Life of Shri Yogendra

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.