Similarly, high control groups often move among us, unrecognized for what they are. I have written elsewhere about the Hidden Levers and Dissolving Dissonance that allow cunning cults to stay hidden in plain sight, as well as how they remain concealed through Surprises, Blinders and Lies.

Let’s look at another aspect of a high control group, its onion-like structure. This structure does two things:

1 — The layers create a pathway for pacing people through successively deeper levels of indoctrination and submission over time.

2 — The structure also facilitates the creation and maintenance of the illusions that are so critical to the group’s functioning. With tight information control, only those closest to the center may have access to unsavory truths about the founder or group — and they are unlikely to be able to see those truths directly for what they are, as it would blow up their world in every way. Instead, they have become adept at denial and rationalization as a matter of survival.

Layer by Layer

To illustrate the onion concept, I will flesh out the layers of my old meditation group. My understanding comes from the particular period of my peak involvement (~2001–2006), with insights gained from publications and conversations that speak to earlier eras, as well as tidbits shared by others (all included with permission). The layers might look a little different during various eras of the group; that is typical for any group, which will be fluid as it builds its empire and adapts to circumstances.

Keep in mind that other groups may parse the layers differently. They may have fewer, or more, layers. They may have front groups more disconnected from activity at the core. They may have more or less churn of members or lieutenants.

Regardless, a layered structure following similar principles will be found in a high control group of any kind, be it Eastern, Christian, New Age, commercial, therapeutic, political, etc.

This structure also appears in extremist groups — think ISIS — and political totalitarian regimes. The onion concept actually originates with Hannah Arendt, a German Jewish and American political philosopher who theorized on the origins of totalitarianism, after herself fleeing Nazi Germany.

At the Heart

The leader / founder / teacher / guru sits here, at the heart of it all. This person is the driver of the entire enterprise. They are the source of charisma and authority that grows and controls the group. Arendt writes:

“In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it into motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his ‘intangible preponderance.’ His position within this intimate circle depends upon his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel.” [i]

Relationship Zero

Social psychologist and cult survivor Alexandra Stein uses the term Relationship Zero to indicate the first person captured in the thrall of the leader. This first relationship creates the model for the leader-follower relationship generally; any subsequent followers will replicate those patterns established in the original dyad.

For the founder of my old group, Relationship Zero was a young southern woman. I’ll call her Katarina here. She had already been dabbling in occult and mystical circles for several years when the future founder of my group appeared on the scene. She had a more enduring appetite for meditation than most of the other young people who first attended his lectures and meditation sessions in the Bay Area.

​I imagine Katarina in those early years as demure and malleable, the perfect devoted helpmate to a man who needed continuous affirmation (and perhaps visa help too). Katarina was his everything, from wife to chauffeur to business manager. At first, she worked full-time in the city, while the itinerant guru gave talks at no charge.

Before they had barely begun to get organized in the U.S., the couple returned to his native India together for several years. He supposedly became more “established” in illumination during that time. There may have been practical, immigration and bureaucracy- related reasons for this detour from building a proper following in the fertile fields of flower-child California.

In any case, this sojourn on the other side of the globe surely isolated Katarina more completely from her family, friends, and culture, engulfing her in his world and worldview. These years in a foreign land would have made her completely dependent upon her husband, the aspiring guru.

One could only speculate as to whether, in addition to isolation, other elements of the Power and Control wheels associated with controlling 1:1 relationship or similarly controlling religious groups came into play (religious wheel featured here).

I imagine she embraced the teacher with the same idealism that later students would, feeling privileged to be part of bringing the sacred science of meditation to the West. Her own personal history and psychology may also have influenced in meaningful ways how she responded to the attention of this charismatic figure, and why she attached herself to the particular person she did.

(Notably, women who suffered sexual abuse as children are far more likely to be revictimized later. I wonder if a similar parallel exists for those who have grown up in the shadow of narcissists or psychopaths.)

Given the era and their backgrounds, the couple probably largely shared ideas around gender roles that worked in his favor. While they built his public image as a teacher of Eastern wisdom, Katarina was content to stay behind the scenes. To what extent she deferred to his goals and decisions, and gradually lost faith in her own intuition and critical thinking abilities, I could only speculate.

Katarina did wield considerable power in the group they built — and seemed to those who later left to have relished all the perks of power, and been complicit in the abuses of power on the part of the teacher that went unchecked. This kind of both/and reality — she was both a victim and a perpetrator of harm to others — is common in a high control group.

Whether the teacher’s control over Katarina was subtle and largely voluntary, or more dramatic and deftly orchestrated, the result was the same — her agency and individuality were subsumed to him as she became, first, his helpmate, and later, his most trusted surrogate within the cult.

Altogether the couple spent four years in India. During this time, as his group would later tell it, they lived with his ancestral family. Without the need to earn a living or attend to practical matters, they focused on immersion in meditation and other spiritual disciplines.

Geographic isolation, cultural-religious engulfment, and long hours every day of mind-altering practices — all of this would have made for a potent setting for Katarina’s indoctrination.

Surely, by the time the obstacles that had prevented their earlier return to California “fell away,” Katarina’s conversion was complete. From this cult of one, the guru would soon expand his reach.

