The Binge Cases: Scary Terri - I Am Rama | 1. Golden Light

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Rama was a man of many faces: teacher, tech entrepreneur, friend - and to some, a scam artist. This episode introduces Rama, examining the world from which he came, the way he shaped those who entered his orbit for better and for worse, and the mysterious circumstances around his demise.  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

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Some things you just can't explain. You don't know how to explain it. You just know it happened to you. It could be a miracle or it could be a mirage.

Your family, friends, coworkers, society may never really understand it. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Because either way, that thing changed your life. Jim had one of those experiences. My name's Jim Piccarello. In the early 90s, he was in a crowded restaurant just north of Manhattan. He was there to see a spiritual teacher named Rama. He came into the room and told everyone there that he was going to sit down on a stool.

Everybody, do your meditation, but this time do it with your eyes open. And generally look at me. Just sort of like have a light gaze in my direction. Jim and the other people there focused on their breath, their eyes open. Music started playing. And they put on this, what sounded like rock and roll new age music that was very calm.

They lowered the lights. He concentrated on his breathing, looked up in the direction of this teacher, a man named Frederick Lenz, who went by the name Rama. And God damn it if the whole room didn't turn into solid gold and everyone in it. The golden light. It wasn't just something he saw. He says he felt it too. And I got a rush of euphoria that I had never felt before. He said it was like a wall of good feelings just washing through him. And I almost got a little nauseous because of feeling that way. It was very disorienting. The lights came back on 15 minutes later. He remembers Rama started talking, but can't remember what it was about. I just remember saying, I'm following this dude for the rest of my life because he's got something that no one has.

Jim would come to believe that Rama could transmit spiritual energy, and in so doing, heighten Jim's awareness, help him achieve an enlightened state of being. It's what attracted Jim to Rama and kind of changed his life. And whether it was golden light or something else, Jim was far from the only person who saw it, who felt it. Yes, gold light and movement, vibratory movement, his face shifting and changing.

And the whole room would light up, and I would feel eternity. 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. Over time, I've come to know many of the people who say Rama changed their life. And while these stories start much the same way, they don't end up in the same place. For some of his students, Rama was nothing short of a magical being. And he just casually said, yes, this is pretty much what Samadhi feels like.

Or you might say this is what Nirvana feels like, one of the two. And it was just blissful, it was just beautiful. For others, it's more complicated than that. And then I told him the bit about getting the energy, meditating, programming, making lots of money, giving the money to him. He says, dude, you're in a pyramid scheme. And even others saw a troubled man, someone who, surrounded by people who adored him, was very much alone.

I felt a little bit of sorrow that, you know, this guy never got it together. I mean, you know, I still saw him as a fractured human being. At first, for me, the story of Rama was the story of a curiosity. I've spent years studying controversial American gurus and teachers, even met some of them. But Rama confounded me. His story rested somewhere between hagiography and cautionary tale, but for reasons I didn't expect, it made me question everything I thought I knew.

It cuts to the bone of the human story, of what we know and who we choose to believe. I'm Jonathan Hirsch from Neon Hum Media and Smokescreen. This is I Am Rama. Chapter One. Golden Light. I've known about Rama for a long time, my whole life, in fact. But my curiosity about him really grew a couple of decades ago. 1999. I was a 15-year-old kid living in Northern California with my parents. We were followers of another spiritual teacher. It's a long story, which I get into in great detail in my series

Dear Franklin Jones. But here's the TLDR. I grew up in what many people consider a cult. In the 70s and 80s, there was this proliferation of alternative spiritual groups that were frequently accused of being cults. Some of the leaders were clearly pathological, narcissistic, dangerous. And I have complicated feelings about who the leader of my family's group was and what the word cult does and doesn't mean. But suffice it to say, when I was 15, I was a true believer. I was trying my best to win my parents' approval, to assimilate, and to fit in with other members of the group.

