My heart pounded. I felt like a bomb had exploded in my face. I saw Kara gazing at Atmananda. It was only months before that Atmananda had asked me to deceive the disciples into buying him a "surprise gift"--the new car. I scanned the crowded room. People seemed disoriented. Three disciples visiting from the Santa Barbara Chinmoy Centre kept glancing at the door. They looked ready to bolt. "Many of you have been having difficulty meditating recently," said Atmananda in his familiar, soothing voice. "You have been blaming yourselves. But you should understand that it is not you. "For years I have meditated on the Transcendental and the room has filled with a beautiful, white light. But lately, the light has simply not been there. At first I thought that the level of my meditation had dropped. Intuitively, though, I knew that that was not the case." I could not believe what was happening. I had never heard Atmananda criticize his--our--beloved Guru. Still, I had to admit that his intuition was usually correct. "When I tried meditating without the Transcendental," he continued, "my consciousness suddenly jumped to a much higher level-- as if the Guru had been holding me down. And yet my logical mind still refused to accept that the Guru had fallen. You see, you don't just turn your back on someone you have devoted eleven years of your life to, someone you have loved more than anyone else in the universe." I wondered if a con artist would devote eleven years of his life to a guru. "I had to make sure that the Negative Forces were not playing tricks on my mind," he continued. "So I decided to visit New York and meditate on the Guru in person. I found that he still looked like Guru. But inwardly I could see right away that he had lost his power." I wondered if I could have detected a change. "When the Guru began to meditate, it became clear that he was not entering into samadhi--though the disciples still believed that he was. Nonetheless, I wanted to be absolutely certain that the Negative Forces were not clouding my vision. So I visited Apeksha, a Queens, New York, disciple who has studied with the Guru for as long as I have. "At first, Apeksha thought I was crazy. But after we spent hours looking at old Guru photos, neither of us had any doubt as to what had happened. "Apeksha is now in a real bind. On the one hand, he can see that the Guru has fallen. On the other hand, he knows that he's not strong enough yet to ward off the Negative Forces on his own." Richard, who had bought the million-dollar Centre, raised his hand and said, "Atmananda, isn't there anything we can do to help Guru?" "Your sentiment is a noble one," Atmananda replied. "But you have to be careful. If you are swimming near a sinking ocean liner, it doesn't matter how nice a person you are--you'll be sucked under when the ship goes down.