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F.A.C.T.Net does not sell documents, it only lends them according to the terms of your library cardholder agreement with F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. ===================================================================== The Rama Files Number 3 [NOTE: This is the third of fourteen planned reports on the activities of Frederick Lenz aka Zen Master Rama] Biography - Goofy Fred or the Silver Tongue "When I knew him he had braces and pimples all over, but he had a silver tongue" Pamella Wardell - Lenz' Ex-wife Only sketchy and sometimes contradictory information is available on Lenz' earlier years, but what there is available if often illuminating. Lenz was born in San Diego on February 9, 1950 as Frederick Philip Lenz, III. The family moved to Stamford two years later. There is no indication of what the family was doing in San Diego. In a biographical interview Lenz' father, Frederick Philip Lenz, Jr., said he was born in Stamford and lived there all his life except while in college, (from 1940 to 1942) and for two years as an able bodied seaman in the merchant marine during World War II. [1] The seven years from 1945 to 1952 are unaccounted for. Frederick's mother was Dorothy Gummar Lenz. There is some question about whether Lenz' parents were actually married. In 1961 Fred Jr. married Joyce Slavin, a widow, in a ceremony conducted by the Rev. Daniel J. Foley, a catholic priest. Fred Jr. stated on the marriage certificate that this he had never been married before. Other reports say that Fred Jr. and Dorothy were either divorced or separated some time around 1954 or 1955 when Fred was four or five years old. No records pertaining to the marriage or divorce of Lenz' parents have been located. The picture we get of Frederick Philip Lenz, Jr. is that of a big, good looking, outgoing and likeable man who is curiously shallow. He was described in 1974 as a big, good looking man, about six feet tall, weighing about 190 pounds, and with white hair. A city hall worker described him as "...a big, very good looking man, very, very charming." He was born and grew up in Stamford, son of the stock room foreman at the Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company. On graduation from high school in 1940 he entered Holy Ghost College in Cornwell's Heights, Pennsylvania. "I wanted to be a Holy Ghost priest...but then I found out that to belong to the order you had to take an oath of poverty, chastity and obedience. I didn't want to do that," he told the Stamford Advocate in 1974. [2] He left college after two years then spent two more years in the merchant marine. Apparently, about 1952, when the family moved back to Stamford, Frederick Jr. went to work for a series of magazines in New York involved in selling advertising, in production and publication. About 1956 he went to work for Advertising Age, a trade publication, and remained with that for the next fifteen years, commuting daily to New York. He was eastern sales manager for the magazine when he left in 1971 to become associate publisher of an insurance magazine in Stamford. With the time previously spent commuting he began to take part in local affairs, was elected to the Stamford City Board of Representatives and, two years later, was elected mayor, serving until 1975. In the series of four interviews stretching over a total of five hours during his first year as mayor in 1974, Frederick Jr. appears as a curiously bland person, although he appeared impressed with himself for becoming mayor. According to the reporter the most animation he shows is when he describes the strategy he uses to convince his young daughter, Lisa, that there really is a Santa Claus. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he had read a book but thought the name of it was Jonathon Livingston Seagull, but did say he read everything he could get his hands on about "...what's his name, the English spy." (James Bond). When asked if his son, Frederick III, had been elected to Phi Beta Kapa, he wasn't sure and had to place a hasty call to the college to find out. From the time of his divorce, or separation, about 1955, until his remarriage in 1961, there isn't much information on who had custody of their son or how Frederick Jr. cared for his son. His job involved daily commuting and a good deal of travel. Frederick, III, apparently spent a quite a bit of time with his mother. Dorothy Gummar Lenz has been described as somewhere between a wacky, free spirit to a persons with true mental and emotional problems. One source believes that she was an alcoholic and suicidal. Supposedly Fred found her one day when she had attempted suicide. It had a very great impact on him. There is once story about an unhealthy fruit tree. Dorothy got some plastic fruit and tied it on the tree. According to one source Dorothy and young Frederick, as his family called him, experimented together with LSD and alcohol. Dorothy Lenz died about 1964. This was just after Frederick, III had graduated from middle school. According to Lenz' Aunt Helen, Helen Padersky Lenz, Dot, as she was called, died from a sugar or cholesterol problem of some kind. "It was very, very sad and she was so very young to die," Aunt Helen said. She thought Dot was