BRAINWASHED! A
CULT SURVIVOR’S TALE.
I am an unusual atheist and Humanist in that the God I don’t believe in is
still alive, and was last seen living in Malibu. His name is Maharaji. I still
have a four foot by three foot photograph of him at home. It was the centre
piece of my bedroom shrine to this God, an object of idolatry. I used to have
the big portrait, and several smaller photographs placed around my bedroom in
such a way that I would see the so-called ‘Living Perfect Master, or Satguru,’
whichever way I faced. He was the first thing I saw as I woke up of a morning,
and the last thing I saw before I fell asleep at night. Without even being
physically present in my life, he influenced my every moment for four and a
half years between 1981 and 1985. A cult permeates every aspect of your life
and influences every thought and decision you have.
It should hopefully now be very apparent to you that Maharaji no longer
dictates my thoughts or my feelings in any way, and what I want to do is to
show how someone like me, and someone like yourself, can easily be sucked into
a cult like Maharaji’s Divine Light Mission. I’ll take you step by step through
the experience of being drawn in to a cult, like sinking in a quicksand. It’s
important that anyone who has been conned asks themselves how it happened, so
it doesn't happen again, to them or to others.
How did I get recruited? Some of you probably just agree with P. T. Barnum
and say ‘There’s one born every minute’. Others tell me I must have been on
some kind of quest or search for ultimate spiritual truth, and that I
undoubtedly wanted to join a cult. In fact, I was an atheist when the cult
recruited me. I was raised as a Roman Catholic, confirmed in the name of St.
Jerome, (because St. Christopher who I wanted to be my personal saint, had been
struck off the canonical list, and I went to confession every Saturday. This
involved sitting in a cold, dark, hemorrhoid inducing box to tell my sins to a
grouchy humourless priest I couldn’t see, even though he and his God saw me
clearly. He was never happy with my tales of being caught pinching jam and
biscuits, and convinced himself that there was more that I wasn't telling him. I
found myself making things up just to confess to them. They say childhood traumas
from home life make your character composition up in your first five years, but
most of my problems and neurosis probably stem from the terror of the
confessional. So strictly speaking, I’ve actually been in two cults, but a
childhood of having my fingers wrapped with rulers by nuns for writing left
handed made me rebel early on. I turned atheist as soon as I first heard of the
word, in Joseph Heller’s novel Catch 22. Sadly, I never really worked out what
to do with my atheism bar being relatively rude to hard-line Christians. I was
worried at times that God might actually exist after all, and that he might
send me to Hell for doubting him, whilst death leading to total non-existence
also worried me. I was actually surprised recently to see that I excelled at
religious Instruction at school, according to my report cards. I wasn’t aware
of Humanism, or of Freethought at all.
It has been said by American Psychiatrist, Professor Margaret Singer, that
people who are in some kind of temporary mental and emotional disorientation
are the most likely cult recruits. By Singer’s reckoning, after some kind of
crisis in your life you should be at you most guarded regarding cult
recruitment. I wasn’t guarded or prepared for what happened at all. The crisis
in my life was multiple. My Father died alone, suddenly in a cafe in
Manchester, where I live, dropping dead with an instant coronary a month short
of his 50th birthday in 1979, and the police came to the house to tell my
Mother. It was a tragedy that tore us all apart. My O level studies became very
half hearted, and as I left school, I was hit by a severe attack of Hepatitis,
followed by long term unemployment. By 1981, I was just aimlessly drifting
through life, and reading a lot of books to pass the time. I was cynical and
totally unmotivated. Searching for anything, spiritual, or material was far
from my mind. I simply existed. It started at a second hand book stall, when a
pretty girl invited me to join her at what she called a lecture on
Transcendental meditation. It sounded as innocent and as simple as that. As the
meeting was at a hall hired from Manchester’s Science Museum, it sounded
academic, if not a little dull to me, but cults like to leave you with false
impressions. I also found the girl quite attractive, and felt as though I was
going on a date. Big mistake.
I waited outside the meeting hall, and watched a lot of friendly, smiling
people go in. A few introduced themselves and invited me in, but I insisted on
waiting for the girl I knew, and in the end she turned up. We went in, and I
sat beside her. She obviously knew most people there. The stage was a box, a
poor quality PA system, and a portrait of a smiling elderly looking Indian
gentleman, with a candle burning in front of it. Some of the audience members
added more flowers to it as the evening went on.
A girl got up, talking of a life of drugs and sorrow, and her quest for
happiness, which she found in the grace and gift of meditation given to her by
Maharaj Ji. She occasionally threw in very offbeat jokes, and casually said
that the light he had given her was the best orgasm she had ever achieved in
her life. As she finished, and sat down, I started clapping, more to be polite
after her effort to entertain us than anything. I wondered what sort of lecture
this was. To my horror, no one else clapped, or expressed pleasure at her
passionate talk whatsoever. I felt like a total pratt. I was told bluntly later
on why I wasn’t to applaud. No one is speaking for ego-gratification. Our only
pleasure in this task of presenting the Knowledge to the world comes from
Maharaji himself by his grace and wisdom. Applause only gives our egos and our
pride a boost. Save your gratitude for the Satguru. The speaker didn’t do
anything for you. Maharaji reached directly to you using the speaker as a
medium of expressing his wishes for your happiness. Thank only the guru, never
anyone else." So from then on, I met each speaker’s efforts with stony
silence, and no applause. .
