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Śrīla Prabhupāda Līlambṛta
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Volume 2 — Planting The Seed
<< 17 On the Bowery >>
 | “I couldn’t understand the difference between friends and enemies. My friend was shocked to hear that I was moving to the Bowery, but although I passed through many dangers, I never thought that ‘This is danger.’ Everywhere I thought, ‘This is my home.’”
— Śrīla Prabhupāda in conversation
| | | April 1966
| | | SOMEONE BROKE INTO room 307 while Śrīla Prabhupāda was out and stole his typewriter and tape recorder. When Prabhupāda returned to the building, the janitor informed him of the theft: an unknown burglar had broken the transom glass, climbed through, taken the valuables, and escaped. As Prabhupāda listened, he became convinced that the janitor himself was the culprit. Of course, he couldn’t prove it, so he accepted the loss with disappointment. Some friends offered replacements for his old typewriter and tape recorder.
| | | In a letter to India, he described the theft as a loss of more than one thousand rupees ($157.00).
| | | It is understood that such crime as has been committed in my room is very common in New York. This is the way of material nature. American people have everything in ample, and the worker gets about Rs. 100 as daily wages. And still there are thieves for want of character. The social condition is not very good.
| | | Prabhupāda had told Joseph Foerster, the Scindia ticket agent, that he would be returning to India in a couple of months. That was seven months ago. Now, for the first time since his arrival, Prabhupāda had returned to the Scindia ticket office in Brooklyn. He talked about the theft to Mr. Foerster, who responded with, “Welcome to the club,” and told Prabhupāda about the recent theft of his own automobile. Such things, he explained, were not unusual for New York City. He told Prabhupāda of the dangers of the city and how to avoid thefts and muggings. Prabhupāda listened, shaking his head. He told Mr. Foerster that American young people were misguided and confused. He discussed his plans for returning to India and showed Mr. Foerster one of his Bhāgavatams.
| | | Prabhupāda had lost his spirit for living in room 307. What would prevent the janitor from stealing again? Harvey Cohen and Bill Epstein had advised him to relocate downtown and had assured him of a more interested following among the young people there. It had been an attractive proposal, and he began to reconsider it. Then Harvey offered Prabhupāda his studio on the Bowery.
| | | Harvey had been working as a commercial artist for a Madison Avenue advertising firm when a recently acquired inheritance had spurred him to move into a loft on the Bowery to pursue his own career as a painter. But he was becoming disillusioned with New York. A group of acquaintances addicted to heroin had been coming around and taking advantage of his generosity, and his loft had recently been burglarized. He decided to leave the city and go to California, but before leaving he offered his loft for Prabhupāda to share with David Allen.
| | | David Allen had heard that Harvey Cohen was moving to San Francisco if he could sublet his A.I.R.(4) loft. Harvey hadn’t known David very long, but on the night before Harvey was supposed to leave, he coincidentally met David three different times in three different places on the Lower East Side. Harvey took this as a sign that he should rent the loft to David, but he specifically stipulated that the Svāmī should move in too.
| | | As Prabhupāda was preparing to leave his Seventy-second Street address, an acquaintance, an electrician who worked in the building, came to warn him. The Bowery was no place for a gentleman, he protested. It was the most corrupt place in the world. Prabhupāda’s things had been stolen from room 307, but moving to the Bowery was not the answer.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda’s new home, the Bowery, had a long history. In the early 1600s, when Manhattan was known as New Amsterdam and was controlled by the Dutch West India Company, Peter Minuit, the governor of New Netherland, staked out a north-south road that was called “the Bowery” because a number of bouweries, or farms, lay on either side. It was a dusty country road, lined with quaint Dutch cottages and bordered by the peach orchards growing in the estate of Peter Stuyvesant. It became part of the high road to Boston and was of strategic importance during the American Revolution as the only land entrance to New York City.
| | | In the early 1800s the Bowery was predominated by German immigrants, later in the century it became predominantly Jewish, and gradually it became the city’s center of theatrical life. However, as a history of Lower Manhattan describes, “After 1870 came the period of the Bowery’s celebrated degeneration. Fake auction rooms, saloons specializing in five-cent whiskey and knock-out drops, sensational dime museums, filthy and rat-ridden stale beer dives, together with Charles M. Hoyte’s song, ‘The Bowery! The Bowery! – I’ll Never Go There Any More!’ fixed it forever in the nation’s consciousness as a place of unspeakable corruption.”
| | | The reaction of Prabhupāda’s electrician friend was not unusual. The Bowery is still known all over the world as Skid Row, a place of ruined and homeless alcoholics. Perhaps the uptown electrician had done business in the Bowery and had seen the derelicts sitting around passing a bottle or lying unconscious in the gutter, or staggering up to passersby and drunkenly bumping into them to ask for money.
| | | Most of the Bowery’s seven or eight thousand homeless men slept in lodging houses that required them to vacate their rooms during the day. Having nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, they would loiter on the street – standing silently on the sidewalks, leaning against a wall, or shuffling slowly along, alone or in groups. In cold weather they would wear two coats and several suits of clothes at once and would sometimes warm themselves around a fire they would keep going in a city garbage can. At night, those without lodging slept on the sidewalks, doorsteps, and street corners, crawled into discarded boxes, or sprawled side by side next to the bars. Thefts were commonplace; a man’s pockets might be searched ten or twenty times while he slept. The rates of hospitalization and death in the Bowery were five times higher than the national average, and many of the homeless men bore marks of recent injuries or violence.
| | | Prabhupāda’s loft, 94 Bowery, was six blocks south of Houston Street. At Houston and Bowery, derelicts converged in the heavy crosstown traffic. When cars stopped for the light, bums would come up and wash the windshields and ask for money. South of Houston, the first blocks held mostly restaurant supply stores, lamp stores, taverns, and luncheonettes. The buildings were of three and four stories – old, narrow, crowded tenements, their faces covered with heavy fire escapes. Traffic on the Bowery ran uptown and downtown. Cars parked on both sides of the street, and the constant traffic passed tightly. During the business day, working people passed briskly among the slow-moving derelicts. Many of the store windows were covered with protective iron gates, but behind the gates the store-owners lit their varieties of lamps to attract prospective wholesale and retail customers.
| | | Ninety-four Bowery was just two doors north of Hester Street. The corner was occupied by the spacious Half Moon Tavern, which was frequented mostly by neighborhood alcoholics. Above the tavern sat a four-story Bowery flophouse, marked by a neon sign – Palma House – which was covered by a protective metal cage and hung from the second floor on large chains. The hotel’s entrance at 92 Bowery (which had no lobby but only a desolate hallway covered with dirty white tiles) was no more than six feet from the entrance to 94.
| | | Ninety-four Bowery was a narrow four-story building. It had long ago been painted gray and bore the usual facing of a massive, black fire escape. A well-worn, black double door, its glass panels reinforced with chicken wire, opened onto the street. The sign above the door read, “A.I.R. 3rd & 4th,” indicating that artists-in-residence occupied those floors.
| | | The first floor of the next building north, 96 Bowery, was used for storage, and its front entrance was covered with a rusty iron gate. At 98 Bowery was another tavern – Harold’s – smaller and dingier than the Half Moon. Thus the block consisted of two saloons, a flophouse, and two buildings with lofts.
| | | In the 1960s, loft-living was just beginning in that area of New York City. The City had given permission for painters, musicians, sculptors, and other artists (who required more space than available in most apartments) to live in buildings that had been constructed as factories in the nineteenth century. After these abandoned factories had been fitted with fireproof doors, bathtubs, shower stalls, and heating, an artist could inexpensively use a large space. These were the A.I.R. lofts.
| | | Harvey Cohen’s loft, on the top floor of 94 Bowery, was an open space almost a hundred feet long (from east to west) and twenty-five feet wide. It received a good amount of sunlight on the east, the Bowery side, and it also had windows at the west end, as well as a skylight. The exposed rafters of the ceiling were twelve feet above the floor.
| | | Harvey Cohen had used the loft as an art studio, and racks for paintings still lined the walls. A kitchen and shower were partitioned off in the northwest corner, and a room divider stood about fifteen feet from the Bowery-side windows. This divider did not run from wall to wall, but was open at both ends, and it was several feet short of the ceiling.
| | | It was behind this partition that Prabhupāda had his personal living area. A bed and a few chairs stood near the window, and Prabhupāda’s typewriter sat on his metal trunk next to the small table that held his stacks of Bhāgavatam manuscripts. His dhotīs hung drying on a clothesline.
| | | On the other side of the partition was a dais, about ten feet wide and five feet deep, on which Prabhupāda sat during his kīrtanas and lectures. The dais faced west, toward the loft’s large open space – open, that is, except for a couple of rugs and an old-fashioned solid wood table and, on an easel, Harvey’s painting of Lord Caitanya dancing with His associates.
| | | The loft was a four-flight walk up, and the only entrance, usually heavily bolted, was a door in the rear, at the west end. From the outside, this door opened into a hallway, lit only by a red EXIT light over the door. The hallway led to the right a few steps and into the open area. If a guest entered during a kīrtana or a lecture, he would see the Svāmī about thirty feet from the entrance, seated on his dais. On other evenings the whole loft would be dark but for the glow of the red EXIT light in the little hallway and a soft illumination radiating from the other side of the partition, where Prabhupāda was working.
