Essence of Gita in Poems

Born on the 8th September, 1887 in the illustrious family of Sage Appayya Dikshitar 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 the was an inborn eagerness to serve all and an innate felling of unity with all mankind.

His passion for service drew him to the medical career, and soon he gravitated to where he thought that his service was most needed. Malaya claimed him. He had earlier been editing he 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 doctor and mind renounced his career and took to a life of renunciation to qualify himself at Rishikesh in 1925, 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 in Yoga and Vedanta were their aim and object. In 1950 he undertook a lighting tour of India and Ceylon. In 1953 he convened a World Parliament of Religious. He is the author of over 300 volumes and has disciples all over the world belonging to all nationalities, religious and creeds. To read his works is to drink at the Fountain of Wisdom Supreme. On 14th July 1963 he entered Mahasamadhi.

The writings of Sri Swami Sivananda Ji Maharaj have become so much known to the spiritual inclined public, both in the East and the West that speak of Them or of Their author seems to us as superfluous as showing a candle before the blazing tropical sun.

The Bhagavad Gita has been acclaimed to be gospel of life. It embodies in itself a solution to the immediately pressing problems of man and carries a wonderful message of encouragement hope, cheer and consolation. It is a direct approach to divinize the entire nature of man.

As a writer of poetry, Sri Swami Maharaj occupies undoubtedly an unique place. His versification has a pulse of its own, has and it is ever fresh in the vitality that echoes the song of a realized soul. Each verse, when read with a slow full voice, lifts us into the domain of its rhythmical beauty and grandeur and makes us feel the presence of the Lord bestowing on His devout disciple, Arjuna, the celestial teachings of the Gita.

We hope that our numerous readers will accord this book a very warm reception.