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Swami Satchidananda Saraswati
Satchidananda Saraswati (IAST: Saccidānanda Sarasvatī; 22 December 1914 – 19 August 2002), born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder and known as Swami Satchidananda, was an Indian yoga guru and religious teacher, who gained following in the West. He founded his own brand of Integral Yoga, and its Yogaville headquarters in Virginia. He was the author of philosophical and spiritual books and had a core of founding disciples who compiled his translations and updated commentaries on traditional handbooks of yoga such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita for modern readers.
Satchidananda Saraswati was born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder on 22 December 1914, in Chettipalayam, a suburb of Coimbatore city in Tamil Nadu, India to "a family of wealthy landowners".
According to his authorized biography (published by his existing U.S. organization, Integral Yoga), his father, Sri Kalyanasundaram was a landowner and poet; his mother, Srimati Velammai was spiritual. It further states that his parents called him Ramu, that their home was a meeting place for poets, musicians, and philosophers, that wandering ascetics and holy men received free food and lodging at their home, and that their presence influenced Satchidananda. He studied at an agricultural college.
Satchidananda began working in his family's automobile import business, learning how to weld. At age 23, he became a manager at India's National Electric Works. He was a temporary manager of Perur Temple, and met his wife there. He married and had two sons; his wife died suddenly 5 years into their marriage.
After the death of his wife, Ramaswamy travelled throughout India, meditating at shrines and studying with spiritual teachers including a brief period with Sri Aurobindo. He was initiated into pre-sannyasa in the Ramakrishna Thapovanam and given the name Sambasiva Chaitanya. While at the ashram, he cared for orphaned young boys and studied along with Ramana Maharshi. He left the Sri Ramana Ashram when he could not bear the suffering of Ramana's arm cancer and treatment procedures. He travelled to Rishikesh, a town in the foothills of the Himalayas on the banks of the Ganges. There, he discovered his guru, Sivananda Saraswati, founder of the Divine Life Society, who ordained him into the sannyasa in 1949 and gave him the name Swami Satchidananda Saraswati. The name Satcitananda (Sanskrit: Saccidānanda) is a compound of three Sanskrit words, sat, cit and ānanda, meaning essence, consciousness and bliss, respectively. The expression describes the nature of Brahman. In all, he studied under Sivananda for 17 years. Along with Vishnudevananda, he became one of Sivananda's known missionaries.
During the early 1950s and into the 1960s, Satchidananda and his fellow Sivananda devotee Satchidananda Saraswati Mataji jointly headed the Trincomalee Thapovanam, one of Sivananda's ashrams in the hill country of Sri Lanka. In October 1955, his devotees opened Satchidananda Thapovanam in Kandy. Here, Satchidananda taught yoga, conceived and implemented interfaith approaches to traditional Hindu festivals, and modernised the ancient mode of living that renunciates had followed for many years. For instance, he drove a car to teach throughout Sri Lanka, wore a watch to be on time, and engaged the questions of seekers. These modernisations were ridiculed by some in the orthodoxy, but he felt the changes to be necessary natural extensions and serving tools for betterment in his spiritual yogic work. He loved flying airplanes and helicopters.
Filmmaker Conrad Rooks paid for Satchidananda to fly to New York in 1966, and artist Peter Max, who had been working with Rooks, introduced him to his many friends; Satchidananda stayed for five months. In August 1969, Satchidananda flew in to the Woodstock music festival by helicopter directly to the stage, arriving in orange robes, long hair, and flowing beard, and sitting down in lotus position to speak. He gave the opening address, giving a nod to Vivekananda's 1893 speech in Chicago by greeting the crowd with "Brothers and Sisters of America", telling the crowd that music was "the celestial sound that controls the whole universe", and leading chanting of "Hari Om ... Rama Rama". He was well received by the crowd.
In 1970, he opened a branch of his Integral Yoga Institute, on 770 Dolores Street, San Francisco. In 1973, Columbia Records produced a vinyl double LP Swami Satchidananda that featured a kirtan and a talk (not at Woodstock) by Satchidananda based on questions asked by students. The back cover illustration showed a photograph of the swami at Woodstock. The album was re-released in digital format as: Swami Satchidananda: The Woodstock Years. Satchidananda became a US citizen in 1976, having arrived on a visa stating that he was a "Minister of Divine Words".
