Months after the coup, Atmananda held late-night meetings less often, and I soon caught up on sleep. Refreshed from the rest, I tried to understand the changes that had been taking place within the Centre and within Atmananda. My thoughts were frequently interrupted by squawks from Atmananda's fourteen blue-and-gold macaws. He kept them in a room in the garage. He was unaware that they were gnawing a hole in the roof. He planned to tame them and to sell them at a profit.
One time I lay in bed thinking about One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, a book Atmananda had recommended to me. At first I thought about the similarities between Atmananda and R. P. McMurphy, the novel's free-spirited protagonist. Both men, I realized, exuded auras of self-confidence. Atmananda, for instance, had once offered to teach me the secret of attracting women. Jutting his chin forward like a boxer's glove, he focused on an imaginary horizon and began taking long and rhythmic strides. He suddenly seemed eight feet tall, and I watched in awe as he ignored the young women who were checking him out.
Both Atmananda and McMurphy, I realized, shared their knowledge with others. Atmananda, for instance, made a special effort to make his followers feel big. "How can you become strong and self-confident?" he asked at Centre meetings. "By doing all the things I have been recommending. By meditating. By leading impeccable lives. By cutting off those—such as your family—who are draining your power. And by learning to trust in yourselves."
Both Atmananda and McMurphy, I also realized, were teachers of self-sacrifice. Atmananda, for instance, lectured on Jesus Christ, Gandhi, and McMurphy. "McMurphy," he said at Centre meetings, "leads twelve men to the sea and takes them fishing. After the fishing trip, McMurphy is worn out. He is in pain. He has exhausted his energy so that others might be free. This is the essence of self-giving. This is why I do what I do."
I reflected on the sacrifices that Atmananda had been making lately. His efforts at running a spiritual Centre appeared to leave him exhausted and in pain. Dealing with the physical and non-physical demands of a congregation was no doubt an enormous imposition. And what a spiritual leader he was! I pictured him striding about with his chin jutting forward, exuding that aura of confidence; sharing insights into metaphysical philosophies of the ancients, as well as American pop culture of the early '80s; joking and singing, inspiring and enlivening us; writing and publishing WOOF!, as well as a book called The Bridge is Flowing But the River Is Not; challenging our intellects with the known and unknowable; recording and selling tapes on a variety of spiritual topics; framing and reframing the ways in which we viewed the world; issuing a recommended book list which included The Way Of Life According To Lao Tzu, The Bhagavad-Gita, How To Know God, I Ching, The Gospel Of Sri Ramakrishna, Tales Of Power, Tibetan Book Of The Dead, and Walden; distributing geometric patterns on which to meditate; and generating mystical experiences—with Light from the Infinite, of course!
But then I thought about how, unlike McMurphy, Atmananda increasingly blamed others for the role he chose to play. "I incarnated into this world of pain and suffering," Atmananda often claimed, "to help my students from past lives. Many of you don't seem to realize it, but I am in a constant state of pain as a result of the bad energy that you continuously bombard me with. I am also constantly ill as a result of the massive amounts of bad karma that I absorb from you on a regular basis."
I began to think not about McMurphy and Atmananda's similarities, but about their differences. I recalled Atmananda saying, "When you attain my level of enlightenment, you transcend good and evil. 'Good' and 'evil' become mere words, mere concepts in a universe where only experience matters. So why be attached to the good side of the force?"
I wanted to believe that Atmananda meant: "Why worry about being good if you become goodness itself?" But other memories surfaced, and I became overwhelmed by a nauseating sense that he had something else in mind. "Do you know who I really am?" he had increasingly croaked in a low, throaty rasp, his bright eyes mocking me. "The anti-Christ. I work for the other side. Six-six-six. Think about it."
"He was only joking," I reassured myself. "Or maybe he was testing me. That's it—he was only testing me." Yet it was difficult to discount the numerous, bone-chilling times that he had adopted a credible Lucifer persona.
Vivid memories now rushed forward like water through a newly unblocked dam. There were memories of Atmananda telling students that he meditated each day at noon. "Maybe Atmananda's inner being is always in a state of meditation," I thought, recalling the numerous times that I had seen him at noon not meditating. "But then again, maybe he was just lying."
There were memories of Atmananda's recent nightmare. "Guru tried to kill me last night," he had told me several mornings before.
"Really?" I replied, certain that Chinmoy, the peace-and-tennis-loving Guru, would not want to hurt anyone.
"That's right," he continued. "The Guru attacked me in the dream plane and nearly strangled me. Fortunately, I am stronger than he is—otherwise I would now be dead!"
"Are you okay?"
"My neck and throat hurt."
But Atmananda's sore throat had not stopped him from voicing and capitalizing on what he had dreamt.
"The Guru is attempting to destroy me," Atmananda announced to his disciples at subsequent Centre meetings. "You need to understand that while the Guru has lost his spiritual powers, he has not lost his mystical powers. Until you break all mental, emotional, and psychic attachments to him, and until you develop a powerful inner connection with me, you will be completely vulnerable to his next round of inner attacks. Many of you think that this is some kind of game. Just don't come running to me when you find that all your power is gone."
Memories about Atmananda that had been suppressed for months continued to freely flow. "Do you see how my skin glows?" he had recently asked me.
"That means you are healthy," I had replied.
"True, but if you look closely you will see that the light from my body is emanating from a higher plane."
There were memories of eating breakfast with Atmananda and my other housemates. At one point during the meal, Atmananda gazed out the window and spoke as though in a trance. "The powers," he said repeatedly, "are coming back to me. I can now fill an entire room with golden light. I am not who you think I am." About fifteen minutes later, he stopped talking and went to his room.
"Is there something wrong with Atmananda?" Anne asked me as we washed the breakfast dishes.
"Something is definitely not right," I replied. We glanced at each other, but found it difficult to share our ideas and doubts in much depth. We both felt indebted to Atmananda. He had managed to convince us, separately, that had we not met him, we would now be dead. He used this tactic on many disciples. He had also been giving Anne and me special attention lately, and we therefore felt particularly guilty that we had doubts about him. Then there was the climate of distrust that he had been fostering within the Centre. He occasionally warned me, for instance, that Anne was in a low state of consciousness and that I should avoid her whenever possible; he would then tell her the same about me, and so on. Furthermore, Atmananda had worked to make communication among disciples intimidating and taboo.
"If any of you break the Seven Seals of Silence," he had repeatedly warned inner circle devotees, without explaining what the Seals were, "I would not want to be in your shoes. You have to understand that there would be absolutely nothing I could do to help you. It would be awful—I don't even want to think about it."
Other surfacing memories of Atmananda revolted me. I recalled his often-stated maxim that only through revenge could one of life's greatest joys be attained. In WOOF! (Issue #3; January, 1981), he wrote: "Thousands died today in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted without warning... It was seen that the people of Pompeii had all been enemies of the Gwid in a recent incarnation and that the explosion... was the Gwid's special way of showing the populace that he is not a person to be trifled with... "
I recalled with disgust Atmananda's claim that he used to toss his dog fifteen to twenty feet into the air.