Talking about Maharaji, I learned is called Satsang. It’s a Hindi word
meaning The Company Of Truth, and had to be spontaneous, though many a follower
rehearsed a Satsang carefully and some recycled favourite stories for use again
in future formal talks and casual house meetings. Satsangs were all concerned
with promoting Maharaji as the hero of the world. "He’s saved so many of
us," one girl said, "that he should now receive the Nobel Peace
Prize." Another speaker told us the story of the ugly duckling and how
Maharaj Ji had turned her into a beautiful swan, or at least made her see that
she was a swan deceived by her illusionary mind into thinking she was just an
ugly little duck in a muddy puddle.
Sometimes, between speakers, someone sang a song; some were pop songs, but
sung as though they were hymns; Lennon’s Imagine, which I know is popular with
Humanists, was one. An Indian called Charanand sang a song of his own
composition called ‘There is a Knowledge you will not find in college’, and I
noticed that the word Knowledge was used frequently in the meeting after that.
The recruitment strategy was simple; divert his attention, don’t answer any
of his questions, smile at him a lot, hug him as though he’s your best friend
in the world, charm, smarm, sales pitch, push and pull the target. The classic
brainwashing techniques to keep you off balance so you can’t assess what is
happening to you. Martial arts fans will know the first rule of fighting combat
is to keep moving. Don’t stand still so your opponent can focus his attack.
That’s why boxers use a lot of footwork. Cults recruit at breakneck speed,
putting you through processes of indoctrination quickly so that you have little
time to register doubts or co-ordinate your skepticism. This is known as
information overload. They bombard your analytical thinking system by giving
you more data than you can absorb in one go, all in vague, shifting language.
Guru, Ashram, prachard, Premie, Jaisatchitanand, Bolishrisatgurudev Maharaj Ki
Jai, the Krijas, The list goes on. I’ll explain these words shortly. You
normally wouldn’t get to ask what they mean too soon, or to grasp the extent of
their meanings as they are given to you. You find yourself as I was, surrounded
by beaming, happy people who know all this already or at least appear to. You
feel like an outsider in a club where everyone knows some earth shattering,
life changing secret which they don’t want to share with you too soon. As a
recent cult related article said;
"It is easy, I tell you, if you sit long enough in the landscape of
some very odd picture, to begin thinking, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? instead of
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? You see that everyone else thinks this odd
place is normal, and because you don’t see it is normal, well, then you must be
abnormal. You start questioning yourself. Your judgment gets wacky. You don’t
want to be odd. You want to fit in, so you become normal as defined by the
abnormal picture. you become odd."
I was a little puzzled by it all, and more or less planned on saying so. As
the formal meeting dissolved, people came over asking me about me, one after
another. I was answering questions without getting answers. The cult gets to
know all about you, with information to use for future reference, and yet it
shrouds itself in mystery, to keep you guessing and wanting more. Plural now on
recruiters. There were suddenly several of them. The girl who originally
invited me along has conveniently vanished into the background. I am
outnumbered. I ask one person a question, and someone else gives a vague answer
to it. Feeling slightly overwhelmed, I try to get through to my original
recruiter, but someone else gets in my way, shaking my hand, smiling at me,
skirting my questions with practiced skill I would soon acquire myself.
Misinformation, controlled hysteria, rehearsed spontaneity.
They agree to go to a pub with me and answer my questions over a few drinks.
My first recruiter comes along, but she is quiet in the background still. I
find them overpowering. I’m a little afraid of them. I tell them they are
starting to sound religious. "No," one of them says, "we are not
a religion. We have the actual experience that all the great religions of the
world merely talk about. We don’t believe. we know." What followed then
was a lot of jeering and mockery of all things Christian. In many ways this
appealed to me. My own contempt for Christianity was being mirrored here.
‘There’s room for non-believers here, too’ they said. They would continue to
appeal to my atheism until they were confident enough of their ability to undermine
it completely. Cult members are not religious believers like Christians. They
give you God on a plate, for a price. They don’t need to believe in anything.
They know. Their hints at belief in Maharaj Ji as a savior figure alarmed me.
‘If a man saved you from drowning, wouldn’t you be grateful to him?’ they asked
me. Their overbearing tone and perpetual smiling that made them all seem rather
alike in mannerism alarmed me. I told myself to get clear of them, but I was
slightly overawed too, and I found them exciting and different after the
humdrum drudgery of my undirected, uninspired, undisciplined, unambiguous adult
lifestyle so far. I can’t blame them a hundred percent for hooking me in, but
they realized how vulnerable I was, and they played on that to draw me further
in. I can’t deny that I exercised an element of free will in all this, but I do
believe that they manipulated and pressured me in against my better intentions.
On my part, it was my first real encounter with a subcultural society. I hadn’t
been a mod, a rocker, or a hippie. I was quite old fashioned, square and a dull
person. I probably still am. I was a bookworm, mostly for cheap Science Fiction
books, a day dreamer, and relatively lazy and laid back. I dreamed of travel
and adventures, but most of my jokes, anecdotes and stories to tell were
borrowed from other people, or from the previous evening’s TV. Suddenly I was
involved in a real adventure with truly interesting, if slightly offbeat,
occasionally sinister people. I felt alive. They called their Guru Goomradjie
for short, and talked of him with deep rooted tears of conviction and love that
rather irritated me. I felt as though he was going to walk into the pub at any
minute. It was as though he was with us, and for his followers of course, he
was.
