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.
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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.
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​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.
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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.
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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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​Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to get every new post sent directly to your inbox. ​I also post on Bluesky when a new piece is up.

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.

When one learns how commonplace cultish behavior is among humans, it can make a person feel a bit … guarded. Over the past year, as I’ve come to see my old meditation group in a new light, that’s really been brought home to me.
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I have literally had dreams about creating a cult-proofing curriculum for young people. Similar to programs on healthy individual relationships, training on healthy vs. unhealthy group dynamics ought to be available and used in mainstream religious organizations, high schools and colleges.

Let’s start with what kind of group we are talking about, before getting into how to know what you are looking at.

Defining The Cult-iverse

My group happened to be spiritual in nature (Eastern / syncretic). But high control dynamics can develop in almost any human institution or arena. Such groups can be religious, political, therapeutic, or even commercial. Spiritual ones can be Christian, Eastern, New Age, etc.

They are often seen as existing on a continuum of influence and control. As depicted in the continuum below (debuted in Who Joins Cults), the early, mild stages of influence may seem quite positive — group experiences that make you feel good and want to come back for more.

Potential harm increases as you move down the continuum of cultiness. Tongue in cheek, these are my stages:

• “Wait, is this love bombing?”
• “Perfection, here I come”
• “Leader, I’m not worthy!”
• Beware of Zombies
• Crime Zone
• Resistance Is Futile (borg cube — you WILL be assimilated, and perhaps disposed of at the will of the hive leader)

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​At one end of the continuum are nearly benign groups. No one seems to put a 100% benign group on the continuum. But add a shade or two of omission and coercive influence, and you are getting into concerning territory.

At the other extreme are groups that so fully indoctrinate their members — and so rationalize their actions based on their particular transcendent ideology — that they may routinely engage in criminal behavior, or end in a blaze of violence.

On the Continuum

The word “cult” is often reserved for those at the extremes.Since “cult” has become associated with sensationalized cases and media coverage, people may be more likely to automatically dismiss the possibility that they could be vulnerable to recruitment, when the subject is cults.

But keep in mind that cultishness comes in many degrees and flavors. And even groups that end in apocalyptic imagery — think the Jonestown massacre — didn’t necessarily start out sounding nutso. (Jim Jones first drew people through his charismatic preaching on community responsibility and the imperative of racial integration. What’s not to like?)

More descriptive, neutral-sounding synonyms for cults are high control groups or high demand groups.

These groups do not (necessarily) overtly mistreat people in the way that prisoners of war in totalistic systems may be treated — literally imprisoned, like in Robert Jay Lifton’s classic study of “brainwashing” in China. (Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China by Robert Jay Lifton, 1961)

Instead, the kind of influence they wield over people is subtle — at least at the beginning. And influence or pressure is increased gradually, once people are hooked on the belonging and other benefits.

​Depending on the particular group and how deeply involved a person gets, their experience could be purely positive… a mix (there is always some good, otherwise people would not be attracted and stick with it)… mildly damaging… or deeply harmful.

Keep in mind that for some people in some groups, it takes many years before any negative effects are observed. One can also experience harm without realizing it; participants may be taught to interpret negative effects as positive signs of their progress, for example, or simply to deny them.

It is common, too, for people at different levels of closeness to the same group — or who are involved at different points in time — to have different kinds of experiences.

Once you understand that almost anyone can be hooked by a controlling group at some point in their life — especially those who believe themselves to be invulnerable — it’s natural to want to protect yourself and those you love from potential harm.
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The needs that drive people to seek and explore do not go away; so how does one go about trying to meet valid needs, while managing the risks of culty close encounters?

What to Watch For

Following are some of the characteristics of high control groups often found on lists. If you are considering whether a group with which you are involved — or considering getting involved — might be controlling, you can check off any criteria that sound like the group, as you go through this list.

• Espouses high ideals; attract people who are spiritually hungry or want to make a difference, who seek belonging, or who are dissatisfied with mainstream culture.
• Usually replicate family-like bonds among participants. The closer into the inner circle you get, the tighter the bonds. But even those on the outside may be attracted by this experience of warm community.

• Inside language is taught and used. Sharing the lingo may contribute to people feeling a sense of belonging and specialness. Group jargon and slogans can short circuit critical thinking, as well, constricting how members think and talk.​
• Single-minded about spreading the teachings to more and more people — bringing in new participants (and funds), whether via print or digital communications, in-person experiences, or online experiences.
• Creation of controlled environments, whether on a temporary basis during instruction (e.g., camps or retreats) or full-time, living together in groups such as in a shared home, ashram or compound.
• Zealous commitment to the leader/founder, whether alive or dead; his teachings and practices are regarded as Truth, as law; she may be regarded not simply as a teacher but as an object of veneration; others may seem incapable of exercising their own judgment, but rather always cite the founder’s teachings/example to make decisions.