Ring Around the Ruler

When the couple came back to California — now a more consolidated unit — the would-be spiritual teacher picked back up with his efforts to gather a community.

He had a handful of supporters from his earlier campaign in the Bay Area who had kept the faith. Most notable was a woman I’ll call Carrie, who provided the home that would shelter not only the guru and his wife, but additional early students.
​
As the guru’s audience grew, an inner circle of close students and housemates developed. Eventually the group would obtain a rural property on which to establish a commune. The idealistic young adults who surrounded him there built the compound with their own hard labor.

​While the teacher continued to commute to the city to give public talks, he carved out a traditional guru-student role for himself with the young residents of his new ashram. There was a bait-and-switch tactic here that could make a used car salesperson proud.

In public talks previously, the eminently humble teacher had told eager meditators that he merely pointed the way to enlightenment; each person would have to do their own traveling. Once the young seekers were firmly ensconced as residents at the ashram, however — increasingly isolated from their families and the outside world, increasingly immersed in mind-altering spiritual practices, increasingly talking and thinking in the loaded language he supplied them — the teacher changed his tune.

Now he beseeched the eager seekers to surrender to him as their guru, if they truly wanted to attain enlightenment. The students had been acclimated over years of life with the guru before this pronouncement emerged. As one escapee told me emphatically, “I never would have joined a group where the leader said, devotion to the teacher IS the path.”

The guru’s inner circle at that time would have been drawn from this group of communalists, made up of those who were most loyal, deferential and compliant. At a later stage of his life, when he struggled with the health challenges brought by age, this inner circle would include his direct caregivers.

Within that inner circle, closest to the guru and his wife were lieutenants that enforced norms on their behalf. In some groups, these positions would have formal titles (like lieutenant). I don’t think that was the case in my old group; but the function was the same, carrying out the will of the leader within the group.

It probably made the holder of such a position feel special to be so trusted. Alas, there is typically higher turnover in these positions, who are exposed to more of the ugliness at the heart of the onion, and more at risk for disillusionment, burnout and misconduct, or grabbing power for themselves, any of which would make them a threat to the leader — and thus get them removed. No one but the teacher is irreplaceable.

Among those who were enforcers for the couple at the heart of the onion, one man got into trouble with the law when — repeating patterns of the founder, only outside the group — he attempted to serve his own sexual needs with an underage girl.

As I saw myself when I worked at the ashram, and have consistently observed from afar in the twenty years since, the Board of Trustees for the organization has always been stacked with loyalists. The organization scores poorly with external bodies on things like the independence of its governing board and the transparency of its financials. This kind of insularity is a red flag that a group is likely controlling in nature. It shows that even when the leader is gone, the onion remains intact, inner ring and all.

Residents & Workers

While the inner circle would, I expect, have drawn primarily from those who lived and/or worked at the ashram, not everyone there is equally on the inside. This larger pool of people created a community that could engage with the wider world.

Some resided at the ashram, worked in the nearby community, and helped the ashram run through their contributions of labor in the kitchen or the gardens, or in maintaining the buildings and grounds.

Others took up specialized roles to support the mission of the outward-facing organization. The founder was their brand — when I was there, they even went through a rebranding phase where the web site, emails and everything else consisted of his name. That felt uncomfortable to me at the time, as I was still holding to the “he only points the way” side of the group’s propaganda.

No doubt the young enthusiasts over the decades were lauded for giving selflessly (largely anonymously, to the public) to the group’s work. Ultimately the group’s real function was to serve as a vehicle for glorifying the founder.

Students of the guru worked as volunteers or low-paid employees for public-facing programs. It began with his talks and lectures throughout the Bay Area; expanded to include a press that published a journal, and later books; special projects, such as those in the fields of health and conservation; and in time, overnight meditation retreats.

This ashram layer includes a group that doesn’t fit neatly into the schema — people who show up strictly as employees, live locally, may develop friendly relationships with the residents over time, may interact somewhat with the wider public served by the organization, but are not themselves meditators or students of the teacher. They are not exposed directly to the programs and teachings of the group.

I’m not sure how many there are in that category currently, or when it started. During my peak involvement, it included a local woman who cooked meals for the retreats, and perhaps some people who helped ship books from the press’s warehouse. This in-but-not-really-in group is depicted in my graphic as a shoot that touches all the layers from meditator-workers through the public.

Ashram Associates
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The next layer out was created later, sometime after a program of meditation retreats was well-established. What I’ll call here the Ashram Associates program was geared toward young adults when I started going to retreats. I’m not sure if it existed in some other form before that.

It used the social lever of scarcity — we have a limited number of spots, and you must apply and make your case for why you should be included. It offered the opportunity for a greater sense of intimacy within the participating cohort, and between those participants and the ashram long-timers. And it promised spiritual rewards for the deeper exploration in which we would be guided, over six months of intermittent in-person retreats, at-home work, and online connection among participants.

I participated in this program, along with many other young adults of my cohort. It proved an effective means of deeper indoctrination into the community. And it was a gateway to the next layer in — most of us ended up, sooner or later, moving to the area and living and/or working at the ashram.

For some this was a move from southern to northern California. For others, like me, it was from another region of the U.S. to the Bay Area. Still others came from other countries, even another continent.

