TV Coverage of the Hare Krishna Movement in Australia -- 1985

I'm Sid Hunter, your host for this edition of Every Town and Village. As you can guess from the drawing behind me, our show today is about Krishna Consciousness Down Under. The Krishna Consciousness movement is having a tremendous impact on the countries of Australia and New Zealand. Consequently, it has received an almost continuous barrage of media coverage.

In the next half hour, you're going to see a sampling of some of those fascinating reports. And with the help of Yaso Matinandan Das, a devotee from Sydney, Australia, will look into some of the reasons for the surprising vitality of the Hare Krishna movement in that part of the world. But first, I'd like to tell you a little about our show, Every Town and Village. As you probably know, Americans are now watching more and more news on their television sets every day.

The nightly news has ballooned from half an hour to three and a half hours an evening. And the latest thing is news channels that are on 24 hours a day. Of course, no one will deny the importance of keeping up with current events, but so much of what we see turns out to be repetitive and trivial. This news show, we hope, will be different.

The really significant issues of today concern the spiritual development of the world. I hope you will find these special news reports to be not only interesting, but also spiritually uplifting. Now let's welcome our guest, Yaso Matinandan Das. Welcome to Every Town and Village.

Thank you, Sid. Now tell me, first of all, how long has the Hare Krishna movement been active in Australia? Well, the movement began in Sydney, Australia in 1970 and spread to New Zealand about a year after that. So it's been 11 or 12 years in our part of the world.

But in that short time, the movement really has grown dramatically. We have 10 centres now all over Australia, restaurants in every major city, we have farms and drug rehabilitation centres, and we have even a school which is government assisted, and of course thousands of followers all over the country. So the last decade really has been very productive from our point of view. Well, it seems as though the Australians certainly must have welcomed you with open arms.

No, not really, Sid. We've had a lot of opposition along the way, and in fact we we still do, as you'll see from some of these reports, but I think because the devotees have been so determined and sincere to spread Krishna consciousness, that actually the Australian public now have a great admiration for our movement. One of the things we've tried to do, as you'll see in these news reports, is work very closely with the media and with the public to explain ourselves, and this has led to a much greater appreciation for the movement an example of that is one recent incident at one of our festivals where one of our senior members was accidentally killed and this potentially could have been very bad publicity for us but we were able to go on the Mike Wall show which is like your Johnny Carson show and explain our views on death and reincarnation and so on and in fact the incident turned out to be very favorable for us.

Well, why don't we watch one of those news reports now on that accident and some excerpts from the television show that followed. The accident involving one of the huge chariots used by the Krishna followers in their celebrations happened rather just as the festival procession was due to start in the city center. The details, Ray Franklin. We're at Belmore Park near Sydney's Central Railway Station that the colorful Festival of the Chariots procession rolled to a start at about 11 o'clock this morning and it came to a stop almost immediately when an elderly woman was crushed between the wheels of the leading chariot and killed.

The chariot, weighing about one ton and pulled by 80 members of the Krishna Consciousness Movement was just leaving the curb when, according to a Krishna official the woman leaned forward to touch it and fell beneath its wheels. The procession did eventually take place but without the two chariots. Instead, the singing, dancing crowd pulled their statue of Lord Krishna on a small trolley through the streets of the city centre. And afterwards, back at Belmore Park, the singing and dancing continued, with free vegetarian food for any of the spectators who wanted it.

The Krishna Consciousness Movement's Governing Body Commissioner for Australia and New Zealand, Prabhupada Kripaswami, said the woman who died, Mrs Sharma, was the mother of one of the movement's Sydney members. He said that accidents like the one that happened today weren't totally unknown during religious processions in India, but they weren't expected here in Sydney. In the last century, one or two incidents, because this parade attracts about five million people in its original place in Jagannath Puri in India, and of course with such a throng of people it was very difficult. They didn't have very good crowd control methods, But there's not been any incidents like that for many years, 50, 60 years, because they have very good crowd control.

