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Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jai, Śrī Śrī Devpurīṣī Mahādeva Kī Jai, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṁt Śrī Svāmī Madhavānanda Purī Jī Mahārāj Kī Jai, Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁt Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānanda Purī Jī, Satguru Deva Kī Jai, Hari Om. Yogī Śrī said last week that Strīloka was heaven. So, according to that song from last night, I guess I’m already in heaven. So I should say good day—good day is an Australian way of saying good day. We’re very hungry in Australia, so we eat half of our words. The news from Jadan: it rained all last night, not heavily, but continuously, so it’s quite wet around. The water isn’t flowing into the talab at the moment, but it’s good. The atmosphere has changed quite a lot, and it’s still cloudy. It really was quite a drought. We were delivering water to other villages. There were four or five tractors solely on that work, just providing water for drinking. The problem was you couldn’t find a place to get water to deliver to a village. It was a constant cycle: every week you’d find a new water source, maybe 10 or 15 kilometres from the village. Then you’d arrange electricity for a pump so they could extract the water, and then a tank. And after one or two weeks, that source would start to dry up, and again you’d be looking for another one. This went on continuously throughout the summer. We ended up bringing water for Jadan from about 40 or 50 kilometres away, because they needed water without too much salt, especially for the construction. And everything in our area was completely salty and full of fluoride. Probably the most serious problem in our area with water is fluoride. In some villages, it’s so concentrated in the water. You may have seen, if you’ve been in India, these children who already have completely red-yellow teeth. It’s not because at five years of age they started chewing tobacco; it’s a sign of fluorosis, the disease that comes from having too much fluoride. It destroys the teeth and is especially destructive to the bones. You can see on those children their teeth deteriorate so quickly. According to what I read, there is one way to stop fluoride from going into the bones and teeth. That, without realizing it, traditionally used to do the job. And that was with one fruit: tamarind. In Hindi, it’s called imlī. It’s used a lot in South Indian cooking; they put it in dal. And in our area, they used it as a summer drink because it’s very cooling. Of course, now instead of imlī they drink Pepsi. Because the water quality was the same, they studied and tried to find what made the difference between the two groups. They found that in the villages where fluorosis was much more serious, they were using tomato in their dal instead of tamarind. So then they tested, and actually found in the laboratory that it’s true: imlī somehow catches the fluoride and doesn’t let it go to the bones. So the solution is already there, but of course, over time we all forget. I try to tell that in the village, but nobody wants to go back to imlī. It’s too much trouble. In the ashram, we always have it for drinking in the summer. And it really is great—so cooling. It may not be as sweet as some other things, but it’s excellent. So if we have rain, it makes such a difference to the whole area. Now, I want to read one story from Līlā Amṛt. At one stage, when Swamiji was saying, “Yes, Upanishads and Līlā Amṛt,” I thought, “Soon I’ll be carrying a whole library to the satsaṅg.” Okay, one short story. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān kī jai. [Press on the keys.] Now we return to an earlier time in Bhagavān Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Mahāprabhujī’s blessed life. After the monsoon season, he stayed that year in Jodhpur. He was invited to the village of Nāḍol by the blacksmith Chimnā Rāmjī, Lakāramjī, and others. They had several days of glorious satsaṅg. Then Ṭhākur Raghunāth Siṅghjī, a humble devotee of Guru Dev, came to invite him to his village, Keshar Singhjī Gūḍā. Swāmījī often has programs in that village. Because of his and his family’s faith and devotion, most of that village was inspired to take mantra-dīkṣā from Mahāprabhujī. One day, Ṭhākur Raghunāth Siṅghjī was thinking about useful things he could give to Mahāprabhujī to take back to the ashram, and chillies came to mind. Dear readers, chili peppers are a substantial and important household staple in India. As you may know, but I suspect that unless you have actually been around an Indian kitchen, you cannot quite imagine the quantities of those