Article 8211 of alt.buddha.short.fat.guy: Path: news1.digex.net!news.intercon.com!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!olivea!uunet!news.delphi.com!usenet From: Charlie Rubin Newsgroups: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy Subject: Re: Rama book - complete text (very long, in 15 parts) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 94 20:26:29 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 776 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1g.delphi.com X-To: Charlie Rubin Message-ID: <181302Z11071994@anon.penet.fi> Path: news.delphi.com!uunet!EU.net!news.eunet.fi!anon.penet.fi Newsgroups: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy From: an112477@anon.penet.fi X-Anonymously-To: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy Organization: Anonymous contact service Reply-To: an112477@anon.penet.fi Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 18:04:42 UTC Subject: No subject Lines: 765 This book is electronically distributed with full permission of the author. Please feel free to download and pass along to interested parties. (c) Copyright 1993 by Mark E. Laxer All Rights Reserved. Outer Rim Press 4431 Lehigh Rd., #221 College Park, MD 20740 9. Off The Map "Something heavy has been going down in the inner worlds," Atmananda announced at a Centre meeting in late December, 1980. "Can anyone *see* what it is?" "Is Guru coming to visit us soon?" asked one disciple. "No." "Is the earth's psychic energy field getting progressively worse?" tried another. "Yes, but that's not it. Anyone else?" "This is going to sound crazy," said Kara, a UCSD student who seemed entranced by her own melodious voice. "But has Guru fallen?" "Yes." No one stirred. "Why don't you elaborate, Kara?" said Atmananda. "I first felt it a few weeks ago," she said, glancing at the ceiling as if she were trying to recall something. "I was meditating on the Transcendental but didn't *see* much light, ya know, and well, I just thought it was me but it just kept happening, and like I love Guru and all but..." Months later, Kara would be hospitalized for a mental disorder. "You have truly *seen*," praised Atmananda. My heart pounded. I felt like a bomb had exploded in my face. I saw Kara gazing at Atmananda. It was only months before that Atmananda had asked me to deceive the disciples into buying him a "surprise gift" -the new car. I scanned the crowded room. People seemed disoriented. Three disciples visiting from the Santa Barbara Chinmoy Centre kept glancing at the door. They looked ready to bolt. "Many of you have been having difficulty meditating recently," said Atmananda in his familiar, soothing voice. "You have been blaming yourselves. But you should understand that it is not you. "For years I have meditated on the Transcendental and the room has filled with a beautiful, white light. But lately, the light has simply not been there. At first I thought that the level of my meditation had dropped. Intuitively, though, I knew that that was not the case." I could not believe what was happening. I had never heard Atmananda criticize his -our -beloved Guru. Still, I had to admit that his intuition was usually correct. "When I tried meditating without the Transcendental," he continued, "my consciousness suddenly jumped to a much higher level -as if the Guru had been holding me down. And yet my logical mind still refused to accept that the Guru had fallen. You see, you don't just turn your back on someone you have devoted eleven years of your life to, someone you have loved more than anyone else in the universe." I wondered if a con artist would devote eleven years of his life to a guru. "I had to make sure that the Negative Forces were not playing tricks on my mind," he continued. "So I decided to visit New York and meditate on the Guru in person. I found that he still looked like Guru. But inwardly I could see right away that he had lost his power." I wondered if I could have detected a change. "When the Guru began to meditate, it became clear that he was not entering into samadhi -though the disciples still believed that he was. Nonetheless, I wanted to be absolutely certain that the Negative Forces were not clouding my vision. So I visited Apeksha, a Queens, New York, disciple who has studied with the Guru for as long as I have. "At first, Apeksha thought I was crazy. But after we spent hours looking at old Guru photos, neither of us had any doubt as to what had happened. "Apeksha is now in a real bind. On the one hand, he can see that the Guru has fallen. On the other hand, he knows that he's not strong enough yet to ward off the Negative Forces on his own." Richard, who had bought the million-dollar Centre, raised his hand and said, "Atmananda, isn't there anything we can do to help Guru?" "Your sentiment is a noble one," Atmananda replied. "But you have to be careful. If you are swimming near a sinking ocean liner, it doesn't matter how nice a person you are -you'll be sucked