Mel Lyman played banjo and harmonica for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band out of Boston in the 60s. The charismatic musician formed a neo-transcendental commune on Fort Hill in economically depressed Roxbury and in 1967 released a bi-weekly journal called AVATAR espousing the re-birth of the inner-self as reflected by the glory of Mel Lyman.

“Love isn’t something you find, something you do, something you study. Love is something you BECOME after there is no more YOU.”

I ran into several of their members in the late-60s. I was a teenager. They had no interest in someone as young as me, since I was male. I begged my father to buy property on Fort Hill. A bedraggled tenement cost a few thousand dollars. He thought that the neighborhood was a blight on Boston.

“Best to napalm the hill and start over again.”

That was the end of the real estate career, but Lyman attracted followers and the Avatar recruited believers from around the country. The commune expanded to several houses and the Boston police under orders from the city’s judiciary sought to quell its growth by arresting the vendors selling the Avatar with the sale of obscene material.

The Avatar responded with a centerfold provocatively printed with the words; FUCK, SHIT, CUNT, PISS.

According to famed defense lawyer, Harvey Silverglate the Cambridge and Boston police attempted to prosecute 80 vendors. Only five were found guilty, but their conviction’s were overturn, due to the DA’s inexperience with First Amendment issues and the assenting opinion of the State’s Supreme Court stated that “this rather sad publication is not obscene.”

End of story and the Avatar finished its run as a mouthpiece for the beliefs of Mel Lyman. The Fort Hill commune moved into the future, but the leader passed away in April 1978.

According to Wikipedia the exact date and location are unknown.