Snow Job in the Himalayas

Snowboarding continues where Surfing left off -- the young Lenz continues in Nepal to engage his guru, Master Fwap, who represents a mysterious Tantric Buddhist order. Fwap is a character in the neo-occult tradition of spiritual-adventure novels popularized by Carlos Castaneda. Fwap is to Lenz what don Juan is to Castaneda -- a literary creation who may or may not represent actual shamans whom the author may or may not have actually met. In both cases, the mystical masters are fantastic alter egos of the authors, who seem to delight in fooling some of the people (their devotees) all of the time.

Although I have read dozens of books in this genre, it is not something I do for enlightenment. My job requires it. With that in mind, you might understand why I chose a trans-Atlantic trip to read Snowboarding and annotate it on empty back pages, as is my habit. I finished this task in four hours or less and fell asleep. I may have had a dream that all of Lenz's devotees left him out of sheer embarrassment after they read Snowboarding. If you follow Lenz's logic in his books, dreams can come true.

In the story, young Lenz is snowboarding alone again in Nepal at "extreme" heights (14,000 to 19,000 feet) when he hears a strange "voice" speak to him about hidden "dimensions." We later learn that this voice was from another magical teacher, the Oracle, whom Fwap introduces to our intrepid trekker. Seers among Tibetans are sometimes called oracles. Through-out the story, Fwap and the Oracle guide their student into new insights and experiences, especially at the Oracle's Thunderbolt Monastery hidden deep in the "Anapurna [sic] Himalayas." They give Lenz a Handbook for Enlightenment, conveniently written in English. Passages from the handbook are interspersed throughout Snowboarding, shaded in gray for easy reference. The Oracle and Fwap have an uncanny resemblance to the shamanic duo of don Genaro and don Juan of the Castaneda series in their capricious manner of teaching. They often laugh at their befuddled student after playing tricks on him. They also offer premonitions of whom and what the young Lenz will encounter next. And, of course, it all happens as they predict.

Lenz reiterates some of the insights he gained in the first book -- he and his snowboard are one (p. 15), enlightened masters are funny and have brilliant auras (Oracle glows "electric azure blue" on p. 28), and Earth's crowded humanity has psychically polluted the astral planes, thus making it difficult to meditate (pp. 32 and 214). Meditation is the key to enlightenment, and Lenz's peculiar meditation views are spelled out in the second chapter of the Handbook: meditate twice daily without fail and connect with your "Tantric root guru" (pp. 85-86) -- for Lenz devotees, that means him. The prescribed meditation technique is replete with hypnotic inductions that can create suggestible states in the practitioner. The detailed instructions guide the meditator to visualize (a rose, the ocean, joy) through guided imagery, to breath, to imagine, and to use yantras (sacred pictures or objects) and mantras. Lenz suggests the traditional Buddhist mantra, OM [sic] mani padme hum. The Handbook resembles lectures given by Lenz in which he fuses and confuses Buddhism with New Age pop spirituality.

Early in the story, Fwap and the Oracle predict that Lenz will meet a woman who will teach him something he needs to learn. Then they laugh at him, somewhat leerily. They also inform him that he is a tulku: ". . . an advanced soul that has practiced yoga and meditation in many former lives" (p. 33). Fwap informs Lenz that he has attained enlightenment "many times" but needs to "regain" it in this one as a tulku. Now tulku, according to my dictionary, is Tibetan Buddhist parlance for "a person who, after certain tests, is recognized as the reincarnation of a previously deceased person" (Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion, Shambhala, 1989). The most famous tulku today is the Dalai Lama, who was chosen after certain tests as a child as the incarnation of a previous lama of the Tibetan Gelukpa tradition. "Tulku" Lenz has no objective references outside of his book that he was tested by legitimate monks in any way. But he gives us a key as to why: "The Oracle and I [Fwap], and other enlightened masters, are generally ignored" (p. 149). Later, Fwap predicts that when our snowboarder begins to preach in America, ". . . most of the people there [in the West] will think that you are a charlatan" (p. 203). Hello! The oldest trick in the book by charlatans is to complain that people will call them one. It is a defensive way to disarm a suspicious person. This transparent technique does not work well here.

Lenz comes off defensively in places throughout his story. From the first pages, he seems to believe that he must respond to criticisms of his first novel, Surfing. In fact, I had a suspicion as I read Snowboarding that he had read my critique (SI, July/August 1996) and took it seriously. Lenz explains in his introduction that he took the liberty to alter distances and time periods, but maintains that the "accounts . . . are based on real-life occurrences" (p. xii). That much is understandable -- authors have a right to embellish or restrict a story -- but in many instances within the story, he goes on at length to retort to criticisms. Lenz makes a point of explaining that he snowboarded at altitudes of 14,000 to 19,000 feet, when he seemed to claim in Surfing that he was as high as 24,000 feet. He no longer mentions a "yak-drawn cart" because, as some critics pointed out, yaks do not live at low altitudes around Katmandu. Perhaps he meant a water buffalo -- I saw those around Katmandu, but no yaks.

