The Argus has seen its share of alarming headlines, but few shine like the Oct. 30, 1992 article by Jonathan Dube ’94: “Cult Recruits Students Via Meditation Group.” His reporting revealed a nationwide cult that quietly recruited Wesleyan students through seemingly innocuous campus meditation workshops. This week, we revisit one of The Argus’s most startling investigations: an exposé of the secretive group disguised as a harmless self-discovery club.
A group posing as the Hartford Meditation Society began luring students through meditation and yoga workshops held on campus and in Middletown in 1991. Behind the organization was a nationwide cult led by the self-styled guru “Zen Master Rama.”
Former cult followers claimed that the group’s free workshops on meditation and enlightenment served as gateways to a network that came to control every aspect of members’ lives. Rama, whose real name is Frederick Lenz, was accused of financially, emotionally, and sexually manipulating his devotees.
Lenz developed a personal relationship with several students without ever stepping foot on campus. Alan Goldstein, a Rama disciple, led recruitment efforts and meditation workshops at the University, eventually drawing students to Rama.
“Over the years [Rama]’s worked with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people,” Goldstein said.
Dube confirmed that at least five University students who meditated with Goldstein on campus ultimately attended Rama’s private meditation sessions in New York.
“I go and I listen to Rama and I laugh a lot and I have a lot of fun and I come back home and go back to my life,” one unnamed student group member said to Dube.
For his article, Dube interviewed students, former Rama disciples, and current devotees. He even attended a Hartford Meditation Society workshop to collect propaganda materials and experience the enthralling atmosphere himself.
By 1987, “accusations that Lenz exploited people began to surface,” and the guru withdrew from public view, maintaining contact only with “his most devoted disciples,” Dube wrote. Former members said he soon began rebuilding his following through “more clandestine” methods. A dozen new meditation groups appeared nationwide, including the Northern Virginia Meditation Society, the Pacific Meditation Society, and the Manhattan Meditation Forum.
These fronts masked all connections to Lenz and operated in rented space in churches and libraries. Despite the disorganization, Goldstein told Dube that the Hartford Meditation Society “taught between 2,500 and 3,500 people in the past year.” The Society invited promising student members to gatherings at a member’s home in West Hartford where they met Lenz one-on-one and “signed a legal release promising not to sue and to keep everything…confidential.”
Contracts signed, group leaders urged the students to study computer programming with Lenz’s side hustle companies, Advance Systems, Inc. and Infinity Plus, Inc., to fund their continued participation.
“The longer one is in the group and the more money one makes, the more one has to pay,” ex-members told Dube. Intrigued, Dube attempted to estimate Lenz’s earnings. Newsday interviewed Lenz for an article last year, where Lenz said that each of his roughly 200 disciples paid him $2,500 per month, a total of $5 million per year.
The meditation organization dismissed accusations from a national “LenzWatch Hate Group” as harassment. “Their main business is hate,” Goldstein told The Argus. “Of the maybe 200 people at Wesleyan that have come through my classes, there’s not a single person you’d find that ever had a bad experience.”
Goldstein admitted that he took five Wesleyan students to meet Rama, though one student told Dube that he met with Rama three times. The student, who requested anonymity in fear of legal action, estimated that about 400 people attended each meeting to hear Rama speak and meditate. “[Rama is] very funny, very smart, very endearing,” the student said. “He strikes me as a very shrewd, street-smart kind of person, who does what he does no matter what people think.”
The anonymous student said that his interest in meditation was what initially drew him to the group. “I leave refreshed, in a very clear state of mind,” he said. “I think he’s a rare being.”
Goldstein, however, insisted that the campus workshops were unrelated to Rama.
“In my talks…I’m not recruiting for anybody,” he explained to Dube. “I’m teaching meditation, just for kicks.”
Yet, Dube soon found contradictory statements in Goldstein’s interviews with the Hartford Courant. Goldstein told the Courant that he regularly attended Rama’s meetings and sometimes brought students from the University. Goldstein thanked Rama for launching his “personal development” and hoped the students would gain similar career guidance.
During the same month Dube’s article was published, Goldstein took several University students to a West Hartford gathering of about 40 participants, part of broader recruiting efforts across Connecticut.
“Nothing bad happened,” Goldstein assured The Argus when questioned about the event. “People just had a great time. It was just a party.”
The group’s influence ran deeper than one-off workshops, crystallizing in the form of the Wesleyan Self-Discovery Club. Two students, who attended sessions with Goldstein before joining Lenz’s organization, founded the club in the spring of 1992. Registered with the WSA that year, the club “[used] university space for meetings at no cost” and received no funding. It held weekly meditation sessions, yoga classes, and hikes where members “[meditated] on the cliffs overlooking a pond.”