about forty two years old. On her death bed Dorothy's parting words were to tell Fred to go see the movie MASH. Whatever kind of impact his mother had on him it must have been powerful. Years later in a moment of self pity he was to tell another young woman, "No one ever loved my like my mom." [3] Young Frederick did not get along well with his new stepmother. There were three other children in the family from her first marriage, and, the year before, 1963, Frederick, Jr. and Joyce had a child of their own, Lisa. So it appears that during the remaining three or four years of high school Fred moved around among various friends and family, staying with his father for brief periods of time. In high school Lenz was known as an eccentric, funny, character, affectionately nicknamed "Crazy Fred". He stood six feet three inches tall and moved awkwardly. One of Lenz' former teachers at Rippowam High School described him as a product of the '60s. "They were into a lot of protests, do your own thing." says Sondra Metlzer, chairman of the Westhill High School English Department. " None of them ever got out of that - if they were bright - without it having a great impact on their lives. I'm sure he was affected by it all." Just when, where and how Lenz initially became interested in meditation and Eastern religions is not known. Several of Lenz friends who still live in and around Stamford said they remember his as a gentle, intelligent and unusual man. "He would spout these philosophical ideas," said a former friend who did not want her name publicly associated with Lenz. "I couldn't keep up with him, nor could anyone else I knew...He seemed to love holding court. He would pontificate on these things to anyone who would listen." [4] His former wife said he told her that when he didn't want to go to school he would lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling, putting himself into a trance. [5] The 1967 yearbook of the Rippowam High School described Lenz as "a streak of the unusual - chasing the beautiful, hiding from the known. Cut-rate philosopher. Monopoly on the side." Seeking a taste of the '60s life, Lenz left home after graduation and headed westward to the Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco. He spent a year following the hippie life on the west coast. In a taped lecture Lenz said he used psychedelics and "power plants...based on the Tibetan book of the Dead, to experience Enlightenment." In San Diego the "power plants" were his undoing. He was arrested for selling marijuana and sentenced to a work camp at Warner Springs. His job there was putting out fires. His ex-wife relates a story Lenz told her about the work camp. "He was doing meditation and things and this old black man who was in jail with him watched him a while and said, 'Well, I'll tell you son. You will go back to Jesus someday'". [6] It was while he was in the work camp that Lenz came across some literature describing the teachings of Hindu Guru Sri Chinmoy. He became interested. The short tour in the work camp seems to have had a sobering impact on the young Lenz. He returned to Stamford and in the fall of 1969 entered Connecticut College at Storrs. Sri Chinmoy had an active Connecticut ashram, probably in Hartford. Shortly after entering college Lenz also began his studies with Sri Chinmoy. Within a short time Lenz became one of Sri Chinmoy's star recruiters. Sri Chinmoy sent him all over the world to recruit and used him in training other recruiters. [7] It was during this time that he got into his "Christ dimension". He lived in a log cabin, became a carpenter, had a workshop in his basement, had a pet toucan and made dulcimers. In 1971 Lenz met Pamella Wardell at a meeting of the followers of Sri Chinmoy. They were both typical flower children of the '60s, high on Eastern mysticism. "Eastern philosophy was supposed to be groovy. Everyone would sit around in a room and meditate. He came over to me and said, 'I saw your aura across the room and just knew you were the woman for me' or some such lie", Wardell said. "He just seemed really far out there, somewhere on a different place, she said. "...he had braces and pimples all over, but had a silver tongue." [8] They were married at the Stamford Arboretum on the 15th of May, 1971 by the Rev. Harry L. Peatt, Jr., a Congregational minister from Stamford. "I don't remember how I came to do the wedding, but I'll never forget it because it was so extraordinary," Peatt said. "I had to meet them under a tree in the woods. At the reception afterwards they went into some kind of trance." Within a year they were divorced. As Lenz explained it later to one of his close associates, Mark Laxer, he said that he left Pam, that he felt that rather than loving just one person he could love many. [9] Whatever talents Lenz was beginning to develop one talent he had at this time was a prodigious capacity for work. He completed his undergraduate work in three years, graduating with honors in May of 1973 and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa. All this was in addition to his studies with Sri Chinmoy and his recruiting efforts. That fall he entered the State University of New York at Stony Brook pursuing advanced studies in English under a fellowship. He completed work for and earned a