Chapter Nineteen

August 1966

IT WAS MAKESHIFT – a storefront-turned-temple and a two-room apartment transformed into the guru’s residence and study – but it was complete nonetheless. It was a complete monastery amid the city slums. The temple (the storefront) was quickly becoming known among the hip underground of the Lower East Side; the courtyard was a strangely peaceful place for aspiring monks, with its little garden, bird sanctuary, and trees, squeezed in between the front and rear buildings; the Swami’s back room was the inner sanctum of the monastery. Each room had a flavor all its own – or rather, it took on its particular character from the Swami’s activities there.

The temple room was his kīrtana and lecture hall. The lecture was always serious and formal. Even from the beginning, when there was no dais and he had to sit on a straw mat facing a few guests, it was clear he was here to instruct, not to invite casual give-and-take dialogue. Questions had to wait until he finished speaking. The audience would sit on the floor and listen for forty-five minutes as he delivered the Vedic knowledge intact, always speaking on the basis of Vedic authority – quoting Sanskrit, quoting the previous spiritual masters, delivering perfect knowledge supported with reason and argument. While contending with noises of the street, he lectured with exacting scholarship and deeply committed devotion. It appeared that he had long ago mastered all the references and conclusions of his predecessors and had even come to anticipate all intellectual challenges.

He also held kīrtanas in the storefront. Like the lectures, the kīrtanas were serious, but they were not so formal; Prabhupāda was lenient during kīrtana. Visitors would bring harmoniums, wooden flutes, guitars, and they would follow the melody or create their own improvisations. Someone brought an old string bass and bow, and an inspired guest could always pick up the bow and play along. Some of the boys had found the innards of an upright piano, waiting on the curb with someone’s garbage, and they had brought it to the temple and placed it near the entrance. During a kīrtana, freewheeling guests would run their hands over the wires, creating strange vibrations. Robert Nelson, several weeks back, had brought a large cymbal that now hung from the ceiling, dangling close by the Swami’s dais.

But there was a limit to the extravagance. Sometimes when a newcomer picked up the karatālas and played them in a beat other than the standard one-two-three, Swamiji would ask one of the boys to correct him, even at the risk of offending the guest. Prabhupāda led the chanting and drummed with one hand on a small bongo. Even on this little bongo drum, he played Bengali mṛdaṅga rhythms so interesting that a local conga drummer used to come just to hear: “The Swami gets in some good licks.”

The Swami’s kīrtanas were a new high, and the boys would glance at each other with widening eyes and shaking heads as they responded to his chanting, comparing it to their previous drug experiences and signaling each other favorably: “This is great. It’s better than LSD!” “Hey, man, I’m really getting high on this.” And Prabhupāda encouraged their newfound intoxication.

As maestro of these kīrtanas, he was also acting expertly as guru. Lord Caitanya had said, “There are no hard-and-fast rules for chanting the holy name,” and Prabhupāda brought the chanting to the Lower East Side just that way. “A kindergarten of spiritual life,” he once called the temple. Here he taught the ABCs of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, lecturing from Bhagavad-gītā and leading the group chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa. Sometimes, after the final kīrtana he would invite those who were interested to join him for further talks in his apartment.

In the back room of his apartment Prabhupāda was usually alone, especially in the early morning hours – two, three, and four A.M. – when almost no one else was awake. In these early hours his room was silent, and he worked alone in the intimacy of his relationship with Kṛṣṇa. He would sit on the floor behind his suitcase-desk, worshiping Kṛṣṇa by typing the translations and purports of his Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

But this same back room was also used for meetings, and anyone who brought himself to knock on the Swami’s door could enter and speak with him at any time, face to face. Prabhupāda would sit back from his typewriter and give his time to talking, listening, answering questions, sometimes arguing or joking. A visitor might sit alone with him for half an hour before someone else would knock and Swamiji would invite the newcomer to join them. New guests would come and others would go, but Swamiji stayed and sat and talked.

Generally, visits were formal – his guests would ask philosophical questions, and he would answer, much the same as after a lecture in the storefront. But occasionally some of the boys who were becoming serious followers would monopolize his time – especially on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, when there was no evening lecture in the temple. Often they would ask him personal questions: What was it like when he first came to New York? What about India? Did he have followers there? Were his family members devotees of Kṛṣṇa? What was his spiritual master like? And then Prabhupāda would talk in a different way – quieter, more intimate and humorous.

He told how one morning in New York he had first seen snow and thought someone had whitewashed the buildings. He told how he had spoken at several churches in Butler, and when the boys asked what kind of churches they were he smiled and replied, “I don’t know,” and they laughed with him. He would reminisce freely about the British control of India and about Indian politics. He told them it was not so much Gandhi as Subhas Chandra Bose who had liberated India. Subhas Chandra Bose had gone outside of India and started the Indian National Army; he entered into an agreement with Hitler that Indian soldiers fighting for British India who surrendered to the Germans could be returned to the Indian National Army to fight against the British. And it was this show of force by Bose, more than Gandhi’s nonviolence, which led to India’s independence.

He talked of his childhood at the turn of the century, when street lamps were gas-lit, and carriages and horse-drawn trams were the only vehicles on Calcutta’s dusty streets. These talks charmed the boys even more than the transcendental philosophy of Bhagavad-gītā and drew them affectionately to him. He told about his father, Gour Mohan De, a pure Vaiṣṇava. His father had been a cloth merchant, and his family had been intimately related with the aristocratic Mulliks of Calcutta. The Mulliks had a Deity of Kṛṣṇa, and Prabhupāda’s father had given him a Deity to worship as a child. He used to imitate the worship of the Govinda Deity in the Mulliks’ temple. As a boy, he had held his own Ratha-yātrā festivals each year, imitating in miniature the gigantic festival at Jagannātha Purī, and his father’s friends used to joke: “Oh, the Ratha-yātrā ceremony is going on at your home, and you do not invite us? What is this?” His father would reply, “This is a child’s play, that’s all.” But the neighbors said, “Oh, child’s play? You are avoiding us by saying it’s for children?”

Prabhupāda fondly remembered his father, who had never wanted him to be a worldly man, who had given him lessons in mṛdaṅga, and who had prayed to visiting sādhus that one day the boy would grow up to be a devotee of Rādhārāṇī.

One night he told how he had met his spiritual master. He told how he had begun his own chemical business but had left home and in 1959 had taken sannyāsa. The boys were interested, but so ignorant of the things Prabhupāda was talking about that at the mention of a word like mṛdaṅga or sannyāsa they would have to ask what it meant, and he would go on conversational tangents describing Indian spices, Indian drums, even Indian women. And whatever he spoke about, he would eventually shine upon it the light of the śāstra. He did not ration out such talk, but gave it out abundantly by the hour, day after day, as long as there was a real, live inquirer.

At noon the front room became a dining hall and in the evenings a place of intimate worship. Prabhupāda had kept the room, with its twelve-foot-square hardwood parquet floor, clean and bare; the solitary coffee table against the wall between the two courtyard windows was the only furniture. Daily at noon a dozen men were now taking lunch here with him. The meal was cooked by Keith, who spent the whole morning in the kitchen.

At first Keith had cooked only for the Swami. He had mastered the art of cooking dāl, rice, and sabjī in the Swami’s three-tiered boiler, and usually there had been enough for one or two guests as well. But soon more guests had begun to gather, and Prabhupāda had told Keith to increase the quantity (abandoning the small three-tiered cooker) until he was cooking for a dozen hungry men. The boarders, Raphael and Don, though not so interested in the Swami’s talk, would arrive punctually each day for prasādam, usually with a friend or two who had wandered into the storefront. Steve would drop by from his job at the welfare office. The Mott Street group would come. And there were others.

The kitchen was stocked with standard Indian spices: fresh chilies, fresh ginger root, whole cumin seeds, turmeric, and asafetida. Keith mastered the basic cooking techniques and passed them on to Chuck, who became his assistant. Some of the other boys would stand at the doorway of the narrow kitchenette to watch Keith, as one thick, pancakelike capātī after another blew up like an inflated football over the open flame and then took its place in the steaming stack.

While the fine basmati rice boiled to a moist, fluffy-white finish and the sabjī simmered, the noon cooking would climax with “the chaunce.” Keith prepared the chaunce exactly as Swamiji had shown him. Over the flame he set a small metal cup, half-filled with clarified butter, and then put in cumin seeds. When the seeds turned almost black he added chilies, and as the chilies blackened, a choking smoke began to pour from the cup. Now the chaunce was ready. With his cook’s tongs, Keith lifted the cup, its boiling, crackling mixture fuming like a sorcerer’s kettle, and brought it to the edge of the pot of boiling dāl. He opened the tight cover slightly, dumped the boiling chaunce into the dāl with a flick of his wrist, and immediately replaced the lid. … POW! The meeting of the chaunce and dāl created an explosion, which was then greeted by cheers from the doorway, signifying that the cooking was now complete. This final operation was so volatile that it once blew the top of the pot to the ceiling with a loud smash, causing minor burns to Keith’s hand. Some of the neighbors complained of acrid, penetrating fumes. But the devotees loved it.