And you hadn't expected anything like that here in Sydney? Oh, no. It was the last thing we expected. Very, very unfortunate.

Will this affect future parades in future festivals of the chariot? Well, we're hoping not. It may be that we might be required to keep some stricter security or crowd control. we've had the parade for eight years running consecutively and never had any problems at all and what can you say sometimes accidents happen now last weekend the movement hit the headlines when a woman was crushed to death after falling under an eight-ton chariot at a street festival in sydney and this sensational banner appeared the next day so to shed some light on this incident and to talk about their lifestyle i'd like you to welcome to our program chima rye got it right Cheetah, Hari and Talasi give them all a welcome I'd just like to cover this incident last Sunday because you people haven't really had your point of view put forward on it but it quoted one devotee as saying how marvellous to die under the chariot you'll go straight to God well first of all I'd like to say that we're very sorry the incident happened it was just a very unfortunate accident there was a woman, she fell off the top of it did she? no no, she asked if she could go and touch the wheel of the chariot She's an old lady, 69 years old, and she's an Indian lady.

Right. So she's a member of the Hindu community. So she went to touch the wheel of the chariot because she considers it a sacred, holy object. At that moment she tripped, and at that same moment the chariot began to move.

Oh, I see. So she got crushed under the wheel. Right. Now, as far as the fact is, what a glorious way to die.

Well, just like in most religions, there are the last rites. So we consider the chanting of Hare Krishna and the religious ceremony that we were performing to be like the last rites. So actually, from the religious point of view, from her point of view, and from her son, who is a devotee and a very religious person, it was actually a wonderful way for her to die. A bit like a Catholic dying during Mass or something, is what you're saying.

Right, yes, similar. Yes, right. Well, you know, after they've had communion or something, it would be a very spiritual thing indeed. But from the material point of view, of course, it's very unhappy.

Right, right. Now, you're married. you two right how long have you been married seven years seven years and does this uh is your marriage much different from what your parents would have expected your marriage to be i think they're thrilled with our marriage our marriage is very happy um there's great harmony there and um there's no argument it's very satisfying marriage my parents my parents specifically are very thrilled how long have you been a hari krishna i've been a hari krishna eight and a half years eight and a half years yes i suppose at first they were terrified you know at first because they didn't know anything about the Hare Krishna movement. So it's eight and a half years, it's a long time. So they've just observed, and I've come to the temple, I've been, I see them all the time.

And just through understanding my lifestyle, they appreciate it very much, and also the principles we follow, the strictness that we... It is very strict, isn't it? I mean, I think when you first started, everyone thought it was going to be drug, sex, and rock and roll at 40 paces, you know? Well, we're no sex, no intoxication.

Well, let's explain that. You only have sex when it's necessary to produce a child. like we do have sex just like we have children you know and they don't just come out of um but we have sex to be get very nice children krishna conscious children and uh we don't we only do it between husband and wife we don't have wife swapping either or anything no nothing like that in fact the whole thing is very very conservative by any standards isn't it so your parents would be delighted to know you're leading a conservative life what about your family um i come from a big catholic family nine children in the family and of course in the beginning they were horrified yes but um now i think all my family's pretty happy with me they see that i'm a pure upstanding personality that they love my wife they love all the devotees and a lot of them have even started to follow some of the principles of our religion but without getting into explaining religions in the sentence is almost impossible but basically a devotion is to krishna which is a god force right right yep the god it's the same god as the The Christians worship, it's just another name of me is Krishna.

And is vegetarianism a part of your religion? Yeah. But strict? Yeah, strict, but we don't eat any meat or fish or eggs.

So that is very strict. But we only eat foods that are offered to Krishna. Krishna says in the Gita, and that's our main book, Bhagavad Gita, that I only accept those things that are offered to me with love. And he lists the things he doesn't accept, animals, eggs, and fish.

