Way back when, in 1972, during one of his several visits to California, Swami Venkatesananda had been invited to give a lecture on yoga at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, which had opened its doors just a few years earlier. Other than libraries and cultural centers, like the East-West Cultural Center in Los Angles, and Weiser's Books in NYC, there were few places in North America that specialized in "spiritual" literature of the East beyond esoteric and occult writings; certainly very few that had representation of the great spiritual masters of India, Japan and China. Later, stores like Banyon Books, Yes!, East-West Books, Light Fountain Books, and Phoenix Rising joined Bodhi Tree in offering more than smattering of the wisdom of the East. But at the time, the Bodhi Tree Bookstore was a breakthrough effort.
And so, it was there, in the crowded main room at the Bodhi Tree in April 8, 1972 that the lecture "What is Yoga and Who Is a Yogi" was given. The excerpted passage below is taken from that talk. It is included here not as a passage that might stand on its own, but quoted rather to encourage you to listen to talk in its entirety.
