Article 8214 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 20:27:17 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 739 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1g.delphi.com X-To: Charlie Rubin Message-ID: <181335Z11071994@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 18:08:01 UTC Subject: No subject Lines: 728 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 17. On High "How would you like to get out of the spiritual rut you are in?" Rama asked me in the spring of 1984. "I would like that very much," I replied. I knew that there was something wrong with my life. For years I sought enlightenment, but was no longer happy. For years I sought the Spirit, but was no longer animated. For years I sought the Self, but was no longer me. I was ready to try anything, I told him. He offered to give me LSD. "I suggest that you take it," he said. "But you should only take it if it feels right." In the past he had used Chinmoy's line that hallucinogens damaged the subtle body. But the potential benefits, he now explained, outweighed the risk, provided that a fully enlightened teacher was around to supervise. "Don't worry," he added with a smile. "I am very familiar with the drug." I was startled by the offer. As a teenager, I had responded to similar solicitations with: "I'm high on life -drugs would just bring me down." But the buzz of youth had long disappeared, and I knew that the rut ran deep. Sensing, too, that three years before Rama had diffused my internal conflict with Stelazine, I wondered if LSD could quell my recently resurfacing doubts. There were other factors involved. Months before, Rama had asked Tom, the bass-guitar-playing disciple who had finally moved west, to compile a tape of songs from the late '60s. "I want to tap into the people who had been involved in the early consciousness movement," Rama explained. Subsequently, the list of musicians whose songs Rama played at Centre meetings and at public lectures -without regard for copyright law -grew from Tangerine Dream, Walter Carlos, Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis, and the Talking Heads, to now include the Beatles, Cat Stevens, Traffic, and Jimi Hendrix. Perhaps my decision regarding the LSD was affected by the music. Perhaps it was affected by my fascination with the drug scenes in the Castaneda books. Perhaps it was affected by my realization that, according to the dictates of Rama's etiquette, there were grave karmic consequences for those foolish enough to ignore his suggestions. I told him it felt right. Roughly one hundred fifty miles east of the beaches of Los Angeles, in Joshua Tree National Monument, was a rock climbing route called "Therapeutic Tyranny." Less than ten miles away, by the edge of a mountain, the five or six disciples probably did not see Rama handing me a tiny stamp. On it was a picture of Mickey Mouse dressed as a wizard, waving a wand. I was slightly apprehensive. LSD was supposed to be a powerful drug. "Chew it for a few minutes," Rama whispered. It was as bitter as he said it would be. I soon noticed the deep blue sky turn to bands of crimson and yellow and orange. I noticed the lights of Palm Springs twinkle like stars thousands of feet below. I noticed the mammoth peaks of Mount San Jacinto gradually fading away. So stark and surreal was the scene before me, that I had to remind myself that this was how the desert appeared at twilight ordinarily. "How do you feel, kid?" "Fine, Rama," I reported, enjoying the attention. "Nothing yet." About fifteen minutes later he gave me another stamp when I found myself noticing that I was noticing that I was noticing that I was that i was that i was that hey hey hey (hey) ((hey)) ((((hey)))) ((((((((hey)))))))) -* h e y * - - - - - - (it) ((it)) ((((it)))) ((((((((it)))))))) -* i t * - - - - - - (works) ((works)) ((((works)))) ((((((((works)))))))) -* w o r k s *- I gazed at the lights of Palm Springs. I did not blink. I did not breathe. I lost awareness that I was on a mountain. I lost awareness that I was tripping. I lost awareness that I existed. The points of light grew fuzzy and bright. Time touched the mountain world. I blinked. I inhaled. I turned from the light. "I am alive in this desert," I thought. Through the powerful, rose-colored lens of the initial rush, the thought magnified and blossomed into a stunning realization. I blinked again and exhaled. I turned and saw Rama and the disciples. I knew that I was *seeing* on a different level than they were. This made me happy. A large, silly grin took hold of my face. The joy gradually receded, but the