The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - I Am Rama | 9. Conscience Bay

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Power trips to paradise and never-before shared knowledge -- were these golden times, or Rama’s way of saying goodbye? This episode explores the final years leading of Rama's life.  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. A quick heads up.

This episode deals with a number of difficult topics, specifically including self-harm and suicide. Thank you for listening. A lot of what I'm about to describe comes from police reports from the early morning of April 13, 1998. A little after midnight on Long Island in New York, Suffolk County Police Sergeant Robert Bell stopped by Rama's Long Island home. He was familiar enough with the place. He had worked private security for Rama. The house, Bell said, was lit up like a Christmas tree. The front door was closed but unlocked. He called for Rama.

Nothing. Then he asked the caretaker for the home to come over and help him look. Inside, they found a house in disarray. Furniture turned over, linens across the house stained with blood, dog feces. In the kitchen, broken glass littered the floor. Rama's wallet had been emptied, his IDs and credit cards strewn across the counter. Police found pills and emptied liquor bottles around the house. Something was, obviously, not right. But it would be almost nine hours until Sergeant Bell and the world

knew exactly what this snapshot into Rama's private life really meant. For most people, Rama was a very public figure. It was true for a lot of his students too. Even though he had individual interactions with them at times, he was still the guy on stage, teaching at a seminar, leading a desert hike, empowering their companies. He had a role. But of all the people I talked to about Rama, there's one person who seemed to have a unique peek behind the curtain. Lisa Erickson saw a side of Rama that, from what I can tell, not too many people did.

You know, it was a very meaningful experience in my life. A lot of the ways that it was meaningful were seeing him off the stage. And he would often say, measure someone by how they treat people when they don't think anyone was looking. And that's what I got to see. Lisa first saw Rama speak in 1990, eventually began studying with him. And a few years later, as she tells it, was pretty forward about wanting to spend time with him. Rama seemed interested back and suggested they go out to dinner to talk about it.

And then they went to dinner a few more times. Eventually, things became romantic. They were dating. Sometimes Lisa would go to Long Island to see him for a weekend, and sometimes he'd come to see her upstate in New York. And that's when Lisa got to see how Rama was different alone than he was being a teacher in front of his students. And at times on the stage as a teacher, he could be a Zen master. He could be harsh with us if he felt we were engaged in silly power battles with each other

or just in a messy state of mind or whatever, right? But when Lisa was alone with Rama, when he was her partner, she said she saw him in a different light. With strangers, a cashier, a grocery store clerk. She found him to be different. The same was true when they were at home. He was just a guy. He had three dogs at the time, and he played

with his three dogs like a little kid. He was very gentle. There was one particular memory that Lisa keeps close to her. It had recently been Rama's birthday, and he insisted on no gifts from his students, only getting cards. So one night after his birthday, we went back, and he went through every single one. And he would read me pieces of them, and it was like, my grandfather's in the hospital with cancer. Can you help? I just got a new puppy. Here's a picture. Can you bless it? My niece just got diagnosed with leukemia. Can you help? I'm having a really hard time finding a new job.

I just broke up with someone and I can't concentrate on anything. I can't meditate. I can't do anything. I'm just devastated. It was just, you know, and then others would be, thank you so much, Rama. My life is so beautiful. I don't know what it would have been like without you. So it was just the whole human experience. Rama would read each one and stop for a second, meditate on what the card said. And he just turned to me at one point and said, this is what it means to be a spiritual teacher. And that, you know, I'll never forget that night. Like that night more than anything

taught me who he really was. According to Lisa, Rama eventually ended his relationship with her. But she and Rama continued as teacher and student up until his death in 1998. When something ends unexpectedly, it could be a relationship or a job or an era in your life, sometimes it's really hard to pinpoint when things started to change. But, you know, later when you look back, hindsight kicks in, softening the bumps in the road and sharpening the signs. Toward the end of Rama's tenure as a teacher and the end of his life, some students say they felt a change in the tides.

They sensed something was going on. But it was only later that some of them, like Lisa, would put a finger on the feeling. So in retrospect, he was winding down, right? He didn't necessarily know that at the time. Rama was getting himself and his students ready for the end. From Neon Hum and Smokescreen, this is I Am Rama, Chapter 9, Conscience Bay. The mid-90s saw Rama take a few notable steps when it came to his role as a teacher and to his students.

