An entertaining autobiography of Satsvarupa dasa Goswami, previously known as Srila Gurupada in the Hare Krishna Movement.

Almost thirty years since the publication of his first book on japa, Japa Reform Notebook, Satsvarupa dasa Goswami has produced yet another volume solely dedicated to the subject of the improving chanting of the holy names and is drawing from his experiences on the retreats in his bhajana-kutir in Delaware, when chanting extra number of rounds and rising early. In his Foreword to the new book, Krishna Ksetra prabhu of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies recalls the impact of the Japa Reform Notebook: "The book was seen as quite radical or even inappropriate. How could a senior devotee, revered as a renunciant and as an adept spiritual teacher, so openly communicate his own personal challenges in the practice of chanting Hare Krishna? Yet others were enlivened to see that a frank discussion of the challenges to pure chanting was being aired... As in the previous book, Goswami locates himself as both a student and a teacher, as one who continues to learn from his own guru and who aims to help others benefit from what he learns. In this book he asks readers to spend time with him as he questions the extent and depth of his own successes and the meaning of occasional apparent setbacks in practice as he takes one through a sustained personal meditation on the eight verses of the Siksastakam, Sri Caitanya's verses that encapsulate his teachings."

Earl Warren: The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression. Potter Stewart: Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.

This biography tells the story of a remarkable individual and a remarkable achievement. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada - philosopher, scholar, religious leader and saint - was responsible for the revolutionary transplantation of a timeless spiritual culture from ancient India to 20th century America. The first volume of this biography begins with the story of the events leading up to Srila Prabhupada's meeting with his guru, an encounter that ignited a slow burning flame of desire to take Krsna consciousness to the Western world. His early life was a period of patient and transcendent determination as he prepared for a mission that would later be crowned with astounding success. In August and September of 1965 Srila Prabhupada travelled alone aboard a steamship from India to New York City, with no more than the equivalent of eight dollars in his pocket and no institutional backing, but with an unshakable faith in Lord Krsna and the instructions of his spiritual master. His encounter with America took place in an era in which the children of those who fought World War II were leading a sweeping revolt against a society losing its soul to a godless mass consumerism. Into this milieu Srila Prabhupada brought a vision of a new kind of society, a society born of a radical transformation of human conciousness from materialism to the loftiest spiritual and ethical idealism. By 1967 he had arrived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, America's counter-culture capital, where he continued his work of calling America's youth to live up to their higher spiritual ideals and distributing the holy name of Krsna indiscriminately. By the end this volume, we will have seen Srila Prabhupada in England (meeting the Beatles), Holland, Japan, Africa and finally back in India, where he triumphantly returned with his "dancing white elephants" - a group of his mostly Caucasian Western followers. The second volume of this biography begins in 1971. In the West, Srila Prabhupada had firmly established the Krsna consciousness movement, which his disciples were expanding in his absence. The author chronicles his triumphant return to India and his plans for constructing temples in three crucial locations: Bombay, the centre of India's wealth and business; Vrndavana, the sacred village where Lord Krsna lived and sported; and Mayapur, the holy birth site of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who had inaugurated the Hare Krsna movement some 500 years earlier. These are vigorous years spent building a spiritual society in India and establishing centres around the world where people could contact the ancient, orthodox faith of India in their own cities. In this second volume, Srila Prabhupada circles the globe repeatedly, speaking out on timely issues and defending his budding religious society against "brainwashing" charges in America and shady business practices in India. Srila Prabhupada wanted to unite two worlds, the "lame man" of India and the "blind man" of America. "A blind man can carry a lame man", he said, "and together they can walk. Similarly, the combination of Indian spirituality and American technology can benefit the whole world". His principle means of accomplishing this feat was to publish his books - annotated translations of India's spiritual classics. Under his guidance, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust was organized, and by 1977 it had produced and distributed more than sixty million volumes of Srila Prabhupada's writings. A final tour of India in 1977 took Srila Prabhupada, 81 and in failing health, to the colossal Kumbha-mela religious festival, to Hrsikesha and finally back to his beloved Vrndavana. The time had come for his passing, he said. As his anguished disciples flooded to Vrndavan from all corners of the world, Srila Prabhupada presented them with the greatest challenge - and the greatest lesson - of their young spiritual lives.