Later a similar model was used, with the same name, but minus the focus on young adults. I suspect not enough of us “stuck” — young adults, after all, tend to be in a time of transition. Easy come, easy go. (I mean, not *really* easy — it upended my life! But we childless, early-career YAs were less tied down elsewhere.)

Subsequent cohorts included folks who were later in their careers, or even retired. Well-established and, I think, largely past the child-rearing stage. The ones I know of were professionals who had the resources, of money and time and skills, to be able to help carry out the work of the group. Most of the married ones seem to have been in relationships with people also practicing the group’s methods; they progressed inward in the onion structure together.

Participation in this program promised mature adults a sense of purpose and closer relationships, similar to the appeal for YAs. Only these folks would not soon conclude, as I had, that there was no way they could save for retirement adequately while working for the group. No, they already had that taken care of.

An overlapping category here may be those who would become program presenters. This is a structure that was developed after I left the group. The aging first-generation students were looking for ways to sustain retreats, while reducing reliance on themselves. For those offered the opportunity to serve in this way, it would have seemed a great honor to be so trusted. I gather their training was quite controlled, with scripts that required strict adherence.

Similarly, some people would come closer in other kinds of volunteer capacities, such as serving on the editorial team. They would work closely with — and be closely guided by — loyalists who were deeper/longer in.

Some of those later associates and presenters did end up moving to live near or at the ashram. As with my YA cohort, however, there was plenty of “leakage.” People who moved back outward again are seen in outer layers of the onion, or are made invisible beyond it.

The group was left with a challenge at the opposite end of the age spectrum from the one at which I entered — how to prevent older ashram associates, ones who had taken the leap to living on group property, from becoming a net drain on resources as they aged out of their productive years. I understand that some years ago, leadership adopted a rule — “voluntarily” embraced by all to whom it would one day apply — that associates would retire, and cease to live on group property, when they hit 70 years of age.

I wonder how many waves of these special programs there have actually been over the decades. Each time, the organization netted some short-term free or cheap labor and donations. Each time, one or a few people may have stuck and become long-term residents / workers, replenishing the heart of the onion that would keep it all going.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t seem to be enough. I don’t see the ashram community or the 501(c)(3) program provider surviving past the dwindling population of current residents. The remaining stalwarts may themselves have come to terms with this; those who fully embrace the teacher’s story of reality may expect that they will be reunited with him in future lifetimes, when all are reincarnated and can pick back up with the work in same way.

Retreatants

The guru expanded from public talks to overnight meditation retreats sometime in the mid-80s. These began in an existing retreat center in the Bay Area. Over a decade later, the group would establish its own retreat house, much closer to the ashram.

The guru was aging by this time, and was purposeful in training hand-picked students to learn to present his program of meditation and related practices. (When the long-timers did likewise with non-residents, they were simply replicating the train-the-trainer model.)

You can get pretty deeply indoctrinated just from retreats, which provide a focused period in a controlled environment, a closed community. Meditating together in person seems to amplify the effects of the practice. That in turn makes one more suggestible to teachings presented in that time.

(If they haven’t already, I expect someday scientists will measure how our minds affect each other. We know that our nervous systems can do this — children cue off their parents’ responses to surprising events, to know whether to respond with alertness or calm. Perhaps our alpha-states are somewhat contagious, just as emotions of various kinds can spread between us humans, who are such social creatures.)

Over time, a variety of options were developed in the retreat program. In person near the ashram, for a weekend, or a whole week. Special pilgrimages of one’s own to this sacred site of the guru. Regional retreats, held for many years in major cities throughout the U.S., and even overseas. More recently, especially since the pandemic, online retreats.
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After the guru’s death, the retreats continued, with his long-time students facilitating workshops, and playing recordings of his talks. As a retreat-goer, after all the talks viewed, not to mention books read, and stories shared around the retreat house dining table by long-time students, it felt like I knew the teacher myself.
​​

​I was taking in his words daily in one form or another, even at home. Within a couple of years, I could reel off any of the spiels on various spiritual topics myself, using the group’s own language, as if it were second nature. Such restricted use of language is a sign of increasing control over one’s mind.

Satsangs

A program more recent even than retreats are satsangs, local groups of people that meet weekly in their city to meditate together, based on the methods of the teacher. Coordinators follow guidelines provided by the ashram, and focus on the teachings of its founder. I remember my old satsang sometimes watching and discussing videos together, too, of the teacher’s recorded talks.

In retrospect, I see how the organization tried to establish boundaries, keeping satsangs only for those who were faithfully doing their method of meditation. In practice, some folks just interested in reading or viewing the materials, and sharing fellowship with others who have spiritual interests, could turn up too, depending on how rigorously the coordinator of that particular group enforced the intended boundaries.

The satsangs were framed as a way to provide fellowship and support where you live for your meditation practice. And they did do that. Along with nightly reading of the founder’s books and journal articles, frequent home viewing of his videos (via a DVD of the month program, or later, an online video archive), periodic retreat attendance, and volunteer work for the ashram, the weekly satsang in one’s own community added yet another touchpoint in one’s life that reinforced the practices, the identity, and the relationships tied up with the founder and his ashram.

