Yogaswami

The Power of Parampara

Glimpses of the Life and Teachings of Yogaswami

OGASWAMI WAS A MYSTERIOUS MEDLEY: A solitary mystic who drew crowds to his feet, a loving guru who often spoke harshly, a man with little education who wrote literately of the highest philosophy, a yogi who loved to drive through the villages, a simple man who confounded everyone who met him. His life is recounted in the 2009 Himalayan Academy book The Guru Chronicles, an 816-page spiritual biography of the Nandinatha Sampradaya’s Kailasa Parampara, of which Yogaswami was the 20th century’s most highly regarded satguru. The book includes the stories of his life, his training with Chellappaswami, his philosophical insights and his relationship with tens of thousands of devotees and seekers. S. Rajam of Tamil Nadu, India, was commissioned to bring these true stories to life in art. The renowned artist worked for two years, bringing forth a masterly depiction of the Jaffna culture and the personalities that surrounded Yogaswami, all shared in these pages. The art above shows Yogaswami on the far right, with the primary satgurus in his lineage to his right: Chellappaswami, Kadaitswami, Rishi from the Himalayas, Tirumular and Nandinatha. His successor, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, is below, arms outstretched.

The Day I Met Yogaswami

By Sam Wickramasinghe, Colombo, Sri Lanka

OMETIME IN THE MID 1950S, SAM WICKRAMASINGHE, a sinhalese Buddhist, visited Yoga­swami with a Tamil friend from Jaffna. Sam was a sincere seeker who had heard much about Yoga­swami but had never visited him. Sam had met his new friend one day while walking along the seashore in Colombo. Soon after they exchanged greetings, the elder began telling him about Yoga­swami with great enthusiasm, then scolded him for never having visited Swami: “It is disgraceful that you haven’t bothered to visit our sage who lives on this island.” The man offered to pay Sam’s train fare to Jaffna and invited him to live in his home in Tellip­pallai as long as he wished. Using the pen name Susunaga Weera­peruma, Sam recounted his experience in a small book he wrote in 1970, called Homage to Yoga­swami.

It was a cool and peaceful morning, except for the rattling noises owing to the gentle breeze that swayed the tall and graceful palmyra trees. We walked silently through the narrow and dusty roads. The city was still asleep. We approached Swami’s tiny thatched-roof hut that had been constructed for him in the garden of a home outside Jaffna. Yoga­swami appeared exactly as I had imagined him to be. At 83 he looked very old and frail. He was of medium height, and his long grey hair fell over his shoulders. When we first saw him, he was sweeping the garden with a long broom. He slowly walked towards us and opened the gates.

“I am doing a coolie’s job,” he said. “Why have you come to see a coolie?” He chuckled with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. I noticed that he spoke good English with an impeccable accent. As there is usually an esoteric meaning to all his statements, I interpreted his words to mean this: “I am a spiritual cleanser of human beings. Why do you want to be cleansed?”

He gently beckoned us into his hut. Yoga­swami sat cross-legged on a slightly elevated neem-wood platform, which also served as his austere bed, and we sat on the floor facing him. We had not yet spoken a single word. That morning we hardly spoke; he did all the talking. Swami closed his eyes and remained motionless for nearly half an hour. He seemed to live in another dimension of his being during that time. One wondered whether the serenity of his facial expression was attributable to the joy of his inner meditation. Was he sleeping or resting? Was he trying to probe into our minds? My friend indicated with a nervous smile that we were really lucky to have been received by him. Yoga­swami suddenly opened his eyes. Those luminous eyes brightened the darkness of the entire hut. His eyes were as mellow as they were luminous—the mellowness of compassion.

I was beginning to feel hungry and tired, and thereupon Yoga­swami asked, “What will you have for breakfast?” At that moment I would have accepted anything that was offered, but I thought of idli [steamed rice cakes] and bananas, which were popular food items in Jaffna. In a flash there appeared a stranger in the hut who respectfully bowed and offered us these items of food from a tray. A little later my friend wished for coffee, and before he could express his request the same man reappeared on the scene and served us coffee.

