Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
Another statue of the great master has been set by disciples in the little parlor of his Benares home. "America! Surely these people are Americans!" This was my thought as a panoramic vision of Western faces passed before my inward view. Immersed in meditation, I was sitting behind some dusty boxes in the storeroom of the Ranchi school.
I am going forth to discover America, like Columbus. He thought he had found India; surely there is a karmic link between those two lands!" "I know you will keep Lahiri Mahasaya's yoga ideals of education ever to the fore," I said. "I shall write you frequently; God willing, someday I shall be back." Tears stood in my eyes as I cast a last look at the little boys and the sunny acres of Ranchi.
I had not spent years in America without learning some of its practical wisdom, its undaunted spirit before obstacles. For one week I remained in Ranchi, wrestling with critical problems.
Within a few months after my arrival in India, I had the joy of seeing the Ranchi school legally incorporated. My lifelong dream of a permanently endowed yoga educational center stood fulfilled. That vision had guided me in the humble beginnings in 1917 with a group of seven boys. In the decade since 1935, Ranchi has enlarged its scope far beyond the boys' school.
At Ranchi I organized an educational program for both grammar and high school grades. It included agricultural, industrial, commercial, and academic subjects. The students were also taught yoga concentration and meditation, and a unique system of physical development, "Yogoda," whose principles I had discovered in 1916.
The poet listened with flattering attention to my description of the energizing "Yogoda" exercises and the yoga concentration techniques which are taught to all students at Ranchi. Tagore told me of his own early educational struggles. "I fled from school after the fifth grade," he said, laughing.
He and one of his students traveled to Europe and America, giving exhibitions of strength and skill which amazed the university savants, including those at Columbia University in New York. At the end of the first year at Ranchi, applications for admission reached two thousand. But the school, which at that time was solely residential, could accommodate only about one hundred.
The turbaned figure seated directly beside her is Swami Benoyananda, a director of our Ranchi yoga school for boys in Bihar. The first day was spent by our group in sheer staring.
A year later, in 1918, through the generosity of Sir Manindra Chandra Nundy, the Maharaja of Kasimbazar, I was able to transfer my fast-growing group to Ranchi. This town in Bihar, about two hundred miles from Calcutta, is blessed with one of the most healthful climates in India. Their forest ashrams had been the ancient seats of learning, secular and divine, for the youth of India.
Sometime after Swami Pranabananda had visited Ranchi, I accompanied my father to the Calcutta house where the yogi was temporarily staying. Pranabananda's prediction, made to me so many years before, came rushing to my mind: "I shall see you, with your father, later on." As Father entered the swami's room, the great yogi rose from his seat and embraced my parent with loving respect.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking