Does yoga run the risk of degenerating, like other great schools of thought and traditions, or lineages?
When you lose sight of the main purpose, then yoga will become a sect. Today yoga is a practice, not an organization. It has no popes and cardinals. It has no canons and laws. It has just practices and techniques. It has no ceremonies and rituals and that is why everybody likes it. If yoga is turned into an organization, politicians are bound to cash in on it, because they are always after a popular movement. Then they will make it into a very big organization, install a chief at the top and call him His Holiness or His Highness. They will have so many unnecessary ceremonies, and yoga will degenerate if such is the case.
It did degenerate in the past. For example, in Tibet they used to practise yoga but they ordained very big lamas, like the popes or cardinals. Each of these lamas used to wear coats with large vests and hats, in order to show to the common people that they did not work. When you have big vests and other fancy attire, you cannot work. So, this is how they deviated from the practice of yoga, to conducting elaborate ceremonies and the establishment of Lamaism. Every religion was practical in the beginning. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism were all practical in their approach. However, today there is no recognition of the importance of integral practice, there is only focus on the outer show of rituals and ceremonies, so there is degeneration. If you do the same thing with yoga, it is also going to degenerate.
I have studied that there was a belt, called the yoga belt. Territories in Latin America, Central America, France, Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, India, other South East Asian countries, China, Japan, Tahiti were regions which formed the yoga belt. The southern part of modern day France was a very important region in that yoga belt. The neighbouring countries were also under the influence of this belt. You know what is a yoga belt? Let me explain. For example, what is the Communist belt? Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, China, Vietnam form the Communist belt and it influences the bordering countries. It has influenced France, Italy, Iran, India and many other countries. Similarly, once upon a time there was a yoga belt having its own areas of influence.
However, some mistake happened, something unexpected. We do not exactly know what the problem was. Perhaps it was due to the great geographical rearrangement known as the continental drift that was responsible for this. Atlantis sank into the ocean, the central part of India came up, the Indus valley civilization, and for a long time there were big monsoons, typhoons, hurricanes and all kinds of difficult natural disasters.
You have references in the Bible. We have references in our Hindu scriptures. There are also references in the Zend Avesta of Zoroaster. Scientists are also saying the same thing. That continental shift did disturb the entire structure of the yoga belt and its civilizations. And later on, I think it could not be put together, because the whole world had to be reorganized.
Only the catchment areas of Ganga were free from this disaster. The Himalayas were not affected by this disaster. The southern parts of India and the present Africa were separated by the Arabian Sea. Otherwise, before this, the present South India and Africa were linked through the Arabian Sea, and still you can find the similarity between the African tribes and the south Indians. But of course this happened thousands of years ago.
Now since the Himalayas were not affected by this geographical disaster, yoga remained there in its original form. The Hindus preserved the knowledge of yoga even after the total geographic restructuring of the continents. Therefore, all the acharyas and teachers of yoga are said to have descended from the Himalayas.
I think it is important for us not to worry about what is going to happen. We should look after our immediate problems. We have very little time to think about whether we should choose yoga or not. I think, and you will also agree with me, that the world today is in a state of emergency and we have no time to lose. Yoga or no yoga, the choice is yours.
How can yoga modify or alter your destiny, if it depends on the position of the planets in your astrological chart?
Well, the question does not directly relate to yoga but I will deal with it briefly. When you were a child, you were so incapable, that your parents had to help you with everything. You had to be carried and you had to be fed. And whatever your parents did, you had to accept, because you were a child and under their care. But gradually you gained strength, you could walk on your own two feet, and your parents did not have to carry you. Later, with age, you learned to look after yourself. You earned your own money, and they did not have to feed you. You became independent.
It is the same thing with the individual. When you are weak in mind, the planets influence you. They control your destiny. If it is the time to suffer, you have to undergo it, because you are an undeveloped individual and are unable to exercise your willpower. You do not have willpower at all and are tossed by your destiny hither and thither. If any star or planet is to influence you, you have no choice. However, gradually, as you develop your inner being, and when you learn to control your thoughts, develop your mind, sublimate your emotions, and channel the energies of life properly, then planets do not have complete control of your life. Things begin to change, not completely, but significantly. If you go on developing your inner being more and more, and you expand your mind and make it a super mind, and you completely transmute your emotions into absolute devotion; then passions do not control you, but you play with them.
Similarly, when the mind does not command you, and you control it; when you can handle your emotions; when you can change the nature of your mind, the planets will be unable to disturb you. It is not possible for everybody to understand what I am saying. It is like telling a two-year old, ‘Hey, you can drive a car!’ He will not even understand what I am telling him. He will only understand after twenty years, when he is driving a car. I will tell you a little about myself. My family priest cast my horoscope at birth. He predicted that I would be destitute, sick all the time, and would be a loafer or a vagabond. He said that I would destroy my whole family. He was not wrong. His predictions were based on the planetary positions, because there were many bad aspects, indicating sickness, poverty and about everything else that is bad in life. He even said that I would not have friends. Somehow I came to spiritual life, and in my childhood one great Indian lady saint told my father that I was not meant to be a householder. So, it was decided that I would go to a guru and live with him.
I lived with my guru for twelve years. I had nothing of my own, not even a piece of cloth but that changed my whole destiny. I became very strong in mind and such things had no meaning for me. Success had no meaning; failure had no meaning for me; love had no meaning; and hunger also had no meaning for me. That is how the mind develops very strongly, in the course of twelve years in a guru’s ashram.
The predictions still remain true. I am still a pauper. I have no bank balance anywhere, no bank account. I have no property in my name. I have no relatives. I have no religion. However, I meet with sick people every day, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, maybe more. All the time sickness and diseases are in my mind, such as cancer, tumours, rheumatism, arthritis. The predictions came true, but because of the quality of my mind which my guru was responsible for developing in me, the outcome of the predictions changed.
The same thing can happen to anybody. What is destiny after all? It is a great law of nature. You cannot violate the law, but you can definitely change the structure and outcome. You cannot only change the structure, you can even understand its place in your life. It is very necessary for everybody to accept their destiny, but it is more important for you to know how to restructure it and reshape your own life for the best outcome.
11 April 1982, Martinique