(Note that the zeal can be directed instead to the group’s ideology; the absence of an elevated teacher does not guarantee that a group is free from cultic dynamics.)
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• Questioning and dissent are discouraged, whether overtly or subtly.
• All good things a person has gained from their involvement are attributed to the leader / group / practice / higher power. All problems are assigned to the individual practitioner. Likewise, at the societal level, the group’s program is regarded as the root solution to all problems.
• Dependence is cultivated — people become progressively more dependent on the group the longer they are involved or the closer they come. This dependence may be emotional (group meets connection needs), spiritual (group provides foundation for one’s spirituality), financial (a resident may not be able to make it outside), etc.
• Leadership dictates how people should behave; this may flow from the teachings/practices, with greater degrees of control exerted as one moves closer in.
• Impression management — the leader/founder’s or group’s image is carefully developed and protected. Lying by omission is common, as are other forms of deception. Triangulation (indirect communication), shunning of ex-members, minimizing concerns, and questioning of others’ motives are also common.
• Lack of informed consent. A person does not know at the outset where their involvement with the group could take them in time — where it is designed to take at least some of those who get involved. People are carefully paced through the group’s process of learning the teachings and practices, imbibing the belief system, building relationships within the community, and devoting more and more of their lives to the teachings / organization.
• Authoritarian style of leadership. The leader or a cabal at the top makes the real decisions, whatever the org chart might say. Genuine democracy is antithetical to cults. Ditto for true transparency. The chief virtue of followers is unquestioning loyalty.

• The leader/founder or successors are not accountable to any external authorities (unlike clergy in mainstream denominations, teachers, licensed mental health professionals, etc.). Misconduct of various kinds by leaders of such groups is common. This includes sexual misconduct, financial misconduct, and other abuses of power.

While the above list is geared toward spiritual or self-help oriented groups, core attributes will show up in other kinds of high demand groups too.

Is a group a high control group if it only checks a few boxes? Not necessarily.
Many religious groups have charismatic leaders, attract idealistic people who are seeking belonging, and may use language not used in secular society.
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These things alone do not make a group cultish. But if indoctrination, isolation, and emotional contagion are used systematically to trap people in the group and control their behavior — generally for the glory of a particular leader, ideology or goal — well, beware. You have entered the continuum!

Interested in more resources on how to identify a high control group? Matthew Remski provides a good summary of the most widely known frameworks.

For more on how cults camouflage their true nature, check out Hidden Levers and Dissolving Dissonance and Surprises, Blinders & Lies.

An earlier, 3-part series describes ways that controlling groups have similar dynamics to 1:1 controlling relationships, drawing on my experience with my old meditation group: Power & Control in Collectives — Reading Between the Power Moves — The Roots of Control.

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In my last post, I considered why the conflicted experience of participating in a high control group leaves one in the dark about what is really going on. How is it that astute people miss what is happening right before their eyes? Hidden levers of influence are used, softly, gradually, to manipulate people. Cognitive dissonance arises and is resolved — most often through unconscious compliance with the group’s worldview.
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Let’s examine a few more reasons the inner workings — and the nature — of a culty group may remain veiled.

Surprise Inside

High control groups promise to make a difference in the lives of their participants, and/or in the wider world. This is why they especially attract caring, idealistic people who are hungry for meaning and purpose.

Like most of us, such people tend to assume that others are like them (most people are). We assume people mean what they say (most often, people do). We give people the benefit of the doubt if something doesn’t add up. (Wouldn’t I want the other to do that for me?)

