On the outskirts of Kollam city in Kerala, INDIA, in a place called Mangad , there dwells a great sage of this age His Highness Swami Santhanantha Giri, Swamiji as his disciples address Him. He is indeed a beacon of light, guiding aspirants to the path of Self-Realisation.

His Ashram is a humble abode without any pomp and show. To a stranger, he seems to be an ordinary man in ochre robes, but his close disciples have had ample experiences to assure them that he is indeed an incarnation taken form to save blessed jeevas or individuals from the tangles of worldly existence and the miseries of birth and death.

To an inquisitive disciple, who would be keen on knowing about his purvashrama (His past life), Swamiji would reiterate "For the unchanging, ever-existing One, what life? What history?" All biographies, subject to changes and limited to Time and Space are false declarations; mere sounds! All sounds are meaningless. The meaning they seem to convey are subject to the mind. Beyond all thoughts is "Silence", where all words cease, all history dies. There the mind and the intellect have no entry. That is the Self, The Absolute Truth.

At an early age he left his native place to stay in Thiruvananthapuram. There is a cemetery at Thycaud, where he spent nights in meditation. There is a special reason for choosing the place, for it is the sacred spot, where the mortal remains of the great Guru and Jnani, Ayyavu (Ayyavu was the Guru of Sree Narayana Guru and Chattambi Swamikal) of Thycaud was laid to rest. Moreover, a Cemetery is a place, which reminds one of the meaninglessness of life, and the mortality of the body.

There too he had visions of the Divine Mother. All worldliness vanished. Nothing else remained except the limitless, infinite Ocean of Consciousness. He got a job during this time, but he could not pay proper attention to it, as all materialistic pursuits repelled him and so he resigned the post. The presence of the Divine Mother was so strong in him, that all the hymns he wrote reveal this ecstatic state.

During this time, he met the great scholar Professor G. Balakrishnan Nair. Professor Balakrishnan Nair was no ordinary scholar, but an enlightened soul. This great teacher, was instructor in the Brahma Vidyalaya at Sivagiri Varkala, and taught Swamiji the Scriptures, especially the Upanishads and The Gita and the works of Sankaracharya in detail. A close study of the Scriptures convinced Swamiji that the experiences he had until then were those experienced by the Self Realized Souls of the past.

Even as a student of Vedanta in Sivagiri, he would go to Sree Narayana Guru's Samadhi and spent most of his time there (even during the night) in Meditation. He even observed days of silence, which he does at times even now. After his days in Sivagiri, he went on a pilgrimage to the Himalayas and other sacred places.

True to the words uttered during his childhood, Swamiji renounced the world. He underwent the formal rites and accepted the name Santhanantha Giri at the age of twenty two. Residing in his small ashram, built by a few disciples, this great sage, with great divine fervour shares his experiences of Eternal Bliss, with the sincere aspirants whom Mother Nature has entrusted to his care. Through his influence, inspiration and above all his blessings, many lives have changed and many of his disciples have found deep Spiritual fulfillment.

Whoever visits the ashram is sure to be captivated by the serenity of the atmosphere. The pervading peace in the presence of the Enlightened Soul, sets the disturbed mind at rest. This great sage who reminds us of the ancient sages, exhorts that, "the goal of human existence is to go beyond the limits of the mind and to Realize the Self. How absurd is the state of one engrossed in Maya" (Ignorance).

Read About Swamiji's Childhood Here...