Dr. Devaki Kutty Mataji Gurudev’s Letters to Dr. Devaki Kutty Mataji 2nd July 1953 OM Namo NarayanayaAdorable, Immortal SelfSalutations and adorations I am thankful to you for all your kindness. You took so much pain in going over here and did very noble service in relieving the sufferings of women who were ailing in silence. A good record. I humbly pray you will be graciously pleased to do such acts in future every year. Cordial greetings. Kindly write to me direct in future. I am not a big Swami. I am a simple sevak (servant) of humanity, very easily approachable by all. Become angry with anger itself, because anger does the greatest mischief. There is no enemy worse than anger. Glad to know you have made great progress in self-restraint. Purify. Meditate. Unfold the Divinity. This is thy foremost duty. Dharma is the gateway of Moksha. A meditative life contributes to the supreme illumination. May Lord bless you with health, long life, peace, prosperity and bliss eternal. Om Tat Sat. Thy Own Self,With regards, Prem and OmSivananda Dr. Devaki Kutty-A Legend In Her Own Life Time (Sri Swami Chidananda) Worshipful homage to the Eternal and Infinite Supreme Universal Spirit, the Param-Atma. This is a tribute to Dr. Devaki Kutty, my spiritual sister due to her discipleship to our most revered Guru Bhagavan, H.H. Parampujya Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. This special tribute is upon her completing her 75th Birthday Anniversary on 8th October 1998. But, if she told someone she was 75 years old, they would immediately retort, “Impossible! Don’t pull my leg! Tell me truly, what is your age?” Because, in her appearance Dr. Kutty belies her age. No one would believe that she is even a day older than the early sixties. She is a slim, trim and active person who even today puts in a 5-6 hours work schedule 6 days in a week from 8 am to almost 2 pm in the women section of her Gurudev’s Sivananda Charitable Hospital at Sivananda Ashram, on the sacred banks of holy river Ganga near Rishikesh. She is something of a mini-phenomenon in her own personality and daily activities. All religions in our human world believe that God, the Supreme Universal Spirit, is an ocean of compassion. God is the all-merciful, says the Holy Koran. He is ever gracious. He is infinite Love. These are the terms by which scriptures refer to God. He rescues those who are in danger. He is the reliever of pain and suffering. He removes the distress of those who are in distress. He is solace and hope to those in grief and despair. He is all these and much more. Therefore, the sorely afflicted beings fervently pray to the Lord for succour. He is the answer to our prayers. He is the one Being to whom we can turn when we have no one else to turn to. This is the truth. This is also the fact. However, in this world of human beings the Supreme Universal Spirit does not personally come down and attend to all our aches and pains and problems and life’s complications. It is only upon very very rare occasions, when some extremely grave situation arises in this world, that we hear of an incarnation taking place in order to set right such a situation by doing the needful at that critical juncture. Otherwise it is the divine plan that He manifests His divine grace, compassion and active help by and through chosen human agencies and instruments, that have proved worthy of being thus used as channels by their exemplary lives and their exceptional character, conduct and their noble and benign nature. Dr. Devaki Kutty Mataji is one such worthy person, whom the Lord Almighty decided to make a channel and an instrument for the manifestation of His kindness, compassion, solace and succour. He chose her as an instrument for the active expression of His healing, curing and pain relieving grace. He made her a super person par excellence for presiding over His work of creating new life in this human world. He blessed her with great skill in the field of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. Thus, she became well known as a top surgeon and an expert maternity specialist in the greater part of North India in Uttar Pradesh as well as in several neighbouring States. Countless couples flocked to the King George’s Hospital where she worked as well as to her residence on Jagat Narayan Road in Lucknow. They were prepared to wait for hours together for obtaining even 5 minutes of her personal professional attention. Hailing from Kerala, graduating from Madras Medical College, destiny made North India the field of her work. To her parents she was one among three sisters and two brothers, she being the eldest among the sisters. Her career took on a dual capacity as a member of the teaching staff of the Lucknow Medical College and at the same time as a member of the medical