I made a google search on "hare krishna mantra euphoria", and all I got was a lot of "Prabhupada said". Does not people know that the mantra chanting can induce a state of euphoria?
Why is the world full of "Prabhupada said", but so empty of experience by oneself?
I will make only one quote of Prabhupada, that I found through google, but it could as well be a quote of myself, since it is also my experience, just that no one believe me if I say it:

And that is also showing that Prabhupada did not speak about some hypothetical "pure devotee" state, but was pretty much down to earth with it.

And if ISKCON could not, and can not, teach how to get there, they are [IMHO] a failure.
What's the use of being a religious fanatic? It is just not the same thing.

If we want to be atheistic, we can speak about it in purely psychological terms. Chanting can bring sustainable, repeatable euphoria. And apart from the subjective experience, I am pretty convinced it can be measured with medical instruments, like ECG, EEG, etc.

Prabhupada was not down to earth with it. He says There is no coming down from this.
Or maybe he just thought he was high but had no idea what he was talking about?

I remember back to when I started to chant rounds on beads, based on information that I received from a devotee correspondence course I was taking from one devotee in the Detroit temple. I was doing the correspondence course because I was weary of the TM movement finding out I was visiting the HK temple in any capacity, for they would blacklist members for attending other meditation or yoga systems if someone wanted to rat on you, which would disallow one to attend courses and get advanced teachings.

I remember at first getting a peaceful feeling from chanting, feeling relaxed by the chanting while sitting in my usual meditation spot at home. When I wrote this down on my correspondence, I was at once reprimanded for chanting for peaceful feelings and getting relaxed, for it was to be a call to Krsna, a call to service and not something we did for the benefit for our physical or mental selves. I remember stating this to devotee's in person once I started to visit the temple when I eventually stopped caring what the TM organization knew, they too all told me not to look for peaceful states, bliss or relaxation while chanting, that those things will one day come once we are in an advanced KC state, but for now, just think of Krsna intently, focus on the meaning of the words and loudly call out for his mercy.

There was a fear that one would sahajaya things up, make it into something other than the hard work and sacrifice that actual surrender to a guru was going to ask for, and that system was being passed down from the top.

ISKCON now teaches Japa courses, incorporating the idea of being more meditative and relaxed in Japa, but it still seems to be taught as a spiritual activity that is pushing outward and not inward.

I think what developed was that meditation and self-realization (with the resulting 'euphoria') wound up becoming the sales package of ISKCON. The angle is to dissuade against Mayavaad. Mayavaad of course is the other sales package that most who are interested in yoga or meditation have already looked at.

So it's a subject that's mostly meant for preaching, kind of like the gulabjamins you are supposed to save for the guests. To make your own concerted effort to become self-realized or attain euphoria would be considered selfish, and make you a target of ridicule. You are mainly to cooperate in 'devotional service' and thus go 'back to Godhead' at the end of your life.

Seeing how frustrating all this 'selflessness' for the sake of outward expansion became though, I would think inner experience outta be a lot higher emphasis by this time.

Ha, ha, ha. A nice story. And of course one that can't be confirmed. Pretty handy.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the states of euphoria of GV can be medically confimed, since they leave traces on the body, like pulse frequency, blood pressure, hairs standing on an end etc.
Let's all take them away, forbid it, to make it easier to cheat.
Get rid of anyone who gets ecstatic symptoms, call them "sahajiya" and kick them out of the temple (god forbid, they might have something to teach - maybe true GV).
Let's make up the story that you should hide the symptoms, if you are "advanced", so you can cheat more easily.
Disregarding the bodily visible symptoms, and making the philosophy that only hypothetical non-existent "pure devotees", "incarnations", and others can get them.
Make a new goal - serve the leader (guru) - to be the meaning of it all.
Twist everything into something else.
And voila - we have a new version of western new-age religion.

(space left for puking)

And we all bought it!
Except for those who were looking for victims for their psychopatic/narcissistic needs, or their pedophilia, or whatever. They found their heaven on earth.

This is so darn sad. And it resembles well how we treated these things in Poland too. We would even tell our new bhaktas and bhaktins, when they happily reported how chanting made them feel good: "This is Krishna's way of making you attracted to his service; he lets you taste a little bit ecstasy although are are still not purified." And we smiled cleverly, knowing that Krishna would soon take away that little taste, just to make the bhakta more eager to enter the ocean of purification and service.

What a scam! I never felt as blissful by chanting as in my first days or weeks of doing it. When I was still doing it on my own and the way I liked. Before this selfless duty mentality, this obsession with purity, killed off the bliss.

This never occurred to me before, you are right, the requirement to hide ecstatic symptoms opens up a whole field for deception -- or self-deception, like in the case of disciples.

