Question 4

QUESTIONER: TODAY A MOVEMENT BY THE NAME OF KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS IS GETTING POPULAR IN AMERICA, ENGLAND AND OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE WEST WHERE THINGS LIKE KIRTAN ARE BECOMING FASHIONABLE. IS IT A NEW VARIETY OF ENTERTAINMENT OR A FAD? OR DO YOU THINK THAT THE GROUND IS BEING PREPARED FOR KRISHNA'S BIRTH IN THE WEST?

This event has deeper implications.

The movement for Krishna Consciousness is growing fast in America and Europe. Like the villages of Bengal of Chaitanya's days, the streets of New York and London today are resounding with God's songs. And this is not accidental.

The whole of the West today has collectively reached a point where Chaitanya had once reached individually. It is the same last frontier of mind and intellect, where Chaitanya absolutely tired of thinking and realized that it leads nowhere. In the same way the West is now tired of thinking. From Socrates to Bertrand Russell, the West has long tried to find truth through thinking. It was a great and unique adventure to search for reality through reason and logic, and the West has consecrated all its energy to this quest. The West has always refused to accept that truth is beyond the boundary of intellect and reason, that reality is illogical and unthinkable. It has trusted only mind and intellect.

For twenty-five hundred years the West has traveled the path of intellect with dedication, and yet failed to have a glimpse of reality. Many times its great minds felt reality was within reach, but it continued to elude them. Each time they had only ideas and concepts in their hand, not truth. And now the whole of the West feels fed up with mentation.

Today the collective consciousness of the West is exactly where Chaitanya had found himself individually a few centuries ago. It is now on the brink of an explosion, a transformation which is every day coming closer. The first flowers of spring have already blossomed and new winds are blowing. Cracks have appeared in the old order and the young generation is rebelling against old ways and decaying values -- against tradition itself. And they are now turning their ears to the music and message of that which is unthinkable the mysterious.

And if the West has to go in the direction of the mysterious, Krishna is going to be its hero. He is the best representative of the truth that is beyond mind and its logic, that is mysterious. Mahavira and Buddha cannot serve that purpose. Mahavira is very logical; even when he speaks about the mysterious he uses the language of logic and reason; he sticks to the process of consistent and logical thinking. As far as Buddha is concerned, he persistently refuses to speak about the mysterious whenever he is asked about it. He just says it is inexplicable. He goes only as far as logic, not beyond.

The mental stress and tension the West is suffering from today is the direct result of too much thinking. The anxiety and anguish of the West comes from thinking stretched to its ultimate; it is suffering under the crushing weight of the mind. Consequently the younger generation is in revolt. And it is natural that when a whole generation rebels it does so in many different ways. On their journey to the unthinkable, some are singing "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama" and many others are taking drugs like LSD and mescaline. The same people are now traveling across India and wandering through the Himalayan mountains. In the search of the achintya, the unthinkable, they will go to Japan and squat in its Zen monasteries. The quest is the same all over.

In its search for the mysterious, it seems the western world will be coming increasingly close to Krishna. LSD cannot take them far; travels to India and Japan are not going to last long. Eventually they will have to discover their own consciousness, their own soul; they cannot live long on credit. That is why their boys and girls are restless chanting "Hare Krishna" in the streets of New York, London and Berlin.

It is remarkable that when young men and young women of the West dance and do kirtan, they do it with an abandon and joy that cannot be found anywhere in India today. Go round this country where kirtan has been in vogue for centuries and you will nowhere come across that enthusiasm and joy among people who do kirtan here. For us it is a well-traveled road, a routine. For us the kirtan is now a worn out coin; we know it is worthless. For the westerners it is a new coin which is valuable. When a group passes through the streets of London singing and dancing, even the traffic police watch them in amazement. They think their youth are going crazy. No one in India will think like that; here it is an accepted ritual.

But remember, real religion is run by mad people, it is not the job of the so-called wise. Whenever and wherever a breakthrough happens it always happens with the help of those who are called crazy by their contemporaries. Now singing and dancing is not thought to be strange in India. It was considered strange when Chaitanya danced through the towns and villages of Bengal; people thought he had gone out of his mind. But tradition sucks down everything that comes its way and puts it in its closet. Even madness is tamed by tradition.

The West is on the brink of an explosion, a breakthrough, a revolution. That is why when young people in the West move through the streets dancing and singing, there is a newness and simplicity, beauty and charm in their performance. Certainly it is a preparation, but not for Krishna's birth; it s a preparation for the birth of Krishna consciousness in the West.

Krishna consciousness has nothing to do with Krishna. It is a symbolic term which means that now a consciousness is dawning in the West which will make them give up work and embrace celebration as their way of life. It is just symbolic. Work has become meaningless. The West has done plenty of hard work and hard thinking; it has done everything that man is capable of doing, and now it is tired, utterly tired of all that. Either the West will have to die or it will enter into Krishna consciousness. These are the two choices before the West. And since death is not possible, because nothing really dies, Krishna consciousness is inescapable.

Christ has ceased to be relevant for the West, and the reason is again tradition. For the West, Christ symbolizes tradition and Krishna represents anti-tradition. Christ is an imposition on them and Krishna is their free choice. And then Christ is very serious, and the West is fed up with seriousness. Too much seriousness turns into a disease ultimately. So the West is trying hard to get rid of its seriousness; the cross has proved much too heavy on its soul. Jesus hanging on the cross seems dreadful, and the West in its heart feels disturbed, uneasy with it. So the cross is being taken down and the flute ushered in. And what can be a better substitute for the cross than the flute?

For these reasons Krishna's appeal to the West is growing, and it will continue to grow. Every day it is going to come nearer and nearer to Krishna.

There are some other reasons for Krishna's incursion into the West. Only an affluent society can gather around Krishna; a poor society cannot afford him. A society steeped in poverty and misery cannot have that leisure and ease so necessary to dance and play a flute. The society in which Krishna was born was highly prosperous in its own way. There was no lack of food, clothes and other necessities of life; milk and yogurt and butter were available in abundance -- so much that when Krishna wanted to play pranks with his numerous girlfriends, who were milkmaids, he went on breaking their containers full of milk and yogurt.

Judging by the standard of living of his time, Krishna's society was at the peak of affluence. People were happy, they had plenty of leisure; a whole family lived well on the earnings of one of its members. It is only in such a society that flute and raas and celebration take center stage. The West today is at that height of affluence which the world has never known before. It is not surprising that Krishna has such a great pull on the western mind.

Ironically, Krishna no longer has any appeal for the present day India, ravaged by poverty, squalor and disease. She will have to wait long to deserve him. At the moment Christ has more attraction for this country. It is natural that a country hanging on the cross should think of Christ as the right person to alleviate their pain and suffering. That is why a striking and unexpected event is taking place: Jesus' influence in India is growing every day, while it is declining in the West. And it is not enough just to say that Christian missionaries are proselytizing Indians through devious and questionable means. What is equally true is that the Christian symbol of the cross comes closest to the agonized mind of this country. It is because of this affinity between the two that the missionaries are succeeding here in their efforts.

On the other hand the golden statues of Rama and Krishna, symbolizing royalty and richness are becoming out of tune with the poverty stricken people of this country. The day is not far off when the poor of India will not only mount an assault on the rich but also on the statues of Krishna and Rama. It is just possible, because they can no longer put up with their glittering gold. And they are going to fall in love with Christ on the cross, symbolizing their pain and misery. The possibility of India turning to Christ and of the West turning to Krishna is growing every day.