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Interview with Robin Perlman Member of ECKANKAR
Pompano Beach, Florida, December 31, 1999
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 It
was New Year's Eve. I was attending a party for local
followers of Eckankar, a teaching with ancient roots that was
introduced as a modern-day religion in 1965 by Paul
Twitchell. I was at the home of Fran Blackwell, a prominent
member of the group. The house was located in an area called
Lighthouse Point, just north of Pompano Beach, Florida. I
had driven with a friend from Ft. Lauderdale through serene suburban
neighborhoods, with many of the houses decorated in white Christmas
lights that hung from eaves in a way intended to resemble
icicles. Once we had arrived, I stood around eyeing the
enormous buffet that was already spread out on the dining room
table. Then I wandered out onto the enclosed verandah,
beyond which the dark canal slipped by like a silent snake, the
individual illuminations from adjacent homes like patches of white on
its back. I sat down next to some of the
guests. Beside me was a willowy young woman with an arched
back, her dark hair festooned with clumps of aluminum foil like silver
popcorn strung on a Christmas tree, and accentuated with two large
aluminum foil balls that hung from her ears.
"I like the effect," I told her.
"Thanks," she replied, in a lively voice. "If you don't have
any money, you have to find ways to be creative."
She introduced herself as Robin Perlman.
"I wonder if I could interview you about your experiences as a follower
of Eckankar," I asked her.
She was surprised, but willingly accepted. We found a couple
of seats in an undisturbed area of the foyer, and sat down.
"What's the most important experience you've ever had in your life?" I began.
"I was very ill," she
replied. "The last two years, after my parents died, I
started getting sick, progressively sicker, and I didn't know what was
going on," she replied. I went to many different doctors; I
went to neurologists. At one point I was going to one
doctor, and every week I came back he said I had another illness in
another organ of my body. It was like a traveling
illness. One doctor said I had leukemia, and he thought I
was going to die. They just didn't know what was the matter
with me. I gained a lot of weight, and no one could diagnose
what was wrong with me. I got to the point where I couldn't
walk any more. I had excruciating pain every time I would
stand up. And I kept on having dreams that every time I
would get up, I would fall down; I couldn't walk. I started
having really bad emotional problems. I started to become
suicidal. As a student of Eckankar, I knew that if I
committed suicide, I'd have to come right back. But I really
wanted to die. Somehow I just felt a tremendous amount of
fear and guilt."
"There wasn't anything
happening outwardly, in terms of your relationship to Eckankar, was
there?" I asked.
"No. I loved
Eckankar. But I just felt, 'What did I do to let myself fall
into this state?' And I didn't have any
money. How was I going to pay for my treatment? I
was just doing a number on myself. I got to the point where
I was going to an outpatient clinic, and since I didn't have insurance,
all they would do was give me painkillers, and send me on my way."
"This was in Florida?"
"Yes. I came to Florida after my parents died."
"Where was that?"
"In Phoenix. I had
very strange, bizarre parents. I had a very difficult
childhood."
"In what way?"
"There was sexual abuse,
emotional abuse. They were very possessive Jewish
parents. They were always sick, especially my
mother. My mother was diabetic. She had heart
problems."
"Did you have to care for them a lot?"
"When my mother died, my
sister and I took care of my father for a couple of months while he was
ill. At any rate," she said, returning to her narrative, "it
got to the point where I didn't have any more money. The
landlord kicked me out, and I was really going through a lot of
emotional turmoil. I was in contact with Fran throughout all
this. And she would say, 'Go here, go there, call the health
clinic,' and so forth. Finally, a friend called the mental
illness clinic. I didn't have any place to go, so they took
me there. I had a walker, but they took the walker away
because they thought I could use it as a weapon. There was
one woman on the floor who knocked me over as I was walking towards
her. My bones were pretty brittle at that
point. I lay there for I don't know how long. It
was just the most horrible thing to be in a mental
hospital. I was only there overnight. They didn't
know what to do with me. They couldn't decide. It
was wild." She laughed. "I've been around every
kind of mental illness you can imagine. A lot of things have
happened to me on this journey."
I was becoming quite interested in her story.
"So they dismissed me," she
continued. "I didn't have any place to
go. Basically, I was a homeless person. And I was
about sixty pounds heavier than I am now."
I tried to imagine this
slender young woman carrying an extra sixty pounds, but failed to form
a picture in my mind.
