Swami Rama
"The word teacher means “knowledge.” The knowledge should be followed, not the individual personality of the teacher. The subject should be given prime importance, not the individual. Teachers have complicated things. Yoga science has suffered because of this. One teacher says, “This is my method.” Another teacher says, “This is my method.” The poor student is confused. After some time he finds that his mind, his individuality, and his pocket have been robbed."
Teachings of Swami Rama — What, Who and Where is Guru?
A Himalayan Master
Swami Rama believed in, and taught the universality of the realisation of spiritual truths, in the inner chamber of one's own being. He never asked to be followed or worshipped, or for any change in culture, or for or any conversion of religion. Rather, he encouraged self-awareness through practices of yoga meditation and contemplation, with an attitude of self-reliance.
He was born in a small village in the northern Indian and was raised in the legendary Himalayan mountain caves where countless generations of yogis have been trained and initiated into the deepest mysteries of yoga. Throughout his childhood and adolescence he lived and travelled with many saints and yogis.
He studied psychology and philosophy in Varanasi and Prayas, India, and received a medical degree from Darbhanga Medical School in 1945. At a later date, he pursued a formal education at Oxford University, continuing his studies of Western psychology and philosophy in Germany and Holland for three years before coming to the United States in 1969.
In the following year, he served as a consultant to the Voluntary Controls Project of the Research Department of the Menninger Foundation at Topeka, Kansas. Here he began his synthesis of eastern and western traditions with his research work at the Menninger Foundation in the United States and helped to revolutionise scientific thinking about the relationship between body and mind. He demonstrated his control over various physiological processes, such as heartbeat, blood pressure, and body temperature, under scientific scrutiny in laboratories in the United States during the 1970s. He demonstrated such feats as manipulating his heartbeat at will to 300 beats per minute (effectively stopping the flow of blood) for seventeen seconds.
The publication of the results of such tests generated a new medical interest in body-mind relationships and spurred public interest in yoga techniques among young adults already involved in reacting to the steady arrival of new Indian spiritual teachers.
He was a great yogi, scientist, philosopher, humanitarian, and mystic poet, all rolled into one. Having reached the heights of spiritual enlightenment, he always strove with seemingly endless energy to attain perfection in his actions in the external world.
As Swami Rama prepared to leave his body in 1996, he left strict instructions to build no memorials, establish no shrines, and do nothing else to commemorate his name.
Further Exploration:
Short Bio Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1sZNbRH2N8
His talk on Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oNHIWbziSs
Some of his writings: https://www.swamij.com/swami-rama-articles.htm
Book on his spiritual travels, teachers he met and lessons leaned: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112519.Living_with_the_Himalayan_Masters
Scientific Experiments Excerpt: https://www.swamiramasociety.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/BFB21.pdf