(the picture of this sissy faggot explains a lot!)
Fredrick Lenz, aka "Master Rama", aka sick-fuck, rapist, drug-user, brainwasher

The 'Rama-Lama Ding-Dong' Cult. Sicko madness, mind control, and rape
 
 

THE 'RAMA CULT'

In the spring of 1978, Frederick Lenz completed his work at the State University at Stony Brook, and was awarded a Ph.D. in English literature. Immediately, he launched himself full time into the mystique of Eastern religions. He taught Eastern religions at New School of Social Research in NYC, Harvard University, New York University and the State University at Stony Brook.

However, his main occupation was a recruiter for the cult of Sri Chinmoy, a Hindu yogin who ran an ashram in Queens. As early as 1972, he was leading meditation groups as a "trusted student" of Sri Chinmoy. Frederick Lenz began to break some of Shri Chinmoy's rules and angered many of the senior members. Finally, his guru confronted him regarding these issues, and as a way of reconciling himself with his guru, he left the ashram for San Diego to open a laundromat to learn humility and to open a Chinmoy Centre.

In San Diego, Frederick Lenz began again to break rules: exploiting his women followers. He commenced exercising powers that were reserved to Sri Chinmoy. He interposed himself between his guru and the followers in his group and began to make some new rules of his own.

In 1981, Frederick Lenz was called back to New York and had a confrontation with his guru over his behavior. When he returned to San Diego, he announced to the group that negative forces and entities got to his guru. Then, Frederick Lenz proclaimed his own enlightenment, "Chinmoy has fallen and I am now the enlightened one." A large number of followers left but Frederick Lenz, with a core of 50 remaining, moved first to a house near the University of California at San Diego, then later to a house in La Jolla.

He began to call himself Atmananda and the group was called Lakshmi. Although men were also welcome, Frederick Lenz focused on the enlightenment of women. He incorporated a company as "Laskhmi" and various other offshoot companies such as Vishnu Travel, Lakshmi Distribution and New Light Productions. He began intensive recruiting in San Diego and at UCLA campus in Los Angeles. And the recruitment was expanded to the San Francisco Bay area. The group quickly built back to more than a hundred.

For a while, the relationship between himself and his students is like a mentor/friend. About the time he broke away from Sri Chinmoy, he began talking about "entities" or negative forces that "would attack you in your sleep and affect your mind and your actions". His former followers said, "He said we were partly possessed and that he was the only one who could help us. He listed his former lives in Tibet, Japan, Atlantis, India and so on." Soon, his movement had expanded and he became more remot and "God-like". Frederick Lenz began to use drugs, such as LSD, on himself and on members of his inner circle. He became more ambigous and contradictory in his lectures, saying, "If you think you understand what I am saying, you've lost because you don't have humility." He began to emphasize the occult more, began to use fear as a tactic to control his group, and began to use "divide and conquer" tactics within the group, group criticism and self criticism in group meetings. Other techniques were developing. Once he took a group of inner circle students to watch an autopsy. He began to develop the idea of his desert trips, used to isolate and exhaust his followers, making them more susceptible to suggestion.

In the beginning, Frederick Lenz had started with Hinduism but then decided to switch to Buddhism. He made a research in the "market" in California and decided that Zen was in. So, in late 1982 or early 1983, he dumped the name "Atmananda" and anointed himself as "Zen Master Rama". Instead of observance of renunciation, he offered something much more appealing - "Tantric Mysticism" which includes meditation, out-of-body experiences, altered consciousness but involves living an affluent life-style and enjoying worldly pleasures. In fact, one of the ads of his group showed pictures of a sexy blonde and a Porsche.

By the mid of 80's, he has perfected the techniques of recruiting followers, dominating and controlling their minds.

From the 90's onwards, he has some ups and downs in his 28 years of "teaching career". Finally, in April 1998 (Easter holidays), he took 150 phenobarbitol tablets and killed himself.

Frederick Lenz, self-styled guru
Associated Press/April 15, 1998

Old Field, NY -- Frederick P. Lenz 3d, 48, a self-styled spiritual and computer guru who was criticized as an exploitative cult leader, was found dead in a bay adjoining his $2 million Long Island home.
Police said Mr. Lenz, author of the 1995 novel Surfing the Himalayas, may have died Monday from a drug overdose or accidental drowning. An autopsy was pending.

