"Hello... Atmananda?" said my brother into the phone. Then he winced and hung up.
"Well?" I asked.
"I have to call him back," he replied sheepishly.
"How come?"
"He said I didn't have the right spirit."
He dialed again. "Halllooooooo, Atmanaaaaaaanda!" he bellowed. This time, Atmananda gave him directions to the party.
Weeks before, Atmananda gave me permission to attend his parties—provided that I did not "vibe" the women.
"Don't look at them as women," my brother had suggested, quoting Chinmoy and Atmananda. "Look at them as seekers. When you look at them as women, it hurts their evolution."
I assured him I would try.
After I moved to Stony Brook, I started going to Atmananda's parties regularly. At one party my brother and I arrived at Tom's house, left our sneakers by the door, and went inside. Atmananda, Sal, Anne, Tom, and a few other disciples stood in the kitchen. They looked bewildered. The air smelled charred. Black, gooey gobs darkened the floor. Atmananda was not talking. Something was wrong.
When Anne had lit the stove moments before, an explosion singed her hair and propelled chocolate and marshmallow covered graham crackers across the room. Now, as we cleaned the mess, Atmananda began to speak.
"Guru protected us from the Negative Forces," he said in a rich, lulling voice.
I told myself that the explosion had probably more to do with the gas being left on than it did with Guru and the Forces.
"The Negative Forces want to hurt Guru's mission," Atmananda continued grimly. "But they know not to challenge an avatar directly. Instead, they go after his disciples—particularly those wide open to doubt."
For months I had grappled with the concept of Negative Forces. Perhaps they existed, I told myself, perhaps they did not. In either case, I did not take them seriously. Now, though, I tried to imagine what they looked like. I pictured massive, menacing storm clouds in a dark, foreboding sky. I imagined the "clouds" were aware of my current thoughts. Suddenly the clouds seemed real. I felt jolted. I looked around the room. I sensed the disciples had taken Atmananda's caveat seriously. My stomach felt taut. I thanked Chinmoy silently.
Atmananda had meanwhile flipped to a less somber mood. "One of the best ways to combat the Forces," he said, "is to have fun." So we went out to eat.
At an Italian restaurant during one party, Atmananda suddenly slapped Sal on the back and, adopting the voice of the Godfather, cried, "Heyyy Sal! You plenty-fine kinda guy!"
"Sure I'm plenty-fine, but I'm also plenty-hungry!" Sal replied with an equally zesty accent, but without slapping him back.
Atmananda then denounced Sal for rescuing a maiden who had been held against her will in "a large vat of ravioli."
"What's wrong with that?" I asked.
"Sal, tell the baby what'sa wrong with that."
Until now I had enjoyed their antics, but the transition from being the editor-in-chief of my high school paper to "the baby" felt awkward. Yet at seventeen, I was the youngest in the group, the average age of which was twenty-one. Atmananda was twenty-seven. And I had learned from Chinmoy and Atmananda that humility was the quintessential spiritual quality. Besides, I loved the attention.
Sal replied that rescuing maidens was wrong because he should have been at home meditating.
I looked again at Sal, a twenty-year-old with a large, creased forehead. He had studied computer engineering first at CalTech, and now at Stony Brook. He also studied guitar and drama. He cradled the eggplant parmigiano hero lovingly in his hands and closed his eyes before each bite, as if bracing for the next dose of ecstasy.
"Observe the maestro chow hound," Atmananda announced.
We laughed.
Sal had apparently adjusted to his role as chow hound. He continued to eat as if nothing happened.
"If only Sal could focus on the Infinite rather than on the eggplant," Atmananda noted, "he would be the first among us to realize God."
It was fun eating out with Atmananda. After dinner, we often continued the fun and the fight against the Forces at the movies.
One time, Atmananda took us to Warlords of Atlantis. He bought five buckets of heavily buttered popcorn, Tabs, Cokes, diet Cokes, boxes of licorice, Sno-caps, and Raisinetes. Then, from the fourth row—Atmananda claimed that four was a power number—we watched a film which, at the time, seemed extraordinary.
Atmananda sat by the aisle of the nearly empty theatre. He whispered something to Sal, who told Tom, who told my brother, who told me: "Atlantis was once a real city."
"Atlantis was a real city," I told Anne, who told Dana, who told Suzanne. Meanwhile, juxtaposed at an intersection of transmigrating junk food, I further divided my attention between monitoring what needed to be passed, trying not to notice the women, and watching a man on the screen discover a lost world of magic and conflict under the sea.
"We all had past lives in Atlantis."
"We had past lives there." Pass the Raisinetes. A hidden city of magicians, seers, and warriors, where the laws of physics do not apply.
"We were together then."
"We were together." Pass the napkins. Crystals have a non-physical power.
"Atlantis was destroyed by the greed of its inhabitants."
"Atlantis was destroyed by greedy people."
Afterwards, we drove back to Tom's and caught the last few minutes of The Twilight Zone. It was late. I was getting sleepy. Atmananda began to repeat how Guru had saved us from stove-demolishing Entities. I entered a state of mind where I heard his words, but did not scrutinize them. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, he suggested that we meditate on the Transcendental which Tom placed on a table by the television.
