Swami Satchidananda Saraswati

[1] According to his authorized biography (published by his existing U.S. organization, Integral Yoga), his father, Sri Kalyanasundaram was a landowner and poet; his mother, Srimati Velammai was spiritual.[1][4] After the death of his wife, Ramaswamy travelled throughout India, meditating at shrines and studying with spiritual teachers including a brief period with Sri Aurobindo.Here, Satchidananda taught yoga, conceived and implemented interfaith approaches to traditional Hindu festivals, and modernised the ancient mode of living that renunciates had followed for many years.[5] In August 1969, Satchidananda flew in to the Woodstock music festival by helicopter directly to the stage, arriving in orange robes, long hair, and flowing beard, and sitting down in lotus position to speak.[10] In over fifty years of public service, Satchidananda made eight world tours and logged two million miles of travel around the globe.From the late 1970s, for fifteen years, he spoke at the annual European Union of National Yoga Federations conference in Zinal, Switzerland.[21] He made yearly tours of India and Sri Lanka, and traveled in Asia and the Middle East to speak at yoga, peace, health, and other conferences.[16] The LOTUS shrine cost $2 million, and Satchidananda blessed it on its opening by flying his helicopter to sprinkle holy water over it.James P. Morton of the Interfaith Center of New York, Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, Brother David Steindl-Rast OSB, and Pir Vilayat Khan, holding monthly meetings.In 2009, Nalanie Chellaram founded a non-profit international collective of charities established in honor of Satchidananda and based on his core teaching of selfless service.[34] In 1991, about a decade before his death, protesters accused Satchidananda of molesting his students, and carried signs outside a hotel where he was staying in Virginia that read "Stop the Abuse".[40] Despite these events, followers remained loyal; Meryl Davids Landau wrote in the Elephant Journal in 2012 that the question for her was whether the teachings had served her, and she concluded that even though men like Swami Satchidananda and John Friend were "imperfect messenger[s]", one can appreciate what one gets from them.