The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - I Am Rama | 3. California Dreaming

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

Rama’s growth as a spiritual teacher in the mid-80s starts in California but takes him and his students all over the country. Rama defines his doctrine, turning his attention to the potential of the computer industry. But for his students, it’s not always easy to keep up with their teacher, or stay in his good graces.  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. About an hour northeast of San Diego, there's a hike in the Anza Borrego Desert.

A lot of Rama students told me about it. It's one of the spots where they used to go on these desert trips with him. The ones where they said magical things happen, like Rama's name being spontaneously recognized by his students. Liz Lewinson, Rama's biographer, first went on a trip in 1981. On that very first trip, I remember seeing beautiful things. I saw the hills behind Rama just sort of undulate with this beautiful light and energy. He disappeared and became these two big blue spheres of light. There were no bad trips for Liz. She said they were magical. Luke Sutton went on a bunch of those trips too.

I was starting to short circuit because the energy was so strong. It was sublime. The way Luke tells it, these desert trips had some of the same elements as the seminars. He would tell a joke. I mean, Rama had a sense of humor like he could have been a stand-up comedian. He was extremely funny. And here they were out in the wild exploring they would go on these long walks together usually single file or double file down the gorge it was called the gorge and that he always waited until it was dark so we

waited and waited until it was really dark because that's where the phenomena really happens. Rama would say he was communicating with the beyond. And things started to happen. I mean, but I would see things like lights in the sky and like vortexes opening up. And again, the undulating of the hills and the Shakti energy building inside of me, all these things happening at once. It was just amazing.

These kinds of moments in the desert, that sense of magic, so many of Rama's students bring it up. I don't know, it kind of sounds like the way that people talk about the early days of a band or something like that. It was a few friends with a common dream that turned into something so much more. Those walks in the desert sealed the deal for a lot of people. It was what made some students believe. I'm Jonathan Hirsch from Neon Hum Media and Smokescreen. This is I Am Rama. Chapter 3, California Dream.

For the early parts of this episode, many of the facts are from Liz Lewinson and her book, and I was not able to independently verify all of them. There's a street in San Diego called La Jolla Farms Road. It's where Rama, in the early 80s, started in earnest to really teach meditation and to lay the groundwork for his roving meditation school. La Jolla Farms Road is now a perfectly conceived community of new developments. Multi-million dollar seaside homes, occupied by wealthy investors, surgeons, CEOs, the kind of power brokers Rama would eventually position his

students to walk among. But in those early days, it was more freewheeling than that. So what happened in those five years? Rama went from being a guide for a handful of spiritualists to being kind of famous. A nationally known teacher, wealthy, running more of a business than a meditation group. And who did he leave behind in the process? In the beginning, it seemed everyone was young. The future was mostly ahead. Rama had housemates like Mark Laxer and hosted little meditation parties. Later, he'd move to a larger residence that they'd nickname the castle. He bought his first personal computer, the size of a desk, and got a dog, a Scottish terrier named Vayu. He loved that dog.

It was in San Diego that Rama started to build the engine of what would become a meditation community and a business. And eventually, that growing business would take him away. It would take him north to Los Angeles. I talked to Liz about that. He said a very ancient civilization had lived there and he was tapping into that. Motivated by the ancients, Rama set up a pretty modern new headquarters. Goldie Hawn was renting this really cute house overlooking the bluffs there, Malibu, and that's the place they ended up renting.

Yep, a classic L.A. story, renting a movie star's house. Rama moved in in May of 1982. Rama was running up and down the coast very quickly because he soon started a group in San Francisco as well. More students started showing up. Sure, some of it was word of mouth, but Rama also put a lot of energy and funds into advertising. Of course, there's the poster of Rama I've mentioned before, the one that my parents might have even seen in San Francisco.