Goldstein taught the workshops and gave out meditation tapes and books for free. Dube found that he had even purchased several advertisements in The Argus to promote the club to the student body.
“I pay for the ads… because I feel like this stuff is really cool,” Goldstein said. “I get a tremendous kick out of it.”
About a dozen students attended the workshop that Dube observed, half for the first time. Goldstein spoke for over two hours “in a smooth, calming voice” about “stopping all thought” and meditated with students to music composed by Rama “to facilitate meditation,” calling it “the next best thing” to being with his teacher.
Students left “visibly pleased,” Dube noted.
Despite their post-meditation highs, members were reluctant to discuss the group.
“I’m a little touchy…because meditation is a very personal thing,” said one anonymous senior. None of the members had read the Courant’s reports on Lenz; they only knew that it wrote bad things about Rama.
Diane Brennan, then-Event Coordinator at the University, told the Courant she was unaware of any meditation groups on campus. When a student requested meeting space for a meditation club soon after that interview, Brennan contacted the Courant.
“A connection was made only because of the coincidence of the call from the Courant a few weeks earlier,” she told them.
The group’s unassuming appearance allowed it to flourish out of sight. Dube contacted Walter Jacobs, a Pennsylvania resident labeled a member of the “LenzWatch Hate Group,” who told him about a 1991 alum who had gotten “fairly far down into the recruiting process” before dropping out. “I was able to get some information to him so that he could make an informed judgment,” Jacobs said.
Former followers described the group as deceptive, saying newcomers “do not realize what they are getting involved in.”
“I was very vulnerable and open and just real naive,” said Barbara Sherman, who left the group at age 26 after five years of membership. “At the first meeting, I was captivated by him… He knows how to use mass hypnosis.”
Another former member, Wes Walker, said the sessions were “quite thrilling and dramatic,” recalling that “we would see light coming out of his hands.”
Both Walker and Sherman said Lenz “claims to be fully enlightened,” a “divine incarnation of God,” and “equivalent to Jesus Christ and the Buddha.” Sherman warned, “Once you are convinced that he is enlightened, you are under his power.”
Ex-followers said Lenz fueled paranoia by warning of “demonic entities out to get them” and claiming the power “to control not only your life but your afterlife.” They were required to meditate for hours, report their activities, and keep dream journals, pledging to “meet Rama in the desert.” “If he had said drink this Kool Aid…I would have done it,” Sherman said.
The group operated in “levels,” each level requiring an increase in payment. “Every penny I had I gave to him,” Sherman said. Lenz’s teachings blended “Buddhism, Hinduism, Native American shamanism, and the occult,” according to the Courant. “We’re instructed not to pay attention to the world, only to what he says,” Walker added. “When you’re not with him,” Sherman said, “you’re living and breathing every moment for him.”
Allegations that Lenz “sexually exploited his followers” surfaced in 1987. Two women accused him of coercion during “private meditation” sessions. He ultimately admitted to the encounters but claimed that they were consensual. Sherman later alleged that Lenz drugged and assaulted her at his Long Island home. “He had his way with me,” she said. “I was paralyzed, in some weird, funky state.”
The Courant reported that Lenz’s aides framed her accusations as “jealousy” and called his teachings “a powerful program of self-discovery for women.” Other ex-followers claimed he had sex with “more than half the female devotees.”
Goldstein dismissed the assault allegations: “Rama’s a single guy… he has sex like a normal guy.”
Former followers told Dube that they feared leaving, believing Lenz had the power to “give them cancer” or “destroy their afterlives.” “You have to work at it,” said Walker. “My life is better than it has ever been. But it’s scarring.”
“I feel like I wasted five years of my life,” Sherman said. “I woke up and I’m 24 and I’m all messed up. I really should be 18 again.”
Hope Cognata can be reached at hcognata@wesleyan.edu. “From the Argives” is a column that explores The Argus’ archives (Argives) and any interesting, topical, poignant, or comical stories that have been published in the past. Given The Argus’ long history on campus and the ever-shifting viewpoints of its student body, the material, subject matter, and perspectives expressed in the archived article may be insensitive or outdated, and do not reflect the views of any current member of The Argus. If you have any questions about the original article or its publication, please contact Head Archivists Hope Cognata at hcognata@wesleyan.edu and Lara Anlar at lanlar@wesleyan.edu.
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