CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

January 16, 1967

AS THE UNITED Airlines jet descended on the San Francisco Bay area, Śrīla Prabhupāda turned to his disciple Ranchor and said, “The buildings look like matchboxes. Just imagine how it looks from Kṛṣṇa’s viewpoint.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda was seventy-one years old, and this had been his first air trip. Ranchor, nineteen and dressed in a suit and tie, was supposed to be Śrīla Prabhupāda’s secretary. He was a new disciple but had raised some money and had asked to fly to San Francisco with Prabhupāda.

During the trip Śrīla Prabhupāda had spoken little. He had been chanting: “Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare.” His right hand in his cloth bead bag, he had been fingering one bead after another as he chanted silently to himself. When the plane had first risen over New York City, he had looked out the window at the buildings growing smaller and smaller. Then the plane had entered the clouds, which to Prabhupāda had appeared like an ocean in the sky. He had been bothered by pressure blocking his ears and had mentioned it; otherwise he hadn’t said much, but had only chanted Kṛṣṇa’s names over and over. Now, as the plane began its descent, he continued to chant, his voice slightly audible – “Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa …” – and he looked out the window at the vista of thousands of matchbox houses and streets stretching in charted patterns in every direction.

When the announcement for United Airlines Flight 21 from New York came over the public-address system, the group of about fifty hippies gathered closer together in anticipation. For a moment they appeared almost apprehensive, unsure of what to expect or what the Swami would be like.

Roger Segal: We were quite an assorted lot, even for the San Francisco airport. Mukunda was wearing a Merlin the Magician robe with paisley squares all around, Sam was wearing a Moroccan sheep robe with a hood – he even smelled like a sheep – and I was wearing a sort of blue homemade Japanese samurai robe with small white dots. Long strings of beads were everywhere. Buckskins, boots, army fatigues, people wearing small, round sunglasses – the whole phantasmagoria of San Francisco at its height.

Only a few people in the crowd knew Swamiji: Mukunda and his wife, Jānakī; Ravīndra-svarūpa; Rāya Rāma – all from New York. And Allen Ginsberg was there. (A few days before, Allen had been one of the leaders of the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, where over two hundred thousand had come together – “A Gathering of the Tribes … for a joyful pow-wow and Peace Dance.”) Today Allen was on hand to greet Swami Bhaktivedanta, whom he had met and chanted with several months before on New York’s Lower East Side.

Swamiji would be pleased, Mukunda reminded everyone, if they were all chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa when he came through the gate. They were already familiar with the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. They had heard about the Swami’s chanting in the park in New York or they had seen the article about Swamiji and the chanting in the local underground paper, The Oracle. Earlier today they had gathered in Golden Gate Park – most of them responding to a flyer Mukunda had distributed – and had chanted there for more than an hour before coming to the airport in a caravan of cars. Now many of them – also in response to Mukunda’s flyer – stood with incense and flowers in their hands.

As the disembarking passengers entered the terminal gate and walked up the ramp, they looked in amazement at the reception party of flower-bearing chanters. The chanters, however, gazed past these ordinary, tired-looking travelers, searching for that special person who was supposed to be on the plane. Suddenly, strolling toward them was the Swami, golden-complexioned, dressed in bright saffron robes.

Prabhupāda had heard the chanting even before he had entered the terminal, and he had begun to smile. He was happy and surprised. Glancing over the faces, he recognized only a few. Yet here were fifty people receiving him and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa without his having said a word!

Mukunda: We just had a look at Swamiji, and then we bowed down – myself, my wife, and the friends I had brought, Sam and Marjorie. And then all of the young men and women there followed suit and all bowed down to Swamiji, just feeling very confident that it was the right and proper thing to do.

The crowd of hippies had formed a line on either side of a narrow passage through which Swamiji would walk. As he passed among his new admirers, dozens of hands stretched out to offer him flowers and incense. He smiled, collecting the offerings in his hands while Ranchor looked on. Allen Ginsberg stepped forward with a large bouquet of flowers, and Śrīla Prabhupāda graciously accepted it. Then Prabhupāda began offering the gifts back to all who reached out to receive them. He proceeded through the terminal, the crowd of young people walking beside him, chanting.

At the baggage claim Śrīla Prabhupāda waited for a moment, his eyes taking in everyone around him. Lifting his open palms, he beckoned everyone to chant louder, and the group burst into renewed chanting, with Prabhupāda standing in their midst, softly clapping his hands and singing Hare Kṛṣṇa. Gracefully, he then raised his arms above his head and began to dance, stepping and swaying from side to side.

To the mixed chagrin, amusement, and irresistible joy of the airport workers and passengers, the reception party stayed with Prabhupāda until he got his luggage. Then they escorted him outside into the sunlight and into a waiting car, a black 1949 Cadillac Fleetwood. Prabhupāda got into the back seat with Mukunda and Allen Ginsberg. Until the moment the car pulled away from the curb, Śrīla Prabhupāda, still smiling, continued handing flowers to all those who had come to welcome him as he brought Kṛṣṇa consciousness west.

The Cadillac belonged to Harvey Cohen, who almost a year before had allowed Prabhupāda to stay in his Bowery loft. Harvey was driving, but because of his chauffeur’s hat (picked up at a Salvation Army store) and his black suit and his beard, Prabhupāda didn’t recognize him.

“Where is Harvey?” Prabhupāda asked.

“He’s driving,” Mukunda said.

“Oh, is that you? I didn’t recognize you.”

Harvey smiled. “Welcome to San Francisco, Swamiji.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda was happy to be in another big Western city on behalf of his spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, and Lord Caitanya. The further west one goes, Lord Caitanya had said, the more materialistic the people. Yet, Lord Caitanya had also said that Kṛṣṇa consciousness should spread all over the world. Prabhupāda’s Godbrothers had often wondered about Lord Caitanya’s statement that one day the name of Kṛṣṇa would be sung in every town and village. Perhaps that verse should be taken symbolically, they said; otherwise, what could it mean – Kṛṣṇa in every town? But Śrīla Prabhupāda had deep faith in that statement by Lord Caitanya and in the instruction of his spiritual master. Here he was in the far-Western city of San Francisco, and already people were chanting. They had enthusiastically received him with flowers and kīrtana. And all over the world there were other cities much like this one.

The temple Mukunda and his friends had obtained was on Frederick Street in the Haight-Ashbury district. Like the temple at 26 Second Avenue in New York, it was a small storefront with a display window facing the street. A sign over the window read, SRI SRI RADHA KRISHNA TEMPLE. Mukunda and his friends had also rented a three-room apartment for Swamiji on the third floor of the adjoining building. It was a small, bare, run-down apartment facing the street.

Followed by several carloads of devotees and curious seekers, Śrīla Prabhupāda arrived at 518 Frederick Street and entered the storefront, which was decorated only by a few madras cloths on the wall. Taking his seat on a cushion, he led a kīrtana and then spoke, inviting everyone to take up Kṛṣṇa consciousness. After his lecture he left the storefront and walked next door and up the two flights of stairs to his apartment. As he entered his apartment, number 32, he was followed not only by his devotees and admirers but also by reporters from San Francisco’s main newspapers: the Chronicle and the Examiner. While some devotees cooked his lunch and Ranchor unpacked his suitcase, Swamiji talked with the reporters, who sat on the floor, taking notes on their pads.

Reporter: “Downstairs, you said you were inviting everyone to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Does that include the Haight-Ashbury Bohemians and beatniks?”

Prabhupāda: “Yes, everyone, including you or anybody else, be he or she what is called an ‘acidhead’ or a hippie or something else. But once he is accepted for training, he becomes something else from what he had been before.”

Reporter: “What does one have to do to become a member of your movement?”

Prabhupāda: “There are four prerequisites. I do not allow my students to keep girlfriends. I prohibit all kinds of intoxicants, including coffee, tea and cigarettes. I prohibit meat-eating. And I prohibit my students from taking part in gambling.”

Reporter: “Do these shall-not commandments extend to the use of LSD, marijuana, and other narcotics?”

Prabhupāda: “I consider LSD to be an intoxicant. I do not allow any one of my students to use that or any intoxicant. I train my students to rise early in the morning, to take a bath early in the day, and to attend prayer meetings three times a day. Our sect is one of austerity. It is the science of God.”

Although Prabhupāda had found that reporters generally did not report his philosophy, he took the opportunity to preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Even if the reporters didn’t want to delve into the philosophy, his followers did. “The big mistake of modern civilization,” Śrīla Prabhupāda continued, “is to encroach upon others’ property as though it were one’s own. This creates an unnatural disturbance. God is the ultimate proprietor of everything in the universe. When people know that God is the ultimate proprietor, the best friend of all living entities, and the object of all offerings and sacrifices – then there will be peace.”

The reporters asked him about his background, and he told briefly about his coming from India and beginning in New York.

After the reporters left, Prabhupāda continued speaking to the young people in his room. Mukunda, who had allowed his hair and beard to grow but who wore around his neck the strand of large red beads Swamiji had given him at initiation, introduced some of his friends and explained that they were all living together and that they wanted to help Swamiji present Kṛṣṇa consciousness to the young people of San Francisco. Mukunda’s wife, Jānakī, asked Swamiji about his plane ride. He said it had been pleasant except for some pressure in his ears. “The houses looked like matchboxes,” he said, and with his thumb and forefinger he indicated the size of a matchbox.

He leaned back against the wall and took off the garlands he had received that day, until only a beaded necklace – a common, inexpensive item with a small bell on it – remained hanging around his neck. Prabhupāda held it, inspected the workmanship, and toyed with it. “This is special,” he said, looking up, “because it was made with devotion.” He continued to pay attention to the necklace, as if receiving it had been one of the most important events of the day.

When his lunch arrived, he distributed some to everyone, and then Ranchor efficiently though tactlessly asked everyone to leave and give the Swami a little time to eat and rest.

Outside the apartment and in the storefront below, the talk was of Swamiji. No one had been disappointed. Everything Mukunda had been telling them about him was true. They particularly enjoyed how he had talked about seeing everything from Kṛṣṇa’s viewpoint.

“The lanky ‘Master of the Faith,’ ” Mukunda read, “attired in a flowing ankle-long robe and sitting cross-legged on a big mattress – ”

Swamiji interrupted, “What is this word lanky?”

Mukunda explained that it meant tall and slender. “I don’t know why they said that,” he added. “Maybe it’s because you sit so straight and tall, so they think that you are very tall.” The article went on to describe many of the airport greeters as being “of the long-haired, bearded and sandaled set.”

San Francisco’s largest paper, the Chronicle, also ran an article: “Swami in Hippie-Land – Holy Man Opens S.F. Temple.” The article began, “A holy man from India, described by his friend and beat poet Allen Ginsberg as one of the more conservative leaders of his faith, launched a kind of evangelistic effort yesterday in the heart of San Francisco’s hippie haven.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda objected to being called conservative. He was indignant: “Conservative? How is that?”