The result is a category of people that I see as in a gray zone of indoctrination. They might never identify themselves as having been part of a high control group, even if they someday learn how such groups work, and learn previously-withheld hard truths about its founder. Because they didn’t get in *that* deep. From the outside, they would seem to be leading normal lives in their communities, with work and families and friends.

However, on the inside, it is quite possible to be plenty indoctrinated while living far from the ashram. It’s all a spectrum.

Someone who just read some books, took to the meditation practice, and perhaps plugged into a local satsang might recover relatively quickly from the shock of contradictory new information about the founder. In contrast, it might be much more world-shaking for someone who had become more deeply enmeshed relationally and spiritually with the group, through years of retreats, perhaps personal acquaintance with the guru or core first-gen students, perhaps going through an ashram associate program or serving as a presenter or getting in deep as a skilled volunteer who is virtual staff, and being deeply invested in one’s own identity.

Readers

It’s been over a half century since the founder of my old group started teaching meditation in this country, and building an organization to further that work. And the most common way people come into contact with his work now is his books. (I say “his” books, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say books published in his name, since virtually all of them were, I now understand, ghost written.)

Perhaps a hundred people have resided at the ashram over these 50+ years.
Thousands have surely come to public talks and retreats. And who knows how many have watched the videos of the founder’s talks that are, by now, available online.

But books and other publications bring the teacher’s exposure exponentially higher.
​

Millions have read the books or translations published in the founder’s name (or read e-books or listened to audio-books). The translations in particular, I’ve heard, are on the shelves of yoga studios hither and yon.

This is the most common point of entry into the onion. Many people will stop at that layer. But without the books, some who end up deep inside might never have even heard of this particular teacher and meditation practice.

What the Onion Structure Accomplishes

The layers of my old group illustrate fairly well how these onion structures tend to work for high control groups generally.

Moving Down the Pipeline

The layers provide the group a means of cult-ivating people into deepening levels of involvement.

The books are a feeder for the retreats — I recall postcards that came in them, by which one could be added to the mailing list and indicate interest in learning about programs. The retreats further funnel some people into special programs, volunteering, and even, eventually, living and/or working at the ashram. This may have been true of other programs that came and went before my time in the group. Human resources are drawn from the periphery in toward the center of the onion.

​​All publications and programs also provide some level of income to support the ashram. I suspect, though, that such income might be a wash, financially, if not for the charitable donations of the most committed supporters. Especially, the estate gifts that are surely “maturing” with increasing frequency in this decade.

There is an element of choice in this process. Individuals are encouraged and/or self-select to go deeper — or not. As I explored in Who Joins Cults?, this process is akin to a non-profit’s systematic cultivation of donors. If done with full transparency for mutual benefit, such a process is ethically sound. Transparency, alas, is usually spotty at best in a high control group.

The self-selection part of the process is evident. I chose to try out this particular method of meditation after I learned about it from a fellow traveler. Later I chose to read book after book by that meditation teacher, and eventually to go to a regional retreat. Later still, I decided to attend a weeklong retreat at the headquarters. Further down the line, I applied to participate in the Ashram Associate program. This is part of how the illusion of choice is created — this is the part we know about.

A high control group quietly influences participants throughout the process (part 1 ​part 2), not least by withholding critical information for individual’s decision-making. I certainly would have made different choices if I had known the truth about the founder and his community.

In addition, puppet-masters in the group are making unseen choices about who gets to go deeper — and who doesn’t.

Any steps the group takes to encourage or bar participation may only be visible to the individual involved. I remember interactions with several different long-timers from the ashram who encouraged me to feel that I had something valuable to offer as a potential employee, should I choose to draw closer in that way. These were private conversations. No doubt others who made the move had their own experiences of love-bombing or gentle nudging.

On the other hand, the group could quietly decide who to prevent from moving further inside the onion. The Ashram Associate program I participated in seemed open to anyone with a genuine interest and ability to make the commitment. However, I now understand that there were other criteria applied to admission decisions.

I recently learned that one woman who had gotten involved with the community was barred from participating in young adult programs, despite falling within the indicated age range. She was told that she was not eligible because she was married. She was crushed! It really hurt. She didn’t understand what her marital status had to do with why she should or should not have access to this opportunity for spiritual growth.

I would guess that had her spouse been a fellow meditator, and had they both applied to participate together, the outcome would have been different. As it was, her relationship with her uninvolved spouse would have made her harder to indoctrinate into the group. So they chose not to invest in her. That piece of the process was not publicized, of course.

​Similar gatekeeping between layers may have been carried out, based on whether particular individuals had skills needed by the organization. For example, desirable skills in my old group, at certain points in time, included everything to do with publishing (copywriting, editing, graphic design, translation, marketing); fundraising (annual fund, grants, major donor development); digital editing of the teacher’s old talks, administrative and HR skills, web site management, presenting, and so on.

And of course, closer to the center of the onion, going back to the guru’s lifetime, those admitted to the innermost circle would’ve been those who most met his needs, be they practical, psychological, or otherwise.

