Life and Teachings Series No. 16,
Sivananda-The Enlightened
BY KAVIRATNA T.N.V. RAJAN, M.S.G.S.
Published by
The Sivananda Publication League,
ANANDA KUTIR P. O.,
HIMALAYAS,
Price] 1940 [Rs. 2
PUBLISHED BY
SWAMI CHIDANANDA
FOR
The Sivananda Publication League
RISHIKESH.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
First Impression-1949
Printed at the Mafasilite Printing Works, Mussoorie.
KAVIRATNA T. N. V.
RAJAN, M. S. G. S.
OM
This priceless book is issued in token of our great admiration fro the yeoman service to the cause of Divine, that the Maymyo Branch of the Society rendered under the inspiring leadership of the author, Sri T. N. V. Rajan. A handful of Divine Life workers have through their united effort backed by dauntless zeal and courage, worked wonders in Burma! The Branch has contributed funds towards the publication of this book, too!
Secretary,
DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY,
ANAND KUTIR.
OM
DEDICATED
TO MY MASTER-
THE TEACHER UNIVERSAL-
H. H. SWAMI SIVANANDA
SARASWATI-
TO WHOSE FEET
MY LATE WIFE
SRIMATHI SEETHA
LED ME.
THE ENLIGHTENED SIVA
PUBLISHERS NOTE
SIVANANDA is a household name today: and to introduce the greatest of modern saints to a reader even remotely interested in spirituality is like carrying coal to Newcastle. This selfluminous Beacon-light sheds its lustre today in every nook and corner of the world: and has dispelled the darkness of ignorance from the core of the heart of countless aspiring souls.
The author is a genius, thrice blessed by having the genius in him ‘discovered’, uncovered, nourished and exalted by the Seer in the sage. Sri Kaviratna T.N.V. Rajan’s rare faculties blossomed forth in the Garden of Siva: and this flower has rightly been offered by him at the lotus feet of Siva.
Sri Rajan’s greater work-The Teacher Universalawaits publication. And this small booklet will serve to introduce the Hero and the author.
In this booklet Sri Rajan has picturesquely painted his own initiation into the Sivananda Gyana Sabha, and has endeavoured to portray tho dazzling visions of the Master that he saw. And the publishers would have been amply rewarded for placing this before the public if this booklet awakens a keen longing in those interested in the life divine, to seek an entry into this August assemblage-the Sivananda Gyana Sabha.
Anunda Kutir. 8th Sep. 1948.
The Publishers.
Contents
(A Short Life-Sketch) (By Sri Swami Venkatesananda)
2. The Aspirant meets the Enlightened One.
3. The Enlightened One imparts advice to the Aspirant’s Wife.
4. The Enlightened one speaks to the Aspirant before parting.
5. The Aspirant parts from the Enlightened One
6. The Aspirant and his wife depart from Rikhikesh.
Radiant Sun of the Renascent East.
SIVANANDA, THE PERFECT TEACHER.
SAD GURU PRAPATTHI
.(Composed by Sri Prof. M. Ramakrishna Bhatt, M. 4.)
ॐ नमो भगवते सद्गुरवे परमकारुणिकाय योगीन्द्राय अद्यौघतूलवाताय भक्तकल्पद्रुमाय शिष्यचिन्तामणये शुद्धस्फटिक संकाशहृदयाय कारणमानुषाय अकारणबान्धवाय लोकानुग्रहव्रताय विदितवेदितव्याय महामहिम्ने सर्वसुक्तभाय आन्तररिपुदुष्प्रधर्षाय हर्षपरिप्लुतस्वान्ताय शान्ताय परममाहेश्वराय पुण्यश्लोकाय सर्वजगद्वन्दितचरणेन्दीवराय अनिर्वचनीयगुणगणगरिष्ठाय दक्षिणामूर्तिकल्याय पुराणसर्वमहर्षितपः फलायमाननिजबोधवैभवाय श्रीमत्परमहंसाद्यनेकमहितबिरुद भाजे श्रीस्वामिशिवानन्दाय सच्चिदानन्दमूर्तये ।। Salutation to the Sadguru, Bhagawan Sri Swami
Sivananda, who is supremely compassionate, who is the atmospheric wind to the host of sins, who is the wishfulfilling tree (Kalpadruma) to the devotees, who is the wish-fulfilling jewel (chintamani) to the disciples, whose heart is like the pure crystal, whose taking the body is purposive, who becomes the relative (of all) without cause, whose vow is to bless the world, who has known all that is worth knowing, whose glory is great, who is accessible to all, who has completely overcome the internal enemies, whose mind is flooded with joy, who is tranquil, who possesses the supreme qualities of the highest Divinity (Maheshwara), whose name it is very auspicious to utter, whose lotus-feet are bowed down to by all the worlds, who is great due to the many indescribable noble qualities, who is in comparison with Dakshinamurti, whose magnificence of the Essential (True) Knowledge is like the fruit of the penance practised by Maharishis of yore, who has several lofty titles like Srimat Paramahamsa, etc., who is of the form of Satchidananda itself!
Om Tat Sat
OM
SWAMI SIVANANDA
(A Short Life-Sketch) (By Sri Swami Venkatesananda)
A mere catalogue of Swami Sivananda ji’s achievements in the field of regeneration of humanity in all its aspects, physical, mental, moral, social, religious and spiritual, would by itself fill the pages of a volume. Further, the saint’s is a personality that eludes the Historian. At best a biography can capture and present the physical sheath of the saint, and external expressions of an inner personality whose depth and magnitude go far beyond human calculations: when these expressions are observed and narrated, they get coated by the recording individual’s own ego. Biographies, are at best attempts at grasping what little the saint has let be known of himself.
Swami Sivananda ji has led, when compared to his compeers of recent memory, the most eventful and the most fruitful life. What astonishes an observer who follows keenly the trek of Swamiji’s footsteps from the time they played on the bosom of the blessed lady who gave birth to this venerated son, to the present-day when devotees in various parts of the globe long to lay their head at the dust of his feet, is the perfect ease with which Swamiji has reached perfection in every walk of life.
Born of a pious South Indian couple on the 8th September, 1887, the child gave very early expressions of its distinctive personality. Piety, nobility, courage and a thirst for adventure, were born with him. Besides winning many prizes for daring eloquence, ready wit, proficiency in the histrionic art, and for his quick grasp and rapid assimilation of class-lessons, the boy Sivananda at school won the hearts of his teachers, too. At long last, the Principals of the Medical College recognised the latent genius; and he enjoyed the special privilege of a free entry into the operation theatres which was denied to his seniors at the College! An adamantine will prevailed against all persuasions of his kith and kin to take up professions that were proverbially more paying: his eyes had perceived what was beyond the reach of the worldlings’ farthest flight of imagination.
SERVICE of humanity was his ideal. A perfect athlete at school whose physical and moral personality amazed his friends and elders, now revealed within him a tender heart that melted at human suffering. He worked in feverish haste to qualify himself for the work before him. Nights he converted into day. Time fled: but he left time far behind him! His doors were wide open throughout the day for the ailing to enter and obtain relief.
Nor could space prevail against him. Not content with serving those that resorted to him, Swami ji’s helping hand reached out to suffering humanity at large and through the pages of his magazine “Ambrosia,” he distributed his nectarine prescriptions to relieve pain, cure maladies and rejuvenate the human body.
Far off Malaya (in the Far East) needed hint Snapping his hand at superstitious conventions against. Voyages, snapping the fast-binding ties of family, Swamiji set forth, to leave his motherland for a while. Only to come back later intent on discovering the hidden treasures in her bosom and to enthrone himself in her heart and to hold aloft the torch of wisdom for the entire humanity to find its way to a saner evaluation of life.
This Heart of Love sent forth in Malaya a typhoon which swept away misery: his fame as the most kind-hearted doctor, always smiling, ever ready to serve, soon spread all over the land. Rapid promotions provided ever-increasing opportunities for service. What barriers were left that still obstructed his universal consciousness, were soon pulled down. Wealth, position, fame and name-all seemed in the new light, mere trivialities!
Swamiji had then his rebirth into the Divine. The renowned doctor who led the princely life in Malaya wandered like a lone mendicant along the roads leading to the fountain-source of wisdom-the abode of the ancient Seers-the Himalayas.
The Sanyasins who live in Swarg Ashram bow their head in silent veneration to Swami Sivananda who, without the least thought for himself, without the least trace of selfishness, served one and all-the rich and the poor, the saint and the sinner-all!
Apace grew his inner spiritual strength, for, through control of the senses and the mind, he had mastered Nature and had achieved the Supreme through slumber less nights of meditation on the Absolute.
His lustre took the shape of the Divine Life Society which today has grown world-wide. Its aim is to awaken in man a thirst to lead a life in tune with the Divine. Revitalising the diseased organism of humanity is its programme. SERVE LOVE MEDITATE REALISEthese four words represent the four corner-stones of this magnificent edifice. They embody the Mantras (sacred words) the Society has inherited from its Founder.
Within the all-embracing orbit of the Society have come into being several sister-institutions each one directing its attention to the care of particular sections of humanity and to the solution of particular problems. Foremost among these are the All-World Religions Federation, and the All-World Sadhus Federation, the former aiming at uniting the warring sectarians, and the latter infusing into the renunciates of all lands the spirit of service of humanity, a dynamism that would hand them a torch to dispel the darkness of evil from the face of the earth.
Swamiji’s writings have been hailed by all sections of humanity, and have found their place upon the tables of chiefs of nations, of eminent scholars, philosophers and leaders of thought, as well as of young students and semi-literate seekers! Their effect in general has been one of spiritual inner transformation in countless men and women and handing to them a permanent scale of values that they ought to keep before their mental vision if they are to achieve the peace, health, life and happiness that they seek in wrong quarters, and through wrong methods. His has been a call to all to turn the gaze within to seek happiness and life there, instead of running after the shadow. Most noteworthy, however, is Swamiji’s stirring call to the students and placing before them a set of ideals that makes them at once super-efficient within the four walls of their class-room and qualifies them for a citizenship of the Kingdom of Heaven! Swamiji has, in short, infused Life into the students by exhorting them to lead a life bounded on the three sides by Ahimsa (all-embracing love), Satyam (Truth), and Brahmacharya (celibacy and moral purity), the fourth opening out to a road to the Kingdom of Heaven-leading them through righteousness, inner self-purification, devotion to the Lord and ultimate realisation of the Self. Equally laudable have been the effect of Swamiji’s message upon the household; he has brought about a real and lasting harmony between man and woman, telling them of their respective duties and responsibilities to each other and conjointly to the Creator. He has put a timely check upon the modern craze of woman claiming equality with man, by pointing out to her that she is in fact the mother of man and that she is in fact fit to be worshipped by him! At the same time, he has pointed out that the sphere of woman’s activity is mainly her own household which if attended to she can convert into a haven of peace and godliness! Bringing up perfect citizens of the morrow!!
