Paradise Hotel
part II
by Michael Dolan
B.V. Mahayogi
This is the entire second part of my story so far. It began when Hawk traveled back in time 50 years from 2017 to the summer of love in San Francisco 1967.
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 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.
+++++++++++++++++++
After the morning kirtan, Ginsberg and Hawk were invited upstairs for a talk with the Swami. He had his own apartment above the temple. They were solemnly ushered in by Atmarama, who bowed on his knees before the Swami. He sat behind a low table, talking with his disciples. He had cooked a number of sweetballs called Gulabhamins, which were on a tray. As the poet entered, the Swami held out a sweetball, saying "Take." Ginsberg took the sweet and began munching. Licking his fingers and grinning, he said, “That’s good.”
The Swami beamed with luminous joy. His ecstasy was contagious. Even the cynical Ginsberg seemed transformed. He sat before the Swami with great respect. Atmaram served the rest of the sweetballs from a tray to the others who were seated. A vibration of divine love and transcendental bliss filled the silence.
The early morning San Francisco rain had stopped and a beam of sunlight parted the clouds and shined through the saffron curtains. Sandalwood incense permeated the air. The Swami broke the silence: “Allen, you are up early.”
Ginsberg said, “We answered the call of the temple bells.”
The Swami picked up an imaginary piece of dust that glided down on a mote of light and studied it in his fingers. “Have the arrangements been made for this evening’s program?”
“Yes. Everyone’s coming for the Mantra Rock: Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead. It’s good I slept in the office. While I was explaining the power of the mantra to my friend Hawk here the phone was ringing all night long. After he fell asleep I talked to Jerry Garcia. He wants to know more about Hare Krishna. We’ll put the Hare Krishna chanters in about half-way through the program. It’s funny: I came here for peace, but the phone has been ringing since I arrived in San Francisco.
The Swami laughed. His disciples, seeing his mirth, followed his example. Everyone laughed.
“You are too famous now, Allen. That is what happens when one becomes famous. That was the tragedy of Mahatma Gandhi also. Wherever he went, thousands of people would crowd about him, chanting, "Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! Mahatma Gandhiki jai!" The gentleman could not sleep.
Ginsberg laughed and took another sweetball from the tray.
“Well, at least it got me up for Kirtan this morning.”
The Swami smiled: “Yes, that is good.” His followers laughed. A young man had entered wearing a cheap suit and a skinny black tie. He was in his thirties and was the only one not laughing. He was a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle. They had been following the Swami and his new followers. The reporter took the awkward silence as a chance to get his question in.
“Downstairs, you said you were inviting everyone to Krsna consciousness. Does that include the Haight-Ashbury Bohemians and beatniks?”
The Swami noticed him for the first time. He signalled Atmaram to offer him a sweet from the tray.
“Yes,” he said, “everyone, including you or anybody else, be he or she what is called an “acidhead’ or a hippie or something else, everyone is invited to participate. But once he is accepted for training, he becomes something else from what he had been before. He must give up his bad habits. ”
The reporter flipped a sheet on his notebook and began scribbling. “What does one have to do to become a member of your movement?”
“There are four prerequisites,” the Swami said. “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.”
“That’s very strict,” the reporter said. “He looked askance at the disheveled poet Ginsberg, at Hawk and some of the strange-looking followers of the Swami. With their shaved heads and golden robes they seemed to live with their heads in the clouds.
“Do these shall-not commandments extend to the use of LSD, marijuana, and other narcotics?”
The Swami became grave. He looked around the room, making eye contact with his students as if to impress them with the point: “I consider LSD to be an intoxicant. I do not allow any one of my students to use that or any intoxicant.”
Some of his students lowered their heads. Allen Ginsberg looked straight ahead, unashamed and defiant.
Smiling at Ginsberg, the Swami said, “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.”
The reporter noted everything very carefully. He looked up from his notes. "Swamiji: you said Bohemians and Beatniks are welcome. What about hippies? Do you accept 'hippies' in your temple?"
The Swami reflected for a moment and looked at Ginsberg: “Allen,” he said, “What is this hippie?”
The reporter and the Swami’s followers turned to Ginsberg. Here was an expert. Wasn’t he the prophet of the hippies?
