Swami Atulananda, or Cornelius J. Heijblom, was one of the first westerners who became a monk in the Ramakrishna Order of India. He had close associations with Swami Vivekananda, Sarada Devi, Swami Abhedananda, and many of the disciples of Ramakrishna who were alive in those days.

The conversations themselves are of worth not only for spiritual and historical reasons, but as a window of an educated mind looking at the East.

Swami Atulananda was born in Holland in 1870, lived for a time in the United States, and spent the last half of his life in India, where he died at the age of ninety six. He was initiated by Holy Mother, Sri Sarada Devi, and was connected with some, of the direct monastic disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was very close to Swami Abhedananda, and was inti­mately associated with Swami Turiyananda in founding the Shanti Ashrama in California. Swami Atulananda is the author of the classic description of the early days of the Vedanta Movement in the West: With the Swamis in America (This book was later republished in a new and extended edition with the title: With the Swamis in India and America).