| | | Prabhupāda lived on the Bowery, sitting under a small light, while hundreds of derelicts also sat under hundreds of naked lights on the same city block. He had no more fixed income than the derelicts, nor any greater security of a fixed residence, yet his consciousness was different. He was translating Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam into English, speaking to the world through his Bhaktivedanta purports. His duty, whether on the fourteenth floor of a Riverside Drive apartment building or in a corner of a Bowery loft, was to establish Kṛṣṇa consciousness as the prime necessity for all humanity. He went on with his translating and with his constant vision of a Kṛṣṇa temple in New York City. Because his consciousness was absorbed in Kṛṣṇa’s universal mission, he did not depend on his surroundings for shelter. Home for him was not a matter of bricks and wood, but of taking shelter of Kṛṣṇa in every circumstance. As Prabhupāda had said to his friends uptown, “Everywhere is my home,” whereas without Kṛṣṇa’s shelter the whole world would be a desolate place.
| | | Often he would refer to a scriptural statement that people live in three different modes: goodness, passion, and ignorance. Life in the forest is in the mode of goodness, life in the city is in passion, and life in a degraded place like a liquor shop, a brothel, or the Bowery is in the mode of ignorance. But to live in a temple of Viṣṇu is to live in the spiritual world, Vaikuṇṭha, which is transcendental to all three material modes.
| | | And this Bowery loft where Prabhupāda was holding his meetings and performing kīrtana was also transcendental. When he was behind the partition, working in his corner before the open pages of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, that room was as good as his room back at the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple in Vṛndāvana.
| | | News of the Svāmī’s move to the Bowery loft spread, mostly by word of mouth at the Paradox restaurant, and people began to come by in the evening to chant with him. The musical kīrtanas were especially popular on the Bowery, since the Svāmī’s new congregation consisted mostly of local musicians and artists, who responded more to the transcendental music than to the philosophy. Every morning he would hold a class on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, attended by David Allen, Robert Nelson, and another boy, and occasionally he would teach cooking to whoever was interested. He was usually available for personal talks with any inquiring visitors or with his new roommate.
| | | Although Prabhupāda and David each had a designated living area in the large loft, the entire place soon became dominated by Prabhupāda’s preaching activities. Prabhupāda and David got on well together, and at first Prabhupāda considered David an aspiring disciple.
| | | April 27
| | | He wrote to his friends in India, describing his relationship with David Allen.
| | | “He was attending my class at Seventy-second Street along with others, and when I experienced this theft case in my room, he invited me to his residence. So I am with him and training him. He has good prospect because already he has given up all bad habits. In this country, illicit connection with women, smoking, drinking, and eating of meats are common affairs. Besides that, there are other bad habits, like using [only] toilet paper [and not bathing] after evacuating, etc. But by my request he has given up ninety percent of his old habits, and he is chanting maha mantra regularly. So I am giving him the chance, and I think he is improving. Tomorrow I have arranged for some prasadam distribution, and he has gone to purchase some things from the market.”
| | | When David first came to the Bowery, he appeared like a clean-cut college student. He was twenty-one, six feet tall, blue-eyed, handsome, and intelligent-looking. Most of his new friends in New York were older and considered him a kid. David’s family lived in East Lansing, Michigan, and his mother was paying one hundred dollars monthly to sublease the loft. Although he did not have much experience, he had read that a new realm of mind expansion was available through psychedelic drugs, and he was heading fast into the hazardous world of LSD. His meeting with the Svāmī came at a time of radical change and profoundly affected his life.
| | | David: It was a really good relationship I had with the Svāmī, but I was overwhelmed by the tremendous energy of being that close to him. It spurred my consciousness very fast. Even my dreams at night would be so vivid of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. I was often sleeping when the Svāmī was up, because he was up late in the night working on his translations. That’s possibly where a lot of the consciousness and dreams just flowed in, because of that deep relationship. It also had to do with studying Sanskrit. There was a lot of immediate impact with the language. The language seemed to have such a strong mystical quality, the way he translated it word for word.
| | | Prabhupāda’s old friend from uptown, Robert Nelson, continued to visit him on the Bowery. He was impressed by Prabhupāda’s friendly relationship with David, who he saw was learning many things from the Svāmī. Mr. Robert bought a small American-made hand organ, similar to an Indian harmonium, and donated it to David for chanting with Prabhupāda. At seven in the morning Mr. Robert would come by, and after Bhāgavatam class he would talk informally with Prabhupāda, telling his ideas for making records and selling books. He wanted to continue helping the Svāmī. They would sit in chairs near the front window, and Mr. Robert would listen while Prabhupāda talked for hours about Kṛṣṇa and Lord Caitanya.
| | | New people began coming to see Prabhupāda on the Bowery. Carl Yeargens, a thirty-year-old black man from the Bronx, had attended Cornell University and was now independently studying Indian religion and Zen Buddhism. He had experimented with drugs as “psychedelic tools,” and he had an interest in the music and poetry of India. He was influential among his friends and tried to interest them in meditation. He had even been dabbling in Sanskrit.
| | | Carl: I had just finished reading a book called The Wonder That Was India. I had gotten the definition of a sannyāsī and a brahmacārī and so forth. There was a vivid description in that particular book of how you could see a sannyāsī coming down the road with his saffron robe. It must have made more than just a superficial impression on me, because it came to me this one chilly evening. I was going to visit Michael Grant – probably going to smoke some marijuana and sit around, maybe play some music – and I was coming down Hester Street. If you make a left on Bowery, you can go up to Mike’s place on Grand Street. But it’s funny that I chose to go that way, because the shorter way would have been to go down Grand Street. But if I had gone that way, I would probably have missed Svāmīji.
| | | So I decided to go down Hester and then make a left. All of a sudden I saw in this dingy alcove a brilliant saffron robe. As I passed, I saw it was Svāmīji knocking on the door, trying to gain entrance. There were two bums hunched up against the door. It was like a two-part door – one of them was sealed, and the other was locked. The two bums were lying on either side of Svāmīji. One of these men had actually expired – which often happened, and you had to call the police or health department to get them.
| | | I don’t think I saw the men lying in the doorway until I walked up to Svāmīji and asked him, “Are you a sannyāsī?” And he answered, “Yes.” We started this conversation about how he was starting a temple, and he mentioned Lord Caitanya and the whole thing. He just came out with this flow of strange things to me, right there in the street. But I knew what he was talking about somehow. I had the familiarity of having just read this book and delved into Indian religion. So I knew that this was a momentous occasion for me, and I wanted to help him. We banged on the door, and eventually we got into the loft. He invited me to come to a kīrtana, and I came back later that night for my first kīrtana. From that point on, it was a fairly regular thing – three times a week. At one point Svāmīji asked me to stay with him, and I stayed for about two weeks.
| | | It was perhaps because of Carl’s interest in Sanskrit that Prabhupāda began holding Sanskrit classes. Carl and David and a few others would spend hours learning Sanskrit under Prabhupāda’s guidance. Using a chalkboard he found in the loft, Prabhupāda taught the alphabet, and his students wrote their exercises in notebooks. Prabhupāda would look over their shoulders to see if they were writing correctly and would review their pronunciation. His students were learning not simply Sanskrit but the instructions of Bhagavad-gītā. Each day he would give them a verse to copy in the Sanskrit alphabet (devanāgarī), transliterate into the roman alphabet, and then translate word for word into English. But their interest in Sanskrit waned, and Prabhupāda gradually gave up the daily classes to spend time working on his own translations of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
| | | His new friends may have regarded these lessons as Sanskrit classes, but actually they were bhakti classes. He had not come to America as the ambassador of Sanskrit; his Guru Mahārāja had ordered him to teach Kṛṣṇa consciousness. But since he had found in Carl and some of his friends a desire to investigate Sanskrit, he encouraged it. As a youth, Lord Caitanya had also started a Sanskrit school, with the real purpose of teaching love of Kṛṣṇa. He would teach in such a way that every word meant Kṛṣṇa, and when His students objected He closed the school. Similarly, when Prabhupāda found that his students’ interest in Sanskrit was transitory – and since he himself had no mission on behalf of Sanskrit linguistics – he gave it up.
| | | By the standard of classical Vedic scholars, it takes ten years for a boy to master Sanskrit grammar. And if one does not start until his late twenties or thirties, it is usually too late. Certainly none of Svāmīji’s students were thinking of entering a ten-year concentration in Sanskrit grammar, and even if they were, they would not realize spiritual truth simply by becoming grammarians.
| | | Prabhupāda thought it better to utilize his own Sanskrit scholarship in translating the verses of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam into English, following the Sanskrit commentaries of the previous authorities. Otherwise, the secrets of Kṛṣṇa consciousness would remain locked away in the Sanskrit. Teaching Carl Yeargens devanāgarī, sandhi, verb conjugations, and noun declensions was not going to give the people of America transcendental Vedic knowledge. Better that he utilize his proficiency in Sanskrit for translating many volumes of the Bhāgavatam into English for millions of potential readers.