A pier railing at his estate was bent or broken. Divers found his body in 20 feet of water in Conscience Bay, about 60 feet from land. "It appears he fell into the water from a floating pier, but the circumstances leading up to that are still unclear," Suffolk County Detective Lt. John Gierasch said.

Mr. Lenz, who for a time called himself Zen Master Rama, recruited spiritual followers starting about 1980. But he told the Washington Post two years ago that his primary business had become software development and computer seminars, for which students paid $3,500.

Former followers called him a con man who encouraged them to sever family ties and used them for sex and to enrich himself. Mr. Lenz denied this, but said sex with students was "perfectly acceptable."

He maintained that his training had enabled followers to become millionaires. Lenz-Watch, a parents group, said he took in as much as $6 million a year from his students.

His followers reportedly never numbered more than a few hundred at any time.

Surfing the Himalayas, about a snowboarder who hooks up with an Eastern sage, was a best-seller in 1995. Mr. Lenz followed it up in 1996 with Snowboarding to Nirvana.

In 1995, New York magazine put him on its list of the "100 Smartest New Yorkers."

Mr. Lenz was born in San Diego in 1950, but grew up in Stamford, Conn. He received a doctorate in English from the State University at Stony Brook in 1978.

He became a recruiter for Sri Chinmoy, a New York-based teacher of a form of Hinduism and promoter of physical fitness. He struck out on his own in 1980 in San Diego.
 

Lenz Dies On Drugs
150 sedative pills in guru
The New York Post/April 16, 1998

Yuppie guru Frederick Lenz -- whose body was found floating in the waters off his Long Island mansion --fell off his dock after taking more than 150 phenobarbitol tablets, it was reported yesterday.
Suffolk County Police, awaiting toxological tests that could take up to two months, declined to comment on the report in the Three Village Herald, which also said Lenz's three dogs were drugged.

Lenz's female companion, identified by the weekly as lacy Brinn, 33, of Manhattan, was found in an upstairs bedroom about 2 a.m. Monday by Old Filed Police Sgt Bob Bell, who had noticed lights burning and the front door open.

"You get to know the residents, what they do. This --sometyhing just didn't look right," Bell told the newspaper about the death of Lenz, 48, at his Old Field estate.

The woman, who had ingested 50 drug tablets, told a somewhat incoherent tale of going down to the water with Lenz, and seeing him fall in on Easter Sunday morning, the paper reported.

"She was all bruised up," Bell was quoted as saying. " I guess that happened when she was trying to reach him, but he just floated away -- on his back, she said."

Naighbors said multimillionaire Lenz did not have a boat, but would sometimes go down to the water with his three terriers to watch them swim.

Mentor to Some, Cult Leader to Others
The New York Times/June 20, 1993.
By Kate Stone Lombardi
To his followers, he is Rama, a gifted teacher and spiritual leader with special powers who offers a path to enlightenment, happiness and career success. To his detractors, he is everything from a sophisticated con man to a dangerous cult leader.
Controversy has surrounded Dr. Frederick P. Lenz for the last 15 years as he has moved his base of operations to different cities around the country. Trina Walker, a former student, said that Dr. Lenz has more than a hundred students in Westchester County. He offers lectures at several places, including regular monthly lectures, by invitation only, at the Performing Arts Center at the State University of New York at Purchase. The group has been renting space at SUNY for three years but is not affiliated with the college.

Last month Dr. Lenz was included in a list of groups labeled as cults in the Congressional Quarterly Researcher. The independent Washington-based publication -- owned by the St. Petersburg Times of St. Petersburg, Fla. -- describes him as follows:

" Rama (the American Buddhist Movement). Known as the 'yuppie guru,' Frederick P. Lenz, 43, lives in a Long Island mansion where, as Zen Master Rama, he offers business-oriented teachings. Some 900 members in several cities believe Lenz is the first earthly incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu. To attend seminars and meditation sessions sponsored by Lenz's Advanced Systems Inc. , adherents in such high-paying fields as computer programming allegedly pay up to $70,000 a year. Female members have said Lenz exploited them sexually. " 'A Highly Ethical Person'

Dr. Lenz, however, dismisses the allegations of psychological manipulation, financial exploitation and sexual abuse made at different times by former members of his group. Speaking to a reporter for the first time in several years to clarify what he said were gross distortions about his program, Dr. Lenz said such accusations were absurd.

