What was his diet? There was no clarified butter, or ghee, no oil, no milk, no fruits. What else was there? Dry bread used to be distributed to the sadhus, with a little bit of pulse, or dal, with no oil or ghee in it. Try eating such a thing for several days—dry bread with no lubrication whatsoever—you will see what will happen to your stomach. The sadhusused to suffer very much with dysentery, and illnesses of various kinds due to inclement weather. No medical treatment was possible; there were no hospitals. I mentioned that there were not even human beings, let alone hospitals and such other facilities—no shops, nothing. There was just a little mini-township called Rishikesh.

Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was a doctor, a medical specialist, and he was well read in the modern sense of the term. He was the was the only English-educated sadhu. They used to call him Doctor Swami. When I occasionally visited Kailash Ashram to pay my respects to the great Swami Vishnudevanandaji Maharaj, he used to ask me, “Doctor Swami kaise hain?” Swami Sivanandaji was a medical specialist and a Good Samaritan for all suffering souls.

Swami Sivanandaji had no money. Financially he was a pauper, and so were all the sadhus. They had nothing. But he was a reputed person. He was a stalwart in many ways, and he was recognised as a kind of spirit that leads, who could speak intelligently—not merely speak intelligently, but even contact government authorities because of his education and sympathetic nature. He was not an isolated individual, remaining only in his room. He noticed the problems of the sadhus in Swargashram. I should mention here a great little service—it can be called great and little at the same time—which is that Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj received one rupee per month from a schoolmaster in Nagpur called Hari Ganesh Ambekar, who later on took Sannyasa and became Swami Hariomananda Sarasvati. He was a science teacher in a high school. He read a pamphlet or a book of Swami Sivananda, and he used to send a one rupee money order every month. In those days one rupee was a very great treasure. One could survive for a month on two rupees, so one rupee was a very great thing indeed. We hear that this one rupee which came from this schoolmaster was utilised in a most appropriate manner. How was it utilised? A little milk and a little yogurt were purchased by Swami Sivanandaji. What for?

It was not for himself. He used to observe which sadhus were suffering with stomach trouble, with diarrhea, dysentery, fever. But those sadhus were of a peculiar type; they would not accept anything from anyone. One sadhu could not go and give a little yogurt to another sadhu; he would not accept it. He would say, “No, I am satisfied.” He would certainly reject any kind of offering, especially if he knew who gave it. So when the bell rang for biksha in Swargashram and the sadhus went for their alms, Swamiji would quietly go into the kutirs of the sadhus who were ill and put a mug full of milk or yogurt in the corner of the kutir, and leave without anyone knowing. The sadhu who returned from the kshetra would not know who gave it, so he would accept it. For months and months nobody knew what this phenomenon was, and it was not discovered. Later on Swamiji became a friend, philosopher and guardian.

But with the growth of reputation, Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj also became a cynosure of all eyes in a very unpleasant manner. We know very well that there is a trait in human nature which cannot appreciate the growth of another person. One does not like that another should prosper, especially if one is unable to prosper equally, in the same proportion. “When I am small, why should the other person be big?” This attitude is present practically in every person, and one day or the other it can manifest itself under given circumstances. “If I am poor, let all be poor. If I die, others also should die. Why should they live?”

This subtle jealousy arose due to the reputation of the educated Swami and the adoration that was bestowed upon him by the other Mahatmas. This was not considered as a happy thing by those who had authority over the sadhus. It slowly brewed, like a simmering volcano, and it took twelve years to actually boil to the surface. This is a side issue.

Incidentally, to repeat again, this medical Swami was not merely satisfied with collecting medicine, curd and milk, etc., for sadhus. He found a location near the other side of Laxmanjula Bridge and opened a little dispensary called the Sathya Seva Ashram Dispensary, which is today a government hospital. That was the place where he started his medical work.

But Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was not merely a medical man. He was a spiritual healer who came from the South to the North not only to do this kind of work; he was an austere and very fierce type of sadhaka. ‘Fierce’ is the only adjective I can use to describe the type of tapas that he is said to have performed. He used to be busy throughout the day in the service of pilgrims who passed by. There was no motorable road. Pilgrims had to cross over the bridge and follow the footpath. It is there that Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj had his little abode, the Sathya Seva Ashram Dispensary. It was a very convenient place for him to see all the pilgrims passing by and find out who required any kind of aid. It gave him great joy. “To serve is my duty. It is my gospel,” he said. But Swamiji was altogether different inside. This is something which was observed by many of us who lived with him for so many years. He was a very amiable, ultra-social type of person, over-enthusiastic in the service of people, going out of the way to be of assistance to others—initiating talk, even if they did not speak. Such an extreme type of social, serviceful humanitarian was totally different inside himself.