| | | Carol Bekar came from an immigrant Catholic background, and she immediately associated with Catholicism the Svāmī’s presence as a spiritual authority and his devotional practices of chanting on beads and reciting from Sanskrit scriptures. Sometimes she would accompany Prabhupāda to nearby Chinatown, where he would purchase ingredients for his cooking. He would cook daily, and sometimes Carol and others would come by to learn the secrets of cooking for Lord Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Carol: He used to cook with us in the kitchen, and he was always aware of everyone else’s activities in addition to his own cooking. He knew exactly how things should be. He washed everything and made sure everyone did everything correctly. He was a teacher. We used to make capātīs by hand, but then one day he asked me to get him a rolling pin. I brought my rolling pin, and he appropriated it. He put some men on rolling capātīs and supervised them very carefully.
| | | I made a chutney for him at home. He always accepted our gifts graciously, although I don’t think he ever ate them. Perhaps he was worried we might put in something that wasn’t allowed in his diet. He used to take things from me and put them in the cupboard. I don’t know what he finally did with them, but I am sure he didn’t throw them away. I never saw him eat anything that I had prepared, although he accepted everything.
| | | Prabhupāda held his evening meetings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, just as he had uptown. The loft was out of the way for most of his acquaintances and it was on the Bowery. A cluster of sleeping derelicts regularly blocked the street-level entrance, and visitors would find as many as half a dozen bums to step over before climbing the four flights of stairs. But it was something new; you could go and sit with a group of hip people and watch the Svāmī lead kīrtana. The room was dimly lit, and Prabhupāda would burn incense. Many casual visitors came and went. One of them – Gunther – had vivid impressions.
| | | Gunther: You walked right off the Bowery into a room filled with incense. It was quiet. Everyone was talking in hushed tones, not really talking at all. Svāmīji was sitting in the front of the room, and in meditation. There was a tremendous feeling of peace which I have never had before. I’d happened to have studied for two years to become a minister and was into meditation, study, and prayer. But this was my first time to do anything Eastern or Hindu. There were lots of pillows around and mats on the floor for people to sit on. I don’t think there were any pictures or statues. It was just Svāmīji, incense, and mats, and obviously the respect of the people in the room for him.
| | | Before we went up, Carl was laughing and saying how Svāmī wanted everyone to use the hand cymbals just correctly. I had never played the cymbals before, but when it began I just tried to follow Svāmīji, who was doing it in a certain way. Things were building up, the sound was building up, but then someone was doing it wrong. And Svāmīji just very, very calmly shook a finger at someone and they looked, and then everything stopped. He instructed this person from a distance, and this fellow got the right idea, and they started up again. After a few minutes… the sound of the cymbals and the incense … we weren’t in the Bowery any longer. We started chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. That was my first experience in chanting – I’d never chanted before. There’s nothing in Protestant religion that comes even close to that. Maybe Catholics with their Hail Marys, but it’s not quite the same thing. It was relaxing and very interesting to be able to chant, and I found Svāmīji very fascinating.
| | | The loft was more open than Prabhupāda’s previous place uptown, so there was less privacy. And here some of the visitors were skeptical and even challenging, but everyone found him confident and joyful. He seemed to have far-reaching plans, and he had dedication. He knew what he wanted to do and was single-handedly carrying it out. “It is not one man’s job,” he had said. But he went on doing all he could, depending on Kṛṣṇa for the results. David was beginning to help, and more people were coming by to visit him.
| | | Almost all of Prabhupāda’s Bowery friends were musicians or friends of musicians. They were into music – music, drugs, women, and spiritual meditation. Because Prabhupāda’s presentation of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra was both musical and meditative, they were automatically interested. Prabhupāda stressed that all the Vedic mantras (or hymns) were sung – in fact, the words Bhagavad-gītā meant “The Song of God.” But the words of the Vedic hymns were incarnations of God in the form of transcendental sound. The musical accompaniment of hand cymbals, drum, and harmonium was just that – an accompaniment – and had no spiritual purpose independent of the chanting of the name of God. Prabhupāda allowed any instrument to be used, as long as it did not detract from the chanting.
| | | Carol: It was a very interracial, music-oriented scene. There were a few professional musicians, and a lot of people who enjoyed playing or just listening. Some people were painting in some of the lofts, and that’s basically what was going on. We had memorable kīrtanas. One time there was a beautiful ceremony. Some of us went over early to prepare for it. There must have been a hundred people who came that day.
| | | For the Bowery crowd, sound was spirit and spirit was sound, in a merging of music and meditation. But for Prabhupāda, music without the name of God wasn’t meditation; it was sense gratification, or at most a kind of stylized impersonal meditation. But he was glad to see the musicians coming to play along in his kīrtanas, to hear him, and to chant responsively. Some, having stayed up all night playing somewhere on their instruments, would come by in the morning and sing with the Svāmī. He did not dissuade them from their focus on sound; rather, he gave them sound. In the Vedas, sound is said to be the first element of material creation; the source of sound is God, and God is eternally a person. Prabhupāda’s emphasis was on getting people to chant God’s personal, transcendental name. Whether they took it as jazz, folk music, rock, or Indian meditation made no difference, as long as they began to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Carol: Whenever he had the chanting, the people were fairly in awe of the Svāmī. On the Bowery, a kind of transcendence came out of the ringing of the cymbals. He used the harmonium, and many people played hand cymbals. Sometimes he played the drum. In the very beginning, he stressed the importance of sound and the realization of Godhead through sound. That was, I suppose, the attraction that these musicians found in him – the emphasis on sound as a means to attaining transcendence and the Godhead. But he wanted a serious thing. He was interested in discipleship.
| | | One serious newcomer was Michael Grant. Mike was twenty-four. His father, who was Jewish, owned a record shop in Portland, Oregon, where Mike grew up. After studying music at Portland’s Reed College and at San Francisco State, Mike, who played the piano and many other instruments, moved to New York City, along with his girlfriend, hoping to get into music professionally. But he quickly became disenchanted with the commercial music scene. Playing in nightclubs and pandering to commercial demands seemed particularly unappealing. In New York he joined the musicians’ union and worked as a musical arranger and as an agent for several local groups.
| | | Mike lived on the Bowery in an A.I.R. loft on Grand Street. It was a large loft where musicians often congregated for jam sessions. But as he turned more and more to serious composing, he found himself retiring from the social side of the music scene. His interests ran more to the spiritual, quasi-spiritual, and mystical books he had been reading. He had encountered several swamis, yogīs, and self-styled spiritualists in the city and had taken up haṭha-yoga. From his first meeting with the Svāmī, Mike was interested and quite open, as he was with all religious persons. He thought all genuinely religious people were good, although he did not care to identify with any particular group.
| | | Mike: There was a little bit of familiarity because I had seen other swamis. The way he was dressed, the way he looked – older and swarthy – weren’t new to me. But at the same time there was an element of novelty. I was very curious. I didn’t hear him talk when I first came in – he was just chanting – but mainly I was waiting to hear what he was going to say. I had already heard people chant before. I thought, why else would he put himself in such a place, without any comforts, unless the message he’s trying to get across is more important than his own comfort? I think the thing that struck me the most was the poverty that was all around him. This was curious, because the places that I had been before had been just the opposite – very opulent. There was a Vedānta center in upper Manhattan, and others. They were filled with staid, older men with their leather chairs and pipe tobacco – that kind of environment. But this was real poverty. The whole thing was curious.
| | | The Svāmī looked very refined, which was also curious – that he was in this place. When he talked, I immediately saw that he was a scholar and that he spoke with great conviction. Some statements he made were very daring. He was talking about God, and this was all new – to hear someone talk about God. I always wanted to hear someone I could respect talk about God. I always liked to hear religious speakers, but I measured them very carefully. When he spoke, I began to think, “Well, here is someone talking about God who may really have some realization of God.” He was the first one I had come across who might be a person of God, who could feel really deeply.
| | | Prabhupāda is lecturing. “Śrī Kṛṣṇa is just trying to place Arjuna on the platform of working in pure consciousness. We have already discussed for so many days that we are not this dull body but we are consciousness. Somehow or other we are in contact with matter. Therefore our freedom is checked.”
| | | Attendance is better now than it had been uptown. The loft offers a larger space; in fact, the platform where Prabhupāda sits nearly equals the area of his entire office cubicle on Seventy-second Street. The dingy loft with its unpainted rafters is more like an old warehouse than a temple. The members of his audience, most of them musicians, have come to meditate on the mystical sounds of the Svāmī’s kīrtana.
| | | Carl, Carol, Gunther, Mike, David, the crowd from the Paradox, and others join him on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night, when he holds classes beginning punctually at eight o’clock. The program consists of half an hour of chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, followed by a lecture from Bhagavad-gītā (usually forty-five minutes long), then a question-and-answer period, and finally another half hour of chanting, everything ending by ten o’clock.
| | | The kīrtana has just ended, and Svāmīji is speaking.
| | | “As spiritual beings we are free to act, free to have anything. Pure, no contamination – no disease, no birth, no death, no old age. And besides that, we have got many, many other qualifications in our spiritual life.”
