First and foremost, Rama was an Enlightened Buddhist and Siddha master whose life, and whose ability to help his students, transcended the limits of his earthly incarnation.

Rama was raised in an ordinary

At the same time as Rama went through the usual rites of passage of a growing young man, however, his Enlightenment from past lives began to reassert itself. Rama indicated that it was pretty much inevitable, given that he had been Enlightened in so many past lives, that he would become Enlightened again in this life. He began to experience Samadhi-a high state of consciousness marked by the absence, at least temporarily, of thought-at an early age. To put some structure on his experiences, he began to seek out Eastern spiritual teachers. By the age of twenty, Rama was himself beginning to teach meditation to others, and was studying formally with a teacher based on Long Island.

Rama enrolled in the University of Connecticut, and performed sufficiently well to be awarded the top graduate fellowship available in the entire State University of New York system. He earned his Ph.D. in English from the SUNY campus at Stony Brook in 1978, writing his dissertation on the work of American poet Theodore Roethke. At the same time, Rama also wrote a book entitled Lifetimes: True Accounts of Reincarnation. Rama was thus on a path to become a teacher on two different tracks: as a traditional university professor, and as a teacher of Enlightenment and mysticism through his books and his direct experience of Samadhi.

Rama taught for a little while at the New School in New York, but as he approached his Saturn return, his past life Enlightenment began to kick in much more powerfully, and the focus became ever stronger on the esoteric aspects of his teachings. In 1979, Rama moved, along with a number of his closer meditation students, back to San Diego. By this point, Rama was known as 'Atmananda'-he was no longer referred to primarily by his birth name, but had not yet taken the name of Rama. It was in San Diego that Atmananda/Rama's Enlightenment really began to kick in. Atmananda and several of his closer students rented a house in San Diego, and they also began to teach to others living in the areas. Those who studied with Atmananda at the time recall sitting up with him often most of the night, watching his body dissolve into Eternity and dissolving with him. Atmananda was letting go of the structures that had led him to that point in the incarnation, and his Enlightenment was taking over. Rama subsequently observed that this was not necessarily an easy part of his life, because he had no one really to guide him through the experience.

Atmananda also began leading students on desert excursions in the surrounding deserts near San Diego. Atmananda indicated that by meditating in the desert one can find some of the highest energy to be found in the USA, and one can make major transitions in one's life. It was on one such trip that Atmananda saw that the Universe wanted him to become known as Rama, and this was the name he used-sometimes in the longer form 'Zen Master Rama'-for the rest of his incarnation. Rama indicated that this did not mean that he was the incarnation of the historical Rama from the Ramayana, but rather both he and the historical Rama were manifestations of the warrior aspect of Enlightenment.

In the early 1980's, Rama moved his teachings primarily to Los Angeles-he also had a center in San Francisco for awhile-and he began to teach, through an organization called Lakshmi Seminars, to a larger number of students. Most came because of the pure magic that Rama was able to impart-both the "Light shows" in the seminars and on the desert excursions, but even more importantly through the magical ways that they were able to make changes in their own lives. Rama rented a home owned by Goldie Hawn for a time, and taught to over a thousand active, formal students including movie stars and people from all walks of life. Through his public lectures, Rama probably taught introductory meditation to hundreds of thousands of people during this period-he kept up a schedule of public meditations that was quite grueling. During this time, Rama also put out his second major book-The Last Incarnation-about his students' experiences studying with him--as well as a number of other, shorter, books.

Rama was demanding on himself, and he was also, by his own admission, demanding on his students. By this time period he began to notice that a lot of his students were not strong in the "first attention" or the "tonal"-that is, they were focused on trying to achieve Enlightenment at the expense of their material success. Rama saw that a student's ability to achieve Enlightenment depended, in part, on their ability to have their physical life together. (It doesn't necessarily work the other way: someone who is rich isn't necessarily going to be especially spiritual. But someone who is homeless doesn't have an environment in which they can meditate effectively). Rama saw, therefore, that he was going to have to be a bit more selective about whom he would admit as students. He demanded more of his students, and he conducted what were affectionately called "purges" where he asked large numbers of students to leave the program. Needless to say, those who were "purged" were first given an empowerment to help them with their lives outside the program.

