Krishna Consciousness in Northern and Central Europe 1987

In this CBS video presentation, we'll be looking at the activities of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON, as it is commonly known, in ten European lands, beginning with Sweden in the far north and ending in sunny Italian Switzerland. ISKCON is a worldwide spiritual movement that was begun in New York in 1966 by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. Śrīla Prabhupāda based his ISKCON movement upon the teachings of Lord Kṛṣṇa as they are found in Bhagavad-gītā, a 5,000-year-old Sanskrit text in which the basic directions for a God-conscious or Kṛṣṇa-conscious lifestyle are given.

This lifestyle is known as bhakti-yoga. the yoga, or spiritual science, of devotion to Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In the Western world, it is commonly said that God is good or God is great, although God's true identity remains unknown. By understanding Kṛṣṇa as He is, one can actually experience the goodness and greatness of God. Kṣa means to draw or attract, and na means pleasure.

Krishna is the reservoir of unlimited, unending spiritual pleasure. Bhakti-yoga entails centering one's life around Krishna so that one becomes more and more attracted to Him and thus more and more absorbed in transcendental ecstasy. Since Srila Prabhupada established the first Krishna conscious community of American disciples in the 1960s, ISKCON has grown into a spiritual network with centers in almost every civilized nation on the face of the earth. Although we can only show a small fraction of ISKCON's total international scope, we hope that this will clearly demonstrate the strength, vitality, and universality of this ever-growing spiritual alternative.

Stockholm is the capital city of Sweden. Founded in 1252, it has a population of some 800,000 people and is the site of several universities and the Nobel Foundation, which awards the coveted Nobel Prize every year. On Fridhelm's Plan, one of the important business streets in Stockholm's downtown area, ISKCON has established the Hare Krishna Center for Higher Education. In this center, the public can learn about the bhakti-yoga system by experiencing it in an interesting cultural setting.

Here we see a demonstration of the traditional arctic ceremony which has been performed for thousands of years in temples in India. Paraphernalia such as a camphor lamp, a flower and a fan of peacock feathers are offered to the archivigraha or worshipable form of God. These particular forms are of Lord Chaitanya and Lord Nityananda both of whom are manifestations of Krishna himself. They appeared in India about 500 years ago to teach that God can most easily be realized in this present age by the sublime process of Harinam Sankirtan, the congregational chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra.

This simple process of meditation is an uplifting experience for all. The Hare Krishna Center also features a restaurant that daily serves meals of prasadam, delicious vegetarian dishes that have been offered to Kṛṣṇa and thus spiritually transformed. There is also a shop in which guests at the Hare Kṛṣṇa Center can purchase Indian incense, posters, clothes and other devotional items. The Hare Kṛṣṇa Center in Stockholm hosts regular courses in Bhagavad-gītā as well as broadcasts its own forty-hour-a-week radio show.

Krishna consciousness in Stockholm has thus become so influential that Ulla Sahid, the owner of a well-known restaurant, has transformed her establishment into a perfect copy of the ISKCON restaurant. Here we see her offering her food to Krishna in a small temple she has installed in her restaurant's cellar. Madhav Puri Das, an ISKCON devotee, has been helping Ulla in her efforts. Madhav Puri explains that Ula's restaurant, Kusim Vitamin, was originally an ordinary meat, fish and eggs establishment.

But after learning about Krishna, she became determined to serve him through her occupation, and thus she now serves only pure vegetarian foodstuffs prepared in accordance to devotional regulations. This has proved not only good for her Krishna consciousness, but good for business as well. This is Korsna's Gord, a country estate some 30 kilometers outside of Stockholm. Korsna's Gord was purchased by ISKCON in 1977 and is the site of a grand temple to Krishna and his beloved consort Radharani.

The Swedish devotees often gather at Korsna's Gord to observe special festivals. Here they participate in the Abhishek, in which small forms of Radha and Krishna are bathed in various auspicious substances. Another interesting feature at Korshna's Gord is the 16-track recording studio in which several best-selling albums of Krishna conscious music have been produced. Madhav Puri and Karl Henrik, two expert keyboard players, are busy working on another LP.