| | | When he speaks he is pure spiritual form. The Vedic scriptures say that a sādhu, a saint, is not seen but heard. If the people in the audience want to know Svāmīji, they will have to hear him. He is no longer simply the old Indian immigrant who lives on the other side of the partition of this loft, hanging his clothes to dry, barely getting his meals.
| | | But now he is speaking as the emissary of Lord Kṛṣṇa, beyond time and space, and hundreds of spiritual masters in the chain of disciplic succession are speaking through him. He has entered amid New York’s Bohemians in 1966 saying that 1966 is temporary and illusory, that he is eternal and they are eternal. This was the meaning of the kīrtana, and now he is explaining it philosophically, advocating a total change in consciousness. Yet, knowing that they can’t take it all, he urges them to take whatever they can.
| | | “You will be glad to hear that this process of spiritual realization, once begun, guarantees one to have his next life as a human being. Once karma-yoga is begun it will continue. It doesn’t matter – even if one fails to complete the course, still he is not loser, he is not loser. Now, if someone begins this yoga of self-realization but unfortunately cannot prosecute this task in a nice way – if he falls down from the path – still there is encouragement that you are not a loser. You will be given a chance next life, and the next life is not ordinary next life. And for one who is successful – oh, what to speak of him! The successful goes back to Godhead. So we are holding this class, and although you have multifarious duties, you come here thrice a week and try to understand. And this will not go in vain. Even if you stop coming here, that impression will never go. I tell you, the impression will never go. If you do some practical work, that is very, very nice. But even if you do not do any practical work, simply if you give your submissive aural reception and understand what is the nature of God – if you simply hear and have an idea even – then you will be free from this material bondage.”
| | | He is talking to a crowd who are deeply set in their hip life. He knows that they can’t immediately give up taking drugs, and there they sit with their common-law wives. Their path is to play music, live with a woman, and meditate sometimes. And be free. After hearing his lecture they’ll stay up all night with their instruments, their women, their drugs, their interracial Bohemian scene. Yet somehow they are drawn to Svāmīji. He’s got the good vibrations of the kīrtana, and they want to help him out. They’re glad to help, because he has no one else. So Prabhupāda is saying to them, “That’s all right. Even if you can only do a little, it will be good for you. We are all pure spirit souls. But you have forgotten. You have fallen into the cycle of birth and death. Whatever you can do toward reviving your original consciousness is good for you. There is no loss.”
| | | The Svāmī’s main stress is on what he calls “dovetailing your consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness.” “… Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Consciousness. And Arjuna, as the representative individual consciousness, is asked to act intelligently in collaboration with the Supreme Consciousness. Then he will be free from the bondage of birth, death, old age, and disease.”
| | | Consciousness is a popular word in America. There’s consciousness expansion, cosmic consciousness, altered states of consciousness, and now – dovetailing the individual consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness. This is the perfection of consciousness, Prabhupāda explains. This is the love and peace that everyone is really after. And yet Prabhupāda talks of it in terms of war.
| | | “They are talking on the battlefield, and Arjuna says, “I will not fight. I will not fight with my relatives and brothers for the sake of achieving some kingdom. No, no.” Now, to the ordinary man it appears that, “Oh, Arjuna is a very nice man, nonviolent. He has given up everything for the sake of his relatives. Oh, what a nice man he is.” This is the ordinary calculation.”
| | | “But what does Kṛṣṇa say? He says, “You are damned fool number one.” Now just see. The things which are estimated in the public eye as very nice, very good, that is here condemned by God. So you have to see whether the Supreme Consciousness is pleased with your actions. And Arjuna’s action was not approved by Lord Kṛṣṇa. It was for his own whim, sense gratification, that at first he would not fight – but in the end, for Kṛṣṇa’s satisfaction, he did fight. And that is our perfection – when we act for the satisfaction of the Supreme Consciousness.”
| | | At this point, some in the audience are filled with reservations. They are all opposed to the role of the United States in Vietnam, and this idea is very difficult for them. Like Arjuna, they want peace. So why is a swami sanctioning war?
| | | He explains: Yes, Arjuna’s idea not to fight is good, but then Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Consciousness, instructs him to fight anyway. Therefore, Arjuna’s fighting is above mundane ethics. It is absolute. If we follow Arjuna, give up good and bad, and act for Kṛṣṇa, not for our sense gratification, then that is perfect – because Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Consciousness.
| | | To some in his audience, although his answer seems philosophically sound, it’s not quite what they want to hear. Still, they want to know his political views. Does he support America’s involvement in Vietnam? Is he antiwar? But Prabhupāda is neither hawk nor dove. He has no political motive behind his example of Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna. His theme is simple and pure: beyond the good and the bad is the Absolute, and to act in accord with the Absolute is also beyond good and bad.
| | | But what about Vietnam – does Kṛṣṇa say to fight there? No, Svāmīji answers. The Vietnam war is different from the Kurukṣetra war. In the Battle of Kurukṣetra, Kṛṣṇa was personally present asking Arjuna to fight. Vietnam is different.
| | | But his audience has yet another objection: If he is not addressing the Vietnamese war, then why not? After all, this is 1966. If he isn’t talking about the war, then what is his relevancy? The Svāmī replies that his message is actually the most urgent and relevant. The Vietnamese war was an inevitable karmic reaction; it was one symptom, not the whole problem. And only this philosophy – surrender to the Supreme Consciousness – addresses the real problem.
| | | But for many the reference to fighting is so emotionally charged that they can’t go beyond the immediate politics of Vietnam to Prabhupāda’s real message of surrender to the Supreme Consciousness. They respect the Svāmī – they realize he’s referring to a deeper philosophy – yet the story of Arjuna and the war makes things difficult. The Svāmī nonetheless continues to refer to Arjuna’s fighting as the classic example of Bhagavad-gītā’s basic teaching.
| | | It’s not the basic teaching his audience is having difficulty with. It’s the example. Prabhupāda has deliberately handed his audience a volatile analogy. He hasn’t come to join their peace movement, and he doesn’t accept their shortsighted concept of peace. He confronts them: It is better to fight in Kṛṣṇa consciousness than to live in a so-called peace devoid of God realization. Yes, the example is hard for them to accept. It makes them think. And if they do accept, then they might come near to understanding the Absolute.
| | | “Is it very difficult, dovetailing our consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness? Not at all. Not at all! No sane man will say, “Oh, it is not possible.”
| | | He isn’t suggesting that to dovetail with the Supreme Consciousness they will have to go fight in Vietnam or perform some other horrible act on behalf of God. He knows that spiritual life will have to be more attractive than material life, or his audience will never take to it. He wants to bring the theme of dovetailing with the Supreme Consciousness down to something practical, something all-attractive and beautiful, something anyone could do and would want to do. He wants to encourage them by saying that they can do their own thing – but for Kṛṣṇa. Arjuna, after all, was a lifetime warrior. Kṛṣṇa didn’t ask him to give up his work, but to do it for the Supreme. So Prabhupāda is asking the same of his audience. And they can begin with something as simple as offering their food to God.
| | | “Because everyone has to eat. So God wants to eat something. Why don’t you first offer your food to God? Then you eat. But you may say, “But if God takes it away, then how shall I eat?” No, no. God will not take it. Daily, after preparing our foodstuffs, we are offering to Kṛṣṇa. There is a witness. Mr. David has seen. (Prabhupāda laughs.) God eats! But His spiritual eating is such that, even after His eating, the whole thing is still there.”
| | | “So we shall not suffer a pinch if we dovetail our desires with the Supreme Lord. We simply have to learn the art – how to dovetail. Nothing has to be changed. The fighting man did not change into an artist or a musician. If you are a fighting man, you remain a fighting man. If you are a musician, you remain a musician. If you are a medical man, you remain a medical man. Whatever you are, you remain. But dovetail it. If by my eating the Lord is satisfied, then that is my perfection. If by my fighting the Lord is satisfied, then that is my perfection. So in every sphere of life we have to know whether the Lord is satisfied. That technique we have to learn. Then it is as easy as anything. We have to stop creating our own plans and thoughts and take the perfect plans from the Supreme Lord and execute them. That will become the perfection of our life.”
| | | “And Lord Caitanya has made acting on the platform of consciousness very easy. Just as there are some note-makers of school books – Easy Study – so Lord Caitanya has recommended that you be engaged in whatever occupation, but just hear about Kṛṣṇa. Continue to hear the Bhagavad-gītā and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. It is for this that we are trying to organize this institution. So you have come, and whatever work you do, it doesn’t matter. Everything will be adjusted by and by, as our mind becomes clear simply by hearing. If you continue this process, chanting the Kṛṣṇa name, you will practically see how much your heart is becoming clear and how much you are making progress toward spiritual realization, the real identity of pure consciousness.”
| | | Prabhupāda is speaking on behalf of the Supreme Consciousness, and he offers his day-to-day activities as an example of dovetailing with the Supreme.
| | | “I am here always working at something, reading or writing – something, reading or writing – twenty-four hours. Simply when I feel hungry, I take some food. And simply when I feel sleepy I go to bed. Otherwise, I don’t feel fatigued. You can ask Mr. David whether I am not doing this.”
