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WIRED 2.01
Electrosphere
*************

The Code Cult of the CPU Guru
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In the search for the enlightened teacher, sometimes the only path is
through voice mail.

By Zachary Margulis

                          * * *
Undo! (From Rants & Raves, Issue 2.04) Clarification: This story is
mostly about Dr. Frederick P. Lenz III. It mentions Christine Comaford
and her company, Corporate Computing. Ms. Comaford is a respected
computer consultant and columnist for PC WEEK. The article did not
state, and should not be read to imply, that information reported
about other persons applies to Ms. Comaford or her company.
                          * * *

When a television crew recently interviewed Christine Comaford, president
of Corporate Computing, a Chicago-based consulting firm, they did not tell
her what they wanted. Comaford is a regular columnist for PC Week and a
pundit on Microsoft's role in the computer software industry. She is also
a "student" of Dr. Frederick P. Lenz III, a mysterious and alleged cult
leader who convinces followers like Comaford to work in computers, live by
his strict rules, and worship him as a god. The interviewer began by
asking Comaford general questions about computers. When he changed the
subject to Dr. Lenz, the real purpose of the interview, she became
hysterical and asked them to leave.

"They totally misrepresented themselves, and they'll be hearing from my
attorney," she said when I asked her about the confrontation. Like most
curious journalists, they did hear from Lenz's lawyers, but nothing came
of it.

Years ago, in 1980, Comaford was a popular, attractive undergraduate
struggling with the decision to join Lenz's fledgling flock, according to
people who knew her then. (When I asked for her side, she hung up shortly
after telling me about the lawyer, with this warning: "You wouldn't want
that to happen to you.") Christie knew that becoming Lenz's student would
mean leaving behind her friends at the University of California and
starting a new life - a central, oft-repeated tenet of the group is that
members must be "inaccessible" to outsiders. But her sister, Kay, was
already a "student" of the charismatic Dr. Lenz, a rising star in Southern
California's New Age scene, and Christie was so taken with Lenz that she
decided to drop her friends, avoid her family, and become a central member
of his growing following. One former Lenz student remembers her crying
over the decision, but she stayed with Lenz, allowing him to separate her
from her family and push her into computers.


Lenz gets smart people to do stupid things.

According to published reports, he manipulates a couple hundred people
into giving him millions of dollars a year (The Hartford Courant reckons
the figure at "more than US$5 million") so that he can live like an oil
sheik while they struggle to get by. The money comes from the students'
work as computer consultants and, detractors say, massive frauds often
committed by those students, who routinely misrepresent their credentials
and let projects fall apart. Preaching enlightenment through computer
science, Lenz's organization offers a series of classes in database
management and computer systems, but then pushes neophyte programmers to
misrepresent themselves in order to obtain lucrative computer consulting
contracts - and turn most of the proceeds over to him.

"It's like rape," for people fooled by the scheme, says Wendy Vandamme,
who publishes a newsletter for computer consultants in the New York area.
"This used to be treated as a religion story, but it has become a business
fraud story."

By playing on businesspeople's ignorance of new technology, Lenz amasses
huge amounts of money, much as he plays on young people's confusion and
questions about life to attract their devotion. He lures the young and the
vulnerable into his flock, but he also succeeds brilliantly with
physicians and millionaires. His message holds fast some 200 often
brilliant misfits - talented, privileged seekers looking for all the
answers to the mysteries of life and finding them in him. He controls
virtually every facet of their lives, but he roams as freely as anyone on
earth. He often charges his disciples thousands of dollars a month for
meetings and activities. According to ex-followers who slept with him,
Lenz has sex with many of the female students, who later feel violated and
coerced. Others suffer a worse fate: Several have been driven to suicide,
lost their minds, or disappeared mysteriously, without a trace.

