Back from the Rainbow
Diary
of a spiritual journey 11
August 8, 2005
We just returned from the European Rainbow gathering. It was a nice experience. The Rainbow people started in 1972 in America in the spirit of going back to nature. There was influence from hippies and from sadhus in India and also from the Hopi Indians from North America. The Hopi Indians have a prediction that first a materialistic society would control and destroy the earth, then a new class of men would emerge and go back to nature and make the earth green again. I have even heard that amongst the six people who initially came up with the Rainbow concept, one was a former Hare Krishna, named Carana dasa. By now the rainbow people have developed their own sub-culture, there are many Tipis, they are vegetarian, they don't drink, they have their songs with the rainbow message and many nice musicians, there are jugglers with balls and girls expert at fire dancing swinging pots of fire held on chains in circles in the darkness of night, it is not uncommon for the rainbows to walk around naked in nature when the weather allows. they patiently and enthusiastically cut their firewood by hand. They have a forest kitchen and twice a day they call out "Food Circle" and 2000 people gather in an open field, all holding hands and then take meals together, later there is a magic hat for donations.
The
2005 European Rainbow gathering was in the 700 mtr. high hills of East Germany
and the week that I was there it was pretty cold and plenty of rain, at least
people mostly kept their clothes on which is better for a sannyasi dedicated
to celibacy. The devotees from Leipzig, Germany, have a nice round tent, a yurt
with a fireplace in the middle and carpets on the ground, which can accomodate
maybe 50 people sitting on the floor. There we would have bhajans, kirtanas
and prasadam and the people were really in to it. Sometimes the devotees took
over he main rainbow kitchen and cooked for all the people there, who all appreciate
Krsna prasadam. One day before I came they had a big kirtana in the food circle
and a thousand people were enthusiastically chanting and dancing. In my presence
we didn't have such large numbers, but throughout the day people would come
to the tent and chant with us. This would go on until deep in the night.
One day someone asked what the Hare Krishna's had to do with the Rainbow gathering. I explained to him that actually we are also in favor of returning to a natural way of life, a life based on agriculture and on the protection of the cow and bull in a world free from factories and technology along with high spiritual values recognizing that Krishna is behind nature.
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have a look at www.welcomehome.org
So we are actually part of the scene. The rainbow crowd is anyway full of variety, there were plenty of Siva Babas, and even a Cay Baba with matted locks tied in a bundle upon his head as the sadhus in India do. He was very nice and had a very nice service attitude,he was giving us milk and herbal tea. In the general the rainbow people displayed a very good service attitude, they were all very helpful and positive towards each other, it was noteworthy. One of the songs that rainbow people sing every once in a while is "Hare Govinda Gopal Narayana", so there is no doubt that there is some special mercy with these people and it is not surprising that from rainbow gatherings in America and Europe some have become devotees. I think that in ISKCON we have some wonderful properties and that we need some people with an heroic spirit to go back to living a simple life on the land and chant Hare Krishna.