CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ROOM 307 WAS never meant for use as a residence or āśrama or lecture hall. It was only a small, narrow office without furniture or a telephone. Its door held a large pane of frosted glass, the kind common in old offices; above the door was a glass-paned transom. Prabhupāda placed his blankets on the floor before his metal footlocker, which now became a makeshift desk where he wrote. He slept on the floor. There were no facilities here for cooking or even for bathing, so daily he had to walk to Dr. Mishra’s apartment.

When he had lived in room 501 at Dr. Mishra’s yoga-āśrama, Dr. Mishra had financed his needs. But now Prabhupāda was on his own, and whatever he could raise by selling his books, he would have to use for his daily maintenance and for the monthly rent of seventy-two dollars. He noted that for a little powdered chili the West End Superette charged twenty-five cents, ten times what he would have paid in India. He had no guaranteed income, his expenses had increased, and his physical comforts had reduced. But at least he had his own place. Now he was free to preach as he liked.

He had come to America to speak about Kṛṣṇa, and even from the beginning he had found the opportunity to do so, whether at an informal get-together in the Agarwals’ living room or before a formal gathering at the Butler Lions Club, Dr. Norman Brown’s Sanskrit class, Dr. Mishra’s Yoga Society, or the Tagore Society. But he did not attach much importance to lecturing where the people who gathered would hear him only once. This was the main reason he wanted his own building in New York: so that people could come regularly, chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, take prasādam in his company, and hear him speak from Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

Moving out of the yoga studio into the small office downstairs gave Prabhupāda what he was looking for – his own place – but not even euphemistically could that place be called a temple. His name was on the door; anyone seeking him there could find him. But who would come there? By its opulence and beauty, a temple was supposed to attract people to Kṛṣṇa. But room 307 was just the opposite: it was bare poverty. Even a person interested in spiritual topics would find it uncomfortable to sit on the rugless floor of a room shaped like a narrow railroad car.

One of Dr. Mishra’s students had donated a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and Prabhupāda recorded some of his solitary bhajanas, which he sang to his own accompaniment of hand cymbals. He also recorded a long philosophical essay, Introduction to Gītopaniṣad. “Even if no one attends,” Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī had told him, “you can go on chanting to the four walls.” But since he was now free to speak his message in the new situation God had provided, he decided to lecture three evenings a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) to whoever would come.

His first audiences consisted mainly of people who had heard about him or met him at Dr. Mishra’s yoga studio. And despite the poverty of his room, the meetings became a source of new life for him.

March 18
  He expressed his optimism in a letter to Sumati Morarji:

Outside the closed windows of room 307, the late winter night has fallen. Prabhupāda’s words are punctuated with the muted sounds of car horns and occasional sirens from the street, and sometimes by the startling chords of a lonely foghorn on the Hudson. Although bare, the room is warm. Prabhupāda is speaking on the Second Chapter of Bhagavad-gītā.

Now Arjuna is perplexed. He is perplexed about whether to fight or not to fight. After seeing in front of him his relatives with whom he was to fight, he was perplexed. And there was some argument with Kṛṣṇa.

Now here is a point: Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. …

Prabhupāda’s voice is earnest, persuading. Sometimes his speech becomes high-pitched and breaks with urgency. His cultured British diction bears a heavy Bengali accent.

Suddenly he pauses in his lecture and addresses someone in the room.

Prabhupāda: What is that?

Man: What?

Prabhupāda: What is this book?

Man: Well, this is a translation of the Bhagavad-gītā.

Prabhupāda is obviously displeased that while he is speaking someone is looking through a book. This is hardly like the respect offered to learned speakers described in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

Prabhupāda: Well, no, you can hear me.

Man: I am hearing.

Prabhupāda: Yes, don’t turn your attention. Just hear me.

