Searching

I climbed the stairs out of the dungeonlike subway, not far from the West Village. It was October 16, 1969. After jogging four blocks, I arrived at 735 Spring Street. I tried to open the door, but it was bolted shut. I rang the bell, and soon someone was peering through the peephole. "What's your name?" said the muffled voice. I replied (as I'd been instructed), "Danny the Red." The door creaked open, and a smiling brunette with glasses and a collegiate sweater greeted me. Behind her stood three men with baseball bats. She continued the interrogation.

"Who sent you?"

"I met Mark Folsom up at Columbia, and he suggested that I come down and check things out."

At the mention of "Mark" the three men dispersed and the girl's smile widened.

"Good. My name's Andrea. Let me introduce you to Ted Gold."

Blotched mimeograph paper, crumpled coffee cups, pop bottles, and hundreds of crushed cigarette butts littered the brick floor of Ted Gold's office. The walls were plastered with posters of the revolutionary masses and the pantheon of armed struggle-Lenin, Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara. Ted Gold himself had reddish hair, thick glasses, and an energetic though ruffled air about him.

"What do you know about communism?" he asked. No pleasantries.

"Just what I've learned in college and from a few books I've read."

Gold's line of vision sank to the floor, then honed back in on me.

"Communism means violent revolution," he said. "There's no redeeming value in this capitalistic society-none."

"None?"

"None! Insurance, welfare, social security-these are all stopgap measures designed to tranquilize the masses and prevent them from rising up and smashing their oppressors. There's nothing of value in this society-NOTHING! Our job is clear. We must tear this rotten structure down-brick by brick-until nothing can stop the revolution."

Since the main purpose of my visit was to hear about the radical movement's vision of the perfect society, I asked, "After you've torn everything down, what will you replace it with?"

Gold fidgeted. It appeared I'd asked the wrong question.

"We don't have time to worry about things like that. All we have to do is rip this society apart. What happens after the revolution will take care of itself."

"That's all you can tell me?"

"So you'll help us tear it down?"

"I don't know. Let me think about it."

He didn't care for my answer, and I hadn't cared for his. Since he wouldn't or couldn't tell me any more, I left.

Almost five months later, on March 7, 1970, a headline in the New York Times read, "Townhouse Razed by Blast and Fire; Man's Body Found." The firemen theorized that a gas leak had triggered the blast, but the man's body was too disfigured for immediate identification. Then, two days later, the Times ran Ted Gold's picture and tagged him as the disaster's victim. Familiar with Gold's radical background, the police decided to keep sifting through the debris. Finally, on March 11, the Times front page said, "Bombs, Dynamite, and Woman's Body Found in Ruins of 11th St. Townhouse." According to Chief Inspector Albert Seedment, "The people in the house were obviously putting together the component parts of a bomb, and they did something wrong."

For two years I'd been searching for a workable solution to the problematic life I saw all around me-but without much success. I was beginning to sense that, though billed as a haven of peace and love, the so-called counterculture harbored about as much narrow-mindedness as there was anywhere else.

The first real light appeared in the spring of 1971, when I started investigating Eastern meditation. The descriptions of enlightened meditators closely matched Maslow's ideal of the self-actualized person, and there was a practical way to get there.

The cultural difference didn't really bother me much. Although I wasn't a very religious person, I'd sometimes thought, "I don't know what truth is, and I don't care if a red, white, black, yellow, or brown man speaks it-or if it comes from the north, south, east, or west. All I know is, I want it."

From the start, I sensed the power of turning inward, the power of meditation. At one and the same time, I was becoming more aware of my inner self and more aware of the people and events around me. Yet I noticed that many spiritualists, including big teachers, became not so much self-realized as self-serving.

For instance, after you had gained a little spiritual power, the next step-the "in" thing to do-was to admit that you were really God, posing for now as a mere mortal. It got to be sort of dizzying, meeting all these yogis who were actually God. Then gradually it began to make sense. If you were God you could pretty much get what you wanted. God doesn't have to ask twice. But, to be fair, these divine debauchees provided some of the best comedy I'd ever seen.