Ginsberg grew serious and began intoning with his stentorian poet’s voice: “The word hip started in China, where people smoked opium lying on their hips.” He moved from the lotus position to a lying position to show off. Even the reporter had to laugh.
Ginsberg droned on: “Opium and its derivatives then spread to the West, and were looked down upon by the people in power, who were afraid of the effects. As a result, the opium-taking hip people created their own culture language, signs, symbols to show that they were hip.”
The reporter scratched away at his notebook, feeling that he had hit pay-dirt. Finally there was a connection.
Ginsberg said, “See, San Francisco is a spiritual meeting ground. The word hip has changed into hippie today. But you people in the press have got it all wrong. You basically sensationalize everything. You’re not interested in truth. You’re not going to print the truth. You’re only trying to titillate your readers with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. You’re just trying to sell newspapers. The people who come here are looking for something higher, man. They’re interested in a higher state of consciousness. These young people here are truth-seekers. They're interested in all forms of spirituality. But the Swami can tell you about that. You should listen.
The Swami bowed his head. “That’s very kind, Allen. Thank you. Very nice definition. As you can see, Krishna Consciousness resolves everything. We are not interested in these drugs or this LSB. The Hare Krishna mantra is complete. Nothing else is needed. We have been very kindly invited to demonstrate the teachings of Krishna Consciousness at evening’s program at the...?”
Ginsberg helped with the missing name: “The Avalon Ball room, Swamiji”
“...Yes, the ah, Ball Room.”
Ginsberg said, “I would like to ask your permission to play my tune on the harmonium this evening.”
The Swamiji said, “Very nice; Harmonium is not generally acceptable for aroti or kirtan purposes, but it may be played for bhajan as long as there is respect shown."
As the reporter jotted his notes, Ginsberg said, “Swamiji, I hope the program tonight is a big success. Some of your rules are pretty strict. I have to confess that I can’t give up smoking.”
The devotees laughed. They too had made sacrifices for their faith.
“I love the peace and bliss here, and I’m not sure ashram life is for me, but I will chant the Maha Mantra every day.”
“You must try to be sincere, Allen. If you simply chant Hare Krishna, these bad habits will soon disappear.”
“Thank you, Swamiji. I will chant the mantra:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
until I leave this Earth.”
As Hawk and the reporter watched, Ginsberg then bowed before the Swami. He touched the Swami's feet and then touched his own head. Atmaram offered him a paper bag with a few sweetballs.
The Swami said, “You have my blessings, Allen. Try to chant Hare Krishna and remember the teachings.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“What time is it?”
Hawk blinked.
“What time is it?”
“I’m not sure.” And Hawk wasn’t sure. The bonds of time had loosened for him. Hawk was thinking to himself. Perhaps the right question was not “What time is it?” but “What is time?”
St. Augustine of Hippo, when confronted with this very question admitted, “I know what time is, but if you ask me, I can’t explain it.” At the moment of death we can collapse 70 years into 7 seconds. A motorcycle stunt man flying through the air feels 7 seconds to be more like 70 years. In his famous debate with Einstein, Bergson argued that time is subjective as is all reality. Reality is fired by consciousness. Without consciousness, time does not exist. But what was the reality he was experiencing. Was he really stuck in 1967? Or was this all some weird altered state produced by the tryptamines given him by Dr. Van Jensen?
“Come on. We’re going on Harinam,” said Atmaram Das.
Ah yes. The Hare Krishnas. San Francisco. But what day was it? Hawk needed to see a newspaper. And what was Harinam? He followed Atmaram down the corridor past the office. He entered a large room where men where dressing, getting ready to go somewhere.
“Here,” said Atmaram, “We’ll show you how to tie a dhoti.”
“A dhoti?” said Hawk, perplexed, as Atmaram found a long white sheet of cloth.
“Yes. We’re going out on Sankirtan. Congregational chanting of the holy name. Schwartz Prabhu! Show this man how to tie a dhoti. I’ll meet you outside.” Atmaram hit the door.
Shwartz Prabhu was short and intense with thick glasses. “Lift up your arms,” he said, and began working like the Jewish tailor that he had been before falling into a life of drugs and alcohol and being saved by the Hare Krishna mission. He deftly wrapped the long cloth around the jeans that Hawk had been wearing since 2017 at the Paradise hotel in Tokyo, Japan. He had left his tweed jacket in the office.