under when the ship goes down. "You should understand that I am not criticizing the Guru. Nor should any of you. You should give him a great deal of credit for holding out against the Forces for as long as he did. "The Forces are not exactly evil per se. They are merely playing their role in the Cosmic Game. It just so happens that their role is to destroy Light." Several disciples shook their heads incredulously. Others cast a glassy-eyed, soporific gaze at the renegade Centre leader -as if this were a typical late-night meeting. "In 1985, the situation in the universe will begin to get much worse. A great cloud of darkness will envelop the earth for thousands of years." I pictured the shadow of a huge oil slick creeping toward the globe. "There will soon be a sharp increase in the number of wars and natural disasters, and nearly everyone on the planet will be affected. Spiritual seekers will suffer the most, because they are the ones who are most sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. It will become increasingly difficult to meditate, and seekers not grounded in the dharma [Truth] will be in grave danger of being seduced by the Dark Side." Unaware of the effect Atmananda was having beneath the surface world of my reason, I watched his demanding, doughy face and listened to his soothing, arresting voice. "But there is no reason for you to indulge in sadness. In times of great darkness, spiritual warriors band together and fight the Forces. This is their soul's work, and therefore their inner beings are extremely happy! Despite enormous odds, they fight for Truth and Light and, well, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but, let's just say that the warriors are in for some pleasant surprises in this and in future lives." I assumed he meant that they would accrue good karma. "And I would be willing to wager," he said, smiling warmly, "that they are in for a heck of a good time. "Until the warriors are close to attaining enlightenment, they will need a genuine spiritual teacher. They will need a teacher who turns out strong, free-thinking individuals, *not* spaced-out, dependent disciples. They will need a teacher who is fully or partially enlightened, and who has extensive experience in guiding souls to self-realization. They will also need a teacher who has the power to ward off hordes of Negative Forces." Atmananda reminded us that the powers from his past lives had been "cycling" through him and had been propelling him into basement samadhi and beyond. He said that he had been carefully monitoring his progress toward self-realization. He had not only asked the Infinite for advice, he assured us, but had been reading detailed accounts of the enlightenment process. No one asked to review his source material. He went on to describe the countless inner realms he had been slipping in and out of lately. The realms, he explained, were so deep and powerful that the man we had come to know as Atmananda had all but disappeared inside the clear light of the void. I was attempting to make sense of his claims, when he said that samadhi was incomprehensible to the human mind. Then he paused, slowly scanned the audience, and announced that he would be helping advanced, sincere seekers in their quest for enlightenment...on his *own*. "He's on a power trip!" I thought. "Maybe he's been planning this all along. Maybe he actually believes in it. In either case..." "You need to realize that I am doing this because it is what the Infinite wants me to do. It certainly wasn't my idea. You see, when you reach this stage in the enlightenment process, you completely surrender your will to the Infinite." "If that's true," I thought, "no problem. But..." "Please understand that I am not a guru. I am a teacher. How can you tell if someone is your teacher? By how you feel when you meditate with them. By their glow. By how they treat the people around them. By whether they practice what they preach. But you have to be careful out there. You have to ask yourself, 'Are they phony or are they genuine? Are they trying to take your money? Are they trying to sell you spiritual rhetoric laced with subtle, complex half-truths?'" "I agree," I thought, "we should watch out. But..." "You have to ask yourself, 'Does the teacher give individual counseling when necessary? Provide a community of advanced seekers? Transmit light inwardly? Teach several spiritual philosophies and disciplines? Point out traps along the Path? Ward off the Negative Forces?'" Atmananda inundated us with so many details that he appeared to be conducting a lesson, not a coup. "Another way to tell if someone is your teacher," Atmananda said, turning toward me, "is to see if you have studied with them in a previous life. Several of you have been with me before. Mark, for instance, has studied with me in Tibet, Japan, and India. He doesn't remember very well, but he will. You may have noticed how easy it is to see his aura." "He's just saying that!" I