He is taking the role of a teacher correcting his student. Of course, there is no compelling reason why any of his casual guests should feel obliged to obey him. He simply begs for their attention, and yet demands it – “Just hear me” – as he attempts to convince them of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

You have heard that one must accept the spiritual master after careful examination, just as one selects a bride or a bridegroom after careful examination. In India they are very careful. Because the marriage of boys and girls takes place under the guidance of the parents, so the parents very carefully see to it. Similarly, one has to accept the spiritual master. It is necessary. According to Vedic injunctions, everyone should have a spiritual master. Perhaps you have seen a sacred thread. We have got sacred thread. Mr. Cohen? You have seen? Sacred thread.

Prabhupāda pauses. His audience has not noted the thin, white cords he wears beneath his shirt across the upper part of his body. For thousands of years, brāhmaṇas in India have worn such threads, placed diagonally across the torso, looped over the left shoulder and down to the right waist. A brāhmaṇa holds his thread in his right hand while chanting the sacred Gāyatrī mantra three times a day. But this is all strange indeed to Americans. Prabhupāda himself is exotic to them. His gray cādara wrapped around his shoulders, he sits cross-legged and erect on a thin pillow, and they sit facing him on the other side of his trunk, which now serves as a desk and lectern. They are close together in the narrowness of the room. He is frail and small and foreign to them, yet somehow he is completely assured, in a way that has nothing to do with being a foreigner in New York. Visitors sense his strong presence. Two white lines of clay run neatly vertical on his forehead. His pale peach clothes are gathered in loose folds around his body. He pauses only a few seconds to inquire whether they have seen a sacred thread.

That sacred thread is a sign that a person has a spiritual master. Here, of course, there is no such distinction, but according to the Hindu system a married girl also has some sign so that people can understand that this girl is married. She wears a red mark so that others may know that she is married. And according to the division in the hair … what is this line called?

Man: Part.

Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Man: Part.

Prabhupāda: What is the spelling?

Man: Part.

Prabhupāda: Part. This parting also has some meaning. (They know English, and he knows the Gītā. But he knows a good deal of English, whereas they know practically nothing of the Gītā, which he has to spoon-feed to them. But occasionally he asks their help in English vocabulary.) When the part is in the middle, then the girl has her husband, and she is coming from a respectable family. And if the part is here, then she is a prostitute. (With a slight gesture he raises his hand toward, but never really reaching, his head. Yet somehow the half-gesture clearly indicates a part on the side of the head.) And then again when a girl is well dressed, it should be understood that she has her husband at home. And when she is not well dressed, it is to be understood that her husband is away from home. You see? And a widow’s dress … There are so many symptoms. So, similarly, the sacred thread is a sign that a person has accepted a spiritual master, just as the red mark symbolizes that a girl has a husband.

Although his audience may be momentarily enamored by what appears to be a description of Indian social customs, a careful listener can grasp the greater context of Prabhupāda’s speech: Everyone must accept a spiritual master. It’s a heavy topic for a casual audience. What is the need of taking a spiritual master? Isn’t this just for India? But he says, “Everyone should have a spiritual master.” What is a spiritual master anyway? Maybe he means that accepting a spiritual master is just another cultural item from Hinduism, like the thread, or the part in a woman’s hair, or the widow’s dress. The audience can easily regard his discussion as a kind of cultural exposition, just as one comfortably watches a film about the living habits of people in a foreign land although one has no intention of adopting these habits as one’s own. The Swami is wearing one of those threads on his body, but that’s for Hindus, and it doesn’t mean that Americans should wear them. But these Hindu beliefs are interesting.

Actually, Prabhupāda has no motive but to present the Absolute Truth as he has heard it in disciplic succession. But if anyone in that railroad-car-shaped room were to ask himself, “Should I surrender to a spiritual master?” he would be confronted by the existential presence of a genuine guru. One is free to regard his talk as one likes.

In every step of one’s life, the spiritual master guides. Now, to give such guidance a spiritual master should also be a very perfect man. Otherwise how can he guide? Now, here Arjuna knows that Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the perfect person. So therefore he is accepting Him – śiṣyas te ’haṁ śādhi māṁ tvāṁ prapannam.