After breakfast Yoga­swami asked us not to throw away the banana skins, as they were for the cow. He called loudly to her and she clumsily walked right into the hut. He fed her the banana skins. She licked his hand gratefully and tried to sit on the floor. Holding out to her the last banana skin, Swami ordered, “Now leave us alone. Don’t disturb us, Valli. I’m having some visitors.” The cow nodded her head in obeisance and faithfully carried out his instructions.

Yoga­swami closed his eyes again, seeming once more to be lost in a world of his own. I was indeed curious to know what exactly he did on these occasions. I wondered whether he was meditating. There came an apropos moment to broach the subject, but before I could ask any questions he suddenly started speaking.

“Look at those trees. The trees are meditating. Meditation is silence. If you realize that you really know nothing, then you would be truly meditating. Such truthfulness is the right soil for silence. Silence is meditation.” He bent forward eagerly. “You must be simple. You must be utterly naked in your consciousness. When you have reduced yourself to nothing—when your self has disappeared, when you have become nothing—then you are yourself God. The man who is nothing knows God, for God is nothing. Nothing is everything. Because I am nothing, you see, because I am a beggar, I own everything. So nothing means everything. Understand?”

“Tell us about this state of nothingness,” requested my friend with eager anticipation.

“It means that you genuinely desire nothing. It means that you can honestly say that you know nothing. It also means that you are not interested in doing anything about this state of nothingness.” What, I speculated, did he mean by “know nothing?” The state of “pure being” in contrast to “becoming?” He responded to my thought, “You think you know, but, in fact, you are ignorant. When you see that you know nothing about yourself, then you are yourself God.

“Who Am I?”

By Dr. James George, Toronto, Canada

R. JAMES GEORGE WAS PROFOUNDLY INFLUENCED BY SWAMI. The following is an account of his visits to the sage’s hut in Columbuthurai.

The Tamils of Sri Lanka called him the Sage of Jaffna. His thousands of devotees, including many Sinhalese Buddhists and Christians, called him a saint. Some of those closest to him referred to him as the Old Lion, or Bodhidharma reborn, for he could be very fierce and unpredictable, chasing away unwelcome supplicants with a stick. I just called him Swami. He was my introduction to Hinduism in its pure Vedanta form, and my teacher for the nearly four years I served as the Canadian High Commissioner in what was still called Ceylon in the early sixties when I was there.

For the previous ten years I had been apprenticed in the Gurdjieff Work, and it was through a former student of P. D. Ouspensky, James Ramsbotham (Lord Soulbury), and his brother Peter, that, one hot afternoon, not long after our arrival in Ceylon, I found myself outside a modest thatched hut in Jaffna, on the northern shore of Ceylon, to keep my first appointment with Yoga­swami.

I knocked quietly on the door, and a voice from within roared, “Is that the Canadian High Commissioner?” I opened the door to find him seated cross-legged on the floor—an erect, commanding presence clad in a white robe, with a generous topping of white hair and long white beard. “Well, Swami,” I began, “that is just what I do, not what I am.” “Then come and sit with me,” he laughed uproariously.

I felt bonded with him from that moment. He helped me to go deeper towards the discovery of who I am, and to identify less with the role I played. Indeed, like his great Tamil contemporary, Ramana Maharshi of Arunachalam, in South India, Yoga­swami used “Who am I?” as a mantra as well as an existential question. He often chided me for running around the country, attending one official function after another, and neglecting the practice of sitting in meditation. When I got back to Ceylon from home leave in Canada, after visiting, on the way around the planet, France, Canada, Japan, Indonesia and Cambodia, he sat me down firmly beside him and told me that I was spending my life-energy uselessly, looking always outward for what could only be found within.

