Quote
jjjbarry
i went to some of his group meetings...where fred found his groupies
he was a liar and worse.......
see atheists ? ed tabash....he was there and is a lawyer

No I don't know who Ed Tabash is--is he a lawyer who worked for Rama/Lenz? Yes, Rama lied a lot. Due to a combination of excellent social skills and telling the truth on a selective basis, he was able to get away with a lot of lies for a long time. I suspect the real reason for his suicide is that his lies were finally catching up with him--he'd promised too much, without delivering, for too long and he couldn't get away with it anymore.

In a different thread, not moses introduced readers to the Pair a Docks blog and wrote:
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> https://pairadocks.blogspot.com/2021/04/leaving-cult-may-not-go-well-if-one-is.html

Thanks for these postings. I notice that there are quite a number of relevant blog posts at the "Pair A Docks" blog which I'm very glad to have been introduced to via not moses' posts here. Another interesting "Pair a Docks" blog posting, which is also relevant to Rama/Lenz, is the following one:

How People Leave One Cult - and End Up in Another

That posting mentions yet another connection involving the movie What the "Bleep" do we know? as if I didn't have enough such connections already. One of the directors of that movie, Betsy Chasse, is married to a former high school classmate of mine--my classmate himself has a cameo role in the film. Another of the directors, Bill Arntz, was involved with the same cult group led by Rama/Dr. Frederick Lenz, that I was.

The Pair a Docks blog post talks about cult hopping. The first significant hopping that took place was that, after Lenz' suicide, many of his former members including Arntz but not including me, went on to various other gurus. Arntz ended up in the group led by Ramtha/JZ Knight, where it seems he hooked up with Chasse and the third director, Mark Vicente, and made the film "What the 'Bleep' do we know?" Vicente then went on to further cult hopping and ended up with NXIVM.

Cult hopping has been very common among the students of Lenz. Many went on to hop from one guru to another after Lenz' suicide, and many were members of other groups before Lenz.

While cult hopping describes the behavior of many cult members, it does not describe my own behavior. I seemed to be unusually strongly drawn to Lenz, and far more resistant to the recruiting tactics of most other cult groups. From time to time over the years before and after Lenz, I've checked out other organizations such as Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, Landmark Forum, Ramtha, Sai Baba, Sri Siva, and others. None of these other groups ever attracted more than polite interest from me. But I seemed very strongly drawn to Lenz.

Again--thanks to not moses for introducing us to the "Pair a Docks" blog!

corboy also made the following comment about new (recent) recruiting activities by the Lenz/Rama group:

> They target areas where people with high future
> earning potential attend school.

It seems that at least in this way, not much has changed over the years. The 1992-1993 recruiting drive, which brought in many new members including myself, was heavily focused around the areas near campuses where potential high future earners went to school.

In 1992-1993 this seemed to be a precursor to directing all the new members to move to New York as a test of whether they were "serious". Lenz liked New York. The importance of New York to the group, however, seems to have faded a bit over the years, and I suspect current leaders will keep the group in California and other states in the American Southwest.

I was recruited pretty aggressively as a Stanford student studying in a tech field--Lenz was very focused on computers for about the last 10-15 years of his life--but weirdly Lenz showed little interest in working closely with me after I moved to New York. It was, from my perspective, weird.

Another thing that was strange is that when Lenz killed himself, the big tech boom was just starting to heat up. It is as though Lenz spent a great deal of his adult life and that of his disciples preparing for 1999, only to kill himself in 1998. Weird.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2021 10:28AM by DharmaLion2003.

Cult leader Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupanada Paramahamsa Chris Butler of the Science of Identity Foundation used to criticize his male and female followers using volgur sexualized language like "cunt, bitch, whore, prostitute, dyke, faggot" and many there derogatory terms publicly in front of his followers. It was almost like a power play masquerading as "Gurudev disciplining his disciples". But it wasn't that. It was often over the top and demeaning and lacked any quality of mercy (unless you view being made a fool in front of everyone as "mercy").