"I am a highly ethical person," said Dr. Lenz, who has a doctorate in English literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "I'm a Buddhist, and I can't do stuff like that. I'd fry. I believe in karma. My experience is that people build you up and then shoot you down. "

Dr. Lenz said that he taught a form of American Buddhism, in which he offered courses in meditation and computer science -- a field that he has always been interested in. "I'm mingling a few things -- the Oriental esthetic to life and meditation and, at the same time, a very American sense of how we as Americans can become successful," he said. People who meditated successfully seemed also to do well in computer programming, he added. Doubts About the Master

The accounts of Dr. Lenz's activities are a study in contrasts, depending on the source. For instance, Mark Laxer, one of Dr. Lenz's former students (from 1977 to 1985), said he remembers the first time that Rama announced that he had attained perfect awareness and true enlightenment. ( Rama is the name for one of the incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu. )

"Before he declared this he had us go on a 13-day fast, and I was pretty dizzy," Mr. Laxer said. "At that point he had about 100 disciples, and that's when he hit us with this news. It was like we were imprinted. After that, we were allowed to eat, but we had to stay up all night for a month. "

Still, Mr. Laxer said he had his doubts about his spiritual leader's veracity. Some months later, Mr. Laxer packed his backpack and tried to leave the group, but he said that Dr. Lenz stopped him as he was about to head out the door.

"He managed to convince me to stay, but shortly thereafter he started giving me antipsychotic drugs, because he said the other spiritual techniques weren't working. Basically, at that point, my rational doubting side subsided for a few years," Mr. Laxer said.

Students who wish to study with Dr. Lenz usually begin with meditation courses, which are free or offered at a nominal cost. If they are invited to become formal students, they begin computer science courses, at which point the price tag increases. A five-day course with Dr. Lenz costs about $2,000, said several of his current students, all of whom are over 18. No one under 18 is accepted. 'Respect for His Judgment'

Four students talked about their studies and their lives at the office of Dr. Lenz's lawyer, Jonathan Lubell. They said they had voluntarily switched careers after studying with Dr. Lenz.

Richard Harmon had been a graduate student in film school when he began meditation courses. He is now a computer consultant. Mordy Levine had been a partner in a trading firm on the American Stock Exchange. He has now been in the computer industry for four years. Marie Landis had been an artist; she is currently involved in computer programming. Terry Quirk had been pursuing a doctorate in earth science; she now has her own company providing software development and customization to corporations. They continue to pursue more advanced courses in computer science with Dr. Lenz.

All four said that they were happy and making considerably more money than they had in their former careers. Because their careers were so lucrative, they said they could easily continue to pay for Dr. Lenz's courses. They said they lived normal lives, were in contact with their families and had great admiration for their teacher, Dr. Lenz.

"Sometimes I feel this incredible love," said Mr. Levine. "It's not devotion or awe. But if he asked me to do something, say 98 out of 100 things he asked me to do, I would do, because I have incredible respect for his judgment, for his taking the right path. "

The students brought up one of their most troublesome grievances. They said they believed that their names are on a blacklist, circulated by anti-cult groups to executive recruiters in an effort to prevent them from advancing in their careers. Richard Harmon likened critics of Dr. Lenz to Nazis. Studying meditation in America in the 1990's was "probably like being Jewish in Nazi Germany," he said. "The first thing they do is destroy you economically. " A Material and Spiritual World

Dr. Lenz has been criticized for, among other things, his lavish life style, which includes a mansion in Long Island and travel by Lear jet. But he says that people have a misguided attitude that spirituality must be connected with poverty.

"People have gotten an attitude that somehow it is noble to be poor," Dr. Lenz said. "There is this tremendous negative take on the material world. It seems to me the material world is as spiritual as anything else," he said.

Dr. Lenz said that allegations of his running a cult are untrue, because among other things, his students are very much a part of the real world, holding jobs and living independently.