When lunch was ready, Swamiji would wash his hands and mouth in the bathroom and come out into the front room, his soft, pink-bottomed feet always bare, his saffron dhotī reaching down to his ankles. He would stand by the coffee table, which held the picture of Lord Caitanya and His associates, while his own associates stood around him against the walls. Keith would bring in a big tray of capātīs, stacked by the dozens, and place it on the floor before the altar table along with pots of rice, dāl, and sabjī. Swamiji would then recite the Bengali prayer for offering food to the Lord, and all present would follow him by bowing down, knees and head to the floor, and approximating the Bengali prayer one word at a time. While the steam and mixed aromas drifted up like an offering of incense before the picture of Lord Caitanya, the Swami’s followers bowed their heads to the wooden floor and mumbled the prayer.

Prabhupāda then sat with his friends, eating the same prasādam as they, with the addition of a banana and a metal bowl full of hot milk. He would slice the banana by pushing it downward against the edge of the bowl, letting the slices fall into the hot milk.

Prabhupāda’s open decree that everyone should eat as much prasādam as possible created a humorous mood and a family feeling. No one was allowed simply to sit, picking at his food, nibbling politely. They ate with a gusto Swamiji almost insisted upon. If he saw someone not eating heartily, he would call the person’s name and smilingly protest, “Why are you not eating? Take prasādam.” And he would laugh. “When I was coming to your country on the boat,” he said, “I thought, ‘How will the Americans ever eat this food?’ ” And as the boys pushed their plates forward for more, Keith would serve seconds – more rice, dāl, capātīs, and sabjī.

After all, it was spiritual. You were supposed to eat a lot. It would purify you. It would free you from māyā. Besides, it was good, delicious, spicy. This was better than American food. It was like chanting. It was far out. You got high from eating this food.

They ate with the right hand, Indian style. Keith and Howard had already learned this and had even tasted similar dishes, but as they told the Swami and a room full of believers, the food in India had never been this good.

One boy, Stanley, was quite young, and Prabhupāda, almost like a doting father, watched over him as he ate. Stanley’s mother had personally met Prabhupāda and said that only if he took personal care of her son would she allow him to live in the monastery. Prabhupāda complied. He diligently encouraged the boy until Stanley gradually took on a voracious appetite and began consuming ten capātīs at a sitting (and would have taken more had Swamiji not told him to stop). But aside from Swamiji’s limiting Stanley to ten capātīs, the word was always “More … take more.” When Prabhupāda was finished, he would rise and leave the room, Keith would catch a couple of volunteers to help him clean, and the others would leave.

Occasionally, on a Sunday, Prabhupāda himself would cook a feast with special Indian dishes.

Steve: Swamiji personally cooked the prasādam and then served it to us upstairs in his front room. We all sat in rows, and I remember him walking up and down in between the rows of boys, passing before us with his bare feet and serving us with a spoon from different pots. He would ask what did we want – did we want more of this? And he would serve us with pleasure. These dishes were not ordinary, but sweets and savories – like sweet rice and kacaurīs – with special tastes. Even after we had all taken a full plate, he would come back and ask us to take more.

Once he came up to me and asked what I would like more of – would I like some more sweet rice? In my early misconception of spiritual life, I thought I should deny myself what I liked best, so I asked for some more plain rice. But even that “plain” rice was fancy yellow rice with fried cheese balls.

On off nights his apartment was quiet. He might remain alone for the whole evening, typing and translating Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, or talking in a relaxed atmosphere to just one or two guests until ten. But on meeting nights – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday – there was activity in every room of his apartment. He wasn’t alone anymore. His new followers were helping him, and they shared in his spirit of trying to get people to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and hear of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

In the back room, he worked on his translation of the Bhāgavatam or spoke with guests up until six, when he would go to take his bath. Sometimes he would have to wait until the bathroom was free. He had introduced his young followers to the practice of taking two baths a day, and now he was sometimes inconvenienced by having to share his bathroom.

After his bath he would come into the front room, where his assembled followers would sit around him. He would sit on a mat facing his picture of the Pañca-tattva, and after putting a few drops of water in his left palm from a small metal spoon and bowl, he would rub a lump of Vṛndāvana clay in the water, making a wet paste. He would then apply the clay markings of Vaiṣṇava tilaka, dipping into the yellowish paste in his left hand with the ring finger of his right. He would scrape wet clay from his palm, and while looking into a small mirror which he held deftly between the thumb and pinkie of his left hand, he would mark a vertical clay strip up his forehead and then trim the clay into two parallel lines by placing the little finger of his right hand between his eyebrows and running it upward past the hairline, clearing a path in the still-moist clay. Then he marked eleven other places on his body, while the boys sat observing, sometimes asking questions or sometimes speaking their own understandings of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Prabhupāda: My Guru Mahārāja used to put on tilaka without a mirror.

Devotee: Did it come out neat?

Prabhupāda: Neat or not neat, that does not matter. Yes, it was also neat.

Prabhupāda would then silently recite the Gāyatrī mantra. Holding his brāhmaṇa’s sacred thread and looping it around his right thumb, he would sit erect, silently moving his lips. His bare shoulders and arms were quite thin as was his chest, but he had a round, slightly protruding belly. His complexion was as satiny smooth as a young boy’s, except for his face, which bore signs of age. The movements of his hands were methodical, aristocratic, yet delicate.

He picked up two brass bells in his left hand and began ringing them. Then, lighting two sticks of incense from the candle near the picture of Lord Caitanya and His associates, he began waving the incense slowly in small circles before Lord Caitanya, while still ringing the bells. He looked deeply at the picture and continued cutting spirals of fragrant smoke, all the while ringing the bells. None of the boys knew what he was doing, although he did it every evening. But it was a ceremony. It meant something. The boys began to call the ceremony “bells.”

After bells Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, it would usually be time for the evening kīrtana. Some of the devotees would already be downstairs greeting guests and explaining about the Swami and the chanting. But without the Swami, nothing could begin. No one knew how to sing or drum, and no one dared think of leading the mantra-chanting without him. Only when he entered at seven o’clock could they begin.

Freshly showered and dressed in his clean Indian handwoven cloth, his arms and body decorated with the arrowlike Vaiṣṇava markings, Prabhupāda would leave his apartment and go downstairs to face another ecstatic opportunity to glorify Kṛṣṇa. The tiny temple would be crowded with wild, unbrahminical, candid young Americans.

Don was a test of Swamiji’s tolerance. He had lived in the storefront for months, working little and not trying to change his habits. He had a remarkable speech affectation: instead of talking, he enunciated his words, as if he were reciting them from a book. And he never used contractions. It wasn’t that he was intellectual, just that somehow he had developed a plan to abolish his natural dialect. Don’s speech struck people as bizarre, like it might be the result of too many drugs. It gave him the air of being not an ordinary being. And he continuously took marijuana, even after Swamiji had asked those who lived with him not to. Sometimes during the day his girlfriend would join him in the storefront, and they would sit together talking intimately and sometimes kissing. But he liked the Swami. He even gave some money once. He liked living in the storefront, and Swamiji didn’t complain.

But others did. One day an interested newcomer dropped by the storefront and found Don alone, surrounded by the sharp aroma of marijuana. “You been smoking pot? But the Swami doesn’t want anyone smoking here.” Don denied it: “I have not been smoking. You are not speaking the truth.” The boy then reached in Don’s shirt pocket and pulled out a joint, and Don hit him in the face. Several of the boys found out. They weren’t sure what was right: What would the Swami do? What do you do if someone smokes pot? Even though a devotee was not supposed to, could it be allowed sometimes? They put the matter before Swamiji.

Prabhupāda took it very seriously, and he was upset, especially about the violence. “He hit you?” he asked the boy. “I will go down myself and kick him in the head.” But then Prabhupāda thought about it and said that Don should be asked to leave. But Don had already left.

The next morning during Swamiji’s class, Don appeared at the front door. From his dais, Swamiji looked out at Don with great concern. But his first concern was for ISKCON: “Ask him,” Prabhupāda requested Roy, who sat nearby, “if he has marijuana – then he cannot come in. Our society …” Prabhupāda was like an anxious father, afraid for the life of his infant ISKCON. Roy went to the door and told Don he would have to give up his drugs if he entered. And Don walked away.

Raphael was not interested in spiritual discipline. He was a tall young man with long, straight, brown hair who, like Don, tried to stay aloof and casual toward Swamiji. When Prabhupāda introduced japa and encouraged the boys to chant during the day, Raphael didn’t go for it. He said he liked a good kīrtana, but he wouldn’t chant on beads.

