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The glow I am referring to is the glow on your faces, in your hearts and in your spirits. But if fellowship implies fraternity, when is fraternity possible? It is possible only when we are capable of suffering for those who are actually suffering. In my conception of yoga there cannot be fraternity without the capacity for altruistic suffering, suffering for others. We in India are specialists in self-centered suffering and because of this, barring this present company, we cannot produce a culture of yoga. Yoga, or fraternity, requires the capability for altruistic suffering. I also believe that fellowship, fraternity and co-suffering in turn involve active compassion. Active compassion I would define not by the Hindu concept of daya (kindness) but by the Buddhist concept of karuna (care of the suffering one). I think that all these elements of fellowship were built in the sixties and in Satyam's mission of the International Yoga Fellowship they continue to blossom.
The path of individual salvation is deeply unethical. If yoga is going to be the culture of tomorrow, then it has to follow the path of collective liberation. Again I refer to the thinker Karl Marx, who wrote in 1850, “The classical saint of Christianity mortified his own body for the sake of the salvation of the souls of the masses. In contrast, the modern educated saint mortifies the bodies of the masses for the sake of the salvation of his own soul." Whatever your view of Marx may be, let me suggest, that when it comes to choosing a model of saintliness we should make him our unerring guide. I preside over a system which produces educated saints and I know this is precisely what education in universities means.
We all know that educated saints, unlike Jesus, seek their own salvation by tormenting the bodies of the masses. But what about the real saints? That is the question which every sadhaka, every guru and every paramahamsa must constantly ask, including a mahatma, if he is to remain a mahatma.
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