From Science to Pseudo-science - Part I

Yoga in regards to changing times

- Kum. Hella Naura

Coping with Fast Changing Times

Thinking of Shri Yogendraji's approaching 35th death anniversary, last year, this writer wanted to write about his life-long, devoted, independent and original work. But circumstances were against it. The work of Founder, as he was unofficially called, was based on his heart-felt mission to make increasingly stressed and disoriented modern men not only understand but actually experience by themselves, what yoga is about and how it could do good to them. He began this pioneering work by wanting yoga to get appreciated for its scientific - other than its so-to-say mysterious - great value in the far West. So, in New York from 1919 - 1921, he took efforts to get medical men interested and eventually succeeded very well. Yet, he returned to India after two years at the call of his aging father.

Back home, Founder continued to stress the scientific aspect of yoga in view of the then prevailing Indian opinion about yoga as being too mystical to be reconcilable with a normal life within society. Moreover, from the age of thirty, the so-far celibate lived a harmonious and very fruitful family life for everyone to see. His much younger wife, Sita Devi, was turning out to be a perfect partner who soon became able to share everything with him: love, understanding, a careful upbringing of two sons and also a tremendous work load and many challenges. After a few years of her own learning from her husband, she became the first female yoga teacher of the world in the modern sense, as compared to female masters in the traditional sense who had always existed, too.

Spreading Madness about "Science"