Swamiji’s message is a Message of Love and Service! He has found his God, not in the thick woods nor in the dark caves of Himalayas, but in His Creation, in humanity at large. He has given an altogether new turn to religious thought, by synthesising individual inner effort at finding the Lord-in-the-heart and a progressive expansion of consciousness that would fill the entire creation with the Light of one’s own Self. That is what his writings in his own books, in the Magazines (“Divine Life” and the Supplement) that the Society publishes, and in the Journals and newspapers to which he contributes articles, convey to Man. Love, tolerance, understanding, unity cultivated in one through a life of Truth, Purity and sincere devotion: that is Divine Life. It is this Divine Life that proclaims the history of this Saint who is every inch of him the Divine Life that he has come to proclaim to the world.
OM TAT SAT.
SIVANANDA-THE ENLIGHTENED
1. THE NAME
In train and ear Siva came with us,
Each move and turn of ours he did bless,
The stress and stra.n of the journey long
We forgot in the echo of his song.
From her lovely hand-bag my wife drew
A little leaflet printed in blue,
And thus to me joyously she read“
The message of the divine Name do spread.
The treasure of treasures this Name be,
Grasp this truth, my dear, quite firmly’
“And learn no more to swear at your wife
And fill your house with quarrel and strife.”
“Soothe my wrath with the song of His Name,
And earn, my dear, everlasting fame
As the wife that quenched the flames of wrath,
And took her husband along the right path.”
‘Hear again, Sweetest of all things on earth,
Most precious, powerful, immense in worth
Is the Name the true eternal friend
Wherein all the Lord’s glories do blend.’
“Many be His form, many His Name,
Choose we one Name, and to all proclaim
The loveliest gift of our pilgrimage
Is the Name, our Guru’s great message.
In life and in death the Name will befriend,
Our ways of living ‘twill help to amend,
The divine Name shall be our daily breath,
With the divine Name we shall defeat Death.
(Ah! Death. He came sooner than we thought.
What a painful tragedy he wrought,
Shattering my life built on her love,
Branding with agony my reeling brow!
The madness of grief found quick relief
In the Name, I laughed at Death-a petty thief
That stole but the withered fleshy sheath!
The Name was her soul’s immortal wreath.)
SIVA before whom our fathers bowed
His name we chose and that day we vowed
To repeat His name again and again; ‘
OM NAMASIVAYAH’-echoed the train.
2. The Aspirant meets the Enlightened One.
We met: the tron to the magnet flew,
For its inner life resistless drew;
To the urge and pull it sought no clue,
For it thrilled with with a joy that was new.
We met: the bee in the lovely bloom—
All colour and glory and no gloom,
The palace of beauty, joy and bliss
Can life hold greater glory than this?
We met: the moth singed its wings of dust
In the light that burns for burn it must,
And became one with the subtle light,
Released for aye from the shades of night,
We met: the duckling its swan’s face saw
Clear-mirrored in the divine aura
Of the saint; looked on its past with shame
And resolved its own birth-right to claim.
We met: the stream beholding the lake
With shy nervous joy began to quake,
And flowing in floods of joyous tears.
Lost in the lake its life and its fears.
We met: the river seeing the sea
Expanded, grew many a lovely
Arm, and grasped with its multiple arms
The sea with all its glory and charms.
We met: lone the orphan child beheld
The long lost mother whom he had held
As lost for ever; a fancied dream
Of remote days when all things did seem.
And now he saw the love in her face.
The love that had never aught but praise
And hope to give; he dissolved in tears,
Knowing that separation endears.
The poet in search of eternal love
Found that it was not too far above
Man’s reach for a balmy sweetness spread
From the rays of light the Rishi shed.
The philosopher’s search for harmony
Ended when he found the unity
Of Truth and Religion incarnate
In a life so pure and consecrate.
The artist’s quest for beauty and grace
Ended when he beheld on his face
The divinity of the human soul,
In the sublimity of its role.
Of service and love and spread of light
To defeat the malevolence of might,
To redeem man from the claws of war,
And envy and hate and greed that mar.
“From Hoshiarpur we all have come,
The journey has been long and tiresome,
We’ve reached here too late for morning food,
We’re hungry; excuse our being crude.
The children want food and I want food,
Of hunger my wife has gone quite rude,
The burden of wife and children is great,
And that’s my excuse for being late.
She has brought me here, my little wife,
I feel I wouldn’t leave here for my life,
But the burden of wife and children is great.
And I cant but submit to my fate.”
Tall and noble, majestic of mien,
Nor less lovely for his majestic mien,
He came out to meet us, his devotees,
His broad smile made us feel quite at ease.
Was it the Master or child or friend!
To forget his greatness we almost tend,
As he talks freely and serves us food
Apples and Cardamoms. Weare in happy mood.
No questions we ask, for questions none
Can arise when the Enlightened One
Sheds light without a shadowy bound,
Makes you feel the Perfeet One you’ve found.
I knelt at his feet. A flash of light
Like a rapier tore my sky outright;
I beheld a glory beyond dream,
I felt that all earthly things do seem.
We knelt at his feet, my wife and I,
I blessed Seetha that had brought me nigh
To the Master in whom Life and Death
Had commingled in immortal breath.
An eternity I had left behind,
An eternity in front I did find;
I lay at Swami Sivananda’s feet
Where Heaven and Earth in reverence meet.
3. The Enlightened One imparts advice to the Aspirant’s Wife
In the valley of life, in the grove
Of Grace, where many a beauty throve,
I roamed about and found one above
The rest in her loveliness and love.
Arm in arm, through Life’s benighted way,
Where dangers stalk and temptations play,
We marched on, each the other gunding,
Never in our moves with false ones siding.
When howling storms swept across our way,
Each on the other leaning did pray;
We feared not the storm, feared not foul play
We knew the Lord helped us on our way.
With head on her lap I often shed
My tears when, foot-sore, I could not tread
My way; when she fed me with her love,
I felt I received a strength from above.
I found in her a strength potent more
Than manly strength, for her immense store
Of devotion in a heart so pure
Helped her life’s trials calmly to endure.
Her love-lit eyes were my stars of hope.
When they shone what need was there to grope?
When strength I drew from a heart so pure,
What trials of life could I not endure
A golden bar on the distant sky
Oft she would say, ‘On that keep your eye,
March fast and firm, thither let us hie.
In that our strength and our life do lie.’
Nearer, yet nearer, towards that bar
Of gold: and we find it stretches far
Into the realms of infinity
Of which but the earthly fringe we see.
It stretches far-this light that we see
Siva of immense divinity
And to her that held my soul in her hand
Siva spake thus in words sweet and grand.
‘The melody that binds earth to sky
Sankirtan-that drew famed Mira nigh
To God this be your divine treasure;
Choose this in lieu of worldly pleasure.
With children by your side, night and day
Seek through Sankirtan to find your way
To truth and Bliss. Make your children sing,
And heaven’s sweetness to your home bring.’
She is no more: void had been this earth,
And life a dreary thing of drought and dearth
And woe and death, had she not taken me
To him that fills life with divinity.
4. The Enlightened one speaks to the Aspirant before parting.
I felt your kindly hands on my head,
In silent bliss grateful tears I shed;
My tears and laughter were henceforth thine,
Problems and cares were no longer mine.
The touch lingers yet, the touch that blessed,
The touch that lifted the soul depressed,
The touch that swept off burdens and cares,
And dissolved the knots of worldly snares,
The golden touch, yea, the touch divine
That made my senses and mind supine.
While my head in reverence inclined,
And heart with head in worship combined.
Hush! Who broke my heart with shafts of fire
And made it squirt its venom and ire?
Whe broke? I heard not the crack nor felt
The deft surgeon’s attack when I knelt.
My heart was in your hand. I beheld
The broken heart that you did reweld
And re-shape into a vessel of gold Fit
Love’s nectar and Truth’s light to hold!
The dead self of a dead past was gone,
My life with a new-born glory shone
The effulgence of a heart renewed:
With hope and joy life’s struggle I viewed.
*Child, the mother’s voice is sweet and dear
In hearing, in reminiscence more dear;
Her love more compelling than the fear;
For tyrants. Learn Ganga’s voice to hear.
In the garden of light where saints grew
The choicest blooms that devotion knew
Was distilled the drink of Gayatri.
Drink that and from birth and death be free.
In the Gita’s immense shadeless light
Keep your heart, mind and soul day and night;
Let your life be dissolved in that light.
This is your estate, this your birthright.”
My sorrow and joy, hope and dead fears,
Repentance and relief flowed in tears,
And in my heart in a golden light
Sat the Goddess of Peace, smiling bright.
5. The Aspirant parts from the Enlightened One
We never did part, never did part,
Each carried the other in his heart,
Vain Time tolled its parting bells in vain
Striving to stir separation’s pain.
We never did part, never did part,
For like a ray from you I did dart,
A ray from you, wandering in space,
Still to you my origin I trace.
We never did part, never did part,
For parting would have broken my heart.
Those men part that live in flesh alone,
Not those that vision a higher zone.
I fixed my web on a pillar of light,
I weave it in air by day and by night.
How could we part when you are the base
Of my soul’s home, my mind’s dwelling place?
When the light of your eyes gleamed in my heart
I knew we would never never part;
For it still burns there – the light of your eyes.
Will blaze till last, the light of your eyes.
When the breath of your grace lit the flame
Of my love, and you vouchsafed to claim
Me as your own, what answer was there
But to give my life to a love so rare?
When as a bloom I lay at your feet,
And with immortal breath, rare and sweet,
You fanned my fragrance to odour divine,
Did not my life with your life combine?
A charcoal that hid a diamond fine,
With yogic fire you chose to refine;
The fire of your life with mine did combine,
How can I see separation’s sign?
Blind since my birth, you opened sealed eyes,
With shafts of light you opened my eyes.
How could we part when you made me see
That space and time are sheer fantasy?
Jewel of my life, Crown of my heart,
In dream or fancy could we ever part
When the sound of your name is my heart’s beat
And my head ever rests at your feet?
6. The Aspirant and his wife depart from Rikhikesh.
We departed: the fresh mountain air
Kissed our bare cheeks, and we seemed to share
The freedom of that rarefied breeze
That helps the weight of cares to decrease.
We departed: in showers of gold
Poured on hill tops and down the slopes rolled
The setting sun’s light, ere fold on fold
On hill and plain Night’s robe was unrolled.
A breath of mountain air on our trail
Came gently, surely, and did not fail
To sound in our ears, though pilgrims vain
Clamoured about taxi, bus and train.
Heard distinct above the engine’s roar,
Heard while the train along its track tore,
Was a note of divine music sweet
That recalled to mind your sacred feet.
The glittering stars came one by one
Blindly the callous machine did run
Oblivious of the sky and star
But we heard a message from afar.
Amid the stars a melody floats,
And there is a gurgle in our throats;
The melody rises from road and sward,
And on our lips is the name of God
The stars fade and sink in the cloudy sky;
A strange feeling: we do not espy
Star or sky; of us something fades and dies,
We care not, the fool alone fears and sighs.
Something fades: the flesh, the sense, the mind;
Something dies: the world ceases to grind;
One thing lives a breath, a light, a flame.