Change was in the air. In 1994, he announced the end of his formal meditation teaching career. In other words, he wasn't accepting any new students, and he certainly wasn't lecturing in any banquet or lecture halls anymore. Without new students, Rama could turn all his focus to those who were already with him. It was around that time that he also started asking students to refer to him not as their teacher, but as a CEO. Some speculated it was all part of an effort to distance himself from the bad press he'd been getting. One student I talked to

said that looking back at these years, it felt like Rama had given up on his spiritual plans in favor of his money-making ventures. But others ascribe a mysticism to this, like they do with so much of what Rama did. That there was something otherworldly about his seemingly pedestrian decisions to stop teaching, to try on a new job title. What could look like a midlife crisis to some observers seemed purposeful, even magical, to others. Those years had their share of harder times for the group, especially for Rama. All the bad press, the Dateline special, the confrontations with the programmers, that was all happening in the early to mid-90s. But there was one thing I haven't mentioned yet. In 1995, Rama lost his beloved Scotty, Vayu.

Taking it all together, losing his dog, years of battles with the programmers, and a legacy of bad press culminating in the Dateline special, it's easy to imagine Rama felt like he was having more losses than wins. Not to be glib, but it kind of sounds like he needed a vacation. And that's kind of what happened. In 1997, Rama instituted a new wrinkle to his teaching. Here's Lisa again. In 97, he was doing these trips to the Caribbean.

I think he had five that year. And you just went to whichever ones you wanted to. And so I went to all of them. And they were just beautiful events. Rama in the islands, teaching meditation. Sounds nice. The time he was kind of positioning this year of these Caribbean trips is kind of a breather year. A lot of students went on these trips, including Christopher Jones.

Today, he lives just a stone's throw from the beach in Barbados. Outside his window, you can see the crystal water, hear the waves crash. And it's definitely an easy place to meditate. After a career as an entrepreneur, Christopher's pretty much living his best life. Now I'm a writer. So now I'm writing on my first novel and I get to be an artist now for the rest of my life, which is what I always wanted to do anyway. Christopher moved there recently and now Barbados is home. But he'd been there many times before, the first time with Rama. Rama brought me down to Barbados and I always felt the connection with the island. I've been coming back consistently. Christopher started studying with Rama in 1992. He liked the meditation.

That's what got him in the door. But he was really taken by Rama's focus on business. And Rama seemed relatable to Christopher, more role model than guru. You know, my father did his best he could. You know, we're pretty poor, but, you know, I have food and there's a roof over my head. But my dad really wasn't very successful in the things that he did. It was that promise of success that kept him coming back. And half a decade later, Christopher accompanied Rama to a new teaching venue, Paradise. Many other students joined, including Alan and Jonna. I think we went to all. I think I missed one.

You might have missed one. I think I missed one. I don't know if I missed any. I think you went to all. Nowadays, Alan and Jonna are semi-retired and live in Sacramento. They've been together since the mid-70s and finally tied the knot eight years ago. They started studying with Rama back in the early 80s as a couple. In fact, according to them, they hold a unique spot in the history of Rama students. We were, I believe, the only people who came in together who actually stayed together.

To Rama's... Of Rama's students, yeah. They studied with Rama up until 1998, and some of their best memories with Rama are those trips to the Caribbean. It was a usual format, which was a long evening meeting with Rama, you know, with a lot of meditation and so on. And then some evening parties also. There was at least one of those. And, you know, just kind of a relaxing kind of thing, but with a serious bunch of meditation. But they were great. I mean, they were just great. Rama called them power trips.

Side note, this is one of those holdovers from Rama's teaching that insinuated its way into my childhood. My parents would talk about power trips, visiting places they felt possessed a certain natural power, places of raw or natural beauty. I mean, mostly that was like a hike in Muir Woods on a Sunday afternoon, but call it what you will. The places that he took us to were natural power spots to begin with. So it was like a lot of high, high, high energy, really big time. True to his nature, Rama wasn't sitting still. But now, instead of moving his students from city to city, he was asking people to jet set far away

to paradise to spend time with him. In September of 1997, Rama took another step towards closure. Lisa remembers that gathering. He announced, if you want to teach meditation, if you would like to receive an empowerment to teach meditation, because we had not taught yet, right, us formally. Rama gave his students a teaching empowerment. He basically, if I'm

understanding it correctly, sort of blessed his students to become their own teachers. I remember him saying is, you're all empowered to teach now. And he gave a very beautiful speech about teaching and what it meant. It has echoes of when Sri Chinmoy gave young Freddie the name Atmananda decades earlier, letting the birds try out their teaching wings a little bit. Later in 97, Rama held another empowerment. But this time, he invited everyone who'd ever studied with him. And all these people showed up. I mean, I don't know how many people were there, but there were people there that hadn't seen him in a decade.

Everyone had questions for Rama. Things that had stuck with them through the years that they never got answers to. Lisa says Rama answered the questions and also offered a new meditation technique. And he said, if you practice this, this will cycle the kundalini and it will eventually bring about your awakening, right? Again, different memories on what he said about that. And someone said, why didn't you give it to us before? And he said, I couldn't. I couldn't do it then.

