Atmananda smiled as he opened my door. "Hi, kid. The meeting
will start in a few minutes. Do you want to greet people--
or should I find someone else?"
Simultaneously soothed and disoriented by his voice and face, I felt
reluctant to give up a position of authority. "I'll greet them,"
I said.
Some of the fifty or so former Chinmoy disciples that I greeted
seemed excited, but most, like me, seemed anxious and confused.
Twenty minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin,
I closed the door and sat with the group before a barren,
Transcendental-less shrine. A nervous tension permeated the room.
Atmananda strode in, sat down, and fiddled with his wristwatch.
Then he looked up and quickly raised his hand to his mouth--
as if he were surprised that he was not alone. A few people laughed.
"There are four paths leading to enlightenment," Atmananda said.
"Bhakti yoga, the way of love, is by far the easiest path because love
is the strongest force in the universe."
He had described the four paths many times before, and I began
to feel slightly more at ease. It was particularly reassuring
in his tumultuous world that love was still so important a quality.
"Karma yoga, the path of selfless service, is perhaps the noblest
of the paths if you can avoid feeling superior to those whom you serve.
Mahatma Gandhi was a karma yogi, though he never actually
attained enlightenment."
"How can he be so sure?" I wondered. "Maybe Gandhi *had*
attained enlightenment." I also wondered if Atmananda would
end up serving himself rather than the Infinite.
"Jnana yoga, the path of knowledge and wisdom, is the least
traveled of the four paths. Jnana yogis face the difficult task
of learning to discriminate between what is real and what is maya,
or illusion."
It was extremely difficult for me to face my friend and hero,
and to discern whether his was a genuine path to the Infinite
or an illusory path to himself. So I thought, instead, about jnana
yoga master Sri Yukteswar, whose disciple, Paramahansa Yogananda,
wrote the popular Autobiography of a Yogi.
"Mysticism," Atmananda said, "is the path described in the Castaneda books.
By living impeccably, the mystic accumulates personal power until she
or he is capable of entering into the Other Worlds. Though mysticism
is the fastest way to enlightenment, it is also the most dangerous.
Mystics are often attacked and drained of their power by the
Dark Magicians, and many end up becoming Dark Magicians themselves."
Though enthralled by this path, I was bothered by Atmananda's
insistence that a myriad of beings, human and otherwise, stood poised
to destroy mystics who strayed from a constantly changing set of rules--
that Atmananda happened to know all about. I was also bothered
by Atmananda's seeming obsession with "Dark Magicians."
"In past lives," Atmananda continued, "I have followed, mastered,
and taught each of the four paths. You should understand
that if you choose to continue your spiritual education with me,
it will be your resistance to the Light--not my level of evolution--
that is responsible for impeding your progress."
"Where does he come off sounding so sure of himself?" I wondered,
my doubts suddenly resurfacing. "I really need time to think
about this."
"For me, leading people to enlightenment is old hat. Each of you
have been singled out to me through omens or through dreams.
It was up to me to hook you, to essentially trick you into
pursuing the long, arduous path to knowledge. Hooking takes
place on an inner level and can not be explained with words.
Tricking is necessary because people, left to their own devices,
are inherently lazy and would avoid their higher destiny."
Remembering how Don Juan hooked Castaneda, I figured that being
hooked and tricked into a higher destiny was probably okay--
as long as everything turned out all right. It was deeply ingrained
in me to believe that things tended to turn out all right.
"It is essential that you learn spiritual etiquette," Atmananda said.
"Do not hang pictures of me. Do not worship me. Do not treat me
like a guru. I am a teacher, a spiritual benefactor. You will have
to fight your impulses to treat me as though I were more important
than anyone else."
I liked his term "spiritual benefactor." It seemed to encompass
the spiritual worlds of the Guru and the mystical worlds of benefactor
Don Juan. I also liked his claim that he sought no special attention.
"Needless to say, you are free to leave at any time,"
he suddenly lashed out. "No one is asking you to stay--believe me,
you are not doing anyone any favors!"
It made me upset and confused when Atmananda flipped to his emerging,
hostile personality.
"But if it is the highest good that you seek," he said,
returning to a gentler tongue, "you have come to the right place."
I suppressed a yawn. He had been speaking awhile, and it was well
past midnight. Exhausted, too, from the shock of Atmananda's sudden
grab for power, I became mesmerized by the sound and the rhythm
of the words.
"You are caught up in trying to be someone you are not, and it is clearly
not working. You are fighting yourselves for no apparent reason.
