Was the hippie movement of the 1960s just a fad, or was there something more
to it than bell-bottom pants, tie-dyed shirts and psychedelic music? David
Rey Echt firmly believes that the movement had a spiritual message that
stirred young people then and remains relevant even today.

His novel, which takes place during San Francisco's "Summer of Love" (1967),
is story of a young man who goes on a journey from his home in Los Angeles,
stopping en route at the famed "Monterey Pop Festival" and ending up in the
middle of the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. But the real journey
of its protagonist (Trevor) is not geographical but rather spiritual. It is
a journey in which Trevor's focus of attention changes from his worry about
a failed personal relationship to his absorption into a path of spirituality
and meditation.  The catalyst for this transformation is a mysterious young
spiritual Master, whom Trevor first glimpses in Los Angeles, and then
finally meets in a San Francisco commune.

The Master is, in my opinion, something of a composite of the many spiritual
teachers who began to emerge in the West during this period. In accord with
many accounts of such teachers, the Master had knowledge of Trevor's, past,
present and future, and offered guidelines for life based on precepts such
as the preciousness of life, generosity, right speech and meditation. And
the Master also proclaimed that humanity was about to enter a new age.
Today's "New Age" movement stems directly from this belief that humanity is
about to leave a dark materialistic age and come into a more spiritual era.
But the message of Trevor's Master, is not a sugar coated one, for he warns
that unless there is a radical change in human thinking and actions, the New
Age will be preceded by a period of war and destruction.

Just as the Master is a composite, rather than a single actual character,
the protagonist himself is no doubt representative of thousands of young
people who took part in the events of the late 1960s. If you are curious as
to what really went on during the hippie era, then this book is for you. It
is not written from the perspective of an historian but from a participant
and all the details appear to be correct: from the list of bands playing at
the Monterey Pop Festival to a description of a long grassy area in Santa
Barbara (midway between LA and SF) where hoards of young people used to stop
before completing their journey to San Francisco.

Echt's account is thus an accurate account of the inner and outer details of
a colorful period of the recent past and deserves a wide readership.

"It’s all love. God is love. Love is everywhere. This is the Summer of Love. I clearly heard him say those words." - Trevor

"The 60’s".  This short  phrase conjures up deep feelings in the souls of Baby Boomers and generates bemused fascination in their children (and grandchildren) who have only experienced the era as consumers. Those of us who were the youth of those "daze" remember the excessive passion - we were birthing the “new age” of Aquarius. It felt like the universe was having sex and we were in the middle of it! The cosmic seeds of a new vision for humanity were dispersed all over the earth. But when our generation was beaten into submission by the draft, billy-clubs, and assassinations, those seeds were buried.  We went “underground”,  blended in, kept a low profile and put our “dreams” on hold.  Waiting for what ? Maybe this new book, THE MESSENGER FROM THE SUMMER OF LOVE, will remind us.

The Introduction should absolutely be read first, as it is a tease for what’s to come.  This is important because the author takes his time creating the setting (60’s lifestyles) and acquainting us with the main protagonist in the first half of the book. 

David Echt’s saga starts out in Topanga Canyon in 1967. His quasi-fictional character, Trevor, narrates the story by telling you what’s in his head as things happens. He lives in a cool “cabin” in a beautiful natural setting and has a sauna where he and his friends innocently get naked and smoke weed.  His beautiful girlfriend is Laura, whose parents support her while she goes to college. Trevor first sets eyes on the “Messenger of Love” at a Dylan concert - he sees him for a few fleeting seconds, feels the VIBES, and then - poof - the man disappears. His life now takes a radical turn, though he doesn’t realize it yet. Minutes later, his girlfriend breaks up with him. Next, Trevor picks up a hitchhiker who tells him he will “go to San Francisco.” Then the journey really begins. 

 “I think this country is hungry for a spiritual awakening. I feel like we’re all looking for something, something sacred.” - Suhalia

The first Monterey Tribal-Love-Pops Festival, a farm off Graham Hill Road in Felton, a cafe overlooking Capitola beach, the San Francisco Airport, and finally, a blue Victorian on Geary Street - just a few of the stops on the way to the “Haight”.  Add more hitchhikers and yet another psychic reading to the mix.  Oh yeah, the minute they hit downtown Santa Cruz, they get spare-changed by a weirdo. Did I mention that the author actually lived in Santa Cruz during the 1970s ? 

When Trevor finally gets to San Francisco and takes a walk down Haight Street, an encounter with a fellow seeker literally saves his life, and another piece of the puzzle falls into place .  He is in the right place at the right time.  The “Master” finally makes his appearance and begins to work his magic on Trevor and the other soul-searchers who have made their own individual pilgrimages to “The House”.

