A Teacher
Swami Rama
Voluntary control of involuntary states
The transmission
Swami Rama (1925–1996) was an Indian yogi, teacher, and author from the Himalayan tradition who became one of the twentieth century’s most important bridges between yoga and Western laboratory science.
Trained from youth by masters in the Himalayas in meditation, pranayama, and the disciplines of raja yoga, he later founded the Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy (1971, in the United States) as a vehicle for integrating Eastern contemplative practice with Western scientific inquiry and holistic health.
He wrote widely for a general audience, including the autobiographical Living with the Himalayan Masters, presenting the tradition’s claim that the mind, breath, and body form a single trainable system. His historical significance for mind-power study rests largely on a series of experiments in the early 1970s at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, conducted with biofeedback researchers Elmer and Alyce Green.
Under instrumented conditions, Swami Rama demonstrated voluntary control over functions long classed as involuntary: producing a measurable temperature difference of several degrees between two points on the same palm, altering his heart’s rhythm at will, and generating specific brainwave states on command.
These demonstrations, recorded with electrodes and monitoring equipment, became landmark evidence in the early biofeedback and mind-body-medicine movement, lending laboratory weight to the yogic claim that trained attention can reach the autonomic depths of the body.
The Atlas treats these as carefully observed feats of trained voluntary control; the wider metaphysical interpretations placed on them, and disputed aspects of Swami Rama’s later organisational history, sit outside what the experiments themselves established.
What they gave
Laboratory-demonstrated autonomic control: Showed, under instrumented Menninger Foundation conditions, deliberate control of heart rhythm, skin temperature, and brainwave state, supporting the mind-over-body thesis.
- Catalysing biofeedback and mind-body medicine: His demonstrations helped legitimise the study of voluntary regulation of “involuntary” functions in Western science.
- The Himalayan Institute: Built a durable institution for teaching meditation, breathing, and yogic health practice, framing them as a learnable science.
- Popular transmission: Through books and teaching, conveyed the Himalayan tradition’s view that disciplined practice progressively trains body and mind toward stillness and self-mastery.
In their words
The human mind is a great wonder and magician. It can assume the form of both a devil and a divine being any time it wishes. It can be a great enemy or a great friend, creating either hell or heaven for us. There are many tendencies hidden in the unconscious mind which must be uncovered, faced, and transcended before one intends to tread the path of enlightenment.
I am never lonely. A lonely person is one who is not aware of the complete fullness within. When you become dependent on something outside without having awareness of the reality within you, then you will indeed be lonely. The whole search for enlightenment is to seek within, to become aware that you are complete in yourself. You are perfect. You don’t need any externals.
It is true that the highest of all companionship is the company of the real self. Those who learn to enjoy the real self within are never lonely. Who makes us lonely? Those who claim to know and love us, or those whom we love, create loneliness and make us dependent. We forget the eternal Friend within. When we learn to know our real self we do not depend on externals.
There is a narrow barrier between selfishness and selflessness, love and hatred. After crossing it one enjoys doing things for others, without seeking anything in return. This is the highest of all joys, and an essential step in the path of enlightenment. A selfish man can never imagine this state of realization, for he remains within the limited boundaries built by his ego.
The shortest cut to self-enlightenment is to cut through the ego; surrender before the Highest One. Satsanga — company of the sages — and constant awareness of the center within help one in going beyond the mire of delusion. The ego is also purified by cultivating selflessness. Unpurified ego is an evil which obstructs one’s own progress.
DIRECT EXPERIENCE IS THE HIGHEST OF ALL WAYS of gaining knowledge. All other means are only fragments. In the path of self-realization purity, one-pointedness, and control of the mind are essentials. An impure mind hallucinates and creates obstructions, but an orderly mind is an instrument for direct experiences.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: the Himalayan yoga and Vedanta tradition and his own Himalayan masters; raja yoga and pranayama discipline; tantric energy practice.
- Influenced: the Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy; the biofeedback and mind-body-medicine field (notably the work of Elmer and Alyce Green); and Western meditation and yoga-science culture.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Living with the Himalayan Masters1978
- The Science of Breath1979