A few kilometers from Korshna's Gord is a third Hare Krishna community in the Stockholm area. This one, a 67-hectare farm project that was purchased by ISKCON in 1981. The economy of classical Vedic Indian civilization was based on land and cows, and as much as it is possible in a European cultural setting, the members of ISKCON try to follow suit. Hare Krishna devotees see the cow as a kind of mother who gives her milk freely for human consumption.

Therefore cows are protected, for to kill one's mother and eat her flesh is certainly a terrible sin. Although Swedish weather is problematic, these huge steam-heated greenhouses allow the devotees to grow abundant fruits and vegetables. Spiritual festivals such as this one, the Prana Pratishta Abhishek ceremony for the worshipable deities, are the life and soul of all ISKCON farm communities around the world. A very special feature of the Alamvik guard community is the Gurukula, in which the children of Hare Kṛṣṇa families receive a spiritual yet practical education.

Qualified teachers instruct the children in all the usual grammar school subjects, but a special emphasis is given to spiritual and moral training. Śrī Rāmiprabhu, an ISKCON Minister of Education who resides at Alamvik's guard, explains more about the gurukula concept. ISKCON's Gurukula system was started in 1972 by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in order to give the children of His disciples the same advantages in spiritual life, the same training in spiritual practices that He was giving to His own followers. The Gurukula system is based on the ancient Vedic system of education.

Gurukula means the place of the spiritual master. So here the children learn more than just academic education, more than just education to help them enjoy sophisticated eating and sleeping and sex and fighting when they grow up. Gurukula education means education based on the soul or understanding who you are. after all the point of all educational systems is to equip the children to be happy later in life but how can one be happy if he doesn't understand who he is so we find that even the children can appreciate the difference between the body and the soul and more important they can also learn how to be devotees of Krishna as Krishna describes in Bhagavad Gita that just always fix your mind on Me, always worship Me, offer obeisances unto Me, and then you'll be successful in spiritual life without any doubt. So the children can also learn these lessons in a simple way through the culture of Krishna consciousness, learning how to be obedient and faithful, clean, diligent in their work, all the qualities which will help them in spiritual life later on.

And they can engage in practical devotional service to Krishna through their studies and other activities without any difficulty, even though they're just children. The Alamvik Offset Press churns out Śrīla Prabhupāda's books in more than 20 languages. Here we're seeing the Polish language edition of the Sanskrit devotional classic Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam being printed. After printing, the pages of text are compressed before they are bound into book form. form.

Drupad Das, a Yugoslavian devotee who is a trained machinist, makes adjustments on the stitch binder which sews the pages of the books together. Vita Prabhu, a German devotee, operates one of the linotype machines, a complicated device that sets printing type from molten lead. Vita then installs the typeface he has created on the linotype machine into the letterpress, which is used by the devotees to print Gurukula school books, posters, postcards and other specialized materials. Kirtiraj Das, an American devotee who has been living at Amvik's guard with his wife and two children since the project first started.

Kirtiraj is the director of the Committee to Free the Soviet Hare Krishnas, which has its headquarters here. These are photographs of members of ISKCON in the Soviet Union who have been incarcerated for their beliefs. ISKCON has been active in the Soviet Union for more than a decade but since the communist authorities take a dim view of religious proselytization they have systematically persecuted these and many other Russian devotees. Dhumrakash Prabhu describes the oppression the Soviet devotees have had to undergo.

The first devotee that Srila Prabhupada made in the Soviet Union, his initiated name Anandashanti, he was also faced with much harassment by the police in the Soviet Union. He was first arrested in 1981 in Riga, held for about two weeks in the prison. Numerous other occasions he was arrested by the police, harassed in different ways. And then in 1982, he was arrested and then placed before Soviet psychiatrists, and they examined him and found him, for some reason or other, to be irresponsible or unaccountable.

And so when they held his trial, they did not even allow him to be there. He was tried in absentia. And he was, the verdict of that court was that he should be given forced psychiatric treatment. So presently in Antishanti, he is residing or forcibly interned in a Soviet psychiatric hospital in Smolensk.