My favorite part of the book was the spin put on the meaning behind the Summer of Love according the Master. There was definitely something extraordinary - even profound - about that time, and I think the explanation given in this novel is a perfect metaphor - or maybe even the truth. What is real is that it triggered a remembering of all those collective values, reflecting the higher “cosmic” consciousness that epitomized the era. It turned me on.

“A golden glow emanated from his motionless body....I couldn’t take my eyes off him...With each word that he uttered, I felt myself gradually dissolve more and more. I felt the ecstasy and tasted a sweet nectar on my tongue.” - Trevor

The Master, also called The Maitreya and Guruji in the book,  described his mission on earth at that moment in time as the fulfillment of destiny and that all the young people’s yearnings for deeper spirituality translated into an “invitation” for him come. His job is to consciously send out the message from the Haight - a power place - that love is a better way.  That’s why people all around the world were feeling those higher vibrations and knew about what was happening in San Francisco.  It was a love magnet ! It’s why everybody was migrating there in droves, including tourists.   “Think of it as your lover who sneaks in through your bedroom window at night and seduces you”, says the Master. Could this be a reference to the reappearance of the Christ where he was prophesized to come back “like a thief in the night”?

 “I see cities being destroyed” - The Master

 Like the boy who could see dead people, the Master can peer into the future. He makes many interesting, yet sometimes scary, predictions. In the spirit of the false prophet, he tells of bad things coming in the hope that it will inspire others to make the changes to prove him wrong. I won’t give away the details, but let’s just say the theme “don’t fool around with Mother Nature” is a big clue.

 “When you turn your back on the divine, you create a negative karma for yourself.” - The Master

 In a discussion over the phone with the author, who is now living in Boulder, Colorado, we talked about why he decided to write this book now.  “Inspiration”, he said, and a growing sense of urgency.  The more we conspired, the more we agreed that there are indeed rumblings of the desire to “jumpstart” the “movement” and pick up where we left off 30 years ago. We were on the right track in the 60’s - we had the answers.   Solar power, holistic health, organic food, tolerance, brother/sisterhood, recycling...these are just a few of the “hippie” visions for a better world. In fact, when checking out the book’s website, I discovered the delightful hippy.com. Located there was a Timeline that really jolted my memory - here is an example: 1960- Dec  - Birth Control Pills go on sale in the US  / 1967 - Dec - 486,000 American troops in Vietnam, of the 15,000 killed to date, 60% died in 1967 / 1969- Apr 4 - Smothers Brothers tv show canceled because it is too controversial.  (http://hippy.com/hippietour.htm#learn)

 This timely  book, along with the recent election, served to reawaken some of the dormant 60’s passion that still resides in my soul. It was a groovy flashback.

"It’s time to begin a spiritual renaissance here in America and throughout the world.” - The Master

 So, what are we waiting for?

For many, the Summer of Love was a time when hippies ruled supreme in their
Day-Glo attire, when psychedelic acid tests replaced cocktail parties,
brotherly love replaced prejudice, freedom replaced conformity, and sharing
replaced greed. It was a time to change the rules, to experiment with novel
living arrangements, open relationships and of course powerful
mind-expanding drugs.

For others, like David Echt, the Summer of Love presented a unique
opportunity for a grand leap in personal and human evolution.  It was a
special time when the cosmic energy was right, and people with newly opened
minds could decide our collective future.  One could choose to either work
within through meditation and yoga, or work out in the world, expressing
their karma through positive action and service to others.

In his book, Echt seeks the deeper meaning of that special summer and
reminds us of how much we grew as individuals and a group through those
extraordinary experiences afforded us in the late 60s.  Through the use of
psychedelic drugs and by exploring eastern philosophies, we learned new ways
of looking at life that made more sense than what we'd been taught by
parents and school. We discovered our common ground and a deep unity and
brotherhood.  Could this timely enlightenment save humanity and the world
from destruction at a time when our species' fate could be decided with the
press of a button?

The story follows the life of Trevor, an open-minded twenty year old from
L.A as he seeks answers to life's important questions during the summer of
'67.  Leaving a failing relationship, he casts his fate to the wind and
finds signposts guiding him towards his true path, which takes him to the
Monterey Pop Festival, then Haight-Ashbury where he meets the Messenger. The
Messenger arrives just in time to help him and others sort out their novel
experiences, for which our western society has no reference, placing them in
a spiritual context that gives them tremendous meaning.

Like many during that period in history, what we sought, and what we found
were two different things.  We sought our individuality, and we found our
humanity.  We sought an end to war, and discovered how important it was to
find peace within. We sought free, carnal love, and found a transcendent
universal love. We tried to stay high on drugs, only to discover the natural
high.  We needed to express ourselves and we unleashed a profound artistic
creativity. We sought personal freedom and started a social revolution.
It's taken over 30 years for many of us to reassess those years and see the
events of the past in a positive light.  David Echt, has done justice to
that time and after reading this book, I for one have a renewed sense of
meaning and purpose.  Let's pick up where we left off, and help those
generations that followed us to discover the truth; We can still make a
difference, we can still change the world.
 

