to persuade one disciple in her late twenties to leave her husband and
newborn child.

Despite his ability to invoke adoration and fidelity, Rama seemed
concerned that his power to control female followers was not absolute.
He therefore kept certain men from the inner circle, despite my
recommendations.

"Jeff," I once advised, "is really smart. He's good with people, and
he's a lot of fun to be around."

Rama hesitated. "I don't know, Mark; I'm worried about Dana."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't want her falling in love with him."

Rama was in a bind. On the one hand, he knew that Jeff would be an
asset to the operation. On the other, he sensed that Jeff was too
bright (he had been an honors graduate student in chemistry at UCSD),
too athletic (he played ultimate frisbee), and too good looking to be
running around loose within the carefully controlled nest. But Rama
had a plan. He encouraged Jeff to form a relationship with Karen, who
had previously followed Rama's advice and turned down an offer from
Stanford medical school. He then encouraged them both to enroll in a
computer science Master's program at UCLA, and to gradually phase me
out as the poster and newspaper distribution coordinator.

One night in a restaurant in Los Angeles, Rama's story about wanting to
help women took on a new twist. He had invited me to dinner with Nick
and Sarah, a handsome young couple who acted in Hollywood and who had
recently joined the Centre. When the waitress came to take our orders,
Rama began waving and curling his hand.

Moments later, as the waitress was walking away, Nick asked, "What were
you doing with your hand, Rama?"

"I was sending her sexual pleasure directly through the inner worlds,"
he replied, glancing at Sarah now and again.

Stories of "Rama and the Enlightenment of Women" were all the more
startling, I found, when narrated by Rama himself. There was the one,
for instance, about Sue.

"Sue once came in my room," Rama told me, "took off all her clothes,
and flung herself on me. 'Please don't make me go home and masturbate,
Rama,' she kept saying, but I just sat there and meditated on the
Infinite, until I entered samadhi."

There was the one about Harry, the main character from Lolita, one of
Vladimir Nabokov's novels. "The point of Lolita," Rama explained to
me, "is not that Harry repeatedly slept with a fourteen-year-old after
kidnapping and drugging her. The point is that Harry rea