By
Perucci Ferraiuolo
Seen any flyers
on your local college campus for "Free Meditation
Workshops" lately? Ex-participants warn that behind these
innocuous ads from "The American Buddhist Society" is a
bizarre and sinister cult that promises bliss but
delivers devastation.
The leader of
this cult -- "Zen
Master Rama," a.k.a. Dr. Frederick P.
Lenz
-- calls himself a meditation teacher chosen by the
universal consciousness to guide his students through
powerful interdimensional vortexes while preparing them
to earn millions of dollars through high-tech careers.
Critics allege, however, that "Rama" has left a trail of
mind control, drugs, sexual abuse, suicides, kidnapping,
and unexplained disappearances in his
wake.
Lenz is now
employing blind ads and flyers promising "Free Meditation
Workshops" to recruit new disciples in New York and
California. Ex-members say that followers who run the
workshops conceal the guru's identity from new students
until they are considered ready for "more advanced
teachings."
Lenz's early
career and chameleon-like character are outlined in the
writings of American religions scholar J. Gordon Melton.
Lenz was born in San Diego in 1950. While pursuing M.A.
and Ph.D. degrees (the latter in English literature) from
the State University of New York in the 1970s, he became
a disciple of the Indian guru Sri Chinmoy. Receiving the
name "Atmananda," he went on to teach yoga in New York
and Europe.
According to
sources once close to Chinmoy, however, the guru's local
leaders considered Lenz so arrogant that they sent him to
Southern California to open a small Laundromat and learn
humility. He began a Chinmoy meditation center in San
Diego in 1980 but soon rebelled, taking a number of
Chinmoy's followers with him and claiming that he, not
Chinmoy, was the true "Enlightened One."
Around 1980
Lenz established his own organization -- Lakshmi, named
after the Hindu goddess of fortune -- and set up
headquarters in Los Angeles. Lenz's followers organized
meditation seminars in swank hotels with expensive
buffets fit for visiting heads of state, earning the
nickname "The Rolex Gang" from hotel
caterers.
Psychic
Phenomena?
In his
Encyclopedia of American Religions Melton writes that
"during the early years of [Lenz's] work in
California, his students began to report a number of
extraordinary experiences. According to the reports, Lenz
would levitate, disappear completely, and/or radiate
intense beams of light during group meditations. Soon
after these reported experiences, at a gathering of
approximately 100 students, Lenz announced that eternity
had given him a new name, 'Rama.'" Melton adds that
"while Rama makes no claim to be the same conscious
entity as the historic Rama" of Hinduism, "he does claim
to be the embodiment of the 'particular octave of
celestial light which was once incarnated as Rama'" and
the ninth incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu. (Lenz
has also distributed a resume of supposed earlier
incarnations with such entries as "1602-1671 -- Zen
Master, Kyoto, Japan" and "1725-1804 -- Master of
Monastery, Tibet.")
By 1985 Lakshmi
had some 800 full-time students, with branches in San
Diego, San Francisco, and Boston, and slick advertising
in national New Age periodicals. In that same year,
however, Lenz closed Lakshmi and incorporated Rama
Seminars.
He reformulated
his basic program in 1986 and assumed the name "Zen
Master Rama." In the 1990s he has used the name "American
Buddhist Society" in his activities.
Lenz calls his
hybrid religious philosophy "Tantric Zen."
The New Age
Encyclopedia says that Lenz's "Tantric Zen is described
as a formless Zen, closely related to Chan (the original
Chinese form of Zen) and similar to Tibetan Vajrayana
Buddhism" -- but unlike that taught in modern Japanese
Zen centers.
Claims of
Coercion.
Former
followers claim that selected students are offered a
"private" meditation meeting with "Rama," and are then
indoctrinated with Eastern philosophy and persuaded that
Lenz is deity (a process that can require several
meetings or several months). When the student accepts
Lenz as the "Enlightened One," he or she is directed to
attend frequent seminars, costing thousands of dollars.
