SpiritualAfter Sucandra successfully opened a preaching center in Munich, in 1971, some of the other experienced devotees also tried to start centers. Within a few months centers opened in Heidelberg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Düsseldorf.
The previous year, Prabhupāda had established the GBC, the Governing Body Commission, to help him manage his steadily growing movement. However, because the first GBC secretaries had acted for years as temple presidents, they tended to continue to get involved in the details of temple management and keep tight control on the initiatives of the new presidents. In a letter to Hansadutta, Prabhupāda clarified what duties he had in mind for his GBC secretaries: So as GBC you must see to it that the highest standards of routine work are maintained throughout all the centers, and that chanting, rising early, cleansing, and all other aspects of our regular program may not be neglected. That is our first business. GBC men should not dictate very much, simply supervise and see that the standards are maintained. The individual presidents should be more managerial, more individual, and you can supervise, and if some defect is detected, you can make suggestions how to correct it. But if we lose individuality and simply become mechanical, what is the point?”
Actually, as far as Germany was concerned, officially, Kṛṣṇadāsa was the GBC while Hansadutta was in charge of the Mediterranean countries and the Middle East, although he had never been there. But Kṛṣṇadāsa had become unsteady and left Hamburg temporarily. In his absence, Hansadutta did all the practical work. He was spearheading the preaching in Germany and getting tangible results.
Kṛṣṇadāsa had left Germany out of frustration. By nature soft and easygoing, he found it difficult to deal with Hansadutta’s domineering personality. But when Prabhupāda learned that he had returned to Hamburg, he encouraged him to give it another try and to establish a working relationship with his godbrother: I am very much pleased that you are now in Germany and that everything is going very nicely there. You stay there in Hamburg with Hansadutta for some time and make that center very strong, then you may both return as it was, and Hansadutta may go to his zone of Mediterranean countries and Near East, and you as husband and wife can conduct everything there. Mataji Himavati can train your wife or someone how to worship the Deities nicely, and you both stay there for the time being. You are both men of experience, so work together combinedly to make Germany zone very strong.
But Kṛṣṇadāsa soon concluded that it was too demanding to cooperate with Hansadutta. In early February 1972, he left Hamburg for Sweden. Although he had acted without consulting Prabhupāda, his spiritual master tried to encourage him by sending him an appreciative letter: I am very glad that you are trying something there. I have heard Sweden is a very good field. So I have informed Hansadutta that you may stay there and work for opening a branch if there is good response. And so far money and books, I have informed Karandhara what is the position and he shall be sending you some money for immediately renting one place for temple, as well as sufficient stock of literatures. Without such books and magazines, our preaching work has no authorized basis, so there must be always books. Now you develop there very nicely, it is Krishna’s grace you are there, so just as you practically developed first the Hamburg center, so you will be getting the extra credit for starting Sweden branch. [...] I think that if you go on in this way and spend your whole time preaching and engaging others to hear you and become themselves engaged in Krishna’s service, that will cure you of all misgivings and miserable conditions. [...] And I am also aware that sometimes Hansadutta will be very stubborn, but he is also doing something there, so why not let him go on, and you take charge of opening branches in those northern European countries like Sweden, and that will be very much appreciated by me. If you require some more help in any way, just inform and I shall do the needful, do not worry.
Hansadutta increased the print run of Zurück zur Gottheit to 50,000 copies. For Prabhupāda, the key to success in any preaching effort was the distribution of transcendental knowledge, and he was extremely pleased when he heard Hansadutta was trying his best to fulfill this desire. Phalena paricīyate: he judged a thing by its result. New devotees were coming and new centers were being opened. To Prabhupāda, Hansadutta’s success showed that he was the right person to spread Lord Caitanya’s mission in Germany.
I am very much pleased to hear from Mandali Bhadra that so many BTGs in German language are being printed and distributed by you, and also that you have opened so many centers in Germany. You are the right person to control over Germany, so Krishna will give you strength, and I’m sure you will be successful. Your German blood injected with KC drug will do tremendous good to the German people. So I think that you shall remain in charge of German-speaking centers of Europe, and let us keep Krishna das in charge of Scandinavian zone, for developing Sweden and other places in the far northern part. Now you develop Germany very nicely, perfectly, and turn the whole nation into devotees, that is your task, and later we shall see, but I am thinking to appoint other qualified men to supervise as GBC members for Mediterranean, Near East, and African countries, as these areas also need to be developed, but you are so much necessary and important there in Germany, and practically Germany is the most progressive country in Europe, so I cannot think of your being absent from there.