One time Swamiji was locked out of his apartment, and the boys had to break the lock. Swamiji asked Raphael to replace it. Days went by. Raphael could sit in the storefront reading Rimbaud, he could wander around town, but he couldn’t find time to fix the lock. One evening he dropped by the Swami’s apartment, opened the lockless door, and made his way to the back room, where some boys were sitting, listening to Swamiji speak informally about Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Suddenly Raphael spoke up, expressing his doubts and revealing his distracted mind. “As for me,” he said, “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know whether a brass band is playing or what the heck is going on.” Some of the devotees tensed; he had interrupted their devotional mood. “Raphael is very candid,” Swamiji replied, smiling, as if to explain his son’s behavior to the others.

Raphael finally fixed the lock, but one day after a lecture he approached the Swami, stood beside the dais, and spoke up, exasperated, impatient: “I am not meant to sit in a temple and chant on beads! My father was a boxer. I am meant to run on the beach and breathe in big breaths of air. …” Raphael went on, gesticulating and voicing his familiar complaints – things he would rather do than take up Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Suddenly Prabhupāda interrupted him in a loud voice: “Then do it! Do it!” Raphael shrank away, but he stayed.

Bill Epstein took pride in his relationship with the Swami – it was honest. Although he helped the Swami by telling people about him and sending them up to see him in his apartment, he felt the Swami knew he’d never become a serious follower. Nor did Bill ever mislead himself into thinking he would ever be serious. But Prabhupāda wasn’t content with Bill’s take-it-or-leave-it attitude. When Bill would finally show up at the storefront again after spending some days at a friend’s place, only to fall asleep with a blanket wrapped over his head during the lecture, Prabhupāda would just start shouting so loud that Bill couldn’t sleep. Sometimes Bill would ask a challenging question, and Prabhupāda would answer and then say, “Are you satisfied?” and Bill would look up dreamily and answer, “No!” Then Prabhupāda would answer it again more fully and say louder, “Are you satisfied?” and again Bill would say no. This would go on until Bill would have to give in: “Yes, yes, I am satisfied.”

But Bill was the first person to get up and dance during a kīrtana in the storefront. Some of the other boys thought he looked like he was dancing in an egotistical, narcissistic way, even though his arms were outstretched in a facsimile of the pictures of Lord Caitanya. But when Swamiji saw Bill dancing like that, he looked at Bill with wide-open eyes and feelingly expressed appreciation: “Bill is dancing just like Lord Caitanya.”

Bill sometimes returned from his wanderings with money, and although it was not very much, he would give it to Swamiji. He liked to sleep at the storefront and spend the day on the street, returning for lunch or kīrtanas or a place to sleep. He used to leave in the morning and go looking for cigarettes on the ground. To Bill, the Swami was part of the hip movement and had thus earned a place of respect in his eyes as a genuine person. Bill objected when the boys introduced signs of reverential worship toward the Swami (starting with their giving him an elevated seat in the temple), and as the boys who lived with the Swami gradually began to show enthusiasm, competition, and even rivalry among themselves, Bill turned from it in disgust. He allowed that he would go on just helping the Swami in his own way, and he knew that the Swami appreciated whatever he did. So he wanted to leave it at that.

Carl Yeargens had helped Prabhupāda in times of need. He had helped with the legal work of incorporating ISKCON, signed the ISKCON charter as a trustee, and even opened his home to Swamiji when David had driven him from the Bowery loft. But those days when he and Eva had shared their apartment with him had created a tension that had never left. He liked the Swami, he respected him as a genuine sannyāsī from India, but he didn’t accept the conclusions of the philosophy. The talk about Kṛṣṇa and the soul was fine, but the idea of giving up drugs and sex was carrying it a little too far. Now Prabhupāda was settled in his new place, and Carl decided that he had done his part to help and was no longer needed. Although he had helped Prabhupāda incorporate his International Society for Krishna Consciousness, he didn’t want to join it.

Carl found the Second Avenue kīrtanas too public, not like the more intimate atmosphere he had enjoyed with the Swami on the Bowery. Now the audiences were larger, and there was an element of wild letting loose that they had never had on the Bowery. Like some of the other old associates, Carl felt sheepish and reluctant to join in. In comparison to the Second Avenue street scene, the old meetings in the fourth-floor Bowery loft had seemed more mystical, like secluded meditations.

Carol Bekar also preferred a more sedate kīrtana. She thought people were trying to take out their personal frustrations by the wild singing and dancing. The few times she did attend evening kīrtanas on Second Avenue were “tense moments.” One time a group of teenagers had come into the storefront mocking and shouting, “Hey! What the hell is this!” She kept thinking that at any moment a rock was going to come crashing through the big window. And anyway, her boyfriend wasn’t interested.

James Greene felt embarrassed. He saw that most of the new men were making a serious commitment to the Swami, whereas he could not. He had no bad feeling toward the Swami and his new movement, but he preferred to live alone.

Robert Nelson, Prabhupāda’s old uptown friend, never deviated in his good feelings for Prabhupāda, but he always went along in his own natural way and never adopted any serious disciplines. Somehow, almost all of those who had helped Prabhupāda uptown and on the Bowery did not want to go further once he began a spiritual organization, which happened almost immediately after he moved into 26 Second Avenue. New people were coming forward to assist him, and Carl, James, Carol, and others like them felt that they were being replaced and that their obligation toward the Swami was ending. It was a kind of changing of the guard. Although the members of the old guard were still his well-wishers, they began to drift away.

Bruce Scharf had just graduated from New York University and was applying for a job. One day an ex-roommate told him about the Swami he had visited down on Second Avenue. “They sing there,” his friend said, “and they have this far-out thing where they have some dancing. And Allen Ginsberg was there.” The Swami was difficult to understand, his friend explained, and besides that, his followers recorded his talks on a tape recorder. “Why should he have a big tape recorder? That’s not very spiritual.” But Bruce became interested.

He was already a devotee of Indian culture. Four years ago, when he was barely twenty, Bruce had worked during the summer as a steward aboard an American freighter and gone to India, where he had visited temples, bought pictures of Śiva and Gaṇeśa and books on Gandhi, and felt as if he were part of the culture. When he returned to N.Y.U., he read more about India and wrote a paper on Gandhi for his history course. He would eat in Indian restaurants and attend Indian films and music recitals, and he was reading the Bhagavad-gītā. He had even given up eating meat. He had plans of returning to India, taking some advanced college courses, and then coming back to America to teach Eastern religions. But in the meantime he was experimenting with LSD.

Chuck Barnett was eighteen years old. His divorced mother had recently moved to Greenwich Village, where she was studying psychology at N.Y.U. Chuck had moved out of his mother’s apartment to one on Twelfth Street on the Lower East Side, in the neighborhood of Allen Ginsberg and other hip poets and musicians. He was a progressive jazz flutist who worked with several professional groups in the city. He had been practicing haṭha-yoga for six years and had recently been experimenting with LSD. He would have visions of lotuses and concentric circles, but after coming down, he would become more involved than ever in sensuality. A close friend of Chuck’s had suddenly gone homosexual that summer, leaving Chuck disgusted and cynical. Someone told Chuck that an Indian swami was staying downtown on Second Avenue, and so he came one day in August to the window of the former Matchless Gifts store.

Steve Guarino, the son of a New York fireman, had grown up in the city and graduated from Brooklyn College in 1961. Influenced by his father, he had gone into the Navy, where he had tolerated two years of military routine, always waiting for the day he would be free to join his friends on the Lower East Side. Finally, a few months after the death of President Kennedy, he had been honorably discharged. Without so much as paying a visit to his parents, he had headed straight for the Lower East Side, which by then appeared vividly within his mind to be the most mystical place in the world. He was writing stories and short novels under the literary influence of Franz Kafka and others, and he began to take LSD “to search and experiment with consciousness.” A Love Supreme, a record by John Coltrane, the jazz musician, encouraged Steve to think that God actually existed. Just to make enough money to live, Steve had taken a job with the welfare office. One afternoon during his lunch hour, while walking down Second Avenue, he saw that the Matchless Gifts store had a small piece of paper in the window, announcing, “Lectures in Bhagavad Gita, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.”

Chuck: I finally found Second Avenue and First Street, and I saw through the window that there was some chanting going on inside and some people were sitting up against the wall. Beside me on the sidewalk some middle-class people were looking in and giggling. I turned to them, and with my palms folded I asked, “Is this where a swami is?” They giggled and said, “Pilgrim, your search has ended.” I wasn’t surprised by this answer, because I felt it was the truth.

Bruce and Chuck, unknown to one another, lived only two blocks apart. After the suggestion from his friend, Bruce also made his way to the storefront.

Bruce: I was looking for Hare Kṛṣṇa. I had left my apartment and had walked over to Avenue B when I decided to walk all the way down to Houston Street. When I came to First Street, I turned right and then, walking along First Street, came to Second Avenue. All along First Street I was seeing these Puerto Rican grocery stores, and then there was one of those churches where everyone was standing up, singing loudly, and playing tambourines. Then, as I walked further along First Street, I had the feeling that I was leaving the world, like when you’re going to the airport to catch a plane. I thought, “Now I’m leaving a part of me behind, and I’m going to something new.”