For example, one day during the summer of 1972, at a green-lawned country retreat, I was sitting in on a verbal meditation. The Great One said, in a sonorous voice, "Feel that you are that same power that has manifested innumerable suns, moons, and stars.... Feel yourself creating and maintaining innumerable ... owwwwWWWWW!!" All at once a severe toothache jolted the Great One's jaw. The meditation seemed to be ending a little sooner than the supreme will had ordained, but perhaps toothaches were just a divine entertainment. His other pastimes included phobias for mosquitoes, airplanes, and death. And, to make matters worse, the Great One was in constant anxiety about whether the United States government would grant him immigration status.

Nonetheless, I stayed convinced that meditation could awaken the self. All I had to do was find a way to practice it purely. I carried on as well as I could. Then, one day in the spring of 1973, I was walking through the Port Authority Bus Terminal, on 40th Street, to catch a Greyhound to the Catskill Mountains. The noise level at the terminal was high-hundreds of arriving and departing buses, honking taxicabs, and bustling travelers.

Suddenly, above the tumult, I heard a woman's voice call out, "Hey, yogi!"

I stopped dead in my tracks. You didn't have to be clairvoyant to tell that I was interested in yoga and meditation. My white pants and Indian shirt were giveaways. Still, I couldn't help thinking, "Who cares about yoga in the Port Authority?" I turned around and saw a smiling young American woman dressed in an Indian sari. She had a travel bag across her shoulder.

"Hare Krsna," she said, folding her hands together in a traditional, prayerlike greeting.

"Hare Krsna," I replied.

"My name's Daiva Sakti. What's yours?"

"Daniel."

During our pleasant conversation, I told her that two years ago I'd married a girl who also meditated.

"Do you have any children?"

"Yes, a baby boy named Maitreya."

When Daiva Sakti heard that name, her face lit up in near ecstasy.

"Maitreya!" she said, reaching into her travel bag. "Have a look at this book. It's about the great Vedic sage Maitreya."

"Maitreya was a Vedic sage? But don't the Buddhists consider him to be the coming Buddha [enlightened one]?"

Daiva Sakti smiled. "Twenty-five hundred years before Lord Buddha appeared, the sage Maitreya lived in India, and this book has his teachings."

This revelation whetted my curiosity so much that I offered to buy the book. I handed her a ten-dollar bill, said "Thank you," and rushed off to catch my bus. As soon as I'd settled into my recliner, I absorbed myself in reading. This book was so attractive that it took me only three days to finish.

To my delight, the book told about the irrationality of trying to be God. "God is conscious of everything past, present, and future, and also of each and every corner of His manifestations, both material and spiritual." But as for the ordinary person, he "does not even know what is happening within his own personal body. He eats his food but does not know how this food is transformed into energy or how it sustains the body."

The author, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, recommended bhakti-yoga (unselfish loving service) as the sure cure for all forms of egotism. My college friends and I had joked that newspaper headlines should herald the big ego as public enemy number one. Now the idea of conquering the big ego by bhakti-yoga captivated my mind. Srila Prabhupada said that this service attitude was "dormant in everyone ... the natural inclination of every living being,... the highest perfection in life."

I recalled how I'd enrolled in college with the idea of landing a job in public service. All my life I'd been serving someone or something-my parents, my teachers, my friends (even my car). Srila Prabhupada pointed out how big businessmen had to serve their customers and the president had to serve his country. It seemed that no matter what I did, it would be some sort of service. And, as Srila Prabhupada said, you could reach the ultimate state of consciousness by directing your service toward the complete whole, or Krsna.

I was able to pick up the logic of practically everything Srila Prabhupada wrote. His students, who were making Krsna consciousness available in such hectic places as the bus terminal, also impressed me. Nonetheless, my experiences with counterfeit groups made me reluctant to get involved. It was only after several months of thinking and reading Krsna conscious books that I decided, in the winter of 1973, to check into this process more closely.