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Biographie Vishnudevanandas auf englisch
I consider myself very lucky to have studied yoga in the mid-sixties with Swami Vishnu-devananda. You could feel his unique and charismatic energy the moment he entered the room. This book captures that energy. It will inspire as well as bring great enthusiasm to your own spiritual pathway.
· lilias folan
Lilias Yoga Complete
Swami Vishnu-devananda was a living example of the power of faith. Whenever I think of him I am reminded of the Children of Israel fleeing from Egypt, blocked by the Red Sea. They didnt know what to do. They didnt want to go back and be slaves, but they couldnt swim across the sea. When Moses asked God what they should do, God said that they should simply go forward, plunge in, and everything would be taken care of. That is how Swami Vishnu taught me to approach my life. Dont worry about tomorrow. Just press on, doing what you know is right. This book shows Swamiji for what he was: a simple, energetic man full of love for his fellow man and moved by his faith in God to spread the knowledge of yoga throughout the world.
· rabbi joseph gelberman
Some men are called to challenge society to a higher vision. Vishnu-devananda was such a man. He accepted the enormous burden of teaching an aggressive world with an indominable energy of peace and wisdom. The remembrances in these pages puts one in touch with his irresistible spirit. This book is dynamic and inspirational reading at its finest!
· yogi achala
It is with great love and appreciation that I remember my brother monk, our beloved Swami Vishnu-devananda. He is not easily forgotten! A great and accomplished hatha yogi, he was one of the first swamis to come to the West and impart the great teachings of yoga science to eager students here. Through the many teaching and retreat centers that Swamiji established around the world; sincere seekers were introduced to yoga and the message of Swami Sivananda Maharaj. Swami Vishnu-devananda was not an ordinary sanyasin. All of us who knew him when he entered the Rishikesh Ashram knew he would achieve great things and be a beacon of divine light. He had a great and novel universal vision that was only limited by the confines of his physical form. Now he has shed that burden in order to be free to continue his service unimpeded. May his noble vision be perpetuated and flourish in the hearts of all his devotees.
· swami satchidananda Founder, Integral Yoga Society
The Yogi
Portraits of Swami Vishnu-devananda
VLi Acknowledgements
ix xi Introduction
xV Chronology
1 First Meetings
11 Finding the Guru
21 With the Master
31 Ego Fever
37 Early Days
47 Peace Missions
59 Mantra Initiation
71 Just One More Story
81 Learning Through Serving
89 A True Saint
97 Relationships
103 The Physical Presence
113 Devotion
123 I Am Not This Body
133 Completion
139 Appendix: Sadhana Tattwa of Swami Sivananda
143 Glossary
148 Resources
Preface
The original idea for this book was not mine. Soon after Swami Vishnu-devananda, or as he was usually called by his students and friends, Swamiji, had his first stroke early in 1991, one of his senior disciples, Swami Shankarananda, sent out a request to Swamijis students to send in material for a book. He made a start at gathering and collating the information that flowed in, as well as starting to transcribe the thousands of tapes of Swamijis talks that are in the Sivananda Yoga Ashram archives. Swami Shankaranandas hectic schedule and many other responsibilities made it impossible for him to get very far into the project.
In the first few days after Swamiji left his body, November 9th, 1993, it became clear to me that I should take on this project myself. I cannot explain or describe how this feeling arose. It was just there, full blown. Id never, written anything larger than a short scientific paper on some aspect of computer technology, but I knew I could write this book. What I wanted to do was to somehow preserve and pass on what Swamiji taught all of us over the years.
I immersed myself in the material that had been collected, and set about gathering more. Every day was filled with thoughts, images and memories of Swamiji. As I read transcripts of his talks I could often see and hear him very clearly in my mind. It was like being with him again, sitting at his feet. Hopefully as you read this book, you too will feel his presence.
Swamiji guided me through the whole process. He wrote this book. I have only acted as his instrument. I dont mean to imply by this that I have some sort of special relationship with Swamiji; many of his thousands of students could have written this book. I just got lucky.
The chapters in this book are arranged partly in chronological order, as you would find in a biography, and partly by topic. The biographical chapters are in part based on an autobiographical tape about his early life that Swami Vishnu-devananda made in the mid 1980s. The topical chapters contain something Swamiji said about that subject during satsang. Luckily, many of his talks were recorded, either on audio or video tape, so I had a vast collection of his own thoughts and teaching to draw from. Interspersed with this material drawn directly from Swamiji will be a selection of memories of people who knew him.
