His Holiness Radhanath Swami began the launch of his new book, The Journey Within, at the ISKCON Dallas temple on May 16, 2016. The following exchange took place toward the end of the event.
Radhanath Swami: When I was with His Holiness Giriraj Swami Maharaja this past September, I told him, “I really don’t know what to do with this book. Please save me.” And he started reading it. That was in Boston, yes?
Giriraj Swami: It actually began on the flight from Los Angeles to Boston. After we had spoken together for some time, you said, “Excuse me, I have a manuscript that I have to look at because I have a deadline and I have to send it in.” And then you said, “Would you like to have a look at it?” That was the beginning.
Radhanath Swami: That’s right. Maharaja was supposed to go to Boston a day earlier, but Amala Bhakta Prabhu was going to take sannyasa at the Los Angeles temple and he really wanted Maharaja to be there, so I begged Maharaja, “Please come for his sannyasa ceremony.”
So, Amala Bhakta Prabhu became Amala Bhakta Swami Maharaja, and the next day Giriraj Swami Maharaja and I flew together to Boston. It was a really interesting flight. That was the flight where those people were yelling and fighting, right?
Giriraj Swami: Yes.
Radhanath Swami: Were you ever on a flight like that? I don’t want to get into the sociological, psychological dynamics, but there were these men who were with women and they were really drunk. They just kept drinking more and
more liquor, and they were trying to show off to the women how tough they were and how arrogant they were, and they were just saying the most obscene, terrible things on the flight. Everybody around them was disturbed by them, and some of the passengers started chastising them, and they had to show their prowess to their girlfriends, so they were screaming and standing up and ready to fight. And the girls were smiling. Then everyone around started chastising the airline attendants: “Why did you give them so much to drink? Look at what you’ve done. This is all your fault. We’re never going to fly on this airline again. We’re going to get you fired.” The attendants were saying, “We didn’t know,” but the people were saying, “No, we are going to get you fired. What is your name?” And then the men said, “Don’t blame them. You fight with me.”
And two little swamis were sitting in the middle of it all. So, in that very sattvika environment, Giriraj Swami started reading the manuscript!
Giriraj Swami: Yes. You had come to a certain point in the manuscript, so you asked me to look at it from that point, which I did, and I was sharing my thoughts with you and you found it instructive, or interesting. When we landed, your vehicle, a minivan, came to receive us all, and when there was a delay with my rental car, you said, “Oh, this is good. It will give us more time to work on the book.” So we were working in your vehicle, and then, even when my car was ready, you wanted to continue working, so I stayed and you didn’t get out even when we got to your place, which came before mine, and we continued working all the way to my place and then you went back to yours.
Radhanath Swami: Yes.
Giriraj Swami: Thereafter, pretty much any time you were free, when we weren’t directly involved in programs, I would come over and we would work on the book.
Then you said that you were going to New York and that it would be good if I joined you. It was a difficult decision for me, because it had been planned long before that I would spend some time in Boston with His Holiness Niranjana Swami. But I felt this imperative from you, so I presented the situation to Niranjana Swami, and he was very gracious and said, “Yes, Radhanath Swami is also very dear to me. I also consider myself to be his servant, so if you are serving him, I will also be happy.”
And so we went. You actually went ahead—you drove at night—and I came the next day, and we made our base at Yasoda-dulal Prabhu’s place in New Jersey and went through the book from where we had left off. Then you thought we should start again from the beginning, so after we got to the end, we did just that. We worked from early in the morning, and when you had to go out for a program, I would accompany you and we would work together in the car. That ended up being the time when the pope came and you were scheduled to speak at the UN. There were a couple of programs scheduled for you in New York, and you cancelled one of them so we could work on the book. You said our work was more important. Then we were working at The Bhakti Center together. But there was still some anxiety over whether we would be able to finish, because I had to leave the next day and we were really going through the manuscript—paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word, comma by comma.
Radhanath Swami: I don’t even know what a comma is. You were doing it.
Giriraj Swami: And it was like a miracle. You did one program and cancelled the other. Then you came back, and it was like a miracle: we actually finished the whole book. I thought that maybe if we were lucky we would finish by midnight, but we finished around 8 p.m.
I really felt that I got to enter your heart more deeply, because so much of your heart came out in the book. And I really got to appreciate—I always did, but in a deeper, maybe more intimate or confidential way—how compassionate you are, because your compassion came out on every page, in every paragraph, every sentence. That was for me one overwhelming effect of going through the book together.
Another was seeing how personal you are in how you present the philosophy. All the philosophy is there, but it is illustrated with vivid examples that even a Minnesota housewife can relate to. Working together was a very enriching and rewarding experience for me, and I pray, and am completely hopeful, that the book will be read widely—by all sorts of people, even people who don’t have any background in yoga or acquaintance with Krishna. That will fulfill your desire that they be awakened to this beautiful life in Krishna consciousness, which can relieve them from so many miseries in the material world.
And there are many stories, such as “The Tale of Dorothy,” that illustrate how someone who has faced setbacks and reversals and tragedies in life can find hope in Krishna consciousness.
Then there is the story of that poor family in Maharashtra—they were so poor, but the mother, Tarabai, had integrity and a sense of self-respect and didn’t want to take something without reciprocating, but she was so poor she really had nothing to give you. You took her son into our orphanage and school, which was a big thing. It is such a moving story: she had nothing to give, but she really wanted to give something. Finally, after droughts and all sorts of calamities, she got a little crop of peanuts, and she gave you the peanuts as an offering. There is an expression—if something is sold for a small amount, or if someone is compensated for some work with a small amount, something meager, useless, or trivial, we say, “Oh, that’s peanuts.” She literally gave peanuts and, like Krishna, out of your loving and compassionate heart, you accepted those peanuts as a most spectacular offering.
So, yes, it was really a wonderful experience, and I look forward to reading the published book, because, as it is said, sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. In other words, you pay so much attention to the trees, the details, that you can’t get an overview of the whole forest. Looking at every word and every comma, I didn’t get a full sense of the whole. So, I am looking forward to reading it again, that I might relish it again, and to seeing it in its final form.
Thank you for engaging me.
Radhanath Swami: Thank you for saving me. When Giriraj Maharaja put his magical, mystical, devotional grace into the book in such a loving and attentive way, I really felt for the first time that Srila Prabhupada has blessed it, and I am forever indebted to you for assisting me in this way. Thank you.
Giriraj Swami: Thank you for engaging me and purifying me.
Radhanath Swami: Thank you for engaging and purifying me.
Giriraj Swami: You want to fight about it?
Radhanath Swami: We don’t have any ladies to show off to!
Thank you very much, Giriraj Swami Maharaja!