Flashback Download: The Human Be-In and Arrival of the Flower Children

It was Christmas season in Haight-Ashbury. I was still in my new multi-dimensional consciousness much of the time, Peace, Love, and Joy filled the air and filled my heart as Todd and I strolled along Haight Street on Christmas Eve, giving away pairs of filigree-and-bead earrings I had made, in hopes of teaching Todd that the joy of Christmas is in giving – even to total strangers. People on Haight Street received the earrings much more graciously than the New Yorkers had. One guy even said he was on his way to his girlfriend’s and didn’t have a gift for her, or money to buy one, so he really appreciated the help.

Later that evening, after Todd was asleep and I was sitting alone in my darkened living room, I heard a group of carolers singing on the street corner beneath my window. The song they sang was not a traditional Christmas carol. It was the Negro spiritual, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand. My consciousness expanded with this reminder that an infinite Creative Intelligence held the Earth and Earth Mother Sylvia (really just one Being) within Its eternal mantle of protection. And part of that protection is that we are eternal. Our souls – the God sparks within us – live forever. This God-stuff of which everything is made is always changing as it passes through its cycles from non-material to material and back to non-material again, but the grand, reliable rhythm of those cycles is, itself, our protection. To my mind, those carolers beneath my window, and the transcendent consciousness they triggered, were my Christmas gift from the Great Allness of the All.

Early in the new year (1967), I realized that since I was sexually active again, I’d better get down to the Planned Parenthood clinic and get some birth control. This was before “the pill” was common, and I thought I’d try an I.U.D., in those days commonly called a “coil.” I got out my calendar to get my dates straight because I knew that at the clinic they would ask me when I had my last period. “Let’s see – there was the mark – my last period was one, two, three, four, five, six! Six weeks ago?!? Whoops!!! Too late for birth control now – I’m pregnant! I had been celibate for almost five years now – since Todd’s conception – but there was that one night with Steve while I was still very much glowing and transcendent from my Earth-Mother awakening. Now Steve had left the city for parts unknown, and I had no idea how to find him.

This information merged into my new consciousness, and I was humbled by the honor of growing within me yet another child of the new Age. I had already received inner knowledge that Todd had come to assist in Earth’s new beginning, and now I would get to bear yet another Aquarian Age child to help bring in the budding era of the Brotherhood of Man.


Those five days of Awakening last November had changed my life and my consciousness forever. And now that I was carrying another child, my number-one priority became living my new truth as fully as possible. I knew by then that children don’t learn from what we say to them; they learn from our behavior, from our example. So I decided that living my highest ideal – the Unconditional Universal Love of an Earth Mother – would be the best possible example I could give my offspring.

To me that meant sharing everything I had with everyone who came my way. It meant rejoicing constantly in my heart because God is real and a new Age of Peace and Brotherhood is beginning. That meant seeing everyone at a soul level – seeing the spark of God within each one – and relating to that God Self from my God Self. That meant living the Earth Mother archetype that had awakened within me and loving and nurturing all Earth’s children, and treating each one as a potential Christed entity. (“Inasmuch as you have done this even to one of the least of these…”) And that meant sharing my “pad” – spacious five-room flat that it was – with whoever crossed my path needing a place to stay.

The first one to move in was Richard – a 19-year-old rock-n-roll drummer from Texas. Richard was a sweet, sensitive young man, short in stature, with blond hair just starting to grow down over his ears, and a wide Howdy-Doody grin. He needed not only a place to crash, but also a place to set up his drums and practice. And yes, my living room would do just fine, thanks! Richard and his drum set moved in. He took Todd to the park with him often, and they became good buddies.

That January (1967), Mary and Christopher and Todd and I went to the first “Human Be-In” at the Polo Grounds of Golden Gate Park. The civil rights movement of the early sixties had popularized the idea of “sit-ins”, and now someone had called a “Be-In, a Gathering of the Tribes to celebrate our Human Beingness. The event was free, and so were we.