Gradual Conditioning

The more time passes, and the deeper into the onion one goes, the more one’s whole life becomes colonized, from the inside, by the group and its worldview.
First, the way they behave becomes the way you behave — doing the practices, whatever they may be in a given a group.
​
Through this immediate experience brought on by behavior, as well as through instruction, the way they think becomes the way you think. (Or the way you don’t think — the suspension of thought is a big part of the process.)

Likewise, you learn what are appropriate ways to feel and you perform accordingly, restricting and denying even to yourself feelings that are outside the bounds of permissibility. Janja Lalich calls this bounded choice. [ii]

The concept of bounded choice helps me greatly to understand the apparent blindness of the long-timers in my group to what it has become, from its promising beginnings as a group of idealistic young people, to a community riddled with shameful secrets that no one signed up for — and no one still left seems willing or able to look at.

While I understand there are groups that quickly isolate and strip away the identities of new recruits, my experience in my old group was much more gradual. It happened as I came closer, layer by layer.

One of my old friends from my YA cohort observed something that illustrates a deliberate aspect of this process. The information shared by the group is geared to the particular layer you are in — and perhaps even, at times, what they read you as an individual to be ready for, open to.

For example, the videos of the teacher’s talks are curated and calibrated to meet a person where they are at, in their particular layer of the onion. When he was alive, he would have done this calibration himself, of course. Now those exerting leadership in his absence continue to do the same with his videos and writings.

Some talks viewed by ashram die-hards would never be shown at an introductory retreat — only a fraction of the talks archived would be considered suitable for the public. Potential recruits and newbies are kept on a diet of palatable propaganda, until moved deeper into the onion.

The spiritual practices and ideas which draw them in can be found in various teachers and traditions, and are artfully expressed by this particular teacher who speaks charmingly to their time. No one says at the outset: “Once you come to trust this teacher, this community, the message will slowly change. Loyalty will start to mean something different.” No, that has to be worked up to over a long period of time.

Alexandra Stein explains, “propaganda plays an important role in what we might call ‘voluntary’ recruitment.” These are “the ideas, messages, images and narratives that are used specifically to communicate with the outside world… those to whom propaganda is directed are not yet isolated or only partially so… Propaganda can be seen as the softening up process that gets the recruit to the point where indoctrination processes can start to be implemented… As recruits enter more fully into the life of the group the language and messages change.” [iii]

I have described elsewhere an evening ritual after meditation that was orchestrated at the end of the Ashram Associate program for my cohort. In our highly-suggestible post-meditation state, within the shared circle of identity of the cohort, we were invited to ACT OUT a kind of reverence and submission toward the guru (see the end of The Roots of Control).

This is something I would NEVER have imagined myself going along with before I took up this method of meditation. I was not someone who had started down this path seeking a guru, nor a devotional relationship, much less SURRENDER. I barely remember the experience, which may be partly because of the twilight mental state (and literal darkness in that garden — it feels like a dream). But that may also be because it’s not consistent with my self-understanding, so I didn’t let it up to the surface. That whole cognitive dissonance thing.

I guess that was my generation’s version of the bait-and-switch that the guru’s early students had experienced regarding the role of the teacher.

All Is Maya… The Membranes’ Function

At the innermost layers of the onion, in my old group, the real world is not regarded as terribly real. This is not the highest reality; no, from the plane of enlightenment, where the guru presumably is and everyone else has been conditioned to want to be, this reality is no more real than a dream is to waking consciousness.

Perhaps it is more than coincidence that illusion plays such an important metaphysical role. It certainly plays an important practical one in the group.

​Consider Hannah Arendt’s concept that each layer in a totalitarian movement (or in my case, small, non-political cult) serves a double function. It protects the inner core from too much contact with the real world, from which they have grown disconnected and out of touch.

And it protects the outer layers from the weirdness at the heart of the onion. Including the truth underneath the mythology of the founder, and his less-than-morally-exemplary behavior.

Alexandra Stein puts it this way:  “the deeper you go toward the center of the system, the more distant from reality you become … The life and beliefs of the innermost circle are so extreme that the outer circles must be protected from it until they are ready and have moved through the intervening layers, becoming sufficiently conditioned along the way. On the other hand, the inner circle must also be protected from the reality that might burst their fictional bubble… the group employs secrecy and deception to maintain the separation between layers.” [iv]

At this point, I’d guess the long-timers still remaining at the ashram are so deeply embedded in the guru’s story of the world — and so far entrenched in betrayal blindness, if they’ve made it this long — that there’s little risk of their bubble being burst. They can hole up on their ashram, in their insular community, reinforcing these illusions for one another, until their dying days.
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That is, as long as they push away knowledge of the people who have left and WHY they have really left.

So I suspect that in my old group, it was the guru himself, at the very heart of it all, who most needed to be buffered by his inner circle. Once he created that community, he was surrounded by devotees always. This meant he was never confronted by normal people without his most enthralled supporters there to reinforce his positive self-conception, and shield him from anything that might disturb it.
​
The books and retreats of my old group serve an important function for both sides. Stein explains, “Front groups allow rank-and-file members [ashram residents] to feel ‘normal’ as they have channels to interact with the outside world — although these interactions are rigidly scripted and controlled. They also present a benign face of the group to the outside world while nonetheless being a way in, a wide-open entry point into the no-exit lobster pot of the group.”