“You’ll need to take off your shirt,” said Schartz Prabhu, producing a rough version of an Indian kurta. “Put this on.”
Hawk put on the kurta. He hadn’t looked in a mirror since the hotel with Nancy, which seemed to him to be in the past, but which was in the future. His scientific theories about quantum time leaps made no sense.
Schwartz Prabhu studied his work and made an adjustment to the fit of the dhoti.
“That’ll do,” he said, touching his glasses with the tip of his index finger. “Let’s go. We’ll be late.”
As a scientist, Hawk was too busy gathering data, studying the situation to question anything. He did as he was told and joined Schwartz. They went down the corridor by the office together, exited the back door by the garbage cans and found a small group of Krishna followers lining up outside. Atmaram was there with the double-headed tom-tom drum the devotees carried. It was smaller than a conga drum or a djembe. Atmaram wore it around his shoulder with a strap.
“Let me introduce you to the devotees,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Prabhus, this is Hawk. You know Schwartz Prabhu. Next to Atmaram was another drummer, tall, powerfully built, with massive hands black as coal. He wore a white dhoti and roman sandals. With a shaved head and strong chin, he might have been Othello carved out of ebony. “This is Bhakta Congo. He’s from Kinshasa.”
The last drummer was Jay Ram. He was a Cuban refugee who had fought at the Bay of Pigs. Disgusted with the Vietnam war he had become a follower of the Swami. Goodlooking as a Hollywood actor he had wanted to be a Catholic priest, but Castro had outlawed the church. He learned English reading the Bhagavad-Gita translation of the Swami. Now he wore saffron and marched with the Hare Krishnas.
Dave Krishna had been in the marines. Strung out on Vietnamese opium he had spent time in the streets of Haight Ashbury getting high on hash before he learned to get high on Krishna. His tattooed muscles told tourists and cops not to mess with the Krishnas.
Yashoda was there, a green-eyed brunette in a pink paisley sari. She was an artist and designed the posters for the Mantra Rock. She did paintings for the Swami’s books. He said her work was a window on the spiritual world. She was leading a shy Mexican girl dressed in a blue sari, named Esmeralda Devi.
Atmaram Das lined them up carefully.
“The others will join us later. Let’s get started.”
As Atmaram gave orders and explained the mission, Hawk, Schwartz Prabhu, Bhakta Congo, Jai Ram, Dave Krishna, Yashoda and Esmeralda began marching down the street towards Market Street. As they reached a populated area Atmaram began a simple beat on his murdanga hand drum.
Bhakta Congo picked up the beat with an African rumble and Jai Ram put a Cuban salsa tang into it. Dave Krishna clashed the cymbals and Yashoda and Esmeralda raised their hands to the heavens and danced along, their saris swirling in the breeze coming in off Stinson Beach.
They danced up and down the hills of San Franciscos gay streets chanting the holy names of Krishna, Gauranga, Gopal and Govinda, past cable cars, hippies, sailors and tourists.
And there was Hawk, unstuck from time, loosed from the bonds of temporal reality, transported from the 21st century into this sublime past, high on the holy name, in a cloud of ecstasy, as Bhakta Congo of Kinshasa and Jai Ram of Havana were drumming away and chanting on Market Street in downtown San Francisco in the winter of 1967.
They stopped on a street corner and a crowd of onlookers gathered. Esmeralda handed out handbills invited all to the Mantra Rock event at the Avalon ball room. As promised other devotees arrived, their shaven heads gleaming in the afternoon California sun. With the clash of cymbals and the beating of drums they were dancing and sweating, pounding the pavement with their sandals, jumping up and down, chanting ever louder, challenging each other to see who could chant louder, who would dive deeper into the ecstasy of the moment.
The tourists were pleased. Finally there were photos to snap. Cameras pointed. They took the handbills to Mantra Rock and moved on. A few hippies joined the devotees in song. They slapped tambourines to the rhythm of the kirtan. As a mist rolled in from the bay, angelic voices were raised in song:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
They appeared out of the fog.
We hadn't noticed the squad cars. The owner of the pawn shop behind us had called it in. Time collapsed. Before the swami’s men could scatter and run they were surrounded.