It was a mellow, sunny day – warm for January. Reaching the crest of a small hill as we approached the Polo Grounds, we looked down at the large crowd that had already gathered. We continued down the slope and onto the lawn, mind-blown by the spectacle of thousands of people like us – long hair, beads, creative clothing, smiles, and big, peaceful eyes. I don’t think any of us had any idea that there were that many of us until that day. That realization alone got us high.

There was music and speakers. Hope flooded my womb when Allen Ginsberg led a prayer in honor of the coming Maitreya – the coming Buddha – “whose beauty is already among us.”

Someone parachuted down onto the field from a small plane, creating quite a murmur in the crowd. It turned out to be Timothy Leary.

But what impressed me most was just how many hippies there were, and how high and beautiful and open and sharing everyone was. This was the first time I experienced the collective vibe of thousands of high-minded people in the same place at the same time. Remember, this was in the olden days, before outdoor concerta with thousands and thousands of hippies. Nothing like this gathering had happened before—so many hip people in one place—each one beautiful in his or her own natural beingness.

Joints and pipes were being passed openly. Lots of people were on acid. The police, on horseback, watched from the slopes above the field but never came down into the crowd and hassled anyone. Here was a peaceful, flowing Perfection to the scene – lots of action, but it all seemed to be cosmically choreographed into One Perfect, Flowing Dance of Light and Love. The crowd dispersed at sunset, carrying the vibe of integrated consciousness with us out into the city and beyond.

On Palm Sunday that spring Mary took me to my first rock-and-roll dance at the Fillmore. We both took some LSD. I was now about four months pregnant. The “chromosome damage” disinformation had not yet been spread. I felt that acid was good for me and was here to save the world. It was the sacrament of my personal religion. It must be good for my baby, too.

On that Palm Sunday at the Fillmore, Chuck Berry and Quicksilver Messenger Service were holding communion.

Now, the last time I had gone to a dance was when I was in high school in small town Connecticut, back in the late 1940’s, when the main dance was the fox trot, couples only, and a girl had to wait to be asked by a boy to dance. So the Fillmore on that Palm Sunday afternoon blew my mind a little further yet. Loud, inescapable, pulsating music, strobe lights, black lights, a projected light show, everyone dancing in this free, uninhibited, un-self-conscious, tribal way – it was all such a breakthrough from the neurotic conditioning of the mainstream culture – such a testimony to mental and spiritual wholeness – that I knew then for sure, if there had been any doubt left within me, that humankind was saved! We had broken through the fetters of separation and control, and were being healed and made whole again! Indescribable joy swelled up within me as this knowingness burst upon my consciousness. It was all true! God is real and humanity is being saved!

The next week was Easter Sunday. I took some acid to celebrate Earth’s rebirth. Todd and I went to the park. The meadow at the foot of Hippie Hill was alive with beautiful people. Todd joined a group of kids flying a kite. For a while I chanted Hare Krishna with Swami Bhaktavedanta and his followers. The swami had just arrived from New York, and it was a very high time for the folks from the San Francisco Krishna Consciousness temple. I didn’t realize at the time that the swami was the one who had written the little Who’s Crazy? pamphlet, but I did notice that the chanting was especially strong and inspired due to his presence.

As we chanted – Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare – over and over again, I began coming on to the LSD. To me, Krishna and Rama are just local names for the One Divine Consciousness, or God, and I joyously chanted Its praises as my own consciousness expanded to unite with that Great Cosmic Consciousness of The All.

There was a large frisbee game in the center of the meadow, and again I was struck with the sense of choreographed dance as I watched the random but somehow synchronized movements of the meadow throng. Frisbee’s flew, babies crawled, children ran, dogs chased, Krishnas chanted, butterflies floated, congas boomed – and no one got in anyone else’s way, no accidents happened, no one got angry at anyone else, no one put out funky vibes of any kind – a meadow full of turned-on and tuned-in people, merging into one harmonious happening – a joyous Dance of Life, directed by the Cosmic Choreographer of the One-That-Is-All, through whose eyes I was now gazing at the scene.

The two weeks around Palm Sunday and Easter were spring vacation for many high schools and colleges around the country, as they are today, and hundreds of young people made pilgrimage to Haight-Ashbury. They could be seen trudging along Haight Street with backpacks and sleeping bags, or sitting on Hippie Hill, weaving garlands of daisies for their hair and looking for the Love that they had heard was happening here.

