ON AN OVERCAST DAY in January 1967, the Swami left New York on a United Airlines flight bound for San Francisco. The plane rose from the runway, and he watched skyscrapers and bridges shrink away to the size of matchboxes. The plane merged into a dark bank of rain clouds, and for several minutes nothing was visible. We are like that, he reflected: small, our vision easily covered by clouds of maya. He chanted on his beads and waited. Then suddenly the plane lifted up over the cloudbank into a bright sky. “Krishna is compared to sunshine and maya to darkness,” he recited. “Wherever there is sunshine, there cannot be darkness.”⁹¹

Six hours later, his flight touched down in San Francisco. Allen Ginsberg was there with a handful of devotees and friends to greet the Swami on his arrival.

San Francisco Chronicle

Swami in Hippie Land

Holy Man Opens San Francisco Temple

A holy man from India, described by friend and beat poet Allen Ginsberg as one of the more conservative leaders of his faith, launched a kind of evangelistic effort yesterday in the heart of San Francisco’s hippie haven.

“Conservative?” the Swami asked on reading the article. “How is that?”

Mukunda suggested the reporter might have been referring to their restrictions on sex and drugs.

“Of course, we are conservative in that sense,” the Swami agreed. “But we accept everyone into this movement, regardless of sex, caste, position, or whatever. Everyone is invited to come chant Hare Krishna. No, we are not conservative.”

Kirtans in the San Francisco temple were lively. Each evening the storefront was packed with young people sporting long hair, exotic clothing, Indian beads, and painted cheeks, and their dancing was free and vigorous. From the temple, the Swami walked to his apartment on Frederick Street. A window faced east, filling the room each morning with bright sunlight. Two storefronts and a few dozen long-haired young Americans were hardly the worldwide movement predicted by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. But it was a start.

ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 1967, the Avalon Ballroom was packed with more than 500 ticket-holders for the Krishna Mantra-Rock Concert, which one commentator on the Sixties dubbed “the ultimate high of that era.”⁹² There were a handful of San Francisco temple regulars by now, and everyone attended in their Sixties best. Men wore Merlin-style gowns, women dressed in colorful saris, and the hippie crowd cheered appreciatively as the devotees took to the stage. Mukunda picked up a drum; others readied kartals, tambura, and harmonium; and the group opened with a mellow kirtan. From the balcony, technicians turned on strobe lights that projected pulsating rainbows of color onto walls and ceiling.

An hour later, the Swami and Allen Ginsberg entered the hall, and there was a drum roll and spontaneous roar of approval from the audience. The crowd parted as devotees onstage brought the kirtan to an end. The guests of honor mounted the stage and sat on cushions. Technicians positioned microphones. The Swami was dressed in fresh saffron silks and wore a fragrant gardenia garland around his neck. He studied the audience and would later remark, “Hippies are our best potential. Although they are young, they are already dissatisfied with material life and frustrated. Not knowing what to do, they turn to drugs. So let them come to us, and we will show them spiritual activities. Once they engage in Krishna consciousness, all these anarthas, unwanted things, will fall away.”

Ginsberg adjusted the microphone. “When I was in India,” he told the audience, “I got enthralled with the mantra we’re going to sing. The mantra is called the maha-mantra, literally ‘the great mind-deliverance mantra.’ Sometimes you can have a bad acid trip, and I want you to know that if you ever do, you can stabilize yourself on reentry by chanting this mantra. Now I want to introduce you to Swami Bhaktivedanta, who brought this mantra to the place where it was probably most needed, to New York’s Lower East Side—to the dispossessed, to the homeless, the lost, the anarchists, the seekers.” The crowd cheered.

“He left India, where life is peaceful,” Ginsberg continued, “where he could have remained happily chanting in a holy village where people never heard of war and violence, where life is slow and meaningful. But instead, he’s here with us tonight, his first time in this city—his first time in America! And he’s come to share with us something precious, something to treasure, something serene.” He gestured to the Swami, and the crowd went silent.

Prabhupada closed his eyes. “This chanting,” he said, “will lead us to the spiritual world. The mantra is not only for Indians. Hare Krishna is for all people because Krishna is everyone’s father. God is God for all human beings, beasts, aquatics, insects, trees, plants—all varieties of life. That is God. This sound is the sound-representation of the Supreme Lord. Everything has emanated from the Supreme Absolute Truth.” After a few more minutes of explanation, he thanked Ginsberg, and the audience again burst into applause.

Ginsberg pumped his harmonium. “Everyone sing loud,” he urged. “And dance, if you feel like it.”

The devotees onstage joined Ginsberg in a slow, hypnotic repetition of the words. The audience caught on, the kirtan began, and everyone sang, swaying as the tempo slowly picked up. The drummer from Moby Grape took his place behind the drum kit. Guitarists from The Grateful Dead plugged their guitars into amplifiers and were joined by guitarists from Big Brother and the Holding Company. The audience screamed with excitement as the celebrity rockers took to the stage. Moved by the inclusiveness of the scene, janitors, stage managers, security guards, and firemen clapped and danced.

Ginsberg chanted faster, sweat cascading down his face. Young people in the audience jumped and stomped their feet. On the wall behind the musicians appeared a towering image of Krishna, flute in hand, peacock feather in his hair. Incense burned in ceramic pots around the room, sending clouds of smoke drifting out over the scene, and through the billows of smoke the Swami watched as the throngs of young people danced and screamed out “Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!”

In his memoir, Mukunda described the unusual spectacle of serene dancers interspersed with hippies on LSD, squirming on the floor “like wounded snakes, while others shook, pranced, spun, shrieked, laughed, and cried.” Without warning, the Swami stood up from his pillow and raised his arms, dancing left foot over right, right foot over left, as he had taught followers to do in New York. Soon a thousand arms were waving in rhythmic unison. Ginsberg removed his microphone from its stand and held it in front of the Swami, and for several minutes the Swami’s voice filled the auditorium as he lead the chant. When Mukunda saw beads of perspiration streaming down the Swami’s face, he brought the chant to a crashing halt by raising his arms and motioning for devotees to bow to the audience.