So it's very vegetarian indeed in that case. Could you be a Hare Krishna and sort of live a normal sort of life or do you have to live in a community and do you have to wear the sort of clothing you wear and wear the markings? The majority of people who are Hare Krishnas, they don't dress like this. We're the preachers, you know, so we're just like the priests and nuns virtually and we live on a communal basis. but the majority of people like we have about 30 000 members in australia who just look like you and there may be one sitting in the audience here or they may be in your office there may be a harry christian that you don't know right just like that boy whose mother was killed in the unfortunate accident uh he's an accountant in a public service i think you know what's the what's the family in it like now talasi is not your child you don't have any children no so we had to borrow you had tomorrow you're very pretty to lassie how are you that's a lovely dress have you had that for very long how long just just until the future especially for the parade especially for the parade it's the name of the festival right now the children uh are you educating them yourselves or what we have one school in warmbar at the moment we're also hoping very soon actually we'll be starting one school down here in sydney at our collo farm and um we have a full educational program for them and is that recognized by the education department yeah by the new south wales education the studio audience seemed very favorable yes and that show was watched by over one third of the people in australia as well do you always get that type of coverage well said we we try to present all of our preaching programs in as favorable a light as possible and naturally we try to be as helpful to the media and work with them as much as possible basically we try to get as much media attention as we can to present our philosophy to the public and to give them some spiritual benefit one program we held was with our balinese dancing group and that received australia-wide coverage as well well why don't we see that right now the hari krishna movement has established a base in Bali with one of its specific aims being the maintenance of an art form stretching back over thousands of years.

A group of Balinese Hare Krishna devotees are currently touring Australia and provided this special performance for Today Tonight. The reporter is Jim Devine. Dance portrays the activities of Lord Rama who was an incarnation of God many thousands thousands of years ago and throughout the centuries the activities of Lord Rama have been passed down in this way through the dance and the music and the art of the eastern countries you'll find most of the art music and drama is centered either on the pastimes of Rama or Krishna so this is actually the Ramayana which means the story of Lord Rama's appearance on the earth Lord Rama is able to win back his wife Sita who was stolen by the wicked King Ravana Ravana he stole away the wife of Rama and took her to his island fortress which is called Sri Lanka so in this final scene of the drama he when Rama wins back his wife with the help of the white monkey who is actually a devotee he's actually portrays a devotee of God who helps God in his mission these devotees who are just dancing now they're all devotees, Hare Krishna devotees who are dancing for actually devotion there's no other purpose in this actually it's a method for us to remember the pastimes of Rama remember the pastimes of Krishna and it's done, devotionally performed therefore it's as a sort of a more heart than what you'd see in the hotels and so on do you feel and i because you are based in bali now do you feel that some of the cultural edge if you like has been taken off the country with the influx or the tremendous influx really of tourists from all over the world not necessarily because they there's a great interest in this traditional culture because in so many technologically advanced countries there's a shortage of culture drama art music which has some depth some some traditional meaning some devotional meaning actually in these countries the real meaning is spiritual the real meaning of this art form is to convey to us a spiritual message so when music art and drama is divorced from its original spiritual purpose then it becomes almost it dies away actually just like in the western countries you see that the for instance architecture everything is flat straight whereas if you go to for instance to bali so much beautiful carvings but if you examine those carvings you'll see that they all portray these activities of rama or krishna now what about some of that opposition and adversity that you had talked about before well first of all sid let me explain that the australian people actually love a good fight or an argument and they'd like to see the underdog come up winning so our movement has gained a lot of respect from the australian public because we're very strong in our convictions and we're prepared to stand up for them i think the next clip we're about to see deals with our fight for free speech in adelaide australia and this gained a lot of interest all over the country i think it ran in the local and national news in nearly two weeks straight.

Well, let's take a look. Good evening, nice to have your company. Welcome to State Affair. Many would consider members of the Hare Krishna sect to be little more than a noisy nuisance.

