An Authentic Life 1.1 for pdf - Universalist Radha-Krishnaism

"How's this?” I asked Swamiji in his apartment.
"You should cut the back also," he replied.
One Thursday evening, in February 1967,
Bhaktivedanta Swami initiated Carolyn and I. We
dedicated our lives to a path of enlightenment under
the direction of a spiritual master who claimed an unbroken
chain of spiritual masters that went back to
Krishna himself.
In front of an altar, devotees formed a circle
around a wok filled with dirt. Swamiji sat with his
back leaning against a wall with the wok in front of
him. Carolyn and I sat on cushions opposite him.
A number of devotees muttered mantras on
their prayer beads, and four of them read aloud at
once from four different Vaishnava scriptures. Swamiji
drew a pattern in the dirt with colored flours and
built a fire in the center using splinters of wood
dipped in clarified butter. Carolyn and I repeated
mantras after him and threw a mixture of barley, sesame
seeds, and ghee in the fire saying, "Svaha!" as an
offering. As a final offering, we placed a couple of
whole bananas in the fire.
Then Swamiji chanted the Hare Krishna mantra
on our large, red wood prayer beads to show us
how to do it. He instructed us to chant at least sixteen
rounds of 108 beads a day. It took us about ten minutes
to chant one round of the Hare Krishna mantra in
the beginning. Chanting a round with the whole congregation
out loud was a regular part of morning
worship.
38