Atmananda

“ 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. ”

“ Some of the fifty or so former Chinmoy disciples that I greeted seemed excited, but most, like me, seemed anxious and confused. Twenty minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin, I closed the door and sat with the group before a barren, Transcendental-less shrine. A nervous tension permeated the room. Atmananda strode in, sat down, and fiddled with his wristwatch. Then he looked up and quickly raised his hand to his mouth—as if he were surprised that he was not alone. A few people laughed.
"There are four paths leading to enlightenment," Atmananda said. ”

“ My newfound calm, however, was broken by what Atmananda said at a Centre meeting several days later. He announced that he had recently attained levels of consciousness so powerful and sublime that he was no longer the person that we thought him to be. Each time he dipped into these higher realms of perception, his old self died and a new one emerged, forged in the fires of what he called perfection.
"A number of you have already sensed the change," he said. "I first started entering into these higher states—which I call basement samadhi—during deep meditation. ”

“ I began to think not about McMurphy and Atmananda's similarities, but about their differences. I recalled Atmananda saying, "When you attain my level of enlightenment, you transcend good and evil. 'Good' and 'evil' become mere words, mere concepts in a universe where only experience matters. So why be attached to the good side of the force?"
I wanted to believe that Atmananda meant: "Why worry about being good if you become goodness itself?" ”

“ On La Jolla Scenic Road, I saw more exotic flora: tall, cedar-like trees, plants with huge vein-covered leaves, and cacti with yellow flowers and spiny needles. I did not know their names.
"At last," boomed Atmananda, pointing to a large shrub which drooped like a wilted phallus. "We have found the fabled swaaaanso bush!"
I laughed nervously at his fabrication and glanced at Dana, who sat beside me. Only minutes ago, she and I had sat outside the San Diego airport terminal, caressed by a balmy breeze, waiting for Atmananda and Rachel to rent a car. It was the first time we had been alone. ”

“ Atmananda inundated us with so many details that he appeared to be conducting a lesson, not a coup.
"Another way to tell if someone is your teacher," Atmananda said, turning toward me, "is to see if you have studied with them in a previous life. Several of you have been with me before. Mark, for instance, has studied with me in Tibet, Japan, and India. He doesn't remember very well, but he will. You may have noticed how easy it is to see his aura."
"He's just saying that!" I thought. Yet I had always felt a powerful affinity toward those countries. Several students cast their gaze at me. ”

“ One time I lay in bed thinking about One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, a book Atmananda had recommended to me. At first I thought about the similarities between Atmananda and R. P. McMurphy, the novel's free-spirited protagonist. Both men, I realized, exuded auras of self-confidence. Atmananda, for instance, had once offered to teach me the secret of attracting women. Jutting his chin forward like a boxer's glove, he focused on an imaginary horizon and began taking long and rhythmic strides. ”

“ I asked Atmananda what he thought had nearly killed me. "It is no coincidence," he said mysteriously. "Whenever you make genuine spiritual progress, the Negative Forces in the universe try and hold you back. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Exhausted, too, from the shock of Atmananda's sudden grab for power, I became mesmerized by the sound and the rhythm of the words.
"You are caught up in trying to be someone you are not, and it is clearly not working. You are fighting yourselves for no apparent reason. ”

“ But then I thought about how, unlike McMurphy, Atmananda increasingly blamed others for the role he chose to play. "I incarnated into this world of pain and suffering," Atmananda often claimed, "to help my students from past lives. Many of you don't seem to realize it, but I am in a constant state of pain as a result of the bad energy that you continuously bombard me with. I am also constantly ill as a result of the massive amounts of bad karma that I absorb from you on a regular basis." ”

“ In my naive, sleepless stupor, I accepted Atmananda's mission of poking fun at others, and did my best to train and coordinate the WOOF! distribution teams.
Perhaps it was to dispel doubts about his own authenticity that Atmananda proceeded to poke fun at himself. Appearing beside his photograph was the following ad (Issue #6; March, 1981) : "His High Holiness SWAMI UGULA UGLE From The Himalayan Institute For The Strange will be appearing in Del Mar on March 37th at 2 a.m. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Atmananda replied, "Elizabeth is asking a perfectly legitimate question. But if you could see, you would have detected the underlying hostility in her tone."
The room filled with uneasy silence.
"But that is why we study meditation," he went on. "We are constantly striving to perfect our different selves."
He slowly scanned the disciples. "Many of you send Guru hostile vibrations in the inner worlds, so don't hide behind your holier-than-thou facade. It isn't necessary. We understand." ”

“ I had been taught that samadhi was a state of consciousness so exalted that precious few enlightened souls achieved it. But now I was dizzy and nauseous from hunger. I was having difficulty concentrating. I saw swirling dots before me whether I was meditating or not. I found myself realizing that Atmananda had studied meditation in past lives. I found myself realizing that he was an advanced disciple of the Guru. I found myself feeling bad that I had doubted so advanced a soul, so educated a man, and so close a friend. ”

