The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - I Am Rama | 10. Legacy

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

In this episode, we explore all that Rama left behind: students, a charitable foundation, music, books, and a complicated legacy. A Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment production. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. When I talk to Rama students about why they were so drawn to their teacher,

they cite a number of things. Some care for the spiritualism, the Buddhist magic. Others for the more practical, the professional. Rama, the businessman with the Midas touch. But there's another piece of Rama's teachings, or I suppose his style, that also appealed to some of his students. Rama was very educated, an academic. He had a PhD in literature, something that came through in his lectures,

how he blended Eastern philosophy with Western ideas, not just popular culture, but also writings. His doctoral thesis was on the modernist poet, Theodor Rothke. A while back, I came across a poem by Rothke that caught my eye. It's called No Bird. It goes, Now here is peace for one who knew, the secret heart of sound. The ear so delicate and true is pressed to noiseless ground. Slow swings the breeze above her head, the grasses whitely stir. But in this forest of the dead, no bird awakens her. Rama died in 1998, but his story didn't end there. From Neon Hum and Smokescreen, this is I Am Rama, Chapter 10, Legacy. Rama's death in April 1998 made national headlines.

It was picked up by the Associated Press, printed in newspapers from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to the New York Daily News. In articles, he was called a millionaire, an author, a lecturer. A couple of them called him a cult leader, and I can count six newspapers that called Rama an alleged cult leader or said he had a cult-like following. Lisa Erickson remembers seeing the papers in the next day and weeks. Someone once said to me, this is perhaps the most useful thing someone said to me. It's a koan. A paradox used in Zen Buddhism to make you think, teach a lesson in a way. Because in the paper, it's this sensational, outrageous thing, right?

And the way he did it was almost designed to be front page New York Post, which it was. And I had friends that were not in the study who had always been okay with it, friends in the doja, friends from college still that I was in contact with, and now they're reading on the front page of the New York Post.

For those who were still studying with him in those final years, Rama's death left a specific void. They no longer had a spiritual teacher. Some of them went on to new teachers. Some, as I mentioned so many episodes ago, joined my parents' spiritual group to study with my parents' guru, Adi Da. For Alan Jew O'Holland, you might remember they were one of the few married couples from Rama's group. His death meant they had a decision to make. After a few months had passed after Rama's death, it was kind of like I was going, well, what's next? They went on to study with a number of different teachers after Ramatide? Yes, we've been with a few teachers, one now for quite a while.

But nobody's like Rama. Nobody's like Rama. In the sense that, you know, he was one of us. He was our culture. He was so accomplished in every worldly way. He always dressed impeccably. He was part of our lifestyle. We've really had a lot of training, and it shows the actual experience

of being in an enlightened state of attention. And that part is really, really, really difficult to find, for me anyway. I mean, I found it once entirely with Rama, and I'm now finding it sometimes with myself. And I would say that my progress in the spiritual path is greatly enhanced by my time with Rama. While Rama's students figured out how to continue their spiritual lives without Rama, there were some other more tangible questions that remained, specifically around Rama's estate. Rama first prepared his will in 1994, which he'd made some amendments to in 1997, the year before he died. But in both, he spelled out a few things. First, he said he wanted all

family disinherited. Then, he said he wanted all his pets put to sleep. He also said he wanted his estate to go to, quote, a charity created by me that has the primary purpose of disseminating Zen Buddhist teachings, meditation, and yoga in the context of which I have taught as American Buddhism, end quote. But according to the will, if Rama didn't take the right steps to create a charity in his lifetime, then the estate was to go to the National Audubon Society, to a non-profit whose entire purpose is protecting birds and their habitats. And that gray area in Rama's

will, it spurred a legal fight. The Audubon Society sued for the estate in New York's surrogate court. It's part of the New York court system that handles wills and the related proceedings. Audubon's argument wasn't limited to what was written in the will. It concerned Rama's character too. Audubon pointed out the bad press he got over the past decade of his life, suggested that the money would be better used preserving bird habitats than promoting American Buddhism. And they

weren't the only ones involved. Two people who claimed to be Rama's wives also came forward seeking their cut. One woman, Diana Reynolds, was supposedly married to Rama in the 1980s. But I looked, and I couldn't find marriage or divorce certificates. And when I called the lawyer who represented Diana Reynolds in this whole estate case, she said it had been too long.