I can't be sure. There's a big picture of Rama and his curly blonde head sprouting out of a turtleneck. And it says in big block letters, journey through the void. My favorite, though, is this full page ad. I have to tell you, it's kind of amazing. It reads like a resume. But instead of, you know, listing his PhD and prior experience with Chinmoy, it's kind of amazing. It reads like a resume. But instead of, you know, listing his PhD and prior experience with Chinmoy,

it went way further back, to before he was born in the body of Frederick Lenz, all the way to his past lives, starting with 1531 to 1575, Zen Master, Kyoto. It goes on to India, Japan. From 1912 to 1945, he was a lama in Tibet. It ends, of course, with his current gig, self-realized spiritual teacher,

director of spiritual communities in San Diego and Los Angeles. You know, in case anyone wanted to check his living references. The ad also lists Rama's interests. They include swimming, yoga, and perfection. Rama's centuries-long resume was one selling point, but really in the end, he was the best advertisement of his teachings. He was the product. He appeared to be a happy, successful guy who'd found a kind of content and understanding many were in search of, and also drove a Porsche. Who wouldn't want that? Who didn't want to be that?

When Rama started teaching in Los Angeles, the response was huge. He was teaching in San Diego to groups of 20, 30, 40 people. But when he started teaching in Los Angeles, there were, even when I went in UCLA, there were 250 people. It wouldn't be long before the group was a thousand strong, and Rama wasn't shy about telling his students that their school was the best one out there. Here he is in a video hyping his teachings in academic terms. There is a lot of flavors of Buddhism. There is one form of Buddhism that is the graduate school of Buddhism,

and that's what I'd like to talk to you about. In his lessons, Rama focused on a few things. One, of course, was teaching his students an Americanized brand of Buddhism. But there was another tentpole in those sessions, one that was an even bigger departure from the other spiritual teachers that were out there. Rama's other thing. Computers. That's next.

The early 80s were kind of the wild west of the tech industry. Companies like IBM and Apple were in something of an arms race to make the best PC and corner the market. On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984. IBM, the bigger picture. Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the day's newspaper. Well, it's not as far-fetched as it may seem. These larger-than-life IBM and Apple machines had entered the collective consciousness. In 1982, over a million personal computers were sold in the United States.

That's the year Time magazine named the personal computer the Machine of the Year. This remarkable invention was no longer just used for clunky military projects and science experiments the size of an entire room. It was a consumer product, not much bigger than the typewriter you no longer need. By the early 80s, a sort of computer arms race was on, which took a lot of people. Designers, programmers, engineers, the industry was blowing up. In 1984, a top computer programmer could make around 40k a year, which in today's dollars, that's six figures.

A systems analyst, 69k a year, which today translates to over $175,000. A lot of money was being poured into the industry. One Rama student told me that during this time, the newspaper classifieds would be filled with wanted ads for people with experience with computers. Liz says Rama's vision of the future and our world was prescient. Rama loved it because he saw this potential in it. Humans, Rama said in his lecture from the early 80s, were kind of like computers. The mind is like a computer.

It runs programs. And most of the software that's written, that runs on the computer of the mind, has been very poorly written. It's primitive, outdated. It's written in the language of fear. There are many more languages, advanced languages, that you can run. It's a huge part of Rama's form of Buddhism, Liss says. Your mind needs to develop through all the different things you do

during the day. You need to have that precision and continually challenge yourself mentally. It's one of the things that drew 23-year-old Mark Lertzema to Rama's practice in 1984. Mark was ex-military, including a stint in the Marine Corps.

He struggled to return to civilian life. They didn't really talk about it. You're just like, done. You know, there's the gate. Go home. Live your life. He moved to Arizona, took a job working at the Marriott in Phoenix, and was about to start college in the fall.

But he had this longing. I was looking for something that was not mundane. You know, when I got out of the Marine Corps, there was something in me that wanted to forget that I'd ever served in the military, that wanted to ever forget anything about violence, that wanted to be at peace with myself and with my life. You know, I wanted to go do something special.

