Chapter 8

I had developed over the years a deep trust in him, as if he were family. I had allowed him to access and to control an important part of me, my imagination, and now I feared that without him, the window to worlds of dreams and fantasy would never open up again. There were other fears: of death, of God, of the absence of God, of being lost without a world, without a friend...

"I..."

I could not admit that I had trod what had in part become a bogus path. I wanted so much for there to be a simple solution.

"I...I see sparks flying from your hand, Atmananda," I said, allowing myself to imagine--and therefore to see--the sparks.

Atmananda left the room. I lay in bed, listening to the macaws.

"I won't let the Negative Forces take me over," I determined. "I am going to be a true spiritual warrior." When thoughts about Atmananda's other side resurfaced, I refused to confront them. Instead, I silently repeated Atmananda's recommended doubt-combating mantra: "NO!"

"NO!" I thought, after reading in a Castaneda book Don Juan's assertion that under no circumstance should you stay on a given path if your feelings tell you to leave.

"NO!" I thought, whenever I found myself questioning the process by which I censored my own thoughts.

I was still thinking, "NO," on the day Atmananda noticed the hole in the roof.

"GRAAAAAUUUUHHHHG!" squawked one of the colorful, captive birds.

"BAM! BAM! BAM!" echoed Atmananda's hammer as he blocked off the escape route with some two-by-fours.

13. Breakdown

In the months after I tried to run away, Atmananda kept me busy expanding his postering routes north to Los Angeles and to the Bay area. Once he had me plan and coordinate a campaign in which one hundred disciples distributed four thousand posters and one hundred thousand promotional newsletters across the entire state of California. He did not seem concerned that I was only twenty-one. He seemed to have faith in me. But after the work was complete, his faith regressed into stinging verbal attacks on my level of consciousness, loyalty, and sanity.

"You are mentally ill," he said. "You can hardly deal with the real world." He explained that I was a prime target for the mind-ravaging Forces because I was spiritually advanced, because I held a key position in his Light-spreading organization, and, most importantly, because I still doubted him.

"But stick with it, kid," he added. "We haven't given up on you yet."

Atmananda failed to appreciate that my doubt-blocking efforts were largely successful, except for the time that I spent with him. It was then that I saw him not as a divine incarnation with a bright golden aura, but rather as an opportunistic Ph.D. with smooth social skills. It was then that knots of tension mounted in my stomach, pangs of guilt haunted my conscience, and, only after several emotionally exhausting hours of telling myself, "NO!", the surfacing conflict appeared to short-circuit. It was then that my mind drew a blank.

One evening, in a movie theatre with Atmananda and the inner circle, the conflict had already run its course. I felt detached, numb, dumb. I gazed listlessly at the screen. Atmananda said something. Sal, Anne, Rachel, and Dana laughed. I looked straight ahead. I did not smile.

They kept giving me popcorn and candy, but I had deeply withdrawn. I did not eat. I passed the items along. I wished that it would stop.

What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion. Sal held out a bucket of popcorn. Halfheartedly, I reached for it. I wanted to be left alone. I held the bucket loosely. It slipped from my hand. Popcorn covered the floor. I stood up. Popcorn fell from my lap. I sensed that my friends had been having fun, and that I was ruining it for them. I would not meet their gazes. I stood there, bathed by the flickering lights of the film, frightened by the resurfacing conflict.

"Maybe it's been me all along," I thought.

"That's nonsense," I countered. "It's Atmananda who is..."

"NO!!"

I grimaced. I walked up the incline toward the exit. I left the theatre in a stupor. I felt dizzy and disoriented. My mind again drew a blank.

I crossed the street to UCSD. I walked to Revelle College. To the Humanities Library Building. To HL 1402. I often reserved this room through the Meditation Club for Atmananda's public and private meetings. I sat down. I did not reflect on how his talks in this room had changed in the past two years. Nor did I reflect on how he had changed. Nor on how I had changed. I just sat there. After a few minutes, I stood up and left.