“You are all the time running about, doing something, instead of sitting still and just being. Why don’t you sit at home and confront yourself as you are, asking yourself, not me, ‘Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?’” His voice rose in pitch, volume and intensity with each repetition of the question until he was screaming at me with all his force.

Then suddenly he was silent, very powerfully silent, filling the room with his unspoken teaching that went far beyond words, banishing my turning thoughts with his simple presence. In that moment I knew without any question that I AM; and that that is enough; no “who” needed. I just am. It is a lesson I keep having to relearn, re-experience, for the “doing” and the “thinking” takes me over again and again as soon as I forget.

Another time my wife and I brought our three children to see Yoga­swami. Turning to the children, he asked each of them, “How old are you?” Our daughter said, “Nine,” and the boys, “Eleven” and “Thirteen.” To each in turn Yoga­swami replied solemnly, “I am the same age as you.” When the children protested that he couldn’t be three different ages at once, and that he must be much older than their grandfather, Yoga­swami just laughed, and winked at us, to see if we understood.

At the time we took it as his joke with the children, but slowly we came to see that he meant something profound, which it was for us to decipher. Now I think this was his way of saying indirectly that although the body may be of very different ages on its way from birth to death, something just as real as the body, and for which the body is only a vehicle, always was and always will be. In that sense, we are in essence all “the same age.”

After I had met Yoga­swami many times, I learned to prepare my questions carefully. One day, when I had done so, I approached his hut, took off my shoes, went in and sat down on a straw mat on the earth floor, while he watched me with the attention that never seemed to fail him. “Swami,” I began, “I think...” “Already wrong!” he thundered. And my mind again went into the nonconceptual state that he was such a master at invoking, clearing the way for being.

Looking at the world as it is now, thirty years after his death, I wonder if he would utter the same aphorisms with the same conviction today. I expect he would, challenging us to go still deeper to understand what he meant. Reality cannot be imperfect or wrong; only we can be both wrong and imperfect, when we are not real, when we are not now!

He Touched the Soul in All

NE MORNING AN OLD MAN CAME TO VISIT YOGA­SWAMI who was Swami’s same age and had known him for a long time. He was living in an old folks’ home run by the government and subsisting on a small pension. Entering the hermitage, he placed a bunch of bananas at Swami’s feet and prostrated. Swami was clearly happy to see him. This companion had come often, and Swami enjoyed his company.

“Good morning, old friend,” Swami greeted him. Then they talked for some time about the man’s situation. How had he been? Had he been enjoying good food? Finally, Swami asked him by what means he had traveled. “On the train, Swami,” came the answer.

“But trains are crowded these days and difficult for an old man like you to climb on and off of. It’s a great deal of trouble for you to travel on the train,” Swami replied. “Oh, Swami, I only think of one thing when I set out to see you, and that carries me along. No difficulties at all coming here.”

“I know what you mean,” Swami replied, “but traveling is really too much trouble for you, and costly, too, these days. You needn’t come, you know. There are other ways of visiting me.” Swami fell quiet but his friend continued, “Oh, Swami, coming to visit you every few months gives my life a wonderful peace. It is worth any amount of trouble.”

Swami kept his silence, allowing that conversation to die away completely, then spoke again. “Tell me, old friend, you have lived a long time now, and have lived a good life; do you feel at peace? What stands out in your mind as the most important thing in your life?”

“You know, Swami, I have given that question a lot of thought these days. Everything that I used to think was important is gone. My family is gone. My friends are gone. My home is gone and my work is finished. My body is old and feeble. Yet I go on the same. I always find love in my heart. I think that probably love is the most important thing in life.” Swami was moved and pleased by the answer. “You and I are the same,” he said. “That’s what I find important, too.”

After the man left, Swami told those who were gathered around that to have a simple heart, as this man did, is worth more than anything else. “Everything is so simple, but man with his monkey mind and his idea of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ makes a complex mess of it, then blames everyone around him because he cannot see the truth. This man will leave his body in a few days. It will be simple and natural for him. And he has something that he will carry on into his future lives: a fine and simple sense of life. Everything will be easy for him.” The man died a few days later.