facial muscles held. I knew the grin was out of sync. I laughed. I turned to some rocks. I grew serious. "The rocks," I realized, "are part of the Earth. The Earth is sacred." I did not realize, as I continued to astonish myself with my own profundity, that I had finally entered a world similar to the ones described in the Castaneda books. Suddenly Rama raised his arms and made a whistling sound. The disciples looked at him as if he were a god. I felt detached from the scene, as if I were observing myself observe the disciples observe the man acting like a sorcerer. Soon I detected a faint glow from the corner of my eye. I gazed at what I felt was an incredible source of power, beauty, and wisdom. It was the rocks. They were glowing. On the drive back to Malibu, Rama was perhaps experiencing flashbacks from the late '60s, because he "let me do my own thing." As a result, I rode with him in front, but focused on Cindy in back. Her flowing, blond hair and radiant face had made an impression on me long before she appeared on the cover of Rama's newspaper. I turned around often to smile at her. "Hey there!" I said at one point. Cindy looked slightly embarrassed. "Hey there!" she returned sheepishly. This is fun, I thought. For the first time in years, things were looking up. 18. Where's My Tribe? In the fall of 1984, Rama took twenty-eight disciples for a ride around the western United States. The purpose of the trip, he said, was to *see* which city we were supposed to move to. I was glad that he had invited me. I liked the idea of searching for a home. I loved to travel. And I looked forward to an exercise in *seeing*. "This is going to be fun," I thought. The trip began in a parking lot in southern Malibu. Rama raised his arms, made a whistling sound, and said, "The ocean is your friend. You do not know how long you have left in this world. You may never see the ocean again in this lifetime. You should say good-bye." It was a poignant moment for me. I loved the ocean. "Good-bye," I thought. Then Rama strode to his Turbo Carerra. It no longer bothered me that Rama owned two Porsches at a time when many disciples were struggling to meet the increasing tuition. If he got what he wanted, I figured, maybe he'd go easy on us during the scorching demon-and-brimstone monologues. Besides, at three a.m. in northern Malibu, he once took me over one hundred and twenty miles an hour. The acceleration had been breathtaking; the ride, smooth. The disciples now turned from the ocean to their cars. Anne, Dana, and I walked to our gifts from Rama -two Mazda RX-7's and a Honda Civic Wagon, respectively. Then we drove east by northeast into Los Angeles, the high desert, and southern Nevada. Rama had divided us into four groups, with three cars per group and two or three disciples per car. The groups caravanned separately, and we met two or three times a day, typically at a Denny's restaurant or at a Best Western motel. I rode with Alexander, a spare, devout UCSD recruit who had impressed the Centre with his ability to place second or third in a marathon. Perhaps from a lack of social self-esteem, Alexander never said much, but he spoke with me, and I enjoyed his company. The following day, Rama invited me and Alexander to ride in his group. It was at a rest area in southwestern Utah that Rama approached me and said, "You had better stop vibing Laura. I am fucking her." A UCSD recruit in her early twenties, Laura had large, dark eyes and ample social self-esteem. She spoke so fast that she often slurred her words. She was currently riding with Rama. "Sorry, Rama," I said, startled by his raw honesty. We pushed on to Denver and then to Boulder, where we stayed in a motel near the university. We assessed the city in terms of jobs, housing, computer courses, and mystical power spots. Two or three days later, Rama asked us to *see* if we should stay or move on to Boston. He seemed pleased that we voted to stay. Boulder, after all, was commuting distance to computer jobs in Denver; it had a respectable university; it was beautiful in the winter and cute the year round; it felt at least a mile high until several days later, when Rama accused us of destroying it with our powerful Negative Energy Field. "Pack your things," he ordered, and we cut a path south toward Albuquerque along the Rockies' edge. There was something about the open road and the blue Colorado sky that absolved us of our guilt from having decimated a city, because Alexander and I were anything but upset. The Beatles' White Album was playing Sexy Sadie, a song satirizing an Indian guru. I asked him if I could