Through lawyers and spokespersons, Lenz has repeatedly denied all
wrongdoing, but at the same time has secluded himself whenever details are
sought. Instead of responding to the charges, current Lenz followers sent
me a thick notebook of affidavits detailing the personal lives of the
people making them and alleging their mental instability. Lenz initially
agreed to be interviewed for this story, then, through his lawyers,
abruptly canceled.

Since 1980, the so-called Yuppie Guru has sent disciples wherever
good-paying computer jobs can be found: Seattle, San Francisco, Baltimore,
Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, Hartford, and other cities. The size of
his flock has oscillated between a couple of hundred and perhaps a
thousand followers. Now, after a year of intensive, nationwide recruiting
that ended last May, Lenz's younger students have begun to settle in New
York while his senior followers, including Comaford, have descended upon
Chicago.


Lenz, who calls himself Rama, first appeared in 1531 in Japan, where he
was a Zen master, according to a published resume. He claims to have lived
four lives - in India, Tibet, and Japan - between then and his current
incarnation, which began in the holy land of San Diego in the year 1950.
His family moved to Stamford, Connecticut, where Lenz grew up and where
his father served as mayor from 1973 to 1975. Shortly after earning his
doctorate in English from the State University of New York, Stonybrook,
Dr. Lenz moved back to San Diego in 1979 to open a center devoted to his
then-guru, Sri Chinmoy, a well-known Indian musician, athlete, and teacher
based in Jamaica, Queens.

The move to San Diego, according to Mark Laxer, the first member of Lenz's
early inner circle to discuss his experiences publicly, was actually the
beginning of a schism between Lenz - who then called himself Atmananda -
and Chinmoy, known simply as "Guru." The charismatic Atmananda was
Chinmoy's best recruiter; within a few years, his lectures would draw
thousands to the southern California auditoriums where he performed
miracles. Even skeptics witnessed levitation, shimmering mirages, and
golden light flowing from behind the head of Atmananda, who would soon
declare himself an avatar, an incarnation of Vishnu, "the Cosmic
Preserver."

Unhappily, young Dr. Lenz was as wayward as he was brilliant. Guru taught
chastity, but Atmananda slept with many women; Chinmoy taught peace, but
Atmananda loved violent movies and often took disciples to see them. Guru
taught humility, but more and more, Atmananda hinted that he was something
more than human, that he was an avatar, a fully enlightened teacher, a God
on Earth. And, more and more, the followers believed him.

By the end of 1980, the relationship between Guru and Atmananda had
deteriorated, according to former students. The younger teacher called for
senior members of his following - including Comaford - to fast on nothing
but fruit juice for thirteen days. He kept them up late for spiritual
sessions. The intended effect was achieved: Dazed and confused from hunger
and exhaustion, the disciples felt an even stronger loyalty to their
teacher. They would need it in the face of what came next.

One night in late December, Atmananda called his flock to his home on a
cliff overlooking the ocean of La Jolla, a plush house he shared with
Laxer and three women.

"Something heavy has been going down in the inner worlds," he told about
100 assembled faithful. "Can anyone see what it is?"

After a while, someone guessed correctly: "Has Guru fallen?" asked a young
woman.

Sri Chinmoy had. The result was uproar in the ranks. About 20 students
quit outright, 40 remained loyal to Chinmoy and left Atmananda, and the
remainder stayed with Lenz, forming the core of a spiritual empire - a
psychotic dictatorship to some, a source of unending happiness to others -
that would be built in the ensuing years.


In time, Lenz's techniques and philosophy changed from Chinmoy's friendly,
chaste Hinduism to what Lenz likes to call "American Buddhism," which
ex-followers and secretly disloyal initiates say is a hierarchical blend
of Zen, mysticism, and New Age philosophy. The philosophical mix is slowly
revealed to neophytes as they prove their loyalty through time spent in
group activities.

