Divine Life Society

Divine Life Society

Swami Sivananda

When the Master left his job in Malaya and sailed for India, it was to seek God and find Him. When he gave away the last cent in Poona and began to wander as a mendicant, it was to surrender to God and be saved by Him. When he took Sannyas and practised intense austerities, it was to realise God and rest in Him. At no time during his Sadhana period did the Master even dream of starting an Ashram or founding a society.

But somewhere around the year 1930, he was gripped by a burning desire to serve the world. Driven by this desire, he came out of his seclusion in Swarg Ashram and entered the cities, mingling with the masses. There was a sparkle in his eyes, a fire in his speech. The Master, who cast a spell on the vast audiences at Sitapur and Lakhimpur, the Sankirtan Samrat, who sang and danced his way into the hearts of tens of thousands at Rawalpindi and Lahore and threw them into high ecstasy, left no one in doubt about him being a realised soul. When and where he attained illumination no one knew. It was a secret known only to him and to God.

Even after his God-realisation, the Master did not want to build an Ashram of his own. To spiritual aspirants who sought his guidance at that time, he said, “I am only a common Sadhu. I may not be able to help you much. Further, I do not make disciples. I can be your sincere friend till the end of my life. I do not like to keep aspirants by my side for a long time. I give lessons for a couple of months and ask my students to meditate in some solitary place in Kashmir or Uttarkashi.”

The Master did not desire to get entangled, either in training seekers of God, or in tours for spiritual propagation. No doubt he was eager to serve humanity, but his method then was the “lightning method”. He would take some places by storm, do intense propagation for a few days and rush back to Rishikesh. This became his routine.

In Swarg Ashram itself the Master saw a field for service awaiting him. It was not physical privation alone which afflicted the Swarg Ashram Sadhu community. Many of its members had left their hearth and home in a fit of dispassion, and now lived in a disorderly manner in the absence of someone to give them proper spiritual guidance. Many tortured the body in the name of austerity. Some took intoxicating drinks, fondly hoping to be thrown into Samadhi. Others just whiled away their time playing with pups and monkeys.

The Master felt that once the physical and spiritual needs of these Sadhus were taken care of and their confidence won, their energies could be channelised for their own upliftment and for public good. Prompted by these thoughts, he founded the Swarg Ashram Sadhu Sangh on August 24, 1933, to promote the spiritual welfare of the Sadhus, and to disseminate spiritual knowledge widely. The Master now felt that as a first step towards reorganising the Sadhus into a community of useful citizens, he should train a batch of them on proper lines. The desire to serve the world thus forced him to accept disciples. But as their number increased, the Swarg Ashram management found it difficult to maintain them all. For the Master it now became necessary to choose between Swarg Ashram and training of his disciples. He opted for the latter.

On January 17, 1934, the Master moved to the right bank of the Ganges with four disciples. Before leaving Swarg Ashram he handed the management of Satya Sevashram Dispensary to one Swami Jnanananda, who also had been a doctor in his pre-Sannyas days.

From the day that he thus set foot on the right bank of the Ganges as an independent Sannyasin with disciples of his own, the Master’s life of service took on an unparalleled dynamism. He began to act in different directions with the air of a man who knew his mission in life. Within weeks he succeeded in securing from the Maharaja of Tehri Garhwal some land for constructing an Ashram. In the meantime, the Master and his disciples found on the Ganges bank itself, what looked like an abandoned cowshed. To them it was more than a palace, for it had four rooms. The Master occupied one, another was set up as a dispensary, and the remaining two were occupied by the disciples. They called it “Ananda Kutir”, the “Abode of Bliss”. This was in March 1934.

Soon they found more cowsheds, vacant but uninhabitably filthy with hay and cow-dung. They cleaned them up and occupied them.

“It was all East Indian Company style!” quipped the Master years later. “We just got into those huts and they were ours!” In one room an old cowherd was living, but he, too, left after a year.

