16. Ride To Heaven
"I didn't do well enough to remember," wrote Donald Kohl in 1984. "Bye, Rama, see you next time."
Months later, Donald's father called me. "Do you have a few minutes?" he asked. I knew that Rama would not want me to talk with Mr. Kohl. But I was shocked by the image of blood spurting from Donald's wrists.
"I have time," I said. "I'm sorry about your son."
Mr. Kohl asked about Rama and the organization.
"I know what you're thinking," I said. "But Donald was not involved in a cult. We're not like that. Rama teaches us to accept or reject his recommendations based on our own perceptions. He teaches us that he's no more important than anyone else." I did not mention that Rama had distributed to each devotee a larger-than-life poster of his face.
"Rama asks that we help cover the cost of room rentals and things like that. But we're in charge of our own money." I did not tell him that Rama actively sought gift money to supplement the skyrocketing "tuition." Nor did I tell him that Rama worshipped and had named the organization "Lakshmi," the Hindu goddess of beauty and prosperity.
"Our goal is to teach people to meditate." I did not mention Rama's stated interest in finding students from his past lives, filling stadiums, and starting a world religion. Nor did I mention that Rama actively pursued these interests. He payed many thousands of dollars, for instance, for promotional photographs featuring a back-lit aura. He shifted his advertising copy and name to reflect a growing sentiment that gurus were out while Zen masters were in (he called himself "Zen Master Rama"). And he persuaded thousands in the two years since the Stelazine experiment that he was a living legend, a rare presence, and a direct line to God.
"We normally meditate on our own for forty minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes at noon, and fifty minutes in the evening. Once a week we meditate with Rama at a Centre meeting. Sometimes we'll attend a public lecture or a field trip to the desert. Sometimes we'll help out on a project like office work or postering. But that's pretty much it. Basically, we're just a group of healthy individuals who happen to meditate. It's not like we live in an ashram or anything." I did not mention that Rama had been initiating disciples with names—Prema, Hanuman, Arjuna—taken from Hindu mythology. Nor did I mention that Rama had been teaching us to flip between various "caretaker personalities." He taught, for instance, that within the hostile environment of the "outside world" we should adopt the shrewd powerful personality of a warrior, whereas within the safe environment of a Centre meeting we should adopt the gentle, trusting personality of a child. Nor did I mention the details of Rama's spiritual etiquette, some of which he described in his tape, "Welcome To Lakshmi" (see Appendix B).
"Rama teaches us a combination of spiritual paths like Taoism, mysticism, and Christianity." I did not describe what might happen at a typical Centre meeting. Rama, who usually arrived about forty minutes late, might begin with a discourse on the teachings of Lao Tzu, Castaneda's Don Juan, or Christ. Then, couching parables in modern terms, he might proclaim: "Short is the path of the fast lane on the freeway to enlightenment." Or he might say: "As the coyote tries to catch the road runner, so too tries the seeker to comprehend the life of a fully enlightened teacher through rational means."
He might make the several hundred disciples laugh with: "Many are cold (called) but few are frozen (chosen)."
He often lectured the men in the Centre that our untamed sexual energy had been stunting the spiritual growth of our sister disciples. He often lectured the women in the Centre that they needed to learn how to emotionally detach themselves from men. And he often lectured both sexes that he attracted very powerful souls, that we were way too powerful for our own good, and that we had been making him physically ill by relentlessly attacking him in the inner world.
He lectured, too, about the inevitable eclipsing of the world's spiritual light, a process which seemed to be perpetually accelerating. "Haven't you been feeling it?" he asked.
"Yes, Rama," came the inevitable response. "I feel it."
Rama quoted Chaucer, Roethke, and Shakespeare. He also told a story (from The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury) about a Martian who, when approached by humans, transformed into the object of their desires. The Martian became a woman's dead son, for instance, until someone else walked by. "I am like the Martian," said Rama. "I am constantly being called upon to fulfill your desires."
Rama might question disciples with a portable microphone, a la Phil Donahue. "Why don't you share what you saw tonight," he said, roaming the aisles. He seemed to enjoy interrupting us when our response was spiritually or grammatically incorrect.