Śrīla Prabhupāda was showering his blessings on Hansadutta, although he was aware of his disciple’s driving, ambitious nature, which caused frequent clashes with his godbrothers. He also wrote to Maṇḍalibhadra on the same day he wrote to Hansadutta. Prabhupāda stressed again the importance of making the vaiṣṇava philosophy available to the German public: It appears that in Germany we have got very good possibility, and I am glad to hear from Hansadutta that he has expanded more centers, and that all programs are increasing. That is his success and your success. Actually, everyone in the world can accept this Movement very easily. My angle of vision is that throughout the whole world everyone is good and innocent, only they have been misled and corrupted by rascal leaders. If you can organize everything nicely, the Americans and Europeans of the future will come out very nice, that is my opinion. [...] As I have told you before, you are the chief editor of German BTG, in charge of its writing, translating, subject matter, content, everything, so I have complete trust in you for this, now do it nicely. When you are finished with Bhagavad-gita, then we shall see what shall be the next book for translating. But I think the German people are very philosophicallyminded, and they will appreciate the higher philosophy of TLC, or the science of NOD. This we can decide later, first finish the work at hand. Actually, these four books: Krishna, TLC, NOD, and Bhagavad-gita, if these four books are translated and distributed widely in German language, alone they are sufficient to give everyone the whole contents of Krishna Consciousness subject matter. So try for all of them, why just one or two?
But Maṇḍalibhadra was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. In the beginning, he had appreciated Hansadutta’s abilities to get things done and inspire others, but Hansadutta’s freewheeling and sometimes eccentric personality was at odds with Maṇḍalibhadra’s more conservative and structured character. As time went on, Maṇḍali-bhadra took part less in the temple’s activities, and naturally, his translation work suffered. Occasionally, he would come by for an evening ārati. As a family man, he was working a job, and the devotees did not hide their criticism of his often dressing in street clothes and putting on “water tilaka” (applying a tilaka mark on the forehead with water instead of clay, so it won’t be seen). But besides disagreeing with Hansadutta about management, Maṇḍalibhadra had deeper misgivings. His wife was initiated by Vāmana Dāsa, a disciple of Prabhupāda’s godbrother, Sadānanda Swami, and Maṇḍalibhadra had been exposed to the views and mood of the Gauḍīya Maṭh, which in some ways were at odds with Prabhupāda’s preaching spirit.
Thus it came as no surprise that Maṇḍalibhadra gradually drifted further and further away until he stopped coming to the temple altogether. Hansadutta didn’t mind. Actually, he was relieved. It had been a headache to deal with Maṇḍalibhadra; as Hansadutta’s peer, he couldn’t simply be pushed around. And Hansadutta had completely depended on Maṇḍalibhadra to get translated texts to publish.
In conversations, Hansadutta had already prepared Prabhupāda for the transition. He had pointed out that the book production was being held up because Maṇḍalibhadra had been appointed as the ultimate authority. It was he who had to check all the translations, and this had become more and more of a bottleneck. When Prabhupāda heard this, he rescinded Maṇḍalibhadra’s authority and gave Hansadutta a free hand to manage the publication of his books.
BHAKTI GAURAVANI GOSWAMI: I had met Maṇḍalibhadra a couple of times, but only briefly, and we never developed a working relationship. By the time I moved into the temple to take up the translation work full-time, he had practically given up his affiliation with ISKCON.
