TAKE ME FOR A RIDE
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Mark E. Laxer >> TAKE ME FOR A RIDE
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15 Take Me For A Ride
* * *
One flew east,
One flew west,
One flew over the
cuckoo's nest.
--Childhood nursery rhyme
quoted in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
Fly me over the cuckoo's nest,
To your *golden* side,
I don't care if you're the cuckoo--
Take me for a ride...
--Agni
TAKE ME FOR A RIDE Coming Of Age In A Destructive Cult
by Mark E. Laxer
1993 Outer Rim Press Copyright 1993 by Mark E. Laxer
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written
permission from the publisher, unless the intent is to benefit humankind.
For *physical* book order information, or to contribute to Laxer's
legal defense fund :( and write-another-book fund :)
write:
Outer Rim Press
4431 Lehigh Road, #221
College Park, MD 20740
USA
mlaxer@cap.gwu.edu
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Simon & Schuster,
Inc., for permission to reprint an excerpt from Gandhi:
A Memoir by William Shirer. Copyright (c) 1979 by William Shirer.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-085777
ISBN 0-9638108-3-9
Initially printed and posted in the United States of America
To Patsy Sims--inspired teacher, intriguing storyteller,
intrepid journalist.
Author's Note
Names in the following story have been changed, except for those
already mentioned in the press.
Contents
1. Bicycle Ride--Walden
2. Zapped!
3. The Joining
4. The Community
5. Bicycle Ride--Lenox
6. The Garden
7. Money Mantra
8. Fast Leader
9. Off The Map
10. Bicycle Ride--Utica
11. Displaced
12. Thwarted Escape
13. Breakdown
14. Bicycle Ride--St. Ignes
15. The Enchanted Taco
16. Ride To Heaven
17. On High
18. Where's My Tribe?
19. I'm Okay
20. The Last Supper
21. Bicycle Ride--The Continental Divide
Epilogue
Appendix A: Excerpts From WOOF!
Appendix B: Excerpts From "Welcome To Lakshmi"
Appendix C: Excerpts From "Sophisticated Sexuality"
Appendix D: Excerpts From Rama's Ads and Brochures
1. Bicycle Ride--Walden
After I left Rama's inner circle in 1985, I occasionally bicycled
to Walden Pond, where I read about Thoreau's experiment with
self-reliance. My seven years in the cult of Rama--Dr. Frederick Lenz,
who was known early on as Atmananda--had deeply shaken my confidence.
Atmananda often assured me that I was possessed by Negative Forces,
that I was barely able to function in the real world, and that I
was fortunate he did not drop me off at a mental institution.
I met him in 1978, when I was seventeen.
Thoreau helped me recall a time, before Atmananda, when I was strong
and self-reliant. I had been an avid cyclist. Pedaling thousands
of miles each year helped strengthen both my legs and self-esteem.
Throughout my teenage years bicycling and self-confidence were
inextricably linked, and I grew to believe I could ride anywhere,
under any conditions. I tried to approach life with a similar gusto,
which may explain why, in 1979, Atmananda invited me to move with him
to southern California to start a spiritual centre. From 1979 to 1981,
I lived with him by the cliffs of La Jolla where I witnessed his
rise to power. Today, in 1993, he controls the minds of several
hundred computer consultants, businessmen, doctors, and lawyers.
Each year he extracts from them roughly ten million dollars.
As I gazed at Walden Pond in search of calm, the wind spawned new waves,
and the surface swelled with complexity. I recalled what Atmananda
had said after I returned from a five-day bike trip in California.
He announced in front of other disciples that my aura was dark.
He also said that I had been attacked by nocturnal,
mountain-dwelling Entities which "cause neurosis and psychosis,
obliterate lifetimes of spiritual evolution, and can possess
your soul."
Atmananda's Entity-prevention program included studying with a
fully enlightened teacher, meditating regularly, and avoiding
solitary excursions into nature. Yet in the spring of 1986,
nearly one year after I left him, I reminded myself that I would
rather be possessed in my world than potentially perfect in his.
I planned to pedal across America not with an exorcist, but with
a puppy.
