Introduction
These are the stories of remarkable souls who knew the Unknowable and held Truth in the palm of their hand. They confounded their contemporaries, revealed life’s purpose and path, and became inexplicably aware of the future. They worshiped God as Siva, knowing Him as All and in all, as the God—by other names—of every faith and path. Many are the gurus; but these knowers of God—those who have achieved the ultimate goal of yoga, transcending the mind itself—are called satgurus. Their successors still live, their powers transmitted and maturing from one to the next, now flourishing in the 21st century. But their stories have remained largely untold, a kind of universal spiritual secret. Here, for the first time, what moved and motivated them is revealed, to the extent they let it be known. Here, for the first time, what they said and did is shared outside the circle of initiates. §
Scholars and scientists in our time have probed the past for the story of man and discovered how astonishingly little they could find. Our species has peopled the Earth for over two million years, but we can account for barely a trace of that history today. How many unknown civilizations have come and gone? We live as if they never did, for they left so little. Piecing together the human events of a mere fifty centuries reveals dozens of cultures that flourished for ages and vanished almost entirely. §
Where are the ancient religions of Egypt, Sumeria, Greece or Peru, Italy, Britain or Persia? With precision, historians trace out their histories and their influence on modern times, but this is only scholarship. Buried cities, broken walls, enigmatic shards, excerpts of their laws and scraps of their art are not the living traditions that made each of them great in its time. Apart from clusters of survivors here and there, the continuity of nearly all of Earth’s ancient religions and cultures has been broken in recent millennia due to religious wars and, in the larger time frame of geology, by the obscuring power of recurring ice ages.§
The remarkable exception is ancient Bharata, modern-day India, the homeland of Hinduism, the world’s oldest living faith. Knowledge of the religion’s antiquity is traditional among Hindus and has been more or less proven by modern research. Though the Sanatana Dharma, the “Eternal Path,” belongs by its nature to the whole world and has spread in many guises and tongues to distant continents throughout history, only in India did it survive and thrive in unbroken continuity throughout the millennia, flourishing today as a billion-strong, global Hindu faith. §
India has always been the cradle of spirituality. During his 1895 lecture tour to India, Mark Twain wrote, “India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only!” §
What spared Hinduism the oblivion that claimed every other ancient faith? It cannot have been mere good fortune. India is a difficult land in itself, and its history is marked by the repeated absorption of whole races and religions from beyond its borders. In addition, it has had more than its share of foreign invaders, natural disasters and internal wars. Yet, drawing from some secret sustenance, Hinduism flourished with persistent vitality and retained its grip on the soul of India, never failing to inspire, never fading, ever renewed and strengthened from within. We can well ask who is responsible. Who kept the religion alive in the mind of man through all these millennia? Who keeps it vibrant and inwardly strong today? How many were they? Where do they live? How was it done? The answers lie, in part, in the pages of this book. Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, whose life story ends this biography, explained:§
Among a thousand [devout] Hindus, one or a few will abandon the world for a stricter path, living in seclusion by a river, in a cave in the hills or wandering, the sky his roof, God his landlord. Each Hindu looks up to the swami or sadhu, knowing they will one day be where he is now. Among a hundred thousand such tapasvins who search for God, one, or ten, will find That which all souls are seeking, so high is the summit, so steep the ascent. Realized saints and sages are rare, but never absent in India. Their absence would leave it a land like any other. Their presence makes it holy. §
Every Hindu generation has produced its farmers, lawyers, mothers, kings, beggars, scholars, priests, swamis and God-men. Yet all of these souls together do not carry or sustain the full force of the Sanatana Dharma, for they cannot. They are each engaged in their own desires, their own affairs or their own quest. Their search continues. They do not yet possess the fullest knowledge; they have yet to accrue their soul’s full maturity. Even after God Realization, the soul continues to evolve. It does not vanish, nor does the world disappear. An enlightened man can help many forward on the spiritual path, according to his maturity of soul. Whose mission is it to guide whole generations? Who turns from their search to guide hundreds of millions on their way? Only those whose search is utterly ended, only the perfected souls who have become the goal itself.§
Such men live; such men have always lived. They are known as siddhas, which means “accomplished ones” or “perfected ones.” They are a special class of yogis, each a fully matured soul and heir to the inner force and subtle knowledge of the Sanatana Dharma even as the masses of India are heir to its outer precepts and practice. They hold the power of it and protect its destiny. One with Siva, they speak and behave only in expression of the will of God. §
All gurus differ one from another depending on their parampara, or lineage, as well as on their individual nature, awakening and attainments. Basically, the only thing that a guru can give you is yourself to yourself. That is all, and this is done in many ways. The guru would only be limited by his philosophy, which outlines the ultimate attainment, and by his own experience. He cannot take you where he himself has not been. It is the guru’s job to inspire, to assist, to guide and sometimes even impel the disciple to move a little farther toward the Self of himself than he has been able to go by himself.§