“In respect to sex and drugs,” Mukunda suggested.

“Of course, we are conservative in that sense,” Prabhupāda said. “That simply means we are following śāstra. We cannot depart from Bhagavad-gītā. But conservative we are not. Caitanya Mahāprabhu was so strict that He would not even look on a woman, but we are accepting everyone into this movement, regardless of sex, caste, position, or whatever. Everyone is invited to come chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. This is Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s munificence, His liberality. No, we are not conservative.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda rose from bed and turned on the light. It was 1 A.M. Although the alarm had not sounded and no one had come to wake him, he had risen on his own. The apartment was cold and quiet. Wrapping his cādara around his shoulders, he sat quietly at his makeshift desk (a trunk filled with manuscripts) and in deep concentration chanted the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra on his beads.

After an hour of chanting, Śrīla Prabhupāda turned to his writing. Although two years had passed since he had published a book (the third and final volume of the First Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam), he had daily been working, sometimes on his translation and commentary of the Second Canto but mostly on Bhagavad-gītā. In the 1940s in India he had written an entire Bhagavad-gītā translation and commentary, but his only copy had mysteriously disappeared. Then in 1965, after a few months in America, he had begun again, starting with the Introduction, which he had composed in his room on Seventy-second Street in New York. Now thousands of manuscript pages filled his trunk, completing his Bhagavad-gītā. If his New York disciple Hayagrīva, formerly an English professor, could edit it, and if some of the other disciples could get it published, that would be an important achievement.

But publishing books in America seemed difficult – more difficult than in India. Even though in India he had been alone, he had managed to publish three volumes in three years. Here in America he had many followers; but many followers meant increased responsibilities. And none of his followers as yet seemed seriously inclined to take up typing, editing, and dealing with American businessmen. Yet despite the dim prospects for publishing his Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīla Prabhupāda had begun translating another book, Caitanya-caritāmṛta, the principal Vaiṣṇava scripture on the life and teachings of Lord Caitanya.

Putting on his reading glasses, Prabhupāda opened his books and turned on the dictating machine. He studied the Bengali and Sanskrit texts, then picked up the microphone, flicked the switch to record, flashing on a small red light, and began speaking: “While the Lord was going, chanting and dancing, …” (he spoke no more than a phrase at a time, flicking the switch, pausing, and then dictating again) “thousands of people were following Him, … and some of them were laughing, some were dancing, … and some singing. … Some of them were falling on the ground offering obeisances to the Lord.” Speaking and pausing, clicking the switch on and off, he would sit straight, sometimes gently rocking and nodding his head as he urged forward his words. Or he would bend low over his books, carefully studying them through his reading glasses.

An hour passed, and Prabhupāda worked on. The building was dark except for Prabhupāda’s lamp and quiet except for the sound of his voice and the click and hum of the dictating machine. He wore a faded peach turtleneck jersey beneath his gray wool cādara, and since he had just risen from bed, his saffron dhotī was wrinkled. Without having washed his face or gone to the bathroom he sat, absorbed in his work. At least for these few rare hours, the street and the Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa temple were quiet.

This situation – with the night dark, the surroundings quiet, and him at his transcendental literary work – was not much different from his early-morning hours in his room at the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple in Vṛndāvana, India. There, of course, he had had no dictating machine, but he had worked during the same hours and from the same text, Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Once he had begun a verse-by-verse translation with commentary, and another time he had written essays on the text. Now, having just arrived in this corner of the world, so remote from the scenes of Lord Caitanya’s pastimes, he was beginning the first chapter of a new English version of Caitanya-caritāmṛta. He called it Teachings of Lord Caitanya.

He was following what had become a vital routine in his life: rising early and writing the paramparā message of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Putting aside all other considerations, disregarding present circumstances, he would merge into the timeless message of transcendental knowledge. This was his most important service to Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī. The thought of producing more books and distributing them widely inspired him to rise every night and translate.

Prabhupāda worked until dawn. Then he stopped and prepared himself to go down to the temple for the morning meeting.

Though some of the New York disciples had objected, Śrīla Prabhupāda was still scheduled for the Mantra-Rock Dance at the Avalon Ballroom. It wasn’t proper, they had said, for the devotees out in San Francisco to ask their spiritual master to go to such a place. It would mean amplified guitars, pounding drums, wild light shows, and hundreds of drugged hippies. How could his pure message be heard in such a place?

But in San Francisco Mukunda and others had been working on the Mantra-Rock Dance for months. It would draw thousands of young people, and the San Francisco Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Temple stood to make thousands of dollars. So although among his New York disciples Śrīla Prabhupāda had expressed uncertainty, he now said nothing to deter the enthusiasm of his San Francisco followers.

Sam Speerstra, Mukunda’s friend and one of the Mantra-Rock organizers, explained the idea to Hayagrīva, who had just arrived from New York: “There’s a whole new school of San Francisco music opening up. The Grateful Dead have already cut their first record. Their offer to do this dance is a great publicity boost just when we need it.”

“But Swamiji says that even Ravi Shankar is māyā,” Hayagrīva said.

“Oh, it’s all been arranged,” Sam assured him. “All the bands will be onstage, and Allen Ginsberg will introduce Swamiji to San Francisco. Swamiji will talk and then chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, with the bands joining in. Then he leaves. There should be around four thousand people there.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda knew he would not compromise himself; he would go, chant, and then leave. The important thing was to spread the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa. If thousands of young people gathering to hear rock music could be engaged in hearing and chanting the names of God, then what was the harm? As a preacher, Prabhupāda was prepared to go anywhere to spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Since chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa was absolute, one who heard or chanted the names of Kṛṣṇa – anyone, anywhere, in any condition – could be saved from falling to the lower species in the next life. These young hippies wanted something spiritual, but they had no direction. They were confused, accepting hallucinations as spiritual visions. But they were seeking genuine spiritual life, just like many of the young people on the Lower East Side. Prabhupāda decided he would go; his disciples wanted him to, and he was their servant and the servant of Lord Caitanya.

Mukunda, Sam, and Harvey Cohen had already met with rock entrepreneur Chet Helms, who had agreed that they could use his Avalon Ballroom and that, if they could get the bands to come, everything above the cost for the groups, the security, and a few other basics would go as profit for the San Francisco Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Temple. Mukunda and Sam had then gone calling on the music groups, most of whom lived in the Bay Area, and one after another the exciting new San Francisco rock bands – the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service – had agreed to appear with Swami Bhaktivedanta for the minimum wage of $250 per group. And Allen Ginsberg had agreed. The lineup was complete.

In San Francisco every rock concert had an art poster, many of them designed by the psychedelic artist called Mouse. One thing about Mouse’s posters was that it was difficult to tell where the letters left off and the background began. He used dissonant colors that made his posters seem to flash on and off. Borrowing from this tradition, Harvey Cohen had created a unique poster – KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS COMES WEST – using red and blue concentric circles and a candid photo of Swamiji smiling in Tompkins Square Park. The devotees put the posters up all over town.

Hayagrīva and Mukunda went to discuss the program for the Mantra-Rock Dance with Allen Ginsberg. Allen was already well known as an advocate of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra; in fact, acquaintances would often greet him with “Hare Kṛṣṇa!” when he walked on Haight Street. And he was known to visit and recommend that others visit the Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Temple. Hayagrīva, whose full beard and long hair rivaled Allen’s, was concerned about the melody Allen would use when he chanted with Swamiji. “I think the melody you use,” Hayagrīva said, “is too difficult for good chanting.”

“Maybe,” Allen admitted, “but that’s the melody I first heard in India. A wonderful lady saint was chanting it. I’m quite accustomed to it, and it’s the only one I can sing convincingly.”

With only a few days remaining before the Mantra-Rock Dance, Allen came to an early-morning kīrtana at the temple and later joined Śrīla Prabhupāda upstairs in his room. A few devotees were sitting with Prabhupāda eating Indian sweets when Allen came to the door. He and Prabhupāda smiled and exchanged greetings, and Prabhupāda offered him a sweet, remarking that Mr. Ginsberg was up very early.

“Yes,” Allen replied, “the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since I arrived in San Francisco.”

“That is what happens when one becomes famous,” said Prabhupāda. “That was the tragedy of Mahatma Gandhi also. Wherever he went, thousands of people would crowd about him, chanting, ‘Mahatma Gandhi kī jaya! Mahatma Gandhi kī jaya!’ The gentleman could not sleep.”

“Well, at least it got me up for kīrtana this morning,” said Allen.

“Yes, that is good.”

The conversation turned to the upcoming program at the Avalon Ballroom. “Don’t you think there’s a possibility of chanting a tune that would be more appealing to Western ears?” Allen asked.

“Any tune will do,” said Prabhupāda. “Melody is not important. What is important is that you will chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. It can be in the tune of your own country. That doesn’t matter.”

Prabhupāda and Allen also talked about the meaning of the word hippie, and Allen mentioned something about taking LSD. Prabhupāda replied that LSD created dependence and was not necessary for a person in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. “Kṛṣṇa consciousness resolves everything,” Prabhupāda said. “Nothing else is needed.”

Roger Hillyard: He was great. I was really impressed. It wasn’t the way he looked, the way he acted, or the way he dressed, but it was his total being. Swamiji was very serene and very humorous, and at the same time obviously very wise and in tune, enlightened. He had the ability to relate to a lot of different kinds of people. I was thinking, “Some of this must be really strange for this person – to come to the United States and end up in the middle of Haight-Ashbury with a storefront for an āśrama and a lot of very strange people around.” And yet he was totally right there, right there with everybody.

Almost everyone who came wore bright or unusual costumes: tribal robes, Mexican ponchos, Indian kurtās, “God’s-eyes,” feathers, and beads. Some hippies brought their own flutes, lutes, gourds, drums, rattles, horns, and guitars. The Hell’s Angels, dirty-haired, wearing jeans, boots, and denim jackets and accompanied by their women, made their entrance, carrying chains, smoking cigarettes, and displaying their regalia of German helmets, emblazoned emblems, and so on – everything but their motorcycles, which they had parked outside.

The devotees began a warm-up kīrtana onstage, dancing the way Swamiji had shown them. Incense poured from the stage and from the corners of the large ballroom. And although most in the audience were high on drugs, the atmosphere was calm; they had come seeking a spiritual experience. As the chanting began, very melodiously, some of the musicians took part by playing their instruments. The light show began: strobe lights flashed, colored balls bounced back and forth to the beat of the music, large blobs of pulsing color splurted across the floor, walls, and ceiling.

A little after eight o’clock, Moby Grape took the stage. With heavy electric guitars, electric bass, and two drummers, they launched into their first number. The large speakers shook the ballroom with their vibrations, and a roar of approval rose from the audience.

Around nine-thirty, Prabhupāda left his Frederick Street apartment and got into the back seat of Harvey’s Cadillac. He was dressed in his usual saffron robes, and around his neck he wore a garland of gardenias, whose sweet aroma filled the car. On the way to the Avalon he talked about the need to open more centers.