I couldn’t walk down Haight Street without being stopped by at least one or two young people who would ask me if I knew of a place where they could crash that night. And of course I did. Inasmuch as you have done this . .…

My apartment was soon full of wide-eyed seekers – from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or Grand Rapids, Michigan, or Tupelo, Mississippi. Some stayed for one night, some stayed for several months. They were all my children. I loved them all and tried to help them in any way I could.

Todd suddenly had lots of teenage “sisters and brothers”, who liked to take him to the park or Haight Street, and who played with him around the apartment at other times. I housed them and fed them and sometimes clothed them. Any Earth Mother would have done the same. I shared smoke with them and read to them from the I Ching. I did my best to point their consciousness toward Spirit.

I had just dropped some acid when I opened a letter from my sister in Connecticut, which contained an article about the “LSD-damages-chromosomes” myth. I wasn’t sure whether to believe it or not. I decided that if LSD really did change my baby’s chromosomes, it would be a change in consciousness for the better, and I would be proud to be the mother of the next step in humanity’s evolution. Maybe that was what Jesus meant by the coming of the “Son of Man” – the next generation in human consciousness.

Richard’s band was now practicing in the apartment a couple of afternoons a week. That meant, among other things, a bigger-than-usual crowd for dinner. I always fed whoever was around at meal time, but it was tricky to predict what the count might be. I would walk around the pad about 4 p.m., counting heads, and then prepare a meal for one-and-a-half times that many. If I counted twenty people at four o’clock, I’d cook for thirty, and it would usually come out just right.

With the band practicing, conversation was impossible – thinking didn’t even work, the music was so loud and insistent. So I learned to jump up to the non-verbal plane and cook dinner in a headspace of wordlessness. This took some adjusting for li’l ol’ conceptual me, but I had experienced pre-verbal consciousness in my explorations of other dimensions, and after a while I was able to give my left brain a break for a couple of hours and function from a level where knowingness exists without words.

Another thing we were discovering is a phenomenon called a “contact high.” We began to notice that when hanging out with someone in a high consciousness (usually from grass or acid), others would begin to get high, too, even though they had not taken a psychedelic or even smoked any pot. Somehow the high consciousness of the partaker was able to influence the consciousness of those around him or her. It was amazing! Those who got the contact high didn’t usually get to the point of hallucinations or anything, but they did notice a definite rising of their consciousness just being around someone who was high.

At that time I was supporting Todd and myself (and an ever-changing couple dozen other folks) by making jewelry and selling it to the Psychedelic Shop and through wholesale mail orders. So I paid all the rent, bought all the food, did all the cooking and most of the cleaning up – all with a child of the new Age growing in my belly. (Teach by example. Live your highest ideal.)

This was really my first experience in group living. We were an extended family – but one in which I was doing all the work. At the time it seemed appropriate – I was almost a generation older than the rest of the “family” and was just doing my Earth Mother thing.

One of the crashers who spent his spring vacation in my home that year was Bruce, a tall, dark-haired, gentle teenager from Santa Cruz. I enjoyed having him around. And he had such a great time at my pad in April that he showed up again in May – this time with six friends from Santa Cruz, all under 16, all wanting to know if they could crash there.

Haight Street overflowed with runaways in those days, and I was sympathetic to them because I felt that they were wise to flee from the square conditioning of their birth families and seek their own spiritual awakenings here in the City of St. Francis, where the seeds of gentleness and love were beginning to sprout. But I also knew – and had recently been reminded by some new friends – that harboring runaways was a bust, and I definitely didn’t want to get busted.

So I told Bruce and his friends, “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you stay here. You’ll have to find another place.”

“Okay,” they said cheerfully. “We’ll go out and look. But can we just leave our stuff here while we’re looking?”

That was easy to say “yes” to – no runaways, just some backpacks and sleeping bags. “Okay,” I said. “Put them in the hall closet.”

