Mantra Rock

The whole temple smelled of Sandalwood incense mixed with jasmine incense mixed with strawberry incense. As Hawk looked around, he could see everyone savoring a special kind of deep spiritual satisfaction. Those who were not laughing and smiling outwardly were dancing in their hearts and smiling internally. This was not some satanic cult: The Krishna people were joyful. They were mostly young people, but old souls. He felt perfectly safe. These people were kind truth-seekers with friendly, shining faces. While they had a philosophy, they weren't trying to jam a message down his throat.

Hawk felt permeated with transcendental spirituality. A sublime sense of divine wonder was in the fragrant air of the incense, the music of the kirtan, the rice, dahl and chipatties made by hand and prepared with love. Hawk asked the Krishna person sitting next to him, “What is this?” and held up a paper cup of something sweet.

The boy smiled, “Oh, that’s preparation #39: Gentle--Honey in Saffron and Cream." Pointing to another, he said, that’s “Brahmananda's Midnight Dream.”

The light rain outside had turned into a downpour. Most guests had finished eating and had left before the storm hit. There were only a few people left behind cleaning their plates. The devotees had stopped serving. Two women in saris began mopping the back of the hall.

Hawk was tired. Night was falling. It occurred to him that it was time to look for shelter for the night. Could he stay here, at the temple? The boy next to him, read his thoughts. “So, are you new here?”

“Why do you ask?” said Hawk, finishing his plate.

“Well, you look different. You followed the kirtan party here. “I’m Atmaram Das. Everyone calls me atom.”

“I’m Hawk.”

The two hippie girls sat in the lotus posture, meditating. A tall man who could have been truckdriver wandered over to them. He cracked a broad smile and they giggled. Hawk noticed them as they chatted. He turned to Atmaram:

“Listen, I’m a bit lost. I just got in from Tokyo. Is there a good hotel near here?”

“Well, you won’t find any luxuries in part of town. But, look, I have an extra cot in the office for guests if you want to crash here. The only thing is mangal aroti.”

“Aroti?”

“Yeah, it’s like a mass, like what we just did. We get up early for it.”

The hippie girls got up to leave with the truck driver. He wore a red lumberjack shirt. He was tall and rugged looking. He had an angular bony face with sideburns and an arrogant nose. He was powerfully built, like he could split a log with a single blow of the axe. Hawk couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.

The tall girl in the granny dress got and took his hand. “I’m Crystal and this is my sister Blue. We’re from Kansas, but we’ve been here for months. We came to find out what it was all about. You know, what’s happening. We’re staying over in Japantown.”

“I’m Neal. I’ll take you home,” the stranger said. For some reason they all cracked up laughing as if it were the wittiest thing anyone had ever said. Hawk tried to place his face. He had seen him somewhere.

The truck driver’s partner appeared, also wearing a lumberjack shirt. They could have been brothers. Somehow, they didn’t fit in with the hippie crowd and the Krishna people. The partner had a worried look and wore blue jeans. Before Neal and the girls reached the door, he stopped them. “Hey, not so fast! I get the blond.”

“Sure, Jack. Come along for the ride. I’m taking these ladies to Japantown. We’re gonna find out what it’s all about. But tomorrow it’s the last frontier: Mexico!”

“You got that right,” said the one called Jack. He had a French Canadian accent. He carried a little notebook in the pocket of his shirt. Writers? Hawk thought, where had he seen these characters? Jack? Neal? He watched as they scooped up the other hippie chick and waltzed out the door. A car engine roared.

Hawk felt intoxicated by the food. His head was spinning. He had traveled 50 years through time. What were those drugs Van Jensen had given him? Tryptamine? When was the last time he had slept? The storm outside thundered.

Hawk looked at Atmaram, who seemed as if he were in some kind of trance. Suddenly he was tired. With the rain still pounding outside, the office sounded pretty good.

“Well, I suppose I could make it to your morning mass. What time is it?”

“We rise early around here. It’s at 5:30. What’s time any way?”

He looked around the temple room. Everyone had cleared out. The hippie girls were all gone now. Outside a motorcycle gunned its engine. He noticed a forlorn-looking bearded man with glasses, chanting and meditating by himself in the corner. He was the last guest. Everyone else had cleared out.

Atmaram followed Hawk’s glance.