On May 31, 1986, as warm, moist air pushed pockets of fog over Walden Pond,
I lifted the four-month-old Siberian husky, Nunatak, into the
doggie-carrier. The carrier rested on top of the bicycle trailer,
attached to the frame of my 12-speed. Strong headwinds soon strained
my muscles, shook the lush canopy of foliage, and pelted me with
large drops of rain. As I began the journey west, the front tire
raced through puddles while my mind raced through painful memories
and questions. How had my years with Atmananda affected me? Why was
it so difficult to leave him? What was it about my past that led me to him?
2. Zapped!
"Lights," said my father and for a moment, except for the
phosphorescent hands of the clock on the wall, the room went black.
With a flip of a switch, he suddenly reappeared: a tall,
thin man with thick glasses, standing beside the glowing enlarger.
As a child I sat for hours under a dim yellow light,
mesmerized by images appearing on paper submerged in trays filled
with smelly liquid. Yellow, my father taught me, has no apparent
effect on the light-sensitive specks coating photographic paper.
The unorthodox images which leapt from the walls of our house seemed
as eerie as the darkroom experience itself: there was a photograph
of a llama's head as viewed through a distorting fish-eye lens,
there was a photograph of a shredded poster of a man's face,
and there were many abstract photos which seemed to defy description.
My father, a production manager at a New York publishing company,
perhaps saw the world in a different light than his peers.
My mother was an elementary school teacher with black hair and
sometimes kind, sometimes intense eyes. A generous and caring woman,
she put her career on hold for more than a decade to raise a family.
She met my father in upstate New York on a hike sponsored by an
outing club.
When I was fourteen, I sensed that my father was growing tired,
detached, and depressed, but I did not understand why. He expressed
abstractions better than emotions, and found it difficult to vent
the angers and frustrations which had accumulated from work and from home.
Nor did I understand that my mother freely gave to me what she,
in her youth, had sorely missed: love. Oblivious to the magnitude
of her workload--she taught full-time and was pursuing a Master's degree--
I grew angry with her as a teenager partly because she seemed
insecure and overbearing, and partly because she expected me,
my brother, and my father to help keep the house clean in the way
that she wanted.
Despite my family's love for the outdoors, for our dog,
and for one another, the emotional fabric that bound us together
often seemed on the verge of ripping apart. And the problems
only intensified as my brother and I grew older.
Two-and-a-half-years my elder, my brother was an avid backpacker
and rock climber with jet-black hair, Gandhi glasses, and a gentle
but determined disposition. He too felt that something in our family
was "out of whack," and we occasionally discussed what we would
do when we left home. But unlike me, he had no one to buffer him
from my parents who, I was starting to discover, were only human.
I was a sensitive child. I was so sensitive that the sounds of someone
chewing made me upset. I was a light sleeper. I was also a slob,
a knee-jerk rebel, and something of a nerd when it came to doing
things like making friends with girls. Nonetheless, I decided
that I could work out whatever I needed to work out in a healthier
environment than at home; the countdown to the last day of high school,
after which I planned to set out on my own, began when I was
around fifteen. Meanwhile, I read a lot and spent time with friends,
some of whom also enjoyed hiking and bicycling.
In the summer of 1976, when I was sixteen, I bicycled from the White
Mountains of New Hampshire to Boston with people from an outing club.
One morning, as I watched my traveling companions prepare their daily dose
of hallucinogens, I realized that I wanted to be part of their fellowship.
The desire, however, was checked by a gut-level impulse to avoid drugs,
so Jim, a sinewy guy stooped over a pot of boiling morning glory seeds,
turned me on instead to The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way
of Knowledge. This was a popular account of Carlos Castaneda's
purported apprenticeship with Yaqui Indian medicine man Juan Matus,
or Don Juan.
From the cover of the book peered a menacing and surreal painting
of a crow.
"But a crow isn't always a crow," said Jim softly, paraphrasing Don
Juan as he stirred the seeds. "Sometimes it's a powerful sorcerer
in disguise."
Intrigued by the paradox of the crow, I plowed through The Teachings of Don
Juan and through Castaneda's A Separate Reality and Journey To Ixtlan.
At summer's end, still drugless and clueless as to whether crows
were birds or sorcerers, I left Boston clutching a Castaneda book.
Back in New York, I chose to see the world less through the eyes
of an eleventh grader taking honors physics and history,
and more through the eyes of a sorcerer's apprentice.
I incorporated into my daily routine Don Juan's recommendations.
As an exercise in humility, I spoke aloud to plants. To *see* beyond
society's description of reality, I tried to stop my thoughts.