In the months that followed, Atmananda accepted me into his inner circle of friends. But not every encounter with him, I quickly learned, was a party.
* * *
One morning Atmananda emerged from his cottage in Stony Brook carrying a thick stack of posters. Bluejays, doves, sparrows, and chickadees flocked around a feeder. Sal, Paul, my brother, and I stood nearby. Atmananda approached, but the little birds remained.
"Ellaow," he said in a Cockney accent.
"Ellaow," we echoed.
"WHAT... is your name!" he demanded, quoting from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
"Sir Waff-noid," offered Sal.
"WHAT... is your quest!"
"I seek the higher worlds."
"WHAT... were you thinking about last night at 11:30!"
Sal blushed.
"Alas, my lad," said Atmananda, patting him on the shoulder. "You won't reach the higher worlds thinking about that."
Atmananda showed us a poster. It read: "ECSTASY AS A WAY OF LIFE." Also printed were details about a free lecture series, "With Atmananda-Dr. Frederick Lenz." But before he sent us to Manhattan, Atmananda inspired us, told us how to protect ourselves, how to change.
"Guru's mission," he said in a pacifying voice, "is to bring peace, light, and bliss into a world that is rapidly heading towards darkness."
I realized that it was largely through Atmananda's lectures, and through his appearances on radio and television—including a recent appearance on the Phil Donahue Show—that Chinmoy's mission was being spread. I felt important that I was a part of the operation.
"Your task is to see where to place the posters so that they will be noticed by advanced seekers. To do this you will need to maintain a very high state of consciousness."
We nodded solemnly.
"If you run into religious fanatics, be polite but firm. Do not let them engage you in conversation."
We nodded again.
"By postering, you are helping Guru bring light into this world. But Negative Forces will sense this and will try to inject you with doubts. If you are attacked by the Forces, cry inwardly to Guru."
I was not too worried about non-physical creatures on the prowl. I had a great deal of self-confidence, I assumed the Guru would protect me, and I wasn't convinced that Atmananda's ghosts were real.
"I see that many will be helped as a result of today's efforts— provided that Sal can muster the willpower to work and not just eat," he said, smiling warmly. "And don't forget to have a good time."
We meditated a moment.
"Guru put a special force on the posters," Atmananda said, breaking the silence and handing the stack to my brother. Then he strutted around us in a "silly walk" which I recognized from a Monty Python skit.
"Cheeriao."
"Cheeriao," we echoed, waddling down the driveway, imitating his imitation. On the way to the train station, his words reverberated in my mind: the path, spiritual, awareness, see, sea of consciousness, dream-time, vibrations, energy, chakra, subtle, metaphysical, pyschic, unseen forces, traps, Entities, light, and darkness. The language defined for me a world in which I chose at each moment between good and evil. Put that way, there was not much of a choice. I believed now that ours was a pure and noble quest, and that I was a warrior of Truth, not a casualty of rhetoric.
On the train ride into the city, I sat next to Paul, a happy-go-lucky Swede with blond hair, a broad grin, and a magnet-like attraction for devices that were electronic. We both were Stony Brook freshmen who had learned about Chinmoy through Atmananda's lectures. We both sensed that there was something out there beyond the surface world of reason. We both intended to do something about it.
"What's the penguin doing on the tehlee?" he quipped, quoting from Monty Python. Green and grey scenes of Long Island sped by through the train's window frame.
"The penguin on the tehlee," I squawked, "is about to blow up!"
"Tickets, tickets," announced the conductor. "All tickets please!"
I remembered how, as a kid, I rode the trains without paying. I had stayed ahead of the ticket collector, gotten off when I reached the front car, and then caught the next train... But now I no longer believed in free rides. It did not matter that the Ultimate Destination could not, according to Atmananda, be described using words. I still felt that I should pay to get there. By postering I was not only paying for myself, but was affording thousands the opportunity to be taken for a ride of their own. I handed the conductor my ticket.
My brother and Sal sat across from us. Their backs were straight, their eyes closed. I too tried to meditate, but could not. Instead, I thought about my parents. I had followed Atmananda's suggestion and told them that I was studying spiritual mysticism. Nonetheless, they seemed convinced that their sons were getting sucked into a cult. I was sensitive to their reaction to me and intentionally saw them less as the weeks went by.
I also thought about Chinmoy. He had instructed followers to memorize four of his disciple-published books. I opened one and read, "When you choose you lose." Chinmoy, it seemed, believed that major decisions should be left to the Supreme, his favorite word for what Atmananda called the Infinite, which the Rabbi had referred to as God.
"Help, Guru!" I thought, doubting I could memorize the numerous aphorisms without divine intervention.
"Penn Station, Penn Station," came the reply. "Last stop!"
We left the train and were funneled onto the escalator by the crowd. Paul and my brother headed uptown on Third Avenue, while Sal and I worked Second Avenue. Dodging cars, bicycles, and more crowds, we entered a supermarket and found the manager.
"Excuse me, sir," Sal said sweetly. "We are sponsoring a workshop on relaxation and were wondering if we could place this in your window."
"One of the posters is already outdated," I pointed out. "So we won't have to take up more of your window space."
The manager looked us over, glanced at the poster, and nodded.
