A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo

BEDE GRIFITHS (1960-93) the name Swami Dayananda as a gift of the Holy Spirit when he came to India from England in 1955 and assumed the Kavi robe as a sign of his sannyasa, the threefold renunciation of offspring, wealth and the world of ego-gratification. Yet even before he first touched India soil, Father Bede-Dayananda had been formed according to the Christian equivalent of the Upanishadic idea, since for more than twenty years he had lived as a Benedictine monk of the Catholic Church at Prinknash Abbey in Gloucester, England. His first two years in India (1955-57) gave him time to restructure his understanding of Indian life and culture. He spent the following decade (1958-68) in the mountains of Kerala where he formed a monastic community known as Kurisumala Ashram. In 1968 he assumed charge of Sacchidananda Ashram at Shantivanam in Tamil Nadu. It is from there that he started his correspondence with K.D. Sethna, who had already read and admired a few of his books.