On the evening of the 23rd December 2009 Sri Swami Vishwananda decided spontaneously to give a Satsang and invited all his disciples to the temple. There he spoke the following words about why we actually come together, what the meaning of a Satsang is and why it can help us on our spiritual path.

Sri Swami Vishwananda: Jai Gurudev! (audience: Jai Gurudev!)
It was just a quick decision of doing a Satsang, because today I didn’t spend
much time with the people here. So you didn’t see me much. That gives a chance to be all together.
That’s what the word Satsang means, no?: “To come together”. But to come
together for what? Very often people come together to gossip, no? This is the
favorite topic of people. Whenever there is something to gossip, they like to be together. But the people, who are on the spiritual path like to be together also to praise God, no?
So like that there are different ways where people try to come together to be heard, to discuss, to share and that what makes us strong, that’s what makes one strong in oneself- the coming together. Of course one can practice one’s spiritual path alone, which is also strong. But when you come together, the energy is completely different. It’s like everybody has one goal and everybody is vibrating the same frequency. It’s much stronger.
So, that’s what the word Satsang means. To come together, to unite with one energy, one goal, where everybody is up to. We are not coming together to see how beautiful this one is dressed, we are not coming together to look how beautiful is my voice or how beautiful is somebody else’s voice. We are not coming together to make ourselves interesting. But we come together, so that we can build up our foundation in ourselves, we can build up our strength towards God-realization or Self-realization. But it’s sad to see that nowadays when people come together; it’s mostly to talk about other people, to gossip about what the other person has been doing. (smiling) But what the person has done is not your business; it’s the person’s business. (smiling) Mind your own business; but that’s what
people don’t do nowadays. They don’t look at themselves, but they do look at others, forgetting what Christ has said: “The fault that you see in other people, the judgment you put on to others, is your own judgment towards yourself”.

Once Sri Swami Vishwananda told us a story about a disciple and his Master.

Sri Swami Vishwanada:

Once a student went to his Guru and said: “Master, I am troubled.”

The master stood right in front of him and came very near to his face and said: “Why do you hang on the illusion?

You know, whatever is in this mind is an illusion, why do you hang on that.

You know very well that deep inside of you only God resides. Why you don’t find joy inside of this?”

Then the master said: “My dear child, recite for 24 hours nonstop your Guru mantra* and meditate intensely for four hours and you will conquer the mind.”

Of course the grace of the Guru was there.

The same way the grace of God is also with you.

* A Guru Mantra is a special and powerful Mantra which is given by the Sadguru and which should not be talked about or given to other persons.



Listen here to the Mantra ‘Om Kriya Babaji Namah Om’ and meditate on the feet of your Sadguruji.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rabSOIP9i-c

Happy New Year to all of you!

Here is a wonderful excerpt of a Speech, which is a nice message for the new year. It is true: Life is the most precious and most beautiful. So we should not waste and just spread Love all around us and focus on the source of all this Love- God.

Sri Swami Vishwananda:

How many among you, out of fear what people think are not doing something? (Some raise their hands) Many; but than you are limiting yourselves. Be free. That is what your inside is calling you- to be free, to learn and to move on.

Life is the most beautiful thing that God has given you. Don’t waste it. Cause at the end, when life is departing this body and you look back you say: “Oh my God, I have missed so many choices. So many chances God has sent to me, but yet, my mind has been ruled by so many matrikas. I blinded myself.” Why do I say, I blind myself? Because the choice to be blind or to see is up to you. How to do that?

You do your sadhana every day, no? Do you, or not? How many among you do your sadhana regularly, I mean every day? (Many raise their hands) Good. You see the spiritual sadhana helps you to free the mind, helps you not to get entangled into this limitation.

And here the proof that God watches always over you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Y-NjLN3nY&NR=1
(This video was recorded during a Hurricane in Kerch) Sri Swami Vishwananda told us that these are the eyes of the Divine Mother. Devi Mata ki- Jai!

Sri Swami Vishwananda:

The grace of God is with you. Chant the name of God if you can 24 hours. And you will say: “What if I sleep?” How can we chant when we are sleeping? But that is the secret of mantra japa, you know.

