• Everything cannot be done by everyone, sadhana too is somewhat like that.: Aghor tradition mangaldhanram

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Aghor tradition mangaldhanram

The aghor tradition began from the god of the god and goddess the lord Shiva, his southern face among his five faces is named Aghor.
There were many Aghors born time to time. Aghor is an ancient spiritual discipline which is the tradition based on the Guru. Disciples are the one who are made Guru by his Guru. The disciple is linked with the guru By the Diksha Mantra. which are given by the Guru to the choosen one by him. In this tradition only the Guru knows when, where, how and who should get the ‘Diksha Mantra’. If the disciple comes out to be evil the Guru is the one who will have to bear all his wrong deeds(sins) so Aghor Guru would give the Diksha Mantra to those who are trust worthy to him. Who would be tested by his Guru in all aspects. So this tradition is totally based on Guru’s wish. This tradition is very less known to the society before the Aghoracharya Kinaramjee Maharaj of the sixteenth century. There were many Aghor saints in the ancient age Aghoracharya of Nepal and Aghor Bhairavacharya in 5th-6th centuary in Kashi.

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Aghoreshwar vani

TEACHINGS OF AGHORESHWAR BABA BHAGWAN RAMJI
To achieve that great grace, that supreme soul, that cosmic energy, all that we need is self-control. Performing all kinds of violent austere practices does not qualify as real quest and seeking. Performance and observance of good character and self-discipline qualifies as real quest. Such a quest has great meaning. You know in Hinduism that people who have maintained good behavior in life have achieved the respect even of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and all other divine beings. They all bow their heads to him. Otherwise you may keep beseeching them and they will not come. If you lose your good behavior, if you lose your self-discipline, then you cannot follow your quest. If you cannot follow your quest you will not be able to achieve the company of the divinities.
The prayers and meditations that we perform regularly do not go to waste. In one form or other they will definitely bear fruit in us. And we will achieve that supreme gift which gives us limitless peace and contentment.
When we save our strength and take the vow of remaining with one woman, then it is a great austere practice by itself. What practice can be more austere than that? This is a bigger vow than worshipping divinities and going to the doors of saints and fakirs. This is a vow that also pays respect to your Guru. If you really want to worship that creative energy, then you will have to take support of the creative strength within. And save the strength within. And refine that strength within. You will have to incubate it like an egg.
Our inner being should remain constantly with our divine, while at the same time we keep performing our duties with our eyes, nose, mouth and hands.
Say, what is wealth? At the inception of all prayers we use the mantra, "Tatsat" (that, which is true). Your best fulfillment of duty, your sweet words, your good character, your complete absorption in the most venerable inner spiritual strength, all these are your wealth. With this wealth you can acquire anything in the invisible field of divine existence.
On completing the process of pranayama (breathing exercises) and pranav (vibrations of the seed mantras) electrical currents are generated and end the lethargy of all your senses.
Live a natural life. You will achieve the clear vision of knowledge.
Act according to the inspiration you get from within. Do not be artificial. Never harbor conceit.
Real happiness lies in giving up even giving up.
Whatever is gone, is gone. Keep whatever remains.
Struggle is necessary for success.
Focus and concentrate. Do not be careless and negligent and later repent. This is our discipline.
Seeker! To escape attachments and jealousy stop feeding the fire of material desires. The fire will go out. To attain a state of liberation this action is necessary.
All practices are practicable, but all practices are not practicable for everyone. The choice of your practice will be made by your guru for you.
Service for social welfare and fulfillment of appropriate social goals is a great service to the Creative Energy. There is no other spiritual practice, knowledge, or salvation greater than this.
You should try to awaken the divinity residing within you. Only then will you derive true joy.
You will find divine knowledge only when you lose your egoistic attachments.
With strong determination and practice we can get to know the Unknown.
Aghor is the path of simplicity.
Your days in this world are numbered. Everybody is destined to depart after the last night of life.
A disciplined life brings about happiness and peace and leads one to salvation.
Only a balanced mind can fathom life's mysteries. The state of a person whose mind revolves around food, clothes and ornaments is worse than that of an animal. Identification with the Divine alone will release you from material bondage.
Your good or bad deeds cannot be concealed from sky and space; the messengers of the Divine are omniscient.
If you wish to attain enlightenment, walk the path indicated by your Guru and do good in the world. O, Man! Remember that neither wealth nor your progeny will enlighten you.
For rowing across the ocean of life, Guru Mantra is the only oar.
A physical body does not constitute the Guru. The Guru happens to be one's own life-force.
If God is angry, He can be appeased; if, however, the Guru is angry, the disciple will lose both this world and the world beyond.
The Guru is one whose mere presence brings peace to the Atman.

You can achieve liberation through heartfelt devotion to your Guru.
Aghoreshwar Bhagwan Ram gave a new turn to this safeguarded tradition of Siddhas and expanded its field of activity. He opened up and availed the teachings and practices of Aghor to the all sincere seekers.
If you want to live a meaningful life, move towards simplicity. The foundation of a simple life is love and harmony. Love and harmony has the power to neutralize all discord and to provide inspiration. One who knows Brahman, after much arduous sadhana, receives such inspiration.
A person who talks of big principles, reads various scriptures, claims to know many things but does not act on what he knows, is like that poor person who counts the money of others and develops the false pride of being rich.
Happiness and peace are the chief aims of life, and the purity of the soul is the only means of achieving them. Through purity of soul, you can achieve the rarest of rare; you can solve even the most complicated riddles of life.
Do not be afraid of those who assault you. They can not touch your soul. The intellect of the Aughor is soul oriented. Live securely in the realm of the soul.
One who is totally without compassion, sense of duty and meditation is a demon.
Mental tension weakens one and drags one to exhaustion.
Pictures influence the thinking of a person, and thinking influences the character and behavior of a person.
Atleast make a compromise with yourself and have patience.
A real guru is one on seeing whom pure thoughts and emotions rise in you, new ideas emerge in your heart, and self-purification is realized easily.
Consider the deep mystery: While you live only for yourself, your life is useless. The day you come to know that you live for others, your life becomes meaningful.
Before becoming a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist or a spiritual person, become a human being with virtues
One whose words are true is close to God. One who speaks lies remains afraid.
The merit of one moment spent with a good person is more than the merit achieved through prayer and worship of hundreds of years.
The highest wisdom is the knowledge of the Self.
