Swami Sivananda Saraswati

Do you know about this one guru who inspired a generation of countless gurus who healed the world through Yoga? His name was Swami Sivananda Saraswati & here’s his story.

He was born in 1887 as Kuppuswami Iyer in modern-day Tamil Nadu. He was a bright student of medicine & briefly went to British-owned Malaya before feeling the urge to quit everything & coming back home in Rishikesh in 1924.

He was then initiated into the life of a monk by one of the gurus in the Sringeri line. He continued to wander all of India searching for answers & meeting other spiritual leaders of his time.

As a guru, he preached Advaita Vedanta, the Hindu philosophy of non-duality, teaching that we & God are one.

After opening a charitable dispensary at the famous Lakshman Jhula in 1927 & a small ashram, he formally est. what would become his immortal legacy - The Divine Life Trust, in 1936, which later became The Divine Life Society.

Swami Sivananda Saraswati did countless charity & community activities like conscecrating mandirs, setting up Sadhu foundations, Academies & Universities, conducting mass initiations, and setting up branches worldwide.

His genius was in writing 300+ titles that explained the mind, yogas, vedanta, Upanishads, Brahmacharya & home exercises to millions of middle-class Indians.

Through his process of Yoga of Synthesis, he taught that all 4 paths must be combined to develop oneself fully. And he gave 20 important spiritual instructions to be in tune with our Antahkarna, the inner instrument.

Swami was the butterfly that triggered a storm-like movement of monks to go out & help the world; including Swami Chidananda Saraswati, Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati, Swami Jyotirmayananda Saraswati, etc.

Basically, he was the core architect of the Modern Yoga renaissance & renewed Vedanta in India.

Before leaving his body & taking Mahasamadhi at the age of 75 in 1963, he left us with a simple core mantra - “Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realise.”