Yoga: The Timeless Path to Self-Connection and Inner Stability
Your Excellency, Mr Ambassador, all the team members of the Embassy, and all of you yogis, I’m so happy to stand in front of you here on World Yoga Day (IYD).
In 2014, Narendra Modi became the prime minister of India. One of the first things he did was to legitimise yoga through the United Nations and create World Yoga Day. And what is the need to legitimise it? We already know yoga. Yoga has been there for centuries. It’s because yoga is not superficial. There is a lot of depth in it.
As our beloved ambassador mentioned, yoga is also exploration, self-exploration, self-connection. Patanjali codified the Yoga Sutras, but Patanjali also defined dissolution from yoga to complete the dissolution of the whole process. If you look at Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, it’s a manual for the whole existence as a spiritual being. Great masters used to meditate and do penance in the Himalayas for centuries. They tried to connect to themselves, and through minimal movements tried to tone their body up. Where you concentrate, that grows. Just like a seed is put in the ground and if you pour water on it every day, it’ll become a tree. Like that, where your focus is, where you concentrate, that becomes stronger. So, these masters were concentrating on the subtle, the metaphysical inside them.
As you know, there are 72,000 Nadis, starting at the forehead and extending throughout the body. And there are prana, apana, vyana, udana, samana – five pranas which are functional pranas which are circulating and maintaining you. When you accentuate, or focus on these things, they sometimes become too overwhelming, and you become too energised. What happens when over-energisation happens? You could become paralysed because the body has a capacity. So, they started moving, the movements which are necessary movements from sitting stable to that of movement and then it reached to the level where… If you look at yoga traditionally, all the first postures are like a child was born lying down on the back. Next is the child turns to one side; all the postures are like that. Next, the child turns onto the belly, turns himself or herself to the belly, and all the postures are of that level. After that, the child sits down; some of the postures are sitting down. Finally, the child stands up; all the postures are standing up. The child sees the world outside. It sees a lot of things, a lot of life outside; it starts imitating them. All the postures are like that.
In other words, yoga is organic. Yoga is natural. When you become natural, you are a yogi. This is one of the biggest gifts Bharat, India, has given to the world. Self-connection is priceless, the most priceless connection: connecting with yourself. Because this is not a connection with personality; it’s a connection with ourselves as we are. This is the importance of yoga, and that’s why we have Yoga Day. This reminder is very important. You are absolute for your set of karma, for this time and this world.
We have great masters like Bodhidharma who further developed that and, with intention, changed things. See, after a while, when you become completely aligned with just an intention or a thought, you can make a difference in the world, a difference in you, or around you.
This is a superficial exploration of Yoga Day. I’m not talking more because all of you are waiting to do yoga. But please remember one thing: you are the most important person in this existence for you. If you are stable, your world is stable. And this is your birthright.
I wish all of you great awareness, and great elevation of awareness, consistently, organically.
Here are various groups participating, which is very commendable. This is exactly how it should happen. We have members from Sadhguru ji, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar ji and Maharishi ji. All these groups are just many rivers going to the same ocean. We are all going to the same place, no difference. We are all one.
Thank you. I wish this Yoga Day the very best, and all of you yogis a great Yoga Day and be great yogis.
Thank you so much.