He is also known as Chinmayananda Saraswati, was born with birthname Balakrishnan Menon in Ernakulam, Kerala, India.

Sivananda Saraswati of Rishikesh, who founded the Divine Life Society, was his Guru.

He also struggled for the freedom of India and joined the independence movement in 1942.

Soon he was arrested and jailed, where he contracted typhus disease.

The jail authorities threw him out on the street in the hope that he would soon die.

But he was saved by a christian lady who took him home and cared for him.

While with The National Herald as a journalist, he went to meet Sivananda Saraswati at Rishikesh to write an article criticizing the monks.

But this meeting became a turning point in his life, when he adopted the Hindu spiritual path.

He took sanyas deeksha (monkhood) from Sivananda on Mahashivratri day in February, 1949, when he was given the name Chinmayananda Saraswati - the one who is saturated in Bliss and pure Consciousness.

After his stay at Rishikesh for several years, Sivananda sent him to study under Tapovan Maharaj, a guru in the Himalayas, under whom he studied for the following years.

After being educated there for about 8 years, he left the Himalayas with a mission to spread the knowledge of Vedanta in the world.

He started the tradition of Jnana Yagnas, in an effort to spread the message of the Gita and the Upanishads.

He also promoted a rural development project, known as the Chinmaya Organization for Rural Development or CORD.