Matchless Gifts

Paradise Hotel continued,

By Michael Dolan,

B.V. Mahayogi

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 turned out the light. He lit another cigarette and sat on his cot in the lotus position, moonlight reflected from his awkward spectacles. “Let me tell you how I met the Swami,” he said, with an impish grin. “When I was in India opening the doors of perception, ridding myself of Blake’s Nobodaddy ideas of sin and shaking loose from Moloch I learned that I could regenerate broken tissues through sacred vibrations and improve longevity. Shivananda was there and he taught the power of mantric incantation. I could see there was something there, but I couldn’t fully unlock the power.”

“Peter and I had rented rooms on the third floor of a house in Benares overlooking the Dasasvamedha Ghat, the Ganges River. The steps were populated with pilgrims, truth-seekers, Hindu holy men, and American tourists with Hawaiian shirts and Kodak cameras trying to avoid reality. There were sacred cows and heroic monkeys who stole our bananas and ran over the walls of Benares.”

He took another drag off his cigarette. The moon was clouded over. The ember glowed in the dark with an eery red reflection off the glasses. The beard wagged on.

“It was back in 1963. I used the mantra in India, then. I think it healed me, but what I didn’t understand is that you don’t use the mantra; the mantra uses you. This was before I understood how to achieve altered states of consciousness with the use of Lysergic Acid Dyethylamide. This was before Cuba, before Moscow and Yevtushenko and all the shit that went down in Prague.”

“You have to understand that our life consciousness is increasingly conditioned by the massive material structure we have erected around ourselves to sustain the innumerable population born of technological meditation. But I think it was William Blake who taught me to look within, to see infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour.”

“I was doing some thought experiments on the mystic connection between mantra, magic and language, the language of poetry. I was living in New York with Orlovsky, over on East 10th Street in Manhattan, the Lower East Side. I was walking down the street, chanting the mantra: Hare Krishna Hare Krishna. Across the street I saw a golden effulgence, a sadhu in saffron robes. He was chanting Hare Krishna on his beads, followed by a couple of young men. I thought I was dreaming.

“A few days later, I received an invitation in the mail:

‘Practice the transcendental sound vibration

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama

Rama Rama Hare Hare

This chanting will cleanse the dust from the mirror of the mind. You are cordially invited to come and bring your friends’

“There was an address for a place over on Second Avenue. I could hardly resist. I mean, was I using the mantra or was the mantra using me? Somehow the mantra was calling me. I had to go. There was a sort of inner reassurance. The invitation glowed in my hands. I thought, well namaste. I looked in the mirror and remembered the chandala in Benares who pointed to the heavens and said “Hari bol.” It was time for mobilizing the mantra.

“Orlovsky was stupefied. We loaded the Volkswagen microbus with a hand-made harmonium I found in Benares and drove over to meet the Swami. Everyone thinks the Bowery is a squalid neighborhood, but these were my old stomping grounds from the early Beat days. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness was a little storefront next to the Gonzalez Funeral Home across the street from the Red Star Bar. It had been a gift shop called “Matchless Gifts.” I wondered what kind of gifts they had in store.

“I think his followers were scandalized to see me and Peter. They probably thought I was a degenerated beatnik hippie demon. Anyway

we had a little kirtan and played with the magic sound of the mantra. They told me to come back tomorrow to see the Swami. I was intrigued. I came back in the morning and finally met him.”

“One of his followers explained that the Swami had come here from Calcutta. He was a Bengali Vaishnava who had written commentaries on the Bhagavad-Gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam. Abandoned and forgotten by his own people, who were beginning to succumb to the succubus of Moloch, the Swami decided to head for America. He booked passage on a tramp steamer, a beaten-up cargo ship called the Jaladutta, the water messenger. The Swami had nothing but the mantra. His only possessions were a battered old trunk with books an umbrella, and a few kilos of rice. He carried about forty rupees. I don’t know how they let him into the country. I had just been kicked out of Cuba and Czechoslavakia, so I know what it is to be deported.”

“One of the Swami’s men told me his visa was about to run out and he needed some help to get an extension. I know a good immigration lawyer, so I gave them a donation and promised to help.”

“After he arrived in Manhattan, the Swami had stayed for a while at a yoga ashram in upstate New York, with a Doctor Mishra. But the scene just wasn’t happening for him. Somehow he managed to infect a few followers with the magic of the mantra and they helped him get this storefront in New York.”

“I had to come back the next day to meet the Swami. He offered me prasadam, divine food, just like we had here tonight. It was a bit simpler which is fine with me, I have to watch my diet. When I entered his office I found him working at an old typewriter propped upon on his steamer trunk. He immediately got up and welcomed me as if we were old friends.”

“He still had the same golden effulgence as the first time I saw him cross the street. He had an aroma of sweetness about him, a personal selfless sweetness like total devotion. And that was what conquered me. I’m not one for gurus, really. I think we have to find our own guru within. I had met Shivananda in Hrishikesh and found his ashram vulgar in tone and style; his followers were duds, I mean they were just stoned fools looking for a giggle and a fix.

“But this was different. I could see that he was real. He had this quality of sweetness and joy, but fire at the same time. I was a little shy with him at first, because I didn’t know where he was coming from. I know about the power of the mantra, but I didn’t have any theological background. But here was some one who could satisfy further inquiries. I felt secure that I could use the mantra as much as I wanted and if I needed to understand something there was Bhaktivedanta Swami. He was someone who knew the technical intricacies and the ultimate history.

“So as we talked, he explained to me about his own teacher and about Chaitanya and the entire spiritual lineage of divine sound and mantra, the magic of the Sanskrit language.

I asked him about the mantra and he said:

‘Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

These names of God are the transcendental seeds of the mahamantra. Krishna is the name meaning all attractive. God is not a void. God is a person, eternally youthful and fresh. He appears just like a young cowherd boy and His color is dark blue like a thunder cloud. And Rama means the Lord as supreme enjoyer. He is the enjoyer, Purusha, and we are the enjoyed, Prakriti. And Hare means the energy of the Lord. Through the transcendental energy of the Lord, we can reach the Lord Himself. So when we chant Hare Krishna, we are saying ‘O Lord! O energy of the Lord! Just lift me up and place me as an atom of dust at Your lotus feet.”

“He showed me the books he was translating at his typewriter. I looked at his work. He was working on a manuscript of the Second Canto of the Bhagavat Purana. The manuscript was almost impossible to read. He had a stack of flimsy onionskin paper lying on the trunk. His tiny handwriting had no margins. He so was careful not to waste any paper that he had filled all the blank space, squeezing every possible character onto the page. One of his followers came in to help him type. I could see that his angelic head was filled with transcendental thoughts. I was ecstatic. Now I could go around singing Hare Krishna, knowing that the inner meaning would shine through this man.”

As Ginsberg talked on into the night, Hawk listened. He wanted to explain how he had traveled through time, how he had arrived from 50 years in the future. Somehow the darkness was dissipating. The first morning light was dawning over San Francisco. He heard the temple bells summoning them for the early mass called aroti.