The devotees’ happy, smiling faces, their enthusiasm, and their music all attracted me deeply. Suddenly I felt that I’d like to be a part of this group. I let the idea pass, but I purchased a set of three Krsna books from one of the devotees.
John Favors, alias Toshombe Abdul, had become Bhaktitirtha Swami of the Hare Krishna movement. He had set aside the politics of the revolution and adopted the life of a monk.
My interest in the Hare Krsna movement goes back to when I was a freshman at Southern Illinois University. When those strange-looking people with the orange robes and shaved heads first appeared on campus, I had no idea who they were.
I grew up in Connecticut in the fifties and sixties. Always “the observer,” dissatisfied with the status quo, I saw my parents’ lifestyle as boring and futile. They had to bear the burdens of the kids and their only reward was a yearly summer vacation.
I was born in Aravade, a small village in the Indian state of Maharashtra that differs little from more than seven hundred thousand others in India. After I graduated from high school, my family sent me to Bombay to study chemistry in college. But my college career was not to be.
Having just spent four disappointing years at the Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire, I was enjoying a new freedom at Harvard. I could choose my own courses, make new friends, and take part in Boston’s collegiate youth culture.
The language hypnotized me, to say the least, and I couldn’t put the book down. After about two days of reading, I began to feel out of place around my friends. My only thoughts were of those books and that author. I knew that it was time for me to leave Oregon.
In distress I prayed out loud: “If there is someone behind all this, I want to know You. I will be obedient to Your will.” I prayed from my heart, with every bit of sincerity I could muster. At the time, I thought that if there actually was a God, He must have heard me.
Everyone in New York City thinks he’s a philosopher. And who do they talk with about politics, religion, traffic, and the weather? Not their psychiatrists, business associates, or even their families as much as the New York cabbie.
In college I had delved into the thoughts of the great philosophers and literary personalities of the past. Echoing my godless upbringing, I would argue with my logic professor, a devout Catholic, against the rationality of the existence of a God.
When I came to New Zealand in 1972, the farthest thing from my mind was opening a Hare Krsna temple. I was on a world surfing safari and the closest idea I had to spiritual life was finding “the perfect wave.”
When Vicki Overton was growing up in Auckland in the 1950’s, duly attentive to her studies at St. Cuthbert’s College for girls, no one would have imagined she would one day be among the most sought-after fashion models in the world.
At the end of each day, after trading in his Gucci suit for a simple cotton dhoti, Marco spends the evening hours chanting Hare Krsna on beads, reading Bhagavad-gita, and speaking with visitors about the philosophy of Krsna consciousness.
Srila Prabhupada’s message to the world was not one of artificial renunciation but of devotion. Whatever you may be—family man, businessman, professional—add Krsna to your life and be happy. Business, after all, is an essential element of society.
A million dollars and three dozen magazine covers later, Anne had wealth, fame, and apartments in most European capital cities. Anne Schaufuss had everything. Except, maybe, happiness.
The other doctors never call him Samika Rsi dasa. Most of them don’t even know he is an initiated devotee of Lord Krsna. In the hospital—St. Joseph’s Hospital, Carbondale, Pennsylvania—he is Shyam Sundar Mahajan, director of the emergency ward.
I was brought up a Catholic. I went to church every Sunday. As a young woman my only understanding of God was fear. I was told I had to do things, but nobody ever explained why. Even when I went away from the church, I suffered from fear.
Before I came to Krishna consciousness my life was completely impure. I was confused and indecisive about spiritual life and couldn’t help myself. But after I read that book, I lost my taste for materialistic activities. And now I understand that I was being cheated by maya, illusion.