Article 8213 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 20:27:01 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 1031 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1g.delphi.com X-To: Charlie Rubin Message-ID: <181322Z11071994@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 18:06:34 UTC Subject: No subject Lines: 1020 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 15. The Enchanted Taco 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. 16. Ride To Heaven "I didn't do well enough to remember," wrote Donald Kohl in 1984. "Bye, Rama, see you next time." Months later, Donald's father called me. "Do you have a few minutes?" he asked. I knew that Rama would not want me to talk with Mr. Kohl. But I was shocked by the image of blood spurting from Donald's wrists. "I have time," I said. "I'm sorry about your son." Mr. Kohl asked about Rama and the organization. "I know what you're thinking," I said. "But Donald was not involved in a cult. We're not like that. Rama teaches us to accept or reject his recommendations based on our own perceptions. He teaches us that he's no more important than anyone else." I did not mention that Rama had distributed to each devotee a larger-than-life poster of his face. "Rama asks that we help cover the cost of room rentals and things like that. But we're in charge of our own money." I did not tell him that Rama actively sought gift money to supplement the skyrocketing "tuition." Nor did I tell him that Rama worshipped and had named the organization "Lakshmi," the Hindu goddess of beauty and prosperity. "Our goal is to teach people to meditate." I did not mention Rama's stated interest in finding students from his past lives, filling stadiums, and starting a world religion. Nor did I mention that Rama actively pursued these interests. He payed many thousands of dollars, for instance, for promotional photographs featuring a back-lit aura. He shifted his advertising copy and name to reflect a growing sentiment that gurus were out while Zen masters were in (he called himself "Zen Master Rama"). And he persuaded thousands in the two years since the Stelazine experiment that he was a living legend, a rare presence, and a direct line to God. "We normally meditate on our own for forty minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes at noon, and fifty minutes in the evening. Once a week we meditate with Rama at a Centre meeting. Sometimes we'll attend a public lecture or a field trip to the desert. Sometimes we'll help out on a project like office work or postering. But that's pretty much it. Basically, we're just a group of healthy individuals who happen to meditate. It's not like we live in an ashram or anything." I did not mention that Rama had been initiating disciples with names -Prema, Hanuman, Arjuna -taken from Hindu mythology. Nor did I mention that Rama had been teaching us to flip between various "caretaker personalities." He taught, for instance, that within the hostile environment of the "outside world" we should adopt the shrewd powerful personality of a warrior, whereas within the safe environment of a Centre meeting we should adopt the gentle, trusting personality of a child. Nor did I mention the details of Rama's spiritual etiquette, some of which he described in his tape, "Welcome To Lakshmi" (see Appendix B). "Rama teaches us a combination of spiritual paths like Taoism, mysticism, and Christianity." I did not describe what might happen at a typical Centre meeting. Rama, who usually arrived about forty minutes late, might begin with a discourse on the teachings of Lao Tzu, Castaneda's Don Juan, or Christ. Then, couching parables in modern terms, he might proclaim: "Short is the path of the fast lane on the freeway to enlightenment." Or he might say: "As the coyote tries to catch the road runner, so too tries the seeker to comprehend the life of a fully enlightened teacher through rational means." He might make the several hundred disciples laugh with: "Many are cold (called) but few are frozen (chosen)." He often lectured the men in the Centre that our untamed sexual energy had been stunting the spiritual growth of our sister disciples. He often lectured the women in the Centre that they needed to learn how to emotionally detach themselves from men. And he often lectured both sexes that he attracted very powerful souls, that we were way too powerful for our own good, and that we had been making him physically ill by relentlessly attacking him in the inner world. He lectured, too, about the inevitable eclipsing of the world's spiritual light, a process which seemed to be perpetually accelerating. "Haven't you been feeling it?" he asked. "Yes, Rama," came the inevitable response. "I feel it." Rama quoted Chaucer, Roethke, and Shakespeare. He also told a story (from The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury) about a Martian who, when approached by humans, transformed into the object of their desires. The Martian became a woman's dead son, for instance, until someone else walked by. "I am