Prev | Current Page 241 | Next

Laxer, Mark Eliot

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

The next wave
of subjects in his chemical experiments would not be as fortunate
(see Epilogue).
I meditated during the bike trip on how, over the years,
Rama flipped between "caretaker personalities" more frequently
and how, starting in 1984, the flipping grew sudden and extreme.
This unnerving phenomenon could be seen in the stages of his
LSD trip. Perhaps, inadvertently, he had designed a multi-leveled,
persona-flipping program of "sophisticated spirituality" to mask
advanced symptoms of schizophrenia.
I meditated on what had happened the night I left the Centre.
When I followed my gut feelings and spoke honestly to Rama and to
the inner circle, Rama responded by turning my brother against me.
It did not matter to me, during the meditations on my brother,
that Rama's childhood had been difficult. Rama had told me that his
father was "power hungry" and "cold" and that his mother was "wacky"
and "liked to take drugs." Nor did it matter that Rama had probably
sought to fill the vacuum of his early years with promiscuity,
LSD, devotion to a guru, money, expensive cars and property,
and consummate power over hundreds of peoples' lives. Nor did
it matter that his confusing set of personalities had probably
developed from a simultaneous belief that he was a hustler on
the one hand, and a living legend and god incarnate on the other.


Pages:
229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253