master's degree in 1974 and earned his doctorate in August of 1978. His thesis was on "The evolution of matter and spirit in the poetry of Theodore Roethke." At Stony Brook Lenz' nickname changed from the "Crazy Fred" of his high school days to "Goofy Fred" as his professors knew him at Stony Brook. He spoke with equal fervor of mysticism and money and wrote books on psychic phenomena that he plugged on the Joe Franklin TV show. "He was always coming to me with these book ideas and asking me, 'Do you think it will sell?'", says Professor Gerald Nelson, a member of the university's English faculty and the supervisor for Lenz' doctoral work. "My honest opinion was that he was a hustler. But I thought he was goofy and harmless." Lenz applied himself diligently to his course work and the subject of his thesis, but outside of class he was the English department's resident mystic, telling friends about their past lives. "I got a sense of someone who would read an audience carefully and give it what it wanted," Professor Paul Dolan said. [10] By 1978 he had formed a group of some twenty Sri Chinmoy disciples at SUNY Stony Brook. Throughout his post-graduate work Lenz carried on his study of Eastern religions and his recruiting for Sri Chinmoy at his ashram at Jamaica, Queens. Chinmoy was teaching a westernized version of Hinduism, promoting physical fitness, and claiming near-supernatural powers for himself. Lenz was not particularly popular with the other members of Chinmoy's group. At various times they would hold "carnivals". Fred would always dress in costumes and be the fortune teller. He was quite good as this. He put of lot of effort into female members, trying very hard to impress them. Alan Buchman, a follower of Sri Chinmoy, knew Lenz during this period. He said he was "arrogant" and "slick"... that when it came to women Lenz had no qualms about using "deception" to seduce them. "When Fred was forming Sri Chinmoy meditation groups at the camps", Buchman recalled, "He used to encourage infatuations with his female students. A responsible spiritual person would never have done that." [11] Not long afterward Lenz came into conflict with Chinmoy, moved to San Diego to open a Chinmoy center, then broke with Chinmoy, announced himself as enlightened and commenced his independent career as a contemporary guru. ------------------------------- The Rama Files Number 3 [NOTE: This is the third of fourteen planned reports on the activities of Frederick Lenz aka Zen Master Rama] Biography - Goofy Fred or the Silver Tongue "When I knew him he had braces and pimples all over, but he had a silver tongue" Pamella Wardell - Lenz' Ex-wife Only sketchy and sometimes contradictory information is available on Lenz' earlier years, but what there is available if often illuminating. Lenz was born in San Diego on February 9, 1950 as Frederick Philip Lenz, III. The family moved to Stamford two years later. There is no indication of what the family was doing in San Diego. In a biographical interview Lenz' father, Frederick Philip Lenz, Jr., said he was born in Stamford and lived there all his life except while in college, (from 1940 to 1942) and for two years as an able bodied seaman in the merchant marine during World War II. [12] The seven years from 1945 to 1952 are unaccounted for. Frederick's mother was Dorothy Gummar Lenz. There is some question about whether Lenz' parents were actually married. In 1961 Fred Jr. married Joyce Slavin, a widow, in a ceremony conducted by the Rev. Daniel J. Foley, a catholic priest. Fred Jr. stated on the marriage certificate that this he had never been married before. Other reports say that Fred Jr. and Dorothy were either divorced or separated some time around 1954 or 1955 when Fred was four or five years old. No records pertaining to the marriage or divorce of Lenz' parents have been located. The picture we get of Frederick Philip Lenz, Jr. is that of a big, good looking, outgoing and likeable man who is curiously shallow. He was described in 1974 as a big, good looking man, about six feet tall, weighing about 190 pounds, and with white hair. A city hall worker described him as "...a big, very good looking man, very, very charming." He was born and grew up in Stamford, son of the stock room foreman at the Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company. On graduation from high school in 1940 he entered Holy Ghost College in Cornwell's Heights, Pennsylvania. "I wanted to be a Holy Ghost priest...but then I found out that to belong to the order you had to take an oath of poverty, chastity and obedience. I didn't want to do that," he told the Stamford Advocate in 1974. [13] He left college after two years then spent two more years in the merchant marine. Apparently, about 1952, when the family moved back to Stamford, Frederick Jr. went to work for a series of magazines in New York involved in selling advertising, in production and publication. About 1956 he went to work for Advertising Age, a trade publication, and remained with that for the next fifteen years, commuting daily to New York. He was eastern sales manager for the magazine when he left in 1971 to become associate publisher of an insurance magazine in Stamford. With the time previously spent commuting he began to take part in local affairs, was elected to the Stamford City Board of Representatives and, two years later, was elected mayor, serving until 1975. In the series of four interviews stretching over a total of five hours during his first year as mayor in 1974, Frederick Jr. appears as a curiously bland person, although he appeared impressed with himself for becoming mayor. According to the reporter the most animation he shows is when he describes the strategy he uses to convince his young daughter, Lisa, that there really is a Santa Claus. