Lectures on Yoga and Vedanta

Born on the 8th September, 1887, in the illustrious family of sage Appayya Dikshitar and several other renowned saints and savants, Sri Swami Sivananda had a natural flair for a life devoted to the study and practice of Vedanta. Added to this was and inborn eagerness to serve all and an innate feeling of unity with all mankind.His passion for service drew him to the medical career; and soon he gravitated to where he thought that his service editing a health journal and wrote extensively on health problems. He discovered that people needed right knowledge most of all; dissemination at that knowledge he espoused as his own mission.It was divine dispensation and the blessing of God upon mankind that the doctor of body and mind renounced his career and took to a life of renunciation to qualify for ministering to the soul of man. He settled down at Rishikesh in 1924, practiced intense austerities and shone as a great Yogi, saint and Jivanmukta.In 1932 Swami Sivananda started the Sivanandasharm. In 1936 was born The Divine Life Society. In 1948 the yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy was organised. Dissemination of spiritual and training of people in yoga and Vedanta were their aim and object. In 1950 Swamiji undertook a lighting tour of India and Ceylon. In 1953 Swamiji convened a ‘World Parliament of Religious’, all over the world, belonging to all nationalities, religious and creeds. To read Swamiji’s works is to drink at the Fountain of Wisdom Supreme. On 14th July, 1963 Swamiji entered Mahasamadhi.