Chandraswami biography sample
FAMOUS GURUS, OSHO, SADHGURU AND SRI CHINMOY
CHANDRASWAMI
Chandraswami
Chandraswami was a flamboyant guru who partied with the sultan of Brunei and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and claimed to have cured Elizabeth Taylor's bad back with a special potion. Although he claimed to be a celibate vegetarian Chandraswami enjoyed material pleasures. He mediated on a tiger skin in a marble palace with gold prayer beads in his hands.
Indira Gandhi consulted regularly with astrologers and holy men. It is said that she scheduled trip at auspicious times and reportedly told Queen Elizabeth to delay the landing of a flight she was on so as not to land at an inauspicious time. The flamboyant guru Chandraswami was credited with devising potions to protect Indira Gandhi from her enemies. He acted like a court astrologer for Gandhi's government, reading palms, mixing traditional medicines and telling fortunes to influential people in her government.
P.V. Narasimha Rao, Indian Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996, was plagued by a number of scandals. One of the central figures in Rao's scandals was Chandraswami, who reportedly provided services for Rao while he was in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet. Chandraswami ended up in a 6-x-8-foot prison cell for swindling a businessman out of $100,000 after Rao had vouched for him. Scandals and perceived insensitivity towards the poor caused the defeat of Rao and the Congress Party in elections in 1996. After leaving office Rao wrote an autobiographical novel called The Insider and was arrested for fraud.
Websites and Resources: Gurus
Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; Why so many Indians flock to gurus - BBC News bbc.com ; The Guru in Hindu Tradition, J Mlecko (1982), Numen (journal) jstor.org/stable ; Spiritual Gurus and Saints of Hinduism, India and the World hinduwebsite.com/saints ; Great Saints of India greatgurusofindia.wordpress.com ; Gurus Gone Bad in India aljazeera.com ; Guru choice and spiritual seeking in contemporary India, M Warri
Walking With Lions : Tales From A Diplomatic Past
By K. Natwar Singh
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About the book
The story goes, apocryphal perhaps, that one day the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, told his foreign minister that the country’s name must be changed to Idi, and he should inform the UN and all other international bodies. A week passed. President Amin then summoned the minister and asked, ‘Did you carry out my orders?’ He replied saying that there was a problem. ‘What problem?’ the president inquired. ‘Your Excellency, there is a country called Cyprus. The people are called Cypriots. If Uganda were to be called Idi, we would be called Idiots.’ There are few leaders that K. Natwar Singh, in a diplomatic career spanning more than three decades, has not known – and fewer still about whom he has no story to tell. In Walking with Lions: Tales from a Diplomatic Past, Singh puts together fifty episodes that entertain, inform and illuminate. Featured here is Indira Gandhi as a statesman and friend, alongside other renowned figures such as Fidel Castro, Haile Selassie and Zia-ul-Haq. Singh analyses some personalities with disarming candour, among them Morarji Desai and Lord Mountbatten; at other times, his admiration for leaders like C. Rajagopalalchari and Nelson Mandela shines through. In these pages you will also find a rare, fascinating glimpse of Godman Chandraswami and his cohort Mamaji, and their interaction with a surprisingly submissive Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. Besides, there are short tributes to artists, writers, cricketers and film stars, like M.F. Husain, Nadine Gordimer, Don Bradman and Dev Anand. Recounted with empathy and humour, this collection of stories from contemporary history is a warm, unaffected and reassur Indian Hindu mystic (1836–1886) For other uses, see Ramakrishna (disambiguation). Ramakrishna (18 February 1836 – 16 August 1886), also called Ramakrishna Paramahansa (Bengali: রামকৃষ্ণ পরমহংস, romanized: Ramôkṛṣṇo Pôromohôṅso; pronounced[ramɔkriʂnopɔromoɦɔŋʃo]; IAST: Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahaṃsa), born RamakrishnaChattopadhay, was an Indian Hindu mystic. He was a devotee of the goddess Kali, but adhered to various religious practices from the Hindu traditions of Vaishnavism, Tantric Shaktism, and Advaita Vedanta, as well as Christianity and Islam. He advocated the essential unity of religions and proclaimed that world religions are "so many paths to reach one and the same goal". His parable-based teachings espoused the ultimate unity of diverse religions as being means to enable the realization of the same God. He is regarded by his followers as an avatar (divine incarnation). Epigraph "I have practised all religions - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity - and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion - Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well - the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several Ghats. At one, the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it ' Jal ' ; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it ' pani '. At a third the Christians call it ' water '. Can we imagine that it is not ' Jal ' , but only ' pani ' or ' water '? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seek Ramakrishna
(1) Narayan Maharaj's comments on Sva-likhita-jivani
(2) Lalita Prasad Thakur and Bhaktivinoda's meat-eating.
This version is a little shorter, since I have here been able to rely on the testimony of Shukavak Das and the photos from the MS.
This file also includes some comments on the new translation and acknowledgements and appreciation at the end.
Though it seems barely worth mentioning, there are unfortunately some who doubt the authenticity of the Jīvanī. These persons have put forth various speculations on why it may be a forgery or have been tampered with in some way. This seems to have arisen out of a misunderstanding of the genre and mentality of Bhaktivinoda Thakur in writing his autobiography.
Perhaps these suspicions -- always coming from those who have little or no expertise in Bengali or Bengali history -- arise out of a fear that anything that disagrees with the image of the Thakur as someone who descended from the Spiritual World, unblemished in any respect by matter, as the incarnation of Gadadhar or his shakti, even Radha herself, in order to teach bhakti to the conditioned souls and bring them back to Godhead, could not possibly be genuine. Their idealized image would be contradicted by any representation of him as a genuine human being living life with real human challenges, and the fact that for Kedarnath Datt Bhaktivinoda, the main story of his life is his conversion to Vaishnavism. He is telling his "how I came to Krishna consciousness" story -- and the good thing is that there is more to it than just coming -- he stayed and was victorious, so to speak, by inspiring others to follow him.
Anyway, there is no fear. The Jīvanīwas written as a letter to Lalita Prasad Thakur when he was just a teenager but was showing the attitude of veneration for his father that made him a genuine and honest disciple. It was written as a long letter. Lalita Prasad Prabhu ke