Swami Gitananda was a renowned yoga master who taught a triune approach to yoga. The author first met Swami Gitananda in 1966 and was immediately impressed by his grace, dignity and wisdom. Swami Gitananda was a physician trained in Canada but also a great master of yoga, having mastered tantric lineages from India. He had an unparalleled knowledge of yoga and its science. Swami Gitananda's approach integrated the scientist, physician and great yoga master, seamlessly blending yoga philosophy, anatomy and spiritual teachings.

1. RishiCulture Yoga Magazine16
The Triune Teaching of
Swami Gitananda
by Yogacharya Shantideva (William H. Phillips), Canada
It was in March of 1966, when he was
fifty-nine years of age, that I met Dr.
Ananda Bhavanani. He was seated
at a picnic table in the beautiful
surroundings of Stanley Park in
Vancouver, Canada. Short and stocky
compared to myself and the Canadian
colleague who introduced us, Dr.
Bhavanani conveyed an effortless
air of grace, dignity and wisdom.
His greying hair and neatly trimmed
moustache (the iconic mane and
beard were to come later) were of an
appearance quite often encountered
among academics of all disciplines
and thus not at all unusual in a
physician.
But this was a physician with a
difference. Fred Latremouille, a
fellow journalist and broadcaster who
shared my interest of matters of the
soul and spirit, had told me that we
were to meet a Great Yogi. But not the
“ethnic” sort of yogi who goes about
unshorn and besandaled in the white
robes of a sannyasin or pandit, Fred
emphasized. This was a physician,
a doctor of medicine trained in
Canada who had served in the
Royal Canadian Navy, but who was
nonetheless an Anglo-Indian who had
come to Canada in his adolescence.
Within moments of our meeting,
although I didn’t notice at first, Dr.
Bhavanani manifested one of his
many yogic accomplishments of the
kind known as “riddhi.” We felt we
were sitting in a park chatting about
yoga with a dear old friend. And of
course that was exactly what we were
doing. The attributes that underlay
the person of my new acquaintance
and soon-to-be mentor are those
of the Dearest Friend imagineable!
And never before or since have I met
anyone who possessed a quarter of
his knowledge and experience in the
Divine Science.
It goes without saying that
Dr. Bhavanani was by then a
great master, one of the world’s
acknowledged authorities on the
science of yoga. A leading student of
Bengal’s “Sleeping Saint” Ram Gopal
Majumdar, as Swami Kanakananda
of the Brighu lineage was also known.
Dr. Bhavanani was soon to inherit
both the Bengali tantric lineage of
Swami Kanakananda and the ancient
Tamil lineage of the Kambaliswamy
tantric tradition. His enthronement
as Yogamaharishi and successor to
both Swami Kanakananda Brighu
and Shankaragiri Swamigal was a
formality.
But, so typically of him even in
that transitional time, this genial
gentleman said nothing of his
accomplishments. Instead he asked,
“What do you know about Yantra, Bill?
What is your date of birth?” I replied,
“September 16, 1933.” Whereupon
I was treated to a more dazzling
demonstration of the ancient science
of number and symbol than I could
ever have imagined. All who have
learned Yantra under our pujyaswamiji
will know how to educe from those
birth numbers the life path that was to
follow from my 33rd year onward.
“Soon you will travel far and wide,”
he told me, “in pursuit of your most
profound interests. You will see more
of the world than any of your friends
or family. You will visit realms that
most people have never heard of.”
In that moment I thought he was
predicting for me the career of a world
traveller, and indeed that could have
been the eventual outcome. But as
my soon-to-be pujyaswamiji later
explained, such a far travelling path
may be either outward and physical
or inward and spiritual - or both. As it
turned out, I was to travel far both in
the outer world and the inner.
Perhaps my physical travels were not
so remarkable. I have been no further
from Vancouver than the Caribbean
islands. But my inner travels have
been more profound. More than once
I have experienced death. My heart
has stopped and I have departed
this phenomenal world to dissolve
like a cloud in the sky, beyond time
and space, into the ecstasy of Being.
