Why is it that we listen to satsang but cannot follow it?

A private conversation with Pujya Shri Hit Premanand Govind Sharan Ji Maharaj at Shri Hit Radha Keli Kunj, Vrindavan. Sadhaks bring questions about their life and sadhana, and Maharaj Ji resolves them.

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Udit Chandra Ji, Advocate, High Court, Radhav Shri Harivansh Maharaj Ji Maharaj Ji. Just seeing you online gives me so much strength, and until today I had not had your direct darshan. Maharaj Ji, my question is this: watching your videos and hearing your good words feels very good. But when hardship comes in life, or in everyday life, we are unable to follow that knowledge, and for small gains we forget everything that was said. So I pray to you to guide us on how to hold on to those teachings with firm resolve. Firm resolve to hold those things comes from naam bal.

Shri Harivansh naam bal, take it in your heart, the brothers all say, take refuge in Harivansh. As we know what we should do and what we should not do, yet we are so overpowered by the craving for pleasure that we do what we should not do and fail to do what we should. To fulfil this, we need strength, spiritual strength. And spiritual strength comes from naam jap. The more naam jap you do, the more this strength comes within you, so that what should not be done is not done, and what should be done is done. This comes from naam jap.

If bhagwan's naam jap is not done, you will find many scholars who have knowledge of the shastras, but who do not live by it. Where we should be victorious, over lust, over greed, over ego, over attachment, they will be found defeated. Why? Because there is no bhajan bal. There is only the knowledge of the shastra in the intellect. So one should hold on to bhajan bal. We think that if we do naam jap as much as we can, eat pure food and keep listening to satsang, then if we continue this practice for a long time, a time will come when we become people of supremely pure thought, and we will not fall from our path into the temptations of small pleasures.

Do you understand? Maharaj Ji, how to continue in sadhana, for example, practising for four days and then on the fifth day it feels like it is dropped, then not again. Now look, we have to build a longing for it. Without longing we do not reach any goal. If we do sadhan for four days, it will not go to waste, but the practice that went wrong on the fifth day will drag us down. You will get the fruit of those four days of sadhan, but you will not be victorious. To be victorious, one must practise for a long time, continuously, with respect and devotion. If a rule is followed respectfully for a long time, look, a rule has a very great power.

If you do not hold to a rule, then things will not work out. In 24 hours we give all our time to our body, to indriya bhogs, to the world. If we make a rule of 24 minutes of naam jap, and we consider that this brings happiness into my life, then will our 24 minutes become a rule of 24 hours, that while doing every work we are doing naam jap? First make the 24-minute rule. You are earning, you earn rupees, you study and take up a job, whatever you do, you do it to live, don't you?

Tell us, rupees for what? For living, isn't it? Through them we get bhog padarth, don't we? Is the cycle just this much, to enjoy those things? Then what is the benefit of this human life? Life is for immersing oneself in the Satya, Sachchidanand. These are the means of living. Earning rupees and paisa, gathering objects of enjoyment, nourishing the family, nourishing the body. But we are living for the Prabhu. If our life is not for the Prabhu, then it is a dead body. "Jin Hari bhagat hriday nahin aa, jeevit sab saman te praani": those beings whose hearts do not have the devotees of Hari are, like the living, the same as the dead. See for yourself how hollow such a life is.

Just enjoyment, fulfilment of many kinds of desires, intoxication, earning rupees, and then going to hell. Is that a life? If you hold a sense of importance, the rule will not break. A rule is a stubborn disposition. Now, if you practised for four days and then gave it up, you will not experience paramarth. But that will not go to waste. If you did naam jap four times, you will get its fruit too. When asat karmas do not go to waste, how can the good karma of bhajan to the imperishable, eternal Sachchidanand Bhagwan go to waste? So let us take a rule of 24 minutes. Let us take a rule of one hour. If we give 23 hours to ourselves and one hour to Bhagwan, then He will take care of everything for us.

Slowly, our intellect will become pure, and the faults within us will end. Look, what joy we will find. Khud anand tyagant nirantaram: when we give up dirty pleasures, when we give up dirty thoughts, then supreme bliss and peace are experienced within the heart by themselves. Are you following? Rule, nishtha, food: correct the food and your rule and nishtha will improve. Food nowadays is very wrong. This food from hotels is very impure food. Now, is there anyone so rare who bathes and so on and keeps purity? Otherwise very impure diet, which corrupts the intellect, and then no rule will be made.

Then only the rule of enjoyments will be made. No rule of bhajan will be made. The one whose food is right, his bhajan will be right. The one whose food is not right, his bhajan will not be right. And today food is 100% impure; there is not even one percent room left. If you prepare food in your home with purity, suppose you bring turmeric, pound it at home and season with it, then it is turmeric. You don't know whether it is turmeric or chemical. You have a cow at home and you take milk from it, then you know it is milk. You don't know whether it is milk or chemical. Now, if such food goes in, the body will be afflicted with disease.

Therefore it has been said earlier that food is the purity of diet, and from purity of diet comes purity of the sat, that is, purity of the inner mind. Great impurity is now being created. Nowadays people have become so lazy at home that they like hotel food, and home food no longer appeals to them. When hotel food appeals, then indulgence and sensual pleasure will appeal, and bhajan will not. Write this down: bhajan will not appeal. The reform of food is the reform of bhajan. It is the reform of life. See how wrong diet has become, and how far it keeps going wrong. Young children and youth take alcohol, ganja and all such dirty things that corrupt the intellect, and see the immorality. See the effect of food. What has taken hold in society is very harmful.

A child forms a friendship with one girl and exploits her body, then goes to another, then a third, breaks up with the first, then with the second. If this tendency toward immorality is not brought under control, under your own mind and your own discipline, it will corrupt you and make you fit to give up the body. It will trap you in such a situation that the negative-thinking mind will urge you to give up your body. So be very careful. Let food be pure. Only then will our paramarth be nourished.

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Original video: Bhajan Marg (YouTube)