The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami

by Radhanath Swami

Mike, a bearded, long-haired American, spoke on the science of consciousness as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

where we were led to an abandoned warehouse where dozens of hippies sprawled on the floor freely smoking marijuana.

disappeared into the smoke. In the days that followed, Gary and I learned to survive with practically no money at all. Early in the morning we’d spend a few cents on a loaf of bread, hot out of the baker’s oven.

met, under trees, inside abandoned buildings or in public crash pads. What little money we had, we tried to stretch for as long as possible.

A calling awoke in my mind to visit Assisi.

Whenever I look back to that day, I am reminded how prayers may be answered in ways we never expect.

Then, contemplating, I tried to make sense of it all. I realized that our free will could convert a curse into a blessing or a blessing into a curse. Yes, ludicrous as it was, this mongoose

may have been sent to teach me the sacred virtue of patience and forbearance. To bear difficulty and turn to God was a priceless blessing. To transform a crisis into an opportunity was true wisdom.

Maybe they realized the charm of the opposite sex to be a distraction from their exclusive dedication to God.

while cows strolled gracefully by. After spending months in the grave and stoic culture of the Middle East, I found this atmosphere to be a celebration of life.

It was also at this conference that I first met Swami Rama, who has since become renowned as the founder of

the Himalayan Institute.

If we judge others for their faults, we fall into a trap. It will be better to put your faith in those of good character and cultivate your own yoga practice.”

He told us that Krishnamurti was born in South India in 1895 and, as a child, was discovered by the renowned clairvoyant Charles Leadbeater.

more than psychosomatic acrobatics. Ashrams and monasteries are concentration camps of the mind.”

He told a story about the devil who was walking with a friend. They witnessed a man ahead of them on the road picking up a brilliant object. The devil’s friend turned and asked what the man had found. The devil answered, “He has picked up the truth.” “That’s a bad business for you,” the friend said.

“Not at all,” the devil replied. “I am going to help him organize it.”

He leaned forward, “Man cannot be enlightened through any organization, creed, dogma, priest, or ritual, nor through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through understanding the contents of his own mind, through observation, not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.”

Spontaneous tears filled my eyes. The person in the picture seemed to fill my very soul. Why was this happening to me? I felt him calling me. But how? It was only a painting, and of a fantastical person I didn’t even know. His name was written on the bottom in an ancient alphabet I couldn’t read.

He identified a common problem among spiritual practitioners—that one can do meditation in the morning and evening, but during the activities and dealings of the day, show petty-mindedness and selfishness.

He stressed that the disciple should have complete faith that in this age one could achieve God-realization through mantra japa, the recitation of God’s holy names. “You should practice chanting the Lord’s name,” he said, “until you reach a state in which the japa goes on uninterruptedly in the mind even while sitting or standing, eating or drinking, walking or working, waking or sleeping.”

As I passed, he would offer me one. Ganges water and one carrot a day, I decided, would be my only food for thirty days.

All beautiful forms of this world are in the process of transformation. Nothing is stable. With every moment, our reality is changing. Mother Ganges, like nature, is constant, but no manifestation of hers remains. Likewise, all that we hold dear in this world is imperceptibly vanishing. We cannot cling to anything. But if we can appreciate the beauty of the underlying current of truth, we can enjoy a reality deeper than the fickle waves of joy

and sorrow.

The next morning I traveled by foot to the far end of the Ganges bank in Rishikesh. Climbing up a mountain, I arrived at Sankaracarya Nagar, the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

On it was a picture of the Maharishi’s Guru, Brahmananda Saraswati. He had a white beard.

An esteemed yogi, he was the first in over 150 years to be awarded the post of Shankaracarya of the Himalayan region Jyotirmath, a role similar to a pope’s.

It was here that I especially felt the Maharishi’s presence as a deep peace and serenity permeated my mind and body.

Maharishi was born in 1917 in central India and graduated with a physics degree from Allahabad University. For thirteen years, he served his guru, Brahmananda Saraswati, in the position of secretary.

him this order: “What I have taught you also contains knowledge of the technique for the householder, which has been misinterpreted and forgotten over the centuries. Don...

Don’t worry and don’t be afraid of being alone. Don’t be anxious about anything. Begin working and e...

Then in 1955, he began teaching Transcendental Meditation (TM) and established his hillside ashram at Rishikesh. From 1957 on he began his travels across the world.

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught that, by practicing TM, our consciousness enters into finer and more subtle states.

more subtle than our ordinary states of wakefulness, slee...

I read his books, The Science of Being and Art of Living, and six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita.

His technique was simple—only fifteen to twenty minutes of “effortless” meditation in the morning and evening, and no need for lifestyle changes or religious and philosophical adjustments. He taught that life is essentially bliss, that we are essentially beings of bliss, and that TM can bring us into contact with this blissful state of being by gently directing our mind’s natural tendency to seek after happiness toward the inherent happiness of our being.

sometimes refer to this as “watering the root and enjoying the fruit.”

There, in the lotus posture with back erect, sat an amazing being. His thickly matted hair extended beyond his back and several feet onto the ground behind him.

This was Mahavirdas Tat Walla Baba.

This was how I first met Kailash Baba.

Wherever I traveled, people spoke reverentially of a woman saint named Anandamayi Ma.

I myself had read of her extraordinary qualities in the classic Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahamsa Yogananda in the chapter entitled “The Joy-Permeated Mother.”

Whenever you possibly can, sustain the flow of the sacred Name. To repeat His Name is to be in His presence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what you have just seen is called prapti siddhi, a yogic art. It is only viewed as supernatural if you do not understand the science. Through yogic discipline, a person can learn to manipulate the gross elements of nature by controlling the subtle elements with the mind.”

“True spiritual life is to know that you are beyond the body, mind, and ego and realize the soul within and to realize God and be godly. This alone will bring peace.”

Everywhere we look, we witness the unsurpassable miracles of God, but because we see them constantly, we take them for granted.

God has put a gigantic banyan tree in this tiny seed and each tree produces thousands more seeds. That’s a miracle.

But Balashiva Yogi had rightly challenged his spellbound audience, “I can create ashes. God can create universes.”

Then, before my eyes an elder Naga, sitting motionless in the lotus posture, slowly levitated about a foot above the ground. Another Baba near the fire did the same. I pinched myself to be sure I wasn’t dreaming. No, I was awake, just in another world, a world of rough and rowdy mendicants aloof to everything but their own reality.

From that day on, whenever I passed through New Delhi, I stayed at the Hanuman Temple near Connaught Place in the company of sadhus.