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Hari Om. I’m going to explore a slightly different topic. Before I came to Jhadan, I was studying to become a physiotherapist. So, although I’m a very, very poor therapist—well, not anymore—there are certain principles I was learning at university in physiotherapy that I think are incredibly useful for your spiritual growth or practice. It’s not about anatomy or the body as such; it’s about certain principles that apply in treatment. This morning I was reflecting on this, and, you know, we’re on a journey where we are dealing with our own mind, trying to control it, and attempting to shift our thoughts and concentration in a certain direction. Now, I’m sorry, Hemlatājī, I have to use your example here. I have never been for a treatment with Hemlatājī—I am sorry—but I will take an example from Hemlatājī nonetheless. Her presence suggests to me exactly what would happen if you went to her for treatment. You know, with your own mind, when you come to some sādhanā that is tough to do, you’re constantly thinking of reasons why you can’t do it. It’s very similar with many patients who come when you’re practicing physiotherapy. Of course, everyone wants to be free of their pain; they want to be well. But they’re not necessarily prepared to go through the exercises and the tapasyā that will come with that to get well again. Often people will come and start with a list of, “Oh yes, yes, I did this and that, but it’s hurting me so much here today, and I really don’t know if I can do this,” and so on and so forth. They say, “Yes, I practice it, but today it hurts me so much that I don’t even know if I could practice it.” And Hemlatājī sits there and says, “Yes, yes, really, and how does it hurt, and so on, and what happens?” And a very convincing argument will emerge as to why we shouldn’t actually do this exercise today. Then, after all that, somehow everything will have come out from that patient about what is going on, what is hurting, and what is not hurting. And at the end of it, the therapist will say, “Very, very good, that sounds very serious, but we’ll do it anyway.” The physiotherapist says, “Well, that sounds very serious, but we will do it anyway.” Because it’s what’s good for that moment, for the body, for that treatment. You know, when our mind starts to come up with excuses why we shouldn’t do something in our spiritual practice, in our sādhanā, these principles can apply physically, and they can also apply to your mental and spiritual journey. When someone comes for treatment or with some problem, the first step is to ask many, many questions about how it happened, when did it happen, when did it start. What makes you get that pain? What makes you get that problem? Just trying to collect as much information as possible about what is there. And this all comes before making any sort of further investigations, checking, or pushing. It’s the same with us, with our life issues. If you want to change something about yourself, the way you behave, ask yourself those questions: When does it happen? Why does it happen? Does it happen after you do certain things? Does it happen in the morning? Does it happen in the evening? Does it happen when you’re tired? Physically, you’d ask, does it happen when it’s hot or when it’s cold? When you start to ask these questions, you learn more and more about that issue you have. Does it happen when you meet certain people, or does it happen when you continuously do certain things? Once you construct that picture of it, then you can think about how you may be able to change some of those things that are seemingly causing it to happen. How can you change your environment so that you may do what you would like to do, rather than what you just seem to always end up doing? Let me perhaps give an example from your computer. Let’s say you think, “Every time I turn on the computer at work, I always end up going and looking on the internet, and I’m not getting work done.” It happens. But you may then look at your computer screen and think, well, seeing as that link to my favorite website is right in the middle of the home screen, perhaps it’s inviting me there all the time. If it were moved somewhere else, perhaps it would be better. I’m sure many people have the first thing that opens on their web browser as your Green Daily Life website. And it’s great because the first thing you think of, the first thing you see when you open that browser, is yoga. But you can think similarly about your house, and the environment in which you live, the environment in which you work. Set it up in such a way that those things you really would like to be doing, and would like to be thinking, are there in the main parts of your life. It is commonly said now that families don’t talk together. But when you go into the house, the biggest thing in the house is the television. And the constant statement will be, nobody talks anymore, they’re all watching television. Well, of course it will be, because it’s there, and it’s in the middle of the room, and it’s the biggest thing