At ten o’clock Prabhupāda walked up the stairs of the Avalon, followed by Kīrtanānanda and Ranchor. As he entered the ballroom, devotees blew conchshells, someone began a drum roll, and the crowd parted down the center, all the way from the entrance to the stage, opening a path for him to walk. With his head held high, Prabhupāda seemed to float by as he walked through the strange milieu, making his way across the ballroom floor to the stage.

Suddenly the light show changed. Pictures of Kṛṣṇa and His pastimes flashed onto the wall: Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna riding together on Arjuna’s chariot, Kṛṣṇa eating butter, Kṛṣṇa subduing the whirlwind demon, Kṛṣṇa playing the flute. As Prabhupāda walked through the crowd, everyone stood, applauding and cheering. He climbed the stairs and seated himself softly on a waiting cushion. The crowd quieted.

Looking over at Allen Ginsberg, Prabhupāda said, “You can speak something about the mantra.”

Allen began to tell of his understanding and experience with the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. He told how Swamiji had opened a storefront on Second Avenue and had chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa in Tompkins Square Park. And he invited everyone to the Frederick Street temple. “I especially recommend the early-morning kīrtanas,” he said, “for those who, coming down from LSD, want to stabilize their consciousness on reentry.”

Prabhupāda spoke, giving a brief history of the mantra. Then he looked over at Allen again: “You may chant.”

Allen began playing his harmonium and chanting into the microphone, singing the tune he had brought from India. Gradually more and more people in the audience caught on and began chanting. As the kīrtana continued and the audience got increasingly enthusiastic, musicians from the various bands came onstage to join in. Ranchor, a fair drummer, began playing Moby Grape’s drums. Some of the bass and other guitar players joined in as the devotees and a large group of hippies mounted the stage. The multicolored oil slicks pulsed, and the balls bounced back and forth to the beat of the mantra, now projected onto the wall: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. As the chanting spread throughout the hall, some of the hippies got to their feet, held hands, and danced.

Allen Ginsberg: We sang Hare Kṛṣṇa all evening. It was absolutely great – an open thing. It was the height of the Haight-Ashbury spiritual enthusiasm. It was the first time that there had been a music scene in San Francisco where everybody could be part of it and participate. Everybody could sing and dance rather than listen to other people sing and dance.

Jānakī: People didn’t know what they were chanting for. But to see that many people chanting – even though most of them were intoxicated – made Swamiji very happy. He loved to see the people chanting.

Hayagrīva: Standing in front of the bands, I could hardly hear. But above all, I could make out the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa, building steadily. On the wall behind, a slide projected a huge picture of Kṛṣṇa in a golden helmet with a peacock feather, a flute in His hand.

Then Śrīla Prabhupāda stood up, lifted his arms, and began to dance. He gestured for everyone to join him, and those who were still seated stood up and began dancing and chanting and swaying back and forth, following Prabhupāda’s gentle dance.

Roger Segal: The ballroom appeared as if it was a human field of wheat blowing in the wind. It produced a calm feeling in contrast to the Avalon Ballroom atmosphere of gyrating energies. The chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa continued for over an hour, and finally everyone was jumping and yelling, even crying and shouting.

Someone placed a microphone before Śrīla Prabhupāda, and his voice resounded strongly over the powerful sound system. The tempo quickened. Śrīla Prabhupāda was perspiring profusely. Kīrtanānanda insisted that the kīrtana stop. Swamiji was too old for this, he said; it might be harmful. But the chanting continued, faster and faster, until the words of the mantra finally became indistinguishable amidst the amplified music and the chorus of thousands of voices.

Then suddenly it ended. And all that could be heard was the loud hum of the amplifiers and Śrīla Prabhupāda’s voice, ringing out, offering obeisances to his spiritual master: “Oṁ Viṣṇupāda Paramahaṁsa Parivrājakācārya Aṣṭottara-śata Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Goswami Mahārāja kī jaya! … All glories to the assembled devotees!”

Śrīla Prabhupāda made his way offstage, through the heavy smoke and crowds, and down the front stairs, with Kīrtanānanda and Ranchor close behind him. Allen announced the next rock group.

As Swamiji left the ballroom and the appreciative crowd behind, he commented, “This is no place for a brahmacārī.”

Later that morning, while riding to the beach with Kīrtanānanda and Hayagrīva, Swamiji asked how many people had attended last night’s kīrtana. When they told him, he asked how much money they had made, and they said they weren’t sure but it was approximately fifteen hundred dollars.

Half-audibly he chanted in the back seat of the car, looking out the window as quiet and unassuming as a child, with no indication that the night before he had been cheered and applauded by thousands of hippies, who had stood back and made a grand aisle for him to walk in triumph across the strobe-lit floor amid the thunder of the electric basses and pounding drums of the Avalon Ballroom. For all the fanfare of the night before, he remained untouched, the same as ever in personal demeanor: he was aloof, innocent, and humble, while at the same time appearing very grave and ancient. As Kīrtanānanda and Hayagrīva were aware, Swamiji was not of this world. They knew that he, unlike them, was always thinking of Kṛṣṇa.

They walked with him along the boardwalk, near the ocean, with its cool breezes and cresting waves. Kīrtanānanda spread the cādara over Prabhupāda’s shoulders. “In Bengali there is one nice verse,” Prabhupāda remarked, breaking his silence. “I remember. ‘Oh, what is that voice across the sea calling, calling: Come here, come here. …’ ” Speaking little, he walked the boardwalk with his two friends, frequently looking out at the sea and sky. As he walked he softly sang a mantra that Kīrtanānanda and Hayagrīva had never heard before: “Govinda jaya jaya, gopāla jaya jaya, rādhā-ramaṇa hari, govinda jaya jaya.” He sang slowly, in a deep voice, as they walked along the boardwalk. He looked out at the Pacific Ocean: “Because it is great, it is tranquil.”

“The ocean seems to be eternal,” Hayagrīva ventured.

“No,” Prabhupāda replied. “Nothing in the material world is eternal.”

In New York, since there were so few women present at the temple, people had inquired whether it were possible for a woman to join the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. But in San Francisco that question never arose. Most of the men who came to learn from Swamiji came with their girlfriends. To Prabhupāda these boys and girls, eager for chanting and hearing about Kṛṣṇa, were like sparks of faith to be fanned into steady, blazing fires of devotional life. There was no question of his asking the newcomers to give up their girlfriends or boyfriends, and yet he uncompromisingly preached, “no illicit sex.” The dilemma, however, seemed to have an obvious solution: marry the couples in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Because traditionally a sannyāsī would never arrange or perform marriages, by Indian standards someone might criticize Prabhupāda for allowing any mingling of the sexes. But Prabhupāda gave priority to spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness. What Indian, however critical, had ever tried to transplant the essence of India’s spiritual culture into the Western culture? Prabhupāda saw that to change the American social system and completely separate the men from the women would not be possible. But to compromise his standard of no illicit sex was also not possible. Therefore, Kṛṣṇa conscious married life, the gṛhastha-āśrama, would be the best arrangement for many of his new aspiring disciples. In Kṛṣṇa consciousness husband and wife could live together and help one another in spiritual progress. It was an authorized arrangement for allowing a man and woman to associate. If as spiritual master he found it necessary to perform marriages himself, he would do it. But first these young couples would have to become attracted to Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

It was through her sister Jan that Joan had first met Śrīla Prabhupāda. Jan had gone with her boyfriend Michael Grant to live in New York City, where Michael had worked as a music arranger. In 1965 they had met Swamiji while he was living alone on the Bowery, and they had become his initiated disciples (Mukunda and Jānakī). Swamiji had asked them to get married, and they had invited Joan to the wedding. As a wedding guest for one day, Joan had then briefly entered Swamiji’s transcendental world at 26 Second Avenue, and he had kept her busy all day making dough and filling kacaurī pastries for the wedding feast. Joan had worked in one room, and Swamiji had worked in the kitchen, although he had repeatedly come in and guided her in making the kacaurīs properly, telling her not to touch her clothes or body while cooking and instructing her not to smoke cigarettes, because the food was to be offered to Lord Kṛṣṇa and therefore had to be prepared purely. Joan had been convinced by this brief association that Swamiji was a great spiritual teacher, but she had returned to San Francisco without pursuing Kṛṣṇa consciousness further.

A few months later, Mukunda and Jānakī had driven to the West Coast with plans of going soon to India but had changed their plans when Mukunda had received a letter from Swamiji asking him to try to start a Kṛṣṇa conscious temple in California. Mukunda had talked about Swamiji to Joan and other friends, and he had found that a lot of young people were interested. Joan had then accompanied Mukunda, Jānakī, and a boy named Roger Segal to the mountains in Oregon, where they had visited their mutual friends Sam and Marjorie, who had been living in a forest lookout tower.

Mukunda had explained what he had known of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and the six of them had begun chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa together. They had been especially interested in Swamiji’s teachings about elevating consciousness without drugs. Mukunda had talked excitedly about Swamiji’s having asked him to start a temple in California, and soon he and his wife, Jānakī; Sam and his girlfriend Marjorie; and Roger and Joan, now intimate friends, had moved to an apartment in San Francisco to find a storefront and set the stage for Swamiji.

After Swamiji’s arrival, Joan had begun attending the temple kīrtanas. She felt drawn to Swamiji and the chanting, and she especially liked the informal visiting hours. Swamiji would sit in his rocking chair with his hand in his bead bag, chanting the holy names, and Joan would sit fascinated, watching his fingers moving within the bag.

One day during Swamiji’s visiting hours, while Swamiji was sitting in his rocking chair and Joan and others were sitting at his feet, Jānakī’s cat crept in through the hallway door and began slowly coming down the hallway. The cat came closer and closer and slowly meandered right in front of Swamiji’s feet. It sat down, looking up intently at Swamiji, and began to meow. None of the devotees knew what to expect. Swamiji began gently stroking the back of the cat with his foot, saying, “Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa. Are you feeding him prasādam milk?”

Joan: I was touched by Swamiji’s activities and his kindness – even to cats – and I longed for more association with him.

Joan came to understand that serving Swamiji was a serious matter. But she didn’t want to jump into initiation until she was one-hundred-percent sure about it. Sometimes she would cry in ecstasy, and sometimes she would fall asleep during Swamiji’s lecture. So she remained hesitant and skeptical, wondering, “How can I actually apply Swamiji’s teachings to my life?”

One evening Swamiji asked her, “When are you going to be initiated?” Joan said that she didn’t know but that she relished reading his books and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. She said that because she was attracted to the mountains and to elevated spiritual consciousness, she wanted to travel to Tibet.

Swamiji, sitting in his rocking chair, looked down at Joan as she sat at his feet. She felt he was looking right through her. “I can take you to a higher place than Tibet,” he said. “Just see.”

