He hated it all. Yet, like scores of others in his position, he did not hate it enough to tear up the checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that were mailed to him each quarter from the trust company. As a young man, Mark wore imported Italian suits, Gucci loafers, and Ferragamo neckties. He drove a high-powered Porsche and lived in a luxuriously furnished Fifth Avenue co-op. To assuage his guilt, he consorted with Marxist radicals, New Age gurus, and intellectual extremists, and lent his name and influence to many leftist causes and manifestos.

After he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia, he tried for a couple of years the life of the pampered playboy. Then he joined the Peace Corps, and from that point everything changed.

He was sent as a Peace Corps volunteer to a city in India north of Madras called Rajahmundry, “The City of the Kings.” In this city, amid disease, squalor, and shocking poverty, Mark Beaulieu attained what he felt was ultimate spiritual enlightenment.

In the center of Rajahmundry is a statue of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, whose consort is Kali, the goddess of death. According to legend, the task of Shiva was to destroy the world and rebuild it to perfection. Around the head and shoulders of the stone god, the artist had carved a cobra with its head outstretched as if it were imparting wisdom to Shiva. As Mark Beaulieu stood in front of that enigmatic statue and stared into the face of the pagan deity, something icy cold coursed through his being. Then he felt that the statue spoke to him—he was sure it was more than his imagination—and Shiva promised him what he truly wanted: wisdom and power.

The people of Rajahmundry believe that the river that flows alongside their city is the sperm of Shiva, their patron deity. Many natives of the town come early in the morning to bathe in the polluted, muddy river, hoping to receive the life force from their god.

Day after day, Mark Beaulieu watched the devotees of Shiva. Day after day, he stood in front of the statue of Shiva and studied the cobra. Day after day he seemed to receive enlightenment and spiritual wisdom. And day by day, the consciousness grew in him that Shiva would give him the wisdom and power to destroy the corrupt nations of the world—including America and all its greedy capitalists. Then one day he would rebuild it all in beauty and harmony.