The Journey Home By Radhanath Swami Book Summary

 

The Journey Home By Radhanath Swami Book Summary

The Journey Home - Autobiography of an American Swami by Radhanath Swami. So first let me tell you how I discovered this book. I watched a podcast in which Gaur Gopal Dass was being interviewed by Ranveer Allahbadia and he was asked what are the top five books that he recommends, and The Journey Home was one of those books. And then again I was listening to a different podcast in which Joe Rogan was interviewing Raghunath Cappo and in that Raghunath mentioned this book again, and also that his guru is Radhanath Swami. So that's how I learned about this book.

Now I'll tell you what this book is about. This book is the autobiography of an American swami. So when Radhanath — was Richard at the time — was a teenager he left his home in Chicago to go to Europe with his friends as many teenagers do, with the intentions of returning back home in the fall. But during his adventures in Europe he felt a very strong spiritual calling to go to India. So he hitchhiked all the way from Europe to India, through Greece, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally India.

In doing so he encountered a lot of obstacles. He almost lost his life a few times, he got very sick with dysentery. Also there was a cholera epidemic happening in Turkey at the time and also at every border crossing — every country's border crossing — he had to get a visa for that country and sometimes that visa was denied to him including India. But he persisted and somehow he managed to get the visa and finally enter India. As they say, where there is a will, there is a way.

Even though sometimes he had thoughts of returning to the comforts of America, his spiritual calling was so strong that he actually never turned back. Once he entered India, he traveled all over India from the Himalayas to Bombay and Goa and Calcutta and Patna and then Ayodhya and Mathura and Vrindavan — all these places. He visited different ashrams and tried to learn from different sadhus and teachers. He also spent some time by himself meditating in different places and living the life of a sadhu.

As he was learning from all these different teachers and himself as well through his meditations, he was trying to find the answer to the question: which path of yoga would be the best for him and which spiritual teacher would be best for him. After two years of searching for his answer, he arrived in Vrindavan where he spent six months. That's where he realized that bhakti yoga is the path of yoga that he wants to pursue, and the teacher that he accepted as his teacher — even though lots of other sadhus and swamis had offered to be his teachers — he finally accepted his spiritual teacher to be Swami Prabhupada.

Who should read this book? This book is for you if you are into spirituality but you don't want to read a preachy book. This book is for you if you're interested in learning about Eastern spirituality in particular. And also if you're interested in the roller coaster journey of a person who is trying to search for meaning.

Now I want to share with you my reactions and takeaways from this book. I had expected this book to be a bit heavy but it wasn't heavy at all. It actually felt like reading fiction because it is just a story. And it's a very interesting journey and very nice storytelling which has been done by the author.

There are some moments in this book which are absolutely mystical and magical — especially for me as a layman. For example, how the author decided that Krishna bhakti yoga is his path. It's really beautiful how he discovers that. When he had arrived in India, and he didn't even know who Krishna is, he was looking at the pictures of deities being sold by a vendor. Out of all the pictures — maybe 50 of them — the one picture that stood out for him and appealed to him and attracted him was the picture of Krishna — a blue boy with a peacock feather on top and a flute in his hands. So why did only that picture stand out to him?

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