Last spring, Lenz ended a year-long recruiting drive that included open
meetings held in public places in cities throughout the country.
Advertisements for "free meditation classes" were posted in universities,
at YMCAs, and on the back page of the Village Voice. The advertisements
did not mention Lenz or Rama, but reporters and disenchanted seekers found
time and again that the classes, led by Rama's senior students, were
fronts for bringing candidates into the fold.

When Kenneth Pollinger, who runs a New Age center in Nyack, New York, was
told by a student that the well-dressed men offering free classes in his
center (one of them was Kristopher Kane, who later appeared in the offices
of WIRED hoping to stop this story from running) were a front for Lenz, he
felt angry and deceived. They had told him that they had nothing to do
with Rama.

When pushed, they finally admitted they were part of the Lenz group, and
Pollinger recalled how he had been deceived by the same group years
earlier, when a female disciple brought him to a lecture, promising it was
free, only to demand money when they arrived.

"It was an insidious deception," said Pollinger, who also teaches
sociology at a community college. "When confronted, they were obviously
defensive."

That defensive attitude became necessary after about 1988, when former
members went to the media with claims that Lenz manipulated and violated
them. Before then, he happily met with anyone interested in joining, and
recruiters did not find it necessary to hide their affiliation with him.
Now, however, Lenz only meets with the new students - mostly trusting
young people who thought they were simply taking a meditation class -
after they have already begun meditating on a series of cassette tapes he
provides and their instructor is reasonably confident of their loyalty.

I have heard two old versions of the tapes, and mostly they contain
sensible banter about the practicalities of life in the "center," about
"being yourself," and about how special the students are, how close to
enlightenment. Lenz's voice on the tapes - the only place I have ever
heard it - is slow and soothing.

Often, the initial meeting with Lenz offers the first hint that something
is awry. Chadd Nyerges, who stuck with the group through the summer as a
kind of infiltrator after he realized it was destructive (and who kept
WIRED informed of his experiences), recalls one of his meditation
teachers, Elizabeth Powers, complaining that Lenz would scream at senior
members for hours.

"But she would justify it," Nyerges said. "It was as though she believed
they deserved it."

After several meetings, teachers began to explain the group's philosophy
to Nyerges, a 24-year-old aspiring actor fresh out of UCLA who joined
after several of his friends did. Powers and other "intermediate students"
took him out for coffee and told him that he had a special aura, a
spirituality about him that would make him a good candidate for
enlightenment and eternal bliss. He remained skeptical but played along,
contacting me occasionally while he was still a member of the group. After
he realized the cruelty inherent in the cult of Dr. Lenz, he stayed in
just so that he could pull a dozen or so of his friends out.

Nyerges's account of the group's real, hidden philosophy is identical to
accounts of members who left the group after following Lenz for years.
According to Nyerges, Lenz's universe revolves around two crucial
concepts: enlightenment and energy. The explicit task of his students is
to achieve enlightenment - eternal bliss - through his program. There are
different levels of "awareness" on the road to enlightenment; studying for
just a few minutes with Lenz can be the equivalent of seeking
enlightenment for thousands of lifetimes. When neophytes grumble that the
system seems too hierarchical, he responds that being enlightened is not
better than being "your puny little self," it's just "different."

"Is a college student any better than a third grader?" Lenz once asked
Mark Laxer.


Rama himself is fully enlightened. In 1987, he reportedly announced that
he had changed from Vishnu, the Cosmic Preserver, to an avatar of Shiva
the Cosmic Destroyer.

"I am an enlightened being from the Dark Side," he said around that time,
according to Mark Lurtsema, who left the group three years ago. "Jesus was
a nice guy, but the people he represents were tired of sending nice guys
so they sent me instead."

In 1990, he told Newsday he was one of twelve enlightened teachers on
earth, but refused to say who the others were (ex-followers say he
considers his dog, Vayu, to be one of them). He has reportedly since said
that five or six of the others - but not Vayu, of course - are "no longer
on Earth."