There is no fire stronger than desire. There is nothing worse than hatred. There is no pain greater than inner.
That which we call the Divine resides in Truth and Faith alone.
§ Those who live on unjust interest find that their heart falls very low. If we help someone with money in their time of sorrow, then to take interest on that money, or to expect anything else in return, shall cause our own downfall.
§ Keep beautifying this organization, in the same way you beautify your hair.
§ To look back upon some of your past actions in life will give you sorrow. Perform pure actions in the present it will lead to retrogression.
§ To want more, is greed.
§ May Good give us the strength to bear with things?
§ The word shudra (low caste) does not mean impure. Actually it means ‘pious and respectful’. The day you begin to look at shudras with the sentiment of them being ‘pious and respectful’, you will achieve indescribable heights, your personality will have a great aura, you will generate wholesomeness. O sambhav seeker! This is what is to be known, that you too have to know.
§ Tell a sick person about his diet and way of life also, not just about the medicine, to help him recuperate fully with the medicine of knowledge; we must also have good conduct as a way of life.
§ Because you eat grains and derive nourishment from your country, if need be, relinquishing all love for your life, sacrifice yourself on the sacrificial altar of your country and your nation.
§ I hope you will keep yourself free from all tensions and stress in every way, and will pay attention to your health, to your cleanliness, and to your good behaviour.
§ To hoard those things that are necessary for saving lives, in any nation or society, is an indication of the weakness of the administrative structure.
§ You will have to keep yourself carefully separate from the retrogressive tendencies that are prevalent in society today, amongst those people competing to paint the truth as a lie and a lie as the truth.
§ [In the Hindu context] vermilion is the symbol of a woman’s blessed state of life when spouse is alive; it is indicative of her husband’s valour. Ignoring this, many Kshatriya women are enacting the husband destroying form Mahadevi these days.
§ In the same way that it is a heinous crime for a very greedy person to gamble with his friend and thereby claim all his money, so also it is a heinous crime to accept someone’s daughter after wrenching money out him.
§ How can a man, after neglecting his duty to nurture his family, be called a true ‘head of the family’? Such a person is definitely not worthy of being addressed as a father, or a head of his family, or as the ruling authority of a country.
§ It is not good to keep oneself in darkness.
§ One should strive to achieve glory. One should have unfailing trust in God, and one should have this sentiment long as I want to be friendly to myself, the extent to which I am friendly to myself, I will be friends with others too.
§ The ashram in which you live, the little hut in which you live, every things in there is worthy of respect, nor neglect. When you live with this feeling, then you will achieve that vision of the Guru, the experience for which saints and great souls keep searching, that entity who is addressed as God. All these you will find right here.
§ May my speech become eloquent? May my speech become highly efficacious? May my speech have that supreme ability of patience? May my speech neither hurt anyone nor generate any feelings of regret anyone. Let this be our constant endeavour though out life: that our speech should remain ever sweet and pleasant for others.
§ Be polite towards all your friends and relatives, and accept humility in your life. Then you will learn to live with politeness and love and affection with everyone the love and affection which have in them no trace of cunning or deception. This should be the ultimate goal of our life, and this should be our religious duty in today’s day and age.
§ The kind of behaviour one metes out to others, it is certain, shall be received in return. Our actions keep trailing behind us. They spare no one. They do not spare even the gods or goddesses, or their representatives.
§ If like the dung beetle, we carry our ego with us wherever we go, then we will remain deprived of that supreme happiness and peace; instead of enjoying this we will only keep criticizing each other.
§ Let us not turn away from this duty of ours (to experience supreme joy). Let us not wash our hands of our duty of ours. We have to search for it. Then it arises in us. Then we feel its vibrations in us. Then we have its sound within us.
§ We say that we are going to become a devotee of the Divine Mother; we say that we shall propitiate her, and that we are going to her to establish our rights with her. What is our right? Our children, our friends and relatives, our well wishers, they have a right to get some love for us. Are we able to give that love to them? People of such cruel temperament, people involved in such cruelty, will not find shelter anywhere on earth.
§ Divinity is nothing separate from us. Human beings themselves are divinities. Human beings themselves are demons, as well. If their behaviour becomes so, they become demons. If their behaviour becomes good, they become gods.
Aghoreshwar Vani

§ We will have to now with certainty that these idols [I e. These living beings] in whom God himself has infused life are the idols we shall respect. We will give them love, we will receive love from them, we will receive affection from them, and we will fed great pride and satisfactions in receiving all this from them.
§ Salute to the divine; the way is the truth. Neglecting the way of our ancestors and our rishis and by presenting the reality to others in a gently distorted way according to their own convenient viewpoint, the priesty class has fomented retrogression within our society. Now they have nothing to teach about the way anymore, not do they have any knowledge of the scriptures or puranas with them. These have gown unfamiliar to them, and are becoming increasingly unfamiliar every day. May God save them?
§ We the people of India had such ideal behaviour and character once. That we had no need for any rules and regulations.
§ One who desires someone else’s wealth for his own convenience remains dependent on that person. In the same way we are indebted to our mother and father, to our guru to our nation and to our society. And there is only one way to pray this debt back to never turn away from our duty ‘‘welfare of all, happiness to all’’.
§ One who live his own home and kept to roaming around other’s people doors he loses his own self respect and becomes an object of ridicule every were. Then, no one even come to sit with him.

Aghoreshwar Vani

· If something comes to you by itself, without your having desire for it, such as grains and cereals, then you are nor will anyone think so. But if you desire something and act on that desire by pulling something to yourself with effort, that effort neither is nor correct.
· Amass the wealth of peace, equanimity, non attachment and equal sight.
· Real happiness lies in giving up even giving up.
· Whatever is gone, is gone. Keep whatever you still have.
· Struggle is necessary for success.
· Act according to the inspiration from within. Do not be artificial. Don’t harbour conceit.
· Wishing does not beget anything. Act for it.
· Live a natural life. You will achieve the clear vision of knowledge.
· Do not amass too much by your livelihood. Share what you have with those who are without resources. This is the spirituality of equal vision; this is known as encompassing empathy.
· O virtuous one, O sudharma! Teaching without initiation widens a gap between guru and disciple.