The one who was concerned with the welfare of everyone was really concerned with nothing. That great difference has to be reconciled. We have to find an explanation for the coming together of these apparent contraries in the personality of that single individual. A person who was an out-and-out humanitarian social welfare worker, as it were, wanting to be of help to people even if they were not wanting any assistance, running after pilgrims who were going to Badrinath in order to give them medicine, a cup of water, a little milk—running after them because he had missed these people and they had already walked a furlong or two or even a mile. “Oh. I didn’t see them. I was elsewhere”—so he ran with a cup of water, a little milk, some medicine and something they could carry with them. Such a person who could be considered as a super social worker wanted nothing for himself. That he wanted nothing for himself was something which was manifest in many of his actions in later days, which we ourselves observed. I am one of those persons who lived with Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj for several years, and I was close to him even physically, so that many of his peculiarities—they may be called idiosyncrasies, contraries, greatnesses and magnificences—could be observed. I am not going to recount all of them, but some interesting features are worth making objects of our contemplation.

Even though Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was a super social welfare worker, he was a person who had no social relations. He was busy throughout the day with this kind of medical service, but what was he doing at night? If you can walk for about a mile or so northwards along the road you will find, at a particular bend towards the left, a governmental habitat of tin sheds, evidently a kind of base for the project of a dam that they are trying to construct across the Ganga. There you will find a sandbank on the other side which is said to be the place of his tapasya. That sandbank was the place of Swamiji’s tapasya, and the Ganga flowing in front touching the sandbank was the place where he stood up to his navel in the cold water of the Ganga. Later on he developed lumbago, and he used to say that lumbago was the consequence. The cold water struck his bones so hard that he could not bend properly. Anyway, his tapasya was standing in the Ganga, navel deep, and doing whatever he did. It was his inner secret and contemplation on the sandbank there. That sandbank can be seen even today. It is a very holy spot. Nobody goes there because nobody knows the significance of that place, but it is worth noticing.

I mentioned that a schoolmaster sent Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj a money order of one rupee every month. Swamiji had no fountain pen with which to write a book; he had no paper, no clerical assistance, and no printing facilities. After taking bhiksha in Swargashram he used to go to the Ram Ashram library and read book after book. Most of the books in the library of the Ram Ashram have many red marks that were made by Swami Sivanandaji. There is practically no book there which he has not read, especially the books in English; and all the red underlining is supposed to have been done by him.

Then he used to go to Rishikesh and collect a bundle of old newspapers and bring them back to his kutir. What did he do with the newspapers? Newspapers have a little bit of space in the margins, maybe half an inch. That was the paper on which he wrote, because he had no other paper. The margins of those newspapers were his writing pads, and I am told that one of the first, or perhaps the first, manuscripts that he wrote later became a book called Spiritual Lessons, in two volumes. It was a bundle, and not a well-trimmed manuscript. A heap of cuttings of the margins of newspapers, bundled up like a haystack, were his thoughts recorded as Spiritual Lessons.

Who would print it? There were two devotees in Madras. One was G. A. Natesan and another was P. K. Vinayakam. They had printing presses and they were publishers, but they were not job workers; they would not take up just any kind of work. Somehow, when the Swami from Rishikesh in the Himalayas, a stalwart saint, wrote a line asking about the possibility of releasing these writings in print, G. A. Natesan replied, “Great Swamiji, we do not undertake job works, but because this letter has come from a great saint, we shall do it.” This book, Spiritual Lessons, was the first of Gurudev’s writings. Some say it is Practice of Yoga, which was in two volumes, though today the same book is in one volume. Spiritual Lessons, Practice of Yoga and Sure Ways of Success in Life and God Realisation were the earliest of his writings, followed by The Practice of Vedanta, which is not available today, and Vedanta in Daily Life, which was published by M. Elley and Co., Amritsar and Lahore Printers. These great benefactors should be remembered because in those days of hardship, helpers of this kind were rare. Those publishers who were associated with this great master in releasing his writings which came out of such hardship should also be considered as pillars of the great edifice of the Divine Life Society, which grew later on.