Hari Om.The August pournami is normally Agasthiar pournami. If you don't know who Agasthiar is, that's him there in the centre. He's a great saint.
Because it's Agasthiar Pournami, the first part of the prayer will be for those who follow and worship Agasthiar. They will sit and offer to Agasthiar. Today is also raksha bhandan – at least one day in the year sisters remember their brothers. Like mother's day, father's day, and women's day. Today is brother's day.
This is Agasthiar's stick. He used it to train Khanniah Yogi, Swami's guru. One day Kanniah Yogi sent swami into the Nilgiris forest to find this stick. He got an astral instruction from Agasthiar who told him exactly where it was buried. Swami Murugesu and three other devotees went into the forest to find the stick. The forest is full of wild animals, elephants, tigers. When they reached the spot where Khanniah Yogi told them to find the stick, the animals surrounded Swami and the others, in a circle to protect them while they dug for the stick. There was also a begging bowl found with the stick. This piece of wood is a hundred times older than the oldest person here. Therefore you can see I'm taking care of it – not to hit you – but so it doesn't disappear. Today I'm going to bless you with this, according to instruction. If I give you one tight one, like this, it means you misbehaved sometime.
Ashok asked me a question just now. He asked me, “What happened on this Agasthiar pournami that we have such a small crowd?” I have an answer for him: we've had Lakshmi pooja, and everyone came to Lakshmi pooja instead. Also, Saturday is our Maha Yajna. Everyone will come to that instead. They say, “My quota is once a month at the ashram so I don't have to go'.
Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutra gives us practical methods of controlling and modifying the mind. Many of us think it is impossible to attain or experience what cannot be seen or touched. And that's where many of us are wrong. I get very happy and joyous when I get an SMS after a function: “Guru, I've had this fantastic experience; I've had this energy flow through me. I could not control my emotions”. That is an experience with God. So if you have controlled the faculties of the mind, then there's some kind of harmony in your body. And an harmonious body will make it possible for you to attain those states of bliss, peace and eternal joy. This can only be done through sadhana.
What is sadhana? Spiritual practices. And once we have this sadhana, daily practice, then we will experience these things. You won't get it by coming to the ashram once a month, for one function and think, “Now I am religious, I am spiritual”. You're far from that. Spirituality is a regular, daily practice. The sadhana for spirituality has to be regular. What does that mean? It has to be every day and at a specific time every day. If you can do that you won't have any stress. None at all. But we can't. We believe it is impossible to reach those states that are untouchable, that is, when we cannot feel or see. We think it's difficult but it's not. And that process Patanjali calls 'meditation'.
In astanga yoga meditation is the seventh step on the rung of the spiritual ladder. There are only eight steps and meditation is so close to the final step, yet we have such great problems, such difficulty even practicing meditation. It all comes back to the mind. Our mind sets us up to believe that we don't have to go to the temple or the ashram, that we can attain those states at home. Yes you can. But you have to have a guru when those states appear.
Recently somebody passed on. The guru had taught them certain techniques. They practised the techniques, short-circuited their prana and, after thirty-one days in intensive-care, died. These are the things we are worried about. Gobi Krishna is a perfect example. He walked around insane. It took him fourteen years to come back to normal. Why? Because you need someone to guide you. If you have your guru with you, you won't have a problem. We can do tantra, mantra, japa yoga, and leave this body if you so desire. But you can only do that if you have a guru in your presence who can guide you and stop you at the right time. Therefore it is very important for you to come and absorb this kind of energy. It is regulated. It won't make you mad. It won't take you to states of permanent ecstasy like taking drugs 24/7. You'll reach states of ecstasy that you'll really enjoy. Drugs can also give you states of ecstasy but they are temporary.
Meditation is permanent. You can experience it all the time. And why I'm bringing this up is because many of you, as you sit here, you believe, firstly, that it's impossible to experience God because you can't touch him or see him. Secondly, you say it's too difficult to do sadhana: “I don't have the time”. There's no such thing as, “I don't have the time”. You have the same 24 hours that I have, and many other people have. But they have arranged their 24 hours in such a way that they can do everything in, including their sadhana. But we cannot get up in the morning; we cannot make that extra effort to say, “Well, I have to be at work at 8am. I have to leave at 6am so l'll get up at 4am, do one hour of sadhana and leave at 6am”. You have one hour to get ready. But our problem is that we take too long to get ready. And then we rush because we are late.
I've said this to you before and I'll say it to you again. We do everything to our face, not for ourselves - nobody does things to their face for themselves – none of you can stand up here and tell me that you do that for yourself, put make-up on your face. We walk out of our house so that other people are happy and can tell you, “You're looking good!”. It must be yours, and once its yours it must be good. That extra time that you waste on your face, rather use it to think about God, do some sadhana. It's the most important aspect of this journey, of this life. This is the highest form of being. There's no form higher than this as you sit here. But we fail. We failed as beings because we've got this thing called God only allocated to certain times of the month, once a week, four times a month.
We must have a passion for God. And I think that's what we lack. You must have a union with God. You must be in love with God. Once you're in love with God, nothing in this world will bother you and why do I say you must be in love with God? Because that love for God becomes kolavery – a madness, a total madness. Just as a young man needs a young girl, and after a couple of months of relationship, kolavery begins: the cellphone will be in his hand waiting for a call. This is true. In the same way we should be in love with God. God sends you messages. You don't need your cellphone on. God's messages will guide you in your daily life. 'I love you,' are just words – they are not energy at all. You can pre-set your phone to send 'I love you' messages. But to be in love with God you can't do that, you have to connect. You don't have to pay and there's no top-up.You just sit there and God will take you (the Tamil word kola means 'kill', very means 'madness' ). So go home and enjoy this madness. Fall madly in love with God and kill the ego.
Some of you are thinking, “Guru makes it sound so simple”. Yes, it is simple. You just have to change who you are and be what you should be. You should not be God-fearing, you should be God-loving. So, enjoy this new relationship that you are going to start today with God. Forget all you other relationships. They bring about another kind of madness.
