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Laxer, Mark Eliot

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


I questioned the Negative Forces. The Forces, I realized, had never
affected me before I met Rama. Furthermore, they seemed to disappear
as soon as I stopped thinking about them. "Maybe the Forces only
exist in my mind," I thought. "Maybe they are a part of Rama's trip--
Rama's experiment."
I questioned Rama's claim that I was mentally ill and that I could
hardly deal with the real world. I recalled my success as an
undergraduate at a competitive university, as a computer operator
and programmer, and as Rama's distribution coordinator. I recalled
his claim that nearly *everyone* on the planet was mentally ill.
"Maybe Rama isn't qualified to diagnose mental illness," I thought.
"Maybe playing doctor is his way to control people."
At one point during the walk, I wondered what the consequences were for
doubting the "Last Incarnation of Vishnu." But Rama had encouraged us,
in the early years, to question him and to think for ourselves.
"Besides," I thought, "I haven't burst into flames yet."
So I went right on remembering, questioning, and thinking.
I thought about The Razor's Edge, a movie about one man's attempt
to walk the narrow path between the spiritual and the mundane.
What struck me about the film was that the man does not have a guru.


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