Their irreverence for Catholicism was of much appeal to me. "They mock
us because Goomradjie has some money in the bank, but they follow the Pope who
has much more money than that. Such hypocrisy. They failed to see that if it
was wrong for the Pope, it was wrong for their leader too. "They say
Maharaji has a big expensive car, but that Jesus only had a donkey, but I bet
that Donkey was the finest Jesus’s followers could get for him at the
time."
Unlike the Catholic community I was raised in, Maharaji’s followers were
vibrant, alive, and full of good spirit. They gushed and talked with ceaseless
enthusiasm, non-stop. I envied them for being so articulate. Their talk was
sometimes hilarious and occasionally sad. They confessed casually to the most
extraordinary and often deeply private things; not in a quiet priest’s
confessional, but openly, casually, for all to hear; abortions, attempted
suicides, petty crimes committed in their youth, nervous breakdowns, etc. They
were full of analogies and parable like stories. I had imagined myself one day
becoming a writer, but I had never known people use words to fill someone with
wonderment as they did so easily, before.
I asked for a description of this Knowledge of which they spoke with such
awe and reverence. ‘It’s easy to understand,’ they said, it’s so simple that
you can’t actually describe it in words or pictures. It’s like trying to
describe the taste of sweet sugar. You only understand it once you actually get
to taste it." Let me taste it then? I asked. "You’re not ready for it
yet," they said. "You think too much. You ask too many
questions."
I took their anti-Catholicism for anti-religion, though they were certainly
a religion, being a Hindu based meditation cult, but s yet they made little use
of ideas like Karma, Yoga-meditation, or belief in reincarnation. That would
come once I was fully ensnared in their ranks. I was torn between the emotional
impact they had on me, and the rising tide of alarm and critical doubt that
filed my head. I went home after that initial meeting in a daze, confused. My
sister asked me about them and shared my laughter about their absurd beliefs,
or at least what little of them I could grasp at that early stage.
I was torn between the emotional impact that they had on me and the alarming
doubts and criticisms filling my head. I went home after that first meeting in
total confusion. My sister asked me about them, and shared my laughter at the
absurdity of their beliefs, what little of them I could grasp at that stage,
and I decided never to go again, but I went back a fortnight later because I
couldn’t stop thinking about them and their Guru at all. They had said that my
own mind was the thing I most had to fear. "Mind distracts you. It keeps
you away from your birthright, and makes you look in all the wrong places for
answers that are right in your own heart. How often have you mislaid a sock and
found that your mind won’t tell you where it is, even when it knows? Your mind
knows about the inner peace you can experience if it ever shuts up. You have
felt this inner peace before. Your heart remembers it. Mind hides it from you.
Maharaji can give you that inner peace again and in a way that you will never
lose it again. You just have to be able to switch your mind off to hear what
Maharaji is saying to you"
And there it was all of a sudden, disturbing me, not letting me sleep or
think straight. I was acutely conscious of my own mental processes ticking
over. The cult had sown the suggestion into my head that I should mistrust my
own thinking. Here’s a simple brainwashing experiment for you. Think of numbers
in your head, randomly, not in sequence. The only number you can’t think of is
42. Notice how 42 keeps popping into your head. You can’t not think of it
without also being consciously aware of it. My mind was hyperactive on me all
of a sudden. It’s like the Aesopian fable the cult used frequently themselves.
A butterfly asks a caterpillar how it manages to co-ordinate all its hundreds
of legs to be able to walk so easily on them. The caterpillar thinks about it
and then starts tripping up and stumbling through thinking about what has been
intrinsic and natural to him all along. The trick is autosuggestion, a key word
in brainwashing. You end up half-brainwashing yourself. I’d been apply with my
mind for 19 years then, and suddenly I didn’t trust it any more, it was a
destructive, dangerous, possibly even sentient enemy. Once fully indoctrinated,
the cult would turn my own mind into a satanic demon inside me. I was at war
with myself. I was told that we are all always at war with ourselves, with only
Maharaji to bring us to peace. Going back to these strange people sounded like
a good idea. I went back, still full of doubts, still resisting, and seeking
some other way to interpret the Experiences I was having in some way other than
the cult anted me to experience everything. They kept pulling me back to seeing
things their way. I had too many questions, and it worried them as much as it
worried me.
After a few meetings more, I found my sister still regarding the cult as a
joke, but that I was taking her remarks as personal insults now. My mother was
getting worried too, by my listlessness, tense looks on my face, my reluctance
to wash or change clothes any more, and explosions of anger at her efforts to
find out where I had been and what I had been doing. I became sullen and
introspective. I wasn’t reading books any more, which was a real give-away that
something was wrong in my case. Books tell you about things. They don’t show
you things for yourself.