Joan suddenly felt that Swamiji knew everything about her, and she understood, “Oh, I have to see through his eyes what Kṛṣṇa consciousness is.” He was promising that he would take her to some very elevated realm, but she would have to see it. It was then that Joan decided to become Swamiji’s disciple.

When she told her boyfriend Roger, he was astounded. He and Joan had been coming to the kīrtanas and lectures together, but he still had doubts. Maybe it would be good for him and Joan to get married but not initiated. Joan, however, was more determined. She explained to Roger that Swamiji hadn’t come just to perform marriages; you had to get initiated first.

Roger Segal had grown up in New York. He was following a haṭha-yoga guru, had experimented with psychedelic chemicals, and had traveled in the Deep South as a civil rights activist, taking part in freedom marches with the blacks. Large-bodied, sociable, and outgoing, he had lots of friends in San Francisco. At the airport, in a merry mood with the Haight-Ashbury crowd, he had seen Swamiji for the first time and been especially struck by Swamiji’s regal bearing and absence of self-consciousness. The concept of reincarnation had always intrigued him, but after attending some of Swamiji’s lectures and hearing him explain transmigration of the soul, he felt he had found someone who definitely knew the answer to any question about life after death.

One night, after attending the program at the temple, Roger returned to his apartment and sat down on the fire escape to meditate on what Swamiji had said. The world is false, he had said. “But it feels real to me,” Roger thought. “If I pinch my arm, I feel pain. So how is that illusion? This fire escape is real; otherwise I would be falling in space. This space is real, isn’t it?”

Roger decided he didn’t understand what Swamiji meant by illusion. “If I try to walk through the wall,” he thought, “would that be real or not? Maybe the wall’s reality is just in my mind.” To test the illusion he went inside his apartment, concentrated his mind, and walked against the wall – smack. He sat down again and thought, “What does Swamiji mean when he says that the world is illusion?” He decided he should ask at the next meeting.

He did. And Śrīla Prabhupāda told him that actually the world is real, because it was created by God, the supreme reality. But it is unreal in the sense that everything material is temporary. When a person takes the temporary world to be permanent and all in all, he is in illusion. Only the spiritual world, Swamiji explained, is eternal and therefore real.

Roger was satisfied by Swamiji’s answer. But he had other difficulties: he thought Swamiji too conservative. When Swamiji said that people’s dogs must be kept outside the temple, Roger didn’t like it. Many visitors brought pet dogs with them to the temple, and now there was a hitching post in front of the building just to accommodate the pets on leashes. But Swamiji wouldn’t allow any pets inside. “This philosophy is for humans,” he said. “A cat or dog cannot understand it, although if he hears the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa he can receive a higher birth in the future.”

Roger also had other points of contention with what he considered Swamiji’s conservative philosophy. Swamiji repeatedly spoke against uncontrolled habits like smoking, but Roger couldn’t imagine giving up such things. And the instructions about restricting sex life especially bothered him. Yet despite his not following very strictly, Roger felt himself developing a love for Swamiji and Kṛṣṇa. He sensed that Swamiji had much to teach him and that Swamiji was doing it in a certain way and a certain order. Roger knew that Swamiji saw him as a baby in spiritual life who had to be spoon-fed; he knew he had to become submissive and accept whatever Swamiji gave him.

When Mukunda had visited Sam at his mountain lookout tower and told him about Swamiji and Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Sam had been intrigued by the new ideas. Sam’s life had nearly reached a dead end, but he had seen hope in what Mukunda and Jānakī had been saying about Swamiji. After spending only a few days with Mukunda, Sam had been eager to help him establish a temple of Kṛṣṇa consciousness in San Francisco.

Sam was the one who knew the local rock stars and had persuaded them to appear at the Avalon with Swami Bhaktivedanta, whom he had never met. Sam had seen Swamiji for the first time when Swamiji had arrived at the San Francisco airport; and Sam had later insisted that he had seen a flash of light come from Swamiji’s body.

At first Sam had been afraid to say anything, nor had he known what to say – Prabhupāda was completely new to him and seemed so elevated. But the day after the program at the Avalon, when Mukunda told Prabhupāda that Sam had arranged the dance, Prabhupāda sent for him to find out how much money they had made. Sitting across from Prabhupāda, who sat behind his small desk, Sam informed him that they had made about fifteen hundred dollars profit. “Well then,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “you will be the treasurer.” Then Śrīla Prabhupāda asked him, “What is your idea of God?”

“God is one,” Sam replied.

Prabhupāda asked, “What is the purpose of worshiping God?”

Sam replied, “To become one with God.”

“No,” Prabhupāda said. “You cannot become one with God. God and you are always two different individuals. But you can become one in interest with Him.” And then he told Sam about Kṛṣṇa. After they talked, Prabhupāda said, “You can come up every day, and I will teach you how to do books.” So Sam began meeting with Prabhupāda for half an hour a day to learn bookkeeping.

Sam: I had never been very good at keeping books, and I really didn’t want to do it. But it was a good excuse to come and see Swamiji every day. He would chew me out when I would spend too much money or when I couldn’t balance the books properly. I really loved the idea that he was so practical that he knew bookkeeping. He became so much more of a friend from the beginning, rather than some idealized person from another sphere of life. I took almost all my practical questions to him. I learned to answer things for myself based on the way Swamiji always answered day-to-day problems. And the first thing he made me do was to get married to my girlfriend.

Śrīla Prabhupāda was eager to have someone play the mṛdaṅga properly during the kīrtanas, and Mukunda, a musician, was a likely candidate.

Mukunda: The day the drum came I asked Swamiji if I could learn, and he said yes. I asked him when, and he said, “When do you want?” “Now?” I asked. He said, “Yes.” I was a little surprised to get such a quick appointment. But I brought the drum to his room, and he began to show me the basic beat. First there was gee ta ta, gee ta ta, gee ta ta. And then one slightly more complicated beat, gee ta ta, gee ta ta, gee ta ta geeeee ta.

As I began to play the beat, I kept speeding it up, and he kept telling me to slow down. He spent a lot of time just showing me how to strike the heads of the drum. Then I finally began to get it a little. But he had to keep admonishing me to slow down and pronounce the syllables as I hit the drum – gee ta ta. The syllables, he said, and the drum should sound the same. I should make it sound like that and always pronounce them.

I was determined and played very slowly for a long, long time. I was concentrating with great intensity. Then suddenly I was aware of Swamiji standing motionless beside me. I didn’t know how long he was going to stand there without saying anything, and I became a little uncomfortable. But I continued playing. When I got up the courage to look up and see his face, to my surprise he was moving his head back and forth in an affirming way with his eyes closed. He seemed to be enjoying the lesson. This came as a complete surprise to me. Although I had taken music lessons before and had spent many years taking piano lessons, I can never remember an instance when the teacher seemed to actually enjoy my playing. I felt very wonderful to see that here was a teacher who was so perfect, who enjoyed what he was teaching so much, not because it was his personal teaching or his personal method, but because he was witnessing Kṛṣṇa’s energy pass through him to a conditioned soul like myself. And he was getting great pleasure out of it. I had a deeper realization that Swamiji was a real teacher, although I had no idea what a spiritual master really was.

Jānakī: There were a group of us sitting around in Swamiji’s apartment, and I asked him if he had any children. He looked at me as if I had said something strange, and he said, “You are not my child?” I said, “Well, yes.” And he said, “Are not all these my children?” And his answer was so quick that I never doubted that he seriously meant what he said.

For several hours each morning Prabhupāda showed Jānakī, Joan, and others how to cook. One day in the kitchen he noticed a kind of berry he had never tasted, and he asked Jānakī what they were. She told him strawberries. He immediately popped one into his mouth, saying, “That’s very tasty.” And he proceeded to eat another and another, exclaiming, “Very tasty!”

One time Jānakī was making whipped cream when Prabhupāda came into the kitchen and asked, “What’s that?”

She replied, “It’s whipped cream.”

“What is whipped cream?” he asked.

“It’s cream,” she replied, “but when you beat it, it fluffs up into a more solid form.”

Although always adamant about kitchen rules (one of the most important being that no one could eat in the kitchen), Śrīla Prabhupāda immediately dipped his finger into the whipped cream and tasted it. “This is yogurt,” he said.

In a lighthearted, reprimanding way that was her pleasure, Jānakī replied, “No, Swamiji, it’s whipped cream.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda corrected her, “No, it is yogurt.” And again he put his finger into it and tasted it, saying, “Oh, it tastes very nice.”

“Swamiji!” Jānakī accused him. “You’re eating in the kitchen!” Śrīla Prabhupāda merely smiled and shook his head back and forth, saying, “That is all right.”

Jānakī: One time I told him, “Swamiji, I had the most exciting dream. We were all on a planet of our very own, and everybody from earth had come there. They had all become pure devotees, and they were all chanting. You were sitting on a very special chair high off the ground, and the whole earth was clapping and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa.” Swamiji smiled and said, “Oh, that’s such a lovely dream.”

Gary, the son of a U.S. Air Force officer, had been raised in Germany, Okinawa, and other places around the world before his family had settled in Texas. His dark hair and bushy brows gave him a scowling look, except when he smiled. He was one of the first students at the University of Texas to wear long hair and experiment with psychedelic drugs. While taking LSD together, he and Bonnie had become obsessed with the idea of going on a spiritual search, and without notifying their parents or school they had driven to the West Coast “in search of someone who could teach us about spiritual life.”

They had spent a few frustrating months searching through spiritual books and amongst spiritual groups in Haight-Ashbury. They had become vegetarians. Gary had started teaching himself to play electric guitar while Bonnie had gone to Golden Gate Park every day to perform a self-styled haṭha-yoga meditation. But gradually they had become disillusioned and had felt themselves becoming degraded from drugs.

When the disciple is ready, the guru will appear, they had read. And they had waited eagerly for the day when their guru would come. Although Bonnie had spent most of her time in the parks of San Francisco, one day she had been looking through a tableful of magazines in a Haight-Ashbury head shop when she had found a copy of Back to Godhead, the mimeographed journal produced by Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disciples in New York. She had been particularly attracted to Hayagrīva’s article about Swamiji. The descriptions of Swamiji’s smile, his bright eyes, his pointy-toed shoes, and the things he said had given her a feeling that this might be the guru she had been looking for. And when she had learned that this same Swamiji had opened an āśrama in Haight-Ashbury, she had immediately started searching through the neighborhood until she had found the temple on Frederick Street.

Before Bonnie and Gary met Swamiji they had both been troubled. Gary was in anxiety about the threat of being drafted into the Army, and both of them were disillusioned because they had not found the truth they had come to San Francisco to find. So on meeting Śrīla Prabhupāda in his room they began to explain their situation.

Bonnie: He was sitting in a rocking chair in his little apartment, and he looked at us like we were crazy – because we were – and said, “You come to my classes. Simply come to my classes every morning and every evening, and everything will be all right.” That sounded to us like an unbelievable panacea, but because we were so bewildered, we agreed to it.