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he had read a book but thought the name of it was Jonathon Livingston Seagull, but did say he read everything he could get his hands on about "...what's his name, the English spy." (James Bond). When asked if his son, Frederick III, had been elected to Phi Beta Kapa, he wasn't sure and had to place a hasty call to the college to find out. From the time of his divorce, or separation, about 1955, until his remarriage in 1961, there isn't much information on who had custody of their son or how Frederick Jr. cared for his son. His job involved daily commuting and a good deal of travel. Frederick, III, apparently spent a quite a bit of time with his mother. Dorothy Gummar Lenz has been described as somewhere between a wacky, free spirit to a persons with true mental and emotional problems. One source believes that she was an alcoholic and suicidal. Supposedly Fred found her one day when she had attempted suicide. It had a very great impact on him. There is once story about an unhealthy fruit tree. Dorothy got some plastic fruit and tied it on the tree. According to one source Dorothy and young Frederick, as his family called him, experimented together with LSD and alcohol. Dorothy Lenz died about 1964. This was just after Frederick, III had graduated from middle school. According to Lenz' Aunt Helen, Helen Padersky Lenz, Dot, as she was called, died from a sugar or cholesterol problem of some kind. "It was very, very sad and she was so very young to die," Aunt Helen said. She thought Dot was about forty two years old. On her death bed Dorothy's parting words were to tell Fred to go see the movie MASH. Whatever kind of impact his mother had on him it must have been powerful. Years later in a moment of self pity he was to tell another young woman, "No one ever loved my like my mom." [14] Young Frederick did not get along well with his new stepmother. There were three other children in the family from her first marriage, and, the year before, 1963, Frederick, Jr. and Joyce had a child of their own, Lisa. So it appears that during the remaining three or four years of high school Fred moved around among various friends and family, staying with his father for brief periods of time. In high school Lenz was known as an eccentric, funny, character, affectionately nicknamed "Crazy Fred". He stood six feet three inches tall and moved awkwardly. One of Lenz' former teachers at Rippowam High School described him as a product of the '60s. "They were into a lot of protests, do your own thing." says Sondra Metlzer, chairman of the Westhill High School English Department. " None of them ever got out of that - if they were bright - without it having a great impact on their lives. I'm sure he was affected by it all." Just when, where and how Lenz initially became interested in meditation and Eastern religions is not known. Several of Lenz friends who still live in and around Stamford said they remember his as a gentle, intelligent and unusual man. "He would spout these philosophical ideas," said a former friend who did not want her name publicly associated with Lenz. "I couldn't keep up with him, nor could anyone else I knew...He seemed to love holding court. He would pontificate on these things to anyone who would listen." [15] His former wife said he told her that when he didn't want to go to school he would lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling, putting himself into a trance. [16] The 1967 yearbook of the Rippowam High School described Lenz as "a streak of the unusual - chasing the beautiful, hiding from the known. Cut-rate philosopher. Monopoly on the side." Seeking a taste of the '60s life, Lenz left home after graduation and headed westward to the Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco. He spent a year following the hippie life on the west coast. In a taped lecture Lenz said he used psychedelics and "power plants...based on the Tibetan book of the Dead, to experience Enlightenment." In San Diego the "power plants" were his undoing. He was arrested for selling marijuana and sentenced to a work camp at Warner Springs. His job there was putting out fires. His ex-wife relates a story Lenz told her about the work camp. "He was doing meditation and things and this old black man who was in jail with him watched him a while and said, 'Well, I'll tell you son. You will go back to Jesus someday'". [17] It was while he was in the work camp that Lenz came across some literature describing the teachings of Hindu Guru Sri Chinmoy. He became interested. The short tour in the work camp seems to have had a sobering impact on the young Lenz. He returned to Stamford and in the fall of 1969 entered Connecticut College at Storrs. Sri Chinmoy had an active Connecticut