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Swami Sivananda
Swami Sivananda was born on the 8th of September, 1887, to pious parents, Sri Vengu Aiyer and Smt. Parvati Ammal, in the serene and peaceful village ofPattamadai, District Tirunelveli, Tamildadu. He was imbued with the spirit of service and very compassionate heart from early boyhood. After a period of work undersenior British doctors, young Kuppuswami set up his own medical practice in the city of Johorebaru, Malaya. His daily close contact with pain, suffering, disease and deathstirred up intense feelings of dispassion and a great longing to solve the mystery of life and death. Answering an inner call in the year 1922, Dr. Kuppuswami renounced his lucrative medical proactive and turning away from the life secular he returned to India, as a spiritual seeker keenly longing for illumination and enlightenment. He reached Rishikesh on the bank of the holy river Ganga in early 1924. There he met the venerable monk, Sri Swami Viswananda Saraswati, who initiated him into the Paranmahamsa Sannyasa Order, giving him Jananopadesa and the monastic name of Swami Sivananda which has become a name familiar to millions to world over.
He founded the Divine Life Society in 1936 to bring about global spiritual awakening through the nation-wide and world-wide propagation of Yoga and Vedanta as also the spreading of Dharma by expounding the high ethical ideals and principles of India's sublime culture. There was no distinction of race, religion, nationality, caste or creed. Thus the membership was all-embracing and universal.
He took up enthusiastic preaching and teaching of the invaluable ancient science of Hatha Yoga. He authored more than three hundredbooks, covering every aspect of human culture, and the divine Life Society which he founded in 1936, stood for the reveal of bharatiya-samskrit and the universality of the spiritual essentials of all the world religions. Two years later in 1938, he started the monthly English Journal 'the Divine Life'. In 1953 April, he convened a Parliament of World religions at Rishikesh. His books have been translated in most Indian vernacular and several foreign languages. He had created a band of dedicated Sannyasins to carry forward his good work before he attained Mahasamdhi on 14th of July, 1963.
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