| | | Of course, the Svāmī’s daily routine doesn’t require certification from David Allen, and any of his regular visitors can see that he is transcendental. His personal life is a perfect example of dovetailing with the Supreme Consciousness. Prabhupāda has always kept himself dovetailed with the Supreme. He had been perfectly dovetailed in Vṛndāvana also and had no personal need or motive to come to America and live on the Bowery. It was for others’ sake that he came to the Bowery, and it is for others’ benefit that he is speaking tonight. His spiritual master and Lord Kṛṣṇa want the conditioned souls to come out of their illusion before it is too late.
| | | Speaking vigorously, even until he becomes physically exhausted – sometimes shouting, sometimes pleading, sometimes laughing – he gives his audience as much as he feels they can take. As the emissary of Kṛṣṇa and the disciplic succession, he can boldly shout that everyone should dovetail with the Supreme. He can speak as strongly as he likes for as long as they’re willing to listen. He is a sādhu. (The Sanskrit word means “saint” and “one who cuts.”) And he repeats the same message that for thousands of years sādhus of the original Vedic culture have spoken. He is reviving the eternal spirit of the Vedic wisdom – to cut the knots of ignorance and illusion.
| | | “So everything is illusion. From the beginning of our birth. And that illusion is so strong it is very difficult to get out of. The whole thing is illusion. Birth is illusion. The body is illusion. The bodily relationship and the country are illusion. The father is illusion. The mother is illusion. The wife is illusion. The children are illusion. Everything is illusion. And we are contacting that illusion, thinking we are very learned, advanced. We are imagining so many things. But as soon as death comes – the actual fact – then we forget everything. We forget our country. We forget our relatives. We forget our wife, children, father, mother. Everything is gone.”
| | | Mike Grant: I went up to him afterward. I had the same feeling I’d had on other occasions when I’d been to hear famous people in concerts. I was always interested in going by after concerts to see musicians and singers just to meet them and see what they were like. I had a similar feeling after Svāmīji spoke, so I went up and started talking. But the experience was different from the others in that he wasn’t in a hurry. He could talk to me, whereas with others all you could do was get in a few words. They were always more interested in something else. But he was a person who was actually showing some interest in me as a person, and I was so overwhelmed that I ran out of things to say very quickly. I was surprised. Our meeting broke off on the basis of my not having anything further to say. It was just the opposite of so many other experiences, where some performer would be hurrying off to do something else. This time, I was the one who couldn’t continue.
| | | Prabhupāda liked to take walks. From his doorstep at 94 Bowery, he would see directly across the street the Fulton Hotel, a five-story flop-house. Surrounding him were other lower-Manhattan lodging houses, whose tenants wandered the sidewalks from early morning till dark. An occasional flock of pigeons would stir and fly from one rooftop to the next or descend to the street. Traffic was heavy. The Bowery was part of a truck route to and from Brooklyn by way of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.
| | | The Bowery sloped gently downhill toward the north, and Prabhupāda could see signboards, a few scraggly Manhattan trees, and the street lights and traffic signals as far up as Fourth Street. He could see Con Edison, with its prominent clock tower, and (if there were no clouds) the top of the Empire State Building on Thirty-fourth Street.
| | | He would walk alone in the morning through the Bowery neighborhood. The month of May that year saw more frequent rains than was normal, and Prabhupāda carried an umbrella. Sometimes he walked in the rain. He was not always alone; sometimes he walked with one of his new friends and talked. Sometimes he shopped. Bitter melon, dāl, hing, chick-pea flour, and other specialty foods common in Indian vegetarian cuisine were available in Chinatown’s nearby markets. On leaving the loft, he would walk south a few steps to the corner of Bowery and Hester Street. Turning right on Hester, he would immediately be in Chinatown, where the shops, markets, and even the Manhattan Savings Bank were identified by signs lettered in Chinese. Sometimes he would walk one block further south to Canal Street, with its Central Asian Food Market and many other streetside fruit and vegetable markets. In the early morning the sidewalks were almost deserted, but as the shops began to open for business, the streets became crowded with local workers, shopkeepers, tourists, and aimless derelicts. The winding side streets of Chinatown were lined with hundreds of small stores, and parked cars lined both sides of the street.
| | | His walks on Hester would sometimes take him into Little Italy, which overlaps Chinatown at Mulberry Street. In this neighborhood, places like Chinese Pork Products and the Mee Jung Mee Supermarket stood alongside Umberto’s Clam House and the Puglia Restaurant, advertising capuccino a la puglia, coffee from Puglia.
| | | His walks west of Bowery into Chinatown and Little Italy were mainly for shopping. But he also noted prospective sites for a temple; Chatham Tower on Chatham Square particularly drew his attention. Sometimes he would walk in the opposite direction as far as the East River and Brooklyn Bridge. But when a friend warned him that a sniper had been firing at strollers along the river, he stopped going there.
| | | Despite the bad neighborhood where Prabhupāda lived and walked, he was rarely disturbed. Often he would find several Bowery bums asleep or unconscious at his door, and he would have to step over them. Sometimes a drunk, simply out of his inability to maneuver, would bump into him, or a derelict would mutter something unintelligible or laugh at him. The more sober ones would stand and gesture courteously, ushering the Svāmī into or out of his door at 94 Bowery. He would pass among them, acknowledging their good manners as they cleared his path.
| | | Ciertamente, pocos de los hombres de Bowery y otros que lo vieron en sus caminatas sabían mucho sobre el pequeño sādhu indio de edad avanzada, vestido con azafrán y que llevaba un paraguas y una bolsa de supermercado marrón.
| | | Sometimes Prabhupāda would meet one of his new friends on the street. Jan, Michael Grant’s girlfriend, met him on several occasions as he was out walking.
| | | Jan: I would see him in the midst of this potpourri of people down there, walking down the street. He always had an umbrella, and he would always have such a serene look on his face. He would just be taking his afternoon jaunts, walking along, sometimes stepping over the drunks. And I would always get sort of nervous when I would meet him on the sidewalk. He would say, “Are you chanting?” and I would say, “Sometimes.” And then he would say, “That’s a good girl.”
| | | Sitting cross-legged, his back to the shelf with its assortment of potted plants, a whitish cādara wrapped in wide, loose folds across his body, Prabhupāda looked grave, almost sorrowful. The picture and an accompanying article appeared in a June issue of The Village Voice. The article read:
| | | “The meeting of the mystical West and practical East comes alive in the curious contrast between A. C. Bhaktivedanta Svāmī and his American disciples. The swami, a cultivated man of seventy with a distinguished education, is here for a year to preach his gospel of peace, good will, nearness to God, and, more practically, to raise money for his American church. … Like his teachings, the swami is sensible and direct. His main teaching is that mankind may come closer to God by reciting His holy name.”
| | | “Despite the fact that the swami came to America to seek out the root of godless materialism – a disease, he said, that has already enveloped India – he is a realistic man. “If there is any place on earth with money to build a temple, it is here.” The swami wishes to found in America an International Society for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, which will be open for anyone – including women.”
| | | The article had been written by Howard Smith. He had first heard of the Svāmī by a phone call from a contact who had told him of an interesting holy man from India living in a loft in the Bowery. “Go there any time,” Howard’s contact had told him. “He’s always there. I think you will find it fascinating. I believe he’s about to start a major religious movement.”
| | | Howard Smith: So I went down there and went upstairs into this very funky artists’ loft. There were carpets all over the place, old and worn out, and a lot of people sitting around in various kinds of hippie garb, plus what I think they must have thought was Indian garb. Most of them were sitting alone around the room facing the wall, like they had nothing to do with each other. They were sitting cross-legged, and each one seemed to be doing something different. Nobody paid any attention to me when I walked in.
| | | I saw shoes lined up, and I thought, “Maybe I am supposed to take off my shoes,” but nobody said anything to me. So I walked around the edge of the carpet, looking for somebody to pay attention to me. I wondered what was going on, and I didn’t want to interrupt anybody, because they all seemed deep into whatever kind of prayers they were doing.
| | | In the back of the loft I noticed a little curtain – an Indian madras type of curtain – and so I decided I’d peer into that area. I looked in, and there was Svāmī Bhaktivedanta sitting there cross-legged in saffron garments, with the markings on his forehead and nose and his hand in the bead bag. Even though he looked like the real thing, he seemed more approachable, and I said, “Hello,” and he looked up. I said, “Svāmī Bhaktivedanta?” and he said, “Yes.” I said, “I am Howard Smith.” I was expecting to sit down, so I said, “Excuse me, I have to take off my shoes,” and he said, “Why do you want to take off your shoes?” I said, “I don’t know – I saw all the shoes out there.” And he said, “I didn’t ask you to take your shoes off.” I said, “What are all those people out there doing?” and he said, “I don’t know. And they don’t know what they’re doing. I am trying to teach them, and they seem to be misunderstanding me. They are very confused people.”
| | | Then we sat and talked, and I liked him a lot right away. I mean, I’d met a lot of other swamis, and I didn’t like them too much. And I don’t think it’s fair to lump them all together and say, “Those swamis in India.” Because he was very, very basic, and that’s what I seemed to like about him. He not only made me feel at ease, but he seemed very open and honest – like he asked my advice on things. He was very new in the country.
| | | I thought his ideas stood a good chance of taking hold, because he seemed so practical. His head didn’t seem in the clouds. He wasn’t talking mysticism every third word. I guess that is where his soul was at, but that isn’t where his normal conversational consciousness was at.
