...And Now, Yoga

This is why Patanjali started the Yoga Sutras, which is a tremendous document on life, with half a sentence. If you still believe that by getting married or unmarried, your life will become fulfilled – not yet time for Yoga; if you believe that if you get some money or wealth, your life is settled – not yet time for Yoga; if you believe that if you build a new home or buy a new car, life will be fulfilled – not yet time for Yoga; if you know that all these things make some convenience happen in our life, but do not really transform us in any way – if you understand this one thing – “and now, Yoga.”

So the time has come for China – “and now, Yoga.” Because all said and done, China is the only society which has moved a billion people from utter, abject poverty to reasonable levels of wellbeing in a matter of two generations – just fifty years’ time. Nowhere has it ever happened. Right now India is sitting on such a threshold. What China did with great force, India could do democratically – but we are still sitting on the threshold; we still need to walk the distance.

We can give commentaries about many things – about freedom of speech, freedom of Yoga, freedom of pursuing my own goals and stuff, but we must understand the present wellbeing of the Chinese people has happened as a consequence of forceful determination by somebody. So is that the way to live now? When they were in hopeless conditions of poverty, that was the way to push ­– right or wrong, that is what became a solution. We must appreciate it because it has happened. Because keeping a whole generation of people in abject conditions of poverty is a worse crime than forcefully doing a few things. Forceful things are cruel and cause pain, sometimes take people's lives, but keeping a whole generation in utter poverty is a much bigger crime – because taking away human possibilities and making people somehow live is not really a solution.

Yoga Is Not Opium of the People

For China, the time for Yoga has come. Not the twisting, turning Yoga that is becoming popular there, but the real Yoga! Yoga means to obliterate the boundaries of your individuality. A nation like China has grown because of a strong sense of “this is what we will do” – a determined approach towards the nation. Now that those goals are achieved, slowly relaxing that must happen – I think they are doing it, but still, it may not be fast enough to benefit this generation. It needs to happen but not by protests or threatening that sense of stability they have created for the nation. By threatening that you are not going to get anywhere. 

The religions of the past were described as opium – because they were. They were putting people to sleep. Yoga, pursuit of spiritual process, will not work as the opium of the past, a sedative for the population, but will act as an invigorating force – this understanding must be brought to those who administer that nation. That is the way to take it forward.