Five Great Healers Speak Here

Author(s): Nancy, Esmond Gardner
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing House

Page 26

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Munishree Chitrabhanu, a profound and brilliant teacher, is one of the spiritual leaders of India's 4,000,000 Jains, a religion little known outside India. Yoga and Jainism share the principles of non-violence. Munishree has stated: “There is nothing in the world so powerful as non-violence."
He explains that the Jain philosophy is not essentially founded on any particular writing or external revelation but on the unfolding of spiritual consciousness, which is the birthright of every soul. Through knowledge and endeavor, the individual develops and unfolds the potential within him.
Munishree defines a Jain as a man who speaks of personal responsibility for his own deeds, regards a person as master of his own destiny, and refrains from violence. Whether he calls himself a Jain or not is unimportant. “I look for a change of soul, not a label.”
Munishree is broadly ecumenical in his approach to spirituality. He says, “I do not want to teach people their duties or any doctrines of religion. I want to arouse them from their complacencies, to stir their hearts, to vivify their imaginations, to bring them to the heights of which they are capable.” He describes a true religious leader as the small boat which takes the spiritual pilgrim from the shore to the deep-water vessel of spirituality out in the harbor.
Born in a village in Rajputana to a middle-class family on July 26th, 1922, Roop Rajendra (as he was named) attended college at Bangalore. At the age of sixteen he