfless karma and sevā. Nāhaṁ kartā, please act through me. Fill my heart with humbleness and devotion. Let me be the instrument of your love, that I may serve all. You gave me the human body as a boat to cross the ocean of saṃsāra. O Lord, bless me, since I don’t know when I may get such a chance again. The Last Verse Help me to conquer my ego and pride—pride of beauty, of knowledge, of position, and of possession. Make me humble and kind-hearted. Help me to overcome my karmic poverty and meanness. Make me a giver, giving freely and happily. Make me a wise one, always happy and content, always in divine bliss. O Lord, I beg for your mercy, that my life does not just pass away in vain. I rely on you alone. You are my only hope. When we get messages like today, that friends of ours passed away or are in life danger, it touches us, and I think it awakens these basic questions always in us. In the Skype interview, Swāmījī said we should think why we came here to the seminar and if we are still actually on the track for which we came. But we can put the question also very basically to ask us every day: why am I here, and am I still on that track for which I came in this life? Every day we should ask ourselves why we came here in this life. And am I still actually fulfilling this life plan for which I came? We have to do this again and again on every single occasion. The problem is that mostly we live unconsciously. As we spoke this morning, our body is like a chariot. The soul is the ātmā inside it, which would direct it. The question is, where do we direct this car? When we live unconsciously, that means we don’t control our mind properly. Practically, we become the slaves of our mind. We follow the mind, not the mind following us. And the result is that we live our life uselessly. This is exactly as it says in the bhajan: I don’t even know what the mind is doing. Though it’s actually easy to understand, because the mind follows its own principles. The mind always wants some kind of enjoyment, and it sends its messengers out to search for that. It even asks for the help of the sense organs at such times. In the example this morning, it was the horses driving the chariot here and there. Instead of the driver controlling, the horses just run somewhere. The result is twofold. First, we will end up in disappointment. We will not find that which we really want: happiness. Second, we waste our life, we waste our time. One day we realize that. This bhajan says, "Think on your life. Live your life meaningfully." Every time we get such a message, as we did today, it is such a reminder. Do we really live our life meaningfully? As the saints formulated, live every day as if it were the last day of your life. From this point of view, such messages can also be like a blessing, an awakener for us. There’s nothing good or nothing bad in this world. It’s just a question of how we take the essence out of it, what we learn from it. It is sometimes known that people, for example, who get from the doctor a judgment, "You have only to live half a year," for example. Such people suddenly really look at their life with other eyes and change their whole life. Now they don’t live unconsciously anymore, because they know very well how precious every day is. Sometimes this change in lifestyle can be so complete that someone even conquers that disease from which he was about to die. Good. So much for this. Now I ask if one of the three whom I called, one was Kṛṣṇa Nānjī, would like now maybe to talk something, to share some experience. Mokṣa? I would like to ask one of those who would like to speak, if you could share your experience with us. I would like to share with you one of my personal stories with Swāmījī. The story is about how important it is to have the mind under control, but mainly about how incredibly important Guru Kṛpā is. My story took place long ago, 17, maybe 19 years ago. I was just a newcomer to yoga. I knew Swāmījī for two or three years only. The story began after one weekend seminar with Swāmījī. The situation was that Turianan and Jyoti invited Swāmījī to their summer house. Since my mother had a car and they invited him, I also happened to go there. There was Swāmījī with only about 10 people or so, and I was among them. Jyoti gave me a tray of food and told me, "Now you serve it to Swāmījī." I didn’t want to, because I was shy, and I didn’t know how to do it, but Jyoti pressed me a little bit, so I did. Swāmījī got his eating, and it was a nice evening. When Swāmījī was leaving, my mother followed him. She wanted me to translate for her, as she wanted to say something to Swāmījī. It ended up that we, outside the house, remained only three of us: Swāmījī, my mother, and me. It was a beautiful night, a big full moon shining. My mother was just melting with happiness. She wanted me to translate how meeting Swāmījī really changed her life, how important it was that she met him. I was translating, and Swāmījī was standing there smiling at her, and really, you could see the love also in him. He was merciful to her and smiling. But when he looked at me, there was no smiling. It was such a deep, strict gaze. While Swāmījī was looking at me, I noticed a kind of seriousness. And so my mom was so full of love, overflowing with love, so he smiled finally and blessed her. He touched her head. But no blessing for me, no smile for me, only this strict look in his eyes for me. So I was thinking, why wouldn’t he bless me also? We are standing just next to each other. He blesses her, and no blessing for me. And he was just standing there and looking at me this way. And then he looked at my mother again, and as if somehow he was feeling sorry for her. So he was looking at my mother with compassion, and then after all, he blessed me too. So I was satisfied. I thought, "Finally, I got blessed," so the story was somehow over. No, but it was only the beginning. As time went on, after some time, maybe a year or two years, I remember it was Friday, the 21st of January. I was organizing many, many things, traveling here and there. My mind was not under control, and I was really organizing so many things. I was quite late already. And when I was leaving my office, I got some insight, some intuition that I was about to have an accident, so I should drive carefully. But because my mind was in charge, my mind was controlling me, I wasn’t controlling my mind, so I was in a hurry anyway. I was already late, and I was driving the car fast because I was already used to it. But the problem was that there was snow on the road and it was raining, so the road situation was really hard. As I was passing through the first village, I was thinking, "Well, I am in a village, I shouldn’t go 110, I should slow down now to 80." And as I was braking, slowing down, I got my first slide there. But somehow I managed the situation, and I didn’t take notice of the warning, so after the village, I drove fast again. There was a big truck in front of me, but I thought that I would not waste my time with it, so I thought that I would overtake. Far away in front of me, I saw a car approaching, so I was thinking, well, okay, I’ll slow down and wait behind the lorry. I should not risk that much. But as I was speeding at the speed of 110, and the lorry was going about 60 kilometers per hour only, I realized if I did not start braking at once, I would crash into the lorry. And I knew that I could not just hit the brakes, because if I did, I would start skidding again. As I was approaching this truck, my relationship with time changed, and suddenly there was a signal that I should step on the brakes gently. As soon as I did it, I touched the brakes, and of course I completely lost control over my car. The car just started dancing on the road, one side, other side. I was trying to do something with my steering wheel, but it was really just swimming on the road. I really don’t know how it happened that I avoided crashing into this approaching car. I avoided crashing on the sides of the road, and there was a big lorry behind me, and I also avoided this big lorry from behind me. As the car, out of control, was flying here and there on the road, once it just happened I was flying towards a big slope, a big abyss near the road. As I hit the brake, the car turned around, so I ended up on the roof at this hole, which I was trying to avoid. The car landed on the roof, the front windshield crashed, and I was hanging there in the seatbelt straps, upside down. I didn’t feel any pain, I didn’t have any injury. As I was on the roof, I was feeling, touching how much space there was till the roof, and there was only one centimeter between my head and the roof of the car. Thanks to having a seatbelt, it helped me up, so I had just the place to move my head a little bit, no more space there. To make it short, the point was that the car was completely broken and pressed all around me, but I was protected and safe. I didn’t have any injury; nothing bad happened to me. When the driver from the lorry behind me came to help me and pulled me out of the car, I really didn’t have a single scratch on me, but the car was completely destroyed, as if you step on a toy car. It was just totally crashed. I really don’t know what my fate was, what happened to me, but what I know for sure is that if it wasn’t for Swāmījī’s blessing, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you today. So I just wanted to share this, my experience, that one single blessing of Swāmījī can really change the whole life. Thank you. So now it’s really late. Now it’s already nearly 10 o’clock again, unfortunately. And that was, I think, inspiring for everyone. So then, good night.