And e’vrywhere Siva’s voice and the NAME.
Hark! Is it the voice of the boatman late
That on Ganga’s stream doth patiently wait,
Singing, “I’m here to help you to row,
Come to me, come sure, come fast or slow.
I wait to help when the sun shines bright,
I wait to serve in the darkest night;
In storm and calm patiently I wait,
I smile at men that distrust and hate,”
Hark! The engine’s roar echoes the NAME,
And river and tree repeat the same,
And Siva’s voice resounds in the air“
Repeat the NAME;
His bliss you shall share.”
SIVA’S MESSAGE OF LOVE
To-day is a day of love. We know no hatred or envy towards anybody. To-day is a day of love and we shall try to prolong this day of love and keep it till it consents to leave its breath in all the days in our lives to come. To-day is a day of love and we shall vow today that never in our lives shall we cherish or encourage within ourselves a feeling that even takes a tinge of the passions of hatred or ill-will or envy. For love means bliss and hatred means unhappiness.
During the past eight years the world has witnessed the appalling effects of cherished venom and fostered hatred. We have passed through a war that threatened to hurl mankind back into the abyss of forgotten times when we were weltering in savagery and living on a plane of life not far above that of the bestial kingdom. That war came to an end with the use of a weapon hitherto unknown to mankind, a weapon so terrific and appalling in its destructive capacity that while its concussion clove the earth in Japan, the horrifying realisation of its destructive potency clove the heart of all humanity with a grisly fear and made statesmen and politicians pause to think whether war and violence brought about by hatred were not imperilling the very existence of humanity. In our own country which has just entered the palace of liberty there was massacre at the door posts, a massacre that continues through the corridors that lead into the palace, and fills that palace of light with the gloom of sorrow and the shadows of men grappling with one another in fratricidal fighting.
We have known enough of the effects of hatred. We have had a blood bath that choked our souls.
To-day is a day of love, for that is the spirit in which India has lived in the past. That is the spirit in which our forefathers confronted and solved all the problems of life in the honry days of old. That was the spirit in which the ancient Aryans absorbed into their fold the highly civilised Draviutats. That was the spirit in which they welcomed into this country Christian and Parsi and Jew. That was the spirit in which they reconciled the differences between Buddhism and Hinduism.
It is this spirit of India that has triumphed recently in the personality of Mahatma Gandhi and brought us within the palace of liberty. Through the long centuries that this country has lain at the heels of the conqueror this spirit has managed to live and gather strength. It seemed at one time that the spirit of India had been driven underground, had been buried for ever and would never come back to life again. But underground it lay, healing itself, gathering strength, fed by our sorrows, watered by our tears, and it has asserted itself again. It is in keeping with our past history that India should have been redeemed not by a mere politician but by a saint, a Karma Yogi.
To-day is a day of love for we are met here to celebrate the birthday of Lord Sri Krishna, the embodiment of love.
To-day is a day of love for we are gathered here today to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of one who has proclaimed that God is love, and love of God is love for all human beings-Swami Sivananda Saraswati,
Resting, with golden wings outspread, on the summit of synthesised yoga, Swami Sivananda Saraswati seeks to bathe all humanity in the radiance of his light, and when they are so bathed and refreshed, he calls on them to direct the pilgrimage of their lives through paths that will be fruitful materially and spiritually.
What has this great teacher of mankind got to tell what His life speaks to us. He has written many books on religion. But he is greater than all his books, and a study of his life is as good as a study of the Vedas. For he has embodied in himself that spirit of India which recognises the presence of divinity in all life, in all human beings and in all messengers of God. He makes no distinction between caste or creed or race or religion. Taking Hinduism he has synthesised a 1 systems of yoga, and taking all religions he has pointed out their essential unity. All religions speak of God and speak of the soul, and postulate that the soul’s destination is God or the Kingdom of God. There may be differences of opinion among philosophers as to whether the realised soul becomes one with God or remains apart. All may not accept the theory ‘Thou art That’, but all are agreed that the soul is divine.
It is when we try to realise this divinity that we come to know that all life’s activities, in whatever sphere of life we may be working, should be directed towards this end. We come to realise that we should become Karma Yogins. Whether we are labourers or peasants or clerks or politicians, it is the spirit of service alone that will make our lives fruitful in the material as well as the spiritual sphere. And we realise that we shall never be able to serve if we are to be deterred in our service by the failings of our brethren. There is no service in returning evil for evil and good for good. If you want to serve a man and if you withhold service because he had some failing, you not only deprive a brother of your service but you deprive yourself of an opportunity to serve and choke the spirit of service with in you. True service cannot co-exist with any feeling that is turned against our brethren. This is Siva’s message-Love and Serve. Serve and Love. His life itself is an illustration of this sublimated Karma Yoga. As a stulent, as a Doctor, as a tapasvin, his concern has always been to help, to give, to serve, and he served and he gave-gave of his strength and of his wealth and of his knowledge and skill-gave profusely to all, and still gives, offering gifts from a plane that is above all distinctions.
I tell you to-day that it is this alone, this spirit of love and serve that will take humanity to a higher plane of life, that will lead humanity to a prosperous and happy future.
I said that the spirit of India is a spirit of divine love that rises above all distinction. It is this spirit that dominates all Siva’s activities. It is in this spirit that he has formed the all World Religions Federation.
I end my speech with a note of hope. I hope the day will soon come when our saints and scholars and philosophers will meet together and will elect for entry into our pantheon Jesus Christ and Mohamed the Prophet. I hope that once again will be played outin this country, as of old, the superficial conflict of religious ending in their unity, and that we shall proclaim to the world once again, and that the world shall hear, that we are all one mot only in spirit but also in flesh.
A speech delivered on the occasion of the celebration in Maymyo (Burma) of Swami Sivananda’s Birthday Diamond Jublee on the 8th September 1947.
Radiant Sun of the Renascent East.
(Sanyas Silver Jubilee Greetings)
Radiant Sun of the Renascent East,
Flooding with golden rays the lurid clouds
Of death and woe spread by the human beast
Tha stalks this earth, armed with Hate’s knives and shrouds,
May Thy divine light eternally shine
To help virtue increase and vice decline.
Sole Moon to guide us in this stormy night
When ghosts of ignorance criss-cross the shades
Of our wanton sins, and temptations light
Our way to pitfalls, perdition and and Hades,
From thy sky watch and guide and encourage,
May thy divine light shine from age to age.
Scintillating Star of Souls unity,
Mingling the radiations of life
In the splendour, in the supreme beauty
Of thy life the disunity and strife
Of Gods and creeds and cults and religios cease,
Mingling in harmony and sublime peace,
Embodied voice of the sages of old
Who spoke to the Supreme as man speaks to man,
And through the sublime Upanishads told
The secrets of life and soul and the divine plan,
Awake, asleep or a dream, thy voice may we hear,
And feel that God and Truth and Bliss are near.
Safe and sure pilot on the stormy sea
Of perilous life where on the waters float
Tempting flotsam we seek with avidity,
And finding feed till our unruly senses bloat,
And we weary and weep and put down the oar
And by chance winds driven fail to reach the shore.
May we hear your voice as we sail along,
And resist temptations that lure and charm,
May we see thy light and feel we are strong,
Feel bold that we are the soul beyond harm,
May we pray as thou hast taught us to pray,
Feeling we shall not be lost on the way.
Guide on the shores of immortality,
Thou hast chosen to sail on this earthly sea
So man may learn-on the bark of non-injury,
The love of all Truth and celibacy,
Prayer is thy sail and service thy oar,
And thy goat the light that shines ever more.
The waters are calm and all storms subside,
And temptations dare not lift up their heads,
And eddies and whirlpools and rocks move aside,
As gaily thy bark guides, while Viswa Prem sheds
Soothing balm on the sea, and the Gita’s song
Is echoed as the oars of service ply along.
In the bark of every aspirant
Thou art present as the pilot and guide,
For thou, Master of Yoga, resplendent
With divine powers. Dost choose to cast aside
Thy oneness for yogic multiplicity
When thou heare at the call of thy devotee.
Son of Gayatri. Thou hast proclaimed aloud
The redeeming glory of the divine Name,
And torn the mystery that did enshroud
The divine truth, smashed a proud priesthood’s claim
To hold Truth in closed hands; thou hast redeemed
Men and Truth, though at thy love false men have screamed,
Child of Gita, once again hast thou sung
The song of immortality Krishna sang
And tuned thy song to the sorrows that have wrung
The hearts of mankind who at every pang
That tore their heart have with gratitude
The soothing melody of thy divine word. Heard
Yea, this has been the burden of thy song‘
Fear never, thou art the immortal Self’
Whom no temptations can harm, no man can wrong,
And thou hast taught us to despise gain and pelf
And roared the Upanishads’ message again
To love life for service and not for gain.
Ganga’s beloved, the rhythm of her waves
And the melody of her motion thou hast caught
And given the seeker what his soul craves
Love and Truth-that thou hast skilfully wought
In Ganga’s melody; by poems, songs and writ
In men’s hearts the Divine light thou hast lit.
Chosen heir of Rikhikesh, her age-long hoard
Of rich spirituality slow gathered
Assiduously, as great sages poured
Their divinity on wind and wave, and treasured
In the caves of Himalaya, in the breath of trees,
On Ganga’s waves, and in Himalaya’s breeze,
She has bequeathed on thee, and the treasure
Immense like a prodigal thou dost throw,
Seattering far and wide, without measure,
Thy divinity; nor less is thy wealth, we trow,
For all the scattering; it sprouts like seeds
Wherever it falls, and meets the soul’s urgent needs.
The divine treasure that ever grows more,
Growing with each gift-the Knowledge of Self
This is thine; for though thou didst stand in the fore
Of Fortune’s favourites, thou didst scorn pelf,
Power, fame and ease-all within thy hand
And on renunciation take thy stand.
Great was the day when in Malaya thou,
By service purified, yearning to know God,
Filled with dispassion and with divine love,
Smotest down sense-impulses with the rod
Of Vivekachudamani’s wisdom
And vowed to seek and find the soul’s freedom,
The prayers and gratitude of the poor
Fanning thee on thy way sultry and long,
Over sea and land through valley and moor,
Thou didst move, cheering thyself with a song
Of praise of God when shelter seemed far away,
And with hungry mouth thou sattest down to pray.
The dust of sacred places was on thy feet,
The breath of India’s ancient age-old fanes
Played on thy brows, and Rikhikesh did greet
Thee with a smile, as into her domains
Thou didst enter, for she saw the future King
Of her domains, and Ganga began to sing.
Greatest and most blest indeed was that day
When thou didst don the yellow robe, by thy side
Standing, thy Guru Viswananda did pray
As to Truth he gave thee as a loyal bride;
He prayed thy divine loveliness might shine
Resplendent, befitting Sankara’s line,
Praise the day when Worldliness lost for ever
Thy ebullient life, talents and intellect.
Praise the day when mankind go for ever
The Redeemer that helped them to stand erect,
And march firm on the path of truth and love
And Dharma, and before sin refuse to bow.
