About this person
Swami Satchidananda Saraswati was an Indian yoga guru and spiritual teacher who gained a large following in the West. He founded his own school, Integral Yoga, and its Yogaville centre in Virginia.
He was born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder in Tamil Nadu into a family of wealthy landowners. He graduated from an agricultural college, worked in the family business and in industry and, after his wife's death, travelled around India, meditating and studying under several spiritual teachers. He later embraced monastic life in the Saraswati tradition.
In the United States, he became known in part for delivering the opening address at the Woodstock festival in 1969. He founded the Integral Yoga Institute and later the Yogaville community, with its Light Of Truth Universal Shrine dedicated to interfaith understanding.
He wrote spiritual and philosophical books, and his students compiled translations of and commentaries on classical texts, including the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita. He died in Chennai, India, in 2002.