Glorious Fifty Years of Wisdom and Service

A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 50th Birthday

Swami Krishnananda—Portrait

by Lisette Mathieu

How can one describe Swami Krishnananda's life—how do you describe the flight of a bird: then seen, then so high in the sky that you cannot make him out… while his sight, up there, above the world, is unobstructed; as he is free...

Sri Subbarao was born on the 25th of April 1922 in Mysore State; to parents that gave both kindness and knowledge to him. Little do we know of his childhood, for he is a Sannyasin and as such has renounced even memories—he would not talk about himself anyway: he does not consider his person important enough.

But we have asked those who were around him longer, and have received fragments: we can see the child sitting on his father's or grandfather's lap, hearing, taking in and learning the holy verses of the Vedas…

“1 will be a monk!” he tells his mother… and we can find him sitting up in a tree, reciting Sanskrit slokas.

The knowledge of those who 'see with closed and sleep with open eyes' must have come to him early; we know that he arrived in Rishikesh in 1944 and, having been Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji's disciple for three years, received Sannyas from him on the fourteenth of January 1946 and was henceforth called Swami Krishnananda. And what other name could he have been given than His Whose fervent servant he always was and always will be.

Years of intensive studies followed: the monk, at the age of 25 already called a "seer- sage in the making" by his master, grew into a great and eminent scholar of the holy scriptures of India as well as western philosophy, literature, psychology, physics..., there is no field of humanistic studies that he has not explored, and explored thoroughly and with deep and understanding.

His first book, The Realisation of the Absolute, a treatise of the Vedanta Philosophy and its methodology, written when he was 24, is also his mast abstract: of a supreme clarity and profoundness, it makes him at this early age a Vedantin and Jnanin of the first order.

Resurgent Culture, printed from three lectures he delivered at the University of Allahabad, is a beautiful discussion on the goal of life, the psychology of the inner man and on how modern education, having lost its supreme meaning of being "assimilation of reality by degrees" needs to once more become the way to "moral excellence, truth and purity, learning and wisdom, culture and religion, the spirit of service and self-abnegation, strength of character and will," in Swami Sivananda's words.

A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India was his next book; a most lucid study of the grand and holy scriptures of his country, covering the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Itihasas and Puranas the Bhagavadgita, the Epic and Purana Texts, the Yogavasishtha, the Theology and the Smritis, with an exquisite and splendid essay on the Purusha Sukta in the appendix.

The Philosophy of Life is the first volume of Swami Krishnananda's life—a work which will be the sum total of this great philosopher's vast and profound knowledge.

This first volume treating "The Foundations of Philosophy" and, in its second part, offering "a comparative study of some western philosophers", covering, among others, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, James, Whitehead, is a work of such beautiful order and clarity, of such brilliance, that it is, and always will be, a true gem of philosophic literature.

Besides his writings, though, and as important as they, are his lectures, being so many that they are without number. The Sutras of Patanjali, Raja-Yoga, the Upanishads, the Bhagavadgita and uncountable other subjects have been expounded by him, explained, commented upon, and it is during these famous discourses, always delivered with a breath-taking power of clarity, brilliance, and purity of thought, that the philosopher becomes the seer and sage.

But his is not a quiet life of teaching, study and meditation practically since he came to the Ashram in i 943 he has edited and printed all the books coming from 'The Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy Press, plus two monthly journals for which he also quite often writes articles; and as the Vice-President of an organisation as big and versatile as The Divine Life Society, he has to be a down to earth personality, a personality with knowledge of, and sense for, worldly dealings. Swami Krishnananda fulfils this duty of his with great competence since many years, knowing, in the silence beyond words, that "everyone is inside the prison of his own experience" within the circumstances he makes for himself, to move on the path to the Absolute.

Remains he as the master of his disciples, a master known not to be a lenient one. He moulds them, and leads them, often without a spoken word, often stern; always an example, with a delightful sense of humour, able to be funny and even comic; laughing at his own sufferings, but never at those of others.

To deal with his chelas on an emotional basis would shock him, but those who can look beyond his dryness have seen the great mercy and compassion of the true master.

"True love," he says, "is never expressed. It simply melts in experience."

And to him there is naught but the One to love, the One Whom he sees in all beings and everything: That Truth Which Is.

"It is tantamount to veritable death, to try to realise God," has he written, and this phrase gives us the insight into his personality, an insight not to be Witten of or commented upon.

Such is the life of Swami Krishnananda, this unbelievably rich and versatile life, this life lead in greatest simplicity and discipline.

He is not satisfied yet—there is so much to still be done, so much to be finished in this one life, "so that I, absorbed in cosmic consciousness can speak in your hearts and have no hands and feet anymore, but am everywhere."

We would not let him go yet, anyway. For we are at his feet with the one request: "Adhihi Bhagavo Brahma!"

We have realised the truth of his words: "Yoga is hard, because being within the subject (in oneself) is egoistic; and being within the object is being infatuated—so where is one to be? That is why the spark (God) has not to be there, so one can forget himself. Forgetting oneself is happiness. And the spark must be ignited."

"That is why you must be guided by a God mad, God learned, God ecstatic being. Because the path of god is the path of Love; the path of Love is the path of Beauty; the path of Beauty; is the path of Bliss."

And this love has filled these fifty years of Swami Krishnananda's life. It will fill the rest of it, no matter how long or how short it be. May he forever lead us to God.