turn up the volume. "Sure." Soon he asked me the same. Before long, the music was blasting, and we were singing Helter Skelter at the top of our lungs: "WHEN I GET TO THE BOTTOM I GO BACK TO THE TOP OF THE SLIDE, AND I STOP AND I TURN AND I GO FOR A..." Several nights later, near Tucson, Arizona, the disciples looked out from a hill at the lights of the city below. "This is a real moment of power," said Rama. "It is essential that each of you speak with power and with respect for the spirit of the land." I typically spoke very briefly at such a gathering unless I knew in advance what Rama wanted to hear. But now I went on and on about how in Tucson there was a healthy balance between people and nature, and about how if we moved here, we would heal. When I was done, Rama took me aside and said, "Kid -you're going to be all right." But Tucson was not the right city, he later announced, so we continued the drive west. In a motel just east of San Diego, Rama left us one evening to conduct a Centre meeting in Beverly Hills. When he returned, he berated us for not working together and for not even *trying* to maintain a decent level of consciousness in his absence. "You are acting like a hoard of angry sorcerers," he snapped, borrowing a phrase from a Castaneda book. But he was wrong. Paul, Karen, and I had stayed up late that night trying to come up with a catchy name for his proposed software company. Furthermore, we had meditated together, we had maintained something of a meditative consciousness, and we had tried to *see* which city we were supposed to move to. In the past when Rama contradicted the facts, I had assumed that he was right while my *seeing* was wrong. But riding across America's west was making me feel big. And memories of traveling rogues from Jack Kerouac's On The Road, which I had read and reread in high school, was making me feel good and rebellious. And Tom Wolfe's experimentally:::::punctuated, day-glowingly huemorous, sa-tir- ically lyr-i-cal The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which Rama had recently assigned, was making me want to view the world through the sharp, detached eye of the narrator. "Maybe Rama really can't *see* all that well," I suddenly thought. "Maybe he's making it up as he goes along." The following day, Rama asked the group to *see* if we should stay in San Diego, return to Boulder, or move to Boston. When our vote was split, mostly between Boulder and Boston, he gave the word to move on. So we drove around again to Los Angeles, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, where, by the intersection of Interstate-70 and Route 82, he announced that we had arrived at a crossroad: we could continue the search for a home, or we could take a side trip to a posh resort in nearby Aspen. By now the disciples had been out of work for nearly a month, and a few of us were running low on money. The majority voted to continue the search. He led us instead to Aspen. I told Rama that I felt uncomfortable having him pay my way. "Look," he retorted, "it's my experiment." "Does that make us your guinea pigs?" I wondered. Later that week, in front of a handful of disciples, Rama harshly accused me of indulging like a child, of attacking him in the inner world, and of ruining the experience for the others. Then he issued a compassionate smile. "Don't take it so personally, kid," he said pleasantly. "Your consciousness got stuck, so I fixed it." Then he swaggered away with the confidence of a heavyweight champion. Rather than accepting the abuse as I had done in the past, I found myself thinking about The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I thought about how main character Ken Kesey convinced himself during a drug experience that he could access god-like powers. Kesey, writes Wolfe, was able to step back and realize that he was only hallucinating. Rama, who often claimed that he took so much LSD in the '60s that he never came down, also convinced himself that he could access god-like powers. But Rama went further than Kesey. Rama professed to be an actual incarnation of a god. Rama professed that a few dozen disciples were causing extensive, invisible damage to a metropolitan area. "Maybe Rama has been hallucinating since 1969," I thought. "Maybe, unlike Kesey, he can't step back and get a perspective." During the drive from Aspen to Boulder, I also realized that Kesey never charged "tuition," never tricked followers into buying lavish gifts for himself, and never claimed to be the anti-Christ. Kesey drove around America with his community in an old school bus. Rama led us separately