She didn't remember a Diana Reynolds. Another woman, Deborah Lenz, would end up writing a book about Rama. The way she puts it in her book, she started as a deprogrammer and then fell in love with Rama. I found someone from her book, she started as a deprogrammer and then fell in love with Rama. I found someone from her book publisher. In an email, they said Deborah published her book way back in 2002, and they'd, quote, made several attempts to communicate with her over the years, but to no success. She has since passed away. Ultimately, after what the estate described in documents filed with the court as

extensive litigation, Audubon settled in November of 2000 to the tune of $8.7 million. The settlement required Audubon to recognize Rama's posthumous contribution, including naming a 50-acre gorge in Connecticut after him, and a few plaques at Audubon headquarters in New York, that sort of thing. I reached out to Audubon for comment, but they have not responded yet. Meanwhile, from what I've gathered, it looks like the alleged spouses did not receive any portion of Rama's estate, but it's hard to say conclusively from the documents I've seen. After various other expenses were deducted, the amount remaining for Rama's intended purpose, a charity devoted to American Buddhism,

was about $10 million. And in 2002, according to the website, the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism began formal operations. And nearly 20 years later, they're still up and running. Federal tax forms show the nonprofit made grants and contributions of more than $300,000 in both 2017 and 2018, the most recent years publicly available. The money went to various places, including a number of meditation centers, places like the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Zen Center of Los Angeles. And some of the contributions went to private universities,

including Loyola Marymount University and USC Gould School of Law. The foundation holds events too. According to their website, there was a conference on mindfulness and business held jointly with NYU's Department of Global Spiritual Life and Stern School of Business in 2016. Even though a lot of students told me Rama was a last incarnation, the foundation makes it so that his teachings at least seem to live on, and some of the companies his students started remain in business. You could say that Rama's spiritual and business empires, which both thrived while he was alive, still exist to this day.

And arguably, some of them have flourished. There are other ways Rama lives on. Over the course of his life, Rama wrote six books, according to the Foundation's website. You can check them out. They're all available on Amazon. The best-selling one of them, Surfing the Himalayas, tells the tale of Rama's early days in the Himalayas with his first teacher, Master Phwop. Remember him? According to various news outlets, Warner Books gave Rama a $250,000 advance for the story. But things got a little hairy after citing all the controversy surrounding Rama in those days. Warner Books apparently dropped the deal in exchange for an $80,000 kill fee.

NBA coach Phil Jackson famously named the Zen master for his reputation as a counterculture coach who infused Buddhism and mindfulness into his coaching. Also won a couple rings with Michael Jordan. Praised the book at first, but soon withdrew his public blurb. Naturally, the scrap deal spurred a whole new round of news articles about Rama. The book would ultimately still be published. St. Martin's Press swooped in and published the book instead. According to a handful of articles at the time, the book was a bestseller in 1995. Surfing the Himalayas still has some staying power. In 2018, Tina Turner told the New York Times,

the book sits on her nightstand. As I've mentioned, Rama played in this band called Zazen, too. While it's sort of ubiquitous in his story, it also didn't really play a role in the larger story of Rama in the public. It was kind of like a really well-funded garage band. Zazen produced more than 20 albums with names like Enlightenment, Samadhi. The music is synthy, kind of wandering, very 80s, ideal for meditation, kind of like what we think of now as Chillwave.

The records are still on Spotify if you're curious. As I've documented in this series, Rama had a lot of skeptics. He faced accusations of alleged financial manipulation and sexual impropriety. And we've spent some time reviewing the media's attempts to shine a light on what seemed suspect to them. But there were others who heard about Rama's lectures and the students who followed him across the country to study with him and attempted to hold Rama accountable. In the 1990s, a New York state senator named Susie Oppenheimer and Assemblywoman Naomi Matusso, neither of whom are still in office,

both expressed some concerns about Rama, specifically because they suspected Rama had worked out a deal with SUNY Purchase in New York to lecture there, despite the allegations against him. The way they characterized it at the time, according to news articles, they thought Rama was swindling students out of money. They thought, again, according to news reports at the time, Rama was running a cult, basically using a public university as its headquarters. They wanted to go after him, they told reporters. And despite those promises, no one did anything.

But there's someone, a private eye actually, who had some insight on this. His name is George Belladino. He was hired by some parents of Rama's students back in 1991 to follow their kids around, making sure they weren't getting too deep in with Rama and his group, making sure they didn't leave the state like so many Rama students did. George remembers the concern around Rama's deal with Sunni. In fact, it was George's sense that Rama had pressured Sunni to let him lecture there, despite all the controversy, that there was some sort of politics involved. They had some feeling that there were some high-ranking officials in SUNY that not were involved with the cult, but were able to do things for them that they should have been doing. But George wasn't really looking into that part.