staff in the King George’s Hospital. Soon she became well known both for her academic as well as for her Hospital work. Her parents decided to live with her, because she had determined to be single in order to dedicate herself totally to her dual work as mentioned above. While living thus, a wish arose in her to take her parents on a pilgrimage to holy Badrinath in the Himalayas during her annual leave. In those days Dr. Kutty used to have an annual leave period of about 40 days. Little did she know that the wish in her mind was prompted by the Divine Indweller, Antaryami Bhagavan. For, the time had come for a transformation in her life. It was a moment of destiny in which she was to be blessed by a glance of grace from a towering spiritual personality of this Himalayan location. This great soul was no other than the saint and sage H.H. Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj of Muni-Ki-Reti, Sivananda Ashram, a couple

His Holiness Sri Swami Devananda Saraswati Maharaj G. Sannyasi (that was the pre-Sannyasa name of Swami Devananda) was born on the 19th of June, 1937 (Eswarnama Samvatsar Jyestha Shuklapaksha Ekadasi Day), in a pious family in Andhra Pradesh. At a very young age he left home and joined Sri Brahmananda Ashram in Andhra Pradesh and took Sannyasa in 1954. For sometime he was in the holy Vyasashram, Yerpedu, near Tirupati and then came to Rishikesh in 1957. Swami Sivananda recognized the worth of this young Swami and took him for his personal service. Certainly it is the purva-punya (meritorious deeds of past births) of Swami Devananda that gave him this blessed and rare privilege of doing all sorts of personal service to Sri Gurudev, including menial service. This close and constant association with the sage had its unfailing effect on the young monk,–he automatically imbibed the divine virtues from Sri Gurudev, particularly of the gift of ‘giving’. His service to Sri Gurudev during the last days has earned him the special blessing of the master, which has made him what he is today. A man of self-effort and determination, coupled with devotion and application, he has made himself great in his own way. He is a master Sankirtanist, who can awaken and keep thousands spell-bound by his soulful Bhajans and Kirtans, and transport them to a different realm altogether, for which he is invited every year to Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. And recently he was chief organizer of the group of Sannyasins and Sadhaks who went from the Ashram on an All-India tour, in 1985, propagating the teachings of Sri Gurudev’s work into the Telugu language. His dedication to Sri Gurudev and his Mission is total and undivided. Swami Devanandaji Maharaj left for his heavenly abode at 10.20 am on 7th January 2000.

His Holiness Sri Swami Premananda Saraswati Maharaj A saint is generally said to have no pre-saint life. Once a person takes Sanyasa, he gives up all his earlier relationships, ‘burns’ as it were, all his previous samskaras (impressions) and that is the day of his new birth. However, it is difficult for even a sanyasin to renounce completely all his earlier samskaras, and it is equally the nagging curiosity of all his devotees. Since I happen to know something about the early days of Swami Premanandji Maharaj, the task of piecing together my reminiscences about him has been given to me. As a child he lived in a sprawling house at Balrampur where he was born. The house had two main divisions–inner and outer courtyards. The inner compound itself was so large that there were many trees, including a BEL tree with a low platform around. Near by the house was a graveyard and not faraway a cremation ground close to a small rivulet. This boy would often sit with closed eyes under the bel tree for long periods. As a student at the Balrampur school, he would often slip away with his books at the graveyard, or near the burning ghats. A large number of sadhus and wandering mendicants used to visit the house. The behaviour of the child was reported to them. One of them looked at him intently and said that this boy was a saint in his two previous lives. This remark, I am told, was later reiterated by the Most Revered Gurudev Swami Sivanandji Maharaj. Premananda Ji was born as Mahabir Prasad Saxena s/o Shri Shivprasadji and Smt Parvati at Balrampur on 7th May 1920 at about 4 a.m., in Brahma Muhurta. His father had lost several children in infancy and was worried that this boy might meet the same fate. He went to various saints and peers to seek their benedictions. One muslim peer relented and said the boy shall survive but the father will have to make a sacrifice. Shivprasadji agreed, and within a few days of the birth of the boy, his wife passed away. He was closely related to my maternal uncle, Munshi Kanhaiyalalji, whose