"Thanks," we said and quickly placed two, back to back, visible to people inside and out. After several hours we had placed more than half the stack.
Postering with Sal boosted my confidence in asking favors from strangers. Soon, though, we decided to work opposite sides of the street to increase our efficiency. I found that by acting polite and a bit shy, I could easily persuade store owners to say yes. The more I spread the word of Guru's mission, to people in stores and on the street, the more I believed in it. And the more I believed, the more I wanted to spread the word of Guru's mission...
When Sal and I ran out of posters, we crossed over to Third Avenue, met Paul and my brother, and caught the subway to Penn Station. I was tired from the postering. I found the repetitive clatter and vibrations of the train soothing. I found it easy to meditate. I could have thought about how Atmananda had been teaching me how-to-hunt-and-how-not-to-be-hunted. I could have thought about how those who teach how-to-hunt-and-how-not-to-be-hunted can easily prey upon those whom they teach. I could have thought about how, by asking Atmananda to take me beyond the world of reason, I was hunting him. I could have thought about how he was hunting me. But I just sat there and let my thoughts run free.
That year, Sal, Paul, Tom, my brother, and I placed thousands of posters in Manhattan. Working with Anne, Dana, and Suzanne, we also distributed thousands of handouts on the Stony Brook campus. Sometimes we worked in sub-freezing temperatures. Once Atmananda had us glue posters on buildings in Manhattan in the middle of the night. I did not mind. I tended to enjoy the effort, in part because I believed we were doing some good, because we had plenty of time to pursue other interests (in January, 1979, I began studying English literature at Stony Brook), and because as hard as we worked, we played.
* * *
"The Muppet Movie?" I asked after another full day of postering. "Starring Kermit-the-Frog?"
"Trust me," Atmananda replied.
Trust was the bridge to Atmananda's world, a peculiar, improbable place where it snowed inside buildings in Manhattan in the spring, where invisible beings threatened a guru's mission by blowing up stoves, and where people were hunters or hunted or both. It felt natural to trust a man who treated me with kindness, who exuded an aura of competency and of vulnerability, and who seemed wholeheartedly dedicated to the cause of self-improvement.
We met at a theatre where we ate popcorn and candy in the fourth row. I told Atmananda that the postering had gone well. The lights faded and the movie began.
A Hollywood agent on a fishing trip strikes up a conversation with Kermit-the-Frog. The agent is impressed with him and suggests that he move west, to Hollywood.
Though seemingly content in his East Coast swamp, Kermit is taken by the agent's prediction that, as a movie star, he could make millions of people happy. "Make millions of people happy," echoes the starry-eyed muppet.
The scene reminded me of my former plan to hitchhike west on a mystical quest. The plan seemed less glamorous now because I had already found a teacher and because of Atmananda's prediction. He often told me that had he not rescued me from that path I would have been shot by bandits and tossed in a ditch. Perhaps, though, the former plan would have regained some momentum had I known about, and had I analyzed, the problems currently fouling the air between Chinmoy and Atmananda.
One problem was sex. Chinmoy, who taught that higher consciousness lay above the sweaty world of physical pleasure, often instructed us to avoid members of the opposite sex whenever possible.
In contrast, Atmananda told me, "I once had several girlfriends at the same time—each named Susan."
There was the problem of ego. Chinmoy emphasized over and over the importance of humility.
Atmananda often pointed out, to his inner circle of friends, that in a past life he was Sir Thomas More.
There was the problem of cinema. Guru prohibited the viewing of sexually explicit or violent movies.
Atmananda had his own view, which was to see them. As a result, I got to see such films as Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dawn of the Dead, and Apocalypse Now.
There was the problem of expression of individuality. In an attempt to merge with the Beyond, many disciples decorated their often sparse homes with Guru's paintings, posters, and photographs.
In contrast, Atmananda's plushly carpeted, colorful cottage, gave me the sense that he rearranged the space until the lines connecting the physical and non-physical dimensions meshed nicely. By the front door, two ferns thrived beside an electronic synthesizer. By a stained-glass window hung a photograph of Atmananda with a toucan on his shoulder. "The toucan died," he once told me, "but its soul is advanced and will soon take on a human incarnation." Multi-colored rug segments covered the stairs to the loft, where a larger-than-life Transcendental stared down from the slanted ceiling, directly over his bed.
And there was the problem that Stony Brook disciples learned the language of spirituality and of dreams less from Chinmoy than Atmananda.
Able to speak at length about anything and nothing, Atmananda often did. For him, reality seemed to consist of an infinite number of levels which were interconnected in obvious and in not so obvious ways.
"Words are used to describe these levels but are extremely limited," he explained. Nonetheless, I often found myself tripping on his words from the world of the bizarre to the world of the sensible, and back again. I became familiar with the diversity of his language during his lectures and, perhaps more so, during his parties.
