January 1978: On or around this date in history, the author meets a Hare Krishna devotee for the first time. Henry remembers:

My first time meeting with a Hare Krishna devotee was at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, January 1978. I was 21 years of age, and had just flew in from Rochester New York, where I had auditioned for a spot as a piano performance graduate studies major at Eastman School of Music. I was returning to my college, Park College in Parkville, Missouri, near Kansas City.

In Chicago I was supposed to transfer to another plane to Kansas City, but there was a huge snowstorm in Missouri and our flight was delayed until the next day. The airline clerk told me they’d give me a hotel room for the night and I should come back in a few hours.

I went back into the terminal, and suddenly a fairly attractive young woman in a long skirt pinned a carnation on my lapel and asked for a donation. I declined. She pressed on, “Oh, why not give a small donation?” I was wearing a business suit. She thought I had lots of money. I said, “I’m a poor college student.” She flattered me, saying, “You must be a musician,” as I had very long hair. Although I was flattered, I continued to decline. Finally, she entreated, “It is good to give to God.”

“Okay,” I thought. I gave her a dollar, and she gave me a Back To Godhead magazine, the official publication for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Then she disappeared.

I briefly glanced at the magazine. It seemed to be a type of yoga. Bhakti Yoga. I was interested in yoga and meditation. I was a Transcendental Meditation initiate and practiced silent meditation for twenty minutes twice a day. I went to hear Baba Ram Dass present a lecture at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. I wondered what these Hare Krishna people were all about.

A little while later, while waiting to get my hotel confirmation, I was sitting on a bench, and a young man with a wig came up to me and started jabbering. It was obvious to me that he was wearing a wig. He recited a line to me. I knew it was a memorized line which he had been taught to say, because when I tried to ask him a question, he could not respond. He had to continue his memorized line. Interruption was not in his playbook.

He put a big book, maybe a Bhagavatam, on my lap, and requested some money. I tried to ask him some questions, as I was curious about his religion, but he could not answer. Within a minute or less, he took the book back, put it in his book bag, mumbled something about a quota, and disappeared.

As I still had an hour or two to kill, I walked back into the busy terminal to find the lady who gave me the carnation. I had read a few pages of the Back To Godhead magazine and wanted to ask her some questions about her religion. After several minutes, I spied her in the crowd, and tried to get her attention.“Hey, I want to talk to you!”

She disappeared, probably thinking that I wanted my dollar back. I continued to search and finally found her up on the second level. I caught her eye from down below, I waved, and she waved back. But when I got up the escalator to the second floor, she was gone.

It was time to get my hotel voucher and get on the hotel bus. While standing in line, I was reading a paperback book about yoga. A young lady approached me and started talking about yoga. She was also stranded, and she invited me to her hotel room to talk about yoga. I readily complied. In her room, she lit a joint and we smoked a bit, although I was not fond of inhaling smoke into my lungs, but I did it anyway. I had a mystical experience, feeling the oneness of myself with the universe and seeing it in my mind. I wanted to get in bed with her, but she declined, saying something like, “It’s better we don’t.” I accepted her explanation.

Later, I found my way to my own hotel room, got settled, and read a little more from the BTG. I discovered the men devotees shaved their heads and they didn’t have sex. I threw the magazine into the trash, and got back to my college the next day.

Who could imagine that seven months later, in August 1978, I would be a celibate brahmachari with shaved head at the New Vrindaban West Virginia Hare Krishna Commune, and stay on for 15 years? Perhaps truth is stranger than fiction.

For more about this topic, see Henry’s book Gold, Guns and God, Vol. 3.

Henry the Hare Krishna devotee, illustration from Brijabasi Spirit, Vol. 2, No. 2 (February 1982).

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