· Vandewanagar, the home of aghor knowledge, is beautiful. It has been the Aghoreshwar’s place of spiritual practice. It is ever resonant with mantra. It has been the residence of Aghoreshwar’s, Aughars, saints, great souls, and good people. Spiritual practice here during appropriate time’s leads to great knowledge and merit. Here, one can even glimpse the Aghoreshwar; one can even glimpse the Kapaleshwar.
· Understand the indications sent by all liberating Tara. O seeker! Let spiritual unity generate within oneself during sleep. This will create absolute knowledge. What can be better than this?
· One who has given up the quest for prestige, status and praise needs neither to wear ashes on his body, nor to do austere practices, nor to look for recognition. Such a person keeps himself free even from the chains of caste, of lineage, and of regional, national or linguistic identification.
· I do not ask you to understanding only this and no more. Such is not a state of complete understanding. There is more beyond this, which you have to know and make your own. For complete understanding, you have to end all notions of ownership.
· Sudharma! Roam freely in a state of limitlessness. Accept the state of non acceptance.
· You can find a lot within yourself which you cannot find in history or literature, or in inscriptions or through rituals and devotion. What you can find by an exploration of yourself is better and higher than things achieved through other mediums. I exhort you to active toward this reachable goal.
· Free yourself from illusions induced by hearing, misunderstanding, produced by seeing, doubts created by smelling, tasting, touching and speaking.
· It is better to remain unburdened by metal [I, e. Gold and silver] or stones [gems and jewels] or papers full of ink [scriptures, the Vedas the puranas] than to lug them about. The mind should have to bear the burden of too many books.By doing pranayama (breathing exercises) and pranav (vibrations of the seed mantras), electrical currents are generated which will end the lethargy of your senses

· Become neither god nor a representative god. Represent yourself. Otherwise, you may be separated from yourself. One who worships himself deserves kindness. He is kind to himself. He saves himself from falling low, from troubles, from illusion, from imagining an unreal life. That person is a human being. There are many people who live as animals among human beings.
· Knowledge alone does not lead to salvation. Action is primary then with the strength of knowledge, we can fly as a bird with both wings in the sky of salvation. We need both wings to fly the wing of action.
· Determination is the basic mantra of self knowledge. It is essential to meditate on the self.
· ‘‘O myself, I promise you, I will behave nicely with you, I will never beguile you, I will never let you fall. This I vow to do. This, I promise you.’’
· Without a cleansing of the self, amassing inner strength is useless. To harbour desires in your heart is to turn away from yourself.
· If you stay in a quiet, peaceful state for even two or three minutes, you will realize a new life. You will experience a new spirit.
· By practice, even that which is hidden becomes visible. It then, becomes conscious, health and strong.
· To realize your past glory [of your own self], you should practice the fivefold path, the fivefold path that produces vision and intellect.
· By deep meditation you can achieve knowledge of the one true entity in the commons.
· Daily practices:
The time for daily practices begins early in the morning in the ‘divine period’ [Brahma muhurta, an hour and thirty six minutes before sunrise]. As you get up remember God look at the palms of both hands, say the mantra:
‘‘Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) lives in the front of my hand saraswati (the goddess of knowledge) likes in the middle at the root resides Brahma (creator of the universe) at dawn, thus, I see them.’’ Then before stepping on the ground, pray to mother earth:
The oceans are your clothing, O mother the mountains are your breasts wife of Vishnu, I beg you forgive me, I touch you will my feet.’’ Then complete your toilet, shower and put on clean clothes. Alone, at your place of worship, sit on an asana facing east.
Keeping water for self purification in a Copper vessel on your right hand side.
· Upon arising setting your feet on the earth, touching your face with the palms of both hands which serve as symbols of action say to yourself ‘‘Today may I achieve creative strength, without the support of which I am deprived of success’’. Then touch your eyebrows, for father of Janak, ‘Nimi’, our predecessor, is present in your eyebrows. If your hands are clean if they are not bloody then touching your eyebrows will give you strength, and a feeling of oneness.
· To defeat an enemy: in the morning take three steps back, press your feet hard against the ground, then take a step and walk. By doing this, you will defeat the bad soul that has attached itself to you. This is also knowledge. You should lead this, too.
· It is not proper to meditate if you are troubled and ill at ease.
· By getting away from fear, regarding everything as a miracle of God’s power, you will awaken pure feelings in yourself. Awake your faith, practice it, be with God.
· When you pray to God, hold your breath for a moment; bring a feeling of restfulness into your heart. Don’t harbour desires. Keep your mind and heart happy. You will then be experienced in doing everything. You will remain cheerful. As far as your faith holds, you will achieve success.
· Empty your mind, lighten your heart, loosen your body, close your eyes for a moment. Do not close your eyes to put yourself in darkness. Close your eyes to turn your ‘outsight’ inward. See with ‘in sight’ your inner depths. See what is happening there, what is not happening there. Look for the supreme truth.
· Perform pranav (chanting of the mantra Om). Then empty your mind, make your heart light. Sit straight and do not perform any action. No action at all. Do not think of anything or anyone. Do not perform japa. Absolutely thoughtless, do not remember even the supreme unknown.
· Live in a state of ‘vibrationlessness’, a state where no thought vibrations rise in your heart or mind, where no attachments grow in it. Whether standing or sitting in the lotus position, be mindful of your mantra. Let the vibrations of pranav emanate from every pore of your body. Maintain a conscious experience of it. This is called ‘kindness’. This is the ‘strength of the soul’.
· Close your eyes, close your ears, stop your breath, make your body as inactive as a log, and experience yourself. There will be no vibrations.
· We sit on asana (we seat of meditation). By sitting on the asana, we take control of our body. Taking control of this inert body we perform our practices. What practices do we perform? We wake ourselves up. But only a person who is actually sleeping can be awakened. You cannot wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
· Continue your prayers even while completing your toilet and you will achieve peace. This is Aughar knowledge. Pray while performing your toilet; see how much peace you feel. You will feel more peaceful than if you had prayed in a temple. Peace depends on how you focus your mind, how determined you are, how you look for your divinity. The creative power is everywhere.
· Pay attention to yourself, where everything is found, where nothing is lacking. While performing actions, remain unattached. Even if others see you as running after action, be still and unattached inside. Search in the forest of your mind in a state between the states of the being focused and unfocused.
· Why don’t you observe, analyze and ponder over all that is happening. Within you every day? Why don’t you accept that eagerly? Why don’t you make it your own? It will, in a very short time, take you towards the absolute unlimited, towards that which has no limits at all.
