I had never seriously meditated before, but I had nothing to do but join in. I felt a vague anxiety as my floating body seemed to tilt on its axis, until I realized that I was leaning just a few degrees to the right. I straightened myself, but the feeling persisted even as Praver broke the silence. She realized in a recent visit with her Jewish family that they couldn't accept that she was a minister, not a rabbi. But it really doesn't matter.
Life is a dream.
Praver sits in the chancel of a mission-style church in Palo Alto that Ananda bought from the Catholic Church in 1994. To sit in a place like that, and be told from the pulpit that life is a dream, is a bracing experience in itself. Bertolucci soon was attending Sunday services for the New Age blend of Hindu and Christian teachings and, within months, had left her job and moved to Ananda Village in Nevada City, Calif., Ananda's rural center. Bertolucci claims Asha Praver encouraged her to leave her husband behind because he was uninterested in Ananda. Several thousand people a year study meditation and yoga at Ananda Village or in Palo Alto, Dallas, Seattle and other Ananda outposts.