Mark still rocks a military fade, tattoos on his arms and a big smile. Back in those days, Mark was struggling. But as luck would have it, once an hour, he would hear this one radio ad for a world-renowned meditation expert and author. It was Rama, plugging an upcoming lecture in Scottsdale. And every time Mark heard the ad, he got more and more curious. Because, he says, Rama's seminar sounded fun. It sounded like a big party.

A big spiritual party. Mark decided to go. And at first, Mark was not exactly enchanted. I was deeply disappointed that he wasn't like an Indian guru. It's a white guy. But then Rama started talking. He was fun, charismatic. And then it was time for the meditation, and I think you've heard this part before. The energy blessing, where Rama looks people right in the eyes, one at a time,

and Mark saw something he didn't expect, couldn't have expected. The room's filling with all kinds of lights, like auric lights, like reds and blues and purples and golds. And he's like pure white light up on the stage and he's disappearing in this intense energy of white light. Weird experience. And I'm watching that and I'm amazed.

And when he's not disappearing in the white light, it's looking like he's levitating. And I'm like, wow, that's pretty cool. He's looking like he's turning into other persons, like his facial appearances are changing and all kinds of stuff. Then Rama made eye contact with Mark. And it was like two red corkscrews of light went out of his eyes and just slapped me in the body. And I literally felt myself, like, disappear for a moment. And when I came back, it was like I was out of my body and I was staring down at the whole room from the top of the auditorium. And it was just a moment of stillness and peace and strangeness.

And I was like, whatever that guy has, I want to know. I want to know what that is. I want to be able to do that. He came back a few more times, decided eventually to apply to study under Rama. I should say here, becoming a student of Rama's wasn't as easy as just showing up, paying to get in. There was an application process.

It's kind of like applying to college. You had to be accepted. And Mark made the cut. Soon he was leaving his whole life behind and moving to LA to be with Rama. He really bought in. He also took Rama's advice about learning computer programming. How the mind

is like a computer. How this was his path to a high-vibe job. Better life altogether. And it also just sounded like it could be fun. Mark didn't have a computer background, so he had to start from scratch. He took an entry-level job doing word processing. He would eventually enroll in programming classes in San Francisco and score his first proper programming gig a few months later. You can probably tell that Mark was committed. He stayed with the group through all of the moves and in the process gained a career and a means to a good salary. But not everyone was able to stick around

when Rama decided to make a change. And after a while, Rama would be deciding who was even worthy to come along, who was in, who was out? More on that after the break. Rama's approach solved a problem for many spiritually seeking boomers. My parents, for example. When it was all said and done, there's a lot about their lives on the spiritual journey that they regret. And it usually comes down to economic success and stability. Their occupation never set them up for the future or retirement. They were too focused on being with their guru, Franklin Jones,

to being in service of the pursuit of enlightenment. Believe me, they were not putting away anything from my college fund. Rama provided both the key and the antidote to a hyper-capitalist world. It may seem ironic or perhaps hypocritical to some, but as far as Rama was concerned, the two went hand in hand. The more spiritual you were, the better you'd be at your job. You could have it all. Rama helped convince his students by making explicit ties between the two worlds. Here he is in a video from a series he recorded in the early 80s, waxing poetic about that

very interplay. Life is like a giant computer, I suppose. The computer is nothing without the software. A computer is just a big piece of metal, tubes, transistors, chips, diodes, and it sits there and it doesn't do much. What gives the computer life is the software, the programs that we run on the computer. Your mind is a PC, and Rama's program is compatible. Students dress for success, learned while they earned, because they were part of the program, running the right software, you could say. The path to enlightenment included optimizing your mind. But was Rama doing this more for his students' sake or to enrich himself? This was a common refrain, and one Mark Lertzema has a take on.

