Many are the masters who have deigned to bless this earth by their sojourn. Consciously or unconsciously human beings are wending their way towards divinity. They are on a long pilgrimage. These masters play the role of guides, leading the pilgrims along the intricate path. They infuse new life to the veins of the very pilgrims. They never preach what they have not practiced.

Swami Chidbhavananda was one amongst those masters. Swami Chidbhavananda was the very embodiment of the qualities which he had attributed to the great masters. He was born on March 11, 1898 in a traditional agricultural family to Perianna Gounder and Nanjammal. Swamiji was the last of the seven children.

Swami Chidbhavananda, a spiritual teacher of great eminence and a dynamic religious leader was initiated into the Ramakrishna order first as a Brahmachari and later as a sanyasin in the twenties by Swami Shivananda, popularly known as Mahapurushji Maharaj, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

Swami Chidbhavananda was the founder of the Ramakrishna Ashram at Udhgamandalam and was the head of the ashram from 1926 to 1940. Then he established an organization in 1942 at Tirupparaithurai, a sacred temple town on the banks of Cauvery, 15 km west of Tiruchirapally town in Tamilnadu. It was here that Swamiji established the Ramakrishna Tapovanam and developed it into a great religious, cultural and educational movement, enveloping the entire Tamilnadu.