in cars. Kesey brought diverse groups of people together. Rama made a special effort to keep friends, lovers, and families apart. Yet despite their differences, I sensed that Rama had been shaped in his youth by Kesey's pioneering experiments with Eastern culture and Western counter-culture, consciousness and drugs, expression and art, and freedom and control. I wondered if Rama, by assigning the book, had been trying to reach out vicariously to his past and to an influential leader of his generation. When we arrived in Boulder, Rama seemed to flip between supportive and abusive personas more rapidly. One moment, he was calm and kind; the next, he was ranting about how the Negative Forces, which had been co-inhabiting our bodies, were causing his hair to fall out and affecting the health of Vayu, his advance-souled Scottish terrier; then, flipping again to the other extreme, he encouraged us to move to a new condominium just outside of Boulder where "we could all live close to one another." No one reminded him that only weeks before, we had left the city in psychic shambles. The dream of living and working together -of community -lingered on, and Rama had us fill out rental applications. When he found out that I had signed up for a less expensive condo unit, he gently chided me. "You just don't get it, Mark. That's your old self trying to reassert itself. You need to have more space. You need to live in a clean, healthy environment." I tried to explain to him that I needed money for Centre expenses and also for food. "Don't worry, kid," he said. "I'll subsidize you. I want you to be happy." So I switched to the most expensive unit and I was happy, and the other disciples seemed happy, and Rama seemed happy. Boulder, after all, felt at least a mile high until a few days later, when Rama shouted at us for having once again destroyed the dream, the Light, and the city. "This is crazy," I thought. After the meeting, I went for a walk. I thought about how, earlier in the trip, Cathy had approached me and said, "This may sound funny, but is Rama...*okay*?" "What do you mean?" I had replied. "He's...well...it's just that something doesn't feel right." "Rama is fine," I told her. "He just *sees* on a different level than we do." But now, as I strayed from the condo grounds, I wondered if Cathy had been on to something. I thought about how the other disciples had seemed pensive lately, as if they too shared her concern. I thought about how, during the trip, Rama seemed to be flipping out of control. "Maybe Rama is not okay," I thought. Meanwhile, my readings and reflections on Kesey had located Rama within a cultural context which, like the knowledge that the Wizard of Oz was a man behind a curtain, largely deflated his projected images and metaphors. This enabled me to question elements of his world without fear of reprisal. I questioned the Negative Forces. The Forces, I realized, had never affected me before I met Rama. Furthermore, they seemed to disappear as soon as I stopped thinking about them. "Maybe the Forces only exist in my mind," I thought. "Maybe they are a part of Rama's trip -Rama's experiment." I questioned Rama's claim that I was mentally ill and that I could hardly deal with the real world. I recalled my success as an undergraduate at a competitive university, as a computer operator and programmer, and as Rama's distribution coordinator. I recalled his claim that nearly *everyone* on the planet was mentally ill. "Maybe Rama isn't qualified to diagnose mental illness," I thought. "Maybe playing doctor is his way to control people." At one point during the walk, I wondered what the consequences were for doubting the "Last Incarnation of Vishnu." But Rama had encouraged us, in the early years, to question him and to think for ourselves. "Besides," I thought, "I haven't burst into flames yet." So I went right on remembering, questioning, and thinking. I thought about The Razor's Edge, a movie about one man's attempt to walk the narrow path between the spiritual and the mundane. What struck me about the film was that the man does not have a guru. Life is his teacher. I recalled the hour-long conversation I had had with Donald Kohl's father, and suddenly the dam burst open and a flood of suppressed memories washed over me. I pictured Rama shouting "Fess up!"; announcing his name change; telling me to swallow the Stelazine; bursting into my room on the night that I wanted to leave... I walked briskly back to the condo and knocked on Rama's door. "Things don't feel right," I told him. "I think I need to take some time off." "You have to do