Know Thy Self by Thyself

Yoga­swami would say, “If you are a king, will you have contentment? If you are a beggar, will you have contentment? Whatever your walk in life may be, you will only have contentment through knowing yourself by yourself.” It was a persistent call to action, a prescription he wrote up frequently, urging devotees to undertake sadhana, to curb the mind, to discipline their life and live in Siva’s perfect grace.

Anyone who came to Swami with an honest and simple heart was well received. When children visited, he would lift them onto his lap and tell those around him, “This child and I are the same age. We speak the same language. And we understand things the rest of you have forgotten.”

Sometimes he would ask children to sing for him. They would sing the Natchintanai hymns he had composed, and he would join in, perhaps singing in a child’s airy voice. As often as not, he would ask the child if he or she wanted anything, a toy, or something else. If a wish was expressed, he would send out for it immediately.

He was also stern with children. He told them that the most important thing to learn was obedience. Once he wrote a letter to a boy, advising: “Be obedient. Listen to the advice of your father, mother, elder sisters, younger brother, as well as your uncle, aunt and elder brothers. Always set an example in obedience. Siva does all.” “Oh, it might seem hard,” he would say, “But it is the best way of living in the world. Even I take orders. My orders come from within. Later you, too, will receive orders from within.”

Most people came like children and were obedient to his orders. He was so close to his devotees that they would rush to tell him when a child was born, sometimes before they told the rest of their family. They would have a special offering ready to take to Swami so that when the child was born they wouldn’t have to stop at a shop, but could go straightaway to see him and receive his blessing for the child.

Often he would greet these new fathers at his compound gate and shout at them with a twinkle in his eye, “Great news I have for you. A lovely girl named Thiripurasundari was born this morning. Come, let us celebrate.” That, of course, was exactly the news the father was bringing, except that he hadn’t yet named his daughter! Many people in Jaffna received their names from Swami in such ways.

Markandu, the Surveyor

Markanduswami, a close devotee of Yoga­swami from the time they met in 1931, was a lifelong bachelor who wanted to renounce the world and take sannyasa in the middle of his career. Yoga­swami told him to continue in his profession as a surveyor. Finally, when Markanduswami’s retirement came at age 6o, Yoga­swami surprised him by arranging for a kutir to be built in a small coconut grove in the village of Kaithadi, a hut with one room, an open porch and a concrete floor, with walls and roof of woven palm fronds. He settled his disciple there and looked after him for years.

His foremost sa­dhana, a difficult one they say, was to speak only the words of his guru, so everyone who spent an hour with him would hear, again and again, “Yoga­swami said....” “Yoga­swami taught us....” He was amazingly faithful to this discipline of not giving out his own wisdom, though he was deeply endowed. Standing on his porch or perched on a raised neem seat with four posts and a canopy, he would explain excitedly that Yoga­swami gave him the following sa­dhana, his indirect way of inviting seekers to control their own minds: “Sit in one place. Do not move. Watch where your mind goes; watch the fellow. First, he’ll be in Kandy, then go to Colombo, then to Jaffna, all in a fraction of a second. Keep track of every place he goes. If he goes one hundred places and you have caught only ninety-nine, you fail. As you progress in this sa­dhana, you will begin to pick up things coming from within. When you get messages from inside, you must deliver them to those who need to know. It will be a great help to them.”

On one Mahasivaratri evening Yoga­swami paid a surprise visit to Markanduswami’s hut and told the old sadhu, “We shall observe this Mahasivaratri vrata with meditation only.” That night, for them, there were no pujas, no chanting of Natchintanai, Agamas or Puranas, only meditation in absolute silence. T. Sivayogapathy shared:

“Markanduswami was a man of few words and avoided involving himself in the public life. He knew the whole corpus of Natchintanai songs by heart and always quoted Natchintanai when talking about Hinduism and spiritualism. Yoga­swami is said to have told devotees, ‘Markanduswami is my compass to you all; he shall show you all the spiritual directions,’ this being an indirect reference to Markandu­swami’s career as a surveyor. Markanduswami attained mahasamadhi on May 29, 1984.”

