Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati: When Sri Swami Satyananda established the International Yoga Fellowship, he had a vision of people living the yogic life, interacting and presenting a style of life. That was the idea of Yoga Fellowship. However, fellowship represents the fiinality of yoga, not its beginning. The beginning of the yogic movement was propagation, where more and more people were introduced to yoga. Ninety percent of these people were focused on fulfilling their physical needs through yoga. Out of the one million people globally who practise yoga today, ninety percent are fitness-oriented. They are those who come to a yoga class, practise, and then go their own way. Of the ten percent that remains, many become yoga teachers and also go their own way. Out of the remaining, there are only a few who want to deepen their understanding and experience of yoga, and they form the nucleus of the fellowship.
The Yoga Fellowship signifies a group of people who are experiencing and living yoga, not who are only practising it. The second chapter of yoga is taking us one step closer to this idea of Yoga Fellowship. Until now, most of you were part of the ninety percent group. The outcome of the Munger Yoga Symposium is that a group is emerging which aspires to deepen the experience and live yoga. They will constitute the beginning of the Yoga Fellowship.
The vision of the first chapter was to create many centres and teachers to propagate yoga. Thousands of teachers and thousands of centres came into existence in these fifty years. The vision of the second chapter is not propagation; therefore teachers are not needed. What is needed is people who can live the teachings. That is why it has been emphasized during the Munger Yoga Symposium that the training being given is not for teaching others.
We envision that in the next ten to fifteen years, three or four locations in the world will develop where yoga is being lived. Instead of a thousand centres, the number will come down to three or four. They will become the centres of ‘yoga from moment to moment’. They will not create teachers, but lead sadhakas and individuals to live yoga in their own homes and environment.
1 November 2018, Ganga Darshan, printed in Yoga Chakrodaya, Munger Yoga Symposium 2018, Book 3/3