His chief task was just following students from place to place, mainly just to tell their parents that they were okay. Sort of uneventful stakeout, if you will. They were all well-educated kids. They were all college grads. They weren't stupid in any way. Mostly in the mid-20s, early 20s, mid-20s. He had some control over them. It's just the way he was. I think he, is he around today or is he still in jail? I think he locked up. Other than that minor drug offense in the 70s, Rama didn't have a criminal record that I could find. But what's interesting is that a lot of people I called up

asked me that. Is Rama around today? What's he up to? I didn't even know he was gone. For a split second, Rama was everywhere. A popular spiritual teacher on Larry King and Dateline and the New York Times, Washington Post. But as it happens over time, eventually, the world forgets. But not his students. A lot of Rama students told me that he was one of the central catalysts of their lives. That, decades after his death, they still credit him for much of their success, happiness. But some chose a life that followed a different path, like Lisa Erickson. But I don't live the life that he designed for me at that time in the way that some others do. I'm

not still in tech, right? And all that kind of stuff. Of the people I know, maybe half are in tech still, half are not. There's artists and writers and people who went into different healing fields. But for many, like Lisa, moving on with their lives didn't totally mean moving on from Rama. I moved on with my life four years later. I got married, went on this whole other direction, but will always feel like Rama is my root teacher. And some still join to remember him every year on his birthday in February. Here's Liz Lewinson. But we all love Rama, okay? The people who are still being in touch with each other, celebrating his birthday, just really teaching.

These are people that just benefited from Rama. Liz still thinks back to one of Rama's power trips in the Bahamas. We had a beautiful gathering with Rama, and he said, okay, you're now ordained as teachers, but you don't represent me. You can say that you studied with me, but you don't represent me. You can say that you studied with me, but you do not represent me. So there are people teaching, but they teach in their own way. And they were people that happened to spend time with Rama, definitely.

Almost as if by releasing his birds from the nest before he died, Rama left behind a totally voluntary community, connected because of him. So we've had physical gatherings ranging from about 150 to 200 people. We have virtual gatherings, and sometimes one of the highlights is just telling Rama stories. We laugh, we tell beautiful things that happened. As far as Liz is concerned, Rama remains close by. I don't feel the energy's gone far at all. I think it's still accessible and I think it will be for

a long, long, long, long time to come. A long, long time to come. He just showed up in the physical for a while. All these different people, a millionaire in Montecito, a programmer in Olympia, a writer in Barbados. On the surface, there isn't some single characteristic they all share. They span a variety of ages and professions and live all over the place. But fundamentally, what they did have in common was Rama. For the last year, I've been trying to figure out what the story of Rama is exactly. And for some, the conversation around Rama was one about cults,

where the Rama led one. Liz, for one, boxed at the term. I believe the word cult is a pejorative word. The word itself, cult, actually just means a group of people who are passionate about something. That is the dictionary definition. And so that's why you can have cult followers of a particular clothing line or type of shoes or sheets or a band, whatever, you know, cult followers, no problem. But cult, when it's applied to a spiritual teacher or a religious movement, almost gets a mind-numbing response. Like,

oh no, it's a cult. And it's become so negative. Liz says the right word is new religious movement or alternative spiritual community. And why would a spiritual teacher have more ability to have mind control than anyone else who's a political leader or your ex-wife or husband? You can say the same thing. This person had mind control. I was not in my correct senses when I made that decision. So I believe it's very harmful to continue to use the word cult as a pejorative description. And I would caution everybody to look inside themselves

when they hear that word. Rama made it clear over time that he did not see himself as a cult leader. He explicitly disassociated himself from cults. Here he is in one of his lectures he recorded between 82 and 83 when he was just starting out. I think it's a great mistake to join a spiritual community

and give them all your money and sign over your property. You know, sort of the cult mentality. Either way, cult or no cult, I'm definitely left wondering how to explain all the Buddhist magic in Rama's story. I know we've heard some naysayers describe it as a trick, as neuroscience, not magic. But I have to say, the golden light came up a lot.