I walked to John Muir College. I saw a picture of conservationist, writer, and mountaineer John Muir. I found myself thinking about the plumber, about Palomar Mountain, about the solitary hawk...

"NO!" I said aloud and turned away.

I walked down the hill to Central Library. I remembered walking here with two friends from high school who, months before, had unexpectedly appeared at the Centre door. I had not spoken with them in years. I told them I was no longer a disciple of an Indian guru. I also told them my new spiritual teacher was different than the others. "He's got a Ph.D," I explained. "He's been on Phil Donahue. He's my friend." Despite my assertions that I was fine and that I could take care of myself, they still looked at me as if I were in some kind of cult.

"The past is dust," I now thought, recalling a saying that Atmananda had borrowed from Chinmoy.

I walked to Third College. To Third College Lecture Hall. To TLH 104. I saw Atmananda's face on either side of the front wall. I had placed the two posters. Atmananda often claimed that his photograph was a doorway to his "awareness field," and now I wondered if he was watching me through the posters on the wall. I felt uneasy and left.

I walked to a nearby computer terminal room. I logged on and played Star Trek. The E on the screen was the Enterprise. R's were Romulans. K's were Klingons. Klingons had stealth devices. I was E. R's and K's surrounded E. E got destroyed. Each time I played, E got destroyed. I logged off and walked away.

I plodded over soft, squishy lawns. The sprinklers were on. I got wet. I felt like a zombie. I felt small.

I crisscrossed campus several times more. I was tired. I thought about sleeping in the computer room. I was afraid to return to the Centre. I was afraid of facing Atmananda. I did not examine the fear. I walked home.

I opened the door. It was late. Atmananda stood in the living room. I sensed that he had been waiting for me.

"You may not realize it," he said right away, "but you are very sick. You are mentally ill. I am a professional and you are going to have to trust me."

Atmananda spoke authoritatively. He held something in his hand. He said that he was going to help me.

"Have you ever heard of Stelazine?" he asked.

"No."

"Stelazine is a drug that helps people who suffer from mental illness or depression. With the advent of drugs such as this, people who would otherwise be dysfunctional can lead happy and normal lives."

I had a flash of fear. I glanced at the door.

"Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of," Atmananda said, holding out the pills. "You'd be surprised how many people experience some form of neurosis or psychosis. I have a cousin who took anti-psychotic drugs for years. Now he flies F-14's for the military."

The conflict sparked and it flickered and then disappeared. My mind became still. I reached for the pills.

"Western doctors don't really understand mental illness. It is a form of possession. Stelazine blocks out the lower occult worlds, which are inhabited by the Negative Forces."

I nodded. My doubts remained submerged.

"We are not about to desert you. But you have to understand that you *are* mentally ill. All along, you thought that this was some kind of game. You did not take my warnings about the Forces seriously. You opened up your consciousness to them, and now you are paying the price."

I nodded again.

"Of course, there is still hope. But you've got to stop fighting me. You've got to act *now*." He instructed me to take the drug. I had no premonition as I swallowed the Stelazine that Atmananda would later call me his "chemical experiment."

In the days that followed, Atmananda seemed to enjoy his assumed role as psychiatrist and nurse. He knocked on my door several times a day and, in a cheery voice, announced, "Hi, kid--reality check. How do you feel?"

"Dizzy," I replied. I smiled. I was enjoying Atmananda's attention and kind treatment. "I feel pretty relaxed."

"Good," he said. "Now tell me about your thoughts."

I did.

He seemed pleased that I was finding it difficult to concentrate, that my thoughts had a fuzzy, dream-like quality to them, and that my self-analyzing, authority-questioning nature had submerged beyond my control.

"You should feel good about yourself," he said pleasantly. "You are making some definite progress."

14. Bicycle Ride--St. Ignes

Two weeks into the cross-country bicycle trek, I pedaled from Utica, New York, to Rochester, where I stayed with Noah, a childhood friend. When I told him the story of my years with Atmananda, he congratulated me for having left what sounded to him like an abusive marriage. In fact, he was surprised that Atmananda did not have sexual relations with the men disciples as a way to control them. He also pointed out that while in medical school, he had observed self-proclaimed incarnations of Jesus Christ at psychiatric wards.