wife took charge of the infant and they adopted the child as their own. After sometime the father also expired and Mahabir was reared by them as their own son along with their daughter, Sushita, who was born a few years later. About 10 km from Balrampur was a Buddhist pilgrimage of Seht Mehet. Mahabir was very fond of visiting that place and spent quite some time there all alone. Mahabir did well at school, and at college. My grandfather, Shri Gopal Sahai, was the diwan (Prime Minister) of the Balrampur Maharaja. My maternal uncle enjoyed great respect and by dint of his honest, truthful character occupied very responsible positions in the Raj. After doing his intermediate–(now we have 10+2+3)–Mahabir joined the Survey of India and later was selected as Naib Tehsildar (revenue official). At Balrampur he never missed the satsang at the place of Lala Babu which used to begin at 4 in the morning. It was here that he met Swami Sharnanandaji Maharaj and came under his spell. Shri Trimbakeshwarlal Srivastava of Balrampur was a great devotee and had much influence in shaping the devotional propensities of young Mahabir. When war broke he joined the Army in 1943 as havildar and by the time he left Army in 1952 he had risen to the rank of Non-Gazetted Officer. Back in Balrampur he was re-appointed as Naib Tehsildar and joined his first duty at tahsil–Tarasbganj in district Gonda, not far from Balrampur. It was during his army days; when he was posted at Delhi–when we came into closer contact with him as myself and my younger brother Balbir Sahai, used to go to Ramakrishna mission every Sunday, regularly. Mahabir would join us invariably. There we came in close contact with a number of saints. As my mother was ordained by the President Maharaj of the then Ramakrishna Mission at Belurmath, the mission saints had a soft corner for us and Swami Manglanandaji Maharaj was a frequent visitor to our place. Those days Swami Ranganathanand Ji Maharaj used to hold lectures on Srimad Bhagawatgita. He would sit motionless like a statue and sloka by sloka explain lucidly the hidden meaning and philosophical import of each, lacing his discourses with suitable quotations from the latest books on western philosophy. To listen to his talks was a remarkable experience and left an indelible impression upon us all and Mahabir must have imbibed a good philosophical grounding at that time. I had two volumes on Swami Ramtirtha, entitled, In the wood of God Realisation, published by Ganeshan & Co, Madras. The books contained the lectures by the great Swami in America and elsewhere. Mahabir lapped up both the volumes which made a deep impression on his mind. Similarly, he studied the works of Swami Vivekananda and Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. After his army days, Mahabir returned to Balrampur where thanks to his service in Armed Forces during the war, he was straightaway offered Naib-Tehsildar and soon was promoted as Tehsildar. His meticulous planning, relentless application and superb efficiency in whatever he does, I think has much to do with his military training. I had also returned to Balrampur when he was there and we again had good interaction. A number of saints used to visit our house regularly. Among them, the most important was Swami Palak Nidhiji Maharaj–‘pathik’. He was a poet of sorts and ‘pathik’ was his pseudoname. He would ask my brother, and Mahabir who has a mellifluous voice, to sing popular Film Songs. That rather astounded us but very soon we were able to divine the secret. He gave the collection of his poems, all in praise of the Lord, mentioning in bracket on the top ‘to be sung after the song…, from….film.’ That is how his prayers became very popular and were sung in many

Swami Sivananda-Hridayananda Born on the 18th of April 1914, in an orthodox and pious family of Perur, in Travancore (Kerala) State, she was known as Chellamma. She passed her Senior Cambridge examination privately and then had her Inter and M.B., B.S., combined course of 7 years at the Lady Hardinge College, Delhi. She was one of the brightest students and had won many prizes and medals. In 1942 she was appointed as Asst. Surgeon in the Govt. Opthalmic Hospital, Madras. Being very efficient, she got quick promotions and became the Civil Surgeon at the same hospital. In 1951 she resigned her job and took to private practice. She happened to buy a second-hand book of Swami Sivananda at the Moore Market, Madras, and when she saw the photo of the Swami in the book, she instantaneously felt that she had known him, intimately. That book possessed her and the same evening she had a vision of Swami Sivananda in her meditation, blessing her. Since then an inner transformation was taking place in her in spite of herself. In April 1955, she came on