“ The road began following a winding river, and it became increasingly difficult to convince myself that a town or phone was just ahead. Exhausted, I stopped at the edge of a clearing and set up the bent, many-sided tent—another gift from Atmananda. I lay on my sleeping bag and listened to the river and to voices from the past. I could almost hear Atmananda talking, back in 1979, about the pending move from New York to southern California.
"It's very important that the right people go," he had said to Rachel and me. ”

“ Trust was the bridge to Atmananda's world, a peculiar, improbable place where it snowed inside buildings in Manhattan in the spring, where invisible beings threatened a guru's mission by blowing up stoves, and where people were hunters or hunted or both. It felt natural to trust a man who treated me with kindness, who exuded an aura of competency and of vulnerability, and who seemed wholeheartedly dedicated to the cause of self-improvement. ”

“ Both Atmananda and McMurphy, I realized, shared their knowledge with others. Atmananda, for instance, made a special effort to make his followers feel big. "How can you become strong and self-confident?" ”

“ But the thick fog of illusion, which prevented me from gaining insight into his true nature, might have partially cleared had I known what Atmananda told Tom only weeks before, during a meditation with Chinmoy in New York.
"Have you noticed anything different about Guru?" Atmananda had asked him.
"No," replied Tom, who had not yet joined Atmananda's west coast entourage.
"Something heavy has been going down in the inner worlds," Atmananda said. "Call me in San Diego in late December, and I will fill you in." ”

“ When you are attacked by the Forces, just think of Guru."
I did think of Guru. I often doubted, though, that nefarious, non-physical Entities from beyond the world of reason were getting underneath my skin. I recalled that Don Juan tricked Castaneda into pursuing the path to knowledge, and wondered if Atmananda's explanation was a ploy to maneuver me closer to Guru. But because I sought adventure, challenge, and entrance into the metaphysical worlds of Don Juan, Obi-Wan-Kanobi, Chinmoy and Atmananda, I willfully suspended my disbelief. ”

“ Atmananda replied. "But you have to be careful. If you are swimming near a sinking ocean liner, it doesn't matter how nice a person you are—you'll be sucked under when the ship goes down.
"You should understand that I am not criticizing the Guru. Nor should any of you. You should give him a great deal of credit for holding out against the Forces for as long as he did.
"The Forces are not exactly evil per se. They are merely playing their role in the Cosmic Game. It just so happens that their role is to destroy Light."
Several disciples shook their heads incredulously. ”

“ Then, in his Kermit-the-Frog voice, he said, "We're going to make millions of people happy."
"Make millions of people happy," I echoed.
Chinmoy seemed willing to look the other way when Atmananda, his chief recruiter, disregarded his etiquette on sex, ego, cinema, individuality, and language. But his patience ran out in 1979, when a Queens disciple informed him that Atmananda was "playing guru." Actually, it had been several months since Atmananda had made it a practice to scan the audience during the meditation part of his talks, as if he were channeling Divine Light. ”

“ Displaced
"Aren't enlightened souls supposed to be more quiet?" I thought, recalling Atmananda's newfound access to a world without words. It was an hour or so after the coup. His voice crept through my bedroom door, interrupting my thoughts. I had been deliberating on whether I would attend the follow-up meeting, which was scheduled to begin within minutes. "Well," I thought, trying to ignore the relentless monologue, "he did claim only *partial* enlightenment."
I read from the Castaneda poster on the wall of my room a quote about following a path with heart. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I told myself that the explosion had probably more to do with the gas being left on than it did with Guru and the Forces.
"The Negative Forces want to hurt Guru's mission," Atmananda continued grimly. "But they know not to challenge an avatar directly. Instead, they go after his disciples—particularly those wide open to doubt." ”

“ Atmananda did not teach the myth of Icarus. He spoke, instead, about the role of the Self-Sacrificing Hero. "Be like a star," he said at Centre meetings, citing Guru, Gandhi, and Jesus Christ. "Burn your own substance so that others may see."
Yet as the months in southern California slipped by, he spoke increasingly about the myth of the Fluid Warrior. "Be fluid," he said. "Don't let people pin you down as being a certain way." ”

“ 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." ”

“ During the lecture, Atmananda predicted that the world would enter a spiritual dark age in 1985. "The darkness will last for thousands of years, and it will become increasingly difficult to meditate and to think clearly. Spiritual warriors will need to band together under the protection of a guru who can fight the Negative Forces and forge a path toward freedom and Light through a world turned murky and grey." Then we had cookies.
After several public meetings at the Centre, Atmananda invited those who were interested in studying with Chinmoy to stay afterwards. ”