Swamiji’s Converts

Psychologists analyze religious conversions and give many reasons why a person accepts the absolute truth of scripture.  I am not trying to analyze my conversion in that way.  I know what happened to me: a pure devotee came into my life.

The pure devotee (Prabhupada) has a lot of ammunition.  He has very good reasoning power and good arguments.  He has personal saintliness and a mystical connection with the Supreme.  In addition, Prabhupada had the ancient and great Vaisnava tradition behind him.  He was from India and spoke of many acaryas who also spoke of Krishna consciousness.  He said that what he was preaching was the same thing that Christ and Buddha had taught.  So if we went against him, we went against all the Visnu incarnations, all the God-teachers and sages of renunciation and lovers of the Supreme.  He frankly said that the truth was beyond our senses; we should accept it and be humble.

When I speak of my own conversion, I may also speak for other devotees who joined with me at this time.  One thing we all had in common is that we were suffering from material life and we admitted it.  Prabhupada said that what he was teaching would bring us freedom from anxiety.  We wanted that.  Swamiji himself appeared to be free of anxiety, and he was “fixed”.  He said that we could do it just by chanting Hare Krishna.  We tried it, and when we did not feel much change Prabhupada would assure us, “You will, eventually.”  He told us to be patient. 

But for ourselves, did we experience anything?  Yes, undoubtedly; something.  I attained release from bad personal habits and addictions.  This was something tangible; I knew it for sure.  In a more general sense, I also experienced a new meaning to life, a willingness to be part of the adventure of living and hearing from the Swami.  To speak psychologically, I would say that Krishna consciousness fulfilled a deep need in my psyche, a desire to be like a monk, someone who would seriously approach a guru.  I had perhaps never thought of it exactly in those terms, but I had read about it in novels like Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game и Siddhartha.  The idea of discipleship was not entirely strange to me.  These are some of the things that the Swami had going for him in his battle against our cynicism – the battle to save souls, to convert us.