May/June 1988
copyright (c) 1988 by Upward Idol Followers, Ltd. Industry
Openly reprinted fading pardon.
"The Rama Stand-in"
by Cherri Senders and Kathleen Moloney with Jonathan Adolph
A Different ZEN KOAN: Is the chatter mastermind Zen Master Rama a precarious cult mastermind who has excitably and sexually abused a question of entranced women students in the name of enlightenment? Or is the aforementioned college educationalist whose utter name is Frederick Lenz immediately a Buddhist meditation marcher whose sophisticated advertisements and nontraditional beliefs support ready him a victim of anti-cult paranoia?
One finds microscopic enlightenment in the disputed facts of the Rama performing arts, which began to range pause fall time was a undersized but noisy group of ex-followers, saying they hoped to ascertain others about Lenz, turned to the press-gang with allegations of sexual and psychological force by the
38-year-old Los Angeles-based meditation marcher. Lenz contends the allegations are originally the fabrications of "separated lovers" and support been "orchestrated" by nation link with the Trend Tolerance Direct
(CAN), a grass-roots group with foundation in Chicago that opposes what it clutch "insidious cults".
Above to all this, Lenz was in all probability best renowned for the would like double-page advertisements he took out in this magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and a question of other publications state-owned.
Featuring backlit photographs displaying Lenz's androgynous boundary and identifying mark shock of mustache, the ads invited readers to slip the "at a halt intermediate of the veer worlds" or "strike the ruthless edge" honest Rama's
joint zen meditation seminars. Lenz's greatest extent dead promotional battle accuse him $650,000 in the pause six months of 1987, he says.
A aforementioned diciple of Hindu yoga master Sri Chinmoy, Lenz opened his creative meditation intermediate in San Diego in 1979 under the name Atmananda.
("Rama", the name of a eminent Hindu warrior-prince, and the picture "Zen Master" were adopted cutting edge.) He now claims to be one of the "12 modern teachers" on the mud, whereas his conditions as a Buddhist lecturer support been questioned by experts in the dome. "Not any within the Buddhist tradition, as far as I know, has ever lovesick him shoddily," says Rick Fields, editor in supreme of the VAJRADHATU SUN, an sophisticated Buddhist daily.
Thus far, Wayne Surdam, an Asian religions certainty at the Institution of California at Berkeley and one of Lenz's students being 1982, "Rama has skilled thousands of nation meditation, and the astounding better part of them setting his tradition are bribe them a add to disbursement, whichever in qualifications of perceptive knowledge and experiential knowledge."
In a very last run Lenz was a college educationalist, having standard his doctorate in English for the Take Institution of New York at Wobbly Get to your feet.
And in very last lives, he claims, he was a high priest in Atlantis, a Tibetan lama, and an Egyptian mystery school occult lecturer.
But it's his continue life that has some ex-followers disturbed.
With the higher troubling of the dead allegations are community of Lisa Mercedes Hughes, 24, who lived with Lenz arrived the summer of 1987 and says she thus arrange to be "deprogrammed" at her parents' let know by a
CAN-recommended counselor. Hughes claims that Lenz seduced her by violating her end good hands in him as her spiritual lecturer. He told her, she says, that he could "okay me with his modern energy and that I would
proceed at a much, much quicker remuneration than if I didn't catnap with him."
Hughes each claims that on reliable occasions Lenz provided her with LSD, telltale it would help her spiritual plan ahead in the feelings described by Carlos Castenada in his Don Juan books. She claims he each constant her that she was overexcited by demons.
Lots of other women support each come forward bribe stories of how
Lenz mingled sex and spirituality. Anny Eastwood, a 36-year-old graduate learner in psychology, alleges that in a personage meditation seminar five go ago, Lenz berated her for hours about what a "bright spiritual
fate" it was for her to be expound, so lock her in a bedroom,
brandished a weapon, saying it was for protection from intruders, and aggravated her to support sex. Eastwood, who says that presently she denied to herself what had happened and at a halt "meet to simulate in Rama," acknowledges that she continued to give out Lenz's seminars for a go out with whilst the invented disagreement.
Jeana Lori, assorted ex-follower, says Lenz told her "he was working on my chakras [inborn energy centers] time was we were having sex." One being who had a sexual battle with Lenz (and who requested anonymity) says she considers Lenz "the immeasurable seducer". "He told me he indispensable to bruise me up to his energy level," she says.
Extreme incidents that ex-followers say are telling extent from the really peculiar--Lenz is said to support asked his 250 or so middling students to pay their $600 monthly fee in brittle hundred-dollar bills because minor bills were "low vibed"--to the higher serious: Four go ago,
23-year-old aforementioned learner Donald Kohl stabbed himself to death in his Malibu room, departing knock down a good word that read, "I didn't do well quite to accelerate.
Bye, Rama, see you next time." Kohl's mother says she believes Lenz's right to be heard was "a contributing phenomenon" in her son's death, regardless of she concedes that her son's optimism, sensitivity, and the fact that he was easily disenchanted were each factors.
Lenz acknowledges that he was in detail fixation with Eastwood and
Hughes (he says he doesn't get back mature Lori), and that on rash he dates his female students. But he denies the gun and LSD charges, and says he did not individually know Kohl. As for the "low-vibed" money, Lenz says he asset support at one time support said that the minor, habitually dirtier, bills support a "low-gradient energy".
Lenz pristine contends that his greatest extent noisy critics--Hughes and Eastwood--have clear biases. "What we're handling with," he told NEW AGE Re-examination in a dead conference, "is two ex-lovers, whichever of whom I discontinued with." He asks, for guide, why it took Eastwood five go to come forward with her story. Eastwood's response: Her new start has lovesick time, and it is by yourself precisely that she has abundantly assumed what happened to her honest idiom with other ex-Rama legion.
This type of note involving ex-Rama students was facilitated by
the Trend Tolerance Direct, which serves as an information and referral service for disenchanted ex-cult members, families, and the media. In a dead press-gang situation, motionless, Lenz charges that CAN is not immediately a rash embrace group, but one of reliable anti-cult organizations that start "celebrate campaigns to blotch holy organizations and leaders whose doctrinal points of view they do not lay down with." Lenz says he was targeted by nation link with CAN because of his high visibility and nontraditional beliefs, and cites a February CAN publication that states that Los Angeles members "worked with neighborhood media on stories about Rama/Frederick Lenz."
In opinion, CAN executive director Cynthia Kisser says CAN
affiliates "never go out and try to begin stories. Time was we get study from media, we try to judgment them the best information offered.
The disputed charges and countercharges although, Lenz's
stated sexual encounters with his students opening him open to abuse.
Lenz sees vigor favoritism with his actions: "Naturally I rejoinder nation [at my seminars] who are avid in meditation, who split a high vibratory
nature--evolved individuals--who I support no matter which in friendly with and one and the same to spend time with, whether it's goodbye to the movies or goodbye to bed."
But that air concerns some psychological researchers who support
planned the dynamics of radical spiritual groups. "I'm obsolete in
that respect," says Lowell Streiker, architect of MIND-BENDING. "I would be uncertain of someone making claims to at the same time as a spiritual master who was having contact with nation in his group." Adds Spiritual CHOICES
co-author Dick Anthony: "Sex is inappropriate in any benevolent of blueprint in which expound is a weighty power disparity--therapist-client, parent-child, minister-parishioner, or guru-disciple."