prevention program included studying with a fully
enlightened teacher, meditating regularly, and avoiding solitary
excursions into nature. Yet in the spring of 1986, nearly one year
after I left him, I reminded myself that I would rather be possessed in
my world than potentially perfect in his. I planned to pedal across
America not with an exorcist, but with a puppy.

On May 31, 1986, as warm, moist air pushed pockets of fog over Walden
Pond, I lifted the four-month-old Siberian husky, Nunatak, into the
doggie-carrier. The carrier rested on top of the bicycle trailer,
attached to the frame of my 12-speed. Strong headwinds soon strained my
muscles, shook the lush canopy of foliage, and pelted me with large
drops of rain. As I began the journey west, the front tire raced
through puddles while my mind raced through painful memories and
questions. How had my years with Atmananda affected me? Why was it so
difficult to leave him? What was it about my past that led me to him?

2. Zapped!

"Lights," said my father and for a moment, except for the
phosphorescent hands of the clock on the wall, the room went black.
With a flip of a switch, he suddenly reappeared: a tall, thin man with
thick glasses, standing beside the glowing enlarger. As a child I sat
for hours under a dim yellow light, mesmerized by images appearing on
paper submerged in trays filled with smelly liquid. Yellow, my father
taught me, has no apparent effect on the light-sensitive specks coating
photographic paper.

The unorthodox images which leapt from the walls of our house seemed as
eerie as the darkroom experience itself: there was a photograph of a
llama's head as viewed through a distorting fish-eye lens, there was a
photograph of a shredded poster of a man's face, and there were many
abstract photos which seemed to defy description. My father, a
production manager at a New York publishing company, perhaps saw the
world in a different light than his peers.

My mother was an elementary school teacher with black hair and
sometimes kind, sometimes intense eyes. A generous and caring woman,
she put her career on hold for more than a decade to raise a family.
She met my father in upstate New York on a hike sponsored by an outing
club.

When I was fourteen, I sensed that my father was growing tired,
detached, and depressed, but I did not understand why. He expressed
abstractions better than emotions, and found it difficult to vent th