I told him I had traveled all over Europe, and he said, “Oh, you have traveled so much.” And I said to him, “Yes, I have traveled so much, I have done so many things, but none of it ever made me happy.” He was pleased with that statement. He said, “Yes, that is the problem.”

We began going to his morning lectures. For us it was a long distance to get there at seven in the morning, but we did it every morning with the conviction that this was what he had said to do and we were going to do it. Then one day he asked us, “What do you do?” When we said that formerly we had been art students at college, he told us to paint pictures of Kṛṣṇa. Shortly after that, we asked to be initiated.

Although Swamiji had called for ghee (clarified butter) as one of the sacrificial ingredients, the devotees, thinking ghee too costly, had substituted melted margarine. He had called for firewood also, and the devotees had supplied him the bits of a broken orange crate. Now, with Yamunā and Gurudāsa seated before him on the opposite side of the mound of earth, he picked up a small piece of the splintered orange crate, dipped it into what was supposed to be ghee, and held it in the candle flame to begin the fire. The splinter flamed, sputtered, and went out. He picked up another splinter and moistened it in the melted margarine, but when he touched it to the flame it made the same svit-svit sound and sputtered out. After trying unsuccessfully four or five times, Swamiji looked up and said, “This marriage will have a very slow start.” Yamunā began to cry.

On the evening of the wedding Govinda dāsī’s father came from Texas, even though he objected to Kṛṣṇa consciousness as radically un-American. Walking up to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s seat in the temple, Govinda dāsī’s father asked, “Why do ya have to change my daughter’s name? Why does she have to have an Indian name?”

Prabhupāda looked at him and then, with a mischievous gleam, looked at Mr. Patel, an Indian guest standing nearby with his family. “You don’t like Indians?” he asked.

Everyone who heard Swamiji laughed – except for Govinda dāsī’s father, who replied, “Well, yeah, they’re all right. But why does Bonnie have to have a different name?”

“Because she has asked me to give her one,” Śrīla Prabhupāda replied. “If you love her, you will like what she likes. Your daughter is happy. Why do you object?” The discussion ended there, and Govinda dāsī’s father remained civil. Later he enjoyed taking prasādam with his daughter and son-in-law.

Govinda dāsī: Gaurasundara and I set about reading the three volumes of Swamiji’s Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. And at the same time Swamiji had told me to paint a large canvas of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa and a cow. So every day for the whole day I would paint, and Gaurasundara would read out loud from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam – one volume after another. We did this continuously for two months. During this time Swamiji also asked me to do a portrait of him standing before a background painting of Lord Caitanya dancing. Swamiji wanted it so that Lord Caitanya’s foot would be touching his head. I tried. It was a pretty horrible painting, and yet he was happy with it.

One night in the temple during the question-and-answer session, a big, bearded fellow raised his hand and asked Prabhupāda, “Can I become initiated?”

The brash public request annoyed some of Prabhupāda’s followers, but Prabhupāda was serene. “Yes,” he replied. “But first you must answer two questions. Who is Kṛṣṇa?”

The boy thought for a moment and said, “Kṛṣṇa is God.”

“Yes,” Prabhupāda replied. “And who are you?”

Again the boy thought for a few moments and then replied, “I am the servant of God.”

“Very good,” Prabhupāda said. “Yes, you can be initiated tomorrow.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda knew that it would be difficult for his Western disciples to stick to Kṛṣṇa consciousness and attain the goal of pure devotional service. All their lives they had had the worst of training, and despite their nominal Christianity and philosophical searching, most of them knew nothing of the science of God. They did not even know that illicit sex and meat-eating were wrong, although when he told them they accepted what he said. And they freely chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa. So how could he refuse them?

Of course, whether they would be able to persevere in Kṛṣṇa consciousness despite the ever-present attractions of māyā would be seen in time. Some would fall – that was the human tendency. But some would not. At least those who sincerely followed his instructions to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and avoid sinful activities would be successful. He gave the example that a person could say that today’s fresh food, if not properly used, would spoil in a few days. But if it is fresh now, to say that in the future it will be misused and therefore spoil is only a surmise. Yes, in the future anyone could fall down. But Prabhupāda took it as his responsibility to engage his disciples now. And he was giving them the methods which if followed would protect them from ever falling down.

Aside from Vedic standards, even by the standard of Swamiji’s New York disciples the devotees in San Francisco were not very strict. Some continued going to the doughnut shop, eating food without offering it to Kṛṣṇa, and eating forbidden things like chocolate and commercial ice cream. Some even indulged in after-kīrtana cigarette breaks right outside the temple door. Some got initiated without knowing precisely what they had agreed to practice.

Kīrtanānanda: The mood in San Francisco was a lot more relaxed. The devotees liked to go to the corner and have their coffee and doughnuts. But Prabhupāda loved the way so many people were coming. And he loved the program at the Avalon Ballroom. But there were two sides: those who strictly followed the rules and regulations and emphasized purity and then those who were not so concerned about strictness but who wanted to spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness as widely as possible. Swamiji was so great that he embraced both groups.

It was an evening kīrtana, and the irrepressible hippies were twirling, twisting, and wiggling. Michael and Nancy took a seat on the floor off to one side, impressed more by the presence of the Swami than by the kīrtana. After the kīrtana Prabhupāda lectured, but they found his accent heavy. They wanted to understand – they had an innate feeling that he was saying something valuable – and yet the secrets seemed locked behind a thick accent and within a book written in another language. They decided to come back in the morning and try again.

At the morning program they found a smaller group: a dozen devotees with beads for chanting draped around their necks, a few street people. The kīrtana seemed sweeter and more mellow, and Michael and Nancy chanted and danced along with the devotees. Then Prabhupāda spoke, and this time they caught a few of his ideas. They stayed for breakfast and became friends with Mukunda and Jānakī, Sam and Marjorie (now Śyāmasundara and Mālatī), Yamunā and Gurudāsa, and Govinda dāsī and Gaurasundara. They liked the devotees and promised to come again that evening. Soon they were regularly attending the morning and evening programs, and Nancy, along with the other women, was attending Prabhupāda’s weekend cooking classes.

Michael was open to Prabhupāda’s ideas, but he had difficulty accepting the necessity of surrendering to a spiritual authority. His tendency was to reject authorities. But the more he thought about it, the more he saw that Prabhupāda was right – he had to accept an authority. He reasoned, “Every time I stop at a red light, I’m accepting an authority.” And finally he concluded that to progress in spiritual understanding he would have to accept a spiritual authority. Yet because he didn’t want to accept it, he was in a dilemma. Finally, after hearing Prabhupāda’s lectures for two weeks, Michael decided to surrender to Prabhupāda’s authority and try to become Kṛṣṇa conscious.

Michael: Nancy and I decided to get married and become Swamiji’s disciples and members of his Society. We told some of the devotees, “We would like to see Swamiji.” They said, “Yes, just go up. He’s on the third floor.” We were a little surprised that there were no formalities required, and when we got to the door his servant Ranchor let us in. We went in with our shoes on, so Ranchor had to ask us to take them off.

I didn’t know exactly what to say to Swamiji – I was depending on my future wife to make the initial opening – but then I finally said, “We came because we would like to become members of your Kṛṣṇa conscious Society.” He said this was very nice. Then I said that actually the main reason we were there was that we wanted to be married. We knew that he performed marriage ceremonies and that it was part of the Society’s requirements that couples had to be duly married before they could live together. Swamiji asked me if I liked the philosophy and if I had a job. My answer to both questions was yes. He explained that first of all we would have to be initiated, and then we could be married the next month.

At their initiation Michael received the name Dayānanda, and Nancy received the name Nandarāṇī. Soon Prabhupāda performed their marriage.

Nandarāṇī: We knew it would be a very big wedding. In Haight-Ashbury, whenever Swamiji would perform a wedding hundreds of people would come, and the temple would be filled. My parents were coming, and Dayānanda’s parents were also coming.

Swamiji said that it was proper that I cook. He said I should come to his apartment on the morning of the wedding and he would help me cook something for the wedding feast. So that morning I put on my best jeans and my best sweatshirt and my boots, and I went off to Swamiji’s apartment. When I got upstairs I walked in with my boots on. Swamiji was sitting there in his rocking chair. He smiled at me and said, “Oh, you have come to cook.” I said, “Yes.” He sat there and looked at me – one of those long silent stares. He said, “First take off the boots.”

After I took off my boots and my old leather jacket, Swamiji got up and went into the kitchen. He got a very large pot that had been burned so thick on the bottom that practically there was no metal visible. He handed it to me and said, “We want to boil milk in this pot. It has to be washed.”

There wasn’t a sink in Swamiji’s kitchen, only a teeny round basin. So I went into the bathroom, put the pot in the bathtub, and rinsed it out. I assumed Swamiji didn’t want the black off the bottom, because it was burned on. So I brought it back to him, and he said, “Oh, that is very clean, but just take off this little black on the bottom here.”

I said okay and got a knife and crawled into the bathtub and started scrubbing the black off. I worked and worked and worked, and I scrubbed and scrubbed. I had cleanser up to my elbows, and I made a mess everywhere. I had gotten about half the black off – the rest seemed to be more or less an integral part of the bottom – so I took the pot back to Swamiji and said, “This is the best I can do. All of this is burned on.” He said, “Yes, yes, you’ve done a wonderful job. Now just take off this black that’s left.”

So I went back into the bathtub and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It was almost midday when I came out of the bathtub with all the black scrubbed off the bottom of that pot. He was so happy when I brought the pot in. It was sparkling. A big smile came on his face, and he said, “Oh, this is perfect.” I was exhausted.

Then Swamiji welcomed me into his kitchen and taught me how to make rasagullās. We boiled the milk, curdled it, and then I sat down and began rolling the curd into balls on a tray. As I rolled the balls I would put them in a little row along the tray. And every single ball had to be exactly the same size. Swamiji would take his thumb and first and second fingers and shoot the balls out of the row when they weren’t the right size. And I would have to remake them until they were the right size. This went on until I had a full tray of balls all the same size.

Then Swamiji showed me how to boil the balls of curd in sugar water. Mālatī, Jānakī, and I were cooking in the kitchen, and Swamiji was singing.

At one point, Swamiji stopped singing and asked me, “Do you know what your name means?” I couldn’t even remember what my name was. He had told me at initiation, but because none of us used our devotee names, I couldn’t remember what mine was. I said, “No, Swamiji, what does my name mean?” He said, “It means you are the mother of Kṛṣṇa.” And he laughed loudly and went back to stirring the rasagullās. I couldn’t understand who Kṛṣṇa was, who in the world His mother would be, or how I was in any way related to her. But I was satisfied that Swamiji felt that I was somebody worth being.

I finished cooking that afternoon about four o’clock, and then I went home to get dressed for the wedding. Although I had never worn anything but old dresses and jeans, Swamiji had suggested to the other ladies that they find a way to put me into a sārī for the wedding. So we bought a piece of silk to use for a sārī. I went to Mālatī’s house. She was going to try to help me put it on. I couldn’t keep it on, so she had to sew it on me. Then they decorated me with flowers and took me to Swamiji and showed him. He was very happy. He said, “This is the way our women should always look. No more jeans and dresses. They should always wear sārīs.”

