prediction made by Lord Caitanya: “The chanting of Hare Krsna will be heard in every town and village of the world.”
The Society is as famous for its Sunday feasts and festivals as for its chanting in the streets. Every Sunday, in each of the ISKCON centers, a grand feast of from 10 to 15 courses of Indian vegetarian food is prepared and distributed for guests. The feasts are arranged around festival days celebrating the pastimes of Sri Krsna during His appearance on the earth 5,000 years ago. Plays, puppet shows and chanting are regular items which invite guests to participate in the transcendental glorification of the Personality of Godhead. Krsna consciousness is not a dry philosophy. Residents of San Francisco appreciate the yearly  Ratha-yatra  Festival in which the large cart bearing the Jagannath Deity is wheeled to the sea. During the Ratha-yatra celebration of 1969, more than 15,000 people followed the regal 8,000-pound cart, and thousands were fed full plates of  prasadam  at the seaside.
The important aim of the festivals, chanting and philosophizing is to engage people in the service of the Personality of Godhead and in feeling His soothing contact. All miseries are caused by forgetfulness of God, and ISKCON, by reviving the lost memory of the Supreme Lord in the minds of the people, is—according to  Bhagavad-gita —performing the greatest service and highest welfare work for suffering humanity. Moreover, it is performed in this sublime and easy way, by feasting, dancing, singing and philosophizing.
Sometimes in Lord Caitanya's time, the devotees were accused by the impersonalists of being mere sentimentalists because they were always singing and dancing. The actual fact is that Krsna consciousness is backed by a vast learned literature, the Vedic scriptures such as  Bhagavad-gita ,  Srimad-Bhagavatam ,  Vedanta-sutra , the  Upanisads ,  Mahabharata ,  Ramayana , etc., so that one could read 24 hours a day without exhausting the source. All of this Krsna consciousness information is understood by revelation. Simply by applying one's energy in a devotional service attitude, the knowledge becomes known to the devotee through the heart. Classes in the transcendental science of God consciousness, or  bhakti-yoga , are held every morning and three nights a week at all ISKCON centers, and the public is freely invited to attend. The  Brahma Sampradaya  discipline succession, in which A.C. Bhaktivedanta is coming, is particularly noted for being a learned line. There is plenty of philosophy and logic in stock. There are many different religious philosophies and transcendental teachings, but the Krsna conscious students and ministers are unique in that they are convinced of the Personality of Godhead. Not just that they have heard “God is great,” but they have heard from the spiritual