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My Journey to "Another World"
Meeting and discussion with Hari
I have to admit, I am a little bid surprised about the great interest of you to read my travel journal but at the same time also somehow very pleased . There must be something to it that Hari called me “a professor” last week during our conversation of almost two hours in his apartment there in the spiritual community center in St. Petersburg. „You are a professor Harsi“ did he said to me, making me at the same time feel also very humble and somehow uncomfortable in his presence, by hearing him characterize me in this way. Knowing me well that I have neither a university degree in this regard nor do I have any great intellectual ability of memorizing and teaching any kind of knowledge to others. But Hari encouraged me, telling me that my approach and the distribution of knowledge and information I prefer is very similar to the way the professors are doing as well.
We came to talk about this issue because I told him about my experiences with a friend of mine from the temple community in Timisoara, Romania. There Murari Krishna whom I facilitated and encouraged since the time I met him in this town, he is by the way a real professor in computer science at the local university there, and leading now the devotee community in Romania. And I told Hari that every now and than when I happen to stop there on my way to my apartment in Iasi (some 750 km away from there) and am listening to the lectures he gives as a very intellectual person I am still always able to find some faults or inconsistencies in his presentation of spiritual knowledge, the way it is done in Iskcon and other similar groups. And that although I myself have always had great difficulties to give some lectures like that, being often unable to memorize and again recall and quote all those slokas or verses from scriptures or other spiritual minded persons. Hari said that ones intellectual ability to memorize is not everything in spiritual life ones experience in this regard is of much higher value. Thus Hari called me „professor“ more because of having acquired also some useful experiences I may use also for the spiritual advantage and advancement of other people. At least that’s how I understood it.
It was interesting, I arrived exactly on the day of Krishna Janmashtami in the spiritual community center in Saint Petersburg and after I had a small conversation with Kamalamala in front of the deities inside the temple room I went upstairs to my room on the fifth floor and relaxed a little bid from my long journey there with the airplane. It was around 8 o‘clock in the evening when Yamaraja came into my room and invited me to come downstairs in the temple room were the Janmashtami celebration had just began. Hari just started to give an introduction conveying the meaning of Janmashtami celebration to the more than 40 guests which attended at this event there in front of the deities of Radha Krishna and Sri Sri Gaura Nitai and all the other divine beings present there in their deity form.
It took me a while to make me ready to go down, also because I wanted to give Hari some presents I prepared for him in Nuremberg and it took me some time to take them out from my suitcase and put them into the gift bag I took with me for this occasion. It was a picture of Prahlad Nrsimhadeva from Germany imprinted on a aluminum build plate fixed at a resplendent brown wooden plate as a frame which one could stick on the wall. A very beautiful, mystical and almost three dimensional looking image of Prahlad Nrsimhadeva. And I gave him a porcelain cup with a beautiful photo of Radha Madhan Mohan from Germany imprinted on the side of it. Everything was done professionally by a specialized photo shop I know here in Nuremberg. The photos were done and given to me ones by my good friend Haravapu, a professional photographer who died on the Bahamas in a car accident. He was also initiated at the same day as me in 1987 in Almviks-gàrd in Sweden.
When I entered the door to the temple room and went inside I was agreeably surprised to see Hari again after almost 14 years have past since our last meeting, speaking there in front of the great audience gathered inside the temple room. And how well he was looking! It was simply amazing to see him smile at me and wave with his right hand in my direction in a sign of welcome. I set down on the side on a chair and followed attentively to his lecture and the meditation conducted by him which followed afterwards as well as his music performance on the keyboard for the pleasure of Krishna and the gathered audience participating to his birthday celebration in this spiritual community center and temple in St. Petersburg.
After the Janmashtami celebrations in the temple room were over shortly before midnight, Hari left and went to his apartment situated one floor higher directly vis-à-vis the entrance from the top to the temple room. Here you can find also a few beautiful paintings with Krishna and Radharani and Sri Chaitanya hanging on the wall on the left side of the entrance, where you can look from the hand made white wooden balustrade into the temple room. Kamalamala told me when we met ones up there that the big wooden ceiling was hand made and cut in handcraft by a skillful man of their community which took him one full year to finish. He said there was before a theater located inside.
.Temple room (2006)
After Hari left the temple room I recognized his wife Kamala I had in memory from some photos published on the internet. We were speaking ones on the phone together a few years ago when she was calling me and my wife from Gainesville. I was interested at that time on some astrological advice she gave to us very expertly on the phone after reading our astrological charts she put together from some information‘s I supplied to her before in an e-mail. I approached her in front of the deities of Radha Krishna were she was staying and told her "Hello, I'm Harsi from Nuremberg in Germany, we were speaking ones together on the phone a few years ago. Would you please be so kind to give this present to Hari." She smiled and said yes of course. We exchanged some words and I gave her my present bag for Hari. She took it and after looking for a short while at the beautiful deities of Radha Krishna and Sri Sri Gaura Nitai left the temple room. She told me a few days later when we met again when I attended the lecture she gave there on
Evolutionary Astrology that four years have past since she came together again with Hari in this town and that he liked my present very much. Than after midnight we were all eating in the temple room a very tasty and sumptuous meal on this very eventful day of Sri Krishna Janmasthami I experienced there in Russia, after which I went in a happy mood upstairs to my room to take rest.
The next morning I woke up at around 6.30 and felt the need to go on a morning walk and explore a little bid the neighborhood of the spiritual community building I was in. Through the big window of the room I was in on the fifth floor I could first have directly in front of me a stunning look at the sun rise through the drifting clouds of Saint Petersburg. It was a fantastic sight for the eyes indeed. During the night it was raining but in the morning most clouds were already gone.
When I went downstairs and unto the street, outside it was wet from the rain during the night. I followed the street which went around the building and which was already full of people which went to work. After a while also a big street dog was following me perhaps in the hope I would give him something to it or so. After some time I stopped and was looking around and that dog came to me seemingly without any fear and was snuffling on my shoes. There are many street dogs in that city as far as I could see there in the neighborhood. But they are harmless. They just hang around here and there where they could find something to it. After a while the dog gave up following me and I continued on my way. I saw a big cathedral which I passed and after an hour or so I came again from the other side into the street where I started my journey of exploring the surroundings of the community and temple building. After I passed that area I went straight across one street in the neighborhood and after some 300 meters or so I discovered a beautiful area where a small river or a kind of water canal was flowing.
My surprise was big when I saw there inside the water many water lilies or lotus flowers as this flowers are also commonly called. And there were hundreds of them inside. In between there were two ducks which were floating around those big green petals of those flowers there. It was a fantastic and beautiful place I discovered there on that morning directly in the neighborhood of the temple in Saint Petersburg. It seemed the season when this water lilies are blooming was already over since one could see there only all this big petals of those flowers floating on the water. I was so fascinated that I even got a little wet when I tried to take with me to my room one of those big petals. Later that morning I even took it with me when I went to meet Hari and was telling him about my small discovery tour of the surroundings of the temple.
..Inside Sankt Petersburg's former Radha Krishna temple
.» A conversation we had in that location in 2010
Shiva Parvati deities of Sankt Petersburg
