This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 6, Issue 2, from 1992.
I am often told that only the deeply religious get into religious cults. I am regularly informed that I must have been searching for something spiritual. I was in fact an atheist when I was recruited into the Hindu-rooted cult, Divine Light Mission (DLM).
I had been raised as a Roman Catholic, but my left handedness led to my being brutally treated by the nuns who taught at my infant school. I was forced through a series of knuckle raps with a ruler to write right handed with the rest of the school. The result was illegible handwriting and my rapid conversion to Nietzsche’s notion that God is dead. I was skeptical, cynical, hardened and indifferent to all that had anything to do with religion. If anything, my deep aversion and fear of religion helped to make my recruitment easier. I had read nothing on cults. I hadn’t heard of the Moonies, the Scientologists or the Krishnas. Words like ‘brainwashing’ meant nothing to me. There are about 500 cults active in Britain. I was ignorant about all of them.
The death of my father in 1980 and the long-term unemployment I faced in 1981 brought me to a state of temporary despair. I was unsure of myself or my immediate future. It is at such moments of displacement that cults are most likely to strike at a person. The theory that people going through some period of transition in their lives are the most vulnerable to cult recruiters, was advocated by Professor Margaret Singer of the American Cult Awareness Network, and it certainly applied in my case. I’d left school with no prospects; no friends, and no interests beyond an introspective love of cheap Science Fiction.
It was at a bookstall that I was recruited in May 1981. The bookseller, a young lady, invited me to a lecture on ‘Transcendental Meditation’. I accepted her invitation, because it sounded like something to do; and a chance to develop a relationship with her. I took the promised lecture for something academic. I was naive enough to miss any sense of the religious in what I was invited to. The lecture turned out to be a series of discourses and personal testimonies (called ‘Satsangs’) concerning a man called Guru Maharaj Ji. The esoteric jargon-riddled language of the speakers baffled me, and to some extent also amused me. At one moment it was highbrow, and at the next, anarchically offbeat. One girl announced proudly that Maharaj Ji’s knowledge was like the best orgasm she had ever had.
The speakers were also surprisingly hostile to the Christian teachings that I had my own reasons to be averse to. They felt that the scriptures had been distorted by some conspiracy to remove the references to the true inner experience of God; experiences that Maharaj Ji allowed his followers to have again. To me, so cocooned and isolated from all religious expression, this was audacious and exciting talk. My friend, and her colleagues, relentlessly swamped me with beaming smiles, hugs, and anecdotes. I was curious to know more, and I started asking questions… lots of questions. I had to go back a few weeks later to ask more questions… I was hooked, but I still had my doubts. My aunt, an outsider, had met these cultists before; she told me that they were the Divine Light Mission. This was news to me. I took them for a group of friends who just got together once in a while. I asked the cultists if they were in fact DLM. They claimed to be the ‘Divine Understanding Order’ (DUO). (I should point out that ‘Transcendental Meditation’ is a separate cult entirely, and despite the original tone of my invitation, TM has nothing to do with DLM). The romantic date was also out – DLM members are sworn to celibacy, as I would be for four and a half years.
I went to the library and read up on how the young Guru Maharaj Ji had once had the support of his mother and three older brothers. Their support lasted until he married an American air-hostess and renamed her as Durga Ji, the name of a Hindu fertility goddess. As Maharaj Ji himself comes from a Hindu based order, this was extremely offensive to his mother, who renounced him in public as a fraud. This had left many of DLM’s followers (‘Premies’, or ‘Lovers of God’) to abandon the cult. The surviving hard-core elite continued to spread their Guru’s praises by word of mouth, and the cult avoided all publicity (so successfully, in fact, that many writers think that the cult has ceased functioning altogether).