Then Rama sat in front of the auditorium, wiggling his toes and fielding questions, a la Chinmoy.
"Rama?" a woman might begin.
"Yes."
"The men where I work are constantly sending me sexual energy. Each day I come home completely drained."
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a receptionist."
"Why don't you study programming?" he suggested. "Software professionals tend to be less visible and, therefore, less prone to psychic attack."
Rama often lectured on the nature of consciousness: "Consciousness, like a complex system of software, has thousands of levels of nested, self-accessing subroutines." He taught that the next step along the path to self-knowledge was to debug those subroutines hidden in our minds at an early age by our teachers and, in particular, by our parents.
Rama lectured on the nature of words: "Words are inaccurate pointers to reality and should by no means be trusted." Logic, he said, was based on the shaky foundation of words and was of primary value to those who could not access Truth directly. Since he had transcended these limited tools, attempts to comprehend his actions on a rational basis were meaningless. In fact, those doubting his behavior through a framework of words and logic were merely reflecting their own mediocre level of awareness. Those who concluded that he was greedy were, therefore, guilty of greed themselves.
I felt confident as I listened to Rama's words that I was learning new, valuable ways of understanding knowledge. Just as often, though, I felt confused by the belief that words had no fixed, real meaning. It was as if Rama were yanking the rug on which my descriptions of the world were centered. But then I recalled that confusion was an essential part of the process through which the Infinite dissolved our countless selves in the clear light of the void. "If you think you have it figured," Rama often pointed out, "you have what we refer to as an inflated ego."
At one point during a typical Centre meeting, Rama frowned and said, "Okay, what's up?"
No response.
"Hello, friends. What's going on out there?"
The silence and tension grew.
"Let's talk!"
It occurred to me that I did not like his tone. Suddenly, a hidden, mental "subroutine" activated, reminding me that those who questioned his methods were asked to leave the Centre.
"Fess up!" he snapped.
"Rama," started one disciple, "I don't know what it is, but... "
"Of course you know. Look—you're fooling no one but yourselves. C'mon people—fess up!"
"Rama, are we focusing on the l.o. [lower occult] again?"
"What do you think?"
"Yes, Rama."
"Look, none of you realize what you are getting yourselves into. Once you open the door to the Negative Entities, it is nearly impossible to get rid of them." He read our expressions and paused, as if to assess the point at which to start building us up again.
"Eternity is all around us at every moment," he said gently, "be absorbed. Nirvana is a world of unlimited ecstasy, be absorbed. Go see the new Schwartzenegger movie, be absorbed. You are doing much better lately, be absorbed. Don't forget that we will soon be meditating together on the golden beaches of Maui, be absorbed. Be proud that you are taking a stand against the Negative Forces, be absorbed. Don't be so hard on yourselves—give yourselves a break—be absorbed. Learn humility and you will learn the secret to happiness, be absorbed. A desert trip is coming up soon, be absorbed. Forget not that our mission is to spread light in the world, be absorbed. Our friends from past lives will soon be joining us, be absorbed."
Rama asked that we sit up straight. He put on electronic music, slowly scanned the audience, and raised his hands above his head. Many of us gazed at him intensely. It didn't matter that those occupying the same room as him were, during meditation, supposed to evolve hundreds, even thousands of lifetimes. We still tried to absorb as much spiritual light as we could.
Then, he might end with a quote from the teachings of Lao Tzu, Castaneda's Don Juan, or Christ.
At the next Centre meeting, Rama might announce that everything had changed and that we were in an extremely poor state of consciousness.
"At the weekly Centre meetings," I told Donald Kohl's father, "Rama teaches us to realize our full potential. He teaches us to love and respect life." I did not describe, however, Rama's fixation on death.
"Someone in San Diego is trying to kill me," Rama once told devotees in a turret of the castle he was renting. "I am moving to Los Angeles. I suggest that you do the same."
Another time Rama turned to me and said, "Do you realize that I can kill you at any moment?"
"He's only joking," I thought.
"No, really," he went on. "I am extremely strong and could kill you in an instant!"
