In this issue we look at how one of India's greatest festivals Rathayatra, the chariot festival of Puri spread to cities all over the world. Srila Prabhupada, the founder/acarya of the Hare Krsna movement, introduced Rathayatra to the West in San Francisco during the height of the '60s counterculture. The hippies loved it, of course, but Prabhupada knew they wouldn't be the only ones a fact proven by the smiles on the faces of millions of people from all races and walks of life who have witnessed the festival over the last thirty-six years.
Because Rathayatra honors Lord Krsna (as Jagannatha, "the Lord of the universe"), Prabhupada saw it as an excellent way to demonstrate an essential point of the philosophy of Krsna conscious: God is a real person. In "God Beyond the Void," Prabhupada's lecture in this issue, we hear the urgency with which Prabhupada wanted to convey that message.
In "What Is Love?" Arcana-siddhi Devi Dasi shows what the personhood of God is all about: the exchange of love between God and His devotees. And in "Full Surrender to the Lord," the last in our series on the nine processes of devotional service, Dvarakadhisa Devi Dasi explains what we need to do to taste the fulfillment of loving the Supreme Person.
Hare Krsna.
(Nagaraja Dasa, Editor)
Our Purposes
• To help all people discern reality from illusion, spirit from matter, the eternal from the temporary.
• To expose the faults of materialism.
• To offer guidance in the Vedic techniques of spiritual life.
• To preserve and spread the Vedic culture.
• To celebrate the chanting of the holy names of God as taught by Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.
• To help every living being remember and serve Sri Krsna, the Personality of Godhead.