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Show Hare Krishnas: on a quest into themselves desired overtones or associations that may distort a seekers idea of the state so labelled. Back to the Krishna Corps. By chantmg a certain mantra, one Krkh'nVOlVeS the presen of Krishna, a member of the Hindu Pantheon, the individual seeker gets zonked into the ideasecstasy ideasec-stasy of that god. Krishna is, like all gods, an embodiment of principles as well as a supposed living being, so that the invocation in-vocation mantra evokes a system of thought in the mind of the worshipper, concentrates his thoughts like a sort of semantic lens and helps him merge his being with that of Krishna and the whole cosmos (or, at least, hisKrishna's idea of it). The chanting releases .one from the puny bonds of his own ego, lets him merge with the essential being, the world-soul, It, The Answer, etc. J By H.D- ROBERSON Chronicle Staff .ws note: This is the first of a on the Hare Krishna n-ement) ,nt hang me up, don't bring down, Harvey Krishna s back town!" (arts with a sonorous droning, solves into gentle person per-son counterpointed by a ;i,ng chant. Then you see the 1 the saffron robe, the wed 'heads; and you realize u've stumbled onto them 3inthe Krishna Con-ousness Con-ousness boys. a sense, they represent a tillation of the human spirit, a )Upof men depersonalized to mogeneous regularity by a est into themselves, exactly what is this quest? In ying on a chanted phrase or ,ntra, music and dancing for ening the door to spiritual iightenment, the Krishna .msciousness movement is arcely alone. Not only are there terencesto "joyful noise" in the .cripturesof most major religions, here are also countless examples of the use of chanting and dancing as a method of getti ng on high. "' For instances, the "Ave Maria" intoned by many Christian mystics, the recitation of ' Bodhisatva names by certain sects of Buddhism, the shouted choruses of "Amen" and "Hallelujah" common to fundamentalist fun-damentalist evangelical services, the songs of Sephardic Judaism, the drums and incantations of "primitive" animistic rites. Of course, the best known of these examples is the tradition from which Krishna Consciousness Con-sciousness as a religious movement grows, the Hindu mystic tradition. The principle Upanisads are full of mantrum and chant, not to mention the sacred syllable known in the West as OM. What do all these have in common? Did you ever sit in the library before they repaired the buzzing ballasts in the fluorescent light fixtures? Did you have a tendency to lapse into reverie, perhaps to sleep? Many people did. The reason for this is simple, sonorous noise or, if you prefer, music. It has a hypnotic effect, that is, it lets one focus his attention and throughts on a single idea or object; it helps one eliminate distracting phenomena from his thinking; it aids in concentration. con-centration. It also tends to zonk one right out of the real world into dreamland. So okay, you take the old hypno-hum, hypno-hum, mix a few loaded religious words into it, and chant it so that you are taking an active part in forming the hymn. You get a nice autohypnotic trance wrapped around a (hopefully) sound religious thought. Instant happy! The Eastern Mystic tradition has a whole (and much better) set of jargon for describing the why and wherefore of the autohypnotic state. Incidentally, labelling something, as "autohypnosis" is used as a label here, does not invalidate it as a genuine feeling the difficulty with labelling a religious or psychological state lies in un- |