The Journey Home Book - By Radhanath Swami

 

At the age of only nineteen, Radhanath Swami left his home in America seeking adventure and spiritual knowledge. After trekking across Europe for months,  Radhanath Swami reached his long hoped for destination: India. After living there for many years as a sadhu or wandering monk, Radhanath Swami returned to America in order to share the sacred knowledge and wisdom he had learned from the many holy men and women he had met there. It was an extraordinary choice, given what Radhanath Swami had survived to get there: a journey filled with bizarre characters, mystical experiences, and dangerous adventures. The story is recounted in his recently published memoir The Journey Home - Autobiography of an American Swami. Reviewers have called Radhanath Swami's saga  "at once an engaging yarn, a love story, and the evocation of a transcendent paradise in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor.

Radhanath Swami emerged from his years of travel wanting to explain for others the beauty and rewards of a life devoted to God, and therein lay a dilemma. Radhanath Swami's many followers and friends describe him as completely selfless and consequently unwilling to take credit for his work and restless when a spotlight is focused on him. By choosing A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (1896-1977), a Bengali Vaishnava Saint, as his guru (after declining offers of initiation from several tyagis or renunciants in the Himalayas), Radhanath Swami cast his fate to the wind, cut his matted locks, and entered back into the society.

RadhanathMaharaj.net gives us a complete collection of the teaching of Radhanath Swami. Teachings consists of Transcriptions of lectures delivered by Radhanath Swami at various places. This website is to inspire the followers of Radhanath Swami to practice the philosophy of Vaishanavism.

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Untitled lecture

 

 
 
 
I would like to share with all of you a very sacred lesson that I learned from Yamuna Mataji many years ago. She will not remember this but it is very engrave very deeply in my heart.
 
I have spoken at times of my search for truth through Europe, the Middle East, to the Himalayas in route I passed through Bombay and there by Krishna’s mercy, I met the devotees on the first day of the first major pandal program the devotees held at Cross Maidan that was I believe in March of 1971. I was sitting away away in back amongst all twenty thousand people. I explained when I first came in Yamuna Mataji was singing beautiful bhajanas for several hours, it I remember. Her husband Gurudas is the person who came way way to the back of the audience and took me by the hand and said, “Srila Prabhupada wants you to sit beside him on the stage”. I asked, “How does Srila Prabhupada know me”? He did not answered my question and he just pull me and took me on the stage. When I climbed on the stage, I really felt like a retched crow in a flock of beautiful pure swans because everyone was cleaned with tilak and shaved heads in bright dhotis. I only had one dhoti and chadar that I had wore for months and months. I would wash it in dirty rivers and put it back on to dry. I had not combed my hair shaved in a couple of years. I was like a saddhu. I had a little stick which was an uprooted branch from a tree and a little begging pot and I was on the stage with all these Hare Krishna Vaisnavas. They were dancing and singing and I was thinking this dancing is not for Yogis.
 
Then they take us a parikrama to Varsana, Nanda gaon, Gavardhan, Dauji, Gokula Mahavana, Radha Damodar six temples. He would personally take us to these places and tell us about each places. It was such a deeply and reaching experience to be with Srila Prabhupada in Vrindavana. I had many dreams over the years of Srila Prabhupada taking us in Vrindavana and revealing Vrindavana to us. Then in the afternoon he would give darshan and I would sit close to him and I never spoke anything. I was too shy but I was just sit and watch him and listen. But it was at that time that I accepted Srila Prabhupada as my guru in my heart that is compassion his knowledge, his love was unparalleled in my observation of anyone I had ever met in any religion in any part of the world. So I surrender my heart.
 
The devotees wanted to take me with Srila Prabhupada. They were traveling but I said I’ll never leave Vrindavana. So the devotees left. They even offer me the position of his personal servant because they said that his servant, who was always getting sick because India was such hard place. They said, “You seem too no harder living in India, quite well”. But I said, no. When Srila Prabhupada comes back and starts a temple I’ll help him then. But I’ll stay in Vrindavan. So the devotees started call me a sahajia but Srila Prabhupada rub on the head and this is very good that you love Vrindavana and gave me all encouragement. It was during that time I happen to be great fortune of being purified by witnessing the auspicious marriage of Vishakha Mataji and Yadubal Prabhu and they still remained over all these years, so faithfully together in Srila Prabhupada’s service.
 
So I stay for some months after this but due to Visa problems I had to live and the people of Vrindavan, they told me that “If you have to leave India there is a place just like Varsana, you should go there. It is called Mithila or Janaka pur. It is in Nepala. So I left and went to Mithila, to day it is called Janakapur and there I read Ramayana of balmiki and Tulsidas. I was immensely studying Rama’s Lila and Rama Navami came and then I came to Himalayas in Nepal. Then I got a two week trans visa in India. So I first went to Prayaga, where I bathed in Triveni, Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati. Then I went back to Ajyodha then I came back to Vrindavan. During that time in Vrindavan, I met all my Vrajavasi friends but I went to Radha Damodar temple. When I was there I found that Yamuna Mataji and Gurudas Prabhu was living in an upstairs room of Radha Damodar temple. It was the first time I ever saw ISKCON devotees living in Vrindavan. I think they were the first.
 
So I visited them one day and they very graciously welcome me. They remembered me and they felt sorry for me. She was very motherly and he was very fatherly but there something I witnessed that had a deep impression in my heart because from the time I accepted Srila Prabhupada as my spiritual master in heart the relationship was that I was worshiping Radha and Krishna and I was chanting the holy names and following all the principles and I was reading his books, I was trying to intensely remember Krishna and pray to Krishna. My conception was that all this is by the mercy of my guru Srila Prabhupada and all this is whatever I do should be an offering to my guru. But I never had the conception of actual practical day today service. When I met them I was looked them for several hours and that whole several hours they were constantly talking between themselves of what Srila Prabhupada wants them to do. Even the little littlest things, Srila Prabhupada done like this. Srila Prabhupada wants us to do like this. That was all coming out of their mouths in their exchanges with each other, is what Srila Prabhupada wanted to do and what they must do and what they will do and what they have done.
 
I can tell you the truth first I felt uncomfortable by that because such surrender to a spiritual master in practical day to day, moment to moment spirit of service. I had never experienced anywhere before in any matha or in any cave or in ashram of any guru. Then I was thinking my self by seeing them that this is what a disciple actually is. Someone who at any moment was just thinking and discussing how to assist the spiritual master in his mission. The idea of direct personalized service, I first experienced in Yamuna devi and Gurudas Prabhu and that was a very large impact in my heart. I began to question, Srila Prabhupada is my guru and I am trying to surrender to Krishna but what I am actually doing for him and his mission? These people are doing something at every moment. It was astounding to me, their every thought, their every words, their every action were simply to do what Srila Prabhupada wanted them to do in Vrindavana.
 
I am sure Yamuna Devi does not remember this but it is a very sacred part of my life. I only spend few hours with them on that day but what I received I carry with me even 29 years later. My last day in Vrindavan before my visa expired, I performed the Govardhan Parikrama and then perceive to the western world. Some of my dear Vrajavasis babaji and pujari friends told me You should go to New Vrindavana because Goswami maharaja has said that it is none different than Vrindavana.
 
So Yamuna Mataji, Vishakha Mataji, Jaidas prabhu, Chandramauli Maharaja, these devotees are bottom lifetime commitment of service to the mission of their guru maharaja and for this I pray that my head may eternally bowed at their lotus feet.
 
Thank you, very much.
 
 
 
End of the Transcription.

 

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