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Over the Easter weekend of 1970 a yogi sat in a laboratory with temperature sensors taped to his right palm and, without moving his hands, made one side of the palm warmer than the other by several degrees. The psychologist Elmer Green, who ran the experiments for the Menninger Foundation, later wrote them up in Beyond Biofeedback. The yogi was Swami Rama, who had arrived in the United States the year before and went on to found the Himalayan Institute, a hospital in the Himalayan foothills, and a list of books that the Institute still keeps in print. His reputation was also damaged by allegations of sexual abuse from former students, which ended in a 1997 jury verdict. This guide covers every book in order, where to start, how the books were made, and that history.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1972–1996 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
This guide covers 14 key books by Swami Rama, from Book of Wisdom (1972), a commentary on the Ishopanishad, to Sacred Journey (1996), a book about death published the year he died, and lists 6 more below. Most were edited from his lectures and published by the Himalayan Institute he founded. Several are short practice manuals; others are long commentaries, so the right first book depends on what you want from him.
Where to Start with Swami Rama
If you read only one
→ Living with the Himalayan Masters (1978).
If you want to start practising
→ Science of Breath (1979).
If you come to him from psychology or therapy
→ Yoga and Psychotherapy (1976).
If you have one evening
→ Freedom from the Bondage of Karma (1977).
If you want his reading of a scripture
→ Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita (1985).
14 Key Swami Rama Books, in Order
Book of Wisdom
His commentary on the Ishopanishad, one of the shortest of the Upanishads and a founding text of Vedanta. It opens with a history of the Upanishads before working through the text on the nature of God, the origin of ignorance and illusion, and the levels of mind and consciousness. The Himalayan Institute dates it to 1972; the current edition runs to 121 pages, and an early review in The Illustrated Weekly of India is still quoted by the publisher.
Yoga and Psychotherapy
Written with two Western-trained students: the physician Rudolph Ballentine, later president of the Himalayan Institute, and the psychotherapist Swami Ajaya. The book sets Western models of the mind beside yogic ones and compares how each understands the ego, instinct and consciousness. It was written for therapists as well as general readers, and the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof is among those who endorsed it.
Freedom from the Bondage of Karma
Eight lectures on self-understanding, collected in 89 pages. Karma is described as a rope woven from actions, thoughts, desires and the tendencies stored in the unconscious, which keep the mind restless and turned outward; self-study is offered as the way to loosen it. The book opens with his hope that modern men and women become aware that life has two aspects, “within and without”.
Living with the Himalayan Masters
Edited by Swami Ajaya from his stories and first published at Honesdale in a volume of nearly 500 pages. He tells of meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi, of eleven months in a cave monastery, a journey to Tibet to see his grandmaster, and a ninety-six-year-old woman sage in Assam who was said never to sleep. Some chapters are comic: in one he is mistaken for a ghost while meditating in a cemetery. The Himalayan Institute still calls it his best-known book.
Science of Breath
A short guide, 119 pages in its current edition, written with two medical doctors, Rudolph Ballentine and Alan Hymes. It combines an account of how breathing works with exercises meant to expose unconscious breathing habits, replace them with steadier patterns, and in time give control over prana, the energy yoga links to the breath. Library catalogues date the first edition to 1979, from the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.
A Practical Guide to Holistic Health
Starts from a question rather than a regimen: what is the purpose of life, and how should a person go about it? The practical chapters that follow cover cleansing, diet, exercise, stillness and the understanding of emotions. The book is 100 pages long and came out in 1980 from the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale.
Choosing a Path
An introduction to the four classical paths of yoga, each given its own section: karma yoga, the path of selfless action; bhakti yoga, the path of devotion; jnana yoga, the path of self-inquiry; and raja yoga, the path of meditation. The aim, as the title says, is to help a reader decide which path suits them. It runs to 200 pages.
Enlightenment Without God
A commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad, the short text that sets out the syllable Aum and the states of waking, dreaming, deep sleep and the fourth state beyond them. He reads it as a guide to inner practice and argues that self-realisation does not depend on belief in a god, which gives the book its title. 124 pages, first published in 1982.
Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita
His longest commentary, 479 pages: a reading of the Bhagavad Gita that draws out its ideas about the mind rather than its theology. The argument throughout is that mastery of the outer world depends on exploring one’s inner potential. The publisher aimed it at psychotherapists and students of Eastern thought as well as spiritual seekers; the Institute also sells an edition of the text without commentary.
Love Whispers
A slim book of 90 pages taken from his private diaries: short prose pieces, poems and dialogues, among them conversations with the Divine Mother, written as he reflected on life and nature. The Himalayan Institute presents it as the first time these entries were made public. It was reissued in a second edition in 2000.
Path of Fire and Light
Two volumes of advanced practice. The first, from 1986, studies swarodaya, which the book calls the science of breath, with step-by-step instructions for advanced pranayama and meditation. The second, from 1988, is subtitled “a practical companion to volume 1” and was edited from an advanced seminar he taught at the Himalayan Institute in the summer of 1987.
