Yoga is a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one's ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness.
Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on.
The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth.
Yoga means to bind back, unite. To bring the body and the soul together. For this reason the practice of yoga is a holy endeavor and the teaching of it to our people a very high calling.
Great compassion penetrates into the marrow of the bone. It is the support of all living beings. Like the love of a parent for an only child, the tenderness of the Compassionate One is all-pervasive.