"Auuuuummmmmmmmmmmmm," he chanted after a twenty-five minute meditation at the start of one party. He slowly bowed and touched his forehead to the floor which is where he sat, along with the rest of us. Then the Stony Brook disciples stoked the fireplace, set the tablecloth on the floor, grated cheese, and emptied bags of tortilla chips. I watched the disciples work. Only months had passed since the exploding stove episode, and yet I felt close to them. There was Atmananda. He was orchestrating the festivities. He had brought us all together. There was my brother. He looked happy. He did not seem to mind me tagging along. There was Sal. His intense nature seemed balanced by a fabulous sense of humor. There was Tom, the tall, easygoing bass guitar player. He would soon receive a degree in history from Stony Brook. He seemed to be good friends with Atmananda. And there was Paul. He and I were becoming friends.
Then there were the women. According to Guru, I was not even supposed to look them in the eye. I tried to protect them from my wayward sexual thoughts but sometimes, in my imagination, I did more than just look. Then I felt bad. I was told that they would now have to meditate extra hard to cleanse themselves of such "lower energy." I wished that we could be friends. They seemed so nice.
Rachel, with light brown hair and perceptive eyes, was closer in age to Atmananda than the rest of us. She had completed medical school in three years and become a disciple in 1978, two months after attending Atmananda's lectures at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.
Dana, a one-time fashion model, had been an occupational therapy major at Canada's McGill University. She first met Atmananda while interviewing him for the campus radio station. After the interview, which touched on Atmananda's book Lifetimes: True Accounts of Reincarnation, he invited her to visit him in Stony Brook. Shortly thereafter she left her boyfriend, family, school, and country. She moved to Stony Brook, just around the block from the charismatic young meditation teacher and author.
Connie was a waitress with long dark braids, a Midwesterner's friendliness, and a cheeky smile.
Suzanne had long brown hair and dreamy eyes. She studied art at the Parson's School of Design in Manhattan.
And Anne, with long, black hair and that playful, impish grin, was studying to be a nurse.
I turned back to watch Atmananda. "Don't think that spirituality is divorced from the physical world," he was saying as he reached for a chip. "After you meditate a few years, you begin to see that Annam Brahma—food is God." He then set the chips-and-cheese-laden tray in the oven.
Sal observed intently, as though witnessing a ritual.
Soon Atmananda and Sal were delivering trays of crunchy nachos. I garnished mine with sour cream to alleviate the delicious, consciousness-altering burn of the hot sauce. As we ate, I felt proud that I had managed to stop thinking about the women. Then I had to tell myself to be careful, lest my ego swell instead. Finally, I told myself to relax. Which I did. The food, the crackling fireplace, and the medieval trumpet and recorder music reminded me of something distant, intangible, and noble. My spirit soared.
"The kid and I are going to write some songs for you," Atmananda announced.
I looked at him, perplexed. After all, I was no longer "the baby" but "the kid."
He motioned for me to follow him upstairs.
I immediately assumed that my brother would be right beside me when I climbed those stairs: him first and then me. But he just sat there, boosting my confidence with a faraway smile.
I nearly told Atmananda to write the song with my brother. Instead, I chose instead to go with the flow. I climbed.
"If you are going to study English," Atmananda told me, "you might as well get used to putting together words." He grinned mischievously. "Let's write songs about Sal."
At first, he was the driving force behind the creative process; I merely smiled at each of his ideas. Later, though, I came up with a few lines of my own, which seemed to blend with his, and after about forty-five minutes we marched triumphantly downstairs and sang together.
We sang and danced around Sal, who tried to maintain a dignified countenance but who ended up laughing along with the rest of us. Then Rachel made cinnamon-spiced, hot apple cider and we sat around the fire sipping the brew. Later, Atmananda sang a revised version of I Don Quixote from Man of La Mancha:
After the performance, Atmananda said that the level of our consciousness was dropping, so he had us meditate for about twenty minutes. Then he said, "We are going to play The Game."
"What game?" I asked, feeling bolder after having performed with him.
"Part of The Game," he replied cryptically, "is to figure out what The Game is."
"The Game is The Intuition Game," said Sal. "You want us to intuit something."
"Right."
I wondered if Sal could read Atmananda's mind.
"Some of you think that you can read my mind," Atmananda said, peering at Sal. "But you can read only those thoughts that I make available to you."
Sal had intuited that we had to intuit something but we still did not know what it was.
"Is it about the past?" asked Anne.
"When you intuit The Truth you get an answer, not a question," Atmananda stated.
"It's about the future," stated Dana.
"Right."
"You want us to look into the future," she continued.
He nodded.
"I see you traveling around the world giving lectures," she predicted.
"Many seekers will become disciples as a result of your talks," offered Tom.
"Guru will be happy with us," suggested Anne.
"We're going to put up a lot of posters," I added.
Atmananda said that we had done well but were forgetting something important.
We looked at him expectantly.
Then, in his Kermit-the-Frog voice, he said, "We're going to make millions of people happy."
"Make millions of people happy," I echoed.
Chinmoy seemed willing to look the other way when Atmananda, his chief recruiter, disregarded his etiquette on sex, ego, cinema, individuality, and language. But his patience ran out in 1979, when a Queens disciple informed him that Atmananda was "playing guru." Actually, it had been several months since Atmananda had made it a practice to scan the audience during the meditation part of his talks, as if he were channeling Divine Light. But now Chinmoy saw the light, and Atmananda was in immediate danger of being kicked out of the Centre.