| | | Then he said several people had told him that the Voice would be a very good place to be written up and that basically it would reach the kind of people who already perhaps had a leaning or interest in what he was preaching. And I said that I thought he was correct. He asked me if I had read any books or knew anything about Indian culture, and I said no, I didn’t really. We talked a little, and he explained to me that he had these books in English that he had already translated in India. And he handed those to me and said, “If you want more background, you can read these.”
| | | It was obvious to me that I was not talking to some fellow who had just decided that he had seen God and was going to tell people about it. He seemed to be an educated man, much more than myself, actually. And I liked his humbleness. I just plain liked the guy.
| | | He explained everything I wanted to know – the significance of what he was wearing, the mark on his forehead, the bead bag. And I liked all his explanations. Everything was very practical. Then he talked about temples all over the world, and he said, “Well, we have got a long way to go. But I am very patient.”
| | | Prabhupāda had hope for what the Voice article had referred to as “his American church.” There was life in his lectures and kīrtanas, and at least he was acquiring a small, regular following. But from India there was no hope. He had continued corresponding with Sumati Morarji, his Godbrothers, and the Indian Central Government, but their replies had not been encouraging.
| | | In the faith that Padampat Singhania would agree to his plans for a Kṛṣṇa temple in Manhattan and finance its construction, Prabhupāda had petitioned New Delhi to sanction the release of foreign exchange. He had written to the Reserve Bank of India, New Delhi.
| | | “I want to establish this cultural center, and for this I wish to get some exchange from India. I think there are good prospects all over the world for propagating the culture of how to love God in these days of forgetfulness.”
| | | A month later the Indian bank had advised him to resubmit his request, through the Indian Embassy in Washington, to the finance minister of the Indian Central Government. Prabhupāda had complied. And another month had passed, with no word from the government.
| | | One of his Godbrothers had written that Svāmīji should come back to India and work personally to get the government’s sanction. But Prabhupāda didn’t want to leave America now. He wrote to Sumati Morarji:
| | | “I am trying to avoid the journey to India and again coming back. Especially for the reason that I am holding at the above address classes thrice a week and training some American youth in the matter of sankirtan and devotional service to the Lord. Some of them are taking the lessons very sincerely and in the future they may be very good Vaiṣṇavas according to the rigid standards.”
| | | One day a curious, unsolicited correspondent wrote to Prabhupāda from India. His name was Mukti Brahmacārī. Introducing himself as a disciple of one of Prabhupāda’s Godbrothers, and reminding Prabhupāda of their past slight acquaintance, Mukti wrote of his eagerness to join Prabhupāda in America. Certainly Prabhupāda still had hopes for getting assistance from his Godbrothers in India – “This mission is not simply one man’s work.” Therefore, he invited Mukti to come to America and asked him to request his guru to cooperate by working personally to secure government sanction for the release of foreign exchange. Mukti wrote back, reaffirming his eagerness but expressing doubt that his spiritual master would give him permission. Mukti thought he should first come to the United States and then request his spiritual master’s help. Prabhupāda was annoyed, and he sent an immediate reply:
| | | “Is preaching in America my private business? Srila Prabhupad Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati wanted to construct some temples in foreign countries as preaching centers of the message of Srila Rupa Raghunath,(5) and I am trying to do this in this part of the world. The money is ready and the opportunity is open. If by seeing the Finance Minister this work can be facilitated, why should we wait because you cannot talk with your Guru Maharaj about cooperation because you are afraid your journey will be cancelled? Please do not think in that way. Take everything as Srila [Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati] Prabhupad’s work and try to do the needful. Do not think for a moment that my interest is different from that of your Guru Maharaj. We are executing the will of Srila Prabhupad according to our own capacity. A combined effort would have been far better.”
| | | Mukti submitted the entire proposal before his spiritual master, who, as Mukti predicted, canceled the trip. Although Mukti’s guru was Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Godbrother, he did not want to be involved, and he doubted that Prabhupāda would actually get a donation from Padampat Singhania.
| | | And now Mukti Brahmacārī also doubted: “If your program is not bona fide, the approach to a big personality will be a ludicrous one no doubt.”
| | | On the same day that Prabhupāda received the “ludicrous” letter, he also received the final blow of noncooperation from the Indian government. Second Secretary Prakash Shah of the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C., wrote:
| | | “Due to existing conditions of foreign exchange stringency, it is not possible for the government of India to accede to your request for release of foreign exchange. You may perhaps like to raise funds from residents in America.”
| | | It was confirmed: Prabhupāda would have to work without outside help. He would continue alone in New York City. His last letter to Mukti Brahmacārī reveals his deep faith and determination.
| | | So the controversy is now closed, and there is no need of help from anyone else. We are not always successful in our attempts at preaching work but such failures are certainly not ludicrous. In the absolute field both success and failure are glorious. Even Lord Nityananda pretended to be a failure at converting Jagai and Madhai in the first attempt. Rather, He was personally injured in such an attempt. But that was certainly not ludicrous. The whole thing was transcendental, and it was glorious for all parties concerned.
| | | If Kṛṣṇa consciousness were ever to take hold in America, it would have to be without assistance from the Indian government or Indian financiers. Not even a lone Indian brahmacārī would join him. Kṛṣṇa was revealing His plan to Prabhupāda in a different way. With the Singhania-sanction schemes finished and behind him, Prabhupāda would turn all his energy toward the young men and women coming to him in his Bowery loft. He wrote to Sumati Morarji:
| | | “I am now trying to incorporate one corporation of the local friends and admirers under the name International Society for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, incorporated.”
| | | Of all his friends and admirers, Prabhupāda gave his roommate, David Allen, the most personal attention and training. He felt he was giving David a special chance to become America’s first genuine Vaiṣṇava. Prabhupāda would eventually return to India, and he wanted to take David to Vṛndāvana. He would show him temple worship and train him for future preaching in the West. He had requested Sumati Morarji to provide free passage for David as well as for himself.
| | | “You will be pleased to see this American boy. He is coming of a good family and is a sincere soul to this line of culture. There are others also in the class I am holding here, but I wish to take with me only one of them.”
| | | “I am very glad to say (Prabhupāda said one evening in his lecture) that our Mr. David says sometimes, “Svāmīji, I want to increase my spiritual life immediately.” (Prabhupāda laughed as he imitated David’s urgency.) “Take patience, take patience,” I tell him. “It will be done, of course. When you have got such desire, God will help you. He is within you. He is simply trying to see how sincere you are. Then He will give you all opportunities to increase your spiritual life.”
| | | At first David and the Svāmī lived together peacefully in the large hall, the Svāmī working concentratedly on his side of the partition, David ranging throughout the large open space. David, however, continued taking marijuana, LSD, and amphetamines, and Prabhupāda had no choice but to tolerate it. Several times he told David that drugs and hallucinations would not help his spiritual life, but David would look distracted. He was becoming estranged from the Svāmī.
| | | But Prabhupāda had a plan to use the loft as a temple – to transform it into New York’s first temple of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa – and he wanted David’s cooperation. Although the neighborhood was one of the most miserable in the world, Prabhupāda talked of bringing Deities from Jaipur or Vṛndāvana and starting temple worship, even on the Bowery. He thought David might help. After all, they were roommates, so there could be no question of David’s not cooperating, but he would have to give up his bad habits.
| | | Prabhupāda was trying to help David, but David was too disturbed. He was headed for disaster, and so were Prabhupāda’s plans for the loft. Sometimes, even not under the influence of a drug, he would pace around the loft. Other times he appeared to be deep in thought. One day, on a dose of LSD, he went completely crazy. As Carl Yeargens put it, “He just flipped out, and the Svāmī had to deal with a crazy man.” Things had been leading to this – “he was a crazy kid who always took too much” – but the real madness happened suddenly.
| | | Svāmīji was working peacefully at his typewriter when David “freaked out.” David started moaning and pacing around the large open area of the loft. Then he began yelling, howling, and running all around. He went back to where the Svāmī was. Suddenly Prabhupāda found himself face to face not with David – nice David, whom he was going to take to India to show the brāhmaṇas in Vṛndāvana – but a drugged, wild-eyed stranger, a madman.
| | | Prabhupāda tried to speak to him – “What is the matter?” – but David had nothing to say. There was no particular disagreement. Just madness...
| | | Prabhupāda moved quickly down the four flights of stairs. He had not stopped to gather up any of his belongings or even to decide where he would go or whether he would return. There had been no time to consider anything. He had taken quite a shock, and now he was leaving the arena of David’s madness. The usual group of bums were sitting in the doorway, and with their customary flourish of courtesy they allowed him to pass. They were used to the elderly swami’s coming in and out, going shopping and returning, and they didn’t bother him. But he was not going shopping today. Where was he going? He didn’t know. He had come onto the street without knowing where he would go.