To expand my awareness beyond the confines of the waking state,
I sought to wake within a dream.
My interest in what lay beyond the scope of traditional reality led
to an interest in what lay beyond the scope of traditional education,
and, that fall, I thought about switching to a public experimental
high school founded in the late '60s. I firmly believed that I
would thrive in a world without grades, attendance taking, tests,
and requirements. In January, 1977, with the guidance of my brother,
I managed to persuade my reluctant parents to let me join.
I chose to continue taking physics and history at the traditional school;
other subjects I took at the non-traditional school where,
in a creative writing class, I wrote:
Teachers force us to perceive,
The surface world of reason:
"A tree is but a pole with leaves,
Whose habits change each season."
I thrived within a self-designed, academically rigorous educational program,
but experienced no breakthroughs in my search for Hidden Realms
of Perception until the following summer. The experience came when I
was working ten-hour days and five-and-a-half day weeks on a farm
in southern New Hampshire. In my spare time, I was designing
and building an electricity-producing windmill, which ended up
towering some twenty feet above Onyx, one of the tallest cows.
Farm-crew members sometimes walked out to the hay fields to get high.
One night, after smoking marijuana, I fell asleep and later saw,
above where I lay, a cow, its head swaying gently to and fro.
Though I thought I was awake it was but a dream, for when I woke
from "waking," the cow had disappeared. This experience led me
to believe that like Mr. Castaneda's mentor, I could consciously
direct my actions within the context of a dream.
Back in New York, I became editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper.
I soon learned that I had a knack for inspiring and for managing
a team. I was well regarded by my teachers and by my peers,
and I had many friends. I could have continued my studies at
a prestigious university, but I longed for a mystical quest.
I dreamt that I walked silently across a vast desert plain. I longed
to experience that which lay beyond the surface world of reason.
I dreamt that I flew over desert chaparral into an infinite orange horizon.
I longed for a wisdom that was secret, magical, ancient. I decided
to hitchhike, alone, to the Sonoran Desert in Mexico to find
a mystical teacher, a *brujo*, who was just like Don Juan. I planned
to leave on the day after high school graduation.
Meanwhile, I continued to read the Castaneda books and to experiment
with consciousness. One time I attempted to raise my right arm
without consciously lifting it. I wanted it to levitate on its own.
I soon felt a tingling in the arm, but it did not rise. Finally, I lifted
it on purpose. Then, as part of the experiment, I suggested to myself
that the arm remain lifted. As long as I repeated the suggestion,
the arm remained where it was. Afterwards, I could not recall
how long the state of mind had lasted.
My brother shared with me an interest in rising above the limitations
of home, school, religion, society, and reality. By the time
I turned him on to the Castaneda books, he had already studied
Einstein's special theory of relativity and The Tao Of Physics.
In the spring of 1978, when he was studying physics at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, he told me that he had met
an English professor who was an expert on the Castaneda books.
He knew that my quest for a teacher would begin in roughly two months,
when I would graduate from high school. He wanted to help me.
He suggested that I attend the Castaneda expert's free lecture series on
meditation in Manhattan.
I wondered why a Castaneda expert would live on Long Island rather
than in a remote desert in Mexico, but my brother's enthusiasm
was sincere. "Besides," I thought as we rode the train into the city,
"anything I learn now will only help me on the journey."
We arrived at a building on 33rd Street. A rickety elevator took
us to the third floor, where the sweet and spicy aroma of incense
wafted through the air. I saw a row of sneakers by the elevator
door and wondered if they had been responsible for the incense.
After placing our sneakers in line with the others, we walked past
a sign which read "Yoga Life Perfection." A young woman with long,
black hair and a playful, impish grin sold books and incense in
the hallway. She recognized my brother and smiled at us. She wore
a sari.
We entered a medium-sized room where a smoldering stick
of incense and two unlit candles rested on a table up front.
Two young women stood together near the back of the room.
One had long brown hair and dreamy eyes. The other had a face
and figure like a model. Their faces were flushed and aglow.
They also wore saris.
"Too bad I'm not gonna be sticking around New York," I thought,
gazing at them.
In the audience sat two women in their sixties, dressed entirely
in black. They sat near a man in his thirties, with the frame
of a metal pyramid resting squarely on his head.
We sat by the two sari-clad women. They were clearly excited
about something. They used words like inspiration, aspiration,
concentration, visualization, meditation, reincarnation, and perfection.