· When you remember Maheshwar shiva while walking or doing other things, Rama, roams within you. When you remember Rama, you rise above body consciousness and enter shiva consciousness. ‘so’ham’, the divine knowledge, automatically comes within your consciousness.
· The joy of living in solitude with discipline is far greater than the joy derived from gems bought by wealth.
· O sudharma! In my realized state I saw many circles and colours. If one makes circles on his clothes or on the ground, or on his flag or icon, and colours them in as many colours them in as many colours as I saw, and in the same sequence as I saw them, and then meditates on my realized state and invokes me, then he can achieve a lot. At that time I was fourteen or fifteen years old. If one meditates on my form at that age, meditates on the characteristics and functions of that age, he can achieve a lot.
· Great souls and munis used four major kinds of spiritual powers in ancient times. What are those four spiritual powers and a fifth one too?
1) Retention of semen 2) stopping one’s desires, 3) living with one’s own life force (prana), 4) following the arduous way of the example set by one’s guru, and 5) living an ideal life. One who is engrossed in his mantra, diligent in his spiritual practices and engrossed in action without laziness can achieve these five spiritual powers very easily.
· A divine entity generated by mantra, rituals and herbs is not a divinity that will do good for us. It will inspire us towards materialism. It will prevent us from going to our own refuge, to the refuge of our soul. The divinity generated by mantra, rituals and herbs cannot benefit our pure body, the body in which resides our magnetic attraction, our conscious self, our joy and happiness.
· Sit with a straight body and with your memory in front of you.
· In this age of science we know that sound spreads through the whole solar system instantaneously. Consider mantra knowledge, posture knowledge, and ritual and yantra knowledge to be similar to instantaneous communication. Look into it for yourself, in reality.
· The use alcohol is not for everybody. Its use is only for those who have found sad guru. Alcohol prevents the seeker from being sucked into attraction of this reality.
· Buddha, before gaining Buddha hood, performed aghor practices. Sujata helped him in his practices. Buddha was beyond the do’s and don’ts of the world. Only by keeping a constant practices can one move ahead on one’s path.
· Silence is the best japa.
· In worship and prayer, you should know which foot to keep on top, how to stat the sound (of the mantra Om) from the navel, how to behave with the mantra who is a friend. Learn to gauge if the vibrations in your heart, if the emanations are of the right kind. Know when and to whom to offer fruits and flowers. Guru should be worshipped with white flowers at the feet of the divine Mother. So that your actions may be auspicious, worship with yellow or yellow white flowers. If you have no flowers, worship with the five basic elements everything is composed of five basic elements. The method of how to do so is described in the safal yoni: consider the earth to be perfume, the sky flowers, and the wind incense, the sun a lamp, and water, food. Offer them to your dear divinity with all your heart, mind and soul.
· If one worships the Divine Mother with gold silver, one will be born poor in the next life. One, who worships the Divine Mother with flowers, fruits, and grasses, if he takes rebirth, will become wealthy, prosperous and happy.
· When you meditate, let the mantra resonate in your pran. When energy wakes in your pran, the seeds of divine characteristics will be sown. Let japa resonate in your heart. You can even say the mantra aloud. With enough practice, a time will not need to say it aloud. With your mouth closed, the whole process will begin: from head to toe, your body’s pores will begin to resonate with the sound of the mantra. Hear the resonance. Feel the joy of the waves produced by it.
· When you sit on your asana to do japa, touch the earth with one of your hands, because, one derives strength from the earth. If you do japa with your right hand, touch the earth with your left. Also when you get up after sleeping, salute the earth. The earth is the mother. She harbours strength and energy.
· When you sit on your asana, keep your arms and legs in the appropriate posture (mudra). This generates a power of attraction within you. Let your thinking deepen. Quiet your mind, discipline your senses, and then meditate.
· Sacrifice and yantra are necessary to generate energy. Don’t be afraid of the obstacles that arise when you start your players and meditation by them. Don’t be angered by them. Sacrifice them.
· Shivaratri is the day to worship the self. The third eye of this Mahadev yantra takes you toward the sky. It makes you aware of the ephemeral nature of the world. You will experience a desire free heart where exist neither time nor action, nor do’s and don’ts. True Shivaratri practice requires a knowledge of the right sequences and their quantities.
· Purify the asana by sprinkling water on it. After purification, put your right foot on the asana first, then your left foot. Sit facing east, north or west a peaceful heart and mind.
· Seated on your asana, do the digbandhan, the act of ‘tying the directions’. For digbandhan, Aughars have many mantras. One can say aloud: ‘‘Shri Guru Padukaye Namah’’; ‘‘Shri Adiguru Padukaye Namah’’ or Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati Devataye namah’’, and then clap. Bad souls run from the sound of clapping. Then we perform achamani by dropping water on the right palm three times with a spoon or mango leaf while saying ‘‘Om Tatsat’’, drinking the water each time. This is known as bhutasbuddhi ‘‘the purification of the past’’. By performing this ritual we are asking god to burn up the bad effects of our past misdeeds.
· After achamani we perform pranayama. In pranayama, breathe in through the left nostril, hold your breath, and then exhale through the right nostril. This succession of inhaling, retaining, releasing should have a 1:2:3 ratio that is, hold your breath for thrice as long as it takes to inhale, and breathe out for twice as long a duration as when you breathe in. Count this silently, or recite the guru mantra silently in the same 1:2:3 retios as your perform pranayama. Practicing pranayama, our channels become pure. This exercise, a part of purification, makes our body light and energetic. It also makes our ideas and feelings bright and divine.
· When doing pranayama (purification by air), the life force comes in with the air. Breathe in through the left nostril and slowly breathe out through the right. Do this three times. It takes only a little time. Hold it for thrice the time it takes to breathe in.
· If you perform pranayama and pranav moderately and regularly, your mental weakness and physical laxity will disappear. Twenty four times, draw your breath in through the left nostril, hold it for twice as long as it took to draw it three in, and then release it through your right nostril. Slowly increase the length of this practice. In twelve hours do it three times. With concentration, in a state of soundless, thoughtless solitude, do this at dawn and at duck. If you persevere in this practice, the latent rays of light in your body will become stronger, brighter. They will become flames of enthusiasm and inspiration for you.