And there they're giving him all kinds of neuroleptic drugs, which have very devastating side effects to the nervous system and also to the physical body as well. So he's enduring this. He's endured this for more than three years now. And the Soviets are showing no sign of letting up.

Here we see a huge gathering of devotees from the Stockholm area marching in procession to the Soviet embassy in support of their brethren in the USSR. Mr. F. L.

Sharma, president of the Danish branch of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and president of the Scandinavian Friends of India, reads a note of protest directed to the government of the Soviet Union. His attempt to hand-deliver his note to the Soviet consul was, as usual, fruitless. He clearly stated from Mr. Gorbachev regarding the subject of his letter's content.

We have received no reply from him and are therefore left with no alternative but to make our problem known to the world public. It takes one full night to travel by ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, the capital city of Finland. Helsinki, with a population of a half million people, is the cultural, commercial as well as political center of the Finnish nation and has in recent years become famous as the site of important international agreements between the leading governments of the Western world. On Yegari Gatun Street in central Helsinki, ISKCON has established Govindas, a temple and restaurant.

Govindas is often visited by classes from the many high schools in and around Helsinki. Here Kuru Das, a young Finnish brahmachari, gives an introduction to the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita to a group of students. The restaurant is well attended by persons of all ages and backgrounds. After ferrying back to Stockholm from Helsinki, it's more than a 500 km drive to the next important ISKCON center in Scandinavia.

This is Göteborg, or Gothenburg, situated on the west coast of Sweden. Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden, has a population of about a half million people. It is an important industrial town noted for shipbuilding and automobile manufacture. Gothenburg is also the site of a university and several colleges.

The main shopping area in Gothenburg is the Oropa Passage, a huge indoor mall in the very center of the city. This is where, every Saturday, the Hare Krishna devotees perform Haranam Sankirtan. As mentioned already, many of the ISKCON centers in Scandinavia make regular broadcasts over the state radio networks the gothenburg temple has its own small radio studio which is linked to the national network with this facility the devotees fill the airways with transcendental music and philosophy because gothenburg has a large percentage of non-swedish residents radio krishna often broadcasts in english which is also spoken by most swedes we now drive north from gothenburg across sweden's border with norway we have an appointment to meet tilakanath prabhu the president of iskcon norway somewhere in the mountainous countryside of the norwegian wilderness norway is a land of stark unearthly beauty of mountains and fjords and primeval forests that form a surrealistic landscape that emerges from an ever-present dreamlike fog.

Norway has the least population density of any land on the European continent, just 13 people per square kilometer. Because of this factor, the Norwegian devotees are very mobile, traveling the length and breadth of the land in vans and selling Srila Prabhupada's transcendental books to whomever they meet. Here comes Tilakanath now, chanting his morning japa. Hare Krishna devotees, wherever they may be, rise before dawn every morning to chant the Hare Krishna mantra on prayer beads before they do anything else.

Hare Krishna. It's a great pleasure to have you all here with us today in Norway. And in the background we can see Ålesund, it's a town situated on the west coast of Norway. We are going to distribute books here in Ålesund today. as you can see from the pictures we are showing you here it's a lot of mountains a lot of fjords but unfortunately there are not so many people so sometimes we have to look for the people to find someone to give the books to though the population of norwegian villages such as this one is often less than a thousand people they are kind and simple folk who will usually buy a book when approached by an enthusiastic devotee.

Tilakanath also visits the many colleges in his hometown of Bergen on Norway's southwest coast. The students are avidly interested in his presentation. Several members of the Norwegian ISKCON were former students who joined after attending programs like this one. To reach our next destination, we must go more than a thousand kilometers west of the Norwegian coast, across the horizon to the place known in the ancient world as Ultimatule, the end of the world, is Iceland, which lies on the Arctic Circle, a highly volcanic island as big as Ireland, but with a population of only a quarter of a million people, a land where primitive nature flaunts raw powers untamed by men.

