When you have a car, you need fuel to run it. However, fuel itself is not enough; you also need a mechanic to repair it from time to time. Similarly, the body needs a mechanic. The various parts of the human mind need a mechanic. If you don’t find a mechanic for your mind, mental disaster will follow. However, if you do find a good mechanic, you will feel peaceful, there will be shanti. Yoga will play the role of such a mechanic in the years to come.
We are coming to a point where economic problems have been taken care of, and many other problems that our ancestors had do not exist any more. We are living in the age of comfort, affluence, possibility and freedom. When all these things are achieved, the mind becomes free like the devil. In ancient days, to buy a small thing you had to walk for half an hour to the market. To go from Paris to another European country you rode a horse. Now you can reach India from France in five hours. So the mind has very few material problems now. And when the mind has few material problems, it creates psychological problems. That is what the West as well as the East – India, China and all the countries that are now developing – will face.
Yoga has a great promise to keep. The stalwarts who know about the mind and body should devote a lot of time to thinking about yoga in relation to the body and mind. I am not talking about the spirit. That may come after two hundred years perhaps. It came in India once upon a time when everybody became mad about enquiring after the spirit. During Buddha’s time, everybody was searching for the soul and spirit. Food, bed, money were not considered necessary, one’s self was the only concern. That time will soon come again when most people, especially young people, in the developed countries will say “Who am I?” “Where have I come from?” “What is the cause?” “What is my ultimate form?” However, to delve into all this will be the last mission of yoga, not its first mission. The first mission of yoga is the body and mind.
Religion will again make a comeback. It keeps coming back. It is a cycle. There is a time when you want religion. There is a time when you hate religion. There is a time when you terminate religion. There is a time when you understand religion. There is a time when you do not talk about religion. All this is cyclic. Religion will come back because religion was born before man was born. The basis of religion is not intellect, but faith.
Everyone carries faith within. Everyone uses faith. If they do not believe in God, they apply their faith elsewhere, such as secularism, a figure like Mahatma Gandhi, and so on. Faith and belief are the basic things that endure until the end of man’s life. After all, who has seen God? But God has lived with man from the first day to the last. You may say that you do not believe in God, but just sit down and think, and a point will come when you will say, “How can I deny God when I don’t really know him?” You can deny someone you have seen; you cannot deny the one you have not seen. So, faith and belief are the basis of religion.
Nobody can make you religious. The word ‘religion’ is made of two root words. ‘Re’ means again and ‘legion’ means connection. So religion means ‘second connection’. We have separated; you were lost in France, I was lost in India for many years, and finally one day we met in Tibet. That is called re-union, religion, meeting again, uniting again. With whom are you going to unite? You were with God, but you got lost and today you are with Mammon. Mammon is material life, indulgence, desires, passions and all that. You did not remember, you did not even think of God. Close your eyes and look within, and you will see that God is in you.
My God is in me. Her God is in her. But it is not as if there are as many Gods as there are people. There are not six billion Gods. God is only one, but He exists separately in six billion people. Six billion bulbs and only one power house! In science we call this the unified field theory. It says that everything is present everywhere. You are all-pervading. I am all-pervading. She is all-pervading. That is the unified field theory.