Sanskrit! No one knows a word of it! But there is never any question for Śrīla Prabhupāda – even if they don’t understand it, the transcendental sound of śāstra will purify them. It is his authority, and he cannot omit it. And even at first impression, it presents an air of scholarly authority – the original, though foreign, words of the sages.

“I am just surrendering unto You, and You accept me as Your disciple,” Arjuna says. Friendly talks cannot make a solution to perplexity. Friendly talks may be going on for years together, but no solution. So here, Arjuna accepts Kṛṣṇa as the spiritual master. This means that whatever Kṛṣṇa will dictate, he has to accept. One cannot deny the order of the spiritual master. Therefore, one has to select a spiritual master by whose orders one will not commit a mistake.

Suppose you accept the wrong person as spiritual master and he guides you wrongly. Then your whole life is spoiled. So one has to accept a spiritual master whose guidance will make one’s life perfect. That is the relationship between spiritual master and disciple. It is not a formality. It is a great responsibility, both for the disciple and for the spiritual master. And … Yes?

Student: But if the disciple is in ignorance before …

Prabhupāda: Yes. (Prabhupāda acknowledges a serious question. It is for answering questions like this – from “disciples in ignorance” – that he has left retirement in India and come to America.)

Student: … how does he know which master to choose? – because he doesn’t have the knowledge to make a wise decision.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So the first thing is that one should be searching after a spiritual master, just as you search after some school. You must at least have some preliminary knowledge of what a school is. You can’t search for a school and go to a cloth shop. If you are so ignorant that you do not know what is a school and what is a cloth shop, then it is very difficult for you. You must know at least what a school is. So that knowledge is like this:

According to this verse, the spiritual master is required for a person who is inquisitive about transcendental knowledge. There’s another verse in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam: tasmād guruṁ prapadyeta jijñāsuḥ śreya uttamam. “One should search after a spiritual master if one is inquisitive about transcendental subject matters.” Unless one is at least conversant with preliminary knowledge of transcendental matters, how can he inquire from the spiritual master?

His questioner seems satisfied. The lecture is not a prepared speech on a specific subject. Though grave and thorough in scholarship, it ranges over several philosophical points. Yet he never pauses, groping for words. He knows exactly what he wants to say, and it is only a question of how much his audience can take.

But sometimes his mood is light, and he commiserates with his fellow New Yorkers, chuckling about the difficulties they share: “Suppose there is a heavy snowfall, the whole New York City is flooded with snow, and you are all put into inconvenience. That is a sort of suffering, but you have no control over it.” Sometimes he praises Dr. Mishra’s students for having learned so nicely from their teacher: “Now, what Dr. Mishra is teaching is very nice. He is teaching that first of all you must know, ‘Who am I?’ That is very good, but that ‘Who am I?’ can be known from Bhagavad-gītā also – ‘I am not this body.’ ” And sometimes a guest suddenly speaks out with an irrelevant question, and the Swami patiently tries to consider it.

Yet behind his tolerance, Prabhupāda’s mood is always one of urgency. Sometimes he talks quickly and one senses his desire to establish Kṛṣṇa consciousness in the West as soon as possible. He has no followers, only a few books, no temples, and he openly states that he is racing against time: “I am an old man. I could leave at any time.” So behind the formal delivery of Kṛṣṇa conscious philosophy is an anxiety, an almost desperate desire to convince at least one soul to take up Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Immediately.

Now the constrained situations of Butler and the Ananda Ashram and Dr. Mishra are behind him. He is free to speak about the Absolute Truth in full. Throughout his life he has prepared for this, yet he is still discovering the best ways to present Kṛṣṇa, exploring his Western audience, testing their reactions.

