Question to Radhanath Swami: I was curious to know how your experience was like when you first heard the Hare Krishna mantra chanted by the Hare Krishna monks.
Radhanath Swami Answers: In the book The Journey Home I tell the story of how I first heard the Hare Krishna mantra. I didn’t hear it in the Hare Krishna movement. It was given to me in a way, by what I believe, was a profound grace. I was fasting and sitting on the bank of the Ganges in the Himalayas, in Rishikesh. After weeks of meditation I heard in the current of Mother Ganga this beautiful mantra being sung. And it really transformed my life although I didn’t know what it meant, although I didn’t know what Krishna, Rama, or Hare meant. I just heard this Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. It really moved me so deeply that I was meditating on that.
It was months and months later that I actually made the connection of what it meant. In Vrindavan I learnt who is Krishna, what is the origin of this mantra.
