YOGA AND THE 21st CENTURY

4. Yoga and Spirituality

Question:
Do you think that Yoga can help a person in his or her religious practices?

Desikachar:
The moment there is a search, an inquiry, we need some help and start looking for it. Then what happens?

We all have roots – we did not appear spontaneously! We came from our parents, and they came from their parents. We are a part of a society, with a culture. We begin to look at our past, discover aspects we may have ignored, and some of these are religious. One discovery leads naturally to another…

I strongly believe that a serious aspirant of life, who goes into Yoga, will find his or her roots, and these roots are often linked to religion.

– TKV Desikachar – Yoga and the 21st Century 1999

TKV Desikachar was in France in 1999, for a symposium on “Yoga and the XXIst Century”. The purpose of the symposium was to consider the role of Yoga for the coming century in the three fields of Health, Psychology and Spirituality. These Posts are from an introductory interview around the Relevance of Traditional Teaching, Yoga and Health, Yoga and Psychology and Yoga and Spirituality.