Originally, a small booklet was published by the Jaffna Co-operative Tamil Books, Publication and Sale Society Ltd., at 1 K.K.S. Road, Jaffna, on the northern tip of the island of Sri Lanka, off the south-eastern coast of India, where Yogaswami was born and spent most of his life. The First edition was published in April 1972, and the Second Edition in July 1972 to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Yogar Swamigal. Recently I learnt that another of Yogar Swami's successors, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, had published this book on the web in association with the Himalayan Academy and Hinduism Today - where there are vast resources which relate to India's ancient spiritual path.

The presentation of these words of the twentieth century mystic and sage Yogaswami at this website has been arranged into three large (about 40K) sections:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

My acknowledgement of the original text must be directed to the above, however in my review of each of the thousand of more sayings - for the purposes of study - I have simply reformatted the presentation. I do not intend to provide a biography of YogaSwami for that task has been admirably attended to in the works which are already published at the above sites, which provide - at the present moment on the web (early 1997) - the only source of information about the life of Yagaswami of Sri Lankar:

The Testament of Truth - a study of the Life and Teachings and Writings of Yogaswami

A Brief Biography - Lanka's Yogaswami ... A Masterful Life

A More InDepth Biography - selected from The Testament of Truth

The Sage Yogaswami - An introduction by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

Words of Our Master - Acknowledged as the original web publication.

Indeed, a collation of the Publications of Peace and Of Great Souls could in no way be complete without reference to the this work based on the life of Yogaswami of Sri Lanka.

In the decade of the 1960's, when Yogaswami passed from this life, when the Eagle landed on the moon and when the Gaia Hypothesis was being formulated, the global generic perspective of humanity was just beginning to become known to its peoples though the emergence of technology. Since that time, this global perspective is slowly now becoming more into focus, and the great inter-connectivity of all things in the natural world in which mankind lives, has evolved and is sustained - is being recognised not only anew by the disciplines of the Arts, but also within the formative specifications of emergent Sciences. This great and foundational inter-connectivity would appear to extends to all branches of human recognition, and the myriad religions are no exception, as Yogaswami points out:

At the top of the mountain you find it very cool.
There will be none of the dissimilarity that you can see at the bottom of the path.
The fundamental principles of all religions are one.

To understand that these words of wisdom have sprung from the soil of the island of Sri Lanka, necessitates the comprehension that the emergence of goodness and virtue and instruction have emerged - each in their time and Age - over all parts of the terrestrial planetary surface. Such resources are destined to assist those who would know themselves to be the students of life, and this - to the last - should represent each and every one of us.

Peace.

PRF Brown
BCSLS {Freshwater}
Mountain Man Graphics, Australia