there, and all the chairs are facing toward it. That environment is created so that it would be the focus of the room. The question comes back to the Upaniṣad, whether those two things are there: the good things and the things that are pleasurable. What do we want our focus to be? And then, to slowly transform our lives to draw toward those focuses. Another thing is the principle of treatment when you are a physiotherapist. And this you can perhaps look at yourself when you are doing āsanas or if you are trying to change your body in some way. It is to do something and then observe what happens from that. There are two sides to your body, so you have a reference between the two. You can often see that one will be completely different from the other, and it may be that one is in better condition than the other. If this side is working well and this side is not working so well, you can use this one somehow as a reference as to how you should do the āsana, and then try to do the same on the other side. And also, don’t just look immediately after you do it and see how something feels. Why? You are always getting angry in that situation. And you think, “Okay, prāṇāyāma will help it, and I should do relaxation, and I shouldn’t see those people, and I should go to this other place as well.” Very good. Afterwards, you didn’t get angry. But you don’t actually know why. Was it because you didn’t see the person, or because you did the prāṇāyāma, or the relaxation, or because you went there? Our whole practice, our whole yoga sādhanā, is one very, very long personal journey, an experiment. Pura Pura... The temptation can always be there to go to extremes, to try and do so many things at once. But if you can be more patient in that process, you can learn about each thing and what effect it has upon you. There are people here in this room who have been on their yoga journey for much, much longer than I have. And they have such an experience of themselves and of how they react to situations. They have a lot of experience about themselves and how they react to certain things—on how to prepare for the Anuṣṭhāna, on how to help their bodies in certain situations, how to prepare for the Anuṣṭhāna and how to prepare the body for certain positions. How do they practice differently in the winter or in the summer? How do they do exercises that are different in the summer and in the winter? Or when they’re working, or when they’re on holidays... And this all comes from experience, from practice, and from observing again and again. People will have their ways of sitting, and they’ll know that when their bodies are in a certain condition, it’s easy to sit one way, and then at other times, another way. You learn which prāṇāyāma helps you when you are upset, when you are down, when you are depressed, when you are happy, and when you are angry. But this all comes constantly from observing, from trying and observing, trying and observing. And also, just at the start, from listening to yourself, from listening to what is going on inside. So often our body is trying to tell us something, trying to give us a message. But because we are already thinking of something else, we don’t hear that message. There can really be times when your body is telling you not to do something, to stop doing something, because it’s going to cause damage at that moment. But to come to that relationship with your body and with your mind takes time and takes discipline. If you practice with your body and your mind, it will take some time and discipline. Constantly practicing, constantly observing. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai, Satguru Dev Kī Jai. Oṁ, siddhi, praṇām, bhāvanā, kīrtan, Maheśvarānandjī, Sadgurudhī. In the morning, for some reason, we ended up talking about surfing. And we were talking about the wave and how it functions. I was enjoying that. And actually, in the morning here in the meditation, I was here, and Swāmījī was guiding. At one point in the meditation, he said, “Concentrate on the form of God which you like, whether it be unmanifest or manifest form.” It is this question that Arjuna asked to Kṛṣṇa in the twelfth chapter of the Bhagavad Gītā: which one should we meditate on? Which one is better? And Kṛṣṇa in the twelfth chapter says it’s better to meditate on the manifest form because it’s easier. I’ve always thought of it in the way—I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to feed a big apple to a horse, but they can’t eat it, because their mouths don’t open that wide. If you put a big apple inside the horse’s eating area, they’ll just end up chasing it round and round with their nose and not be able to eat it. But cut the apple in half, and it’s gone within seconds. Because it fits into the mouth. And somehow it seems to me, in the same way, that the whole apple is there and that unmanifest God is there. But in order for us to be able to get a grasp of it, we have, as Swāmījī says, nirguṇa se saguṇāī, Mahāprabhujī. It’s the same, but in a more focused form, somehow, that we can grasp and contemplate. Anyhow, now let me try