Shaivism/Tantra/Nath New movements Kashmir Shaivism Gaudapada Adi Shankara Advaita-Yoga Nath Kashmir Shaivism Neo-Vedanta Inchegeri Sampradaya Contemporary Shaivism/Tantra/Nath Neo-Advaita Hinduism Buddhism Modern Advaita Vedanta Neo-Vedanta Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati (IAST: Svāmī Cinmayānanda Sarasvatī), also known as Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati (born Balakrishna Menon; 8 May 1916 – 3 August 1993), was a Hindu spiritual leader and a teacher.

In 1951, he founded Chinmaya Mission, a worldwide nonprofit organisation, in order to spread the knowledge of Advaita Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and other ancient Hindu scriptures.

Today, Chinmaya Mission encompasses more than 300 centres in India and internationally and conducts educational, spiritual, and charitable activities.

Approaching August 1942, in the midst of a wide-scale attempt by Indian activists to make the British "Quit India," Balan was one of the students to join in writing and distributing leaflets to stir up national pride.

[6]: 25–26 In 1944, almost two years after the British had issued his arrest warrant, believing his case was long forgotten, Balan arrived in Punjab and associated himself with several freedom groups.

K. Rama Rao gave Balan his first job, as a journalist at The National Herald, a young newspaper that had been founded a few years back by Jawaharlal Nehru.

"[10] In the summer of 1947, Balan arrived in Rishikesh, by the banks of the Ganges and made the one-mile hike to the Divine Life Society, the ashram of Swami Sivananda.

[11] Having returned to the Divine Life Society ashram, on 25 February 1949, the holy day of Mahashivratri, Balan was initiated into sannyasa (Hindu vow of renunciation) by Sivananda, who gave him the name Swami Chinmayananda, or "bliss of pure Consciousness.

"[7] With Sivananda's blessing, Chinmayananda sought out one of the greatest Vedantic masters of his time, Tapovan Maharaj of Uttarkashi, and devoted the next few years of his life to an intensive study of Vedanta under his tutelage.

[7] In 1951, flying in the face of orthodox Hindu traditions but with the blessings of his guru, Chinmayananda decided to bring the teachings of Vedanta to the masses.

In May of that year, he left the Himalayas with a plan to set out on an all-India tour and to visit places of worship to see how Hindu religious heritage was being handed down.

My experiences during those five months of roaming only strengthened my conviction that I must execute ... Upanishad Jñāna Yajña sessions (lecture series) all over India, in all the great cities.

[6]: 93 At the end of the second jñāna yajña in Madras in 1953, a handful of people expressed the desire to create a forum for the study and discussion of Vedanta.

[6]: 112 On 6 March 1965, Chinmayananda set out on his first global teaching tour, covering 39 cities in 18 countries: Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, United States, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Lebanon.

[6]: 233  Over the next 28 years, he continued these international discourses, staying only a week or so in each place, delivering a minimum of two lectures a day, and handling numerous meetings, interviews, discussions, and programs.

In the same year, Chinmaya Mission collected ₹10,000 to fund the construction of the Vivekananda Rock Memorial, which the RSS was building at the time in Kanyakumari.

[19][20][21][22] Apte and Chinmayananda jointly organised such a conference at the Sandeepany ashram in August 1964, which resulted in the founding of the Vishva Hindu Parishad.

[4] According to Chinmayananda, the VHP was founded in order to awake(n) the Hindus and to make them conscious of their proud place in the comity of nations.

Once we have made every Hindu conscious of his own identity, the Parishad has done its job and we shall feel fully rewarded... ...Let us convert Hindus to Hinduism, then everything will be all right.

[5]: 42 He also believed that the VHP should be focused on educating members of the Hindu diaspora and their children about knowledge of their "cultural duties and spiritual values" and give them the opportunity to "learn, to appreciate and involve themselves in our tradition".

[14]: 95  In the summer of 1980, when he was in the United States for a series of jnana yajnas, he had to undergo multiple heart bypass surgeries in Texas.

[30][27] Forty years after his first jñāna yajña, on 24 December 1991, in the Leela Kempinski Hotel, in Bombay, Chinmayananda's devotees gathered in Mumbai to offer him an amount of gold equal to his body weight, presented to him on a tula (ceremonial balance scale) in an age-old ritual called suvarņa tulābhāram.

[citation needed] In the late 1970s, Chinmayananda established rural health care services in Sidhbari, Himachal Pradesh, India.

It categorises the totality of human experience, according to the science of Vedanta, by drawing on 11 characters of the English and Devanagari alphabets.

He was also to be honoured for his selfless service to humanity in Washington, DC at "World Vision 2000," a conference of religious leaders organised by Vishva Hindu Parishad on 6–8 August 1993.