Swami Sivananda standing in front of his press building

Swami Sivananda, after undertaking an All-India and Ceylon tour in 1950 recognised that there was a great thirst for spiritual knowledge and he wanted to meet that need and to awaken the moral and spiritual consciousness in the hearts of people. He knew that books were a good way to do that, and also that books published in English would further help to disseminate the knowledge around the world. Therefore, in 1951 he established The Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy Press and he purchased and imported a state-of-the-art offset printing press, a Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, from Germany. The press was expensive but later proved to be a very wise investment.