As well as formal public meetings, cult members met nightly at each other's
houses. I was invited to one, and it surprised me that the room was devoid of
furniture. There were only cushions to sit on, and we had to take our shoes off
in the hall. I was originally told that his was just to save wear and tear on
he carpets. Large photographs o the guru were on every wall. There was even a
giant picture of just his feet. When invited to ask a question I immediately
asked about this, which seemed to embarrass the hosts. Maharaji’s feet, I
learned, play a big part in this story. There are giant photographs available,
just of his feet, the lotus feet of Satguru. The lotus is a powerful symbol in
India, as the lotus flower grows in foul mangrove swamps, but its petals never
touch the mud, so it is seen as a perfect thing in a revolting environment.
Maharaji’s followers believe that his lotus feet, like the flower, touch our
world, but don’t belong here.
I gave more and more time to the meetings. Once a week became twice a week,
then every day and weekend retreats. I lived at home with my Mother, and
sister, but they hardly saw me. I dressed, went straight to the ashram, and
stayed there till home time, and then went straight to bed to read their
literature or listen to Maharaji speaking in his shrill excitable metaphors on
audio cassettes. This practice served both to steep me in the cult’s
philosophy, and also to get me used to using an hour after waking and an hour
before sleeping for the meditation that I would soon be taught. The main ashram
was the chief centre of the cult’s activity in Manchester. I never actually
moved in to the cult communally, as my income wasn’t strong enough for that.
Ashram members had to submit their entire income to the cult, which then paid
them back a strictly controlled allowance. Though not an ashram member, I was
living the cult’s teachings round the clock, and I wasn’t even fully converted
yet.
At the cult’s suggestion, I minimized communication with my mother. Cults
have a way of making profound changes in the way we use everyday language. Many
parents will say to a son or daughter in a cult that they only criticize the
cult because they have the son or daughter’s interests at heart. Cult recruits
are however primed, as I was, early on to watch out for such impassioned plea
bargaining as my Mother was to use on me. "If your mother says she loves
you it’s because she wants to control you and possess you. If she really loves
you, she will let you make up your own mind about staying with us." I was
one step ahead of my mother on every argument she tried. She started fighting
back. Relatives and friends came round trying to talk sense into me. Most of
them were easy to ignore, but my Mum’s sister actually knew a thing or two
about the cult, as they’d tried unsuccessfully to recruit her. In fact, her
recruiter was the same girl who had recruited me. My auntie told me the group
were called Divine Light Mission, which even after two months of involvement,
was news to me. They’d been hiring halls as The Divine Understanding Order.
(DUO) Later, they would change that to The World Welfare Society, and today the
cult’s official name is Elan Vital. My auntie had been disturbed by the vacant
similar smiles of the group members, and she had fled from them at the first
opportunity she had, actually leaping out of one of their cars while it was at
a set of traffic lights. Since that near recruitment she had learned that the
guru had been accused of womanizing, eating meat, and financial question marks
were raised over his real worth in capital and income. Worse, his own mother
had publicly denounced him as a charlatan, and attempted to set up his brother
as the real guru. This had almost driven the cult to destruction in the
seventies. They were now beginning to recruit again, strictly by word of mouth
alone, and I was picked up as part of this major recruitment drive to recharge
the cult’s failing fortunes.
What my aunt said should have told me to distance myself too, but it wasn’t
enough. The group did seem happy, and there was this Knowledge they spoke of. I
dreamed of getting the Knowledge and then showing it for the sham it was and
rescuing these genuinely nice people from their own folly. I was addicted to my
own curiosity. I even went to the library and found out more about the cult,
and about brainwashing itself. The techniques were gleamed from behavioral psychology, and first given prominent use in the Korean War, often in
conjunction with physical torture and violence, which cults don't often use in
recruitment. The aim in Korea was not to get vital information on military
weapons and plans, etc, but to actually change the ideology of the captives
through breaking down of the personality in order to remold it with new ways
of seeing the world. US Prisoners found themselves embracing communism, and
Koreans were induced to denounce Mao and Marx in favour of capitalism.
I learned that Maharaji spells his name differently from time to time,
depending on who is interested in knowing about him. Maharaj Ji, or Great King
as it means in English, is his most commonly used title, though he varies the
spelling of it from time to time. Goomradjie was a followers' pet name for him,
abbreviating his title somewhat; then there was the modest title, Satguru, or
Living Perfect Master, a strange title for a man who once informed 8,000 people
that he no longer had an ego. Sometimes we just called him Guru, which is
itself a mystical title. Gu means darkness, and Ru, means light, so a guru is
someone who takes you from darkness to light. A guru is a messiah, an avatar,
and a living incarnation of God. Maharaji’s actual name from birth was Prem Pal
Rawat Sing, but a name like that doesn’t pull the punters in, does it?
I took my new discoveries back to the cult and put the charges before them.
They were shocked by what I knew and yet they answered me. We have to keep our
identity secret, because there are people out there who want to hurt us, and
laugh at us. Maharaji’s mother was the corrupt one, not her son. She wanted to
take over and dominate the movement. I asked about brainwashing. The answer was
put bluntly; if this is brainwashing, I want more of it. I love being brainwashed.
Somehow the answers wore me down gradually, but if they hadn’t I was too far
gone now. Had I discovered Maharaji had an atom bomb and ate babies, I still
wouldn’t have left. I was that far gone. I have quite a lot of sympathy with
Hitler’s nazis who pleaded that they were only following orders. I’m just glad
this cult never issued such orders. I would have undoubtedly followed them too.