Like any teenager would. Anyway, around this time, a group of new followers joined the religious community I'd been raised in. These followers had previously been students of another spiritual teacher. Rama. And I remember one kid in particular. I'll call him Chris. He was a few years younger than I was, maybe 11. And he'd come to the group with his mom. Chris was this soft-spoken, shy kid. I almost felt bad for him, like he was being dragged into this new group with all these strangers. But there was one thing about which Chris was quite bullish,

presenting an image of success. He wore suits and ties and seemed obsessed with becoming a wealthy capitalist. At the time, my friends and I found this quality in him, an 11-year-old boy, pretty amusing, mostly because we didn't understand where it came from. Thinking about it now, it was Rama he looked up to. After I'd finished making Dear Franklin Jones, Chris reached out to me. Hey man, I listened to your series. Really well done. I had no idea you felt that way. Good stuff, man. Recently, I emailed him about this documentary,

asked him if he wanted to share his experiences with Rama for the series. That's a tough one, man, he said. I said, yeah, I know he meant a lot to you. Is that what you mean? I wasn't really sure what he was talking about. I'm not interested in discussing. He removed his picture from his profile and unfriended me. He removed his picture from his profile and unfriended me. He didn't want to be a part of any public story about Rama. So, like I said, I knew about Rama. It runs a bit deeper than that. In fact, without Rama, there's a good chance I never would have been born.

In 1982, my mom met my dad at a Rama seminar. One day, while walking around San Francisco, she saw an advertisement for this guy with a square jaw, big smile, and an unforgettable mess of blonde curls. It was an ad for a meditation with a spiritual teacher who said he'd had past lives in Tibet. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, in a break room of the parts department of a major airline, my dad saw the same flyer.

And one day, they both ended up in the same place, in downtown San Francisco, both of them there to see the man on the poster, who would later be known as Rama, a man who led with the promise of a better life and a pathway to enlightenment while also making you laugh. This evening I'd like to consider ways of

expanding your awareness that are legal. There was something magnetic about him. Something almost supernatural. My parents became students. He had this casual, accessible way of talking about Buddhism and spirituality. He was really appealing to spiritual seekers like my parents. Middle class, white, boomers.

Again, here's a video from the early 80s of him going deep, but being light about it at the same time. I mean, is there a difference between being baked and half-baked? I suppose it's a matter of temperature and time. Try not to worry so much. All the time you worry. You worry about the present, you worry about the past, you worry about the future. All you're worrying, what will it do?

This is where the story sort of splinters. Mom and dad would end up following a guru named Adi Da, or Franklin Jones. They had a kid, me, and raised me in a spiritual community. In, well, some would see it, a cult. But I never forgot about Rama and my parents' spiritual meet-cute all those years ago. I thought about him a lot over the years, how he compared to the rest of the charismatic spiritual teachers of the time, many of whom would be accused of manipulating their followers, labeled frauds, deserving or not. I soon discovered that plenty of people accused Rama of similar

things, from former students to prominent media outlets, accused him of, well, being a bad guy. It made me want to see if he was, in fact, cut from the same cloth as these bad guys, or if he was perhaps actually misunderstood. Because my parents talked about their time with Rama like it was paradise. It's hard not to wonder how my life would have been different if they had stayed with Rama, or what his life and his teaching amounted to. Hi everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness. Clean water, fresh air, our health. Electricity, honey.

We tend to take for granted the things that matter most, like the separation of church and state. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been on the front lines defending your freedom to live and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Most folks don't see how church state separation affects our daily lives until that freedom is gone. The separation between church and state covers many core freedoms like civil rights for LGBTQIA plus people, women and racial slash religious minorities, or reproductive justice and freedom. But those rights are not a given.

Every day, Americans United works at the state and federal level to make sure these freedoms and more are protected for every American to enjoy and benefit from. They can't do this alone, though. Join Americans United for separation of church and state and growing the movement because church-state separation protects

everyone. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more and get involved at au.org slash curious. Hi everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness. Clean water, fresh air, our health. Electricity, honey. We tend to take for granted the things that matter most, like the separation of church and state. Americans United for Separation of Church and State

has been on the front lines defending your freedom to live and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Most folks don't see how church-state separation affects our daily lives until that freedom is gone. The separation between church and state covers many core freedoms like civil rights for LGBTQIA plus people, women, and racial slash religious minorities,

or reproductive justice and freedom. But those rights are not a given. Every day, Americans United works at the state and federal level to make sure these freedoms and more are protected for every American to enjoy and benefit from. They can't do this alone, though. Join Americans United for separation of church and state and growing the movement, because church-state separation protects everyone. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more and get involved at au.org slash curious.

Liking Rama was easy. He was, after all, quite a success story. What's unlikely about his story is how it happened, and eventually how it ended. Tonight we have a great show. Rama was, in a word, cool. He dressed like an 80s bad boy. Spendy, madras shirts, leather jackets, the whole deal. He was in a band.