"What I had, when they
finally diagnosed it, was something called Cushing's
syndrome. It's a hormonal imbalance. The body
overproduces cortisone, which is a steroid. It's caused by a
tumor in the pituitary or the adrenal gland. Mine was in the
adrenal gland. So I was wandering around the street with
this walker, and the police picked me up. They took me to a
place called Tent City, which is where all the homeless people
go. I was there for another night. No one knew
where I was. My sister, who is an Eckankar member and lives
in Canada, was in contact with Fran the whole time, as well as a number
of other mutual friends, one of whom worked as a volunteer in the
homeless shelter. And so they decided to look there, and
there I was. And my sister was shocked. They
wanted to put me in the hospital, but I didn't want to go because I
didn't know how I was going to pay for it. They made sure
that I got into the hospital, and I was there for four
months. They diagnosed me, gave me a couple of
biopsies. I had millions of tests. They found the
tumor in the adrenal gland, so I had to have surgery. All
this time I had no idea where I was going to live afterwards, or how I
was going to pay for the treatment."
I asked her where the adrenal gland is located, and she showed me a cut in her side.
"Then, because the bones get
really soft, I had to have reconstructive back surgery. And
they put two metal bars in my back. I can't stand needles,
and every day I had needles. They take your blood a million
times a day. I was on so many different
floors. One night, there was a mentally ill person who was
sick. She was in the bed next to me. She was
talking to entities, and screaming. This was after I had my
surgery, and I couldn't move. She came over and started
'playing' with me, you know. They tied her down, but she
broke loose. It was nightmare after
nightmare."
I found her account very
absorbing. Looking at her fresh face, it was hard to believe
that she had been through so much.
"Then they took me to another
hospital for rehabilitation. I had to learn to walk all over
again. They really push you. When my time was up
there, I still had no place to go. And I was wearing a body
brace for four months. I could hardly get up by
myself. They found a place for me, which was an assisted
living facility. It's a place for homeless
people. The people who own it are filthy rich, but the place
is dark and smells of urine and cigarettes. I lived there
for almost a year, until last July."
"And how long have you been in Florida?"
"About three years."
"So most of the time you've been in Florida, it's been a nightmare."
"Well, you know," she said
cheerily, "now that I'm over this experience, I'm happier than I've
been in my whole life."
"What do you think that experience was all about?"
"I think it has to do with
what an individual is willing to go through to get to a certain state
of consciousness. People told me, 'You're getting ready to
receive another initiation,' but I thought I was going to get kicked
out of Eckankar! That's how low I was
feeling. Then I got my fifth initiation, in
October. I don't know what it's like for other people, but I
can say that, for me, life began with that initiation. That
was my experience!"
"Not everyone has to go through hell to receive the fifth initiation,
do they?" I asked.
"No," Robin
replied. "But in my case, I had to let go of so much that
had accumulated inside me. If that was the only way that it
could be done, then that's the way it had to be done. It
also gives you compassion for other people," she added. "And
my experience also touched a lot of people in the
process. For instance, the doctor who did the surgery argued
for ten hours in order for me to have the particular kind of surgery
that I had. There were only two people in Florida who did
the surgery, he and his teacher. So he had me write some
letters to the CEO of the hospital. And because the disease
I had was a rare one, I had all these medical students coming and
taking pictures of what I looked like, before and after. The
doctor, when I went back, after the surgery, was so amazed at what I
looked like, because I had looked horrible. He was
ecstatic. 'I can't believe how well you look,' he
said.
"It makes you feel thankful,"
she continued. "And being in a place with a lot of mentally
ill people, and people on drugs, makes you realize how responsible you
are for your own state of consciousness. Because these
people are in the throes of being totally controlled by other people."
"Well, they've relinquished their own responsibility," I replied.
"Exactly. There
were a couple of women there whose husbands had gone years ago, and
they were still in denial about it. One of the women had
apparently been very wealthy. Her husband had left her, and
ever since then she had been totally disconnected from
reality. Another woman's husband had died, and she was still
asking, 'Where is my husband? Have you seen my
husband?' They didn't know at all how to deal with reality."
"I've never had the kind of
experiences you've had," I responded. "But I know something
about what you're talking about. Years ago," I reminisced,
"I had a dream in which I went insane. It was a very vivid
dream, which I still remember well. It was interesting."
"Maybe it was a past life."
"No, I don't think so."
"Or a reflection of fear."
"No, not really."
"What, then?"
"Sometimes they say that if
you go through something in a dream experience, you won't have to go
through it in the waking state. I think that was the
situation, in my case. Through the dream, I received the
same understanding that you did through your experience-that insanity
is essentially a matter of giving up one's free will, one's
responsibility."
"Yes. You're
responsible for your own state of consciousness, for everything that
you create. I guess that could be a scary thought for some
people, but it's actually a very wonderful thing. Everything
is a learning experience."
Our conversation was at an
end, and I found myself sitting wordlessly with Robin in the foyer of
Fran Blackwell's house, just appreciating her silent company. |
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Date Submitted:
7/17/01 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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