Yogaswami Sharma poster

Sage Yogaswami(1872-1964) was a mystical giant and protector of Saiva Dharma, satguru of millions of Sri Lankans for half a century, leader of a Saivite lineage dating back 2,200 years to Nandinatha, famed guru of the Tamil rishi Tirumular. Yogaswami’s very name came to mean spiritual power and knowledge or the timeless, formless Self within, Parasiva. He met his satguru, Chellapaswami(1840-1915), in 1905 amid a festival crowd outside Nallur Temple and suddenly everything vanished in a sea of light. The world was renounce that instant. Chellapaswami’s guru was Rishi Kadaitswami(1804-1891), whose preceptor was the Rishi from the Himalayas(ca1770-1840). Upon Chellapaswami’s great departure in 1915, Yogaswami became the 161st satguru of the Nandinatha Sampradaya’s Kailasa Parampara. For fifty years, people of all walks of life, all nations and paths, came for his blessings at his small ashrama hut in Colombuthurai. He was a visionary who foresaw events that would befall his island’s people. In 1949 he ordained Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as his successor, with a tremendous slap on the back, and event that witnessing elders described as a coronation. Yogaswami remains the stabilizing force for Sri Lankans, appearing in dreams and visions, guiding the lives of devotees from the inner world, no less today than when he was with them physically. Truly a great nayanar saint of our time, he articulated his teachings and his Saiva Siddhanta heritage in hundreds of poems and songs called Natchintanai “good thoughts, which are sung in temples and homes everywhere. In these verses he urged seekers to follow dharma, serve selflessly and realize God within.