Prev | Current Page 195 | Next

Laxer, Mark Eliot

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


When our vote was split, mostly between Boulder and Boston, he gave
the word to move on. So we drove around again to Los Angeles,
Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, where, by the intersection of Interstate-70
and Route 82, he announced that we had arrived at a crossroad:
we could continue the search for a home, or we could take a side
trip to a posh resort in nearby Aspen.
By now the disciples had been out of work for nearly a month,
and a few of us were running low on money. The majority voted
to continue the search. He led us instead to Aspen.
I told Rama that I felt uncomfortable having him pay my way.
"Look," he retorted, "it's my experiment."
"Does that make us your guinea pigs?" I wondered.
Later that week, in front of a handful of disciples, Rama harshly accused
me of indulging like a child, of attacking him in the inner world,
and of ruining the experience for the others. Then he issued
a compassionate smile. "Don't take it so personally, kid,"
he said pleasantly. "Your consciousness got stuck, so I fixed it."
Then he swaggered away with the confidence of a heavyweight champion.
Rather than accepting the abuse as I had done in the past,
I found myself thinking about The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.


Pages:
183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207