The great task at hand was the translation of the Bhagavad-gītā. The unabridged version had not yet been printed in English, but Hansadutta had received a copy of the final layout, and he was eager to publish this most important book as soon as possible. Being a new devotee I didn’t feel qualified to translate “the Bible” of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement by myself. Śacīnandana loved Prabhupāda’s books. After only a year in the temple he was known to be well-versed in the philosophy, and he used every free minute to study. He wanted to translate, but his German lacked elegance, so we formed a translation team. Later, Pṛthu, another high school graduate, joined us and gave the manuscript a final reading. PṚTHU DĀSA: The death of my younger brother at age seven figured decisively in my spiritual development. He died of cancer, and I asked our priest, “How is this possible because in the Bible it says that everyone reaps what he sows?” But the priest had no answer. I insisted, “It is clearly said that you reap what you sow, so what has my little brother sown that within seven years he has to die in agony from a cancerous brain tumor?” His head had been opened several times by the medical faculty of a university, but all their efforts were of no avail. So when I received no answer I turned toward atheism. I thought, “If there is no justice, there is no God.” I sympathized with Ernest Hemingway’s view of existence as “a trip from nowhere to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere.” This was in 1960. In the mid-‘60s I read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, and it became clear to me that the real meaning of “everyone reaps what he sows” is that we get the results of our activities from past lives. I became convinced of the law of karma and reincarnation. As in the physical world every action has a reaction, so on the human level everyone is suffering and enjoying the results of their deeds in due course of time. This made sense. And it answered the age-old question of Job: “Why do the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer?”
I then understood that my brother did not suffer without reason in the hands of brutal fate, which dishes out enjoyment and suffering without concern. Fate isn’t blind or random. The law of karma, combined with the idea of reincarnation, gave meaning to the sufferings and enjoyments in the world, death being the end of a chapter but not the end of the story. I became attracted to Eastern philosophies and began to read books about Tibetan mysticism, Buddhism, and Zen.
In 1968, I enrolled at the University of Bonn to study comparative religion. We read various scriptures, including the Bhagavad-gītā, and I could see that the East, particularly India, had all the answers. Ex oriente lux—light comes from the East.
Then I became sidetracked by the student revolution, joined a political commune in Berlin, and became a member of the SDS, the German Socialist Student Union. The next step in expanding my consciousness was to take psychedelic drugs because I realized that the external circumstances that influence consciousness are not everything, as the Marxists thought; there is also an internal dimension.
But after some time, the hopes for a new generation of “beautiful people” faded, and the counterculture turned ugly. People hadn’t changed a bit despite all the talk. Paradise was as far away as ever. In fact, everyone’s mind was wearing out, because the higher we flew, the further we fell. Having seen everything and done everything, I finally concluded that I had to choose between worship or suicide. I was convinced it was useless to live without a spiritual purpose.
During my student days, in 1967, I had heard a record by the Fugs that had the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra on it. I had listened to it over and over again. And then there was the album by Quintessence, which also featured the mahā-mantra and contained the song “Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Gauranga.” It showed on the back cover a hodgepodge altar with pictures of Buddha, Shiva, Ramakrishna and other spiritual personalities. So I made a similar altar, where I burned incense and bowed down. And over my bed, I hung an enormous poster of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa that I’d bought in a head shop in Frankfurt. Some Hindu gods, I thought. That was in the summer of 1970.. As the days and weeks passed, I wondered how to make my realizations a reality—what group of people to live with so we could practice spiritual life together. I began rising early, gave up psychedelic drugs, became a vegetarian, stood on my head and practiced prāṇāyāma. But above all, I was waiting for a sign from heaven, some sort of Writing on the Wall, to show me the path of perfection.
In late December 1971 a friend of mine confided in me he was contemplating suicide. We talked for hours, and then it occurred to me to light some incense and play my guitar. The Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra came to mind, and we ended up chanting for hours. Of course, we had no idea what we were doing, but it was a strangely ecstatic experience, and my friend began to feel unknown happiness deep within. He realized that it was only his thoughts that were driving him mad. We concluded he should just forget about watching the heavens and hells of his autobiographical drama, throw the film away, and become more positive. That helped him out for the time being.
The next day I met him again, and when I saw him coming toward me from a distance, I sensed that this was a crucial moment in my life. I went straight up to him and said, “Whatever you have, please give it to me. I have been waiting for this so long.” He looked at me strangely and said, “I have this book for you.” And he pulled an Īśopaniṣad out of his pocket. It was a magical coincidence. His parents had bought the book on the street in Hamburg and given it to him because they knew he was interested in spiritual things, and he was now giving it to me because he felt grateful that I had stopped him from committing suicide.