What I think in hindsight, to be honest, if he had a lot of computer programmers that were making 90 or 100,000 a year, living a very austere lifestyle, he would have a good flow of income himself. Mark talks about it like it's a business, down to the numbers. So if he could get 400 people, I'll give him 400 or 600. And by the time I left $2,500 a month, then good for him, right? Between 1984 and 1987, Mark moved to LA, then to Boston, back to LA, all to study with Rama. And living a transient life meant they had to live without some of the basics. I noticed that a lot of us didn't have furniture, you know.

We lived a very Spartan lifestyle. The students, by and large, got paid well, but still lived like monks, while Rama drove around in a Porsche. For a while, Mark didn't really much care, but he noticed. When you're a frog and you get into tepid water and somebody turns the heat up, you don't necessarily notice it first. I frankly noticed things about the Porsche. I noticed these things, but because I was very spiritually inclined, I didn't really care that much because I was like focused

on that which is transcendent rather than that which is material. With each move, some students couldn't afford to stick with the group and others weren't encouraged to. Yeah, everywhere he went, he would gather people up and he would boot people. I mean, it was kind of both. Mark remembers a housemate of his who was struggling in Rama's group, a guy with a bad temper. And Mark had gone to Rama for help with the situation. He says, well, tell him he needs to move to Hawaii because he's done. He's not up for the energy that's going on through us right now. So he's got to take some time off. So me and my friends actually bought an airplane ticket to Hawaii so he could got to take some time off. So me and my friends actually bought an airplane

ticket to Hawaii so he could go to Hawaii. And that was that. But the most memorable occasion happened in 1987, now three years into Mark's time with Rama. The group was in the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles, an iconic venue that Rama rented out for regularly scheduled lectures. But on that night, it quickly became clear that nothing would be regular. That evening, Rama announced that there would be big changes. And going forward,

the group would only be meeting once a month instead of every other week. And the cost of attendance was also going up. Tuition was increasing from $400 to $600 a month. But the biggest change,

they were moving again, this time to Palo Alto. And some of them wouldn't be invited to come along. As he said, you're effing around in the lower occult. I'm done. You know, you're psychically attacking me. It's going to kill me. So we're done. You know, we're severing our relationship after tonight. Mark had no idea what Rama was talking about. Psychically attacking him? He said, none of you are innocent here.

You're all messing around. But some of you are so bad, right? And if you don't think you're messing around, you're the worst. Right? You're so dishonest and lack so much self-reflection that you don't even know how bad off you are. Right? You're so dishonest and lack so much self-reflection that you don't even know how bad off you are. Right? Since then, I've learned that that's a really great manipulation. If you don't know you're doing it, you're the worst. He had us line up in a line. At the end of it, he stood outside, you know, by the lobby.

And each person who would come through, he'd say yes or no. Yes, you're a student. No, you're not a student anymore. And I would say that 30% got told no. It's almost as if he was laying off a third of his company, cleaning house, a corporate reorg in tough times. I should say that according to some of Rama's students, he did this to ensure that only serious practitioners stayed in his group. It wouldn't be the last time it would happen either. They came to be known as purges. For somebody not involved with the group, it might not seem like a big deal, but after talking to some of Rama's students, the risk of being cut out of Rama's group was more than a

passing concern. So Mark got in line to learn his fate. He was in front of his girlfriend, who'd also been going to these Rama lectures, and Mark moved up in line. Things were getting kind of brutal. I'm hearing women crying and all kinds of stuff going on. It was heart-wrenching. And he got to me, he looked at me, smiled and said, yes, I keep going. And he says to my girlfriend behind me, he says, yes, but no. Yes, but no. And just like that, Mark was in. Mark's girlfriend was out.

And that was it, the end of their relationship. After that, Mark would move with Rama to Palo Alto, and he finally got a job in tech. He'd be pulled further and further into Rama's inner orbit. Over the next few years, though, Mark would start to see Rama differently, in a less flattering and more troubling light, something we talk about more later in this series. But eventually, Mark would decide he'd be better off on his own. Mark would end up leaving the group in 1989, and when he did, he went to the press. I did not go quietly because I was outraged at the time.

