as hopping around
the house like a kangaroo, and I was right beside him, and we were
laughing like children, and at that moment, in the fading light, the
cap blew and tears streamed down my face.

* * *

Over the next few years, I grappled with conflicting images of Rama.
Sometimes I saw him as a friend. Other times I saw him as a
semi-enlightened seeker or as a powerful sorcerer. But the more I
researched his past, the more I discovered he was human.

He was born Frederick P. Lenz III on February ninth, 1950, in Mercy
Hospital, San Diego. He was raised Catholic in Connecticut where he
lived, alternately, with his grandparents, aunt and uncle, and father.
His parents divorced when he was a child. His father remarried, joined
a yacht club, and, in 1974, was elected mayor of Stamford.

In 1967 Fred graduated from Rippowam High School. The following
description of him appears in the yearbook: "A streak of the
unusual--chasing the beautiful, hiding from the known. Cut-rate
philosopher--monopoly on the side... "

At seventeen, Fred left the east coast and experienced the mushrooming
of the psychedelic movement while living in San Francisco's
Haight-Ashbury district. It was during the subsequent year, which he
spent in prison for selling drugs, that he was handed a promotional
brochure for Indian guru Chinmoy Kumar Ghose. Chinmoy, whose path was
paved with "peace, light, and bliss," had several hundred followers
worldwide, including rock musicians John "Mahavishnu" McLaughlin and
Carlos "Devadip" Santana.

Fascinated by Eastern philosophy and meditation techniques popularized
in the late '60s, Fred returned to the east coast where he studied the
art of quieting the mind with Chinmoy. He also studied English at the
University of Connecticut at Storrs. While still an undergraduate, he
married and divorced a Chinmoy disciple named Pam, built dulcimers in a
wood shop in his basement, joined the university debating team, and
began hosting free public lectures on meditation.

Chinmoy, who often asked disciples to start "divine enterprises," asked
this well-spoken, Phi Beta Kappa graduate to start a laundromat. When
Fred chose instead to enroll in a Ph.D. program in English at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, Chinmoy kicked him out of the
Centre for roughly one year in an apparent attempt to teach him
obedience and humility.

By the time I met Fred several years later, Chinmoy had dubbed him
"A