“Oh, that’s Allen. He’s some kind of a poet. He met the Swami in New York. He’s giving a concert with the Grateful Dead on Saturday.”

“Allen Ginsberg?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He knows everyone here. He started chanting Hare Krishna when the Swami first started. He knows Bob Dylan. He’s our other guest. tonight.”

The two women in saris had finished mopping. It was time to make a move.

“Well, the office sounds find. That would be great. Thanks for the hospitality.”

“Right this way,” said Atmaram, with a sweep of his hand.

Hawk followed him to a door in the back of the temple room. It led down a corridor past a staircase and another door, past the kitchen where some devotees were cleaning up. The corridor dog-legged left past the back door which led to the alley and some garbage cans. A golden retriever with a red bandana stood watch.

At the end of the hall was a tiny office with a window in the door. Inside were bundles and packs of incense. Boxes held loose sticks of incense and more boxes held empty cardboard slips tied with rubber bands and the logo “Spiritual Sky” with a psychedelic illustration of Krishna. There were stacks of books from floor to ceiling. “Bhagavad-Gita As It Is.” “Easy Journey to Other Planets.” There was a stack of psychedelic posters. One was tacked on the wall. It showed a photo of the Swami and said, “Krishna Consciousness Comes West” at the Avalon Ballroom at Sutter and Van Ness. The Headliner was Swami Bhaktivedanta, followed by Allen Ginsberg, the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, Big Brother and the Holding Company. The theme was “Mantra Rock.”

“Bring cushions, drums, bells, and cymbals.”

Hawk looked around the office. A card table with a folding chair held an Underwood typewriter and a telephone with a dial. The room reeked of strawberry incense. A green army cot had been set up next to the table. Another cot was next to the window.

“You can crash in here,” said Atmaram. “Don’t make any long distance phone calls.” Allen will probably join you later. I hope you don’t mind sharing.”

“O.K.,” said Hawk, reaching for his wallet, “What do I owe you?”

“Atmaram’s shaven head turned red. His angelic blue eyes glowed in the dark. “There’s no charge. You need spiritual help, brother. You’ll help us somehow later. I can tell. You know, the law of karma? What goes around comes around.”

“Right,” said Hawk, trying to remember the hippie lingo he had heard about, “Ah... Peace and Love, man.”

“Chant Hare Krishna and be happy,” said Atmaram.

Hawk sat on the cot. He pulled the blanket around his ears. Through dark clouds a gibbous moon shone through the window. He inhaled strawberry incense. Time floated through the air. Raindrops streaked the window. The sounds of pots and pans cleaned gradually ceased.

He heard a man’s voice muttering mystic word formulas in the hall outside the office.

The office door opened quietly. The light flicked on, a bare bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the office ceiling. Hawk felt a presence. He turned over and looked up. It was the poet Ginsberg, muttering mantric incantations. He had the air of a sorrowful poetic conman as he stroked his diabolic beard. He met the piercing stare of this wooly-haired madman, whose beady eyes glared through licorice whip glasses, his furry beard wagging in fury.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Hawk. Atmaram said I could crash here.”

“I get it. You’re here to see what it’s all about, right? Were you at the mantra rock?”

“No, I just got here.”

“Welcome to the ashram.”

“Ashram?”

“Refuge, sanctuary. This is where I come for peace. It’s insanity out there.”

Police sirens echoed through the nervous streets. The dog outside whined. Hawk heard voices in the alley.

“A lot of people think it’s about the sex and the drugs, but that’s not it.”
“No?” said Hawk, impressed by Ginsberg’s intensity.

“Not at all. It’s the void man. Nirvana. I ain’t saying the void is the ultimate truth. I’m just saying that’s one of the…

“But why the void?”

“You know what I would say? – All ideas as to the nature of the self , as well as to the existence of the self, as well as all ideas as to the existence of a supreme self, as well as all ideas as to the non-existence of the self, as well as all ideas as to the non-existence of the supreme self, are equally arbitrary, being only ideas. An experience of void, or an experience of supreme self are nameless experiences that really can’t be argued about one way or the other, or discussed rationally even. I’ve had experience of a supreme person and I’ve had a contradictory experience of the void . I’m not even in a position to know whether the experiences were even contradictory finally. It’s not emotionally satisfying entirely to say that we are empty phantoms entirely and there’s no.. that evenKrishna is empty, which is what the Buddhists would say. But, on the other hand, I’m afraid of attachment, even to Krishna, as being an attachment also. Not that I’m that detached from everything. But if we’re talking philosophy...”