Then the guru's surrogates pressure the new disciple to
conform -- often under the threat of expulsion from the
organization, or of possession by demonic entities ready
to pounce on any student who rejects "Rama." (Lenz
requires his students to place furry stuffed toys, called
"Blisses," strategically around their homes to ward off
evil spirits -- charging them up to hundreds of dollars
per "bliss.")
Ex-members tell
of being coerced into paying upwards of $6,000 per month
for Lenz's computer courses, which are given by his
Delaware-based, for-profit "Advanced Systems, Inc."
According to recent estimates by critics, over 300
"inner-circle" students give practically everything they
earn to Lenz, who made in excess of $15 million in 1992,
enabling him to maintain a fleet of luxury cars, plus
mansions in Long Island, New York; Tesuque, New Mexico;
and Malibu, California.
Lenz's
opponents say that his followers, who are mostly in
high-paying computer-related jobs, lease their cars and
apartments, own no furniture, sleep on mats, and spend
every free moment working on a national computer link-up
program for their guru. And they do all this while
subsisting on candy bars and two to three hours of sleep
per night.
Ex-members
reveal that all of Lenz's "inner circle" devotees -- who
meditate for hours before his picture -- are told to
divorce themselves from all relationships with anyone but
each other and Lenz. The guru's disciples can only be
reached through mail drops and telephone voice mail
systems. Even Lenz's public relations director, Lisa
Lewinson, and her company, "Northstar Consulting
Services, Inc.," have only a mail drop and voice mail to
communicate with. This is supposedly the case for all of
Lenz's corporations, including The American Buddhist
Society, Advanced Systems, Infinity Plus Counseling,
National Personal and Professional Development Center,
Vishnu Systems, Rama Seminars, Inc., Lakshmi
Distributing, New Light Productions, and Zazen Music,
Inc. (Lenz's own record label).
While no
warrants had been issued for the guru's arrest as of
March 1993, the Journal has learned of two open
investigations into Lenz and his enterprises -- one by
the FBI and the other by the Criminal Investigation
Division of the IRS. Further, assorted criminal
complaints have been filed with the Suffolk County, New
York district attorney and with police agencies in White
Plains, Seatauket, Hawthorne, and East Farmingdale, New
York; Millersville, Maryland; and Santa Fe, New
Mexico.
Horror
Stories
In 1987 the
press began reporting a rising tide of claims against
Lenz by former followers. One such person was 36-year-old
Annie Eastwood, who was utterly swept away by the curly
haired guru when she first met him in 1982. He invited
her to his Malibu home (supposedly rented from Goldie
Hawn for $6,000 per month) to meditate with him
personally. But her bliss quickly became a
nightmare.
Eastwood claims
that Lenz "worked on me for hours, took me on a tour of
his mansion, and then locked me in a bedroom, pulled out
a gun, and forced me to have sex." Although she continued
in the group for some time after the incident, Eastwood
says that the closer she got to Lenz, the more abusive he
became.
Eastwood
charges that some of Lenz's inner-circle followers worked
day and night, subsisting on coffee and cookies. "Rama
would sometimes call us at 2:00 or 4:00 in the morning,
and we'd all pile into cars and meet him. He'd yell at us
about what slow, lazy wimps we were, and that we were
weak and not good enough."
Eastwood is far
from alone in accusing Lenz of sexual seduction,
manipulation, and strong-arm tactics. Mercedes Hughes, a
follower of Lenz from 1987 to 1988, told an interviewer
on CNBC that the guru urged her to leave her boyfriend,
then tricked and seduced her. "He told me that having sex
with him would empower me and that I would spiritually
progress at a faster rate." She alleged that one of her
new job duties, as his follower, "would include making
him feel good after seminars -- and that sex was the main
way."
At first Hughes
bought in to the seduction, but things got strange. She
recalled Lenz ordering her to his house so they could
expel demons from it. Hughes even laughed while
describing Lenz on LSD, clad in bright yellow rain gear
and grabbing at devils that looked "like water" and
standing on a stepladder to clean them off the ceiling.