"How can you be sure that someone *isn't* enlightened?" I asked, puzzled by the certainty with which Noah expressed his opinions.

"How can you be sure that someone *is*?" he replied.

I thought about the visit as I continued the journey west to Detroit. Noah's reluctance to give a person or an idea the benefit of the doubt, and the scrutiny with which he questioned words such as "enlightenment," seemed bizarre but not entirely unnatural, like a trusted habit long forgotten.

Several days later, I rushed down a long hill in northern Michigan toward an oncoming truck. It was twilight. The trailer suddenly hit a bump, swung out from behind the bicycle, and slammed into my rear wheel. I nearly fell from the impact. Then I lurched forward as the trailer disengaged.

"Nuna!" I cried, glancing back, but the wheel had stopped spinning and it took my full attention to balance the skidding, swerving bicycle. Moments later the truck smacked me with a wall of air as it thundered by, and the bike quickly came to a halt. I ran up the hill to the wayward trailer and found Nunatak peering out from the doggie-carrier. She tilted her head as if to ask, "Is this something all huskies go through?"

I sat with the pup in the tall grass. I was devastated. The rig was the vehicle I had chosen to exercise and exorcise my body and mind. It was also my means of transportation. Now, it was broken. As the sky went from deep purple to black, the memory of Atmananda calling me his "chemical experiment" seemed to usher in the darkness. Other recollections bubbled up from the murky depths, only to burst into vivid, unnerving images. Here was Atmananda telling me that he was a professional, that I was extremely sick, and that he was going to help me. Here he was telling me to swallow my pride. And here he was telling me to swallow the Stelazine.

Cars zoomed by now and then, dispelling apparitions of my former mentor. Headlights flashed an angry light at the severed trailer, the pretzel-shaped wheel, and the fallen gear strewn in disarray. Then the lights were gone, leaving behind a fiery-comet afterimage.

I wondered why Atmananda had fed me the drug. Did he actually believe that he was helping me? If so, why didn't he recommend that I seek guidance outside his direct sphere of influence? It seemed more likely that, unable to tell the difference between helping and controlling people, he gave me the drug to strengthen his grip on my mind. But I suspected another motive. I knew that Atmananda had often used me as a sounding board for new ideas and, later, for LSD. He may have wanted to observe my reaction to the Stelazine before using it on others--or on himself.

As I meditated on Atmananda's possible motives, I swatted mosquitos and picked at scabs of aging stings. I did not yet know that he had given Stelazine to at least one other inner circle follower.

I tried to remember how I had felt during the Stelazine experiment. I recalled feeling dizzy. I also recalled feeling at peace with myself. The conflict between my rational and mystical natures did not seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter.

"You're doing fine, kid," Atmananda had told me each day. "Just go with the flow and enjoy the process."

Stunned by the memory, I held the husky in my arms. Nunatak was a wonderful traveling companion. Each day she tugged and leaped alongside the rig as if she were a full-grown sled dog. She licked the drying sweat and tears on my face.

I tried to understand why I had followed Atmananda-Dr. Lenz's drug prescription. Perhaps the most compelling reason was because I was afraid not to. Since the coup, Atmananda had stepped up his effort to instill fear in his followers. He taught me, for instance, to fear the Negative Forces which he said were destroying the fabric of society. "Just read the papers," he would say. "You'll see what I'm talking about."

He taught me to fear what would happen if I left the Centre. "You know too much to leave. It's a greedy, materialistic world out there. Your soul would be miserable. Besides, the Forces would flatten you like a bug. You would lose thousands of lifetimes of evolution."

He taught me to fear, not just the Forces but people, particularly old friends and family. "It's best if you don't tell them what we do here. Believe me, they won't understand. They'll end up blocking your progress and sapping your power."