But when I got over to Second Avenue, I couldn’t find Hare Kṛṣṇa. There was a gas station, and then I walked past a little storefront, but the only sign was one that said Matchless Gifts. Then I walked back again past the store, and in the window I saw a black-and-white sign announcing a Bhagavad-gītā lecture. I entered the storefront and saw a pile of shoes there, so I took off my shoes and came in and sat down near the back.

Steve: I had a feeling that this was a group that was already established and had been meeting for a while. I came in and sat down on the floor, and a boy who said his name was Roy was very courteous and friendly to me. He seemed to be one who had already experienced the meetings. He asked me my name, and I felt at ease.

Suddenly the Swami entered, coming through the side door. He was wearing a saffron dhotī but no shirt, just a piece of cloth like a long sash, tied in a knot across his right shoulder and leaving his arms, his left shoulder, and part of his chest bare. When I saw him I thought of the Buddha.

Bruce: There were about fifteen people sitting on the floor. One man with a big beard sat up by the front on the right-hand side, leaning up against the wall. After some time the door on the opposite side opened, and in walked the Swami. When he came in, he turned his head to see who was in his audience. And then he stared right at me. Our eyes met. It was as if he were studying me. In my mind it was like a photograph was being taken of Swamiji looking at me for the first time. There was a pause. Then he very gracefully got up on the dais and sat down and took out a pair of hand cymbals and began a kīrtana. The kīrtana was the thing that most affected me. It was the best music I’d ever heard. And it had meaning. You could actually concentrate on it, and it gave you some joy to repeat the words “Hare Kṛṣṇa.” I immediately accepted it as a spiritual practice.

Chuck: I entered the storefront, and sitting on a grass mat on the hard floor was a person who seemed at first to be neither male nor female, but when he looked at me I couldn’t even look him straight in the eyes, they were so brilliant and glistening. His skin was golden with rosy cheeks, and he had large ears that framed his face. He had three strands of beads – one which was at his neck, one a little longer, and the other down on his chest. He had a long forehead, which rose above his shining eyes, and there were many furrows in his brow. His arms were slender and long. His mouth was rich and full, and very dark and red and smiling, and his teeth were brighter than his eyes. He sat in a cross-legged position that I had never seen before in any yoga book and had never seen any yogī perform. It was a sitting posture, but his right foot was crossed over the thigh and brought back beside his left hip, and one knee rested on the other directly in front of him. His every expression and gesture was different from those of any other personality I had ever seen, and I sensed that they had meanings that I did not know, from a culture and a mood that were completely beyond this world. There was a mole on his side and a peculiar callus on his ankle, a round callus similar to what a karate expert develops on his knuckle. He was dressed in unhemmed cloth, dyed saffron. Everything about him was exotic, and his whole effulgence made him seem to be not even sitting in the room but projected from some other place. He was so brilliant in color that it was like a technicolor movie, and yet he was right there. I heard him speaking. He was sitting right there before me, yet it seemed that if I reached out to touch him he wouldn’t be there. At the same time, seeing him was not an abstract or subtle experience but a most intense presence.

After their first visit to the storefront, Chuck, Steve, and Bruce each got an opportunity to see the Swami upstairs in his apartment.

Steve: I was on my lunch hour and had to be back in the office very soon. I was dressed in a summer business suit. I had planned it so that I had just enough time to go to the storefront and buy some books, then go to lunch and return to work. At the storefront, one of the Swami’s followers said that I could go up and see the Swami. I went upstairs to his apartment and found him at his sitting place with a few boys. I must have interrupted what he was saying, but I asked him if I could purchase the three volumes of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. One of the devotees produced the books from the closet opposite Prabhupāda’s seat. I handled the books – they were a very special color not usually seen in America, a reddish natural earth, like a brick – and I asked him how much they cost. Six dollars each, he said. I took twenty dollars out of my wallet and gave it to him. He seemed the only one to ask about the price of the books or give the money to, because none of the others came forward to represent him. They were just sitting back and listening to him speak.

“These books are commentaries on the scriptures?” I asked, trying to show that I knew something about books. Swamiji said yes, they were his commentaries. Sitting, smiling, at ease, Swamiji was very attractive. He seemed very strong and healthy. When he smiled, all his teeth were beautiful, and his nostrils flared aristocratically. His face was full and powerful. He was wearing an Indian cloth robe, and as he sat cross-legged, his smooth-skinned legs were partly exposed. He wore no shirt, but the upper part of his body was wrapped with an Indian cloth shawl. His limbs were quite slender, but he had a protruding belly.

When I saw that Swamiji was having to personally handle the sale of books, I did not want to bother him. I quickly asked him to please keep the change from my twenty dollars. I took the three volumes without any bag or wrapping and was standing, preparing to leave, when Swamiji said, “Sit down,” and gestured that I should sit opposite him like the others. He had said “Sit down” in a different tone of voice. It was a heavy tone and indicated that now the sale of the books was completed and I should sit with the others and listen to him speak. He was offering me an important invitation to become like one of the others, who I knew spent many hours with him during the day when I was usually at my job and not able to come. I envied their leisure in being able to learn so much from him and sit and talk intimately with him. By ending the sales transaction and asking me to sit, he assumed that I was in need of listening to him and that I had nothing better in the world to do than to stop everything else and hear him. But I was expected back at the office. I didn’t want to argue, but I couldn’t possibly stay. “I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said definitely. “I’m only on my lunch hour.” As I said this, I had already started to move for the door, and Swamiji responded by suddenly breaking into a wide smile and looking very charming and very happy. He seemed to appreciate that I was a working man, a young man on the go. I had not come by simply because I was unemployed and had nowhere to go and nothing to do. Approving of my energetic demeanor, he allowed me to take my leave.

Chuck: One of the devotees in the storefront invited me upstairs to see the Swami in private. I was led out of the storefront into a hallway and suddenly into a beautiful little garden with a picnic table, a birdbath, a birdhouse, and flower beds. After we passed through the garden, we came to a middle-class apartment building. We walked up the stairs and entered an apartment which was absolutely bare of any furniture – just white walls and a parquet floor. He led me through the front room and into another room, and there was the Swami, sitting in that same majestic spiritual presence on a thin cotton mat, which was covered by a cloth with little elephants printed on it, and leaning back on a pillow which stood against the wall.

One night Bruce walked home with Wally, and he told Wally about his interest in going to India and becoming a professor of Oriental literature. “Why go to India?” Wally asked. “India has come here. Swamiji is teaching us these authentic things. Why go to India?” Bruce thought Wally made sense, so he resolved to give up his long-cherished idea of going to India, at least as long as he could go on visiting the Swami.

Bruce: I decided to go and speak personally to Swamiji, so I went to the storefront. I found out that he lived in an apartment in the rear building. A boy told me the number and said I could just go and speak with the Swami. He said, “Yes, just go.” So I walked through the storefront, and there was a little courtyard where some plants were growing. Usually in New York there is no courtyard, nothing green, but this was very attractive. And in that courtyard there was a boy typing at a picnic table, and he looked very spiritual and dedicated. I hurried upstairs and rang the bell for apartment number 2C. After a little while the door opened, and it was the Swami. “Yes,” he said. And I said, “I would like to speak with you.” He opened the door wider and stepped back and said, “Yes, come.” We went inside together into his sitting room and sat down facing each other. He sat behind his metal trunk-desk on a very thin mat which was covered with a woolen blanketlike cover that had frazzled ends and elephants decorating it. He asked me my name and I told him it was Bruce. And then he remarked, “Ah. In India, during the British period, there was one Lord Bruce.” And he said something about Lord Bruce being a general and engaging in some campaigns.

I felt that I had to talk to the Swami – to tell him my story – and I actually found him interested to listen. It was very intimate, sitting with him in his apartment, and he was actually wanting to hear about me.

While we were talking, he looked up past me, high up on the wall behind me, and he was talking about Lord Caitanya. The way he looked up, he was obviously looking at some picture or something, but with an expression of deep love in his eyes. I turned around to see what made him look like that. Then I saw the picture in the brown frame: Lord Caitanya dancing in kīrtana.

Inevitably, meeting with Prabhupāda meant a philosophical discussion.

Chuck: I asked him, “Can you teach me rāja-yoga?” “Oh,” he said. “Here is Bhagavad-gītā.” He handed me a copy of the Gītā. “Turn to the last verse of the Sixth Chapter,” he said, “and read.” I read the translation out loud. “And of all yogīs, he who is worshiping Me with faith and devotion I consider to be the best.” I could not comprehend what “faith” and “devotion” meant, so I said, “Sometimes I’m getting some light in my forehead.” “That is hallucination!” he said. So abruptly he said it – although he did not strain his person, the words came at me so intensely that it completely shocked me. “Rāja means ‘king’ – king yoga,” he said, “but this is emperor yoga.”

