Take Me for a Ride Part 9

And what a buffer Atmananda was! I pictured him striding about with his chin jutting forward, exuding that aura of confidence; joking and singing, inspiring and enlivening us; challenging our intellects with the known and unknowable; framing and reframing the way in which we viewed the world; and generating mystical experiences-- not on his own, of course, but with the Guru's Spiritual Light.

"Yes!" I replied, without considering the feelings of my brother, who continued to support me in my quest with a faraway smile.

I was proud that Atmananda had chosen me to be part of his team.

I did not know, however, that he had embellished stories in his book Lifetimes. Nor did I know that he had told the San Francisco Examiner that he never experienced a past life remembrance.

Nor did I know that he had once asked a girlfriend to slip out the window when another appeared at the door.

Nor that he had recently been in deep trouble with Chinmoy.

Nor that during the height of the controversy, he had admitted to Tom that he might leave the Centre before Chinmoy kicked him out.

"What would you do if you left?" Tom had asked him.

"I'd move to California and teach meditation," Atmananda replied.

On August 30, 1979, Atmananda, Dana, Rachel, Connie, and I left the ground in a jet bound for San Diego. In the excitement of packing and leaving, I had forgotten my wallet and daypack back at my brother's. Now, without money or ID, I watched rays of light play off darkening clouds and thought about the frog.

5. Bicycle Ride--Lenox

The weather had cleared since I had started pedaling west from Walden Pond five days before, but headwinds continued to press both the doggie-carrier and bicycle-trailer as if I were tugging a parachute.

Contributing little to the weight of the rig was a book by William Shirer on Mahatma Gandhi. Disillusioned, but not yet ready to live without heroes, I actively sought a replacement for Atmananda.

I rode over the mountains of western Ma.s.sachusetts and rolled into the town of Lenox. There a woman noticed the oddness of my entourage and asked, "What exactly is going on?"

"I am bicycling across America with my dog," I replied.

Ten minutes later she was interviewing me in a nearby cafe.

She was a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, and, as I answered her questions, I thought about how I would answer when she asked me "why?" I realized it was more than a love for bicycling, more than a longing for adventure, and more than a desire to strengthen my self-confidence that propelled me west.

I wanted time to think about Atmananda's thousands of lessons, some of which I sensed were valid and some of which I knew were not.

There was another reason: I wanted to do something distinctly *me*. Bicycling across a continent against the prevailing winds with all my possessions and a Siberian husky--that was *me*.

"Why?" she asked later.

I tempered my answer with the knowledge that I was being interviewed by a journalist and not a shrink. At one point I told her that I was traveling with a book on Gandhi.

"Do you like it?" she asked.

While reading the book I felt proud that Gandhi had been deeply influenced by Th.o.r.eau's essay "Civil Disobedience," proud that a thinker and experimenter from the United States had had an effect on one from India whose thoughts and experiments affected humankind.

But it was more than pride which attracted me to Shirer's Gandhi: A Memoir. Gandhi's dream of helping the ma.s.ses reminded me of Atmananda's seeming interest in making millions of people happy.

While Gandhi wielded influence over two-thirds of a billion people as he helped India secure independence, never did he grow twisted by the enormity of his own power, never did he betray the public trust.

Though Atmananda eloquently described the balance between the spiritual and the mundane, I knew from years of firsthand experience-- yet found it difficult to admit--that a Mahatma Gandhi he was not.

"I like the book very much," I replied.

"Would you like to meet Shirer?" she offered.

William L. Shirer was the only correspondent sent by an American newspaper to cover India's revolution. He gathered that Gandhi's philosophy encompa.s.sed more than civil disobedience, pa.s.sive resistance, non-cooperation and non-violence, but "had to do also with something more subtle--and fundamental: the search for truth, for the essence of the spirit..." Insights such as this made him seem particularly suited to investigate so complex and sensitive a matter as India's social, political, and spiritual ferment.

Shirer was also the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of n.a.z.i Germany. As I knocked on his door, I hoped that with his knowledge of benevolent and malevolent charismatic leaders, he could help me to understand Atmananda.

I wanted to tell Shirer that I had seen Atmananda's seemingly tight-knit community transform into a group of fearful, paranoid people.

I wanted to tell him that I had seen Atmananda himself transform from a seemingly kind and n.o.ble seeker into a man who used anti-psychotic drugs and LSD as tools of persuasion, who--without the use of drugs-- persuaded one woman to leave her husband and newborn child, who dreamt of filling stadiums and of starting a world religion, who claimed to be the anti-Christ, and who spoke repeatedly of taking the inner circle for a ride in a Learjet into a mountain.

I wanted to tell Shirer how, in 1984, I had helped Atmananda through a bad LSD trip and how, as he was "coming down," I had observed his opposing personalities rea.s.sert themselves. I wanted to tell him that Atmananda seemed to be getting progressively worse.

And I wanted to tell him how Atmananda had persuaded one disciple that he and I would be forever locked in a battle over mystical power.

The disciple was my brother.

When Shirer answered the door his large, bright forehead and serene countenance made him appear intellectually and spiritually advanced, and I had an uncanny feeling that something of the Mahatma himself peered out at me through those eighty-three-year-old eyes.

"What can I do for you?" he asked me.

"I wanted to tell you that I'm enjoying your book," I said, suddenly aware that he might not want to discuss the extremities of human nature with a total stranger. I told him about the bike trip, his book on Gandhi, and the reporter. But he was busy preparing for a lecture tour of Russia and had no time to talk. I thanked him, got back on my bicycle, and left.

I pictured Shirer as a young man, contemplating the life and lessons of Mahatma Gandhi. I also pictured him observing uniformed men with swastikas, bent on genocide. I imagined him accepting both good and bad in people, for only by cultivating acceptance did I imagine him harvesting peace. But I realized, as I pedaled north, that I would have to learn to distinguish between the nurturing and noxious roots Atmananda had sown in my mind without Shirer's help.

This was something I would have to do for myself.

I continued to ride towards Pittsfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, with Frank, a childhood friend. Tall, with messy red hair, he was an expert car mechanic though he never made much money. This was in part because he was a slow worker, because he had little self-confidence, and because people took advantage of him.

"How's work going?" I asked him.

"Okay, I suppose."

I knew that he was making less than six dollars an hour.

"Have you thought about looking for a higher paying job?"

I asked.

He shrugged.

"You know you're being ripped off."

He shrugged again. We had been through this conversation before.

I wanted to teach Frank that he was like a sitting duck, that he could protect himself, that he could change--suddenly I froze.

I remembered that Atmananda had taught us that we were like sitting ducks, that we could protect ourselves, that we could change...

6. The Garden

Southern Californians have been exposed to more New Age teachers than perhaps any population in the United States.

Yet the forty or so people seemed unprepared for Atmananda, who strode into the lecture hall twenty minutes late, with a can of diet soda in one hand and a pack of green gum in the other.

I a.s.sumed that many of the Birkenstock-clad seekers drank natural fruit juice and did not chew gum.

"This evening I'd like for you all to hold hands and be like reeeally mellowwww," said Atmananda, mimicking the way some people spoke in San Diego's flourishing holistic community.

There was tense laughter. A few people left.