SWAMI NIKHILANANDA

Born Dinesh Chandra Das Gupta in 1895, Swami Nikhilananda was a direct disciple of Sri Sarada Devi. In 1933, he founded the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, a branch of the Ramakrishna Mission, and remained its head until his death in 1973.

Nikhilananda was considered a brilliant speaker and was invited to lecture at different universities, churches, and synagogues, and to participate in inter-religious conferences East and West.  He made important contributions to the literature of the Ramakrishna movement, attracting along the way distinguished disciples, including Margaret Woodrow Wilson, daughter of President Woodrow Wilson, the comparative mythologist Professor Joseph Campbell, and Chester Carlson, inventor of the xerographic process.  Philosopher Lex Hixon was Nikhilananda's disciple.

Joseph Campbell was, for a number of years, the president of the New York Center.  He also worked on various translations with Nikhilananda, and helped with the editing of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Mahendranath Gupta aka "M," a direct disciple of Ramakrishna's.  The Nikhilananda edition included a foreword by novelist Aldous Huxley, an initiate of the Vedanta Society of Southern California.