Yoga should be taught especially to people who are unhappy. There was a time when people thought yoga was for monks and for people who had nothing to worry about, but it was a wrong conclusion that people had drawn for centuries. If you have come to the same conclusion you should withdraw it. I am not going to comment on the Bhagavad Gita. It has eighteen chapters and each is named after one yoga. The name of the first chapter is The Yoga of Dejection. When your mind is unhappy, when you are in a state of imbalance, when the scales are heavily loaded against you and the mind is in a state of confusion and unable to decide anything, from within you a consciousness arises and tries to create balance. That effort of maintaining balance is yoga.
Handicapped children are, no doubt, unhappy. If you go deep down into their consciousness, if you analyse the depth of their mind and if you make them aware, you will know that they are unhappy. Even if you are not able to help them physically, supposing they remain handicapped – although yoga helps some children to improve physically – I can assure you that mentally, emotionally and psychologically, they will surely become alright. If a handicapped person is spiritually illumined, becomes happy within and without, he might become a genius, who knows? There have been many geniuses who were handicapped. Another important point that we should remember while we are teaching yoga and trying to make people happy, especially handicapped people, is that yoga is not only a system of treating sickness and diseases. It is a system of treating the patient himself. Medicines treat the disease, not the patient, but yoga treats the patient.
A handicapped person has physical disabilities; that is the problem he is suffering from. As a result of that disability, his mind is also affected, his emotions are affected, and the sum total is that his personality is affected. There may be a few disabled people whose personality may not have been affected but mostly it is. Therefore, yoga should be brought into the lives of these people who are suffering from physical disability so they can realize the deep-rooted and unending peace, the fountain of joy and hope within themselves. Even if they remain disabled throughout life, they will at least have happiness and peace.
13 February 1983, Plymouth, UK