Rama (a.k.a. Frederick Lenz 1950-1998) - The Skeptic's Dictionary

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Frederick Lenz 1950-1998)</h1> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Zen Master Rama was Frederick P. Lenz, Ph.D. (in English<img border="0" src="graphics/rama.jpg" align="right" alt="Frederick Lenz, aka "Rama"" width="143" height="176"> literature) and businessman (Advanced Systems, Inc.). Lenz parlayed his knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism into a cult. In the early 1980s he started calling himself after <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama">Rama</a>, an avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu. He started giving seminars in 1982 in Malibu, California. Eventually, thousands of people would pay as much as $5,000 per seminar to be enlightened by this self-proclaimed guru, psychic, and miracle worker. Here is what one of his followers said he learned from his master: "Spiritually advanced people work with computers because it makes a lot of money. The more money you make, the better you meditate" (Clark and Gallo 1993, 102). </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Rama used a variety of so-called <a href="mindcont.html">mind-control</a> techniques to seduce his disciples. He had his subjects stare at him for long hours until they would hallucinate and "see" Lenz begin to glow or change shapes. Lenz told his followers that having these "visions" meant they were <a href="psychic.html">psychic.</a></font></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Rama seduced many of his female followers by telling them that he only has sex with women who have a rare sort of <a href="karma.html"><i>karma</i></a>. He also told women that having sex with him would elevate them to a higher plane of consciousness. It is hard for a skeptic to believe that such a line would work with any woman, but apparently it does.</font></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Rama took religious freedom and <a href="tantra.html"> tantric</a> gullibility to new heights in his book <i>Surfing the Himalayas: A Spiritual Adventure</i> (1997). There he tells us of his adventures "snowboarding through Tantric myetiolem" and offers such bits of wisdom as </font> </p> <blockquote> <p><font face="Arial" size="3">Ultimately, thinking is a very inefficient method of processing data...</font></p> </blockquote> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">And, </font> </p> <blockquote> <p><font face="Arial" size="3">The relational way of doing things is to move your mind to a fourth condition, a condition of heightened awareness. In a condition of heightened awareness, you elevate your conscious mind above the stream of extraneous data -- out of dimensional time and space, so to speak -- and you meld your mind instead with the pure intelligent consciousness of the universe.</font></p> </blockquote> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Bob Frankenberg, Chairman and CEO of Novell, claims the book "entertains and enlightens" and calls it "a wonderful contrast of Eastern spirituality and Western pragmatism." Phil Jackson, coach of the Chicago Bulls, said the book "Brings levity and humor to a subject often relegated to a mundane, boring prospect." The book became a best-seller. Within a year Rama published another cult classic: <i>Snowboarding to Nirvana.</i> </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Unfortunately, all his Tantric wisdom couldn't save him and the day before taxes were due in 1998, Rama drowned in Conscience Bay near his residence in the exclusive Old Field section of Setauket on Long Island, New York. Rumor has it that he was stoned when he fell off the dock. An unidentified woman described by police as ''incoherent'' was found to be in  Lenz's house at the time his body was recovered by police divers. Lenz was 48 at the time of his death. <a href="cults.html">Cult</a> expert Joe Szimbart claims that Lenz was suffering from liver cancer and committed suicide by overdosing on Phenobarbital (<i>Skeptical Inquirer</i>, July/August 1998). The Suffolk County Medical Examiner's office said it was Valium. Either way, Rama snowboards with the fishes.</font></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><b>See also</b> <strong style="font-weight: 400"><a href="cults.html"> cult</a></strong> and <strong style="font-weight: 400"><a HREF="mindcont.html">mind control.</a></strong>  </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a href="comments/ramacom.html"><strong>reader comments</strong></a></font></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><b>further reading</b> </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><b><font size="3">books and articles</font></b><p style="text-align: left"> <font face="Arial" size="3">Clark, Nancy and Nick Gallo, "Do You Believe in Magic? - New Light on the New Age," <i>Family Circle</i>, February 23, 1993. </font> <p style="text-align: left"> <font face="Arial" size="3"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1400054109/roberttoddcarrolA/"> Salerno, Steve. (2006). <i>Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.</i> Three Rivers Press.</a></font><p style="text-align: left"> <b><font size="3">websites</font></b><p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a href="http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Rama/rama-appendix-1.html"> CHRONOLOGY/BIOGRAPHY Frederick Lenz, aka Zen Master Rama</a></font><p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a href="http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Rama/">Rama Lama Ding Dong</a></font><p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a HREF="http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Rama/">The Rama Page</a></font><p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a href="http://www.trancenet.org/groups/lenz/news.shtml">News of Rama's death</a></font><p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a href="http://www.rickross.com/groups/lenz.html">The Rick Ross page on Rama</a> (See especially his posting of <a href="http://www.rickross.com/reference/general/gurus.html">Why We Love Gurus</a> by Wendy Kaminer (<i>Newsweek</i> Magazine/October 20, 1997) </font> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a HREF="http://www.ramalila.com/">Ramalila - "</a>dedicated to Rama's students, past, present and even future!"</font><p></webContent>Last updated 27-Oct-2015 </p> </div> </div> <div class="right"> <div class="right_it"> <div class="search"> <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/custom" target="_top"> <input type="hidden" name="domains" value="skepdic.com" /> <input type="text" name="q" maxlength="255" value="" size="20" /> <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" /> <br /> <div class="search_2"> <input type="radio" name="sitesearch" value="" /> Web     <input type="radio" name="sitesearch" value="skepdic.com" checked="checked" /> Skepdic.com <br /> <img src="_images/logo_google.gif" alt="Google" width="48" height="19" /> </div> <input type="hidden" name="client" value="pub-3542920166946725" /> <input type="hidden" name="forid" value="1" /> <input type="hidden" name="ie" value="ISO-8859-1" /> <input type="hidden" name="oe" value="ISO-8859-1" /> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="GALT:#008000;GL:1;DIV:#336699;VLC:663399;AH:center;BGC:FFFFFF;LBGC:336699;ALC:0000FF;LC:0000FF;T:000000;GFNT:0000FF;GIMP:0000FF;FORID:1;" /> <input type="hidden" name="hl" value="en" /> </form> </div> <div class="center"> <p align="right"><a href="http://skepdic.com/authorpage.html"><strong>Books by R. 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Rama (a.k.a. Frederick Lenz 1950-1998) - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com