They've been labelled dangerous religious fanatics and lumped together with cults such as the Moonies. But the Krishnas say they're simply misunderstood, that they're a fast-growing legitimate religion worshipping the same God that Christians do. But, as Brian Anderson reports, the Hare Krishnas are in trouble again. They claim to have as many as 50,000 followers in Australia.

They've become a familiar, but not always welcome, sight on the streets. Yesterday in Adelaide, seven were arrested. They'd been warned off chanting and dancing in a shopping mall, but defied that warning. Well, that is the reaction from a few narrow-minded, atheistic, demonic men.

You're saying the Adelaide police or the government that directed them are atheists? Well, actually, it's the mall managers who are atheistic. Yes, because the Krishna Consciousness Movement is a pure religion. It is the oldest religion in the world, going back 5,000 years.

It predates Christianity, Judaism, and all the other religions. So when you're chanting in the street, you're basically like a Salvation Army band playing on the corner? Exactly. We are glorifying God.

An ancient and harmless religion. Well, that, according to spiritual leader Bhavananda Vishnupada, is how they like to be seen. And certainly in Queensland, it seems the Hare Krishnas are considered less a problem than they are in Adelaide. Because ironically, the same day its followers were being carted off by police in the South Australian capital, the Hare Krishna movement was given a permit to chant on the streets of the Gold Coast.

However, handing out books is still banned and that they don't like. That is a ridiculous law then. If you're not allowed to give out literatures on God, about God, about his activities, about his likes, about how wonderful he is, then that law should be changed. How do you see the Hare Krishna movement?

How should Australians accept it? Is it like another religion, Christianity, Islam, or even Church of England, or Catholic? It is definitely one of the major religions of the world. There's only one God, and that God has many names.

Sometimes he's called Jehovah, Allah, Adonai, like that. Krishna is also a name of God. There's only one God, the Supreme Person, and the purpose of life is to develop your love for him. But really, who are the Hare Krishnas?

We know they dress in strange clothes and paint their faces. They also developed a somewhat notorious reputation for demanding donations on the streets, although that, they say, has changed. They now finance their activities through business enterprise, selling soaps and incense, but still offer no apology for their past actions. Collecting on the streets, which was necessary in the beginning, but it had some bad reactions, so we've changed that tactic.

When you say bad reaction, what exactly do you mean? Well, people, of course, they were becoming a little aggravated because some of our devotees, due to their enthusiasm, most of them are young and very enthusiastic, so they would become very aggressive in persisting to engage someone in service to God. So that people were reacting a little badly to that. So we've changed our tactics, as you've said, that you don't see that on the streets anymore that we're collecting like that we are now rather than try to take we're giving you think we're giving this book science of self-realization and this is all financed now through business enterprise yes business enterprise and donations change their tactics it seems they have the hari krishnas now run vegetarian restaurants and hand out free meals the hari krishna school at mwilomba has been rated one of the best in new south wales It also qualifies for state aid like any other school run by a religious organization.

And that's just what they say they want, to be considered apart from religious sects such as the Munis and to be accepted. Now, is there a chance perhaps that in the fundraising method you could actually become part of the materialistic world that you've thrown off? No, because everything is used in the service of Krishna. We don't say that the material world is bad.

But when you utilize the material energy for your own sense gratification, then it's bad. But when you utilize it in service to Krishna, then it resumes its spiritual nature. Last Wednesday, seven Hare Krishna members were arrested in Rundle Mall after their permit to sing and dance in public was revoked by the city council. On January the 20th, they will appear in court charged with failing to stop loitering.

Since then, no other arrests have been made, despite the sect's continued public appearances. But police have taken names and summons will eventually be issued. Prabhubada Kripa Goswami, or Maharaj as his position at the head of the movement demands, hopes to discuss the matter with local government minister Murray Hill. If this fails, he will approach Premier David Tonkin.

