The Academy of Yoga and Oriental Studies (AYOS) organised a one-day seminar on ‘Great Yogis of India’ at the College of Agriculture here on Sunday to celebrate the International Yoga Day which was inaugurated by OUAT Vice-Chancellor Prof Manoranjan Kar. The other guests on the occasion were Prof Aditya Kumar Mohanty, former Professor and HOD, Dept. Philosophy, Utkal University, and Dr Harmohan Mishra, former Reader, Sanskrit. The meeting was presided over by former IAS officer Sudarsan Nayak, who is also the president of AYOS.
Prof Kar said it is a great pleasure that more and more people in the world are being attracted towards yoga. Prof Mohanty said yoga is a technology which causes the individual entity to lose its entity with the cosmic one. Dr Mishra said a yogi takes himself to the state of mindlessness which is Samadhi. AYOS director Dr Indulata Das said that by the practice of yoga the individual self realises that it is not the body and is liberated from the three types of sorrows.
Sudarsan Nayak, in his presidential address, said yoga helps one severe the bondages of the world which bind him and cause him go from one body to another. At academic sessions, there were discussions on great yogis like Patanjali, Omkaranath, Swami Sivananda, Ramana Maharsi and Ananda Murty. Scholars from various parts of Odisha and other States participated in the seminar. Every paper was followed by elaborate discussions with audience participation.
The valedictory session was graced by scholars S Sundar Rajan and Arun Kumar Upadhyaya as guests. The meeting was presided over by Dr Indulata Das. Upadhyaya explained how the meditation on a form ultimately leads to the meditation of the formless. Sundar Rajan said lord Jagannath is the real master of all yogas. Yoga would change the Yuga, he said.