Mind Control and
Religious Cults
|
Date: 11-24-02
From: Mary
Garden
Email: marygarden@bigpond.com
The
following article by Mary Garden was published in 1990, following the 1988 publication of
her book:
"The
Serpent Rising. A Journey of Spiritual Seduction".
Mary's
extraordinary experiences in India with several gurus, including Sathya Sai Baba, and in
particular her observations and reflections on how easily some people can be persuaded to
switch off and
surrender their powers of critical thought and discernment remain as topical and as
poignant as when she wrote this article and her book. The new version to which she refers
at the end of this article will be eagerly awaited.
For
correspondence or further information about her book, Mary Garden's e-mail address is
given below.
***
Mind
Control and Religious Cults
(originally
published in Nature and Health, Australia, 1990)
Mary Garden
(e-mail address: marygarden@bigpond.com)
Even though I am now regarded as 'a dangerous witch' by some in
the Sathya Sai Baba fraternity, and presumably other groups, I have come to believe that
the e use of bizarre rationalisations by such cults - the Moonies' 'heavenly deception',
for instance - is the essence of mind control.
When I began
writing The Serpent Rising - a Journey of Spiritual
Seduction, I had no intention of exposing gurus and the kingdoms over which they
reign. I was still quite ambivalent about my seven-year stint as a guru-junkie in India
during the 1970s and, if anything, I blamed myself for not having been able to stand up to
the rigours spiritual enlightenment demanded.
The actual
writing of this book, however, had a miraculous effect in that it began to unlock my mind
from what I now see was a quite pernicious form of mind-control. A mind-control to which I
succumbed in the first place for a variety of reasons: the temptation of spiritual power,
a naïve gullibility, some need for authority, a sense of despondency about the meaning of
life ... the list could go on. As I neared completion of the book, the desire to read,
study and think for myself was re-awakened. I discovered numerous other writings by former
cult-members and was astonished to find the same patterns of mind control were present.
Autobiographies of ex-followers of Sun Myung Moon, Jim Jones, Rajneesh, Sai Baba,
Maharishi Yogi, Ron Hubbard, Prabhupada and, more recently, Swaggart and Bakker
(charismatic Christians), revealed alarming exploitation of members - sexual, financial,
psychological and other abuses.
Yet in spite of
such exposés, people are still drawn, as if by a magnet, to these religious leaders and
movements. Hugh Milne's Bhagwan, the God that
Failed documents the hypocrisy that went on in the name of spirituality under
Rajneesh. Although virtually the entire original 'inner' circle have since escaped and are
slowly putting their lives back together again in various parts of the world, a new group
has nestled around the 'Bhagwan', now back in Poona. Despite adverse media publicity over
the bizarre events that unfolded at Oregon, not to mention Milne's revelations, people
still flock to the feet of this man. Tal Brooke, former close devotee of Sai Baba, wrote Lord of the Air in which he claimed that this
so-called avatar was in fact a deviant con-man, possessing extraordinary psychic powers by
which he could prey on his followers, especially close male disciples. Yet people still
rush off to Bangalore convinced that there is God on Earth.
Why? Is it the
addiction to the bliss one can feel in the presence of these enigmatic beings? Or do
people deliberately close their minds out of fear, because what is being reported in
exposés is too threatening to their faith? And why do people assume that because a person
exhibits unusual powers of clairvoyance, healing, or even materialisation of physical
objects that this instantly seals his claim to divinity?
The place in
India where I spent the most time at (and where I suffered a wide range of abuse), was an
isolated ashram near Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas. This was the kingdom of
a powerful yogi, Balyogi Premvarni, who had a chameleon personality portraying not only
god-like qualities but also revealing a cruel, almost demonic face. However, I later even
came to believe that this darker side was in fact just divine 'lila' - a
test to wake us up!
It is now clear that my
dramatic changes of personality (which I regarded as spiritual) were in fact a total
disruption of my individual identity as a person. This disruption was in part
facilitated by the imposition of a new name - a common initiation in most religious cults.
When "Swamiji" bestowed on me the Sanskrit name 'Archanad' , he
explained that my true spiritual path was one of adoration of the Divine. These new names
have tremendous significance - they signify a re-birth, a cutting off from the past,
as if what we were before needs to be somehow obliterated, forgotten.
