Sri Swami Sivananda and His Mission

by Swami Krishnananda

The perception of pain and suffering is often the impulsion behind the sudden rise of a religious awareness, and it acts as such a powerful awakener that one begins to see a new world in front of oneself. The transitory character of things, which is the basic conditioning factor of all things, is exactly what misses the attention of people. It required a person like the Buddha—Gautama Siddhartha—to tell people that everything is transient.

Why should someone have to tell us that things pass away? Do we not see this phenomenon with our own eyes? We do see the coming and the going of all things; so why should Buddha have to tell us, as if we do not know it? We see the birth and the death of people. Everything everywhere on Earth is insecure; one’s condition on the morrow is not guaranteed today. Transitoriness is a poor word to describe this problem. It is as if we are carrying death on our heads or it is hung around our necks. Our only possession of worth, our only treasure, seems to be our subjection to death. Nothing else seems to be present, existing or stable anywhere in the world.

The stability of objects is an illusion. Nothing stands; everything moves. Neither the flame of a lamp nor the movement of a river is a phenomenon of staticity. It is a dynamic action. Velocity is mistaken for stability. The blades of fast-moving electric fans look like stable existences, as if they do not move at all. When the rapidity of movement passes beyond the ken of the capacity of the eye’s perception, it ceases to be an object to the eyes. Our eyes cannot catch the speed of things, and so we see what is not there. Hence, it requires an awakened spirit to come and tell us that things are not what they seem. “Even this shall pass away” is a line from Shakespeare. Everything passes away. Not merely shall it pass away—everything passes away at every moment. There is a continuity of the procession of events. The whole world is a procession, and not a stable entity. It is a rapidly moving series of cinematographic pictures, as it were. Even this is not a proper comparison because here at least the pictures are stable, even if just for a split second, but in this world nothing remains stable even for a split second.

The world is a process. When we say the world is a transition, we are likely to feel that something is moving from one condition to another condition. It is not something that is moving; it is only movement, and nothing but that. It is difficult to understand what force means. Force is not a substance. We cannot tangibly cognise it or perceive it or come in contact with it. There is no tangibility in a process or a movement. This is the way in which we can distinguish between objects and bits of energy or force.

Hence, there is a great similarity between the modern discovery of the whole world being a sea of energy and Buddha’s ancient proclamation that all is transition. They are only two different ways to describe the same occurrence. The world is not; it is just a movement. How is it that we seem to be caught up by the apparent stabilities of things in this world and we do not perceive the inherent destruction that is gnawing into the vitals of the apparent stabilities? Are we not from moment to moment heading towards death? Are we not preparing for this termination of the movement of our procedural activities through this anatomical body? Are we existing? Are we moving, even if it is only movement and transition and dying? How is it that we do not perceive it?

The reason is a peculiar interaction between the perceptual faculties and the so-called structural pattern of objects, which really are not objects. A particular collocation of forces at a given point in space and time catches the attention of a particular structural pattern of the perceptual apparatus, and this peculiar momentary interaction between these two terminals of perception gives the impression of a stable object in front. This is a sort of scientific explanation of the erroneous perception of stability in actually moving forces. While science requires a laboratory to discover the momentary condition of things, an illumination of this kind struck the mind of Buddha. It is suddenly presented before the minds of great leaders of mankind—spiritual heroes—and they realise the anityata, the dukhamayata and the asasvatata of the whole world.

Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was a medical man. The anatomy of the physical body may be said to be a real description of its beauty. Gurudev used to say that only doctors can know the truth of things because they can probe into the human system more accurately, more precisely than the naked eye of a relative, a friend, a father, a mother or a brother. The medical man that Sri Swami Sivanandaji was, he could very easily be turned into a physician of the soul. Though very little of his early life is known to us, it is said that this phenomenon of transition, transitoriness, sorrow, pain and suffering of people awakened his spirit. His actual career as a torchbearer of the spirit may be said to have commenced between the years 1922 to 1924.

In the year 1922 there was an astounding flood—water, water everywhere. The water level rose to such an extent that towns were flooded. In the cyclic movement of time, occasionally such floods do come. We had a little experience of it here in the year 1963, when five feet of water entered the kutir of Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, and inside his bedroom one could be drowned. After that, the Ganga never rose to such an extent; it never rose at all. Devotees with an eye to seeing the mysteries of things saw significance in the Ganga rising to such a level, which she never did at any other time. She came, as it were, to meet the great spirit that left. Otherwise how could we expect the Ganga to enter the room and rise to a height of five feet inside the room? In those days many of us might not have been in this world. Some of us might have been little children, and a few might have been adults. The years were 1922 to 1924. We need not go into the details of the manner of Swami Sivananda’s wind-like movement northwards; the point is that the wind touched the North.