One Day...

Yoga­swami looked after everyone, and nothing was hidden from his inner vision. He knew exactly what was going on in his village, and all over Jaffna for that matter. Very little deserving his attention ever escaped it. A devotee recalls her time with Yoga­swami during this period.

“Yoga­swami went about like a king. I came to know of him when I married into a family who had taken him as their guru. The first time I saw him was the day after my wedding, on the 4th of September, 1951. I had not yet met Swami, though he lived very close to our house.

“We had returned from Malaysia after the Second World War. I first saw him on a visit with my husband and my father-in-law, Sir Vaithilingam Duraiswamy, who had known Swami since 1920. We took tea in a flask and fruits on a tray. It was about 7pm when we arrived at the small mud hut with roof thatched with coconut fronds. It was dark inside the hut as I followed my father-in-law and husband. There were no lights, only the camphor burning in front of Swami. When my turn came to fall and pray at his feet, I saw myself looking at a pair of eyes so powerful, as if they saw into you.

“We sat opposite him. He spoke to my father-in-law for a while, then turned his eyes on me and asked, ‘Can you cook?’ I replied, ‘Yes.’ He also gave me a Devaram book of Saint Tirujnanasambandar’s songs. After that, I came to cook for Swami nearly every day. We would often visit him in his hut. He drank his tea from a coconut shell. The shell kept the heat in, and most Jaffna people had them in their house.

“He also came for lunch the three years when my husband was stationed in Jaffna. My husband would read for him. He would say, “If Sorna reads, I can understand.” He had named my husband Sorna and wanted his brothers and sisters to call him by that name.

“The people of Jaffna treated him as their king. He walked about Jaffna, through the paddy fields and palmyra groves, visited houses and scolded people who had to be put right. In my father-in-law’s house his words were law. Most decisions to be made were put forth to Swami and his conclusion was carried out.

“Swami encouraged everyone to go to the temple. Once on the morning of the annual chariot festival at Nallur Temple, my father-in-law was still asleep, and we could not leave without his permission. It was 7am, and at eight the Lord would come out of the temple. Suddenly we heard Swami shouting in front of the house, ‘What are you all doing there? Get out and go to the temple! Arumugan comes once a year to bless everyone. Go!’ He was Lord Nalluran Himself, ruling his people. He called everyone by name.

“My mother was a great devotee of Lord Nalluran. As we lived close to Nallur Temple, she conducted her day according to the ringing of the temple bells. Getting up at 4am, she would say, “My Nalluran has gotten up.” Swami would often come and sit on one of the verandah chairs. He would look at her as if to say, “Don’t you know me? I am your Nalluran.’ He was a strength to the Jaffna people. He was their Nalluran.”

Occasionally Yogaswami refused to accept things, sometimes asking that food offerings be buried in the yard behind his hut. “Don’t even let the crows eat it,” he would shout. “It’s not fit for the crows to eat!” One day a man came with a tray of offerings. In the middle of the tray was a bag containing five hundred rupees, a goodly amount in those days. Those around watched him present the offering, speculating what Swami would do, for they all knew the money came from a venture Swami was not in favor of.

Usually in such cases Swami would not accept it. To add force to the refusal he might even send the tray and its contents sailing through the air with a strong throw. But this time, to everyone’s surprise, he instructed a devotee to distribute it to various people. Swami instructed, “Save a hundred rupees and take Vithanayar to the doctor. I’ve heard he’s ill. He won’t want to accept the money, so tell him he can pay me back later. Then he will accept.”

Entering the house, the devotee found Vithanayar sitting in the courtyard. Startled to see him appearing so fit, the man inquired about his health. Vithanayar said everything was fine, so the devotee gave him the money as Swami had instructed, which, true to life, was initially refused but finally accepted under the strict condition that it would be repaid.