red and green pods that disappear daily into the cooking pots. But then the Ṭhākur thought with dismay: unfortunately, this year they’re terribly expensive because the drought has made them scarce. And they hadn’t got any from their own farm for the same reason. Mahāprabhujī read his thoughts and said, “Why worry about that? In Gurudev’s presence, anything is possible. Which field did you last harvest chillies from? Come, let me take a look.” And so he went with Ṭhākur Raghunāth Siṅghjī to the field. Ṭhākur Raghunāth Siṅghjī said that it had been two years since they had last been able to grow chillies. When they got there, they saw nothing but dried-up stalks in the field. Despite a few rains, nothing had come up. And finally, even the roots had been eaten by insects. Mahāprabhujī looked around and said, “This is fine. Just water the field and see what happens.” The Ṭhākur couldn’t imagine that anything would happen, but he didn’t dare to ignore Mahāprabhujī’s command. So he watered the field of dead stalks as carefully as though they had been freshly planted. And chillies grew there in super abundance. But once, when asked to explain this miracle, Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Mahāprabhujī said, “Dear brother, the garden of Gurudev is evergreen. To keep it fresh requires only water, the water of love and devotion.” We are all flowers in the Heavenly Father’s garden, where we grow and thrive if we but turn our hearts to receive His benevolent light. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Satguru Deva Kī Jaya. In the bhajan “Huwa Guru Deva,” there is one verse that talks about this same point: you have such a beautiful garden within, but it just has to be watered with love, and then it will continue to grow. And if you are to do a watering, let it be that type of watering. You know, it may be that you are here now, refreshing your practice, and a whole year has gone by and you come back here to refresh. But I’m sure you’ve had the experience, when you’re here or when you’ve come previously or come to Swamiji, that although your practice may have waned before you came, when you arrive it flourishes again, it grows again. That’s it. It’s never too late to put water again on your practice, on your yoga practice. It’s never too late to put water inside, to water that which you think may even be gone, which may not be there anymore. It’s better to continuously water and continuously harvest. But as Mahāprabhujī says, it’s evergreen—it can always grow. It’s just up to us to keep putting that water of love inside. There’s a story from this year, some may have heard, about the Nepal Āśram and the well that’s outside Gurujī’s room. Many people are here just this week, so let me tell it to you. There was a well outside Gurujī’s room that many people will remember. There was a hand pump there, just a few meters outside the door of Gurujī’s residence. When there was water, he used to always send someone out to the hand pump, and they would take water in buckets, and he would use that for his bathing. For quite some years, it has been completely dry. Nobody really gave any chance of there being water there. Swamiji was there, I think it must have been in May, and they were discussing filling it in, covering it, and making the area clean, because there is quite a transformation in Nepal that you will see the next time you go. And Gurujī’s Mahāsamādhi function will be in Nepal this year, because now it is ready for a lot of people. But then they were discussing filling this well. It’s an open well, quite wide. And Swamiji said, “Is there somebody who can dig it down a little bit further? We can see if there’s water.” Someone was arranged, a person who does that job, and they started to work. They were digging down 20 feet further in the well. The first 10 feet were soft and could be dug, but after that it was granite—very hard rock. The area, you may have noticed the hills around Nepal, they are all stone, and this is granite too. They have to dig there by drilling holes, putting in gunpowder, and making explosions. So the system goes: in the morning when they come, they remove the debris from yesterday’s blasting, drill the holes, put in the gunpowder, and in the evening they blast, so that by morning it settles again. When they reached 22 feet, it was still completely dry, no sign of any water. Somehow Swāmījī was saying, “Just go a few feet more.” He set the target at 25 feet, as I remember. But at 2:00 AM in the night, they did the blasting. And in the morning, there was 20 feet of water inside—20 feet! So water came in, as happens when you’re digging a well. They put water around all the gardens