I have recently obtained a copy of "Rama" Dr. Fredrick Lenz's book How To Meditate which is an anthology of his talks on meditation. It is really insightful and interesting and has furthered my meditation experience exponentially. So I was interested and looked up what was online about his life, since he died at 49 and the book didn't go into detail about his private life or his early demise... and I found a number of disturbing details about his life that make his teachings seem less credible and even reading his books hard. I will cut to the chase- he lived a life of pure excess, conned female diciples into sleeping with him and eventually killed himself. he sounds really credible as a spiritual teacher now right? a really enlightened being. I'm just not sure what to think of his teachings, if they are a tool of deception or a path to enlightenment. I guess I will just take what I can from them and not trip on it. It is too bad though, he taught some deep things and the best meditations I have ever had were ones suggested in his book Snowboarding to Nirvana. so much for American Buddhism? anyone else read anything by him?
I think this is probably a case where the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If I were to speculate, I would say that he probably attained some legitimate higher states of consciousness but failed to fully discover his true nature. As with many other false gurus, he was very likely pathologically convinced that he had attained full enlightenment, but later came to realize that on some subconscious level he had deceived himself (and consequently thousands of others), which then drove him to commit suicide. I think that's probably a good attitude to have. As long as you keep in mind that by definition whatever meditation techniques he prescribed are probably incapable of allowing you to progress beyond a certain point on the continuum of consciousness. (That being said, the most important element of any meditation practice is the intention of the spiritual aspirant. Ultimately, the technique is only a mechanism to produce transcendence of technique and all other structural and conditional dependency. One of the many paradoxes that litter the path to enlightenment ). Travis
Swami Rama is just one of many people who have crashed and burned after discovering some latent seed of animal within themselves. Like climbing Everest, when you get near the top, you are most likely to slip. It is a form of purification. Not quite this life, but maybe the next? The effort is never lost. People marvel at the heights from which these people fall. Only because they have not obtained that level themselves yet. x
With regard to your assertion that you're most likely to slip near the top, I'd have to disagree. As one experiences upliftment of consciousness, they discover quite naturally that reward and risk exist in direct proportion to one another. And yes, slipping is a form of purification. It's called: The Long Way. Travis