My intense display of questions, doubts and skepticism was quickly squashed. In raising questions about Maharaj Ji’s forgotten past I was frightening other potential converts away. I would have to suspend such deluded thinking: in DLM theology all thinking is a delusion of ‘the Maya’. Maharaj Ji said ‘Because your mind troubles you, give it to me. It won’t trouble me’ [1]. You have to accept Maharaj Ji at face value. I was told in no uncertain terms to stop questioning, or get out of DLM. Now I wish I had chosen excommunication. I was ordered to turn my skepticism off at the source, my mind. I was to learn by experience, and emotion, but not analysis. My mind was an agent of demonic temptation, out to distract me from attaining what was my true birthright. I was taught that Maharaj Ji was my real mother, father, brother and friend.
Remain in the hypnotically soft and repetitious atmosphere of a DLM meeting (Satsang) and you come to accept all that Premies say of Guru Maharaj Ji as true (Satsang means ‘to be in the company of truth’). My earthly mother was horrified by my mental disintegration. I was aggressive, withdrawn, unable to take an interest in anything other than DLM. I didn’t even bother myself with matters of personal hygiene. I heard all my relatives, one by one, pour scorn on Maharaj Ji, but they had the disadvantage of knowing less about the cult than I did. I was experiencing it first hand. I knew how to answer the most scathing criticisms imaginable. I was getting ready to receive the ‘Knowledge’ – the four secret meditation techniques that prove Maharaj Ji is God incarnate (an Avatar on par with Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and the rest).
On 20 October 1981 I received this proof. It consisted of focusing on the Third Eye, after the Initiator (the Premie empowered by Maharaj Ji to reveal the Knowledge) poked me in the eye with her finger. I was to witness his Divine Light inside my head. I saw the light alright, and I took it for God. I’d heard Premies describe it as God for six months. I had no other contextual definitional way of interpreting the Light. Today I see the Light as anything but God; I see it as my having stimulated the pineal gland, activating the chemical processes that normally come to life when you are dreaming or taking LSD. I was seeing the effects of a state of getting high. Quite simply, I was stoned.
There are a number of related techniques. The second, the ‘Music Meditation’ involves sticking your thumbs in your ears, but so hard as to hear the blood pounding through the veins in the earlobes. You pull back just enough to avoid hearing that; and then hear the ‘singing of angels’. The third technique is a hyperventilational breathing discipline which over-oxygenates the brain, creating a buzz. I later learned to use this ‘Holy Name breathing’ in support of the other God-seeing meditations, and in my daily activity. My Initiator even told me that if regulated carefully just before going to sleep, this technique could keep me breathing ‘Holy Name’ throughout the night. I had no reason to doubt it… The fourth technique, that of ‘the Nectar’, involves placing the tongue as far back towards the throat as possible, and tasting the sweetness thus generated. This sweetness turns out to be mucus dripping down the nasal/throat passageway.
I believed it all because I had no reasoning ability left. The very mind-bending deceptive, limited information process (often called brainwashing) which DLM used to indoctrinate me and hundreds of others, stifles the skepticism that sets any alarm bells ringing within. I was subjected to four and a half years of mental atrophication. Cultists know that doubt and skepticism are a threat to them. They therefore set out to hide from that part of us that asks embarrassing questions. Or, they feed those questions with misleading, ambiguous answers. They got me because I was totally ignorant of any information about them – other than what they themselves gave me. By the time I was able to see any objective, critical information on DLM, it was too late. Had I read that they ate babies and had an atom bomb I would have stayed with them…
Eventually I did get out. DLM has only itself to blame for that. When I was recruited it was a highly active, dynamic organisation. I worked for their promotion (a service for which I, like many, was unpaid) and I shared in their Satsang discourses which took place nightly. In time, it became felt among the hierarchy of DLM that such time was not being used productively enough. The spontaneous Satsang talks became more stage managed; speakers were vetted and shortlisted in advance. Many Premies left in disgust, so there were fewer meetings to attend. I was getting used to the creative opportunities for spontaneous communication presented by such meetings (I was a regular speaker at house meetings, but spoke only once at a public meeting). DLM actually made me more articulate. When these meetings declined I started looking for other ways to pass the time, especially in creative writing. My mind started to free itself of its immobilization. I wanted to know the answers to a few questions: How could Maharaj Ji claim to have no ego? Why was celibacy advocated by a man with four children? Why couldn’t his followers love each other as well as loving him? I asked him this last question directly and to my astonishment the Premies in my community were forbidden to refer to the occasion at their public meetings. I saw the petty jealousy and frustration that really motivated the cult members with any true power. I’d had enough.