My brother, too, seemed excited, as if something extraordinary
and wonderful were about to occur. With each passing minute,
I found myself growing more curious, more impatient, and more excited.
Fifteen minutes after the talk was scheduled to begin, the women
in saris stopped talking and looked up.
I looked up too and saw a tall man with a projecting nose and
lush locks. His long strides seemed synchronized with his arms,
which swung like perfectly conflicting pendulums; this motion
seemed to propel him into the room. He sat on the table facing
the audience, folded his legs in the pretzel-like posture seen
in Buddha statues, and introduced himself as Dr. Frederick Lenz.
He explained that he had another name: Atmananda. Then he lit
the candles and asked us to drop our preconceived notions because,
"meditation is beyond thought."
"Thought is like a car," he said in a smooth, charming voice.
"You can drive it to California. But if you want to cross the ocean,
you will need an alternate means of transportation. If you want
to cross the sea of consciousness, you will need meditation."
Though his metaphors were new to me, they seemed to point
the way beyond the surface world of reason. He used words
like guru, avatar, warrior, power, power spots, personal power,
moments of power, spiritual power, psychic power, ecstasy, enlightenment,
cosmic love, transcendental, supreme, Nirvana, and the Infinite.
When he said it was time to meditate, I was surprised
that he had been speaking for over forty minutes. It had seemed like five.
"Now extend your index fingers and close your eyes," Atmananda instructed.
I squinted to see if anyone else was peeking. From what I could tell,
the twenty or so people obeyed him.
"Now say 'me' out loud and touch your chest."
My "me" was muffled by the group's "me".
"You are not only pointing to your chest," Atmananda explained,
"but to your heart chakra, one of seven psychic energy centers
associated with the subtle body. Concentrating on a chakra is an easy
way to begin crossing the sea of consciousness."
So we sat there, drifting, and though I tried to stop my thoughts
and feel the throbbing pulse of my heart chakra, I found myself
checking out the women in saris.
"Very good," he said after about five minutes. Then he suggested
that we sit back, relax, and ask questions.
There was something hauntingly familiar about this confident,
well-spoken, young professor. Perhaps it was the way his chin
jutted forward, the rich timbre of his voice, or his seeming
interest in helping people that reminded me of the cartoon character
Dudley-Do-Right. I felt drawn to him. I found myself staring into
his full moon, gripping eyes. I found myself seeking his attention.
"Can a person be healed by meditating?" I asked, only partly
concerned that I had a cold.
He locked my attention with those eyes...I felt slightly dizzy...it
was not unpleasant...it felt as though I were floating...my vision
blurred...things went fuzzy and white...it appeared as though it
were snowing...
"Am I having a vision?" I wondered and immediately the "snow" vanished.
Just then Atmananda seemed unreal, like a superhero from a cosmic
comic-strip that had been cut, enlarged, and inserted into the room.
When he smiled at me, I had the uncanny sense that he knew what I
had felt and seen. Then he left, flanked by the women in saris.
3. The Joining
In the days following Atmananda's talk, I longed to know if my vision
of the "snow" had been a mystical experience, an optical illusion,
or a figment of my imagination. Graduation was only weeks away.
I assumed that Atmananda would help me solve the mystery, and I counted
the days until his next public lecture.
I did not tell my friends much about Atmananda. They seemed content,
even after reading the Castaneda books, to view the world through a
rational framework. In contrast, I grew excited about the possibility
of transcending the world of reason altogether. They were proud
of their letters of acceptance from the Harvards and the Princetons.
I was proud of my letter of acceptance from The School Of Mysticism.
My letter arrived in the form of brilliant white specks which swirled
about me like snow.
Nor did I tell my parents, who represented discord, anxiety,
and manipulation--the opposite of what Atmananda seemed to stand for.
Instead, I spoke with my brother. He and I were close.
I wanted to be just like him. He used words such as disciples,
selfless-service, humanity, humility, purity, soul, soul-mate,
past-lives, karma, fast track, and cosmic evolution. He got
excited when he talked about Atmananda. He told me that he too
had experienced perceptual distortion during Atmananda's talks.
We returned to "Yoga Life Perfection."
About thirty minutes after the talk was scheduled to begin,
Atmananda strode through the door. He wore a light brown suit.
"Anne," he said, "did you bring the Transcendental?"
