I could have thought about how
those who teach how-to-hunt-and-how-not-to-be-hunted can easily prey
upon those whom they teach. I could have thought about how, by asking
Atmananda to take me beyond the world of reason, I was hunting him.
I could have thought about how he was hunting me. But I just sat there
and let my thoughts run free.
That year, Sal, Paul, Tom, my brother, and I placed thousands
of posters in Manhattan. Working with Anne, Dana, and Suzanne,
we also distributed thousands of handouts on the Stony Brook campus.
Sometimes we worked in sub-freezing temperatures. Once Atmananda had us
glue posters on buildings in Manhattan in the middle of the night.
I did not mind. I tended to enjoy the effort, in part because I
believed we were doing some good, because we had plenty of time
to pursue other interests (in January, 1979, I began studying English
literature at Stony Brook), and because as hard as we worked,
we played.
* * *
"The Muppet Movie?" I asked after another full day of postering.
"Starring Kermit-the-Frog?"
"Trust me," Atmananda replied.
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.
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