The Swami descended from the stage, and the audience parted, cheering and applauding as they made room for him to pass. Girls more or less clothed bowed before the Swami and threw flowers at his feet.

“This is no place for a brahmachari,” he murmured to a disciple, referring to celibates like themselves, as they carefully made their way through the crowd of undulating young women.

THE NEXT MORNING after little sleep Kirtanananda and Hayagriva drove their teacher to the beach. In those halcyon days of Krishna consciousness, before a movement grew into an institution and a trickle of disciples swelled into a tidal wave, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami could take a morning stroll on a beach with just a few students. It was a cool January day, and wind blew across the boardwalk that paralleled the ocean. The Swami stopped and looked out over the water. Then he sang a song in praise of Krishna that the two disciples had not heard before: “Govinda jaya jaya, Gopala jaya jaya, Radharamana Hari, Govinda jaya jaya.”

Hayagriva would later remember that he chanted slowly, with the ocean waves rushing back and forth on the sand. The Swami came to the end of the song and explained its meaning for the two young men.

“Govinda is a name for Krishna,” he said, “meaning he gives pleasure to go, the cows and the senses. Gopal is another name for Krishna, meaning the cowherd boy. Radha-ramana means Krishna is the rama—the ecstasy—of Radha. These are the words of this mantra.” Then he again began singing, walking slowly along the boardwalk, wind blowing the bottom of his robes. He stopped again and watched the waves roll in and out.

“There is a verse in Bengali,” he said. “Oh, what is that voice across the sea, calling, calling, Come here, Come here . . .”

Then they sat on a bench and looked out across the Pacific Ocean, and in intermittent bursts he sang a line from one song, then another, and translated. “Oh, Gopinath—Krishna, beloved of the gopis—please sit within the core of my heart. Subdue this mind, and thus take me to you. Only then will the terrible dangers of this world disappear.” After a few more moments, the Swami stood up.

“Back to the temple,” he said.

He had come to them as a stranger, less than three years before, to give them a startling vision of themselves as eternal beings, and that alone had been sufficient to change their lives. Then he gave them recipes to cook, songs to sing, deities to worship, books to study. He encouraged them to open temples, establish farms, and travel around the world to teach Krishna consciousness to others. He helped them build a community of brothers and sisters, more family than many of them had ever known, and with simple examples showed how to see Krishna in everything and every moment. He revealed for them the face of God as described in scripture, youthful, joyful, a playful Supreme Being unlike the wrathful divinity of institutional religions. He taught them verses from the prayers of Brahma:

I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord,

Who is adept in playing on His flute,

With blooming eyes like lotus petals,

His head decked with peacock feathers,

The figure of beauty tinged with the hue of blue clouds,

His unique loveliness charming millions of cupids.

Then, at moments such as this, on a boardwalk with the sun rising behind them, he showed them his heart and invited them to witness his love for Krishna, to inspire them on their own often difficult journey. You are eternal and your soul is pure, he reassured them. Nothing can take that from you. Chant Hare Krishna and erase all karma. Just keep going, he told them. Don’t go away. Come “back to the temple.”

His disciples knew they did not measure up to his high standards. They loved him for accepting them with all their failings, and being with him was greater than any blessing they could imagine.

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE EARLY DAYS of the Swami’s movement frequently mention his response to emotionally unstable visitors. Not only was he attempting to institute Vaishnava standards of behavior, but he was doing so in the most psychologically stressed neighborhoods of the era such as the Lower East Side of New York and Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Followers protected him as best they could from confrontations with irate guests and young people on drugs, but they were unavoidable.

In the middle of one of the Swami’s lectures, a disoriented young woman suddenly blurted out, “What are you going to do now? Are you just going to sit there? Who are you?”

The Swami waited quietly while students escorted her out. He seemed saddened by the outburst, and those sitting close by reported hearing him whisper, “It is the darkest of darkness.”

Some guests chose to add their own, often incoherent comments to his lectures. The Swami would handle such tense moments with reserve and calm, acknowledging the soul in the intruder’s body and responding with respect and reason. Still, he never compromised the teachings, and when warranted he could be severe if it helped shock someone out of an illusion. Sometimes a guest would say, “I am God,” a fantasy which frequently occurred to people on LSD. “What do you mean?” he would say, challenging their impudent claim. “Do you have the attributes of God? Are you all-knowing? Did you create the universe?”

“I used to watch how the Swami would handle things,” recalled Haridas, a disciple from the early days of the San Francisco temple. “He would turn their energy around so that before you knew it they were calm, like when you pat a baby and it stops crying.” His management of these moments was a combination of “superior intelligence and a lot of compassion,” Haridas described. “When I saw him do these things, I realized he was not only a great teacher but a great human being.”

CHALLENGES TO BHAKTIVEDANTA SWAMI’S MISSION were not limited to the ravings of distressed temple visitors. Journalists as well, encountering street-chanting parties, had no clue what his disciples were doing and usually handed in weak stories about robes and incense. Writers did not care to spend time studying the movement’s philosophy, and its distinguished history simply held less appeal for readers than puff pieces about shaved heads and tambourines.