That evening I had booked a train to Paris, where my older sister was living, and during the ride, I read the Īśopaniṣad from cover to cover. Once I began, I couldn’t stop reading. It occurred to me that this ancient scripture contained the conclusion to everything I had thought and read about. It brought everything into focus. Whatever I had been thinking and wondering about, here it was, expressed to perfection. I came to the end and closed the book. It was four o’clock in the morning, December 28, 1971. The train was approaching Paris. I knew I had come to the end of a long journey.
I dumped my things at my sister’s and went to the Quartier Latin, a meeting place for students and hippies. Asking about the Hare Kṛṣṇas, I was directed to a shop whose owner knew the devotees. In his shop window, there was a Kṛṣṇa Book displayed, opened in such a way that you could see the front and back covers. And there I saw again a picture of the man I had read about in the Īśopaniṣad—Prabuddha—that’s what I thought his name was. When I saw the bright smiling face of the Prabuddha, I thought, “This is the man I have to meet. I have to know more about him.”
I got the address of the temple and took a metro to Fontenay-auxRoses, a suburb in the South of Paris, where the devotees had rented a small house. When I arrived, Hari-vilāsa Prabhu was standing at the entrance. There were scents of incense and prasādam, and the whole vibration was something foreign and exotic. I walked up to him just as the devotees were preparing to leave for saṅkīrtana, and I said, “I want to join.” He replied, “Well, that can be done. In the meantime, try one of these,” and he pulled a white sweet ball from his pocket. I popped it into my mouth. He asked me, “How do you like it?” I said, “It’s simply wonderful!”
“Well, that’s what it’s called,” he said and smiled.
I went with them on saṅkīrtana. I walked behind them, and with my long hair and beard, I looked like Jesus beating a gong. By the time we came back in the evening, Maṇḍākinī Dāsī had prepared an outstanding feast. Then Hari-vilāsa gave an amazing lecture. Afterward, I walked up to him and said, “I want to join right away.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Listen, this is what I have been looking for.”
He suggested, “Why don’t you go to Hamburg? You are German, so it may be better for you there.”
“All right,” I said, and I got back on the train, riding overnight to Hamburg on January 1, 1972.
When I came to Bartelsstrasse and climbed the stairs, I was again greeted by exotic scents, and the first person I met was Hansadutta. I did not need much convincing, so after ten minutes I gathered up my hair and asked, “What about this?”
While he was shaving me he explained that I had to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Someone handed me beads, and I began to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa. After one round I said, “All right, I’m done.”
“No,” he replied, “we chant sixteen rounds like that every day.” I thought, “Sixteen? My God!”
*** In May 1972 Śivānanda went to Heidelberg to establish a temple. Shortly afterward, Pṛthu joined him, eager to help open a new preaching field in Germany’s most famous university town. Because it wasn’t easy to find a suitable place for a temple, Śivānanda was staying in the table tennis room at Heidelberg University’s student union. The big hall of ping pong tables had a stage at the front, and Śivānanda lived behind the stage curtain. PṚTHU DĀSA: When I got there Śivānanda greeted me with a broad smile and said, “Welcome to the Hare Kṛṣṇa temple.” It was dreadful because every evening the hall filled up with students who played ping pong for hours.
After some time we met a hippie couple who had taken prasādam at the temple in San Francisco, and they invited us to stay with them. From their flat near Main Street, we would go out every afternoon for saṅkīrtana. I would stand on one side of the street, chanting the mahāmantra and oṁ purṇam adaḥ purṇam idam, while Śivānanda stood on the other and distributed BTGs. Sometimes I would be surrounded by hundreds of people because the sight of Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees then was still something unusual in Germany. I always got into huge arguments with Christians.
Śivānanda suggested I approach Prabhupāda for initiation, and one day I came back from saṅkīrtana and saw these big beads hanging out of the mailbox. In the initiation letter that had been sent earlier, he wrote: My Dear Son (Prthu Das) Please accept my blessings. Upon the recommendation of Sivananda I have gladly consented to accept you as my duly initiated disciple. Your beads have been duly chanted by me and they are sent by separate post. I have given you the spiritual name of Prthu dasa Brahmacari. King Prthu was the ideal ruler of the citizens, so you should also set the example of ideal person and spread this ideal very widely to all the citizens of your country. I can understand that you are a very sincere boy and are very eligible candidate for going back to Home, back to Godhead. And the process is simple. follow the regulative principles, chant at least 16 rounds of beads daily, read our literatures, go for street sankirtana, etc. In this way keep yourself engaged in Krishna's business 24 hours and you will be really happy in this life and in the end reach the supreme destination. Hoping this will meet you in good health.