and trees. They ran the pump for 24 hours and still couldn’t get the water level to go down. So it was like some plug had been opened and an underground water source had flowed in. Of course, Swāmījī was saying, “Oh, really?” Samudrunya Swāmījī said, “Yes, really? Isn’t that good?” Mahāprabhujī is Kṛpā. Of course it is. But he could see it. But what I wanted to say with this is: it’s fantastic that now there’s water in Nepal, and it’s actually very good, sweet water. But this story brings to mind many stories you hear in yoga about digging and then giving up and digging somewhere else. In our practice, you may feel that your well is dry, that you’re doing something but no change is happening. You just don’t know when that moment comes when the plug is opened. Swamiji said to dig the well there, they dug it, and the water was there. And the practice we’ve been given is because there’s something there when we do it. But we keep doing and doing because you don’t know if this is the day it will happen. When that plug opened, there was no wetness on the stone, no trickle of water—just an explosion and water. That trust has to be there that what Swāmījī has given us to do will bring fruit. Similarly, Ṭhākur Sāhib had trust in Mahāprabhujī to put water—which must have been very precious at that time, during a drought—onto that field of dry chillies. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jai, Satguru Deva Kī Jai. Oṁ Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Śrī Mādhavānanda Śrī Kī Jaya, Śrī Mahāśvarānanda Satguru Deva Kī Jaya. Oṁ Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Śrī Śiva Mādhavānandajī Kī Jaya, Śrī Śiva Maheśvarānandajī Satguradeva Kī Jaya, Śrī Siddhāśramajī Kī Jaya, Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya. Hmm, okay, Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya, better? Yesterday we spoke about this bhajan, the chariot, which is driven by ten horses, and these symbolize the ten indriyas, our sense organs. And we spoke theoretically about how to control our senses. And Mahāprabhujī is obviously very present. I was laughing this morning in the Kriyānusthāna program: He said, “OK, let us follow the theory with the practice,” because the workers started making lots of noise just as we were practicing. During the first morning practice, the workers aren’t there yet, but for the afternoon he suggested we simply do the practice outside. I think that’s a very good idea, because on the tennis field you have a flat area big enough for everyone, with fresh air. If it starts raining, we go to plan B. So, Kriyā Anuṣṭhān group, please note: today we will meet in the afternoon at 1:30 PM on the tennis field, close to Swāmījī’s house. We’ll see how it goes; tomorrow we’ll also meet at 1:30 PM on the tennis court behind Swāmījī’s house. And I hope they can stop the work for that one hour during our morning practice. I promised yesterday—or I said that I actually intended to tell one story also about the sense organs. You know this bhajan at the end of Prabhalīvācāra, which we mentioned yesterday? It says that two sense organs are actually very tricky, and they are like controlling the whole world. Only perfect yogīs can control all the sense organs, but two are especially difficult to get under control. One of them is the organ of reproduction, the sexuality. And the second one is the taste. Nobody can stop them because they produce wishes and passions. These senses are powerful in everyone—also in the gods, like Brahmā, Indra, and the Devas; in humans, as we know; in the Asuras; and also in the birds and other animals. In fact, these two senses control the whole world. Acharam says those who defeated them could achieve God-realization. And I do my praṇām to them, because they have conquered what otherwise conquers the whole world. Swamiji came. Most of the time, he came to Hamburg only for the weekend seminars, and he started the weekend seminar straight away. But that time, he came one day earlier. So before the official program, we had one internal satsaṅg with Swāmījī. And in that satsaṅg, Swāmījī told that story, which I’m trying to retell now. The Lord of Passion, Kāmadeva, made trouble for the yogīs and said, “I will conquer you.” And Kāmadeva replied to him, “I will ride you,” meaning “I will suppress you.” Now, Nārada sat down for meditation. The great Ṛṣi performed strong tapasyā, sitting from morning till evening—much stronger than what Swamiji originally suggested. In the original version of Kriyānusthāna, there was no rule of mauna, no question of food and fasting; he basically did nothing except meditation, with a firm will to go through. Only once a day he got up and