what is right for you," he replied. I wanted to make a clean break. I still had a few hundred dollars. I told him that I wanted to give him back the car. He frowned. "Your desire to return the gift," he said, "is proof that you are mentally ill and that you can not function in the real world." I did not want to stand around and argue. "Okay, Rama," I said and left. I felt primed for action. I was not scared. I felt sure I was doing the right thing. I said good-bye to the disciples, packed, and started to back out of the lot, when I saw Laura in the rearview mirror, signaling me to wait. "Rama wants to see you!" she exclaimed. My impulse was to press the accelerator. After all, he might try and get me to stay, as he did years before in La Jolla. But I felt that I had come a long way since 1981. I felt confident that I could handle myself. Besides, I was curious. I let Laura lead me to him. Rama, Anne, and a few others were in the room. They looked somber. Rama had us stand in a circle and hold hands. He told us we were a tribe. It felt odd, holding hands. It wasn't the sort of thing he'd normally have us do. After a brief meditation, he took me to another room and gave me a long hug. I drove away feeling sad. For the next few days I rode east, driven by childhood memories of New England, and by the notion that I had *seen* Boston as the target city. In Nebraska and Iowa, I felt good about my decision to leave. But I had developed no system with which to support my new interpretation of the world, and the decision seemed more distant with each passing state. I had devised no language of rebellion, forged no icons of discontent, and, on a more practical level, had no sense of what I wanted to do or whom I wanted to be. I had met Rama when I was seventeen. Now I was twenty-four. I had never experienced successes or failures from following a path of my own design. I had been deprived of this ritual of passage into adulthood. I had come of age in a destructive cult. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was packed away somewhere in the back. I arrived in Massachusetts feeling frightened and confused. I felt drawn to southern New Hampshire where, eight years before, I had worked one summer on a farm. I found Rico, a younger friend from the farm days who was now a senior in high school. I had not seen him in years. I wanted to tell him about Rama and the organization but did not know where to start. "There are bad people out there, Rico," I told him. "You have to be careful. Whatever happens, always follow your heart." I drove away, Rico later recalled, with a frightened look on my face. I called my parents in New York and asked them if they wanted to see me. They flew to Boston, and we went to a restaurant near Gloucester, Massachusetts. I felt happy to see them but could not share the burden of my new found freedom. Days later I sat in traffic in the suburbs of Boston. I felt completely alone. I missed the disciples. It was true that we had fallen for Rama's line about stealing one another's power. It was true that we had allowed Rama to foster, through ongoing whispering campaigns, a climate of fear and competition. But I didn't care. The disciples spoke the same language as I. They were my friends. I missed Robert, a UCLA graduate who, in 1982, was drawn to a lecture on the works of Carlos Castaneda. Months after joining the Los Angeles Centre, he was approached one night in Pacific Palisades by two white men. Robert was black. The men were angry that his girlfriend was white. They each pulled out a gun and took aim. They said: "Get out of the car." Robert was concerned that they would rape and kill his girlfriend. He made a quick decision. He slammed down hard on the accelerator. When the bullet entered his head, he kept driving. He passed familiar streets. He had grown up in Los Angeles. Blood streamed down his face. He drove to a hospital where, in the weeks that followed, he did miraculously well. The experience cemented his devotion to Rama, who took credit for the recovery. I missed the Stony Brook disciples. I missed Paul, the computer wizard with the silly grin. Sal, another computer genius, had taken to heart Rama's caveat that disciples were stealing his power. But beneath his fears was a gentle, humorous soul, and I missed him. I missed Rachel, the doctor, who had continued to support the Centre financially, and who had apparently forgotten about the "Garage Door Opener Incident." Dana, the former model and occupational therapy student, often grew icy with the power that Rama gave her over other disciples. But I knew that as