I knew that he had attained such a high state not by using chemicals from a laboratory or by any Western speculative process, and this was certainly what I wanted. “Are you giving classes?” I asked. He said, “Yes, if you come at six in the morning I am giving classes in the Gītā. And bring some flower or fruit for the Deity.” I looked into the adjoining room, which was bare with a wooden parquet floor, bare walls, and a tiny table, and on the table was a picture of five humanlike figures with their arms raised above their heads. Somehow, their arms and faces were not like any mortal that I’d ever seen. I knew that the picture was looking at me.

When I came out on the street in front of the storefront there were a few people standing around, and I said, “I don’t think I’m going to take LSD anymore.” I said it out loud to myself, but some other people heard me.

Steve: I wanted to show my appreciation for spiritual India, so I presented to Swamiji that I had read the autobiography of Gandhi. “It was glorious,” I said. “What is glorious about it?” Swamiji challenged.

When he asked this, there were others present in the room. Although I was a guest, he had no qualms about challenging me for having said something foolish. I searched through my remembrances of Gandhi’s autobiography to answer his challenging question, “What is glorious?” I began to relate that one time Gandhi, as a child, although raised as a vegetarian, was induced by some of his friends to eat meat, and that night he felt that a lamb was howling in his belly. Swamiji dismissed this at once, saying, “Most of India is vegetarian. That is not glorious.” I couldn’t think of anything else glorious to say, and Swamiji said, “His autobiography is called Experiments with Truth. But that is not the nature of truth. It is not to be found by someone’s experimenting. Truth is always truth.”

Although it was a blow to my ego, being exposed and defeated by Swamiji seemed to be a gain for me. I wanted to bring before him many different things for his judgment, just to see what he had to say about them. I showed him the paperback edition of the Bhagavad-gītā that I was reading and carrying in my back pocket. He perused the back cover. There was a reference to “the eternal faith of the Hindus,” and Swamiji began to take the phrase apart. He explained how the word Hindu was a misnomer and does not occur anywhere in the Sanskrit literature itself. He also explained that Hinduism and Hindu beliefs were not eternal.

Bruce: After I talked about my desire for religious life, I began telling him about a conflict I had had with one of my professors in English literature. He was a Freudian, so he would explain the characters in all the novels and so on in a Freudian context and with Freudian terminology. Everything was sexual – the mother for the son, this one for that one, and so on. But I would always see it in terms of a religious essence. I would see it in terms of a religious impulse, or some desire to understand God. I would write my papers in that context, and he would always say, “The religious can also be interpreted as Freudian.” So I didn’t do very well in the course. I was mentioning this to the Swami, and he said, “Your professor is correct.” I was surprised – I am going to an Indian swami, and he is saying that the professor was correct, that everything is based on sex and not religion! This kind of pulled the rug out from under me when he said that. Then he qualified what he’d said. He explained that in the material world everyone is operating on the basis of sex; everything that everyone is doing is being driven by the sex impulse. “So,” he said, “Freud is correct. Everything is on the basis of sex.” Then he clarified what material life is and what spiritual life is. In spiritual life, there is a complete absence of sex desire. So this had a profound effect on me.

He wasn’t confirming my old sentimental ideas, but he was giving me new ideas. He was giving me his instructions, and I had to accept them. Talking to the Swami was very nice. I found him completely natural, and I found him to be very artistic. The way he held his head, the way he enunciated his words – very dignified, very gentlemanly.

The boys found Swamiji not only philosophical, but personal also.

Steve: A few nights later, I went to see the Swami and told him I was reading his book. One thing that had especially caught my attention was a section where the author of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Vyāsadeva, was admitting that he was feeling despondent. Then his spiritual master, Nārada, explained that his despondency had come because although he had written so many books, he had neglected to write in such a way as to fully glorify Kṛṣṇa. After hearing this, Vyāsadeva compiled the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

When I read this, I identified with the fact that Vyāsadeva was a writer, because I considered myself a writer also, and I knew that I was also despondent. “This was very interesting about the author, Vyāsadeva,” I said. “He wrote so many books, but still he was not satisfied, because he had not directly praised Kṛṣṇa.” Although I had very little understanding of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Swamiji opened his eyes very wide, surprised that I was speaking on such an elevated subject from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. He seemed pleased.

Chuck: I had come by in the afternoon, and Swamiji had given me a plate of prasādam. So I was eating, and a chili burned my mouth. Swamiji said, “Is it too hot?” “Yes,” I said. So he brought me a tiny teacup with some milk, and then he took some rice off my plate and took a piece of banana and crushed it all up together with his fingers and said, “Here, eat this. It will kill the action of the chilies.”

Bruce: There wasn’t anything superficial about him, nor was he ever contrived, trying to make some impression. He was just completely himself. In the Swami’s room there was no furniture, so we sat on the floor. And I found this to be very attractive and simple. Everything was so authentic about him. Uptown at another swami’s place we had sat on big, stuffed living room chairs, and the place had been lavishly furnished. But here was the downtown swami, wearing simple cloth robes. He had no business suit on – he wasn’t covering up a business suit with those saffron robes. And he wasn’t affected, as the other swami was. So I found myself asking him if I could be his student, and he said yes. I was very happy, because he was so different from the other swami. With the uptown swami I was wanting to become his student because I wanted to get something from him – I wanted to get knowledge. It was selfishly motivated. But here I was actually emotionally involved. I was feeling that I wanted to become the Swami’s student. I actually wanted to give myself, because I thought he was great and what he was giving was pure and pristine and wonderful. It was a soothing balm for the horrible city life. Uptown I had felt like a stranger.

On one occasion, our conversation turned to my previous trip to India in 1962, and I began talking about how much it meant to me, how much it moved me. I even mentioned that I had made a girlfriend there. So we got to talking about that, and I told him that I had her picture – I was carrying the girl’s picture in my wallet. So Swamiji asked to see. I took out the picture, and Swamiji looked at it and made a sour face and said, “Oh, she is not pretty. Girls in India are more beautiful than that.” Hearing that from the Swami just killed any attachment I had for that girl. I felt ashamed that I had an interest in a girl that the Swami did not consider pretty. I don’t think I ever looked at the photograph again, and certainly I never gave her another thought.

Bruce was a newcomer and had only been to one week of meetings at the storefront, so no one had told him that the members of Ananda Ashram, Dr. Mishra’s yoga retreat, had invited Swamiji and his followers for a day in the upstate countryside. Bruce had just arrived at the storefront one morning when he heard someone announce, “The Swami is leaving!” And Prabhupāda came out of the building and stepped into a car. In a fit of anxiety, Bruce thought that the Swami was leaving them for good – for India! “No,” Howard told him, “we’re going to a yoga-āśrama in the country.” But the other car had already left, and there was no room in Swamiji’s car. Just then Steve showed up. He had expected the boys to come by his apartment to pick him up. They both had missed the ride.

Bruce phoned a friend up in the Bronx and convinced him to drive them up to Ananda Ashram. But when they got to Bruce’s friend’s apartment, the friend had decided he didn’t want to go. Finally he lent Bruce his car, and Swamiji’s two new followers set out for Ananda Ashram.

By the time they arrived, Prabhupāda and his group were already taking prasādam, sitting around a picnic table beneath the trees. Ananda Ashram was a beautiful place, with sloping hills and lots of trees and sky and green grass and a lake. The two latecomers came walking up to Swamiji, who was seated like the father of a family, at the head of the picnic table. Keith was serving from a big wok onto the individual plates. When Prabhupāda saw his two stragglers, he asked them to sit next to him, and Keith served them. Prabhupāda took Steve’s capātī and heaped it up with a mound of sugar, and Steve munched on the bread and sugar, while everyone laughed.

Prabhupāda began talking somehow about lion tamers, and he recalled that once at a fair he had seen a man wrestling with a tiger, rolling over and over with it down a hill. The boys, who rarely heard Swamiji speak anything but philosophy, were surprised. They were delighted – city kids, taken to the country by their guru, and having a good time.

Steve: I was walking with Swamiji across a long, gentle slope. I wanted him to see and approve a picture of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa I had found in a small book, Nārada-bhakti-sūtra. I had planned to get a color reproduction of it to give to each of his followers. So as we were walking across the grass I showed him the picture and asked him whether it was a nice picture of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa for reproducing. He looked at the picture, smiled, nodded, and said yes.

Bruce: I walked with Swamiji around the grounds. All the others were doing something else, and Swamiji and myself were walking alone. He was talking about building a temple there.

Prabhupāda walked across the scenic acreage, looking at the distant mountains and forests, and Keith walked beside him. Prabhupāda spoke of how Dr. Mishra had offered him the island in the middle of the āśrama’s lake to build a temple on. “What kind of temple were you thinking of?” Keith asked. “How big?” Prabhupāda smiled and gestured across the horizon. “As big as the whole horizon?” Keith laughed. “Yes,” Prabhupāda replied.

A few Ananda Ashram men and women came by. One woman was wearing a sārī. Prabhupāda turned to the other women and said, “A woman who wears a sārī looks very feminine.”

