On May 20, 1977, Pan American fl ight 695 touched down at Kennedy Airport in New York City carrying a great treasure. The treasure could not be measured in gold or silver or precious gems. The treasure was spiritual, not material. A saint, revered by hundreds of thousands of people in India, but little known in the west, had agreed to visit the United States. His name was Swami Kripalu. This book tells the remarkable story of his life and his extraordinary stay in the United States from 1977-1981, when he broke his silence of many years and delivered more than 100 talks on a vast array of spiritual topics, most of which have never been published prior to this book. In the process, he became the namesake for the Kripalu Center in Lennox, Massachusetts, the largest holistic health center in North America and for Kripalu Yoga, a form of yoga taught by more than 5000 yoga teachers in the United States and around the world. “To live near one of the greatest saints of India is an experience of profound grace. Rarely does such an evolved being exist on this plane. And here he was in the spring of 1977, Swami Kripalvanandji, lovingly known as Bapuji, living among us at the spiritual community named for him.” Yogi Amrit Desai “Nothing could have prepared me for my first encounter with Swami Kripalu. As the 69 year old Kripalu walked into the room, my mind was catapulted into a state of focused awareness deeper than anything I’d ever experienced. My first startled thought was that he looked surprisingly like my grandfather, who was also bald and pencil thin. But the similarities stopped there. Swami Kripalu was a lightening bolt wrapped in an orange robe.” Rick Faulds, author of Kripalu Yoga: A Guide to Practice On and Off the Mat. “His Holiness Swami Shri Kripalvanada was the greatest yogacharya of the 20th Century. He meditated 10 hours a day for 30 years, a stunning feat, in pursuit of the Divine Body. He is revered in India as one of our greatest saints.” T.R. Patel, Doctor of Ayurveda, author and yoga instructor, Ahmedabad, India. John Mundahl has been a yoga teacher and practitioner for 34 years. He was a resident at the original Kripalu Yoga Ashram in Sumneytown, Pennsylvania from 1977-1981, the four years of Swami Kripalu’s remarkable stay in the United States. He is also a retired public school teacher, a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, an Ayurvedic Health Care Educator and the author of 10 books, including From the Heart of the Lotus, the Teaching Stories of Swami Kripalu and Soul To Soul: Poems, Prayers And Stories To End A Yoga Class.