Rama's office manager, hers was a particularly trying position (she typically slept three or four hours a night), and I missed her. I missed Anne, the nurse, who had known Rama the longest, and who was also under intense pressure to perform. Once I overheard Rama advising Anne to accept her "true" cold and callous nature. Despite his remark, she mostly lived up to her spiritual name, Prema, which symbolized a higher form of love. I missed the disciples whom Rama had dubbed "assholes of the mountains." I missed UCSD recruits Doug and Eric, whose adventuresome spirit and love of the outdoors was evident in their winter assaults on 12,000 foot peaks. And I missed Mike. Tall, with thick red hair, Mike looked, ate, and at times acted like a wild Viking. In reality, he was a wild UCSD medical student. Once he told me that he occasionally slept in his Volkswagon bus in campus parking lots. "You really do that?" I asked. "Yeah. The cops don't like it, though." "What do they do?" "They shake the van and try to get me to come out." "Do you?" "Nah. I usually go back to sleep." Perhaps Mike's unique way of doing things, as well as the pride with which he questioned authority, contributed to his standing in the Centre as a less-than-model disciple. "I'm glad that you are friendly with Mike," Rama once told me. "But you should understand that he's not really into our program. I can see that he's in it for himself." I missed Tom, the bass-guitar-playing disciple from Stony Brook whom Rama had put in charge of security. (Rama, based on fears that his psychic vision excluded those who wanted to shoot him, had assembled a team of volunteer disciples and professional security guards.) Tom, one of Rama's closest disciples, was the first high- profile follower to leave the Centre. He left largely as a result of the "Omelet Incident." The "Incident" occurred in Rama's kitchen in Malibu. Rama sat with Tom and Fran, a tall, young UCSD recruit with a long, powerful stride and a glint of the wild in her eye. Rama liked to say that Fran had spent past lives in Africa as a hunter, and that she was one of two disciples with the potential of attaining enlightenment in this life (I was the other). At around 2:30 a.m., Rama asked Fran to cook him an omelet. Perhaps she was tired from having accompanied Rama and Tom that night to the San Francisco Centre meeting. She burned the eggs. "You are in a lousy consciousness," Rama accused her, stewing over the omelet. "Your level of spirituality has been plummeting!" Then he continued to lambast her. Tom was struck by the contrast between Rama's lofty language onstage and his crass behavior at home. After mulling over the double standard for several days, he sent Rama a note that he was leaving the Centre. Rama called him and shouted at him for roughly twenty minutes. Rama told him that he was a low life and that he was blowing it for future lives. Despite Rama's warning, Tom left his apartment and prepared to move back to the east coast. A day or two later, Dana told me that Rama wanted me to track Tom down and have him call the Centre. When I succeeded at my "Warrior's task," Tom spoke with a very different Rama. "Don't worry about all the negative karma," Rama assured him. "I'll absorb it for you." Rama also told him that he was not really leaving so much as he was being kicked out. But I did not yet know the details of Tom's sudden departure as I sat in rush hour traffic in Concord, Massachusetts, feeling dejected and lonely. I missed Fran. I missed Kate and Pat, each of whom I had gone out with. I missed Ed, a quick witted UCSD recruit with a passion for mysticism and Jimi Hendrix music. We had studied together at a computer school in Los Angeles and, back in 1982, we had bicycled from San Luis Obispo to Monterey, California. I missed Alexander and Marty and Elizabeth and Carl and Karen and Jeff and... I missed my brother. Dan had already left Chinmoy to join Rama's Centre in San Diego. But the closeness we once shared was buried by too many months and too many miles, by unspoken resentments on his part, and by a lust for power within Rama's organization on mine. Ultimately, though, it was the acquired belief that "the past is dust" that kept us from searching and sifting through finer elements of memories' shifting sands. In 1983, my brother nearly left the Centre. He had been hanging out with Bill, a burly, bearded, freedom-loving forest ranger who decided that Rama was taking advantage of women disciples or, to put it in his words, Rama was "dipping into the company ink." My brother, too, decided that Rama was out of line, and