a short visit to Rishikesh, to have Darshan of Swami Sivananda. But Sivananda played the miracle. He asked her to do some service in the hospital and when the day of her return to Madras came she decided to stay on, for ever, at Rishikesh. On the holy Guru Purnima day in 1956, she was initiated into the sacred order of Sannyasa and given the name Swami Sivananda-Hridayananda. Swami Hridayananda being an eye specialist, Sri Gurudev asked her to start a regular Eye Hospital for the benefit of everyone, as the Sivananda Charitable Hospital that was serving the people then was not a systematic hospital. Simultaneously it so happened that one Capt. Srivatsava, who was also a great devotee of Sri Gurudev, became responsible for a substantial contribution by way of donation for the construction of an Eye Hospital, which became an added incentive to step up the work. Under the instruction of Sri Gurudev himself the work of building a regular Eye Hospital commenced and progressed by leaps and bounds. Swami Hridayananda became the Medical Officer of this service wing of the Ashram and within a few years she established such a name as an expert physician and surgeon that the reputation of the expert handling of cases in the hospital reached the ears of the officials of the Government in the State and the Centre, who were eager to assist our hospital by grants given by the Government. Swami Hridayananda was very personally associated with Sri Gurudev not only as a Medical Officer but as a personal assistant and personal physician. In addition to her medical career, she was also an ardent spiritual seeker who wrote articles, essays and even books on Sri Gurudev which was an expression of her aspiration and devotion to Sri Gurudev. She became very famous as a spiritual guide to many people and seekers who came to the Ashram and a very able physician and surgeon at the same time. This fame of Swami Hridayananda Mataji as a spiritual guide particularly brought her request from various parts of the country and even abroad. Invitations came from different places and one of them was from our revered Sri Swami Sahajanandaji Maharaj of Durban, South Africa, which invitation she accepted and went to South Africa. From South Africa she toured different parts of Europe and America, where she conducted extensive series of lectures and established certain centres for spiritual guidance. Finally she is now settled in Europe (France, Belgium and Holland), which is a delight and great satisfaction to seekers in those parts.

His Holiness Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda Saraswati Maharaj Swami Jyotirmayananda was born on the 3rd of February, 1931 in a pious family in the state of Bihar. From his very childhood days he showed signs of his future greatness. He was calm and reflective, brilliant in his studies, as also loved by his friends and relatives. While he was studying in the Science College of Patna, when he was 18 years of age, he had read Swami Sivananda’s book “Mind, Its Mysteries and Control.” This had captured him and When Swami Sivananda visited Patna during his All-India tour in September, 1950, he had Swamiji’s first Darshan at Patna. Then on his mind was drawn towards his Master more and more. Finally in 1952 he came to Rishikesh on a short visit, but stayed on permanently. Gurudev found that he is a good speaker and entrusted him with the work of conducting classes. He also held regular discourses, very frequently, during the evening Satsangas in the Ashram in the very presence of Sri Gurudev. After being granted Sannyasa by Sri Gurudev on the 3rd of February, 1954, he took to literary side of work more intensely and became the editor of the Hindi journal of the Society known as ‘Yoga-Vedanta’. This work he did exquisitely, in addition to conducting daily classes on scriptures such as the Yoga-Vasishtha in the Ashram’s Bhajan Hall, which many visitors attended with great love and concentration and interest. His exemplary life, great command of spiritual knowledge, love towards all beings, and his very impressive and dynamic exposition of Yoga and Vedanta Philosophy attracted enormous interest all over India, and in different countries of the world. He frequently lectured by invitation at All India Vedanta Conferences in Delhi, Amritsar, Ludhiana and other parts of India. Thus he continued the work of editing the ‘Yoga-Vedanta’ journal and conducting the scriptural classes until 1962, when on an invitation from a well-wisher of him he travelled to the West. Crossing Europe, he stayed for several years in Puerto Rico and in 1969 he shifted his centre to Miami in the United States where he has established a Publishing Centre and a systematically working Yoga Research Foundation, he himself being a very good writer and speaker.