The way is peace, the road is love

Reviewer: Scott Ryan  from Silver Lake OH

This generally well-executed and hard-to-put-down book is a fictional(ized) reminiscence about What Really Happened according to someone who was at ground zero when the love bomb went off.

That is, I _think_ it's fictionalized. At the very least, author David Rey Echt has changed his name to "Trevor" for the purposes of the narrative. I don't know how much of it is really supposed to have happened. But it doesn't matter, because the novel is true in the most important sense. Something really did happen during the Summer of Love, and it wasn't just that a bunch of kids did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex.

Zen master Seung Sahn once remarked to his then-disciple-and-protege Stephen Mitchell that the hippie mind was just a quarter-inch away from enlightenment. You'll find similar views echoed everywhere from Stephen Gaskin and Ram Dass to (more recently) Skip Stone's _Hippies A to Z_ and John Bassett McCleary's _The Hippie Dictionary_. And on my own website I write as follows: "It may be best to regard the hippie movement, on its spiritual side, as a recent example of that perennial underground countercultural mysticism that always seems to swell up, like grass through the cracks in the sidewalk, whenever a dogmatic and/or authoritarian worldview, religious or otherwise, holds cultural sway."

So you may well imagine that I'll be sympathetic to a novel suggesting that, at the heart of all of this, is a spiritual event that . . . well, I'd better not spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet. But fictional or not, the personal journey described in this book is realistic, and the spiritual advice is sound. (For whatever it's worth, this review is being written by someone who has been known to tote around a battered copy of Stephen Gaskin's _This Seasons' People._) Echt has clearly done his spiritual homework.

What can I tell you _without_ spoiling anything? Just that it follows the travels of a young man named Trevor from Topanga Canyon to San Francisco on a journey of spiritual enlightenment.

I can also tell you that there's some serious mojo in this book (or, more precisely, accessible "through" it, if you know what I mean). There are a few psssages that will actually give you the spiritual equivalent of a contact high just from reading them. That's a nice feature, given the aim of the book.

If you lived through this period of time (whether or not you were at ground zero), this book will help to remind you of its real meaning. If not, the first-person narrative will show you what the air tasted like, so to speak. Either way, this text can push you a little further toward mindfulness, if you want it to.

From 60sfurther Website

http://60sfurther.com

Messenger from the Summer of Love
By David Ray Echt

A Spiritual Journey

Review by MammaMoon

"And now those of my generation are growing older, and we need to pass on a legacy. I don't want time to forget how we dared to love." (From the introduction to this timely and inspiring book)

For those of us fortunate enough to have felt the spiritual opening that occured on a global level in 1967, and were touched individually by this, David's book is a fond reminder of a time of innocence and expansion of soul. Many of us wish and choose to hold this "awakening" close to our hearts, and live this reality, still, in our day-to-day walk. The Summer of Love (1967) was in my view, when the portal opened more fully to spirit, and we find embodied in this book a gathering of the truths that were spoken by many during that opening. For those of you readers who came after, you will discover here the "heart and soul" of the hippie movement of spirituality, written in an interesting and engaging syle.

As we follow "Trevor's" story, we see how he is led, through his experiences, in a most remarkable fashion, to meet his Master/Teacher. The "Master" feels to me to be a collective vision of many of the teachers who chose to share their vision, insights and love during this time . Trevor learns that the Master is here to "awaken the light that is already within you", and that he is to hold the message until the time is right. And it appears that now is the time! I, for one, am grateful that he has! I consider the Summer of Love (1967) to be the birth of the new dawn of spirit, and am happy that this book brings this time more fully to the Light.

The "teachings" of the Master, the timeless truths that are the healing force we need to embrace, are the most inspiring part of this story. In the falling away of illusion, we know in our hearts that love is the answer, as much now as then. It never hurts to be reminded of this, for the way we live our lives, the words we speak, the smiles and love we share with all are surely a healing balm that are a choice we make in every moment. The importance of finding our center through meditation is emphasized, as we can all too easily be distracted from that calm center, and our "work" is to live fully from that peaceful place within us. As the sign on the front door of the house that Trevor finds himself says "The Way is Peace, and the Road is Love".

As the world collectively felt the higher vibration emanating from San Francisco in the summer of 1967, so may the words of this book resonate and activate more fully these truths once again. I highly recommend this book, I find it personally reflects the inspiration I wish to share with those of you who visit us an 60's and Further. I have written to David, and found him to be a generous and authentic heart. It is my birthday this week, and I am grateful to have received a copy of this book from Lionheart. It is one that I will treasure and share, for the message comes truly from Spirit. Thank you David, and Namaste!

Happy and Blessed Reading!!!

Mammamoon

February 2004