We should always remember that He is God. He is all-powerful. In strength, no one could conquer Him. In beauty – as far as beauty is concerned, when He was on the battlefield … Have any of you seen a picture of Kṛṣṇa? Have you seen? Have any of you ever seen Kṛṣṇa? Oh. … No?

Prabhupāda’s voice fades as he pauses, looking out at his audience. No one has ever seen Kṛṣṇa. None of them have the slightest previous knowledge of Lord Kṛṣṇa. In India, hundreds of millions worship Lord Kṛṣṇa daily as the eternal form of all beauty and truth and view His graceful form in sculpture, painting, and dance. His philosophical teachings in Bhagavad-gītā are all-famous, and Prabhupāda is His intimate emissary. Yet the ladies and gentlemen in room 307 look back at the Swami blankly.

One should go to a sacred place in order to find some intelligent scholar in spiritual knowledge living there and make association with him. Just like I … my residence is at Vṛndāvana. So at Vṛndāvana there are many big scholars and saintly persons living. So one should go to such holy places, not simply to take bath in the water. One must be intelligent enough to find some spiritually advanced man living there and take instruction from him and be benefited by that. If a man has attachment for going to a place of pilgrimage to take a bath but has no attraction for hearing from learned people there, he is considered to be an ass. [He laughs.] Sa eva go-kharaḥ. Go means “cow,” and khara means “ass.” So the whole civilization is moving like a civilization of cows and asses. Everyone is identifying with the body. … Yes, you want to speak?

Woman: In the places known as secret places –

Prabhupāda: Sacred. Yes.

Woman: Is it “sacred” places?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Woman: Isn’t it also a fact that there is more magnetism because of the meeting of saints and more advanced people?

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes, certainly. Certainly. Therefore the place itself has got some magnetism.

Woman: Yes, and when –

Prabhupāda: Just like at Vṛndāvana – that is practical. Here I am now sitting in New York, the world’s greatest city, such a magnificent city, but my heart is always hankering after that Vṛndāvana.

Woman: Yes. (Laughs.)

Prabhupāda: Yes. I am not happy here.

Woman: Yes, I know.

Prabhupāda: I shall be very happy to return to my Vṛndāvana, that sacred place. But then, “Why are you here?” Now, because it is my duty. I have brought some message for you people. Because I have been ordered by my superior, my spiritual master: “Whatever you have learned you should go to the Western countries, and you must distribute this knowledge.” So in spite of all my difficulties, all my inconveniences, I am here. Because I am obligated by duty. If I go and sit down in Vṛndāvana, that will be good for my personal conveniences – I shall be very comfortable there, and I will have no anxiety, nothing of the sort. But I have taken all the risk in this old age because I am duty-bound. I am duty-bound. So I have to execute my duty, despite all my inconveniences.

An outsider opens the door and hesitantly glances inside.

Prabhupāda (stopping his lecture): Yes, yes, come in. You can come here.

Robert Nelson was like a slow, simple country boy with a homespun manner, even though he had grown up in New York City. He was twenty years old. He wasn’t part of the growing hippie movement, he didn’t take marijuana or other drugs, and he didn’t socialize much. He was a loner. He had gotten some technical education at Staten Island Community College and had tried his hand at the record manufacturing business, but without much success. He was interested in God and would attend various spiritual meetings around the city. So one night he wandered into the Yoga Society to hear Dr. Mishra’s lecture, and there he saw Prabhupāda for the first time.

Robert: Swami was sitting cross-legged on a bench. There was a meeting, and Dr. Mishra was standing up before a group of people – there were about fifty people coming there – and he talked on “I Am Consciousness.” Dr. Mishra talked and then gave Swami a grand introduction with a big smile. “Swamiji is here,” he said. And he swings around and waves his hand for a big introduction. It was beautiful. This was after Dr. Mishra spoke for about an hour. The Swami didn’t speak. He sang a song.

Afterward, I went up to him. He had a big smile, and he said that he likes young people to take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He was very serious about it. He wanted all young people. So I thought that was very nice. It made sense. So I wanted to help.

