An interesting pastime I heard recently in Vrndavana was about a hippie in 1966 who used to travel around with Ken Kesey’s psychedelic bus dance group, travelling around America handing out Kool-Aid drinks laced with LSD and performing plays in colourful hippie gear that set a trend among the 60’s youth.

Somehow one of Srila Prabhupada’s original Srimad Bhagavatams was in a small library section on the Kesey bus in 1965 and was read by such future devotees as Mohanananda dasa, who travelled on that bus as a young boy.

Another young hippie on that bus was not satisfied in just reading the amazing book Srimad Bhagavatam; he was determined to find the author of this wonderful Vedic text and was prepared to travel all around India if he had too, until he found the amazing Sadhu who wrote it.

When the Bus reached New York, Kesey and the Pranksters visited Leary in Millbrook, NY, at his psychedelic retreat called “The International Federation for Internal Freedom.” It was founded when Leary was fired from Harvard University for doing research with his students on the hallucinogenic drugs, LSD-25 and Psilocybin.

This young hippie however, stayed on the bus and kept reading the Srimad Bhagavatam, and never did met Leary at that time. Actually, Leary stayed in his room anyway and Kesey never did meet him.

Frankly, the young hippie did not really care anymore about LSD. He had had enough of LSD and realized that God can NEVER be found in a pill. He decided to go on a spiritual quest to India in search of the ’swami’ who wrote the Srimad Bhagavatam.

He then decided to leave the Merry Pranksters and begin his journey to India; he bought a ticket and was on his way to the Kennedy Airport. On the way, however, he had some time to spare and went by Tompkins Square Park to see what the ‘acid head hippies’ were up to.

As he went by in the taxi he saw this big crowd of hippies dancing. He was curious and told the taxi driver to stop, then went over, investigated, and found an elderly sadhu leading the chanting of Hare Krishna. He watched with some curiosity as he danced with the other hippies and wondered if the Sadhu he would eventually find in India, who wrote the Srimad Bhagavatam, would be like this Sadhu.

Anyway the kirtan stopped and this Sadhu began reading from the same book he was reading on Ken Kesey’s bus.

Now this young hippie was even more determined to seek out the writer of the Srimad Bhagavatam, seeing this Sadhu also reading it. Eventually the reading stopped and the young hippie went over to the Sadhu and said:

‘Sir, I am also reading this book and I am now just on my way to the airport to fly out to India, I am determined to search all over India for this Sadhu’.

The elderly gentlemen Sadhu chuckled to himself and said to the young hippie:

‘You do not have to go to India, I am here in New York, I am the translator of this book the beautiful Srimad Bhagavatam.”

The young hippie was without words, he was ecstatic and had tears in his eyes and fell at his feet. Then Srila Prabhupada, the elderly Sadhu said to the young hippie:

“Just see, if you are completely sincere and genuine then you do not have to find Guru, he will find you.”

Hare Krishna All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

Srila Prabhupada explains that all of us are all looking for a way to establish our original eternal relationship with Krishna as follows:

“Established means re-establish. It (our perpetual 'Svarupa') is already established. We have got different types of relationship. That is called svarupa-siddhi. When you are perfect in spiritual life, you will understand automatically. Nitya-siddha krishna-bhakti. When one becomes perfectly spiritually realised, then he understands what is his relationship is. This relationship is eternal” .
(December 7, 1974, Bombay)