He's aiming for a new permit and freedom to practice the religion as they do around the world without harassment. We're definitely prepared to negotiate with the council and make some concession if it's necessary. The main point is that we should be allowed to go into the mall, chant the Hare Krishna mantra and distribute our literature, which we do for free, and if we have to remain in one place, we don't mind. We're quite willing to do that.

But we're not going to stop going into the mall. What happens if they completely ban you from city streets? Then we'll continue to go out as we have been the last few days, we'll chant, we'll get put in jail if necessary and if we go to jail we'll fast, we don't mind that. Rundle Mall manager Trevor Wing stresses that the council is not hitting at the Krishna religion.

He says action was taken after the council received hundreds of complaints about noise and obstruction caused by the sex activities in the mall. According to Mr Wing, anyone causing a similar public nuisance would be treated in the same way. But, as the Adelaide City Council's quickly finding out, whatever the motives may be, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness is here to stay. It has a congregation in Australia numbering into the thousands, and as Russ Diggins found out, Krishna devotees take their religion very seriously.

Ten Krishna temples around Australia go through this ceremony every morning. It isn't a prelude to a sex or drug orgy as many Australians think, nor is this some weird Jonestown cult. This noisy call to God is as strict in its observance as a Catholic church high mass. The Krishnas praise God with a fervour that would make some traditional churchgoers wince.

The blessed Lord said, yes, I will tell you of my splendorous manifestations. I will tell you of my splendorous manifestations. I wouldn't like to put our religion above any other religion, but we're personally finding on an individual basis, and I think I speak for everyone, that it does give us all individual satisfaction and happiness and helps us appreciate our relationship with God. Krishna is a God.

He is the embodiment of the love of God. And the devotee of Krishna endeavours to bring about a personal relationship between him or herself and God. Krishna devotees treat the body and nature as temples to God. That means sex only for procreation, no alcohol, tea, coffee or drugs, no gambling and no meat.

They're hardworking and industrious. Near Wentworth in New South Wales, they've taken over the 26,000-acre farm Old Warrakooh. It's new name, New Gorda Desh. First of all, I'm going to do 750 acres first class.

And then if I've got more time between then and seeding, then I'm going to work up more land. But if I try, like, because it has to be some of the ground more than it has to be ploughed three times because it's so rough. Six years ago, William Horsfall was a New Zealand farmer. Now known as Krodishvara Das, he calls Krishna's name 16,000 times a day.

He and other devotees do it as a mark of humility. So too is the bald head and the dress. And that tuft of hair is a badge of office. Krodishvara's experience with traditional religion is typical of devotees.

Traditional religion isn't satisfying. There's many, many people going to church every Sunday and confession on Wednesdays, but still they're not satisfied with their lives. I mean, I know from my own experience, working as a farmer beforehand, you may work very, very hard, but to find that actual real satisfaction that you're looking for is practically, it's like a donkey with a carrot out in the pond, but you never actually quite get there. But in Krishna consciousness, actually you find that satisfaction that you're looking for.

25 devotees also live on the farm. Apart from growing wheat, they grow vegetables, experimenting with everything from bananas to avocado. They keep horses, and soon they'll be keeping oxen too, teaming them with ploughs to return to their ancient agricultural methods so common to their eastern culture. They're renovating the old Warakoo homestead.

Like that given their temple in Melbourne, they hope for a National Trust classification. With that sort of quiet persistence, it's easy to understand their determination to preach their alternative to our western lifestyle. They say the Christians have preached in India for centuries. Now it's the Hindus' turn to preach here.

And in Adelaide, that means singing in the mall. We're going to take this issue to its limits because we feel very strongly about our right for freedom. And I think a lot of Australians do. We cherish our freedom, our democracy.

