Ome, lead us from the unreal to the real, lead us from darkness unto light, lead us from death to immortality.

Ome, peace, peace, peace.

Namaste and good morning everybody.

We are here for a special session which we call Ask Swami. In this what we are here for a special session which is which we call Ask Swami in this what we do is we have

all these questions from all over the world large numbers of questions which come in

and you know writing back was never a very effective way of dealing with the questions.

Nobody's ever satisfied with one, a few lines on email.

It's much better to discuss it and this way it gets preserved online also.

Unfortunately, we cannot deal with all the, we cannot take up all the questions.

There are literally thousands of questions.

We take up only a representative sample.

And our brave team, they go through this, the email over months and they select some

and present it in these sessions. We try to have one per month.

So Diane has the questions for today but what we do is we interview with questions from the live audience.

So you are here, you've braved the miserable weather to come here and we have hundreds of people joining us online also.

So people here will take some questions from the online audience first.

And then I'll ask you to raise your hands.

When you raise your hands, I'll call upon you, come up here.

Tell us your name and ask the question.

All right, Diane,

what do we have today? The first question is from Tom Hay in Asheville, North Carolina. He says,

I'm a teacher of yoga and start every class by reciting the first three Patanjali Yoga Sutras as our reason for coming together to practice yoga. But if I do not believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing God, and one of the three essential practices is dedication to God.

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