Divine Life Society

The name "Divine Life Society" is a direct English translation, reflecting its mission to foster a life lived in accordance with divine principles. It emerged from the Hindu tradition of ashrams and spiritual missions, established in the modern era by Swami Sivananda Saraswati.

The Divine Life Society (DLS) is a Hindu spiritual organisation and an ashram, founded by Swami Sivananda Saraswati in 1936, at Muni Ki Reti, Rishikesh, India. The Society has branches around the world, with its headquarters in Rishikesh.

The Divine Life Society, though a relatively recent creation in the grand sweep of spiritual history, represents a potent contemporary expression of an enduring human impulse: the desire to live a life imbued with meaning and connection to something larger than the self. Founded by Swami Sivananda Saraswati, a figure whose prolific output of spiritual literature has reached countless seekers, the Society embodies the spirit of the ashram, a traditional Indian hermitage, reimagined for a globalized age. It is not merely a repository of ancient texts, but a vibrant center for the practice of yoga and Vedanta, disciplines that, as Mircea Eliade noted in his studies of shamanism and archaic techniques of ecstasy, offer systematic methods for altering consciousness and apprehending deeper realities.

Sivananda's vision, as channeled through the DLS, emphasizes the integration of spiritual practice into the fabric of everyday existence. This is a crucial insight for the modern individual, often overwhelmed by the demands of secular life and prone to compartmentalizing spirituality as a weekend or retirement pursuit. The Society's focus on "practical Vedanta" and "integral yoga" suggests that the divine is not a distant, abstract concept, but an immanent presence to be realized through diligent effort in all aspects of life—work, relationships, and personal contemplation. This echoes the insights of thinkers like Aldous Huxley, who, in his exploration of perennial philosophy, sought common threads of wisdom across diverse traditions, recognizing that the path to enlightenment often involves a harmonious development of all human faculties. The DLS, therefore, offers a tangible framework for those seeking to cultivate a divine life, not as an otherworldly aspiration, but as an achievable, transformative way of being in the world. It reminds us that the sacred is not merely in the temple, but in the very breath we take and the actions we perform.