His Holiness Sri Swami Satchidananda Saraswati Maharaj Ramaswamy, as he was named by his parents, was born on the 22nd December, 1914, as the second son of a very devout couple Sri Kalyanasundaram and Smt. Velammai, at Chettipalayam, Tamilnadu. After pursuing a highly successful business career, he gave up worldly life on the death of his wife. He visited many sacred places of pilgrimage, stayed in Ashrams with holy saints like Sadhu Swamigal, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Chidbhavananda and Sri Ramana Maharshi, and finally arrived at Rishikesh in 1949 and met Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj upon which he felt he has reached his final destination and his Guru. He was initiated into the holy order of Sannyasa by Swami Sivananda giving him the monastic name of Swami Satchidananda, on the 10th of July, 1949. In February, 1951, Sri Gurudev asked him to undertake an All-India Tour, during which he gave lectures, taught Yoga Asanas and organised Branches of the Divine Life Society. Knowing his ability in the work of management and also proficiency especially in Hatha Yoga, Swami Satchidananda was asked by Sri Gurudev to go to Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, to build up a centre of the Divine Life Society, in response to an ardent request by a lady called Swamy Satchidananda Mata. She was a very devoted lady and considered Gurudev as God himself. But she had not the ability to maintain the Centre being a lady herself and not very much acquainted with the knowledge of the Sastras, much less of Yoga. So Swami Satchidananda’s going there was a God-sent, and he actually fulfilled this pious wish of Sri Gurudev. Having seen that the Centres in Sri Lanka are raised to the status expected by Sri Gurudev, he moved further to the West until he established himself in the United States of America where he has his Yoga capital in Buckingham, Virginia. This Swami has also veritably worked a miracle in the West, and in one of the movies that he has produced he has portrayed the difficulties which he had to face in doing any good at all to people there as also the achievements which were to his credit by the grace of Sri Gurudev; because materialism, atheism and total non-acquaintance with the higher values of life etc., etc., were some of the negative sides which he had to face in Western youth especially, all which he handled very dexterously with his calm, quiet and poised nature, speaking slowly, powerfully, cogently and touchingly whatever be the disciples, students and enquirers that came to him for guidance. Today he has a vast Ashram with a land extended to some hundreds of acres where he has recently built a temple of all faiths, called the LOTUS (Light of Truth Universal Shrine), which is the work of several years of many people’s cooperation and thinking under his guidance. The construction of this was completed recently and inauguration of it was done in July 1986 in a most grand manner attended by many dignitaries both in the West as well as in the East. Swami Satchidananda is also a staunch devotee of Sri Gurudev though he stands by himself, on his own legs, in reputation as well as material security. He is one of the stalwarts who succeeded to the point of perfection in carrying the message of Sri Gurudev, in the West.

His Holiness Sri Swami Satyananda Saraswati Maharaj Swami Satyananda was a teenager, a little boy, when he came to the Ashram, but very active and proficient in Hatha Yoga right from the beginning. Many were the departments of the Ashram in which he rendered service, particularly during the later days in the Hindi department of the Ashram. He edited the Hindi journal and wrote articles and was proficient even in composing poems in Hindi and Sanskrit, language; very active and tireless in his service. One of the great contributions of his, which is to be remembered for all times, is the hard work that he did in bringing about a translation and commentary in the English language of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by Sri Gurudev. He was actively connected with this work and, but for his struggle day and night in seeing to it that the manuscript was made ready, the book would not have actually come out. He was solely responsible, one may say, for the coming out of this book–the commentary on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of Sri Gurudev. Later on, he left the Ashram on an inner feeling of establishing himself separately in a secluded place and he found himself somehow landed in Bihar, a place called Monghyr, where devotees somehow recognised some value and worth and intrinsic merit in him, collaborated with him and the result was a very magnificent well-planned Institution of Yoga teaching, which became the venue for imparting instructions not only to hundreds of seekers in India, but also countless seekers came from the West, many of whom took Sannyasa, under Swami Satyananda. He did such active and intensive work in the field of Yoga that his name is known in many places even in the West as a very competent and effective teacher of Yoga and the way of spiritual life. Now he is retired and has handed over the active work of his Ashram to an assistant of his.