and explain it from the surfing perspective. Near the beach, the shallowness of the water means that the bottom part goes slower, and the top part of the wave continues at the same speed. So at one stage it’s like this, and then slowly it starts to go like this. This water on the bottom is slowed down because of the friction of the bottom of the ocean. But the top is starting to go faster and faster. And when you are surfing, you don’t wait until it’s crashing to catch a wave. You go backwards, still, like this. At that point in time, you have to put in a lot of effort to try and go at the same speed as that wave. Because there’s not a lot of slope on the wave, it cannot take you by itself. And it’s such a subtle moment, you just feel that now your work is over and now the wave is taking over. I never really thought about it before, but it’s such a beautiful way of experiencing that same thing—when you finally let go in your meditation and suddenly something else takes over. It may just be for moments, it may be that it comes right at the extreme of your practice when you’re exhausted. And I’d say, if you’re using it as an analogy, that is like Mahāprabhujī, from that point, taking you further. And it’s an acknowledgment that at some point, that energy will take you toward the shore. In the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa says you can also go towards the unmanifest, but it’s much more difficult. Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad Gītā says, “You can also go towards the unmanifest, but it’s much more difficult.” And it’s exactly the same principle in the ocean. You can paddle and swim all the way back toward the shore. Because these bigger waves are not coming all the time. They come maybe every one or two minutes, just three or four waves, and then it’s quiet afterwards. So at one point, they have to decide: do they wait for the wave, or do they try and swim in? Because you cannot make both choices. Once you go past a certain point towards the shore, you can’t catch those waves because you can’t be on top of them. If you choose to swim the whole way, you have to swim the whole way. It often happens that someone will be winning the race by a long way, but somebody will wait for a wave and catch them from behind and just go, without any effort, just fly past them. Because once you have become on top of the wave and you start to go with it, and it takes you, it is only by your own will that you will come off. You basically don’t have to do much at all. If you’re doing it without a board, you just put one hand in front, and you keep your head up so you can breathe, and you just go... And that, I would guess, is an Australian way of expressing what Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad Gītā. And so I think that the Australian wave explains what Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad Gītā. If Kṛṣṇa had been surfing, he would have said that. But you know, just that moment when you let go, as Kṛṣṇa also says in the Bhagavad Gītā, in the 12th chapter: that jñāna is better than practice, that meditation is better than jñāna, and letting go of the fruits of your actions is better than meditation. Because it is when we let go and let that wave take us, let Mahāprabhujī take us in our meditation. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai, Satguru Dev Kī Jai. One more bhajan. Because I ate the macadamia nut, you know, I suddenly felt like I was at home. Well, he was home, but at that time. Oṁ Śrīdhī Praṇām Bhagavān Kī Jai, Māheśvarānandajī, Satguru Dev Kī Jai, Śrī Śrī Lelanandajī Kī Jai. One little thing about that wave. Again, think about it from your own experience. That point comes when the wave starts to take you. And at that point in time, there is a certain moment where the wave is at a very steep slope. And one can pull back off it, or trust in yourself that you’ll balance and just go with it. It’s the same at that moment when meditation starts to happen. How many times have people experienced that, that at that moment they start to think, “Oh, oh, what’s that?” It’s that point where that śraddhā is so much required. Trust in my Prabhujī and trust in yourself. And then the only thing to do is just to stay balanced on that wave. Stay balanced and breathe. One very small point about this bhajan and Vrajadhāma Guru. In Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, when it’s talking about Tamas and Rajas, the word “rajas” is also coming from the same root as “rajas” meaning dust. Rajas is from the same root as rajas—that is, dust. And it’s already in one commentary: because rajas is that which obscures the sattva. In the same way, like dust obscures the light or stops you from seeing what is around the altar, if there is a dust storm, for instance. In the same way, rajas guṇa obscures sattva guṇa. So, put that together with the bhajan: if there should be a rajas guṇa, if we are doing something, then let it be the service of the Guru, let it be the service of his feet. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai, Satguru Dev Kī Jai.