Satchidananda Saraswati

Global travels

In over fifty years of public service, Satchidananda made eight world tours and logged two million miles of travel around the globe. "I don't belong to any one country or organization", he often said. In 1971, he made the first of several visits to Australia and New Zealand, as part of his second world tour. In late 1979, he opened the first Nambassa Festival in New Zealand, inspired by the Woodstock Festival. In 1975, he made his first South American trip, visiting Venezuela including giving a lecture at the Central University of Venezuela.

In Europe, Satchidananda was a guest speaker at programs sponsored by institutions such as the British Wheel of Yoga and the Italian and German Yoga Federations. From the late 1970s, for fifteen years, he spoke at the annual European Union of National Yoga Federations conference in Zinal, Switzerland. He traveled to Eastern Europe twice, as part of a citizen-diplomacy delegation. In 1985 and 1986, he went to Finland and the Soviet Union for 10-day tours by two peace organizations. 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.

Integral Yoga

Satchidananda taught a blend of hatha yoga and yoga philosophy which he named Integral Yoga. In 1971, he began training students to teach yoga in prisons and drug rehabilitation centers. In 1976, Sandra McLanahan founded one of the first integrative health clinics in the US, offering yoga therapy, at that time new to America. Branches were opened in many places around the world. The LOTUS shrine cost $2 million, and Satchidananda blessed it on its opening by flying his helicopter to sprinkle holy water over it. The opening parade included a "flame-tossing juggler" In the early 1950s, when the Divine Life Society was preparing for Guru Poornima Day, where each separate lineage honors its own Guru, Satchidananda suggested that the focus be on Sivananda and spiritual masters of other faiths. That tradition continues today in all Integral Yoga centers. In later decades, Satchidananda collaborated with other interfaith advocates, including the Very Rev. 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 1968, Satchidananda co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies in New York with Rabbi Gelberman, Br. David, and Eido Tai Shimano.

Over the years, he received many honors for his humanitarian service, including the Juliet Hollister Award presented at the United Nations in 1996. In 2002, he received the U Thant Peace Award. In 2014, he was posthumously honored as an "interfaith visionary", with the James Parks Morton Interfaith Award by the Interfaith Center of New York. He was named a "Fellow of World Thanksgiving" by the World Thanksgiving Council in 1981 and named "Hindu of the Year" by Hinduism Today magazine in 1994.

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. Service in Satchidananda (SIS) exists to serve children and families in need around the globe through various seva (selfless service) projects. Currently, SIS operates charities in Spain, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, India and the United States.

Vegetarianism

Satchidananda advocated a vegetarian diet for its health, ecological, and spiritual benefits. In 1972, he established the first vegetarian health food store in New York City, which remained the only vegetarian store in Manhattan, until its closure in late 2018. In 1986, Satchidananda authored The Healthy Vegetarian, a vegetarian cookbook with a foreword by Dean Ornish. Satchidananda inspired Ornish's dietary research.

Sexual misconduct allegations

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". Several former disciples claimed he used his spiritual authority to coerce them into sexual relationships. After those first allegations, several more women made similar allegations of sexual manipulation and abuse.

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", one can appreciate what one gets from them.

Death

On 19 August 2002, Swami Satchidananda died after speaking at a peace conference in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.

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