Praise Siva the Máster, the Guru, the Lord,
The Yogi supreme, the blazing divine light,
The poet, the artist, the saint one with God,
The poor man’s friend who has lifted the blight
Of sorrow from the sick and lame, the guide
Of the wise who in divine peace doth abide.
Praise him, aspirants all, praise him, young and old, him, ye learned and wise,
Yogis all, Praise him who has made us fearless and bold,
Praise him, may the sweetness of his name fall
Like soothing balm on hearts broken and sore,
Giving them courage to hope evermore.
Praise him whose splendour in a billion rays
Falls on our darkened minds, whose sweetness pours
Quickening us on our long weary ways
Where oft we falter; healing our hearts’ sores,
And kindling Faith’s wick on the lamp of peace
In a light where love for truth begins to increase.
Praise him whose mellow light falls on the sea
Of man’s ambition-agitated life In this dark starless night of history,
And gives us the hope of the end of strife
And the SOUL’S VICTORY. LONG MAY HE LIVE
LOVE, LIFE AND HOPE, WISDOM AND BLISS TO GIVE.
SIVANANDA, THE PERFECT TEACHER.
I
They knew these ancients. We with our garish modes of living may feel like laughing at them, but they knew. And they knew the human mind well; nothing was hidden from them, not the least little spring or nut or delicate wire in the human mind, acting with magnetic strength or the flashing propulsive power of electricity. They knew the human mind, its tricks and oscillations, the subtlest of its impulses, the wildest of its passions, its selfishness and greed and possessiveness, its generosity and responsiveness to noble treatment. They knew, too, in what infinitely varied forms and stages it functioned within the human frame-scarcely different from that of a beast, with but a trace of reason and intelligence, enmeshed and feeble in the snares of primitive instincts and savage desires that in men of the the lowest type-, but withal a fear of God, a fear and a slavish love of the supernatural, the Godly, the Divine, and groping for 5 the Divine, in its ignorance and impotency, in transitory shadows and apotheosised spirits in trees and streams, in skulls and fossils: almost angelic, filled with noble impulses, quick to respond to generous appeals, impatient to soar high into realms of truth, eager to develop golden wings, eager to break the prison bars of ignorance and fly into domains of eternal light-this in the highest; and they knew the dazzling, miraculous varieties in between the lowest and the highest minds.
They knew the shape and colour and form, the mask and paint, the sound and ventriloquism, of each artful feeling, passion and impulse, of each blinding, deceptive mood!
They knew, too, the varying stages of culture in which men lived, the arboreal and the agricultural, the pastoral and the poetic, the literary and the romantic, the imaginative and the aspiring.
And well indeed they knew how the child loved wonder tales charged with emotion and romance, how the youth, wondering at life, put questions and sought answers, and in his buoyancy and optimism imagined he could unlock all the mysteries of life; how the middle aged man, chastened by experience, somewhat disillusion. Ed regarding his own cleverness, sought advice with a humble heart; how the aged man, mellowed by experience, sought to learn, sitting at the feet of the Great, accepting their offerings of truth like a child accepts food from its mother.
And they knew the effect of colour and sound, the value of words, the appeal of rhythm, the sway of melody.
The cudgellings of a cruel world, inhabited by a varied mass of men, left their impress on them. Each cudgelling cinematographed in their minds the mind behind the cudgelling.
They gathered their poignant experiences and shut them up in ice caves in the Himalayas, and occasionally, refreshed after meditation, brooded over them with the wings of love and intuition. Love and intuition-for could they hate the ignorant men that had harmed without knowing? Could they help except with love? Were they not like children that needed guidance-the clamorous mass of men, blatant in their ignorance, proud in their stupidity, cruel in their hollow hilarity, demented by the chronic disease of unrestrained passions and like children still, despite all their show and wagger and vanity?
They brooded and they devised methods of teaching these men. They had to be taught, each according to his capacity. So there were the intuitional revelations for the intellectual and the philosophically-minded the Vedas; the Smritis for the students of sociology and men of the world who wanted to lead a well-ordered life; the Itihasas for wondering childhood, questioning youth, chastened middle age and mellowed age, and for the untutored masses who could distinguish a thing by taste or smeli and not by innate worth; the Agamas for practical men who wanted to do and were not satisfied with mere learning; the Darshanas for the rationalistic; and there were the secular writings to meet the love of art, the needs of the aesthetic sense, and to wean man from worldliness by the appeal of colour and sound, the beauty and charm of words and the pathos of noble emotions.
Poetry and song, prose and rhetoric, story and fable, all interspersed with laughter and tears,-and learned treatises-all these the ancients made use of for instilling into the minds of men the few simple truths that take man to God. None or few of the adcient teachers, however, were able to adopt a combination of all these methods, excepting VYASA.
The world fights and clamours. The world weeps and swears. The world shouts and staggers in strife. The protean mind, functioning in a multi-million forms, unleashes storms in masses of nen, sweeps them off their feet and whirls them about, and they circle and reel and shout and swear, but heed not for the voice of truth.
There lives in their midst one who holds the secret of peace that passeth understanding, and has evolved a multi-sided method of imparting truth, a method which combines all the methods of the ancients with all advanced modern methods of imparting instruction. He lives in the Himalayas, the great teacher Sivananda. Great in manner and mode of teaching, great in thought and truth, in principle and example, in precept and practice, he is one of the greatest teachers that this world has seen. May his voice bring peace to all men.
SIVANANDA-THE PERFECT TEACHER
II
The glistening stream glided by, murmuring many a mystic song in which sages read messages of truth. It drew towards itself_that stream-the peasant and the shepherd, the sage and the teacher, the recluse and the hermit. For its banks were fertile and its higher reaches coursed through forests vibrant with the songs of birds. There was silence in those forests and sweet music, an eternity of alternating light and shade. Nature, half visible in many an alluring form, played hide and seek in the coverts and glades of those forests with the fledgling and the fawn, with the wild rose and the winding creeper.
Thither, to that forest retreat, repaired the ancient teacher. For there in an atmosphere vibrant with the prayers of saints, that floated like silvery ripples on the placid lake of silence, the teacher imbibed purity and calmness, and himself became fit to be a teacher. That was his primary concern-his purity, his calmness, his fitness to shape the young mind. His was the highest avocation, the highest and the most onerous, the most exacting, for he it was that guided men to God or Sin, to Heaven or Hell, to Salvation or Perdition. The blessings of a noble task well done would be his, but if his task was ill done the curse of ruined souls would haunt his steps through many a long year.
Conscious of his high responsibility, and conscious, too, that if that responsibility was to be shouldered in a right manner he himself should be a fit instrument, the ancient teacher sought perennial purity of mind and body. Having found an atmosphere conducive to purity and calmness, a place charged with spiritual vibrations, he breathed in that atmosphere, and living on that, sought to radiate purity peace.
No small man was he this ancient teacher-no mere wage earner, charlatan or hack. He mingled his life with those of his pupils and shared with them a common life. Fees were unknown and he dreamt not of such things. The commercialisation of man-his body and mind, his talents and intellect, his gifts and accomplishments, his knowledge and work was a rot that had not yet set in. Living was simpler and on a higher plane, and a man’s worth was assessed by the extent to which he embodied truth in his life, and not by garish trappings and pompous garrulity. Those were days when kings did obeisance to men of learning, poets were revered as prophets and saints were revered as God.
This ancient teacher had his cousins in Greece and Rome. They went where people gathered the Forum of the street and talked truth so that men might profit. They talked for the truth in them had, to be given out. Spiritually, perhaps they were not as great as the teachers of India, for they relied on intellect and reason while the Indian teacher sought to know by practising meditation and developing intuition. Nevertheless, they were akin in spirit and yearning to their greater cousins of the East.
We refer to them, for were they not as much Siva’s ancestors as Vasishta and Yagnyavalkya and Sankara?
There in the noble forest retreat of Ananda Kutir, where Himalayan breezez chant ‘OM’ in unison with Ganga, Sivananda has built up a Gurukula far surpassing in beauty and spiritual richness the Gurukulas of ancient times. It is a universal Gurukula wherein converge and gather rays of light from all corners of the world and from all times-from ancient India and Greece and Rome and from the modern world, nor less from Arabia and Persia and Palestine, to be gathered for universal radiation. The spirit of ancient sages of India and the prophets of the world makes itself felt there. Saraswati is in company with the Muses.
This is so because Sivananda, like the ancient teacher, has sought to make himself fit. If he was to be a universal teacher he knew that he should effect a union of all the teachers of the past, the teachers of religion and philosophy and the custodians of culture. A universal spiritual and cultural union was necessary, and this union should be embodied in him so that he might be a worthy teacher. That he sought to be and became what he sought to be. He effected a celestial union of Gods and Prophets and Muses and speaks with their unanimous voice.
SIVANANDA-THE PERFECT TEACHER
III
He was a clever man this ancient teacher and a wise man, too. For mere cleverness is not enough. Often cleverness co-exists with worldliness and then it proves suicidal. Wisdom the very antithesis and negation of selfish unprincipled worldliness is essential to make of a teacher, or of any man, successful in life, achieving a success measured in terms of service and not noisy publicity, garrulous fame, wealth or self-aggrandisement.
He was a wise man—this ancient teacher-wise and practical and skilled in shaping the human mind, the human life. Not a mere talker, immersed in fantastic theories, and prone to ruin the best material with unskilled paws! He knew life. He knew he was the gardener and his was the work to regulate light and shade, water and food, and to prune and protect, so that nurslings might grow healthy, strong, vigorous and bear many a large, lovely, aromatic bloom.
He knew that our habits, often formed without forethought, shape our lives-shape or twist and distort. Initially and primarily these habits are of the flesh and mind. We form them when we eat and drink, when we bathe and dress, when we talk and laugh, when we play and quarrel. Eating, an undignified performance, if unregulated, degenerates into an unpleasant performance, bespeaking avidity and tends to worsen into gluttony. Gluttony and the eater fails to distinguish dirt from food, poison from honey and seeks to gorge his maw like a carnivore. So, too, drinking a man may drink mere cold water, and yet may drink it like a drunkard, drinking in haste, with greed, dirtying the glass with which he drinks! And hurried bathing, leaving the dirt on the skin, half-moistened, to soak through the pores!
Talking-most important of all the factors that determine human relations! Words lead to friendship or enmity, peace or war Words, in the masses of men, are emotions given audible expression, and may please or wound, may conciliate or antagonise, may charge the atmosphere with emotions in which cordiality and peace aud happiness may thrive or die. How exceptionally careful one should be of the words he uses. Would that everyone that talked used words as carefully, as sparingly as a thrifty man would use gold! Would that everyone vowed that he would use his tongue to proclaim love and peace! Would that politicians and statesmen and orators took this vow! When poison has been spread by pathogenic words and in epidemics of blood-thirsty emotions women’s honour falls stricken and infants fall dead, where shall we look for the cause of sorrow except where men chose to desecrate the sanctity of words?
