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Swami Rama directed his life towards the unification of science and spirituality. His Master suggested that he could help bring Eastern and Western science closer together by working with psychologists and medical doctors who were studying mental and physical phenomena. Upon the invitation of Dr. Elmer Green of the Menninger Foundation of Topeka, Kansas, Swami Rama was a consultant in a research project investigating the voluntary control of involuntary states in 1970.
Reports of this work have been documented in the World Book Science Annual l974, the 1973 Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook of Science, the Time-Life 1973 Nature Science Annual, and numerous other publications. Journals and newspapers across the United States reported on the experiments. Articles appeared in Journal of Transpersonal Psychology (1970), New York Times Magazine (September 1971), Times Weekly (July 1972), Playboy (December 1972), Psychology Today (August 1974), and other popular journals such as Esquire (December 1972), Time (April 1973), Saturday Review (February 1975), and Prevention (June 1978). Swami Rama was a frequent figure on national television shows in the United States, having appeared on such widely viewed programs as "Good Morning America" and the "Phil Donahue Show."
He was the first yogi to subject himself to modern scientific methods of testing his states of consciousness while at the highest level of meditation. When questioned about these feats by an interviewer from The World Book Science Annual, 1974 Science Year, he explained that he could control his heart and blood vessels, and consciously produce various kinds of brain waves at will, because, "All of the body is in the mind, but not all of the mind is in the body."
Through his work with the Menninger Foundation he helped to pioneer the use of biofeedback as a therapeutic modality, to lay the foundation for stress management and holistic health programs, and to generate interest in the human capacity to experience previously unrecognized levels of consciousness.
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