Precepts For Practice

Sri Swami Sivanandaji's writing are characteristic in being free from the rigid technical nomenclature and the austere logic usually met with in texts dealing with super-mundane matters and in thus being accessible even to the most non-intellectual type of aspirants.

These priceless precepts have already been made available to seekers of Truth all over the world through "My Magazine of India" for over twenty-five years.

A point worth mentioning here is that most of the earliest disciples of the Master (e.g., Sri Swami Paramanandji, Sri Swami Narayananandaji, Sri Swami Chidanandaji come into contact with Sri Gurudev and His message through the pages of "My Magazine of India".

For the benefit of the devotees, these precepts were brought out in a book from in the year 1958.

This beautiful production is a joyous hand-book to one and all in their daily life, which instructs like a philosopher, coaxes like a mother, and makes merry like a friend. A page from this book cannot go without seriously benefiting its reader. We have no doubt that it will illumine many a soul that seeks light.

Born on the 8th September, 1887, in the illustrious family of Sage Appayya Dikshita and several other renowned saints and savants, Sri Swami Sivananda had a natural flair for a life devoted to the study and practice of Vedanta. Added to this was an inborn eagerness to serve all and an innate feeling of unity with all mankind.

His passion for service drew him to the medical career; and soon he gravitated to where he though his service was most needed. Malaya claimed him. He had earlier been editing a Health Journal and wrote extensively on health problems. He discovered that people needed right knowledge most of all; dissemination of that knowledge he espoused as his own mission.

It was divine dispensation and the blessing of God upon mankind that the doctor of body and mind renounced his career and took to a life of renunciation to qualify himself for ministering to the soul of man. He settled down at Rishikesh in 1924, practiced intense austerities and shone as a great yogi, saint, sage and Jivanmukta. In 1932 he started the Sivanandashram. In 1936 was born The Divine Life Society. In 1948 the Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy was organized. Dissemination of spiritual knowledge and training of people Yoga and Vedanta were their aim and object. In 1950 he undertook a lightning tour of India and Ceylon. In 1953 he convened a 'World Parliament of Religions'. He is the author of over 300 volumes and has disciples all over the world, belonging to all nationalities, religions and creeds. To read his works is to drink at the Fountain of Wisdom Supreme. On 14th July, 1963, he entered Mahasamadhi.