About the Author
 
     
  Luna Tarlo, a native of Montreal, Canada, graduated from The University of Michigan where she majored in English Literature.  She married and had two children and while rearing them wrote three novels, Morning Sickness, An Arid Land, An Arid Zone and Coming to Earth, in addition to several stage plays and short stories.  She has just completed a screenplay for Stanley Chase Productions in Hollywood.

In December 1985 Ms. Tarlo went to India to visit her thirty-year-old son Andrew, now a guru with followers all over the world.  He had left for India two years earlier to seek "enlightenment" but had not yet found what he was looking for.  Four months after her return to the United States she received a telephone call -- It was Andrew.  "Come back to India," he said, "interesting things are happening."  She boarded the first available flight and returned to India.  There she found a very different person than she had left four months ago -- oddly removed, supremely confident and imbued with the conviction that he could "enlighten" others.  She also found a small group already devoted to him and subsequently traveled with them from India to Europe to the United States.

She was enthralled at first, but soon suspected that her son was the leader of a cult.  His absolute claim to power, his grandiosity and inability to tolerate criticism shocked her.  Fearful that criticism of this behavior would create an unendurable rupture between them, she kept silent.

But aware of her suppressed opposition, her son, with whom she had previously shared a warm loving relationship, became increasingly cruel.  During the three-and-a-half years she spent as his disciple a terrible tension grew between them.  Eventually his public condemnation and humiliation of her became so ruthless that in 1991 she could bear it no longer and broke away knowing that she would probably never see him again.

Ms. Tarlo is presently living and working in New York City.

Contact Luna Tarlo at lunat@erols.com

 
     
 
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