Any Way You Slice It

Any way you slice it, the onion structure of a high-control group reveals layers of conditioning and control.

In sum, “The attributes of the structure — its closed nature, the fluctuating hierarchy, the highly centralized, onion-like layers, the secrecy and deception, internal and external isolation, duplication, and endless motion — ensure power and control remains in the hands of the leader.” ~ Alexandra Stein [v]

The leader of my old meditation group has been dead for decades, yet thanks to this onion structure, he is still somehow calling the shots. The group continues to glorify him and cement the legacy of his teachings. No inconvenient truths about his dark deeds of the past — or their own complicity in manipulating people and information — will be allowed to change that.

I hope, though, that if the truth gets out more widely, fewer new people will get drawn in, unawares.
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Meanwhile, here are some other articles that may interest you.👇
Seeking Safely … What I Found … What Is A High Control Group?

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Endnotes

[i] From The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, as quoted in Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems by Alexandrea Stein (Routledge, Second Edition 2021).
[ii] Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults by Janja Lalich (University of California Press, 2004).
[iii] Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems by Alexandrea Stein (Routledge, Second Edition 2021).
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.

“Things started out so great. But I don’t feel safe with him anymore,” the caller told me. “I don’t know what to do.”

I took many calls like this — and some more frantic — while working at a domestic violence shelter and rape crisis line in the late 90s. Lessons from my training and time in that advocacy center have been coming back to me as I have learned about high control groups (sometimes called cults).

​Not only because the literature on such groups makes clear that abusive relationships can be, in essence, one-to-one cultic relationships, with all the same dynamics. But also because the more I reflect on my own experience in a group I now regard as a high control group, the more I notice ways that many of the same elements of control that are present in individual controlling relationships showed up — and continue to show up — in my old group.

Here are five of the lessons I learned as a volunteer and staffer in the women’s shelter, that translate to controlling group settings.

​Note: I typically refer to domestic abusers with male pronouns, and victims/survivors with female pronouns. This is the most common scenario. However, abusers can be any gender or sexual orientation, as can victims/survivors. The same holds true of the leaders and members of controlling groups. The important thing to pay attention to is the dynamic of power and control.

“He’s so well regarded, I just never guessed this could happen…”

The abusive partner may be a pillar of the community, just as the founder of a cultic group may have impressive credentials. Perhaps the abuser runs a business, practices law, or has buildings named for him due to his philanthropy. The group’s founder could be an accomplished scholar and gifted writer/translator who walked with a living saint.

Or they may have a more ordinary background; what the person lacks in accomplishments they may make up for in charm, the stories of their past experiences (real or fictitious), and their ability to read people and intuit how to connect and build trust with different people.

It’s likely that many people — particularly the ones they choose to be around, and who choose to be around them — find the person credible, likeable, even admirable. (Anyone who is put off by them, or sees through them, isn’t likely to stick around.) The abuser/leader/group may also deftly manage their public image, singly or with the help of skilled operatives.

So, it likely won’t be obvious from the outset that this person or group might be harmful. That’s no accident.

Lesson #1: Yes, even THAT person could be a controlling person — an abusive partner, or the founder/leader of an authoritarian group.

“Our relationship started out so great.”

In the early stages, a predatory person or group will often pour on the love. He may bring flowers and gifts and shower her with affection. He is considerate, caring, and complimentary. He pays attention to what she needs and responds accordingly.

Likewise, group members show interest in the prospective new member, offering things many people crave more of in their lives — attentive listening, warm connection, curiosity and interest about you, open-hearted sharing about me, especially where we have commonalities.

Early experiences with the group bring real value to participants. These may include social connections as they bond with other newcomers and develop a sense of belonging; introduction to tools and perspectives that participants can use to develop themselves or improve their life experience; perhaps delicious retreat food, needed rest, beautiful scenery, or simply a break from the pressures of ordinary life.

If the group’s founder(s) are still present in body in the group, becoming the focus of their attention and charismatic charge may make one feel particularly special and cared for. This attention may be brief, but as a rare commodity that only makes it more precious. Tender regard by their deputies or other leaders in the group may have a positive effect too.

Such experiences can foster a genuine sense of well-being and connection, encouraging prospects to continue and deepen their affiliation with the group.

Whether the relationship is with a romantic partner, charismatic leader or high-minded group, it’s only natural that such early experiences of meeting essential human needs set one up to expect more good things in the relationship.

Lesson #2: While not every beautiful beginning will lead to a controlling relationship, most controlling situations start out feeling very promising. There may be little warning of what will develop in time.

“This love was irresistible. It changed me.”

Romantic love has a powerful effect on the human person. Falling in love has been likened to an illness, with physiological effects that alter daily experience, and that must simply be allowed to run its course.

The reward centers of the brain go on overdrive, obsessive thoughts can take over, and the cycle of anticipation, connection, and separation enthralls the new lover. Suddenly this relationship and all the feelings it brings is the most vibrant thing in one’s life.

These dynamics pertain in a relationship with a (someday-discovered-to-be) abuser, just as they do with healthy people. The abuser may even add an extra dose of charisma and intensity into the mix, making the relationship more addictive than usual with new love.

