What is Agni Yoga?
In his novel "Lost
Horizon", also a Hollywood movie, James Hilton tells of Shangri-La, a remote valley in the Himalayas,
where an order of sages has unlocked the secret of immortality and established a culture in which people live as in
paradise: without hardship, suffering,
greed, violence, poverty and unemployment.
The Mahatmas of Shangri-La (or Shambhala, as we say today) actually
exist. They have addressed the suffering, misguided humanity several
times in the last 150 years or so: With the famous Mahatma
Letters, which anyone can still see in the British Museum in London,
and through Helena Blavatsky and Francia La-Due (Temple
of the People) and their writings. They have sent out
representatives to build new communities in various places around the world
according to the example of Shambhala.
The latest, most comprehensive
initiative of the Brotherhood of Shambhala is Agni
Yoga (in the West also called Living
Ethics): A Holy Scripture of 14 volumes comparable only to the Bhagavad Gita,
the Bible or the Koran. It can be read at www.agniyoga.org.
This immense work conveys the
knowledge that humanity will need in the coming two millennia (Age of
Aquarius). Anyone who reads these books will sense that a higher than human wisdom
is speaking to him.
The Teachings of Agni Yoga
were given in the first half of the last century to the Russian Helena Roerich, the wife of the great painter
Nicholas Roerich.
Agni Yoga is a synthesis of science and religion: a religion
based on science and a science that penetrates with its cognition into the
higher, invisible world.
Living ethics is a philosophy that
gives everyone, regardless of faith, answers to the existential
questions of human existence: About the meaning of life, the meaning
of suffering, God, life after death, man's responsibility for his thoughts, words and deeds, etc.
Agni Yoga, like Zen for
example, is a practice of spiritual exercises that enable everyone, in whatever circumstances he
lives, to attain a higher existence. It is a spiritual martial art. Just as in
the past the Shaolin or Samurai practised sword fighting to preserve the
integrity of their bodies, so today's spiritual warrior needs spiritual weapons
to defend and develop the life of his higher nature, his immortal soul.
Agni Yoga encompasses a complete programme for
the renewal of
both the individual and human society as a
whole.