The Art of Joyful Living
A book about ordinary difficulties, in 171 pages: breaking negative habit patterns, working through strong emotions, building willpower, listening to intuition, and keeping a spiritual life inside a loving relationship. The final chapters turn to setting up a meditation practice of one’s own. The thread running through it is that each person is responsible for making their own life happy.
Meditation and Its Practice
A meditation manual of 107 pages, with photographs to show the instructions. It describes moving past the everyday chatter of the mind toward inner awareness, and finally toward what he calls the Atman, the centre of awareness. The publisher calls it a practical guide to the inner life; the current printing dates from 2012.
Sacred Journey
A book about death, first published in India in 1996, the year he died, and reissued in 2002 by the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust with Lotus Press. It starts from the idea that death cannot be understood without first understanding the purpose of life, and treats the two as partners. It stresses living with intention and preparing for a peaceful death. 136 pages.
How Many Books Has Swami Rama Written?
Counts vary widely. The Himalayan Institute’s shop alone lists 29 titles under his name, including co-written books, Sikh texts and later compilations, and many of his books were edited from talks, some of them after his death in 1996; this guide lists 14 key books and 6 more.
- His own story — Living with the Himalayan Masters, Love Whispers, Sacred Journey Read the entries →
- Breath, health and practice — Science of Breath, A Practical Guide to Holistic Health, Path of Fire and Light, Meditation and Its Practice Read the entries →
- Scripture commentaries — Book of Wisdom, Enlightenment Without God, Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita Read the entries →
- Psychology and daily life — Yoga and Psychotherapy, Freedom from the Bondage of Karma, Choosing a Path, The Art of Joyful Living Read the entries →
- Co-written, commentaries and practice — Creative Use of Emotion, Life Here and Hereafter, Exercises for Joints and Glands and more See the list →
In What Order to Read Swami Rama
None of his books depends on another, and there is no series to follow. The one pair that belongs together is Path of Fire and Light: the second volume (1988) was published as a practical companion to the first (1986) and assumes you have read it.
A sensible order starts with the stories in Living with the Himalayan Masters, which explain where the teaching came from, moves to the practice books (Science of Breath, then Meditation and Its Practice), and leaves the long commentaries, such as the 479-page Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita, until later. Sacred Journey, on death, reads best near the end.
A reading path
1. Living with the Himalayan Masters (1978), the stories first
2. Science of Breath (1979)
3. Meditation and Its Practice (1992)
4. Choosing a Path (1982), the four paths of yoga
5. Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita (1985), for a long read
6. Sacred Journey (1996)
Everything Else Swami Rama Published: The Full List
Beyond the 14 key books: 6 more titles, grouped by form.
Open a form with the + to see every book in it.
Co-written
2
2 books · 1976–1983
- 1976Creative Use of Emotionwith Swami Ajaya, on moving from inner conflict and restlessness toward a calm, joyful mind
- 1983Meditation in Christianityessays by Swami Rama and Christian teachers on meditation in the gospels, in monasticism and in prayer
Commentaries and sacred texts
2
2 books · 1976–1986
- 1976Life Here and Hereaftera commentary on the Kathopanishad, the dialogue between the boy Nachiketa and Yama, the king of death
- 1986Celestial Song/Gobind Geeta poetic dialogue between Guru Gobind Singh and Banda Singh Bahadur on Sikh dharma and selfless service
Practice and family life
2
2 books · 1977–1992
- 1977Exercises for Joints and Glandsgentle stretching exercises, among the first techniques he taught, shown in 100 photographs
- 1992Love and Family Lifeon marriage and family as a setting for spiritual growth
Quick facts about Swami Rama
- Born
- 1925, in the village of Toli in the Garhwal Himalayas, northern India
- Died
- 13 November 1996, at the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust near Dehradun, India
- Teacher
- Bengali Baba, the Himalayan sage who raised him from early childhood
- Known for
- His laboratory demonstrations of control over heartbeat, skin temperature and brain waves, reported in the New York Times Magazine and Time, brought him wide attention in the West, and the Himalayan Institute he founded still teaches and publishes his work.
- Laboratory
- Studied by Elmer Green for the Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas, from 1970
- Came to the US
- 1969
- Founded
- Himalayan Institute, 1971 in Illinois; headquarters in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, since 1977
- In India
- Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust, begun in 1989 at Jolly Grant, Dehradun; now Swami Rama Himalayan University
How Swami Rama Taught: Talks Turned into Books
Most of his books began as talks. Freedom from the Bondage of Karma is eight lectures; the second volume of Path of Fire and Light was edited from a seminar he gave at the Himalayan Institute in the summer of 1987; Living with the Himalayan Masters was shaped from his stories by his student Swami Ajaya. Students with Western training co-wrote the books that brought yoga into conversation with medicine and psychology, among them the physicians Rudolph Ballentine and Alan Hymes. Nearly everything was published by the Institute’s own press in Honesdale, which keeps the books in print, and several titles were compiled or reissued after his death.