And why can't the Hare Krishnas have that same freedom and democracy? so what finally happened well you'll be happy to know Sid that we eventually did win the right to preach in that mall that's great is that the only trouble that you've had with the authorities recently actually no it's not Sid in northern New South Wales in a town called Moolambar we've had an ongoing battle with the city council there over plans we have to develop a model Vedic farming community and that's received a tremendous amount of television coverage over Australia as well in fact I think right now we're going to be looking at one of the many pieces that were done on that situation let's look at that now you see plans by one of Australia's largest Hare Krishna communities to build a village in a tourist complex near Mawillumbah have gone haywire. The local council has refused permission to build proper housing and even says they can't build a school which already has state government approval.

Brian Anderson has the story. This is New Govardhan, a little piece of India transplanted in the fertile farming country of far northern New South Wales. Home to a people who follow a religion and have adopted a culture which is more than 5,000 years old, the Hare Krishnas. This is their ashram or spiritual refuge but it's destined to become much more than that.

Actually the Hare Krishna movement has big plans for this place, a development costing more than five million dollars. In fact they've spent more than a million dollars here already. You could say they're planning to build a type of devotional Disneyland, something that will attract the tourists, not only the temple here but the museum. Far from being secretive they want to go public and preach the word, their lifestyle to Australians.

They believe in the simple life down on the farm, work to produce enough food to be self-sufficient and spend the rest of the time in prayer and meditation. It's a way of life that's not at all unusual in this district, known for its communes and followers of the alternate lifestyle. But life down here on the Hare Krishna farm is not all that it should be. The grand vision is yet to materialise.

There is no proper housing here, just 19 caravans to house a community which includes 65 children. Single men sleep on the temple floor. It's been raining and there's plenty of mud underfoot. Do you want to live this way?

No, we're establishing a model Vedic community, showing people how to live properly, not to live in situations like this. Our philosophy is simple living and high thinking, but it doesn't mean to live in abominable conditions like this. We have a master plan of development of the property and it includes building nice strata type houses. They don't want to live this way and they do have the money to build.

Trouble is, Tweedshire Council says they can't build because they have no proper permanent access to their land, and that is true. The original access road was surveyed in 1860. A change in the course of the river that skirts the farm cut that, and negotiations to buy other access land has failed. Well, perhaps I can give you an idea of just what is involved in the road access problem.

It was proposed to build a bridge across the river here, A properly constructed bridge, something big enough to take tourist coaches. Trouble is the land is owned by somebody else. This little pocket of land that runs from the river just up to that gate, that's the borderline of the Hare Krishna property. A tiny piece of land that they offered to pay $1,000 for.

The owner won't sell. He says he wants $10,000 now. The result? No access to the farm, no building permits and a whole heap of very angry Hare Krishnas digging in for a fight with Tweed Shire Council.

They've given access to the new Tweed Mall that they've built on the most congested highway in Australia, which has caused incredible traffic jams and confusion. But they won't give us some compensation for our small access problem that we have. So this shows that actually it's a case of discrimination in our case. How certain are you of that discrimination?

In an article in the paper some eight weeks ago, The council, they unanimously voted against trying to assist us in this access problem. As a result, the Hare Krishnas have gone it alone, defied the council refusal to issue building permits and begun construction of their community complex. First were basic health facilities such as toilet and shower blocks, and now a school. What you're looking at is a government standard school block that shouldn't be here.

Ironically, the Hare Krishna school is registered, attracts a government grant from New South Wales Government and was highly commended by an inspector from the Education Department. But no building permit was issued for its construction. So we have had no course but to go ahead and to build. What do you want us to do?

To educate our children under the trees, in the rain? They give the local churches the right to build their own schools and state schools but they won't allow the Hare Krishnas to build one simple building to educate their own children. The council obviously would have the right under law to come down and bulldoze every building you've put up without a permit. What would happen if they took that action?

I myself would stand in front of the bulldozers. Let them bulldoze me down first. We're forced to live like dogs. We're forced to live like the pig.

We're forced to live in mud and slush. This is all because of the unreasonable nature of the Tweedshire Council. So how did that one turn out? Well, the city council finally ruled in our favour and forced our neighbour to sell us the land at a reasonable price, and now we have access to our farm.