The ancient teacher knew the force of habits, the growth of habits. And he knew how with each habit, formed without forethought or without guidance, we throw a root in flesh till, as adults, we stand with our Lives multi-rooted in the flesh.
Multi-rotted, immoveable in the soil of worldliness, breathing the air-foul or fine-that chance winds blow, we stand. That satisfies us. We fear to move. We fere not move, for our roots have sunk deep and we fear our lives shall be riven if our roots are disturbed. With multitudinous roots we stand, supporting our own burden, and all the creepers that may twine around our trunks, and the parasites that may cling to our boughs. We feel secure so long as we do not move. The boughs may break and the trunk may fall, but still the roots remain driven deep in the soil of worldliness.
The ancient teacher knew that his primary task was to form and shape the habits of those in his care. Their habits would shape their lives. Devotedly he set himself to his task, praying that he might not mis-shape.
Sivananda, too, knows the mysterious powers of habit. Habit moulds our lives. Hobit serves to guard against or to let in the forces of maya. It is through the crevices in ill-formed habits that maya creeps in. Imperative and great is the need to form habits that will leave no room for the multiple invisible forces of maya to creep in. And imperative, too, is the need to dissolve and melt ill-formed and ugly habits so that maya may ooze out of our lives and we may fortify saboteurs and spies, fortify ourselves in moral habits proof against the thief and the storm alike.
How best can this be done-Siva asked himselfand found a reply in his Sadhana which is a panacea for the evils and a talisman against the pitfalls of the world. In the practice of Sadhana prescribed by him-suiting, as it does, men of all classes and creeds-evil habits are dissolved and vaporised and disappear from our lives; and healthy habits, lovely in their strength and purity, grow and thrive, guarding us against the storms and temptations of the flesh. In its higher form his system of Sadhana is for all. In its simpler form it is a master method of shaping the lives of children.
SIVANANDA-THE PERFECT TEACHER
IV
He was a simple man-this ancient teacher. He aimed at simplicity in all aspects of life a unified, coordinated simplicity of life. He aimed at simplicity in thought, word and deed, for, however abstruse the truths might be which he knew or learnt, he reduced them to a level of pure simplicity. He sought and found simplicity in dressing, in housing, in habits of living, He aimed, above all, at simplicity in the direction and purpose of life, and the coordinated simplicity of all aspects of this life gave it a one-pointed direction towards the ultimate simple purpose-that of Godrealisation.
That simplicity of aim and direction is essential, if life and living are to have a meaning, are to mean something more than mere vegetating existence, comething higher than a bestial life of feeding and multiplying, something nobler than utilitarian in purpose. The whole life of a man should be directed towards on goal, and directed without the least deflection. All the rays of an individual life should converge in one direction. Let them diverge in multiple directions, seeking multiple ends and then there is dissipation and waste.
The simplicity he sought was not dry, uninteresting, repellent by its undue austerity and absence of beauty. It was a simplicity surcharged with divine beauty. He lived surrounded, encompassed, immersed and absorbed in the beauty of nature. In fact, he absorbed the beauty of nature in the fullest measure possible and gave it out, as Valmiki did, in measures of unequalled loveliness. He lived in such close contact with nature that nature itself became a part of his life. The life of rivers and streams, of sunlight and shadow, became woven in his teachings.
In his personal life he sought not softness of skin of a glossy complexion did the superficial sheen of powder and cream. But he did seek to win the inward spiritdel splendour that suffuses the mien of the man who has shaped his life to divine ends.
The ancient teacher derided not beauty, nor did he deery the ideal of beauty, but he did not seek to realise this ideal on the physical plane alone, nor did he pursue it to the exclusion of higher, nobler ideals. The higher ideals of life he held the ideals of celibacy, truth and non-injury-tended to eclipse but not to negate the lesser ideal of beauty. The loveliness of the moon does not negate the existence of the stars. His intense love of beauty and nature is apparent in all the writings he has left for posterity. In the pursuit of this very ideal of beauty he seems to have realised his unity with subhuman life. His flowers, his pets, his deer-all shared his life. Nowhere does sub-human life intermingle with human life so abundantly as in the recorded writings of the ancient teacher.
Simplicity and beauty and strength, too. Physical strength and fitness were the indispensable requisites of a life dedicated to God-realisation. Food was to be earned by the sweat of one’s brow. No labour was mean, no task was ignoble, no work was to be shirked, in the interests of keeping elean the home and ashram, the country and the earth.
He was not contented with simplicity, beauty and strengths Something far more important and a fundamental requisite, was courage. No ideal can be achieved without a struggle. Between man and his goal, what ever that goal may Bete dangers, difficulties, perils that can engulf, trials that can overwhelm. Curiously, and fortunately for man, these perils and trials share the nature of maya. They are thin as air, evanescent as vapour, unreal as slindow, and vanish before courage like darkness before light. Heknew, and instilled into the minds of his students that man is a soul-immortal, indestructible, that no elemental power, no man-made weapon, no force on earth could harm or destroy.
The evanescent nature of the prizes and perils alike of this world had to be instilled into the minds of his students, had to be embodied in the exemplary conduct of his own life so that his personal example might itself be a fountain-source of courage to his pupils. He had to lead a personal life, so exemplary in all respectsexemplary, too, in courage in facing earthly trialsthat his students students in the distant days of their future to come might draw inspiration from his example when they found themselves alone in the midst of perils. Need we say his life was one of exemplary purity and courage.
With his simplicity, his love of beauty, as distingu ished from the love of flesh, his physical fitness and his courage, he set himself to the task of teaching his students. They had to be taught these great truthsthat the soul is the only reality and that the world is unreal. In terse words, simple and strong, he drove these truths into the minds of his pupils, like a gardener drives seeds into softened earth. These truths were not merely for emotional pleasure, aesthetic enjoyment or intellectual assimilation. These truths were to be sown into the young life of the students so that they might grow with his growth, grow into his life and be indistinguishable from it.
There was still the other truth, the great truth-the soul is God. The soul is God, the soul is the only reality the world is unreal. The third of these truths is present by Implication in the second. The first two truths are combined in the mahavakya ‘SOHAM ASMI’.
These truths having been instilled into the minds of the students, the next task of the teacher was to teach the students how to realise these truths. The means had to be found out. And if the means was to be universal, that is, if it was to be acceptable to all, the principles on the basis of which the means could be shaped had to be simplified. Details of the method or methods which would constitute the means could differ to suit differences in temperament, stage of spiritual growth, diversity in the external trappings of creeds and beliefs. The basic principles of all sadhana had to be smiplified. And this he did. He proclaimed that celibacy, truth and non-injury alone could lead to the ultimate goal.
Celibacy, truth, non-injury-we have reversed the order. Ahimsa, Satyam, Branmacharya-this is the usual order. Verily it is the proper order for ahimsa is the highest principle, higher than truth itself. Ahimsa is the highest principle because akimsa means the welfare of all living things.
Celibacy the brain reels, the nerves shake, the youth pleads young blood, the maiden her motherly instinct, and the masses cry in dispair-‘No, it is beyond us’. And yet if purity, that makes us fit for the reception of truth, is to be had celibacy is indispensable. Here is the biggest struggle that a man and woman can face. Sez, a little less potent than hunger, is the second fundamental biological ‘need’, the first being food. Movement originated, limbs were developed and higher forms of life evolved from movement necessitated by the search for food-so says the scientist. And he says life has multiplied on account of sex, and the sexual impulse is a Biological necessity.
One more pitiable instance of the senses being turned outward and incapable of seeing within. If the senses could be turned inward, as they could be, and if the scientist did it, as he could, he would be more cautious in theorising about sex-life being a necessity.
Truth in thought, word and deed that was the advice of the ancient teacher. That was his motto and watchword. That was the text of his sermons. Truthfulness in word-veracity-is a great virtue, a supreme virtue, but veracity may sometimes endanger lives, and life is sacred. Veracity if it was to be detrimental to the sanctity of life the ancient teacher paused and gasped. The sanctity of life, the one all-pervasive life, was to be protected against all harm, against all desecration, in all forms of life, for the welfare of that one life, despite the multifarions mayaic sheaths it wore, the one Life all try to seek-was the supreme concern. Of what use indeed is anything on earth if it is to be had at the cost of that one Life? Truth at all costs to oneselfit mattered not how much one suffered, but not at the cost of suffering to others. God grant that veracity may not prove detrimental to any living being on earth. Rely on Him to guide you with his unfailing wisdom, but here is the greater principle, the highest principle, Ahimsa the greatest Dharma. Hark: Siva speaks. His voice has the ring of eternity.
“Thou art divine. Live up to it. Feel and realise thy divine nature. Thou art the master of Destiny. Do not be discouraged when sorrows, difficulties and tribulasion manifest in the daily battle of life, Draw up courage and spiritual strength from within. There las vast inexhaustible magazine of power and knowledge within. Learn the ways to tap the source. Dive deep within. Sink down. Plunge in the sacred waters of Immortality, the holy Triveni within. You will be quite refreshed renovated and vivified when you realise: ‘T AM THE IMMORTAL SELF’.
SIVANANDA-THE PERFECT TEACHER
V
The ancient teacher was a servant, a servant in the highest sense of the term. He knew one Master and one Master only and that Master was God. And he sought to serve that Master as that Master loved to be served out of pure love and not for reward, not for praise. He sought Him everywhere and found Him everywhere through the eyes of service. He found Him pulsating in the lowest, breathing in the Highest. He found Him in this sorrow-ridden earth of ours-sorrowridden, yet solid, and thrilling to a fresh-born hope at every touch of the sharp needle of pain-often wandering, bowl inhand, his emaciated frame clothed in rags, a helpless prey to the inclemencies of weather and climate. He found him often sitting by the wayside, a lonely forlorn child, friendless, visioning earth as a desert of dry sands and dust and stone, and hoping, yea, hoping on that desert for blooms filled with honey to spring up. And he found Him in the men to whom mortal frames were a burden too heavy to carry on account of disease.
Were these the men from whom he was to seek payment or reward? Was he to expect these men to find their way to his abode and knock at his doors for help. How could they go to him? He had to go to them if he wished to help them, to serve them. Vain and false would be the excuse, and a mockery his professions of desire to serve if he stayed at home and waited for these men to go to him. He had to go into their midst. He had to seek out opportunities to serve. Reward-No, not the least. Was it not great, was he not blessed that they allowed him to serve them, to serve God through them?
The ancient teacher was fastidious in his choice of words, his preference for truth. He picked and chose when it came to distinguishing the true from the false, but he knew no choice in the matter of service. The leper’s sores did not repel him. What does service mean unless it means cleansing the earth, cleansing life on earth, sweeping and washing away the dirt and the gime and the slush and the stinking heaps of dung that choke the culverts and viaducts of life; and cleansing the minds of men of the poisonous heaps of prejudices and passions and pride? The servant is essentially a sweeper and a scavenger, otherwise he is no servant. That was how the ancient teacher thought and felt. The broom and the water pot-laught not-are there any higher symbols of service? Add the ploughshare and the seythe and you get the symbols of all world service. Do we leave out the sword as a symbol of service! Yes, we do. Service is construction and the sword symbolises destruction. The sword, if it has proved to be an instrument of service, has proved so in spite of itself, and the service it has rendered has always been mixed in equal or greater proportion with disservice.
