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Laxer, Mark Eliot

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


The point is that Harry really did love her."
There was the one about the UCLA students. "Sometimes I walk
the streets of Westwood," he said at Centre meetings, "and drain
the undergraduates of their mystical power. Now, don't get all upset.
It's not like they're using it. Most of them are just wasting it
on sex."
And there was the one about his former wife. "At one point in
the relationship," he told me, "I had to decide whether to be of
service to the one or to the many." Rama often described his dream
of living in a fortified desert compound with hundreds of heavily
armed women devotees. Perhaps he broke up with his "jealous"
wife--"She kept imagining that I was looking at other women..."--
in search of the many.
Once I invited a friend from work to one of Rama's public lectures.
She was interested in meditation and had recently left her boyfriend.
"Thanks, but no thanks!" she exclaimed when I mentioned the lecturer's name.
"So, what's wrong with Rama?"
"You mean the one who lists his past life credentials--dates and all--
in full-page ads? The one who *specializes* in women?"
"Uh, yeah."
"He isn't bringing women to enlightenment, Mark. He's bringing
them to bed."
"Come on," I countered, trying not to admit to her or to myself
what he had been doing for years.


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