I recalled with disgust his treatment of me during one of his public lectures. "Can anyone see what is wrong with Mark?" he had asked the audience, after calling me to the front of the room.
No response.
"Look at him now."
Silence.
"The energy around his head," he told them matter-of-factly, "is not balanced. But don't worry. We are working on him."
As I grappled with the memory, I grew angry. Atmananda, I realized, probably saw me as one of his pets. Suddenly it struck me that while Atmananda might be like McMurphy, he might also be like the novel's mean-spirited antagonist, Nurse Ratched, also known as Big Nurse.
Both Atmananda and Big Nurse, I realized, discouraged their wards from exploring the outdoors. I remembered Atmananda warning me, before I went backpacking in Yosemite, that he was picking up bad vibes from the trip. Despite his grim prophecy, the trip had been a success. I had gone with three friends from the Centre, each of whom loved the woods as much as I did. We woke to the sounds of a brown bear eating our food. We played hacky-sack on top of Half Dome. We got muddy and jumped in a river and yelled and laughed from the cold. Yet when we returned, Atmananda scolded me for having picked up significant quantities of Negative Psychic Energy. "Don't worry," he told me. "I'll process the bad energy for you—though it will probably make me ill." Then, adding humiliation to guilt, he dubbed us "assholes of the mountains."
Both Atmananda and Big Nurse, I also realized, relied heavily on informants to gather data about the group that they controlled. Atmananda exposed his Big Nurse nature in other ways. He claimed, for instance, that he had to "press all the right buttons" to help people overcome their resistance to the Light and to him. And he said he never trusted a man unless he had his pecker in his pocket.
As I lay in bed remembering and reflecting, I felt overwhelmed by the extent to which Atmananda had changed. For a moment, I felt sad. I still thought of him as a friend. I found myself thinking about the time he had initiated the former Chinmoy disciples. When it came my turn, he placed his hand on my forehead and looked into my eyes. Not a grin or gesture broke his stern countenance. Seconds later he was done meditating on me, and I returned to the audience. Then he called me back.
"You are rejecting me inwardly," he accused and tried again. After the third time, he frowned.
"Next," he said.
Now I struggled with the memory and with the realization that Atmananda considered me less his friend than a subject. I had believed in him. I had loved him. I was devastated. But as I concentrated again on his other side, the sadness disappeared. Atmananda, I realized, had been using me. I grew angry and scared.
My thoughts drifted, and I found myself thinking about a bicycle trip I had taken to Palomar Mountain months before. At the top of the mountain one of my brakes had malfunctioned, so I hitched a ride to a bike shop in Escondido. A plumber had picked me up. During the ride, the plumber, who lived with his wife and kids on the mountain, had pointed out a red-tailed hawk. Now, in my room in Atmananda's Centre, I pictured the way that the hawk had soared through the clear, blue, mountain sky on a course of its own...
"What the hell am I doing here?" I suddenly thought, lifting myself out of bed. I stepped into the hall.
"What if Atmananda sees me?" I thought nervously. But the door to his room was shut. I stepped into the kitchen. Except for an occasional squawk from a macaw, the house was dead quiet. I picked up the phone. I remembered the name of the plumber on Palomar Mountain. I called information. My heart raced. The plumber remembered who I was.
"Do you need an apprentice?" I asked in a strained whisper.
"Well, come to think of it," he said, "I could use some help. But weren't you going to finish college?"
"I think I need to take a break for awhile," I admitted.
"I understand. I'll tell you what. Why don't you come on out and we'll talk it over."
I wrote down directions, thanked him, and returned to my room. I wanted to say good-bye to my friends in the Centre, but I knew that in the interest of "saving" me, they would tell Atmananda. And I knew too well that he had a knack for persuading borderline disciples not to leave. So, wishing the disciples well on their journey, I kept my plan secret. I wished Atmananda well on his journey, too. Each time I thought of him, though, I broke out in a cold sweat.
My plan was to hitchhike that night to Palomar Mountain. I stuffed some gear in my backpack, which I kept hidden in the closet. I was ready. The sun was starting to set. "It's okay, man," I thought, hugging myself. I was frightened.
Suddenly the bell rang. I remained in my room. Atmananda answered the door. It was Sal.
I heard Atmananda shout, "Salitos, take out the hot sauce!"
"Yowwwww!" I heard them yell moments later.
I opened the door to my room and saw them hopping around the kitchen. For a moment I felt nostalgic. Drinking hot sauce and hopping around with Atmananda had been one of my favorite experiences in the Centre. Returning to my room, I quietly closed the door and tried to ignore them. I imagined that I was living on Palomar Mountain by a clearing in the forest. I imagined the brilliant California sun as it pierced the thick morning fog below. I imagined the solitary red-tailed hawk as it soared through the clear, blue, mountain sky on a course of its...
The door flew open and in strode Atmananda. He took giant steps. He was followed by Sal.
"Heyyy, Sal!" Atmananda blasted. "Da baby, he'sa thinkin'-a leavin'!"
"Baby," queried Sal, "you thinkin'-a leavin'?"
"Gespacho," cried Atmananda, not waiting for my reply, "where have-a you been?"
"With-a Guacamole!" shouted Sal.
I was stunned. "How... how did they find out?" I thought.
They danced about the room singing about Guacamole, a young maiden who blushed bright green.
I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. I was doing a little of both when, a minute or so later, Atmananda asked Sal to wait outside.
"You've got to admit, kid," Atmananda said to me. "We have a good time here."
I glanced in the direction of my backpack.
Atmananda made a fist and shut his eyes.
"Watch out!" cried my rational side. But he seemed sincere and vulnerable, and I found myself gazing at him.
"Contemplate mountains—not him!" I thought. But in him I saw a man who could see; who read people's inner thoughts and feelings; who predicted the future; who glowed after I stared at him intensely for several minutes; who spent hundreds of hours teaching me about worlds of enchantment, excitement, and nobility; and who banked on a career of making millions happy.
"Sure he's got a lot to offer," I thought, "but he's got that other side—I need to get away!" But in him I saw the community I had helped build, a community which included all my current friends.
"Help build another community! Find new friends!" But in him I saw my aspiration to be a seeker of Truth—as well as my desire to wield power over others.
"He's playing a power game—run!"
Atmananda opened his eyes. He seemed displeased and hurt. He appeared as both a mother and father figure. He towered over me. He exuded self-confidence.
I grimaced. Over the past few years, I had occassionally questioned Chinmoy's authenticity in the back of my mind. Over the past few months, I had occasionally questioned Atmananda's authenticity in the back of my sleepy mind. Over the past few days, I had continuously questioned Atmananda's authenticity in the forefront of my rested mind. But now, the conflict, which pitted my rational nature against my mystical nature, became too much to endure.
He opened his fist and demanded, "What do you see?"