If the ancient teacher was to serve, and to serve as a real servant, it was not for him to feel that any work was degrading, mean and beneath him. Sweeping and preaching had to be regarded as equally noble. Scavengering and gardening were equally divine. And he had to go out into the world and do his work and not expect all men in need of help to flock to his doors. And he had to serve without asking for reward or praise, without caring for blame or scandal, and disregarding opposition and obstacles.
Blame and scandal and abuse these are the portion of the best and the noblest of men. Whoever sought to serve over whose head the sword of Damocles did not hang! Whoever tried to do good deeds that did not meet with opposition at every slap and furn he took! No moralist, no philosopher, no messenger of truth, no prophet of God ever lived and moved on this earth of ours but moved in the midst of peril and worked against opposition and obstacles that sought to smash and overwhelm. The sword, the chalice of venom, the cross, the executioner’s axe, the frown and espionage of prestigeridden authority intoxicated with power and envious of rivalry, have been against the servant of man, the servant of God. Were these to prevent him from serving?
The very men whom he had to serve might rise up in opposition to him. Did it matter?
The chains we wear suck our blood and when the redeemer comes to break those chains the very chains snarl. Is this to prevent the redeemer from redeeming?
Such were the principles that animated the ancient teacher as a servant. If he was a servant and a servant in the highest sense of the term, he was a servant of his students, too, and more a servant than a master. He expected obedience, love and respect, but he did not seek to win these by punishment.
Punishment: He was not a bigoted believer in the efficacy of extraneous punishment. He did not seek to drive in truth into the minds of his pupils with the rod, nor did he seek to exorcise the evil in him with a rod. He sought to develop in the student the habit of introspection, repentance prayaschitta. And self-punishment or
The evil in the student had to be eradicated by the student himself, by an effort of his will, by the summoning of good forces within himself. There was hope of improvement for him only who had learnt to seen his own faults, to admit them to himself, and not, like a moral coward, hide his own faults from himself and live in a state of self-delnsion; or to justify his own faults to himself in pitiful attempts to silence his conscience and feed his hungry mind on the dirty dregs of false consolation. This being so, the teacher tried to evoke and develop the good sense in his students, so that they might learn to scan and root out their own faults and develop the spirit of courageous self-punishment-prayaschitta.
To punish oneself needs courage. We may submit to extraneous punishment on account of fear or submit to it boldly, without flinching from the descending lash, but to apply the lash to oneself needs extraordinary moral courage and a capacity to bear pain. The fear of pain. The horror of pain-so characteristic of the majority of men-had to be eradicated. Pain wasa friend, a teacher, a Doctor, the best ally of ours in our march Godward through a world, often unfriendly. Lest this fearlessness of pain for himself should degenerate into callousness towards other men’s pain, compassion had to be developed, too. That compassion for other men’s pain was bound up with the feelings of love and respect for others and a readiness to court suffering for the sake of reducing other men’s pain.
He paid special attention to the virtue of respect for others. The hall-mark of culture and self-respect in respect for other men, however low and humble they may be. Let the strong man respect the weak, let the free man respect the slave, let the learned man respect the ignorant man, let the truthful man pity but not despise and hate the liar; let this happen and shall we not then have a world where the opposites shall be drawn towards one another by sympathy, and where disastrous cleavages caused by lack of sympathy, pride and prejudice shall disappear This self-respect he could generate in his pupils and evoke from them respect for others only if they were accustomed from their young age to respectful treatment. Ill-treat a young lad continuously and he becomes a nuisance to all in his future life, one on whom respectful treatment will act as an intoxicant.
He respected his students, for were they not essentially divine? This sense of innate divine splendour had to be invoked and kept alive.
Such a teacher we have in Siva. Listen to his immortal message:-
“Hey Saumya! Dear Immortal Self. Be bold. Be cheerful though you are on the roll of unemployment, though you have nothing to eat, though you are clad in rags Thy essential nature is Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute and Bliss Absolute). The outer cloak, this mortal physical sheath, is an illusory mayaic production, Smie. Whistle Laugh. Jump. Dance in joy and ecstasy. Singh OM OM OM, Ram Ram Ram, Shyam Shyam Shyam, Sivoham Sivoham Sivoham, Soham Soham Soham. Come out of this cage of flesh. Thou art not this perishable body. Thou art the Immortal Self. Thou art sexless Atman. Thou art the son of King of Kings, an Emperor of Emperors, Brahman of the Upanishads, the Atman who dwells in the chambers of your heart (Hridaya Guha). Actas such, Feel as such. Claim your birthright now from this very second. Feel, Assert. Recognise, realise, not from tomorrow or the day after but right now from this very second. Tat Twam Asi, Oh Niranjan. THOU ART THE IMMORTAL SELF!”
SIVANANDA-THE PERFECT TEACHER
VI
The ancient teacher, we said, went out to serve. So did Siva during his lecture tours and Sankeertan Propaganda. And he comes now, comes into your prayer room, smiling the smile smile of eternal peace. When the bells are rung and the hymns are chanted, he stands at the door post, smiling the smile of enternal peace. When the incense is burnt and the camphor light waved, Siva’s face beams with the smile of eternal peace. He comes into your study on his books, and as you turn page after page, in each sentence flashes his soul in streaks of silver or golden light that break and tear the clouds that lie heavily on your mind. He comes sparkling on his aphorisms. The bliss of meditation and the melody of peace fill your room as you read his poems. And the sweetness of a life turned to the infinite transports you with exaltation as his songs echo in your room.
And not only thus. He comes in many more ways to soothe and cheer and uplift. Often it is a message, often a short personal letter, a word of encouragement, a word of advice or admonition, pat to the occasion. You wonder how he knew your mind. When you are depressed and in despair, an unexpected letter from Siva lifts you up. When raging passion tears your heart, a gentle word of admonition comes from him in an unexpected letter and you learn to cool your passions. By invisible telepathie wires the minds of a million disciples are in perennial communication with the mind of Siva.
Yes, he comes (as you wander along in the fields) like a whiff of fresh mountain air. As you sit by the brook and meditate, Siva murmurs his message of love.
And not only thus. He comes in answer to every request of yours. There is no secret which you need hide from him, no difficulty that you need be ashamed of admitting to him. He will help.
This is the highest of the secrets of greatness of any teacher, that his pupils do not seek to hide their difficulties from him. The ancient teacher put his most inept pupils at ease, and the least brainy did not feel diffident on account of his own shortcomings. Perhaps modern methods of dealing with students are defective in this respect, that the student tends to hide his ignorance and difficulties from his teacher on account of fear. Often the teacher’s ignorance of the student’s mind, his lack of sympathy, his incapacity to assess the sensitiveness of a student and his brain capacity-often these defects in the teacher mar a student’s education. Lack of sympathy, lack of appreciation of the sensitiveness of the superior human mind-what a tragedy lies there of geniuses ruined and intellectuals made to feel they are unfit for life. The ancient teacher’s unfailing sympathy drew forth the poet in the rogue, the Valmiki in Ratnagar.
Such, too, is the unfailing sympathy of Siva to all his disciples.
APPENDIX A
APHORISMS OF SRI SIVANANDA.
You have no enemies to fear outside. The real enemies are egoism, pride, lust, anger, avarice. Infatuation and selfishness.
Spiritual practice-regular and systematic, sincere and tenacious is more necessary than theoretical spiritual knowledge. Even a grain of practice is better than tons of theory. Regularly study the scriptures and other religious books. Whatever you find applicable and benevolent, put them into actual practice immediately. Develop the feeling that you must become an ideal Karma Yogin to serve the needy, the unhappy. Maintain a spiritual dairy. It will quicken your progress.
Practice detachment. The greatest Sadhana for the householder is to reamin in the world as a lotus leaf in the lake. Insure yourself against the worldy ties by first becoming firmly grounded on mental renunciation and detachment. Rigorously train the mind to remain unshaken by the worldly troubles and affliction. Use your discrimination. Work efficiently, wholeheartedly. But be not affected by the results of your actions, ly success and failure. Keep your mind always steady. Exert and persevere. Plond on steadily. Aspire zealously.
It is necessary to practise the positive virtue of probing into the hearts of the silent sufferers and offering aid to them inoffensively with the fullest conviction that they are God Himself who in His infinite mercy has given you an opportunity to purify your heart. Such must be your feeling. With such conviction you must dedicate your whole life in the service of others.
To be conscious of the Divine, to feel always the Divine Presence everywhere, to live always in the awareness of the Supreme Being in the chambers of your heart and everywhere around you is verily to live a life of fullness and Divine Perfection, even while on earth.
It is the natural tendency of the mind to run towards worldly objects; because the mind is directly or indirectly attached to some of its pleasing or favourite objects. It is because of the negative Samskaras. When the Sattvic Samskaras become powerful, then the mind is no more affected by the negative Samskaras. They become powerless.
Always entertain sublime, divine thoughts. Intrsopect carefully the subtle workings of the mind. Find out your defects and mould the mind by cultivating their opposite, Sattvic qualities. Never allow the mind to dissiplate its energy on vain worries, vain imaginations and vain fears. Practise concentration. Fix the mind on one object or idea. Withdraw the mind again and again from the external objects. Thus by manipulating the mind you will be able to bring it under your control and compel it to concentrate its powers a
- Culled from Sri Swami Sivanandaji’s writings and published by OCCULT Review, London.
THE WAY TO LIFE IMMORTAL
(Sri Swami Sivananda)
1. Cultivate love in the graden of your heart by removing the weeds of jealousy, hatred, suspicion. Revenge, pride and selfishness. The power of love is ineffable. Its depth is unfathomable. Its glory is indescribable. It is divine.
2. Equal vision is the touchstone of knowledge. Unselfishness is the touchstone of virtue. Celibacy is the touchstone of ethics. Oneness is the touchstone of Self-realisation. Humility is the touchstone of devotion. Therefore, be unselfish, humble and pure. Develop equal vision. Be in tune with the Infinite.
3. Overcome anger by love, Inst by purity, greed by liberality, pride by humility, egoism by self-surrender to the Lord Thou wilt become divine.
4. Life without lust, egoism, greed, anger, pride, is in itself divine life. Try to lead a life of purity with a spirit of sacrifice. Lead a divine life.
5. Practise Yoga constantly. Look for the descent of Divine Light. Be regular in your meditation. All defects and weaknesses will perish by themselves. This is the positive dynamic method to annihilate evil desires. Defects and weaknesses.
6. Serve the humanity, the poor, the sick and the country. Service is the worship of God. Never forget this. Purify the intellect. A pure insellect helps you to reach the door of intuition and attain Self-realization.