We stood there talking for about an hour. Mishra had a library in the back, and we looked at certain books – Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa, chariots, and things. And then we walked around. We looked at some of the pictures of swamis on the wall. By that time it was getting very late, and Prabhupāda said come back the next day at ten to his office downstairs.

The next day, when Robert Nelson went to room 307, Prabhupāda invited him in. The room was clearly not intended to serve as a living quarters – there was no toilet, shower, chair, bed, or telephone. The walls were painted “a dark, dismal color.” Prabhupāda showed Robert the three-volume set of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, which Robert purchased for $16.50. Then Prabhupāda handed him a small piece of paper with the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra printed on it.

Robert: While Swamiji was handing it to me, he had this big smile on his face like he was handing me the world.

We spent the whole day together. At one point he said, “We are going to take a sleep.” So he lay down there by his little desk, and so I said, “I am tired too.” So I lay down at the other end of the room, and we rested. I just lay on the floor. It was the only place to do it. But he didn’t rest that long – an hour and a half, I think – and we spent the rest of the day together. He was talking about Lord Caitanya and the Lord’s pastimes, and he showed me a small picture of Lord Caitanya. Then he started talking about the devotees of Lord Caitanya – Nityānanda and Advaita. He had a picture of the five of them and a picture of his spiritual master. He said some things in Sanskrit, and then he translated. It wasn’t much of a room, though. You’d really be disappointed if you saw it.

Robert Nelson couldn’t give Prabhupāda the kind of assistance he needed. Lord Caitanya states that a person has at his command four assets – his life, money, intelligence, and words – at least one of which he should give to the service of God. Robert Nelson did not seem able to give his whole life to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and as for money, he had very little. His intelligence was also limited, and he spoke unimpressively, nor did he have a wide range of friends or contacts among whom to speak. But he was affectionate toward the Swami, and out of the eight million people in the city, he was practically the only one who showed personal interest in him and offered to help.

From his experience in the record business, Mr. Robert, as Swamiji called him, developed a scheme to produce a record of Swamiji’s singing. People were always putting out albums with almost anything on them, he explained, and they would always make money, or at least break even. So it would be almost impossible to lose money. It was a way he thought he could help make the Swami known, and he tried to convince Prabhupāda of the idea. And Prabhupāda didn’t discourage Mr. Robert, who seemed eager to render this service.

Robert: Me and the Swami went around to this record company on Forty-sixth Street. We went there, and I started talking, and the man was all business. He was all business and mean – they go together. So we went in there with a tape, and we tried talking to the man. Swami was talking, but the man said he couldn’t put the tape out. I think he listened to the tape, but he wouldn’t put it out. So we felt discouraged. But he didn’t say much about it.

Prabhupāda had been in business in India, and he wasn’t about to think that he could suddenly take up business in a foreign country on the advice of a young boy in New York City. Besides, he had come not to do business but to preach. Robert, however, was enthusiastically offering service. Perhaps he wouldn’t become a regular brahmacārī student, but he had a desire to serve Kṛṣṇa. For Prabhupāda to refuse him would be perhaps to turn away an interested Western young person. Prabhupāda had come to speak about Kṛṣṇa, to present the chanting, and if Mr. Robert wanted to help by arranging for an American record album, then that was welcome.

Mr. Robert and the Swami made an odd combination. Prabhupāda was elderly and dignified, a deep scholar of the Bhāgavatam and the Sanskrit language, whereas Robert Nelson was artless, even in Western culture, and inept in worldly ways. Together they would walk – the Swami wearing his winter coat (with its imitation fur collar), his Indian dhotī, and white pointed shoes; Mr. Robert wearing old khaki pants and an old coat. Prabhupāda walked with rapid, determined strides, outpacing the lumbering, rambling, heavyset boy who had befriended him.

