Jinendra Swami

Jinendra Swami lives in Pune, India. He's a guru, husband, father, engineer, businessman, and author of several extraordinary literary works.

When the editor of this website first read Jinendra's unpublished poem Pilgrimage to Self, her first reaction was, "This is the equal of the Ashtavakra Gita (an ancient Sanskrit classic of Advaita Vedanta) -- it's an Ashtavakra Gita in modern English."

Her second thought was, "No, that's impossible, because the Ashtavakra Gita is one of the greatest works of literature of all time, and I just happened to stumble across Pilgrimage to Self on the web,* and who am I to judge anyway?"

But after many rereadings, she thinks her first reaction was right.

*The poem was brought to our attention by Sundeep Baldota, who publicized it through his Yahoo club, Enlightened Ones in India.

The complete text of Jinendra Swami in His Own Words, from which this biography is adapted, is on this website here.

Born on October 20, 1948 into a middle-class family in Mumbai, western Maharashtra, India, Jinendra was one of ten children. From early childhood he was creative, perfectionistic, quiet, shy, and quick to help others. He enjoyed sports, dramatics, and mischief but always finished first in his class. When he was twenty he went to the United States on a merit scholarship and earned a batchelor's degree with honors in manufacturing engineering and a master's degree in industrial design.

He was never interested in organized religion or rituals. He didn't think about soul or karma, or go to temple, or seek a guru, but he always had a deep feeling of some special relationship with the cosmos and a deep faith in life, the universal energy. While on a camping trip in March 1974, he had a vision of an aspect of himself dying and vanishing into the universe, and in its place, something totally new being born. He knew then that there is more to life than he usually perceived.

In 1976, after ten years in the United States, he returned to India and started a company to manufacture LCD animated displays. The products received prestigious Parkhe Awards and were exported all over the world. By 1985 the company was well established with a monopoly in the whole of Asia. Business took him around the world.

Jinendra calls his 1973 marriage the turning point of his life. As if by divine providence, in 1979 his wife Shakuntala introduced him to a formal technique of vipassana meditation. Soon all fields of activity became natural forms of self-expression. Be it architecture or interior design, video production or still photography, manufacturing or marketing, gardening or cooking, all activities came effortlessly.

Jinendra and Shakuntala have two sons. Alok, 24 years old (in 2000), works in the computer field after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania (USA), and Kalpak, 19, is a third-year student at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (USA).

On January 20, 1994, Jinendra's mind made an effortless somersault. He was sitting in silence at the Virupaksha cave atop the Arunachala hill, Tiruvannmalai. And as the silence deepened, spontaneously, without his volition, as if it were Sri Ramana's grace... "IT" happened. He experienced an incredible lightness, a limitlessness, a sense of total freedom. A feeling of Oneness that was both blissful and sublime. He discovered the "Changeless" and realized the bliss of not being a "person" while in the waking state.

Later, when asked about his experiences, he would simply smile and say, "That which cannot be said can be shown. Now I see miracles happening all the time. The inner peace continues to exist even after returning to the phenomenal world. This inner peace brought about perceptual changes. My attitudes changed without my conscious efforts. My relationship with the world and events in and around my life had a dramatic metamorphosis. I lost my ability to worry. I lost interest in judging self or others. I lost interest in interpreting my actions and those of others. Conflict failed to grab my attention. I experienced lack of fear and a strong tendency to act spontaneously. Somehow the old ways of analyzing, evaluating, and thinking before taking action seem to have evaporated."

During the period that followed his awakening, all business and professional activities simply dissolved. There were no more social visits to friends and relatives, dietary habits suddenly changed, and watching TV and reading newspapers ceased. There was a serene aloofness and a silent detachment which most could not comprehend. When questioned, no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to translate his state of being into thoughts.

In June 1996 he met his living master in Swami Harish Madhukar, reverently called "Babaji." With him was the beginning of a journey from Enlightenment to the point of no return. Babaji reconfirmed, "You are the endless, bottomless, ocean of Consciousness that is Life within and beyond."

For Enlightenment
Just know yourself
As Changeless Witness of the Changeful Mind
That is enough

Pilgrimage to Self
by Jinendra Swami
If the great classical how-to poems of Advaita Vedanta -- the Ashtavakra Samhita, the Advahut Gita -- had been written in modern English by a living realized person who spoke our own colloquial language, they might look like this.

Conscious Life Design
by Jinendra Swami

Divine Heart Meditation
by Jinendra Swami

Guidance to the Seeker of Truth
by Jinendra Swami

Jinendra Swami in His Own Words
by Jinendra Swami
This autobiography contains a longer version of the material on this page plus some nice photographs.

Jinendra Swami's Website

Nateshvari
Website of Shaktiyogashrama Gurukul, an ashram founded by Swami Shri Harish Madhukar, master of Jinendra Swami.

Jinendra Swami welcomes all queries from genuine seekers. His email address is jinendra@yahoo.com.

This page was published on January 14, 2000 and last revised on May 8, 2000.