Rama moved his "intermediate" students to Palo Alto in the fall of 1987, and at that point he began a new cycle in his teaching. For the next few years, he pretty much eliminated his public lectures and focused on intensively teaching a smaller number of students. He was, by most accounts, pretty tough with these students, really expecting them to get their lives and especially their careers in shape. Rama was criticized at the time for rising tuitions-his seminars, which at one point had been offered for free or at nominal cost, were definitely becoming more costly. Yet he also got results, as his students were making amazing progress in their careers, moving from minimum wage jobs to high paying positions as consultants or corporate leaders. During the late 1980's, Rama moved this group of students around a fair bit as business conditions changed, settling in Washington DC, Boston, and finally New York. Not every student necessarily made every move that Rama recommended, but most of them did end up in New York by the early 1990's.

By this point, Rama saw two things: one, that the energies of the world were changing with the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, and two, that his students had reached a point where they were ready to begin teaching themselves. Indeed, he felt that sometimes the only way you learn something is by teaching it yourself, and he thought that his students had better start teaching themselves if they were ever to really learn anything. So in late 1991, Rama sent his students out to teach meditation to new students in six cities throughout the USA-New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. His older students, who had been with Rama for years, were dubbed "ST1s"-"Star Trek Ones". The new students, who were mentored by the ST1s and had to be 29 or under, were called "ST2s". At this point, the focus changed back somewhat to the direct study of Enlightenment and meditation-during the late 1980's career had very much been the dominant theme. Magic was definitely back in style around Rama-he conducted new desert excursions, and the ST1s helped the ST2s to make the same transitions in their personal and spiritual lives that they themselves had made over the years. The group moved once again, in 1993, with the ST1s moving to Chicago and the ST2s moving to New York. During this period, Rama also wrote two new books: Snowboarding to Nirvana and Surfing the Himalayas which were aimed especially at the ST2s. Rama also had a number of very high vibe rave parties at upscale locations in Manhattan. These parties were not simply parties-they were opportunities for people to permanently shift their assemblage points and make significant changes in their lives.

At this point, Rama decided that he wanted to start a number of software companies with his students, to work more closely with them and to help everyone to move forward in the growing software industry. He founded a number of software companies in 1994 and began to put more and more of his energies into the software industry.

On a somewhat different track, for most of this whole time period, Rama had worked closely with a band called Zazen, composed of three of his students. Rama worked very closely with Zazen to help them create music that his students could meditate to and go into higher states of consciousness. It was often said that the members of Zazen were Rama's closest students. Meditation to music is not strictly necessary, but it can go a long way, especially for a beginning student, to blocking out negative energies of the world and assisting in meditation. Some of the albums produced during this period included Enlightenment, Canyons of Light, Samadhi, Samurai, Retrograde Planet, Cayman Blue and Zen Master. All were impeccable-Rama used to say that the two ways to find him were either in his music or in the desert.

Shortly after founding his software companies, however, Rama's health began to fail. It is said that an Enlightened teacher only has so long to teach before their cell structures begin to break down-they do not really belong in the physical anymore, so can retain their physical form for only so long. Rama worked very hard on his companies-in fact, probably he worked harder than on anything else he'd ever worked, and this likely contributed to his physical decline-and he achieved some significant successes, as well as the inevitable setbacks any entrepreneur faces. By early 1997, Rama realized that his time in the physical was ending-the death of his favorite Scottie dog Vayu had been a setback for him too. He continued to push himself very hard on his work, but he also called his students together for a number of farewell parties in the Caribbean, culminating in the Kalachakra empowerment in late 1997, to which all of his former students were invited. Rama passed away around April 12, 1998, and he has said that he will not be incarnating again on this earth.

Rama's teachings are continued to this day through the efforts of his students. Each of Rama's students represents their own unique strand of Rama's luminosity, so while they each teach in a unique manner, together they keep Enlightenment alive on the Earth. Many of his students are themselves going into Samadhi and reaching the earlier stages of Enlightenment at this point, and they are empowering growing numbers of people to do the same.