Unsure of what to do next, the devotee decided to return to Swami when Vithanayar’s daughter motioned him aside and said that her father had a high fever and was quite sick, but was simply too stubborn to let on or do anything about it. Understanding this, he told Vithanayar that Swami had ordered him to take him to the doctor. He pleaded, “If you don’t go, I’ll be in trouble with Swami. And you know how that is.” The devotee continued to beg, “Please come with me, just to satisfy Swami.”

Vithanayar relented, and they set out to visit the doctor. Examining Vithanayar, the physician scolded the devotee for even moving him, much less bringing him in a car. “He has double pneumonia,” the doctor scolded. But when the man explained the circumstances, he understood. After administering some medication, he gave instructions to take Vithanayar home and put him to bed, adding that he would come by the next morning to check on him. The medicine, an expensive new antibiotic, cost almost exactly the amount Swami had allotted for the visit.

A Guru’s Chores

Swami arranged marriages, named babies, settled family arguments, helped devotees find homes to buy, got them jobs and generally mothered everyone. He kept all of Jaffna on its toes and made sure that people got what they needed and deserved. He gave and gave and gave and gave. He said, “We are in the tradition that gives. We give even to people who don’t deserve anything, to selfish and jealous ones.”

Inthumathy Amma recorded the testimony of Panchadeharam of Ariyalai, a schoolteacher who had gained much from his visits to Yoga­swami through the years:

“Even though a year had passed since our marriage, my wife and I had no children. Due to financial difficulties, we were not disappointed. Even after two years, we were childless. During this time when we went for his darshan, Gurudeva asked, “You have no children yet, isn’t that so?” We replied, “Yes, Aasan.” Then he plucked a big grape from a bunch, gave it to my wife and said, “Do not give this to anyone. You alone must eat it.” My wife did accordingly. Next month we realized that she was pregnant.”

“Who Do You Think You Are?”

OGANATHAN WAS WALKING ALONG THE ROAD OUTSIDE NALLUR TEMPLE. Sage Chellappaswami shook the bars from within the chariot shed, where he camped, and boldly challenged, “Hey! Who are you?” (Yaaradaa nee?). Yoganathan was transfixed by the simple, piercing inquiry. Their eyes met and Yoganathan froze. Chellappaswami’s glance went right to his soul. The sage’s eyes were like diamonds, fiery and sharp, and they held his with such intensity that Yoganathan felt his breathing stop, his stomach in a knot, his heart pounding in his ears. He stared back at Chellappaswami. Once he blinked, in the glaring sun, and a brilliant inner light burst behind his eyes. He later wrote of that moment:

He revealed to me Reality without end or beginning and enclosed me in the subtlety of the state of summa. All sorrow disappeared; all happiness disappeared! Light! Light! Light!

Waves of bliss swept his limbs from head to toe, riveting his attention within. He had never known such beauty or power. For what seemed ages it thundered and shook him while he stood motionless, lost to the world. He later described it as a trance.

To end my endless turning on the wheel of wretched birth, he took me beneath his rule, and I was drowned in bliss. Leaving charity and tapas, charya and kriya, by fourfold means he made me as himself.

The roaring of the nada-nadi shakti—the mystic, high-pitched inner sound of the Eternal—in his head drowned out all else. The temple bells faded in the circling distance as from every side an ocean of light rushed in, billowing and rolling down upon his head. He couldn’t hold on, not for an instant. He let go, and Divinity absorbed him. It was him, and he was not.

By the guru’s grace, I won the bliss in which I knew no other. I attained the silence where illusion is no more. I understood the Lord, who stands devoid of action. From the eightfold yoga I was freed.

Yoganathan stood transfixed, like a statue, for several minutes. As he regained normal consciousness and opened his eyes, Chellappaswami was waiting, glaring at him fiercely. “Give up desire!” he shouted. People were passing to and fro, unaware of what was taking place. “Do not even desire to have no desire!”