In one peculiar passage, Lenz lectures Fwap about the history, techniques, and development of snowboarding. Fwap seems content to listen politely to his student brag about his knowledge of snowboards and his snowboarding accomplishments: "I'm into extreme vertical and off-piste boarding. I like to ride alone. . . ." (p. 76). Read: no one ever sees Lenz perform "extreme" boarding. He does not answer the criticism that he could hardly have been using a snowboard during the time sequence of his first novel.

In another chapter, Fwap discourses about the "second attention" (a Castaneda/don Juan concept that corresponds to psychic intuition and power). The second attention is enhanced during "power" moments at sunrise and sunset according to both don Juan and Fwap. It helps to use the second attention to gain consciousness of the "half-life of time." This is Fwap's teaching about "the awareness that time doesn't have either mass or energy . . . it doesn't really exist at all. . . . Nothing is ever born, nothing grows, nothing matures, and nothing decays or dies, nor is anything really reborn. . . . The self itself is an illusion" (p. 209). Although Buddhist philosophy bears out these pithy comments by Fwap, in the context of Snowboarding the statements are meaningless. Lenz misrepresents the cultures that give Buddhism meaning or validity, much as Castaneda does with Mexican Indian shamanism.

Fwap and the Oracle welcome their prodigal student with new, more powerful teachings. Lenz is introduced to "skyboarding" in a higher dimension after learning a most powerful mantra. "Phat! Phat! Phat! Phat!" chant the masters to "clear" the atmosphere of astral interference -- all that people-pollution I mentioned before, and nasty astral beings who attack meditators. The masters tell Lenz that "Phat! . . . when uttered loudly by a person with occult power," causes destructive beings and forces "to flee. . . . Always use `Phat!' when you find yourself in an impure or aurically negative physical location. . . . [It] can purify astral spaces" (pp. 181-182). At the Oracle's retreat, the three meditate on "Blue Sky" and proceed to "skyboard" through colored dimensions until they reach the violet one. "The air in this dimension was textured with what looked like some kind of undecipherable hieroglyphic writing. Beings like huge American Indians began flying past us . . . [they] didn't seem to be aware of the three of us" (p. 179).

There are some occult happenings, like the psychic teleportation of three human beings, a snowboard, and backpack at the end of this sequel that I won't go into. The key passages of this book are on pages 202 and 203. Lenz tells us through his alter ego, Fwap, that he must gain his Ph.D. and become "wealthy and famous" because the West will only "bother to listen to what you have to say about enlightenment" after that occurs. If Lenz has a purpose, it is to convince us, not necessarily to prove to us, that he is a misunderstood mystic in a universe that is conspiring to thwart his mission.

But what about his wealth and fame? It became clear to the general public who saw an exposë on Lenz by Dateline (NBC TV, August 1996) that Lenz gains most of his "wealth" by convincing a core group of devotees to find high-paying computer industry jobs, sell software for his businesses, and "donate" thousands of dollars a month each to support his mission. One wonders where the young Lenz in the books gets his money to travel, snowboard, and hang out in exotic places. He does not talk about work. Try mind control. Lenz has managed to influence dozens of intelligent, young "students" to believe in him and support him in a way that could only make mind control enthusiasts, like the Central Intelligence Agency, wonder.

On my return from Paris -- the trans-Atlantic trip mentioned earlier -- I reread The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control, by John Marks (Dell, 1988), for another project. This book took me longer to finish than Snowboarding, as it is dense with useful information and interesting facts. It occurred to me that, as flawed and silly (and dangerous) as much of the CIA experimentation on "mind control" was, the government's search for a method to "control" the thoughts and behaviors of a deployable agent turned up only one undeniable fact: "By the time the MKULTRA program ended in 1963, Agency researchers had found no foolproof way to brainwash another person" (Marks, p. 154).

The best agents, it seems, are those who exhibit deep devotion to the cause and a willingness to avoid doubts about their mission. "Brainwashing" worked best when it mimicked "religious conversion" (Marks, p. 138), and the Chinese had the most effective system to accomplish this, if only temporarily, with their targets. They relied mostly on "group pressure, ideology, and repetition" (Marks, p. 139). Fwap asks for as much from Lenz, who complies with the pressure from his masters, absorbs the ideology irrationally, and follows the meditation rituals repeatedly. And if you read the Handbook, you can surmise what Lenz might ask of his students.

As for "fame," Lenz reportedly advertises himself and his projects with the "donations" from devotees. One might say that he is a self-made man. But is he enlightened, as he claims, in a Buddhist sense? Phat chance he is not. "Phat" is inner city jargon for "cool" or "great" or "excellent," depending when and where you lived your life as a youth. Maybe "Master Fwap" has appropriated a trendy Western word in an effort to impress trendy Western readers. Out of curiosity, I interviewed a Tibetan national at Project Tibet in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He never heard of "Phat," and it means nothing to him in his native language.

About the Author

Related Information

• A Wayward Way to Buddhist Spirituality
  Book review of Surfing the Himalayas from the July/August 1996 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

• Snow Job in the Himalayas
  Book review of Snowboarding to Nirvana from the January/February 1998 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

• The Skeptic's Dictionary: Rama
• The Rama Page
  Including Take Me For A Ride, by Mark Laxer

• Rama/Dr. Frederick Lenz's Official Web Site
• The Official Web Site for the Works of Rama - Dr. Frederick Lenz

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