They made music videos. There were photo shoots that involved Porsches. And he was popular. Lines for his seminars stretched out the door. And once you were in the room with him, you'd realize this guy was funny. Why did the Sphinx cross the road? That's the riddle of the Sphinx. Because a moron threw him out the window, right?

But it was more than a veneer. Rama's message as a teacher to his students was unique. It blended eastern philosophies with the terrestrial, even more so the practical, the professional. He said, you can have enlightenment. And I'll help you find a job that pays the bills too. And he didn't so much preach as present. In a lot of ways, he skewed more towards an academic than gurus like Franklin Jones. You would be excused for confusing his meditations with a masterclass. And to his students, that's exactly what they were. In fact, he took out these full-page ads for his seminars in newspapers and magazines across the country, full-on marketing campaign. Rama had an offering that was, to say the least, unique at the

time. A program for the modern seeker, for the nine-to-five spiritualist. You didn't have to travel to a remote monastery, secluded compound to find him. Just stumble on a flyer or open up the paper. That's how Luke Sutton found Rama, same year my parents did. Same city, too, San Francisco, 1982. He's older now, but in those days he was young and fit, with dark curly hair and these gentle eyes. Luke was hanging out with a friend one time, about to meditate together, which, you know, I guess that's the sort of thing you did in those days. And he showed me this full-page ad of this teacher that was coming to do a public talk, and it listed his resume of past lives.

And I looked at it and I said, well, that's not very humble, is it? So I said, let's go. We've got to see what this guy is like. When he arrived, the place was packed. Like at least a thousand people. They got a seat close to the back. And we sat there and he came out on stage

and he was wearing a corduroy blazer, looked like a college professor, which he actually was. By that time, Luke was already into meditation. He was a spiritual seeker. He knew what he was getting into when he decided to sit with a meditation teacher. But when he met Rama, Luke could tell he was different. That this, whatever exactly it was that Rama was offering to the public, was different. He would scan the whole room one by one and just gaze with each person. I could really feel his energy building. The next morning, when Luke tried to meditate,

he had a feeling he couldn't shake. He said it was like Rama was with him, in his frontal lobe. The next time he went to see Rama, he said he felt like his body was buzzing. I knew without a doubt I was going to see my teacher. Luke said he talked about Carlos Castaneda, a sort of pop mystic of the time.

He had these best-selling books about philosophy, the magical, the mystical. And Rama added his own flavor, of course. The next clip is from a different session, but it gives you a sense of Rama's range. It's highly unusual for a spiritual leader to do things like reference pop culture, talk about movies, that sort of thing. And especially this movie. I find Rambo 3, it might be too violent for you, but I'm very inspired by that. The ultimate warrior, played by Sylvester Stallone, who goes in and saves the oppressed people.

And if I'm having a really tough day and everything's going wrong, I had a bad day at the studio, bad day at the office, whatever, I go home and I put on Rambo 3. It pumps me up. But for Luke, more than the philosophy or the pop culture, he was taken by Rama's energy. He trusts what he feels. And that night in Berkeley, he felt something totally new. Gold light and movement, vibratory movement,

his face shifting and changing, sometimes looking like an old man with a beard, sometimes looking at Kali with a black face, and this constant shifting and changing. Like nothing was solid, everything was just fluid movement. And all the time I'm visually seeing these amazing things. The golden light. It was like I stuck my finger into a light socket.

The energy was so strong and powerful, and yet so peaceful. It was amazing. It was so strong and powerful, and yet so peaceful. It was amazing. So amazing, in fact, that after that night, Luke filled out an application to study with Rama. It was a selective group. At the time, there were only about 50 students in San Francisco. That's what he told me. That would have been the center my parents visited at the time.

By 1982, Rama had opened centers in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and was traveling around to them. But a few years later, Rama closed the San Francisco center. If you wanted to keep studying with Rama, you had to move, or travel all the time to be with him, in Los Angeles. So I said, oh my goodness, because I was married, I had a son. I said, what am I going to do? Luke and his wife were separated by then. Leaving her wasn't too hard to contemplate, but leaving his young son was another thing.

You couldn't possibly explain that to a three-year-old. He promised to visit as much as possible. He just wouldn't be around every day. And he did visit a lot, actually. I would drive all night long and get there in the morning on a weekend. I'd drive up Friday night, get there Saturday morning, leave late Sunday night. I'd do that probably twice a month. But less than a year after the move to L.A., Luke hears that Rama plans to make another major announcement.

