Prev | Current Page 152 | Next

Laxer, Mark Eliot

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


They look a lot like American Indians."
Hundreds of braves, tall and unflinching, were conjured in my imagination.
"What do you *see*?" Atmananda asked the group.
I made no response. I did not doubt the images cast on
the back of my eyes by my brain. Nor did I doubt Atmananda.
In the months after the week-and-a-half-long Stelazine experiment,
the doubts and the conflict had vanished. I was reluctant to speak
because my vision had been so subtle, so fleeting.
Meanwhile, others in the circle--engineers, teachers,
doctors, lawyers, students, and business professionals--
also remained as silent as the rocks and hills around us.
"If you are at all serious about the study of mysticism,"
chided Atmananda, "you must learn to talk openly about what you
*see*. If you don't, your mind will play tricks on you and you
will doubt your experiences later on."
More silence. The next ten seconds passed very slowly.
"Atmananda," I suddenly announced. "I *saw* the Warriors."
Others in the circle soon *saw* them too.
Atmananda held desert trips once or twice a month and, by mid-1983,
followers *saw* him walking above the ground on a "cushion of light,"
flying to distant mountains, sending columns of light into the sky,
and causing constellations to gyrate and disappear.


Pages:
140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164