Hawk could see some meaning in Ginsberg’s argument, even if he was somehow incoherent. It was the first conversation he had had since his chat with Van Jensen.

“But what about time?”

“That’s what I’m saying, man. Time, eternity, the void, it’s all there. But people are absorbed in war, stupidity, meaninglessness. Look at the fucking Vietnam War, Hawk. Those are no angelic bombs dropping from the sky, hurray halleluah, no sirree bob. It’s like what I said in Howl. You don’t mind a bit of poetry, do you?”

“Not at all. I could use some poetry at a time like this.”

“Exactly, man, said Ginsberg, his eyes glazing over, entering deeper into his poetic trance.

“ Listen to this:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by  madness, starving hysterical naked, 

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn  looking for an angry fix, 

angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly  connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night; 

who, poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high,

sat  up smoking in the supernatural darkness of  cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities  contemplating jazz,  who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and  saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, 

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes  hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy  among the scholars of war,  who were expelled from the academies for crazy &  publishing obscene odes on the windows of the  skull.

They wanted to put me in jail for that, man.”

The police sirens had long since faded into silence. The rain had stopped. The night was tranquil. The aroma of incense filled the air.

Ginsberg pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. He became serious.

“But listen to this,” the poet said:

“I TRAVELL’D thro’ a land of men,

A land of men and women too;

And heard and saw such dreadful things

As cold earth-wanderers never knew.

For there the Babe is born in joy

That was begotten in dire woe;

Just as we reap in joy the fruit

Which we in bitter tears did sow.

“That’s William Blake, man. The Mental Traveller. I can’t touch that. But then I wouldn’t want to. He’s William Blake. What we need today is not a Blake but a Howl. But they tried to put me in jail for Howl. That’s why I like to come here. This is my sanctuary, my ashram. I’m like Hugo’s Quasimodo: I need sanctuary. God, I could use a cigarette. Open the window.”

As Hawk opened the window, Ginsberg found a loose stick of incense and lit it. On the table, next to the typewriter was a small brass incense holder. A cool breeze floated in lifting the smoke in arabesques that curlicued toward the psychedelic posters.

“But what I’m saying, is, they’re getting it wrong. Everyone talks about the Be-in or the Mantra Rock, like its about drugs and getting high. But we’re not getting high for sex. Sex is there. But what they don’t get is that people are here looking for their soul.”

He fumbled with his jacket, finally sitting down. He found a pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes. Sitting closer to the window for better air flow, he let a match, and held it in his cupped fingers. He wrinkled his brow with concentration and set fire to a cigarette. Tobacco smoke mixed with incense as he filled his lungs.

Hawk was sitting up. He had completely lost his sense of time.

“Altered consciousness leads to higher awareness and greater individuality, which is interesting,” he said, streaming smoke from his nostrils. “See, America is looking for its soul. See the military police state wants us to believe that the scene here is about crime, sex, runaway girls, and negros. They want to strip all poetic language from the lexicon. The church wants us all to accept Grandpa Nobodaddy as the father figure to lead us into war. So the press, the newspapers try to make everyone believe that young people are being led into sin and crime by hippie murderers and madman. But that’s not what it’s about.”

He blew smoke from his mouth and stroked his beard with a free hand.

“So, this summer of love, the LSD festivals, hippie madness, young girls running away, what’s it all about?”

“I get what you’re saying,” he said, waving his cigarette as he made his points. “But the innate yearning of the masses who have gathered here has nothing to do with the primal urges. See, America is looking for its soul. There’s a search. It’s for peace. Not just the war in Vietnam, that’s Moloch, but inner peace. Higher consciousness. See, that’s what the Swami’s trying to do and that’s why I love him.”

Ginsberg removed his jacket as he smoked. He took off his shirt and tie and sat on the cot in his t-shirt. As he waved his hands and spoke in a hypnotic voice. He had the air of an Old Testament prophet, talking madness mixed with oracular truth. The cigarette smoke grew stale. Ginsberg put out his smoke and threw the butt out the window. The dog barked.

He said, “Have you met the Swami?”

Hawk said, “Not yet.”

Ginsberg said, “Let me tell you how I met the Swami.”