“I left the United States because I had to work and I didn’t want to work. I grew up in a very rich family and my father died of Parkinson’s disease when I was sixteen and till then nobody told me anything about money or work; and I just left. I said I am leaving forever. There was a hippie movement I knew travelling across Europe and I heard about freaks in India. But you know it is something you hear, a word here and there. And then one day I saw a sign that a bus was leaving from Athens to Goa, India. I had never heard of Goa. We went from Greece through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan (which is now gone), Pakistan and into India…Goa!” (Late) Dr. Cleo Odzer
“India, it was most exotic, most different from Protestant America…The materialism of Protestant America didn’t provide Spirit. The youth of America in the 60s who were then in their 20s had everything and it wasn’t enough because everything was all things and there wasn’t spirit, and mystery and creativity and magic…” – Swami William from San Francisco, Sadhu and Visual Artist, first went to India to make a movie about hippies and sadhus.
“I was born into a family that was five generations San Francisco. In ’65 I was like 14 years old and I had already been listening to music for a long time ‘cause I grew up on Elvis and Big Bopper and then all kinds of like Motown and whatever. There were certain groups in the underground that I started to like and that kind of went along with what was starting to happen in The Hague so I started to hang out there when there were just 30 people sitting on the side walk in front of the Psychedelic Store and stuff. When the magic was lost in ’69, many people from all over the world started to head to India. It’s been like an evolution going on and on…” Goa Gill, Cyber Sadhu
LAST HIPPIE STANDING PART II IN THE MAKING !
Message for my readers.
Live Encounters Free Online Magazine is my labour of love. I believe that knowledge is free and should be shared with all. In this edition there are some famous journalists, writers, poets and upcoming scribes (like me).
To all those who helped me resurrect my magazine –
shukreya, peace and Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om