This time, the group is going to Boston, too far to visit his kid twice a month. My calling was so deep that I felt that's what I had to do. And most Westerners, even as I speak this right now, it sounds crazy. And most people would just not believe it and feel that I'm a terrible father. How could I possibly explain what I was really doing? It just can't be explained. explain what I was really doing. It just can't be explained. Rama would become known for these last-minute moves. If he didn't like the energy in one place,

he'd tell everyone to pack up and find new jobs and meet him in a brand-new city. And if you couldn't swing it, you stayed behind, fell off Rama's path. It was tough to keep up, some people told me. It's important to understand that for people of my parents' generation, people like Luke, the path to enlightenment often meant sacrificing many of the elements of conventional life, even if the outside world or your family thought you were crazy for doing so. There was a notable exception. Studying with Rama did not mean sacrificing your career. Just the opposite, really.

It was around this time that Rama became known for something that would set him apart. An approach that was different than that of all the other spiritual teachers that came before or after him. A growing interest in computer programming. This was right around the time personal computers were becoming more readily available to consumers and businesses alike. And Rama set his sights on the growing industry. He started urging students to learn computers, to break in. He didn't force it, but said there were energetic reasons to do it. The programming was a great way to focus, kind of like meditation.

He used to say that if we were in the East, we'd be focusing in caves for 10 hours a day, but we're not, we're here. Luke said Rama would reference the philosophy of tantric Buddhism, which is basically in this context, the idea that you don't have to give up things to have a spiritual practice,

like become a monk in the mountains or something like that. That living a normal everyday life can be its own spiritual practice. So in the spirit of tantric practices, you utilize everything. Here's Rama in one of his videos tying meditation to computer programming.

I feel that the computer world is a fine place for spiritual seekers to be, because the mindset that it takes to use the computer technology is the Zen mind. As you meditate, your mind changes in specific ways. And those ways are perfect for people who program computers and work in the computer field. Computer programming. Yeah, it's hard to imagine a wave of hippies trading in their

peace pipes and Birkenstocks for loafers and PCs. I can imagine people like my parents seeing computer programming as antithetical to the life they chose to live. It's too conformist. Luke trusted Rama. Still, he was a little freaked out. I was an artist. What did I know about computer programming? I thought computer programming was about math. I was never a good math student. Luke went back to what he knew worked. So I sat down, I meditated, and I was so peaceful and resolved about this. If Rama said computers were the way, then Luke was going to get himself up to speed. There were some computer schools recommended to us,

and there was one in particular that I was going to apply to. I was going to live in Boulder and go to this computer school in Denver. Rama was now moving the whole group to Colorado, and instead of waiting for the group to leave town, Luke got a head start. And I found this beautiful place near a stream. And for the next few days, that's where he slept, in his car, by a stream.

And I washed up, and it was right next to the University of Colorado in Boulder. So he did that, wash, rinse, and repeat, until he found a place to live. Then he registered for school. Turns out... I was so good at it. Luke, who had almost zero experience with computer programming to that point, was a natural. And I loved it, and I really took to it.

I took to it like a fish to water. And that was pretty much how it happened for Luke. And he owes it all, he says, to Rama. I would not have had this amazing career as a computer programmer, database designer, systems analyst. I wouldn't have had all that. And Luke is far from the only person I met while reporting this series who felt this way.

You know, he said, look, what's going to happen is every business is going to have a computer system. You learn a heck of a lot, and I've never forgotten what I learned there. He gave me a career. I have an extraordinarily successful career in the life I have because of that. The mind is like a computer.

It runs programs. I was, like, super focused. I had started this software company. It was fairly successful. This is when you have the ultimate freedom, the freedom of your own business. It's kind of incredible. Some of these students made tens of millions of dollars

in an industry they never planned to make a career out of. It makes sense now why Chris, that kid I knew as a teenager, would aspire to be like Rama. And maybe also why he didn't want to talk to me. Controversies dogged Rama for a decade. When I started looking into his life, reaching out to hundreds of people for this series, I was met with a wall of silence and the occasional no thanks. Many students felt they'd been burned by the press.

