"What do you mean?"
"I don't want her falling in love with him."
Rama was in a bind. On the one hand, he knew that Jeff would be an asset
to the operation. On the other, he sensed that Jeff was too bright
(he had been an honors graduate student in chemistry at UCSD),
too athletic (he played ultimate frisbee), and too good looking
to be running around loose within the carefully controlled nest.
But Rama had a plan. He encouraged Jeff to form a relationship
with Karen, who had previously followed Rama's advice and turned
down an offer from Stanford medical school. He then encouraged
them both to enroll in a computer science Master's program at UCLA,
and to gradually phase me out as the poster and newspaper
distribution coordinator.
One night in a restaurant in Los Angeles, Rama's story about wanting
to help women took on a new twist. He had invited me to dinner
with Nick and Sarah, a handsome young couple who acted in Hollywood
and who had recently joined the Centre. When the waitress came
to take our orders, Rama began waving and curling his hand.
Moments later, as the waitress was walking away, Nick asked,
"What were you doing with your hand, Rama?"
"I was sending her sexual pleasure directly through the inner worlds,"
he replied, glancing at Sarah now and again.
Stories of "Rama and the Enlightenment of Women" were all
the more startling, I found, when narrated by Rama himself.
There was the one, for instance, about Sue.
"Sue once came in my room," Rama told me, "took off
all her clothes, and flung herself on me. 'Please don't
make me go home and masturbate, Rama,' she kept saying,
but I just sat there and meditated on the Infinite, until I entered samadhi."
There was the one about Harry, the main character from Lolita,
one of Vladimir Nabokov's novels. "The point of Lolita,"
Rama explained to me, "is not that Harry repeatedly slept
with a fourteen-year-old after kidnapping and drugging her.
The point is that Harry really did love her."
There was the one about the UCLA students. "Sometimes I walk
the streets of Westwood," he said at Centre meetings, "and drain
the undergraduates of their mystical power. Now, don't get all upset.
It's not like they're using it. Most of them are just wasting it
on sex."
And there was the one about his former wife. "At one point in
the relationship," he told me, "I had to decide whether to be of
service to the one or to the many." Rama often described his dream
of living in a fortified desert compound with hundreds of heavily
armed women devotees. Perhaps he broke up with his "jealous"
wife--"She kept imagining that I was looking at other women..."--
in search of the many.
Once I invited a friend from work to one of Rama's public lectures.
She was interested in meditation and had recently left her boyfriend.
"Thanks, but no thanks!" she exclaimed when I mentioned the lecturer's name.
"So, what's wrong with Rama?"
"You mean the one who lists his past life credentials--dates and all--
in full-page ads? The one who *specializes* in women?"
"Uh, yeah."
"He isn't bringing women to enlightenment, Mark. He's bringing
them to bed."
"Come on," I countered, trying not to admit to her or to myself
what he had been doing for years. "So he has a girlfriend.
What's wrong with a spiritual teacher having a girlfriend?"
"There's nothing wrong with that," she said firmly. "But he
is sleeping with many, many women."
"Where did you hear that?"
"From a number of women I met at a meditation retreat in San Diego.
They fell for his line about being lovers in past lives."
Suddenly I recalled Rama on stage at Centre meetings, wearing short
red gym shorts, closing and spreading his legs, tonguing in a slow,
circular fashion the insides of his mouth. The memory repulsed me.
But the repulsion, I feared, was due to the Negative Entities within me.
And it was Rama, I quickly reminded myself, who had been trying day
and night to imbue the many with the fullness of his enlightenment.
"Well, I have been good friends with him since 1978," I replied,
"and he's just not like that."
When disciples Giles and Claire, a couple living in Los Angeles,
heard similar stories about Rama's sexual exploits, they spoke
candidly with one another.
"We were not judging him," Claire recalled years later.
"But we were concerned about what would happen to him and to our
community if the press found out. I wrote him a letter saying
that he looked much more human than divine when he approached women
at Centre meetings for sexual, rather than spiritual reasons."
"And I decided to phone him," recalled Giles. "A member of his
staff said that he was not at home and would call me back.
