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Editorial

Rediscovering Yoga

Defining Yoga unceasing aim of Nature which it represents,
and find by virtue of this new self-knowledge
Over a hundred years back, at the turn of and self-appreciation its own recovered and
the previous century, Sri Aurobindo wrote larger synthesis (1).”
in a prophetic vein about the important
place that yoga was going to take in the sum This prophecy is becoming true. Yoga
total of human activities of the future. has indeed become one of the major gifts
of India to the world. With its appeal to a
“We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, wide range of humanity, independent of
when all forms of thought and activity that religious beliefs and secular views, with an
have in themselves any strong power of increasing validation by scientific research
utility or any secret virtue of persistence and acceptance in academic circles, Yoga is
are being subjected to a supreme test and fast becoming popular among the different
given their opportunity of rebirth. The world strata of society. Yet it is still ill-understood
today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron and its far-reaching effects and impacts
of Medea in which all things are being are far from being understood. And until
cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, we discover or rather rediscover it, — for
combined and recombined either to perish and Yoga is as ancient as the hills — we shall
provide the scattered material of new forms or remain deprived of its real potential and
to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh left unsatisfied with the husks, while leaving
term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a the real grain that hides behind its elaborate
special action or formulation of certain great systems, techniques and processes.
powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided
and variously formulated, is potentially one
of these dynamic elements of the future life
of humanity. The child of immemorial ages,
preserved by its vitality and truth into our
modern times, it is now emerging from the
secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it
had taken refuge and is seeking its place in
the future sum of living human powers and
utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself,
bring to the surface the profoundest reason What then is Yoga? It is most commonly
of its being in that general truth and that understood as a set of physical and breathing

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