When Atmananda learned of his predicament, he had an idea. Fond of temperate climates, he had been wanting for years to move back to his birthplace, sunny southern California. This dream had recently reasserted itself in his mind as the number of people attending his talks gradually dwindled, which he attributed to a diminishing interest in spirituality in the New York metropolitan area. But suddenly the idea of starting a Chinmoy Centre in a distant city seemed less of a dream than a necessity. He wrote Guru a letter asking if he could move to San Diego.
Chinmoy consented.
Weeks later, the phone rang. It was Atmananda.
I offered to find my brother.
"No," he said, "I want to speak with you. Why don't you come over?"
He lived about a quarter of a mile from my apartment in Stony Brook. I jogged down Cedar Street and knocked on his door.
"Hi, kid. Make yourself at home." He offered me a yogurt.
I accepted.
He told me that he was starting a Centre for Guru in La Jolla, California. Then, in an enchantingly anesthetizing voice, he explained that southern California rested upon a mystical power spot around which had congregated the nation's largest population of spiritual seekers. "Would you like to go?"
I realized that San Diego—San Diego!—was driving distance to the Sonoran Desert and to UCLA—Castaneda's frequent haunts! I remembered Atmananda telling me that California boasted many lovely, friendly women! I realized that such a move would distance me from my parents, who continued to worry that I was in a cult! I also realized that such a move would distance me from Guru. But I now believed that the Light would reach me in whichever state I inhabited. Besides, I sensed that without Atmananda as a buffer, Chinmoy's highly regimented brand of spirituality would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to conform to.
And what a buffer Atmananda was! I pictured him striding about with his chin jutting forward, exuding that aura of confidence; joking and singing, inspiring and enlivening us; challenging our intellects with the known and unknowable; framing and reframing the way in which we viewed the world; and generating mystical experiences—not on his own, of course, but with the Guru's Spiritual Light.
"Yes!" I replied, without considering the feelings of my brother, who continued to support me in my quest with a faraway smile. I was proud that Atmananda had chosen me to be part of his team. I did not know, however, that he had embellished stories in his book Lifetimes. Nor did I know that he had told the San Francisco Examiner that he never experienced a past life remembrance. Nor did I know that he had once asked a girlfriend to slip out the window when another appeared at the door. Nor that he had recently been in deep trouble with Chinmoy. Nor that during the height of the controversy, he had admitted to Tom that he might leave the Centre before Chinmoy kicked him out.
"What would you do if you left?" Tom had asked him.
"I'd move to California and teach meditation," Atmananda replied.
On August 30, 1979, Atmananda, Dana, Rachel, Connie, and I left the ground in a jet bound for San Diego. In the excitement of packing and leaving, I had forgotten my wallet and daypack back at my brother's. Now, without money or ID, I watched rays of light play off darkening clouds and thought about the frog.
The weather had cleared since I had started pedaling west from Walden Pond five days before, but headwinds continued to press both the doggie-carrier and bicycle-trailer as if I were tugging a parachute. Contributing little to the weight of the rig was a book by William Shirer on Mahatma Gandhi. Disillusioned, but not yet ready to live without heroes, I actively sought a replacement for Atmananda.
I rode over the mountains of western Massachusetts and rolled into the town of Lenox. There a woman noticed the oddness of my entourage and asked, "What exactly is going on?"
"I am bicycling across America with my dog," I replied.
Ten minutes later she was interviewing me in a nearby cafe. She was a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, and, as I answered her questions, I thought about how I would answer when she asked me "why?" I realized it was more than a love for bicycling, more than a longing for adventure, and more than a desire to strengthen my self-confidence that propelled me west. I wanted time to think about Atmananda's thousands of lessons, some of which I sensed were valid and some of which I knew were not.
There was another reason: I wanted to do something distinctly *me*. Bicycling across a continent against the prevailing winds with all my possessions and a Siberian husky—that was *me*.
"Why?" she asked later.
I tempered my answer with the knowledge that I was being interviewed by a journalist and not a shrink. At one point I told her that I was traveling with a book on Gandhi.
"Do you like it?" she asked.
While reading the book I felt proud that Gandhi had been deeply influenced by Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience," proud that a thinker and experimenter from the United States had had an effect on one from India whose thoughts and experiments affected humankind. But it was more than pride which attracted me to Shirer's Gandhi: A Memoir. Gandhi's dream of helping the masses reminded me of Atmananda's seeming interest in making millions of people happy. While Gandhi wielded influence over two-thirds of a billion people as he helped India secure independence, never did he grow twisted by the enormity of his own power, never did he betray the public trust. Though Atmananda eloquently described the balance between the spiritual and the mundane, I knew from years of firsthand experience—yet found it difficult to admit—that a Mahatma Gandhi he was not.
"I like the book very much," I replied.
"Would you like to meet Shirer?" she offered.
William L. Shirer was the only correspondent sent by an American newspaper to cover India's revolution. He gathered that Gandhi's philosophy encompassed more than civil disobedience, passive resistance, non-cooperation and non-violence, but "had to do also with something more subtle—and fundamental: the search for truth, for the essence of the spirit... " Insights such as this made him seem particularly suited to investigate so complex and sensitive a matter as India's social, political, and spiritual ferment. Shirer was also the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. As I knocked on his door, I hoped that with his knowledge of benevolent and malevolent charismatic leaders, he could help me to understand Atmananda.