I saw memories of him telling me to act like a warrior before the Forces destroyed what we had worked so hard to achieve. I saw him telling me with a concerned look on his face that he had spent more time with me than with any other student.
"I... "
I had developed over the years a deep trust in him, as if he were family. I had allowed him to access and to control an important part of me, my imagination, and now I feared that without him, the window to worlds of dreams and fantasy would never open up again. There were other fears: of death, of God, of the absence of God, of being lost without a world, without a friend...
"I... "
I could not admit that I had trod what had in part become a bogus path. I wanted so much for there to be a simple solution.
"I... I see sparks flying from your hand, Atmananda," I said, allowing myself to imagine—and therefore to see—the sparks.
Atmananda left the room. I lay in bed, listening to the macaws.
"I won't let the Negative Forces take me over," I determined. "I am going to be a true spiritual warrior." When thoughts about Atmananda's other side resurfaced, I refused to confront them. Instead, I silently repeated Atmananda's recommended doubt-combating mantra: "NO!"
"NO!" I thought, after reading in a Castaneda book Don Juan's assertion that under no circumstance should you stay on a given path if your feelings tell you to leave.
"NO!" I thought, whenever I found myself questioning the process by which I censored my own thoughts.
I was still thinking, "NO," on the day Atmananda noticed the hole in the roof.
"GRAAAAAUUUUHHHHG!" squawked one of the colorful, captive birds.
"BAM! BAM! BAM!" echoed Atmananda's hammer as he blocked off the escape route with some two-by-fours.
In the months after I tried to run away, Atmananda kept me busy expanding his postering routes north to Los Angeles and to the Bay area. Once he had me plan and coordinate a campaign in which one hundred disciples distributed four thousand posters and one hundred thousand promotional newsletters across the entire state of California. He did not seem concerned that I was only twenty-one. He seemed to have faith in me. But after the work was complete, his faith regressed into stinging verbal attacks on my level of consciousness, loyalty, and sanity.
"You are mentally ill," he said. "You can hardly deal with the real world." He explained that I was a prime target for the mind-ravaging Forces because I was spiritually advanced, because I held a key position in his Light-spreading organization, and, most importantly, because I still doubted him.
"But stick with it, kid," he added. "We haven't given up on you yet."
Atmananda failed to appreciate that my doubt-blocking efforts were largely successful, except for the time that I spent with him. It was then that I saw him not as a divine incarnation with a bright golden aura, but rather as an opportunistic Ph.D. with smooth social skills. It was then that knots of tension mounted in my stomach, pangs of guilt haunted my conscience, and, only after several emotionally exhausting hours of telling myself, "NO!", the surfacing conflict appeared to short-circuit. It was then that my mind drew a blank.
One evening, in a movie theatre with Atmananda and the inner circle, the conflict had already run its course. I felt detached, numb, dumb. I gazed listlessly at the screen. Atmananda said something. Sal, Anne, Rachel, and Dana laughed. I looked straight ahead. I did not smile.
They kept giving me popcorn and candy, but I had deeply withdrawn. I did not eat. I passed the items along. I wished that it would stop.
What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion. Sal held out a bucket of popcorn. Halfheartedly, I reached for it. I wanted to be left alone. I held the bucket loosely. It slipped from my hand. Popcorn covered the floor. I stood up. Popcorn fell from my lap. I sensed that my friends had been having fun, and that I was ruining it for them. I would not meet their gazes. I stood there, bathed by the flickering lights of the film, frightened by the resurfacing conflict.
"Maybe it's been me all along," I thought.
"That's nonsense," I countered. "It's Atmananda who is... "
"NO!!"
I grimaced. I walked up the incline toward the exit. I left the theatre in a stupor. I felt dizzy and disoriented. My mind again drew a blank.
I crossed the street to UCSD. I walked to Revelle College. To the Humanities Library Building. To HL 1402. I often reserved this room through the Meditation Club for Atmananda's public and private meetings. I sat down. I did not reflect on how his talks in this room had changed in the past two years. Nor did I reflect on how he had changed. Nor on how I had changed. I just sat there. After a few minutes, I stood up and left.
I walked to John Muir College. I saw a picture of conservationist, writer, and mountaineer John Muir. I found myself thinking about the plumber, about Palomar Mountain, about the solitary hawk...
"NO!" I said aloud and turned away.
I walked down the hill to Central Library. I remembered walking here with two friends from high school who, months before, had unexpectedly appeared at the Centre door. I had not spoken with them in years. I told them I was no longer a disciple of an Indian guru. I also told them my new spiritual teacher was different than the others. "He's got a Ph.D," I explained. "He's been on Phil Donahue. He's my friend." Despite my assertions that I was fine and that I could take care of myself, they still looked at me as if I were in some kind of cult.
"The past is dust," I now thought, recalling a saying that Atmananda had borrowed from Chinmoy.
I walked to Third College. To Third College Lecture Hall. To TLH 104. I saw Atmananda's face on either side of the front wall. I had placed the two posters. Atmananda often claimed that his photograph was a doorway to his "awareness field," and now I wondered if he was watching me through the posters on the wall. I felt uneasy and left.
I walked to a nearby computer terminal room. I logged on and played Star Trek. The E on the screen was the Enterprise. R's were Romulans. K's were Klingons. Klingons had stealth devices. I was E. R's and K's surrounded E. E got destroyed. Each time I played, E got destroyed. I logged off and walked away.
I plodded over soft, squishy lawns. The sprinklers were on. I got wet. I felt like a zombie. I felt small.
I crisscrossed campus several times more. I was tired. I thought about sleeping in the computer room. I was afraid to return to the Centre. I was afraid of facing Atmananda. I did not examine the fear. I walked home.
I opened the door. It was late. Atmananda stood in the living room. I sensed that he had been waiting for me.
"You may not realize it," he said right away, "but you are very sick. You are mentally ill. I am a professional and you are going to have to trust me."
Atmananda spoke authoritatively. He held something in his hand. He said that he was going to help me.
"Have you ever heard of Stelazine?" he asked.
"No."
"Stelazine is a drug that helps people who suffer from mental illness or depression. With the advent of drugs such as this, people who would otherwise be dysfunctional can lead happy and normal lives."
I had a flash of fear. I glanced at the door.
"Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of," Atmananda said, holding out the pills. "You'd be surprised how many people experience some form of neurosis or psychosis. I have a cousin who took anti-psychotic drugs for years. Now he flies F-14's for the military."
The conflict sparked and it flickered and then disappeared. My mind became still. I reached for the pills.
"Western doctors don't really understand mental illness. It is a form of possession. Stelazine blocks out the lower occult worlds, which are inhabited by the Negative Forces."
I nodded. My doubts remained submerged.
"We are not about to desert you. But you have to understand that you *are* mentally ill. All along, you thought that this was some kind of game. You did not take my warnings about the Forces seriously. You opened up your consciousness to them, and now you are paying the price."
I nodded again.