While my family watched me sinking deeper in the mire, the cult saw me as
too resistant, and full of doubts. They decided to change that once and for
all. Things were about to get very nasty. I was summoned, rather than invited,
to an ashram gathering. I went, but while everyone else went into the main room
for Satsang, I was told to stay in another room alone.
After about ten minutes solitary confinement, I tried to sneak across to the Satsang
room, but someone big and mean looking was posted outside the door to
stop me. "WAIT HERE," I was told bluntly, and the door was slammed in
my face. I tried again, with similar results, and then decided the old ruse of
expressing a need to go to the loo. I was permitted, but the guard followed me
up to the bathroom door, and all the way back to my isolation cell. I burst
into tears. They were cutting me off from talk about the guru. I could just
about hear muffled laughing and singing from the other room. I desperately
wanted to be in there. I was going cold turkey. They’d fuelled my addiction,
and now they were regulating what had so far been an unlimited, undiluted
supply. The knowledge was going to be secured only at a price. They were hiding
something from me, and I desperately needed to know what it was. Here was the
next phase of my brainwashing process, reward was replaced by punishment, A
domesticated cat pressing a lever in a cage to get food pellets learns which
lever provides the pellets, and which one provides electric shocks. Dolphins
are trained by receiving a fish every time they get a trick right. If the cat
is shocked, or the dolphin is denied a fish, it changes its behaviour
accordingly. So do people. I was being subjected to similar conditioning by
stimulus responses. Now punishment was taking its place along side the
rewarding satsangs. Deprivation of Satsang was the technique used to first
challenge my questioning, doubting, nature.
An initiator, one of the people empowered to give out the knowledge
techniques of meditation came into my cell to interview me.
"We have to be careful," he said. We don’t know whether we can
trust you or not. We have to deceive people sometimes to get them to the right
frame of mind for receiving the truth later on. Some lies are necessary. If you
had to lie to someone to save their lives, wouldn’t you do it? The truth has to
be rationed sometimes. It’s all too much to take in at once. You're very close
to receiving the truth itself now, Arthur, but there is a problem. You have to
agree to stop asking questions first. You’re minds too strong for you. It’s
freaking you out, and some other people are asking questions too, because
they’ve heard you doing it. You are upsetting other people’s minds as well, and
we can’t let that happen. Your mind is freaking you out. You do want the
knowledge. You must do, because you keep coming back to us., so stop resisting
it and fighting. Face it, Arthur, we’ve got you. However, if you ask any more
questions, we will have to let you go and ask you to leave. If you do go, t
will be terribly sad and painful for you. You can never be at peace again
inside your head without the knowledge now. We are the only way you’ll ever be
safe from going insane and having a mental breakdown. I’m going to have to ask
you to peddle faster, or get off the bike. The choice is entirely yours. You’ve
seen too much to stop searching here now. You’re too close to give up. "
I agreed in buckets of tears to suspend my disbelief. I still had doubts at
first, but I was never going to express them openly again. I suppressed my
skepticism.
As a reward for signing away my soul, they let me go to the closing hour of Satsang. Any questions the meeting
co-coordinator asked, looking right at me. I
stayed silent.
My indoctrination speeded up. I attended the fortnight long Satsang period
called all too appropriately, an intensive. They talked again of the mind’s
ability to deceive us. Chain the elephant that is your mind and it turns into a
mouse to slip through the chains. Cage the mouse, and it turns into an elephant
again and smashes through the bars. The mind is unstoppable without Maharaji’s
grace. Without him we’d all go mad.
Fear is a big cult brainwashing factor. Fear of death, fear of evil, hell,
madness, loneliness, other people, yourself, of being unloved, and it’s all
described in gruesome graphic detail as being typical of life outside the
cult’s safe harbors. A few days into the intensive, the initiator produced a
song sheet with words to a hymn called Arti, an extract from a Sanskrit hymn
that had been retranslated to apply to Maharaji. I was actually praying to him
now, though I didn’t realize it at the time. One man stood up, and said that
the didn’t agree with all the words in the song, but that he would keep singing
over and over until he jolly well did believe it all. We all agreed to follow
his example. Within days I had memorized all 19 verses. Here are a few lines
from it;
"Your glory fills the world; protector of the weary and the weak. You
bring the death of attachment. You bring the mind true detachment. Save us from
the ocean deep. Jai dev, Jai Satguru dev. Also
You are my Mother. You are my father. You are my Brother. You are my friend.
You are riches, you are wisdom. You are my all, my lord to me."
My Father was dead, as I’ve described earlier. Now I was singing the praises
of a new father figure. One follower tipped me off about a vacancy that lead to
my first real job, in Lewis’s Department store. I’d been out of work for 18
months. The cult achieved, superficially, what my parents, the schools, the
state, and the church had failed to achieve for me. I felt as though I was
backing the right horse.
Maharaji made his first ever visit to Manchester, and I went to see him,
live. Though we never clapped a speaker giving Satsang, we cheered and laughed
and cried for Maharaji as though he was part of a Beatles comeback tour; it was
sheer hysteria. I was totally intoxicated. The final barrier to the knowledge
crumbled for me, as I was convinced that this preposterous little man really
was God incarnate. I was no longer an atheist and wouldn’t be for another four
and a half years. I was a fanatic. Here he was, 35 years old then, and looking
ten years older, he had declared himself a God when he was just eight years old
in India and inherited a cult founded by his father, who was also called
Maharaj Ji. His wisdom was a pot pouri of tired old risqué jokes and clichés.
