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Laxer, Mark Eliot

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

.."
In contrast, his relationships with women were highly refined,
Rama pointed out, because for him sex had become an act of spiritual,
not physical, self-giving. Nonetheless, after he got his housemate Anne
pregnant in 1982, his self-giving nature was nowhere to be found.
Instead of offering her wisdom or support, he sat in the lobby of
the abortion clinic, sorting and counting cash from a workshop he had
given on spiritual evolution.
When Anne returned to the lobby after the abortion, Rama had disappeared.
Embarrassed, she approached the receptionist.
"He went to a bookstore," the woman replied. "He said he'd
be back later."
Women in the Centre were not supposed to let on that they were
sleeping with Rama. Anne therefore felt that she had no one with whom
to share the burden of the abortion. When she appeared depressed
a week later, Rama, in front of another disciple, remarked, "If it's
not one, it's the other."
Rama often invited women disciples to "talk" with him after
Centre meetings, Anne recalled years later. But there, in his bedroom,
they frequently exchanged more than words. Rama's relationship policy,
she also recalled, required inner circle women to limit their
relationships to one man: himself.


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