Now, as the sun sank in the Pacific, I stood with Nuna on the edge of the property. I took a few steps forward but quickly stopped cold. I could almost hear Rama saying in his Kermit-the-Frog voice, "Make millions of people happy." I stepped to where my room used to be when suddenly, superimposed over blackened concrete slabs, images appeared. Rama was in the kitchen cooking for a hundred spiritual seekers. Rama was in the meditation room giving a talk beside a larger-than-life photo of an Indian guru. Rama was at the same spot giving a talk beside himself. Rama was in the garage surveying stacks of WOOF! Rama was offering me cookies to cheer me up because I doubted his enlightenment--my *friend's* enlightenment. Rama was hopping around the house like a kangaroo, and I was right beside him, and we were laughing like children, and at that moment, in the fading light, the cap blew and tears streamed down my face. * * * Over the next few years, I grappled with conflicting images of Rama. Sometimes I saw him as a friend. Other times I saw him as a semi-enlightened seeker or as a powerful sorcerer. But the more I researched his past, the more I discovered he was human. He was born Frederick P. Lenz III on February ninth, 1950, in Mercy Hospital, San Diego. He was raised Catholic in Connecticut where he lived, alternately, with his grandparents, aunt and uncle, and father. His parents divorced when he was a child. His father remarried, joined a yacht club, and, in 1974, was elected mayor of Stamford. In 1967 Fred graduated from Rippowam High School. The following description of him appears in the yearbook: "A streak of the unusual-- chasing the beautiful, hiding from the known. Cut-rate philosopher-- monopoly on the side..." At seventeen, Fred left the east coast and experienced the mushrooming of the psychedelic movement while living in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. It was during the subsequent year, which he spent in prison for selling drugs, that he was handed a promotional brochure for Indian guru Chinmoy Kumar Ghose. Chinmoy, whose path was paved with "peace, light, and bliss," had several hundred followers worldwide, including rock musicians John "Mahavishnu" McLaughlin and Carlos "Devadip" Santana. Fascinated by Eastern philosophy and meditation techniques popularized in the late '60s, Fred returned to the east coast where he studied the art of quieting the mind with Chinmoy. He also studied English at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. While still an undergraduate, he married and divorced a Chinmoy disciple named Pam, built dulcimers in a wood shop in his basement, joined the university debating team, and began hosting free public lectures on meditation.