Two hundred years before, observers of Indian culture such as British evangelical Charles Grant (1746–1823) and German Orientalist Max Muller (1823–1900) had made similar assessments of Krishna devotees.They concluded, as American reporters would in the 1960s, that bhakti yogis were naïve sentimentalists who had taken refuge in a life of religious emotion. In a word, Hare Krishna people were crazy. In his classes and books, Bhaktivedanta Swami challenged the criteria by which outsiders to bhakti tradition judged who was crazy and who was sane. Knowing yourself to be nonmaterial consciousness was sane, he said. Believing yourself to be the product of matter was total madness. In an article titled “Who Is Crazy?” he quoted the Bhagavad Gita:

“The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone’s heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy.” (Bg. 18.61) These various bodies are like cars, and they are all moving . . . Should we then think that when we [die] the personality no longer exists? This is another kind of craziness. The void philosophy, which maintains that after death we become nothing, is also a craziness that has been contradicted. We are not void but spirit. . . . “As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly, the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.” (Bg. 2.22) Although the soul takes on new bodies, the soul does not select the bodies himself, the selection is made by the law of nature. However, the mentality of the soul does affect the selection, as indicated by Krishna in the following verse: “In whatever condition one quits his present body, in his next life he will attain to that state of being without fail.” (Bg. 8.6) As one’s thoughts develop, his future body also develops. The sane man understands that he is not the body, and he also understands what his duty is: to fix his mind on Krishna so that at death he can attain Krishna’s nature. . . . By ardently following the instructions of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita and following in the footsteps of the great acharyas, teachers of Bhagavad Gita in the line of disciplic succession, we can spiritualize the earth and restore its inhabitants to sanity.

If outsiders to Bhakti tradition chose to judge his students’ sanity by how they dressed or how enthusiastically they sang, that was their prerogative, but more thoughtful persons knew truth was about inner significance, not outward appearance.

“Let the dogs bark,” the Swami would say. “The caravan passes on.”

SHORTLY BEFORE LEAVING SAN FRANCISCO to return to New York, the Swami was in his apartment when Melanie—now initiated as Malati Dasi—arrived. She took a small wooden sculpture out of a shopping bag and set it on the desk for inspection. While shopping in an import store, she had found the three-inch-tall figurine in a barrel of objects labeled MADE IN INDIA. The small wooden doll had a triangular head, rounded torso, and no feet.

“What’s this, Swamiji?” she asked.

The Swami’s eyes grew bright, and he quickly joined his hands together in the traditional namaste greeting. “You have brought Jagannath,” he said with a smile, “Krishna in his form as Lord of the Universe.”

He described the joy he had known as a child worshiping his own small Jagannath deity. But usually, he explained, Jagannath was accompanied by two other figures: his brother, Balaram, and sister, Subhadra. Yes, Malati confirmed, she had seen similar dolls in the import store. Malati called her husband, Shyamsundar—formerly Sam—and they returned to the store to purchase the other figures. The Swami asked Shyamsundar to carve three-foot-tall versions of the Jagannath deities and install them in the San Francisco temple. It would be most appropriate to have Jagannath in San Francisco, he explained, since Jagannath’s compassion extended to “the most fallen,” such as hippies. One day, when his students were qualified, he would teach them how to worship deities of Radha and Krishna.

By March 1967, the Jagannath deities were ready. Shyamsundar fastened a seven-foot-long redwood plank to two thick pillars and positioned the three deities on the plank high above the altar. At night, a few devotees raided Golden Gate Park and returned with boxes of flowers for the installation.

The next evening the temple room filled to capacity as rumor circulated that something new was happening at the Krishna temple. The Swami signaled for kirtan to begin, then he instructed a disciple to place a lit candle on a brass tray. Next he invited guests to offer the candle’s flame to the Jagannath deities by making circles with the tray in a clockwise direction. This was a simplified version of the traditional arati ceremony that had been performed in Krishna temples throughout India’s history. Every invading force from the twelfth-century Moghuls to twentieth-century British, as well as every Hindu reform movement in recent times, had wanted such worship of stone and wood “idols” to disappear. God is not stone or wood, the Swami told the audience.

“If all you see is a stone statue,” he cautioned, “then the deity of Krishna will remain stone to you forever. People ask, ‘Have you seen God?’ Of course! You can see God at every moment. But you must have the qualification. What is that qualification?” He closed his eyes and sang a verse from Brahma Samhita, the prayer of Brahma, the words of the poem lifting upward with the melody: “Premanjana-cchurita bhakti-vilochanena, santah sadhaiva hridaiyeshu vilokayanti . . .” The room went quiet. He opened his eyes and said, “That qualification is unalloyed love—that’s all.”

“Unalloyed love,” or pure love, meant love for love’s sake, unqualified, without wanting any personal benefit in return. Because such love for the Supreme Person was natural, it could be awakened with practice. Krishna was self-sufficient, he explained. He didn’t need anything. Still, if a devotee offered him a candle’s flame with love, he gladly accepted it. Anything offered with love, under the guidance of a qualified guru, constituted bhakti or devotional service.

“When you come to the temple,” he said, “I request that you bring a fruit or a flower and offer it to the deity. It does not have to be costly. Whatever you can afford.”

Devotees and guests took his request literally. Over the next several weeks, many brought whatever they could afford and placed it on the altar before Jagannath. One person left a stalk of wheat. Someone else left a half a loaf of bread. Another guest offered a piece of fudge. Others deposited cans of baked beans and loose feathers. One person presented Jagannath a box of Saltine crackers. Two of the more imaginative guests arrived after a shopping trip and offered their purchases, calculating Jagannath would agree to sanctify their new shirts and pants. The Swami encouraged them all. They were trying to establish a relationship with Krishna, however awkwardly, and no offering was too outrageous. “If one offers me with love a leaf, fruit, a flower, or some water,” Krishna declared in the Bhagavad Gita, “I am happy to accept it.”⁹³

In years to come, authorities on the art of archana, deity worship, would acknowledge the standard in ISKCON temples as the highest in the world. In 1967, it began with feathers and a box of Saltines.

Room conversation:

BARBARA: Have you ever seen Krishna?

PRABHUPADA: Yes. Daily. Every moment.

BARBARA: But not in a material body.

PRABHUPADA: He has no material body.

BARBARA: Well, in the temple here they have pictures of Krishna and deities . . .