"Of course, there is still hope. But you've got to stop fighting me. You've got to act *now*." He instructed me to take the drug. I had no premonition as I swallowed the Stelazine that Atmananda would later call me his "chemical experiment."
In the days that followed, Atmananda seemed to enjoy his assumed role as psychiatrist and nurse. He knocked on my door several times a day and, in a cheery voice, announced, "Hi, kid—reality check. How do you feel?"
"Dizzy," I replied. I smiled. I was enjoying Atmananda's attention and kind treatment. "I feel pretty relaxed."
"Good," he said. "Now tell me about your thoughts."
I did.
He seemed pleased that I was finding it difficult to concentrate, that my thoughts had a fuzzy, dream-like quality to them, and that my self-analyzing, authority-questioning nature had submerged beyond my control.
"You should feel good about yourself," he said pleasantly. "You are making some definite progress."
Two weeks into the cross-country bicycle trek, I pedaled from Utica, New York, to Rochester, where I stayed with Noah, a childhood friend. When I told him the story of my years with Atmananda, he congratulated me for having left what sounded to him like an abusive marriage. In fact, he was surprised that Atmananda did not have sexual relations with the men disciples as a way to control them. He also pointed out that while in medical school, he had observed self-proclaimed incarnations of Jesus Christ at psychiatric wards.
"How can you be sure that someone *isn't* enlightened?" I asked, puzzled by the certainty with which Noah expressed his opinions.
"How can you be sure that someone *is*?" he replied.
I thought about the visit as I continued the journey west to Detroit. Noah's reluctance to give a person or an idea the benefit of the doubt, and the scrutiny with which he questioned words such as "enlightenment," seemed bizarre but not entirely unnatural, like a trusted habit long forgotten.
Several days later, I rushed down a long hill in northern Michigan toward an oncoming truck. It was twilight. The trailer suddenly hit a bump, swung out from behind the bicycle, and slammed into my rear wheel. I nearly fell from the impact. Then I lurched forward as the trailer disengaged.
"Nuna!" I cried, glancing back, but the wheel had stopped spinning and it took my full attention to balance the skidding, swerving bicycle. Moments later the truck smacked me with a wall of air as it thundered by, and the bike quickly came to a halt. I ran up the hill to the wayward trailer and found Nunatak peering out from the doggie-carrier. She tilted her head as if to ask, "Is this something all huskies go through?"
I sat with the pup in the tall grass. I was devastated. The rig was the vehicle I had chosen to exercise and exorcise my body and mind. It was also my means of transportation. Now, it was broken. As the sky went from deep purple to black, the memory of Atmananda calling me his "chemical experiment" seemed to usher in the darkness. Other recollections bubbled up from the murky depths, only to burst into vivid, unnerving images. Here was Atmananda telling me that he was a professional, that I was extremely sick, and that he was going to help me. Here he was telling me to swallow my pride. And here he was telling me to swallow the Stelazine.
Cars zoomed by now and then, dispelling apparitions of my former mentor. Headlights flashed an angry light at the severed trailer, the pretzel-shaped wheel, and the fallen gear strewn in disarray. Then the lights were gone, leaving behind a fiery-comet afterimage.
I wondered why Atmananda had fed me the drug. Did he actually believe that he was helping me? If so, why didn't he recommend that I seek guidance outside his direct sphere of influence? It seemed more likely that, unable to tell the difference between helping and controlling people, he gave me the drug to strengthen his grip on my mind. But I suspected another motive. I knew that Atmananda had often used me as a sounding board for new ideas and, later, for LSD. He may have wanted to observe my reaction to the Stelazine before using it on others—or on himself.
As I meditated on Atmananda's possible motives, I swatted mosquitos and picked at scabs of aging stings. I did not yet know that he had given Stelazine to at least one other inner circle follower.
I tried to remember how I had felt during the Stelazine experiment. I recalled feeling dizzy. I also recalled feeling at peace with myself. The conflict between my rational and mystical natures did not seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter.
"You're doing fine, kid," Atmananda had told me each day. "Just go with the flow and enjoy the process."
Stunned by the memory, I held the husky in my arms. Nunatak was a wonderful traveling companion. Each day she tugged and leaped alongside the rig as if she were a full-grown sled dog. She licked the drying sweat and tears on my face.
I tried to understand why I had followed Atmananda-Dr. Lenz's drug prescription. Perhaps the most compelling reason was because I was afraid not to. Since the coup, Atmananda had stepped up his effort to instill fear in his followers. He taught me, for instance, to fear the Negative Forces which he said were destroying the fabric of society. "Just read the papers," he would say. "You'll see what I'm talking about."
He taught me to fear what would happen if I left the Centre. "You know too much to leave. It's a greedy, materialistic world out there. Your soul would be miserable. Besides, the Forces would flatten you like a bug. You would lose thousands of lifetimes of evolution."
He taught me to fear, not just the Forces but people, particularly old friends and family. "It's best if you don't tell them what we do here. Believe me, they won't understand. They'll end up blocking your progress and sapping your power."
And he taught me to fear for my sanity. "You can no longer deal with the real world. You're lucky I don't drop you off at a mental institution."
Other reasons why I had felt compelled to take the Stelazine slowly dawned. I realized that Atmananda's senatorial countenance, his smooth, commanding voice, and his Ph.D. contributed to an aura of authority which I had found difficult to dispute. He had combined Western rhetoric, Eastern mysticism, and American pop culture to entice me; vague language, long pauses, and repetition to hold me spellbound; and fear, fasting, and sleep deprivation to break me down.
Had Atmananda's techniques ended there, I might have seen him as a control freak—and left. But each time he had broken me down, he built me up again with kindness and with words of inspiration. He spoke of saints, of beauty, and of the wisdom of the desert. He spoke of selflessness, quixotic quests, literature, and wonder. And he spoke of an unconditional love and of a multi-lifetime camaraderie.
Had Atmananda's techniques ended there, I might have seen him as a confused combination of Big Nurse and McMurphy—and left. But he managed, by flipping between abusive and supportive personas, to keep me off balance on an emotionally gut-wrenching roller coaster ride. Genuine spiritual benefactors were supposed to keep students off balance, he maintained, because it was only then that they could "let go and make real leaps in spiritual progress." It was primarily in his uncanny ability to read an individual or group, and to gauge the precise instance in which to flip, that Atmananda's brilliance could be found. I had been unaware that he was speaking to me, controlling me, through the rhythmic "off" and "on" language of intermittent reinforcement.
It was painful to grapple with memories of Atmananda and to see him in such a searing light. But it was far more painful to examine what it was about me that had complemented his techniques and allowed me to accept his authority. I thought about how, as a thirteen-year-old, it had been easier to journey into lives of sorcerers from the Castaneda books than it was to deal with the emotions of a family in conflict; years later, it was easier to follow Atmananda's narcotic program than it was to brave a suppressed conflict of my own. I also realized that I had grown up feeling blessed, immortal, and immune to the dangers of the world; later, when Atmananda issued post-coup etiquette and Stelazine, I found it difficult to admit that I was so wrong for so long about so many things, and that I was just another victim of one man's *other* side.