University professors publicly affirm belief in elves. the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement is seen as another interesting and quite respectable manifestation of religious eccentricism. Here the devotees bring the holy name of Kṛṣṇa to the people of Reykjavik, Iceland's capital city. ISKCON's missionaries to Iceland offer the teachings of Kṛṣṇa consciousness to the public in well-attended programs. In a country as small as this, it is not hard to make an impact.

The lady president of Iceland, Vigdis Finnabogsdottir, has been visited by ISKCON representatives and received Srila Prabhupada's books, as has Hoffi Karlsdottir, Miss World of 1986. It's several days by ferry from Iceland to the Danish west coast port of Esbjerg. Our first destination in Denmark is its capital city, Copenhagen, population 700,000. ISKCON maintains two centers in the city.

One in a neighborhood of embassies and diplomatic residences on the north side. This center, which we'll be looking at first, serves as a nerve center for a number of ISKCON's important projects in Denmark. Adi Dev is here introducing a visiting religious studies class to the universal non-sectarian process of developing love of God by chanting his holy name. In this short interview, Adi Dev Prabhu outlines the goals of ISKCON in Copenhagen.

So here in Copenhagen, five, six years now, here at Bhagavad Gita, for those who are more interested, who wants to get into development, we have a program every evening, some personal association with the Guru. Additional to that, we have a vegetarian cooking course once a week. Come learn how to make vegetarian food, live a life more healthy. The real success is right here, it's Radio Krishna.

The studio is lying in the basement of the temple and it has a transmitting radius of 30 kilometers. This is where there's a maximum audience of 1 million people listening. And from letters and telephone calls and even also from personal visits, you can understand that people are becoming spiritually advanced just by listening to the radio. We have a weekly transmitting time of 40 hours.

So next time you are in Copenhagen, please turn in on Radio Krishna. The most important activity we are going on here is the translation of Transcendental Literature. Here we have from Simuka Prabhu, the person who is translating Srila Prabhupada's books from English to Danish. He is presently working on Srimad-Bhagavatam, which consists of 12 cantos, which in English comes up to 29 volumes.

Presently we have published the first two cantos of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Besides these other books here, there's the teachings of Oṭitanda, Bhagavad-gītā. These books are not only for the five million people living in Denmark, but also for the three and a half million which populate Norway. Over here we have the Polish books for all these lady devotees who are translating Śrīla Prabhupāda's books from English to Polish.

This is the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and they have translated up to third country besides these other books one major devotion the most recent addition to iskcon denmark's preaching efforts is the cultural center in the kub margata in downtown copenhagen it was opened in november 1986 an event that attracted hundreds of guests south of denmark lies the federal republic of germany which with 60 million citizens is the most populous country on a video tour of North and Central Europe. Germany is world-renowned as being highly advanced in technology, but it could use some help in the area of spiritual advancement, as these scenes from a New Age festival held near Frankfurt clearly show. ISKCON first came to Germany in the late 1960s, and its members soon became famous in the newspapers as the Tansanda Zingana Muncha, dancing, singing monks. Not everyone is appreciative, however.

These devotees are members of the Heidelberg Temple. Heidelberg, that world-famous university town on the bank of the river Neckar, is considered one of Germany's most beautiful cities and is therefore one of that country's top tourist attractions. In 1981, ISKCON opened a center for Vedic studies so that Heidelberg's students and intellectuals can experience the fascinating world of Vedic culture without having to travel to India. This is a marriage ceremony performed in the Vedic tradition.

And this is a lesson in classical Indian dance, which was performed in olden times for the pleasure of the temple deity. Every Sunday, the Center for Vedic Studies in Heidelberg holds a free love feast for the public. Devotees perform bhajans or Indian devotional songs which are dedicated to the Lord. Here Sri Lahari Keshwami Vishnupada gives an exciting talk on the subject of reincarnation.

In fact, we take our birth because we make plans and sometimes, almost all the time, we do not succeed in fulfilling these plans in one life. Therefore, these plans carry us over into our next life. After the lecture, delicious prasadam is served to the great satisfaction of one and all. In the southeast corner of the Federal Republic, in the Bavarian forest near Passau, devotees of Krishna maintain a 20-hectare farm.

