A wonderful compendium of Sri Swami Satchidananda's vision and guidance for the creation, evolution and future blossoming of his model Yoga village. From the Introduction: The goal of Yoga is to live a healthy, easeful, peaceful life, and a useful life. The aim is to help you to be always serene, peaceful, happy, and then, to be useful to others. The real spiritual experience is living together happily as one beautiful family with love. Yogaville is this one little miniature world where we are trying to prove that people from various places can come and live together harmoniously as one family. Some people ask me, I haven t realized God, I haven t had any experience. What is it that I have been practicing all these years? I don t know what experience they want. Is it that they haven t lifted up from the ground or had some hallucination? That is not the spiritual experience I want. You may have some good visions, you may see some lights, hear some sounds, all right. What is the benefit to others? The real experience is to move around with smiling faces, loving faces. That is spiritual see the spirit in others, love everybody, rise above the lower nature that s based on egoism. That is the real spiritual experience. You may be regular in your practice. Every morning you come for one whole hour, you sit still, without any movement in meditation. But, if the minute you go out you express all your negative feelings to others, what is the use then? That is not spiritual practice. Be aware of any animosity, back biting, dislikes, hatred. Imagine how happy you would be if you think, Everybody loves me. That is what Yoga is in practical life the application of your religious thoughts. The purpose of Yogaville is for that. We are striving to live as a good community of Yogis according to the yogic principles. Our goal is to make a beautiful Yogaville community and to prove to the world that, as Yogis, we can live healthily, happily. If we can t make this little world a happy place to live, a harmonious place to live, there is no point in talking about global harmony or global peace. Please remember that. All of us should never forget: My purpose in coming here is to make Yogaville a heaven, nothing less than that. A heaven on earth means that your thoughts, feelings, speech, and actions are all yogic. Everything should be heavenly, heavenly, heavenly. Every individual has an important part to fulfill toward this goal. So, please remember it and work hard. Where there is a will there is a way. If we want, we can always make it; and God is there to help us. He is very kind, very generous in helping us this far; and I am sure He will continue to help. If we take one step toward that goal, He will come ten steps toward us. Let s do it. Make sure that your life is a great contribution toward that. You should feel that, I am part of this. I have a duty. I have a commitment to make this a heaven. I will do everything possible. If I really cannot do it, I won t mar it. I will simply say, Sorry, I am not yet ready for it. When I am ready, I will come back. Living here and being unhappy and miserable, is against our principles. It is not just for me you are doing this. And I am not doing it for you. We are all together. We just want to prove something to the world we are as one family. We came from various places, we have various tastes, temperaments, beliefs, but we are living here as one family. When I go out, around the globe, I say, If you want to see a heaven, come to Yogaville.
