No one stirred.

"Why don't you elaborate, Kara?" said Atmananda.

"I first felt it a few weeks ago," she said, glancing at the ceiling as if she were trying to recall something. "I was meditating on the Transcendental but didn't *see* much light, ya know, and well, I just thought it was me but it just kept happening, and like I love Guru and all but..." Months later, Kara would be hospitalized for a mental disorder.

"You have truly *seen*," praised Atmananda.

My heart pounded. I felt like a bomb had exploded in my face.

I saw Kara gazing at Atmananda. It was only months before that Atmananda had asked me to deceive the disciples into buying him a "surprise gift"--the new car. I scanned the crowded room.

People seemed disoriented. Three disciples visiting from the Santa Barbara Chinmoy Centre kept glancing at the door. They looked ready to bolt.

"Many of you have been having difficulty meditating recently,"

said Atmananda in his familiar, soothing voice. "You have been blaming yourselves. But you should understand that it is not you.

"For years I have meditated on the Transcendental and the room has filled with a beautiful, white light. But lately, the light has simply not been there. At first I thought that the level of my meditation had dropped. Intuitively, though, I knew that that was not the case."

I could not believe what was happening. I had never heard Atmananda criticize his--our--beloved Guru. Still, I had to admit that his intuition was usually correct.

"When I tried meditating without the Transcendental," he continued, "my consciousness suddenly jumped to a much higher level-- as if the Guru had been holding me down. And yet my logical mind still refused to accept that the Guru had fallen. You see, you don't just turn your back on someone you have devoted eleven years of your life to, someone you have loved more than anyone else in the universe."

I wondered if a con artist would devote eleven years of his life to a guru.

"I had to make sure that the Negative Forces were not playing tricks on my mind," he continued. "So I decided to visit New York and meditate on the Guru in person. I found that he still looked like Guru.

But inwardly I could see right away that he had lost his power."

I wondered if I could have detected a change.

"When the Guru began to meditate, it became clear that he was not entering into samadhi--though the disciples still believed that he was.

Nonetheless, I wanted to be absolutely certain that the Negative Forces were not clouding my vision. So I visited Apeksha, a Queens, New York, disciple who has studied with the Guru for as long as I have.

"At first, Apeksha thought I was crazy. But after we spent hours looking at old Guru photos, neither of us had any doubt as to what had happened.

"Apeksha is now in a real bind. On the one hand, he can see that the Guru has fallen. On the other hand, he knows that he's not strong enough yet to ward off the Negative Forces on his own."

Richard, who had bought the million-dollar Centre, raised his hand and said, "Atmananda, isn't there anything we can do to help Guru?"

"Your sentiment is a n.o.ble one," Atmananda replied. "But you have to be careful. If you are swimming near a sinking ocean liner, it doesn't matter how nice a person you are--you'll be sucked under when the ship goes down.

"You should understand that I am not criticizing the Guru.

Nor should any of you. You should give him a great deal of credit for holding out against the Forces for as long as he did.

"The Forces are not exactly evil per se. They are merely playing their role in the Cosmic Game. It just so happens that their role is to destroy Light."

Several disciples shook their heads incredulously. Others cast a gla.s.sy-eyed, soporific gaze at the renegade Centre leader-- as if this were a typical late-night meeting.

"In 1985, the situation in the universe will begin to get much worse.

A great cloud of darkness will envelop the earth for thousands of years."

I pictured the shadow of a huge oil slick creeping toward the globe.

"There will soon be a sharp increase in the number of wars and natural disasters, and nearly everyone on the planet will be affected.

Spiritual seekers will suffer the most, because they are the ones who are most sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.

It will become increasingly difficult to meditate, and seekers not grounded in the dharma [Truth] will be in grave danger of being seduced by the Dark Side."

Unaware of the effect Atmananda was having beneath the surface world of my reason, I watched his demanding, doughy face and listened to his soothing, arresting voice.

"But there is no reason for you to indulge in sadness.

In times of great darkness, spiritual warriors band together and fight the Forces. This is their soul's work, and therefore their inner beings are extremely happy! Despite enormous odds, they fight for Truth and Light and, well, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but, let's just say that the warriors are in for some pleasant surprises in this and in future lives."

I a.s.sumed he meant that they would accrue good karma.

"And I would be willing to wager," he said, smiling warmly, "that they are in for a heck of a good time.

"Until the warriors are close to attaining enlightenment, they will need a genuine spiritual teacher. They will need a teacher who turns out strong, free-thinking individuals, *not* s.p.a.ced-out, dependent disciples.

They will need a teacher who is fully or partially enlightened, and who has extensive experience in guiding souls to self-realization.

They will also need a teacher who has the power to ward off hordes of Negative Forces."

Atmananda reminded us that the powers from his past lives had been "cycling" through him and had been propelling him into bas.e.m.e.nt samadhi and beyond. He said that he had been carefully monitoring his progress toward self-realization. He had not only asked the Infinite for advice, he a.s.sured us, but had been reading detailed accounts of the enlightenment process.

No one asked to review his source material.

He went on to describe the countless inner realms he had been slipping in and out of lately. The realms, he explained, were so deep and powerful that the man we had come to know as Atmananda had all but disappeared inside the clear light of the void.

I was attempting to make sense of his claims, when he said that samadhi was incomprehensible to the human mind. Then he paused, slowly scanned the audience, and announced that he would be helping advanced, sincere seekers in their quest for enlightenment...on his *own*.

"He's on a power trip!" I thought. "Maybe he's been planning this all along. Maybe he actually believes in it. In either case..."

"You need to realize that I am doing this because it is what the Infinite wants me to do. It certainly wasn't my idea.

You see, when you reach this stage in the enlightenment process, you completely surrender your will to the Infinite."

"If that's true," I thought, "no problem. But..."

"Please understand that I am not a guru. I am a teacher.

How can you tell if someone is your teacher? By how you feel when you meditate with them. By their glow. By how they treat the people around them. By whether they practice what they preach.

But you have to be careful out there. You have to ask yourself, 'Are they phony or are they genuine? Are they trying to take your money?

Are they trying to sell you spiritual rhetoric laced with subtle, complex half-truths?'"

"I agree," I thought, "we should watch out. But..."

"You have to ask yourself, 'Does the teacher give individual counseling when necessary? Provide a community of advanced seekers?

Transmit light inwardly? Teach several spiritual philosophies and disciplines? Point out traps along the Path? Ward off the Negative Forces?'" Atmananda inundated us with so many details that he appeared to be conducting a lesson, not a coup.

"Another way to tell if someone is your teacher," Atmananda said, turning toward me, "is to see if you have studied with them in a previous life. Several of you have been with me before.

Mark, for instance, has studied with me in Tibet, j.a.pan, and India.

He doesn't remember very well, but he will. You may have noticed how easy it is to see his aura."

"He's just saying that!" I thought. Yet I had always felt a powerful affinity toward those countries. Several students cast their gaze at me. I felt a rush. I felt powerful. It felt good.

Minutes later, Atmananda suddenly grew bitter. "Don't think that I don't know what some of you are thinking," he accused, as he aimed his eagle-like glare. "You realize, of course, who I *am*," he added haughtily.