When You First Called Me Radha: Poems

When You First Called Me Radha: Poems renders the spiritual concepts of yoga into simple poetic verse. From commentary on organized religion to divinely inspired love poems, this book holds the most personal recordings of a woman, swami and spiritual leader. The poems follow the arc of Swami Radha's life story, starting with her journey to India in 1955 - where, as Sylvia Hellman, she was initiated into sanyas by her guru, Swami Sivananda, and became Swami Sivananda Radha. What unfolds are her experiences on the lifelong spiritual path. Her past, present and future are all here.

Included are her early poems, originally written in German, her meditations on the Kundalini chakra and her late material focused on Divine Light, inspired in part by her interpretation of the ancient texts of Kashmiri Saivism.

The book also comes with a CD recording of Swami Radha reading her poems. These were recorded at Yasodhara Ashram in British Columbia, Canada in 1991.