· Do pranav for at least twenty minutes, but no more than thirty. Sitting, without worries, raise the sound of pranav from the navel. Take it to the brahma randhra, at the peak of your skull. Do it in a state of wakefulness. It will take you toward a supernatural light whose electrical rays will help you. Do pranayama and pranav one after the other to perceive their benefit.
· Worshippers and seekers, perform pranayama and pranav before and after worshipping the divinity, before meditating on the Guru, before invoking the Aghoreshwar.
· Before doing japa with the mantra, perform achamani, a purification that is done by taking water in the palm of the purification that is done by taking water in the palm of the hand and invoking the name of the Guru or Divinity. Say, ‘‘O Essence, you are true’’. This purification rite burns the effects of past deeds; all five elements turn into their original essences. Understand this purification so that a sick intellect, distorted perceptions and the understanding within us can be cast away and the doors closed on them. Following this purification rite, take water with the third finger and touch both eyebrows. Then sprinkle drops of water on yourself. Sprinkling this water causes bad souls hovering about to go away. Water is the basis of life for all beings. By using mantra sanctified water you can also perform other actions. Using mantra sanctified water, a bad soul posing as a friend within a person will run away and that person’s health will improve. He will find amrita, the true nectar of life. All this will happen within you, but without a strong will it is distanced from you.
· So, after purification, while praying, we perform prayama. This purifies out channels so that their flow does not contradict each other. The power in these veins to provide the flow for a good mind and thought that flow should not be hampered. This flow should make us think nice thoughts and force us to live a knowledgeable life. This flow should not be enable us to see the divine truth, for which we have a deep desire within. That is why we perform pranayama. When the channels inside have been purified, we can see the truth. Then we try to mould that purity into our lives. Performing japa, we are able to confer with our senses. With the help of our mantra, we no longer do anything that would generate guilt in us, or which would make us restless and explosive. We are no longer led into terrible mantra anguish.
· To perform Dhyana is to meditate. What is even better than meditating (performing Dhyana), is to pay attention, i.e. to practice absolute awareness. If we perform Dhyana, we immediately face the dilemma of meditating on form or formlessness. But one who pays attention will avoid this dilemma. One who merely performs Dhyana creates a separation between himself and truth. He places a curtain between the two. Therefore, do not perform Dhyana, but pay attention. That which is untruth will fade away.
· Visualize the Guru sitting on a white lotus wearing white clothes. Sit on an asana, become triangular like a yantra, get situated within yourself, and feel the vibrations of mantra japa. Watch what shapes form when your breath comes out of your nostrils. Remain vigilant towards sensory or mental attacks. Many hateful things we have heard or seen in the past, have been made to hear and understand have left their scars on our mind. We must not now let these things create fears and worries in us. When we pay attention to these things, slowly our divinity begins to respond to us. One becomes that divinity. Every depends on way of action, our faith, our stability.
· Meditate on that divinity within which has no colour, form, or shape. Meditate on the unthinkable one who does not enter your thoughts easily. Meditate on divine consciousness, the divinity light from which we arise and into which we disappear. Meditate on your own form. Meditate on one who is dear to you. That one is your divinity. Mediate on the guru wearing white clothes. Meditate on him wearing red, yellow, or green clothes. Just as a train stops on being signalled by a red flag and moves again on seeing a green one, each colour signals its message. The Guru wearing yellow signals auspicious acts, red signals the defeat of an enemy, green signals happiness and prosperity.
· Pay more attention during meditation; mind and consciousness should be totally focused. All ten senses, every faculty should be focused, lying latent within.
· When we meditate after emptying our minds of everything, without any worries, without any desires, or attachments in our hearts, without anything coming into our thoughts, without any feelings of jealousy arising then we can clearly see that soul, that atma who, to see, we have wandered for a long time, to many places.
· Even if we little to live by, if we focus on experiencing joy and wealth, if we control our senses and concentrate them in wardly, then the soul or atma, who we address as god or goddess, will provide clear experiences from within.
· When we meditate after emptying our minds of everything, without any worries, without any desires or attachments in our hearts, without anything coming into our thoughts, without any feelings of jealousy arising then we can clearly see that soul, that atma who to see, we have wandered for a long time, to many places.
· Even if we have little to live by, if we focus on experiencing joy and wealth, if we control our senses and concentrate them inwardly, then the soul or atma, who we address as God or Goddess, will provide clear experiences from within.
· Experiences from within are possible, but happen only when we have stopped the wanderings and desires of our senses. Meditate in solitude for ten minutes to half an hour. Then, when you think about someone or something, you will see it clearly.
· By concentrating and becoming peaceful in our heart and mind through pranayama and pranav, creative energy spreads its light in every direction. It becomes a synonym for the unfathomable wealth of joy, enthusiasm and healthfulness.
· So, we purify the past (bhutashuddhi), we purify the life force (pranshuddhi), and then we perform achamani. We perform achamani by saying: atmatattvam shodhayami swaha (I am investigating the self element) prantattvam shodhayami swaha (I am investigating the prana element) viryatattvam shodhayami swaha (I am investigating the semen element) Gurutattvam shodhayami swaha (I am investigating the Guru element) shivatattvam shodhayami swaha (I am investigating the shiva element) shaktitattvam shodhayami swaha (I am investigating the Shakti element) there is no rule about when to do this. There is no rule of serialization. You can perform it before or after other actions.
· After performing tar pan (water sacrifice) we kiss the mala and stroke it without fingers. This is called doing japa. Japa with the mala prevents the mind from running away with us. It brings the mind back to itself. It does not matter if you say japa aloud or not, but keep it continuous. Let the constriction in your larynx and the constant memory of what you are doing remain unbroken.
· After achamani, perform digbandhan (securing the directions). After digbandhan, perform japa. We do japa in whatever way the Guru has told us to. One need not think about it, because the Guru, when he gives it, knew one’s condition and mental state. Remember the Gita: ‘‘Yagyanam japo yagya’’ (the best among yagyas is japa yagya). During mantra japa many seekers hold the mala in their right hand and touch the earth with their left hand. It will be good if married people visualize their creative energy on their left side. If their creative energy is not cruel, but pleasant, cool and normal, then it will be beneficial. In japa, never use the finger used for pointing out the faults in others (the finger next to the thumb). When performing japa, turn back the direction of stroking the beads when you reach the mala’s apex. In japa, the direction is always reversed upon reaching the apex.
