The Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra is a spiritual sound. It's coming from the highest position in the spiritual world. In another song, not the one I'm quoting now, but it says, "golokera prema-dhana, hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana," that the sound of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, a sample of which you can give now, that mantra and the name, which is composed of names of God, is an avatāra also. It comes from the spiritual world into this world, and by hearing that sound, it's very much like The Wizard of Oz.
Dorothy got bumped on the head. I think it was a tornado, because she probably lived... Where did she live? Kansas. Thank you. I've got to know my śāstra. She lived in Kansas, where there are tornadoes, and after being bumped on the head, she entered into a dreamland. She was unconscious, apparently, as we find out in the end, that everything seemed real, and there was a wicked witch and there was a good witch, and there was the Tin Man and the Lion and the Scarecrow. Thank you, everybody. I haven't watched it in a long time, and a robot. And, of course, there was Oz and then the dog, Toto, that one I remember. It was a harrowing experience she had there, fluctuating between the good witch and her benevolence and the bad witch, who was sinister and scary—for me as a kid, it really scared me thinking about that. And on the journey, she came to know an incantation by which she could come back to her original consciousness. Does anybody remember what it was? "There's no place like home." I think she had to click her heels also. If anybody wants to correct me, go ahead, because I'm not fully studied on this, but three clicks of the heels, "There's no place like home. There's no place like home." And by that mantra and clicking her heels, she came back into her home in Kansas, and everyone was worried about her. All her loved ones were there, and that was the reality that she came back to after that harrowing journey she had through the Land of Oz.
And there's a way in which the Bhāgavatam describes how we're sleeping, or the song I'm talking about is we're sleeping, and we're having these dreams about our lives, our life situation. Sometimes it's very scary. And there's a way in which we sometimes feel we've come into good fortune, and we feel elated, but then we lose that fortune, whatever it might have been for, due to circumstances which people can probably relate to. And it comes and goes, and then there is a sound that comes and a mantra that comes from the spiritual world, and the avatāra who brings that to teach it to everybody, the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, is a sound of home.
You can hear your spiritual home. First you hear it, or you can hear God first also, because He appears in sound. It's the philosophy behind the Kṛṣṇa Consciousness Movement, and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu was teaching that the mantra itself is an avatāra, and by chanting it, we awaken from the dream and we come back to reality.
(excerpt from the talk)
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