Swami Turiyananda Life and Teachings

Swami Turiyananda, with whose life and teachings the present book is concerned, was a direct sannyasin disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. The Swami was closely associated with the Great Master during the last six years of his life, and afterwards he became one of the members of the small group of monastics who organized themselves in the Master’s name under the leadership of Swami Vivekananda.
Swami Turiyananda was a rare combination of extreme asceticism, sympathy, devotional fervour, Sanskrit scholarship and modern outlook. Meditation was a pastime for him, and physical hardships and ailments had hardly any depressing effect on his mind. His unfailing spirit of dependence on God enabled him to face the uncertainties of a wandering mendicant’s life even in failing health and distressing conditions. He was an example of one who possessed a body but was not possessed by it. Though a scholar of very high attainments, he lived without the vanity of scholarship, and always preferred to teach through example than precept. God was his only concern in life, with no place for pursuit of ambitious personal values in it. His life was a long-drawn meditation in lonely forest retreats, interspersed with periods of community life among his monastic brethren, with whom he never lost touch in spite of his predilection for a wandering life.
It is remarkable to contemplate that in the midst of his meditative and ascetic preoccupations, he spent about three years of active missionary life in the United States under the persuasion of Swami Vivekananda. His wisdom had thus the fullness and perfection born of acquaintance with the best that is in the East and the West. Though he was not a public speaker, he was a great conversationist, and he influenced the lives of large numbers of spiritual seekers in the East and in the West through his contacts and conversations.
In the present book by Swami Ritajananda are included, incidents, conversations and extracts from diaries of disciples, gathered through very laborious research on the life and teachings of the great Swami. The greatest contribution of Swami Turiyananda to the spiritual heritage of India is his immaculate life, and all lovers of spiritual values will feel grateful to Swami Ritajananda for making it available in a concrete and connected form through this book.