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Laxer, Mark Eliot

"Take Me for a Ride: coming of age in a destructive cult"


Leave aside your petty jealousies, your hates, your desires,
your attachments, your fears, and enter the worlds where I hang out--
worlds of pure joy, light, and bliss."
Several minutes later, Atmananda announced it was time to meditate.
I wanted to rub my eyes, yawn, and stretch out on the soft blue rug.
Instead, I sat there spellbound, drifting in and out of a dreamless sleep.
At one point, I woke and heard, "When you attain enlightenment,
your selves dissolve in the clear light of the void. Maybe you exist,
maybe you don't. It no longer matters." Then, as Atmananda rehashed
the details of his own enlightenment, I dozed off again.
After the meeting, I went to my room. "I need time to think,"
I reminded myself. As I drifted off to sleep, I could still hear my
housemate talking.
Of the original one hundred San Diego Chinmoy disciples, roughly ten
formed their own Chinmoy Centre, forty set out on their own,
and fifty followed Atmananda. While some aspects of Atmananda's
program remained the same, others intensified. He repeatedly warned,
for instance, that the Negative Forces would prey on those who did
not meditate regularly, those who diluted their power with doubts
about him, and those who did not regularly attend his meetings.


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