Little kids as young as 6 to 12 often sat through Butler's rants against homosexuals where he described in graphic detail scatophelia, glory holes, urination and fletching and any number of fringe sexual acts. He spent an inordinate amount of time describing this things and eliciting a cheap laugh form followers. His reasons may have been many, but the fact is it was inappropriate to do in front of such young kids. Never mind the excessive swearing and negative energy it stored up. He would then causally weave it all back in with some sort of spiritual message or story or a meditative, closed eyed chant.

In a cult that promote celibacy it was always bizarre to witness how much the art featuring various gods and goddesses was very hyper sexualized. Big breasts, full hips and men with long sexy hair and muscular bodies was standard fair in the myths and there are countless references to sex. Extremely agitating for a average teen going through puberty being asked to "not think about sex". It's almost like they want you to fail. And I know there is a bunch of reasons they offer and exceptions and excuses, but it's pretty damn silly how much of it is there, how much the guru would focus on this stuff and in the end how infidelity, divorces and issues with sexuality people were having in such cults.

Anyway, my 2 cents, for what's it's worth. I think it's a power trip. For the celibate guru or guru who is against sex life it often is a power trip. Yet they marry their own decibels or do any number of things to beautify themselves and remain attractive and youthful to followers. In the case of Butler he married one of his yoga instructor disciples and broke his sanyasi order and there is hardly any images of him as he aged. He always had his dispels push his youthful image from the 80s publicly. You could hardly find a single image of him as an older man. For a philosophy that was hinged on the concept of "you are not your body", it sure put a lot of weight on the external "brand" of the guru.

There is a new podcast available about Rama/Lenz that can be found here:

Smoke Screen: I Am Rama, The Mystery of New Age Spiritual Teacher: Frederick Lenz | Starting 6/22

The podcast is in a series of 10 episodes, of which only 3 have been seen so far, so it remains to be seen what it will look like when it is all done. However I listened to the first 3 episodes, and I liked what I heard. Most accounts of Lenz these days come from one of two sources--either from one of a handful of still very loyal students of his, or from one of a handful of disgruntled ex-followers. The accounts of both sides have gotten pretty old by now.

This podcast is narrated by someone named Jonathan Hirsch, and Hirsch brings a different perspective to this story than I've heard before. Hirsch' parents met at a Lenz seminar back in 1982. Even compared to other groups, Lenz was very discouraging of his students dating and getting into relationships with each other. Hirsch doesn't quite say so, but had his parents remained with Lenz, Hirsch likely would never have been born.

However his parents never became committed disciples of Lenz, but instead stayed together and became long term devotees of another famous (sometimes considered infamous) guru, Franklin Jones (known by other names such as Adi Da and Da Free John). Hirsch has also hosted a podcast about Adi Da which I haven't seen yet but probably will.

Lenz came back to the attention of Hirsch after his suicide in 1998, when many former disciples of Lenz switched to Adi Da. He mentions then befriending a boy who was a former 11 year old Lenz disciple whom he calls "Chris". Hirsch was a bit older, but having been born sometime after 1982, was himself only in his teens at the time. This was actually a bit of an unusual situation, as there were very few children in the group at the time. Lenz had restricted new recruiting to those ages 18-29 since 1992 or earlier. Chris came to the group via his mother, who was in the required 18-29 age range when she herself was recruited.

I know Chris. He and his mother were housemates of mine at one point. This was at an earlier phase--Chris was aged 7-8 when he and his mother were my housemates. Although I know his real name, I will stick to calling him Chris on here. In introducing the group through Chris, Hirsch highlighted its contradictions. Chris seemed at times like he was just being dragged along by his mother. Yet he also had an extraordinarily strong aura of ambition about him, especially for an 11 year old kid. This was something he'd clearly learned from Lenz. This helps to set the stage that not everything about the group was negative--something that I think is very important to understand about Lenz and his group.

Hirsch reached out to Chris to be interviewed for this podcast, but Chris declined, saying his feelings about the group these days are complicated. Hirsch does include interviews both with Lenz' main biographers (who has a positive view of Lenz) and with Mark Lurtsema, one of Lenz' frequent critics.

The immediate motivation for doing the podcast now appears to be the discovery of Brenda Kerber's remains which happened earlier this year.

The podcast is not yet complete, but I'm looking forward to getting Hirsch' perspective as the series progresses.