Group experiences can affect and shape a person deeply, too, as one is buffeted by forces beyond their conscious awareness or control. Consider the following:
Individuals may have opportunities to feel especially valued by the group / leader(s) as they continue their association. For example, if I am invited to special celebrations that are not open to everyone, I feel honored. If I apply to a program which has prerequisites and a vetting process, I will feel special when I am accepted into the program. If I am welcomed to stay on the residential grounds of the group’s inner circle, or to make personal pilgrimages to the sacred place, I will feel closer to the inner circle myself. Such steps may increase identification with the group and generate positive feelings of being cherished and included.

Members of some kinds of groups — including therapy/encounter groups, religious or spiritual groups, and Large Group Awareness Trainings — may disclose deeply personal experiences to one another in the course of the group’s practices. Such emotional intimacy can form powerful bonds and encourage the person to remain open and vulnerable.
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Certain group practices help to settle the nervous system and can even put you in sync with each other physiologically. This signals to your body that you are in a safe space, where you can relax and trust. As described in Resmaa Menakem’s book My Grandmother’s Hands, such practices include: singing or humming together; rhythmic activities done together, such as walking in sync, clapping in rhythm, or rocking or swaying to music; cooking and/or sharing meals together.

​Though Menakem distinguishes between settling the nervous system and soothing the body through activities like prayer or meditation, the latter kinds of practices can certainly bring welcome calm, too. Meditating regularly — and meditating with others — may lead to deeper, more powerful experiences.

Margaret Singer (Cults in Our Midst) relays that “Trancelike states can occur during hypnosis, during complete absorption in reading or hearing stories, and during marked concentration” as well as through “meditation, guided imagery, drug use, fatigue, or sensory deprivation.” (I suspect certain kinds of dance — like whirling dervishes — and speaking in tongues fall into this category too.) In such altered states, everyday awareness of our surroundings and our relationship to the environment dissolves.

Indeed, participants may consider that one of the aims of their practice of meditation or other above-mentioned activities. “For many persons,” Singer observes, “entering a trance state is pleasurable. It provides a respite from thought about the woes of everyday life.” Meditators may spend weeks, months, or years taming the monkey mind, to achieve such a state of repose.

​Yet such altered states of consciousness have other effects, too; one is heightened suggestibility. Combined with facilitators’ “pacing and leading, exploiting positive transference .., and making indirect suggestions,” group members who frequently enter into trance states become more malleable to the worldview and aims of the group.

​Many high control groups also incorporate sermons or wisdom talks into the group’s regular practices. Meditation may be “followed by the viewing of repetitive soporific [videos], usually of the guru or swami lecturing.” Singer believed that “a number of speeches given by certain cult leaders, and some group chants, fit the criteria for producing transient levels of trance.” One study found that “speeches by cult leaders and fundamentalist evangelists had more hypnotic qualities than those of … mainstream church leaders.”

I am intrigued by Singer’s further observation that group or solitary readings of certain kinds of poems — including Romantic poetry influenced by “mesmerism, the opium-induced hallucinations of British writer Thomas DeQuincy, and Germanic authors’ stress on imagination” — can similarly generate “what are best called trance-augmented aesthetic experiences.” (Hmm, would the likes of Rumi, Kabir, Ramakrishna or Thomas à Kempis qualify? I’m guessing so.) The same qualities identified in this type of poetry “can be identified in analyzing the speech of many cult leaders, particularly when they are addressing groups of members or sympathizers.”

My fellow meditators-of-a-certain-kind, let this sink in: teachers with slow, soothing speech — and texts that drip like poetry from the tongue, slowly uttered in any voice (even your own inner voice) — are likely to induce hypnotic states.
The mechanics and chemistry of influence may be more subtle and gradual in a cultish group than in a new romance. Yet the shaping of identity, physiological experiences, states of consciousness, and heightened susceptibility to ideas and beliefs that others introduce — these are arguably more profound in a high control group.

Lesson #3: This is a two-parter:
· Early in your relationship — or better yet, before you start seeking — clarify for yourself what your goals are. How would you know if you found what you were looking for? Then as you gain experience with a potential partner or group, revisit your list occasionally. If your ideas about what you want change, consider carefully how and why they changed.
· Hold on to your individuality and your agency. These practices may help: when it comes to increasing your commitment level, go slowly; take breaks from the relationship (individual or group) so you have space to think for yourself; journal or otherwise “listen” to yourself; share what you are experiencing with uninvolved friends or other trusted individuals, and listen to their observations about your trajectory.

​“There have been difficult periods, but the thing is, I really love him.”

Any relationship has ups and downs. If you are with someone long enough, you will start to see their shadow side. By this time you have already bonded with them chemically — with things like oxytocin and dopamine that make you feel good.

When couples have disagreements, they try to work through them. Conflict styles and skills vary widely. Any couple goes through a process of learning how to work through difficulties with each other.

Controlling actions often begin very subtly, making it harder to recognize and name them as a different class of conflict from the usual personality clashes. At the first unmistakable sign of abuse — such as physical violence — many a girlfriend or boyfriend may consider breaking up with their significant other.

