Psychedelic Congregation

Prabhupada stepped out of his white shoes, sat down on a thin mat, faced his congregation, and indicated they could all be seated.  He distributed several pairs of brass hand cymbals and briefly demonstrated the rhythm: one … two … three.  He began playing – a startling, ringing sound.  He began singing: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.  Now it was the audience’s turn.  “Chant,” he told them.  Some already knew, gradually the others caught on, and after a few rounds, all were chanting together. 

Most of these young men and the few young women present had at one time or another embarked on the psychedelic voyage in search of a new world of expanded consciousness.  Boldly and recklessly, they had entered the turbulent, forbidden waters of LSD, peyote, and magic mushrooms.  Heedless of warnings, they had risked everything and done it.  Yet there was merit in their valor, their eagerness to find the extra dimensions of the self, to get beyond ordinary existence – even if they didn’t know what the beyond was or whether they would ever return to the comfort of the ordinary.  Nonetheless, whatever truth they had found, they remained unfulfilled, and whatever worlds they had reached, these young psychedelic voyagers had always returned to the Lower East Side.  Now they were sampling the Hare Krishna mantra.

In their psychedelic ambitions to see the face of God, fantasies and visions of Hindu teachings, and the presumption that “IT” was all impersonal light, Prabhupada had encountered a similar group on the Bowery, and he knew this group wasn’t experiencing the mantra in the proper disciplined reverence and knowledge.  But he let them chant in their own way.  In time their submission to the spiritual sound, their purification, and their enlightenment and ecstasy in chanting and hearing Hare Krishna would come.