The reluctance to view myself as a victim persisted, and now, draped with a sleeping bag to protect me from mosquitos, I found it difficult to admit that the "Atmananda phenomenon" may have had as much to do with Atmananda, and with me, as it did with the balance of society. Years later, I wondered if modern American society had been replacing a system of mythology and religious dogma with a system of reason as a way to explain ourselves and the world around us. I wondered if there were a genuine need in humans not only to categorize and comprehend, but to acknowledge and to address, in unscientific terms, the mystery of that which creates, binds, animates, and destroys. And I wondered if teachers like Atmananda were increasingly exploiting such a need in millions who, for whatever reasons, had chosen a path apart from conventional religion. Perhaps by nurturing both mystical and rational inclinations, society could explore the realm beyond the surface world of reason while keeping pace with the charismatic predators of the New Age.
But in the darkness of a northern Michigan night, still angry and upset from memories of Atmananda's experiments, I sensed that a New Age of enchantment and wisdom had passed me by. Yet I also felt cleansed and refreshed, like the air of a city after heavy rain. I stood up and began gathering the fallen gear in a pile by the trailer. Suddenly, I was staring into headlights which did not disappear. A man got out of the pickup.
"What happened, son?"
As I recounted the bicycle incident, I tried to control the quiver in my voice.
"Officer Brown," he said, showing me a badge. He dropped me, the dog, and the rig off at a motel in nearby St. Ignes. He also left me his number at the station, in case I needed help getting back on the road.
The following afternoon, the policeman pounded the wheel back into shape, fixed the derailleur, replaced spokes, and bolted steel bars over the aluminum which attached the trailer to the bicycle. When he was done, he refused to take my money.
"What are you doing now?" I asked.
"Cleaning the frame."
"Thanks," I said, "but you don't have to do that."
"Whenever you do a job, son, do it right."
Later that day, invisible currents from California, along with the weight of the baggage, continued to affect my progress west. As I rode through the woods of the Upper Peninsula, I reflected on Noah's remark that I had escaped from an abusive relationship. My story, I concluded, was not so unusual after all. Invigorated, I coasted down a long hill and squeezed the brakes intermittently.
Late one night, Atmananda met three hundred disciples in a parking lot in the desert ninety miles east of San Diego. He led us for hours over soft, cooling sand to a spot in a dry river bed. He had us form a circle around him. As we scanned for scorpions before sitting down, the desert floor lit up like a circular, gyrating constellation, until one by one the flashlights went out and it grew difficult again to see.
"If you enter a higher level of consciousness," Atmananda began from the center of the circle, "you will see the Warriors on the cliffs across the gorge. They are subtle beings from another plane of existence. They look a lot like American Indians."
Hundreds of braves, tall and unflinching, were conjured in my imagination.
"What do you *see*?" Atmananda asked the group.
I made no response. I did not doubt the images cast on the back of my eyes by my brain. Nor did I doubt Atmananda. In the months after the week-and-a-half-long Stelazine experiment, the doubts and the conflict had vanished. I was reluctant to speak because my vision had been so subtle, so fleeting.
Meanwhile, others in the circle—engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, students, and business professionals—also remained as silent as the rocks and hills around us.
"If you are at all serious about the study of mysticism," chided Atmananda, "you must learn to talk openly about what you *see*. If you don't, your mind will play tricks on you and you will doubt your experiences later on."
More silence. The next ten seconds passed very slowly.
"Atmananda," I suddenly announced. "I *saw* the Warriors."
Others in the circle soon *saw* them too.
Atmananda held desert trips once or twice a month and, by mid-1983, followers *saw* him walking above the ground on a "cushion of light," flying to distant mountains, sending columns of light into the sky, and causing constellations to gyrate and disappear.
On one starlit night, Atmananda raised his hands above his head. As he slowly lowered them, he made a low, whistling sound like the wind.
"What did you *see*?" he asked afterward.
"I didn't *see* anything," one new follower bemoaned.
"Advanced psychic vision is necessary to perceive what I am doing or, more accurately, not doing," Atmananda said patiently.
"I hate to sound negative," persisted the follower, "but what exactly are you doing?"
For a moment I felt tense. The disciple had unearthed a question that had badly stung me many times before.
"Sometimes I alter actual physical objects, sometimes I alter your perceptions, and sometimes I alter both," Atmananda said, dispelling the tension with his gentle, soothing voice.
"Atmananda, I *saw* you become a luminous egg," said another follower, borrowing a phrase from the Castaneda books.
"Anyone else?"
"I *saw* light from the stars pass through your body," tried another.
"Very good. Who *saw* me disappear?"
I often saw Atmananda disappear after I stared at him for several minutes without blinking. But during one desert trip in 1983, I saw him vanish independently of the dilated pupils. Then, a moment later, I saw him reappear as someone else.
"What I am about to say," he had announced that night, "is going to come as a shock to you. You see, I am not who you think I am."
The followers stopped fidgeting.
"A few days ago," he continued, "when I stopped drinking Tab, I knew something was up. This morning when I woke, I looked at my body. There was nothing but Light. I suddenly understood. It was all so simple."
He paused. "Who am I?" he asked.
Dead silence.
"Don't all answer at once."
Nervous laughter.
"I thought you were a man named Atmananda who meditated extremely well," said a man.
Atmananda did not reply.
"Are you a doorway to eternity?"
"Please—no philosophy tonight," he said sharply. "Who else?"
After several more tries, a devotee suggested that he was Vishnu, a Hindu godhead.
"Close," he approved.
I felt a rush in the pit of my stomach. Atmananda's private jet, after years of accumulating the fuel of our trust and belief, was finally taking off. I was worried. "Fastening my seat belt" would do me no good if he started thinking he was on par with Jesus Christ or the Buddha.
"Are you Rama?" someone asked.
"Yes," he replied. "I am Rama, the last incarnation of Vishnu. You people think that I am a person, but I am not. Over the years I watched my various selves fade away. I fought the process tooth and nail—like each of you are doing now. But it was in vain. I could not stop the process of dissolution. I had to admit that I was no longer a person. This morning I suddenly knew who I was. I have been cycling... I am beginning to remember... Eternity has named me Rama... Rama most clearly reflects my strand of luminosity... We're at the end of a cycle... At this time, Vishnu takes incarnation as a person... Vishnu is that aspect of God that preserves and protects life... Rama... the last incarnation of Vishnu... "
Jolted by the speed and the angle at which his jet now climbed—he *was* putting himself on par with Jesus Christ and the Buddha—I suppressed a reaction and awaited instructions from the pilot's latest persona. But the instructions, it turned out, had been issued months before. Each follower was supposed to write and submit stories—typed, double-spaced—about his or her experiences with him. Our prose, he had been telling us, was indicative of our mediocre level of consciousness, so we wrote and rewrote and we tried to revise, guided by his comments in the margin.