| | | He wasn’t going back to the loft – that was for sure. But where could he go? The pigeons flew from roof to roof. Traffic rumbled by, and the ever-present bums loitered about, getting drunker on cheap, poisonous alcohol. Although Prabhupāda’s home had suddenly become an insane terror, the street at its door was also a hellish, dangerous place. He was shaken. He could call Dr. Mishra’s, and they might take him in. But that chapter of his life was over, and he had gone on to something better. He had his own classes, young people chanting and hearing. Was it all over now? After nine months in America, he had finally gotten a good response to his preaching and kīrtana. He couldn’t just quit now.
| | | A. C. Bhaktivedanta Svāmī Mahārāja, whom everyone knew and respected in Vṛndāvana as a distinguished scholar and devotee, who had an open invitation to see the vice president of India and many other notables, now had to face starkly that he had not one friend of stature in the United States. Suddenly he was as homeless as any derelict on the street. In fact many of them, with their long-time berths in flophouses, were more secure than he. They were ruined, but settled. The Bowery could be a chaotic hell if you weren’t on a very purposeful errand – going directly to the store, or back to your place. It was no place to stand wondering where will you live or is there a friend you can turn to. He wasn’t on his way to Chinatown to shop, nor was he taking a little stroll, soon to return to the shelter of the loft. If he couldn’t go to the loft, he had no place.
| | | How difficult it was becoming to preach in America amid these crazy people! He had written prophetically in his poem the day he had arrived in Boston Harbor, “My dear Lord, I do not know why You have brought me here. Now You can do with me whatever You like. But I guess You have some business here, otherwise why would You bring me to this terrible place?” What about his scheduled classes? What about David – should he go back and try to talk with the boy? This had been David’s first fit of violence, but there had been other tense moments. David had a habit of leaving the soap on the floor of the shower stall, and Prabhupāda had asked him not to, because it was a hazard. But David wouldn’t listen. Prabhupāda had continued to remind him, and one day David had gotten angry and shouted at him. But there was no real enmity. Even today’s incident had not been a matter of personal differences – the boy was a victim.
| | | Prabhupāda walked quickly. He had free passage on the Scindia Line. He could go home to Vṛndāvana. But his spiritual master had ordered him to come here. “By the strong desire of Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura,” he had written while crossing the Atlantic, “the holy name of Lord Gaurāṅga will spread throughout all the countries of the Western world.” Before nightfall he would have to find some place to stay, a way to keep up the momentum of his preaching. This is what it meant to be working without government sponsorship, without the support of any religious organization, without a patron. It meant being vulnerable and insecure. Prabhupāda faced the crisis as a test from Kṛṣṇa. The instruction of Bhagavad-gītā was to depend on Kṛṣṇa for protection: “In all activities just depend upon Me and work always under My protection. In such devotional service be fully conscious of Me. … You will pass over all the obstacles of conditional life by My grace.”
| | | He decided to phone Carl Yeargens and ask him to help. Hearing the Svāmī’s voice on the phone – it was an emergency! – Carl at once agreed that Prabhupāda could move in with him and his wife, Eva. Their place was close by, on Centre Street, five blocks west of Bowery near Chinatown. Carl would be right over.
| | | After Carl found Prabhupāda, they went straight to Carl’s place, an A.I.R. loft, smaller than the one Prabhupāda had been living in. It had a main living area, large and open, with areas for the kitchen and bedroom partitioned off. There were decorative indoor plants and a profusion of throw pillows placed all around. Carl’s loft was much brighter than the dingy, factorylike space in the loft on the Bowery. The floor was painted bright orange – Carl used to say it looked like the deck of a ship. The walls and ceiling were white, and light from seven skylights filled the room. Carl and Eva settled the Svāmī in one corner.
| | | Prabhupāda had left his belongings at David’s loft and didn’t want to go back, so Carl went over to pick up a few essential items. Prabhupāda asked him to leave most of his things, including his books, suitcases, and reel-to-reel tape recorder, where they were.
| | | Although by this time David had come down from the intense effects of the LSD, he remained crazy. When Carl arrived at the loft, the door was locked and David was inside, afraid to let anyone in, although finally he relented. He had shut and locked all the windows, making the loft oppressively hot and stuffy. Bill Epstein, who also came by that day, analyzed David as having had “a drug-induced nervous breakdown, a narcopsychosis.” And although David was sorry he had exploded at the Svāmī, neither Bill nor Carl thought Prabhupāda should live with David again. Apparently Prabhupāda’s chances of making the loft into a Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa temple were finished. Carl and Bill gathered up a few of the Svāmī’s belongings, and David stayed behind in the loft. He wanted to be alone.
| | | Carl Yeargens knew Prabhupāda’s living habits and wanted to accommodate him with a suitable place to live and work. In a small alcove at one end of his loft, Carl had a small study, which he allocated for the Svāmī. Carl also set up a cushioned dais and arranged the living room around it so that guests could sit on the floor in a semicircle. Carl’s wife, who didn’t really like the idea of a swami moving in, agreed to cover a few cushions with Indian madras material for him anyway.
| | | Things went smoothly for a while. Prabhupāda continued his morning and evening classes, and many of the Bowery hip crowd came by. Three of his regular callers lived right in the same building, and a few others, including Carl’s brother, were just around the block. Michael Grant, James Greene – even David Allen came once.
| | | Don Nathanson (an artist): I was at Carl’s loft, and the Svāmī comes strolling in one day. So I already knew he was on the scene, from David’s. Mostly musicians were coming. They were enjoying the private morning session with him. And that’s really strange in itself, because these people were up almost all night, and he used to do it at six in the morning, for one hour. He would lead them in chanting with his hand cymbals – dot-dot-dah, dot-dot-dah. It was strange, because that crowd was heavy into drugs and they were well read. But for a short period they used to go every morning, nine or ten of them, and they felt very good about it. They felt very good that they did that in the morning.
| | | Carl felt that the creative group who came to see the Svāmī in his studio were all quick to enter into the mood of the kīrtana, but they were “using it in their own ways, to supplement their own private visions and ecstasies,” with no real intention of adopting the disciplines or the undivided worship of Lord Kṛṣṇa. Prabhupāda was their first real contact with a spiritual person, and yet even without trying to understand, they became absorbed in his kīrtanas and in what he had to say. Carl would invite them: “Hey, come on. This is genuine. This is real. You’ll like it. It’s music. It’s dance. It’s celebration.” Carl saw that “people just felt good being in the Svāmī’s presence and meditating on the chanting and eating the Svāmī’s cooking. It was unlike anything they had experienced before, except maybe for their moments of creative insight.”
| | | Yet for Carl and Eva, Prabhupāda’s simple presence created difficulty. Never before during his whole stay in America had he been a more inconvenient or unwanted guest. Carl’s studio was arranged for him and his wife to live in alone, using the bedroom, kitchen, and living room any way they liked. If they wanted to smoke marijuana or eat meat or whatever, that was their prerogative. This was Carl’s home; he lived here with his wife Eva and their dogs and cats. But now they had to share it with the Svāmī.
| | | Almost at once, the situation became intolerable for Eva. She resented the Svāmī’s presence in her home. She was a feminist, a liberated white woman with a black husband and a good job. She didn’t like the Svāmī’s views on women. She hadn’t read his books or attended his classes, but she had heard that he was opposed to sexual intercourse except for conceiving children, and that in his view a woman was supposed to be shy and chaste and help her husband in spiritual life. She knew about the Svāmī’s four rules – no meat-eating, illicit sex, intoxication, or gambling – and she definitely did not want Carl’s Svāmī trying to change their ways to suit his. And he had better not expect her to wait on him as his servant. She sensed the Svāmī objecting to almost everything she did. If she were to seek his advice, he would probably ask her to stop taking drugs, get rid of the cats and dogs, stop drinking, and stop contraceptive sex. If the Svāmī had his way, they would probably eat only at certain times and only certain foods. Eva was a heavy smoker, so he probably wouldn’t like being around her. She was ready for a confrontation.
| | | But Prabhupāda was not one to make intolerant demands while living in another’s home. He kept to his allotted corner of the loft, and he made no demands or criticisms. Hadn’t he seen his hosts in Butler eating meat and only remarked, “Think nothing of it”? Nevertheless, his imposing spiritual presence made Eva sorry Carl had ever met him. To Eva the Svāmī was an inimical force – and she, being candid and independent, let him know. As soon as he asked whether she could bring him something, she replied, “Get it yourself.”
| | | Carol Bekar saw the situation as being extremely uncomfortable and tense – “Eva was quite resentful.” Eva complained to Carol: here she was paying rent for the loft, working hard, and this man was trying to change their way of life.
| | | Carol: Eva couldn’t handle his teachings, and she couldn’t handle his influence over Carl. She didn’t feel so constrained, but she felt that Svāmīji was making Carl feel constrained.
| | | This was Eva’s main objection – the Svāmī was influencing Carl. Her relationship with Carl had only recently begun, and Carl was aware that she needed much of his time. He agreed with his wife, yet he couldn’t refuse the Svāmī. He was interested in Indian music, poetry, and religions, and here was a living authority, vastly knowledgeable in all facets of Indian culture, right in his home. Prabhupāda would cook his meals in their kitchen, and right away Carl would be there, eager to learn the art of Indian cuisine. Carl also wanted the Svāmī to show him how to play the drum. They would have long talks together.
| | | Carol: Carl was trying to be something he really wasn’t, but he would never have suggested that the Svāmī had to leave. Svāmī, I am sure, was astute enough to pick up on this tension. As soon as he could, he tried to move to another place.
