OUT OF THIS WORLD

Last night my home was blessed by the virtual presence of a very special virtual guest, His Holiness Hridayananda dasa Goswami. We also hosted 10 other devotees from Brasilia who came to hear his class via Oovoo and Skype. Other devotees in various parts of Brazil, namely Recife, Salvador, Marilha, Niterói, and Pindamonhangaba also gathered in their respective places to hear the class via the internet.

Currently, Skype only allows video conferencing between two users, however with Oovoo it is possible to link up to six users. We haven´t had much luck with the sound quality of Oovoo, so for last night´s class we used Oovoo and Skype simultaneously – Oovoo for video and Skype for audio. We could see and hear His Holiness and he could see and hear us. Well, for part of the time we were on audio only because there were too many groups. Also, as you can see from the picture below we had to watch the last part of the class on a small laptop screen after the large screen stopped working for some reason!

There were plenty of technical difficulties but it worked out well and Maharaja gave a great class to about 50 eager devotees. He described Krishna consciousness as the perfect, rational alternative to (1)violent, fanatical interpretations of religion and (2)the idea that religion is a psychological tool and whatever makes you feel good is therefore the highest truth. At the end of the class, Maharaja answered questions from the various groups.

Now we are experimenting with some other internet options so that future classes can be broadcast more widely, to anyone around the world who wants to see and hear the class, while still retaining some interaction with specific groups.

Here in Brasilia, after the class finished we sang some bhajan, led by HG Sadhu Sanga dasa . Finally I fed the assembled devotees with samosas, tomato chutney, halava and lemonade. I think they were satisfied.