Take Me for a Ride Part 23

When he was done, he refused to take my money.

"What are you doing now?" I asked.

"Cleaning the frame."

"Thanks," I said, "but you don't have to do that."

"Whenever you do a job, son, do it right."

Later that day, invisible currents from California, along with the weight of the baggage, continued to affect my progress west.

As I rode through the woods of the Upper Peninsula, I reflected on Noah's remark that I had escaped from an abusive relations.h.i.+p. My story, I concluded, was not so unusual after all. Invigorated, I coasted down a long hill and squeezed the brakes intermittently.

15. The Enchanted Taco

Late one night, Atmananda met three hundred disciples in a parking lot in the desert ninety miles east of San Diego. He led us for hours over soft, cooling sand to a spot in a dry river bed.

He had us form a circle around him. As we scanned for scorpions before sitting down, the desert floor lit up like a circular, gyrating constellation, until one by one the flashlights went out and it grew difficult again to see.

"If you enter a higher level of consciousness," Atmananda began from the center of the circle, "you will see the Warriors on the cliffs across the gorge. They are subtle beings from another plane of existence.

They look a lot like American Indians."

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 pa.s.sed 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 "cus.h.i.+on 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 pa.s.s 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 later, I saw him reappear as someone else.

"What I am about to say," he had announced that night, "is going to come as a shock to you. You see, I am not who you think I am."

The followers stopped fidgeting.

"A few days ago," he continued, "when I stopped drinking Tab, I knew something was up. This morning when I woke, I looked at my body.

There was nothing but Light. I suddenly understood. It was all so simple."

He paused. "Who am I?" he asked.

Dead silence.

"Don't all answer at once."

Nervous laughter.

"I thought you were a man named Atmananda who meditated extremely well,"

said a man.

Atmananda did not reply.

"Are you a doorway to eternity?"

"Please--no philosophy tonight," he said sharply. "Who else?"

After several more tries, a devotee suggested that he was Vishnu, a Hindu G.o.dhead.

"Close," he approved.

I felt a rush in the pit of my stomach. Atmananda's private jet, after years of acc.u.mulating the fuel of our trust and belief, was finally taking off. I was worried. "Fastening my seat belt"