What was Rishikesh like in those days? It is really worthwhile to contemplate those conditions. Only those who can stretch their imaginations, like an artist, can behold the beauty of such an atmosphere. When I was a little boy, I heard that monks used to carry fire on their heads when they travelled from Haridwar northwards to Badrinath. It must have been intensely cold that they carried fire on their heads. There were no roads from Haridwar onwards. It was a forest, a thick jungle inhabited by wild animals. Even some thirty or forty years ago people saw tigers in these forests. Nowadays the tigers must have left, or they died. There was nothing here which could be called a human environment. It was considered as an abode of anchorites, ascetics, renunciates who could somehow manage to survive—by what means, God alone knows.

Incidentally, I may mention the hardships of the lives of these great saints and sadhus in those days. There was no question of food, because sadhus had no means of purchasing food and there was no other way of obtaining it. There was a great saint called Swami Vishuddhanandaji Maharaj, usually referred to as Baba Kali Kamli Wale because of the black blanket that he used to wear. Evidently he was a master spirit in himself, which we can appreciate from the effect produced by his austerities, as can be seen today. Pilgrims used to walk on hard ground that was covered with pebbles and stones. There was no footpath even worth the name, and there was no accommodation whatsoever on the way. We should not compare those days with the present when we can travel quickly by car and reach Badrinath and perhaps even return the same evening. Such comparisons cannot be made. There were hardships galore. Swami Vishuddhanandaji Maharaj—Baba Kali Kamli Wale—observed the sorrows of these pilgrims, that they had no water and no food. It appears that he stood in the middle of the shambles of the little town of Rishikesh and insisted that some arrangements be made for the poor pilgrims. He appealed to the well-to-do Seths, Marwadis, etc., that a chowki (halting place) should be built in Rishikesh and food should be offered to the sadhus, and facilities should also be provided along the way for them to rest.

This is the story behind the founding of what is today called the Baba Kali Kamli Wala Kshetra, where hundreds and hundreds of sadhus are given free food. Incidentally, as a branch, as it were, the Swargashram Annakshetra was opened a little later. This ashram known as the Swargashram existed in a seed form, functioning in miniature during those days. This may not have been exactly in 1922—maybe two or three years afterwards. It is not very clear to us. One of the disciples of Swami Vishuddhanandaji Maharaj, known as Atmaprakashanandaji Maharaj, settled down on the other side of the Ganga and named that location as Swargashram, and opened an Annakshetra for the resident sadhus there. That was where Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj did his tapasya. There was no Sivananda Ashram. There was no Divine Life Society. There was nothing. There was just stone and thorn and jungle—no house, no human beings.

There was the Ram Ashram, built by Lala Bidyanath, a great lawyer and scholar who was a disciple of the late revered spiritual leader Swami Rama Tirtha. The Ram Ashram is said to be named after Swami Rama Tirtha, the great saint. We are told that by some mysterious occurrence—God only knows what was the reason behind it—the body of the great saint was found floating on the river Ganga. This is what we hear—that it was seen at this spot. As a mark of respect for the great saint whose body was discovered there, Lala Bidyanath had this ashram constructed—the Ram Ashram, which is mainly a library now.

Swami Sivananda was initiated into the order of Sannyasa by most revered Swami Vishvananda Sarasvati. Magic-like was that initiation. Instantaneous was the conversation, and in a minute the whole process was over. We hear that he received Jnana Sannyasa—initiation into Sannyasa by the method of pure communication of wisdom, or knowledge. After this initiation, the ritualistic form of it was completed in the present Kailash Ashram, and at that time the pontiff was Swami Vishnudevanandaji Maharaj (not the one who is in Canada now). He was a very old Sanskrit scholar—a great genius in Sanskrit studies and Sanskrit wisdom whom Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj adored as his own Guru and beloved master—and he completed the rituals of the Sannyasa diksha. Then Swami Sivanandaji moved to the other side of the Ganga, and in a little hut, a little cottage, he found his abode.