I wanted to tell Shirer that I had seen Atmananda's seemingly tight-knit community transform into a group of fearful, paranoid people. I wanted to tell him that I had seen Atmananda himself transform from a seemingly kind and noble seeker into a man who used anti-psychotic drugs and LSD as tools of persuasion, who—without the use of drugs—persuaded one woman to leave her husband and newborn child, who dreamt of filling stadiums and of starting a world religion, who claimed to be the anti-Christ, and who spoke repeatedly of taking the inner circle for a ride in a Learjet into a mountain. I wanted to tell Shirer how, in 1984, I had helped Atmananda through a bad LSD trip and how, as he was "coming down," I had observed his opposing personalities reassert themselves. I wanted to tell him that Atmananda seemed to be getting progressively worse. And I wanted to tell him how Atmananda had persuaded one disciple that he and I would be forever locked in a battle over mystical power. The disciple was my brother.
When Shirer answered the door his large, bright forehead and serene countenance made him appear intellectually and spiritually advanced, and I had an uncanny feeling that something of the Mahatma himself peered out at me through those eighty-three-year-old eyes.
"What can I do for you?" he asked me.
"I wanted to tell you that I'm enjoying your book," I said, suddenly aware that he might not want to discuss the extremities of human nature with a total stranger. I told him about the bike trip, his book on Gandhi, and the reporter. But he was busy preparing for a lecture tour of Russia and had no time to talk. I thanked him, got back on my bicycle, and left.
I pictured Shirer as a young man, contemplating the life and lessons of Mahatma Gandhi. I also pictured him observing uniformed men with swastikas, bent on genocide. I imagined him accepting both good and bad in people, for only by cultivating acceptance did I imagine him harvesting peace. But I realized, as I pedaled north, that I would have to learn to distinguish between the nurturing and noxious roots Atmananda had sown in my mind without Shirer's help. This was something I would have to do for myself.
I continued to ride towards Pittsfield, Massachusetts, with Frank, a childhood friend. Tall, with messy red hair, he was an expert car mechanic though he never made much money. This was in part because he was a slow worker, because he had little self-confidence, and because people took advantage of him.
"How's work going?" I asked him.
"Okay, I suppose."
I knew that he was making less than six dollars an hour. "Have you thought about looking for a higher paying job?" I asked.
He shrugged.
"You know you're being ripped off."
He shrugged again. We had been through this conversation before. I wanted to teach Frank that he was like a sitting duck, that he could protect himself, that he could change—suddenly I froze. I remembered that Atmananda had taught us that we were like sitting ducks, that we could protect ourselves, that we could change...
Southern Californians have been exposed to more New Age teachers than perhaps any population in the United States. Yet the forty or so people seemed unprepared for Atmananda, who strode into the lecture hall twenty minutes late, with a can of diet soda in one hand and a pack of green gum in the other.
I assumed that many of the Birkenstock-clad seekers drank natural fruit juice and did not chew gum.
"This evening I'd like for you all to hold hands and be like reeeally mellowwww," said Atmananda, mimicking the way some people spoke in San Diego's flourishing holistic community.
There was tense laughter. A few people left.
"Those who take themselves too seriously on the path to enlightenment," Atmananda said in a more dignified tone, "tend not to get very far."
I felt good knowing that I did not take myself too seriously.
"From the spiritual point of view," he said later on, "eating junk food is fine—as long as you do so in moderation and as long as you exercise regularly."
Jaws dropped. I figured that many of them ate unprocessed rice and seaweed.
When the meditation began, Atmananda played fast-paced electronic music by Tangerine Dream.
More jaws dropped. I surmised that many of them meditated to flute and chime melodies.
During the meditation, Atmananda briefly gazed at each person in the audience, as if he were sending them Spiritual Light.
I closed my eyes... tried to slow my thoughts... opened my eyes... gazed intensely at Atmananda... perceived light emanating from his eyes!... kept gazing without blinking... perceived the entire room go white!... .
"How many of you saw Light in the room?" he asked several minutes later.
No response.
"Be honest now."
I raised my hand.
"Why don't you describe what you saw, Mark?"
I did.
"Mark has been studying advanced meditation techniques with us for over a year. But you don't have to be advanced to have mystical experiences. Who—besides Mark—got zapped?"
A few raised their hands.
"I think you all got so blasted," Atmananda said, "that you don't know what hit you."
After the talk, many of the people came forward with questions. I wanted to watch Atmananda work his charm, but I knew that I had a task to perform. Weeks earlier he had instructed me, "If you see a guy at a workshop trying to pick up a lady, move right in and engage him in conversation. This will give her the opportunity to walk away and maintain a high level of consciousness.
"Do you know what women at the lectures really want? They want to get closer to God. They may think that they want relationships with men. But if they choose that world, believe me, their inner beings will be miserable."
I did not ask how he proposed to relate to them.
"The tricky part," he added, "is to do this without letting either one know what is going on." He was silent awhile and I sensed there was more he wanted to tell me.
