s."

Hundreds of braves, tall and unflinching, were conjured in my
imagination.

"What do you *see*?" Atmananda asked the group.

I made no response. I did not doubt the images cast on the back of my
eyes by my brain. Nor did I doubt Atmananda. In the months after the
week-and-a-half-long Stelazine experiment, the doubts and the conflict
had vanished. I was reluctant to speak because my vision had been so
subtle, so fleeting.

Meanwhile, others in the circle--engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers,
students, and business professionals--also remained as silent as the
rocks and hills around us.

"If you are at all serious about the study of mysticism," chided
Atmananda, "you must learn to talk openly about what you *see*. If you
don't, your mind will play tricks on you and you will doubt your
experiences later on."

More silence. The next ten seconds passed very slowly.

"Atmananda," I suddenly announced. "I *saw* the Warriors."

Others in the circle soon *saw* them too.

Atmananda held desert trips once or twice a month and, by mid-1983,
followers *saw* him walking above the ground on a "cushion of light,"
flying to distant mountains, sending columns of light into the sky, and
causing constellations to gyrate and disappear.

On one starlit night, Atmananda raised his hands above his head. As he
slowly lowered them, he made a low, whistling sound like the wind.

"What did you *see*?" he asked afterward.

"I didn't *see* anything," one new follower bemoaned.

"Advanced psychic vision is necessary to perceive what I am doing or,
more accurately, not doing," Atmananda said patiently.

"I hate to sound negative," persisted the follower, "but what exactly
are you doing?"

For a moment I felt tense. The disciple had unearthed a question that
had badly stung me many times before.

"Sometimes I alter actual physical objects, sometimes I alter your
perceptions, and sometimes I alter both," Atmananda said, dispelling
the tension with his gentle, soothing voice.

"Atmananda, I *saw* you become a luminous egg," said another follower,
borrowing a phrase from the Castaneda books.

"Anyone else?"

"I *saw* light from the stars pass through your body," tried another.

"Very good. Who *saw* me disappear?"

I often saw Atmananda disappear after I stared at him for several
minutes without blinking. But during one desert trip in 1983, I saw
him vanish independently of the dilated pupils. Then, a moment la