There is some sort of half-hen logic about it all. One sets up devotional abandon as the highest goal, but teaches the way to it is through control. One extols love, but clamps down hard on feelings. One emphasizes personal loving relation to Krsna, but does not accepts the devotee as the person he is. It's like weeding out a growing plant to make place for the fruits that it's expected to bear!

I didn't exactly find that to be true back in the seventies. Individuality was pretty much celebrated - as long as it was yoked to the sankirtan mission. That of course became business in a very short time.

Now it seems that for those who were once so 'employed' it is impossible to feel euphoric for very long, even if they have faith in the source of that employment - the GV religion. All those difficult mental associations are going to pop in one's head and ruin it just like it did the first time.

So now having faith in GV maybe it would be better to preach Krishna Consciousness and practice an entirely different religion.

actually feeling hare krishnic euphoria yet not enough to make you collapse and die right out of your body probably makes you a lot more miserable than not loving chanting anymore because it makes you think of that authority figure and just how short he was with you, and how you just took it.

kind of like the pain in this, from wind in the willows

"Since it was to end so soon, I almost
wish I had never heard it. For it has
roused a longing in me that is pain, and
nothing seems worth while but just to
hear that sound once more and
go on listening to it for ever."

so really the practise should not be smaranam, remembrance, but forgetfulness, of whatever euphoria might have once been.

"For this is the last best gift that the
kindly demi-god is careful to bestow
on those to whom he has revealed himself
in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness.
Lest the awful remembrance should
remain and grow, and overshadow mirth
and pleasure, and the great haunting
memory should spoil all the after-lives
of little animals helped out of difficulties,
in order that they should be happy and
lighthearted as before."

it was anyway probably just your imagination

It sounds like the philiosophy - I am miserable chanting, so you should be too!

But of course, the whole thing is that chanting brings you happiness, and will lead to more and more intense feelings of happiness, ecstasy, euphoria, bliss. The "be miserable" philosophy is some other philosophy.
Some people got the whole GV practices backwards. And unfortunately they are quite many and quite prominent.

Prabhupada started out with "chant and be happy", but now 40 years later, what happened?
They still do not know how to make it come true, so instead they redefine misery and instead call it "happiness".

Prabhupada said "get high", since when it comes, it hit you like lightning. It is like you take some powerful drug, but you don't. The euphoria comes sweeping over you, and like shocks you. It is something quite real, not just a poetical saying. It might be called "advanced bhakti", but who cares what it is called? It is something worth chanting, and struggling for years to get.

But if you chant for years and years, and it does not come, something is wrong, seriously wrong. Something is taught improperly. And if the "process" instead gives corpses, traumatized children, abused and abandoned women, you know something is completely rotten.

the more miserable the more eligible to peel the ecstasies from on high one is

Click to view attachment

Food for thought:


Disneyfication
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Disneyfication (also called Disneyization) is a pejorative term which describes the transformation of something, usually society at large, to resemble the The Walt Disney Company's theme parks. Sharon Zukin (1996) uses the former term in her book The Cultures of Cities, as do other social scientists writing about urban transformation. The latter term was popularized by Alan Bryman in a 2004 book, The Disneyization of Society. Disneyfication of urban space is explored in Jeff Ferrell's Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy.

The terms are generally used in a negative way, and they imply homogenization of consumption, merchandising, and emotional labor. They can be used more broadly to describe the processes of stripping a real place or event of its original character and repackaging it in a sanitized format. References to anything negative are removed, and the facts are watered down with the intent of making the subject more pleasant and easily grasped. In the case of places, this typically means replacing what has grown organically over time with an idealized and tourist-friendly veneer reminiscent of the "Main Street, U.S.A." attractions at Disney theme parks.

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (who writes about the nature of reality and the hyperreality) has called Disneyland the most real place in the U.S., because it is not pretending to be anything more than it actually is, a theme park. In his essay Simulations, he writes:

"Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyper-real and of simulation."

He also criticized the hidden corporate nature of the company in his book America:

"The whole Walt Disney philosophy eats out of your hand with these pretty little sentimental creatures in grey fur coats. For my own part, I believe that behind these smiling eyes there lurks a cold, ferocious beast fearfully stalking us."

Might we get a little more theologically Sufisticated now and again?

This was SUFIsticated indeed. Good read.

What jumped out at me (attention, I am going off on a tangent) was, that the era when writers would take that much time and put that much care into building a presentation -- the era when the writer would expect high level of attention and careful reading from the reader -- has sadly ended a good while ago.

I admit, with a pinch of shame, that I do not feel up to task in commenting on the text itself, although I have read it and pondered.

Well, Dhyana, it's good to know that someone took the time to both read and ponder the link I posted.

You may find THIS SITE to be of interest.

Also, THIS BOOK makes extremely ponderable reading.