(Photo: Cover art by Peter Max for the publication of the book of McNeill’s articles.)
Moving Through Here is a book published in 1970 that traces the arc of a single extraordinary year in American cultural history. The story begins in the spring of 1967, when thousands gathered in Central Park for the exuberant Easter Sunday Be-In—a moment filled with hope and communal joy. Within a year, that spirit had shifted dramatically, culminating in the violent Yip-In at Grand Central Station.
During those twelve months, the youthful “love ethic” that had fueled the early counterculture was increasingly overshadowed by frustration, anger, and disillusionment. What started in celebration ended in confrontation, signaling larger upheavals soon to unfold in Chicago and beyond.
The book draws from the writings of Dan McNeill, a Village Voice reporter and earnest student of Integral Yoga. McNeill wrote from within the movement he chronicled—never as a distant observer. His reflections center on the individuals and spaces that defined that moment in time: Swami Satchidananda and the fledgling Integral Yoga Institute; Allen Ginsberg; Ed Sanders and the Peace Eye Bookstore; Abbie Hoffman; Timothy Leary; and the wide constellation of seekers, activists, musicians, wanderers, runaways, police, and eccentrics who shaped the cultural landscape.
Through McNeill’s reporting, readers return to St. Marks Place—the Sweep-Ins, the Free Store, the steady rhythm of arrests—and to the Haight during the autumn when the media loudly proclaimed the “death” of the Hippie movement. His writing carries both the subtle shifts and the major shocks of a society struggling to redefine itself in post–atomic age America.
This book features an excerpt from one of McNeill’s most evocative pieces, “The Swami Makes the People Glow,” originally published in the Village Voice in its August 3–9, 1967 edition. In that article, his keen eye and open heart capture the early encounters between Swami Satchidananda and the emerging youth movement—moments that would later help shape Integral Yoga’s place in American spiritual culture.
Moving Through Here neither glamorizes nor sensationalizes the era. Instead, it preserves the authentic, firsthand impressions of a young writer who fully inhabited the world he described. Through McNeill’s words, a pivotal moment in cultural history becomes alive again—immediate, raw, tender, and alive with possibility
“The Swami Makes the People Glow” – excerpt from Moving Through Here by Don McNeill
(Photo: Front page of the Village Voice, 1967.)
Swami Satchidananda had been in Ceylon [now Sri Lanka] for five months, and the Integral Yoga Institute had lost some of the momentum that was so strong before when Swami had been in New York. His people in New York are good friends, so they had not lost touch over his absence, but they were anxious to get back to work on the Hatha Yoga, and most anxious to see and dig their wonderful Swami.
His plane was due in from Paris at four in the afternoon. So around to his people gathered outside the Institute on West and Avenue to begin a caravan to JFK airport. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and Swami’s people were happy, and smiling and hugging each other.
They piled in cars and drove to the airport and reassembled in the upper lobby of the international terminal, where they waited for Swami’s plane. They looked great, with bells and flaming colors and flowers. And they stood around the top of the escalators, waiting and not talking very much and admiring the building.
One of them had a movie camera. He wound it and started to shoot. He was down on his knees zooming in. Not much action. Just people waiting. But suddenly there was an audience. The camera convinced a hundred other passengers, there was indeed something strange about the people in colors, just waiting around. They were making a movie. A hundred people formed a semicircle around Swami’s people, watching them waiting, careful not to walk through the middle.
Swami’s plane was late, and this went on for three hours. But finally he arrived, and came through customs, beaming and radiant, and his people came to him, loving, with garlands of flowers, and gathered around him to walk slowly a foot off the ground, through the terminal, softly singing “Hari Om,” into a Swami orange sunset behind the limousine outside.
Swami Satchidananda first came to New York a year ago in August. Conrad Rooks, a young millionaire, who recalls his years as a junkie—and his escape from drugs—in a monumental personal epic filled called Chappaqua, had met the Swami in his small Ashram in Ceylon, where the Swami, a student of the great, Swami Sivananda, had come in 1953 from the foothills of the Himalayas. Rooks was awed by the holy man. He sat with him and learned from him and paid his fair to travel around the world. When he was in Paris, the Swami met Peter Max, the New York artist, who urged him to come to the United States. He returned to New York with Max, intending only to stay two days.