This is often when the abuser turns up the charm and pulls out all the stops. He may beg you to take him back, convincingly promising it will never happen again. He may buy extravagant gifts, take drastic actions to prove he has turned over a new leaf, get down on his knees and profess his undying love.

And the thing is, the love between these two people may feel genuine, from one or both directions. If you love someone, if you believe they feel the same way toward you, and if they promise you they will change — well, many people will try to forgive and move forward.

The group parallel is a bit more complex here. A newer member may not agree with everything they hear from the group. In a democratic group that doesn’t matter; people don’t all have to think alike. But even in a group that turns out to be more doctrinaire, a participant may find enough of the teachings / practices beneficial and true in their own experience to want to continue with the group; so they brush aside any private disagreements or misgivings.
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As relationships form with other people in the group, the relationships carry weight too. Individual relationships may be important to a participant — relationships which began in the group and make sense because of the group context. Whether you have connected with other newbies, long-time members, or the group’s charismatic leader(s), a similar cocktail of happiness chemicals can come into play as with a romantic partner.

​Plus, the collective relationship is its own thing. Belonging is a powerful force for humans; we are social creatures by nature. We all need community. We all need identity. To quote the theme song from the 80s sitcom Cheers, we all need places where “everybody knows your name.”

Yes, there are other fish in the sea, and other groups in the world. But when you are already emotionally attached to a particular partner or group, and have experienced how they can meet your needs for things like connection and meaning — those wonderful early experiences you had with them — it’s hard to walk away. Most people are going to keep trying, initially.

Lesson #4: Learn to distinguish who you care about — and even who may genuinely care about you — from who is actually good for you. One does not guarantee the other.

Love yourself enough to walk away if/when you realize a partner or group is controlling. (Controlling behavior rarely decreases over time.) Keep what you learned and get out while you can.

“He became the center of my world. Others fell away…”

Isolation is one of the classic signs that an intimate relationship is emotionally abusive, and at risk of becoming physically abusive, if it hasn’t already. I remember this wedge on the Power and Control Wheel graphic from training at Middle Way House.

Other people that the victim trusts could empower and support them to leave the relationship. But the abuser wants to stay in control. So he keeps her focus on him and their relationship. He might tell her that her friends don’t know what’s best for her, undermine her relationship with her mom or sister, arrange to move far away, even delete her social media accounts. Financial dependence may layer on top of emotional dependence in keeping her fixed in the relationship, serving his needs.

A couple months ago, as I was reading up on high control groups and noticing more and more of these parallels with abusive partnerships, I recalled the power and control wheel and wondered if there was an equivalent for groups. It’s much newer, but I did find one, in survivor-turned-trauma-informed-psychotherapist Laura E. Anderson’s 2023 book When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion. Below is her Religious Power & Control Wheel.

When I moved cross-country to work for the meditation center I’d gotten involved with — something a whole cohort of us then-young adults were cultivated to do — I put thousands of miles between myself and my long-time friends, my parents, my healthy church community, my choir, and other social supports. All I had in the new place were the people I knew from retreats. Even without moving into the ashram I had become much more isolated.
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I decided not to spend all my spare time with fellow meditators, going to group meditation, spiritual talks, volunteering in the garden or doing the other things that many others did do. I felt that spending my entire work week there was enough of a leap in time and energy devoted to that community and its mission.

Fortunately for me, another member of my choir moved from my city in Indiana to the same area of California the same month as me. We quickly joined a local choir together, and hung out weekly after rehearsal. I also checked out the nearest church in my (non-extreme) denomination and began to build relationships there. I have no doubt I fared better than I would have otherwise because I had a web of relationships beyond the meditation group. I went home to see my parents at Christmas, as well. That made me different from the people who lived on the group’s communal living site; they rarely seemed to have contact with their families of origin or other friends.​

There was a financial side to this too. I found I could barely make ends meet, even living in a small apartment with a roommate. My car was paid off, but in the future, when I had a car payment to add back to my budget, this scenario simply would not work. Not to mention, I wanted to be able to live generously — making donations to charitable causes (modest, but still, something) — to buy healthful food rather than the cheapest, less nutritious food, and to save responsibly for retirement.

I had done all those things before. But I could see none of that was going to work long term on the peanuts I was making at the meditation center. At the time, I saw this as a reflection of how out of touch the meditation community was with life for regular householders. Now, worse occurs to me: that the poverty pay was a kind of financial coercion to live at the ashram, where living expenses were considerably lower — and there was extensive “milieu control.”

In any case, I got a call from back east about a job opportunity, and began exploring that possibility. In the process, I realized that, for a variety of reasons, I needed to get myself out of this situation. All the official group email accounts of employees were monitored, I’d learned. So in job search communications, I was careful to only use my personal email address. It was only one of the forms of information control at work in the group — there were others I didn’t even recognize at the time — but it was unnerving.

Lesson #5: Stay connected with other positive people in your life. A social support network is important no matter what marvelous partner or group becomes part of your life. Anyone who wants to cut you off from that does not really want what is best for you. Be wary of financial dependence too.

I’ll share other lessons from the domestic violence field in the future. Next up: why, in a controlling relationship or group, it’s always your fault — never his or theirs.

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