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.
2005, Rikhiapeeth, India