thought. Yet I had always felt a powerful affinity toward those countries. Several students cast their gaze at me. I felt a rush. I felt powerful. It felt good. Minutes later, Atmananda suddenly grew bitter. "Don't think that I don't know what some of you are thinking," he accused, as he aimed his eagle-like glare. "You realize, of course, who I *am*," he added haughtily. "Who are you really, Atmananda?" I wondered. I felt frenzied and dazed, as if a dark and powerful cyclone had swept Atmananda's train off its tracks -and me with it. I thought about the time Atmananda had narrated at a Centre meeting the tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes." He had likened himself to the story's truthful, outspoken child. "Is he like the child?" I now wondered. "Or is he really like the deceitful tailor?" Looking up, I chose to see him as my kind, warm-hearted friend. "There are a few of you," he said, "who are letting the Forces fill you with confusion and doubt. But overall, you are a fairly advanced group and should have no trouble perceiving what your inner beings already know." "He sounds like he believes in what he's saying," I thought. "Look, you can think about it all you want. But until you learn to *see*, believe me, you won't get very far." The Santa Barbara disciples suddenly stood up. "You folks are invited to stick around," Atmananda said. They stepped outside and closed the door. At around 9:30 p.m., Atmananda announced that those who sought to continue their studies with him should return to the Centre later that night. Then, pointing out that we were letting ourselves get fogged, he suggested that we meditate to clear things up. Many in the audience closed their eyes to meditate. "Open your eyes and look at me," Atmananda scolded. Despite my new credentials as an old mystical seer, I looked but could not *see* if Atmananda was an enlightened spiritual teacher who had found the way, or a charismatic megalomaniac who had lost it. But the thick fog of illusion, which prevented me from gaining insight into his true nature, might have partially cleared had I known what Atmananda told Tom only weeks before, during a meditation with Chinmoy in New York. "Have you noticed anything different about Guru?" Atmananda had asked him. "No," replied Tom, who had not yet joined Atmananda's west coast entourage. "Something heavy has been going down in the inner worlds," Atmananda said. "Call me in San Diego in late December, and I will fill you in." 10. Bicycle Ride -Utica One week into the cross-country bicycle trek, I stopped near the New York-Massachusetts border by a sign pointing to a campground. It was getting late. I wondered if I should save the money and sleep in the woods. I recalled Atmananda's penchant for lodging at exclusive, expensive hotels. I realized that I did not want to follow him. I also realized that I did not want to *not* follow him. I wanted to do what was right for me. I followed the sign. I stood at the campground entrance beneath a totem pole, whose carved faces reminded me of the Negative Forces. But I was no longer bound by Atmananda's interpretation of the world, I told myself. "Sweet dreams," I said to the faces and rolled past them. The next morning I crossed over the Hudson River into Albany and walked up the hill toward the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza. Endowed with intricately sculptured arches and columns, the majestic New York State capitol building contrasted with the modern structures across the street, which included four towers labeled in letters of gold. I sat by a reflecting pool where I watched wavering images of pennies at the bottom. I thought about my financial situation. I was doing okay. In Boston I had stopped paying Atmananda's ever-increasing tuition, moved from a studio apartment to a small room in a house, and commuted to my computer job each day by bicycle. I had managed to pay off one student loan and, after selling the car, to build a small buffer. Why, I now wondered as I tossed a penny in the pool, did I feel so bad? Because it was Atmananda, I suddenly realized, who had sent me to computer school. It was Atmananda who had bought me that car. I felt bad because I still considered myself to be in his debt. I needed to distinguish, I told myself, between the effects of his unsolicited gifts and the results of my own hard-earned efforts. Two days later, as I continued to travel, the cars whizzing by served as a constant, crushing reminder that towing a three-foot wide trailer down a country road at night was probably not such a good idea. But driven by the thought of staying with a friend in Utica, I continued despite the danger. The road gradually rose into thick, dark woods, and there were no houses in sight. To complicate matters, I was a devout believer in the excitement and mystery of a journey and carried no maps. I was completely lost. The road began following a winding river, and it became increasingly difficult to convince