His Holiness Sri Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati Maharaj Known as Balakrishnan, he was born of noble parents at Ernakulam (Kerala) on the 8th of May, 1917. The rigidity of the family daily routine of worship, lasting for quite a few hours, became part and parcel of the mental and moral make-up of the young lad. And, added to this, he had the rare chance of coming under the influence of his family-Gurus who were saintly souls. Right from young age he had the inquiring mind which critically questioned everything. He was equally brilliant in his studies and emerged out of the Lucknow University as a Master of Arts. Like many of the highly learned youths who find themselves in a dilemma as to what to do with life when they come out of the universities, Balakrishnan too was assailed by doubts with conflicting ideologies. But providence guided him properly; he studied the great works of Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo and others, and found his way to his Master, Swami Sivananda. Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj knew that he was an exceptionally gifted person and entrusted him with conducting a Gita Committee, as Gurudev called it, which consisted of some members,–the members being Sri Balakrishna Menon (Swami Chinmayananda), Swami Krishnananda, a very learned philosopher from Bihar called Sri Nanda Kishore Srivastava, etc. He used to conduct classes in the Ashram, now and then. He was ordained into Sannyasa by Sri Gurudev on 25th February, 1949 to pursue further studies of scriptures under Swami Tapovanamji Maharaj, in Uttarakashi where he stayed with the great Master studying Panchadasi and other Vedanta Texts as well as Upanishads. Having mastered these texts, Swami Chinmayananda started his own Jnana Yajna Mission and moved from corner to corner of India conducting Gita Yajna classes, Upanishad classes and discourses on the scriptures, which earned him great reputation as an extraordinary orator and a masterly exponent of India’s culture, its literary heritage and scriptural lore. Swami Chinmayananda has also travelled to the West many a time. He has Centres in various places in India and also abroad. Today he is one of the world-figures who have hoisted the flag of India’s spiritual heritage not only in this country but also in the other countries of the world. Swami Chinmayananda returned to God’s heavenly abode on August 3, 1993.

His Holiness Sri Swami Vishnudevananda Saraswati Maharaj Born on the 31st of December, 1927, he was known as Kuttan Nair. He hails from Kerala, where he had his school education. After completing school, he was engaged in teaching for sometime, after which he joined the Indian Army. While searching for a misplaced paper, he happened to lay his hand on a pamphlet entitled ‘Sadhana Tattwa’ by Swami Sivananda. The practical instructions in that pamphlet attracted him to Sivananda. He took leave, went to Rishikesh and had Darshan of Swamiji. Subsequently he visited the Ashram a few times and finally when he came to the Ashram in 1947 to attend the Diamond Jubilee of Swami Sivananda, the Master told him, “Stay here,” and he stayed. The Master initiated him into the holy order of Sannyasa, on the sacred Mahasivaratri, in February 1949, and gave him the name Swami Vishnudevananda. When he entered the Ashram he was specially interested in the Hatha Yoga techniques, knowledge of which he brought with him even when he came from Kerala. The Master, knowing his abilities, made him the Professor of Hatha Yoga in the Forest Academy of the Ashram which was the only work he did for several years. It was during a period of absence from the Headquarters of Swami Madhavananda, the Secretary, that Sri Gurudev nominated Swami Vishnudevananda as the Secretary of the Ashram, sometime in the year 1955-56. During those very hard days when the financial strength of the Ashram was not much, Swami Vishnudevananda worked hard not merely as a managing Secretary but took immense interest in seeing to it that a temple is built in the name of Sri Gurudev, called Sri Guru Mandir. He had to struggle hard to achieve this purpose which of course he completed. In the year 1957, devotees who were attached to him due to the teaching they got through him got interested in him to such an extent that they invited him to countries outside, which invitation he accepted with the permission of Sri Gurudev and went to Malaysia, Hong Kong and Japan and from Japan he went to America fixing his permanent Centre in Montreal, in Canada. He opened other Centres in the United States and also several other Yoga Centres in Europe. Today Swami Vishnudevananda is a very well-known name and his work is of international reputation and very few in the field of Yoga in the world would be unacquainted with the name of Swami Vishnudevananda. He has also a Centre in India in Nayyardam near Trivandrum, South India. Swami Vishnudevananda is a very simple man, though, like a magician, he worked a miracle in the West, where tirelessly he worked to bring together many complex elements, group of devotees and participants in his work. He maintained a simplicity of his own and almost not caring for himself, only caring for the welfare of his mission and his devotees. He lives the life of a desireless, unselfish and simple man, working very hard vigorously for sometime and completely severing himself from work at other times and rushing back to the Himalayan peaks, Uttarakashi and Gangottari often times for retreat and personal prayer and meditation. He has taken several rounds of trip through the world and through India in the name of Sri Gurudev and it is a great praiseworthy quality of his that even after earning such a reputation as a Yoga Teacher throughout the world, even today he considers himself as the humble servant of the great master Swami Sivananda and never does he forget to mention the name of the Master when he speaks whether in Satsangas, retreats, seminars or conferences. He is an extremely good person, simple to the core, very hard working and immensely devoted to the name of Sri Gurudev and his Mission.