The same ideas run through the practice books and the commentaries: the breath as the link between body and mind, the mind as something that can be trained, and the claim that the inner life has to be explored before the outer one can be mastered. His scientific reputation rests on the Menninger Foundation sessions. Over the Easter weekend of 1970 Elmer Green recorded him making two spots on his right palm differ by about 7 °F; in other tests he produced alpha, theta and delta brain waves on request and, by raising his heart rate to around 300 beats a minute, stopped it pumping blood for about 17 seconds. The Institute also claims he served as Shankaracharya of Karvirpitham in South India from 1949 to 1952.
His life story has been questioned. In 1987 two close followers left the Institute after concluding that parts of his official biography had been fabricated, and his claimed degrees from Oxford and Hamburg have not been verified. Women who had studied with him made allegations of sexual abuse going back to the early 1970s; they were documented in a 1987 University of Minnesota doctoral thesis and reported by Yoga Journal in 1990. In 1994 a woman sued him and the Institute over repeated sexual assaults in 1993, when she was 19 and at the Institute. On 4 September 1997, after his death, a Pennsylvania jury awarded her about $1.9 million; the Associated Press reported that the Institute had been aware of similar complaints by other women.
Frequently asked questions about Swami Rama’s books
How many books did Swami Rama write?
Several dozen titles carry his name, and the Himalayan Institute’s shop lists 29. Many were edited from his lectures, some were co-written with students, and some were compiled after his death in 1996. This guide covers 14 key books, from Book of Wisdom (1972) to Sacred Journey (1996), and 6 more.
What was Swami Rama’s first book?
The earliest still in print is Book of Wisdom: Ishopanishad, which the Himalayan Institute dates to 1972, a commentary on one of the shortest Upanishads. His first co-written book was Yoga and Psychotherapy (1976), with Rudolph Ballentine and Swami Ajaya.
What was Swami Rama’s last book?
Sacred Journey: Living Purposefully and Dying Gracefully, about preparing for death, was first published in India in 1996, the year he died, and reissued in 2002 by the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust. Other titles have been compiled from his talks since then.
What is Swami Rama’s most famous book?
Living with the Himalayan Masters (1978), edited by Swami Ajaya, in which he tells of his upbringing by Bengali Baba and his meetings with teachers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi. The Himalayan Institute calls it his best-known book.
Which Swami Rama book should I read first?
Living with the Himalayan Masters (1978) explains where his teaching came from. For practice, Science of Breath (1979), written with two physicians, and Meditation and Its Practice (1992) are both short.
What happened in the Menninger Foundation experiments?
Beginning in March 1970 the psychologist Elmer Green studied him for the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas. Green recorded him making two spots on his right palm differ in temperature by about 7 °F without moving his hands, and in other tests he produced chosen brain-wave patterns and stopped his heart pumping blood for about 17 seconds.
Was Swami Rama accused of sexual abuse?
Yes. Former students accused him of sexual abuse dating back to the early 1970s, documented in a 1987 doctoral thesis and reported by Yoga Journal in 1990. In 1997, after his death, a Pennsylvania jury awarded about $1.9 million to a woman who said he had assaulted her repeatedly at the Himalayan Institute in 1993, when she was 19.
Who was Swami Rama?
An Indian yogi, born in 1925 in the Garhwal Himalayas and raised by the sage Bengali Baba, who came to the United States in 1969. He founded the Himalayan Institute (1971), now based in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust near Dehradun (1989), and died on 13 November 1996.
Footnotes
- Swami Rama — Wikipedia
- Swami Rama — Himalayan Institute
- Swami Rama, Founder — Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust
- Beyond Biofeedback, ch. 2 excerpt (Elmer and Alyce Green) — Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust
- Swami Rama, Researcher/Scientist — Swami Rama Society
- Evolutions, December 1997 (jury award) — Hinduism Today
- Swami Rama Himalayan University — Wikipedia
- Living with the Himalayan Masters (1978) — Penn Libraries catalogue
- Living with the Himalayan Masters — Himalayan Institute
- Living with the Himalayan Masters, review — Spirituality & Practice
- Science of Breath (1979) — Texas A&M University Libraries catalogue
- Yoga & Psychotherapy — Himalayan Institute
- Freedom from the Bondage of Karma — Himalayan Institute
- Path of Fire and Light, 1986–1988 — Marmot Library Network catalogue
- Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita — Himalayan Institute
- Swami Rama books — Himalayan Institute shop
Bibliography last verified 7 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I hope that modern men and women become aware that life has two aspects—within and without.”
— Swami Rama, Freedom from the Bondage of Karma
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