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"If you sincerely want to take the next step in your spiritual evolution," Atmananda said, "we will mail your photographs to Guru. Guru will use his psychic vision to see if you are meant to study with him." By the time Chinmoy accepted the flight attendant, the crafts-person, and the marine, there were many more applicants to be processed.
Actually, it had been several months since Atmananda had made it a practice to scan the audience during the meditation part of his talks, as if he were channeling Divine Light. But now Chinmoy saw the light, and Atmananda was in immediate danger of being kicked out of the Centre. When Atmananda learned of his predicament, he had an idea.
That night, in the Castaneda books, I read how ordinary events were often portentous omens. I wondered if there was a significant message hidden in the Guru's absence. I wondered, too, if I was supposed to meditate with this Guru before hitchhiking west. The following week, I ventured with my brother to another of Atmananda's lectures. We also returned to meditate with Chinmoy.
I liked the way Atmananda poked fun at the pomp and ceremony which had distanced Chinmoy from many of his disciples. I also found Atmananda's deflated view of himself a relief. A number of Atmananda's advertisements, however, were of a more serious nature. Each month... he offers several free workshops to members of the San Diego community.
She ran her fingers through her hair and smiled at me. I wanted so much to kiss her, to tell her that she was beautiful, to love her. Had I followed my gut feelings, Atmananda might have sent me back to New York on the next available flight. But Chinmoy and Atmananda had explained that sex saps psychic growth.
Chinmoy smiled, flickered his eyes, and pulled from the box... nothing! He had run out of oranges. "An omen!" I thought. I was unsure, though, what the delay exactly meant. Nonetheless, I decided to take advantage of the situation. I focused my gaze on Chinmoy. Soon everything in the chapel, except for his shiny face, seemed to disappear.
"The Centre" was Atmananda's term for the San Diego branch of Chinmoy's organization. It was also his term for the house he now shared with me and the three other Chinmoy disciples. Atmananda had not needed a map to the Centre months before, on the day that the five of us moved west. He had seemed to know the way.
Chinmoy, who often asked disciples to start "divine enterprises," asked this well-spoken, Phi Beta Kappa graduate to start a laundromat. When Fred chose instead to enroll in a Ph.D. program in English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Chinmoy kicked him out of the Centre for roughly one year in an apparent attempt to teach him obedience and humility.
Occasionally, though, I did think about the change. But instead of confronting guilt from having abandoned Chinmoy, and instead of confronting doubts about Atmananda, I found it easier to laugh and laugh at spiritual groups and the absurd things that they did. Thwarted Escape Months after the coup, Atmananda held late-night meetings less often, and I soon caught up on sleep.
Now, as I listened to the gurgling river, I realized that Atmananda had made the same remark two years later, when he announced that Chinmoy had fallen. I realized, too, that there were other foreshadowings of his rise to power. There were the money and the "surprise gift" schemes. There was the basement samadhi announcement, which came during a debilitating thirteen-day fast.
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