Stories about Rama—a figure from Hindu mythology—can be found in the classic Indian text, The Ramayana. Stories about "Rama" (Atmananda [Fred])—a guy from Connecticut—can be found in The Last Incarnation.
The words, "THE LAST INCARNATION" flash from the cover in letters of gold, above a backlit photo of "Rama," the book's editor, publisher, and focus. The stories portray Rama as a warm, intelligent servant of Truth—with enough mystical power to light up a city. A few of my stories, which also depict him as a down-to-earth demigod, appear in the 403-page collection. But there were other stories I could have written.
I could have written, for instance, the story of "Rama and the Puppets of Bliss and Profit." In 1980, Rama got a cuddly, white hand puppet which had purple feet and a purple, toucan-shaped beak. Rama called it "Bliss," and often played with it as though it were alive. He appeared to make it talk, yawn, sleep, and soar. "Bliss is soaring through the other worlds," he explained. In 1982, I asked Rama what he wanted for his birthday.
"Another Bliss," he replied with a boyish grin. So I set out on a quest with Paul to buy a Bliss for our benefactor. Together we combed the toy stores of southern California, but the search was to no avail. Weeks later, I spoke with a puppet designer in northern California.
"Sounds to me like you have a 'Take Me To Your Leader,'" she said. "Does it have antennas?"
"No."
"Then you must have an 'Uncle Lucius.'"
"Actually," I said, "we call it 'Bliss.'"
Over the next few years, Rama ordered thousands of yellow, red, green, pink, and blue Blisses.
"Oh, how adorable," said the flight attendants when they saw the grown man in first class playing with the colorful puppets.
"We donate them to children's hospitals," Rama claimed. He failed to mention that he brought the Blisses to Centre meetings, where he infused their beaks with a "special force" and where he sold them at a handsome profit.
I could have written the story of "Rama and the Token Underdog." "A large part of what motivates me," Rama once confided, "is my concern for the underdog." He displayed his concern one desert trip by accompanying a handicapped student who was unable to keep pace with the group. I recalled one of Rama's lessons: "You can tell a person's level of spiritual evolution by how they treat those around them." I felt proud of my teacher. But shortly thereafter, Rama's attitude changed. He began four-wheeling the desert sands while the rest of us walked. He also banned from all desert trips those who were unable to keep up.
I could have written the story of "Rama and the Menorah Incident." I once placed in the window of my room a menorah, a traditional candle holder used by Jews during the celebration of Hanukkah. But when my housemate and mentor noticed, he looked at me askance. "What, are you crazy?" he said. "Take it down right away!" It was inconceivable to me that behind a mask of intellectual and religious tolerance could lie so powerful a bent to control. I removed the menorah from my window.
I could have written the story of "Rama and the Satanic Billboard." In 1982 and 1983, Rama occasionally said that he'd like to place a billboard of his face above the busy intersection of freeways 10 and 405 in Los Angeles. He seemed excited about including this message: "666—We're Back".
And I could have written the story of "Rama and the Blade Runner Day." "Would you like to meet Harrison Ford?" Rama asked me over the phone in 1983. By then, many San Diego devotees had moved to the expanding Centre in L.A., based largely on Rama's advice. Centre meetings in Los Angeles were first held in a small room in Hollywood, and then in a large room with a stage in Manhattan Beach. By the time meetings were held in the ornate Beverly Theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Rama commuted each week from his ocean-view Malibu rental to the expanding Centre in San Francisco.
"You mean Hans Solo?" I asked. "You bet!" I drove west, then north, toward Zuma Beach. Twenty minutes later, I turned down a long driveway to Rama's house, which he claimed that he rented from Goldie Hawn. Hawn wanted to sell; Ford wanted to buy; and Rama, Anne, and I wanted to see, in real life, a favorite image from the magic screen.
Rama wore a colorful shirt patterned with scenes of the tropics, similar to one worn by Allie Fox (Harrison Ford) in The Mosquito Coast. Obsessed with creating a world of his own, Fox bares a captive community to his innovative dreams, poisoned experiments, and diminishing sanity.
Rama suggested that we act busy, so I went outside and pushed a broom. I smelled smoke. Nearby brush fires had been fanned out of control by increasingly strong winds. The thick, yellow sky reminded me of Blade Runner, a science fiction film starring Harrison Ford. The recollection caused my mind to digress down a corridor of memories, smoke, and mirrors.
I pictured Rama in line at the movies, which is where he met disciples on Saturday nights. He was easy to spot. With arms folded, one foot forward, and head tilted back, he played the part of the self-possessed, insurgent general who had ordered his troops to carry on, despite the overwhelming odds. His bush of hair made him seem taller than he was.
Rama incorporated into his teachings what he gleaned from the three, sometimes four films he saw in a typical week. He taught, for instance, that he was like Mike (Robert De Niro) from The Deerhunter. Mike risks a game of Russian roulette in war-torn Saigon to try to save Nicky (Christopher Walken), his friend.
"You are like Nicky," Rama told me frequently.
Drawing, too, from Mel Gibson's role in Road Warrior, Rama taught that it was okay for spiritual Warriors to temper their valor in order to survive.
Rama taught that it was spiritually correct to see such movies as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Dawn Of The Dead, and The Shining, each of which he viewed repeatedly. Horror films, he claimed, were a clean way to alter our level of consciousness—"No drugs, no sex"—and were a graphic reminder that each lifetime was but a brief, fragile opportunity through which to evolve.
Citing Mick Jaggar in the concert film Let's Spend The Night Together, Rama further taught that it was perfectly natural for powerful men to develop their feminine side. "Part of the reason why people are so attracted to Mick," he said, "is because he puts out a very feminine energy." Rama later depicted himself in posters and newspaper ads as an androgynous figure.
Perhaps as part of a doubt-diffusing lesson, Rama once invited about twenty-five inner circle disciples to see Split Image, a movie portraying a cult in the late '70s. When the cult leader (Peter Fonda) blatantly manipulated his followers, Rama laughed out loud. We laughed too. It was an odd moment; our laughter had a nervous edge to it. I laughed partly to fit in, and partly because I sensed, but refused to confront, the absurdity of the situation.
Another time, Rama took followers to see Conan The Barbarian. When Conan (Arnold Schwartzeneggar) observes a cult leader raise his arms to silence throngs of "DOOM"-chanting disciples, Rama, who sat beside me in the theatre, turned to me and said, "He doesn't have such a bad set up." I figured Rama was only joking. I laughed, but laughed alone.
Rama's lessons about movies often turned my topsy-turvy world further upside down. He told me, for instance, that Star Wars creator George Lucas was wrong to have Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) prematurely leave a mystical apprenticeship, wrong to have evil unmasked by good, and wrong to portray Yoda as being gay.
"Yoda is gay?" I asked.
