I walked briskly back to the condo and knocked on Rama's door. "Things don't feel right," I told him. "I think I need to take some time off." "You have to do what is right for you," he replied. I wanted to make a clean break. I still had a few hundred dollars. I told him that I wanted to give him back the car. He frowned. "Your desire to return the gift," he said, "is proof that you are mentally ill and that you can not function in the real world." I did not want to stand around and argue. "Okay, Rama," I said and left. I felt primed for action. I was not scared. I felt sure I was doing the right thing. I said good-bye to the disciples, packed, and started to back out of the lot, when I saw Laura in the rearview mirror, signaling me to wait. "Rama wants to see you!" she exclaimed. My impulse was to press the accelerator. After all, he might try and get me to stay, as he did years before in La Jolla. But I felt that I had come a long way since 1981. I felt confident that I could handle myself. Besides, I was curious. I let Laura lead me to him. Rama, Anne, and a few others were in the room. They looked somber. Rama had us stand in a circle and hold hands. He told us we were a tribe. It felt odd, holding hands. It wasn't the sort of thing he'd normally have us do. After a brief meditation, he took me to another room and gave me a long hug. I drove away feeling sad. For the next few days I rode east, driven by childhood memories of New England, and by the notion that I had *seen* Boston as the target city. In Nebraska and Iowa, I felt good about my decision to leave. But I had developed no system with which to support my new interpretation of the world, and the decision seemed more distant with each passing state. I had devised no language of rebellion, forged no icons of discontent, and, on a more practical level, had no sense of what I wanted to do or whom I wanted to be. I had met Rama when I was seventeen. Now I was twenty-four. I had never experienced successes or failures from following a path of my own design. I had been deprived of this ritual of passage into adulthood. I had come of age in a destructive cult. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was packed away somewhere in the back. I arrived in Massachusetts feeling frightened and confused. I felt drawn to southern New Hampshire where, eight years before, I had worked one summer on a farm. I found Rico, a younger friend from the farm days who was now a senior in high school. I had not seen him in years. I wanted to tell him about Rama and the organization but did not know where to start. "There are bad people out there, Rico," I told him. "You have to be careful. Whatever happens, always follow your heart." I drove away, Rico later recalled, with a frightened look on my face.