Now, stretched out on a sleeping bag in northern Colorado, I realized that I had started and ended the bike trip in spontaneous meditation. I recalled other times during the journey that I had meditated. I gazed, for instance, at the bands of bright color which arched from drenched cow fields to the luminous Wisconsin sky. I gazed at the blur of the Minnesota pavement when the wind was strong and at my tail. I pondered an encounter with a young, six-pack-carrying Native American who, when I mentioned the spirit of South Dakota's land, told me he had sold his for a bundle of cash. I contemplated an encounter with a Vietnam veteran in Rapid City who said his death was near and whose shirt read, "AGENT ORANGE KILLS." I meditated on the meaning of a bumper sticker in Wyoming that read, "MY OTHER CAR IS A HORSE." I reflected on Nuna's response when I encouraged her to help pull the rig. The nearly full-grown husky had sat down and scratched her ear. The primary focus of the bike trip meditations, though, had been on my years with Rama. I had meditated, for instance, on the LSD trips. During the intense rush of the drug, my acquired knowledge of myself and of the world around me peeled away like layers of an onion. It was as if I saw the world through the eyes of a child. Hours later, as the effects of the acid began to wear off, it was as if I saw the world through the eyes of a young man whose self-confidence had not yet been shaken. Rama, who observed me during each trip, mostly let me re-form the layers which made up "me" on my own. The next wave of subjects in his chemical experiments would not be as fortunate (see Epilogue). I meditated during the bike trip on how, over the years, Rama flipped between "caretaker personalities" more frequently and how, starting in 1984, the flipping grew sudden and extreme. This unnerving phenomenon could be seen in the stages of his LSD trip. Perhaps, inadvertently, he had designed a multi-leveled, persona-flipping program of "sophisticated spirituality" to mask advanced symptoms of schizophrenia. I meditated on what had happened the night I left the Centre. When I followed my gut feelings and spoke honestly to Rama and to the inner circle, Rama responded by turning my brother against me. It did not matter to me, during the meditations on my brother, that Rama's childhood had been difficult. Rama had told me that his father was "power hungry" and "cold" and that his mother was "wacky" and "liked to take drugs." Nor did it matter that Rama had probably sought to fill the vacuum of his early years with promiscuity, LSD, devotion to a guru, money, expensive cars and property, and consummate power over hundreds of peoples' lives. Nor did it matter that his confusing set of personalities had probably developed from a simultaneous belief that he was a hustler on the one hand, and a living legend and god incarnate on the other. Nor did it matter that I wanted to forgive him.