The more you train yourself of chanting throughout the day the name of God, the more you train yourself in reciting continuously, in every action to remember the Divine, the more it will become automatic, even when you sleep it will carry on chanting and will carry on singing the Divine names.
And practice your spiritual practice, because your spiritual practice is like a shield, like an armor, that has been given to you to protect you. And when you are protected you don’t need to fear anything.
But if you have been given an armor you put it in a wardrobe and here you have many enemies attacking you, how will you protect yourself? Tell me, would you be protected? No. So why putting the armor inside a wardrobe! Wear it and be disciplined about it, self-disciplined.
Jai Gurudev! (Audience: Jai Gurudev)
And, happy New Year also! Hopefully next year we have many great yogis amongst you all. Well, it’s good to hope something, you know.
We have to keep hoping! (Laughter)

And here another sweet New Year’s message from our Beloved Guruji Sri Swami Vishwananda:
“Wishing you all a Happy New Year – may the blessing of the Divine be with you all in this new coming year. May the resolution to change and opening the heart be your goal – much Love and Blessings.”
Sri Swami Vishwananda

Happy New Year to all of You!
May all your wishes come true 2010. If you wish not to have any desires or wishes may this come also true.

Here a nice Hindu video- Happy New Year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLJkq6kbV1c

May it become a healthy, succesful, happy, exciting year full of (divine) Love, bliss, faith and trust.

Sri Swami Vishwananda (on the 26th December 2009)

Cross over this limitation, face it, don’t have fear. Start firstly with little things. You know yourself. You know that God will always provide for you. If an animal knows that – we are bound by more qualities than an animal. So we can realize who we are. We are all one family, that what we call humanity. Everybody talks about humanity but very few really behave human (laughter). So, if we call ourselves we are part of this society, we are part of humanity, we have not to behave like an animal. Even animals behave better in society. Because they know who they are and they know where they are leading to. They trust in the higher consciousness that God will always provide.

But poor us human beings- us who have more than just an animal, we like to degrade ourselves. We like to make ourselves worse. It is time to cross over this limitation. It is time that you really let, what you have inside of you, awake.

Another excerpt of Sri Swami Vishwananda’s recent Speech on the 26th December 2009.

Sri Swami Vishwananda:
We are all Yogis but we have to be free. What is a Yogi? It is somebody who is – free! But yet when we see our limitation we see that we are not free. Whenever a fear arises, whenever a thought of: ”Oh, I should have done this, I have not done that”, you know, we run around always in circles. We don’t free ourselves, because we are scared. We are scared to look at that limitation.

What if this limitation is everything? No, what you have to do is to face it. You know very well that this limitation is not you. It is not that for which purpose you are here for. Face it. Look deep into the eyes of this limitation and let go of it. As long as you don’t look deep into the eyes and face it by yourself you will always be into this game. Unless you like it! I don’t know, you have the free will of choice about that.

Like a great Sufi said: You have the choice of life to take this way or that way. It is your choice. You are free in that choice. But you will come to a point where the Yogi which is inside of you, the greatness which is inside of you, will have to take the choice also.
Your true self will have to take the choice. And this true choice of which is inside of you will overtake the limitation of what you think it is.

Before giving Darshan on the 26th December 2009, Sri Swami Vishwananda gave another Christmas Speech. Here an excerpt:

Sri Swami Vishwananda: Jai Gurudev! (Audience: Jai Gurudev!)

Firstly ‘Merry Christmas’ to all of you. To all who were not here, hope you have had a wonderful Christmas time and that you were filled with a lot of joy and happiness.
Like I was saying a few days ago- it is a time of change. It is a time that we have to change ourselves, a time that we have to start taking responsibility. As long as we don’t take responsibility we weaken ourselves.

Often we will see that we let ourselves be dominated by our mind. And you will say: “But, Swamiji, we try our best, but we don’t succeed. Why? We know very well, why we are here. We know very well what we are searching for. And it’s all inside of ourselves.

But yet- why is this mind always troubling us? Why is it so difficult to let it go? Why? It is simple. The answer to that is: We like our limitation. Just that. We like to limit ourselves and we like to dance on this limitation. That’s how, when we analyze ourselves, we see our own limitation. But yet, deep inside ourselves there is another voice that says: “Hey you have to wake up. There is something greater than that.”

But yet, the limitation of the mind shows that…“that’s it”. We are in our own game and we don’t want to jump out. It is, like we are caging ourselves like an animal and we run from one side to the other. Then we are back again to the same place. Like that we let our mind darken our true Self.

But from time to time, through the grace of God, through the grace of Divine Mother, there are some rays of light and the gate is opened and you go out. But then, out of fear, you run in again. Where does that lead you to? Krishna has said to Arjun: “Dear Arjun, be free. Be like a Yogi. Raise your weapon and fight.” When He said that to Arjun, He did not say that to Arjun only, He said that to all of us.

This is another excerpt of Sri Swami Vishwananda’s Christmas Speech last year (25th December 2008)

Sri Swami Vishwananda:
Don’t say you will gradually stop [with giving up bad habits like gossippi ng, smoking, etc) . It doesn’t happen.