searched for some bark from a tree, some root, something small to bite. Thus he gained great power and had strong, uninterrupted discipline. Now, one girl from the next village came and saw this man sitting there. She felt compassion and thought, “Oh, this man has nothing to eat, yet he is doing tapasyā. I will give him at least a little prasāda.” So she made something like halva, I guess, and observing his routine, she placed it on the tree where he took a piece of bark. She stuck it on the tree. Next time Ṛṣi Nārada had his short break for a little food, he saw something strange on the tree. “What’s that?” He tasted it—nice, sweet. “Oh, God’s prasād. A special blessing today.” And he continued his sādhanā. The next day, astonishingly, it was there again. “Oh, double prasāda. Thank you.” And he continued his sādhanā. But on the third day, again he found it. Now his mind started functioning: there must be something. How does it get there? That was the first distraction in his meditation. He started thinking, “How does this sweet get on the tree?” The next day, he went again, found it again, and now he started looking around. Maybe someone brought it. But no one was visible. Okay, he meditated again. The next day he said, “Maybe I’ll stop my meditation a little earlier so I can catch sight of the person who brings this.” But there was no one, and the sweet was there again. So now every day he cut his meditation a little shorter, stopping earlier, hoping to glimpse the person. One day, he caught sight of a shadow rushing away. So he said, “A little earlier, and I’ll catch her.” The next day, stopping half an hour earlier, he really saw the girl. Now a second impression entered his mind: how beautiful she is, how young. So you can imagine, the next day again he stopped half an hour earlier to have a better view of her. Yes, really. The next day, he stopped 45 minutes earlier to meet her. He went to her and said, “Oh, you are the one who always brings me prasād. That’s very kind of you. Thank you.” The girl replied, “Yes, my grandfather told me it’s good to serve the sādhus.” So now it became a habit; every day they talked a little. She no longer needed to stick the sweet on the tree; she gave it directly to him. And now she also brought a little more to make him happier, causing a bit more disturbance in his fasting discipline. Slowly, the senses became more active in him, and meditation was not so strong anymore. Until one day he took heart and asked her, “Are you actually married?” She said, “No. Would you like to be my wife?” But he said, “No, that’s not possible. You have to ask my father, my parents.” She said, “Okay.” “Then tomorrow, can I come with you?” So the next day he went with her to the family. The family said, “He’s a nice young man.” So, why not? They gave their permission. Now it was about the marriage ceremony, which in India is always a really big deal. The girl said to Nārada, “But you know, we have a very special custom here in our village only.” He asked, “What’s that?” She said, “In our village, it is the custom that on the day of the marriage, the groom carries the bride on his shoulders through the village.” So on that day, they prepared. He took her on his shoulders and started walking through the village. At that moment, the girl changed her form. It had all been a māyā of the god Kāmadeva (the God of Passion). And Kāmadeva beat him and said, “Look up, look up to your girl…” He was shocked! He saw Kāmadeva sitting on his back, and Kāmadeva said, “I told you, I will ride you.” That was the story Swāmījī told us. I think the message was quite clear; one could not really mistake it. But why did it come to mind now? Because it so beautifully explains the connection between these two senses: the sense of taste and the sense of sexuality. So now, for the end, I think I would like to sing with you this bhajan, “Indriyam.” But can I have the other harmonium, please? Siddīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jai, Śrī Āśāramjī Mahārāj Kī Jai, Indriye Dūt Pratālā. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇa Bhagavān Kī Jaya, Atskya Nanda Kī Jaya. Do Śabd. Do Śabd, Hari Om. Have a good lunch. Good day. Dobrou chut. Dobrý den. Dobrou chut, this is… Yes, it’s a good day, but we say, “Good day. Have a great…” When you eat, what do you say when you eat? Okay, don’t know, that’s a two-step. Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jai, Śrī Śrī Dev Puruṣa Mahādeva Kī Jai, Dharma Samrāṭ Paramahaṁt Śrī Svāmī Madhavānand Purī Jī Mahārāj Kī Jai, Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁt Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānand Purī Jī, Satguru Deva Kī Jai.