Street. A rickety elevator took us to
the third floor, where the sweet and spicy aroma of incense wafted
through the air. I saw a row of sneakers by the elevator door and
wondered if they had been responsible for the incense. After placing
our sneakers in line with the others, we walked past a sign which read
"Yoga Life Perfection." A young woman with long, black hair and a
playful, impish grin sold books and incense in the hallway. She
recognized my brother and smiled at us. She wore a sari.

We entered a medium-sized room where a smoldering stick of incense and
two unlit candles rested on a table up front. Two young women stood
together near the back of the room. One had long brown hair and dreamy
eyes. The other had a face and figure like a model. Their faces were
flushed and aglow. They also wore saris.

"Too bad I'm not gonna be sticking around New York," I thought, gazing
at them.

In the audience sat two women in their sixties, dressed entirely in
black. They sat near a man in his thirties, with the frame of a metal
pyramid resting squarely on his head.

We sat by the two sari-clad women. They were clearly excited about
something. They used words like inspiration, aspiration,
concentration, visualization, meditation, reincarnation, and
perfection. My brother, too, seemed excited, as if something
extraordinary and wonderful were about to occur. With each passing
minute, I found myself growing more curious, more impatient, and more
excited. Fifteen minutes after the talk was scheduled to begin, the
women in saris stopped talking and looked up.

I looked up too and saw a tall man with a projecting nose and lush
locks. His long strides seemed synchronized with his arms, which swung
like perfectly conflicting pendulums; this motion seemed to propel him
into the room. He sat on the table facing the audience, folded his
legs in the pretzel-like posture seen in Buddha statues, and introduced
himself as Dr. Frederick Lenz. He explained that he had another name:
Atmananda. Then he lit the candles and asked us to drop our
preconceived notions because, "meditation is beyond thought."

"Thought is like a car," he said in a smooth, charming voice. "You can
drive it to California. But if you want to cross the ocean, you will
need an alternate means of transportation. If you want to cross the
sea of consciousness, you will need meditation."

Though his metaphors were new to me, they seemed to poi