But many people came to meet him, and he decided to stay longer. He started a few Yoga classes in a suite at the Oliver Cromwell hotel, and in the Fall he opened the Integral Yoga Institute in a large apartment at 500 West End Avenue. The Institute was a success as his reputation spread, and in November his beaming countenance covered the town in posters which read: “ON DECEMBER 1, 1000 PEOPLE WILL BE ABLE TO HEAR SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA.” On December 11, Allen Ginsberg introduced Swami to 1000 people, some of whom became his disciples. Swami Satchidananda has an ecstatic charisma that is hard to resist.
(Photo shoot for the “Chappaqua” poster, 1966.)
He looks like a Swami, with a great flowing mane of curling black hair that falls over his shoulders and out like a frame around his full silver beard. He wears saffron robes and his voice is deep and gentle and his smile is like a blessing. “He is so beautiful,” said one of his students, “that he can get young people to fall in love with him and live under his guidance.” But the man is inseparable from his message, which is Yoga. It may begin with classes in asanas, or Yoga postures, at the Institute.”You do asanas for a week and you can feel it,” a student said. “Maybe you can feel peace for a few minutes by closing your eyes and listening to your heart beat.”
The tangible results of Yoga appeal to many youths who have experimented with psychedelic drugs. “Kids have been spoiled by acid,” a student said. “They won’t accept anything unless they can feel it.” Many of the students at the Institute are psychedelic veterans, and they are slowly weaning themselves off drugs in a gentle transition from an artificial high to a natural one. Many feel that psychedelic drugs were an important preparation for Yoga but, one smiled, “on drugs, you come down.”
Swami does not approve of the psychedelics, but he is patient with his students. “I never ask them to stop,” he said. “I never force them. These drugs are powerful and hypnotic,” he said. “The conscious mind is enslaved. If a person allows himself to be hypnotized very often, he becomes a subject. He loses his strong will. Certain dormant, psychic forces are rushed up, and so suddenly that the body is shattered. If a person is weak, it is like running an old car on aviation patrol. And how can a chemical give you certain knowledge? They say that they want to expand their consciousness,” he said. “That means that they are already Yoga-conscious. The drugs fail them, so they come here.”
The evolution from drugs is only part of the change among Swami’s people. Some have given up meat, to follow Yoga’s vegetarian diet. Others have learned enough Yoga in less than a year to begin to teach classes themselves. All give testimonials to the power of Yoga.
“I’ve seen myself and many of my friends change,” one said. “It wasn’t easy. I had to vomit up a lot of conditioning to be able to chant ‘Om.’ But I’ve stopped being the skeptic that I was. I stopped the constant analysis. I’ve become a much more peaceful person.”
They have recently developed into a cohesive group that might be called a tribe, and they are now at the stage where they are considering the prospect of communal living. An important step in this evolution was the Electric Lotus, a tribal store, which the Swami’s people opened recently on East 6th Street. Although the store isn’t directly affiliated with the Institute, the profits help to support the group and may someday support a community or ashram. It also serves as a focal point for the group on the East Side, and was a test to see if the group could work and function together.
Since the Swami returned from Ceylon in May, the group has progressed with astonishing speed. Other tribes may come to follow their model. A teacher is a great advantage. They are aware of it, and they revere the Swami. “He is a living ideal and a focal point for us as a group,” one said. “His wisdom not only emanates from him now, but from all of us.”
The Swami is also aware of the evolution, and of the youth movement of which it is a part. “I feel that there is some higher force that is taking care of these youths,” he said, “and I think it’s that force that brought me here. “America has everything, and it should have Yoga too.”
About Don McNeill
McNeill was born on December 21, 1944, in Tacoma, Washington. He graduated from high school in Juneau, Alaska, and attended college at the University of Washington in Seattle. He dropped out of school early in his senior year, and went to New York, where he worked as a freelance writer before becoming a staff writer for The Village Voice in September 1966. He was still working for the Voice when he accidentally drowned on August 10, 1968, while swimming in a lake near a cabin he had rented with friends in upstate New York.
