Who Am I?

My name is James Swartz and I was born in Butte, Montana in 1941. I grew up in Lewiston, Idaho and had a very happy childhood. However, the small world of Lewiston could not contain me and at seventeen I left for a military prep school in Minnesota. I spent two years in a liberal arts college in Wisconscin, was expelled for disciplinary reasons, and enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley in 1963. Six months short of graduation I ran off to Hawaii where I started a successful small business. But something was terribly wrong; at twenty six I had become an alcoholic, chain smoking glutonous adulterer and life in every respect was not worth living. One day in the Post Office in Waikiki I had a life changing epiphany that put me on the path to freedom. You can download the story of my spiritual quest to find out what happened.

 

Influences

Swami Chinmayananda, a guru's guru and the man
whose excellect teaching set me free.

Swami Abhedananda, the greatest human being I ever met.

 

 

Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the most infuential
and highly respected Vedanta teacher in India today.
His pure teachings have had more of an effect on my
ability to teach Vedanta than Swamiji's.