Invitation Downtown

David Allen, a twenty-one-year-old seeker who came up from the Paradox, had just moved to the City, optimistically attracted by what he had read about experimentation with drugs.  He saw the old group as “a kind of fussbudgety group of older women on the West Side listening to the Swami’s lectures.” 

David:  We weren’t known as hippies then, but it was strange for the people who had originally been attracted to him.  It was different for them to relate to this new group.  I think most of the teachers from India up to that time had older followers, and sometimes wealthy widows would provide a source of income.  But Swamiji changed right away to the younger, poorer group of people.  The next thing that happened was that Bill Epstein and others began talking about how it would be better for the Swami to come downtown to the Lower East Side.  Things were really happening down there, and somehow they weren’t happening uptown.  People downtown really needed him.  Downtown was right, and it was ripe.  There was life down there.  There was a lot of energy going around.