And I have been brought back
each time from that Brahmaloka
experience, awakening to a feeling
that might be regret if it were not also
boundless gratitude. Thus I am able
to assure you - should you have any
doubts - that the final Mahasamadhi
differs in no way from the transitory
Samprajnata Samadhi of our daily
dhyana. The Absolute is ever the
Absolute. Only in the Relative are
things greater or lesser.
It’s now possible to realize that
Swamiji foresaw these future
destinations of mine not as detailed
visions but as potential paths that
I was likely to tread. And how
significant it is that, while he never
neglected the basics of Hatha Yoga
in my training, it was in Laya Yoga
that he intructed me most effectively
during the too-brief time that I was
able to be with him. Did he perhaps
foresee my future expeditions to the

2. February 2013 17
kindgom of Lord Yama?
And here, better late than never in
this rambling account, is where I can
tell of the threefold brilliance that
for me surrounds the memory of
Yogamaharishi Dr. Swami Gitananda
Giri Guru Maharaj. He was a brilliant
scientist. He was a deeply caring
physician. He was a Great Master of
Yoga. He was all of these at one and
the same time.
“Lord Buddha did well to liken our
evolution to the Lotus,” he once
said. “Consider the Sushumna as
it rises from gross materiality to the
subtlest realm of Brahman. From the
Muladhara - rooted in the solid muck
of materiality - to Nirvana-Shakti and
the Supreme Bindu, exalted beyond
the descriptive powers of human
thought. Only Splendorous Kundalini
can accomplish such a thing!”
And then he would explain the
science, the anatomy, the neurology,
the splendid symphony of endocrine
secretions we can learn to evoke
as we advance on the inner path of
yoga tantra. “The Manipura Chakra
is nothing less than a second brain!”
he would exclaim, “packed with
neurons, so complex that it has its
own Intelligence – an intelligence
altogether different from what goes
on in the cerebrum. Here resides
within us That which Knows.” Thus
he explained the phenomenon, so
central to the higher antararanga
limbs of yoga, of the arousal of
Goddess Kundalini – whether with
deliberate intent or as the byproduct
of a unified awareness - to ultimate
union with Lord Mahesh in that
most hidden place “Doubtless the
hypothalamus making permanent
connection with the hippocampus,
the cingulate gyrus and the rest of
the paralimbic system.”
In his willingness, not to mention his
ability, to shift so effortlessly from
scientist to anatomist to yogacharya
our Swamiji was and, I think, will
ever be a singular figure in the
history and evolution of Yoga. The
same is true, I must emphasize,
of our “second” Dr. Bhavanani,
his inimitable son and successor,
Dr. Yogacharya Ananda Balayogi
Bhavanani, who has barely begun to
write his own new chapters in yoga
education and research. Likewise
the meeting of Swami Gitananda,
many years ago, with Swami
Anandakapila Saraswati brought
about a flowering of knowledge and
accomplishment in the science of
Tantra that might otherwise never
have happened.
As the middle sixties unfolded there
were constant questions about
the psychedelic agents, principally
LSD, mescaline and psylocybin.
“They’re so crude!” Swamiji would
say. “Those indole molecules are
obviously byproducts of ordinary
adrenaline. LSD is an adrenaline
experience!”
Especially amusing (and often
told) was Swamiji’s parable of the
three people in a room with a loud,
screeching radio. One of them
simply covers his ears and endures
the noise. A second performs
magical gestures and cries,
“Change!” in a futile effort to hear
something more pleasant. A third
grovels in prayer pleading, “O Lord,
be merciful and change this awful
program into something better!”
Finally a fourth person enters the
room, goes to the radio and sets
the tuning dial to a frequency that
produces sweet music. With a
twinkling eye Swamiji would ask,
“Which one is the true yogi?”
The Divine Science abounds in
trinities: Trikaya, Triratna, Triloka,
Trigunas and all the rest. But rarely if
ever have we beheld so marvellous
a yogic trinity as in the person of
Yogamaharishi Dr. Swami Gitananda
Giri Guru Maharaj.
Namaskara to the Lotus Feet of our
matchless Mahasiddha!