Amazing. Now, what about New Zealand? Is it any different than Australia? Actually, the cultures of New Zealand and Australia are very similar, but from one point of view, you wouldn't expect that either of them would be good for spiritual life.

Both the countries have a high consumption of beer and liquor, and also New Zealand and Australia are one of the leaders in animal slaughter around the world. They have the highest per capita consumption of meat-eating in the world. But I think that this contributes somewhat to their frustration with material life and so we experience equal reception to our philosophy from both countries. They must have had a hard time accepting your austere lifestyle though.

Not really. Once people understand the reasons and the philosophy behind it, they don't really mind at all in fact that because they come to realize that real happiness can't come from just trying to satisfy this body that's why we don't mind preaching even in situations where people are just intent on getting drunk or you know having a good time the scenes we're going to be seeing are from the Sweetwater's Rock Festival in New Zealand and it was a festival held It's a festival which is held every year. About something like 60,000 or 70,000 people from all over the country attend. It's like New Zealand's Woodstock Festival.

And every year the devotees go there and we have tents, 24-hour Krishna conscious video shows, tents serving vegetarian food, our prasadam. We have tents giving out books. And the people join in all our activities very enthusiastically, even the chanting we have. We have a rock band also which goes to the festival. and the people are very eager to join and chant with us and find out about Krishna consciousness.

It sounds like you went to a lot of trouble, but under the circumstances, was it really worth it? I mean, after all, the kids just go there to get high and listen to rock music and have fun, not to be preached to. Well, that's true, as you'll see from the news report. But even though their activities were obviously different from ours, we noticed that most of the people, even despite the heavy sense stimulation they were getting just weren't satisfied and i think the people were really impressed to see how happy and peaceful and contented the devotees were you know they were really attracted by that and many of them stayed on and came back to our farm to find out more about us so as to uh whether it was worth it or not i think you'll you could judge that for yourself by the by the piece we're about to see all right let's take a look at it now For those of you who would never dream of going to Sweetwaters, we have a look at what it is that takes people there.

Philip Alpers gives his view of what happens when 50,000 people join to create a quite extraordinary event. In the early open, 10,000 people are already ensconced on the banks of the Waikato at Sweetwaters. Sweetwaters Main Street, Friday, high noon. The firm favourite chilled liquid is not sold at the soya milk stall. hundreds of thousands of cans of beer are guzzled by underage drinkers the police turn a benevolent blind eye not only to the booze but to other drugs on top of the hill chaos in the admin nerve center down at main stage sweating roadies rush to complete the million-dollar platform which later in the evening will push out a boggling wattage of light and noise well it certainly is hot here on Sweetwater's Main Street 25 maybe 27 degrees dust boredom drunkenness lots of sunburn and something very different for Hare Krishna He is actually giving us a mantra, Hare Krishna, Hare Bhits, every day.

Hare Krishna named George Harrison called, The Lord loves the one that loves the Lord. And it describes how the law of karma works, that for every action you get a reaction. The thing that made me think about coming back with Hare Krishna is that I saw that when I was with Hare Krishna, they seemed a lot more happy than all the other people around the festival that were either intoxicated or on drugs or something like that. but these people were naturally high on something, you know, they believe in. I guess I've been searching for a long time for something and never been satisfied, but now I think the search has ended.

It got to a point where I couldn't really ignore it. I was sort of thinking quite deeply about what was going on, and I thought that I'd have to come back and give it a try. Basically what attracts me to Krishna consciousness is just, apart from the fact that there's so much philosophy to it that it's completely satisfying philosophy, but just the feeling of peace. Well, I see what you mean about whether it was worth it or not.

I'm really impressed with the effectiveness of your preaching there. I want to thank you for joining us and for inspiring us with your work in spreading Krishna consciousness to every town and village. Hare Krishna. Thank you for having me.