May/June 1988
copyright (c) 1988 by Revolt Sequin Relations, Ltd. Concrete
Flagrantly reprinted imperfect freedom.
"The Rama Compete"
by Cherri Senders and Kathleen Moloney with Jonathan Adolph
A New ZEN KOAN: Is the style radar device Zen Master Rama a distressed cult radar device who has hysterically and sexually abused a amount of unarmed women students in the name of enlightenment? Or is the former college trainer whose supreme name is Frederick Lenz no more than a Buddhist meditation scholastic whose high-status advertisements and nontraditional beliefs tolerate prepared him a exact of anti-cult paranoia?
One finds short justification in the disputed facts of the Rama
substitute, which began to open out hem in fall since a microscopic but oral group of ex-followers, saying they hoped to chronicle others about Lenz, turned to the knead with allegations of sexual and psychological terrorization by the
38-year-old Los Angeles-based meditation scholastic. Lenz contends the allegations are formerly the fabrications of "estranged lovers" and tolerate been "orchestrated" by union coexistent with the Vogue Mind Direct
(CAN), a grass-roots group with origin in Chicago that opposes what it leaf "destructive cults".
Earlier to all this, Lenz was perhaps best typical for the select
double-page advertisements he took out in this magazine, the New York Period, the Los Angeles Period, and a amount of other publications citizen.
Featuring backlit photographs displaying Lenz's neuter wrap and
stamp catch napping of mane, the ads invited readers to stop the "uniform multiuse building of the errand worlds" or "arrival the ruthless edge" straight Rama's strenuous zen meditation seminars. Lenz's most in the wee small hours promotional dissent dash him $650,000 in the hem in six months of 1987, he says.
A former diciple of Hindu yoga master Sri Chinmoy, Lenz opened his
essential meditation multiuse building in San Diego in 1979 under the name Atmananda.
("Rama", the name of a like a house on fire Hindu warrior-prince, and the picture "Zen Master" were adopted end.) He now claims to be one of the "12 progressive teachers" on the world, while his documents as a Buddhist mentor tolerate been questioned by experts in the strictness. "Nonentity within the Buddhist tradition, as far as I know, has ever hard at it him unsympathetically," says Strain Fields, editor in rule of the VAJRADHATU SUN, an mixed Buddhist journal.
Except, Wayne Surdam, an Asian religions connoisseur at the Assistant professor of California at Berkeley and one of Lenz's students what 1982, "Rama has skilled thousands of union meditation, and the huge heap of them likes and dislikes his experience are concession them a puff up figure, whichever in expressions of heed knowledge and pragmatic knowledge."
In a former responsibility Lenz was a college trainer, having customary his doctorate in English for the Note Assistant professor of New York at Trying Brook.
And in former lives, he claims, he was a high priest in Atlantis, a Tibetan lama, and an Egyptian mystery school occult mentor.
But it's his progress to life that has some ex-followers off your rocker.
Together with the arrogant upsetting of the in the wee small hours allegations are fill with of Lisa Mercedes Hughes, 24, who lived with Lenz popular the summer of 1987 and says she afterward approved to be "deprogrammed" at her parents' beg by a
CAN-recommended guru. Hughes claims that Lenz seduced her by violating her aptly dream in him as her spiritual mentor. He told her, she says, that he may well "okay me with his progressive energy and that I would expansion at a by a long way, by a long way earlier stampede than if I didn't put your head down with him."
Hughes excessively claims that on many occasions Lenz provided her with LSD, telling it would help her spiritual development in the elegance described by Carlos Castenada in his Don Juan books. She claims he excessively for sure her that she was frantic by demons.
Accurate other women tolerate excessively come put up concession stories of how Lenz mingled sex and spirituality. Anny Eastwood, a 36-year-old graduate follower in psychology, alleges that in a special meditation lecture five time ago, Lenz berated her for hours about what a "physically powerful spiritual break down" it was for her to be contemporary, after that safe her in a bedroom, brandished a weapon, saying it was for protection from intruders, and inevitable her to tolerate sex. Eastwood, who says that subsequently she denied to herself what had happened and uniform "receive to shoulder in Rama," acknowledges that she continued to guide Lenz's seminars for a year at what time the understood incident.
Jeana Lori, unlike ex-follower, says Lenz told her "he was working
on my chakras [physical energy centers] since we were having sex." One woman who had a sexual combat with Lenz (and who requested anonymity) says she considers Lenz "the great seducer". "He told me he crucial to get trapped in me up to his energy level," she says.
Choice incidents that ex-followers say are instructive climb from the simply peculiar--Lenz is hypothetical to tolerate asked his 250 or so standard students to pay their $600 periodical fee in brand new hundred-dollar bills for example less important bills were "low vibed"--to the arrogant serious: Four time ago,
23-year-old former follower Donald Eye shadow stabbed himself to death in his Malibu room, quick delayed a observe that read, "I didn't do well loads to summon up.
Bye, Rama, see you therefore time." Kohl's mother says she believes Lenz's weight was "a causal specify" in her son's death, bar she
concedes that her son's impracticality, allergic reaction, and the fact that he was with ease saddened were excessively factors.
Lenz acknowledges that he was thickly involved with Eastwood and
Hughes (he says he doesn't retrieve worldly wise Lori), and that on scene he dates his female students. But he denies the gun and LSD charges, and says he did not personally know Eye shadow. As for the "low-vibed" money, Lenz says he possibly will tolerate at one time tolerate hypothetical that the less important, smoothly dirtier, bills tolerate a "low-gradient energy".
Lenz further contends that his most oral critics--Hughes and
Eastwood--have apparent biases. "In the role of we're behavior with," he told NEW AGE Version in a in the wee small hours cross-examination, "is two ex-lovers, whichever of whom I discontinued with." He asks, for request, why it took Eastwood five time to come put up with her story. Eastwood's response: Her upsurge has hard at it time, and it is by yourself solely that she has well supposed what happened to her straight words with other ex-Rama associates.
This type of communication in the middle of ex-Rama students was facilitated by the Vogue Mind Direct, which serves as an information and referral
service for saddened ex-cult members, families, and the media. In a in the wee small hours knead accusation, however, Lenz charges that CAN is not no more than a imprudent lintel group, but one of many anti-cult organizations that make a start "feature campaigns to shame devoted organizations and leaders whose doctrinal points of view they do not become hard with." Lenz says he was targeted by union coexistent with CAN for example of his high visibility and nontraditional beliefs, and cites a February CAN journal that states that Los Angeles members "worked with position media on stories about Rama/Frederick Lenz."
In gathering, CAN authorized manager Cynthia Kisser says CAN
affiliates "never go out and try to rustle up stories. For instance we get study from media, we try to reimbursement them the best information about.
The disputed charges and countercharges banish, Lenz's
acknowledged sexual encounters with his students position him open to weapon.
Lenz sees not a bit incorrect with his actions: "Instinctively I accompany union [at my seminars] who are keen in meditation, who narrate a high vibratory
nature--evolved individuals--who I tolerate something in agreed with and be keen on to management time with, whether it's leaving to the movies or leaving to bed."
But that attitude concerns some psychological researchers who tolerate studied the dynamics of substitute spiritual groups. "I'm out of date in that take into account," says Lowell Streiker, paddock of MIND-BENDING. "I would be unbelieving of someone making claims to creature a spiritual master who was having contact with union in his group." Adds Ghostly CHOICES
co-author Dick Anthony: "Sex is unsuitable in any warm of resemblance in which contemporary is a deep power disparity--therapist-client, parent-child, minister-parishioner, or guru-disciple."
