'Shri Hans Jayanti festival' was celebrated this year as usual at Shri Sant Yogashram on 8th and 9th of November, 1990 with great ardour and gusto like the previous year. Right from the 3rd of November till 6th, Maharaji was on the move. He started his tour in the western and southern states of India and addressed huge gatherings at Bombay, Hyderabad, Goa and Madras. Hundreds of thousands of exuberant devotees and aspirants participated in these events and were filled with the profound joy and love that was emanating from the benevolent personality of Maharaji.

The Hans Jayanti festival was beautifully organised end a marked improvement was perceivable in the various arrangements made for the convenience of the people participating in the two day program. Maharaji gave three significant and purposeful discourses especially meant for the aspirants of Knowledge.

From Shri Sant Yogashram Maharaji flew to Kathmandu, Nepal where yet another mammoth congregation was addressed by him in the evening of 11th November. The audience mostly consisted of village folks who travelled and came from far off places in the hills. There were about eighteen thousand people including women and children who as- sembled in the long stretch of land behind

the Samakhusi Ashram in Kathmandu, the head office of 'Atma Gyan Prachar Sangh.' All of them listened to Maharaji with rapt attention and thoroughly enjoyed bhajans. Many of them started dancing with the tune of devotional songs.

In this volume we are publishing the translation of one of the discourses delivered by Maharaji on 24th March this year, during the three day 'spring festival. ' Since then he has been travelling extensively throughout the globe and meeting people of various countries belonging to multifarious cultures. He has come to the conclusion that human beings as a race have the same sort of problems, the same old worries and similar characteristic tendencies everywhere. They begin their life as children without any care or anxiety with a lot of laughter on their lips. But with age their responsibilities grow. Then they are surrounded by various problems and troubles. Under the influence of maya (illusion) man defers all the things he really wants to do to his old age. He says, he will be able to find God and become a devotee when he is retired and gets sufficient time to do whatever is essential for him. Thus he does not utilise the opportunity, the limited period of time alloted to him in this

life and goes on wasting the precious moments of this divine gift in trying to grapple with his day to day problems.

But sometimes a slight modification occurs in this worn-out and dull story and that is brought about by Knowledge--the day a. person decides to receive Knowledge, and then a complete metamorphosis of his whole being takes place in which they are able to face all their problems and day to day worries with full confidence. 'Then our heart begins to dance in an ecstasy of love and expectation. But gradually under the spell of mays we pay little heed to that love which was generated within us. We forget the day when we became a little child once again and got the thirst of our heart quenched, by the grace of the Master and our heart was filled with true love and contentment. That day a sort of miracle happened in our life when we were revealed this Knowledge. But slowly we loose track of that historical event. We reach such a stage in our life when we hardly recollect anything about that memorable day.

Maharaji divided his audience into two categories. One were those who had already received Knowledge and then the others who were aspirants. 'If you are an aspirant,' he says, 'I would say that this is the most sacred time in your life that you have a thirst for Knowledge' He advised the premies and instructors not to be vainglorious about their being the learned ones. Because such egoistic tendencies were likely to block their further growth and they will remain no more real premies or mahatmas in the true sense. So a thirst, an aspiration for Knowledge should always be present in every seeker of truth.

Maharaji feels very much indebted to his Guru Maharaji, his Master, and is full of gratitude for him. It was he, he said, who created the thirst in him, who made him an aspirant and then quenched that thirst by his gift of Knowledge. So we should pray to our Master that may this love for him remain constant, may this devotion remain everlasting. May we remain aspirants throughout our lives. When you earnestly become a true aspirant, your heart would dance again as it did on the first day you received this Knowledge.

The heart and the mind are not compatible. They are quite antagonistic and hostile to each other--just two rivals warring with each other most of the time. But we have to follow the call of our heart and disregard the coaxing and lure of the mind altogether.

The issue before us is to open our heart and let this cup be brimmed with true love and joy and thus get full benefit out of this Knowledge by practising it sincerely. Otherwise this gift can be withdrawn by the Master if it is not utilised properly by us. 'Do not stretch the thread of love too much. This Knowledge is the test of that love, so don't sever this thread outright'. So, in order to make this gift of Knowledge and that of life worthwhile to us we have to preserve this delicate thread of love intact between us and our Master. .

Maharaji doesn't like to stand on a high pedestal. He always addresses us as a simple human being. He says that he too is susceptible to all sorts of joys and sorrows of this world. He also had experienced Knowledge in the same way as we did and wants that we on our part be benefited by it in the same way as he has been.

He has decried the tendency of wrangling over the meanings and purport of scriptures. He doesn't like this penchant in people for 'shastrartha' in which they waste better part of their lives in futile and fruitless discussions. In this way they totally ignore the purpose of this valuable gift of life granted to them. They spend this precious time in abusing and insulting each other and then the day conies when the death approaches and knocks at their door. Then of course they are filled with remorse and bitterly repent their folly. But then it is too late.

He pointed out that we have got a fixed span of time on this earth and nobody knows about his future or what is in store for him. So whatever time is allotted to us, has to be fully utilised. We have to fill our hearts with joy as much as we can and not to overburden ourselves with material gains. In this way we can consciously enjoy this life to its full extent on this earth.

In this volume you will also enjoy yet another beautiful discourse of Maharaji which he delivered at Madras during his recent tour of India. He has emphasised the need to determine and stick to our foremost.priority in this life, which is to recognise this unique gift of life granted to us by the Creator, and enjoy our existence upon, this earth as true homo sapiens. The whole discourse is very illuminating and requires a thorough study and implementation in our lives.

We have also included some excerpts in this volume from one of his video film, called 'Life, the Student and Knowledge'. They hardly need any comments but have to be implicitly followed and implemented in our life.