I closed my lids. After several seconds, I felt detached from my thought process. It was as if I could visually observe a thought as it formed, connected with meaning, and vanished. One thought had been: "What is going on?" As I tried to anticipate my next thought, I ended up instead observing the thought of anticipating a thought-- when suddenly a volley of words jarred me out of the trance. "Earth to Mark. Come in Mark." I opened my eyes and saw Rama towering above me, laughing softly. I looked away and saw liquid gold specks lining the blackness. I had managed, until now, to avoid thoughts about time and had no idea how long the experience lasted. "What did you see?" Rama asked the group. "It looked like Mark was dizzy, and you caught him right when he fell." "I didn't see anything," reported another. "But I felt very peaceful. I found it easy to slow my thoughts." "You dissolved him, Rama," offered another. As we prepared for the journey back to the cars, Rama invited me to walk with him at the front of the line. "That was fun, wasn't it?" he asked several minutes later. As he scanned the path for rattlesnakes, his powerful beam cut a sharp tunnel through the darkness. I agreed. It had been a blast. Over the past five years, moments of deep meditation had been typically interrupted by thoughts such as, "Hey--I'm meditating!" But moments earlier, I witnessed thoughts objectively, as if they belonged to someone else. "Tonight I helped you see a beautiful world," Rama said. "My intent is to show my students how to fly through these worlds on their wings of perception. It is easy to show you because you like me. Many of my students fear me or hate me--or, even worse, they worship me." Suddenly he flipped off the light, and a fifteen-foot high ocotillo shrub vanished. "I don't perform miracles to show off my powers, but to expand your view of reality. If my students can accept that I disappear, just imagine what they will be capable of." Though I was learning to fly on my wings of perception, and though in the months after the Stelazine trip I continued to deeply suppress part of my rational side, I never fully accepted Rama's world in its entirety. I never accepted, for instance, the story of "Rama and the Enchanted Taco." The Enchanted Taco, Rama said, was an immense, luminous, and other-worldly treat. It could be seen in the desert, hovering casually over mystical power spots, garnished with divine light, knowledge, and guacamole. But in a parking lot at four a.m., I saw Rama wave to three hundred bleary-eyed disciples, get in a black Turbo Carrera, and disappear. 16. Ride To Heaven "I didn't do well enough to remember," wrote Donald Kohl in 1984. "Bye, Rama, see you next time." Months later, Donald's father called me. "Do you have a few minutes?" he asked. I knew that Rama would not want me to talk with Mr. Kohl. But I was shocked by the image of blood spurting from Donald's wrists.