However, the problem is that
surrender to a guru-figure can lead to the disintegration of personality and
individuality. Instead of the promise of increased awareness and humility, what can take
place is increased robotism. In my own case, over the years I became more and more
indecisive, since most major decisions were made for me. I became like a puppet to this
yogi, who was able to manipulate my emotions, thoughts, behaviour often through his own
psychic powers. Yet I stayed, convinced that he was the most enlightened person on this
planet. (All the other self-professing god-men in India at this time were well down the
ladder of course!) Plus there was the appeal of '...
the taste of the sublime kundalini fire rising
up our spinal columns, our third eye centres opening into light and our hearts melting
into ecstasy'.
One major
contributing factor to mind-control is the gaining of control over a person's environment.
That may mean something as drastic as literal isolation, such as attending a Moonie
weekend camp, or getting a new recruit to attend one meeting after another. Behaviour
control may soon extend to limiting a person's food and sleep, dictating the sort of
clothes worn, the rituals adopted and the work done. The environment in our ashram was
completely regimented in regard to all these things. Some of these impositions, if they
had been less extreme, could have been quite good for us after the self-indulgent,
pampered lives we had led in the West. But we were always getting sick, probably from a
combination of lack of protein in our diet, physical exhaustion from long working hours,
the water we were encouraged to drink from the Ganges, and at times sleep-deprivation.
The use of guilt
and fear is the most powerful way that cults and gurus gain emotional control over their
followers. People become too frightened or paranoid to leave.
Whilst in Poona we were constantly
reminded that if we left (or lost faith), we would miss out on this wonderful opportunity
to be with an enlightened master - the Bhagwan Rajneesh. Moonies and other aberrant
Christian cults are also warned that if they leave they'll be in Satan's hands. In the
Himalayas, we were encouraged to develop a phobia of the outside world. That world out
there, outside the ashram, was in some way evil, samsara,
non-spiritual. When after a few months I asked Swamiji if I could go to Delhi to
collect some money, he replied: 'Everyone comes here and wants to leave straight away.
They use any excuse and go running back into the world again to get covered in dreams.
They forget their guru who tried so hard to wake them up. Such is the pull of samsara.'
The most widely
used and effective way to control a member's thoughts are thought-stopping rituals such as
mantras, 'speaking in tongues', meditating, singing. These are used to such a repetitive
degree that they become hypnotic or trance-inducing. Such rituals, normally useful and
valuable, are perverted in cults since a person is taught to activate them at the first
sign of doubt, anxiety, etc. Thus he/she is encouraged to block out a whole range of
normal human feelings and thoughts, particularly those that are regarded as negative.
Because the leader and the teachings are to be viewed as 'perfect', any problem that
arises is assumed to be the fault of the cult member. Towards the end of my stay with
Swamiji I was ordered to chant a new mantra continuously - a mantra for the Mother
Goddess, Durga Devi. I was told that the rage, grief and other so-called negative emotions
that had begun to plague me, were in fact deeply embedded samsaras cleansing themselves from my subconscious
mind. (Sometimes "Swamiji" used to day that I was being possessed by an evil
spirit.) In fact, looking back, these stronge emotions of mine
were a natural reaction to the irrationality and cruel teachings of Swamiji., It wasn't me that was bad or 'possessed': rather the man I
regarded as my guru was a madman.
Leaders exalt
themselves as an actual incarnation of God or a special divine messenger and they
invariably demand absolute unquestioning obedience and surrender. Hence, cult members
refuse to admit any information that he or she may in fact be otherwise: namely human like
the rest of us, prey to normal lusts of the flesh and the ego. Members, have to construct
endless rationalisations to explain away contradictions, moral lapses or unethical
behaviour of their guru. Thus sexual dalliances with male or female disciples may be seen
as kundalini raising or tantric exercises.
Swamiji used to laugh at me whenever I questioned why he preached celibacy and why the
boys were not allowed to have sex. His reply was: 'This
isn't sex. Sex is what you had with your worldly men. I am just raising your kundalini.' Tal
Brooke, ex-devotee of Sai Baba, shares his similar experiences: 'Up till now I've kept
pretty quiet about the whole thing. I thought it was some kind of purification or test of
allegiance'.
Leaders'
outbursts of temper, physical beating of disciples, hypocrisy or inconsistencies may be
rationalised as 'testing' the disciples' devotion or 'waking them up'. A leader's sickness
may be explained as 'working off the karma of devotees' or even 'an attack by the enemy'!