"Why don't more women attain enlightenment?" he finally sighed. "Because they are taught in a male-dominated society to marry, have children, and serve their husbands. Traditionally, they have not had the opportunity to study with an enlightened teacher."
I was moved by the truth that I felt in his words and now, as he answered questions in the front of the room, I interrupted conversations with all the speed and savvy I could muster. People did not seem to mind. On the contrary, they seemed to regard me as someone special, as if I were on The Bus—and they were trying to get on.
With each passing week, Atmananda further opened the audience to the possibility that they could evolve countless lifetimes by staring at the underexposed photo of a balding man. After about a month, he announced: "Those who are interested in the advanced side of self-discovery should ask Mark for a map to the Centre."
"The Centre" was Atmananda's term for the San Diego branch of Chinmoy's organization. It was also his term for the house he now shared with me and the three other Chinmoy disciples. Atmananda had not needed a map to the Centre months before, on the day that the five of us moved west. He had seemed to know the way. "There's Mission Bay," he said, pointing to bright green lawns bordering light blue water. When he exited the freeway, which he assured us was free, I noticed ground-cover plants surrounding and dividing the road like armies of fat green spiders. On La Jolla Scenic Road, I saw more exotic flora: tall, cedar-like trees, plants with huge vein-covered leaves, and cacti with yellow flowers and spiny needles. I did not know their names.
"At last," boomed Atmananda, pointing to a large shrub which drooped like a wilted phallus. "We have found the fabled swaaaanso bush!"
I laughed nervously at his fabrication and glanced at Dana, who sat beside me. Only minutes ago, she and I had sat outside the San Diego airport terminal, caressed by a balmy breeze, waiting for Atmananda and Rachel to rent a car. It was the first time we had been alone. My heart pounded, and I unsuccessfully tried not to watch the way in which her breasts pressed against her blouse.
She ran her fingers through her hair and smiled at me.
I wanted so much to kiss her, to tell her that she was beautiful, to love her. Had I followed my gut feelings, Atmananda might have sent me back to New York on the next available flight. But Chinmoy and Atmananda had explained that sex saps psychic growth. And I was concerned that Atmananda and Dana might be in some sort of relationship already. Besides, I never had had a girlfriend and was at a loss as to what to say. I paused, and Atmananda and Rachel appeared with the rental car.
Atmananda often displayed an extraordinary sensitivity toward what people around him were thinking and now, as we approached the Centre for the first time, I wondered if he had timed his arrival back at the airport based on my wayward desire. I also wondered how to diffuse my crush on Dana.
"Don't worry," I told myself. "Guru will help me work it out."
Now Atmananda told his passengers that the new Centre was only a few blocks away. He had chosen a house on Cliffridge Avenue where, in the name of the Guru, we would fight evil forces and make millions happy. Before turning left on Cliffridge, we drove past Nottingham and Robin Hood.
The lawns in the neighborhood seemed like tiny golf courses. Atmananda pulled into one of the driveways, got out of the car, and said, "Here we are." Then he strode down the path as though leading us to his castle.
He claimed the master bedroom which overlooked the garden. Dana's was next to his. Then mine. Then Connie's. Then Rachel's.
"Welcome to Atmananda's bar and grill," he grinned from behind the kitchen counter, pretending to serve us.
Adjacent to the kitchen was the meditation room, where Atmananda planned to conduct weekly meetings for the soon-to-be-recruited Chinmoy disciples. From the meditation room I could see the long, narrow yard and the large, wooden deck which he christened "the flogging platform." On the steep hill past the deck, legions of spidery plants advanced imperceptibly toward the garden.
Nearly every day during the first few weeks in San Diego, Atmananda drove us to La Jolla Shores Beach. There, he led Rachel, Dana, and me to where the water was over our heads. Connie was intimidated by the Pacific surf and did not immerse herself the way the rest of us did. With Atmananda's guidance, however, that would soon change.
Two years before, in New York, Atmananda and Tom had tried to swim across a channel in the Long Island Sound. Though a strong swimmer, Tom grew fatigued fighting the swift current, and Atmananda risked his life to save his friend from being swept to sea.
Now, buoyed by Atmananda's legendary strength, I rode the swells beyond the breakers to where my feet dangled above the ocean floor. After thirty minutes or so, we rode the waves toward the shore. At this time Atmananda often disappeared beneath the surface. We stood there in the waist-deep water, waiting, watching, and trying to figure out his next move—when suddenly there was a scream! Still underwater, Atmananda had seized and was tickling someone's foot.
Then we sat on the beach, soothed by gentle currents of the herb-scented air. I looked to the west. Blue on blue stretched across the horizon. I looked to the east. White buildings gleamed behind a row of tall, healthy palms. I remembered Atmananda's advice: "If you want to live in a pretty world, just cry inwardly to Guru." I could not help but feel that I had entered one of Dr. Seuss' fantasy-gardens for children.
Atmananda drove us back to the Centre, where we gazed for forty minutes or so at the Transcendental. Then we ate nachos—a perfect ending, I thought, to a perfect day. I was so absorbed in having fun with my new family, I did not think to contact my parents or my brother.
Several days after we arrived in southern California, Atmananda took us on a bus tour of the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park. The guide pointed to an elephant and said, "This is Peanuts. Peanuts has been with us for seven years."