He frequently lost the thread of his stories and went off at tangents in a
long, drawn out, allegedly unscripted monologue. But to me, he was Satguru, the
living perfect Master, and my God.
To quote an earlier speech of his, "Guru is greater than God, because
guru can show you God." . Maharaj Ji was literally God to us; as one
follower said often; Maharaji is God the Father, not the Son. Why send a boy to
do a man’s job?
In the days after his visit, the euphoria of the group deepened. We were
sold tap water that he had washed his feet in. I was told that this holy
Charananda water was better than Catholic consecrated water, because if |I
drank it, but left just one drop in the bottom, it would return to its full
original potency when I refilled it. By the time I was drinking this miracle
water, my doubts had genuinely vanished rather than just been suppressed. Bye
Bye skepticism.
Satsang talks got longer, and meals were postponed indefinitely as the
monologues rolled on despite being tired & and hungry. We struggled to listen.
Food and sleep deprivation are two more major components of the brainwashing
art. On some nights, I ended up walking home as the last bus had gone.
As I was now so desperate, they decided I was ready for full initiation. Six
months from my first meeting; I have met members who were kept waiting for up
to two years, and a few who got it right away. The knowledge is the Krijas, the
four secret meditation techniques that are the core doctrine of Divine Light
Mission teachings. It is these krijas that make belief and faith in God
obsolete and experienced Knowledge of God accessible. The big eight hour day
arrived. I was taught the meditation, and sworn to an oath of secrecy never to
share them with anyone.
As I now regard the meditation techniques as an insult, and my whole
recruitment as a mocking exploitation of the vulnerable state I was in at the
time, I have no hesitation in giving you these very meditation techniques. It
starts with a ceremony called the opening of the third eye. This involves the
initiator literally jabbing you in the eyes and the space between your eyes
with his or her fingers, in Maharaji’s name. It’s more startling than painful,
and as you are sitting in a totally darkened room, you can’t tell when it is
going to happen.
1/. THE LIGHT - By focusing in total darkness on the third eye, with your
fingers appropriately placed, with thumb and middle finger resting just below
the eyebrows, (thumb in one eye and third finger in the other), and your index
finger resting gently against the centre of your temple, you close your real
eyes and concentrate. You should see the light forming inside your head. Many
see it as a white glow; clichés like brighter than a thousand suns, and I just
had my head opened and a torch shone in, are common. At first, I saw zilch. On
the second try I saw a bright, thin orange line of light turning over and over
on itself slowly. After you learn the Light, your initiator reads quotations
from saints like Anselm & Augustine to convince you that they also saw The
Light you have seen.
2/. THE MUSIC - involves concentrating on the primordial vibration that
activates the Universe, the so-called ‘Music of the Spheres’. You hear it by
placing your thumbs in your ears and pulling back just far enough not to be
listening to the blood pounding through your ears, which is of course, exactly
what you are meditating on, not God’s Song Of All Creation.
3/. THE HOLY NAME (THE VIBRATION) - This is basically deep hyperventilation,
or over-breathing. Inhale slowly, deeply, smoothly, through your nose, and then
slowly exhale, but before all the air is out you start breathing in again, and
you just keep going, never quite letting all the air out. This overfeeds the
brain with oxygen, and creates an artificial but potent drug like high which
can obliterate some brain cells in the process. Long term practitioners have
claimed an inability to read books or do simple arithmetic any more. This is
the most important technique, and used often in conjunction with the other
three techniques. It is also the one technique you can practice round the
clock, as was expected of DLM followers, and it believed that you can, with
practice, even perform the holy name in your sleep. You are supposed to breath
the holy name in all Satsangs and throughout your working day.
4/. THE NECTAR - This involves a slight sounding addition to the holy name
technique in which you move your tongue back as far is it will go towards the
naval cavity and keep it there as you breath the holy name. This allows you to
supposedly breath in all the sweet tastes in the Universe, while in fact you
are only inhaling mucous, and snot dripping down the cavity towards the throat.
Many followers damaged their tongue muscles using this technique, and while I
never came across a case, the danger of actually swallowing your tongue seems
very apparent.
These meditation techniques turned me into a Premie, which literally means
‘lover of God’. My Mother took my total membership as the final straw. She ran
out of ideas. She watched helplessly as I became totally zombified. Every
night, I meditated for hours, and again as I woke each day.
We went out selling potatoes door to door and later we sold home made cheap
first aid kits the same way. We worked at this for hours, and never got paid a
penny. This was called service, the joy of working for the Guru without
expecting personal reward or even a thank you in return. Service was a
philosophy of total altruism, or as I think of it now, cheap slave labor. We
used to have stalls at rock festivals too, and at Knebworth one year, I
literally worked for 28 solid hours before total exhaustion stopped me. I was
woken up four hours later to start again. The daily life in the cult was one of
daily service, an evening of Satsang, and meditation, That routine rarely
altered over the next four years.
I sold all my treasured books and records to raise money for a pilgrimage to
Rome, not to see the Pope, but to see Maharaji, at a three day festival there.
A friend, a non-Premie joked that I should ask Maharaji who the bloke on the
balcony was, wearing that funny hat. In Rome, Maharaji spoke, and also danced.
