Los Angeles Sastra Dana Newsletter Vol. 3, Issue 11
ON MY WAY TO JOIN THE TEMPLE
Narrated by Sarabha das, written by Mahat-tattva das
(Continued from the previous issue)
The remaining walls revealed that the houses had been new, and built in a modern style. A little further down the road a haystack was burning, giving off the only source of light in that part of the village. The unpleasant silence of the whole village was enough to make one’s hair stand on end. I was thinking: “I don’t know what hell looks like, but this would be suitable.” In the courtyard of one house, a cow and its calf were standing staring at the burning haystack. You wouldn’t believe it, but their eyes were filled with tears.
I decided to stop there to see if I could do something for them. I stood by the wall of a house that was illuminated by the burning haystack and loudly shouted: “Is anyone there?” The reply was “Click click” and then through the window of one house someone started shooting at me. Bullets were flying around my legs and head, bouncing off of the floor and walls. I quickly started running away while fiery bullets continued to fly around me. I kept running without stopping for about 15 minutes. “Oh my God,” I was thinking, “Tell me, am I alive?” I was in a state of shock, and I couldn’t tell whether I was alive or not. I clenched my hand and felt my japa beads. From my mouth nervously came the maha mantra. “I am alive, everything is OK, let’s continue,” I was thinking. Little by little I was realizing what had happened, and my faith in Krishna was increasing more and more while my old conception of God as some light, some impersonal force was vanishing.
Because I was chanting the maha mantra the whole time, my previous distress was diminishing and my desire to get to the temple was rapidly growing. During the next 20 minutes of walking, everything was peaceful and I was nearing the exit from Gornji Vakuf. Of course, the whole time I was chanting: Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare…
Then on my left side I heard someone shout: “Stop!” and the sound “click, click.” I stopped but I continued to chant. “Who are you?” the voice said.
“Spirit soul,” I was thinking. “Passenger, well-wisher,” I said after a short pause. The unknown person came out pointing his huge gun at me. He came very close to me, and stared at me, feeling a little bit confused by my previous answer. After finding no weapons on me, not even a pocketknife, the man was even more confused but he considered me to be harmless and therefore he relaxed. But then, from the dark another soldier appeared shouting and swearing. “On the floor!” he said. While I was lying on the floor he searched me. Not finding anything, he got mad. I was still chanting. Then they started talking about what to do with me. The first man wanted to take me to some commander, and the other man wanted to kill me on the spot. And when he heard me “mumbling” something he really became furious. He aimed his gun at me, preparing to shoot. For a moment I stopped chanting, but then I remembered having read that dying while chanting Hare Krishna is very auspicious, so I continued to chant. He started calling me ill names and shot at me. I felt something hit me in my back. Then I saw the bullet bounce off of a stone and fly by the head of the other soldier. “What are you doing? Are you trying to kill me?!” the other one yelled. And again I had to fortify whether I was alive or not. I was still chanting and I didn’t feel any pain. “Good sign,” I thought. The soldier who had shot was now scared and stressed. He was touching me. He could not believe that he had missed me from the distance of one foot.
Then the third soldier came. He was obviously older then the other two. He took my old identification card from my pocket and said: “Let’s take him to the commander.” In the commander’s office a long interrogation took place. Although they were planning to kill me by hanging me on a tree or by shooting me because the photo of myself in my identification card didn’t really resemble me, I was, for some reason, very calm. My calmness was very unusual to them. Then they asked me: “Do you have any money on you?” “Yes, 300.00 Swiss franks,” I said frankly. They were looking at each other. They were confused and it seemed strange to them that I was not attached to money. Of course at that time money didn’t mean anything to me. I just wanted to get to the temple. They said: “We can kill you, we can hang you, we can do whatever we want to do with you!” Again very calmly I replied: “There is nothing auspicious in that, neither for you nor for me, so it is better not to do that.” That completely shocked them, and at that point they threw away their “masks” of detectives and rough soldiers who never joke.
When they learned where I had passed through on my journey, they looked at each other in great amazement and one of them murmured: “He passed through Bistrica. But no one can get even close to that place, neither UNPROFOR (United Nations Peace Forces), nor Red Cross nor anyone, and he passed through it with his hand in this funny bag while murmuring some Hare Krishna Hare Hare!?” Then the whole situation changed. They became very friendly and wanted to help me. They gave me a place to stay overnight, and the following day they gave me a ride to the next town, Tomislav-grad. But that wasn’t the end to the dramatic incidents. In order to get to Croatia I still had to go through three different barricades with very rigid controls. Even people with all required documentations couldn’t pass through that easily. And I had an ID that had expired and the photo didn’t really resemble me, and I had no certificates about anything. Early the next morning we started. The car was passing through some forest. The road was muddy and winding. I was chanting the whole time. The two soldiers who were sitting in front told me: “You know, we really don’t know how you are going to pass this one, but if you do, you are really lucky.”
“Krishna!” I was thinking. My faith in Him had increased by recent incidents, and I was sure that He was listening. “All I can do is to chant Your names, and You, if You want, please help me.”
We approached the first barricade. Both soldiers pulled out their identification cards and some other certificates and documents. When asked, one of the soldiers said that he was the commander of a group for detection and elimination of mines and that he was on a mission. I was chanting and trying hard to hear the mantra. The soldier at the barricade looked at me without saying anything. “All right, go on!” he finally said. “Is it possible?” I asked myself while my two fellow travelers were just looking at each other with mouths wide open in wonder. When we came to the second barricade we didn’t even stop, the soldier just waved his hand allowing us to pass through. My companions’ mouths were wide open again. “The third one is hardest,” they told me. But the same thing happened as at the first barricade. The soldiers checked the documents of my fellow travelers, and asked them where they were going, where they were coming from and when they would return. I continued to chant. The soldiers looked at me, but they didn’t ask me anything.
Then we entered Tomislav-grad (a city near Croatia). We were all pleased that everything had gone so smoothly. I was happily chanting Hare Krishna on my japa-beads. In Tomislav-grad I bought some fruit and was offering it to Krishna’s picture on a bench in a park. I had one hour before my bus to Croatia was to leave. I was just finishing with my simple food offering ceremony when two police officers approached me. With my palm I signaled them to abstain from asking me any further questions until I finished my ceremony. They stopped and waited. After a few minutes, I finished the ceremony and they checked my ID. Finding no proper documentation they returned me to the third barricade. They rebuked the soldiers at the barricade for having let me pass. The soldiers claimed that they had never seen me before, although after hearing my description of the car I had been in, they remembered the car and all the details about it but they still couldn’t remember me. Then they received the order to send me back to Travnik (the city from where I started my journey).
I was again very intensely thinking of Lord Krishna: “Krishna, You wouldn’t return me back to Travnik after all that happened?” But I surrendered to Krishna’s desire, though not happily, knowing that anyway I couldn’t go against His wish. Luckily enough that seemed to have just been another test. Meditating on the power of prasadam I offered the prasadam fruit (fruit offered to Krishna) to the soldiers. They accepted it and ate with satisfaction. After a short conversation they decided to let me go although they had just received the order to send me back to Travnik. They even stopped a truck and convinced the driver to drive me to Posusje (a city on the border of Bosnia and Croatia) where I had some relatives. That night my relatives arranged for the documentation necessary for me to enter Croatia. The next day I arrived in the Rijeka temple in Croatia. Finally I met the Deities and devotees and there was no end to my happiness. By the mercy of devotees, guru and Krishna I am still living in an ISKCON temple, and whenever I remember these incidents I remember Srila Prabhupada’s quote that the word “impossible” exists only in a fool’s dictionary.
