In 1969, Swami Rama created the Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in Kanpur, India, and soon thereafter a beautiful Ashram on the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh-India. The Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in the United States was also founded by Swami Rama in Honesdale, Pennsylvania to connect Eastern and Western traditions of spirituality. In 1970 he offered himself for experiments at the Menninger Foundation in the USA, demonstrating amazing control of the autonomic nervous system. He was also an expert in homeopathy and Ayurvedic medicine, an architect and an accomplished musician – in essence, a Master of the art of life.

Uncountable thousands around the world came to him asking for gifts tangible and intangible. When he gave with the right hand, his left hand did not know. One meets people in all walks of life, in highest professions, who tell us how he blessed, guided, created their success in life. He would sit for hours in the company of a one-buffalo farmer while princes waited outside his chamber. When he granted funds for establishing the library of a University in the Garhwal Himalayas, he did it on the condition that his name would not be given any public association with it.

A philanthropist who created a Medical City (Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences, a hospital, Medical College and nursing school) in four years in Dehradun, India, where there were only farmers' fields, and gave subtle hints on surgery to surgeons. The hospitL is first of its kind, it combines the best of modern Western medicine and the time-tested wisdom of the yoga and meditation and traditional methods of Ayurvedic medicine. A superb administrator who taught leaders how to lead and managers how to manage. Equally at home in the East and the West, he was a both a scientist and an accomplished mystic, a siddha. Above all, he was a direct descendant of the lineage of yogis, going back thousands of years, who are the founders and keepers of yoga, the source of all paths of meditation, and who confer the direct experience as initiation into the mystery of Consciousness.

In 1996 this fully enlightened Master and representative of the ancient lineage of yogis left his body. As he prepared to leave his body, he left strict instructions to build no memorials, establish no shrines nor a museum, and do nothing else to commemorate his name. His memorial is in the hearts of his disciples and students who carry on his work, who miss the love they received in abandon. What we all most remember about him is the magnetic, charismatic power of love, such that as he walked one felt pulled to simply walk behind him. The full impact of his spiritual legacy will be realized perhaps in a century.