Actually, I looked a fright – I kept stumbling, and they had had to sew the cloth on me – but Swamiji thought it was wonderful. The cloth was all one color, so Swamiji said, “Next time you should buy cloth that has a little border on the bottom, so it’s two colors. I like two colors better.”

When we went downstairs to the wedding, Swamiji met my relatives. He spoke to them very politely. My mother cried a lot during the ceremony. I was very satisfied that she had been blessed by meeting Swamiji.

Prabhupāda asked Steve to shave his long hair and beard. “Why do you want me to shave my head?” Steve protested. “Kṛṣṇa had long hair, Rāma had long hair, Lord Caitanya had long hair, and Christ had long hair. Why should I shave my head?”

Prabhupāda smiled and replied, “Because now you are following me.” There was a print on the wall of Sūradāsa, a Vaiṣṇava. “You should shave your head like that,” Prabhupāda said, pointing to Sūradāsa.

“I don’t think I’m ready to do that yet,” Steve said.

“All right, you are still a young man. There is still time. But at least you should shave your face clean and cut your hair like a man.”

On the morning of the initiation, Steve shaved off his beard and cut his hair around his ears so that it was short in front – but long in the back.

“How’s this?” he asked.

“You should cut the back also,” Prabhupāda replied. Steve agreed.

To Steve Prabhupāda gave the name Subala and to Carolyn the name Kṛṣṇā-devī. A few days later he performed their wedding.

Since each ceremony was another occasion for kīrtana and prasādam distribution, onlookers became attracted. And as the spiritual names and married couples increased with each ceremony, Prabhupāda’s spiritual family grew. The harmonious atmosphere was like that of a small, loving family, and Prabhupāda dealt with his disciples intimately, without the formalities of an institution or hierarchy.

Disciples would approach him for various reasons, entering the little apartment to be alone with him as he sat on a mat before his makeshift desk in the morning sunlight. With men like Mukunda, Gurudāsa, and Śyāmasundara, Swamiji was a friend. With Jānakī and Govinda dāsī he was sometimes ready to be chided, almost like their naughty son, or he would be their grandfatherly teacher of cooking, the enforcer of the rules of kitchen cleanliness. And to all of them he was the unfathomable pure devotee of Lord Kṛṣṇa who knew the conclusions of all the Vedic scriptures and who knew beyond all doubts the truth of transmigration. He could answer all questions. He could lead them beyond material life, beyond Haight-Ashbury hippiedom and into the spiritual world with Kṛṣṇa.

It was 7:00 P.M. Śrīla Prabhupāda entered the temple dressed in a saffron dhotī, an old turtleneck jersey under a cardigan sweater, and a cādara around his shoulders. Walking to the dais in the rear of the room, he took his seat. The dais, a cushion atop a redwood plank two feet off the floor, was supported between two redwood columns. In front of the dais stood a cloth-covered lectern with a bucket of cut flowers on either side. Covering the wall behind the dais was a typical Indian madras, with Haridāsa’s crude painting of Lord Caitanya in kīrtana hanging against it.

Śrīla Prabhupāda picked up his karatālas, wrapped the cloth straps around his forefingers, and looked out at his young followers sitting cross-legged on the burgundy rug. The men were bearded, and almost everyone wore long hair, beads, exotic clothing, and trinkets. The bulbs hanging from the ceiling diffused their light through Japanese paper lanterns, and Navaho “God’s-eye” symbols dangled from strings. Prabhupāda began the ringing one-two-three rhythm, and Śyāmasundara began pumping the harmonium. Although the harmonium was a simple instrument – a miniature piano keyboard to be played with the right hand and a bellows to be pumped with the left hand – no one in the Frederick Street storefront knew how to play it, so it became simply “the drone.” Another important kīrtana instrument, the two-headed mṛdaṅga from India, was meant for intricate rhythmic accompaniments, but even Mukunda could play it only very simply, matching the one-two-three of Prabhupāda’s karatālas.

There were other instruments on hand: a kettledrum (the pride of the temple), Hayagrīva’s old cornet, a few conchshells, and a horn Hayagrīva had made by shellacking a piece of kelp he had found on the beach. Some guests had brought their own flutes, pipes, and bongos. But for now they let their instruments remain still and clapped to Prabhupāda’s rhythm as he sang the evening prayers.

Prabhupāda’s Sanskrit hymn praised the Vaiṣṇava spiritual masters; for each great devotee in the disciplic succession, he sang a specific prayer. First he chanted the poetic description of the transcendental qualities of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, then Gaurakiśora dāsa Bābājī, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura – one after another. One prayer described Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta as “the deliverer of the fallen souls,” and another praised Gaurakiśora dāsa Bābājī as “renunciation personified, always merged in the feeling of separation and intense love for Kṛṣṇa.” Śrīla Prabhupāda sang of Lord Caitanya, the golden-complexioned Supreme Personality of Godhead who distributed pure love of Kṛṣṇa. And he sang of Lord Kṛṣṇa, the ocean of mercy, the friend of the distressed, the source of creation. As Prabhupāda became absorbed in the bhajana, his body trembled with ecstatic emotion. The group on the floor sat swaying from side to side, watching him, his eyes closed in meditation, his delicate, practiced fingers expertly playing the cymbals. They heard the heartfelt minor moods and tones of his voice, unlike anything they had heard before.

Then he began the familiar mantra they had come to hear – Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare – and immediately they joined him. The horns and drums sounded, and soon all the other instrument players joined in. Gradually, a few at a time, members of the audience rose to their feet and began to dance. Prabhupāda’s followers stood and began stepping from side to side as he had shown them, sometimes raising their hands in the air. Others moved as they pleased. Occasionally opening his eyes and glancing around, Prabhupāda sat firmly, chanting, though his head and body were trembling.

After twenty minutes many of the young dancers were leaping, jumping, and perspiring, as Prabhupāda continued to sing, leading the dancers by the beat of his karatālas. His eyes were closed, yet he controlled the entire wild congregation, playing his karatālas loudly. The chanting and dancing continued, and Prabhupāda approved.

The kīrtana of these hippies was different from the chanting of Indian brāhmaṇas, but Prabhupāda didn’t mind – his standard was devotion. In his Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa temple, whatever he accepted, Kṛṣṇa accepted; this was his offering to Kṛṣṇa through his spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī. Prabhupāda was absolutely confident. Even if his young devotees didn’t know how to play the harmonium keyboard or the mṛdaṅga, even if they didn’t know that congregational kīrtana should be done not in constant unison (as they were doing) but responsively, and even if they didn’t know how to honor the guru – still, because they were chanting and dancing, he encouraged them and nodded to them: “Yes.”

Wild elements were there, of course – people whose minds and intentions were far away in some chemically induced fantasy – yet the mood was dominated by Śrīla Prabhupāda’s followers, who danced with arms upraised and watched their leader carefully. Although in many ways they were still like hippies, they were Swamiji’s disciples, and they wanted to please him and follow his instructions; they wanted to attain Kṛṣṇa consciousness. For all the varied punctuation of horns and timpani, the kīrtana remained sweet; Hayagrīva even played his cornet in tune, and only during every other mantra.

Śrīla Prabhupāda knew that some aspects of the kīrtana were wrong or below standard, but he accepted the offering – and not awkwardly, but lovingly. He simply wanted these American boys and girls to chant. That they dressed irregularly, jumped too savagely, or had the wrong philosophy did not overconcern him. These boys and girls were chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, so at least for the present, they were pure. The hippies knew that, too. And they loved it.

Just as in Jānakī’s dream, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s pleasure was to see the whole world engaged in kīrtana. Somehow or other, he would say, people should be engaged in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And this was the instruction of Lord Caitanya’s chief follower, Rūpa Gosvāmī, who had written, tasmāt kenāpy upāyena manaḥ kṛṣṇe niveśayet: “Somehow or other, fix the mind on Kṛṣṇa; the rules and regulations can come later.”

Inherent in this attitude of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s and Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī’s was a strong conviction about the purifying force of the holy name; if engaged in chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, even the most fallen person could gradually become a saintly devotee. Śrīla Prabhupāda would often quote a verse from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam affirming that persons addicted to sinful acts could be purified by taking shelter of the devotees of the Lord. He knew that every Haight-Ashbury hippie was eligible to receive the mercy of the holy name, and he saw it as his duty to his spiritual master to distribute the gift of Kṛṣṇa consciousness freely, rejecting no one. Yet while living amongst these mlecchas, he required a certain standard of behavior, and he was adamant about preserving the purity of his Kṛṣṇa consciousness Society.

For example, if he were going to distribute free food to the public, it could not be ordinary food but must be prasādam, food offered to Kṛṣṇa. Feeding hungry people was futile unless they were given prasādam and the chance of liberation from birth and death. And although in the kīrtanas he allowed openness and free expression and welcomed the wildest participation, the transcendental sound of the holy name had to dominate. He never allowed the kīrtana to degenerate into mere beating on drums or chanting of any old words, nor could anyone in the group become so crazy that others wouldn’t be able to hear or take part in congregational chanting.

In his attempts to “somehow or other” get these young people chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, Prabhupāda instinctively knew what to allow and what not to allow. He was the master, and his new disciples followed him when he permitted an egoistic, sensual dancer to jump around the temple or a drugged madman to argue with him in a question-and-answer period. When a person was too disruptive, Prabhupāda was not afraid to stop him. But stopping was rare. The main thing was giving.

The kīrtana lasted more than an hour, as the chanters joined hands and danced around the room and incense poured out the front door.

The morning and evening kīrtanas had already made the Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa temple popular in Haight-Ashbury, but when the devotees began serving a daily free lunch, the temple became an integral part of the community. Prabhupāda told his disciples simply to cook and distribute prasādam – that would be their only activity during the day. In the morning they would cook, and at noon they would feed everyone who came – sometimes 150 to 200 hippies from the streets of Haight-Ashbury.

Before the morning kīrtana, the girls would put oatmeal on the stove, and by breakfast there would be a roomful of hippies, most of whom had been up all night. The cereal and fruit was for some the first solid food in days.

But the main program was the lunch. Mālatī would go out and shop, getting donations whenever possible, for whole-wheat flour, garbanzo flour, split peas, rice, and whatever vegetables were cheap or free: potatoes, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, beets. Then every day the cooks would prepare spiced mashed potatoes, buttered capātīs, split-pea dāl, and a vegetable dish – for two hundred people. The lunch program was possible because many merchants were willing to donate to the recognized cause of feeding hippies.

Harṣarāṇī: The lunch program attracted a lot of the Hippie Hill crowd, who obviously wanted food. They were really hungry. And there were other people who would come also, people who were working with the temple but weren’t initiated. The record player would be playing the Swamiji’s record. It was a nice, family atmosphere.

