Michael Grant

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 a 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 interest ran more to the spiritual, quasi-spiritual and mystical books he had been reading.  He had encountered several swamis, yogis, and Southside spiritualists in the City, and had taken up hatha yoga.  From his first meeting with the Swami, Mike was interested and quite open – as he was with all religious persons.  He thought that 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 comfort, unless the message he’s trying to get across is more important than his own comfort?  I think the thing that struck me most was the poverty that was all around him.  This was curious, because the places I had been before had been just the opposite – very opulent.  There was a Vedanta 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 Swami 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 all this was 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.