Members of some
groups are encouraged to be dishonest in order to promote their cause as they believe 'the
end justifies the means'. When one Hare Krishna devotee asked his partner about. the
ethics of lying to people on the street about where the money collected was going, he was
told: 'It is written in the holy scripture that we can deceive the uninitiated when we do
it for Krishna. He who has the transcendental conviction stands beyond good and evil'. The
Moonies believe that they can lie about the objects of their fund-raising methods because
they regard it as 'heavenly deception'. One Moonie is reported as saying: 'Satan deceived
God's children, so we are justified in deceiving Satan's children'. A leader may claim
that he can lead a luxurious life-style because he says he is detached from material
things. Why, then, are no cult leaders poor?
Implicit in all
these mental back-flips is the same message: I cannot trust my own feelings and thoughts.
My own doubts are in some way evil or wrong; a barrier to faith. Impediments on my climb
to enlightenment. Yet doubt and questioning must be an essential part of any sincere
spiritual search. An unexamined faith is surely not worth having, for how else can we
discern false prophets, charlatans. Right from the outset, it was explained that when I
was able to surrender and accept Swamiji as my guru, only then would I be able to
understand the strange pantomimes and bizarre situations that arose in the ashram.
Rajneesh also encouraged the same Catch-22 situation. Leave your minds and your shoes
outside the gate! Just have faith. But as Sally Belfrage said to Rajneesh, 'The world is
full of phony gurus. How can we evaluate without the rationality, you'd have us drop? One
can't always just feel who is right'.
Hugh Milne,
Bhagwan's former bodyguard for eight years, concludes: 'A false master has to have as many
unquestioning people around him as possible, and Rajneesh was a brilliant manipulator of
the unquestioning disciple ... Rasputin, Hitler and Mussolini were all powerful
charismatic leaders who could draw people to themselves, seducing them and manipulating
them into giving up their own principles and finally their own integrity. The obvious
example in recent times is that of the Jonestown massacre'.
Even though a
great number of people may have experienced benefits or profound changes in their lives
from the burgeoning New Age movement and the recent revivals in both Christianity and
Buddhism (or even perhaps from being at the periphery of cults), there is a dark side that
has been largely dismissed and ignored. I think the questions we must be asking are: Why
do many people lack the inner resources to resist a brainwashing attack? Why are the
mind-control techniques of cults and gurus easily able to take control of people's
personalities and alter them? Why are many of us so dependent on outside authority
figures? How do we educate our children to think independently of the society around them,
to have control over their lives?
The
perniciousness of cult mind-control is that in exchange for certitude and a sense of
belonging, people give up their humanness and critical discernment to a leader and/or
movement that seems to offer an easy way out of the complexities of life. And it is so
easy to do, as Jeannie Mills found out: 'When you meet the friendliest people you have
ever known, who introduce you to the most loving group of people you've ever encountered,
and you find the leader to be the most inspired, caring, compassionate and understanding
person you've every met, and then you learn that the cause of the group is something you
never dared hope could be accomplished, and all this sounds too good to be true it
probably is too good to be true!'
(Jeannie, a
former member of Jim Jones' People's Temple, was assassinated following the 1978 Jonestown
murder of 911 adults and children.)
***
A few copies of
Mary Garden's book, The Serpent Rising, are
still available ($15 plus postage). A revised edition is in preparation. Contact marygarden@bigpond.com.
References
and suggested reading:
Belfrage, S., Flowers of Emptiness, London: The Women's Press,
1981.
Brooke, T., Lord of the Air. Herts, Great Britain: Lion
Publishing, 1976.
Brooke, T., Riders of the Cosmic Circuit, Herts, Great Britain:
Lion Publishing, 1986.
Collin-Smith, J.
Call No Man Master, Bath, Great Britain: Gateway
Books, 1988.
Conway, E and
Siegelman, J. Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden
Personality Change, New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1978.
Davis, D. Berg. The Children of Gad: The Inside Story, Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984.
Freed, J. Moonwebs. Toronto, Ont.: Dorset.
Garden, Mary, The Serpent Rising. A Journey of Spiritual Seduction,
Queensland, Brolga Publishing, 1988.
Gordon, J. The Golden Guru: The Strange Journey of Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh, Lexington: Stephen Greene Press, 1987.
Hassan, S., Combatting Cult Mind Control, Rochester, Vermont:
Park St. Press, 1988.
Hoffman, E., Dark Side of the Moonies, Sydney, Australia:
Penguin, 1982.
Miles, A. Don't Call Me Brother, A Ringmaster's Escape from the
Pentecostal Church, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1989.
Miller, R. Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, London:
Sphere Books, 1987.
Milne, H. Bhagwan, the God that Failed, London: Sphere Books,
1987.
Vosper, C. The Mind Benders, St Albans, Herts: Mayflower
Books, 1973.
***