Hare Krishna-Objective is to achieve elevated blissful life

This article, "'Hare Krishna' Objective is to achieve an elevated, blissful life" was published in The Brandon Sun, August 25, 1973, in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada.

By George W. Cornell - AP Religion Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - A high, weathered wall ringed the garden behind the big, red-brick building in Brooklyn. A sign on the front door admonished: "Srila Prabhupada needs quiet!" 

Inside the front hallway, the air piquant with incense, another penciled sign advised: "Please walk softly and talk softly...Srila Prabhupada is here!" 

The object of this concern was, as he is formally titled, "His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada," 76, founder and spiritual master of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

"He's napping," whispered a devotee, Panchartna Das, 22. "He cannot be disturbed." 

That apparently scuttled the interview, which had been scheduled in advance, with the elderly religious teacher from India who seven years ago started a movement in the West that has sung and danced its way across America. 

In almost every major city nowadays you spot this followers, young men with shaven heads and topknots wearing saffron, wrap-around dhotis and tunic-like sirtas, sandal-footed young women in flowing saris with painted marks of dedication, the tiakas, on their foreheads. 

"Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna," they chant, swaying along. "Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare." 

They thump their twin-headed drums, the kjol, and ring their brass hand cymbals, the kartals. 

"It's great to go out on sankirtan - a chanting party in the street," said Omkama Dasi, 19, a young woman devotee operating the switchboard at the movement's temple on Henry Street in Brooklyn, N.Y. 

All the Western followers, many of them young people disillusioned by hedonism or affluence, take Sanskrit names with various religious connotations symbolizing their change from "material" pursuits to a new "spiritual" path. 

"We are vaishnav - lovers of God," said Goswami Bali Mardan, 26, an aide to the spiritual master and director of the New York temple, one of about 50 in the United States. 

Most of the closest adherents - estimated now at 4,000 - live communally in the temples and surrounding apartment houses, going through their daily routine of chants, classes, work and vegetarian meals taken together. 

"Our objective is to develop greater love of God and to achieve a platform of elevated, blissful life full of knowledge," Goswami Mardan said. 

When people are out of touch with that reality, he added, they "think of themselves simply as bodies, but our real identity is spiritual - as souls, as eternal servants of God. If we don't understand who we really are, it is not possible to be happy." 

The basic method of attaining this spiritual self-understanding is by chanting the name of God, called Krishna, and other sounds or "mantras" believed to release the mind from material concepts. 

"Everything else follows naturally," said Goswami Mardan. 

Studies are centred on the ancient Vedic literature of India, chiefly the Bhagavad Gita, which the group publishes as a source of financial support. They also sell incense, "Spiritual Sky," produced at their Los Angeles centre. Their monthly magazine, Back to Godhead, has a circulation of 300,000. 

Members who hold jobs are enjoined to contribute 50 per cent of their income to the movement and members also accept donations on their musical expeditions into the streets. 

In the temple altar room, as lunch neared, a dozen barefoot devotees swayed before a bright, decorative altar, while candles glowed throughout the room, bells tinkled, smoke rose from censers and Indian music came from a recorder. 

For their highly flavorful vegetarian meals - "prasadam" - devotees sit on the floor, men in one room, women in another. 

"We try not to have too much association between men and women," said Omkama Dasi. "We want to think only of Krishna, and if we're together too much, that's hard to do until you reach a higher level of development." 

Rules of the movement prohibit illicit sex, gambling, the taking of coffee, tea, alcohol or any intoxicant and the eating of meat, fish or poultry. 

The spiritual master had been welcomed the day before at Kennedy airport with an outpouring of song, dance, showers of flower petals and garlands hung over his neck. 

But there were no prospects in sight for the interview. 

A smiling devotee, softly chanting as he counted out the chants on his beads, paused long enough to pass along the information that "the master" was having a backrub in the garden under the flowering magnolia trees.