A Garland of Forest Flowers

Language: English
Pages: 171


About the Author

Swami Nirmalananda, the none-too- noticed Sage of B.R. Hills, after quite some restlessness in his worldly life when young, sought and achieved eternal blessedness, wisdom and peace in the teachings of the most spiritual personalities of many different cultures around the world, his spiritual quest taking him all around the globe. Spiritual freedom, simplicity, sincerity, clarity of thought and mind, prayers and penance formed the guiding lights of his inner and outer self. In perfect freedom and beatification, he walked alone, protected and spiritually nourished by the Almighty.

Following an inner call, Swamiji, at the impressionable age of fourteen, made a deep study of the world's major religions. He was greatly influenced by the lives and teachings of Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Schweitzer and many others. Like Sankaracharya, Jesus and Buddha, he became a wandering monk, a 'Parivrajaka.' No place on earth was, to him, inaccessible, more especially when he was imbued with zeal and passion of spiritual conquest and outer renunciation. On his way to Europe, he visited all of West Asia, particularly Israel. In Jerusalem he met and discoursed with the Existentialist, Martin Buber. Buber reminded him of Jesus, both in looks and charisma.

Turkey, Russia, England, Europe, America, Canada, Japan, and South East Asia were the places where he searched for and found his own true unsullied reflection as God in the people and things around him. He travelled far and wide, but all his wanderings, like those of saints and prophets of the world's major religions, were the wanderings of a spiritually enlightened soul, searching for and discovering his own otherwise lost soul in the love and peace of Godliness.

Swamiji feels that his long, continuous and ardu