The teacher · Bihar, 1931
Born February 3, 1931. Initiated into Sanyasa by Swami Sivananda at Rishikesh in 1953. Teaching today, at ninety-five. What follows is not a legend but a record — dates and places, kept the same way every lecture in the archive is kept.
Five entries carry the whole of it. Each has its date and its place, and each can be checked — the archive itself is the evidence.
The record begins in Bihar, in northeastern India. As a young man he set out for the Himalayas to find a teacher — and found the one whose name still anchors this lineage.
In 1953, Sri Swami Sivananda — founder of the Divine Life Society at Rishikesh — initiated him into the ancient order of Sanyasa. He lived and worked at his teacher's side on the banks of the Ganges, and his command of Yoga and Vedanta drew enormous interest across India.
This is the entry that matters most to a careful reader: the man whose voice fills this archive did not learn the tradition from books about it. He received it in person, from a master, in the place where it was kept.
In 1962 he relocated to Puerto Rico and founded his first ashram, Sanatan Dharma Mandir — regular classes, weekly radio lectures in English and Spanish, and numerous television appearances. Seven years of teaching, before Miami.
In 1969 he established the Yoga Research Foundation — his ashram in Miami, now the center for international activities, publications, and teachings, with branches worldwide. The lectures were recorded as they were given — first on tape, then on film, then digitally — and the archive on this site is the by-product of that constancy.
Today, at ninety-five, he continues to impart scriptural wisdom and guide aspirants toward the supreme purpose of life — Enlightenment. The register is still open, and the archive is free.
From the Foundation's collection · one photograph is enough; the voice does the rest
The same subjects he studied on the banks of the Ganges — Vedanta, Yoga philosophy, the great scriptures of India — taught in Rishikesh, then Puerto Rico, then Miami, nearly every day for over sixty years. The archive is his life's work. Keeping it open is ours.
No biography can do what one lecture does. Everything the life set down — the recordings, the books — is open, catalogued, and free.
Twelve thousand hours across six decades — Vedanta, Yoga philosophy, and the great scriptures of India, taught line by line.
17,690 recorded lectures · digitized and kept by the Foundation
Browse the teachingsThe written teaching — Vedanta, meditation, and the scriptures, in Swamiji's own books.
Published by the Foundation since 1969
Open the writingsThe kindest introduction to the teacher is the teaching: seven lectures, a few minutes a day.
A guided path · free, like the rest of the archive
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