myself that a town or phone was just ahead. Exhausted, I stopped at the edge of a clearing and set up the bent, many-sided tent -another gift from Atmananda. I lay on my sleeping bag and listened to the river and to voices from the past. I could almost hear Atmananda talking, back in 1979, about the pending move from New York to southern California. "It's very important that the right people go," he had said to Rachel and me. We nodded. "I'm not sure about Dana and Connie," he confided. "But I'm sure I made the right decision about you two." Then he squinted and focused his gaze above our heads. "You realize, of course, who I am," he added haughtily. I was eighteen at the time and thought I already knew who he was: a devoted Chinmoy disciple, a respected English professor, and a kind, sensitive person. His remark had left me so confused and repulsed that I let it drop from my conscious mind. Now, as I listened to the gurgling river, I realized that Atmananda had made the same remark two years later, when he announced that Chinmoy had fallen. I realized, too, that there were other foreshadowings of his rise to power. There were the money and the "surprise gift" schemes. There was the basement samadhi announcement, which came during a debilitating thirteen-day fast. And there were numerous times he manipulated Chinmoy's disciples through the use of images, such as when he told me to picture my parents as "two red lobsters sporting bow ties." Why, I wondered, had I largely ignored these and other warnings? Part of the answer, I supposed, had to do with the masterful way in which Atmananda used words. Equipped with a seductively compelling voice, he built vast, virtual kingdoms which were subject to constantly changing, contradictory etiquette. One week, for instance, it was spiritually correct to save money for ourselves, to have sex with someone outside the Centre, to study with Chinmoy; the following week, it was not. It had been difficult to maintain a perspective. I sensed that another part of the answer had to do with me and my need to believe, but now, as memories and realizations grew too painful to touch, I let my thoughts swirl slowly downstream with the gurgles of the river. Soon I was asleep. That night, I woke to the noise of a racing engine and screeching brakes. "This is no dream," I thought. "This is real!" Two blinding lights sped straight toward me. "HEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" I screamed. Suddenly, the screeching and skidding stopped. My heart pounded. No more than ten feet away was a vehicle. It kicked into reverse, spun around, and disappeared into the night in a cacophonous squeal of metal, rubber, and asphalt. It was some time before the sound of rushing water lulled me back to sleep. The next morning, I woke to the sound of car doors slamming. From the tent I saw a family walking toward the river. They stepped past long skid marks. "Excuse me," I called out, "which way is it to Utica?" 11. Displaced "Aren't enlightened souls supposed to be more quiet?" I thought, recalling Atmananda's newfound access to a world without words. It was an hour or so after the coup. His voice crept through my bedroom door, interrupting my thoughts. I had been deliberating on whether I would attend the follow-up meeting, which was scheduled to begin within minutes. "Well," I thought, trying to ignore the relentless monologue, "he did claim only *partial* enlightenment." I read from the Castaneda poster on the wall of my room a quote about following a path with heart. "Does Atmananda's path have heart?" I wondered. "Is it even a path? What the hell is going on?" I turned toward the underexposed photo of Chinmoy still on my shrine. "What if Guru has not fallen?" I wondered, not wanting to be left bobbing in the stormy sea of ignorance. "But then again," I thought, reminded of Atmananda's uncanny ability to see, "what if he has?" I felt overwhelmed. I realized I needed time to think. I realized I needed guidance. I wanted to ask former Chinmoy disciples for advice, but did not want to subject them to spiritual doubts about Guru or Atmananda. I wanted to ask friends and teachers outside the group, but did not want to rely on people whom I supposed could not see. I even thought of asking my parents, but did not want to rely on two lobsters sporting bow ties. So I tried to assess the situation on my own. I recalled some of the good times I had had with Atmananda. I also recalled Atmananda admitting to me, months before, that he wanted some day to be a guru. I saw him as a genuine seeker on the path to Truth. I also saw him as a man whose ambitions I could not fathom. "I need to get away," I told myself. "I need to get a perspective. It's not that I don't trust Atmananda. It's just that..." KNOCK!!KNOCK!! I jumped up. Atmananda smiled as he opened my door. "Hi, kid. The meeting will start in a few minutes. Do you want to greet people -or should I find someone else?" Simultaneously soothed and