Why do we come together?

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”.