Swami Rama Tirtha

The Story

Born in Gujranwala in 1873, Rama was a mathematical prodigy who became a professor of mathematics at Forman Christian College in Lahore. But his real passion was the Vedanta: he would lecture on the Upanishads to his students, and his mind was already set on a higher equation — the oneness of all existence.

In 1899 he renounced the professorship and his family life to wander Bhārat as a sannyasi. He went to the Himalayas, where he lived in the forests and caves of Kumaon, and his spiritual experience there filled his teaching with a radiant joy — he sang, he laughed, and he told his listeners that God-realisation was not gloom but the highest bliss.

From 1902 to 1904 he toured the United States, lecturing on Vedanta in colleges and cities across the country, and from there to Japan. He returned to Bhārat in 1904 and settled in the Himalayas at Tehri, where he wrote and taught until his mysterious disappearance in the Ganga in 1906, at just thirty-three. His lectures and poems survive as the treasury of his joy.