To help the reader follow who is speaking, this book delineates the sections with various type faces:
Paragraphs taken from Swamijis talks will appear in this format. He would regularly gather together everyone who was around him for satsang. We would sit and meditate and chant mantras together and then Swamiji would talk, sometimes briefly, often at great length. For some of these talks the topic would be pre-planned, for instance when he was giving a particular course like the Teacher Training Course he taught regularly. At times he would open at random one of the books of his guru, Swami Sivananda, read a bit of what he found, and take off from there. From time to time the topic would arise out of what he read in the newspaper that day, or had seen on the TV news. Finally Swamiji would sometimes ask for questions during satsang, making sure that he dealt with an individuals questions and doubts on the spot, and at the same time offering a broader teaching to all of us.
Swamiji had a unique style. As much as possible I have kept the text of his talks verbatim. For clarity and brevity, I have edited out digressions and interruptions and corrected his not always perfect English. No effort has been made to delete what may at first seem to be repetitive sections. Swamiji would often repeat himself, making sure the message sunk in.
Paragraphs of memories from Swamijis students and friends will appear in this format. Part of what this book is trying to preserve is the more private and individual teaching he did with each and every one of us. He was a loving, caring human being who took personal interest in each and every person he came in contact with. These memories will hopefully reflect these more private and individual lessons.
Where several memories are printed together, one after another, the change from one persons story to anothers will be indicated by this separator:
Acknowledgements
First and foremost I must thank all my brothers and sisters in the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta organization for all the help they gave me in gathering the material I used to write this book. Without their consistent input and encouragement, and the many wonderful memories of Swamiji they contributed, this book simply would not exist.
A few people gave me much needed technical help during this project, including David Dwyer, who translated all the original computer disks of information into a format I could use, and my friend Shelley Burke, who translated everything I received in Spanish into English.
I am grateful to Yoga International for publishing sections of this book in the November-December, 1994 edition.
Finally I owe a great deal to Theresa King for her guidance and knowledge, helping me take my original idea and bring it to its present, more coherent, form.
This Sanskrit mantra is transliterated in English script as Om Namo Narayanaya, and in translation means Prostrations to Lord Vishnu. Vishnu is the divine preserver of the universe. Wherever Swamiji went he encouraged people to repeat, chant, and write this mantra. He said that by doing so we would invoke the preservative power of Lord Vishnu and help make the world a better, more peaceful place.
Introduction
This little book is a documentary compilation of primary autobiographical sources and reminiscences by disciples and friends from the life of the late Flying-Swami, Swami Vishnu-devananda (1927 - 1993) of India and Canada, Hindu monk and pilot. Swami Vishnu was one of the twentieth centurys most extraordinary activists for world peace and justice, non-violence, open borders, and the realization of the global citizenship of all humanity in what he called a true world order awaiting the spiritual maturation of our race.
Swami Vishnu was one of the most remarkable persons of our age on a number of fronts from the 1950s in Canada and around the world until the time of his death in India in 1993. He conceived and executed a stunning array of prophetic and symbolic events as part of his global peace mission on site in most of the worlds major trouble spots. He was a leader in the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean, the Middle-East, India, and parts of Asia in the propagation of the knowledge of yoga vedanta, the practice of yoga for health, non-violence, inner and outer peace, and hidden potentials of the human soul and spirit for turning the darkness into the light, to help our planet survive and to make our world a better place in which to live.
He was a close friend and for a number of years in the 70s and 80s he asked my assistance in arranging international conferences and events to.call attention to the relevance of yoga (and the ancient cosmology, philosophy of life, and psychology upon which it is based) to emerging new sciences of consciousness, the new physics, the new medicine, new therapies, the growing planetary ecological consciousness. From my standpoint he understood the significance of our increased interest in the West in reports by many persons affirming human immortality after having various extraordinary psychic and spiritual experiences.
In one of the early events in which I participated in 1977, he led an unforgettable 45 day pilgrimage and lecture tour of India via Spain on the topic of Yoga and Psychic Discoveries. This event featured a Hindu Swami (himself), a Christian priest (myself), a Psychic (Dr. Marilyn Rossner, my wife, a childrens therapist and special educator, as well as a practicing yogi and gifted sensitive), and an Astronaut (Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who had performed a successful ESP experiment between his lunar capsule and the earth).
