Swami in a Strange Land Chapter Five Excerpt. Text not final. While visiting the United States, the Beatles heard a broadcast of the Kallman record on radio. Of the four superstars, George Harrison was most taken by the sound. He asked the band's road manager to order copies of the album, and back in London Harrison distributed them to friends. That year, interest in the Hare Krishna chant expanded in a variety of ways. On his posthumous album, titled Om, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and fellow musicians opened and closed the improvised tracks by quoting Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita: "Rites that the Vedas ordain and the rituals taught by the scriptures, the oblation, the flame into which they are offered--all these am I." That was also the year Jimi Hendrix released his album Axis: Bold as Love , with his own face superimposed over the image of Krishna's Universal Form.

Soon after, Allen Ginsberg appeared on William F. Buckley's television talk show Firing Line and sang the Hare Krishna mantra to a nationwide viewing audience. Not long after that, folksinger Tom Paxton referred to the Hare Krishna chant in his song "Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues": "So we all lit up and by and by / The whole platoon was flyin' high / With a beautiful smile on the Captain's face / He smelled like midnight on St. Mark's Place / Cleanin' his weapon / Chantin' sumpin' about Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna." Author Tom Wolfe added to the momentum by including a description of the mantra in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test . Before coming to America, had the Swami imagined what success would look like, he might not have foreseen such assimilation of the maha-mantra into pop culture. If he had been told, he would not have objected. "Chaitanya Mahaprabhu used to cover his ears, pretending to not want to hear the chanting, as a way of tempting children to chant Hare Krishna," he recalled.

"However it is done, the chanting is potent and it will act." Through a combination of karmic good fortune, divine plan, jazz albums, pop songs and talk shows, the Hare Krishna mantra was spreading and the Swami's following grew.