Here is a list of the most famous yogis and gurus who have helped shape the lives of millions of lives worldwide.
1. Swami Vivekananda
“Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.”- Swami Vivekananda.
Swami Vivekananda can be recognized for reviving Hinduism in the east and introducing it to the west. Commonly known as the “Intellectual Monk of India”, Vivekananda was born in Calcutta on Monday, 12th January 1863, in a rich, reputable and renowned family. After finishing from Calcutta University, he acquired a great interest in spiritual affairs.
In 1881, he came in touch with Ramakrishna Paramahansa.
The meeting was of importance as for the master Ramakrishna, he got the disciple of his choosing to carry out his spiritual desires. The connection changed the direction of his life.
Vivekananda yielded himself to the master and the master with his spiritual direction and support implanted the message of universalism and catholicity within him.
Vivekananda represented Hinduism in the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago on 11th September 1893. His brief but powerful speech struck the essence of the Parliament of Religions, namely the note of universal tolerance based on the Hindu belief that all religions are pathways to the same God. His preaching’s captivated the Westerners. Many became his disciples. On his return to India, he opened the Ramakrishna Mission on 1st May 1897. The remainder of his life he spent in teaching the messages of the Vedas in India and abroad.
Vivekananda was a great advocate of Vedanta. His teachings focused on the topics of Vedas and Upanishads. He thought them to be the great sources of energy, wisdom, and strength.
For him, each soul is conceivably divine. The aim is to reveal this divinity within by mastering nature, both external and internal. This importance of individual potentiality still encourages youngsters to play an active role in society as well as the cultural life of India.
He viewed “Jiva as Siva“. It is through the service of ‘Jiva’ or human being, ‘Siva’ or God can be achieved. His appeal to the people was “Go all of you, where there is an outbreak of plague or famine or wherever the people are in grief; relieve their sufferings.
Ramakrishna Mission is a charitable organization. It was founded by Swami Vivekananda in memory of his guru Ramakrishna Paramahansa in 1897. It propounds the Vedantic goals along with socio-religious reforms.
2. Paramahansa Yogananda
“The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is all about, one must know God“—Paramhansa Yogananda from The Essence of Self-Realization
Paramahansa Yogananda, born in 1893, was the leading yoga master of India to take up continual residence in the West. He has deeply impacted the lives of millions with his complete teachings on:
The science of Kriya Yoga meditation,
The underlying unification of all true religions,
The art of balanced health and well-being in body, mind, and soul.
After completing high school, Yogananda left home and joined a Mahamandal Hermitage in Varanasi; he soon became unsatisfied with its emphasis on organizational work instead of meditation and God-perception. He started praying for guidance; in 1910, his seeking after various teachers ended when, at the age of 17, he met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri.
In 1915, he took vows into the monastic Swami order and became Swami Yogananda Giri. In 1917, Yogananda established a school for boys in Dihika, West Bengal that blended modern educational techniques with yoga training and spiritual ideals.
A disciple of Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, he was commissioned by his lineage to spread the teachings of yoga to the West, to prove the unity between Eastern and Western religions and to preach a balance between Western material growth and Indian spirituality.
In 1920, Yogananda traveled to the United States aboard the ship City of Sparta, as India’s representative to an International Congress of Religious Liberals gathering in Boston.
He established the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) to spread worldwide his teachings on India’s classical practices and philosophy of Yoga and its culture of meditation.
He is recognized by yoga experts as the “Father of Yoga in the West.” While in a brief visit to India, Sri Yukteswar gave Yogananda the religious title of Paramahansa, meaning “supreme swan” and symbolizing the highest spiritual attainment, which formally superseded his previous title of “swami.”
He wrote the Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda died on 7th March 1952, while delivering a lecture in California just as he read the poem “My India”. His body is said to have shown no signs of decay even 20 days after his death. The official cause of death was heart failure.But he had attained Mahasamadhi.
3. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
“Being happy is of utmost importance. Success in anything is through happiness. Under all circumstances be happy. Just think of any negativity that comes at you as a raindrop falling into the ocean of your bliss” 1967 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
The guru who was recognized as the Indian guru who introduced The Beatles to transcendental meditation in the west, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was born 12th of January 1917 in India. He studied Physics at Allahabad University and received his Master’s degree in 1940. After completing his academic studies, he decided to look for deeper meaning in life he started austere yoga and meditation practice as a disciple of a revered yogi, Guru Dev. His devotees referred to him as His Holiness, and because he frequently laughed in TV interviews he was referred to as the “giggling guru”.