It was late afternoon when some of Swamiji’s followers gathered by the lake and began talking candidly about Swamiji and speculating about his relation to God and their relation to him.

“Well,” said Wally, “Swami never claimed to be God or an incarnation, but he says that he is a servant of God, teaching love of God.”

“But he says that the spiritual master is not different from God,” said Howard. They stood at the edge of the mirrory calm lake and concluded that it was not necessary to talk about this. The answers would be revealed later. None of them really had much spiritual knowledge, but they wanted their faith to deepen.

Afterward, Keith, Wally, and Howard wandered into the meditation room. There was a seat with a picture of Dr. Mishra, who was away in Europe. But the most remarkable thing was a blinking strobe light. “I feel like I’m in a head shop on St. Mark’s Place,” said Wally. “What kind of spiritual meditation is this?” Howard asked. A Mishra follower, wearing a white kurtā and white bell-bottoms, replied that their guru had said they could sit and meditate on this light. “Swamiji says you should meditate on Kṛṣṇa,” said Keith.

After sunset, everyone gathered in the large room of the main building to watch a slide show. It was a loose collection, mostly of assorted slides of India and the Ananda Ashram. A record by a popular Indian sitarist was playing in the background. Some of the slides were of Viṣṇu temples, and when one slide passed by quickly, Prabhupāda asked, “Let me see that. Can you go back and let me see that temple again?” This happened several times when he recognized familiar temples in India. Later in the show, there were several slides of a girl, one of the members of Dr. Mishra’s āśrama, demonstrating Indian dance poses. As one of her pictures passed, an āśrama man joked, “Turn back and let me see that temple again.” The joke seemed at Swamiji’s expense and in poor taste. His followers didn’t laugh.

Then came Swamiji’s lecture. He sat up cross-legged on the couch in the largest room in the mansion. The room was filled with people – the Swami’s followers from the Lower East Side as well as the Ananda Ashram yogīs – sitting on the floor or standing along the walls and in the doorway. He began his talk by criticizing democracy. He said that because people are attached to sense gratification, they vote for a leader who will fulfill their own lust and greed – and that is their only criterion for picking a leader. He went on for forty-five minutes to explain about the importance of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, his reel-to-reel tape recorder moving silently.

Then he led a kīrtana that bridged all differences and brought out the best in everyone that night. Several nights before, in his apartment on Second Avenue, Prabhupāda had taught his followers how to dance. They had formed a line behind him while he demonstrated the simple step. Holding his arms above his head, he would first swing his left foot forward across the right foot, and then bring it back again in a sweeping motion. Then he would swing his right foot over the left and bring it back again. With his arms upraised, Prabhupāda would walk forward, swinging his body from side to side, left foot to right side, right foot to left side, in time with the one-two-three rhythm. He had shown them the step in regular time and in a slow, half-time rhythm. Keith had called it “the Swami step,” as if it were a new ballroom dance.

Prabhupāda’s followers began dancing, and soon the others joined them, moving around the room in a rhythmic circle of ecstasy, dancing, swaying, sometimes leaping and whirling. It was a joyous hour-long kīrtana, the Swami encouraging everyone to the fullest extent. A visitor to the āśrama happened to have his string bass with him, and he began expertly turning out his own swinging bass improvisations beneath the Swami’s melody, while another man played the tablās.

The Ananda Ashram members had been divided of late into two tense, standoffish groups. There was the elderly crowd, similar to the old ladies who had attended the Swami’s uptown lectures, and there was the young crowd, mostly hip couples. But in the kīrtana their rifts were forgotten and, as they discovered later, even healed. Whether they liked it or not, almost all of those present were induced to rise and dance.

Then it was late. The Swami took rest in the guest room, and his boys slept outside in their sleeping bags.

Howard: I awaken three or four times, and each time I am flat on my back looking up at the stars, which are always in different positions. My sense of time is confused. The sidereal shifts dizzy me. Then, just before morning, I dream. I dream of devotees clustered about a beautiful golden youth. To see him is to be captivated. His transcendental body radiates an absolute beauty unseen in the world. Stunned, I inquire, “Who is he?” “Don’t you know?” someone says. “That’s the Swami.” I look carefully, but see no resemblance. The youth appears around eighteen, straight out of Vaikuṇṭha [the spiritual world]. “If that’s Swamiji,” I wonder to myself, “why doesn’t he come to earth like that?” A voice somewhere inside me answers: “People would follow me for my beauty, not for my teachings.” And I awake, startled. The dream is clear in my mind – more like a vision than a dream. I feel strangely refreshed, bathed in some unknown balm. Again I see that the constellations have shifted and that the dimmer stars have faded into the encroaching dawn. I remember Swamiji telling me that although most dreams are simply functions of the mind, dreams of the spiritual master are of spiritual significance.

Keith also had a dream that night.

Keith: I saw Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra. Arjuna was inquiring from Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa was reciting the Bhagavad-gītā to him. Then that picture phased out, and the images changed. And there was Swamiji, and I was kneeling in front of him, and the same dialogue was going on. I had the understanding that now is the time, and Swamiji is presenting the same thing as Kṛṣṇa, and we are all in the position of Arjuna. The dream made it very clear that hearing from Swamiji was as good as hearing from Kṛṣṇa.

The sun rose over the mountains, streaking the morning sky above the lake with colors. Wally and Keith were walking around the grounds saying to Prabhupāda how beautiful it all was. “We are not so concerned with beautiful scenery,” said Prabhupāda. “We are concerned with the beautiful one who has made the beautiful scenery.”

Later … Prabhupāda sat next to Bruce in the Volkswagen returning to the city. The car went winding around on a ribbon of smooth black mountain road, with lush green forests close in and intermittent vistas of mountains and expansive sky. It was a rare occasion for Bruce to be driving Prabhupāda in a car, because none of the Swami’s boys had cars. They would always travel by bus or subway. It seemed fitting for the Swami to have a car to ride in, but this was only a little Volkswagen, and Bruce winced whenever they hit a bump and it jostled Prabhupāda. As they wound their way on through the mountains, Bruce recalled something he had read in a book by Aldous Huxley’s wife about the best places for meditation. One opinion had been that the best place to meditate was by a large body of water, because of the negative ions in the air, and the other opinion was that it was better to meditate in the mountains, because you are higher up and closer to God. “Is it better for spiritual realization to meditate in the mountains?” Bruce asked. Prabhupāda replied, “This is nonsense. There is no question of ‘better place.’ Are you thinking that God is up on some planet or something and you have to go up high? No. You can meditate anywhere. Just chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.”

After some time the drive became tiring for Prabhupāda, and he dozed, his head resting forward.

Bruce walked with Swamiji up to his apartment, opening the door for him, adjusting the window as he liked it, and preparing things in his room, as if he were the Swami’s personal servant. Prabhupāda settled back into his Second Avenue apartment, feeling pleased with the visit to Ananda Ashram. The kīrtana had been successful, and one of Dr. Mishra’s foremost students had commented that he was impressed by Prabhupāda’s followers: simply by chanting they seemed to be achieving an advanced level of yoga discipline, whereas “we have more difficulty with all our postures and breath control.”

The United States’ recently increased involvement in Vietnam was creating an increase of opposition to the war. On July 29, American planes had bombed North Vietnam’s two major population centers, Hanoi and Haiphong – an escalation which brought expressions of regret from several allied countries, including Canada, France, and Japan. United Nations Secretary General U Thant openly criticized America’s policy in Vietnam. Further opposition to the war ranged from the U.S. Senate down to newly formed pacifist groups, and dissenters held peace marches, sit-ins, and rallies in protest of the war and draft.

Religious protest was led by Pope Paul VI. And the World Council of Churches decried America’s involvement in Vietnam and called for a halt in the fighting as “the most effective step” toward negotiation. On August 6 (the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima) there were demonstrations in many major American cities, including a peace vigil at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

On August 31, there would be another two-week-long peace vigil before the United Nations General Assembly Building, and Mr. Larry Bogart had invited Prabhupāda and his followers to open the vigil of “praying for peace.” Larry Bogart, who worked at the United Nations Headquarters, had become friends with the Swami and had volunteered his help by arranging to print stationery for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The letterhead was designed by James Greene with a sketch of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, and Mr. Bogart’s name also appeared on the stationery at the head of the list of ISKCON trustees.

Prabhupāda accepted Mr. Bogart’s invitation to the peace vigil. Prabhupāda saw it as an opportunity to publicly chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, so he was glad to attend. He announced to his congregation that Monday the thirty-first, instead of the usual morning class at 6:30, everyone should meet at the United Nations Headquarters for a special kīrtana.

August 31
  Some met at the storefront and went by bus, carrying karatālas, a tambourine, and the Swami’s bongo. Swamiji rode with a few of his followers in a taxi. The typical dress of his followers consisted of well-worn sneakers, black pants or blue jeans, and T-shirts or button-down sport shirts. Traveling uptown in the early morning put the boys in a lighthearted spirit, and when they saw Swamiji at the U.N. in his flowing saffron robes they became inspired. Swamiji began the chanting, but right away the peace vigil organizers stepped in and asked him to stop. This was a “silent vigil,” they said, and it should have prayerful, nonviolent silence. The boys were crushed, but Swamiji accepted the restriction and began silently chanting on his beads.