"Yes," Rama replied, "but don't worry—you are not gay. No way. Of course you're not gay. Don't believe anyone who tells you that you are. Why even allow yourself to think that you are gay?" Then, after laughing heartily, he hissed an imitation of the Emperor, Darth Vader's evil master.
Rama, who assumed broad powers to interpret reality and myth, seemed to believe that he was made of the stuff of legends. He got touchy, however, when disciples looked to legends outside the realm of his control. One time, for instance, I excitedly told him that I had seen an autographed photo of Mark Hamill.
"Here you are sitting next to a fully enlightened teacher," he said bitterly, "and all you can do is live in a world of fantasy."
Rama was right, I decided, as I pushed the broom down the long driveway in Malibu. I was living in a world of fantasy. There, shaded by billowing, yellow smoke and accompanied by a talkative real estate agent, was Harrison Ford, quietly stepping toward Goldie Hawn's house, toward the "Last Incarnation of Vishnu." Ford wore dungarees.
Rama introduced himself as the renter and as a teacher of advanced meditation.
Anne introduced herself as a friend of Rama's.
"Sure is a blade runner kind of day," I blurted.
Ford said hello and went inside with the agent. We followed.
When the entourage reached the master bedroom, Rama gazed at the ocean and declared, "The Force is strong here."
But Ford did not seem interested in Rama's assessment of the local mystical energy field. Nor did Ford seem interested in Rama's recollections about his fire fighting days. (Rama failed to mention that he had fought the fires while in a prison camp, where he had been serving time for selling drugs.) Ford was interested in the construction of the house, and now he had seen enough. He started to leave.
Rama handed him a Self Discovery, the free, promotional publication that had taken the place of WOOF!. Rama gave him an issue that had been distributed throughout southern California. On the front cover was a blowup of Cindy, a beautiful, young, blond woman, meditating on the hood of Rama's red Porsche. Inside were stories from The Last Incarnation. On the back cover was Rama's past-life resume advertisement, in which he claimed: "1531-1575, Zen Master, Japan; 1602-1771, Head of Zen Order, Japan; 1725-1804, Master of Monastery, Tibet; 1834-1905, Jnana Yoga Master, India; 1912-1945, Tibetan Lama and Head of Monastic Order, Tibet; 1950- , Self Realized Spiritual Teacher and Director of Spiritual Communities, United States."
Ford took the issue and left.
"It's just like in Star Wars," Rama noted as Ford drove away. "He doesn't really believe in The Force."
There was more to tell of that particular story—my house burned down that day. And while disciples gave generously when Rama took up a collection, no one could have replaced my birthday gift from Rama. I found it lying on the scorched foundation, reduced from a sleek, red bicycle to a meteor-like lump of distorted alloys.
But of all the sketches I could have written for The Last Incarnation, perhaps the most telling would have been the story of "Rama and the Enlightenment of Women." "Certainly we welcome men into our organization," Rama often announced. "But our primary focus is on the enlightenment of women." His interest in helping hundreds, even thousands, of women seemed a genuine reflection of his commitment to the underdog.
When I first met Rama in 1978, his crusade for women had already begun. "Unless you are close to enlightenment," he had told potential women disciples, "you will lose a great deal of your spiritual and mystical power through sex and through sexual relationships." Over the years, Rama spent many hours counseling and persuading women seekers to leave their boyfriends and husbands in the name of gender equality and higher spirituality. In 1981, for instance, weeks after the coup, he wrote and published in WOOF! (Issue #2; January, 1981): "Dear WOOF!, I love the spiritual life and the vital life too. What should I do?—Sproutarina J. Prana
"Dear Sproutarina, Your difficulty is that you are burning the candle at both ends and sooner or later you are going to melt. I suggest a day in the desert alone, a good movie, or a powerful occult experience. You see, Sproutarina, God loves you no matter what you do. If you want the vital, you can have it, and if you want the psychic you can have that too. But you can't have both, at least not in our Centre. Decide which will really fulfill you and choose that one. Only you can decide what you want in this lifetime."
Rama—who preferred the term "having sex" to "making love"—occasionally softened his position on sexuality and invited followers to relax, accept their human nature, and do whatever worked for them. "Hey, Kate!" he once said in an Italian accent. "You go out with-a my boy Mark, and I'll take plenty good care a-you!" It was understood that Rama meant business when he donned his Godfather persona, and I subsequently enjoyed a several-month relationship with this young disciple. Yet when I asked Rama if it was possible for a man and woman to have an emotionally and spiritually supportive relationship, he smiled, shook his head, and said, "Even if you find a woman whose consciousness is spiritually refined, it still wouldn't work—because yours is not... "
In contrast, his relationships with women were highly refined, Rama pointed out, because for him sex had become an act of spiritual, not physical, self-giving. Nonetheless, after he got his housemate Anne pregnant in 1982, his self-giving nature was nowhere to be found. Instead of offering her wisdom or support, he sat in the lobby of the abortion clinic, sorting and counting cash from a workshop he had given on spiritual evolution.
When Anne returned to the lobby after the abortion, Rama had disappeared. Embarrassed, she approached the receptionist.
"He went to a bookstore," the woman replied. "He said he'd be back later."
Women in the Centre were not supposed to let on that they were sleeping with Rama. Anne therefore felt that she had no one with whom to share the burden of the abortion. When she appeared depressed a week later, Rama, in front of another disciple, remarked, "If it's not one, it's the other."
Rama often invited women disciples to "talk" with him after Centre meetings, Anne recalled years later. But there, in his bedroom, they frequently exchanged more than words. Rama's relationship policy, she also recalled, required inner circle women to limit their relationships to one man: himself. His justification for the policy was that it kept them from unwittingly transferring their partners' lower male energy. Male energy, he frequently complained, very much affected his finely tuned, delicate sensibilities.
Perhaps Rama sought protection from "baby energy" as well; he managed to persuade one disciple in her late twenties to leave her husband and newborn child.
Despite his ability to invoke adoration and fidelity, Rama seemed concerned that his power to control female followers was not absolute. He therefore kept certain men from the inner circle, despite my recommendations.
"Jeff," I once advised, "is really smart. He's good with people, and he's a lot of fun to be around."
Rama hesitated. "I don't know, Mark; I'm worried about Dana."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't want her falling in love with him."
Rama was in a bind. On the one hand, he knew that Jeff would be an asset to the operation. On the other, he sensed that Jeff was too bright (he had been an honors graduate student in chemistry at UCSD), too athletic (he played ultimate frisbee), and too good looking to be running around loose within the carefully controlled nest. But Rama had a plan. He encouraged Jeff to form a relationship with Karen, who had previously followed Rama's advice and turned down an offer from Stanford medical school. He then encouraged them both to enroll in a computer science Master's program at UCLA, and to gradually phase me out as the poster and newspaper distribution coordinator.
One night in a restaurant in Los Angeles, Rama's story about wanting to help women took on a new twist. He had invited me to dinner with Nick and Sarah, a handsome young couple who acted in Hollywood and who had recently joined the Centre. When the waitress came to take our orders, Rama began waving and curling his hand.