In 1955, he dedicated himself to spreading his master’s form of meditation, which was obtained from the Hindu teaching of Advaita Vedanta. He assumed the name Maharishi, which means “great soul”, and he rebranded the philosophy as “transcendental meditation”. Transcendental Meditation pacified the spirit and the Maharishi hoped that it would bring peace to the world.
On 24 August, the Beatles heard the Maharishi speak at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. After the lecture, they asked for a private interview and he told them, “The kingdom of heaven is like electricity. You don’t see it. It is within you.”
The Maharishi welcomed the Beatles to a course on TM that weekend at University College, Bangor. The Maharishi told the group, “You have created a magic air through your names. You have now got to use that magic influence on the generation who look up to you.” The Beatles’ song “Across the Universe” pays thanks to Guru Dev.
The principles of transcendental meditation are discussed in the Maharishi’s books The Science of Being and Art of Living (1963) and Meditations of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1968).
He followed a model established earlier by Vivekananda and Paramahamsa Yogananda (1893–1952), who indicated to Western audiences the nonsectarian and philosophical teachings of Hinduism and taught that meditation, yoga, and parts of the Vedantic texts were compatible with any religious tradition.
Mahesh Yogi presented Transcendental Meditation as a method for improving health and reducing stress.
The Maharishi died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes on 5 February 2008 at his residence in Vlodrop, Netherlands.
4. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Sadhguru, the mystic has much younger following due to his socially conscious movement along with spiritual enlightenment. At the age of 12, Jaggi Vasudev came in contact with Malladihalli Sri Raghavendra Swamiji who taught him a set of simple yoga asanas, the practice of which he regularly maintained.
He declares that “without a single day’s break, this simple yoga that was taught to me kept happening and led to a much deeper experience later.”
An enthusiastic motorcyclist, he graduated from the University of Mysore with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Sadhguru was indifferent in the conventional forms of knowledge seeking. He discovered meditation due to his intense enchantment with the swaying movement of the trees and was intrigued by questions about God and existence.
A spiritual experience at the age of 25 atop Chamundi hills made him rethink his life’s purpose and he recognized that his calling was to become a yoga teacher. He went on to open the Isha Foundation to teach yoga and the foundation became connected in various social and community development activities with time
In 1992, he founded Isha Foundation, a non-profit, spiritual organization for offering yoga programs under the name Isha Yoga. Founded near Coimbatore, the organization became very popular over the years and today offers yoga programs not only in India but also in countries like United States, England, Lebanon, Singapore, Canada, Malaysia, Uganda, China, Nepal, and Australia.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev spoke at the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit in 2000, the World Economic Forum in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. In 2012, he was voted among the hundred most influential Indians for his contribution in the field of environmental protection and for encouraging public participation in ecological issues. Numerous youths all over the world look up to him as a spiritual leader and are enchanted by his ideologies regarding the environment and yoga.
5. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Born in 1956 in Southern India, Ravi Shankar was capable to read the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Sanskrit scripture, by the age of 4, and was often observed in meditation. His first teacher was Sudhakar Chaturvedi, a scholar. He possesses degrees in, both, Vedic literature and physics. After graduation, Shankar toured with his second teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, giving talks and arranging conferences on Vedic science, and setting up Transcendental Meditation and Ayurveda centers.
Ravi Shankar launched a series of practical and experiential courses in spirituality around the globe.
He says that his rhythmic breathing practice, Sudarshan Kriya, came to him in 1982, “like a poem, an inspiration,” after ten days of silence on the banks of the Bhadra River in Shimoga, in the state of Karnataka, adding, “I learned it and started teaching it”. The Sudarshan Kriya, a powerful breathing technique, was born, out of this silence. With time, the Sudarshan Kriya became the center-piece of the Art of Living program.
The Art of Living Foundation was established as an international, non-profit, educational, humanitarian organization. It’s educational and self-development programs offer persuasive tools to eliminate stress and foster a sense of well-being.
In 1997, he also founded the International Association for Human Values (IAHV) to coordinate sustainable development projects, nurture human values and coordinate conflict resolution in association with The Art of Living. In India, Africa, and South America, the two associate organizations’ volunteers are spearheading sustainable growth in rural communities, and have already reached out to 40,212 villages.
As a spiritual teacher, Sri has rekindled the beliefs of yoga and meditation and offered them in a form that is relevant to the 21st century. In 34 years, his programs and enterprises have touched the lives of over 370 million people in 154 countries.
Reference
Lord Shiva Daily