And that was all he said about that. So why did he decide to unveil it right then? So he was, in my mind, laying it all out for us? Towards the end, Rama's physical health was also starting to show cracks. Some students had mentioned him having trouble with his eyes. Here's Alan again. At some point he was wearing sunglasses

in the evenings for our meetings, and he referenced that at some point and said, you don't want to see what my eyes look like. Soon after, he took another step that would prove critical for his legacy. Here's Liz again. Rama asked me to write his biography. This was in January of 90, it was January 1st, 1998. And I said, sure. Not realizing it would happen or his departure was soon. In the next few months, Liz says she noticed something different about herself.

About a week before this happened, something in me started saying goodbye to Rama. I don't know why, I just started saying goodbye. I started saying, Rama, goodbye. You know, I know for some reason things have changed and I want to thank you because it's been wonderful, but I'm saying goodbye. And then there was one final announcement. Lisa told me this also happened

that month, in January 1998. Rama gathered his students once more. Lisa remembers the moment, the feeling. He said we're going to end things for a while. Everything's kind of shutting down. So there was nothing more in the books, right? And it was a very sad event.

That was the last time I saw him. For Rama, the end was near. In the early morning hours of April 13th, 1998, according to police reports, Sergeant Robert Bell took stock of the disarray in Rama's house. You'll remember furniture was turned over, broken glass on the floor, pills, bloodstains. The police report also mentions something from outside the house, in the back. The railing on the dock was damaged. He also found someone inside. A woman named Bryn Lacey, who went by the name Savitri, lay in bed, semi-conscious and bruised, police would later say. I reached out

to Savitri. We corresponded at length, in fact. And ultimately, as of the publication of this show, she has not agreed to participate in the series everything you hear about her recollections is from police reports two dogs were found and taken to animal emergency but rama was nowhere to be found an ambulance arrived and took savitri to intensive care where she gave statements to police. More police arrived. The department's canine unit, aviation and marine bureaus began a search of the property in nearby areas for Rama. But it wasn't until the next morning, about nine hours after Sergeant Bell first found

the door unlocked, that police scuba divers would find Rama in the water, about 135 feet away from the dock behind his home. In this police report, it says they found a few things on Rama. A small Buddha statue and an empty bottle of absolute vodka. He was wearing a Versace watch, glasses, black suit, and he had a dog collar on around his neck. Soon after, Rama was pronounced dead around 10 a.m. on April 13th. After that, police contacted a handful of people, including Rama's dad, who lived in San Luis Obispo, California.

His dad, also named Frederick Lenz, told officers Rama had been depressed and that a prior eye operation wasn't as successful as he'd hoped, per the police reports. They also called Rama's lawyer and accountant, Norman Oberstein and Norman Marcus. Oberstein would handle Rama's affairs, he told the officers. According to the report, Oberstein also told them a few other things. That Rama had cataract surgery and that Rama had recently been talking about making reservations to Fiji and Hawaii. He also said Rama never

really used drugs or drank. But in the last few weeks, he had started drinking vodka before bed. Later, Savitri made a series of statements to officers too. They also ended up in the police report. She told them about how she had met Rama first at a seminar in California when she was in college. She'd cleaned his house for almost two decades.

She told police Rama had been feeling an immense pressure from his 350 students and that he wanted to get to, quote, the other side. Savitri also said she and Rama had plans to go on vacation together, and police found an itinerary with plans to visit Hawaii and Australia. But when detectives called airlines and hotels, they found all the reservations had been canceled. There was something else the officers found in Rama's house, a manila folder with a manuscript. On the outside of the folder in red ink was Savitri's handwriting,

quote, we all tried to go into the next world. On the outside of the folder in red ink was Savitri's handwriting. Quote, Savitri would tell the officers what had happened that night on April 12th. Again, this all comes from the police report. She and Rama had gone out to dinner, and Rama was drinking a lot and mentioned suicide. When they returned, Rama fell asleep while Savitri watched TV. When he woke up, he counted out 150 Valium for himself and 50 for Savitri. They wanted to take the dogs with them, she told police. Rama then walked out to the dock and fell into the water. Savitri tried to jump in and save him, but bruised herself on the rocks.

In the hospital, she told police, my guru loves to party. I took something to kill myself. Then, we decided to go on a trip to shed your body. These police reports are hard to read, and not just because they're graphic, though they are, but it's also because so many of Rama's students described him to be a man because they're graphic, though they are. But it's also because so many of Rama's students described him to be a man ahead of his time, beyond this world. That

his death was mysterious, otherworldly, the last twist in Rama's saga of adventures. Something magical. But that doesn't track with this police report version of events. This reads to me like the story of two people who were struggling it feels profoundly tragic Allen was working in a little studio in Sausalito California when he got a phone call it was a friend of his and it was like Rama was dead you know and it was like Rama was dead, you know, and it was like my initial feeling was basically something like, holy shit, are you kidding? You know, it was one of those things that was kind of like, oh, my God, how do you deal with that? But I don't remember. It's been funny with my whole life.