· Start your japa. A mala has 108 beads. Eight beads represent what we owe to our Guru, father, divinity, mother, to the ruler of our country, the lineage and family in which we were born, and the person who gives us our food. The japa value of eight beads is distributed among these people. Then we count the 100 beads that are left. Then we count whatever promises we have made to ourselves whether we do it 10,000 or a 100,000 times, we do it. On completion, we sacrifice in hawan one tenth of all the times we have done japa. This action is known as purashcharan. To perform this hawan of one tenth of our japa, we may not have enough materials. It may also take too much time. So we do japa for that one tenth again. If we do not have enough materials, then we sacrifice in hawan one tenth of this one tenth. We do this not to make trouble, nor to perform undue actions of attraction, repulsion, or aggravation, but for joy and peace. In a place where hawan is not possible, we perform tar pan in with rice, ghee, and guru (molasses). We perform tar pan in water.
· Perform hawan after performing japa with the divine mantra given to us by our Guru. During hawan, perform ahuti (putting blessed materials in the sacred fire) carefully with three fingers of the right hand. Exclude the finger that points faults in others. Be careful to offer, not to throw the blessed materials into the fire. For swaha, the wife of Agni (fire), say ‘swaha’ each time you put materials in the sacred in the sacred fire. The left hand should touch the right elbow. Handicapped people should not perform ahuti because it does involve fire, but if they have faith, they can do it. There is no stricture against it. After performing japa with the mantra given to us by the Guru, we recite a prayer for peace:
Akash shanti (peace to the sky)
Prithvi shanti (peace to the earth)
Charon dishayen shanti (peace to the four directions)
Nadi shanti (peace to the rivers)
Parvat shanti (peace to the mountains)
Vanaspati shanti (peace to the vegetation) etc.
· Then we perform ahuti for each thing we mention. Thereafter, we pacify the restless souls of the village, town and region by Nadi japa and ahuti for each. We add ‘swaha’ after mentioning each thing. If we are poor and cannot afford the materials, then we can perform ahuti in the fire with flowers, or with water we perform tar pan. If we live in a city or in a place where we can’t light a fire, then we can just perform tar pan with flowers, rice and water. If we are bating in a pool or at a well, we can perform tar pan for our forefathers, divinities, and all souls. We can perform tar pan with rice, flowers, dub grass or whatever is available. This is not a death ritual tar pan. The purpose of this tar pan is to have a quiet and peaceful mind and heart. Adverse vibrations from cosmic entities attacking us should now stop. By doing this, the shadow of a bad soul that has fallen on us, or who is about to fall on us, will dissipate and disappears.
· After completing all these actions, take a little water in the palm of the hand, purify it with the guru mantra, or with a divine mantra, and drink it. The meaning of drinking this water is that one offers to one’s guru or divinity whatever one has done until today. The punya (merit of good karma) that will be achieved by doing this, is offered to them again. Whatever is left after that even that is offered to them again? Whatever is left over of the offering, may that be for me.
· Far as the question of flowers etc. Is concerned, you pluck them to offer to your guru; you can say ‘‘shri guru charan padukaya, patram pushpam samarpayami’’ (I offer these flowers and leaves to the feet of my guru) and give them into his hands. If you do not want to pluck flowers, do not want to take it away from someone, do not want to influence your guru with something that belongs to somebody else, and then say mentally: ‘‘I have this body, raggedly old body, this I offer to you. O Divine Mother, give me the right wisdom, give me good inspirivation.’’ Whatever flowers and leaves you have, offer them. At that time, your gesture should gesture should not be that of throwing it at them, but of the offering it to them.
· Your mental state while acquiring and offering rice, leaves, flowers and other things to your divinity is important. While collecting flowers, become so absorbed in doing so that even the cacophony of a passing army would not disturb you. Only then will you know the divinity of the mantra, the benefit and virtue of offering flowers to your divinity. But if your mental state is turbulent, if you are thinking about the deed and misdeeds of people while collecting little pouches of poison for yourself. You are collection garbage that you will then throw on your divinity. That is why collection and offering flowers to your Guru you should be completely absorbed in these actions.
· As part of this practice, we also break a stick of wood. Why do we break a stick of wood? By doing this we are symbolically making a sacrifice, we are defeating our enemies, we are making a vow.
· By breaking a stick of wood, we make a vow. That vow makes us strong, makes us see things beautifully and auspiciously. It makes us sweet. It makes us sweet. It makes our voice beautiful; it makes our face and expression beautiful. It bestows unlimited joy and happiness on us!
· Without practice, even the best knowledge turns into poison. That is why this one moment of practice each day in the course of twenty four hours gives us the capacity to work for a hundred years, and to become successful in our undertakings.
· Friends, who do you, have a right to worship? Until now you have not worshipped yourself, you have not become aware of yourself; you have been very harsh towards yourself. And, neglecting yourself, you have worshipped others! That is an insule to the pure soul residing in your body, residing in the temple of your heart, the pure soul available to you as yourself.
· If we keep worshipping practicing without finding out which mantra we have a right to use, which divinity we have a right to seek, who we have a right to worship, then our practice remains ineffective.
· Proceed toward solitude. In solitude, search for that concentration which encloses everything. Concentration is a great power it is a great energy.
· The kalash (pitcher of water) of navaratri is important. We cherish this kalash. We honour it, we offer flowers and garlands to it, we perform Arati (adoration with kindled lamps) to it, and we worship it because the pran, life force, which has been established in that pitcher, is one’s own pran. Without life energy, human beings become lifeless.
· For the nine days of navaratri, for these nine days, with a stable mind and heart, with pleasant feelings and thoughts, let us watch what happens within us. Let us understand what happens within this body yantra of ours. Once you know this yantra, understand it, hear it, nothing will be difficult for you. Everything will be available to you. Everything exists within in this world.
· For these nine days of worship we should smear vibhuti (ashes) on our body. Our body becomes a cremation ground, to which divinities come only because of these ashes. Because of these ashes great souls come. By smearing these ashes, by remain remembering these ashes; our cremation ground like body begins to seem pure and auspicious. It then looks beautiful, clean, and untainted. Vibhuti is the name of prosperity and glory. You wear this prosperity and glory. The day you become nothing, turn to ashes, that day your prosperity and glory becomes everything and disappears in this country’s soil. You then exist everywhere, in every particle. If you do not have vibhuti (ashes), then think of water as vibhuti and put a little on your forehead.
