Book Title: Yoga Sagar
Author(s): Paramhamsa Satyananda
Publisher: Bihar School of Yoga Munger

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Page 170
________________ a medium, were not established to reinterpret yoga for the contemporary world. Satyam will bear witness to it just as your activities bear witness to it now. A man called Marx said in his Theses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have interpreted the world; the task however is to change the world." Maha yogis have interpreted the world. The task today, however, is to use this ancient wisdom so as to confront the contemporary world challenges. These challenges can be summed up in two simple words, 'infancy' and 'stupidity'. Firstly, let's look at 'infancy'. While human beings have become scientific and technological giants, they still remain ethical infants. Their politics is the art and science of perpetuating this human ethical infancy. Albert Einstein said towards the end of his life that he now understood why politics is harder than physics. To this I add a footnote: that the politics of justice, the politics of the good, the politics of right and the politics of human emancipation are even more difficult than the politics of power. Now let us consider the second word, 'stupidity'. Again, I go to Milan Kundera who said that human stupidity does not decrease with expertise in science, technology, with modernity or progress, but rather it increases. I believe that deliberate infancy, well nurtured beyond its time, together with deliberate stupidity are themselves forms of human evil. Therefore, I think that for the whole world there is a great historic importance in the memory of a yogic mission. Let me now begin to conclude by looking at the final kind of memory that I promised to deal with, the memory of the future. I believe it is a great mistake to think that memory is only possible in relation to the past. We carry the future within ourselves. If, as Satyam says, yoga is the culture of tomorrow, the culture of the future, then we have to ask what kind of memory of the future should we promote and protect in the here and now. Please remember that today's reality is the memory of tomorrow. We are the creators of tomorrow. We are the Vishwakarmas of tomorrow. In whose memory should we create the future? That's the problem of future memory. Yoga, I believe, can only become the culture of tomorrow-and-the-dayafter when we fashion memory with fellowship. What is fellowship? Fellowship as we all know is fraternity. This convention is a shining, glowing example of fraternity. 145 Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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