A dignitary stood up before the assembly and made a short speech in which he mentioned Gandhi, and then he turned to Prabhupāda and indicated that he could now speak about peace. Standing erectly, the U.N. skyscraper looming behind him, Swamiji spoke in a soft voice. The world must accept that God is the proprietor of everything and the friend of everyone, he said. Only then can we have real peace. Mr. Bogart had scheduled the Swami for two hours of silent prayer. Prabhupāda had the devotees sit together and softly chant japa until their two scheduled hours were up. Then they left.

As Prabhupāda rode back downtown in the heavy morning traffic, he said New York reminded him of Calcutta. Amid the start-and-stop motion and noise of the traffic he explained, “We have nothing to do with peace vigils. We simply want to spread this chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa, that’s all. If people take to this chanting, peace will automatically come. Then they won’t have to artificially try for peace.”

September 1
  The New York Post ran a picture of Swamiji’s group at the United Nations Building. Steve brought the clipping in to Prabhupāda: “Swamiji, look. They have referred to you here as ‘Sami Krishna’!”

Prabhupāda: “‘Sami Krishna’? That’s all right.”

In the picture, some of the boys were sitting with their heads resting on their arms. “Where are you?” Prabhupāda asked. Steve pointed. “Oh, you chant like this, with your head down?”

Prabhupāda had participated in the peace vigil to oblige his contact, Mr. Bogart. Now Mr. Bogart was phoning to offer his appreciation and agreeing to visit the storefront. He wanted to help, and he would discuss how the Swami could work with the U.N. and how he could solicit help from important people for his movement of Indian culture and peace.

Prabhupāda regarded Mr. Bogart’s imminent visit as very important, and he wanted to cook for him personally and receive him in his apartment with the best hospitality. When the day arrived, Prabhupāda and Keith cooked together in the small kitchen for several hours, making the best Indian delicacies. Prabhupāda posted Stanley downstairs and told him not to allow anyone to come up while he was cooking the feast for Mr. Bogart. Stanley assented, blinking his eyes with his far-off “saintly” look.

Stanley stationed himself downstairs in the storefront. A few of the boys were there, and he told them, “You can’t go up to see the Swami – no one can.” About twelve noon, Larry Bogart arrived, pale, elderly, and well dressed, by Lower East Side standards. He said he wanted to see Swami Bhaktivedanta. “Sorry,” Stanley informed him, his boyish face trying to impress the stranger with the seriousness of the order, “the Swami is busy now, and he said no one can see him.” Mr. Bogart decided he would wait. There was no chair in the storefront, but Stanley brought him a folding chair. It was a hot day. Mr. Bogart looked at his watch several times. A half hour passed. Stanley sat chanting and sometimes staring off blankly. After an hour, Mr. Bogart asked if he could see the Swami now. Stanley assured him that he could not, and Mr. Bogart left in a huff.

Upstairs, Swamiji had become anxious, wondering why Mr. Bogart had not arrived. Finally, he sent Keith downstairs, and Stanley told him about the man whom he had turned away. “What?” Keith exploded. “But that was …”

Within moments, Swamiji heard what had happened. He became furious. He came down to the storefront: “You fool! You silly fool!” He turned and angrily rebuked everyone in the room, but mostly Stanley. No one had ever seen the Swami so angry. Then Swamiji walked away in disgust and returned to his apartment.

Stanley had been going off the deep end for some time, and now he became even more abstracted in his behavior. Stanley’s mother knew her son had been troubled for years, and she had therefore requested Prabhupāda to keep a very close watch on him. But now the boy deteriorated in his responsibilities and stopped cleaning the kitchen and storefront. He would stand alone looking at something. He was gloomy and sometimes spoke of suicide. And he stopped chanting regularly. The boys didn’t know what to do, but they thought perhaps he should be sent home to his mother.

One day, Stanley went up to see the Swami. He came in and sat down.

Prabhupāda: “Yes?”

Stanley: “May I have fifty dollars?”

Prabhupāda: “Why?”

Prabhupāda used to handle all the money himself, so when his boys needed something, even if it were only twenty-five cents for the bus, they had to see Swami. He was never wasteful. He was so frugal that whenever he received a letter, he would carefully tear the envelope apart and use the reverse side as writing paper. So he wanted to know why Stanley wanted fifty dollars. Stanley replied in a small voice, “I want to purchase some gasoline and set myself on fire.” Prabhupāda saw Chuck at the doorway and told him to call Bruce at once. Bruce quickly came up and sat with Prabhupāda and Stanley. Prabhupāda told Bruce – whom he had recently appointed to handle petty cash – to give Stanley fifty dollars, and he had Stanley repeat why he wanted the money.

“But Swamiji,” Bruce protested, “we don’t have that much money.”

“There, you see, Stanley,” Prabhupāda spoke very calmly. “Bruce says we don’t have the money.” Then they phoned Stanley’s mother. Later Prabhupāda said that because Stanley had asked for fifty dollars for gasoline, which cost only thirty-five cents, he could therefore understand Stanley was crazy.

Keith was cooking lunch in the kitchen as usual, but today Swamiji was standing by the kitchen stove, watching his pupil. Keith paused and looked up from his cooking: “Swamiji, could I become your disciple?”

“Yes,” Prabhupāda replied. “Why not? Your name will be Kṛṣṇa dāsa.”

This simple exchange was the first request for discipleship and Prabhupāda’s first granting of initiation. But there was more to it than that. Prabhupāda announced that he would soon hold an initiation. “What’s initiation, Swamiji?” one of the boys asked, and Prabhupāda replied, “I will tell you later.”

First they had to have beads. Keith went to Tandy’s Leather Company and bought half-inch wooden beads and cord to string them on. It was much better, Swamiji said, to count on beads while chanting – a strand of 108 beads, to be exact. This employed the sense of touch, and like the Vaiṣṇavas of India one could count how many times one chanted the mantra. Some devotees in India had a string of more than a thousand beads, he had said, and they would chant through them again and again. He taught the boys how to tie a double knot between each of the 108 beads. The number 108 had a special significance: there were 108 Upaniṣads, as well as 108 principal gopīs, the chief devotees of Lord Kṛṣṇa.

The initiates would be taking vows, he said, and one vow would be to chant a prescribed number of rounds on the beads each day. About a dozen of Swamiji’s boys were eligible, but there was no strict system for their selection: if they wanted to, they could do it.

Steve: Although I was already doing whatever Swamiji recommended, I sensed that initiation was a heavy commitment. And with my last strong impulses to remain completely independent, I hesitated to take initiation.

Prabhupāda’s friends saw the initiation in different ways. Some saw it as very serious, and some took it to be like a party or a happening. While stringing their beads in the courtyard, Wally and Howard talked a few days before the ceremony.

Wally: It’s just a formality. You accept Swamiji as your spiritual master.

Howard: What does that entail?

Wally: Nobody’s very sure. In India it’s a standard practice. Don’t you think you want to take him as a spiritual master?

Howard: I don’t know. He would seem to be a good spiritual master – whatever that is. I mean, I like him and his teachings a lot, so I guess in a way he’s already my spiritual master. I just don’t understand how it would change the situation.

Wally: Neither do I. I guess it doesn’t. It’s just a formality.

September 8
  Janmāṣṭamī day, the appearance day of Lord Kṛṣṇa. One year before, Prabhupāda had observed Kṛṣṇa’s birthday at sea aboard the Jaladuta, just out of Colombo. Now, exactly one year later, he had a small crew of Hare Kṛṣṇa chanters. He would gather them all together, have them observe a day of chanting, reading scripture, fasting, and feasting – and the next day would be initiation.

At six o’clock, Prabhupāda came down and was about to give his morning class as usual, when one of the boys asked if he would read from his own manuscript. Prabhupāda appeared shy, yet he did not hide his pleasure at having been asked to read his own Bhagavad-gītā commentary. Usually he would read a verse from Dr. Radhakrishnan’s Oxford edition of the Gītā. Although the commentary presented impersonalist philosophy, the translations, Prabhupāda said, were ninety-percent accurate. But this morning he sent Roy up to fetch his manuscript, and for an hour he read from its typewritten pages.

For observing Janmāṣṭamī there were special rules: there should be no eating, and the day was to be spent chanting, reading, and discussing Kṛṣṇa consciousness. If anyone became too weak, he said, there was fruit in the kitchen. But better that they fast until the feast at midnight, just like the devotees in India. He said that in India, millions of people – Hindus, Muslims, or whatever – observed the birthday of Lord Kṛṣṇa. And in every temple there were festivities and celebrations of the pastimes of Kṛṣṇa.