The satguru is needed because the mind is cunning and the ego is a self-perpetuating mechanism. It is unable and unwilling to transcend itself by itself. Therefore, one needs the guidance of another who has gone through the same process, who has faithfully followed the path to its natural end and therefore can gently lead us to God within ourselves. Remember, the satguru will keep you on the path, but you have to walk the path yourself.§
It is the disciple’s duty to understand the sometimes subtle guidance offered by the guru, to take the suggestions and make the best use of them in fulfilling the sadhanas given. Being with a satguru is an intensification on the path of enlightenment—always challenging, for growth is a challenge to the instinctive mind. If a guru does not provide this intensification, we could consider him to be more a philosophical teacher. Not all gurus are satgurus. Not all gurus have realized God themselves. The idea is to change the patterns of life, not to perpetuate them. That would be the only reason one would want to find a satguru.§
Some teachers will teach ethics. Others will teach philosophy, language, worship and scriptures. Some will teach by example, by an inner guidance. Others will teach from books. Some will be silent, while others will lecture and have classes. Some will be orthodox, while others may not. The form of the teaching is not the most essential matter. What matters is that there be a true and fully realized satguru, that there be a true and fully dedicated disciple. Under such conditions, spiritual progress will be swift and certain, though not necessarily easy. Of course, in our tradition the siddhas have always taught of Siva and only Siva. They have taught the Saiva Dharma, which seeks to serve and know Siva in three ways: as Personal Lord and creator of all that exists; as existence, knowledge and bliss—the love that flows through all form—and finally as the timeless, formless, causeless Self of all.§
While the millions lead their lives along the length and breadth of India, the yogis and sages who unveil Eternal Truth within their souls sit for years in silence or gather in conclave, high above the world, in fulfillment of their duty and their mission as guardians of the Truth in man. Carrying the knowledge and force of Hinduism through an age of ignorance, the Himalayan seers have revealed and passed on the Sanatana Dharma to every generation, reawakened knowledge of it in the minds of the population during troubled times, rekindled the lamps of faith when devotion wearied, and carried to every corner of India, year after year, the knowledge that Siva is within you, within all things, that Siva is all things. When all is said and done in this world, naught else matters than to have lived in such a way as to come a little closer to the Infinite within. §
In Asia this is well understood, hence the deep reverence the devout extend to the gurus who walk among us, guiding and showing the way of dharma that leads to liberation. Gurudeva spoke further of the guru’s role in the Hindu tradition:§
In a traditional Saivite family, the mother and the father are the first teachers, or gurus, of their children, teaching by example, explanation, giving advice and direction until their children are old enough to be sent to their next guru, in the arts, sciences, medicine and general education. Families that have a satguru will often choose the most promising religious young son to go to his ashrama, to study and learn the religion and become a sannyasin or a family pandit in later years, depending on how his life works out. In this case, the mother and father, the first gurus, turn the entire direction of their son over to the satguru, the second guru, who then becomes mother and father in the eyes of the son, and in the eyes of his parents as well.§
A satguru doesn’t need a lot of words to transmit the spirit to another person; but the shishyas have to be open and be kept open. The little bit of spirit extends like a slender fiber, a thin thread, from the satguru to the shishya, and it is easily broken. A little bit more of that association adds another strand, and we have two threads, then three, then four. They are gradually woven together through service, and a substantial string develops between the guru and the shishya. More strings are created, and they are finally woven together into a rope strong enough to pull a cart. You’ve seen in India the huge, thick ropes that pull a temple chariot. That is the ultimate goal of the guru-shishya relationship.§
Upon the connection between guru and shishya, the spirit of the parampara travels, the spirit of the sampradaya travels. It causes the words that are said to sink deep. They don’t just bounce off the intellect; the message goes deep into the individual. Between the guru and shishya many threads are all woven together, and finally we have a firm rope that cannot be pulled apart or destroyed even by two people pulling against one another. That is sampradaya. That is parampara. That is the magical power of the Nathas.§
As we look at this great line of satgurus—coming from Lord Siva Himself through Nandinatha and countless ones before Nandinatha, to Rishi Tirumular and countless rishis after him to the Rishi of Bangalore, to Kadaitswami, Chellappaguru and Yogaswami—we see the same spiritual force flowing. We see an undaunted, rare succession of individuals who considered adversity as a boon from the Gods, wherein all the accumulated karmas to be wiped away come together in one place to be taken care of all at once. §
In Sri Lanka and India, men commonly prostrate themselves full face on the ground when they come into the presence of a holy man, no matter when or where they meet him. In this way, they offer their devotion to the Divinity or superconsciousness they sense in him. When they come to worship at his ashram, they bring fruit or flowers or some other offering to show their respect. This tradition of worship is known in Sanskrit as guru bhakti. There are entire scriptures exalting the guru and his importance on the spiritual path, and chants to the guru sung when one enters his presence. By expressing such devotion, people remind themselves powerfully that they are on this Earth not for the pleasure of the senses, not for the acquisition of wealth, not for the storing of knowledge, not for the development of a powerful ego, but for the realization of God within themselves, that ineffable and absolute Truth which the mystics in this book held in the palm of their hand. §