That night I went to bed early as usual. I was still basically a country girl – despite living in New York City for nine years – and I was in the habit of getting up by 6 a.m. So I was ready for bed at 9:30 in the evening, soon after I got Todd settled in for the night. The only two rules I had for the crashers were no hard drugs ever, and no noise after 9:30 p.m. The young folks were usually pretty quiet after I went to bed, and I never did see any hard drugs around the place.

About 4 a.m. the next morning I was awakened by a cop shining his flashlight in my eyes as I lay in bed (actually a mattress on the floor). “Is this your apartment?” he was saying. “Get up. You’re under arrest.”

“What for?” I asked groggily.

“Runaways. We just found seven of them sleeping on your living-room floor.” And he started reading me my rights.

Bruce and his friends had not found another place to stay. They had come back after I was asleep and crashed in the living room. Furthermore, they had been given a ride from Santa Cruz to my front door by another teen friend of theirs. This “friend” had returned to Santa Cruz and given my address when pressed by worried parents and the Santa Cruz police. The Santa Cruz fuzz called the San Francisco fuzz, the runaways were found and returned, and I was busted – for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor, on seven counts.”

There were two cops, and they were gruff and sarcastic. I could see, through my Earth Mother eyes, that their status quo was threatened by us free, loving hippies who were living by a new set of rules. I could feel their fear. I told them I loved them. They told me I needed a bath.

I was driven downtown, handcuffed, in a squad car. I was booked, strip-searched and de-bugged. (This process is a gigantic ego death in itself. - Me? In jail? Jail is for criminals. I’m not that kind of person…)

By then it was fully morning, and I was put into the city jail’s “day room” with a few dozen other women, who were sitting at long, institutional-type tables, smoking cigarettes, talking with each other, or looking at a newspaper. Most of them seemed angry.

I’ll never forget the clang of the iron door as it shut behind me, and I realized for the first time that I was locked up inside there. Furthermore, “they” had the keys and weren’t going to let me out until “they” were good and ready. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of powerlessness as I sat down at one of the tables.

Some of the women in the day room were hookers. The one sitting next to me was there for forging checks. I felt uncomfortable and out of place. My head was spinning. I hadn’t had breakfast, and the baby in my belly was beginning to remind me about that.

I needed something to help me keep my head together. No I Ching here. I walked up to the door and asked the guard outside for a Bible to read. She looked me over from head to toe and said, “What do you want with a Bible?” (Like, “How could such an obvious degenerate as you be interested in a Bible?”)

I told her I wanted to read it. “Isn’t there some law that says prisoners can get a Bible whenever they ask for one?”

She gave me a snotty look and walked away without answering.

A while later she returned and motioned for me to come up to the barred door. There she silently handed me a Bible. I started reading The Sermon on the Mount, and my consciousness began to rise again, merging with Christ Consciousness as I read Jesus’ high and holy words.

A few minutes later another guard called my name. Pat, my black landlord and upstairs neighbor, had put his house on the line to bail me out and was there to drive me home. What a friend!

The next day there was an article in the paper about the arrest. It said that the police had found twenty-six adult hippies milling around my apartment that morning, in addition to the seven runaways. And it said that I was known by the neighborhood kids as “Big Mama.”

Later some of the folks crashing at the pad told me that when the cops arrived that morning, everyone was very stoned – they had just finished capping a gram of acid on my kitchen table while I slept.

The father of a girl who had crashed at my place was a lawyer. He offered to defend me, free. Bruce, his aunt, and some other parents of the runaways came to my apartment to pick up the kids’ stuff. I was friendly; they were polite. A few days later the charges against me were dropped. (Whew! “He’s got the whole world, in His hands…”)

Another highlight of that Spring was a Ravi Shankar concert in San Francisco. As soon as I heard about it, I wanted to attend, but I never did get around to getting a ticket, and of course they were all sold out a few weeks before the concert. So I reconciled myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be going. Then the day of the concert arrived, and Biff came bursting into my kitchen with two tickets. I had picked up Biff and his friend just ourside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and given them a ride to their homes in California. Biff wanted me to go with him to the concert. A little “thank you” for the help I had given him on the road. One of my crasher family watched Todd for the evening. The concert was great, and I was once again reminded of the Great Perfection, and how what we put out really does come back to us