Swamiji makes reservations to leave for New York and from there to India. He continues to speak of the Indian sun and Ayurvedic physicians.

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Every morning, a different devotee comes up to Paradisio to visit Swamiji for a day. Although there is no formal initiation ritual or fire sacrifice, Swamiji chants on the initiates’ beads and bestows spiritual names: Aniruddha, Uddhava, Murari, Devananda.

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Swamiji calls me into his room. I bow and sit facing him, sensing something special.

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It seems that the girls have less trouble surrendering. They just throw themselves in, crying, "Krishna! Krishna!"

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Being somewhat older — late twenties and early thirties — Haridas, myself and a few others marvel over the apparent ease with which teenagers renounce these common drives, inebriants, habits. "Maya is but Krishna’s smile," I try to remember.

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February 27. We drive down to Palo Alto for an engagement in the student lounge of Stanford University. Swamiji sits on one of the lounge’s coffee tables and starts leading the kirtan, chanting into a microphone. At first, only twenty students are present, but as we chant and dance, more congregate.

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Many Indians visiting the Frederick Street temple tell us that they’ve never seen such fiery, enthusiastic kirtans in India — nay, not anywhere else in the world. A combination of magic elements is at work. First of all, Swamiji’s presence. But remarkably enough, his presence is felt even when he does not descend but stays in his upstairs apartment writing his books. The unison kirtans intensify as new instruments are added — flutes and tenor sax, trumpets and kettledrum, cymbals and kelp horn, tambourines, mridangas, guitars and bongos, sitars and castanets. Often we join hands and dance around the walls of the temple, bounding on the floor and daring it to collapse. Kirtan always begins with a rousing Hare Krishna. Then, after Swamiji’s lecture, we chant "Gopala, Gopala, Devakinandana Gopala." We first heard this mantra sung by poet Ginsberg, and for a week Swamiji tolerates it. Then he calls me in.
"That is not a valid Vaishnava mantra," he tells me. "You may change Devaki’s name for Yasoda’s. Yasoda and not Devaki is accepted as Krishna’s real mother because those matya-rasa pastimes were carried on with her. But best not to chant that mantra at all because it’s not authorized. "

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"Isn’t Krishna the eighth incarnation of Vishnu?" someone asks during a question period.

"Krishna is the original Personality of Godhead," Swamiji says. "By Vishnu, we mean Krishna. The four-armed Vishnu form is a special form manifested by Krishna. Brahma creates, Vishnu maintains, and Shiva destroys. These are all aspects of Krishna. But Krishna Himself has nothing to do but enjoy. Therefore we see Him dancing with the gopis, in pure, blissful, eternal pastimes."

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The Jagannatha Deities are beautiful indeed, and amazingly accurate reproductions. Swamiji is pleased.

"Krishna has given you the intelligence," he tells Shyamasundar. "You have done it so nicely." At the installation, Swamiji performs a new ceremony in which he offers incense, fire, water, cloth, and flowers to Lord Jagannatha, circulating these items while ringing a small bell.

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Goursundar and his wife Govinda-dasi, from Texas, are new devotees who have never been hippies. Every morning at six-thirty, they knock on the temple door to awake me. I tie on my dhoti and run to let them in. Sometimes there are two or three visitors waiting with them, hippies who have stayed up all night and are just coming down from LSD and following Ginsberg’s advice to "stabilize their consciousness on re-entry."

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We drive across Golden Gate Bridge to Muir Woods, home of 3,000-year-old redwoods. Walking down the path under the tall, blue-green canopy, Swamiji reads the little signs before the largest trees, then looks up reflectively at the boughs.

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Swamiji always keeps a small postage scale and stamp sponge on his footlocker. From the beginning, he has been instructing us in cleanliness, very much like any parent. "Wash your hands. Take bath. Don’t put your fingers in your mouth. Wash. Don’t bite your nails. Change clothes. Take that pencil out of your mouth. Don’t touch leg. Clean nicely."

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Although I’ve been chanting since July, the cosmos has not unfolded psychedelically before me, as I had hoped. What am I doing wrong? Why haven’t I seen that apocalyptic vision witnessed by Arjuna on the Battlefield of Kurukshetra? Where is that virat-rupa, the Universal Form containing myriad eyes, hands, heads, and flaming mouths devouring worlds?

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Citing a simile from Bhagavad-gita, he has told us that the material world is like a banyan tree with its roots above and branches below. A tree appears this way when pervertedly reflected in water. In the material world, everything is topsy-turvy; what is bad appears desirable, and what is actually desirable appears repugnant. When I see Swamiji taking rest just as most New Yorkers are indulging their senses, and getting up to render Krishna service just when they are taking rest, I’m reminded of the Bhagavad-gita verse: "What is night for all beings is the time of awakening for the self-controlled; and the time of awakening for all beings is night for the introspective sage."

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In the evening, sitting on a little bench out in the courtyard, Swamiji tells us that if he could just make one person Krishna conscious, he would consider his mission successful.

"Now more people are coming to the kirtans because we are getting some notice in the papers," he says. "But because I do not lie to them and tell them they can be Krishna conscious while having sense gratification, they go away. What am I to do? Change Krishna’s message to suit Americans? That cannot be done. It is not my message to change. I can only deliver it as it is. If I have to sit under a tree with just one sincere disciple, that will be all right. We do not require many stars. just one moon. One moon will light up the sky. "

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Swamiji is worried about Stryadhisa, who eats only when prodded. He’s a tall, thin boy, and his self-imposed fast is making him look like a war prisoner. I figure he’s enjoying a starvation high. He must be chanting over a hundred rounds a day, and he sleeps no more than two or three hours. His glazed eyes are sunk in dark caverns. Chanting rapidly on his beads in a soft voice, he ignores all other devotees.

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We receive an invitation from Swami Nikhilananda of the uptown Ramakrishna Mission. Since Swamiji has referred to Ramakrishna as "that mad, impotent monk," I ask whether we should accept.

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Jadurani is our first brahmacharini, unmarried female devotee. At first, Swamiji, in accordance with Vaishnava tradition, was not going to accept female devotees, but the social situation in America changed his mind. Time and circumstance. After all, as Americans, we are fallen mleechas — meat eaters. "If nothing else, just get them to chant Hare Krishna and take prasadam," Srila Bhaktisiddhanta had enjoined.

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Of course, many come looking for miracles. Wanting to be "zapped," they expect to receive an immediate electrical jolt from the guru.

"What is that ‘zap’?" Swamiji asks. "Why not put your hand in a socket? These are cheap show-bottle tricks. In drugstores, they keep some big bottle with tinted water to attract customers. There is no real medicine inside, just water. So we call this a show-bottle. Show-bottle yogis throw some sparks or produce a little gold, and people think, ‘How wonderful! He has produced some gold.’ They do not stop to consider that there are many gold mines in the world, and so what is this little gold worth? No. A real yogi does not resort to such cheap tricks. And some people think that if they grow long hair and beards, they will become yogis. That is more nonsense. These are not yogis, but bogies."

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In the evenings, due to increased kirtan attendance, the Matchless Gifts storefront overflows to the sidewalk outside. One night, Ginsberg brings Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs rock group. The Fugs pride themselves on being the most verbally obscene rock group on earth. After a vivacious kirtan, Swamiji delivers a "sex is stool" lecture. Sanders and Kupferberg sit and stare in disbelief, Sanders’s long red hair and beard bristling in protest. After all, he’s the singer of "Group Grope" and "Slum Goddess of The Lower East Side."

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