It was fun eating out with Atmananda. After dinner, we often continued the fun and the fight against the Forces at the movies. One time, Atmananda took us to Warlords of Atlantis. He bought five buckets of heavily buttered popcorn, Tabs, Cokes, diet Cokes, boxes of licorice, Sno-caps, and Raisinetes. Then, from the fourth row-- Atmananda claimed that four was a power number--we watched a film which, at the time, seemed extraordinary. Atmananda sat by the aisle of the nearly empty theatre. He whispered something to Sal, who told Tom, who told my brother, who told me: "Atlantis was once a real city." "Atlantis was a real city," I told Anne, who told Dana, who told Suzanne. Meanwhile, juxtaposed at an intersection of transmigrating junk food, I further divided my attention between monitoring what needed to be passed, trying not to notice the women, and watching a man on the screen discover a lost world of magic and conflict under the sea. "We all had past lives in Atlantis." "We had past lives there." Pass the Raisinetes. A hidden city of magicians, seers, and warriors, where the laws of physics do not apply. "We were together then." "We were together." Pass the napkins. Crystals have a non-physical power. "Atlantis was destroyed by the greed of its inhabitants." "Atlantis was destroyed by greedy people." Afterwards, we drove back to Tom's and caught the last few minutes of The Twilight Zone. It was late. I was getting sleepy. Atmananda began to repeat how Guru had saved us from stove-demolishing Entities. I entered a state of mind where I heard his words, but did not scrutinize them. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, he suggested that we meditate on the Transcendental which Tom placed on a table by the television. In the months that followed, Atmananda accepted me into his inner circle of friends. But not every encounter with him, I quickly learned, was a party. * * * One morning Atmananda emerged from his cottage in Stony Brook carrying a thick stack of posters. Bluejays, doves, sparrows, and chickadees flocked around a feeder. Sal, Paul, my brother, and I stood nearby. Atmananda approached, but the little birds remained. "Ellaow," he said in a Cockney accent. "Ellaow," we echoed. "WHAT...is your name!" he demanded, quoting from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Sir Waff-noid," offered Sal. "WHAT...is your quest!" "I seek the higher worlds." "WHAT...were you thinking about last night at 11:30!" Sal blushed. "Alas, my lad," said Atmananda, patting him on the shoulder. "You won't reach the higher worlds thinking about that." Atmananda showed us a poster. It read: "ECSTASY AS A WAY OF LIFE." Also printed were details about a free lecture series, "With Atmananda-Dr. Frederick Lenz." But before he sent us to Manhattan, Atmananda inspired us, told us how to protect ourselves, how to change.