like the Martian," said Rama. "I am constantly being called upon to fulfill your desires." Rama might question disciples with a portable microphone, a la Phil Donahue. "Why don't you share what you saw tonight," he said, roaming the aisles. He seemed to enjoy interrupting us when our response was spiritually or grammatically incorrect. Then Rama sat in front of the auditorium, wiggling his toes and fielding questions, a la Chinmoy. "Rama?" a woman might begin. "Yes." "The men where I work are constantly sending me sexual energy. Each day I come home completely drained." "What do you do for a living?" "I'm a receptionist." "Why don't you study programming?" he suggested. "Software professionals tend to be less visible and, therefore, less prone to psychic attack." Rama often lectured on the nature of consciousness: "Consciousness, like a complex system of software, has thousands of levels of nested, self-accessing subroutines." He taught that the next step along the path to self-knowledge was to debug those subroutines hidden in our minds at an early age by our teachers and, in particular, by our parents. Rama lectured on the nature of words: "Words are inaccurate pointers to reality and should by no means be trusted." Logic, he said, was based on the shaky foundation of words and was of primary value to those who could not access Truth directly. Since he had transcended these limited tools, attempts to comprehend his actions on a rational basis were meaningless. In fact, those doubting his behavior through a framework of words and logic were merely reflecting their own mediocre level of awareness. Those who concluded that he was greedy were, therefore, guilty of greed themselves. I felt confident as I listened to Rama's words that I was learning new, valuable ways of understanding knowledge. Just as often, though, I felt confused by the belief that words had no fixed, real meaning. It was as if Rama were yanking the rug on which my descriptions of the world were centered. But then I recalled that confusion was an essential part of the process through which the Infinite dissolved our countless selves in the clear light of the void. "If you think you have it figured," Rama often pointed out, "you have what we refer to as an inflated ego." At one point during a typical Centre meeting, Rama frowned and said, "Okay, what's up?" No response. "Hello, friends. What's going on out there?" The silence and tension grew. "Let's talk!" It occurred to me that I did not like his tone. Suddenly, a hidden, mental "subroutine" activated, reminding me that those who questioned his methods were asked to leave the Centre. "Fess up!" he snapped. "Rama," started one disciple, "I don't know what it is, but..." "Of course you know. Look -you're fooling no one but yourselves. C'mon people -fess up!" "Rama, are we focusing on the l.o. [lower occult] again?" "What do you think?" "Yes, Rama." "Look, none of you realize what you are getting yourselves into. Once you open the door to the Negative Entities, it is nearly impossible to get rid of them." He read our expressions and paused, as if to assess the point at which to start building us up again. "Eternity is all around us at every moment," he said gently, "be absorbed. Nirvana is a world of unlimited ecstasy, be absorbed. Go see the new Schwartzenegger movie, be absorbed. You are doing much better lately, be absorbed. Don't forget that we will soon be meditating together on the golden beaches of Maui, be absorbed. Be proud that you are taking a stand against the Negative Forces, be absorbed. Don't be so hard on yourselves -give yourselves a break -be absorbed. Learn humility and you will learn the secret to happiness, be absorbed. A desert trip is coming up soon, be absorbed. Forget not that our mission is to spread light in the world, be absorbed. Our friends from past lives will soon be joining us, be absorbed." Rama asked that we sit up straight. He put on electronic music, slowly scanned the audience, and raised his hands above his head. Many of us gazed at him intensely. It didn't matter that those occupying the same room as him were, during meditation, supposed to evolve hundreds, even thousands of lifetimes. We still tried to absorb as much spiritual light as we could. Then, he might end with a quote from the teachings of Lao Tzu, Castaneda's Don Juan, or Christ. At the next Centre meeting, Rama might announce that everything had changed and that we were in an extremely poor state of consciousness. "At the weekly Centre meetings," I told Donald Kohl's father, "Rama teaches us to realize our full potential. He teaches us to love and respect life." I did not describe, however, Rama's fixation on death. "Someone in San Diego is trying to kill me," Rama once told devotees in a turret of the castle he was renting. "I am moving to Los Angeles. I suggest that you do the same." Another time Rama turned to me and said, "Do you realize that I can kill you at any moment?" "He's only joking," I thought. "No, really," he went on. "I am extremely strong and could kill you