Take Me for a Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult

Chapter 1

Chapter 14,006 wordsPublic domain

TAKE ME FOR A RIDE

Coming Of Age In A Destructive Cult

by Mark E. Laxer

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

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, unless the intent is to benefit humankind.

Reviews:

“While his portrait of a charismatic leader’s slide into madness is gripping, perhaps more important here is Laxer’s disclosure of some of the motives impelling young people to immerse themselves in cults…the work is well written.”

--Library Journal

“This is a very important work…It is today’s Darkness at Noon…”

--Herb Rosedale, President, American Family Foundation

“One of the most important books written for a very vulnerable population.”

--Roberta Davis, WRCT-FM, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh

“Mark Laxer does a great service in his deeply personal portrayal of life within a cult. His struggle to attain independence…is a poignant quest of a seeking spirit.”

--Jacob Longacre, Lutheran Minister

“All students of human nature will delight in Mark Laxer’s insightful story of his personal journey into a new kind of American cult that interweaves pseudo-spiritual goals with money making, computer, hi-technology ambitions. He shows us the subtle techniques used to seduce bright college students and graduates into this cult and the powerful forces that bind members to their charismatic leader. My students have enjoyed the narrative and learned much from this analysis of the psychology of cult indoctrination in Take Me For A Ride.”

--Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University, Initiator of the Stanford Prison Experiment

Update:

After weathering a $30 million lawsuit meant to silence his ‘Take Me For A Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult’ (1993), Mark Laxer went on to write ‘The Monkey Bible’ (2010) with companion rock opera The Line by Eric Maring and ‘Rama Trauma Trump: I Left the Cult and Now Look What Happened’ (2020) - a nonfiction graphic novel illustrated by Marcie Vallette. Contact author for free digital copies of aforementioned books and rock opera.

Additional resources:

--Free audio of ‘Take Me For A Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult’ read by the author on the Mark Laxer youtube channel, in the Take Me For A Ride playlist

--Subscribe to Mark Laxer and TheMonkeyBible youtube channel for latest

--Follow author on twitter.com/marklaxer and instagram.com/mark.laxer

--Contact author through mark.laxer profile facebook page

--Follow author on facebook through thetravelerscircle or themonkeybible or vEcotourism

--For physical copies of books, search your online bookseller or check with your local librarian

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?"