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Updated: May 5, 2025
"WHAT... is your name!" he demanded, quoting from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Sir Waff-noid," offered Sal. "WHAT... is your quest!" "I seek the higher worlds." "WHAT... were you thinking about last night at 11:30!" Sal blushed. "Alas, my lad," said Atmananda, patting him on the shoulder. "You won't reach the higher worlds thinking about that." Atmananda showed us a poster.
In the fall of 1980, Atmananda spoke with the Stony Brook disciples, who were still in New York, "on an inner level." He also spoke with them on the phone. He told them that Chinmoy was directing a "special force" toward our new, million-dollar Centre in La Jolla. He told them about our now legendary recruitment drive. He told them about our feasts. These disciples missed Atmananda.
Chinmoy seemed willing to look the other way when Atmananda, his chief recruiter, disregarded his etiquette on sex, ego, cinema, individuality, and language. But his patience ran out in 1979, when a Queens disciple informed him that Atmananda was "playing guru."
I enjoyed hanging out with the Stony Brook disciples. They were not only fellow seekers, but they seemed to have a good time. Atmananda, in particular, was fun to be around. He sometimes made me feel important and powerful.
He used words such as disciples, selfless-service, humanity, humility, purity, soul, soul-mate, past-lives, karma, fast track, and cosmic evolution. He got excited when he talked about Atmananda. He told me that he too had experienced perceptual distortion during Atmananda's talks. We returned to "Yoga Life Perfection."
I felt detached, numb, dumb. I gazed listlessly at the screen. Atmananda said something. Sal, Anne, Rachel, and Dana laughed. I looked straight ahead. I did not smile. They kept giving me popcorn and candy, but I had deeply withdrawn. I did not eat. I passed the items along. I wished that it would stop. What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion. Sal held out a bucket of popcorn.
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.
"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.
But as I concentrated again on his other side, the sadness disappeared. Atmananda, I realized, had been using me. I grew angry and scared. My thoughts drifted, and I found myself thinking about a bicycle trip I had taken to Palomar Mountain months before. At the top of the mountain one of my brakes had malfunctioned, so I hitched a ride to a bike shop in Escondido. A plumber had picked me up.
"How many people get a gift from a *fully* enlightened guru?" I wondered. "Don't just stare at it," my brother reproved, explaining that oranges were poor retainers of Spiritual Light. "Eat it!" Moments later, the Guru announced in a lilting voice, "Atmananda, pleeeez bring." Atmananda led the five or six potential initiates to the front of the chapel.
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