for a ride in a Lear Jet into a snow-capped mountain,
into the other worlds. "That would be a clean way to go," he said.

One time after a beach meditation, Rama asked five or six disciples,
"What do you see?"

"I see red," said Sal. "I see blood, destruction, war, global
apocalypse."

"Very good," said Rama.

Repeatedly during the '80s and early '90s, Rama slept with numerous
women devotees, several of whom claim that he took no measures
whatsoever to prevent the potential spread of AIDS.

Also in the 80s, Rama encouraged followers to secure software contracts
in ADA, a computer language used to control the United States' hardware
of war.

On the night before his thirty-fifth birthday, Rama invited thirty or
so disciples to a party. He had been either ignoring or abusing many
of us, so the invitation came as a welcome surprise. Unlike other
recent events, there was an upbeat feel to the party. He had asked
Anne, for instance, to spend time decorating the room with colorful
balloons. "Maybe," a few of us thought, "things are going to get
better." During the party, though, Rama demanded that a handful of us
confess, one by one, before the other disciples, that the demons had
succeeded in talking over our souls.

"Anne is the worst," Rama proclaimed, lashing out at her. "She either
looks like a witch or a whore." Then, in a seeming attempt to exorcise
the demons, he told us to meet him the following day at the Los Angeles
coroner's office. He wanted us to witness an autopsy.

The next day I watched two men saw the skull of a "John Doe"
hit-and-run victim. The saw whined. They peeled off the face. The
air smelled acrid. My stomach felt bloated. "That could be me on the
table," I thought. I wanted to retch. The pathologist measured the
brain. I found myself thinking about life. Not in terms of Rama's
increasingly fearful descriptions of the world, but in terms of my gut
feelings. "Something happened," I wrote in a journal that I had
recently started. "I felt it, a change inside me... "

After the autopsy, I noticed the way I breathed. I noticed the way my
blood pulsed through me. I slept more; I had been sleeping only five
or six hours a night. I watched the way light played off ripples in a
body of water. Rama had failed to appear at the coroner's that day.
Until the next Centre meeting, his world seemed small.

Mr. Kohl listened to my descriptions of Rama and of the organization.
"Tell