It was an hour or so after the coup. His voice crept through my bedroom door, interrupting my thoughts. I had been deliberating on whether I would attend the follow-up meeting, which was scheduled to begin within minutes. "Well," I thought, trying to ignore the relentless monologue, "he did claim only *partial* enlightenment."

I read from the Castaneda poster on the wall of my room a quote about following a path with heart. "Does Atmananda's path have heart?"

I wondered. "Is it even a path? What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

I turned toward the underexposed photo of Chinmoy still on my shrine.

"What if Guru has not fallen?" I wondered, not wanting to be left bobbing in the stormy sea of ignorance.

"But then again," I thought, reminded of Atmananda's uncanny ability to see, "what if he has?" I felt overwhelmed. I realized I needed time to think. I realized I needed guidance.

I wanted to ask former Chinmoy disciples for advice, but did not want to subject them to spiritual doubts about Guru or Atmananda.

I wanted to ask friends and teachers outside the group, but did not want to rely on people whom I supposed could not see.

I even thought of asking my parents, but did not want to rely on two lobsters sporting bow ties. So I tried to a.s.sess the situation on my own.

I recalled some of the good times I had had with Atmananda.

I also recalled Atmananda admitting to me, months before, that he wanted some day to be a guru.

I saw him as a genuine seeker on the path to Truth. I also saw him as a man whose ambitions I could not fathom.

"I need to get away," I told myself. "I need to get a perspective.

It's not that I don't trust Atmananda. It's just that..."

KNOCK!!KNOCK!!

I jumped up.

Atmananda smiled as he opened my door. "Hi, kid. The meeting will start in a few minutes. Do you want to greet people-- or should I find someone else?"

Simultaneously soothed and disoriented by his voice and face, I felt reluctant to give up a position of authority. "I'll greet them,"

I said.

Some of the fifty or so former Chinmoy disciples that I greeted seemed excited, but most, like me, seemed anxious and confused.

Twenty minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin, I closed the door and sat with the group before a barren, Transcendental-less shrine. A nervous tension permeated the room.

Atmananda strode in, sat down, and fiddled with his wrist.w.a.tch.

Then he looked up and quickly raised his hand to his mouth-- as if he were surprised that he was not alone. A few people laughed.

"There are four paths leading to enlightenment," Atmananda said.

"Bhakti yoga, the way of love, is by far the easiest path because love is the strongest force in the universe."

He had described the four paths many times before, and I began to feel slightly more at ease. It was particularly rea.s.suring in his tumultuous world that love was still so important a quality.

"Karma yoga, the path of selfless service, is perhaps the n.o.blest of the paths if you can avoid feeling superior to those whom you serve.

Mahatma Gandhi was a karma yogi, though he never actually attained enlightenment."

"How can he be so sure?" I wondered. "Maybe Gandhi *had*

attained enlightenment." I also wondered if Atmananda would end up serving himself rather than the Infinite.

"Jnana yoga, the path of knowledge and wisdom, is the least traveled of the four paths. Jnana yogis face the difficult task of learning to discriminate between what is real and what is maya, or illusion."

It was extremely difficult for me to face my friend and hero, and to discern whether his was a genuine path to the Infinite or an illusory path to himself. So I thought, instead, about jnana yoga master Sri Yukteswar, whose disciple, Paramahansa Yogananda, wrote the popular Autobiography of a Yogi.

"Mysticism," Atmananda said, "is the path described in the Castaneda books.

By living impeccably, the mystic acc.u.mulates personal power until she or he is capable of entering into the Other Worlds. Though mysticism is the fastest way to enlightenment, it is also the most dangerous.

Mystics are often attacked and drained of their power by the Dark Magicians, and many end up becoming Dark Magicians themselves."

Though enthralled by this path, I was bothered by Atmananda's insistence that a myriad of beings, human and otherwise, stood poised to destroy mystics who strayed from a constantly changing set of rules-- that Atmananda happened to know all about. I was also bothered by Atmananda's seeming obsession with "Dark Magicians."

