Swamiji obeyed, returned home, and became the holy man's most devoted student, finally achieving enlightenment through his master's guidance. Ultimately, Swamiji would become a Guru himself. Over time, his Ashram in India grew from three rooms on a barren farm to the lush garden it is today. Then he got the inspiration to go traveling and incite a worldwide meditation revolution. He came to America in 1970 and blew everybody's mind. He gave divine initiation—shaktipat—to hundreds and thousands of people a day. He had a power that was immediate and transformative. The Reverend Eugene Callender (a respected civil rights leader, a colleague of Martin Luther King Jr. and still the pastor of a Baptist church in Harlem) remembers meeting Swamiji in the 1970s and dropping on his knees before the Indian man in amazement and thinking to himself, "There's no time for shuckin' and jivin' now, this is it . . . This man knows everything there is to know about you."

思瓦米吉听他的话返乡，成为圣者最虔诚的学徒，最后通过大师的引导，取得证悟。最后，思瓦米吉自己也成为导师。不久，他的印度道场从荒地上的三个房间发展成今天草木青葱的庭园。而后他获得灵感，周游各地，引发全球性的禅坐革命。他于1970年来美国，扣动每个人的心弦。他每天给数千、数百人“莎克蒂帕”——神圣开引。他具有直接改变人的力量。嘉兰德（EugeneCallender）牧师（著名的民权运动领袖，也是马丁?路德?金的同事，仍在哈林一所浸礼教会担任牧师）回忆自己在20世纪70年代见到思瓦米吉时，惊异地跪倒在这名印度男人的面前，暗自心想：“没时间插科打诨，这就是了……这男人知道有关你的一切。”

Swamiji demanded enthusiasm, commitment, self-control. He was always scolding people for being jad, the Hindi word for "inert." He brought ancient concepts of discipline to the lives of his often rebellious young Western followers, commanding them to stop wasting their own (and everyone else's) time and energy with their freewheeling hippie nonsense. He would throw his walking stick at you one minute, hug you the next. He was complicated, often controversial, but truly world-changing. The reason we have access now in the West to many ancient Yogic scriptures is that Swamiji presided over the translation and revitalization of philosophical texts that had long been forgotten even in much of India.

思瓦米吉要求热忱、承诺、自制。他总是斥责人们“jad”，印度话里的“怠惰”。他把古时的纪律概念带到年轻、倔强的西方信徒生活中，命令他们不要再用为所欲为的嬉皮举动，浪费自己（和其他人）的时间与精力。这一分钟他才拿手杖扔你，下一分钟却又拥抱你。他复杂难懂，时而引人争议，却是改变世界的人物。西方今天能接触到许多瑜伽古经典，都是因为“思瓦米吉”负责翻译并因此振兴——即便在印度大部分地区亦早被遗忘的哲学著作。

My Guru was Swamiji's most devoted student. She was literally born to be his disciple; her Indian parents were amongst his earliest followers. When she was only a child, she would of-ten chant for eighteen hours a day, tireless in her devotion. Swamiji recognized her potential, and he took her on when she was still a teenager to be his translator. She traveled all over the world with him, paying such close attention to her Guru, she said later, that she could even feel him speaking to her with his knees. She became his successor in 1982, still in her twenties.

我的导师是思瓦米吉最忠诚的门徒。她可以说是生来即注定成为他的弟子，因为她的印度籍父母本身即是思瓦米吉最早的信徒之一。她还只是孩子的时候，每天吟诵十八个小时，虔诚不倦。思瓦米吉看出她的潜力，在她还是十几岁的时候，就让她担任他的翻译。她跟随他周游世界，认真留意自己的导师，后来她说，她甚至感觉到他用膝盖跟她说话。她在1982年还是二十几岁的时候即成为他的接班人。