The cover alone would have been enough to repel me had I seen this book back in college. It depicts Krishna with glowing blue skin and with a black background as if floating in space.
This book, one of many written by Swami Prabhupada, founder of the Hare Krishna movement made especially famous by the Beatles, explains through a collection of lectures, essays, and interviews some of the key tenets of the movement, and of Hinduism in general.
I find some sections simplistic, and circular in reasoning. Swami Prabhupada sometimes sounds like a Christian fundamentalist when he insists that the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures, contains the incontrovertible truth. This should not really be surprising since all religious writers claim to know the revealed truth, except that he also labels his work as scientific.
Evidently, I am not about to chant Hare Krishna, but the key messages of Swami Prabhupada do resonate with me. Chanting is really another way of meditating and clearing the mind. Going back to Krishna, the supreme personality of the godhead, is a reminder of the interconnectedness of everyone, and everything. There is nothing permanent in this world for we live in a world of illusion, of maya, and we can only be truly happy once we are back with Krishna.
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