Several days later at three a.m. the phone rang. It was Rama.
We spoke for about an hour. When I suggested that he consider exercising
more discretion, he was reasonable and polite. We discussed the issue
like human beings. After all, I am old enough to be his father.
He told me, 'Of course I like girls. I'm just an ordinary guy.
You don't know what it's like. They throw themselves at me. What's a
healthy man to do?'"
"At the next Centre meeting," Claire said, "Rama gave us the cold shoulder.
And at the one after that, he distributed the tape 'Sophisticated Sexuality'
(see Appendix C). During the break, Rama approached me.
His eyes became small, like hard, little bullets. He was furious.
He told me repeatedly that my letter was self-indulgent nonsense."
"Then he asked to see me outside," said Giles. "Alone. Grabbing me
and digging his fingers into my shoulders, he shouted, 'I'VE BEATEN YOU!
I'VE BEATEN YOU ALL!'"
"After the break," Claire continued, "Rama lectured for thirty
minutes about how people had been constantly throwing him bad energy--
all the while glaring at Giles."
During the next few weeks, Giles and Claire fearfully recalled
Rama's threat that deserters would look and feel like hell.
Nonetheless, they stopped attending meetings and trips to the desert,
where Rama kept trying to disappear.
"Some of you still harbor doubts that I can disappear," Rama accused
the several hundred disciples who sat around him in a circle.
"But perhaps if I dissolve someone else, you will find it easier to see.
Tonight I will be dissolving an old friend of mine. Mark, would you
come up here, please."
I walked toward him. I was thrilled. My heart was pumping fast.
I loved being the center of attention.
"Now, close your eyes," he said, placing his hand on my forehead.
He flashed me a devilish grin. "This won't hurt a bit."
I closed my lids. After several seconds, I felt detached from my
thought process. It was as if I could visually observe a thought as
it formed, connected with meaning, and vanished. One thought had been:
"What is going on?" As I tried to anticipate my next thought,
I ended up instead observing the thought of anticipating a thought--
when suddenly a volley of words jarred me out of the trance.
"Earth to Mark. Come in Mark."
I opened my eyes and saw Rama towering above me, laughing softly.
I looked away and saw liquid gold specks lining the blackness.
I had managed, until now, to avoid thoughts about time and had no idea
how long the experience lasted.
"What did you see?" Rama asked the group.
"It looked like Mark was dizzy, and you caught him right when he fell."
"I didn't see anything," reported another. "But I felt very peaceful.
I found it easy to slow my thoughts."
"You dissolved him, Rama," offered another.
As we prepared for the journey back to the cars, Rama invited me
to walk with him at the front of the line.
"That was fun, wasn't it?" he asked several minutes later.
As he scanned the path for rattlesnakes, his powerful beam cut a sharp
tunnel through the darkness.
I agreed. It had been a blast. Over the past five years,
moments of deep meditation had been typically interrupted by thoughts
such as, "Hey--I'm meditating!" But moments earlier, I witnessed
thoughts objectively, as if they belonged to someone else.
"Tonight I helped you see a beautiful world," Rama said. "My intent
is to show my students how to fly through these worlds on their
wings of perception. It is easy to show you because you like me.
Many of my students fear me or hate me--or, even worse, they worship me."
Suddenly he flipped off the light, and a fifteen-foot high ocotillo
shrub vanished.
"I don't perform miracles to show off my powers, but to expand
your view of reality. If my students can accept that I disappear,
just imagine what they will be capable of."
Though I was learning to fly on my wings of perception,
and though in the months after the Stelazine trip I continued
to deeply suppress part of my rational side, I never fully accepted
Rama's world in its entirety. I never accepted, for instance,
the story of "Rama and the Enchanted Taco." The Enchanted Taco,
Rama said, was an immense, luminous, and other-worldly treat.
It could be seen in the desert, hovering casually over mystical
power spots, garnished with divine light, knowledge, and guacamole.
But in a parking lot at four a.m., I saw Rama wave to three
hundred bleary-eyed disciples, get in a black Turbo Carrera,
and disappear.