· The lines made by vibhuti can erase the lines of death from your forehead; death, with whom you fight every day. Vibhuti is a great shield of protection against negative things. But you belong to a new age; perhaps you don’t believe in this.
· When you get up in the morning, rub both hands on your face with the supplication, ‘‘O God, O supreme soul, O brightest light, O ray of hope, today please help me meet good people, let the one under whom I live be pleased with me, let me earn my livelihood without trouble.’’
· In the same way, in the evening, before going to bed, rub both hands on your face. We say to God: ‘’Now let me sleep without troubles, in peace. Let no wild animal or being, no problems or difficulties bother me. I want to live in peace.’’ Then our night will be spent in peace.
· Your guru asks you to carefully keep the mantra and cherish the divinity dear to you. Keep them with the care a bird keeps her eggs. At first it is a little uncomfortable, but that will go away if what you cherish is pleased with you.
· Sitting in front of the Divine Mother, connect with thought and concentration. In that connection, be mindful of the shapes your breath takes. When concentrating, do not perform japa or any other kind of meditation. Stay focused on your breath and the connection. This is known as swar sadhana (breath practice).
· Circumambulating a statue of Lord Ganesha in which the life force has been established by a saint, a realized person, or great soul, this bestows the same fruits as circumambulating an image of the ever giving Lord Shiva. It also bestows the fruits from other kind souls, virtues, good characteristics, and the fruits one receives from visiting the most sacred places on earth. This is the merit gained by circumambulating image of Lord Ganesha. But if you perform circumambulation of a statue in which the life force has been established by a smuggler, or by a person of negative thoughts and feelings, this can hurt you. Better than doing the latter, would be to make a ganesha idol of cow dung and circumambulate that.
· Friends! If you think you have the right to venture into the fields of divinities and their manifestations, religion and duty, rules and laws of the country, as well as their customs and constitutions, then you must also accept and follow the standards and guidelines of each. This acceptance is a worship of yourself. To follow standards and guidelines is a form of worship.
· This word that emanates by itself from within you, emanates by itself from your pores, is not to be spoken aloud. The word is happening. It happens within by itself. Without our thinking of it or focusing on it, it happens by itself. Our senses are being disciplined. Keep your attention focused on that.
· Make the mantra that dear to the divinity so conscious and powerful, your soul self so conscious and awake, that you understand everything. Understand who is going on that path, who is coming that path, who wants to talk to you and who you want to meet.
· If you want to send a message to someone in a foreign country far away, then become very quiet, close your eyes. From deep within your heart focus on that village or town, that country, its soil, then send your message to that place as you send a message over the telephone. When you do this, the person you send it to be this your mother, sister, or some other well wisher will receive and be affected by the vibrations. They’ll feel a vibration; a shiver will run through their body. If the recipient is a mother, she will open her eyes and wonder: why did see my son’s face last night? How did it come to me?
· We beg everywhere. Who gives anything without being asked? And, as beggars, we will receive both invectives and good words; stick as well as sweets. Be ready to accept everything. It should not be that we are ready to accept sweets, but that we run away when we get a stick. It should not be that we feel good when we get the sweets, but not good when get the stick.
· Don’t reveal your mantra, your knowledge, your divinity to anyone unless they ask about it. Especially, don’t speak about your guru.
· It is important to light lamps and incense and perform Arati (oil lamp adoration) in the evening, because everybody wants to leave darkness behind and move toward light. They pray, ‘‘O God! Light a lamp to dissipate the darkness in our hearts that we may be rid of it, that we may be able to help others to develop virtues and thoughts, good behaviour and to practice good deeds’’. At evening time we perform puja Arati so that, turning away from negative souls, we may befriend good souls. These good souls remind us of our progeny and our ancestors. And, if any negative souls have attached themselves to these good souls, the good souls may, by the light, be able to rid themselves of the souls.
· We think mantra is something different, the word is something different, the little is something different, divinity is something and that the Divine Mother is something different. We think, like in a cartoon, that the gods have four hands, ride tigers, ride elephant, ride horses. Friends, it is not so.
· Friends, one who meditates on an aggressive mantra, his temperament becomes aggressive. One who meditates on a hard mantra, his temperament becomes hard. One who meditates on a mantra, a certain divinity according to the rules and procedures of meditation, japa, worship he begins to meditate automatically and becomes like the divinity of the mantra. The who you invoke comes close to you. When the divinity comes close, you begin to fidget and become restless. With mantra japa you should also have a yantra. If you do not have a yantra (instrument), then reciting the mantra is just like going bang-bang-bang. Then, the divinity does not come close. She looks at us and turns back. She says we are not ready for her, that it would be foolish to go to such a person. She wonders why he is calling her if he does not have the stability to receive her. Even if we do have an appropriate yantra, and that yantra remains in good condition, still she may not come all at once. She stops and smells the air, to check if the yantra is ready. So, we need right vision, right hearing, and right sense of smell. Even the seeker needs to be able to gauge smell. And we also need right speech, the pure, the speech.
· Our speech should be pure so that the japa sounds, voiced at the right volume, sounds appropriate to the divinity. Thus our voice will find its object, the divinity, attracted by it, will turn to us. If it turns to us and our yantra is not in appropriate condition, instead of helping us, it can smash us to the ground. It can also kill us or make us insane. We can get hurt, become confused, aggressive, and do negative things. This will be our compete failure.
· If we do not practice, our inner being becomes lazy. Without practice laziness, sleep and yawning eat away our life, and take us closer to death. But it we practice our life remains active beneficial.
· We should teach the devoted people in our ashrams and their children how to do hawan (fire puja), japa, tar pan and how to worship various divinities. Do this at least once a week. Also, tell them about saints and great souls who have been great householders.
· Once a soul is weakened, many take advantage of it. This is a tantra (a body of knowledge which can be used either positively or negatively.) You have to understand tantra in this sense only. Tantra does not mean magic and sorcery. You will have to understand and prayer in this sense, too.
· To be protected against attack, before worshipping or meditating, purify your place of sitting with water and by spreading grass or a similar cover, and then your asana. Thus you tie your asana to the earth and then your asana to the earth and the four directions with your mantra and by sprinkling sanctified water. It is necessary to do this to escape the brahmarakshas, and other temperamental, cranky, malicious, negative souls who attack us from the earth, the sky, and from the depths of the netherworld. Do not perform your practice just anywhere, nor when sitting on bare ground, nor on newspaper spread on the ground.
