Swami Satchidada

Satchidananda Saraswati (IAST: Saccidānanda Sarasvatī; 22 December 1914 – 19 August 2002), born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder and usually known as Swami Satchidananda, was an Indian yoga guru and religious teacher, who gained fame and following in the West. He founded his own brand of Integral Yoga and its spacious Yogaville headquarters in Virginia. He was the author of philosophical and spiritual books. He had a core of founding disciples who compiled his translations and updated commentaries on traditional handbooks of yoga, such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita, for modern readers.

In 1991, multiple female members of staff made allegations of sexual manipulation and abuse, more coming forwards after an initial protest. No legal complaints were filed, and Satchidananda denied all accusations. Satchidananda Saraswati was born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder on 22 December 1914, in Chettipalayam, a suburb of Coimbatore city in Tamil Nadu, India, on December 22, 1914, "to a family of wealthy landowners."

According to his authorized biography (published by his eventual U.S. organization, Integral Yoga), his father, Sri Kalyanasundaram, was a landowner and poet; his mother, Srimati Velammai, was deeply spiritual. It further states that his parents affectionately called him Ramu, that their home was a meeting place for poets, musicians, and philosophers, that wandering ascetics and holy men received free food and lodging at their home, and that their presence deeply influenced Satchidananda. He studied at an agricultural college.

Satchidananda began working in his family's automobile import business, learning how to weld.[1][4] At age 23, he became a manager at India's National Electric Works. He was a temporary manager of Perur Temple and met his wife there. He married and had two sons; his wife died suddenly 5 years into his marriage.

After the death of his wife, Ramaswamy traveled throughout India, meditating at shrines and studying with spiritual teachers, including a brief period with Sri Aurobindo. He was initiated into pre-sannyasa in the Ramakrishna Thapovanam and given the name Sambasiva Chaitanya. While at the ashram, he cared for orphaned young boys and studied along with Ramana Maharshi. He left the Sri Ramana Ashram when he could not bear the suffering of Ramana's arm cancer and treatment procedures. 

He traveled to Rishikesh, a holy town in the foothills of the Himalayas on the banks of the Ganges. There, he discovered his guru, Sivananda Saraswati, founder of the Divine Life Society, who ordained him into the sannyasa in 1949 and gave him the name Swami Satchidananda Saraswati. The name Satcitananda (Sanskrit: Saccidānanda) is a compound of three Sanskrit words, sat, cit, and ānanda, meaning essence, consciousness, and bliss, respectively. 

The expression describes the nature of Brahman. In all, he studied under Sivananda for 17 years. Along with Vishnudevananda, he became one of Sivananda's best-known missionaries. During the early 1950s and into the 1960s, Satchidananda and Satchidananda Saraswati jointly headed the Trincomalee Thapovanam, one of Sivananda's ashrams in the hill country of Sri Lanka. His devotees opened Satchidananda Thapovanam in Kandy in October 1955.

Here, Satchidananda taught yoga, conceived and implemented innovative interfaith approaches to traditional Hindu festivals, and modernized the ancient mode of living that renunciates had followed for many years. For instance, he drove a car to teach throughout Sri Lanka, wore a watch to be on time, and actively engaged the questions of seekers. Some ridiculed these modernizations in the orthodoxy, but he felt the changes to be necessary natural extensions and serving tools for betterment in his spiritual yogic work. He loved flying airplanes and helicopters.