The sari-clad woman who had sold incense at the last lecture
placed a frame on the table beside Atmananda. The Transcendental
was a photograph of Atmananda's Indian guru, Chinmoy. But it
was so underexposed that it seemed not a picture of a guru,
but rather a mug-shot of a ghost with high cheekbones.
It reminded me of one of the experimental images which had emerged
from my father's darkroom.
"The Transcendental portrays Guru in his highest
transcendental consciousness," my brother told me.
Atmananda scanned the audience, mostly women in their sixties.
Then he began to lecture, not on meditation, but on reincarnation,
which he had done many times before.
"Maya, or illusion, eclipses the original perfection of the soul,"
he said. "The soul reincarnates over thousands of lessons known
as lifetimes."
I could not recall learning about reincarnation at Hebrew school.
"As the soul evolves, it transcends desire and attachment,
which is the root of all suffering. Finally, enlightenment occurs."
Unaware that he was borrowing Hindu and Buddhist doctrine, and intrigued
but not convinced that in a future life I would attain enlightenment,
I kept one eye on Atmananda and the other on Anne.
"Everything can be classified according to its level of
spiritual evolution. Rocks and minerals are very primitive,
whereas plants have more developed auras. After thousands of years,
the soul seeks an animal incarnation. Except in rare instances,
enlightenment occurs through the human form only."
I grinned and wiggled my thumbs, figuring I was already ahead
of the game.
"Humans in their early incarnations are responsible for many of
the world's problems. But evolved people are not better than others.
Are college students any better than third graders?"
This diffused my concern that Atmananda's line of reasoning justified
the formation of an evolved elite.
"Karma is a cosmic feedback mechanism triggered by past actions.
In a universe governed by karma, few experiences are coincidental."
I supposed a lottery winner could have been a generous philanthropist
in a past life. But remembering the various times I had been
robbed while growing up in New York, I doubted that I had spent
incarnations as a mugger. Still, I liked his contention that it
was karma's role not to punish, but to educate.
"After thousands of human incarnations, you become ready to study with
an enlightened teacher. You may suddenly notice a teacher's poster.
You may have seen the poster many times before--only this time
something *clicks*."
I looked at the Transcendental and wondered if the Guru, who looked
like he badly needed sleep, could make something in me *click*.
Atmananda turned toward me, as if in response to my newest doubt,
and said, "An enlightened teacher can take a person through thousands
of lives in just one lifetime."
"What's the rush?" I thought.
"The sooner you attain enlightenment, the sooner you can help
others transcend this world of pain and suffering."
"How did he do that?" I wondered, unsure if he were addressing
typical doubts, or if he were actually reading my mind.
Atmananda continued to look at me. I found myself gazing,
without blinking, into his eyes...I began to feel as if I were
floating... somewhere far away I sensed my body breathing...I
heard "bzzzzzzzz" droning on and on and on...
He turned away, and I returned to normal consciousness.
"Holy cow," I thought. "He did it again!" Suddenly, I imagined
that he was a sorcerer and I, his apprentice. I forgot about Anne
and carefully followed his words.
"Advanced seekers say that after they attain enlightenment they
will return to earth to help others. But most of them end up
choosing eternal ecstasy instead."
I vowed to come back and help the downtrodden.
"It is even rarer for fully enlightened souls to return," he said,
pointing out that his Guru was fully enlightened.
Fully enlightened souls, Atmananda explained, were aware
of those who meditated sincerely on their photograph.
Atmananda then instructed us to meditate on the Transcendental.
After about ten minutes of silence he asked, "Who saw the light
around Guru?"
One woman shot up her hand. Then another. I admitted to myself
that I thought I saw the photo glow.
"Guru flooded you with light from another world," he explained.
Then, inviting the audience to experience the "advanced" side of
self-discovery, he told us about Chinmoy's free weekly meditations
at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University.
By this time, in keeping with Atmananda's suggestions,
my brother had applied to study with Chinmoy. He was accepted.
He lived near the State University of New York at Stony Brook,
near the eight or so Chinmoy disciples, near Atmananda. When I asked
him to take me to his Guru, he said that he would.
We met at our parents' home. He wore all white clothes.
"White symbolizes purity--the spiritual quality men need to develop most,"
he explained, quoting Chinmoy. "Wearing white only adds one or two
percent more purity to your consciousness, but every bit helps."
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