"There are no Branch Davidian compounds; there are no secret meetings," Dr. Lenz said. "The only time I meet people are at places like the Four Seasons or Tappan Hill or SUNY Purchase," he said. 'Under His Daily Control'

Many people, however, consider Dr. Lenz a cult leader. Arnold Markowitz, director of the Cult Clinic, which is run by the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, a social-services agency in Manhattan, said that "every cult-awareness group in the country has files filled with families and former members who have contacted them about Lenz. "

"It's not just that he has a positive message of how to live one's life," Mr. Markowitz said. "It's that he has hundreds of people who are intimately under his daily control, which includes severing their ties with their families and helping to deceive their families. "

Ms. Walker, the former student who studied with Dr. Lenz for five years, said that he told his students that families were filled with negative energy.

"He told us that our families did not want us to evolve spiritually, that they drain our energy," Ms. Walker said. "He had a lot of different ways to isolate us. If someone didn't like you, you should stay away from them. If they did like you, they just wanted to steal your energy. So you should stay away from them, too. And anyone in the group was competition. "

'Parents Feel Betrayed'

Dr. Herbert Nieberg, a psychologist with Four Winds Hospital in Cross River and an expert on cult mind control, said that he had worked with several parents whose children were involved with Dr. Lenz. Dr. Nieberg said the parents have been devastated by the involvement. "The children are no longer the people they knew," Dr. Nieberg said. "The parents feel betrayed; they feel bereaved. They've lost their child. We are not putting these groups down because of their religious beliefs. We are putting them down because of their destructive natures and what they do to people's lives. The stories are heart-rending. "

One woman, who said she was in Dr. Lenz's group for five years and who agreed to be interviewed only on condition that her name not be used, said that he controlled every aspect of her life, despite her connections to the outside world.

"I lived independently, and I had a job the whole time, and I will tell you that during those years the clothes that I wore were the clothes he told us to wear, the only movies we were allowed to see were the ones he recommended," she said. "He used to spend hours on how we should behave. "

The woman also said she had been sexually involved with Dr. Lenz. She said she was summoned to Dr. Lenz's mansion and told that sex with Rama was a speedway to enlightenment.

Dr. Lenz said that any sexual relations he had with female students involved informed consent. "I've never claimed to be celibate," he said, "but to suggest that in any way, shape, manner or form that I would do anything inappropriate to coerce a person to have sex with me is absurd. "

Dr. Lenz attributed the numerous sexual-abuse allegations to the jealousy of unhappy lovers who felt that he had jilted them. He also provided a 107-page document that included personal profiles of people who had criticized him publicly in the past, most of whom Dr. Lenz accused of being mentally unbalanced. A Dale Carnegie of the 90's

As the national controversy over Dr. Lenz continues in the news media, the question over his continued presence at SUNY Purchase also remains an issue. Dr. Nieberg of Four Winds Hospital said that he was astounded that Dr. Lenz was allowed to operate on SUNY grounds. He said that if the president of the university had a son or daughter in the group, it would have been "off campus years ago. "

But Christopher Beach, director of the Performing Arts Center, described Dr. Lenz as "no more than a Dale Carnegie of the 90's. " Dr. Sheldon N. Grebstein, president of SUNY Purchase, also defended Dr. Lenz's use of the theater.

"They have been model clients -- they are orderly, pay their bills on time, arrive when they say and leave when they say," said Dr. Grebstein. "At SUNY Purchase we have directly witnessed none of the alleged cult activity. "

Dr. Grebstein said that he and members of his college council have received a few letters of protest from several parents whose children were followers of

Dr. Lenz and that he had consulted repeatedly with legal advisers concerning Dr. Lenz's use of the campus theater.

