Devamrita Swami

in

 Acaryas, gurus and sadhus

His Holiness Devamrita Swami entered this life on October 16, 1950 in New York City,
as the firstborn in a family dominated by a very devout and education-motivated
Christian mother. Later in life his mother confided to him that during the time of his
conception, she was praying to God that He send her a “servant of the Lord.” Observing
her infant crawling to bookshelves, trying to grab books, she waited until he reached
four years and then personally taught him to read, while ensuring that he immersed
himself in church programs for children.

At that time, he began to memorize Bible verses, and loved the Bible, hymns, and
church life. Attending a Lutheran primary school for the first three years of his primary
education, he relished learning in a religious atmosphere. At eight years old, the
Lutheran Church offered him a university scholarship if he would promise to be a
minister in the future.

Later, because the family, financially overextended, could no longer afford the fees at
church schools, he enrolled in public primary and intermediate schools. His mother,
observing that the best New York public schools had high Jewish enrollment, deftly
maneuvered through school districts, constantly hunting the best public schools and
teachers for her children.

During these years, her eldest son developed an interest in Judaism and began to wonder
about the existence of other spiritual paths. The mother, a connoisseur of all Protestant
faiths, began to attend Presbyterian churches, and there the future swami, at the age of
thirteen, delivered his first Sunday sermon. Noting her son’s boredom and lack of
challenge at school, his mother pushed for his acquiring a full scholarship plus living
expenses to private boarding schools in New Hampshire, where he attended Exeter
Academy during the summer and Holderness School for Boys during the regular school
year. An abnormality amidst boys from the super rich and famous families of America,
he would never forget his experience that wealth and class do not bring happiness.

At fifteen, dazzled by his sophisticated material studies, the spiritual inclinations

accompanying him since infancy curdled into agnosticism. A year later, however, the
historic recording “A Love Supreme,” by John Coltrane, turned him around. Stirred by
the jazz legend’s devotional expression and by his public declaration, on the album
cover, that love of God is the ultimate goal of life, the future Devamrita Swami made up
his mind to find it—pure love of the Supreme. Coltrane’s explorations of the music and
philosophy of India--especially his chanting verses from the Bhagavad-gita—perplexed
and fascinated the mind of the young student, now bound for university. In 1968, he
received a scholarship to Yale University.

Upon his informing his academic advisors that he was searching for the highest
knowledge and wanted to study whatever he wanted, irrespective of academic rules for
concentration, his overseers gladly agreed, admitting that they, while students, would
have loved to have done the same. Plunging into world history, Western philosophy,
anthropology, political science, economics, and the history of science, by his fourth year
at Yale he gave up—no thinkers had impressed him. He had failed to find any
conclusive knowledge or any effective socio-political strategies for thoroughly
improving humanity.
During those years, seeking relief from the university, he would travel by bus to New
York City and wander in the East Village and Second Avenue areas, expecting to
discover something there that would save his life. As graduation neared in 1972, he
asserted to his dean of studies that he saw no future for himself in materialistic society.
Brushing him off, the dean looked him straight in the eyes and pronounced: “You are a
Yale man; you will influence the world.”

One month after graduation, he bought on the street a small book by Srila Prabhupada.
Life was never the same. Stunned by the contents, he immediately went to a
metaphysical bookshop to obtain more literature by Prabhupada. Addicted to
Prabhupada’s writings, yet skeptical of the budding Krishna consciousness
organization’s ability to solve the world’s problems, he would order books by mail—
just to avoid personal contact with devotees. Three or more hours daily, for six months
straight, he repeatedly read all the available titles by Srila Prabhupada, and then, finally,
in December 1972, he decided to visit the New York ISKCON temple, newly located in
Brooklyn. Devotees informed him that the Krishna consciousness presence in the West
had first begun on Second Avenue—during the years he walked that area, as a student
desperately searching for hope. Praying to the temple Deities, Sri Sri Radha Govinda,
that They cut the knot of his material entanglements, he became a full-time staff
member of the temple in March, 1973.

Initiated by Srila Prabhupada in January 1974, Devamrita das spent several years
traveling throughout the USA distributing the literature that so transformed his life, and
then went to the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust in Los Angeles to assist in Srila
Prabhupada’s book production, as a copy editor and later as chief manager. A few
months after Srila Prabhupada’s departure from this world in 1977, he embarked upon
his international missionary life and in 1982 officially accepted the renounced order of
life, as Devamrita Swami.

For over three decades he has traveled extensively on every continent of the world,
sometimes enduring the most difficult and trying situations in ISKCON history.
Especially harrowing were eight often solitary years spent infiltrating the iron curtain,
the former communist bloc of Eastern Europe, for developing underground bhakti cells
and clandestine book distribution. His personal motto during those severe years: “I may
live or die, but Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-bhagavatam are eternal.” A member of
ISKCON’s Governing Body, he has been chosen by his peers to serve as international
vice-chairman and then chairman. His extensive current regional responsibilities include
“down-under”--Australia and New Zealand--where he spends five months of the year,
as well as northwestern Russia, South Africa, Hawaii, and the Gita-nagari farm project
in Pennsylvania.

Beyond those areas of spiritual responsibility, he travels far and wide, especially in
North America, Europe, and India. An author published by the Bhaktivedanta Book
Trust, he has, to date, written Searching for Vedic India and Perfect Escape. Among his
myriad services to Krishna and Srila Prabhupada, he focuses upon arranging
nontraditional settings for Western audiences to approach bhakti; challenging young
Indian students and professionals to penetrate the veil of religious belief/religious myth;
and advocating spiritually-based economics, sustainability, and environmentalism.

http://www.devaswami.com/