Look, it's easy. You can stay the way you are and continue living
someone else's dream, or you can come with me on a walk to nowhere.
Leave aside your petty jealousies, your hates, your desires,
your attachments, your fears, and enter the worlds where I hang out--
worlds of pure joy, light, and bliss."
Several minutes later, Atmananda announced it was time to meditate.
I wanted to rub my eyes, yawn, and stretch out on the soft blue rug.
Instead, I sat there spellbound, drifting in and out of a dreamless sleep.
At one point, I woke and heard, "When you attain enlightenment,
your selves dissolve in the clear light of the void. Maybe you exist,
maybe you don't. It no longer matters." Then, as Atmananda rehashed
the details of his own enlightenment, I dozed off again.
After the meeting, I went to my room. "I need time to think,"
I reminded myself. As I drifted off to sleep, I could still hear my
housemate talking.
Of the original one hundred San Diego Chinmoy disciples, roughly ten
formed their own Chinmoy Centre, forty set out on their own,
and fifty followed Atmananda. While some aspects of Atmananda's
program remained the same, others intensified. He repeatedly warned,
for instance, that the Negative Forces would prey on those who did
not meditate regularly, those who diluted their power with doubts
about him, and those who did not regularly attend his meetings.
He began holding "crucial" meetings each night to help us "combat
the Forces." The meetings began at around seven-thirty p.m.
and lasted at times until dawn.
I attended each of Atmananda's meetings and, with only two or three
hours of sleep per night, quickly grew fatigued. Once my boss
at the UCSD Computer Center found me asleep with my upper body
resting on a noisy, three-and-a-half-foot-high mainframe printer.
Another time, Atmananda read to me a letter that he had sent to Chinmoy:
"As you know, I have been entering into highly advanced states of
consciousness lately..." Unable to concentrate, I suppressed a yawn
and lapsed into a long, thoughtless pause.
I was occasionally buoyed by the realization that I desperately
needed rest, that I needed time to think, and that I needed to take
a break from Atmananda's all-night meetings. But I was mostly
slapped by waves of fear of Atmananda's Negative Forces, and pulled
under by the weight of shifting etiquette, meta-rational rhetoric,
and sleep deprivation.
Roughly two weeks into the post-coup program, Atmananda began
to publish WOOF! The Weekly Newsletter of Anahata. Having named
his organization after the anahata chakra--the "psychic energy center
of love"--he initially distributed WOOF! to the fifty Anahatans.
Weeks later, after having renamed his organization "Church of Atlantis"
(C.O.A.), Atmananda decided to distribute WOOF! The Voice of Southern
California to tens of thousands of San Diegans.
WOOF! provided work for Atmananda's devotees and helped bind
the fledgling group. We illustrated, laid out, distributed,
and laughed over each edition. We laughed, for instance,
at Atmananda's fabricated advertisement about an imaginary bank
(Issue #3; January, 1981): "Interloka Bank is pleased to announce
the opening of a new branch in Mark's room. We will be giving
away the first 500 customers as valuable gifts...We at Interloka
are dedicated to serving you totally, and are proud to take you
for all we can, whenever we can. We are the only authorized
distributors of the GOLDEN GWIDcard...Interloka Bank--We Own You..."
Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, the desire to believe in our
friend and mentor, or the need for comic relief that blinded
us to the grim foreshadowing of Atmananda's humor.
I laughed the hardest at Atmananda's ads and columns in which he
satirized televangelists, Indian gurus, the Moonies, and New Age healers
(see Appendix A). I felt justified in laughing at other spiritual groups,
partly because they seemed to merit it and partly because Atmananda
said that they needed to be laughed at. He wrote in an editorial
(Issue #6; March, 1981): "WOOF!, the all-natural and organic paper
that millions use to line their bird cages, makes fun of it all.
We act as a consumer's representative for you in the field of New
Age consciousness. We feel that if what people have to offer
is genuine then they won't mind us poking a little fun at them.
And if they do mind--then maybe the products or services they offer
deserve careful scrutiny, and we should re-evaluate the truthfulness of
their claims..."
In my naive, sleepless stupor, I accepted Atmananda's mission
of poking fun at others, and did my best to train and coordinate
the WOOF! distribution teams.
