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Updated: May 6, 2025
Genuine spiritual benefactors were supposed to keep students off balance, he maintained, because it was only then that they could "let go and make real leaps in spiritual progress." It was primarily in his uncanny ability to read an individual or group, and to gauge the precise instance in which to flip, that Atmananda's brilliance could be found.
The meetings began at around seven-thirty p.m. and lasted at times until dawn. I attended each of Atmananda's meetings and, with only two or three hours of sleep per night, quickly grew fatigued. Once my boss at the UCSD Computer Center found me asleep with my upper body resting on a noisy, three-and-a-half-foot-high mainframe printer.
In contrast, Atmananda's plushly carpeted, colorful cottage, gave me the sense that he rearranged the space until the lines connecting the physical and non-physical dimensions meshed nicely. By the front door, two ferns thrived beside an electronic synthesizer. By a stained-glass window hung a photograph of Atmananda with a toucan on his shoulder.
But Atmananda's sore throat had not stopped him from voicing and capitalizing on what he had dreamt. "The Guru is attempting to destroy me," Atmananda announced to his disciples at subsequent Centre meetings. "You need to understand that while the Guru has lost his spiritual powers, he has not lost his mystical powers.
I was occasionally buoyed by the realization that I desperately needed rest, that I needed time to think, and that I needed to take a break from Atmananda's all-night meetings. But I was mostly slapped by waves of fear of Atmananda's Negative Forces, and pulled under by the weight of shifting etiquette, meta-rational rhetoric, and sleep deprivation.
I sensed the disciples had taken Atmananda's caveat seriously. My stomach felt taut. I thanked Chinmoy silently. Atmananda had meanwhile flipped to a less somber mood. "One of the best ways to combat the Forces," he said, "is to have fun." So we went out to eat.
I recalled Atmananda's penchant for lodging at exclusive, expensive hotels. I realized that I did not want to follow him. I also realized that I did not want to *not* follow him. I wanted to do what was right for me. I followed the sign. I stood at the campground entrance beneath a totem pole, whose carved faces reminded me of the Negative Forces.
Roughly two weeks into the post-coup program, Atmananda began to publish WOOF! The Weekly Newsletter of Anahata. Having named his organization after the anahata chakra the "psychic energy center of love" he initially distributed WOOF! to the fifty Anahatans. WOOF! provided work for Atmananda's devotees and helped bind the fledgling group.
"The past is dust," I now thought, recalling a saying that Atmananda had borrowed from Chinmoy. I walked to Third College. To Third College Lecture Hall. To TLH 104. I saw Atmananda's face on either side of the front wall. I had placed the two posters.
And if they do mind then maybe the products or services they offer deserve careful scrutiny, and we should re-evaluate the truthfulness of their claims... " In my naive, sleepless stupor, I accepted Atmananda's mission of poking fun at others, and did my best to train and coordinate the WOOF! distribution teams.
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