7 Jul 2021 HYN Himalayan Yoga Academy
Swami Sivananda Saraswati is a great yoga master also known as Dr. Kappuswamy. Born on September 8, 1887, in the south Indian state of Tamilnadu, he had religious parents. He was a kind-hearted and thoughtful person since childhood. He was a very active and fast learner in both academics and gymnastics.
In Tanjore, he attended medical school where he achieved high marks in all his classes. A tremendously hard worker who never went home during the holidays. He was first in all subjects. He possessed more knowledge than the doctors with the covetable degrees. In the first year itself, he could answer the papers which the students of the 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. Dr Kappuswamy was kind, sympathetic, humorous, witty, and sweet speaking. Everywhere people said that he had a special gift from god for his miraculous cure affected for 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 local sadhus (holy men) and sannyasins (renunciates). It was one of the sadhus who gave 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. Then, he began to read the books of Swami Vivekananda, and Swami Rama Tirtha. He also made time for regular prayers and asanas practice. He had a profitable medical practice but he felt that to develop his spirituality on him he needed to make this his priority. Then, he returned to India and spent a year wandering before settling in the Rishikesh Himalayas in 1924. There he practiced intense austerities and found his guru, Swami Viswananda who gave him his monastic name, and was initiated into sannyasi.
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, infested with scorpions, that protected him from 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 the service of the sick. He visited the huts of sadhus with medicine, served them, and cared for them. Not only this he even begged for the food on their behalf and fed them with his 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 a year of intense and unbroken sadhana, he enjoyed the bliss of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. He had come to the end of his spiritual journey. Sivananda founded a divine life society in 1936 on the bank of the Ganges River. He distributed spiritual knowledge for free, with the main aim of eliminating spiritual knowledge and selfless service of humanity.
In 1945, he created the Sivananda Ayurvedic pharmacy and organized the all–world Religions Federation. He established the World Sadhus Federation in 1947 and the Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy in 1948. Writing became Sivananda’s next mission. For him, the gift of knowledge is the 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’, combines four Yoga of Hinduism (Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga, Jnana yoga, Raja yoga)for action, devotion, knowledge, and meditation respectively.
On 14 July 1963, the Great Soul Swami Sivananda entered Mahasamadhi, or the Departure of the Enlightened Soul in his Kuti on the bank of Ganges in Sivanandanagar