· During meditation, be aware of everything you do. Do not perform actions that weaken you. Stay away from unnecessary talk. It can generate self alienation and insecurity. Your divinity, your dear one, is standing close to you. She asks you to come forward. She says: ‘‘If you take one step forward I will come five steps to meet you’’. But afflicted by laziness, the effects of the environment and illusions, you remain deprived of your divinity.
· By becoming stable, the worship and meditation you perform will lead to knowledge of many kinds. You are performing five to seven different kinds of practices. If even one of them comes to fruition your life will be transformed and become very beautiful. If, when leaving this place, you are not afflicted by negative company, nor accosted by negative souls, nor thrust into negative situations, nor affected by family members with demonic dispositions, you will refrain from abhorrent deeds and your life will remain good. What little you have will seem like a lot to you.
· On Dashahra (the tenth day at the culmination of navaratri puja), sacrifice the animal tendencies within you before the Divine Mother. By not doing this, you send her away. But if you make the sacrifice, you will rise above your beastly state to a good place. You will become a divine person. Even today, you can sacrifice the beast in you and rise to that position.
o O bachelors! If you worship the seven sisters the seven forms of the Divine Mother as your dear divinity, you will regain lost prestige and lost opportunities without difficulty. An O bachelor, to worship these seven divinities with Akshobhya Bhairava (a fearless form of shiva) is a great worship. To do auspicious actions, worship with blue and pink flowers; for peace worship with yellow flowers; for defeating an enemy, worship with red flowers. To conquer your senses, consume porridge that has been offered to the seven sisters. Keep the porridge from the gaze of greedy landowners; even before the worship, stay away from landlords. Just to see them or be touched by their shadows may affect you negatively. You can worship, by making sacrifices to the seven sisters. These offerings are consumed by the worshipper who will then move fearlessly upon this earth free of all afflictions.
· What are bhajans (devotional songs)? When feelings of duality do not touch the mind, when we don’t criticize respectable people, this bhajan [as good thoughts]. Hymns and worship do not have anything to do with food and drink.
· What is worship? It is the adortion of an object of adoration? Our own desires and feelings are objects of adoration. To worship desires and feelings, people make offerings of wine, meat, goat, rice, lentils and money to divinities. One offers flowers, and another offers something else. The divinity remains unmoved. We see this in its statue. Understand this sign. Calm down the eagerness and restlessness that arises in you to be like that unmoved divinity. Eagerness and restlessness is not divine consciousness. Eagerness and restlessness push you into a hellhole where only cruelty resides.
· The stance or posture you take during the day fades into the earth and sky. It is seen by your unknown friend like you see things on television. Nothing you do is secret from the Great Unknown. In all conditions and circumstances, you need to be conscious and vigilant regarding yourself and your actions. Know how to behave in front of your parents, your Guru, great souls and good people. Know what posture to take, what adornments to wear. Learn how to live in your home, village or city, in private and in public. Pay attention to these things, for they are not hidden from your unknown friend.
· Mantra, maithun (sex), and mudra (posture): these three are to be kept private. The better you keep them to yourself, the more you gain respect in society. The scriptures extol the virtue of keeping these to yourself.
· If we don’t follow the practices recommended to us by our Guru in the proper disciplined and measured way, we will not see our own nature in our Guru’s nature. When we sit down to worship and meditate we should relinquish worries, give up restlessness, and draw ourselves in as a tortoise draws its limbs into shell. Only our mantra should vibrate sending a shiver into every pore of our body. Thus will we begin to achieve a state of Samadhi? In that state nothing else will arise. If you do your practice, the day is not far away when you will see the form of the Divine Mother in the words that come from your mouth the form you want to see as something different.
· Teach these practices to at least ten people. Teach the mantra. Teach them the methods of performing tar pan, vow (sankalp) and hawan. Teach them how to use mantra for different purposes. Teach them how to perform japa by taking the shape of a triangle while sitting on an asana. Tell then their own body is a yantra. In this triangular yantra we establish ourselves and remember our divinity within ourselves. Tell them the importance of seeing your own nature in your Guru’s nature. Observe the postures and expressions of your Guru while doing things, and do things in this way in your own life.
· When first learned these things sometimes my hair stood on end. At times I would see emanations from each hair follicle of my body. I would see one lettered mantra coming from my pores. I observed the vibrations of those emanating mantras. I observed my breath and the forms that rose in it. I observed the length and shortness of my breath. I observed how I saw my Guru when I closed my eyes what clothes he appeared in, and if his posture was that of fearlessness, to teach us fearlessness, or the posture of giving. Pray to God to become fearless, and that everyone may become fearless.
· While saying prayers keep your back straight, your head high, your nose forward; keep your back focus between your eyebrows, your chest upright. Sit in the lotus posture, inhale fully, exhale fully, and don’t let any thought enter your mind until your soul is clean and purified, until you achieve the object of your meditation. But you are unable to do this. As soon as you sit, your body begins to fidget. You remember negative things or, if not negative then neither good nor bad, but disturbing thoughts come to mind. You experience either greed or attachment or strange forms and strange vibrations. Then you keep yourself immersed in these vibrations.
· Tapasya (austere practice) is nothing but to live free of the fetters of the mind, where we physically discipline the body but meditate with the mind. If our mind is restless, it will really not matter however much we might discipline body. That is, in fact, a sin towards the body. Bu if our mind becomes clean and pure, then our practice gets fulfilled. One who practices this way is a real seeker. Many divinities have been seen bowing before such a person.
· During prayer we hold our joined hands near our heart. We hold them near our mind. This is done to achieve closeness between our heart and mind.
· When we do virtuous deeds with good thoughts and whole some feelings, troubles arise. Don’t let the mind go toward them. Seekers and mantra meditators experience lots of such difficulties. For example in a cremation ground, a wild buffalo will appear to stomp in front of the seeker or a sea of fire will rise in front of him or it will appear as if a river is bearing down on him or that the land is breaking away and will fall into the ocean with him. If, at that moment, the seeker loses control or runs he may go mad or from then on lead a sorrowful life, or have a life loaded with insults. So if those people who want to achieve the power and knowledge of mantra have not prepared themselves to power to receive it, if they make a mistake, then they may become victims of such an accident. It is because of their mental weakness that we see people having accidents every day.