Incinerated, one person said to me. As a result, there are two wildly different versions of Rama out there. What I've come to call the perfect Buddha and evil cult leader perspectives on him. I wanted to make sense of both versions. Some students understood what I was trying to do, but still felt it was impossible for people who had not meditated with Rama to understand what it was like. It was like believers and skeptics were in these parallel universes, coexisting on the same timeline, but never together. More on the other universe, next. Hello, it's your beauty and wellness BFFs, and we're here to answer all your burning questions. Next. unfiltered thoughts always. Listen to Lipstick on the Rim now on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

What was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic or your sink full of dishes? As an actor, it's very freeing being part of these shows. You can step in the booth and kind of be anything. Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is...

Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. I literally, when I saw it, when I found out about this, I

literally had, like, a nervous breakdown, in a good way. With the best celebrity guests. I've never pirated anything, but I'll steal it if I have to. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler. Ugh, it's coming back.

It's coming back. So join us every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. For all the students of Rama who benefited from his teachings and advice, there are followers who didn't stick around and who, in retrospect,

wish they hadn't stayed as long as they did. To Rama's skeptics, whether students who defected or print in TV media that produced excoriating exposés on him, he was seen as someone who had all the hallmarks of a cult leader. Rama wasn't just a guy who helped you feel good and figure out life. This was a claim that some of his skeptics had. He was a businessman, and you were the product. He showed young people how to succeed in the computer age. He'd teach you, at a premium cost, how to use meditation to be more self-actualized,

and to get a job in computer programming, to make more money. While traditionalists likely balk at the idea that you could accumulate wealth and power and still be an enlightened teacher, Rama found a cozy little niche where the two were not mutually exclusive. He convinced followers to make money and then spend it on him. On attaining his version of self-realization for capitalists, on his seminars, for his blessing, really. The shiny allure of making it in Rama's America came at a steep price to his followers. And it wasn't just the money. Rama exerted a kind of control over your life that doesn't ring of consent.

So how is it that so many people saw the same figure, listened to the same lectures, saw the same golden light, and came away with fundamentally different experiences. The rift started playing out fairly publicly in the late 80s and early 90s. Rama started getting a lot of attention, and not in a good way. This is the intro to a Larry King interview with Rama in 1988. Welcome to Larry King Live! Tonight, Zen and the Art of Making Money. Zen Master Rama.

He offers meditation. Or is it mind control? And here's a clip from People Are Talking, a daytime talk show out of San Francisco from sometime in the mid to late 80s. Some of his former followers accuse him of using mind control to break up relationships, drugs like LSD, even forced sex to control his followers. Well, we're going to look at both sides of this story this morning.

You're going to hear from people who say, no, he is an enlightened teacher. And you're going to hear from other people who say, no, he is a cosmic seducer. One of the outlets that took a hard look at Rama and his followers was Wired magazine. Back then, it was a small San Francisco startup. They published an article in 1994 that painted a picture of Rama as a conman, one who convinced smart college students to fall for his promises of money and enlightenment, making a living off their naivete. And of course, computers.

I think what was so interesting about it was that there was this digital focus. That's Zach Margulis, the author of the Wired article. And remember, this is back in the 90s where the internet, it's a new thing. Most people are not really involved in it for another seven or eight years, where it becomes sort of in everybody's household and in everybody's pocket a few years after that. That's what got Wired interested, the computer angle of it all. So I'm interested in, and Wired is interested,

in the interplay between this authoritarian cult and computer programming. There it is, that word again, Cult. It would become a point of tension for Rama and his followers. A word some still use to describe the group, and others would push back on, hard. And I will be honest with you, I'm somewhere in the middle trying to figure it all out myself. Growing up in a group that many thought of as a cult, I can see the parallels between my experience and what you might think of when you hear about Rajneesh or Chogyam Trungpa or other Swamis and Avadhuts. Don't get me wrong, the worst case scenario from these groups all far exceeded the scope of what my parents and I experienced.

But still, our guru, he was a difficult man by his own characterization, and in my view, had an uncomfortable kind of control over the actions of his followers. Looking back, we were so often on the edge of someone getting hurt psychologically, emotionally. But Rama's group? This didn't seem like that. Was Rama brainwashing people? Or just giving them more options? Useful guidance? Rama brainwashing people? Or just giving them more options? Useful guidance? Was he committing fraud on unsuspecting young adults?

Or just a Buddhist teacher with a pop sensibility charging a little money for his advice? Back in the early 90s, Zach was trying to answer many of the same questions. He talked to people in Rama's inner circle and kept hearing the same kinds of things from Rama's students, most of whom were young college students. How he gets smart people to do stupid things. Some of it is pretty rote. I mean, people described him trying to unknowingly hypnotize them. I don't think it would work very well on me or most people I know, but it has to do with their age and playing on their insecurities.