The cops were swift. Trained in riot control they were glad of a chance to flex their muscles. A police siren pierced Hawk’s eardrums. Six police men moved in on the chanting party as if they were taking action against the Viet Cong. They strong-armed Jai Ram and slapped him in cuffs. They arrested Atmaram and read him his rights. They confiscated the drums and threw them in the trunk as three gargantuan cops grabbed Bhakta Congo and wrestled his huge form into the back of a squad car and raced away, sirens droning. There were squad cars everywhere as if it were a military action against a terrorist event.
Schwartz Prabhu kept on chanting, but a pair of huge cops with beefy arms had him in a choke hold and dragged him away. They broke his glasses and took away his finger cymbals. One by one the Swami’s followers were carted off, handcuffed, and frog-marched into paddy-wagons.
The devotees tried to keep on chanting, but the cops broke it up as they shouted insults:
"Fuckin' Freaks! Join the Circus! Get a job. You're blocking traffic. Come on folks, the show's over."
"Hey You!" Hawk was cornered. "Get ovah heah!"
Hawk knew his rights. He said, "But, Officer, we're only practicing our constitutional right to free speech and free practice of religion as stated in the first amendment to the American constitution..."
"Whaddaya? a wise guy? Smart ass? Shaddup! You're obstructing traffic, section 105.9B of the municipal code of the great city of San Francisco. Take him away."
The finest police officers of the City of San Francisco ran the Hare Krishnas into jail, demonstrating their great respect for first ammendment rights. In a land where freedom of speech and religion are sacrosanct, the cops called Hawk and his friends all kinds of imaginative epithets including but not restricted to freaks, cult-members, sissy-boys, punks, hippies, stoners, rebels, noodniks, knuckleheads, and commie pinko fags.”
These great representatives of democracy did their best to encourage freedom of religion by taking away the drums, cymbals, sacred books and incense of the Krishna people who had troubled deaf heaven with their divine mantras. The police confiscated the posters for Mantra Rock and started an official federal investigation.
In this way, Hawk noted, the truth-seekers who intoned divine mantric incantations for world peace and spiritual liberation were duly processed by the law of the land. The Swami’s men and women were booked, finger-printed, mugged, and accused of disturbing the peace, disruption of public morals, obstructing traffic and justice, resisting arrest and assault on a peace officer.
The Swami’s followers were jailed in a clammy holding cell stinking of urine and alcohol with pot-smoking beatnik bohemians, junkie jazzmen, pimps, winos, transvetite prostitutes, runaway hippies, local criminals, rapists, murderers, dope dealers, muggers, buggers, thieves, drunken long-shoremen, syphilitic steeplejacks, bad-ass boilermakers, homoxexual gandy-dancers, beat wino rapscallions and joy-ride car thieves.
They weren't daunted. They told everyone about “Mantra Rock” and the power of the holy name. They passed out the few flyers they had left. Atmaram Das preached, "The Age of Darkness is upon us. Just see the power of the dogs of Kali! He has beaten you down with sinful activity. Drunken, wasted, and worn out you seek pleasure where there is only pain. Use this human body while you still have time! Time and tide wait for no man bide. Chant the name while you’re still alive.”
The fallen and imprisoned sinners listened to the message and their spirits were buoyed. The lowest of the low, prisoners of the iron age, their souls scarred with sin, took hope. Their eyes shined in the darkness of lockup. Bhakta Congo stood tall, his massive muscles gleaming with sweat as he taught them one and all the words to the Hare Krishna mantra:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.
The prisoners laughed and gave it a try. Half-hearted at first, soon they were infected with the contagious enthusiasm of Schwartz Prabhu. Jai Ram began rapping out a beat against the bars.
Hippies, prisoners and beat down, beat out winos and desperate train-hopping hobos all began to chant as one. They kept the melody simple. When they were tired, Atmaram gave a nice speech echoing Winston Churchill:
“We will not be cowed down. They may take our drums, but they will not take our souls! They can take our books, but we carry the message of the Swami in our hearts. We carry the Hare Krishna mantra in our hearts!
Raise your voice in song, men. Chant the divine mantra for peace and holy salvation. We shall chant on the beaches, we shall chant in the streets, we shall not flag or fail: We shall chant Hare Krishna in Heaven or hell. We shall take the holy name in Jail!"
And so to the chagrin of the guards and cops all the prisoners took up the chant. They could understand this was defending the right to practice free religion in the United States of America. It was an invitation to join the struggle for life, liberty and the pursuit of divine love and transcendental bliss.