“These are the quotation from Bri Swami Sivanandaji’s writings reproduced in the message by Sri Kashiram Guptajl, the Director of The General Printing Works Ltd., Calcutta, to the Bouth Indian Provincial Conference of The Divine Life Society, held at Tambaram, Madras, in the month of December, 1948.
God Exista: The Proofs
GOD EXISTS: THE PROOFS
(Sri Swami Sivananda)
You always feel “I exist”. You can never deny your existence: can you? So, denying your existence is quite absurd and illogical. In denying your existence. You deny your own self. Existence is Brahman or your own Inner Imnortal Sell. Though you are encaged in this finite body, though you are imperfect and mortal on account of egoism, you can think “I am Infinite, Perfect, Immortal Being”. Though you are finite you are capable of having an idea of the most perfect Being which fills all space, which contains everything, beyond which nothing enn be conceived of and where all desires come to infinite fulfilment. This iden of infinity can only arise from an Infiftite Being. G. Hence, Infinite or Brahman exists. This is the ontological method of proving the existence of Brahman or the Supreme.
You can deny your own self. You can deny the existence of God or Brahman. You can doubt the existence of your own self God. But the doubter or denyer always exists. The existence of the doubter or denyer is Brahman or the Absolute.
Everything is changing in this world. There must be a substratum that is unchanging. You cannot think of a changing thing without thinking of something which is unchanging. Forms are finite. You cannot think of a finite object without thinking of something beyond, without thinking of the Infinite. This is the teleological method of proving the existence of Brahman or the Infinite
In this world of phenomena there is cause for everything. The law of cause and effect operates. There is the cause, father, for the effect, child. There is the cause seed for the effect tree. There is the cause potter for the effect pot. A branch of a tree moves. The blowing of wind or the sitting of brid is the cause for the movement of a branch of a tree. You see this world. There must be cause for this world, the effect. But you may say that this cause of the world may be the effect of some other cause. But you cannot stretch this kind of argument without ending it in infinite regress, A causeless ultimate Cause must be admited in order to avoid logical fallacy. That causeless Cause is God or the Creator. This is the cosmological method of proving the existence of Brahman or the Infinite.
There are beauty, intelligent beings, luminosity, law, order, harmony in spite of apparent disorder and disharmony. There must be an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent Being who governs and controls this vast universe. This is the Theological method of proving the existence of God.
Now, do not doubt the existence of God. There is always the silent witness of this doubter. That silent witness is thy own Self, the doubtless, all-wise, imperishable, infinite Brahman or God.
May you attain God-realization through unswerving faith, true devotion and sincere Sadhana.
APPENDIX B
GARLAND OF TRIBUTES
I am very greatful to you for your kind letter of the 25 May, 1949 about the starting of the Scretariat Training School. Your kind message and blessings have given us great encouragement and inspiration in our work, and we shall always bear in mind the kind advice contained in your letter.
I may add that I have read some of your inspiring and ennobling books and derived great benefit therefrom, and have long been an admirer of your noble self and the work that you have long been doing in the dissemination of spiritual knowledge. I have also seen the letters and literature you have sent from time to time to my colleagues Rao Sahib A. V. Raman Asstt. Secretary to the Govt. Of India and Sardar Sahib Fateh Singh of the Ministary of Home affairs.
-B. D. Tewari, Govt. Of India, Ministary of Home Affairs, New Delhi.
The holy Shruti says: “The knower of Brahman is Brahman himself. In the Hegelian philosophy a spirit conscious of itself is perfection. Such is our Siva, the glory and pride of the students of Brahm avidya. He needs no human praise, because the whole creation bows to him in adoration.
It is for the sake of a Brahma Vit that the earth revolves and rotates; the spring showers flowers, the stars twinkle to do obeisance to him. The creation dances, the electrons perambulate the proton. To him the glory of a Brahma Vit.
The Himalayan wisdom has flowered in our Siva: the holy Ganges rolls by the side of his Ashrama to carry the echoes of his compassion to the citizens of holy Bharatwarsha.
The massage of Shri Siva is univereal. It is above the narrowness of nationalism and politics. It is like the all-embracing sunshine.
-Dr. Hari Prasad Shastri, Ph. D. Shanti Sadhan, LONDON.
It (“Gita Sadhana”) is a most brilliant smmmary of Gita Rahasya. I have appreciated it very greatly indeed and I am taking over the copy to another gentleman who is highly interested in such subjects and is a member of our Legislative Council. I am sure he will benefit by its perusal.
-Rai Bahadur Shayama Narayana Singh, C.В.Е. Magistrate & Collector (Retd.) Ex. M.L.A., (Central) Patna.
I feel sure that the inspired songs and hymns will do much good to me and the members of my family and my friends. I shall regard and cherish them (Gramaphone Records) as a treasure
-Dewan Bahadur K. S. Ramaswamy Shastri, Madras.
His Excellency thanks you for your kind letter and. Hopes that you will pray for him.
-Private Secretary to the Governor,(of Bengal) Darjeeling.
I have felt that you are the proper pèrson to lead us for the international Organisations and you alone can guide us better then any body else. On hearing your Holiness’ views 1 shall write to Hon’ble Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru and Hon’ble C. Rajgopalachari on the subject.
-Dr. Gope Guru Bax, Ph. D. Secretary to Bikaner Government, Bikaner.
Your blessing has caused great soothing to the agitated mind. I have again begun to concentrate, The only need is your secret help and blessings.
-Harcharan Singh, Inspector of Police, Alwar.
Illuminating Stories.
Swami Sivanada of Rishikesh is a veritable dynamo of spiritual energy. He does not hide his light under a bushel but spends his vast store of physical energy and spiritual illumination in spreading light and life around him. The number of books he writes, the articles be contributes to all the religious magazines of the country and the propaganda he is carrying on in various ways, all these prove his great love for the masses and his ardent desire to see them uplifted.
He is not a fanatic but a remarkable student of all religions. He finds many good things in other religions though he remains a staunch Hindu. The book under review contains a number of stories selected from sacred books of all religions. It is didactic and each story is expected to teach us a particular lesson, The stories are arranged under different classes each having common aim. For example, Stories that glorify the Lord, Stories that lay emphasis upon Guru Bhakti, and on Nature of Mind etc. They are taken from the Puranas and other sources and form an inexhaustible source of light and inspiration.
Teachers who want to inculcate the minds of their students with fundamental ethical principles and religious truths common to all historical religions will ind this book of great help to them.
-“FEDERATED INDIA”, Madras,
Philosophy and Teachings.
.... Swami Sivananda is a friend, guide, teacher, Yogin and doctor to all. He is all things to all men: this is the general estimate of his contribution to philosophic and spiritual revival and solace in India and in some cases abroad. There is an infectious spirit of spiritual enthusiasm about Swami Sivananda that endears him to his disciples and those who are fortunate enough to meet him...
-“HINDU”, 11th Jan. ’48.
My sincere and greatful thanks for your cordial letter of blessings on my books “After Gandhiji” and “The draft Constitution”. You have summed up for me the essence of the book with your luminous INSIGHT.
There should once again arise a Ramdas-Sivaji combination to rennovate India and I have a feeling and a faith that your Holiness plays and will play a distinguished role in this work. I pray for God’s Grace.
-K.S. Venkataramani, M. A. B. L., Author of “Paper Boats”, “Murgan, The Tiller”, Editor: “Bharatamani”, Kaveripoompatnam, P. О.
Of the book “World’s religions” I read this morning two chapters on two religions with which I am familiar: Buddhism and Christianity, and I wasgreatly struck with the accuracy wherewith these have been represented. Usually when one reads books on different religions written by those who do not profess them, one fiindsall kinds of inexcusable errors. But in Swamiji’s works, the morel begin to feel that I have had the exteremely good fortune to come in contact with a Saint who does not only possess bool-knowledge but who has personally practised everything advised therein.
My continued study of Swamiji’s synthesis of religion and Yoga gives me increasing delight, and also an increasing desire to be allowed to come one day personally under the beneficient influence of your learning and radiant love.
Meanwhile I can only aspire to augment my little understanding by reading the inspiring messages and books which reach me from time to time from Rishikesh.
Henri Van Zeyst (of Dutch) M. A. Ph. D., Colombo.
I cannot express the deep gratitude to the great blessings and confidence and kindness you showed to me. Since then I have been feeling more and more myself. 1 have been trying to act up to your instructions. Please continue to bless me. Mr. John D. Cruz lives in utter, blind and absolute faith of yours. Please bless him with courage and faith in those who love him the most.
-Chandra Bodh Khatri, M. A., Vice Principal, Saharanpur.
I received your nice letter with a special joy.
Indeed, you are, I think a Master and it is the first time in my life that I am in touch with such a one.
I read your books and literature with special attention.
We are very happy to enter into relations with you. We must join the Orient and the Occident,
We repeated your prayer that God may give us the strength to continue our labours in unison.
Thank you and be blessed for your kindness and be sure we shall send all our documents.
My best condial friendship and thankfulness.
-The General Secretary, Conseil Spiritual Mondial, BRUXELLES.
You perhaps remember that in the year 1944 I took some correspondence lessons in Yoga from you with tre result that I have developed the Siddhi of thoughtreading. I gave a demonstration of it to the students of the college where I am professor, and also gave a talk about your Holiness. The Principal of the college, whose letter is sent herewith wants your Holiness spiritual assistance in certain domestic worries he has got. 1 pray that Your Holiness will advice him accordingly.
I want to take your advice about myself. I am a Muslim and I was not practising Bhakti Yoga. But now I find that my soul has turned quite spontaneously towards Shri Krishna. Whenever I hear His name chanted a sweet sensation fills my heart. I fully believe that he was God. What can be the reason for this, about which I am greatly puzzled? Although a Muslim I want to give up myself wholly to Krishna-Bhakti. I have been worshipping and meditating upon a photo of Sri Krishna for some time. Now I pray that you will initiate me into the Mantra of Sri Krishna.
-Professor A. H__ B. N. College, Assam.
I remember that on 7th instant when I was having my meditation on you, I could clearly see your image appearing before me, though only a sacond for Out of all days that I had meditation this morning (13th Jan: ’49) 1 sat for it at about 3 a. M. And I could experience that I could have very clear and lingering view of your Holiness and felt myself forgetful of this world to some extent. I am trying to cultivate more and more of it with your Grace.
-Krishnalal Sharma, Assistant Divisional Forest Officer, Staff Quarters of Mayo College, Ajmere.
There is no one like your pure illumined Self to present something to the people which appeals to their heads and hearts alike.
-John M. Short, AUSTRALIA.
Your words are giving me courage to face obstacles and failures.
-Mrs. Gaby Fritsch, France.
Swami Sivananda is a prolific writer of faith and illumination. He wants peace and happiness all over the earth. He is a believer in the merits of rhythm and harmony in the world. In all religions he finds that God is approached through love, devotion and fellowship. He concentrates on the philosophy behind religions and finds the same philosophy of love and truth I find the book (“World’s Religions”) compelling and transforming.
“THE NEW DEMOCRAT”, 11th Jan. 1948.