Your ever well-wisher, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami One day, I saw a newspaper ad that offered a small house with a garden. The rent was only 400 DM, and the owner asked for a presentation. We went there in the afternoon. At least forty people had gathered in the little house, and one after another they went into a room to speak with the owner. There were solicitors, real estate agents, students, and housewives, and we devotees provoked some murmurs and giggles. When our turn came, Śivānanda explained Kṛṣṇa consciousness to the owner, and I said we wanted the house for preaching, teaching people about spiritual life, and if he would give us the place, we would convert it into a learning center. Finally, everyone had to gather in the hall and wait. Then the door opened and the owner’s representative stepped out to give us the verdict. He coughed nervously and announced that the house would be rented to the Hare Kṛṣṇa group. Of course, that caused a bit of a sensation.
So we converted the house into a nice little temple. The vibration was upbeat, and we invited students to visit in the evenings. In this way it developed, and before we knew it, the place began to fill up. Then Hansadutta visited us and realized that we “had the scene” —in fact, a better scene than the Hamburg temple—and therefore he shifted his headquarters to Heidelberg. He used to sit in the hallway and preach all day. I brought people every day to the temple, and he just preached nonstop. It was heaven.
*** KṚṢṆA-KṢETRA SWAMI: In 1969 I enrolled at the University of California in Berkeley to study architecture. Berkeley attracted all kinds of characters—spiritual seekers, political agitators, and so on. I took an interest in spiritual subjects and read books on yoga and mysticism. And occasionally I visited so-called spiritual groups, but I almost immediately became convinced they were bogus.
Because I was passing daily through the main gates of the campus, I would see the Hare Kṛṣṇas, who would be at those gates about noon chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and distributing BTGs and prasādam. You couldn’t avoid passing them. I would think, “Pretty far-out,” but I never spoke to them. Sometimes I stood at a safe distance and watched them. I thought, “You gotta hand it to these people, they always look happy.” I saw some genuineness to their happiness; it wasn’t pasted-on joy. And they were devotees day in and day out, so it couldn’t be fake. One black-bodied devotee playing mṛdaṅga looked especially blissful. So all of this made a strong impression on me.
A few months later I met the devotees on harināma, and I stopped, listened, stood for a while, then sat down, but then they ended their session and moved on. Nobody talked to me and I was just left sitting there. The kīrtana had been sweet, and I was strongly attracted to it.
One day, as I was walking down Telegraph Avenue, I met a tall young man from the temple, which was nearby. He was carrying a bowl of fruit salad that resembled an orange sauce. It was Sunday, and this was probably a leftover from the feast. With a big smile, he was going around and daubing it out to everyone. I took a dollop in my hand and slurped it up. Two impressions hit me: its special, unique taste, and the blissfulness of the devotee, although he was so completely unassuming.
Once in a while, I took a BTG when it was presented to me, but as I skimmed through the pages, I felt it was all fantasy. I didn’t take it seriously. I never read one from cover to cover. I sort of felt that it might be interesting to find out more, but, after all, I was a student; I didn’t pursue it.
Some months later I was walking through what is called the Eucalyptus Grove, an area on the west side of campus, and in that park, I was thinking, “If I want to really understand what’s what, I need a teacher.” I hadn’t heard the word guru, but I felt a need for nothing less than a perfect person to guide me.
Then, at the end of 1971, I decided to take a break from college, because the draft was off the table for me. The Vietnam War was on, and going to college was a convenient way to avoid going to Vietnam, but then Nixon started the lottery system, and I got a high enough number that I didn’t have to worry about losing my student deferment. So I gave notice of withdrawal and went to Europe to see the world in a mood that something significant had to change. Maybe I would never come back. And, if all else failed, I had an address in Germany of an old business partner of my grandfather, where I could get a job.