That or some form of levitation, auras, that sort of thing. I asked my folks about this the other day, and they also said they had experienced some form of magic out in the desert with Rama on those walks. Let's hear one more student talk about it. His name is Josh. And his time with Rama started in a ballroom in San Francisco in 91, when Rama led him in a meditation. Basically, he entered the room and the whole energy of the room changed. Josh would see the infamous golden light. As he was talking, I felt and also saw this gold light filling up the room. There's not really words to describe that kind of a feeling.

And it would change him from a 19-year-old musician with dreadlocks who had to race to a thrift shop to buy a tie for Rama's lecture, to the owner of a software company on Wall Street. Rama, the golden light even, changed his life. This whole thing was a bit of a paradox. You know, like it didn't really make sense. I know a lot of people are not going to believe what I'm saying. You know, feeling energy coming up your body or the mountains disappearing in the desert or this kind of stuff. It's hard to believe. It's probably hard for a lot of people to accept that it exists or that it was real. But I

can tell you, like in the gold room in the Fairmont, literally the entire, I don't know, existence surrounds me dissolving into gold light. Like it happened. I'll admit, if it were only Rama's true believers who told me these stories, that would be one thing. But some of the students who left the group, who to this day look back and see problems with Rama and his students, they still maintain that they saw the light, the magic. They lived it.

They believe it happened. Here's one of them, Mark Lertzema, reflecting back on something he'd learned from his time with Rama. More of a personal lesson. I think it's a good cautionary tale for anybody on a spiritual path of any kind. At the end of the day, you own your spiritual practice and you can listen and learn from others, but you own your own stuff and don't give your power away. Yeah. Save that for your family. And here's Mark Laxer, one of the first to speak out publicly against Rama.

He also left on bad terms, but doesn't believe people shouldn't pursue spirituality. Go join a cult. Just be careful. Have a roadmap in your heart and your brain as to how to leave if your experiment goes bad. But I'm the last person to tell people not to experiment. I'm not anti-cult. It's these students, the ones who have seen and lived both sides of the Rama effect, whose opinions seem the most informed. They've had a lot longer than I have to settle on an opinion about Rama. In the end, for me,

Rama is nothing short of a paradox. It's a conclusion I have slowly been coming to over the past year, much to the dismay of a lot of people. A few of Rama's students who listened to the first few episodes already didn't like what they heard. They reached out, tried to persuade me to change my tone. They wanted me to give more time to pro-Rama students and less to people like Mark Laxer and Mark Lertzema. But I also heard

from, I guess you could say, the other side. People who think Rama is a cult leader, someone who took advantage of his students, leveraged their vulnerability for money and more. They also encouraged me to pick a lane. In their case, to call Rama out. One person in the comments section of a post asked, Why is Jonathan so afraid of the Rama people? You probably have an opinion too, and honestly, you should. I didn't tell this story from in between two opposing points of view, hoping that the listeners would also land right in the middle.

That's not the point of a documentary. Not the point of telling a story. We each get to decide our own truth on this matter. And at the conclusion of my reporting and of putting this podcast together, that's still my stance. It's more than okay to disagree about Rama. For me, when my private opinions on the matter are not really relevant, I'll admit it's complicated. I can't say for sure how much of my reactions go back to a different spiritual teacher, go back to my childhood.

I was having coffee with my father the other day and and I mentioned Rama, and tears came to his eyes. That's the kind of love he felt for this person. Me? I never met him. But what I can say is that from what I've learned over the last year, the opposing perspectives about Rama are intense and complex. It's part of what made this story fascinating to me. If someone who trusted me asked me today if they should join a spiritual group, I definitely wouldn't say no, but also would have a lot of questions,

not just about the spiritual group and the leader of that group, but about the person who is seeking in the first place. When I think back to the students who are, for lack of a better term, pro-Rama, they are people who were, in some way or another, well-suited to finding peace and motivation from their teacher. Liz Lewinson, Luke Sutton, Will Ernst, Lisa Erickson. They have no doubt that Rama improved their lives. And I don't doubt it either.

And then there are the people like Jim Piccarello, Mark Lertzema, Mark Laxer. They got something out of the group and then got out when it was time or, for some, a little on the late side. And, of course, the women who accused Rama of sexual misconduct. They were students too. People who say Rama took the worst kind of advantage of their trust in him. People who declined to talk to me for the series.