Now earnest seekers after Truth, who had taken the Master as their Guru, and who visited Rishikesh regularly for his Darshan, volunteered to build some Kutirs on the land granted by the Tehri ruler. The first to do so was Hari Ganesh Ambekar, a retired teacher from Nagpur. Then followed another devotee, Srimati R. Lall, wife of a high railway official. Others also arrived and the Master was encouraged. His mood was reflected in a letter he wrote on August 4, 1934:

“Brahmachari Siva Rao is welcome. Greetings to him. I shall serve him. This body is meant for the service of all aspirants. I will attend on him carefully and guide him for quick spiritual progress. You can send any number of sincere aspirants. Here I have created a big field. All can evolve.”

Some years later, one of the Master’s disciples, Het Ram Aggarwal, a doctor returned from London, observed, “In September 1937, we met Swamiji at Ananda Kutir and dined with him in the small kitchen. The room was ill-ventilated, full of smoke and very uncomfortable, yet Swamiji’s love was so overpowering that we completely forgot all those inconveniences.”

In those early days the Master himself kept the accounts. He joined his disciples in preparing packets of spiritual literature for despatch. Every day they worked far into the night tying the packets. If someone gave them Rs. 25, they used to sit up the whole night and get ready a pamphlet for printing. Three petromax lamps were burning in Ananda Kutir, when there was hardly enough food for all the inmates.

Slowly more people started joining the band. God opened up new avenues of service. He gave at the same time the instruments necessary to render that service. There was no self-will in the growth of the organisation at any time. It was all God’s Will. It is to the eternal credit of the Master that when the Sankalpa born out of his human will that no Ashram should be established and disciples accepted, was confronted by the Divine Will, which had it all otherwise, he did not rebel. On the other hand, he humbly accepted each new situation as it developed.

Said the Master later: “I never dreamt that God would ordain matters thus. Cutting off ties, I left my all, with a hazy idea of spending my life in a quiet, secluded spot, absorbed in repeating the sweet Name of Rama. But look now, the Lord has given me a ‘family’ which so dotes upon me that, whether I want it or not, it will have me for itself. Who knows, perhaps I am born for it. As long as anyone continues to derive one iota of benefit from this self, I am happy to be entirely his.”

In the first week of January 1936, the Master was on his way back to Rishikesh, after presiding over the Sankirtan Sammelan at Lahore. Bhagat Karam Chand, a well-known Punjabi devotee, also accompanied the Master’s party. As the train sped on, he requested the Master to break journey at Ambala. The Sankirtan-intoxicated Master laid down his condition: “Well, arrange for a week’s Akhanda Sankirtan immediately.”

Instantly came Bhagatji’s reply, “Please get down and we will have it started this very evening.” The Master detrained at Ambala Cantonment.

The people of Ambala cheered him lustily. The Master was well-known among the Punjabi devotees. Then began a week-long, non-stop chanting of Hari Nam, not just by a few but by thousands of men, women and children, most of them living on a restricted fruit diet during the period. The exemplary manner in which the non-stop mass Sankirtan was conducted for one full week attracted popular attention, not only in Ambala, but in the whole of Punjab.

It was in this atmosphere of sacred ecstasy that the Master all of a sudden remembered the Rs. 5000 whose interest he had been utilising on the Sadhus of Lakshmanjhula. He now wanted to utilise the capital itself to serve the world on a wider scale. Divine Will prompted him to start an institution to cater for the spiritual needs of his disciples, and to make an organised effort to spiritualise the whole country. He wanted to have a registered trust set up for the purpose. The same night, Ram Agarwal, a local lawyer, briefed him about the rules and regulations and a draft was made. The next morning, January 13, 1936, saw the birth of the Divine Life Trust at the Ambala Cantonment court.

The valuable work rendered by the Divine Life Trust in the first years of its inauguration made many people want to join it, but the Trust did not provide for a membership of more than eleven. So to enable all sympathisers of the divine life cause to work under one banner, the Master formed the Divine Life Society, and got it registered at Lahore on April 16, 1939.