So I went to England first, and then started hitchhiking through Germany, France, down to Spain. In Barcelona a con man took me for practically everything I had; he left me just enough money to take a bus to Germany. Once there, I presented myself at the company I had a recommendation for, and they gave me a job as an office boy.
After five months (it was now June 1972), I had saved enough to venture out on my own again, still in the mood that I wanted to do something different. So one day I pondered, “What would be really different?” I thought, “I know! I should look up the Hare Kṛṣṇas and check them out.” I planned to stay with them for three or four weeks and then move on. I knew that they would probably be in places where hippies congregated, either in Berlin or Heidelberg.
I had been reading a book about Patañjali’s yoga system, and the author mentioned several times that this yoga is virtually impossible to practice nowadays, but that bhakti-yoga is feasible.
When I got to Heidelberg, I walked into the part of town where the big fountain is, and there were Śivānanda and Pṛthu on the steps playing karatālas and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. I introduced myself and told them that I had encountered the devotees in California and wanted to learn more. So they took me to the room where they were staying, and there was Bhadra-vardhana, who kind of had preached to me for the first time in the US. But he wasn’t presenting the philosophy so well, and I wasn’t inspired by him to stay.
Still, I was attracted to Śivānanda’s nature: quiet, gentle, and levelheaded, and not starry-eyed. I had seen enough starry-eyed spiritualism in Berkeley. So I asked him, “What is the effect of chanting?” He said only, “Oh, it is very powerful!” I thought, “Wow, that’s what I want.” Then he added, “You know, this is bhakti-yoga,” and that clinched it for me. He also offered me a little prasādam—a bit of cold rice and a morsel of halavā— not an impressive meal, but I liked it. I asked him about the devotees’ schedule, and when I heard that they got up at four o’clock in the morning, I immediately thought these people were serious. So I asked, “Can I also come at that time?”
“Sure,” he said.
So the next morning I joined the devotees for japa. A few weeks later I was on the street in Stuttgart with a shaved head, dressed in a pink dhotī made of some synthetic material, and selling Zurück zur Gottheit for one DM each. Just a month after I joined we were on our way to Paris to see Śrīla Prabhupāda.”
NIKHILĀNANDA DĀSA: I grew up in a small town near Hamburg, and as a child, I often accompanied my mother to the city for shopping. One day, in 1969—I was about twelve years old—as we were heading for the small bridge near the Botanical Garden, we saw a huge crowd of people pushing each other to get a look at a few exotically dressed young people playing drums and singing Hare Kṛṣṇa. I was spontaneously attracted and wanted to go nearer, but my mother pulled me by the hand and forced me to keep walking.
Since my early childhood I had been pondering religious questions, and my mother, who considered herself an atheist, could not provide any answers. Then I became interested in science and space travel, and I spent hours imagining all the wonderful progress humanity would make within the next few decades. One evening, the thought struck me that someday I would not be here anymore to witness all the scientific advancement. That’s how I became aware of death. That night I had a hard time falling asleep because I was constantly thinking about what would happen at the time of death. Would I continue to exist? Dissolve into nothing? Be a thought or wind or inert matter?
One day, my older sister’s boyfriend told me that people in Asia believe that the soul is eternal and wanders from body to body like a ray of light until it becomes liberated and returns to an endless spiritual effulgence. This idea fascinated me, and I felt it put me on the right track to find answers to my questions. I began to look for books on different religions and forms of meditation, but in those days there were only a few books about Zen Buddhism available that contained instructions on how to meditate. So I began to practice Zen.
When I was thirteen, I adopted the external appearance of the hippies— long hair, flower jackets, and Indian ornaments—and tried to overcome duality and break through the barriers of rational thinking.
In October 1971 a friend and I were in Hamburg, and in the evening we visited the Hare Kṛṣṇa temple out of curiosity. We had seen an article about the devotees in a magazine, and some of our schoolmates had been to the temple. A couple of weeks earlier, I had also seen devotees on the street asking people for donations, but I hadn’t taken them seriously. I felt it was a sign of dogmatism to run around in bedsheets.