| | | Gradually, Carl reached an impasse in his relationship with Prabhupāda. He couldn’t share his life with both his wife and the Svāmī, and ultimately he was more inclined toward his wife.
| | | Carl: I couldn’t see my loft becoming a temple. I was raising cats and dogs, and he wanted them removed. He used to call me a meat-eater. But then he changed our diet. Of course, he was hitting the American culture, which doesn’t know what all this business is. I have to put it on myself as much as anyone. I could understand and absorb India through an impersonal agency like a book or a record, but here was the living representative of Godhead, and to me it was as difficult as anything I’ve ever had to do before or since.
| | | Prabhupāda was not insensitive to the distress his presence was causing. He didn’t want to inconvenience anyone, and of course he could have avoided all inconvenience, both for himself and for people like Eva, if he had never come to America. But he wasn’t concerned with convenience or inconvenience, pleasing Eva or displeasing her. He wanted to teach Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
| | | Prabhupāda had a mission, and Carl’s loft didn’t seem to be the right base for it. Prabhupāda’s friends all agreed: he should move more into the center of things. The Bowery and Chinatown were too far out of the way. They would find him a new place.
| | | Forced by conditions he accepted as Kṛṣṇa’s mercy, Prabhupāda sat patiently, trying not to disturb anyone, yet speaking about Kṛṣṇa consciousness day and night. Carl assured him that with half a dozen people searching, it wouldn’t take long to find a new place, and they would all chip in together and help him with the rent.
| | | A week passed, and no one had found a suitable place for the Svāmī. One day Prabhupāda suggested that he and Carl take a walk up to Michael Grant’s place and ask him to help.
| | | Mike: I was awakened one morning very early, and Carl was on the phone saying, “Svāmīji and I were just taking a walk, and we thought we’d come up and see you.” I said, “But it’s too early in the morning.” And he said, “Well, Svāmīji wants to see you.” They were very near by, just down the street, so I had to quickly get dressed, and by the time I got to the door they were there.
| | | I was totally unprepared, but invited them up. The television had been on from the previous night, and there were some cartoons on. The Svāmī sat between Carl and me on the couch. I was keeping a pet cat, and the cat jumped up on Svāmīji’s lap, and he abruptly knocked it off onto the floor. We began to talk, but Svāmīji glanced over at the cartoons on the television set and said, “This is nonsense.” Suddenly I realized that the television was on and that it was nonsense, and I got up very quickly, saying, “Why, yes, it is nonsense,” and turned it off.
| | | As Prabhupāda talked, he tried to impress on Mike how difficult it was for him to live with Carl and Eva, and Mike listened. But was the Svāmī so sure he couldn’t go back to the Bowery loft and live with David Allen? Except for that one incident, it had been a nice setup, hadn’t it? Prabhupāda explained that David had become a madman from too much LSD. He was dangerous. Mike gave the Svāmī a half-incredulous look – David Allen, dangerous? Prabhupāda then told a story: “There’s an old saying in India that you get yourself a spiritual master, you sit opposite him, you learn everything from him that you can, then you kill him, you move his body to one side, and then you sit in his place, and you become the guru.” As Prabhupāda spoke, Mike began to feel that David was dangerous, so he didn’t ask for any more details.
| | | Mike could see that Svāmīji was appealing to him for help, and as they all sat together on the couch, Mike and Carl quietly nodded in agreement. The Svāmī was looking at Mike, and Mike was trying to think.
| | | “So how can we help Svāmīji?” Carl interjected.
| | | Mike explained that he was a pianist and he had to practice every day. He had two pianos, two sets of drums, a vibraphone, and other instruments right there in his apartment. Musicians were always coming over to practice, and they all played their instruments for hours. Also, he was living with a girl, and there was a cat in the apartment. But Mike promised that he would help find the Svāmī a new place. Prabhupāda thanked him and, along with Carl, stood to leave.
| | | Mike felt obligated. He was good at getting things done, and he wanted to do this for the Svāmī. So the next day he went to The Village Voice, got the first newspaper off the press, looked through the classified ads until he found a suitable prospect, and phoned the landlord. It was a storefront on Second Avenue, and an agent, a Mr. Gardiner, agreed to meet Mike there. Carl and the Svāmī also agreed to come.
| | | Mr. Gardiner and Mike were the first to arrive. Mike noted the unusual hand-painted sign – Matchless Gifts – above the front window. It was a holdover, Mr. Gardiner explained, from when the place had been a nostalgic-gift shop. Mike proceeded to describe the Svāmī as a spiritual leader from India, an important author, and a Sanskrit scholar. The rental agent seemed receptive. As soon as Prabhupāda and Carl arrived and everyone had been congenially introduced, Mr. Gardiner showed them the small storefront. Prabhupāda, Carl, and Mike carefully considered its possibilities. It was empty, plain and dark – the electricity had not been turned on – and it needed repainting. It would be good for meetings, but not for the Svāmī’s residence. But at $125 a month it seemed promising. Then Mr. Gardiner revealed a small, second-floor apartment just across the rear courtyard, directly behind the storefront. Another $71 a month and the Svāmī could live there, although first Mr. Gardiner would have to repaint it. The total rent would come to $196, and Carl, Mike, and the others would pitch in.
| | | Prabhupāda had the idea of making Mr. Gardiner the first official trustee of his fledgling Kṛṣṇa consciousness society. During their conversation he presented Mr. Gardiner with a three-volume set of his Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and inside the front cover he wrote a personal dedication and then signed it, “A. C. Bhaktivedanta Svāmī.” Mr. Gardiner felt flattered and honored to receive these books from their author himself. He agreed to become a trustee of the new society for Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and so pay the Society twenty dollars a month.
| | | Mr. Gardiner took a week to paint the apartment. Meanwhile, Mike arranged for the electricity and water to be turned on and had a phone installed, and he and Carl raised the first month’s rent among their friends. When everything was ready, Mike gave Prabhupāda a call at Carl’s.
| | | Now it was time to move the Svāmī into his new place. A few friends who were on hand accompanied the Svāmī over to the Bowery loft. Maybe they weren’t prepared to become his surrendered disciples, but contributing toward the first month’s rent and volunteering a few hours of work to help set up his place were exactly the kinds of things they could do very willingly.
| | | At the loft, they all gathered up portions of the Svāmī’s belongings, and then they started out on foot up Bowery. It was like a safari, a caravan of half a dozen men loaded with Prabhupāda’s things. Michael carried the heavy Roberts reel-to-reel, and even the Svāmī carried two suitcases. They did everything so quickly that it wasn’t until they were well on their way and Mike’s arm began to ache that he realized, “Why didn’t we bring a car?”
| | | It was the end of June, and a hazy summer sun poured its heat down into the Bowery jungle. Starting and stopping, the strange safari, stretching for over a block, slowly trekked along. Prabhupāda struggled with his suitcases, past the seemingly unending row of restaurant supply shops and lamp stores between Grand, Broome, and Spring streets. Sometimes he paused and rested, setting his suitcases down. He was finally moving from the Bowery. His electrician friend on Seventy-second Street would have been relieved, although perhaps he would have disapproved of the Second Avenue address also. At least he was finished residing on Skid Row. He walked on, past the homeless men outside the Salvation Army shelter, past the open-door taverns, stopping at streetlights, standing alongside total strangers, keeping an eye on the progress of his procession of friends who struggled along behind him.
| | | The Bowery artists and musicians saw him as “highly evolved.” They felt that the spirit was moving him and were eager to help him set up his own place so that he could do his valuable spiritual thing and spread it to others. He was depending on them for help, yet they knew he was “on a higher level”; he was his own protector, or, as he said, God protected him.
| | | The Svāmī and his young friends reached the corner of Bowery and Houston, turned right, and proceeded east. Gazing steadily ahead as he walked, Prabhupāda saw the southern end of Second Avenue, one block away. At Second Avenue he would turn left, walk just one block north across First Street, and arrive at his new home. As he passed the IND subway entrance, the storefront came into view – “Matchless Gifts.” He gripped his suitcases and moved ahead. At Second Avenue and Houston he hurried through a break in the rapid traffic. He could see green trees holding their heads above the high courtyard wall, reaching up like over-grown weeds in the space between the front and rear buildings of his new address.
| | | The streetside building housed his meeting hall, the rear building the apartment where he would live and translate. Adjoining the storefront building on its north side was a massive nine-story warehouse. The storefront structure was only six stories and seemed appended to the larger building like its diminutive child. On its southern side, Prabhupāda’s new temple showed a surface of plain cement and was free of any adjoining structure; there was only the spacious lot of the busy Mobil service station that bordered on First Street. As Prabhupāda approached the storefront, he could see two small lanterns decorating the narrow doorway.
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There was no certainty of what awaited him here. But already there had been good signs that these American young people, mad though they sometimes were, could actually take part in Lord Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana movement. Perhaps this new address would be the place where he could actually get a footing with his International Society for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness.
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NOTES
| 4 | | A.I.R., Artist In Residence
 | | 5 | | Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī and Śrīla Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī were two leading disciples of Lord Caitanya in the sixteenth century.
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