When somebody's died, you know, it's been kind of I haven't had a lot of remorse. It's just been sort of like a shift. And when I heard that Rama was dead, it was kind of like I thought, oh my, you know, what's going to happen now? You called me and you were crying. Yeah. Word began to spread. You know, we received a message that he had passed.

I couldn't believe it, you know, he was only 48. And the fact that he died in water when he was a scuba master, I thought he must have been rescuing his Scotty or something. I couldn't imagine how he could die in water. I mean, the whole, this whole thing was a bit of a paradox.

You know, like it didn't really make sense. I heard the news and I was completely stunned. And yet, suddenly what happened is all of these things he'd been saying fell into place in a certain way. That he had been planning a departure and he did it. There are a lot of explanations, theories, really, about Roma's death. Here's what Lisa had to say. If I have a theory, it's what he said to me at the end. Like, we did the best we could.

To keep going was just going to bring even more negativity. He felt like to just keep going teaching was just going to attract more and more negativity. I really view his exit as very planned. When I look at all the events leading up to it, why did he decide to leave in that cessational manner? He could have done it in a manner that wasn't going to make it to the front pages. The way he did it was going to make it to the front pages. The way he did it was going to make it to the front pages. I don't know completely why he did that. Joe Simhart, the deprogrammer we heard from earlier in the series,

the one who had that tête-à-tête with Rama on TV, he had a different take on it all. I think that life, the lies, whatever had caught up with him, I think he was ill, I don't think he was well. The last few pictures I've seen of him, he was kind of thin and he'd been using drugs. I don't think he was well. So he not only wanted to take his own life, to go out on his own terms, so to speak, with his dog Vayu's collar around his neck. Other people also told me they noticed Rama had been in physical pain. One person who didn't want to go on record told me she thought he'd developed an addiction to pain medication.

But others noticed an emotional pain in him. Here's Alan again. There was definitely something physiological going on with him towards the end. And I don't know what it was. I wouldn't even want to guess, really. But was he worn down from it? He was the one who was taking the brunt of it. I mean, if you can imagine, I mean, here's a guy who's got a spiritual community and so on,

who's being attacked by the media and all sorts of things. I would imagine it did have an effect on him. Lisa told me that Rama had actually lectured against suicide. He had very explicitly said at other seminars in the past, don't commit suicide. First of all, it's a complete waste of time because karmically it just doesn't solve anything. I think he was just done.

He was done with this lifetime. And how did you make sense of sort of the way that he died? I'm still making sense of that one. It's impossible to know for sure whether Rama's death was something he was actually planning. Here's Liz. So what I found in writing the biography is that he had started talking about his death in 1988 to a friend that I spoke with. And he had said to her that this whole teaching was only going to last for another 10 years. The police report describes an exhaustion, according to Savitri.

She said that Rama had sat for too long with the burden of being a teacher. Luke remembers hearing something similar back then. He was still a relatively young man, but I heard he was sick. I heard he was definitely suffering with illnesses. And I believe a large part of that is because he ran so much energy through that body in helping so many of his students and even non-students, just being of service to the world and taking on that energy. And I strongly believe that was a lot of what the case was with Rama and his illnesses and his final passing. Because he was in great shape. He ate well, he ran, he was always an athlete, a runner. You know, he always kept in good shape.

Some tried to figure out what he was telling them. Rama had left hidden metaphysical messages for them his whole life. But much like everything else Rama did, his death confounded students. To this day, many of them still grapple with it. They can't explain what led Rama to die when he did. About a month before Rama died, Lisa's dog got really sick. Lisa, now years removed from dating Rama, called his assistant to ask Rama to bless the dog. And he called me back and he walked me through being with her as she was put to sleep and what to expect.

And, you know, that she would be okay how long to stay with her. And he said, see if they'll do it tonight if they have a vet tech there so she doesn't have to suffer anymore. He assured her the grief was natural, despite a belief in rebirth and other planes of existence. And then he told her something else. We all do what we can with the lifetime we're given. And he just left it at that, right? And I didn't process that really what he was saying to me till much later. Years later, she still remembers how Rama made her feel in that moment. But now his message holds a lot more meaning. Lisa would move on, get married, start another career.

After Rama's death, all of his students had to move on, whatever that meant for each of them. Over the years since he died, some people have credited Rama with kick-starting the lives they always wanted, something they continued to enjoy even after he was gone. That's just one part of the complicated legacy Rama left behind. It's probably hard for a lot of people to accept that it exists or that it was real. 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. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Jonathan I. Hirsch. I'll be sharing tons of source material, photos, and other stuff related to our work on the series, so be sure to check it out.

Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Justin Klosko 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. you