disoriented by his voice and face, I felt reluctant to give up a position of authority. "I'll greet them," I said. Some of the fifty or so former Chinmoy disciples that I greeted seemed excited, but most, like me, seemed anxious and confused. Twenty minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin, I closed the door and sat with the group before a barren, Transcendental- less shrine. A nervous tension permeated the room. Atmananda strode in, sat down, and fiddled with his wristwatch. Then he looked up and quickly raised his hand to his mouth -as if he were surprised that he was not alone. A few people laughed. "There are four paths leading to enlightenment," Atmananda said. "Bhakti yoga, the way of love, is by far the easiest path because love is the strongest force in the universe." He had described the four paths many times before, and I began to feel slightly more at ease. It was particularly reassuring in his tumultuous world that love was still so important a quality. "Karma yoga, the path of selfless service, is perhaps the noblest of the paths if you can avoid feeling superior to those whom you serve. Mahatma Gandhi was a karma yogi, though he never actually attained enlightenment." "How can he be so sure?" I wondered. "Maybe Gandhi *had* attained enlightenment." I also wondered if Atmananda would end up serving himself rather than the Infinite. "Jnana yoga, the path of knowledge and wisdom, is the least traveled of the four paths. Jnana yogis face the difficult task of learning to discriminate between what is real and what is maya, or illusion." It was extremely difficult for me to face my friend and hero, and to discern whether his was a genuine path to the Infinite or an illusory path to himself. So I thought, instead, about jnana yoga master Sri Yukteswar, whose disciple, Paramahansa Yogananda, wrote the popular Autobiography of a Yogi. "Mysticism," Atmananda said, "is the path described in the Castaneda books. By living impeccably, the mystic accumulates personal power until she or he is capable of entering into the Other Worlds. Though mysticism is the fastest way to enlightenment, it is also the most dangerous. Mystics are often attacked and drained of their power by the Dark Magicians, and many end up becoming Dark Magicians themselves." Though enthralled by this path, I was bothered by Atmananda's insistence that a myriad of beings, human and otherwise, stood poised to destroy mystics who strayed from a constantly changing set of rules -that Atmananda happened to know all about. I was also bothered by Atmananda's seeming obsession with "Dark Magicians." "In past lives," Atmananda continued, "I have followed, mastered, and taught each of the four paths. You should understand that if you choose to continue your spiritual education with me, it will be your resistance to the Light -not my level of evolution -that is responsible for impeding your progress." "Where does he come off sounding so sure of himself?" I wondered, my doubts suddenly resurfacing. "I really need time to think about this." "For me, leading people to enlightenment is old hat. Each of you have been singled out to me through omens or through dreams. It was up to me to hook you, to essentially trick you into pursuing the long, arduous path to knowledge. Hooking takes place on an inner level and can not be explained with words. Tricking is necessary because people, left to their own devices, are inherently lazy and would avoid their higher destiny." Remembering how Don Juan hooked Castaneda, I figured that being hooked and tricked into a higher destiny was probably okay -as long as everything turned out all right. It was deeply ingrained in me to believe that things tended to turn out all right. "It is essential that you learn spiritual etiquette," Atmananda said. "Do not hang pictures of me. Do not worship me. Do not treat me like a guru. I am a teacher, a spiritual benefactor. You will have to fight your impulses to treat me as though I were more important than anyone else." I liked his term "spiritual benefactor." It seemed to encompass the spiritual worlds of the Guru and the mystical worlds of benefactor Don Juan. I also liked his claim that he sought no special attention. "Needless to say, you are free to leave at any time," he suddenly lashed out. "No one is asking you to stay -believe me, you are not doing anyone any favors!" It made me upset and confused when Atmananda flipped to his emerging, hostile personality. "But if it is the highest good that you seek," he said, returning to a gentler tongue, "you have come to the right place." I suppressed a yawn. He had been speaking awhile, and it was well past midnight. Exhausted, too, from the shock of Atmananda's sudden grab for power, I became mesmerized by the sound and the rhythm of the words. "You are caught up in trying to be someone you are not, and it is clearly not working. You are fighting yourselves for no apparent reason. Look, it's easy. You can stay the way you are