Moments later, as the waitress was walking away, Nick asked, "What were you doing with your hand, Rama?"
"I was sending her sexual pleasure directly through the inner worlds," he replied, glancing at Sarah now and again.
Stories of "Rama and the Enlightenment of Women" were all the more startling, I found, when narrated by Rama himself. There was the one, for instance, about Sue.
"Sue once came in my room," Rama told me, "took off all her clothes, and flung herself on me. 'Please don't make me go home and masturbate, Rama,' she kept saying, but I just sat there and meditated on the Infinite, until I entered samadhi."
There was the one about Harry, the main character from Lolita, one of Vladimir Nabokov's novels. "The point of Lolita," Rama explained to me, "is not that Harry repeatedly slept with a fourteen-year-old after kidnapping and drugging her. The point is that Harry really did love her."
There was the one about the UCLA students. "Sometimes I walk the streets of Westwood," he said at Centre meetings, "and drain the undergraduates of their mystical power. Now, don't get all upset. It's not like they're using it. Most of them are just wasting it on sex."
And there was the one about his former wife. "At one point in the relationship," he told me, "I had to decide whether to be of service to the one or to the many." Rama often described his dream of living in a fortified desert compound with hundreds of heavily armed women devotees. Perhaps he broke up with his "jealous" wife—"She kept imagining that I was looking at other women... "—in search of the many.
Once I invited a friend from work to one of Rama's public lectures. She was interested in meditation and had recently left her boyfriend.
"Thanks, but no thanks!" she exclaimed when I mentioned the lecturer's name.
"So, what's wrong with Rama?"
"You mean the one who lists his past life credentials—dates and all—in full-page ads? The one who *specializes* in women?"
"Uh, yeah."
"He isn't bringing women to enlightenment, Mark. He's bringing them to bed."
"Come on," I countered, trying not to admit to her or to myself what he had been doing for years. "So he has a girlfriend. What's wrong with a spiritual teacher having a girlfriend?"
"There's nothing wrong with that," she said firmly. "But he is sleeping with many, many women."
"Where did you hear that?"
"From a number of women I met at a meditation retreat in San Diego. They fell for his line about being lovers in past lives."
Suddenly I recalled Rama on stage at Centre meetings, wearing short red gym shorts, closing and spreading his legs, tonguing in a slow, circular fashion the insides of his mouth. The memory repulsed me. But the repulsion, I feared, was due to the Negative Entities within me. And it was Rama, I quickly reminded myself, who had been trying day and night to imbue the many with the fullness of his enlightenment.
"Well, I have been good friends with him since 1978," I replied, "and he's just not like that."
When disciples Giles and Claire, a couple living in Los Angeles, heard similar stories about Rama's sexual exploits, they spoke candidly with one another.
"We were not judging him," Claire recalled years later. "But we were concerned about what would happen to him and to our community if the press found out. I wrote him a letter saying that he looked much more human than divine when he approached women at Centre meetings for sexual, rather than spiritual reasons."
"And I decided to phone him," recalled Giles. "A member of his staff said that he was not at home and would call me back. Several days later at three a.m. the phone rang. It was Rama. We spoke for about an hour. When I suggested that he consider exercising more discretion, he was reasonable and polite. We discussed the issue like human beings. After all, I am old enough to be his father. He told me, 'Of course I like girls. I'm just an ordinary guy. You don't know what it's like. They throw themselves at me. What's a healthy man to do?'"
"At the next Centre meeting," Claire said, "Rama gave us the cold shoulder. And at the one after that, he distributed the tape 'Sophisticated Sexuality' (see Appendix C). During the break, Rama approached me. His eyes became small, like hard, little bullets. He was furious. He told me repeatedly that my letter was self-indulgent nonsense."
"Then he asked to see me outside," said Giles. "Alone. Grabbing me and digging his fingers into my shoulders, he shouted, 'I'VE BEATEN YOU! I'VE BEATEN YOU ALL!'"
"After the break," Claire continued, "Rama lectured for thirty minutes about how people had been constantly throwing him bad energy—all the while glaring at Giles."
During the next few weeks, Giles and Claire fearfully recalled Rama's threat that deserters would look and feel like hell. Nonetheless, they stopped attending meetings and trips to the desert, where Rama kept trying to disappear.
"Some of you still harbor doubts that I can disappear," Rama accused the several hundred disciples who sat around him in a circle. "But perhaps if I dissolve someone else, you will find it easier to see. Tonight I will be dissolving an old friend of mine. Mark, would you come up here, please."
I walked toward him. I was thrilled. My heart was pumping fast. I loved being the center of attention.
"Now, close your eyes," he said, placing his hand on my forehead. He flashed me a devilish grin. "This won't hurt a bit."
I closed my lids. After several seconds, I felt detached from my thought process. It was as if I could visually observe a thought as it formed, connected with meaning, and vanished. One thought had been: "What is going on?" As I tried to anticipate my next thought, I ended up instead observing the thought of anticipating a thought—when suddenly a volley of words jarred me out of the trance.
"Earth to Mark. Come in Mark."
I opened my eyes and saw Rama towering above me, laughing softly. I looked away and saw liquid gold specks lining the blackness. I had managed, until now, to avoid thoughts about time and had no idea how long the experience lasted.
"What did you see?" Rama asked the group.
"It looked like Mark was dizzy, and you caught him right when he fell."
"I didn't see anything," reported another. "But I felt very peaceful. I found it easy to slow my thoughts."
"You dissolved him, Rama," offered another.
As we prepared for the journey back to the cars, Rama invited me to walk with him at the front of the line.
"That was fun, wasn't it?" he asked several minutes later. As he scanned the path for rattlesnakes, his powerful beam cut a sharp tunnel through the darkness.
I agreed. It had been a blast. Over the past five years, moments of deep meditation had been typically interrupted by thoughts such as, "Hey—I'm meditating!" But moments earlier, I witnessed thoughts objectively, as if they belonged to someone else.
"Tonight I helped you see a beautiful world," Rama said. "My intent is to show my students how to fly through these worlds on their wings of perception. It is easy to show you because you like me. Many of my students fear me or hate me—or, even worse, they worship me." Suddenly he flipped off the light, and a fifteen-foot high ocotillo shrub vanished.
"I don't perform miracles to show off my powers, but to expand your view of reality. If my students can accept that I disappear, just imagine what they will be capable of."
Though I was learning to fly on my wings of perception, and though in the months after the Stelazine trip I continued to deeply suppress part of my rational side, I never fully accepted Rama's world in its entirety. I never accepted, for instance, the story of "Rama and the Enchanted Taco." The Enchanted Taco, Rama said, was an immense, luminous, and other-worldly treat. It could be seen in the desert, hovering casually over mystical power spots, garnished with divine light, knowledge, and guacamole. But in a parking lot at four a.m., I saw Rama wave to three hundred bleary-eyed disciples, get in a black Turbo Carrera, and disappear.