Everything about Zen Master Rama was fake—except for the piles of money he made. His black belt in paranormal martial arts, three past lives as a Buddhist teacher, 31 meditation albums he claimed to compose in other dimensions, multiple computer software companies, and a bestseller based on being a “world-class snowboarder” were all smoke and mirrors.
He had no training or talent in any of these areas. He was an expert con man, however. The man wore Versace suits and Rolex watches, bought mansions, and owned a collection of pricey cars. His headshots were by the top Hollywood photographer of the day; he made many TV appearances.
His students believed he could fill rooms with golden light, skate on light-beams, and protect them from the demons he claimed wanted to steal their enlightened energy. He instructed them to be celibate but then manipulated and coerced the prettiest into joining him for tantric sex rituals he claimed would accelerate their enlightenment. It didn’t end well for anyone—including him.
In the latest installment of the Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian tells the tale of Frederick Lenz, a quintessential 80's synthesizer of phoney Buddhism, New Age delusions, cultic abuse, and wealth as a signifier of spiritual progress.
Show Notes
The Code Cult of the CPU Guru
Mentor to Some, Cult Leader to Others
The Guru’s Latest Incarnation
Atrocity Guide The Enlightenment Fraud of Zen Master Rama
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The police report said that Frederick Lenz had drowned in about 20 feet of water and was found by divers some 60 feet from the shore.
The small body of water he was in is named Conscience Bay, which may strike you as ironic as this story unfolds.
Lenz was 48 years old.
He had reportedly suffered from depression following an eye surgery and the death of his favorite dog, Vayu, which means wind in Sanskrit.
He wasn't alone.
Fred's ill-fated late-night swim was part of a suicide pact with a young woman named Bryn Lacey.
They had washed fistfuls of Valium down with alcohol and fed the two remaining dogs, Phenobarbital.
The pact apparently didn't include jumping off the picturesque pier that led from the mansion house down to Conscience Bay.
It's not clear exactly what happened, but Lacey, mysteriously covered in bruises and the two remaining Scotty dogs, stiff but still alive, were found through the open front door inside the house by police who noticed exterior lights were on around the estate in the daytime some 48 hours later.
Lacey's spiritual teacher, Frederick Lenz, who went publicly by the name Zen Master Rama, had been in the water that whole time.
The broken railing on the pier told the police where to begin their search.
When he was fished out, Rama was found to be wearing a dark Versace suit and a $30,000 watch, oddly accessorized with that dead dog Vayu's collar around his neck with an out-of-date rabies vaccination tag dangling from it.
Welcome to Conspirituality.
I am Julian Walker.
This is the latest installment of my Roots of Conspirituality series, which focuses especially on the colorful and yet often dark history of cults and gurus, new religious movements and their self-styled prophets and the general charismatic grift of spiritual influence via claims of special identity, knowledge, or experience.
Like, it turns out that claiming to hear the voice of God or channel entities, to have cracked the code of biblical prophecy or been granted an immaterial audience with the masters of ancient wisdom, or having been whisked away on an alien spaceship, is the guru influencer equivalent of having a prestigious PhD.
It opens doors, evokes trust, and provides both power and wealth of the sort that these kinds of charlatans crave.
But it's more than a PhD.
Lots of people have that.
It's much more impressive to the true believer when a charismatic figure presents themselves as having entered the rarefied company of paranormal phenomena, otherworldly beings, or even themselves being an incarnation of the divine.
Now, don't worry if you've not heard previous episodes.
Each of these stories stands alone, but if you go to the Roots of Conspirituality series via the collection tab at the top of our Patreon, you will find over the 10 episodes or so that I've done, fascinating threads weaving through the roughly chronological history I've been mapping from around 1840 in the so-called burned over region of the American Northeast.
But right now, we're up to the 1980s and 90s.
We recently covered the Raelian UFO cult started by Claude Vorion, who said he was visited by spiritual aliens.
They were all over the international news, the Raelians, as late as 2002 due to false claims of having cloned the first human.
And then last time, I looked at the John Roger cult right here in Santa Monica, California, featuring a dude who claimed to have woken up with a kind of second soul present in his body after a medical coma.
Like many of these figures, both of the guys I just mentioned used those ludicrous stories to garner immense wealth, special positions of unquestioned power and reverence, and as a pretext for acting out their compulsive sexual exploitation impulses.
The later decades of the 20th century represent a unique time for cult leaders.
VHS tapes and home VCRs alongside audio cassette tapes and then CDs gave them a medium through which to promote and disseminate their ideas and beliefs while also turning a nice profit.
Having a modern, for that time, self-styled media image also became part of the shtick.
And gurus started to come across more like rock star celebrities than humble and plain-looking enlightened monks.
The 80s put the prosperity gospel on steroids.
And Frederick Lenz or Zen Master Rama perfectly embodied this emergent commercial spiritual zeitgeist.
So, how does a boy born in 1950 in San Diego attain the heights of making millions by seeming to perform miracles, teaching energy-based martial arts and questionable Buddhist meditation, and training his devotees to strike it rich in software development working for him, only to end up packed to the gills with Valium and Booze wearing an expensive suit and a dog collar underwater in Conscience Bay at the end of the long pier that led from the back door of his Long Island mansion.
That's our story for today.
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