and continue living someone else's dream, or you can come with me on a walk to nowhere. Leave aside your petty jealousies, your hates, your desires, your attachments, your fears, and enter the worlds where I hang out -worlds of pure joy, light, and bliss." Several minutes later, Atmananda announced it was time to meditate. I wanted to rub my eyes, yawn, and stretch out on the soft blue rug. Instead, I sat there spellbound, drifting in and out of a dreamless sleep. At one point, I woke and heard, "When you attain enlightenment, your selves dissolve in the clear light of the void. Maybe you exist, maybe you don't. It no longer matters." Then, as Atmananda rehashed the details of his own enlightenment, I dozed off again. After the meeting, I went to my room. "I need time to think," I reminded myself. As I drifted off to sleep, I could still hear my housemate talking. Of the original one hundred San Diego Chinmoy disciples, roughly ten formed their own Chinmoy Centre, forty set out on their own, and fifty followed Atmananda. While some aspects of Atmananda's program remained the same, others intensified. He repeatedly warned, for instance, that the Negative Forces would prey on those who did not meditate regularly, those who diluted their power with doubts about him, and those who did not regularly attend his meetings. He began holding "crucial" meetings each night to help us "combat the Forces." The meetings began at around seven-thirty p.m. and lasted at times until dawn. I attended each of Atmananda's meetings and, with only two or three hours of sleep per night, quickly grew fatigued. Once my boss at the UCSD Computer Center found me asleep with my upper body resting on a noisy, three-and-a-half-foot-high mainframe printer. Another time, Atmananda read to me a letter that he had sent to Chinmoy: "As you know, I have been entering into highly advanced states of consciousness lately..." Unable to concentrate, I suppressed a yawn and lapsed into a long, thoughtless pause. I was occasionally buoyed by the realization that I desperately needed rest, that I needed time to think, and that I needed to take a break from Atmananda's all-night meetings. But I was mostly slapped by waves of fear of Atmananda's Negative Forces, and pulled under by the weight of shifting etiquette, meta-rational rhetoric, and sleep deprivation. Roughly two weeks into the post-coup program, Atmananda began to publish WOOF! The Weekly Newsletter of Anahata. Having named his organization after the anahata chakra -the "psychic energy center of love" -he initially distributed WOOF! to the fifty Anahatans. Weeks later, after having renamed his organization "Church of Atlantis" (C.O.A.), Atmananda decided to distribute WOOF! The Voice of Southern California to tens of thousands of San Diegans. WOOF! provided work for Atmananda's devotees and helped bind the fledgling group. We illustrated, laid out, distributed, and laughed over each edition. We laughed, for instance, at Atmananda's fabricated advertisement about an imaginary bank (Issue #3; January, 1981): "Interloka Bank is pleased to announce the opening of a new branch in Mark's room. We will be giving away the first 500 customers as valuable gifts...We at Interloka are dedicated to serving you totally, and are proud to take you for all we can, whenever we can. We are the only authorized distributors of the GOLDEN GWIDcard...Interloka Bank -We Own You..." Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, the desire to believe in our friend and mentor, or the need for comic relief that blinded us to the grim foreshadowing of Atmananda's humor. I laughed the hardest at Atmananda's ads and columns in which he satirized televangelists, Indian gurus, the Moonies, and New Age healers (see Appendix A). I felt justified in laughing at other spiritual groups, partly because they seemed to merit it and partly because Atmananda said that they needed to be laughed at. He wrote in an editorial (Issue #6; March, 1981): "WOOF!, the all-natural and organic paper that millions use to line their bird cages, makes fun of it all. We act as a consumer's representative for you in the field of New Age consciousness. We feel that if what people have to offer is genuine then they won't mind us poking a little fun at them. And if they do mind -then maybe the products or services they offer deserve careful scrutiny, and we should re-evaluate the truthfulness of their claims..." In my naive, sleepless stupor, I accepted Atmananda's mission of poking fun at others, and did my best to train and coordinate the WOOF! distribution teams. Perhaps it was to dispel doubts about his own authenticity that Atmananda proceeded to poke fun at himself. Appearing beside his photograph was the following ad (Issue #6; March, 1981): "His High Holiness SWAMI UGULA UGLE From The Himalayan Institute For The Strange will be appearing in Del Mar on March 37th at 2 a.m. for the high himalayan karrmuppet hat dancing & tea ceremony. $$ Bring Lots Of