PRABHUPADA: That is not a material body. Because your eyes are material, you cannot see the spiritual form. Therefore, he appears to be in a material body so that you can see him. However, because he has made himself just fit for your seeing, that does not mean he has a material body. Suppose the president of the United States comes to your house. That does not mean his position and your position are the same. It is his kindness. Similarly, because we cannot see Krishna with our present eyes, Krishna appears before us as a painting, as a deity of stone or wood—and Krishna is not different from these paintings or stone.⁹⁴

IN APRIL 1967, the Swami returned to New York. Devotees had spruced up the storefront, painted the walls white, and hung new paintings by Jadurani. “In my absence, things have improved,” he said as he surveyed the changes and examined the art. He was seventy-two years old and walked with a steady step, but they would soon discover that his body could display the symptoms of aging.

So far Brahmananda’s efforts to find a publisher for the Swami’s Bhagavad Gita As It Is had failed. Swamiji had put the manuscript in his hands and said, “You must get this published,” but Brahmananda knew nothing about publishing. He met with editors, explained as best he could who his teacher was, and the importance of his edition of the Gita, but the editors shook their heads.

“There’s just no money in swamis,” they cautioned. “Risky. Very risky.”

On arriving back in New York, the Swami told Brahmananda that publishing the Gita could not wait any longer. If necessary, the Swami said, he would find the money himself somehow and have it printed in India. Brahmananda pleaded for a little more time.

Alan Kallman’s recording of the Hare Krishna chant, popularly known as “The Happening Album,” was released in January 1967. Devotees placed ads in the Village Voice and filled orders for the album as they came in by mail. One envelope carried the return address of Macmillan, one of the world’s largest publishing houses. An order from Macmillan for the Swami’s album seemed like a direct intervention by Krishna. Brahmananda showed the order to his teacher.

“Deliver the album in person,” the Swami advised. “Tell them that you are a disciple of a guru from India and that he has translated the Bhagavad Gita. They will publish it. Do not worry.”

Brahmananda dressed for the occasion in a suit and tie. He arrived at the Macmillan offices, “The Happening Album” in hand, and was brokenhearted to learn the order had come not from one of the company’s publishing agents but from a clerk in the mailroom. Still, Brahmananda knew unseen forces swirled around everything the Swami did, so the hefty devotee engaged the clerk in conversation, and a young executive happened by as they were talking. The clerk made introductions.

“This is James O’Shea Wade,” he said, “our senior editor.”

Brahmananda took a deep breath and repeated verbatim what his guru had told him to say. Wade was stunned.

“We’ve just published a full line of spiritual books,” he said, “but we’ve been looking for a Bhagavad Gita to fill out the set.” The two stared at each other in silence.

“Bring the manuscript tomorrow,” Wade said. “We’ll publish it—sight unseen.”

Brahmananda quickly returned to the temple on Second Avenue and told the Swami about his miraculous meeting. Miraculous indeed, the Swami agreed.

“When I was alone in your New York,” he wrote a few years later, “I was thinking who will listen to me in this horrible, sinful place? All right, I shall stay a little longer. At least I can distribute a few of my books, and that is something. But Krishna was all along preparing something I could not see. He brought you to me, one by one, sincere American boys and girls, to be trained up for doing the work of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Now I can see that it is a miracle. Otherwise, New York, an old man with a few books to sell for edibles—how he can survive, what to speak of introducing a God-consciousness movement for saving humankind? That is Krishna’s miracle. Now I can see it.”⁹⁵

BY THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY, more than a dozen editions of the Bhagavad Gita by other authors had been published in English, and by the end of the century that number would jump to more than 300.⁹⁶ Only the Bhaktivedanta edition provoked “Krishna’s miracle” of transforming Westerners into devotees. Most others promoted the idea of “oneness,” of merging with all-pervading brahman, over devotion to the personal Supreme Being. Love for a personal divinity might be a good place to start, the other editions proposed, but personhood was an illusion, and aspiring yogis would eventually have to give up their attachments to form and personhood in order to realize oneness with God. The Swami called the temptation to become one with God “maya’s last snare,” a final hurdle on the path to awakening knowledge of the self as an eternal, individual soul capable of loving and being loved.⁹⁷ His edition of the Gita would educate seekers about the dangers of this last snare.

The next day the Swami took a bus with Brahmananda to the Macmillan offices on Fifty-second Street and personally delivered the 1,000-page manuscript of his Bhagavad Gita. “I vividly remember the stir caused in our rather sedate and boring office the day the Swami came to visit,” senior editor James Wade later recalled.⁹⁸ “The Swami was special. That was clear. I remember him as a rather tall man, physically imposing—yet he wasn’t, being rather small in stature and not at all daunting.⁹⁹ Quiet, modest, and surrounded by a kind of stillness, a peacefulness that was, well, welcoming. I can’t think of a more precise word. He was in the world and at the same time not of it. He knew that we live in a world of illusion—something science has also taught us, as we go from subatomic particles and quantum mechanics to string theory.”¹⁰⁰

The Swami’s mission seemed to be going well. He now had a book with a major publisher, a record that was getting airplay on alternative radio stations, and reporters were showing up regularly looking for interviews.

Newspaper interview: ¹⁰¹

REPORTER: Do you have children?

PRABHUPADA: Yes, I have grown-up boys.

REPORTER: You just—left them?

PRABHUPADA: I have no connection with them, wife, grandchildren—they are going their own way. My wife is entrusted to the elder boys.

REPORTER: Well, is that—I mean, I find that sort of difficult to assimilate, to give up your family and just sort of say, “See you later”?

PRABHUPADA: That is the Vedic culture. One should not remain forever in family life up to death—that is not good.

REPORTER: Can you explain that?