When we arrived at Bartelsstrasse it took us a while to find the temple, because we were expecting an Indian-style structure, not an old warehouse. When we finally located it and were climbing the stairs, the fragrance of incense filled me with excitement and anticipation. The devotees struck me as mystical and otherworldly. I was offered a plate of fruit prasādam, but arrogant as I was, I thought I was already self-satisfied and a sort of incarnation, so I took only one grape. Then we entered the temple room. But when the priest began to offer incense to the Deities, I felt I had seen enough, and we left.
Nevertheless, on our way home, we chanted the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, and in the following months, I would chant occasionally when I was alone and peaceful. Actually, that summer I had become a vegetarian and had also tried to practice hatha-yoga and prāṇāyāma, and now that I was sometimes chanting, I became a bit stricter in my following of those processes. I rose early in the morning and gave up hanging around with friends who were partygoers and into smoking dope.
Many questions remained unanswered. Was everything only a product of our sense perception and thoughts, or was there a higher reality? I had read about nirvāṇa and Brahman, and to me, these concepts represented an ocean of love, but at times it all seemed too abstract.
I didn’t feel inclined to join one of the meditation groups in Hamburg because they seemed after money more than enlightenment. I felt the need to find a yogī or guru who could teach me the real thing. I was toying with the thought of going to India, and I even began saving money and storing food for the trip, but being only thirteen I was hesitant to undertake such an adventure.
One sunny spring day in 1972 I was sitting on a park bench in a reflective mood. I felt I had come to a philosophical dead end. I had tried to reduce everything to passivity by emptying all thoughts, but I didn’t feel happy. Even in dreams, I had concentrated on nirvāṇa. I had achieved being able to make mental images lose more and more of their form and color. In the park, I contemplated a tree in front of me. It was just standing there, tolerating both heat and cold in a state of complete passivity. It was near to the ideal of eliminating all activity, nirvāṇa, but that didn’t mean the tree was an advanced spiritualist. I concluded that this could not be perfection.
And I was lonely. I had withdrawn from most of my friends, frustrated by their superficial attitudes. I told myself I did not have a single real friend. “Someone is my friend only when I give him something. Did I ever meet anyone who loved me for myself, who offered me a single thing without expecting anything in return?” When I brought to mind all the people I knew, I realized that none of them fit my ideal of a genuine friend. Then I remembered my first visit to the Hare Kṛṣṇa temple. The monks had offered me a whole plate of fruit without asking me for anything in return. They were friendly and unconditional in their love. They seemed to be seriously into yoga, and maybe they even knew a bona fide master, a guru. I wanted to meet them again and ask them questions, but I thought that probably they had returned to India because I hadn’t seen them during the winter. So I gave up the idea.
Sometime later, while walking down a street near Hamburg University, I noticed a small poster on a lamp post with a picture of a dignified-looking man in Indian dress. He had an aura of purity about him and looked absorbed in meditation. With his hands folded in prayer, he looked kind and merciful. It was Prabhupāda, and beneath the picture was a message inviting everybody to visit the temple, chant the holy names of God, and go home with an enlivened mind. So it seemed that the temple was still there.
A few days later I was in Hamburg again to buy some jasmine tea and incense, and near Sternschanze I saw a group of devotees coming toward me. They were distributing magazines to the passersby and asking for donations. I quickly went to the other side of the street. If one of them approached me, I would not be able to say no, being duty-bound by my identification as a spiritualist. But I had just enough money to buy tea and incense. Then Smita Kṛṣṇa, as if inspired by the Supersoul, crossed the street just as I did, and when we met, he stretched out his hand and offered me a magazine and an invitation. I gave a small donation and returned home without tea.
But I did not regret having bought Zurück zur Gottheit. On the cover was a beautiful picture of Kṛṣṇa, and the centerfold displayed a majestic photo of Prabhupāda, who looked like the very embodiment of selfless love.
The picture included the first verse of Gurvāṣṭaka: “The spiritual master is receiving benediction from the ocean of mercy. Just as a cloud pours water on a forest fire to extinguish it, so the spiritual master delivers the materially afflicted world by extinguishing the blazing fire of material existence. I offer my respectful obeisances unto the lotus feet of such a spiritual master, who is an ocean of auspicious qualities.” I instantly knew that I had found a bonafide guru. I hung both pictures on the wall of my room and looked at them over and over again. The magazine also had an ad for the newly translated Śrī Īśopaniṣad, and since I had been looking for a translation of the Vedic literature for a long time, I decided to visit the temple the next Sunday and buy a copy.
