The Journey Within

In this long-awaited follow up to The Journey Home, renowned spiritual leader Radhanath Swami shares intimate stories from his forty years as a teacher of devotional (bhakti) yoga. His heartfelt down-to-earth writing makes accessible topics that have remained esoteric for generations: explanations of the material and spiritual selves, three levels of God-realization, the feminine nature of divinity, the way of righteousness (dharma), what happens at death, and formulas for spiritual health. In brief sidebars, he spells out how to adapt chanting as a daily practice, how to recognize an authentic guru, which rituals to attempt, methods for achieving balance in relationships, and ways to transform a home or apartment into a place of pilgrimage. Radhanath Swami may be the Dr. Oz of yoga, prescribing through anecdote and wise commentary simple principles for balancing our material and spiritual lives.

Destined to become a classic of self-discovery, The Journey Within escorts readers from remote villages of South India to the halls of power in Europe and America. The author’s palette of storytelling includes tales of the famous and infamous, moguls of industry, lepers, newborn babies, the redwoods of California, and jellyfish in Italy. In simple, approachable language, he demystifies India’s ancient path of devotion and reveals how heaven is within the grasp of every man, woman, and child. What is love? Who is God? How can we live in the world without becoming entangled? Radhanath Swami addresses these and other seminal questions with vivid portraits of people confronting life-threatening tragedies with life-affirming tools of devotion, people who discover how to solve impossible dilemmas with the simplest of resources and who uncover miracles in the ordinary course of a day.

Radhanath Swami was born Richard Slavin in Chicago in 1950. At age seventeen, he traveled overland from Amsterdam to India, where he lived in Himalayan caves, learned yoga from revered masters, and eventually became a world-renowned spiritual leader in his own right. He divides his time between Mumbai and the rest of the world.

A review of a customer: “I found this a very enjoyable book to read. While the author is a Hare Krishna, and often misunderstood religion in the west, I found his insights to be universally true. In fact his wisdom applies to every religion from Christianity to Judaism and even pagans. Because he hits upon universal truth that I have come to know in my own heart through decades of spiritual searching. Namely that there is one God that we’re all trying to connect with, and we are rather miserable trying to live without God in our lives. While the book wasn’t one that you just can’t put down because it’s so exciting and you’re learning so much new information every moment, I did find it very interesting to read. The author puts things very well and my favorite parts were the personal stories that he told about people he met to make his point. In fact, most of those stories, like the one about the Indian woman forced to marry at 10, make most of our problems seem insignificant.”

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