I was mentioning Krishna as "a historical personality" refering to him as being described in books which tell the complete history of the vedic culture of the past like the
Mahabharata or the Srimad Bhagavatam. That does not mean in any way that he could not be considered as some people do, I personally also, to be "the Supreme Personality of Godhead". I only wanted to mention that that is a personal faith, which belongs in the realm of religion. Again I dont want to say anything against religion, I am personally a religious person, at least I consider myself as such. But than again I must admit that there are many religious beliefs in this world. I cannot and should not say that one religious faith is in any way better than my religious faith. Why should it be in this way? There is no reason whatsoever that God or the Divine cannot or has not revealed himself or itself in the past or now in some other way known or not known to me or us.
I can well understand what you are mentioning with feeling happy while on "Sankirtan" alhough this term is again a typically wrong used term from our ISKCON days. Sankirtan or Samkirtan actuallly means only to chant or sing the names of the Lord in the congregation of those favorable or who are devoted to Him. Community singing or congregational chanting of the holy names of the Lord. When I think back many things which we were following or considering as valuable in our ISKCON days are concepts used or considered in a somehow wrong way, or typically ISKCON-style way.
The most personal experiences I made with feeling the Divinity or Krishna to be on my side or me as feeling "aligned" to the Divine, was when I decidet back in the beginning of the year 1990 to spread the knowledge about him to the people of my homeland Romania. In December of 1989 I was listening on my radio the news from
Radio Free Europe about the revolution against the Communist dictatorship in Romania and how all ended. That was a great inspiration for me which inspired me to travel to Romania to see the posibilities of "spreading the Krishna Consciousness Movement" as I considered it than, to the people of my homeland. I emigrated in 1975 with my parents and my other brother and sisters from Romania to Germany.
So I put my harmonium in my car, took a few books I had collected over the years in English and French to be given to interested people I may meet in that country. Filled my siutcase, took my sleeping bag and a few other things and told my temple president from the
Nrsimhadeva temple I was living at that time that I travel for a few days to Romania. Interestingly the first person I met in Bukarest on the street, at the
place in the center of the town were many people got shot during the revolution there, was someone who invited me to stay in his apartment that night. I accepted and we were traveling with my car together to were he was living. It was a young man like me who told me how he also participated in street demonstrations against the Communist regime and that he was a eyewitness of how someone near him got shot by the security police at that night. Interestingly in his home while looking through his bookshelf in his room I found a Russian translation of Sri Ishopanishad. He told me that he was buying it on one of his visits to Kishinew, now Moldova Republic.
We were discussing a lot that night until we went to sleep, he also told me about one of his friend who is practicing yoga. The next day he called his friend and arranged a meeting with him. His friend was a member of a secret comunity of people who were practicing hatha yoga and were interested in Indian philosophy in Bukarest and in many other locations of Romania. It was a society and a spiritual practice forbidden during the Communist time. This man considered it to be a message or arrangement of the Divine that we met a few days after the fall of the Communist regime, it was the beginning of January 1990 I was there, two weeks after the Romanian revolution, and at that day he was calling some of his closer friends of his society and organized a meeting in one of their home.
We became close friends during the few days I was staying there and we organized a few month later in 12 town halls all over Romania a concert where many devotees from Germany came to participate in, the way it was also in Russia. There was also a multivision show involved with slides about India which Krishna Prema's wife was showing. Krishna Prema (Paulo Tofani) from Italy was astonishing everyone with his great expertise in playing his electric guitar at our shows on stage. I was involved in speaking to the audiance in the Romanian language and was translating Suhotra Swami's speech. The music concerts were a great succes attendet by many thousands of people where I made many more contacts with people all over the country which helped me later to start and found the
Romanian ISKCON branch in a big house and property I was buying for that purpose in the town of
Timisoara, where the Romanian Revolution began in December 1989. But that is another interesting or how we used to say before "transcendental story".
What I want to say by this is that indeed it is so that if you "align" your desires also in some way with the desires of the Divine, the Supreme, there is a great chance that your dreams become also fulfilled. Of course if one is identifying oneself only with a certain society of people and forgets about ones own independent needs and the needs of ones own family thats also not the way it should be in my opinion. So the best is I would say to find a way of ones own whereby one can fullfill as well the needs of oneself and those of the community of people one is in connection with.
