A Short Walk to the Spiritual World

I remember the walk from my apartment on First Street to Srila Prabhupada at Twenty-six Second Avenue.  I rented that apartment just after I met Srila Prabhupada, as a way to start a new life.  I wanted to be like a yogi, a clean devotee, and so I kept the apartment bare.

Let’s see – around 7 P.M. I start out to see Swamiji.  I’ve come home from work, taken a shower and changed from my office clothes to black chinos, a short-sleeved shirt, and dirty tennis shoes.  I brush my short hair forward and start out, down the stairs and out the front door.  Facing the tall fence across the street, the playground with handball courts and basketball courts, I turn right and walk half a block up First Street heading west to Second Avenue.  Tenement buildings are on the right.  Puerto Ricans, Ukrainians, office workers and a few hippies.  Coming around the corner on Second Avenue, there’s the Mobil gas station, and then you face 26 Second Avenue.  I’m 25½ years old.

I’m looking forward to seeing Swamiji.  He’s a new and interesting person I’ve met.  Very exotic.  Full of unknown things that I want to hear.  So I go to the door of the storefront, open it, and there’s a hallway ahead and stairs.  I go to the right, past the stairs, down the hallway and into the courtyard.  There’s a birdbath, a tree, and some green.  It’s summer.  Then I face the back building and look up to see if I can see Swamiji through his window.  I go up the flight of stairs.  I made the journey and I’m going to see him.  Thinking what it will be like, what he will say to me and the others.  Just through that door.  Go in and have a seat.  There are already people there, sitting in his room.  He’s in the middle of a conversation.  Just go there and be in his presence.  I don’t have to do anything but listen to the conversations and notice how I’m feeling.

My imagination invites me to be there with Swamiji in 1966, but I’m here in 2016.  Fifty years later, looking back, it seems so long ago.  As soon as I speak about it I encounter the same “canned memories”, which I often repeat.  But they are reliable memories and I am trying to open the cans and see what is actually in them.