Signing a Disclaimer

Dr. Grebstein added: "What these parents would like me to do is simply ban the group that we do business with called Advanced Systems Inc. , which has been renting a theater in the Performing Arts Center for about three years. But the council has decided not to single out this group from all others, because it would involve an analysis or evaluation of the content of their programs. We do not make those judgments of the groups using the campus. Once we do that, are we going to approve the content of a symphony? You get into an impossible situation. "

One thing that does distinguish the Advanced Systems lectures from that of a concert performance at the Performing Arts Center is the release form that student participants are asked to sign before attending. Under a paragraph titled "voluntariness," it reads:

"My attendance of the A. S. I. student program is entirely voluntary and any changes that I make in my personal life, life style, choice of career, place of residence, personal association or any other matters, including without limitation participation in martial arts of other physical development programs, are made entirely of my own free will and neither Dr. Lenz nor A. S. I. nor any agent or employee of A. S. I. or Dr. Lenz is responsible for any such change or changes."
 

Take Me for a Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult.
Mark Laxer. Outer Rim Press (4431 Lehigh Road, #221 College Park, MD 20740), 1993, 192 pages.

“One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” This children’s poem begins Mark Laxer’s autobiographical account of what happened during his seven years under the influence of a cult leader and Laxer’s subsequent years of recovery from the experience. The cult of Rama (Frederick Lenz) began in the late 1970s when Lenz was yet a recruiter for Sri Chinmoy, a controversial Indian meditation guru. Under Chinmoy, Lenz, known as Atmananda for nearly 11 years, may have been Chinmoy’s top recruiter. During that time Lenz received his Ph.D. in English Literature, but his interests seemed to be more directed toward seeking devotees than novels and plays. Laxer became one of Atmananda’s closest students and remained with him for a couple of years after Atmananda became Rama in 1983. Laxer broke with his guru only after his growing awareness that Lenz was more a confidence artist than a true mystic became too much to ignore.

By the time Laxer left Rama’s group, it had grown to several hundred students. In Laxer’s opinion, Lenz had diminished from enlightened teacher to a greedy and paranoid womanizer who used religious themes and experiences to manipulate his students. Laxer no longer believed that taking LSD with Lenz had any benefit. The drug experience merely left him and others more vulnerable to Lenz’s mystical tricks. It took Laxer some time to learn that any amateur hypnotist could reproduce the mystical experiences Lenz’s students were having: they saw Rama glow with golden light, they saw him change into past-life forms, they saw him levitate and disappear, and they felt his powerful energy. These experiences, as any meditator knows (or should know), are tricks of the mind and have nothing to do with enlightenment in the strict Eastern sense of the concept.

Laxer estimated that by the early 1990s Lenz was making around eight million dollars a year from his students. In Laxer’s view, Lenz had never been “enlightened.” By the mid-1980s, Lenz encouraged students to get into computer programming. Today, Lenz’s group consists mostly of computer programmers and a sophisticated array of businesses. Laxer documents all of the above as well as many of the articles written about Lenz up until 1993. Interviews with former members, summarized in the last chapter, ground Laxer’s personal knowledge of Lenz and his group after 1985.

Since Take Me for a Ride came out, Lenz has continued to attract controversy in the press. After St. Martin’s Press published his heavily hyped novella, Surfing the Himalayas in 1995 (see my review of this book in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, July-August issue, 1996), many reporters and reviewers referred to Laxer’s book and interviewed him. On January 11, 1996, Washington Post reporter Richard Leiby wrote: “Laxer’s book has gotten far better reviews than Lenz’s.... The Santa Fe Reporter said Laxer’s portrait of himself as a young spiritual seeker ‘comes across brilliantly.’ On the other hand, the Denver Post panned Lenz’s book as ‘poorly researched crud.’ ‘Terrifically dull and stupefy­ing,’ agreed longtime reviewer Hart Williams, [who goes on to say], ‘Aside from failing at every level, there’s nothing remarkable about this novel, except that it was published.’”

If Surfing the Himalayas is a best-seller while Take Me for a Ride has not made it on any charts, it only demonstrates that many people are more easily hyped by advertising than educated by research. Cult apologists in academic circles tend to denigrate the “atrocity tales” of former members as unreliable. They call such writers “whistle blowers” or worse, rarely taking the time to research the truth behind the stories. Yet, “whistle blowers” such as Laxer provide society with the rare, valuable insight individuals need to evaluate deceptive cult activity. Truth and honesty both come across clearly and sensitively in Take Me for a Ride. If you are interested in Frederick Lenz, it is a must read. If you are interested in how easily a bright young person can be duped by a slick mystic, this book will entertain and educate you thoroughly.