His Holiness Sri Swami Madhavananda Saraswati Maharaj Born on the 15th of December 1917, and known as Karunanidhi, he hails from Andhra Pradesh. As he lived in both the outskirts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, he is very conversant with the atmosphere of both the States and knows Telugu and Kannada languages. When Karunanidhi arrived at the Ashram, he found that revered Sri Gurudev was away upon his “All-India Spiritual Awakening Tour”. He was cordially received by Swami Krishnananda who was the in-charge of the Ashram during the absence of Gurudev and all the other office-bearers. He awaited Gurudev’s return and met him for the first time on 8th November, 1950. It would appear that right at this first brief meeting and talk Gurudev immediately recognised his potentialities. Very surprisingly and to the wonder of many people, Sri Gurudev at once gave him the work of the Cashier of the Ashram. Those were very hard days as the funds were almost nil, and it was not easy for anyone to perform the duties of the Cashier. Karunanidhi as a Cashier, prior to his being ordained a Sannyasin, spent very difficult times of course with shop-keepers who were creditors of the Ashram. But with his calm, quiet and reticent nature he managed his little function of the Cashier those days very well. Recognising his spiritual worth, Sri Gurudev gave him Sannyasa within months of his arrival, i.e., on Mahasivaratri, the 6th of March, 1951 and named him Swami Madhavananda. After two or three years of his service as a Cashier, he was appointed by Gurudev by nomination as a Secretary, which, of course, increased the weight of the work he had to perform. This position of responsibility he ungrudgingly accepted and immediately commenced this performance spread over a wide area of the different departments of the Institution. Not only this; together with the responsibilities as Secretary, he took upon himself, of his own accord, the additional burden of supervising the construction works of the Ashram, sheerly with the intention of seeing that there is no wastage of any kind and the building works are efficiently carried on in the interest of public good. Those were days when the Ashram was inordinately hard-pressed with inadequacy of financial resources and the work of the Secretary was indeed not a happy job. It was something which would wear out anyone and fatigue even a strong personality. The Swami indeed worked very hard and steered the course of The Divine Life Society’s functions at the Headquarters during those difficult days when the income side of the Institution was hardly worth mentioning. There were many occasions when it looked that it was difficult for the Ashram to make both ends meet and one could not predict the fate of the Ashram the next day. Such was the nature of the problem created by the financial stress. Swami Madhavananda did indeed bear the brunt of the pains that an Executive of the Institution would have to undergo under such circumstances. The entire saga of the history of the Ashram at its Headquarters during those years would speak eloquently of the sacrifice which the Swami personally did, as the times required, without rest and without even adequate sleep. The several years of such strenuous work naturally told upon his system, particularly the condition of his heart, which called for special attention by way of medical treatment. All this did not deter the Swami from continuing his Seva to the Institution, and it, indeed, did not cease at any time. At the same time, he is a very religious type of person, meticulously following a daily routine of prayer and worship for several hours. He is a reserved type of person who minds his own business, as one may say, not interfering and unconcerned with anything in the world, except whatever work is entrusted to him, and always confined to his own Kutir of prayer and worship. Swami Madhavananda was elected as the Treasurer of the Divine Life Society in August 1963, soon after the Mahasamadhi of the Master. And in due recognition of his glorious services, he was elected as the Vice-President of the Divine Life Society, in the year 1975, which position he continues to hold till this day. This was really as it ought to have been, considering not only his elderly personality but also the intense sincerity with which he has always been identifying himself with the Ashram’s spiritual ideals, the amiableness of his nature and the goodness of his hearth to mention only a few of the exemplary characters which are embodied in his person.