Sri Swami Satyananda Saraswati was born in Almora, India. He was initiated into the Dashnam Order of Sannyasa by his guru Sri Swami Sivananda Saraswati in 1947. After twelve years of serving his guru, he left Rishikesh to fulfil the mandate he was given by Sri Swami Sivananda: to “spread yoga from door to door and shore to shore”. In 1956, he founded the International Yoga Fellowship and in 1963 the Bihar School of Yoga an internationally reputed and authentic center for learning yoga and the spiritual sciences.

As a visionary, he was able to establish yoga as part of mainstream society. From 1963 to 1982, Sri Swamiji brought the ancient systems of yoga and tantra to contemporary societies which he systematized and simplified and introduced to the four corners of the world to people of all ages, cultures and creeds. Throughout his travels, he attracted countless devotees creating a global yoga movement with a network of hundreds of yoga centres, teachers and ashrams. He authored many books on yoga, bringing to light the knowledge of Tantra, Vedanta, the Upanishads and Puranas, as well as revealing and explaining practices from the ancient scriptures which were up until then unknown.

In 1988, Sri Swamiji renounced his mission and departed from Munger to begin a new phase in his life as a Paramahamsa sannyasin leaving Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati as his spiritual successor to continue the work.

Performing higher spiritual and Vedic sadhanas, he received a divine mandate: “Take care of your neighbours as I have taken care of you.” This new inspiration guided him to embark on serving and improving the living conditions of the impoverished and destitute tribal people who lived in the thousands of villages surrounding Rikhia.

In 1994, Sri Swamiji revealed, in a month-long darshan in Rikhia, that the purpose of human life is to realize God through love and to serve God by assisting humanity. He prophesied that it was devotion to God and bhakti yoga that would be the panacea of the twenty-first century.

In 2007, Sri Swamiji announced the formation of Rikhiapeeth, which would be the ashram where the three primary teachings of Sri Swami Sivananda – serve, love and give – were to be practised. Two years later, in 2009, during the Sat Chandi Mahayajna and Yoga Poornima, Sri Swamiji inspired those present to lead a righteous life and later that night, on the 5th December at midnight, he entered into Mahasamadhi.