Introduction
In human history there are times and places where the infinite intersects with the finite. I picture the finger of God poking through the fabric of the universe, causing all kinds disruptions. There may or may not be outer events: fire, water, thunder, lightning, eclipses, earthquakes, ecstatic crowds, divine revelation, miracles. But the real event is silent, invisible, a shift in the nature of reality.
People touched by the infinite at these times may not be able to describe their experience in a coherent way. Their memory of what happened, the things they describe, their attempts to make sense of it, may seem like bits and fragments of a dream that shatters when you try to force it into language. Sometimes other people, decades or even centuries later, will take some of the fragments and piece them together into a story that makes sense. The special quality of the best of these stories is that they reflect something of the universal mystery of human life: of where we come from, where we’re going, and the glory of the journey.
Every religion has such a story at its core. But the intersection points occur at other times and places as well. The result may not be a new religion, but there will be changes in the lives of many people, and even subtle shifts in the course of history.
To those of us who lived through it, the years of the mid-to-late 1960s in San Francisco were just such an intersection point. Haight Street, in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district, was our Main Street, the place where the journey began. Spiritual teachers from all over the world, and young people from all over the U.S., converged here to meet each other, and to live for a few brief years in the intense, dream-like presence of God's finger in the world. What I lived through, as one of the followers of one of those teachers, is one small part of the story.
In preparing to tell you about my part, I feel like I've had to become a kind of archaeologist, digging through the earth, searching out the fragments of an ancient text, often torn, blurred, faded, or missing, and trying to piece them together. I also feel like the proverbial blind man, reaching out his hand to feel the elephant, trying to understand what he's touching.
I open cardboard boxes that I've carried with me for decades from place to place. Inside are old audio cassette tapes of my teacher and friend, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, barely audible now, singing and teaching. Pictures and articles from magazines and newspapers. Occasional journal entries. Letters, 30 or 35 years old, from my friends, fellow "holy beggars" as Shlomo called us, who lived with me in the House of Love and Prayer and wrote me after they left. Tapes of recent interviews I've conducted with them, asking for their stories. Often their memories are different from mine, and from each other's. It's like "Rashamoon" where everyone's version of the story is different and there's no way to determine the "objective" truth.
Stories of holy beggars have long been a part of Jewish tradition. Elijah the Prophet, who has appeared to people throughout history and will appear again to announce the arrival of the Messiah and the redemption of the world, is often seen as a beggar. Our teacher Rebbe Nachman of Breslov wrote in the early 19th century about the Seven Beggars, who are symbolic of our ancestors Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and King David. They also symbolize the levels of a person's soul. Shlomo said that a holy beggar is wandering the streets of the world, begging not to take, but to give.
After years of struggle, I've come to understand that I can't tell this story in any kind of sequential or linear way. I can only select from the thousands of fading fragments, enhancing them as needed to make them clearer, not with digital technology but with the light of imagination. I've stayed with the "facts" where I have them. All texts, quotes, stories and teachings from Jewish sources, letters, interviews, news articles and photos, are "real." Where I don’t have "facts," I've used memory and imagination to fill in the story, staying as close to "reality" as I can. Some people's names and identifying information have been changed to protect their privacy.
I offer you this book in the hope that, as you read it, you can form your own picture of the elephant, and will experience something of the story that I lived and am unable to tell, but can only suggest.
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