Students gain enlightenment by accumulating energy, and herein lies much
of the conflict within the group, for students are constantly stealing
each other's energy, even if they are not aware of it, Lurtsema says. The
more advanced a student is, the more dangerous and corrupted he or she
becomes. The way to protect your energy is to remain inaccessible. That
means, for instance, never giving anyone your home address or phone
number, not discussing Lenz with other people, and maintaining strict
segregation between men and women. Sex between members is generally taboo,
though sex with Lenz seems to be a fast track to enlightenment (for female
students), a way to accumulate massive amounts of energy.

Lenz's secret world view is also full of demons. He calls them "entities"
and "negative spiritual forces" that can attack people, both in the "inner
worlds" and in the everyday world. Without consciously knowing it, Lenz
says, students themselves use negative energy to attack each other on the
dream plane, or in the inner worlds. Only Lenz can see what happens on the
dream plane, but that doesn't make it any less significant or "real." This
confusion between fantasy and reality goes to the heart of Lenz's madness.
Lenz explains real events in the everyday world by actions in the inner
worlds that only he can see.

For example, when Christie Comaford once got sick, Lenz approached her
with apparent concern.

"So you have some cancer cells, huh?" he said, according to Terry
Koressal, another ex-member. "You know, your sister Kay did this to you...
Here you are trying to protect your sister all the time, that
bitch...don't you know what she's doing?"

Based on these ideas - inaccessibility, energy, and spiritual growth
toward enlightenment - the group monitors and dictates virtually every
decision made by members. Former students say the inaccessibility doctrine
was used to cut them off entirely from their past. Initiates are usually
pressured to move. Nyerges says hundreds of new members are being pushed
to move to the New York suburbs - Lenz provides housing, transportation,
and educational information for Californians headed East. They are
forbidden to give their home phone numbers to their parents or friends
outside the group. Lenz warns them that a direct phone line is dangerous
because it gives others an opening to one's energy. Instead, members
maintain phone mail systems.

Indeed, most Lenz devotees I contacted refused to be quoted on the record.
They had answering services and voice mail, and none could be reached
directly. They never give real phone numbers or addresses to their
families or the media because, they say, they are afraid of kidnappers -
not entirely without justification: In the past, distraught parents have
arranged to have their kids abducted to free them from Lenz. These efforts
usually fail. The result of Lenz's secret philosophy is that by the time
one becomes a full-fledged follower, he or she has cut virtually all links
to the outside world.

Inaccessibility is specifically discussed in teaching materials Lenz's
surrogates use in their meditation classes.

"It is very important to address inaccessibility...so as not to get weird
and paranoid on the subject (Rama really hates to see this in the new
kids)," reads a "Suggested Teaching Syllabus" obtained by WIRED from a
current follower.

Questioned about the above phrase, Lenz's "official" spokesperson, Lisa
Lewinson, said: "We never, ever do that." But she would only provide a
voice-mail number when I asked if I could call her back. She never
returned dozens of messages I left there.


As a recruit is eased out of a pre-Lenz life and into the cult, computer
programming is stressed as the only realistic career. Computer careers are
desirable, Lenz and his surrogates tell new students, because working with
a computer sharpens and focuses your mind. It also isolates you from
others, which is desirable to avoid people's negative spiritual energy.
Lenz never commands them to become programmers, but he suggests that it is
the only fast track to enlightenment. In practice, all members who stay in
the group more than a few months - including physicians, engineers, and
other professionals - go into programming.

An oft-repeated suggestion to new students is to "earn while you learn."
Former students like Mark Lurtsema, who now has a legitimate consulting
contract with Time Warner, say the group told them to fabricate their
resumes and set up a friend as a false reference. The result is not only
that they are incapable of completing the work, but also that they are
under tremendous, almost impossible pressure. Lurtsema reports working
fourteen-hour days, billing for eight hours, and worrying that if the
contract fell through he would get cancer or go to hell. By the early
1990s, after a handful of companies got burned, New York executives who
contract consultants became aware of the Lenz group's tactics and even
circulated a black list naming the members.