At the Sunday feast, I was the only guest, and for three hours Cakravartī answered all my questions. Like a sponge, I absorbed his explanations of chanting, prasādam, and the nature of the soul and the spiritual world. Then it was time for ārati, and one devotee smeared a big white tilaka on my forehead. Hansadutta led a melodious kīrtana on the harmonium, and during the whole ārati ceremony I floated on a mystical cloud of bliss. I knew I had found what I was looking for, and I wanted to be part of it. When my mother saw the tilaka and learned what it meant—it marks the body as a temple of God—she flew into a rage. I was only fourteen, and there was no chance to join the devotees yet, so I went to the temple daily after school, chanted some rounds, began to study Īśopaniṣad, and practiced the pronunciation of the mantras. Still, for many months I was convinced that God was ultimately the impersonal Brahman, and I couldn’t understand the descriptions of Kṛṣṇa as a person. I thought that maybe the devotees were wrong on this one point and that Kṛṣṇa was just the representation of love and everything beautiful. Yet I was confident that these doubts would be cleared up in time. Although I was not able to live in the temple, the devotees were very kind to me and treated me as one of them. They encouraged me to just practice Kṛṣṇa consciousness at home.
*** BHAKTI GAURAVANI GOSWAMI: In the early spring of 1972, Jayagoura and Uthāla, two devotees from Hamburg, opened a temple in Düsseldorf, my hometown. Thus during my last few months in the military, I could combine visits to my family with visits to the temple, and I could also show my friends firsthand what Kṛṣṇa consciousness was all about.
But they didn’t seem interested. They resented the fact that devotees accept God as a person and surrender to Him and His representative, the spiritual master. They wanted to follow their own path of enlightenment. One of them asked, “How do you know that some guy sitting in an attic somewhere isn’t a guru as well?” Of course, it was possible, but why search for somebody unknown in an attic when Prabhupāda was already here? Our ways parted like that, but at least my friends had taken prasādam and thus made the first step on the path back home, back to Godhead. One weekend in Düsseldorf, Uthāla suggested that I shave my head. I had been with the devotees for more than half a year now, so why hide it? I thought about it. Within a couple of months, I would be discharged from the army, so even if the soldiers harassed me it wouldn’t be for long, and who cared anyway? I had enjoyed shocking people with my long hair, beard, and weird clothing; why not shock them with a bald head and flowing robes?
My arrival in Buxtehude caused a small stir. I was immediately summoned to the commander’s office. After I explained briefly that I had become a monk, he dismissed me, shaking his head and saying, “Germany’s young men aren’t what they used to be.” The major problem I faced was what to eat. I could not cook for myself, so I saw no other solution than to separate the pieces of meat from the meals provided by the canteen and eat the rest. When Uthāla learned of this, he explained to me that such food was contaminated and unfit. He offered to cook a bucket of halavā that I could take with me. That week my main meal every day was a big plate of cold halavā and some fruit.
Time passed quickly, and on June 1 I finally moved into the temple in Düsseldorf for good. The location was not bad—it was on one of the main arteries of the city and easily accessible by public transportation—but the building was run-down. It served as a shelter for drug addicts and thirdworld immigrants. The temple was on the top floor and comprised two small rooms. One served as an office, prasādam room, and bedroom, while the other served as the temple room. Uthāla had converted a small space under the roof into a makeshift kitchen. The sink was in the hallway, shared by other residents. There was no bathroom. To take a shower, we had to go all the way down to the yard and use the hose. But Kṛṣṇa consciousness was beyond material circumstances. I didn’t feel that I had lost anything by exchanging my comfortable, spacious room at home for this.
We regularly went on saṅkīrtana on Düsseldorf’s most prestigious avenue, the KÎnigsallee. Sometimes Jayagoura and I were by ourselves, so one of us would walk along the street and chant while the other distributed magazines and collected donations. Although the response was small, we were confident that by executing the order of Śrīla Prabhupāda and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu all success was guaranteed. During those days I felt especially blissful because in two weeks we would drive to Paris to see Prabhupāda. It would be the first time any of us would meet our spiritual master in person.