Mr. Robert was supposed to help Prabhupāda in making presentations to businessmen and real estate men, yet he himself was hardly a slick fellow. He was innocent.

Robert: Once we went over to this big office building on Forty-second Street, and we went in there. The rent was thousands of dollars for a whole floor. So I was standing there talking to the man, but I didn’t understand how all this money would come. The Swami wanted a big place, and I didn’t know what to tell the man.

Prabhupāda wanted a big place, and a big place meant a big price. He had no money, and Robert Nelson had only his unemployment checks. Still, Prabhupāda was interested. If he were to find a building, that would be a great step in his mission. And this was also another way of engaging Mr. Robert. Besides, Kṛṣṇa might do anything, give anything, or work in any way – ordinary or miraculous. So Prabhupāda had his reasoning, and Mr. Robert had his.

Robert: The building was between Sixth and Broadway on Forty-second Street. Some place to open Kṛṣṇa’s temple! We went in and up to the second floor and saw the renting agent, and then we left. I think it was five thousand a month or ten thousand a month. We got to a certain point, and the money was too much. And then we left. When he brought up the prices, I figured we had better not. We had to stop.

On another occasion, Robert Nelson took Prabhupāda by bus to the Hotel Columbia, at 70 West Forty-sixth Street. The hotel had a suite that Prabhupāda looked at for possible use as a temple, but again it was very expensive. And there was no money.

Sometimes Robert would make purchases for Prabhupāda with the money from his unemployment checks. Once he bought orange-colored T-shirts. Once he went to Woolworth’s and bought kitchen pots and pans and some picture frames for Prabhupāda’s pictures of Lord Caitanya and his spiritual master.

Robert: One time I wanted to know how to make capātī cakes, so Swami says, “A hundred dollars, please, for the recipe. A hundred dollars please.” So I went and got some money, but I couldn’t get a hundred dollars. But he showed me anyway. He taught me to cook and would always repeat, “Wash hands, wash hands,” and “You should only eat with your right hand.”

And whoever met the Swami was almost always impressed. They would start smiling back to him, and sometimes they would say funny things to each other that were nice. The Swami’s English was very technical always. I mean, he had a big vocabulary. But sometimes people had a little trouble understanding him, and you had to help sometimes.

The Paradox, at 64 East Seventh Street on the Lower East Side, was a restaurant dedicated to the philosophy of Georges Ohsawa and the macrobiotic diet. It was a storefront below street level with small dining tables placed around the candlelit room. The food was inexpensive and well reputed. Tea was served free, as much as you liked. More than just a restaurant, the Paradox was a center for spiritual and cultural interests, a meeting place reminiscent of the cafés of Greenwich Village or Paris in the 1920s. A person could spend the whole day at the Paradox without buying anything, and no one would complain. The crowd at the Paradox was a mystical congregation, interested in teachings from the East. When news of the new swami uptown at Dr. Mishra’s reached the Paradox, the word spread quickly.

Harvey Cohen and Bill Epstein were friends. Harvey was a freelance artist, and Bill worked at the Paradox. After Harvey had been to Prabhupāda’s place at Dr. Mishra’s yoga studio a few times, he came by the Paradox and began to describe all about the new swami to Bill and other friends.

Bill: I was working at the Paradox one night, when Harvey came to me and said, “I went to visit Mishra, and there’s a new swami there, and he’s really fantastic!” Well, I was involved in macrobiotics and Buddhism, so at first I couldn’t care less. But Harvey was a winning and warm personality, and he seemed interested in this. He said, “Why don’t you come uptown? I would like you to see this.”

So I went to one of the lectures on Seventy-second Street. I walked in there, and I could feel a certain presence from the Swami. He had a certain very concentrated, intense appearance. He looked pale and kind of weak. I guess he had just come here and he had been through a lot of things. He was sitting there chanting on his beads, which he carried in a little bead bag. One of Dr. Mishra’s students was talking, and he finally got around to introducing the Swami. He said, “We are the moons to the Swami’s sun.” He introduced him in that way. The Swami got up and talked. I didn’t know what to think about it. At that time, the only steps I had taken in regard to Indian teaching were through Ramakrishna, but this was the first time, to my knowledge, that bhakti religion had come to America.