He dresses as Krishna, the major Hindu deity and dances to rock music. We went
crazy at this, yelling encore after encore. In retrospect his golden robes and
high crown made him look like Carmen Miranda.
The man who claimed to have no ego, also allowed 8,000 of us, queue up to
kiss the lotus feet themselves. It was called darshan, or being ‘in the presence
of the Master’. We’d heard of Darshan from those who had been before
us, and how Maharaji They told how Maharaji’s feet get cramped and how he
suffers and that they have to carry him off afterwards but that he does it from
his love for us. I think he just liked seeing us grovel before him, to appease
his ego and megalomania, but then, at the peak of my involvement, we’d have
kissed his arse as well as his feet if he’d let us. "He wore socks,"
a Premie moaned. "If he really loved us, we could have kissed his bare
feet." That kind of thinking isn’t thinking at all. Maharaji said,
"If your mind troubles you, give it to me; it won’t trouble me.’ I gave
him mine, but it was creeping back at times. This is expected. We had to
counter it by further meditation, Satsang and service. His mother called him a
cheat. Illusion, meditate. I’m discouraged from sexual relationships, he’s
married with four kids. Mind talk. Ignore it. How can he have no ego? Remember
to practice the holy name.
Maharaji’s 4th son was born on Christmas day. The significance of this was not
lost on us at all. His wife deserves a mention too. Marolyn Johnson, was an
American air stewardess. Maharaji renamed her Durga Ji, after the Hindu
fertility goddess. This was regarded as a terrible insult by many of his Hindu
followers in India, and they left the group in droves as a protest against him.
Maharaji’s followers were often former Christians and Jews who have
redirected their original beliefs towards Maharaji, instead of to other
human-divinity figures. Maharaji is a surrogate God, a syncretistic variation
on the religion virus. We believed he was omnipotent and that he saw us at all
times. If a bus came on time, it was by his grace. If the bus was late, it was
our lack of faith in Goomradjie that was to blame. We attributed miracles to Maharaji;
he allegedly came across a cow that wouldn’t give milk, and told the farmer
exactly how much milk it would give next time it was milked. As you guess, the
prophesy came true. We believed all such piffle.
How did the utopian wonderland world turn sour in the end? I was a poor
follower, having little money to give to the perpetual collections, when even
those giving hundreds of pounds were made to feel guilty for not offering more.
My contribution was mostly through unpaid service. I was also left feeling
slightly outside of everything. I never converted to vegetarianism, which upset
some Premies. I was untidy, unwashed, and worn out from lack of sleep caused by
late night meditation, and my hyperactive mind torturing me. Most Premies
seemed to like me. One girl told me that they liked the way I looked them in
the eye when I spoke Satsang, when few others, especially our co-coordinators and
initiators did. If Premies spoke particularly well, I told them so afterwards,
which was seen by some as a reversion to my old individualism and free
expression of feelings.
Satsangs were in small venues around Manchester. If I wasn’t at a meeting,
people just assumed I was at another house or hall that night. I used this
security lapse to sneak off to the pictures every now and then. One night, a
co-coordinator saw me there and threatened to tell everyone I’d spaced out and
gone back to the ways of the world. "So what are you doing here,?" I
asked him. He never said a word about it. One night, a Premie co-coordinator told
of a dream he had the night before in which he had seen Maharaji. These Darshan
dreams were very sacred pieces of Satsang for us. Unfortunately for him, I had
heard the same story he was telling, presumably on the same radio programme the
night before, and as I was the next speaker, I told everyone about his
plagiarism, and demanded to know why the Satsang company of truth had to be in
the company of liars. I got told off for my outburst, and a few weeks later, he
was moved to a new Ashram in London, a fate shared at various times by many of
the ashram Premies if they stepped on the wrong toes. In 1994, Maharaji came to
Birmingham NEC. There was criticism that high ranking Premies were selling the
best seats to the highest bidders, which resulted in a randomized ticket
allocation. Hall security, Maharaji’s hired and much feared personal bodyguards
were thrown into confusion because Premies suspected of being security risks
(likely to heckle or mob the Guru) would not now be conveniently sat at the
back of the hall, for ease of throwing out. My job was to follow risky members
around, see where they sat, and report their seat numbers to the security men.
None of the people I followed looked even remotely like problem people to me. I
knew some of them. I wondered who might be following me.
I got a seat two rows from the front, and when Maharaji took questions, I
put my hand up. We were supposed to OK such a move with our co-coordinators
first. I hadn’t. Maharaji spoke to me. I asked him how important it was that his
followers loved each other as much if not more than we loved him. "I just
want you all to love me, he replied. What kind of a world would it be if we all
loved each other? I don’t want to French kiss the postman."
