LIFE SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR
Swāmī Kripālvānanda has devoted his whole life to the determined quest for truth
and liberation. Maintaining a rigourous discipline for the past twenty-eight years,
he has spent ten hours a day in meditation while keeping silence for the last
eighteen years. Having mastered all previous stages of yoga, he has finally
reached the highest transcendental state of nirvikalpa samādhi. Through his
progress in meditation, he has rediscovered the ancient eight-fold path of yoga.
Upon meeting Swāmī Kripālvānanda, Beloved Bāpujī (Dear Father) as he is
affectionately called, or studying his life, one is immediately struck by the
truthfulness, fearlessness, and long-suffering compassion of a man who has
overcome great obstacles. He is a sensitive devotee who has had to make great
efforts at discipline and detachment. His story unfolds not from a comfortable
pedestal, but from the battlefield of life’s greatest struggle, the war of the soul to
transcend all limitations. Bāpujī Kripālvānanda was born on January 13, 1913, in
western India as Saraswatī Candra Maimundār. His parents were devout
Brahmins who gave him a staunch religious training which helped awaken in him
an intense desire to search for God. By the age of nineteen, his passionate quest
had reached an impasse of despair and futility that took him four times to the
edge of suicide. Finally, when he had made a firm inner resolve to take his life,
destiny intervened in the form of Swāmī Prạnavānandajī. Somehow, this
mysterious swāmī knew all the details of his secret suicide plan as well as the
deeper longing of his heart for God. This all-powerful and loving master, known
as Dādajī (Beloved Grandfather), not only restored the young man’s will to live,
but ignited in his heart the spiritual flame that would one day transform him into a
great master.