PRABHUPADA: First, a boy is trained in spiritual life. If he is unable to remain celibate, then he can marry. At age fifty or so, the husband and wife leave home and travel to places of pilgrimage, to detach from family affection. When the man is a little more advanced, he asks his wife, “You take care of the family, and our grown-up sons will take care of you. Let me take sannyasa.” Then he becomes independent and teaches the knowledge which he has acquired. That is Vedic civilization. If the whole family is Krishna conscious, then it is helpful [and there is no need of sannyasa], but that is very rare.

REPORTER: From a practical standpoint, do you think your movement has a chance to make it here in America?

PRABHUPADA: So far I’ve seen, it has a great chance. What do you think?

ON SUNDAY, MAY 28, 1967, Achyutananda climbed the stairs to the Swami’s apartment. Swamiji was scheduled to lecture, and it was time to prepare. He found his teacher lying down, his face pale.

“Feel my heart,” the Swami said weakly.

Achyutananda placed his hand on his teacher’s chest and felt a quivering. The Swami made circular motions with his hand. “Rub my chest,” he asked, and for two days students took turns caring for him. Achyutananda was sitting with him when suddenly the Swami twitched, his eyes rolled, and he threw himself backward into his disciple’s arms. “Hare Krishna!” the Swami gasped. Acyutananda called for help. Other disciples crowded into the room.

“Hold kirtan,” the Swami told them. “Pray to Krishna that your spiritual master has not yet completed his work. Please let him finish.”

Brahmananda called an ambulance and took him to Beth Israel Hospital, where doctors diagnosed his condition as critical. Jadurani telephoned the San Francisco temple, then she called a small center that had recently opened in Montreal and begged the devotees to chant round the clock for Swamiji’s health. The men and women who had moved into these centers had no illusions about their future. They knew they were still spiritually immature, and that without his guidance their link with Krishna would be severed, and chanting began in earnest. News spread quickly down Haight Street, and the San Francisco temple overflowed with well-wishers and friends who joined the chanting for Swamiji’s recovery. Around 2 a.m., devotees emerged from the kitchen with trays of sliced fruit. Someone lit candles, and the chanting continued in flickering shadows. Fourteen hours later, people were still chanting.

After two days in the hospital, a call came from the New York temple. The Swami was slowly regaining strength. He survived, the Swami told them, because Krishna wanted him to carry out his spiritual master’s order to spread sankirtan in America. When news of the Swami’s improvement reached the other centers, followers cheered and embraced, and many sobbed the way people did when a child was born. They had come far in building their faith and had learned to live without public approval. But they could not live without him. The tears were not only because Krishna had spared their guru’s life, but because he had spared theirs as well.

DEVOTEES PLANNED TO HOLD A bigger than usual kirtan in Tompkins Square Park on June 4, 1967. The Parks Department had authorized them to use a loudspeaker system as well as the park’s outdoor stage. A disciple stood before the microphone and looked out on a crowd of several hundred. “The Swami is in the hospital,” he said, “and is not able to attend today. But he wrote a message for us.” Then he read:

My dear young, beautiful boys and girls of America, I came to your country with great hope and a great mission. My spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami, asked me to preach the cult of Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in the Western world. That was the seed-giving incident. From within, Krishna dictated that I should go to America, and after arriving here I perceived that some of the youngsters were being misled. They were confused and frustrated, although it is they who are the flower and future hope. I thought to myself that if they join with me in this movement, then it will spread all over the world and all problems will be solved. The process is very simple: chant, hear the philosophy taught by Lord Krishna, take a little prasadam, and you will find a new chapter of your life. It is not very difficult. If you just chant Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare—that will save you. Thank you very much, and God bless you.

Against doctors’ advice, the Swami checked himself out of Beth Israel Hospital a few days later. His health was still precarious, but he found no advantage in a sterile hospital room or the mechanical probings of allopathic physicians, over his modest apartment and the attentions of young people who loved him.

“They were only sticking needles,” he said of the hospital stay.

The Swami had grown up with a Vedic program for good health: properly spiced vegetarian prasadam in modest portions, daily chanting of Hare Krishna, a steady routine, and, when needed, plant-based ayurvedic medicines. As a chemist, he had no objection to allopathic products for extreme situations but urged followers to avoid invasive surgery and aggressive medicines as far as possible. For Vaishnavas who understood how to interact with the natural world, there were simpler and much less costly ways to stay healthy. The Bhagavad Gita offered a number of practical hints: don’t eat too much or too little and only foods from the category of sattva-guna, “goodness,” meaning vegetarian and fresh. Don’t sleep too much or too little. Go to sleep early and get up early—there were dozens of such recommendations in the Gita, and the sooner he could return to the routine of devotional life, the sooner he could regain his health.

Disciples drove him to Matchless Gifts and helped him into the temple room. He lowered himself slowly to the floor and extended his arms in homage before Jadurani’s paintings of his spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, and his spiritual master’s father, Bhaktivinode Thakur. Then disciples drove him to Long Branch on the New Jersey shore, where they had rented a house for his convalescence.

“How are you feeling?” a student asked as the Swami settled in.

“The windows are broken, but the light inside is shining,” he joked, looking to reassure them. The Swami viewed heart attacks, as he did everything, from a Krishna-conscious perspective. “If I go to the doctor and my heart is beating,” he told the roomful of anxious students, “but the doctor says, ‘My dear sir, you are dead’—is this not a crazy diagnosis? Similarly, just see the signs of life in this universe. The sun is rising on time, the planets are all moving in their orbits—there are so many signs of life. The universe is God’s body. They are seeing all these symptoms and yet they declare God is dead. Is it not foolishness? They are rascals. I challenge them. Simply rascals.” The show of philosophic strength fueled his disciples’ hopes that he would not be leaving them anytime soon.