Swami Vishnus consistent genius and flair for the imaginative and timely capture of public attention was deeply spiritually motivated. Wherever he went, he established ashrams and centers through which he was able to touch peoples lives, change their lifestyles for the better, and increase the worlds awareness of the urgent need for positive thinking, healthy living, a true spirituality and a dramatic improvement in human behaviors.
When he first arrived in North America from India via South Asia in 1957 as a
young Hindu sanyasin, he had no money, no one to take him in, and precious little practical knowledge of Western ways or persuasive fluency in English, for that matter, to smooth his path.
What he did possess was a very bright, focused, dedicated, positive soul fashioned in its formative years by one of the greatest yoga adepts and sages of the Himalayas, Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, a medical doctor and Hindu monk known to masses in that sub-continent as the Saint Francis of Modern India. Sivananda was an important figure in the renaissance of Indian spirituality in the 19th and 20th centuries. Swami Vishnu also possessed the true spirit and inspiration of the Gandhian doctrine of nonviolent witness to peace and justice in places of urgent human suffering and need. These gifts and fruits of the spirit were his only required bank account and polish.
Swami Vishnu had a clear mandate to serve humanity from his teachers. He regarded this mandate to be from divinely inspired sources of inspiration. These sources and that inspiration never left him. He remained faithful to them with heroic determination through thick and thin until the day he left this world back in India, where his body was finally put into the sacred river Ganges. That mandate in the very words of Sivanandawas one which Swamiji has emblazoned on the walls of all of his ashrams and centers for the spiritual formation of all of his students: Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realize!
His commission from his beloved guru Swami Sivananda was to live the philosophy and practice of yoga himself, and to teach it to his own disciples so that all could attain for themselves its goal: divine self-realizationthe integration of body, mind, and spirit with the ground of being, God, Brahman, the Eternal Source of all life, health, joy, blissand the true inspiration and strength to walk in the sanatoria dharma, the eternal, universal divine spiritual law.
Swami Vishnu was himself an authentic guru and a great spiritual teacher. He was very unprepossessing and humble in appearance. He would often shock disciples and guests by prostrating himself and asking forgiveness when he had been impatient, lost his temper, made mistakes, or offended anyone. He had a great love for people, but an impatience to get on with justice and intelligent courses of action as he perceived them. Wherever he perceived an individual in human need, or a great world tragedy, he wanted to race to the spot with aid, or some action of support, even when all he could do was to risk his life in some symbolic and prophetic action to call the attention of the rest of humanity to that need or tragedy.
You will learn in the following pages that he flew over the Arab-Israeli lines during the 1971 Mideast War in his small twin engine aircraft, bombing each side with flowers and peace leaflets: Flowers, not Guns, to stop Wars! He flew to Northern Ireland with the British comedian Peter Sellers to meet with Protestant and Catholic leaders. A Hindu Swamibrown skinned and wearing an orange clothaffably lectured Christian leaders on the necessity for love, peace, and Christ-like action in a time of terror! He flew over the Berlin wall backwards into East Germany in an ultra-light aircraft, bearing the message to the East German police that, like the wall itself, all man-made barriers to peace dividing humanity could be transcended by the divine spirit operating within us. He then gave them a yoga lesson, a lecture on meditation; they fed him a cheese sandwich because he was a vegetarian, and gave him a subway token to travel back to West Berlin!
What Mahatma Ghandi did to inspire and to change the consciousness of the world was carried out almost entirely within the Indian sub-continent, with a brief period in South Africa. From that stage there went out to all parts of the globe the magnificent story of ahimsa, the principle of non-violence, and respect for the rights of all sentient life, and its inherent, gentle persuasive power eventually to bring racial and religious bigotry to an end.
What Swami Vishnu did in his lifetime for the same noble goal (although Jar less publicized), was in fact carried out on a much wider world stage in many continents and nations in a most spectacular way. He arranged an inspired series of unbelievable, symbolic, prophetic events spanning the last four decades of this century. Somedaywhen humanity has grown a bit and expanded its understanding of what is really newsworthythere will undoubtedly be a major biographical book and film produced on the life of this unsung hero of our age. Until then, here is a sourcebook of reminiscences by his friends and disciples that communicates what he taught to the world.
Rev. John Rossner, O.Tr., Ph.D.
Professor of Comparative Religion & Culture
Concordia University, Montreal
President, International Institute of Integral Human Sciences
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