This being one of the least industrialized areas of the country, is a very refreshing place. The devotees have a herd of about 20 cows and bulls from which they obtain all milk and butter requirements. With an ambitious and comprehensive agricultural program, the land yields enough food grains and vegetables to feed the members of the community all year round. The Hare Krishna farm is amply equipped with housing and guest facilities.

The spiritual center of the ISKCON Germany farm community is the very impressive temple built for the most part by the devotees themselves. This is the Vyasa-saṁ, or sitting place of the spiritual master, where Śrīla Prabhupāda is worshipped. There are two main altars in the temple, one dedicated to Śrī Śrī Rādhā-mādhāna-mohana and the other to Śrī Śrī Prahlāda Nṛsiṁhadeva. Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva is the fierce half-man, half-lion incarnation of Kṛṣṇa who appeared millions of years ago to save His pure devotee Prahlāda, a five-year-old prince, from the depredations of Prahlad's demonic father Hiranyakashipu.

Following the traditions still visible in pious villages of India, the deities are the devotional objective of all activities in the ISKCON farm. Here we see Indian born Narahari Devi Dasi assisted by Kastorika Devi Dasi cooking an offering for their lordships. The puja or formal worship of the deities which is performed on the ISKCON farm in Germany, is famous all over the ISKCON world for its high standards of cleanliness and punctuality and its rigid adherence to the scriptural rules and regulations. This act of offering foodstuffs to Krsna is not mere ritual.

It is yajna, or the sacrificial transformation of matter, meaning the cooked food, into spirit, or prasadam, the mercy of the lord. The grand temple on the German farm is often the site of large festivals held on auspicious days of the Vedic calendar. There are several smaller ISKCON centers in the federal republic such as this one situated on the Lister Myla shopping mall in Hanover. The Hanover center is primarily dedicated to book distribution which can be done quite successfully just by walking out the door.

Two hours drive north from Hanover via Ottobahn brings us to Hamburg where ISKCON has established a bhakti yoga center not far from St. Pauli, the infamous nightlife district. The devotees also operate a biodynamic grocery store called Govindas. An activity that is unique to the Hamburg center is the distribution of Russian Bhagavad Gitas to the many Russian ships that stop in the Hamburg harbor.

And now to West Berlin. This city of two million is as much a symbol of modern times as it is an old European capital. It is a city divided from itself, surrounded by a wall that is a legacy of the Second World War and a warning of the Third. A wall of watchtowers and insolent guards.

A wall of death. West Berlin, city of lost souls, city of the night that covers its loneliness, its foolishness, its crime, its shame. But it is also a city of hope. These devotees are led by Divirata Prabhu, the temple president.

The Berlin Bhakti Yoga Center is situated very close to the famous Checkpoint Charlie, where allied military personnel and diplomats cross the border between East and West Berlin. Like all ISKCON temples, the Berlin Center holds a well-attended love feast every Sunday. Leaving Berlin, we now stand in the heart of another old imperial capital, Vienna. This building stands near the famous Kärntnerstrasse.

ISKCON has established a center for Vedic studies on the sixth floor. Being in a very busy part of a city of a million and a half people, the center for Vedic studies receives guests all hours of the day, who come for kirtan and prasadam. ISKCON is very active behind the iron curtain. For security's sake, however, we are only able to present a limited report on Krishna consciousness in Eastern Europe.

This is Budapest, capital of Hungary, one country within the Soviet bloc that has become known for its openness to new ideas, even those that contradict Marxist philosophy. This street in the suburbs of Budapest, devotees of Krishna maintain a center which provides a meeting place not only for Hungarians interested in Krishna consciousness, but for people from all over Eastern Europe. Here we see a group of devotees from Czechoslovakia chanting Hare Krishna with Suhotra Swami and Turiya Prabhu. And this is a scene from an ISKCON temple in northern Yugoslavia taken during the celebration of Janmashtami, Lord Krishna's birthday.

