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Updated: June 5, 2025
Weeks before, Atmananda gave me permission to attend his parties provided that I did not "vibe" the women. "Don't look at them as women," my brother had suggested, quoting Chinmoy and Atmananda. "Look at them as seekers. When you look at them as women, it hurts their evolution." I assured him I would try. After I moved to Stony Brook, I started going to Atmananda's parties regularly.
It was then that knots of tension mounted in my stomach, pangs of guilt haunted my conscience, and, only after several emotionally exhausting hours of telling myself, "NO!", the surfacing conflict appeared to short-circuit. It was then that my mind drew a blank. One evening, in a movie theatre with Atmananda and the inner circle, the conflict had already run its course.
Because it was Atmananda, I suddenly realized, who had sent me to computer school. It was Atmananda who had bought me that car. I felt bad because I still considered myself to be in his debt. I needed to distinguish, I told myself, between the effects of his unsolicited gifts and the results of my own hard-earned efforts.
We had been through this conversation before. I wanted to teach Frank that he was like a sitting duck, that he could protect himself, that he could change suddenly I froze. I remembered that Atmananda had taught us that we were like sitting ducks, that we could protect ourselves, that we could change... The Garden
My plan was to hitchhike that night to Palomar Mountain. I stuffed some gear in my backpack, which I kept hidden in the closet. I was ready. The sun was starting to set. "It's okay, man," I thought, hugging myself. I was frightened. Suddenly the bell rang. I remained in my room. Atmananda answered the door. It was Sal. I heard Atmananda shout, "Salitos, take out the hot sauce!" "Yowwwww!"
"Can anyone see what is wrong with Mark?" he had asked the audience, after calling me to the front of the room. No response. "Look at him now." Silence. "The energy around his head," he told them matter-of-factly, "is not balanced. But don't worry. We are working on him." As I grappled with the memory, I grew angry. Atmananda, I realized, probably saw me as one of his pets.
But suddenly the idea of starting a Chinmoy Centre in a distant city seemed less of a dream than a necessity. He wrote Guru a letter asking if he could move to San Diego. Chinmoy consented. Weeks later, the phone rang. It was Atmananda. I offered to find my brother. "No," he said, "I want to speak with you. Why don't you come over?"
I replied, without considering the feelings of my brother, who continued to support me in my quest with a faraway smile. I was proud that Atmananda had chosen me to be part of his team. I did not know, however, that he had embellished stories in his book Lifetimes. Nor did I know that he had told the San Francisco Examiner that he never experienced a past life remembrance.
But there was something else I was trying not to think about. "Has anyone noticed that I have been going into advanced states of consciousness?" Atmananda had started to ask at the Centre meetings. At first there had been no response. "The powers from my past lives are returning," he continued in a sincere-sounding voice. "My consciousness is cycling.
When his eyes returned to normal, he flashed a smile at Atmananda, at the new disciples, and at the rest of the audience. Then he left the chapel in a flurry of whites and saris. As I watched him leave, I felt secure that he and Atmananda knew a lot about the unknown. I glanced across the room at the disciples. I realized that I wanted to be part of their fellowship.
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