It is significant that the world-wide spiritual organisation founded by the Master was christened by him in the most cosmopolitan, catholic and impersonal manner. He called it “Divine Life Society”, and not the “Sivananda Society”, or any other personalised name.

By 1940 the inmates of Ananda Kutir as well as the work had considerably increased. Ten years of intense activity, which had kept the Master on his toes all the time, and tossed him from one milling crowd to another while on tour, made him long for silence and seclusion. He therefore left the Ashram unnoticed on February 18, 1941.

Only ten days earlier the Master had almost forced two senior disciples to leave for Lahore on work which was not really urgent. After that there were only about ten inmates left in the Ashram, half of them being absolute newcomers. In a letter he left behind, the Master indicated that he wanted immediate rest. He also made appointments of the president and other office-bearers of the Divine Life Society. He wrote to the bank and the post office for transfer of accounts. He appealed to all the inmates to co-operate in implementing the new arrangements.

The grief-stricken disciples began to search for him along the banks of the Ganges and in the jungles. They advertised in the Ashram magazine, offering rewards to those who gave clues as to his whereabouts. They printed an appeal to the Master himself, beseeching him to return.

Later investigations revealed that the day the Master left the Ashram, he had gone to the post office in the morning and asked for Rs. 2. He had stood awhile, playing with the silver coins, tossing and spinning them, as any little boy would do. He had on his person a bare dhoti and an upper cloth. He was barefooted, too. In that condition, without taking even his spectacles and pen, he had left the place while the inmates were having their post-lunch siesta.

Some friends saw the Master at the Rishikesh toll-gate, but he remained silent and walked on. He spent a night in the Satyanarayan temple, midway between Rishikesh and Hariki-Pauri. The third day, after passing Jwalapur, he continued walking along the Ganges canal. Near Kankhal, at a place called Jagdishpur, while he was resting under a tree, he caught the attention of the villagers. One of them took him to his home. Nothing further is known about how he spent the next ten days. On the fourteenth day of his leaving the Ashram, the Master returned to Ananda Kutir in a car, escorted by his Jagdishpur host.

Soon afterwards, the Ashramites constructed an underground cave for the Master, who named it “Kaivalya Guha”, and used it for meditation. About the same time, he moved his residence from his own Ashram to a cottage on the Ganges bank belonging to Swarg Ashram.

As the work of the Divine Life Society slowly progressed, the Master began to realise the benefits that a good spiritual institution could confer on ailing humanity as well as on spiritual aspirants. He started to feel that such institutions were a boon to mankind. By 1947, his views about the mission of a Sadhu changed completely. In a letter that he wrote then to a disciple who approached him for advice the following lines were found:

“Have you a good library of spiritual books? Kindly have one. It will intensify and strengthen your work and centre. It will be a boon to the public. It will change the mind and turn it Godward. Gradually develop it. A good library is a centre of attraction. The work will grow ad infinitum. You are in need of good, able co-workers, selfless men who would dedicate themselves to this divine, exalted work. Many will come forward themselves and join you. Nature will arrange; the Lord will direct. This is the spiritual law. Let the work expand.

“A separate plot of land should be set apart for the construction of cottages by other persons, who will stay there permanently or occasionally. It would be a retreat for retired and retiring people, who will spend their time in meditation and service, either singly or with family. Provision should be made for this.

“A separate plot with cottages should be provided for Sannyasins. Good Sadhus or Sannyasins should ever dwell on the premises. They should conduct classes and Kathas. This is important. Boys must be trained in Gita recitation, prayer and Kirtan.”

In 1950, the Master was taken by his disciples on a tour of the country. A man of superlative realisation that he was, he drew huge crowds wherever he went. Innumerable new contacts were made between the God-man and spiritual aspirants thirsting for guidance. In the wake of this tour, correspondence grew and donations increased. The Master believed in spending money, not in hoarding it, and every pie that he received was almost immediately utilised by him on one constructive project or other.

