I thank all of you for giving me an opportunity to speak to you on a very important subject, necessary for this century. I came to Yugoslavia in 1973, when I visited Zagreb and Belgrade. Yoga has fascinated humanity for thousands of years. When you go to different parts of the world and study their culture and civilization, you come to know that yoga has always been an integral part of their culture in the past. It is only in the last one or two centuries that yoga received a terrible setback. Otherwise in every century and in every period of history, yoga has been with people in some form or the other.
In the last thirty years, hatha yoga has received prominence. Before hatha yoga received prominence, intellectuals were very sceptical about yoga because they thought yoga diminishes man’s evolution. It was true also in some way or another, because those who taught yoga taught renunciation, abstinence and indifference to life.
Religion and Puritanism crept into yoga for many hundreds of years. Scientists, intellectuals and social thinkers thought rightly, that yoga was out of place. Thanks to the scientists, who are the intellectuals of our century, the effects of hatha yoga have been thoroughly investigated in the last three or four decades.
In many countries in Eastern Europe, America, Japan, India, and some parts of Western Europe, teams of scientists, doctors, psychologists and psychotherapists have been studying yoga. In the middle of the century, or even a little before that, when hatha yoga came to the western world, it was only considered to be physical exercises. Therefore, in many countries they consider yoga as a part of physical education. Even now, in Czechoslovakia and many other countries, they relate yoga to physical education. In the same way, pranayama or breathing practices were known as the breathing exercises. But the picture has completely changed.
In 1962, a team of scientists, under the leadership of Dr Romonowski, Dr Alexandrovitch and Dr Tajukpasak in Poland conducted an extensive study of the effect of sirshasana, the headstand pose. This extensive research was conducted on a wide range of subjects. Not only a few people, but hundreds of people were exposed to sirshasana. Its effects were studied on various organs, processes and influence on the body, and a detailed report was published and printed in medical journals throughout the world. This article was amazing and very encouraging. The age old belief of people that the headstand pose is not good for health and not good for the head was completely exploded.
It is not necessary for me to put those technical details before you because you are not medical men, but it is important for you to know something of their findings. First of all, they found that in the headstand pose, the ventilation in the brain becomes greater and the scope is much greater than when you stand on your two feet. That means that in the headstand pose the circulation in the brain is much more efficient than it is while standing. An efficient circulation in the brain means a good brain. They also found that the consumption of oxygen in the headstand pose was minimum. This means that in the headstand pose your body needs minimum fuel.
When you worry, when you fear, when you are scared, when you are shocked, your body consumes maximum fuel. The body has a limited scope for oxygen generation. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain proper consumption of the fuel necessary for life and the life processes. Not only in sirshasana but in other yoga postures also, it has been seen that the consumption of oxygen is minimum, which means you conserve oxygen for other times.
They have also found that in deep meditation the consumption of oxygen can be brought down to nil. It means when you are in deep meditation, you do not need oxygen to survive. That is why saints and yogis lived in caves without being affected by the carbon dioxide there. It was also found in the studies on the headstand pose that the respiration in the body was also minimum. This proves that in the headstand pose, the heart and the lungs are not at all exerted.
These results found by scientific investigations were directly opposed to the effect of exercises on the human body. When you do jogging, you use maximum oxygen. Any exercise you do is good, but you use maximum oxygen and maximum respiration. It does not mean that you should not do exercises. It is only to tell you that yoga and exercises are not the same. By external manifestations, they appear to be the same, but by scientific observation of the effects on the human body, they appear to be totally different.
In recent years, medical science has come to this conclusion: thought controls a physical symptom; thought creates a physical symptom; and a physical symptom can also create a thought. There is an inter-relationship travelling from one point to the other. The physical symptoms travel to the mind and the psychological symptoms travel to the body. Finally, diseases are not only the diseases we know. Man’s behaviour is also a diseased condition. Your philosophy can also be a diseased philosophy. Your behaviour with your husband, wife and children can also be a sick condition.
Diabetes, blood pressure, hypertension, sciatica are physical diseases. Anger, greed, jealousy, fear are psychological and emotional diseases. Yoga takes care of both, but yoga is not a therapeutic science. In ancient days, people were very healthy and happy. They did not have ecological problems. They did not have social problems. They had a vast world and vast resources. They practised yoga for the development of their inner consciousness. They practised yoga in order to know the realities behind appearance. They practised yoga in order to know the world beyond time, space and object. Today, you have no time for this. If I tell you all that you will not like it. A few of you will like it, but not everybody.
Today yoga is being used for treating the sicknesses of the human body and mind. Yoga is basically, fundamentally and totally a spiritual science. Therapy is its by-product. Psychotherapy is its by-product. Philosophy is its by-product. Today we are utilizing these by-products.
Before I conclude, let me say that man is a man, whether he is black or white, short or tall makes no difference. Whether you are very rich or very poor, makes no difference, whether you speak English, French, Italian or Yugoslavian, makes no difference. You have the same natural problems, and do you know what these problems are? Restlessness, lack of concentration, lack of faith in one’s own self. Many people do not sleep well, many people are frustrated with their love affairs and money affairs, family affairs and job affairs. They have a fear of death. They are afraid of so many things.
Therefore, yoga is not only for Indians. Yoga is not only for religious people. Yoga is not only for pious people. Yoga is not only for old-fashioned people like me. Yoga is for a swami, a businessman, for a politician, an old lady, a ballerina, for a dancer, for everybody, for you and me.
21 September 1982, Lipica, Yugoslavia