"So, what's wrong with Rama?"

"You mean the one who lists his past life credentials--dates and all-- in full-page ads? The one who *specializes* in women?"

"Uh, yeah."

"He isn't bringing women to enlightenment, Mark. He's bringing them to bed."

"Come on," I countered, trying not to admit to her or to myself what he had been doing for years. "So he has a girlfriend.

What's wrong with a spiritual teacher having a girlfriend?"

"There's nothing wrong with that," she said firmly. "But he is sleeping with many, many women."

"Where did you hear that?"

"From a number of women I met at a meditation retreat in San Diego.

They fell for his line about being lovers in past lives."

Suddenly I recalled Rama on stage at Centre meetings, wearing short red gym shorts, closing and spreading his legs, tonguing in a slow, circular fashion the insides of his mouth. The memory repulsed me.

But the repulsion, I feared, was due to the Negative Ent.i.ties within me.

And it was Rama, I quickly reminded myself, who had been trying day and night to imbue the many with the fullness of his enlightenment.

"Well, I have been good friends with him since 1978," I replied, "and he's just not like that."

When disciples Giles and Claire, a couple living in Los Angeles, heard similar stories about Rama's s.e.xual exploits, they spoke candidly with one another.

"We were not judging him," Claire recalled years later.

"But we were concerned about what would happen to him and to our community if the press found out. I wrote him a letter saying that he looked much more human than divine when he approached women at Centre meetings for s.e.xual, rather than spiritual reasons."

"And I decided to phone him," recalled Giles. "A member of his staff said that he was not at home and would call me back.

Several days later at three a.m. the phone rang. It was Rama.

We spoke for about an hour. When I suggested that he consider exercising more discretion, he was reasonable and polite. We discussed the issue like human beings. After all, I am old enough to be his father.

He told me, 'Of course I like girls. I'm just an ordinary guy.

You don't know what it's like. They throw themselves at me. What's a healthy man to do?'"

"At the next Centre meeting," Claire said, "Rama gave us the cold shoulder.

And at the one after that, he distributed the tape 'Sophisticated s.e.xuality'

(see Appendix C). During the break, Rama approached me.

His eyes became small, like hard, little bullets. He was furious.

He told me repeatedly that my letter was self-indulgent nonsense."

"Then he asked to see me outside," said Giles. "Alone. Grabbing me and digging his fingers into my shoulders, he shouted, 'I'VE BEATEN YOU!

I'VE BEATEN YOU ALL!'"

"After the break," Claire continued, "Rama lectured for thirty minutes about how people had been constantly throwing him bad energy-- all the while glaring at Giles."

During the next few weeks, Giles and Claire fearfully recalled Rama's threat that deserters would look and feel like h.e.l.l.

Nonetheless, they stopped attending meetings and trips to the desert, where Rama kept trying to disappear.

"Some of you still harbor doubts that I can disappear," Rama accused the several hundred disciples who sat around him in a circle.

"But perhaps if I dissolve someone else, you will find it easier to see.

Tonight I will be dissolving an old friend of mine. Mark, would you come up here, please."

I walked toward him. I was thrilled. My heart was pumping fast.

I loved being the center of attention.

"Now, close your eyes," he said, placing his hand on my forehead.

He flashed me a devilish grin. "This won't hurt a bit."

I closed my lids. After several seconds, I felt detached from my thought process. It was as if I could visually observe a thought as it formed, connected with meaning, and vanished. One thought had been: "What is going on?" As I tried to antic.i.p.ate my next thought, I ended up instead observing the thought of antic.i.p.ating a thought-- when suddenly a volley of words jarred me out of the trance.

"Earth to Mark. Come in Mark."

I opened my eyes and saw Rama towering above me, laughing softly.

I looked away and saw liquid gold specks lining the blackness.

I had managed, until now, to avoid thoughts about time and had no idea how long the experience lasted.

"What did you see?" Rama asked the group.

"It looked like Mark was dizzy, and you caught him right when he fell."

"I didn't see anything," reported another. "But I felt very peaceful.

I found it easy to slow my thoughts."

"You dissolved him, Rama," offered another.

As we prepared for the journey back to the cars, Rama invited me to walk with him at the front of the line.

"That was fun, wasn't it?" he asked several minutes later.

As he scanned the path for rattlesnakes, his powerful beam cut a sharp tunnel through the darkness.

I agreed. It had been a blast. Over the past five years, moments of deep meditation had been typically interrupted by thoughts such as, "Hey--I'm meditating!" But moments earlier, I witnessed thoughts objectively, as if they belonged to someone else.

"Tonight I helped you see a beautiful world," Rama said. "My intent is to show my students how to fly through these worlds on their wings of perception. It is easy to show you because you like me.

Many of my students fear me or hate me--or, even worse, they worship me."

Suddenly he flipped off the light, and a fifteen-foot high ocotillo shrub vanished.

"I don't perform miracles to show off my powers, but to expand your view of reality. If my students can accept that I disappear, just imagine what they will be capable of."

Though I was learning to fly on my wings of perception, and though in the months after the Stelazine trip I continued to deeply suppress part of my rational side, I never fully accepted Rama's world in its entirety. I never accepted, for instance, the story of "Rama and the Enchanted Taco." The Enchanted Taco, Rama said, was an immense, luminous, and other-worldly treat.

It could be seen in the desert, hovering casually over mystical power spots, garnished with divine light, knowledge, and guacamole.

But in a parking lot at four a.m., I saw Rama wave to three hundred bleary-eyed disciples, get in a black Turbo Carrera, and disappear.

16. Ride To Heaven