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Swami Satchidananda Saraswati
Satchidananda Saraswati (IAST: Saccidānanda Sarasvatī; 22 December 1914 – 19 August 2002), born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder and known as Swami Satchidananda, was an Indian yoga guru and religious teacher, who gained following in the West. He founded his own brand of Integral Yoga, and its Yogaville headquarters in Virginia. He was the author of philosophical and spiritual books and had a core of founding disciples who compiled his translations and updated commentaries on traditional handbooks of yoga such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita for modern readers.
Satchidananda Saraswati was born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder on 22 December 1914, in Chettipalayam, a suburb of Coimbatore city in Tamil Nadu, India to "a family of wealthy landowners".
According to his authorized biography (published by his existing U.S. organization, Integral Yoga), his father, Sri Kalyanasundaram was a landowner and poet; his mother, Srimati Velammai was spiritual. It further states that his parents called him Ramu, that their home was a meeting place for poets, musicians, and philosophers, that wandering ascetics and holy men received free food and lodging at their home, and that their presence influenced Satchidananda. He studied at an agricultural college.
Satchidananda began working in his family's automobile import business, learning how to weld. At age 23, he became a manager at India's National Electric Works. He was a temporary manager of Perur Temple, and met his wife there. He married and had two sons; his wife died suddenly 5 years into their marriage.
After the death of his wife, Ramaswamy travelled throughout India, meditating at shrines and studying with spiritual teachers including a brief period with Sri Aurobindo. He was initiated into pre-sannyasa in the Ramakrishna Thapovanam and given the name Sambasiva Chaitanya. While at the ashram, he cared for orphaned young boys and studied along with Ramana Maharshi. He left the Sri Ramana Ashram when he could not bear the suffering of Ramana's arm cancer and treatment procedures. He travelled to Rishikesh, a town in the foothills of the Himalayas on the banks of the Ganges. There, he discovered his guru, Sivananda Saraswati, founder of the Divine Life Society, who ordained him into the sannyasa in 1949 and gave him the name Swami Satchidananda Saraswati. The name Satcitananda (Sanskrit: Saccidānanda) is a compound of three Sanskrit words, sat, cit and ānanda, meaning essence, consciousness and bliss, respectively. The expression describes the nature of Brahman. In all, he studied under Sivananda for 17 years. Along with Vishnudevananda, he became one of Sivananda's known missionaries.
During the early 1950s and into the 1960s, Satchidananda and his fellow Sivananda devotee Satchidananda Saraswati Mataji jointly headed the Trincomalee Thapovanam, one of Sivananda's ashrams in the hill country of Sri Lanka. In October 1955, his devotees opened Satchidananda Thapovanam in Kandy. Here, Satchidananda taught yoga, conceived and implemented interfaith approaches to traditional Hindu festivals, and modernised the ancient mode of living that renunciates had followed for many years. For instance, he drove a car to teach throughout Sri Lanka, wore a watch to be on time, and engaged the questions of seekers. These modernisations were ridiculed by some in the orthodoxy, but he felt the changes to be necessary natural extensions and serving tools for betterment in his spiritual yogic work. He loved flying airplanes and helicopters.
Filmmaker Conrad Rooks paid for Satchidananda to fly to New York in 1966, and artist Peter Max, who had been working with Rooks, introduced him to his many friends; Satchidananda stayed for five months. In August 1969, Satchidananda flew in to the Woodstock music festival by helicopter directly to the stage, arriving in orange robes, long hair, and flowing beard, and sitting down in lotus position to speak. He gave the opening address, giving a nod to Vivekananda's 1893 speech in Chicago by greeting the crowd with "Brothers and Sisters of America", telling the crowd that music was "the celestial sound that controls the whole universe", and leading chanting of "Hari Om ... Rama Rama". He was well received by the crowd.
In 1970, he opened a branch of his Integral Yoga Institute, on 770 Dolores Street, San Francisco. In 1973, Columbia Records produced a vinyl double LP Swami Satchidananda that featured a kirtan and a talk (not at Woodstock) by Satchidananda based on questions asked by students. The back cover illustration showed a photograph of the swami at Woodstock. The album was re-released in digital format as: Swami Satchidananda: The Woodstock Years. Satchidananda became a US citizen in 1976, having arrived on a visa stating that he was a "Minister of Divine Words".
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