Repeatedly during the '80s and early '90s, Rama expressed a desire to take disciples for a ride in a Lear Jet into a snow-capped mountain, into the other worlds. "That would be a clean way to go," he said.
One time after a beach meditation, Rama asked five or six disciples, "What do you see?"
"I see red," said Sal. "I see blood, destruction, war, global apocalypse."
"Very good," said Rama.
Repeatedly during the '80s and early '90s, Rama slept with numerous women devotees, several of whom claim that he took no measures whatsoever to prevent the potential spread of AIDS.
Also in the 80s, Rama encouraged followers to secure software contracts in ADA, a computer language used to control the United States' hardware of war.
On the night before his thirty-fifth birthday, Rama invited thirty or so disciples to a party. He had been either ignoring or abusing many of us, so the invitation came as a welcome surprise. Unlike other recent events, there was an upbeat feel to the party. He had asked Anne, for instance, to spend time decorating the room with colorful balloons. "Maybe," a few of us thought, "things are going to get better." During the party, though, Rama demanded that a handful of us confess, one by one, before the other disciples, that the demons had succeeded in talking over our souls.
"Anne is the worst," Rama proclaimed, lashing out at her. "She either looks like a witch or a whore." Then, in a seeming attempt to exorcise the demons, he told us to meet him the following day at the Los Angeles coroner's office. He wanted us to witness an autopsy.
The next day I watched two men saw the skull of a "John Doe" hit-and-run victim. The saw whined. They peeled off the face. The air smelled acrid. My stomach felt bloated. "That could be me on the table," I thought. I wanted to retch. The pathologist measured the brain. I found myself thinking about life. Not in terms of Rama's increasingly fearful descriptions of the world, but in terms of my gut feelings. "Something happened," I wrote in a journal that I had recently started. "I felt it, a change inside me... "
After the autopsy, I noticed the way I breathed. I noticed the way my blood pulsed through me. I slept more; I had been sleeping only five or six hours a night. I watched the way light played off ripples in a body of water. Rama had failed to appear at the coroner's that day. Until the next Centre meeting, his world seemed small.
Mr. Kohl listened to my descriptions of Rama and of the organization. "Tell me, Mark," he said. "Does Rama pressure the disciples to be a certain way?"
"Well, technically we're not really disciples. We're students. Think of the organization as being like a university. Sure, there's some pressure, if that's what you want to call it. But it doesn't come from Rama. It comes from each of us wanting to do well."
I did not mention that Rama often threatened to spend less time with his disciples because we maintained an abysmal level of consciousness and because we bombarded him with Negative Occult Energy. "You should understand that I will still love you no matter what you do," Rama lectured. "But when you ignore my suggestions, when you succumb to the Forces, when you don't keep up with your tuition payments, you are setting yourselves up for a multi-lifetime pattern that will be extremely difficult to break. You are also letting down those we were sent here to help. Many of you don't seem to realize that you can easily be replaced. Believe me, there are plenty of seekers out there who would genuinely appreciate the opportunity that the Infinite is providing here."
Nor did I mention to Mr. Kohl that Rama followed through with his threats of replacement. In 1984, for instance, he kicked out four hundred followers after looking at their photos and reading their recently submitted essays. The purge gave him greater control over the remaining four or five hundred, who now lived in constant fear of getting kicked out. As for the outcasts, many had developed psychological dependencies on Rama. They continued to write him letters, to appear regularly at public lectures, and to send him money. Because he maintained their names and addresses in a database, he could always swap them back in when the current batch burned out.
Nor did I mention that, in response to the intensifying pressure, I had dropped out of UCSD a year before Donald, a sensitive, bright UCLA undergraduate, committed suicide.
The longer I spoke with Mr. Kohl, the more I became aware of—and uneasy about—the discrepancy between what I knew and what I was willing to admit about my teacher and my organization. I felt particularly uneasy knowing that at one Centre meeting, Rama had promised to take closer devotees for a ride through the death worlds in a Porsche. After I hung up the phone, the uneasiness did not disappear. Though I did not openly entertain doubts about Rama, my ability to separate myself from his world, and to view myself as an individual, was suddenly infused with new life.