Swami Sivanada Saraswati
7 Jul 2021 HYN Himalayan Yoga Academy
Swami sivananda Saraswati (1887–1963), a great yoga master also known as Dr. Kappuswamy. He was born on September 8,1887,in the south Indian state of Tamilnadu. He had religious parents . He was kind hearted and thoughtful person since childhood .He was very active and fast learner in both academics and gymnastics. He attended medical school in Tanjore, where he achieved high marks in all his classes. He was tremendously hardworking and never went home during the holidays. He was first in all subjects. He possessed more knowledge than the doctors with the covetable degrees, and in the first year itself, he could answer the papers which the students of final year could not. He started a medical journey called ` the ambrosia’
.Upon graduation, He practiced medicine and worked for the british Malaya (Malaysia) for 10 years. He worked vary hard. Dr Kappuswamy was kind ,sympathetic, humorous , witty, and sweet speaking. Everywhere people said that he had a special gift from the god for his miraculous cure effected on the patient, was often willing to care a patient for free or to pay for the treatment himself. This was the beginning of his life service. Among his patients ,were many of local sadhus (holy men) and sanyasins (reununciates) . It was one of the sadhus who game him a spiritual book called “Jiva Brahma Aikyam”.which ignited his interest in spirituality .In his free time ,He started searching all the spiritual books he could find and began to read the books of Swami vikananda ,Swami Rama Tirtha as well as making time for regular prayers, asanas practice.in time, he had a profitable medical practice but he felt that , to develop the sprituality on him he needed to make this his first priority. Then ,He returned to india spent a year wandering before settling in rishikesh Himalayas in1924.There he practiced intense austerities and found his guru, Swami Viswananda who gave his monaistic name ,and was initiated into sannyas .Swami shivananda wrote the necessary instructions about Sannyas dharma from benares .Swami shivanandaji stayed at sworga ashram for sadhana. He spent more than 12 hours in daily meditation in a small hut ,infester with scorpions, protected him form sun and rain. Living in that hut ,he did intense tapas(austerities),observed silence and fasted. With all his intense tapas, swamiji didn`t neglect service of the sick .He visited the huts of sadhus with medicine, served them and cared them .not only this he even begged for the food on their behalf anf fed them with his own hand .With some money in his insurance policy ,he started a charitable dispensary at lakshmanjula in 1927.He served the pilgrims and saw narayana in them.
After the year intense and unbroken sadhana ,he enjoyed the bliss of Nirvikalpa Samadhi .He had came to the end of his spiritual journey.Shivananda founded a divine life society in 1936 in the bank of ganges river,distributing spiritual knowledge for free,with the main aim of dessimination of spiritual knowledge and selfless service of humanity.In 1945,he created the Sivananda Ayurvedic pharmacy ,and organized the all –world Religions federation.He established all world sadhus federation in 1947 and the Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy in 1948. Writing became sivanand`s next mission.For him gift of knowledge is greatest gift of all.Sivananda continued this mission until the end of his life ,publishing more than 200 books on all aspects of yoga.Swami sivananda wrote all his books in English which enabled him to reach the largest audience around the world.In this way swami sivananda spread the light of divine knowledge to all four corners of the earth .
Swami Sivananda`s Yoga ,which he has significantly called the `Yoga of Synthesis’, combining four Yoga’s of Hinduism(Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga, Jnana yoga, Raja yoga)for action ,devotion ,knowledge and meditation repectively.
On the 14 july 1963 ,the Great Soul Swami Sivananda entered Mahasamadhi or the Departure of the Enlightened soul in his kutir on the bank of ganges in Sivanandanagar