in an instant!" Repeatedly during the '80s and early '90s, Rama expressed a desire to take disciples for a ride in a Lear Jet into a snow-capped mountain, into the other worlds. "That would be a clean way to go," he said. One time after a beach meditation, Rama asked five or six disciples, "What do you see?" "I see red," said Sal. "I see blood, destruction, war, global apocalypse." "Very good," said Rama. Repeatedly during the '80s and early '90s, Rama slept with numerous women devotees, several of whom claim that he took no measures whatsoever to prevent the potential spread of AIDS. Also in the 80s, Rama encouraged followers to secure software contracts in ADA, a computer language used to control the United States' hardware of war. On the night before his thirty-fifth birthday, Rama invited thirty or so disciples to a party. He had been either ignoring or abusing many of us, so the invitation came as a welcome surprise. Unlike other recent events, there was an upbeat feel to the party. He had asked Anne, for instance, to spend time decorating the room with colorful balloons. "Maybe," a few of us thought, "things are going to get better." During the party, though, Rama demanded that a handful of us confess, one by one, before the other disciples, that the demons had succeeded in talking over our souls. "Anne is the worst," Rama proclaimed, lashing out at her. "She either looks like a witch or a whore." Then, in a seeming attempt to exorcise the demons, he told us to meet him the following day at the Los Angeles coroner's office. He wanted us to witness an autopsy. The next day I watched two men saw the skull of a "John Doe" hit-and-run victim. The saw whined. They peeled off the face. The air smelled acrid. My stomach felt bloated. "That could be me on the table," I thought. I wanted to retch. The pathologist measured the brain. I found myself thinking about life. Not in terms of Rama's increasingly fearful descriptions of the world, but in terms of my gut feelings. "Something happened," I wrote in a journal that I had recently started. "I felt it, a change inside me..." After the autopsy, I noticed the way I breathed. I noticed the way my blood pulsed through me. I slept more; I had been sleeping only five or six hours a night. I watched the way light played off ripples in a body of water. Rama had failed to appear at the coroner's that day. Until the next Centre meeting, his world seemed small. Mr. Kohl listened to my descriptions of Rama and of the organization. "Tell me, Mark," he said. "Does Rama pressure the disciples to be a certain way?" "Well, technically we're not really disciples. We're students. Think of the organization as being like a university. Sure, there's some pressure, if that's what you want to call it. But it doesn't come from Rama. It comes from each of us wanting to do well." I did not mention that Rama often threatened to spend less time with his disciples because we maintained an abysmal level of consciousness and because we bombarded him with Negative Occult Energy. "You should understand that I will still love you no matter what you do," Rama lectured. "But when you ignore my suggestions, when you succumb to the Forces, when you don't keep up with your tuition payments, you are setting yourselves up for a multi-lifetime pattern that will be extremely difficult to break. You are also letting down those we were sent here to help. Many of you don't seem to realize that you can easily be replaced. Believe me, there are plenty of seekers out there who would genuinely appreciate the opportunity that the Infinite is providing here." Nor did I mention to Mr. Kohl that Rama followed through with his threats of replacement. In 1984, for instance, he kicked out four hundred followers after looking at their photos and reading their recently submitted essays. The purge gave him greater control over the remaining four or five hundred, who now lived in constant fear of getting kicked out. As for the outcasts, many had developed psychological dependencies on Rama. They continued to write him letters, to appear regularly at public lectures, and to send him money. Because he maintained their names and addresses in a database, he could always swap them back in when the current batch burned out. Nor did I mention that, in response to the intensifying pressure, I had dropped out of UCSD a year before Donald, a sensitive, bright UCLA undergraduate, committed suicide. The longer I spoke with Mr. Kohl, the more I became aware of -and uneasy about -the discrepancy between what I knew and what I was willing to admit about my teacher and my organization. I felt particularly uneasy knowing that at one Centre meeting, Rama had promised to take closer devotees for a ride through the death worlds in a Porsche. After I hung up the phone, the uneasiness did not disappear. Though I did not openly entertain doubts about Rama, my ability to separate myself from his world, and to view myself as an individual, was suddenly infused with new life. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.