Chinmoy, who often asked disciples to start "divine enterprises," asked this well-spoken, Phi Beta Kappa graduate to start a laundromat. When Fred chose instead to enroll in a Ph.D. program in English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Chinmoy kicked him out of the Centre for roughly one year in an apparent attempt to teach him obedience and humility. By the time I met Fred several years later, Chinmoy had dubbed him "Atmananda" or "Bliss-of-the-Soul," whereas the State University of New York at Stony Brook, after accepting his dissertation ("The Evolution of Matter and Spirit In The Poetry Of Theodore Roethke"), had bestowed upon him the title "Frederick Lenz, Ph.D." * * * Fundamental to my research on Rama were my discussions with former disciples, some of whom I tracked down, and some of whom I happened to meet at movie theatres, airports, and gatherings of Amnesty International. Talking and writing about my experiences helped me to work out much of the emotional pain. Listening to what others had gone through also helped a great deal. But as I listened, I realized that my darkest fear had come true. Rama had been getting progressively worse. In the fall of 1985, weeks after I left the Centre, Rama disbanded Lakshmi and encouraged roughly one hundred followers to move from Boston to Los Angeles. He directed these disciples to donate their time to his software company, Vishnu Systems. In 1986, Rama moved from Boston to Seattle with about eight men and three inner circle women: Laura, Cindy, and Anne. Once they arrived in Seattle, Rama informed the three women that he had asked them along specifically to satisfy his sexual appetite. He told them that they were to be his "Geisha's." By then, he explained, he needed to sleep with two or three women at a time; an individual, he maintained, had too little "energy" to stimulate him. He confessed to Anne that for most of his life something had been hurting him, keeping him down. He told her that during a recent trip to a family event, he saw that his aunt and uncle had been using their psychic powers all along to make him deathly ill and to try to kill him. He told her that I had been sending him a great deal of Negative Psychic Energy and that, in response, he had been sending me Entities so my life would be "miserable on a daily basis." Also in Seattle, Rama repeatedly administered LSD to the three women. During their hallucinogenic trips he kept them up all night, shouted at them, told them that they were possessed, and tried to get them to confess that they had incarnated on earth to destroy his mission. Then he threatened their lives. During one such episode described by Anne as "nightmare weekend," Rama fed them acid--five or so hits each--and showed them his new puppy.