Yoganathan felt the grace of the guru pour over and through him, all from those piercing eyes. Such elation he had never known. Dazed, he saw that the guru intended to dispel all darkness and delusion with his words, which were beyond comprehension in that moment: “There is no intrinsic evil. There is not one wrong thing!”

Yoga­swami later wrote of this dramatic meeting in a song called “I Saw My Guru At Nallur:”

I saw my guru at Nallur, where great tapasvins dwell. Many unutterable words he uttered, but I stood unaffected. “Hey! Who are you?” he challenged me. That very day itself his grace I came to win. I entered within the splendor of his grace. There I saw darkness all-surrounding. I could not comprehend the meaning. “There is not one wrong thing,’ he said. I heard him and stood bewildered, not fathoming the secret. As I stood in perplexity, he looked at me with kindness, and the maya that was tormenting me left me and disappeared. He pointed above my head and spoke in Skanda’s forecourt. I lost all consciousness of body and stood there in amazement. While I remained in wonderment, he courteously expounded the essence of Vedanta, that my fear might disappear. “It is as it is. Who knows? Grasp well the meaning of these words,” he said, and looked me keenly in the face—that peerless one, who such great tapas has achieved! In this world all my relations vanished. My brothers and my parents disappeared. And by the grace of my guru, who has no one to compare with him, I remained with no one to compare with me.

As Yoganathan tried to comprehend the experience, his guru had already forgotten him there. Chellappaswami was scanning distant rooftops, mumbling to himself and nodding in accord with all he was saying, then began walking away. Yoganathan started to follow when the sage called back over his shoulder, “Wait here ’till I return!”

It was three full days before his guru came back, and the determined Yoganathan was still standing right where he left him. Chellappaswami didn’t speak or even stop. He motioned for Yoganathan to follow, leading him to the open fire pit where the sadhu prepared his own meals. There he served Yoganathan tea and a curried vegetable stew, then sent him away.

He didn’t welcome or praise his new disciple; he didn’t say to come back or not to come back. He didn’t have to. Yoganathan knew he had been accepted. And his training began—the first chance he got, he bent to touch Chellappaswami’s feet, and his guru bellowed in dismay. Drawing back, the sage scolded him, “Don’t even think of it!” Yoganathan was bewildered, but he obeyed, and his guru calmed down. “You and I are one,” he said. “If you see me as separate from you, you will get into trouble.”

The Teachings of Yogaswami

E SPOKE TAMIL AND ENGLISH FLUENTLY BUT KEPT A SINGLE BOOK IN HIS HUT, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. It was all he needed, that and his guru’s guidance. Often Yogaswami would sing spontaneously, and if fortune smiled a devotee would write it down to preserve for others to enjoy. Sometimes he would arrive at a devotee’s house with a song written down that had come to him from within, gifting it to the family. Swami’s compositions consist of 385 Natchintanai songs, twenty letters and about 1,500 terse sayings.

Swami’s teachings explore the mysteries of yoga, disclose the divine experiences on the path and praise Chellappaswami and the Mahadevas, especially the supreme Lord, Siva—avoiding the intricate complexities of the Tamil language. He spoke forcefully, artfully, but in everyday terms. Indeed, his language was incisively simple, and even his profound Natchintanai were couched in common vocabulary, unlike the classical verses of Tirumurai and earlier saints. Natchintanai is a personal diary of sorts, recording Swami’s experiences, his realizations, his anguish and his hopes. The language and style are straightforward. His poems on Murugan and Siva have such a feel of familiarity that you could reach across the page and touch them. He talks to the lizard and the peacock with the confidence that they, too, can help his quest. He uses folk songs and dances, indicating that he was communing with the common man. He goads us on to the feet of the guru on the path, reminding us often that is what a human birth is for: to serve Siva, to meditate on Siva, to find union in Siva.