On June 10, 1967, he wrote to disciples in San Francisco, announcing that he was returning to India for his health. “Although I am practically on the path of death,” he told them, “still I cannot forget about my publications. I wish that if I live or die, you will take very serious care of my publications.” He had had a near fatal heart attack, yet his only concern was to see the books printed. He would gladly have relinquished any plans for returning to India—staying in America to finish the Srimad Bhagavatam took precedent over everything—but the odds of recuperating were better in Vrindavan, where he would have access to ayurvedic doctors and medicines.

Still, before risking such a long trip there was yet one more important project that required his attention. With Jagannath deities presiding over the San Francisco temple, now was the time to inaugurate the Rathayatra festival. What an achievement that would be: to mount the massive public festival celebrating Krishna, Lord of the Universe, in America, just as it was done in Puri, India. Once that was accomplished, he could leave.

“At present, I am on the seashore in New Jersey for recouping my health,” he wrote to Sumati Morarjee, president of Scindia Steamship Company. “I am thinking of going back to India as soon as I get sufficient strength.” He would turn seventy-two in September, he wrote, but the work he had begun in the West was not yet completed. He described wanting to open a temple in Vrindavan, where his students could be trained in the higher principles and behavior of Krishna devotees. “I do not know when death will overcome me,” he wrote, “but I must train some of my disciples in Vrindavan.”

More books, a Rathayatra festival, and now a temple in Vrindavan—nothing, it seemed, could slow him down. Least of all the the risk of dying.

“ARRANGE A PROCESSION down the main street,” he told the San Francisco devotees. “Do Rathayatra nicely, so that it will attract many people.” He drew a sketch showing a flatbed truck with four pillars holding up a cloth canopy topped with a triangular flag. Here is where the deities will sit, he described. Bring the Rathayatra cart to the beach with everyone chanting, as it has been done in Puri for thousands of years.

“I couldn’t believe the Swami was thinking about the Rathayatra so soon after almost dying,” Mukunda wrote in his memoir. The San Francisco devotees had all but forgotten about the festival in the turmoil of the Swami’s stroke.

New York devotees urged their San Francisco brothers and sisters to find a suitable place for him to recuperate. He was still weak, they explained, and he needed peace and quiet to adequately recover. The West Coast disciples took the suggestion seriously and found a ranch-style house on Stinson Beach, a small town in Marin County north of San Francisco. His second day in the rented house, the Swami was chanting on his beads when Mukunda entered to give a report on progress with Rathayatra.

“How are you feeling, Swami?”

The founder of the Krishna consciousness movement—which at that time comprised storefront temples in New York and San Francisco, a converted bowling alley in Montreal, and a few dozen initiated students—continued to chant on his beads, and at first he said nothing. After a few minutes, he put down the beads and stood up. He stretched out his arms, palms up, and with a curled lip, replied, “What is this body?”

Mukunda later reflected that the Swami’s tone suggested disgust over inhabiting an ephemeral form. Embodied life was an embarrassment, he would occasionally say in classes. It was the eternal soul and the soul’s service to Krishna that mattered, and a spiritually progressive person cared little how soon or how long it took for death of the body to come. “This material world,” his guru, Bhaktisiddhanta, used to say, “is no fit place for a gentleman.”

Mukunda retired to the kitchen where he spoke with other students about what the Swami had said and what it might mean for the future of Krishna consciousness. The Swami had already endured two heart attacks on the Jaladuta and a third in New York. What would happen to the movement if he were no longer there? It was a sensitive issue but one they agreed needed to be addressed.

Mukunda returned to the Swami’s room. With as much courtesy as he could muster, he asked, “When you die, what will happen to the movement? Will you have a successor from India who will continue your work and look after our spiritual education?”

The Swami sat silently looking out the window at dunes and water and gulls gliding to a halt on the sand. Then he said softly, “Actually, it is an insult to the spiritual master,” and he turned to Mukunda with a pensive expression as though hurt by the question. The Swami closed his eyes, and a trickle of tears flowed down his cheeks. He slowly wiped them away.

“My spiritual master,” he said, his voice choking, “was no ordinary spiritual master.” He paused and then whispered, falteringly, “He saved me.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll go now,” Mukunda said, too overcome himself to say more. He walked out of the beachfront house and sat, dejected, on the porch to reflect on what had just happened. The Swami’s answer was, he wrote later, “crystal clear. There was no question of replacing the spiritual master. His potency to teach would not end with his death but would continue even in his physical absence.”

Two days later the Swami made clear to his students that, should anything happen to him, he would not call any of his godbrothers to take over as head of his movement. “If another person speaks just one word different from what I am speaking,” he explained, “there will be great confusion among you.”

His concern was not over disciples of Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati helping to spread Krishna consciousness—that had been Bhaktisiddhanta’s wish, and Prabhupada had written several letters urging just that. His concern lay in the risk of his disciples becoming confused by someone else’s recommendations for presenting Gaudiya Vaishnavism in the West. Like his predecessors, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati and Bhaktivinode Thakur, Prabhupada was an innovator. Might members of the Gaudiya Math object to some of his innovations? And if that happened, would his students become disenchanted and go away?

In India, where Krishna worship had a long and rich history, followers of different lineages lived and interacted peacefully, with mutual respect and a sense of common purpose. The Vrindavan community, for example, included followers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu; followers of Mahaprabhu’s contemporary, Vallabha, founder of Pusti Marg, the “path of grace”; followers of Hit Harivams, founder of the Radhavallabha sampradaya; descendants of the Goswamis of Vrindavan; and men and women initiated by Bhaktisiddhanta or raised in other sampradayas. There were more than 5,000 temples in Vrindavan, and the diverse congregations all worshiped Krishna according to their particular heritage and without acrimony. One day his students would understand the importance of such inclusiveness—and one day, he told them, they, too, would initiate disciples of their own—but in 1967, their devotion was still precarious.

THE SWAMI DID NOT HAVE the strength to attend Rathayatra, but he enjoyed the reports by disciples at its conclusion about the perfect weather, the five hundred people who followed Jagannath’s chariot to the ocean and about Yamuna Devi’s beautiful singing, and how everyone danced and jumped for the flowers devotees threw from the chariot, and the huge feast at the end with thousands of bananas and apples and piles of chapatis.

