Since the personal benefits of practicing yoga are becoming widely known, the practice of yoga is becoming increasingly popular. But it is much less understood why the world needs more yogis. Here are five reasons:
1. Consciousness explorers
All our knowledge and information comes to us because we are conscious creatures. Without consciousness we have nothing. No life, no humanity, and no civilization. Yet we spend more time exploring the external world than our own internal consciousness. For Science consciousness is more like a puzzling after-thought than something fundamental that needs to be explored. One reason is that Science does not have the orientation or even the vocabulary to deal with Consciousness. This is because Science focuses on the external directly manifestable and measurable world and not something that is inside and directly experienced. Luckily we need not start from scratch. For thousands of years we have had people who have specialized in exploring consciousness. These are the Yogis. And Yogis have created the methods and the vocabulary to explore consciousness. To be sure this is not all wooly-wooly stuff. The methods of yoga are demonstrable, measurable, and replicable and hence as rigorous as science can be. It is best to view yogis as “consciousness scientists”, and we need more yogis because we need to urgently and rapidly understand consciousness. This is because understanding consciousness may be vital for our very survival as a species.
2. Force for peace
The reason that the science of consciousness can become a force for peace and a key to our survival is that it points to our underlying unity. If at some fundamental level we are all inter-connected, would there be any reason for these false divisions and fights? The uniform message from Yogis past and present, is that we are all connected at a fundamental level. Yogis tell us that consciousness is not something that happens to emerge from our brains, but it is the very building block that constitutes us and everything around us. The message of our essential oneness is a very powerful message for peace that needs to be expanded and amplified. And we need more yogis who can directly corroborate the truth of this message. In the past the yogis were few and far between and their message would either get dogmatized or get garbled and misunderstood. If the number of yogis multiplies thousand and million fold then the message of our underlying unity and oneness will be heard loud and clear.
3. Creative innovators
All our creative ideas emerge from our consciousness. Yet because we have such poor understanding of consciousness, the process of creativity is left completely to chance. We now know that meditation helps calm us down and helps us think clearly. But if we were to better understand consciousness and meditation we could greatly accelerate the creative process. With the explosion of knowledge and information it has become very important that we sharpen our one and only one tool that helps us make sense of it all, and this is consciousness. The world needs more yogis because this allows us to expand our understanding of consciousness and provides us with better tools to make sense of the increasingly complex world around us.
4. Learn Ego-control
Yoga is a science of consciousness, and one key aspect of this science is that it specializes in controlling and reducing the ego. This is because the ego is a roadblock for the deep exploration of consciousness. Just as it becomes necessary for scientists to be able to control nuclear reactions to study subatomic particles, it becomes necessary for yogis to control the ego to study consciousness. It so happens that the ego is also a huge roadblock for our continued survival and prosperity. The rapid speed with which humans have accumulated knowledge and power in the past few hundred years makes it extremely vital that we rapidly and widely spread the yogic knowledge of controlling the ego. Extraordinary power and an uncontrolled ego is a dangerous combination that will potentially wipe the human race out. We need more yogis who can teach our children and us how to control our egos.
5. Accelerators of Evolution
What is the future of the human race? Where is evolution leading us? From the point of view of consciousness we can see clearly that it is guiding evolution to an ever-increasing expression of itself with increasing sophistication. The process of yoga is a way of rapidly accelerating this process. The arc of evolutionary progress will not tolerate any interference. If we try to sidetrack the evolutionary process by our thoughtless ego-filled behavior, evolution will toss us aside and move on. On the other hand if we use the science of consciousness to aid the evolutionary process we will progress and prosper. By increasing the number of yogis amongst us we strengthen the hand that pulls us away from the brink and strengthens our future.
It is high time we begin to view yoga more than a stress relieving activity on the mat. Our very future may depend on it.
You may also like: The Delusion Of Miracles
Credits:This has been written by Raj Shah and edited by Ketna Shah.