The devotees have spent days preparing this delicious feast of prasadam which they are now offering on the altar to the Lord. Prabhu, the president of the temple, explains the activities of ISKCON in Yugoslavia. friends of chanting Hare Krishna, Maha Mantra, and some of them are chanting as much as the full-time devotees. Our devotees are mostly from the student class and we have in this way also two professors of philosophy, we have one lawyer. We have two devotees who finished the Academy of Art and around ten devotees who are university educated as myself also.

Our main activities are book production and distribution. We are producing Srila Prabhupada's books and we are distributing around thousand to one thousand five hundred books per week. We have 12 Sankirtan devotees engaged in this activity. We have also two centers, one bigger center here close to Zagreb and also another center in Belgrade.

We have two flats in Zagreb which we are using as preaching centers and all these properties are owned by the devotees. We are registered as an official religion and we also registered our printing. By our Sankirtana activities we are contacting many people and the people respond by writing us letters. In this way we are receiving many letters daily.

And now we want to make a new program, Namahatta program, opening namahata centers we have until now opened three centers in yugoslavia also what we want to do is that we want to find a farm and in this way we could engage more devotees and also we could be self-sufficient and preach more efficiently although preaching in yugoslavia obviously includes some difficulties, still it seems by Krishna's mercy that everything is going on very nicely. We have now reached the final country of our tour, Switzerland. This is the headquarters of the Schweizerische Stiftung für Krishna Bewusstsein in Zürich, the Swiss chapter of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. This comfortable mansion on the Bergstrasse has been painstakingly renovated by the devotees themselves and is replete with the beautiful temple featuring the ornate Vedic architecture of ancient India.

Let's pause here a few moments and experience what the daily morning program in Hare Krishna temple is like. A prayer gasa in a fashionable shopping area of downtown Zurich, the devotees operate a boutique called Govindas, a place of special interest to young people. This is the Gokula farm situated on 30 hectares of good rich earth adjacent to the Italian border near Lugano, Switzerland. The devotees maintain a happy herd of brown Swiss cows who provide ample milk for Krishna's kitchen.

The Iskand farm in Italian Switzerland features a fully equipped bakery operated by Murari Gupta Prabhu. Being a licensed baker, Murari Gupta markets his bread in the surrounding villages. The Hare Krsna bread is highly valued for its good taste and nutritiousness. Murari Gupta is now preparing special delicacies for Rathayatra, the festival of the chariots, which is held every summer at the Gokula farm.

This festival hails originally from the city of Jagannath Puri in India. On the Rathayatra day, these unique forms of Krsna on the right, His sister Subhadra in the middle and his brother Balaram are worshipped in a grand public parade. This festival has been celebrated in Switzerland for almost ten years and thus it draws a crowd numbering up to several thousands. The festival begins early in the morning with a lecture from Srila Hari Keshwami Vishnupada which is simultaneously translated in Switzerland's three main languages, German, French and Italian.

When new disciples come forward to accept initiation into the process of bhakti-yoga, they pledge to follow four regulative principles, no meat-eating, no illicit sex, no gambling and no intoxication, and chant the prescribed number of Hare Krishna mantras every day. In the next few hours, extensive preparations are made for the festival, such as the making of hundreds of garlands for the decoration of the Rathayatra cart. The guests are entertained by bhajans and kirtans and purchase delicacies from the various prasadam booths. Around four o'clock in the afternoon, the Rathayatra parade is held.

Afterward, in the large tent, Sri Vishnupada explains the meaning of Rathayatra for the benefit of the visitors. The festival continues into the late hours of the night with dramas and Bharat Natyam Indian dance performed by the dance team of Esther and Keshava and family from Basel. I hope that you found this tour of the Hare Kṛṣṇa centers of Northern and Central Europe to be interesting and enlivening. Please remember, these ISKCON communities that you have just seen are also yours.

They were established for the spiritual benefit of everyone. So please, feel free to visit us and experience the transcendental lifestyle of Kṛṣṇa consciousness firsthand. If you'd like to know more about the philosophical background of what you've just seen, then please contact the Hare Krishna Center nearest you for more information on the books of His Divine Grace A. C.

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, or please write to any one of the following addresses.