From the Publisher
What manner of
man is a Yogi? Is his life a bed of nails? Shri
Yogendraji's life is as interesting as his
towering personality. What do you say of a man who
strove hard in various fields of life, to rise to
eminence, only later to reject the achievements
and the entire field of work. Being a sensitive
soul, he became conscious of the limitations of
the activity he undertook. In his teens, for
example, he founded the Free Thinkers Association,
wrote the Bible of free thinkers, in his book Life
Problems; he wrote with distinction in Gujarat
literature on many branches such as essay,
biography, novel, poetry etc. In his twenties he
planned an Encyclopaedia on Yoga in ten volumes,
and published the first volume, he took to
industry and was the Principal with an agent in no
less a business house then Oxford University Press
of London; he set up a large Yoga Institute on a
250 acres plot in New York and planned another
such one in India, already in his thirties, he was
a very responsible householder who blazed a
new-trail of "Yoga with respect" by
establishing The Yoga Institute of Bombay with its
activities of publishing, training, medical,
social and research.
In fact Shri
Yogendraji showed his capacity to set up large
undertakings but withdrew from these when he
realized the limitations of these activities. This
is the case of his encounter with the Government,
when he put up the first Teacher Training
Institute of Yoga in India, or the first hospital
of psychosomatic medicine, or the first research
institute of its kind to evaluate Yoga, or when he
cooperated with other organisations in setting up
the first All India Board of Yoga, the
International Board of Yoga etc. He withdrew from
some of these when he viewed the activity against
a larger frame of reference.
Shri Yogendraji
now is 86 but he has the spirit when an
opportunity arises, to put in all efforts to his
work to reach high level of excellence though it
may happen he may like Newton laugh at the
achievement in the end.
This biography is
a culmination of two years research and is a
factual account interspersed with personal letters
that brings to life the story of a man who is the
acknowledged pioneer of Yoga Renaissance.
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