Foreword

Gunnar Adler-Karlsson

In his introduction to this book, Basile P. Catoméris mentions that Professor S. S. Goswami attracted thousands of pupils to his Yoga school in Stockholm. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones. At the beginning of the 1960s, I overexerted myself on an academic book concerning the extremely sensitive and secret economic side of the Cold War, became a bit nervous, and went to a doctor. The only fault he found was that I had worked too hard with my mind, neglecting my body. He gave me the address of the Goswami school.

Since then I have had close encounters with a number of statesmen and Nobel Prize winners. But I have never in my life met an individual with a stronger charisma combined with such a wonderful mixture of empathy, warm humor, and profound seriousness as Sri Shyam Sundar Goswami. His Haṭha Yoga exercises, together with some deep meditation, quickly picked up both my physical and mental state. For over forty years since then, few weeks have passed without my doing a serious Yoga exercise.

I have no doubt that it was Professor Goswami’s Yoga teaching that gave me the strength to overcome those difficulties in life that all truth-seeking—that is, provocative—individuals are bound to meet. In this superstressed modern world I don’t hesitate to advise anybody and everybody to devote a few hours a week to Haṭha Yoga. All the other hours will benefit from it, and you will enjoy a stronger body and a quicker, as well as more relaxed, mind.

Lest the reader think I am a fundamentalist Yoga fanatic, let me just mention that an English translation of the title of my latest book in Swedish could be “Memories of an Inflated Bacteria.” This scientifically fully correct phrase is a reminder of Goswami’s Indian wisdom, tat twam asi: “you are it”—you are the great-great-great grandchild of the first bacteria at the beginning of life on this wonderful planet.

My own memory of and gratitude to Sri Shyam Sundar Goswami will continue until the other bacteria seriously start to consume me.