Now that the cops had taken away the drums, Bhakta Congo rapped against the bars. Schwartz Prabhu stomped on the floor. The junkie jazz musicians picked up the beat. Everyone clapped our hands and sang Hare Krishna.
The guards were furious: "Pipe down!" "Shut your pie hole!" they said. But after a while they gave it up as futile as all the prisoners chanting as one. So it was that the Swami’s followers converted the dank dirty hell of the San Francisco lockup a holy place of pilgrimage.
Hawk lost his sense of time. Time had collapsed again. Had they been in jail for days or merely hours? It had seemed like forever. Word had gotten out on the street about the arrest. This time it was Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, San Francisco’s most famous rock group that came to the rescue. His personal marijuana dealer had been swept up in a raid and had been busted with the Krishnas. A phone call later and he was out on the street. Their lawyer did his thing and after a few hours the Krishna were released with a warning, just in time for the mantra rock celebration. The police returned everything: the drums, the cymbals, the posters. It was all a misunderstanding, the desk sergeant said as he returned their stuff. They didn’t realize it was a freedom of religion thing.
A Volkswagen minibus showed up to collect them.
The devotees back at the temple had arranged quite a welcome. They had to eat well, after all they needed their strength for the big Mantra Rock program in the evening.
When Hawk arrived, he was amazed to see that the devotees at the temple had hung festive decorations, Mexican paper cutouts, banners and balloons. A sign said WELCOME HOME PRABHUS. Yashoda was in the door waiting for them along with Esmeralda.
Hawk felt that he had arrived home. Atmaram explained, that Krishna was welcoming everyone back after the big ordeal. It was like Krishna was throwing them a big birthday party. Meanwhile, the Swami was upstairs getting ready for the program.
Hawk was hungry after his ordeal in jail. They had offered ham sandwiches but no one had tried the jail food. Now he was happy that he hadn’t The feast was amazing:
There was basmati rice smothered in ghee butter. Brown rice, wild rice, saffron rice and kichari a rice and legumes plate. There were samosas, a kind of vegetarian savory pie eaten with the fingers. A tamarind sauce accompanied the samosas. There were chapatis, a kind of whole wheat tortilla eaten with the hands. There were sweet puris, a fluffy pastry-like tortilla covered with powdered sugar. And there were salty puries, dripping with butter, to be eaten with soup. There were varieties of soup: creamed carrot, cauliflower and potato and pots of vegetables and mung dāl. There were pakoras, a kind of deep-fried tempura vegetable with cauliflower, spinach, broccoli or potatoes.
There were different kinds of subjiis, mashed potatoes with butter, Gauranga potatoes with sour cream, squash, mānakacu and a salad made with pieces of ginger and various types of spinach. There was sukhta, bitter melon. Bitter and pungent sukhtas. Atmaram explained that this was exactly like the feat Advaita Acharya offered Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Bengal, India. Among the various vegetables were newly grown leaves of nimba trees fried with eggplant. The fruit known as paṭola was fried with phulabaḍi, a kind of dāl preparation first mashed and then dried in the sun. There was also a preparation known as kuṣmāṇḍa-mānacāki. There were an opulence of sweets: sweet rice with saffron, nectar juice drinks, orange julius nectar, strawberry and banana smoothies, , roasted coconuts, coconut pulp mixed with curd and rock candy, Curried banana flowers and squash, gopi dust, syrupy indian cheese deserts called rasgullas, golubjamins, lugdus, iskcon bullets, ramananda’s midnight dream.
Hawk looked around. All the Swami’s followers were ecstatic after such a long ordeal. Bhakta Congo looked rejuvenated and grinned wide, his teeth showing ivory against the ebony visage of a proud Zulu warrior. Schwartz Prabhu had taped his glasses together with adhesive tape and was ready for another go after having been tested by fire. The Cuban ex-freedom fighter Jai Ram, confirmed in his faith in Krishna, filled his plate with more prasadam. They were all ready to go back out on Sankirtan, to do their part as the Hare Krishna chanters of Mantra Rock, to bang the drum and chant the holy name of God and purify all of San Francisco.
But first, they all needed a long siesta. It had been a long day and night. That evening would be the Mantra Rock festival. Many people would be there and everyone had to prepare for the real feast.
But first, they all needed a long siesta.