“That was but the beginning,” the Swami told them. “We will inaugurate many such celebrations all over the world, one by one. I will show you.” Unlike austere monastic traditions, Vaishnavas celebrated their life with Krishna. There were so many occasions in the Vaishnava calendar, he said, that they could hold a celebration every day of the year.

Over the next several days, he awarded initiation at his beachfront retreat, without the formality of a fire ceremony. He held a brief discussion with each candidate, chanted on their beads, and gave them a Sanskrit name.

“Are you going to take initiation and go away?” he asked, for it was not the fire ceremony but the dedication of their hearts that formed the essence of initiation.

GRADUALLY, he regained strength for the journey back to India. “I wish to go to Vrindavan,” he announced. “For good health, more sun is required—and Vrindavan is the only place in this universe where Krishna consciousness is automatically revealed. You will see. You can become more Krishna conscious in one day in Vrindavan than in a year in America.”

“Please don’t speak of leaving us now,” a student said.

“The spiritual master never leaves the disciple,” he said, for there were two ways disciples could interact with their teacher. One—vapuh—was the teacher’s physical presence. The other—vani—was the teacher’s presence through sound or teachings. While vapuh was not always available, vani continued always. “Not once have I felt that my Guru Maharaj has left me,” he said, “because I am always following his teachings.”

The night before the Swami’s departure, disciples drove him to the San Francisco temple for a last lecture before he boarded a plane for New York and then India. A hundred people crowded into the Frederick Street storefront. Where once there had been only a handful of devotees, there was now a room filled with faces the Swami had not seen before. He entered, and the kirtan stopped. The crowd fell silent and parted to form an aisle. He slowly crossed the room and climbed onto the dais.

“It was on the order of my spiritual master that I came here,” he told them. “I left home thinking that I was giving up my children. I had only five children then. Now I have come to your country, and suddenly I have hundreds of children. And you are all taking care of me. Now I am going to India—for a little while—but I will return when I have fully recovered.”

A recently initiated disciple entered the storefront. The young man loved the Swami, but honoring vows of self-restraint had proved beyond his ability, and he had come to say goodbye. He fell to his hands and knees and crawled sobbing toward his teacher.

“Come here, my boy,” the Swami said. “What’s wrong, my son? You don’t have to be so unhappy.” Tears trickled down the Swami’s cheek as he stroked the boy’s head. His tears mingled with those of the boy, and the scene provoked an outpouring of emotion in the crowded room. The young people in San Francisco had come to him, as they had in New York, attracted by his assurances that they were beautiful, spiritual beings. He planted in them a vision of themselves they had never known, but the price for sustaining that vision was a voluntarily end to harmful habits. Caught in that tension between his heart and his desires, the boy’s desires had won out. He stood and looked silently for a moment at the Swami, then turned and walked slowly out of the temple.

In the moments that followed, many in the room asked themselves whether the boy’s fate would be their own. It took only a few classes to see that devotional life consisted of more than chanting and dancing and street festivals, and that initiation was not a fad. Discipleship meant entering a permanent relationship with a teacher who could bring them to Krishna—provided they respected the strict standards of devotional life. Contemplating such self-discipline was more than many could bear. He knew they struggled with the task of self-reform and urged them not to give up.

“I am an old man,” he told the crowd. “I may die at any moment. But please, you all carry on this sankirtan movement. As Lord Chaitanya said, be humble as a blade of grass, more tolerant than a tree. You must have enthusiasm and patience to push on this Krishna conscious philosophy. In this material world, everything comes and goes. I beg you not to waste your lives with these material things. Don’t throw your lives away.”

If he was going back to India to die, these might be his final instructions, and they analyzed every word. “Be humble.” Don’t think you are more advanced than you are, for wisdom begins with humility. “Be tolerant.” The world will judge you by appearances and attack you for your beliefs, so look kindly on those who may be frightened by something they do not understand. “Be enthusiastic.” Keep the fire burning and your spiritual practices strong, for regular chanting and proper behavior will be your assurance of progress. “Be patient.” Good things take time, and the best thing—to be Krishna conscious, to love God—could take even longer. You have a chance to regain your soul, he was telling them. Does that not merit some patience and perseverance?

The Swami climbed carefully off the dais, and the assembly rose to their feet and followed him out the door. Dozens of men and women crowded around Mukunda, who held a clipboard with names of candidates for initiation, and begged him to add their names to the list. Traditionally, as it was done in India, candidates spent years studying the philosophy, cultivating devotional character, and earning the approval of senior community members. This final series of San Francisco initiations before the Swami’s departure would be a wholesale measure, since there might not be another chance. There were no forms to fill out, no examinations or lengthy trial periods. The Swami was taking what he described as “a transcendental gamble,” offering the greatest gift to the least qualified on the chance that some would take initiation seriously.

The crowd followed him to his apartment building and waited anxiously outside for their name to be called. A frequent visitor, John Carter, had been holding back from making the commitment to devotional life, but the Swami’s precarious health had erased his hesitation. Carter went up to Mukunda.

“Please put my name on the list,” he asked.

Mukunda obliged, and Carter waited as people were called one by one to walk upstairs and receive their beads. An hour later, the crowd had dispersed. His name had not been called. “He’s going to India,” Carter realized, “and then he’s going back to Krishna—and I just lost my chance. What’s the point in living anymore?” He turned and started walking toward Golden Gate Bridge. “I’ll just jump off,” he told himself.

One of the recently initiated women, Harsharani, saw the sadness in his face and grabbed him by the arm. “Come with me,” she insisted and raced with him up the stairs. Without knocking, she burst into the Swami’s room and held Carter’s hand in the air.

“Swamiji,” she pleaded, “you have to initiate this boy.” Carter stood by her side, on the edge of tears.