Besides avoiding negative energy and sharpening the mind, computer work
brings in a lot of money, the main requirement for membership in Lenz's
group. Costs range from US$20 a month for neophytes to, at one point,
US$3,500 a month for "advanced students," according to ex-members who
showed cancelled checks verifying payments of US$2,000 to Lenz's group.

Generally, this was to be paid in US$100 bills - higher vibratory energy,
ex-members say. Gifts and costly special excursions are extra: In
practice, members give Lenz almost all their money, according to published
reports and ex-followers. They squeeze into shared, unfurnished apartments
while he flies in a Lear jet between houses in Long Island, Santa Fe, and
Los Angeles.

"We never had any furniture because we were always short on money," says
Lurtsema. Lenz's response has been that members are "spartan" because of
their Buddhist beliefs. (To discredit Lurtsema, current follower and
spokesperson Lewinson sent me affidavits detailing Lurtsema's past as a
male stripper and a marine.)

"The more you give, the more people we can help," Lenz says piously on a
tape. "It's that simple."

Less piously, he told Newsday in 1991: "I like cars. I like girls. I'm
just a fun, New Age guy."

Indeed, he does seem to like girls; cosmic power seems to be a powerful
tool in his prolific seductions. Once women students become dependent on
the group, some are ushered into Lenz's inner circle through "private
spiritual sessions" with him. Since the late 1980s, several have come to
the press accusing Lenz of sexual manipulation or worse. But the
experience of Terry Koressal, a regrettable "spiritual" seduction, seems
more typical.

Koressal - tall, blond, and attractive at 35 - moved to Boston in 1986
with other Lenz students who had come from California. She was happy and
excited to be moving, she told me as she stood in her kitchen in a house
in the hills of Purdys, a New York suburb. Soon after she moved, Lenz
asked her to come to his remote suburban home for a "private spiritual
session."

"Are you sure you want to hear this?" she asked me, a little embarrassed.

She continued that Lenz innocently showed her around the house and asked
her to sit in his bedroom. He left briefly, and returned in his underwear
holding a tube of lubricant. She was flabbergasted but played along.

"I was shocked," Koressal recalled, avoiding my eyes and laughing
nervously. "I kept saying to myself, he is not human, don't think of him
as physical, don't be alarmed."

Lenz said his energy would flow into her if she touched his flesh.

"Can you feel it?" he asked, as she rubbed lotion into his back.

Almost in tears, Koressal continued to do as he wished. Then Lenz rolled
over and gently pushed her face and hands to his groin. She complied, but
says she just didn't understand what was going on.

Afterwards, he told her she was his only woman. Oh, she thought, I'll be
his special mate; he has waited years to break his celibacy, but now he
has chosen me.

She was happy. But after Lenz drove Terry home, her roommates were waiting
for her with big smiles. They seemed to know what had transpired. "Was it
nice?" they asked, without bitterness. "Well, welcome to the club... We
all have the same boyfriend."


How does Lenz do it? To be sure, the usual cult explanations apply: He
attracts people when they feel weak and vulnerable, offering an apparently
logical, value-laden system for living in a world that can be stupefying
and cruel. He keeps his people in a constant state of confusion, either
over computers, spiritual matters, or where they'll live in the next
month. When necessary, he deceives recruits about his true philosophy,
identity, and intentions. According to a book recently published by Laxer,
Lenz told him to repeat the mantra "No!" every time he began to question -
whenever a "negative" thought entered his head.

But there is something more. Even non-followers said they felt high or
dreamy in Lenz's presence, like you'd feel at a good Grateful Dead
concert. Most report seeing him levitate, seeing his face change to that
of an ancient Indian warrior, and seeing a vast golden light flowing from
his body. There must be something about him, I thought, that makes so many
people love him and hate him.

So I set out to find this notorious Dr. Lenz: I called his lawyer and
asked for an interview with the man himself.