The same thing with Love- If you want to love, love now. If you want to open your heart, open it now and don’t think of how you will open your heart.

This is another point, you know?
When people say “I want to open my heart, but it’s very difficult “, what is happening?
There is a positivity and directly they put a negativity behind. What is the result? It’s very mathematical. (Audience laughing)
Plus and minus?

Someone: Zero

Sri Swami Vishwananda: Equal minus.
So it’s not about the thinking, because you will think a lot of things.
It’s about just doing and wanting now to change.
The power thought, the power that your mind creates at that moment, when you think is very, very strong.
Example: The first thought that passes through your mind in the morning is your programme of the day. What do you do? What do you think is the first thing?
You think “What will I do today and then you carry on. The day automatically rolls accordingly to what you have thought in the morning, because in the morning, the mind has rested and the power, all the thoughts have been gathered together and focussed on one point – the moment you open your eyes, the moment it comes into action, that reaction makes your day.
But in the morning if you wake up you saying” Oh my goodness I have a headache, even if you don’t have a headache, you have headache.” (Audience laughing)

So it doesn’t matter which kind of headache, you know?
But you will have headache, because you create it.

If Love is given, Love has always to flow.

But what happens, what people do always is: when they receive love, they feel it, but they close themselves. They want to keep this love. They think that they will always feel the same Love, but now Love makes you sick, after some time. Because if you try to keep it always inside of you, all the time pride, arrogance, try to control- all this feelings will awake, because you want to have more, but yet you don’t want to give.

Someone: And you feel fear because of it.

Sri Swami Vishwananda: Yeah. All these qualities will come, fear- all this.
Then it becomes only receiving. What happens? The love inside the body becomes sick and starts to make you sick, makes your mind sick, because the love wants to go.
It’s like a bird in the cage, you know?

The bird wants always to go, doesn’t want to be in the cage, but yet you are trapping it inside.
So the more you trap this Love, the more you are doing harm to your own self, actually. But if you receive Love, well everybody does receive Love, let this Love flow. Increase this Love inside of you, let this Love flow, feel it in each part of your body, increase it and send it out.
You can send it to somebody that you know, you can send it to nature, you can send it to whatever, but let this Love always flow. You will see, when you have sent this Love, when you have increased this Love inside of you and you have sent it out, nature itself will increase in double what you have sent and send it back to you and if this round happens, this is healthy, which many people don’t do, because it’s easy, just to receive the Love and then to keep it.
So, open up- you know! That’s what is important.
Know that every moment, every second, every time, like I just said before, you think of something positive, you think of God, you think of something nice, you receive this love of God, you receive this energy of God- let it work through you, let it work through each part of your body and also let it flow, also out, then it will grow.

Watch and listen here to antoher nice Christmas sung, that we practiced recently in Center Springen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xde54wwncSM&feature=related

Words spoken by Sri Swami Vishwananda during the Christmas- Satsang on the 25th December 2008.

Sri Swami Vishwananda: What do you understand by Christmas?

Someone: Love.
Someone: Sharing.
Someone: Learn to open the heart.

Sri Swami Vishwananda: No, don’t learn! Open it! (audience laughing)

You see, this is a thing in spirituality, that spiritual people always think “I will learn to open the heart, I will learn to do this, I will learn to be positive, I will stop smoking, I want to stop smoking, I want to stop this, I want to stop that.”

It’s not about wanting, it’s about doing. If one will always say “I will open my heart”, they can wait for years and years to open the heart (audience laughing). Every year for Christmas they will say “I want to change” or when the New Year comes they will say “This year, I will change”.
How many among you have done that?
Someone: Lot’s of them.

Sri Swami Vishwananda: (Laughing) It’s not about “I will change”, but now I’m changing.

It’s all about this year I will change. I don’t know when- The year is full, 365 day, 12 months. You don’t know when you will change, but now you can change. So, this is how we have to understand it, you know? If you want to change, change now. If you want to stop smoking, stop it now. If you want to stop eating meat, stop it now.

Here you can listen to another very sweet Song with the Title “Mary did you know”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfpK6cNPF7Y

We also sang this song with Dharmananda on our Christmas Concert on Tuesday in a different style but with the same inspiring text. Hopefully we will sing this song dedicated to our Beloved Lord Jesus more often and also tonight during the Darshan?
“Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk one water?”
We don’t know is She knew, but we know it know and thus can worship our great Lord. Have a a wonderful second Christmas day and enjoy this special time of the year!

Don’t say you will gradually stop. It doesn’t happen.