ashram, probably in Hartford. Shortly after entering college Lenz also began his studies with Sri Chinmoy. Within a short time Lenz became one of Sri Chinmoy's star recruiters. Sri Chinmoy sent him all over the world to recruit and used him in training other recruiters. [18] It was during this time that he got into his "Christ dimension". He lived in a log cabin, became a carpenter, had a workshop in his basement, had a pet toucan and made dulcimers. In 1971 Lenz met Pamella Wardell at a meeting of the followers of Sri Chinmoy. They were both typical flower children of the '60s, high on Eastern mysticism. "Eastern philosophy was supposed to be groovy. Everyone would sit around in a room and meditate. He came over to me and said, 'I saw your aura across the room and just knew you were the woman for me' or some such lie", Wardell said. "He just seemed really far out there, somewhere on a different place, she said. "...he had braces and pimples all over, but had a silver tongue." [19] They were married at the Stamford Arboretum on the 15th of May, 1971 by the Rev. Harry L. Peatt, Jr., a Congregational minister from Stamford. "I don't remember how I came to do the wedding, but I'll never forget it because it was so extraordinary," Peatt said. "I had to meet them under a tree in the woods. At the reception afterwards they went into some kind of trance." Within a year they were divorced. As Lenz explained it later to one of his close associates, Mark Laxer, he said that he left Pam, that he felt that rather than loving just one person he could love many. [20] Whatever talents Lenz was beginning to develop one talent he had at this time was a prodigious capacity for work. He completed his undergraduate work in three years, graduating with honors in May of 1973 and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa. All this was in addition to his studies with Sri Chinmoy and his recruiting efforts. That fall he entered the State University of New York at Stony Brook pursuing advanced studies in English under a fellowship. He completed work for and earned a master's degree in 1974 and earned his doctorate in August of 1978. His thesis was on "The evolution of matter and spirit in the poetry of Theodore Roethke." At Stony Brook Lenz' nickname changed from the "Crazy Fred" of his high school days to "Goofy Fred" as his professors knew him at Stony Brook. He spoke with equal fervor of mysticism and money and wrote books on psychic phenomena that he plugged on the Joe Franklin TV show. "He was always coming to me with these book ideas and asking me, 'Do you think it will sell?'", says Professor Gerald Nelson, a member of the university's English faculty and the supervisor for Lenz' doctoral work. "My honest opinion was that he was a hustler. But I thought he was goofy and harmless." Lenz applied himself diligently to his course work and the subject of his thesis, but outside of class he was the English department's resident mystic, telling friends about their past lives. "I got a sense of someone who would read an audience carefully and give it what it wanted," Professor Paul Dolan said. [21] By 1978 he had formed a group of some twenty Sri Chinmoy disciples at SUNY Stony Brook. Throughout his post-graduate work Lenz carried on his study of Eastern religions and his recruiting for Sri Chinmoy at his ashram at Jamaica, Queens. Chinmoy was teaching a westernized version of Hinduism, promoting physical fitness, and claiming near-supernatural powers for himself. Lenz was not particularly popular with the other members of Chinmoy's group. At various times they would hold "carnivals". Fred would always dress in costumes and be the fortune teller. He was quite good as this. He put of lot of effort into female members, trying very hard to impress them. Alan Buchman, a follower of Sri Chinmoy, knew Lenz during this period. He said he was "arrogant" and "slick"... that when it came to women Lenz had no qualms about using "deception" to seduce them. "When Fred was forming Sri Chinmoy meditation groups at the camps", Buchman recalled, "He used to encourage infatuations with his female students. A responsible spiritual person would never have done that." [22] Not long afterward Lenz came into conflict with Chinmoy, moved to San Diego to open a Chinmoy center, then broke with Chinmoy, announced himself as enlightened and commenced his independent career as a contemporary guru. ------------------------------- Footnotes: 1. "Mayor Lenz..." Stamford Advocate March 7, 1974 2. Ibid 3. Interview with Kristie Patten April 19, 1992 4. "Meet a Guru From Stamford." Stamford Advocate. January 3, 1988 5. Pamella Wardell quoted in "Guru Mixes Money, Mystigue". Hartford Courant. October 18, 1992 6. Ibid 7. Interview with Mark Laxer, May 7, 1992 8. Courant 10/18/92 9. Laxer interview 10. "The Uppie Guru of Old Field". William B. Falk. Newsday. July 30, 1991 11. "The Cosmic Seducer". Cherie Senders and Kathleeen Moloney. L.A. Weekly January28, 1988 12. "Mayor Lenz.." Stamford Advocate March 7, 1974 13. Ibid 14. Patten op.cit. 15. "Meet a Guru" op.cit. 16. Pamella Wardell, quoted in "Guru Mixes Money, Mystique" 17. Ibid 18. Laxer interview 19. Courant 10/18/92 20. Laxer interview 21. "Yuppie Guru..." op.cit. 22. 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