Swami Satchidananda Saraswati

He gave the opening address, giving a nod to Vivekananda's 1893 speech in Chicago by greeting the crowd with "Brothers and Sisters of America", telling the crowd that music was "the celestial sound that controls the whole universe", and leading chanting of "Hari Om ... Rama Rama".

He was received rapturously by the crowd.

Satchidananda Saraswati (22 December 1914 – 19 August 2002), born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder and usually known as Swami Satchidananda, was an Indian yoga guru and religious teacher, who gained fame and following in the West.

He founded his own brand of Integral Yoga, and its spacious Yogaville headquarters in Virginia.

He was the author of philosophical and spiritual books and had a core of founding disciples who compiled his translations and updated commentaries on traditional handbooks of yoga such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita for modern readers.

Satchidananda Saraswati was born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder on 22 December 1914, in Chettipalayam, a suburb of Coimbatore city in Tamil Nadu, India, on December 22, 1914, "to a family of wealthy landowners".

According to his authorized biography (published by his eventual U.S. organization, Integral Yoga), his father, Sri Kalyanasundaram was a landowner and poet; his mother, Srimati Velammai was deeply spiritual.

It further states that his parents affectionately called him Ramu, that their home was a meeting place for poets, musicians, and philosophers, that wandering ascetics and holy men received free food and lodging at their home, and that their presence deeply influenced Satchidananda.

He studied at an agricultural college.

Satchidananda began working in his family's automobile import business, learning how to weld.

At age 23 he became a manager at India's National Electric Works.

He was a temporary manager of Perur Temple, and met his wife there.

He married and had two sons; his wife died suddenly 5 years into their marriage.

After the death of his wife, Ramaswamy travelled throughout India, meditating at shrines and studying with spiritual teachers including a brief period with Sri Aurobindo.

He was initiated into pre-sannyasa in the Ramakrishna Thapovanam and given the name Sambasiva Chaitanya.

While at the ashram, he cared for orphaned young boys and studied along with Ramana Maharshi.

He left the Sri Ramana Ashram when he could not bear the suffering of Ramana's arm cancer and treatment procedures.

He travelled to Rishikesh, a holy town in the foothills of the Himalayas on the banks of the Ganges.

There, he discovered his guru, Sivananda Saraswati, founder of the Divine Life Society, who ordained him into the sannyasa in 1949 and gave him the name Swami Satchidananda Saraswati.

The name Satcitananda (Saccidānanda) is a compound of three Sanskrit words,, and , meaning essence, consciousness and bliss, respectively.

The expression describes the nature of Brahman.

In all, he studied under Sivananda for 17 years.

Along with Vishnudevananda, he became one of Sivananda's best-known missionaries.

During the early 1950s and into the 1960s, Satchidananda and Satchidananda Saraswati jointly headed the Trincomalee Thapovanam, one of Sivananda's ashrams in the hill country of Sri Lanka.

His devotees opened Satchidananda Thapovanam in Kandy in October 1955.

Here, Satchidananda taught yoga, conceived and implemented innovative interfaith approaches to traditional Hindu festivals, and modernised the ancient mode of living that renunciates had followed for many years.

For instance, he drove a car to teach throughout Sri Lanka, wore a watch to be on time, and actively engaged the questions of seekers.

These modernisations were ridiculed by some in the orthodoxy, but he felt the changes to be necessary natural extensions and serving tools for betterment in his spiritual yogic work.

He loved flying airplanes and helicopters.

Filmmaker Conrad Rooks paid for Satchidananda to fly to New York in 1966, and artist Peter Max, who had been working with Rooks, introduced him to his many friends; Satchidananda eventually stayed for five months.

In August 1969, Satchidananda flew in to the Woodstock music festival by helicopter directly to the stage, arriving in orange robes, long hair, and flowing beard, and sitting down in lotus position to speak.

In 1970, he opened a branch of his Integral Yoga Institute, on 770 Dolores Street, San Francisco.

In 1971, he made the first of several visits to Australia and New Zealand, as part of his second world tour.

In 1973, Columbia Records produced a vinyl double LP Swami Satchidananda that featured a kirtan and a talk (not at Woodstock) by Satchidananda based on questions asked by students.

The back cover illustration showed a photograph of the swami at Woodstock.

The album was re-released in digital format as: Swami Satchidananda: The Woodstock Years.

Satchidananda became a US citizen in 1976, having arrived on a visa stating that he was a "Minister of Divine Words".

In over fifty years of public service, Satchidananda made eight world tours and logged nearly two million miles of travel around the globe.

"I don't belong to any one country or organization", he often said.

In late 1979, he opened the first Nambassa Festival in New Zealand, inspired by the Woodstock Festival.