"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."