Haridāsa: It was taken outside too, outside the front. But the main food was served inside. It was amazing. The people would just all huddle together, and we would really line them wall to wall. A lot of them would simply eat and leave. Other stores along Haight-Ashbury were selling everything from beads to rock records, but our store was different, because we weren’t selling anything – we were giving it away.

And we were welcoming everybody. We were providing a kind of refuge from the tumult and madness of the scene. So it was in that sense a hospital, and I think a lot of people were helped and maybe even saved. I don’t mean only their souls – I mean their minds and bodies were saved, because of what was going on in the streets that they just simply couldn’t handle. I’m talking about overdoses of drugs, people who were plain lost and needed comforting and who sort of wandered or staggered into the temple.

Some of them stayed and became devotees, and some just took prasādam and left. Daily we had unusual incidents, and Swamiji witnessed it and took part in it. The lunch program was his idea.

Mukunda: The Salvation Army came in one day for lunch. They just unloaded a whole truckload of people on us – about thirty or forty.

Larry Shippen: Some of the community of loose people cynically took advantage of the free food. They didn’t appreciate the Swami, because they said he was, in his own way, an orthodox minister and they were much more interested in being unorthodox. It was a fairly cynical thing.

Those who were more interested and had questions – the spiritual seekers – would visit Swamiji in his room. Many of them would come in complete anxiety over the war in Vietnam or whatever was going on – trouble with the law, bad experiences on drugs, a falling out with school or family.

There was much public concern about the huge influx of youth into San Francisco, a situation that was creating an almost uncontrollable social problem. Police and social welfare workers were worried about health problems and poor living conditions, especially in Haight-Ashbury. Some middle-class people feared a complete hippie takeover. The local authorities welcomed the service offered by Swami Bhaktivedanta’s temple, and when civic leaders in Haight-Ashbury talked of forming a council to deal with the crisis, they requested Swami Bhaktivedanta to take part. He agreed, but lost interest after the first meeting. No one seemed seriously interested in hearing his solution.

Master Subramuniya: A lot of responsible citizens in San Francisco were very happy that Swami Bhaktivedanta was working amongst the young people. The young people at that time were searching and needed somebody of a very high caliber who would take an interest in them and who would say, “You should do this, and you should not do that.” The consensus was that no one could tell the young people what to do, because they were completely out of hand with drugs and so forth. But Swamiji told them what to do, and they did it. And everyone was appreciative, especially the young people.

Harṣarāṇī: Just from a medical standpoint, doctors didn’t know what to do with people on LSD. The police and the free clinics in the area couldn’t handle the overload of people taking LSD. The police saw Swamiji as a certain refuge.

Michael Bowen: Bhaktivedanta had an amazing ability through devotion to get people off drugs, especially speed, heroin, burnt-out LSD cases – all of that.

Haridāsa: The police used to come with their paddy wagons through the park in the early hours of the morning and pick up runaway teenagers sleeping in the park. The police would round them up and try to send them back home. The hippies needed all the help they could get, and they knew it. And the Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa temple was certainly a kind of spiritual haven. Kids sensed it. They were running, living on the streets, no place where they could go, where they could rest, where people weren’t going to hurt them. A lot of kids would literally fall into the temple. I think it saved a lot of lives; there might have been a lot more casualties if it hadn’t been for Hare Kṛṣṇa. It was like opening a temple in a battlefield. It was the hardest place to do it, but it was the place where it was most needed. Although the Swami had no precedents for dealing with any of this, he applied the chanting with miraculous results. The chanting was wonderful. It worked.

Śrīla Prabhupāda knew that only Kṛṣṇa consciousness could help. Others had their remedies, but Prabhupāda considered them mere patchwork. He knew that ignorantly identifying the self with the body was the real cause of suffering. How could someone help himself, what to speak of others, if he didn’t know who he was, if he didn’t know that the body was only a covering of the real self, the spirit soul, which could be happy only in his original nature as an eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa?

Understanding that Lord Kṛṣṇa considered anyone who approached Him a virtuous person and that even a little devotional service would never be lost and could save a person at the time of death, Śrīla Prabhupāda had opened his door to everyone, even the most abject runaway. But for a lost soul to fully receive the balm of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he would first have to stay awhile and chant, inquire, listen, and follow.

Allen Ginsberg: At six-thirty in the morning we went over to Swami Bhaktivedanta’s space station for some chanting and a little Kṛṣṇa consciousness. There were about thirty or forty people there, all chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa to this new tune they’ve made up, just for mornings. One kid got a little freaked out by the scene at first, but then he relaxed, and afterwards he told me, “You know, at first I thought: What is this? But then suddenly I realized I was just not grooving with where I was. I wasn’t being where I was.”

On occasion, the “reentries” would come flying in out of control for crash landings in the middle of the night. One morning at 2 A.M. the boys sleeping in the storefront were awakened by a pounding at the door, screaming, and police lights. When they opened the door, a young hippie with wild red hair and beard plunged in, crying, “Oh, Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa! Oh, help me! Oh, don’t let them get me. Oh, for God’s sake, help!”

A policeman stuck his head in the door and smiled. “We decided to bring him by here,” he said, “because we thought maybe you guys could help him.”

“I’m not comfortable in this body!” the boy screamed as the policeman shut the door. The boy began chanting furiously and turned white, sweating profusely in terror. Swamiji’s boys spent the rest of the early morning consoling him and chanting with him until the Swami came down for kīrtana and class.

The devotees often sent distressed young people to Swamiji with their problems. And they allowed almost anyone to see Swamiji and take up his valuable time. While walking around San Francisco, Ravīndra-svarūpa once met a man who claimed to have seen people from Mars in his tent when he had been stationed in Vietnam. The man, who had just been discharged from an army hospital, said that the Martians had talked to him. Ravīndra-svarūpa told him about Swamiji’s book Easy Journey to Other Planets, which verified the idea of life on other planets, and he suggested that the Swami could probably tell him more about the people from Mars. So the man visited the Swami up in his apartment. “Yes,” Swamiji answered, “there are Martians.”

Gradually, Prabhupāda’s followers became more considerate of their spiritual master and began protecting him from persons they thought might be undesirable. One such undesirable was Rabbit, perhaps the dirtiest hippie in Haight-Ashbury. Rabbit’s hair was always disheveled, dirty, and even filled with lice. His clothes were ragged and filthy, and his dirt-caked body stank. He wanted to meet Prabhupāda, but the devotees refused, not wanting to defile Prabhupāda’s room with Rabbit’s nasty, stinking presence. One night after the lecture, however, Rabbit waited outside the temple door. As Prabhupāda approached, Rabbit asked, “May I come up and see you?” Prabhupāda agreed.

As for challengers, almost every night someone would come to argue with Prabhupāda. One man came regularly with prepared arguments from a philosophy book, from which he would read aloud. Prabhupāda would defeat him, and the man would go home, prepare another argument, and come back again with his book. One night, after the man had presented his challenge, Prabhupāda simply looked at him without bothering to reply. Prabhupāda’s neglect was another defeat for the man, who got up and left.

Israel, like Rabbit, was another well-known Haight-Ashbury character. He had a long ponytail and often played the trumpet during kīrtana. After one of Prabhupāda’s evening lectures, Israel challenged, “This chanting may be nice, but what will it do for the world? What will it do for humanity?”

Prabhupāda replied, “Are you not in the world? If you like it, why will others not like it? So you chant loudly.”

A mustached man standing at the back of the room asked, “Are you Allen Ginsberg’s guru?” Many of the devotees knew that the question was loaded and that to answer either yes or no would be difficult.

Śrīla Prabhupāda replied, “I am nobody’s guru. I am everybody’s servant.” To the devotees, the whole exchange became transcendental due to Swamiji’s reply. Swamiji had not simply given a clever response; he had answered out of a deep, natural humility.

One morning a couple attended the lecture, a woman carrying a child and a man wearing a backpack. During the question-and-answer period the man asked, “What about my mind?” Prabhupāda gave him philosophical replies, but the man kept repeating, “What about my mind? What about my mind?”

With a pleading, compassionate look, Prabhupāda said, “I have no other medicine. Please chant this Hare Kṛṣṇa. I have no other explanation. I have no other answer.”

But the man kept talking about his mind. Finally, one of the women devotees interrupted and said, “Just do what he says. Just try it.” And Prabhupāda picked up his karatālas and began kīrtana.

One evening a boy burst into a lecture exclaiming that a riot was gathering on Haight Street. The Swami should come immediately, address the crowd, and calm everyone down. Mukunda explained that it wasn’t necessary for Swamiji to go; others could help. The boy just stared at Prabhupāda as if giving an ultimatum: unless Swamiji came immediately, there would be a riot, and Swamiji would be to blame. Prabhupāda spoke as if preparing to do what the boy wanted: “Yes, I am prepared.” But nobody went, and there was no riot.

Usually during the kīrtana at least one dancer would carry on in a narcissistic, egoistic way, occasionally becoming lewd to the point where Prabhupāda would ask the person to stop. One evening, before Śrīla Prabhupāda had come down from his apartment, a girl in a miniskirt began writhing and gyrating in the temple during kīrtana. When one of the devotees went upstairs and told Prabhupāda, he replied, “That’s all right. Let her use her energy for Kṛṣṇa. I’m coming soon, and I will see for myself.” When Prabhupāda arrived and started another kīrtana, the girl, who was very skinny, again began to wriggle and gyrate. Prabhupāda opened his eyes and saw her; he frowned and glanced at some of his disciples, indicating his displeasure. Taking the girl aside, one of the women escorted her out. A few minutes later the girl returned, wearing slacks and dancing in a more reserved style.

Prabhupāda was sitting on his dais, lecturing to a full house, when a fat girl who had been sitting on the window seat suddenly stood up and began hollering at him. “Are you just going to sit there?” she yelled. “What are you going to do now? Come on! Aren’t you going to say something? What are you going to do? Who are you?” Her action was so sudden and her speech so violent that no one in the temple responded. Unangered, Prabhupāda sat very quietly. He appeared hurt. Only the devotees sitting closest to him heard him say softly, as if to himself, “It is the darkest of darkness.”

Another night while Prabhupāda was lecturing, a boy came up and sat on the dais beside him. The boy faced out toward the audience and interrupted Prabhupāda: “I would like to say something now.”

Prabhupāda politely said, “Wait until after the class. Then we have questions.”

The boy waited for a few minutes, still sitting on the dais, and Prabhupāda continued to lecture. But again the boy interrupted: “I got something to say. I want to say what I have to say now.” The devotees in the audience looked up, astonished, thinking that Swamiji would handle the matter and not wanting to cause a disturbance. None of them did anything; they simply sat while the boy began talking incoherently.

Then Prabhupāda picked up his karatālas: “All right, let us have kīrtana.” The boy sat in the same place throughout the kīrtana, looking crazily, sometimes menacingly, at Prabhupāda. After half an hour the kīrtana stopped.