the two of them were planning to leave. When Rama found out, he summoned me to his house. "Your brother is about to blow it in a big way," he told me. "This is your big chance to help him. Get him to call me." I did, and Rama persuaded him to stay. I missed my friends and my brother and now, as I roamed the streets of Concord, I wondered if I would ever see them again. I thought about contacting pre-Rama friends but I feared that we shared little in common. Besides, I had treated several of them as if they were spiritually unrefined, and now it felt awkward to ask for their support. Later that day, on my way to Walden Pond, I saw a man in his seventies walking slowly toward me. "It's an omen of death," I thought nervously. Quickly turning back toward the car, I saw a brief flash of light -a reflection from something I could not see. "It's the Forces!" I told myself and slipped down a fearful stretch of imagination back toward a nightmarish state of mind. Rama's Forces were back. I got in the car and locked the door. I was scared. I meditated a few minutes. I asked the Infinite for protection. I drove around awhile. I had no destination. I recalled something Rama used to say about reflections. "I am like a perfect mirror. If you ever perceive me in a negative light, you are seeing nothing more than a reflection." I pulled into a parking lot of a motel. I found myself looking for cars from Rama's tour group. I found myself wondering where the disciples -my friends -were and what they were doing. For years we had been close, like a tribe. Suddenly I had an inspiration: set out across America and rejoin my tribe! And how my spirit soared! And through the sleepless days and nights, I searched Howard Johnson's, Best Western, and Denny's parking lots across America for a black Turbo Carerra. I had not forgotten the problems with Rama. But I remembered him telling me that through the good times and bad, we would always be family. "And what family doesn't have problems?" I asked myself. I drove south to Stony Brook but did not find the group, so in New York City I paid a surprise visit to Tom. When I told him about my quest to find my tribe, he seemed to understand what I was going through. But he had left the Centre roughly nine months before and had no interest in returning. That night I saw for the second time The Razor's Edge. "Maybe I can rejoin the group and be independent at the same time," I told myself as I began the drive west. Days later, in San Diego, I was showering at the UCSD gym, when I asked a guy if I could use some of his shampoo. "Sure, Mark, take as much as you want," was the reply. Wiping the soap from my eyes, I recognized Gary, a disciple who had left Rama years ago. I was glad to see him. We decided to go for a hike on Palomar Mountain. I told him during the ride that I had lost my tribe. He gave me an understanding smile. "I hear they have moved to Laguna Beach." "No kidding!" I said. "Would you like to go there instead of to Palomar?" In less than two hours we sat eating cheesecake in Laguna Beach. Suddenly I saw Paul drive by. "They're here!" I exclaimed and chased the car down Pacific Coast Highway. But I soon lost sight of my old friend from Stony Brook. I walked back, polished off the cheesecake, and drove Gary back to San Diego. The next day I returned to Laguna Beach. I decided to wait by a twenty-four hour banking machine, an appropriate place it seemed to stalk members of Rama's tribe. Alexander and Marty soon appeared searching for cash. I was jubilant to see them. They were wary of me. After a few minutes, though, they seemed to forget that I was taboo (Rama had put me down at one of the Centre meetings). They told me when and where the meetings were being held. They did not tell me what had happened after I left them in Boulder. The twenty-eight had continued their journey east to Lincoln, Nebraska, where Rama declared that they should move to whichever cities they as individuals *saw*. But when it looked like the group was going to splinter, Rama changed his mind and instructed them all to move to Laguna Beach, California. The next week I drove to the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. I asked Al, who was now in charge of security, to ask Rama if I could rejoin the Centre. I shuffled about nervously. "It may not be perfect," I told myself. "But at least it's where I belong." Al returned after a few minutes. "Rama said 'okay.'" "Did he say anything else?" I asked, greatly relieved. "Yes," Al replied. "Rama said that it's a tough world out there." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.