"In other words," Rama interrupted, "you have Paul wrapped around your finger. You have learned much." His twisted compliment threw me off balance, and I failed to defend the seven-year friendship.

I turned to my brother. ("Love ya, bro.") I said, "I am not attacking you in the Dream Plane."

"Oh no?" Rama interrupted again.

"I'm not conscious of it."

"Oh, sure you're not," mocked Rama. Then, in a professorial voice, he explained how, in each family, only a limited amount of power could be pa.s.sed to the offspring. "Typically, one child claims most of it.

The others are often so drained that they don't even notice it's gone."

"Rama is an only child," I thought.

"Agni used to have the power," he went on. "Now Dan has it.

They will have to fight each other for the rest of their lives..."

"That's bull!" I shouted.

The disciples looked shocked. No one spoke that way to Rama.

Now I was angry. It was still my turn. I turned to Rama.

My heart was pounding. ("Why do you tell Dana to tell me to tell Tom to call you? Why can't you call your old friend on your own?

You're playing power games.") I said, "You're a grown man. You have a Ph.D. You run a computer company and a spiritual organization.

Given three phone numbers, I think you should be able to contact Tom by *yourself*." I sat down, stunned. I had spoken honestly to Rama.

It was invigorating.

"That's going to be a tough act to follow," admitted Rama.

Then he began to speak. Within minutes he transported me with a tranquilizing voice and abstract language inside a fuzzy, familiar bubble where words were not questioned and consciousness seemed high. I found myself being drawn into his world.

It was comforting being back. Earlier, he had given me some play.

That made me feel important. I let my thoughts drift aimlessly about.

I found myself gazing, without blinking, into his eyes.

I found myself mesmerized by the sound and the rhythm of his words.

Somewhere far away, I found myself floating...my vision blurred...things went fuzzy...

"Hey!" I thought, bursting the mental bubble. "He's formatting us again--only this time without the LSD!"

I stood back up. I was ready for action. I did not know what to do.

Rama stopped talking, squinted his eyes, and aimed his index finger at me.

I recalled a scene from The Last Wave, a movie Rama once took me to see, in which a sorcerer kills a man by pointing a "death bone"

at him.

I now saw Rama as both friend and foe, mentor and tormentor, Christ and anti-Christ. I was frightened and confused.

Estranged, yet held by his seductively androgynous, authoritative face, I lapsed into a meditative stupor...

A glint of light caught my eye and snapped me out of the trance.

Rama was chanting something in a low, monotonous tone.

I seized the string with the bicycle lock key. I pictured bright purple sparks and blue lightning bolts radiating in all directions from the key. The light shielded me from attack and lit the path to the door.

"Gotta go," I said and slowly walked away.

"I've got your number," Rama replied, still pointing his crooked finger.

"You're full of it," I returned and stepped outside. Here the light was soft and grey. A morning dove cooed. The bicycle was there for me.

It was 1985, and I was twenty-five.

In the months that followed, I occasionally bicycled to Walden Pond, where I read about Th.o.r.eau's experiment with self-reliance. Distracted by haunting memories, I gazed at the water in search of calm, but the wind sp.a.w.ned new waves and the surface swelled with complexity.

"There's plenty of time to sort it out," I rea.s.sured myself.

"Maybe I'll take myself for a ride across America and do some thinking."

21. Bicycle Ride--The Continental Divide

Three months into the cross-country bicycle trek, I pulled off the road west of Walden, Colorado. I was stuck. The problem was not so much the physical journey. True, I was towing additional weight because towns were farther apart and because Nunatak was no longer a pup.

But my leg muscles were rock solid from the miles in Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, the southern tip of Canada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, and I felt confident I could ride to the coast.

The problem was more the inner journey. The more I thought about Rama, the more I understood. The more I understood, the more I wanted to write. If I wrote, I might publish.

If I published, I would betray Rama. If I didn't publish, I would betray those whom I might have warned. I thought, "d.a.m.ned if I do, d.a.m.ned if I don't." I became emotionally exhausted.

I decided to end the bike trip, return to school, and take a break from the past.

But I still wanted to believe that Rama was a powerful incarnation and that I was an advanced soul of sorts. I did not yet understand that only when I checked my desire to soar, like Icarus, too close to the sun would the impa.s.se disappear, and I would accept who Rama was and who he was not.

That night on a bed of wildflowers, I petted the husky and gazed at the canopy of stars. A warm breeze carried the scent of pine.

I felt at peace. I was proud and relieved that I had used my rational side to alter the course of my bike trip when my world was in need of balance. I looked forward to hitchhiking west with the dog.

I looked forward to school. I took slow, deep breaths and listened to the silence of the valley. My thoughts ebbed into a sea of calm. Flecks of starlight grew brilliant and close.

I felt complete. I lost awareness of the pa.s.sing of time.

Suddenly, I realized I had been meditating. I felt surprised.

I had not consciously meditated since leaving Rama one year before.

Yet the state of mind felt oddly familiar, and I tried to understand why.

I thought about the meaning of meditation. To meditate, I supposed, was to concentrate and reflect on thoughts, images, or phenomena.

It was to work in a garden or stand in a subway and listen to currents of the mind. It was to lose track of time completely, absorbed in memories of a friend. It was to gaze down the highway of light where the sun lit into the sea. There were as many ways to meditate, it seemed, as there were facets on the jewel of the human condition.

It occurred to me that I had meditated on the first day of the bike trip at Walden Pond. I had become immersed in watching waves rise and fall and in listening to them lap the sh.o.r.e.

Their pattern suggested a rhythm unlike any I had followed.

When a friend asked which route I would take, I smiled.

My plan was to follow the setting sun.

Now, stretched out on a sleeping bag in northern Colorado, I realized that I had started and ended the bike trip in spontaneous meditation.

I recalled other times during the journey that I had meditated.

I gazed, for instance, at the bands of bright color which arched from drenched cow fields to the luminous Wisconsin sky.

I gazed at the blur of the Minnesota pavement when the wind was strong and at my tail. I pondered an encounter with a young, six-pack-carrying Native American who, when I mentioned the spirit of South Dakota's land, told me he had sold his for a bundle of cash. I contemplated an encounter with a Vietnam veteran in Rapid City who said his death was near and whose shirt read, "AGENT ORANGE KILLS." I meditated on the meaning of a b.u.mper sticker in Wyoming that read, "MY OTHER CAR IS A HORSE."

I reflected on Nuna's response when I encouraged her to help pull the rig. The nearly full-grown husky had sat down and scratched her ear.