Prabhupāda cut an apple into small pieces, as was his custom. He then placed the paring knife and a piece of apple in his right hand and held his hand out to the boy. The boy looked at Prabhupāda, then down at the apple and knife. The room became silent. Prabhupāda sat motionless, smiling slightly at the boy. After a long, tense moment, the boy reached out. A sigh rose from the audience as the boy chose the piece of apple from Prabhupāda’s open hand.

Haridāsa: I used to watch how Swamiji would handle things. It wasn’t easy. To me, that was a real test of his powers and understanding – how to handle these people, not to alienate or antagonize or stir them up to create more trouble. He would turn their energy so that before they knew it they were calm, like when you pat a baby and it stops crying. Swamiji had a way of doing that with words, with the intonation of his voice, with his patience to let them carry on for a certain period of time, let them work it out, act it out even. I guess he realized that the devotees just couldn’t say, “Listen, when you come to the temple you can’t behave this way.” It was a delicate situation there.

Often someone would say, “I am God.” They would get an insight or hallucination from their drugs. They would try to steal the spotlight. They wanted to be heard, and you could feel an anger against the Swami from people like that. Sometimes they would speak inspired and poetic for a while, but they couldn’t sustain it, and their speech would become gibberish. And the Swami was not one to simply pacify people. He wasn’t going to coddle them. He would say, “What do you mean? If you are God, then you have to be all-knowing. You have to have the attributes of God. Are you omniscient and omnipotent?” He would then name all the characteristics that one would have to have to be an avatāra, to be God. He would rationally prove the person wrong. He had superior knowledge, and he would rationally explain to them, “If you are God, can you do this? Do you have this power?”

Sometimes people would take it as a challenge and would try to have a verbal battle with the Swami. The audience’s attention would then swing to the disturbing individual, the person who was grabbing the spotlight. Sometimes it was very difficult. I used to sit there and wonder, “How is he going to handle this guy? This one is really a problem.” But Swamiji was hard to defeat. Even if he couldn’t convince the person, he convinced the other people in the crowd so that the energy of the room would change and would tend to quiet the person. Swamiji would win the audience by showing them that this person didn’t know what he was talking about. And the person would feel the vibrations of the room change, that the audience was no longer listening or believing his spiel, and so the person would shut up.

So Swamiji would remove the audience rather than the person. He would do it without crushing the person. He would do it by superior intelligence, but also with a lot of compassion. When I saw him do these things, then I realized he was a great teacher and a great human being. He had the sensitivity not to injure a person physically or emotionally, so that when the person sat down and shut up, he wouldn’t be doing it in defeat or anger – he wouldn’t be hurt. He would just be outwitted by the Swami.

On another occasion, about 1:30 A.M., while Prabhupāda was dictating Teachings of Lord Caitanya, a girl repeatedly knocked and called at Prabhupāda’s door. At first he ignored the interruption. Since his arrival in San Francisco, he had completed many pages for this important book. Lord Caitanya’s discussions with Rūpa Gosvāmī and Sanātana Gosvāmī, Rāmānanda Rāya, and others explored many Kṛṣṇa conscious topics mentioned only briefly in Bhagavad-gītā. In the West almost no one knew about these teachings of Lord Caitanya, and now Śrīla Prabhupāda intended to compile these teachings in one volume, providing the most complete presentation of bhakti-yoga ever introduced in English. Such a book would give great substance to the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. But now his solitary concentration was being interrupted by a knocking at his door and a woman’s voice calling.

Getting up from his desk, Prabhupāda went to the front room but did not open the door: “Who is there?”

A young woman answered, “I want to speak to you.”

“Come back later in the morning,” Prabhupāda told her.

He knew that in San Francisco, just as in New York, he would not always be able to write peacefully. Preaching in America meant having to tolerate just this – a crazy call in the middle of the night, tearing one away from ecstatic concentration on the pastimes of Lord Caitanya. The lost souls of Haight-Ashbury – with their illusions of knowledge, their cries for help, their arrogant challenges – pulled his attention away from his mission of translating and commenting on the scriptures. Now, alone in his apartment, speaking through the locked door, Prabhupāda told his intruder that he had work to do and that she should go away. He promised he would see her later that day.

He was ready to speak with the hippies all day, but the early morning hours were the special time for his literary work. Preaching face to face to the conditioned souls was important; he had come here to preach. But he had picked these early hours to speak intimately to the whole world through his books – without disturbance.

The girl, however, continued pounding and calling, until Prabhupāda finally opened the door. There, standing in the hallway, he saw a teenage hippie with a glassy stare and deranged appearance. He asked her what she wanted. She remained tensely silent. “Speak,” he told her. She stepped into his room. He saw her helpless – a victim in the ocean of māyā – and he asked her repeatedly what she wanted. Finally, the girl stared at him with widened eyes and exclaimed, “Looook! Maha ula!”

Prabhupāda decided to awaken Mukunda, who lived down the hall. He stepped barefoot into the hallway. The girl followed, shutting the selflocking door behind her. Now he was locked out of his apartment. She continued to stare at him defiantly, in the bare, unfriendly surroundings of a corridor of locked doors at one in the morning.

This was why the bābājīs of Vṛndāvana stayed in their little cottages chanting the holy name: to avoid being bothered by ungodly people. (The bābājīs, of course, never even dreamed of these bizarre intrusions from the psychedelic San Francisco night.)

At Mukunda’s door Prabhupāda began pounding and calling loudly, “Mukunda! Mukunda!” Mukunda awoke and opened the door, astonished to see his spiritual master standing barefoot in the hallway, a wild-eyed young girl standing a few feet behind. Yet Prabhupāda remained grave and aloof. “This girl came to my door,” he began. He explained briefly what had happened and what should now be done. He did not appear angry or harassed by the girl, and he indicated that Mukunda should deal kindly with her.

Mukunda remembered when Prabhupāda had been driven out of his New York Bowery loft by his roommate David Allen, who had gone mad on LSD. Then also, Prabhupāda had remained coolheaded though caught by a dangerous and awkward circumstance. Mukunda went downstairs and awoke Hayagrīva, who had a key to Prabhupāda’s apartment. Śrīla Prabhupāda then returned to his room and to his dictation of Teachings of Lord Caitanya.

Mukunda saw the girl down to the street and admonished her not to bother an elderly gentleman like the Swami at such an hour. Staring at Mukunda, she said, “You’re not ready,” and walked away.

At seven o’clock, when Prabhupāda came down to the temple for the morning class, the girl was sitting in the audience in a calmer state of mind. She apologized. Later in the day, Prabhupāda repeated the story in good humor, recounting how he had several times asked the girl to speak. He opened his eyes wide, imitating her expression, and said, “Look! Maha ula!” and laughed.

“We shall go for a walk at six-thirty,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said one morning. “You can drive me to the park.”

Several devotees accompanied him to Golden Gate Park’s Stowe Lake. They knew the park well and led Śrīla Prabhupāda on a scenic walk around the lake, over a bridge, through forest-enclosed paths, and across a small rivulet, hoping to please him with nature’s beauty.

As he walked, striding quickly, he would point to a tree or stop to examine a flower. “What is this tree?” he would ask. “What is this flower?” although his disciples were usually at a loss to answer. “When Caitanya Mahāprabhu passed through the forest of Vṛndāvana,” he said, “all the plants, trees, and creepers were delighted to see Him and rejoiced in His presence. The plant life there is like that in the spiritual sky – fully conscious.”

“And these trees, Swamiji – how conscious are they?”

“Oh, the spirit soul is there,” Prabhupāda said, “but the consciousness has been arrested temporarily. Perception is more limited.”

Whatever Prabhupāda saw he saw through the eyes of scripture, and his comments on the most ordinary things were full of transcendental instruction. As he walked, he reflected aloud, “Those who want to see God must first have the qualifications to see God. They must be purified. Just like the cloud is now covering the sun. They say, ‘Oh, the sun is not out,’ but the sun is there. Only our eyes are covered.”

Like tour guides the boys led Prabhupāda to the more picturesque areas. They came upon swans gliding on the lake. “Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam,” Prabhupāda said, “compares devotees to swans, and literature about Lord Kṛṣṇa to beautiful, clear lakes.” The nondevotees, he said, were like crows attracted by the rubbish of mundane topics. Walking over a gravel path, he stopped and drew their attention: “Look at the pebbles. As many pebbles there are, there are that many universes. And in each universe there are innumerable living entities.”

The devotees delighted in bringing Swamiji to a rhododendron glen, its big bushes completely covered with white and pink flowers. And they felt privileged to see Kṛṣṇa through Swamiji’s eyes.

The next morning, when Prabhupāda again wanted to go to the park, more devotees accompanied him; they had heard from the others how Swamiji had displayed a different mood while walking. Again the boys were ready to lead him along new trails around the lake, but without announcing a change in plans, he walked up and down the macadam road beside the lake.

Prabhupāda and his followers came upon a flock of sleeping ducks. Awakened by the sound of people walking on the path, the ducks began quacking, moving their wings, and walking away. When a few devotees hurried ahead to shoo the ducks from Prabhupāda’s path, the ducks began making sounds of grouching and grumbling. “Move, you ducks,” one devotee said. “You’re disturbing Swamiji.” Prabhupāda said quietly, “As we are thinking they are disturbing us, they are thinking we are disturbing them.”

Prabhupāda stopped beneath a large tree and pointed to some bird droppings on the ground. “What does this mean?” he asked, turning to a new boy who stood beside him. Prabhupāda’s face was serious. The boy blushed. “I … uh … I don’t know what it means.” Prabhupāda remained thoughtful, waiting for an explanation. The devotees gathered around him. Looking intently down at the bird droppings, the boy thought the Swami might be expecting him to decipher some hidden meaning in the pattern of the droppings, the way people read the future in tea leaves. He felt he should say something: “It’s the … uh … excreta, the defecations of … uh … birds.” Prabhupāda smiled and turned toward the others for an answer. They were silent.

“It means,” said Prabhupāda, “that these birds [he pronounced the word “bards”] have lived in the same tree for more than two weeks.” He laughed. “Even the birds are attached to their apartments.”

As they passed the shuffleboard courts and the old men playing checkers, Prabhupāda stopped and turned to the boys. “Just see,” he said. “Old people in this country do not know what to do. So they play like children, wasting their last days, which should be meant for developing Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Their children are grown and gone away, so this is a natural time for spiritual cultivation. But no. They get some cat or dog, and instead of serving God, they serve dog. It is most unfortunate. But they will not listen. Their ways are set. Therefore we are speaking to the youth, who are searching.”

When Prabhupāda and the boys passed a sloping green lawn just off Kezar Drive, the boys pointed out that this was the famous Hippie Hill. In the early morning the gently sloping hill and the big quiet meadow surrounded by eucalyptuses and oaks were silent and still. But in a few hours hundreds of hippies would gather here to lounge on the grass, meet friends, and get high. Prabhupāda advised the boys to come here and hold kīrtanas.