When I spoke at the United Nations I said “Yoga is not an Indian thing.”
Some people who believe they are more Indian than me…I think I look very Indian, do I (Laughter)?
I am dressed Indian and I look Indian and I am, all right?
But they think they are more Indian than me.
So, they are very offended I said “Yoga is not an Indian thing.”
And I said “Yoga is a gift from India to the world but it cannot belong to India.”
If yoga is Indian then somebody will claim gravity is European.
Then what do you do? Will you float (Laughter)?
A particular science might have been discovered and explored in a certain culture.
That doesn’t make a science into a culture. For all these people who are twitting a lot about Yoga,
I hope they will get up in the morning and do their yoga (Laughter).
Because if you really want to make yoga Indian, the one billion Indians
must get up in the morning and do yoga then it will become Indian (Laughter).
Anybody who walks in to India and they see entire country is doing yoga, people will say, “Wow!
This is an Indian thing, Indian phenomena.”
Then they will… they may also pick it up it may become an international phenomena (Laughs).
No, they are not doing yoga. They are just tweeting about yoga (Laughter).
Our honorable Prime Minister is lying down on the street and doing yoga with children,
with common people, with the police, with the army. He is doing yoga laying down on the street!
Which world leader is doing anything like that in the interest of the well-being
of the citizens of the nations (Applause)? But they are not inspired to do yoga.
They are sitting and tweeting against me, keeping abuse on me (Laughter)?
I am working seven days of the week. Thousands of our volunteers are working seven days of the week,
to make sure every person in India does yoga.
Around the world we are doing, but in India it’s much more concentrated the work.
Town to town, village to village our volunteers are traveling tirelessly trying
to bring yoga to every human being.
Many things are not settled in the lives of people in that part of the world
but at least they must know some inner well-being. So, we are working towards that.
The very fact that United Nations declared “International yoga day,”
because they recognized it is beyond cultural bounders, it is beyond national identities,
it is beyond religious identities, it is a science for human well-being.
Only because they identified that they declared international yoga day.
So, all the tweeting birds I want you to understand, if you really want people to look up to India
for this contribution that India has made to the world, what you should do is
you must make sure the one billion and odd Indian people are doing yoga every day.
If we do this, then slowly it will generate a few, at least a handful of truly profound beings.
Profoundness of experience and profoundness of knowing!
When such beings come up, the entire world will look up to India for sure. Why will they not?
If you don’t do it soon enough, they may come up elsewhere. And people will look up.
Wherever there is profound experience, wherever there is profound experience people will look in that direction.
Before it happens in America, you better do it in India (Laughter/Applause).