As I grappled with the memory, I grew angry. Atmananda, I realized, probably saw me as one of his pets. Suddenly it struck me that while Atmananda might be like McMurphy, he might also be like the novel's mean-spirited antagonist, Nurse Ratched, also known as Big Nurse. Both Atmananda and Big Nurse, I realized, discouraged their wards from exploring the outdoors. I remembered Atmananda warning me, before I went backpacking in Yosemite, that he was picking up bad vibes from the trip. Despite his grim prophecy, the trip had been a success. I had gone with three friends from the Centre, each of whom loved the woods as much as I did. We woke to the sounds of a brown bear eating our food. We played hacky-sack on top of Half Dome. We got muddy and jumped in a river and yelled and laughed from the cold. Yet when we returned, Atmananda scolded me for having picked up significant quantities of Negative Psychic Energy. "Don't worry," he told me. "I'll process the bad energy for you--though it will probably make me ill." Then, adding humiliation to guilt, he dubbed us "assholes of the mountains." Both Atmananda and Big Nurse, I also realized, relied heavily on informants to gather data about the group that they controlled. Atmananda exposed his Big Nurse nature in other ways. He claimed, for instance, that he had to "press all the right buttons" to help people overcome their resistance to the Light and to him. And he said he never trusted a man unless he had his pecker in his pocket. As I lay in bed remembering and reflecting, I felt overwhelmed by the extent to which Atmananda had changed. For a moment, I felt sad. I still thought of him as a friend. I found myself thinking about the time he had initiated the former Chinmoy disciples. When it came my turn, he placed his hand on my forehead and looked into my eyes. Not a grin or gesture broke his stern countenance. Seconds later he was done meditating on me, and I returned to the audience. Then he called me back. "You are rejecting me inwardly," he accused and tried again. After the third time, he frowned. "Next," he said. Now I struggled with the memory and with the realization that Atmananda considered me less his friend than a subject. I had believed in him. I had loved him. I was devastated. But as I concentrated again on his other side, the sadness disappeared. Atmananda, I realized, had been using me. I grew angry and scared. My thoughts drifted, and I found myself thinking about a bicycle trip I had taken to Palomar Mountain months before. At the top of the mountain one of my brakes had malfunctioned, so I hitched a ride to a bike shop in Escondido. A plumber had picked me up. During the ride, the plumber, who lived with his wife and kids on the mountain, had pointed out a red-tailed hawk. Now, in my room in Atmananda's Centre, I pictured the way that the hawk had soared through the clear, blue, mountain sky on a course of its own...