Perhaps it was to dispel doubts about his own authenticity that
Atmananda proceeded to poke fun at himself. Appearing beside
his photograph was the following ad (Issue #6; March, 1981): "His
High Holiness SWAMI UGULA UGLE From The Himalayan Institute For
The Strange will be appearing in Del Mar on March 37th at 2 a.m.
for the high himalayan karrmuppet hat dancing & tea ceremony.
$$ Bring Lots Of Money $$ His high Holiness Swami Ugula Ugle is
a direct lineal descendant of Llama Fred. He personally assisted
in the baking of several LARGE rye breads at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
A devotee of Sri Ramana Maharshi and baseball, the Swami actually
is a good guy. He doesn't claim to be any better than the rest
of us. But he's happy. So maybe happiness can be learned?
Come and find out...We may hit you for a few bucks - but we'll give
you a good time...Lots of pomp and ceremony for you Western types
who can't accept that enlightened souls can look and act like normal
human beings..."
I liked the ad. I saw no reason why enlightened souls should not
look and act like normal human beings. I liked the way Atmananda
poked fun at the pomp and ceremony which had distanced Chinmoy
from many of his disciples. I also found Atmananda's deflated
view of himself a relief.
A number of Atmananda's advertisements, however, were of a more
serious nature. In the first issue, for instance (January, 1981),
he wrote: "1st WORKSHOP OF 1981...another exciting Castaneda
experience at UCSD...inspired posterers--here's your chance!"
In later issues, he repeatedly ran "The Experience of Luminosity" ad
(Issue #6; March, 1981): "DR. FREDERICK LENZ is a spiritual Benefactor.
Each month...he offers several free workshops to members of the San
Diego community. At these workshops he provides solid information
and techniques that will help you to gain inner peace and happiness.
Dr. Lenz does this by discussing the most helpful aspects
of Buddhism, Yoga, Vedanta, Zen, Taoism and the psychic and spiritual
arts...During meditation, Dr. Lenz enters into Samadhi and directly
channels Peace, Light, Power and Ecstasy to you...ADMISSION FREE..."
At the top of this full-page ad appeared the words, "Paid advertisement"--
as if WOOF! had been published by someone other than Dr. Frederick Lenz.
Atmananda, who at times seemed as cautious as he was bold, told me
to instruct WOOF! distribution volunteers to be highly inaccessible.
I kept this in mind one Saturday afternoon as I approached a health
food store with Marty, a shy, soft-spoken UCSD student with a sense
of wonder in his eyes. Marty had been a disciple of Chinmoy for about
a year.
Raising the WOOF!'s to the counter, I said, "Could we leave
these by the door? They're free!"
"Sure," the manager replied and he took one.
I placed my stack, and Marty, who had been lugging additional copies,
placed his as well. We were almost out the door when the man said,
"Say, who puts out this...WOOF!?"
I was about to reply that we did not know, that we were only
doing this for money, when Marty suddenly blurted, "What WOOF!?"
And in a flash we were gone.
When I told Atmananda this story, he seemed pleased with me.
He was pleased with the large turn-outs at his public lectures,
and he said I was doing an impeccable job overseeing the ten
or so WOOF! and poster distribution volunteers. Perhaps it was in
anticipation of unbridled expansion that, using doubt-diffusing humor,
he wrote and published the "Cult Of The Gwid Spreads Throughout
Rancho Bernardo" article (Issue #6; March, 1981): "In a seemingly
unstoppable tide of fanatic cultism, proponents, adherents and admirers
of the Gwid have firmly rooted themselves in Rancho Bernardo and
are expanding at an alarming rate. The concerned people of Rancho
Bernardo are helpless in the face of such determined behavior
and many have resigned themselves to their fate and joined ranks
with the lively followers of the Gwid...the Gwid reassured and won
the hearts of the entire Rancho Bernardo community when he gave
a public speech yesterday outlining his major beliefs and ideals.
Excerpts follow: 'I do not wish to own your sons and daughters,
merely to use them as a tax break. It is not the acquiring of
wealth that interests me, but rather the actual possession of it.
All else is useless to me unless it involves adventure, limber bodies,
cunning and chocolate...In closing, I stand for freedom, a cheese
in every hand, the dignity to live a free and happy life under my
close supervision...'"
As the month wore on, Atmananda often stopped by my room to perform
what he called "reality checks." This involved chatting and
meditating with me until my consciousness was "in a good place."
He was probably concerned that, as a member of his inner circle,
I might unduly influence his disciples. But I was too tired,
too fearful of the Negative Forces, and too busy coordinating WOOF!
and poster distribution teams to seriously reflect on or pose a threat
to his self-anointed position of power.
Occasionally, though, I did think about the change. But instead
of confronting guilt from having abandoned Chinmoy, and instead
of confronting doubts about Atmananda, I found it easier to laugh
and laugh at spiritual groups and the absurd things that they did.