And he taught me to fear for my sanity. "You can no longer deal with the real world. You're lucky I don't drop you off at a mental institution."

Other reasons why I had felt compelled to take the Stelazine slowly dawned. I realized that Atmananda's senatorial countenance, his smooth, commanding voice, and his Ph.D. contributed to an aura of authority which I had found difficult to dispute. He had combined Western rhetoric, Eastern mysticism, and American pop culture to entice me; vague language, long pauses, and repetition to hold me spellbound; and fear, fasting, and sleep deprivation to break me down.

Had Atmananda's techniques ended there, I might have seen him as a control freak--and left. But each time he had broken me down, he built me up again with kindness and with words of inspiration. He spoke of saints, of beauty, and of the wisdom of the desert. He spoke of selflessness, quixotic quests, literature, and wonder. And he spoke of an unconditional love and of a multi-lifetime camaraderie.

Had Atmananda's techniques ended there, I might have seen him as a confused combination of Big Nurse and McMurphy--and left. But he managed, by flipping between abusive and supportive personas, to keep me off balance on an emotionally gut-wrenching roller coaster ride. Genuine spiritual benefactors were supposed to keep students off balance, he maintained, because it was only then that they could "let go and make real leaps in spiritual progress." It was primarily in his uncanny ability to read an individual or group, and to gauge the precise instance in which to flip, that Atmananda's brilliance could be found. I had been unaware that he was speaking to me, controlling me, through the rhythmic "off" and "on" language of intermittent reinforcement.

It was painful to grapple with memories of Atmananda and to see him in such a searing light. But it was far more painful to examine what it was about me that had complemented his techniques and allowed me to accept his authority. I thought about how, as a thirteen-year-old, it had been easier to journey into lives of sorcerers from the Castaneda books than it was to deal with the emotions of a family in conflict; years later, it was easier to follow Atmananda's narcotic program than it was to brave a suppressed conflict of my own. I also realized that I had grown up feeling blessed, immortal, and immune to the dangers of the world; later, when Atmananda issued post-coup etiquette and Stelazine, I found it difficult to admit that I was so wrong for so long about so many things, and that I was just another victim of one man's *other* side.

The reluctance to view myself as a victim persisted, and now, draped with a sleeping bag to protect me from mosquitos, I found it difficult to admit that the "Atmananda phenomenon" may have had as much to do with Atmananda, and with me, as it did with the balance of society. Years later, I wondered if modern American society had been replacing a system of mythology and religious dogma with a system of reason as a way to explain ourselves and the world around us. I wondered if there were a genuine need in humans not only to categorize and comprehend, but to acknowledge and to address, in unscientific terms, the mystery of that which creates, binds, animates, and destroys. And I wondered if teachers like Atmananda were increasingly exploiting such a need in millions who, for whatever reasons, had chosen a path apart from conventional religion. Perhaps by nurturing both mystical and rational inclinations, society could explore the realm beyond the surface world of reason while keeping pace with the charismatic predators of the New Age.

But in the darkness of a northern Michigan night, still angry and upset from memories of Atmananda's experiments, I sensed that a New Age of enchantment and wisdom had passed me by. Yet I also felt cleansed and refreshed, like the air of a city after heavy rain. I stood up and began gathering the fallen gear in a pile by the trailer. Suddenly, I was staring into headlights which did not disappear. A man got out of the pickup.

"What happened, son?"

As I recounted the bicycle incident, I tried to control the quiver in my voice.

"Officer Brown," he said, showing me a badge. He dropped me, the dog, and the rig off at a motel in nearby St. Ignes. He also left me his number at the station, in case I needed help getting back on the road.

The following afternoon, the policeman pounded the wheel back into shape, fixed the derailleur, replaced spokes, and bolted steel bars over the aluminum which attached the trailer to the bicycle. When he was done, he refused to take my money.

"What are you doing now?" I asked.

"Cleaning the frame."

"Thanks," I said, "but you don't have to do that."

"Whenever you do a job, son, do it right."