“And now,” he said at length, “I will tell you what is meant by initiation. Initiation means that the spiritual master accepts the student and agrees to take charge, and the student accepts the spiritual master and agrees to worship him as God.” He paused. No one spoke. “Any questions?” And when there were none, he got up and walked out.

The devotees were stunned. What had they just heard him say? For weeks he had stressed that when anyone claims to be God he should be considered a dog.

“My mind’s just been blown,” said Wally.

“Everybody’s mind is blown,” said Howard. “Swamiji just dropped a bomb.”

They thought of Keith. He was wise. Consult Keith. But Keith was in the hospital. Talking among themselves, they became more and more confused. Swamiji’s remark had confounded their judgment. Finally, Wally decided to go to the hospital to see Keith.

Keith listened to the whole story: how Swamiji had told them to fast and how he had read from his manuscript and how he had said he would explain initiation and how everybody had leaned forward, all ears … and Swamiji had dropped a bomb: “The student accepts the spiritual master and agrees to worship him as God.” “Any questions?” Swamiji had asked softly. And then he had walked out. “I don’t know if I want to be initiated now,” Wally confessed. “We have to worship him as God.”

“Well, you’re already doing that by accepting whatever he tells you,” Keith replied, and he advised that they talk it over with Swamiji … before the initiation. So Wally went back to the temple and consulted Howard, and together they went up to Swamiji’s apartment. “Does what you told us this morning,” Howard asked, “mean we are supposed to accept the spiritual master to be God?”

“That means he is due the same respect as God, being God’s representative,” Prabhupāda replied, calmly.

“Then he is not God?”

“No,” Prabhupāda said, “God is God. The spiritual master is His representative. Therefore, he is as good as God because he can deliver God to the sincere disciple. Is that clear?” It was.

It was a mental and physical strain to go all day without eating. Jan was restless. She complained that she couldn’t possibly stay any longer but had to go take care of her cat. Prabhupāda tried to overrule her, but she left anyway.

Most of the prospective initiates spent several hours that day stringing their shiny red wooden beads. Having tied one end of the string to a window bar or a radiator, they would slide one bead at a time up the string and knot it tightly, chanting one mantra of Hare Kṛṣṇa for each bead. It was devotional service – chanting and stringing your beads for initiation. Every time they knotted another bead it seemed like a momentous event. Prabhupāda said that devotees in India chanted at least sixty-four rounds on beads a day. Saying the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra once on each of the 108 beads constituted one round. His spiritual master had said that anyone who didn’t chant sixty-four rounds a day was fallen. At first some of the boys thought that they would also have to chant sixty-four rounds, and they became perplexed: that would take all day! How could you go to a job if you had to chant sixty-four rounds? How could anyone chant sixty-four rounds? Then someone said Swamiji had told him that thirty-two rounds a day would be a sufficient minimum for the West. Wally said he had heard Swamiji say twenty-five – but even that seemed impossible. Then Prabhupāda offered the rock-bottom minimum: sixteen rounds a day, without fail. Whoever got initiated would have to promise.

The bead-stringing, chanting, reading, and dozing went on until eleven at night, when everyone was invited up to Swamiji’s room. As they filed through the courtyard, they sensed an unusual calm in the atmosphere, and Houston Street, just over the wall, was quiet. There was no moon.

As his followers sat on the floor, contentedly eating prasādam from paper plates, Swamiji sat among them, telling stories about the birth of Lord Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa had appeared on this evening five thousand years ago. He was born the son of Vasudeva and Devakī in the prison of King Kaṁsa at midnight, and His father, Vasudeva, immediately took Him to Vṛndāvana, where He was raised as the son of Nanda Mahārāja, a cowherd man.

Prabhupāda also spoke of the necessity of purification for spiritual advancement. “It is not enough merely to chant holy words,” he said. “One must be pure inside and out. Chanting in purity brings spiritual advancement. The living entity becomes impure because he wants to enjoy material pleasure. But the impure can become pure by following Kṛṣṇa, by doing all works for Kṛṣṇa. Beginners in Kṛṣṇa consciousness have a tendency to relax their efforts in a short time, but to advance spiritually you must resist this temptation and continually increase your efforts and devotion.”

Michael Grant: I first heard about the initiation just one day before it was to take place. I had been busy with my music and hadn’t been attending. I was walking down Second Avenue with one of the prospective initiates, and he mentioned to me that there was going to be something called an initiation ceremony. I asked what it was about, and he said, “All I know is it means that you accept the spiritual master as God.” This was a big surprise to me, and I hardly knew how to take it. But I didn’t take it completely seriously, and the way it was mentioned to me in such an offhand way made it seem not very important. He asked me very casually whether I was going to be involved, and I, also being very casual about it, said, “Well, I think I will. Why not? I’ll give it a try.”

Jan didn’t think she would make an obedient disciple, and initiation sounded frightening. She liked the Swami, especially cooking with him. But it was Mike who convinced her – he was going, so she should come along with him.

Carl Yeargens knew something about initiation from his readings, and he, more than the others, knew what a serious commitment it was. He was surprised to hear that Swamiji was offering initiation, and he was cautious about entering into it. He knew that initiation meant no illicit sex, intoxication, or meat-eating, and an initiated disciple would have new responsibilities for spreading the teachings to others. Carl was already feeling less involved since the Swami had moved to Second Avenue, but he decided to attend the initiation anyway.

Bill Epstein had never professed to be a serious disciple. Holding initiation was just another part of the Swami’s scene, and you were free to take it seriously or not. He figured it was all right to take initiation, even if you weren’t serious. He would try it.

Carol Bekar was surprised to hear that some people would be taking initiation even though they had no intentions of giving up their bad habits. She had stopped coming around regularly ever since the Swami had moved, and she felt no desire to ask for initiation. The Swami probably wouldn’t initiate women anyway, she figured.

Robert Nelson hadn’t forgotten the Swami and always liked to help whenever he could. But except for an occasional friendly visit, he had stopped coming. He mostly stayed to himself. He still lived uptown and wasn’t into the Lower East Side scene.

James Greene thought he wasn’t pure enough to be initiated: “Who am I to be initiated?” But the Swami had asked him to bring something over to the storefront. “I came, and it was just understood that I was supposed to be initiated. So, I thought, why not?”

Stanley had been chanting regularly again and had come out of his crazy mood. He was sticking with the Swami and his followers. He asked his mother if he could be initiated, and she said it would be all right.

Steve wanted more time to think about it.

Keith was in the hospital.

Bruce had only been attending for a week or two, and it was too soon.

Chuck was on a week’s vacation from the regulated spiritual life at the temple, so he didn’t know about the initiation.

No one was asked to shave his head or even cut his hair or change his dress. No one offered Prabhupāda the traditional guru-dakṣiṇā, the donation a disciple is supposed to offer as a gesture of his great obligation to his master. Hardly anyone even relieved him of his chores, so Swamiji himself had to do most of the cooking and other preparations for the initiation. He was perfectly aware of the mentality of his boys, and he didn’t try to force anything on anyone. Some of the initiates didn’t know until after the initiation, when they had inquired, that the four rules – no meat-eating, no illicit sex, no intoxication, and no gambling – were mandatory for all disciples. Prabhupāda’s reply then was, “I am very glad that you are finally asking me that.”

It was to be a live Vedic sacrifice, with a ceremonial fire right there in the front room of Swamiji’s apartment. In the center of the room was the sacrificial arena, a platform of bricks, four inches high and two feet square, covered with a mound of dirt. The dirt was from the courtyard and the bricks were from a nearby gutted building. Around the mound were eleven bananas, clarified butter, sesame seeds, whole barley grains, five colors of powdered dyes, and a supply of kindling. The eleven initiates took up most of the remaining space in the front room as they sat on the floor knee to knee around the sacrificial arena. The guests in the hallway peered curiously through the open door. For everyone except the Swami, this was all new and strange, and every step of the ceremony took place under his direction. When some of the boys had made a mess of trying to apply the Vaiṣṇava tilaka to their foreheads, Prabhupāda had patiently guided his finger up their foreheads, making a neat, narrow “V.”

He sat before the mound of earth, looking out at his congregation. They appeared not much different from any other group of young hippies from the Lower East Side who might have assembled at any number of happenings – spiritual, cultural, musical, or whatever. Some were just checking out a new scene. Some were deeply devoted to the Swami. But everyone was curious. He had requested them to chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra softly throughout the ceremony, and the chanting had now become a continual drone, accompanying his mysterious movements as head priest of the Vedic rite.

He began by lighting a dozen sticks of incense. Then he performed purification with water. Taking a spoon in his left hand, he put three drops of water from a goblet into his right and sipped the water. He repeated the procedure three times. The fourth time he did not sip but flicked the water onto the floor behind him. He then passed the spoon and goblet around for the initiates, who tried to copy what they had seen. When some of them placed the water in the wrong hand or sipped in the wrong way, Swamiji patiently corrected them.

“Now,” he said, “repeat after me.” And he had them repeat, one word at a time, a Vedic mantra of purification: