Article 8216 of alt.buddha.short.fat.guy: Path: news1.digex.net!news.intercon.com!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!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 20:27:47 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 428 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1g.delphi.com X-To: Charlie Rubin Message-ID: <032307Z15071994@anon.penet.fi> Path: news.delphi.com!news2.near.net!news.umass.edu!news.mtholyoke.edu!world!news.kei.com!eff!news.duke.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!news.eunet.fi!anon.penet.fi Newsgroups: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy From: an113729@anon.penet.fi X-Anonymously-To: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy Organization: Anonymous contact service Reply-To: an113729@anon.penet.fi Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 03:20:01 UTC Subject: Take Me For a Ride -- Epilog 1/3 Lines: 417 [Somehow his portion of _Take Me For a Ride_ didn't get posted with the rest of the book] This is 1/3 files contain the epilouge from the book "Take Me For A Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult" . The entire text of the book has been posted in newsgroup alt.buddha.short.fat.guy with full permission of the author. This is the true story of the author's seven year experience in the cult of the CPU Guru, Dr. Frederick P. Lenz, also known as "Rama" or "Zen Master Rama". This book is electronically distributed with full permission of the author. Please feel free to download and pass along to interested parties. Epilogue Hidden between UCSD and the Pacific Ocean were burial grounds, Rama said, that were sacred to Native Americans. Surfers on their way to Black's Beach passed through this land of cliffs and ravines. They pointed to a graceful, white mansion and said, "Heyyy, duuuude, that's Atkinson's place, duuuuuuuuude." Several properties south of the UCSD Chancellor's mansion lay a burned-out car abandoned on a charred foundation. The address seemed to be 951, but in my mind the missing tile was in place: 9514 La Jolla Farms Road, where Rama became "enlightened" and where I moved into darkness. It was 1988. I parked my Volkswagon Bus at a mall one-and-a-half miles east of campus and walked with Nunatak toward the sea. I had cut through the not-yet-bulldozed chaparral just east of Interstate-5 many times since returning to UCSD -a twenty-seven year old undergraduate -but now the sun was setting and the air seemed heavy. Suddenly, I had a sense of where I was going. During the past two years I had dealt with my Rama experiences intellectually. But you can only sit cooly, unmoved and protected on the cap-of-things-that-were for so long before the cap blows and sends you tumbling. There are many ways to grapple with the enormity of what lies beneath the surface world of reason. I approached 9514 La Jolla Farms Road. The last time I got near the place had been the year before, with a friend. "I lived there once with some radical people," I had told her. "One of them became...enlightened." "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked. "That's where Atkinson lives," I said, pointing away. Now, as the sun sank in the Pacific, I stood with Nuna on the edge of the property. I took a few steps forward but quickly stopped cold. I could almost hear Rama saying in his Kermit-the-Frog voice, "Make millions of people happy." I stepped to where my room used to be when suddenly, superimposed over blackened concrete slabs, images appeared. Rama was in the kitchen cooking for a hundred spiritual seekers. Rama was in the meditation room giving a talk beside a larger-than-life photo of an Indian guru. Rama was at the same spot giving a talk beside himself. Rama was in the garage surveying stacks of WOOF! Rama was offering me cookies to cheer me up because I doubted his enlightenment -my *friend's* enlightenment. Rama was hopping around the house like a kangaroo, and I was right beside him, and we were laughing like children, and at that moment, in the fading light, the cap blew and tears streamed down my face. * * * Over the next few years, I grappled with conflicting images of Rama. Sometimes I saw him as a friend. Other times I saw him as a semi-enlightened seeker or as a powerful sorcerer. But the more I researched his past, the more I discovered he was human. He was born Frederick P. Lenz III on February ninth, 1950, in Mercy Hospital, San Diego. He was raised Catholic in Connecticut where he lived, alternately, with his grandparents, aunt and uncle, and father. His parents divorced when he was a child. His father remarried, joined a yacht club, and, in 1974, was elected mayor of Stamford. In 1967 Fred graduated from Rippowam High School. The following description of him appears in the yearbook: "A streak of the unusual -chasing the beautiful, hiding from the known. Cut-rate philosopher -monopoly on the side..." At seventeen, Fred left the east coast and experienced the mushrooming of the psychedelic movement while living in San Francisco's Haight- Ashbury district. It was during the subsequent year, which he spent in prison for selling drugs, that he was handed a promotional brochure for Indian guru Chinmoy Kumar Ghose. Chinmoy, whose path was paved with "peace, light, and bliss," had several hundred followers worldwide, including rock musicians John "Mahavishnu" McLaughlin and Carlos "Devadip" Santana. Fascinated by Eastern philosophy and meditation techniques popularized in the late '60s, Fred returned to the east coast where he studied the art of quieting the mind with Chinmoy. He also studied English at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. While still an undergraduate, he married and divorced a Chinmoy disciple named Pam, built dulcimers in a wood shop in his basement, joined the university debating team, and began hosting free public lectures on meditation. Chinmoy, who often asked disciples to start "divine enterprises," asked this well-spoken, Phi Beta Kappa graduate to start a laundromat. When Fred chose instead to enroll in a Ph.D. program in English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Chinmoy kicked him out of the Centre for roughly one year in an apparent attempt to teach him obedience and humility. By the time I met Fred several years later, Chinmoy had dubbed him "Atmananda" or "Bliss-of-the-Soul," whereas the State University of New York at Stony Brook, after accepting his dissertation ("The Evolution of Matter and Spirit In The Poetry Of Theodore Roethke"), had bestowed upon him the title "Frederick Lenz, Ph.D." * * * Fundamental to my research on Rama were my discussions with former disciples, some of whom I tracked down, and some of whom I happened to meet at movie theatres, airports, and gatherings of Amnesty International. Talking and writing about my experiences helped me to work out much of the emotional pain. Listening to what others had gone through also helped a great deal. But as I listened, I realized that my darkest fear had come true. Rama had been getting progressively worse. In the fall of 1985, weeks after I left the Centre, Rama disbanded Lakshmi and encouraged roughly one hundred followers to move from Boston to Los Angeles. He directed these disciples to donate their time to his software company, Vishnu Systems. In 1986, Rama moved from Boston to Seattle with about eight men and three inner circle women: Laura, Cindy, and Anne. Once they arrived in Seattle, Rama informed the three women that he had asked them along specifically to satisfy his sexual appetite. He told them that they were to be his "Geisha's." By then, he explained, he needed to sleep with two or three women at a time; an individual, he maintained, had too little "energy" to stimulate him. He confessed to Anne that for most of his life something had been hurting him, keeping him down. He told her that during a recent trip to a family event, he saw that his aunt and uncle had been using their psychic powers all along to make him deathly ill and to try to kill him. He told her that I had been sending him a great deal of Negative Psychic Energy and that, in response, he had been sending me Entities so my life would be "miserable on a daily basis." Also in Seattle, Rama repeatedly administered LSD to the three women. During their hallucinogenic trips he kept them up all night, shouted at them, told them that they were possessed, and tried to get them to confess that they had incarnated on earth to destroy his mission. Then he threatened their lives. During one such episode described by Anne as "nightmare weekend," Rama fed them acid -five or so hits each -and showed them his new puppy. "This dog is possessed," he claimed, citing its frequent need to urinate, and its habit of whining when confined alone in the basement. Rama then fed the dog seven hits of LSD. "Look -it's still standing!" he said in an effort to substantiate his claim. Rama placed his hands around the puppy's neck and began to squeeze. Earlier he had claimed that the Evil Forces were trying to get to him through his pets. All of his pets, he complained, became demonically possessed. Now he continued to choke the puppy to the brink of death. Then he scowled at the three women and boasted that he had just used his *willpower* to stop himself from eliminating this "enemy." Through the sleepless night and following morning, Rama repeatedly told the women that the puppy's situation was remarkably similar to their own. He reminded them that they had better confess. "Barbara confessed!" Rama finally snapped. "Barbara has come clean! If you want to study with me in this or in any future lifetime, you had better come clean!" After Rama left the room, memories screamed across horror-fried synapses of Anne's acid-drenched brain: the puppy...he's strangling the puppy...can't breath...it's possessed -EVIL...like us... -EVIL... like us...five hits of acid...the room...the furniture...me...focus... the Forces...the puppy...he's strangling the..."Anne, I will send you to hell for thousands of lifetimes!"...can't breath..."What you will experience will make AIDS look like fun!"...he, he threatened to kill me..."Cindy, I have a special place for you in hell!"... -EVIL...li ke me..."Consider your future lives!"...the puppy..."Barbara confessed!"... like me..."Come clean!"... -EVIL..."Confess!"... When Rama returned to the room, the three young women confessed. Weeks later, when the women asked Rama about the health of the puppy, he replied that it had passed on to another world. "Do you know how I did it?" he whispered. "With my *will*." Months later, Rama announced to hundreds of followers: "No, friends, I am not paranoid. In fact, three students recently confessed to me that they had incarnated on earth to destroy my mission." Also in 1986, Rama wrote to followers: "A very close friend of mine, Jack Kukulan, died several weeks ago. I know Jack was a friend to many of you. We will miss him. Jack was the best part of all of us. His tremendous help and economic support of the spread of meditation has benefited many. Jack died a warrior's death." A squat man with dark, curly hair and a sardonic smile, Jack had applied to be a student shortly after Rama's 1982 Berkeley lecture series. He had allowed the Bay Area postering crew to use his house as a base of operation, and seemed willing to help his new spiritual teacher in any way that he could. When Rama closed the San Francisco Centre, Jack sold his house and moved to southern California, where he continued to run an Oakland-based fruit distribution company. Each week I stopped by Jack's Malibu apartment to pick up a crate of fruit for Rama, who lived down the block near Point Dume. Before I left, Jack slipped me a small, brown, paper bag. "That's for you," he said. "Thanks," I replied and I pulled out a plum. One time I asked him how he could run a company that was hundreds of miles away. "By making a lot of phone calls." Another time I invited him to see a movie. "Can't make it," he told me. "I need to take a client out to dinner." I nodded. "Big deal coming up?" "Yeah." Rama began spending time with Jack. In 1986, they went on a trip to Japan where, Rama told him, they had spent past lives together. Meanwhile, Jack had donated to Rama not only numerous crates of fruit, but well over one hundred thousand dollars. In fact, Rama announced at fund-raising dinners that the disciples were "off the hook" because Jack had donated yet another hundred thousand. On August 2nd, 1986, forty-year-old Jack Kukulan was found in his apartment, partially decomposed before the shrine. According to the police report, white powder was found on a nearby piece of paper and on the blade of a knife from the kitchen. According to the autopsy report, Jack died of "heroin/morphine intoxication." In August, 1986, Rama left Seattle. Four months later, he returned to Boston, where he reunited dozens of former followers. "You should forgive each other and start anew," he told them. Four months after that, he instructed them to call and invite other former followers to a "very important" meeting in Boston. Hundreds responded by flocking east from Los Angeles and from other areas of the country. At the meeting, Rama divided the congregation into the "NO," "YES," and "MAYBE" groups as a way to determine who could come back into his new, nameless Centre. He put the women who had been with him the longest in the "MAYBE" group. "They are the worst," Rama declared, explaining that they would be required to "pay off" their bad karma with checks ranging from $1200 to $2000 a month each. He then informed the "MAYBE" as well as the "YES" disciples that if they wanted to study with him in this or in any future lifetime, they should prepare to move to Silicon Valley. Several hundred disciples made the move and attended Rama's first gathering in Palo Alto, California. Anne and Rachel, followers since the Stony Brook days, drove west together from Boston and arrived a month later, in time for the second meeting. Rama asked them and seventeen other inner circle women to work at the second meeting. They would check attendance lists and sell his books and tapes, which they had done many times before. During the meeting, Rama warned the disciples in the audience to make a mental note of the nineteen women working that night. "*They* are witches," he explained. "*They* have been incarnating together since ancient Egypt. *They* have been trying to destroy my mission." He cited as evidence the times he had gotten sick, that some of his hair had fallen out, that past-life students had been kept from finding him, and that current students had been sapped of their energy. Briefly flipping to a less abusive persona, Rama announced that the nineteen women also happened to be his best students. "But," he said firmly, "they have been seduced by the dark side of the force...they seduce people...they band together in the demon world." Rama knew the women had recently left their homes, quit their jobs, and traveled three thousand miles to be with him. He knew their devotion ran deep. He then kicked them out before the entire Centre. "Rama?" started a woman disciple from the audience. "I recently dreamt that seven of the nineteen flew around me like witches." Rama nodded. "Recently," he said, "they have networked and conspired to murder Jack Kukulan." Several months later, Rama gave Karen a "Warrior's task." He told her to call and instruct each of the nineteen to attend a private meeting. The meeting was to be held hundreds of miles south of Palo Alto, in an obscure park in the mountains of Malibu. It was scheduled for December 5th, 1987 -the following night. They showed. Under the guise of helping them protect their careers, Rama warned the approximately thirty people -the nineteen women and about eleven other disciples -that newspaper articles targeting him in a negative light were in the offing. He spoke to them about the case of Annie Eastwood. A former follower, Ms. Eastwood reported that during one encounter, Rama had misled her spiritually, abused her psychologically, showed her a gun, and demanded that she have sex with him. Rama later told the press: "At no time during our evening together [with Annie] did I brandish a hand gun." But now, at the 1987 late night Malibu gathering, he admitted: "I did have a hand gun with me that night with Annie... but I did not wave it around." Later that night, Rama asked five or six people to walk back to the cars and wait in the parking lot. Anne and Rachel remained. Rama faced the remaining disciples, roughly half of whom had participated in one of his group LSD trips. "If anyone asks you about LSD," he said somberly, "you all *know* that I gave you a placebo." Then Rama, perhaps nervous about what I had observed in 1984 and 1985, told the disciples: "Mark was always a little young, a little naive, a little stupid...he thought that I actually *had* given him LSD...we all used to indulge him...we all knew that it was just that goofy Mark again..." Rama went on to say that one day they might have to explain "all this" to a judge and jury. But under *no* circumstance, he warned, should they speak to the press. Toward the end of the meeting, he told the nineteen that if they wanted to return to the Centre in this life, they must first hand in an essay -typed, double-spaced -in which they were to confess to and apologize for their hurtful, wicked deeds. After the meeting, Rama returned to his latest project: staging a national, six-month, six hundred and fifty thousand dollar "Zen" seminar promotional campaign. The effort included the placement of a two-page spread in the Sunday New York Times. One page was a photo of himself; the other advertised his free talk on Zen and success at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center (see Appendix D). The full-page spreads also appeared in the L.A. Times, L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Magazine, Vanity Fair, and in more than a dozen college campus newspapers across the country, including MIT, Harvard, Columbia, UCLA, UC San Diego, San Diego State, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara. Rama's aura of allegations came to light in the press in the midst of his national speaking tour: Newsweek, "Who Is This Rama? -The master of Zen and the Art of Publicity is now having some very serious problems", 2/1/88; The L.A. Weekly, "The Cosmic Seducer: How Frederick Lenz Got Rich, Built A Clientele And Seduced Women", 1/28/88, and "Rama Redux", 9/1/88; The San Francisco Chronicle, "Zen and now: The gospel according to guru 'Rama'", 11/8/87, and "Sex, Fear Broke Guru's Spell", 11/27/87; The San Diego Union, "YUPPIE GURU: Ex-Disciples Turn On 'Master'", 1/10/88; and New Age Journal, "The Rama Drama", 6/1/88. When articles began to appear, Rama cancelled several talks. When more appeared, he stopped giving public lectures altogether. In the spring of 1988, Rama had Karen call and instruct the nineteen to attend a middle-of-the-night meeting in the Mohave Desert, scheduled for the end of April. Rachel and Anne individually expressed doubts about whether they would attend. In the past, Rama had used the fear of Entities and of bad karma to discipline his disciples. Typically, he had explained that he would try to protect those who strayed from his path. But by now his role had dramatically changed. No longer the protector, he told disciples that if they disobeyed him, *he* would see to it that they had a car accident or that they came down with cancer. He had Karen warn Rachel and Anne that if they did not attend the meeting, they would come to "serious harm." They showed. At the Mohave Desert meeting, Rama announced that the nineteen could return to the Centre, move to Boston, teach yoga, and bring him new students. "Who does *not* want to come back?" he asked. Anne, Dana, and Rachel reached their hands into the desert sky. Afterwards, the devotees stopped at Denny's restaurant for coffee. The dissenters sat together. Rama approached. Anne mentioned that the brakes of her car were not functioning properly, and that she had had difficulty getting to the meeting. Rama took credit for the problem. He said: "Let that be a warning." Then he told the three women that they had better not send him any bad vibes. "One out of twenty women gets breast cancer," he told them. "Five out of twenty women could get breast cancer. Twenty out of twenty women could get breast cancer. Some women get cancer of the uterus..." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.