No More Coming Down
Practice KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS
Expand your consciousness by practicing the
TRANSCENDENTAL SOUND VIBRATION
HARE KRISNA HARE KRISHNA KRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE
HARE RAMA HARE RAMA RAMA RAMA HARE HARE
This chanting will cleanse the dust from the mirror of the mind and free you from all material contamination. It is practical, self-evident, and requires no artificial aid. Try it and be blissful all the time.
TURN ON
through music, dance, philosophy, science, religion and prasadam (spiritual food.)
TUNE IN
AWAKEN YOUR TRANSCENDENTAL NATURE!
REJOICE IN THE OCEAN OF BLISS!
The process of Sankirtan (chanting of Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare; Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare) brings about transcendental ecstasy.
DROP OUT
of movements employing artificially induced states of self-realization and expanded consciousness. Such methods only lead to spiritual laziness and chaos. End all bringdowns, flip out and stay for eternity. Bhaktiyoga has been practiced for many centuries and is authorized by India's great acharyas. Swami Bhaktivedanta is in the bonafide line of Krishna's disciplic succession. He has especially come to this country to spiritually guide young Americans.
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS, Inc.
26 SECOND AVENUE (between 1st and 2nd Streets) NEW YORK, N.Y.
Phone: 674-7428
Acharya: A.C. BHAKTIVEDANTA SWAMI
Meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 P.M..
Every morning at 7 A.M.
YOU ARE CORDIALLY IMVITED TO COME AND BRING YOUR FRIENDS
I don't know what the Polish housewives thought about staying high forever, but most of the young renegades from middle-class suburbia liked the idea. I remember literally throwing those handbills to thousands in '66 at the November 5th Peace Parade from Tompkins and Washington Squares to Times Square. That was a marvelous parade. Some 30,000 joined the three-hour jaunt for world peace that brisk autumn morning. Poet Ginsberg, wearing white Gandhi pajamas and a stars and stripes top hat and playing a portable harmonium led the Hare Krishna Mantra. Hundreds in the parade took up the chant. Some were so electrified that they continued chanting on into the night, the world peace issue seeming insignificant in the light of the "Maha Mantra," the Great Hymn. Prabhupad's injunction came to mind: "Take up Krishna Consciousness and peace in the world will automatically come."
In January '67 we descended on Frisco and opened up the Radha Krishna Temple on Frederick Street, smack in the middle of the Haight Ashbury scene. During the spring and early summer of '67, Haight culture was at its peak. We were flying high with the mantra, and thousands opened up to us. We splashed in the Haight pond with a mammouth mantra-rock dance at the Avalon Ballroom. Prabhupad and Ginsberg danced on stage with upraised hands. Multi-colored lights swirled across huge wall slides of Krishna and Rama. The Grateful Dead, Moby Grape and Big Brother blared away. Even Tim Leary garlanded one of us and salaamed, "A beautiful night, a beautiful night."
Five thousand hippies, teenieboppers and Hell's Angels stood reverently when Prabhupad entered and listened attentively while he talked. After the chant, someone in the crowd asked him about death. "Oh, death is not such a wonder," I remember Prabhupad replying. "Death is there, of course. But it is life that's the constant wonder. And this is life."
Later, at the Frederick Street center, Prabhupad told his audience that the real life for which man is intended is "to praise his Creator through song, through dance, through study of scripture, through meditation, through renounced action." Many of the young found some of the disciplines hard at first, but they were encouraged by Krishna's injunction in the Gita: "That happiness which is like poison in the beginning and nectar at the end is of the nature of goodness."
And many tasted nectar at the beginning. Every Sunday we chanted in Golden Gate Park and hundreds joined, holding hands and dancing in a ring. At any time of the day I could walk down Haight Street playing khartals (the small hand cymbals) and chanting and pick up at least a dozen enthusiasts. People were also attracted by our free Prasadam (food) program we would feed dozens daily. The Radha Krishna Temple quickly became a dynamic influence in Haight Ashbury life.
Shortly after the Frisco center opened, the movement really began to explode. People were chanting the mantra at all sorts of gatherings: sit-ins, demonstrations, be-ins. Prabhupad was whizzing via jet from the West Coast to the New York center. Then some of his disciples began opening centers in other areas: Montreal, Boston, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Seattle, Columbus, Vancouver, Hawaii and in Europe London and Hamburg.
At Prabhupad's advice, we purchased some 135 acres of land in the mountains near Wheeling, West Virginia and are now developing a transcendental community named New Vrindaban, modeled after Vrindaban in India, where Lord Krishna sported as a Youth. Last winter The Macmillan Company published Prabhupad's translation of The Bhagavad Gita As It Is. Throughout last year Prabhupad delivered lectures on Krishna Consciousness at Harvard, MIT, the University of California and innumerable other colleges and universities.
At this point many who have never heard of Krishna, Rama, The Bhagavad Gita or A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, who always equated swamis with crystal-ball gazers, might ask how so many Americans especially young Americans are being swept up in a movement whose basic philosophy is spiritualistic.
The answer is simple, though many may not find it credible. There is an old Hindu proverb which says, "By the grace of Krishna one gets Guru, and by the grace of Guru, one gets Krishna." Krishna, by definition, is all-attractive. As the Supreme, Krishna is the repository of all beauty, all wealth, all fame, all power, all knowledge and all renunciation. Prabhupad has the power to deliver Krishna to his students. This is a spiritual power given by Krishna. When his students dance and chant Hare Krishna, they are actually participating in bliss. They are actually experiencing Krishna Consciousness. There are many swamis who come to America with a familiar storehouse of Oriental claptrap. They woo rich women and take money as favors, or charge for "initiation." Swami Bhaktivedanta simply delivers the goods.
"How do you know he's not a phoney like all the others?" one girl at Ohio State asked me.
"How do you know an electric wire's live?" I asked her.
"I don't know," she said. "I'm not an electrician."
"You don't have to be. Just touch it and you can feel the current. The real Guru is a transparent medium. You just meet him and you'll feel the current going through you. That's because he's plugged in to the real Powerhouse."
The girl simply looked at me skeptically, but later I sew her chanting with closed eyes. She was already feeling the current.
"Just vibrate Hare Krishna once," Prabhupad has often said, "and your spiritual life has begun. There is no expense. And if there is some gain, why not try it?"
Who would want to doubt him?