A few glimpses into the life of Harikeśa Swami

Harikesha Swami was the first initiating guru among Bhaktivedanta Swami’s Western disciples that I came in contact with (in 1980). He relinquished his formalguru and sannyasi position in the late 1990s, but is still active, as a less traditional spiritual teacher and as a musician, and has several websites devoted to those activities. I found him to be often a forceful speaker, and a skilful expounder of the Vaishnava doctrines in his strict vyasasana teaching. He is known for emphasizing the relevance of the varnashrama system, even in the present and in the West, in his book The Varnasrama Manifesto for Social Sanity (1980?); and for the considerable risks he seems to have taken in teaching in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.