The Swami took in the melodrama of the moment and chuckled warmly. “Don’t cry,” he said and reassured Carter that Krishna would not neglect such a sincere soul. He lifted a set of beads from his desk, chanted on them one by one, and handed them to Carter. “Your name is Jivananda Das,” he said, “servant of Krishna who gives ananda, bliss, to the soul.”

The following morning, before the Swami’s departure for the airport, older disciples stepped forward to reassure him they were determined to help open new centers. One group said they would drive to Santa Fe and try their best there. Dayananda and his wife, Nandarani, said they would go to Los Angeles and look for a place to rent.

“Go to as many cities as possible,” the Swami urged them. “By spreading this movement, you render the greatest service to humanity.”

They vowed to remember his instruction that as long as they chanted Hare Krishna, he would always be with them.

“You will be chanting here,” he said, “and I will be chanting there, and this vibration will encircle the whole planet.”

HE ARRIVED IN NEW YORK for a one-day stopover before taking the flight back to India with Kirtanananda, who would serve as his aid. Disciples drove him to 26 Second Avenue.

“He came into the storefront,” Brahmananda remembered, “and went over to the paintings of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta, Srila Bhaktivinode, Srila Gaura Kishore Das Babaji,” the Swami’s predecessors in the lineage of Vaishnava gurus. The Swami put his head on the feet in each painting, then turned to his students.

“I’m leaving you in the care of your grandparents,” he said, indicating the paintings. “Grandparents are kinder than parents.”

After a day of rest, he was ready for the long flight. Disciples feared it would be his last, given his state of health. “I’ll never forget when Prabhupada got in the car to go to the airport,” recalled Gargamuni. “I held his ankles and wouldn’t let him go. He patted me gently on the back, saying, ‘That’s okay. It will be all right.’ My heart was breaking to see him go. He had come all this way.”

In the Air India waiting room of John F. Kennedy International Airport, the Swami sat with his wool chadar draped over one shoulder. His hands rested on an umbrella, and he looked at disciples sitting on the floor near him. One disciple turned on a battery-operated phonograph and played the Hare Krishna mantra. The Swami nodded his head in time to the kirtan, and devotees sang along quietly. The time came to board. He patted the women on their heads and embraced the men.

“He hugged me tightly,” remembered Rupanuga. “For me, someone who always had difficulty loving another person, Swamiji’s leaving forced a lot of love from my heart that I didn’t even know was there. I was becoming a spiritual person.”

The Swami and Kirtanananda made their way down the aisle, out the door, and across the tarmac to the waiting Boeing 707. In the Swami’s pocket were the forty rupees he had brought to New York less than two years before. Rupees were not accepted as international currency, and he had never been able to exchange them. In effect, he had arrived in America with no money at all. His anxiety then had been how long he would have to remain in such a hellish country. His concern now was how soon he could return. The journey to America by boat had taken him thirty-seven painful days. The journey back to India by plane, with stopovers, would take only two.

THE PLANE ARRIVED IN DELHI on July 25, 1967, at two o’clock in the morning. The seventy-one-year old teacher was feverish. He was coughing and had not slept well, but coming home felt good.

“When we stepped out of the plane,” he wrote to students the following day, “I knew it was India. It was like walking into a solid wall of heat. But that’s what I’ve been wanting.” He asked them to continue the work they had begun together. “I have always said,” he wrote, “that if I could get American boys and girls to take up this movement, the rest of the world would join us. Now my theory is being proven. So I am depending on you all to carry on this great mission in my absence. Chant and Krishna will bless you.”

The Swami picked a taxi from the airport queue and instructed the driver to take them to the Chippiwada neighborhood of Old Delhi. They would stay one night in his room on the roof of Sri Krishna Pandit’s temple before leaving for Vrindavan. The taxi weaved in and out of nighttime traffic, past streets from days gone by when the Swami had sold Back to Godhead door to door and in cafes. They arrived at the temple, and a porter unlocked the gate, escorted them upstairs to the Swami’s old room, and turned on the light.

The room was bare and dusty, and things were more or less as he had left them two years before. Kirtanananda found a collection of printed pages and jackets from Srimad Bhagavatam stacked in the closet, alongside a pile of form letters to prospective members of the defunct League of Devotees.

“I slept over there,” the Swami said, pointing to a corner, “and over here was my typewriter and cooker. I would sleep, type, cook, type, sleep, type . . .”

By mid-afternoon of the following day, his cough had worsened. His fever had gone up, and his breathing was labored. An elderly Sikh doctor arrived and administered an injection of penicillin, and the Swami rested for the first time since his departure from New York. Word of Bhaktivedanta Swami’s return spread, and old acquaintances came by, hoping he would agree to speak at their homes or temples.

“Take him,” the Swami suggested, pointing weakly to his young American disciple.

Kirtanananda visited homes, played the Hare Krishna mantra on his portable record player, and gave brief speeches. Pious Hindus were fascinated to see a white man wearing a dhoti and displaying lines of tilak on his face.

Six days later the Swami was well enough to make the journey by train to Vrindavan. They booked seats on the Taj Express and arrived two hours later at Mathura station. A brief tanga ride brought them to Radha Damodar Temple, and the combination of warm days, ayurvedic medicines, daily massage, and proximity to the temples and deities he loved worked their magic. Gradually, his energy returned. By mid-September, he declared himself fit to return to the United States. He was anxious to see his Bhagavad Gita finally published by Macmillan and to move forward with the commentary on Srimad Bhagavatam. Coming back to India had served its purpose, but the interlude had slowed down his all-important mission in America.

His students worried that he had gone to Vrindavan to die and that his death would mean the end of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. They needn’t have. He had gone back to Vrindavan to regain his health and prepare for the work ahead. The journey to Vrindavan was not the end of the Krishna consciousness movement.

It was just the beginning.