Money $$ His high Holiness Swami Ugula Ugle is a direct lineal descendant of Llama Fred. He personally assisted in the baking of several LARGE rye breads at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. A devotee of Sri Ramana Maharshi and baseball, the Swami actually is a good guy. He doesn't claim to be any better than the rest of us. But he's happy. So maybe happiness can be learned? Come and find out...We may hit you for a few bucks - but we'll give you a good time...Lots of pomp and ceremony for you Western types who can't accept that enlightened souls can look and act like normal human beings..." I liked the ad. I saw no reason why enlightened souls should not look and act like normal human beings. I liked the way Atmananda poked fun at the pomp and ceremony which had distanced Chinmoy from many of his disciples. I also found Atmananda's deflated view of himself a relief. A number of Atmananda's advertisements, however, were of a more serious nature. In the first issue, for instance (January, 1981), he wrote: "1st WORKSHOP OF 1981...another exciting Castaneda experience at UCSD...inspired posterers -here's your chance!" In later issues, he repeatedly ran "The Experience of Luminosity" ad (Issue #6; March, 1981): "DR. FREDERICK LENZ is a spiritual Benefactor. Each month...he offers several free workshops to members of the San Diego community. At these workshops he provides solid information and techniques that will help you to gain inner peace and happiness. Dr. Lenz does this by discussing the most helpful aspects of Buddhism, Yoga, Vedanta, Zen, Taoism and the psychic and spiritual arts...During meditation, Dr. Lenz enters into Samadhi and directly channels Peace, Light, Power and Ecstasy to you...ADMISSION FREE..." At the top of this full-page ad appeared the words, "Paid advertisement" -as if WOOF! had been published by someone other than Dr. Frederick Lenz. Atmananda, who at times seemed as cautious as he was bold, told me to instruct WOOF! distribution volunteers to be highly inaccessible. I kept this in mind one Saturday afternoon as I approached a health food store with Marty, a shy, soft-spoken UCSD student with a sense of wonder in his eyes. Marty had been a disciple of Chinmoy for about a year. Raising the WOOF!'s to the counter, I said, "Could we leave these by the door? They're free!" "Sure," the manager replied and he took one. I placed my stack, and Marty, who had been lugging additional copies, placed his as well. We were almost out the door when the man said, "Say, who puts out this...WOOF!?" I was about to reply that we did not know, that we were only doing this for money, when Marty suddenly blurted, "What WOOF!?" And in a flash we were gone. When I told Atmananda this story, he seemed pleased with me. He was pleased with the large turn-outs at his public lectures, and he said I was doing an impeccable job overseeing the ten or so WOOF! and poster distribution volunteers. Perhaps it was in anticipation of unbridled expansion that, using doubt-diffusing humor, he wrote and published the "Cult Of The Gwid Spreads Throughout Rancho Bernardo" article (Issue #6; March, 1981): "In a seemingly unstoppable tide of fanatic cultism, proponents, adherents and admirers of the Gwid have firmly rooted themselves in Rancho Bernardo and are expanding at an alarming rate. The concerned people of Rancho Bernardo are helpless in the face of such determined behavior and many have resigned themselves to their fate and joined ranks with the lively followers of the Gwid...the Gwid reassured and won the hearts of the entire Rancho Bernardo community when he gave a public speech yesterday outlining his major beliefs and ideals. Excerpts follow: 'I do not wish to own your sons and daughters, merely to use them as a tax break. It is not the acquiring of wealth that interests me, but rather the actual possession of it. All else is useless to me unless it involves adventure, limber bodies, cunning and chocolate...In closing, I stand for freedom, a cheese in every hand, the dignity to live a free and happy life under my close supervision...'" As the month wore on, Atmananda often stopped by my room to perform what he called "reality checks." This involved chatting and meditating with me until my consciousness was "in a good place." He was probably concerned that, as a member of his inner circle, I might unduly influence his disciples. But I was too tired, too fearful of the Negative Forces, and too busy coordinating WOOF! and poster distribution teams to seriously reflect on or pose a threat to his self-anointed position of power. Occasionally, though, I did think about the change. But instead of confronting guilt from having abandoned Chinmoy, and instead of confronting doubts about Atmananda, I found it easier to laugh and laugh at spiritual groups and the absurd things that they did. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help@anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin@anon.penet.fi.