Despite my unfriendly conversations with Lewinson, as well as Karen Lever
and Jennifer Jacobs (all of whom have reportedly since been kicked out of
the group but are anxious to return), Lenz seemed tempted to give an
interview to WIRED. I had been in touch with the spokesperson and lawyers
since the cult tragedy in Waco, Texas. But one day in June, I got a call
from John Battelle, my editor at WIRED. He told me that two students of
Dr. Lenz, Kristopher Kane and an unnamed young man, were in the editorial
offices waiting room, hoping to speak with him. They offered an interview
with Dr. Lenz - on the condition that it be conducted by someone other
than me. Battelle said he would consider it and over the next few weeks
was bombarded with calls from Comaford and several other followers.

They all pushed for the interview, which they tried to transform to "a
conversation between like minds," to be conducted by Battelle - because,
they said, "he was in the same vibe as Dr. Lenz." When Battelle told them
that he would simply ask the same questions that I would ask, they
withdrew the offer and Lenz's lawyers, Frank McLean-Sewer and Jonathan
Lubell, stopped returning my phone calls.

So, having failed to find the man by telephone, I set out to search for
him on the spiritual oasis of Long Island, New York, where he maintains a
home. But I knew I was looking for a ghost, someone everyone saw
differently, someone very, very hard to find.

In the village of Old Field, Long Island, I found nothing but footprints.
The local fire station dispatcher (apparently the only town official on
duty) gasped in horror when I told him (in case I did not come back) that
I was headed to Lenz's home. The local paper let me know that a young
woman had alleged that she was raped on his property in July by a worker
and his girlfriend who were borrowing Lenz's hot tub when he was not home.
Neighbors said Lenz was strange but affable (one said he thought Lenz had
"tried a little hypnosis" in an effort to win him over).

I could not even see his home, just a spotless redwood fence at the end of
a short drive, with a discreetly placed video camera warning the intrepid
journalist that hopping over would probably not be a good idea. Covered by
well-trimmed trees, shrubs, and topiary, it was the only house on the
country road that displayed neither a name nor a number on the mailbox.


As I drove back to Manhattan, I thought to myself how journalists, unless
they are both aggressive and lucky, rarely know what actually happened.
Instead, we know what people say happened and try to sort out the reality
from contradicting accounts. Mostly, what I have seen with my own eyes is
the wreckage Dr. Lenz has left in his wake. When I asked Lisa Lewinson -
the official Lenz spokesperson until she was kicked out last spring -
tough questions about people hurt by the group, she said it was as though
I was asking "Have you stopped beating your wife?" and that asking such
questions was unfair. I told her that if I saw a woman, bruised and
bloody, huddled in a corner pointing at a man, it would be a fair question
to ask the man. She hung up on me a few moments later, but the image
remained of that bruised figure, present in the faces and voices of the
dozens of wounded survivors.


SIDEBAR to _The Code Cult of the CPU Guru_

Casualties of the Cult?

Lenz's group has never been convicted of any crime, yet he seems to have
left behind waves of destruction. Here are some of the confirmed
casualties:

1984. Los Angeles. Donald Cole, a 23-year-old UCLA student, commits
suicide. Leaves behind a note reading, "Bye, Rama, see you next time."

1986. Pacific Palisades, California. Jack Kukulan, 40, dead of a morphine
overdose after giving Lenz about US$100,000. He was found naked in a lotus
position.

1989. Reston, Virginia. Patty Hammond disappears after making preparations
to relocate to New York with Lenz. Roommate Frances Kohl tries in vain to
find her after she does not re-appear to claim her personal belongings in
storage.

1989. White Plains, New York. A landlord reports Brenda Kerber, 40,
disappeared after moving from California to be closer to Lenz. Local
detectives open an investigation, but Lenz refuses to cooperate. Case
still open.

                                   * * *

Zachary Margulis is a reporter for the New York Daily News.


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