"This guy is making it up as he goes," whispered Atmananda, who seemed to resent having someone else control the conversation.
The guide pointed to a giraffe. "This is—"
"Fwazznoid," interrupted Atmananda loudly.
"—and Puzzles has been with us for three years," continued the guide, trying to ignore the man monkeying around with the four laughing hyenas.
One time during our first few weeks in California, Atmananda saw me standing on a wall in the yard. He later told me that he had seen me fly.
"Really?" I said.
"Yes," he replied. "I saw your Astral Body hovering over the canyon."
"Wow!"
Suddenly, his kind encouragement transmogrified into a cold, penetrating glare. I felt he was looking right through me.
"I can see that you still doubt me," he said, turning away.
I was upset with myself. As usual, he was right. Yet I sensed there was something more, something in the way he looked at me...
But he was smiling now. "Don't let it bother you, kid. You're doing fine."
"Whew," I thought, happy to forget about it.
Perhaps Atmananda had been happy to forget about it too because he began giving me other things to think about. He gave me the task, for instance, of starting a meditation club at my new school, the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). He understood that by controlling a university club, he gained legitimacy, prestige, and unlimited access to free lecture halls.
I saw no harm in Atmananda's request. We were, after all, using the club to help Guru. So I set out to find three full-time students who were willing to sign up as the club's officers.
"Hi!" I said, approaching one student. "I'm starting a meditation club and was wondering if you might be interested in helping out."
"What's a meditation club?"
"We're going to have guest lecturers teach Zen and relaxation—you know, stuff like that."
"Sounds cool, dude, but I'm already relaxed."
"Great—but maybe you could take a moment and help people who are not." And so, by soliciting signatures from those not particularly interested in meditation, I became the club's sole proprietor.
Meanwhile, Dana designed, Rachel mostly payed for, and Atmananda "zapped" the new stack of posters, which I then placed around UCSD, San Diego State University (SDSU), and the neighboring communities. The talks went well, and I soon handed out many maps to the Centre.
Before the potential recruits arrived, Connie spent hours cleaning the Centre. According to Atmananda, this was something her soul loved to do. My soul, he pointed out, loved to greet people.
"Howdy—I'm Mark!" I said.
"Hello," she replied. She was graceful and alluring. "I'm Mandy."
"This one," I thought, "is gonna need some heavy protecting."
During the lecture, Atmananda predicted that the world would enter a spiritual dark age in 1985. "The darkness will last for thousands of years, and it will become increasingly difficult to meditate and to think clearly. Spiritual warriors will need to band together under the protection of a guru who can fight the Negative Forces and forge a path toward freedom and Light through a world turned murky and grey." Then we had cookies.
After several public meetings at the Centre, Atmananda invited those who were interested in studying with Chinmoy to stay afterwards.
"What do you do for a living?" Atmananda asked each of the three.
"I'm a flight attendant," said Mandy.
"I know a few things about flying," Atmananda interjected.
"I cane chairs," said a woman with long, brown hair.
"I cane people," said a man with a crewcut.
"If you sincerely want to take the next step in your spiritual evolution," Atmananda said, "we will mail your photographs to Guru. Guru will use his psychic vision to see if you are meant to study with him."
By the time Chinmoy accepted the flight attendant, the crafts-person, and the marine, there were many more applicants to be processed.
Despite the intensity of the recruitment drive, Atmananda found time to assist certain seekers on a one-on-one basis. Mandy, in particular, must have exhibited potential because he often spent nights at her condo.
I figured it was okay for Atmananda to sleep with Mandy, though it was not okay for me to appreciate her beauty. He was, after all, an advanced disciple and knew a lot more about these things than I. (He said on occasion that I could have a girlfriend outside the Centre, but mostly he said that I shouldn't.) My perceptions might have changed, however, had I known that he was sleeping with *numerous* women disciples. My perceptions also might have changed had I known about the "Bedroom Incident."
When Atmananda first flew with Rachel to La Jolla in search of a rental, he chose a house with "good vibes"—but with only four bedrooms. He told Rachel that he would take the large bedroom, that she would take the dining room and living room areas, and that they would switch.
But he never allowed her to use the living room. Nor would he switch. To complicate matters, he often sat outside her makeshift bedroom, advising disciples through the night and early morning how they could accelerate their march toward a wordless perfection.
Unlike Atmananda, Rachel had to wake up in the morning and go to work. After too many nights of too little sleep, she grew tired, angry, and confused.
When Atmananda sensed that she was not her usual, happy self, he did not openly communicate his displeasure. Instead, he ignored her. He let the other women know that she was in a bad consciousness and should be avoided whenever possible. He began to treat her as if she were an outsider.
Rachel grew increasingly flustered. She reached out in her thoughts to Guru, to family, and to friends. When Atmananda asked her to move out of the house, she breathed an exhausted sigh of relief.
In the meantime, without a clue, I studied literature, worked part-time, read Guru's books, meditated one-and-a-half hours a day, tried to see, organized poster teams, attended Atmananda's talks, and immersed myself each day in water over my head. I felt so good about my life and the community I was helping to build that it seemed like I was living in paradise.