Later that day, invisible currents from California, along with the weight of the baggage, continued to affect my progress west. As I rode through the woods of the Upper Peninsula, I reflected on Noah's remark that I had escaped from an abusive relationship. My story, I concluded, was not so unusual after all. Invigorated, I coasted down a long hill and squeezed the brakes intermittently.

15. The Enchanted Taco

Late one night, Atmananda met three hundred disciples in a parking lot in the desert ninety miles east of San Diego. He led us for hours over soft, cooling sand to a spot in a dry river bed. He had us form a circle around him. As we scanned for scorpions before sitting down, the desert floor lit up like a circular, gyrating constellation, until one by one the flashlights went out and it grew difficult again to see.

"If you enter a higher level of consciousness," Atmananda began from the center of the circle, "you will see the Warriors on the cliffs across the gorge. They are subtle beings from another plane of existence. They look a lot like American Indians."

Hundreds of braves, tall and unflinching, were conjured in my imagination.

"What do you *see*?" Atmananda asked the group.

I made no response. I did not doubt the images cast on the back of my eyes by my brain. Nor did I doubt Atmananda. In the months after the week-and-a-half-long Stelazine experiment, the doubts and the conflict had vanished. I was reluctant to speak because my vision had been so subtle, so fleeting.

Meanwhile, others in the circle--engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, students, and business professionals-- also remained as silent as the rocks and hills around us.

"If you are at all serious about the study of mysticism," chided Atmananda, "you must learn to talk openly about what you *see*. If you don't, your mind will play tricks on you and you will doubt your experiences later on."

More silence. The next ten seconds passed very slowly.

"Atmananda," I suddenly announced. "I *saw* the Warriors."

Others in the circle soon *saw* them too.

Atmananda held desert trips once or twice a month and, by mid-1983, followers *saw* him walking above the ground on a "cushion of light," flying to distant mountains, sending columns of light into the sky, and causing constellations to gyrate and disappear.

On one starlit night, Atmananda raised his hands above his head. As he slowly lowered them, he made a low, whistling sound like the wind.

"What did you *see*?" he asked afterward.

"I didn't *see* anything," one new follower bemoaned.

"Advanced psychic vision is necessary to perceive what I am doing or, more accurately, not doing," Atmananda said patiently.

"I hate to sound negative," persisted the follower, "but what exactly are you doing?"

For a moment I felt tense. The disciple had unearthed a question that had badly stung me many times before.

"Sometimes I alter actual physical objects, sometimes I alter your perceptions, and sometimes I alter both," Atmananda said, dispelling the tension with his gentle, soothing voice.

"Atmananda, I *saw* you become a luminous egg," said another follower, borrowing a phrase from the Castaneda books.

"Anyone else?"

"I *saw* light from the stars pass through your body," tried another.

"Very good. Who *saw* me disappear?"

I often saw Atmananda disappear after I stared at him for several minutes without blinking. But during one desert trip in 1983, I saw him vanish independently of the dilated pupils. Then, a moment later, I saw him reappear as someone else.

"What I am about to say," he had announced that night, "is going to come as a shock to you. You see, I am not who you think I am."

The followers stopped fidgeting.

"A few days ago," he continued, "when I stopped drinking Tab, I knew something was up. This morning when I woke, I looked at my body. There was nothing but Light. I suddenly understood. It was all so simple."

He paused. "Who am I?" he asked.

Dead silence.

"Don't all answer at once."

Nervous laughter.

"I thought you were a man named Atmananda who meditated extremely well," said a man.

Atmananda did not reply.

"Are you a doorway to eternity?"

"Please--no philosophy tonight," he said sharply. "Who else?"

After several more tries, a devotee suggested that he was Vishnu, a Hindu godhead.

"Close," he approved.

I felt a rush in the pit of my stomach. Atmananda's private jet, after years of accumulating the fuel of our trust and belief, was finally taking off. I was worried. "Fastening my seat belt" would do me no good if he started thinking he was on par with Jesus Christ or the Buddha.

"Are you Rama?" someone asked.