Through personal experience the Master had discovered that three things were essential for a Sannyasin if he were to carry on his Sadhana uninterruptedly: food, medical care and library facilities. In the Ashram that he founded, he provided these three basic amenities so that his disciples might be spared the trials that he himself had undergone.

No day passed in the Ashram without the aspirants receiving something from the Master’s hands. The fruit and sweets placed before him by his devotees were immediately distributed amongst all. Not unusually, the Master himself carried them in a basket on his head to the rooms of the inmates. Occasionally, he also served meals himself to the Ashramites, bending low before each inmate seated cross-legged on the ground, and calling out, “Roti, Bhagavan, dhal, Bhagavan,” as he asked each person if he wanted more rotis or dhal soup.

One winter, a Nepali aristocrat coming down from the Ashram Bhajan Hall after the night Kirtan, found the kitchen fires burning brightly even at that late hour. He turned to the Master, “What! Swamiji, you seem to be mindful of everything. There is Akhand Kirtan upstairs and Akhand kitchen going on down here!”

“You have remarked rightly,” was the Master’s serious reply. “Indeed, I do believe in both Akhand kitchen as well as Akhand Kirtan, for the latter cannot go on without the former, as long as you have a physical body to deal with. It is the Akhand tea, Akhand milk and fruit, and the Akhand puris with which I nourish the sincere, industrious workers that has resulted in the wonderful work that the Divine Life Society is doing everywhere.”

The Master laid the greatest emphasis on care of one’s health. On this subject he spoke to his disciples one day in the late forties: “Money or no money, you must take care of your body. If you do not look after this instrument of the Lord, then you are not worshipping Durga properly. The best worship of Durga is to maintain this body in a proper condition to enable it to work out His Will in the best manner possible.”

Speaking thus, he sank into memory of his early Swarg Ashram days, and compared the austerities that he had then practised with the amenities that he was now enjoying in Ananda Kutir.

Said the Master to his disciples: “When I was at Swarg Ashram I never touched oil. Now I must keep several kinds of oils. All the cells are vibrating so fast that there is intense heat in the body. When I was at Swarg Ashram I slept on the floor, but now I have a comfortable bed. This is essential for the work that has to be turned out. I do roughen the body sometimes; and for the sake of keeping up the austerity I rub it against the walls. But often I do not have time even for that. There is work to do.

“Service has a greater and more pressing demand on our attention. All that your body needs you must give. You have practised enough of austerity. If you go on in the same fashion, your body will break down; you will become useless. You must take nutritious food. You are all gigantic brain-workers. You must have barrels of fruit juice. Now I have several bottles of various medicines—some for my diabetes, some for my stomach, etc. I have different things for cleaning the teeth—mouth gargle, tooth powder, etc.”

To keep up his humility the Master used to sometimes adopt a strange practice. Not infrequently, after disciples had worshipped him with flowers and high eulogies, he would retire to his cottage and beat himself with a shoe or a broom, asking himself if the shoe-beating had the same effect on the body and the mind as the garlanding and worshipping. He also treated himself like that when his body disobeyed to do his work, or did a wrong action, or expected honour, or desired soft things.

So the Ashram grew. It developed simultaneously in three directions. Firstly, it was the world headquarters of the Divine Life Society, guiding its numerous branches all over the world, bringing out the Master’s books and journals, sending out spiritual emissaries to guide aspirants in different parts of the world, and organising or helping to organise spiritual conferences.

Secondly, it was the Sivananda Ashram, which served as a spiritual retreat to seekers of Truth, extending its hospitality to passing pilgrims, and engaging itself in a modest way by rendering social service to people of the neighbourhood.

Thirdly—and this was perhaps its most vital function—it was the Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy, which imparted training to spiritual seekers in Atma Vidya or the Science of the Self.

-Christ-Consciousness

Divine Life Society