And it has to do with his own personal magnetism and charisma. Zach did hear a lot about the golden light back then, too. People literally described seeing a heavenly glow emanating from him. I mean, that's how adorable his smile was, I guess. But his reporting also led him to believe that Rama had a dark side. That his welcoming, almost divine presence gave way to something more sinister.

And that would change on a dime to manipulate people where he would suddenly be ferocious and diabolical and characterize himself as Shiva the Destroyer. While he was reporting, Zach talked to a computer consultant who was cited in the article as a follower of Rama. And we had some conversations

and she out and out threatened to sue me, which again, you know, bring it on. That's how I know I have a good story because she's threatening to sue me. At one point, a Rama supporter even showed up at Wired Magazine's offices trying to intimidate them out of running the story. It's unclear whether that person actually was a student.

Zach was not impressed. There wasn't a chance in the world they were going to sway me with anything other than accurate, truthful information. So the fact that someone with a strong point of view goes into wired offices was never going to change anything. Zach went ahead and wrote his story, published January 1, 1994. Shortly afterwards, after the story was published, we got a letter. If I'm not mistaken, the guy's name was Jonathan Lubel, who was a lawyer for other religious

groups that are controversial. Church of Scientology, for one. I forget exactly what they were demanding, but it was ultimately a lawsuit against me and Wired for defamation. Defamation. Basically, they were saying that Zach had made mistakes in his reporting.

We were very careful and carefully documented everything that we wrote. So it was a suit that seemed to be intended to intimidate and shut us up and I think probably had the opposite effect. Wired didn't budge and the claim would be thrown out. It was still a pretty good show

of the way Rama went about defending himself or at least the way his lawyers did. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried they would try to do the same thing to me, paint me as a hitman journalist, despite making every effort to understand who Rama was and where he was coming from. Part of the reason for my concern is that I've been here before,

reporting on religious groups who have been accused of being cults. For many of them, including the one I was raised in, the fight for legitimacy in the public forum was a lifelong uphill battle. And those critics would stop at nothing to take Rama down. Deprogrammers and anti-cult groups took aim at him. Some of the methods detailed by Rama's students were shocking, bordering on criminal. I soon understood why many students were not especially keen on me digging up old news. It would be those critics and enemies that, many people told me, would eventually take a toll on Rama, and in turn raise a question about his life that remains unanswered to this day.

By 1998, from the outside at least, Rama seemed to have it all. Millions of dollars as a tech entrepreneur and lecturer. He had big houses and nice cars and was, in so many ways, the picture of success. A picture, it turns out, drawn in disappearing ink. A few minutes after midnight on April 13th, 1998, a police sergeant on patrol in Rama's sleepy Long Island neighborhood noticed lights on at a house overlooking Conscience Bay and walked through the door. He found a disoriented woman behind it. She told the police officer a story about drugs, about falling off the pier. The officer called for more help, and a little while later, police scuba divers would find Rama's body, lifeless, 20 feet below

the surface. Rama, a scion of spirituality and success, gone in an instant. His remaining students would scatter, some finding new teachers. His money would become the subject of legal battles, and his legacy, unclear. scatter, some finding new teachers, his money would become the subject of legal battles. And his legacy, unclear. I wanted to sort it out, to find answers. Who was Rama? I wanted to know why he was revered by some and torn down by others. I guess I wanted to answer the question my parents had so many years ago. I guess I wanted to answer the question my parents had so many years ago. Was this guy for real? I started talking to some of his former students, combed through old news coverage, ancient stuff mostly.

As you'd imagine, his name had stopped appearing in the press decades ago. That is, until this year. So today, DEP police were back out here, along with State Police and White Plains Police, out here for hours. Authorities in White Plains, New York, pulled a car out of a local reservoir, and inside found the body of Brenda Kerber, a student of Rama's who'd gone missing in 1989. It was these deaths, Brenda's and Rama's, that drove me to find answers, a story never fully told. What happened that night he took his own life? And we're going to ask and try to answer a question that Rama got asked quite a bit when he was still alive. Are you a cult? No, I'm Rama. I'm a person. When I came to this story,

I thought I had a pretty complete picture in my head. That Rama would fall in line with other stories of spiritual leaders gone wrong. A cautionary tale. But what I found was so much more than that. From Neon Hum Media and Smokescreen, This is 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.