"He told me to shoot light down my arm to kill them. He
said that they hate light and die." "It wasn't funny
then," Hughes said.
Other ex-Lenz
disciples aren't laughing, and the list of his devastated
and burned-out ex-followers is long. Among the victims
listed in press reports and depositions:
- Nancy
Knupfer, 43, once a successful East Coast banking
executive, gave thousands to Lenz, only to end up
destitute, presently undergoing intense psychiatric
therapy.
- Mark
Laxer,
a 17-year-old high school student, claims that Lenz
held him down and forced him to take LSD after he said
he wanted to leave the group.
- JK gave
Lenz hundreds of thousands of dollars through the
"Foundation for Enlightenment" --reportedly set up as
a front to channel money to Lenz -- and was found dead
on his yoga mat at age 39 of an apparent morphine
overdose. Lenz was reportedly a major beneficiary of
JK's estate. (Ex-disciples claim that after JK's
death, Lenz told a group of followers that his closest
students were black witches who had killed JK with
their occultic powers.)
- Donald
Kohl, a devoted Lenz follower, was so pressured into
giving his earnings to Lenz that he committed suicide
in 1984 because he "displeased Rama." Kohl left a note
for Lenz saying, "See you next time,
Rama."
- Brenda K.
Kerber's parents suspect that she suffered a mental
breakdown after struggling to pay thousands to Lenz
for his classes, and they fear she was abducted,
murdered, or committed suicide due to the unyielding
mind control Lenz allegedly used on her. (The FBI is
investigating her 1989 disappearance.)
Former
followers assert that a favorite Lenz teaching was that
"the best way to die is at the feet of one who is
enlightened." According to Mark Laxer, Lenz used to
promise his disciples that "someday we may go out to the
desert and never come back."
Organized
Opposition. Leading the fight against the guru is Lenz
Watch, a tightly knit, West Coast-based group of parents
whose sons and daughters have fallen under Lenz's sway.
Though colleges and universities welcomed Lenz and his
followers in the past, a number of schools (including
USC, Stanford, and the ultra-liberal University of
California Berkeley) and libraries have now banned his
group from conducting introductory meetings and seminars
on campus due to pressure from Lenz Watch.
Faced with
growing scrutiny and opposition, Lenz has reportedly gone
into seclusion at his Long Island estate, although he
occasionally commutes to Malibu. And while Lenz issued a
prepared statement disputing the claims of several
disaffected members, all efforts by the JOURNAL to
contact him personally to answer the charges in this
article were blocked by his public relations
director.
NOTE:
Full
names not used at the request of the
families.
- ©Copyright
1999 Perucci Ferraiuolo
- Christian
Research Journal
-
UPDATE:
OLD FIELD, New York (AP) --
Frederick P. Lenz III, a best-selling
author who packaged
Eastern philosophies for a '90s audience but was
accused of operating a cult, was found dead Monday in
a bay adjoining his $2 million Long Island compound.
He was 48.
Police said Lenz may have died
of a drug overdose or accidental drowning. An autopsy
was pending.
"It appears he fell into the
water from a floating pier, but the circumstances
leading up to that are still unclear," Detective Lt.
John Gierasch of the Suffolk County homicide squad
said.
A pier railing was bent or
broken and police divers recovered the body from
Conscience Bay on Monday morning in 20 feet (6 meters)
of water. An incoherent New York woman, identified by
authorities only as an acquaintance of Lenz, was found
in the house.
Lenz's 1995 book, "Surfing the
Himalayas," related his snowboarding adventures and
his spiritual philosophies. In 1996, his "Snowboarding
to Nirvana" was published.
St.
Martin's Press
editor Jim Fitzgerald told the Post that Lenz was
working on a third book.
Lenz and hundreds of devout
followers drew negative attention from the media and
cult-watch groups in the 1980s after he announced that he
was the incarnation of a Hindu deity.