BOOKS OF SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA
Diamond Jubilee Commemoration volume
Philosophy and Teachings
Concentration and Meditation
Lives of Saints-Vol. II
Lord Siva and his Worship
Ethical Teachings
Philosophy and Yoga in Poems
Gyana Yoga
Wisdom Sparks
Light Fountain
Spiritual lessons
Siva, the Prophet of the New Age
Illuminating stories
Mind its Mysteries and Control-
Part II
Principal Upanishads-Part II
Uttara Yogi
Sayings of Sivananda
Siva Gita (Swamiji’s Autobiograhy,
Illustrated)
Sage of Ananda Kutir
Sivananda, the Perfect Master Necessity for Sannyas
World’s Religions
Philosophy and Meditation on OM
Mind, its Mysteries and Control-Part I
Sangeeta Lila Yoga
Pushpanjali
Saint Sivananda
Yoga Asana
Siva Lilas
Brahmacharya Drama
Philosophical Stories
Sangeeta Bhagawat
Gita, the Universal Gospel
Saint Alavandar
Stotra Pancharatna
Light, Power and Wisdom Treasure of Teachings Gita Series (Three books) Ten upanishads 0. S. Series Ken Series (Six books) Radha’s Prem Advice to Women Bhakti Rasamritam Philosophy in Humour_ Vedanta for Beginners Yoga of Synthesis Pearls of Wisdom
Upanishads for Busy People Divi e Life Drama
Yoga Asan Chart
Psychic Influence
Upanishad Drama Sivananda Vijaya
My Master
Gospel of Swami Sivananda
Essence of Yoga
Essence of Bhakti Yoga
Story of an eminent Yogi
Hindu Fasts and Festivals
Urdu Books.
Mira Bai Ki Kahani
Zina-I-yoga
Talib Iim (Education)
Brahmacharya Drama
Yoga Asan & Pranayam
Asthic Nasthic Samwad
Telugu Books
Yoga Asanamulu Mukti Margama
Canarese
Japa Yoga
Gayatri Dyan
Gujarati
Bhakti & Sankirtan
Tamil
Sivananda Jyoti
*Sivananda Vijaya
BOOKS IN PRESS.
Brahma Sutras (with Sri Swami Sivananda’s lucid commentary)
Women’s Light & Guide (Edited by Yogi. Srimati Liliane Shamash of London)
Biography of Swami Sivananda (By Sri Sivagyan, B. A.. M. S. G. S.)
Sivananda-The Enlightened. (By Sri Kaviratna T. N. V. Rajan, M. S. G.S.)
All about Hinduism (By Sri Swami Sivananda) Vedanta Jyoti (By Sri Swami Sivananda)
Photographs
Inspiring Photographs of Sri Swami Sivananda, Sivanandanagar, Himalayan Scenery. Murli Manohar, ete, available now. Post Card size at As 6 each.
Lockets.
Enamel lockets of Sri Swamiji and Murli Manohar
Tricoloured locket of the crest of Divine Life
Each As. 6
As. 8
Silver locket (one side Sri Swamiji and other side Murli Manohar) Rs. 1/8
Available at:
The Sivananda Publication League,
P.O. ANANDA KUTIE,
LISHIKESH. (HIMALAYAB)
THE DIVINE LIFF
In Four Vernaculars!
ENGLISH! HINDI! KANARESE! MALAYALAM!
A real boon to all! Of great value to those devotees and aspirants who long to let their families, children and friends share the Divine Light spontaneously shed from the ever-effulgent Siva! Enrol yourselves immediately!
“English Edition-The Divine Life-Published by “The Divine Life Society, Ananda Kutir, Rishikesh,” the Headquarters of the Society, is running its eleventh year of service to humanity. A source of incalculable inspiration to all aspirants all over the world. Annual Subscription Rs. 3.”
Hindi Edition-Sattvie Jeevan-is already under circulation since January, 1949. Excellent Get-up: containing page-to-page translation of the simultaneous issues of THE DIVINE LIFE in English. Annual Subscription, Rs. 3/-Single copy: As.-/5/-Published by Sri Kashiram Gupta, Director, General Printing Works Ltd., 83, Old China Bazaar St., Calcutta 1.
Kanarese Edition-Already out on the 1st of April: Attractive get-up! Containing choicest selections from the inspiring and elevating writings of Sri Siva. Annual Subscription, Rs. 2/-Published by Sri V. L. Nagaraja, Secretary, the Divine Life Society, Tasker Town, Bangalore.
Malayalam Edition-Sri Siva’s Gospel lucidly rendered into Malayalam, Published by Sri R. Viswanathan, Calicut (Malabar), who the Divine Life Society branch, B.A Secretary is also the Editor of a prominent English Weekly, THE CHAMPION, Calicut.
HAVE YOU EVER HEARD SIVA?
Have you ever heard Siva, your beloved friend and guide and loving Guru? Well, even if he is not your Guru or even if you have seen him and talked to him, do you wish to bear him again the distinguished and well-recognised Spiritual Genius of India-and, more Bo, whenever and as many times you please, irrespective of physical distance that is between you and him? Do you wish to be cheered up, soothed and solaced in times of your distress and affliction by Siva’s sweet. Envigorating, powerful and enchanting songs and Kirtans in Samskrit, Hindi and English? Do you wish Siva to speak to you yes, to you indeed-and give you most-needed counsel at times of dilemma when you yourself do not know what to do and what not to do? Well! Here is a treat for you-Siva’s choicest gramophone records.
Self-realization-Speech in English
Govinda Jaya Jaya-Somkirtan in Hindi
H004
Song of Divine Lite-English
H008
Song of a Karma Yogin-English
Message of Freedom Speech in English Song of Viraha-English
Variety of Kirtans
DLR17
(In two parts) Samskrit and Hindi
DLR23
Sangeeta Ramayna (In six pa-ts)-English
DLR14,15,16
Price Rs. 4/ each: Complete Aet (23 records) Rs. 80/-
The Sivananda Publication League, Ananda Kutir P.O., Rishikesh (Himalayas)-
THE DIVINE LIFE MEMBERSHIP SUPPLEMENT
In response to requests from several devotees, it is decided that The Divine Life Membership Supplement will be henceforth Available to non-members as well, on payment of the annual subscription, Rs. 27. Such subscribers to the Supplement will. By no means be counted as members of the Divine Life Society Subscrip ions are payable in advance.
Secretary, THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY, Rishikesh.
HIMALAYAN DIVYAMRIT
The Sivananda Ayurvedic Pharmacy, Rishikesh.
Chandra Prabha occupies a unique position in the Ayurvedie system of medicine. Not merely minerals but a fair proportion of the potent Himalayan herbs also gu to make this most popular medicine That is why cur ancients have declared that “Chandra Prabha” is an unfailing remedy for a number of disease viz., bodily and mental weaknesses diabetes piles, urinary diseases, of all kinds, stone in bladder, weakness of the heart, all rheumatic pains, etc. This is very useful for students with weak memory. This is a patent tonic, and even healthy person could take this with advantage for health, strength, vigour and vitality.
Direction for Use: One pill both morning and evening with lukewarm seer of fresh milk or water. Before commencing the course it is advisable to have a purgative. Chilles, oil, sour, jaggery are to heavo ded For healthy persons one pill is sufficient at bed time with lukewarm milk or water. Price Rs. 2/per tola (price of bottles and packing and forwarding charges extra): available in one and two tola bottles
Chyavanprash is also one of the foremost and most efficacions medicines in Ayurvedic Sastra It is prepared out of rare Himaliyan herbs and other genuine ingredients. Regular use of this most wonderful medicine bestows good health and longevity, abundant energy, vim, vigour and vitality. If is a very effective tonie for wasting diseases like T. B., and highly useful during convalescence It increases brain power, bestows wonderful memory and helps to increase the power of concentration: improves digestive power and purifies the blood; invigorates the vocal system; cures urinary and lungs troubles.
Method of Use: One spoon full to be taken in the early morning immediately followed by half a seer or warm fresh milk or water. Price: (in tins of and I seer) Rs. 2/8 and 10/-.)
Brahmacharya Sudha is an unfailing sovereign
Remedy for wet dreams and all kinds of urinary diseases,
Removes weakness and bestows wonderful physical and
Mental strength, improves memory, vigour and vitality.
1. Prepared under expert medical consultation.
2. Prescription taken from authoritative books on Ayurveda.
3. A boon to those who have wasted much of their vital energy by any means.
4. Made from pure ilimalayan herbs of unfailing potency.
5. Bestows new vigour, strength and hope to the hopeless youngsters as well as elders.
Method of use: 3 mashes or tola of the medicine to be mixed in one chattok or 2 ounce of cold milk and taken; then drink 3 chattak or 6 oz of milk immediately. The medicine should be taken just before sunrise and after sunset. Before commencing the course bowels should te thoroughly cleansed by taking purgative. When one is suffering from fever or any other disease except les of vitality this medicine should not be used till that is cured. People suffering from, Syphilis or Gonorrhoea will not benetit much from this medicine. Medicine should be taken in empty stomach i. E. Before morning break-fast and evening supper, In chronic cases the course of treatment should be extended to 40 days. Take only rice, bread (of wheat), moongh-ki-dal (green-gram) milk and fruits. (very little salt can be added if nec necessary). Avoid completely dulgence, chillies, onions, tea, coffee and all sexual in intoxicants during treatment. Tamarind, sweets, smokine, eggs, meat, oil, jaggery are also prohibited during the treatment
Precautions: After passing urine wash the organ with cold water. Use wet koupeen before going to bed. Always sleep on left side. Sleep on coarse mattress. Do 3 mala of japa before going to bed.
Other Benefits: Besides stopping wet dreams Brahmacharya Sudha increases vitality, improves brain power purifies blood, increases digestive power and makes liver and lungs function properly. Available in ONE rupee & T NO rupees packets containing 2 and 4 tolas respectively.
Other Medicines prepared in the Pharmacy are:
Pure Shilajit (Price Rs. 2/5/and 10/-), Brahmi Amla Medicated Oil (Rs. 4/pertin), Dantarakshak Tooth-powder (in packets of As. 4 and As. 8 and in tins of Rs. ¼ each), Brahmi Buti (in packets of As. 8 and Re. 1/-, BMK Trichoorna (in packets of As 4 and As. 8) and Kshudha Vardhak (in packets of As. 8 and Re 1/-)
PADA-RAKSHAK MALAM
This ointment is very effective for treating fissurefoot. Painful cracks and slits in the soles, especially around the edge of the heels and beneath the toes get healed quickly with a few applications of PADARAKSHAN MALAM. Due to PITTA or Bile, Ushnata or excessive heat and also due to extreme cold during winter very painful cracks appear in the feet, sometimes with bleeding. You find it difficult to walk or even put on shoes. PADA-RAKSHAK MALAM stops bleeding. Fills in and heals the cracks and tissues rike magic. It ends the pain at once. An invaluable and extremely useful product made from purely natural herbal ingredients.
(UNDER PREPARATION)
Por particulars please apply to:
The Sivananda Ayurvedic Pharmacy Rishikesh.