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Laxer, Mark Eliot

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


I had gone with three friends from the Centre, each of whom loved
the woods as much as I did. We woke to the sounds of a brown
bear eating our food. We played hacky-sack on top of Half Dome.
We got muddy and jumped in a river and yelled and laughed from the cold.
Yet when we returned, Atmananda scolded me for having picked up
significant quantities of Negative Psychic Energy. "Don't worry,"
he told me. "I'll process the bad energy for you--though it will
probably make me ill." Then, adding humiliation to guilt, he dubbed us
"assholes of the mountains."
Both Atmananda and Big Nurse, I also realized, relied heavily on
informants to gather data about the group that they controlled.
Atmananda exposed his Big Nurse nature in other ways. He claimed,
for instance, that he had to "press all the right buttons"
to help people overcome their resistance to the Light and to him.
And he said he never trusted a man unless he had his pecker in
his pocket.
As I lay in bed remembering and reflecting, I felt overwhelmed by
the extent to which Atmananda had changed. For a moment, I felt sad.
I still thought of him as a friend. I found myself thinking about
the time he had initiated the former Chinmoy disciples. When it came
my turn, he placed his hand on my forehead and looked into my eyes.


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