Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati, commonly referred to as Swami Chinmayananda, was a Hindu spiritual leader and a teacher who inspired the formation of Chinmaya Mission, a worldwide nonprofit organisation, to spread the knowledge of Advaita Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and other ancient Hindu scriptures.
Balakrishna Menon was born into an aristocratic family of Kerala state. After obtaining degrees in law and English literature from Lucknow University, he joined the Indian independence movement in 1942, later spending several months in prison for his activism. After his release he worked as a journalist for the National Herald, a New Delhi-based newspaper, and wrote prolifically on various subjects.

Despite professional success, Menon was dissatisfied, and he found himself plagued by philosophical questions regarding life, death, and spirituality. He embarked on an intensive study of philosophy, both Indian and European. Profoundly influenced by the writings of Swami Shivananda, a teacher of orthodox Vedanta, Menon renounced the world and joined Shivananda’s ashram in 1949, taking the title swami and adopting the name Chinmayananda Saraswati (Sanskrit: “The One Who Revels in the Bliss of Pure Consciousness”). He spent the next eight years in the Himalayas, studying ancient philosophical texts and scriptures under the Vedanta master Swami Tapovan.

During his study, Chinmayananda decided to spread the message of Vedanta in the hope of bringing about a spiritual revival in India. Beginning in Pune, he delivered hundreds of religious and philosophical discourses, which he called jnana yajñas (“knowledge offerings”), in the major cities of India, explaining the esoteric Vedanta philosophy simply and logically by means of examples drawn from everyday life.
From 1951 onward, he spearheaded a global Hindu spiritual and cultural renaissance that popularised the religion’s esoteric scriptural texts, teaching them in English all across India and abroad.On 6 March 1965, Chinmayananda set out on his first global teaching tour, covering 39 cities in 18 countries: Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, United States, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Lebanon.[4]:233 Over the next 28 years, he continued these international discourses, staying only a week or so in each place, delivering a minimum of two lectures a day, and handling numerous meetings, interviews, discussions, and programs.

Chinmaya Mission is a spiritual, educational, and charitable nonprofit organization that encompasses more than 300 centres in India and internationally.[citation Chinmayananda authored 95 publications, including commentaries on the major Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita. He was a visiting professor of Indian philosophy at several American and Asian universities and he conducted university lecture tours in many countries. RSS pracharak S. S. Apte and Chinamaya jointely founded in 1964 the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. They state:Let us convert Hindus to Hinduism, then everything will be all right
He established numerous institutions including Chinamaya Mission Hospital in Bengaluru.