I left DLM in mid 1985. It was not easy. I found that the addictive meditation effects caused me to go into involuntary trances long after coming out. It was getting into other activity that saved my sanity; I got into my writing with a vengeance, and I undertook a philosophy and literature degree that included an honours dissertation on cults. Today I help others to break free of cults through groups like Family Action, Information and Rescue (FAIR). I am now without a God once again. I am certainly not antireligious. I see religion with a far greater respect. If a sect or cult claims compatibility with your faith you need to ask, skeptically and critically, if that really is the case. I personally doubt the validity of the claims made about the divinity of Jesus. But, if a Christian has faith in Jesus, that is fine by me. I am concerned only when that Christian is approached by someone who claims to share that faith in Jesus in order to trap the Christian into an order that somewhere along the line of its doctrines and practices, spits Jesus out in favour of other teachings.
Cults share a hidden agenda beneath their highly polished sales pitches. Christians and atheists alike need to be skeptical in dealing with them. It’s bad enough to be deceived over a second hand car, but religion is about peoples’ souls, and no one should deceive us into accepting a teaching we would have no wish to invest in, if given free choice in the matter. Though not religious, my interest in different religions is high. My skepticism emerges in response to those who choose either to ram their beliefs directly down my throat, or try to convince me that they are not peddling religion, but something else which is supposed to be a little more acceptable to me. A true religion to me, as an atheist, is not one that has a God that I can believe in, but a religion that presents its theological doctrine with all the cards on the table. Cults invariably fail to achieve this. If someone asks me to suspend disbelief about what they are offering in future, they are likely to have to answer a lot of questions first.
Cultists are ready for the usual skeptical response of ‘Oh you’d never see me in a movement like that’. Such skepticism is based on fears, but also on a lack of knowledge as to how cults recruit. Moonies know that if they say ‘Psst, over here… wanna to be a Moonie?’ you would be off like lightning. Instead, cultists will find out about you, invite you to something you do want to join, like a party, a lecture, a pressure group, or a fraternal society. They then direct their religious beliefs to you in a disguised form. This recruitment method is called ‘Heavenly Deception’. The end justifies all means of getting you and your money involved. Later, the cultists will apologise to you, and say that it was for your own good really.
Most people, if asked, will express skepticism about cults. If asked why they are skeptical they refer to ‘brainwashing’. But if asked to define brainwashing they will rarely have an answer – their skepticism, in fact, lacks depth and definition. Also, many people confuse the cults with one another (I am often asked, and sometimes told, that Guru Maharaj Ji was the man who converted the Beatles to Indian meditation. He didn’t. That was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.) Maharaj Ji has now dropped ‘Guru’ from his title as Great King and now respells his title Maharaji. Divine Light Mission is known as Elan Vital, and despite the claims of many commentators, the group is still very active.
I have spoken and exchanged letters with many ex-victims, relatives and former colleagues from my own days in the cult. To be skeptical, we have to know what it is we are being skeptical about. Don’t assume that cults are a problem but that they won’t affect you. Learn what you can about the nature of the problem, and direct your doubts and skepticism in a constructive, pragmatic, practical way.
My mistake, when aged 18, was to assume that being skeptical about ‘X’ meant having nothing to do with ‘X’. That was a fallacy. I really ought to have looked at ‘X’ closely to ascertain why I ought to have been skeptical about it. That search should have been on my terms, not on the distorted perceptual terms that ‘X’ wished me to look at it with. Today, I’m skeptical about cults, but I know why I am skeptical.