But the person I keep coming back to when I think about this story, about this series, is the person who, it seems, spent much less time around Rama than anyone I just mentioned. Someone who sought a more spiritual life and struggled to find a path. Brenda Kerber. In some ways, she reminds me of my parents. Brenda was spiritual, curious, open-minded. My mom was a seeker. She was a student. That's Brenda's son, Dave. We heard from him earlier in the series. It's hard for me not to

identify a little bit with Dave, to wonder what would have become of my parents and of me if we had stayed in Rama's group instead of following Adi Da. Like Brenda, my parents weren't cut out for success in Rama's universe. It's hard for me to imagine them learning computer programming, starting companies. It's the big maybe of this series for me, the what if. But for Dave, the hypotheticals are no more. It's been over half a year now since his mom's body was found in the Mascout Reservoir in White Plains, New York. Since he finally found out what happened to her over 30 years earlier. This spring, Dave and his sister Shannon held a ceremony to honor Brenda,

who's small, just a few friends and family members. We were able to get together to share memories of my mom, to share memories of what we loved about her, and to also share how her loss had impacted us and to finally reunite her ashes with her parents who spent the remainder of their last years looking for her. Parents who were cut off by Brenda in the months before her disappearance and who, Dave says, felt responsible at some level. This was Dave and Shannon's way of reuniting them, after all these years, of completing

their search in a way. And then the remainder of my mom's ashes, we took to the Oregon coast, which was probably her favorite place. After three decades, Brenda's family was finally able to honor her life and fully acknowledge her death. Still, Dave says, for him, the memorial wasn't really a matter of closure. In fact, neither was the day Brenda's body was found. It's just not that tidy for Dave.

He's been mourning the loss of his mom for decades, hurting from it, and also learning from it. That loss has allowed me to have great empathy and understanding for people who have experienced something similar, and that's a gift. And I'm grateful to have that gift. That's, I think, an incredible takeaway for me, though I wish I never had that gift, if that makes sense. Dave shared the episode of this podcast about his mom with a few people in his life, and says that for some of them, it's how they first found out about Brenda's disappearance, her death. They expressed their sympathy, of course, but many also called the story fascinating. He talked about it as a sort of cautionary tale, one of many available in the

media these days about certain spiritual groups. Dave also shared his opinion about the prismatic nature of what I have found. I completely understand that there were people who learned from Frederick Lentz who had largely positive experiences and whose careers took off and their spiritual well-being was enhanced by him. I believe that that is true. I also believe that there were people who went down a dark path and who Frederick Lenz was not a caring and compassionate teacher who he was cruel to, who he manipulated. I think that both those things are true.

What I would say to the people who had a great experience is if you honestly reflect, did you know that some of that negative stuff was going on? Did you hear rumors about it? Did you read the stories or watch the news programs about the negative press on Frederick Lenz? And did you rationalize it away? Did you ignore it and say, well, that's not my experience? Still decades later, so much about the story about Rama ends with questions instead of answers.

There's an image I keep returning to, though. Do you remember Where's Atmananda? The game Rama and his students would play in the early days, where Rama would go to a movie and his students would have to guess where he was? It was a time for most of them. The entire world was yet to come. The wind was still at their backs. And so much would change. So many unexpected turns lay before young Atmananda and his students. And still, as I've retraced his steps from place to place, I never really found the whole man. Perhaps just the outline, a silhouette of curly hair in the middle of a dark theater,

watching his favorite heroes on the silver screen. Was that Rama? The truth is, I'll never know. I Am Rama is a Neon Hum original podcast reported and produced by Kate Mishkin. Thank you. Thank you, Kate. And me, Jonathan Hirsch. Our editor slash hero is Vikram Patel.

Catherine St. Louis is our executive editor. And I'm the executive producer of the show. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Jonathan I. Hirsch. I will be continuing to share all kinds of source materials from this show and all the shows we do at Neon Hum. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Justin Klosko is our fact checker, keeping us honest. Our production manager is Sammy Allison. The theme song for this series is Dolphin Dance by Tangerine Dream.

Other tracks you heard on this episode are from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. A very, very special thanks to Shara Morris, Nick White, Carla Green, Crystal Genesis, Natalie Rinn, and Haley Fager for all of their contributions to this series, and to the entire Neon Hum and Sony Music Entertainment team. Thank you for letting me put together this strange and fascinating story. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts if you haven't already.

It's a little late, but we'd like you to stay. There are new stories in the Smokescreen feed to come. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. And you can find out more about this series and all the podcasts we produce at Neon Hum by visiting our website, neonhum.com. I'm Jonathan Hirsch, and in the immortal words of Jimi Hendrix,

if I don't see you in this world, I'll see you in the next. So don't be late. Thanks for listening.