I was outraged at him, but I was outraged, probably in hindsight, I was outraged that I had been so stupid to get taken. The decision to take his story to the media would pit many of Rama's students against Mark. Defending their teacher, they penned affidavits, painted Mark as the bad guy. In a group that was sometimes hard to keep up with, Mark was vilified for leaving, and more so for impugning his teacher on his way out. I did get a phone call from a friend of mine who told me that it would be nothing for Rama to take my life. And so I said, because I had a little bit of fire in my belly in those days, I do still probably. I said, well, all I can say is whoever that is better not miss because I'll be at Rama's front door next day.

Mark, in a way, would be a cautionary tale, and one that came early. I think we all wanted a daddy guru at some level. And we were willing to give over the locus of control, if you will, of our own self to this guru. And we probably, I did anyway, justified it because all the spiritual books I read said that's exactly what you do. This is a live conversation in Buddhist circles, by the way. Teacher, student, guru, devotee, these relationships arose in an entirely different cultural context than modern America. They came from India, then moved to China and later Japan. Not everyone believes those relationships are effective in the West the way they have been historically elsewhere. Today, more than 30 years later, Mark actually

bears no ill will towards his former teacher, and his career is a big reason why. He gave me a career. I have an extraordinarily successful career in the life I have because of that. Mark got married, had five sons. He works in IT, project management. He sounds content. On the other side of that, I have never surrendered the locus of control to another human being again. I don't bow.

I do not bow. You know, when I got out and was going through all that, I was trying to overcome my experiences as a Marine too. I did not want to, I did not want to be that Marine self. He's still spiritual, meditates often. You know, I think that, I think the answer is a lot easier than, than following somebody around the country. And I have no answers either. I mean, the older I get, the less I know. The Wilshire-Ebel meeting in 1987 was a turning point for Mark.

A year that would mark a shift for Rama, too, and for the rest of his students. The exact details are hazy, but to the best of my knowledge, Rama decided to spend a significant portion of the summer of 1987 with one of his students, a woman named Mercedes Hughes. Reports from that summer tell two different stories, some of a romance, others of assault and abuse. They would light a spark that would bring accusations from a number of other women in the group and create controversy that would require people to take sides, that would remain

in the public conversation around Rama for the rest of his life. It's around this time that the through line of the story of Rama splits into two parallel tales. Rama's students had to choose sides. And in that process, the character of the group changed. And the way Mark remembers it, it all affected Rama too. He was slowly changing over those years, from the affable teacher in 1984 to something less relatable. I think he changed. I think, like so many of us that go through spiritual practice, we get arrogant about our wonderful consciousness.

And I think he took that to heart and became arrogant. From here on out, everything Rama did was more potent, in a way. The people who loved him, loved him. Some who followed his career advice began to have real success in the tech world. Others didn't have that experience. Studying with Rama, they said, ruined their lives. It would become the crux of the story of Rama. Following him could be the best thing you'd ever done, or the worst. And for some students, like Mark, it could be both.

When Mark stood in line at the Ebell Theater that night in 1987, waiting to learn his fate with Rama's group, there were hundreds of others in line as well. Someone who was Rama's student at the time, a man named Will, was already on his way to years of success and some precarious moments too. And for Will, it meant landing in paradise, just barely. You know, I can truthfully say two things. One, if it wasn't for Rama, I'd never be here. And two, I almost wasn't here because of Rama. That's next time on I Am Rama. I Am Rama is a Neon Hum original podcast reported and produced by Kate Mishkin and me, Jonathan Hirsch.

Our editor is Vikram Patel. Catherine St. Louis is our executive editor. And I'm the executive producer of the show. Thank you. Scott Somerville. Justin Klasko is our fact checker. Our production manager is Sammy Allison. The theme song for this series is Dolphin Dance by Tangerine Dream. Other tracks you heard in this episode are from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. And you can find more about this series and all the podcasts we produce at Neon Hum by visiting our website, neonhum.com. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Thanks for listening.