I was torn between egotistical pride at getting his attention, and finding
his answer troubling. Worse, the co-coordinators were jealous, and forbade anyone
from quoting the incident at public meetings, which many Premies protested
about. A few months later a girl from the Ashram got to ask Maharaji if she
could cut his hair, which he treated as a cute joke, and she was milked on this
trivial drivel for months at public meetings, again with no mention of my
question. We had our nightly house meetings which were more fun and more
relaxed. While I spoke often at these, I had only once in four years been
invited to speak at a public meeting, (and only then because a co-coordinator
broke the rules). Now, at a house meeting, I found out why. Co-coordinators drew
up a shortlist of about twenty out of a hundred members considered suitable to
speak in public and to act as official recruiters. The girl who spilled this
useful information was drunk and boastful, as she was now on the list and
feeling chuffed about it. The house meetings suddenly came to an end. It was
decided that these meetings lacked official co-ordination and were therefore unauthorized, undisciplined and dangerous. At first we refused to heed the
order, and carried on meeting in that way, believing that Maharaji would stop
the co-coordinators from such corruption once he learned about it, (we seemed to
forget about his omnipotence). ’No one tells me what I do and don’t do at
home,’ one member insisted defiantly. The order was repeated, with little doubt
that it came from the top. All house meetings stopped. Cracks and holes were
forming everywhere, and petty jealousies were rife. Many members were missing
meetings, and some were leaving the movement. I found that I wasn’t maintaining
my meditations every night any more. I lacked the motivation, though I found
myself still going into the trances involuntarily. I was shocked when a man
actually identified me as a Premie just because I had their ‘typical’ glassy
eyed stare.
I committed the cardinal sin then of starting to date a girl we were trying
to recruit. We skipped official meetings to be together, which soon got
noticed, especially as she was asking awkward questions about the guru, as I
used to do when I started. One night a Premie shoulder charged her and knocked
her against a wall and called her a Jezebel for luring me away. It was the real
beginning of the end for me. I started consciously thinking of leaving, and
made several abortive attempts, but for a while I was drifting back. No one
seemed to notice or care about my prolonged absences. The last meeting I
attended seemed dull, and repetitive, and boring. The trouble with Divine Light
is that once you have the Knowledge, the meditation techniques, you are thought
to be saved. There are no new revelations, no new secrets to learn, no progress
or evolution. You just repeat it all, and use satsangs to fund new ways to say
how good it was. Unreplenished enlightenment can quickly go stale. I left for
the last time. drifted for a while, sinking in my own apathy sense of shame. I
was becoming cynical and angry, and more Humanistic, without realizing it at
first. I went into full time education. I needed to get my head back together
again. The lack of listening to my mind had left me with much to be healed. My
mother at least was relieved. I took up the Humanities. At Bolton Institute,
where I was, a cult called The School Of Economic Science was recruiting on
campus. I broke silence and reported my own experiences in the college paper. I
finally felt free. I’ve gone onto become a Humanist, and I hold down a
warehouse job, so I’m reasonably free now, but I am sullen and given to bouts
of intense introspection. Some people think I’m too caustic, sharp, and self
assertive. I always seem to probe into everyone as though they are trying to
sell me something. Many people still sense that I look a bit odd, and keep
their distance from me. It wasn't all bad though. Premies were often wonderful,
sincere loving people. The cult exploited people who got together under the
genuine belief that they would help make the world a better place. There’s a
certain noble sense of tragedy about that, and some of my best friends are
still in there, probably thinking of me as a Judas, and a traitor to their
ideals. That hurts.
The problem for us as Humanists is that when people have religious doubts,
they don’t think there is no God, they just think their religion is the wrong
one for finding God, and they start considering sales pitch offered by other
religions and cults instead. The rise of cults is proof that Christian mainstream
religion has failed, but the cults get in the way when people could start to
see religion for the emptiness it really is. Look at Ann Widdicombe and the
number of people who change religion rather than reject it outright. If not for
cults, there would be many more Humanists around. Cults turn religion into
haggler’s bazaar with religions made to measure, Sometimes we could even
convert people without trying. Going to Rome we used the coach for continual
Satsang, for three days, by the end of which, our hired driver begged to join
us. While Humanists show how it’s possible to live happily and morally without
religion, cults offer themselves as new, better religions. ‘You don’t like that
God? Try this one instead. If all else fails, hype God mark 2; God mark 3.
Cults often splinter from other cults, and sects. They arise when religion
fragments. When is a big cult a small religion? When is a big boat a small
ship? Cults aren't doing anything new. The Krijas were not invented by
Maharaji. They are in the Bagavad Gita. Cults sell old wine in new bottles, but
with no receipts and no refunds for dissatisfied customers like me.
This was the talk I gave to the Bristol Humanists in England in March 1998
Here are some Youtube snippets about the 'Living Messiah (not!) and
his followers
that might be of interest to many of you too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WYNxIt1Pf0
The main meditation
techniques - These are a closely regarded secret in the cult - but here
is some old film of followers cheerfully demonstrating them on camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-KVQKx4spM&mode=related&search=
Words of
rambling wisdom from the Master himself - Guru Maharaji - aka - Prem Pal
Rawat Sing speaks - hard to imagine I found him so charismatic at all -
actually just meandering and boring shrill and squeaky.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hoFU3XbMm0&mode=related&search=
A security guard in Maharaji's service declaring that he no longer
has to think - Sums it up better than I could
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSaPYEmbQZs&mode=related&search=
Of all my observations on the cult, the one that draws the most incredulity is
the statement that I, and others, used to queue up literally in our thousands
to kiss our Guru's feet at a ceremony called Darshan - here's
some film footage of a Darshan taking place.
Arthur Chappell
LINK TO THIS PAGE –http://arthurchappell.me.uk/cults-brainwashing.htm
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