"In past lives," Atmananda continued, "I have followed, mastered, and taught each of the four paths. You should understand that if you choose to continue your spiritual education with me, it will be your resistance to the Light--not my level of evolution-- that is responsible for impeding your progress."

"Where does he come off sounding so sure of himself?" I wondered, my doubts suddenly resurfacing. "I really need time to think about this."

"For me, leading people to enlightenment is old hat. Each of you have been singled out to me through omens or through dreams.

It was up to me to hook you, to essentially trick you into pursuing the long, arduous path to knowledge. Hooking takes place on an inner level and can not be explained with words.

Tricking is necessary because people, left to their own devices, are inherently lazy and would avoid their higher destiny."

Remembering how Don Juan hooked Castaneda, I figured that being hooked and tricked into a higher destiny was probably okay-- as long as everything turned out all right. It was deeply ingrained in me to believe that things tended to turn out all right.

"It is essential that you learn spiritual etiquette," Atmananda said.

"Do not hang pictures of me. Do not worship me. Do not treat me like a guru. I am a teacher, a spiritual benefactor. You will have to fight your impulses to treat me as though I were more important than anyone else."

I liked his term "spiritual benefactor." It seemed to encompa.s.s the spiritual worlds of the Guru and the mystical worlds of benefactor Don Juan. I also liked his claim that he sought no special attention.

"Needless to say, you are free to leave at any time,"

he suddenly lashed out. "No one is asking you to stay--believe me, you are not doing anyone any favors!"

It made me upset and confused when Atmananda flipped to his emerging, hostile personality.

"But if it is the highest good that you seek," he said, returning to a gentler tongue, "you have come to the right place."

I suppressed a yawn. He had been speaking awhile, and it was well past midnight. Exhausted, too, from the shock of Atmananda's sudden grab for power, I became mesmerized by the sound and the rhythm of the words.

"You are caught up in trying to be someone you are not, and it is clearly not working. You are fighting yourselves for no apparent reason.

Look, it's easy. You can stay the way you are and continue living someone else's dream, or you can come with me on a walk to nowhere.

Leave aside your petty jealousies, your hates, your desires, your attachments, your fears, and enter the worlds where I hang out-- worlds of pure joy, light, and bliss."

Several minutes later, Atmananda announced it was time to meditate.

I wanted to rub my eyes, yawn, and stretch out on the soft blue rug.

Instead, I sat there spellbound, drifting in and out of a dreamless sleep.

At one point, I woke and heard, "When you attain enlightenment, your selves dissolve in the clear light of the void. Maybe you exist, maybe you don't. It no longer matters." Then, as Atmananda rehashed the details of his own enlightenment, I dozed off again.

After the meeting, I went to my room. "I need time to think,"

I reminded myself. As I drifted off to sleep, I could still hear my housemate talking.

Of the original one hundred San Diego Chinmoy disciples, roughly ten formed their own Chinmoy Centre, forty set out on their own, and fifty followed Atmananda. While some aspects of Atmananda's program remained the same, others intensified. He repeatedly warned, for instance, that the Negative Forces would prey on those who did not meditate regularly, those who diluted their power with doubts about him, and those who did not regularly attend his meetings.

He began holding "crucial" meetings each night to help us "combat the Forces." The meetings began at around seven-thirty p.m.

and lasted at times until dawn.

I attended each of Atmananda's meetings and, with only two or three hours of sleep per night, quickly grew fatigued. Once my boss at the UCSD Computer Center found me asleep with my upper body resting on a noisy, three-and-a-half-foot-high mainframe printer.

Another time, Atmananda read to me a letter that he had sent to Chinmoy: "As you know, I have been entering into highly advanced states of consciousness lately..." Unable to concentrate, I suppressed a yawn and lapsed into a long, thoughtless pause.