Bill Epstein, quite in contrast to Robert Nelson, was a dashing, romantic person, with long, wavy dark hair and a beard. He was goodlooking and effervescent and took upon himself a role of informing people at the restaurant of the city’s spiritual news. Once he became interested in the new swami, he made the Swami an ongoing topic of conversation at the restaurant.

Bill: I went in the back, and I asked Richard, the manager, “I’m going to take some food to the Swami. You don’t mind, do you?” He said, “No. Take anything you want.” So I took some brown rice and other stuff, and I brought it up there.

I went upstairs, and I knocked on the door, and there was no answer. I knocked again, and I saw that the light was on – because it had a glass panel – and finally he answered. I was really scared, because I had never really accepted any teacher. He said, “Come in! Come in! Sit down.” We started talking, and he said to me, “The first thing that people do when they meet is to show each other love. They exchange names, they exchange something to eat.” So he gave me a slice of apple, and he showed me the tape recorder he had, probably for recording his chants. Then he said, “Have you ever chanted?” I said, “No, I haven’t chanted before.” So he played a chant, and then he spoke to me some more. He said, “You must come back.” I said, “Well, if I come back I’ll bring you some more food.”

James Greene, a thirty-year-old carpentry teacher at Cooper Union, was delving into Eastern philosophy. He lived on the same block as the Paradox and began hearing about the Swami from Harvey Cohen and Bill Epstein while regularly taking his evening meal at the restaurant.

James: It was really Harvey and Bill who got things going. I remember one evening at Mishra’s in which Swamiji was only a presence but did not speak. Mishra’s students seemed more into the bodily aspect of yoga. This seemed to be one of Swamiji’s complaints.

His room on Seventy-second Street was quite small. He was living in a fairly narrow room with a door on the one end. Swamiji would set himself up along one side, and we were rather closely packed. It may have been no more than eight feet wide, and it was rather dim. He sat on his thin mattress, and then we sat on the floor.

We wouldn’t chant. We would just come, and he would lecture. There was no direction other than the lecture on the Bhagavad-gītā. I had read a lot of literature, and in my own shy way I was looking for a master, I think. I have no aggression in me or go-getting quality. I was really just a listener, and this seemed right – hearing the Bhagavad-gītā – so I kept coming. It just seemed as if things would grow from there. More and more people began coming. Then it got crowded, and he had to find another place.

The new group from the Paradox was young and hip, in contrast to the older, more conservative uptown people who had been attending Prabhupāda’s classes. In those days, it was still unusual to see a person with long hair and a beard, and when such people started coming to the Swami’s meetings on the West Side, some of the older people were alarmed. As one of them noted: “Swami Bhaktivedanta began to pick up another kind of people. He picked them up at the Bowery or some attics. And they came with funny hats and gray blankets wrapped around themselves, and they startled me.”

David Allen, a twenty-one-year-old seeker who came up from the Paradox, had just moved to the city, optimistically attracted by what he had read about experimentation with drugs. He saw the old group as “a kind of fussbudgety group of older women on the West Side” listening to the Swami’s lectures.

David: We weren’t known as hippies then. But it was strange for the people who had originally been attracted to him. It was different for them to relate to this new group. I think most of the teachers from India up to that time had older followers, and sometimes wealthy widows would provide a source of income. But Swamiji changed right away to the younger, poorer group of people. The next thing that happened was that Bill Epstein and others began talking about how it would be better for the Swami to come downtown to the Lower East Side. Things were really happening down there, and somehow they weren’t happening uptown. People downtown really needed him. Downtown was right, and it was ripe. There was life down there. There was a lot of energy going around.