Brahmananda Saraswati

Brahmananda Saraswati was born in 1868 into a Brahmin family in India. At the age of nine he left home to follow a spiritual path of renunciation. In 1941, after decades of silence, Brahmanada Saraswati agreed to be Shankaracharya (spiritual head) of Jyotir Math in India. In the eighth century Adi Shankara, a reviver of Vedic Sanatan Dharma, established four monasteries in India. These monasteries, or "Maths", were located in the north, south , east and west of India. The Jyotir math is the northern monastery. According to the wishes of Adi Shankara, these monasteries were overseen by Shankaracharyas whose responsibility included the preservation of the major systems of Hindu philosophy which form the basis of the Hindu religion. Swami Brahmanada Saraswati died in 1953. He was the spiritual master of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who popularized Transcendental Meditation.