A sensitive, empathetic person will imagine others’ inner motives to be similar to our own, or to other people we know. It’s hard to perceive other possibilities, foreign to our own experience. Especially if everyone in the group lauds the person as special, enlightened, wise, the embodiment of love — whatever the persona of a particular cult’s leader happens to be.
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Enter a leader from the Cookie-Cutter Messiah School. That’s what cult survivors sometimes call it tongue-in-cheek, upon discovering striking similarities among their different leaders (Take Back Your Time by Janja Lalich).
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​The formal position of the leader varies — spiritual teacher, political leader, therapist, lover, esteemed pastor, college professor, workshop trainer, etc. — but he (or she) usually possesses these qualities:

• “a dramatic and convincing talent for self-expression”
• “an intuitive ability to sense their followers’ needs and draw them closer with seductive promises”
• an ideology with untestable claims that the leader indoctrinates his followers into (using the same, seemingly innocuous levers of influence noted in the previous post)
• “inescapable magnetism, winning style, and the self-assurance” to persuasively promote their chosen cause or worldview

Many (though not all) cult leaders are believed to have personality disorders — not that regular folks would be likely to discern that. On the contrary, “initially many persons with personality disorders appear quite normal. They present themselves to us as charming, interesting, even humble… their contact with reality appears solid” (neuropsychiatrist Richard Restak, quoted in TBYL).

​Trauma therapist Beth Matenaer describes narcissism, common in cult leaders, as characterized by “high need for control, admiration, and lack of maintainable empathy” (in TBYL). The narcissist tends toward paranoia, exploitation of others, grandiosity, lack of genuine concern for others’ needs, and charismatic allure.The narcissist wants attention and will weaponize it when they get it, along with using other forms of manipulation and coercion. They zero in on empathetic people and exploit them to meet their own needs.

Some cult leaders may further have antisocial personality disorder, which is viewed as a subgroup of narcissistic personality. (TBYL) The M.O. of a sociopath, as Robert Jay Lifton coined it, is manipulation from above, idealism from below.

​Other common characteristics of a sociopath include being captivating storytellers, appearing helpful and even ingratiating (while covertly domineering), presenting themselves as enlightened (but also the most humble), pathological lying, having shallow emotions, inability to give or receive love, engaging in thrill-seeking behaviors (publicly or privately) to stave off boredom, lacking personal boundaries or a sense of responsibility, and often scapegoating others.

Multiple marriages, sexual misconduct, and sexual control of followers are common for such a person. Their personal history is often erratic, involving many changes in location or occupation, and a parasitic lifestyle. They may have significant health problems and attribute them to “their so-called compassion in taking on their disciples’ karma” or their role in leading the group. (TBYL) (If “cash karma” is real — consequences rebound on one instantly, or within one’s lifetime — one might deduce, instead, that the leech’s own hurtful misbehavior is the actual root of their illness.)

If a cult leader doesn’t start out as a narcissist — and perhaps a sociopath — living in the authoritarian power seat for a while may well turn them into one. Cathleen Mann, cult expert and educator, commented in one interview on how this can happen:

“Something could be said for compensatory narcissism, which is narcissism that comes out of being put in a powerful position, for a long period of time. It causes you to become narcissistic… you learn the behavior and part of it is a function in order to survive in the system, but a lot of it is because they enjoy it.”
                                       ~ Cathleen Mann

Whatever the stated mission of a cult, its real purpose “is to serve the emotional, financial, sexual, and/or power needs of the leader.” (TBYL)
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​I wager that most people are not going to recognize a narcissist, sociopath, or other charming con artist upon encountering them. Especially not if that person is already surrounded by admirers, who sing their praises and interpret all their behaviors in the most positive possible way. Once such a “trust bandit” has assembled his first cluster of followers, he can prey all the more easily on other kind souls. He will seem like a remarkable, intriguing figure.

Indeed, as Margaret Singer and Janja Lalich put it, “What you first see is not what’s inside” the cultic group. Instead, cults — and their enthralling leaders — are “reminiscent of a jack-in-the-box — a pretty, innocuous-looking container that, when opened, surprises you with a pop-out-figure,.. Similarly, surprising and frightening things pop out over the course of membership in a cult.” (Cults In Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace)

Given all of the above, it must be a rare person indeed who can meet a cult leader in their element — and recognize the emptiness beneath the luminous exterior of these emotional vampires.

Need Trumps Logic

Humans are quite capable of deceiving ourselves when it helps to meet important needs. Psychologist Robert Cialdini tells the story of going to an intro lecture on Transcendental Meditation (TM), as part of his observational research into professional persuaders (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 2021 edition). He brought along a curious colleague who specialized in statistics and logic.

During the Q&A, the logic professor “pointed out precisely where and why the lecturers’ complex argument [for the uniqueness and boatload of diverse benefits] of TM was contradictory, illogical and unsupportable.” The facilitators sat in stunned silence before acknowledging that the points merited closer examination.

But what fascinated Cialdini was how the other attendees responded. “After what appeared to have been an embarrassingly clear collapse of [the] presentation, the meeting had somehow turned into a success,” with audience members making down payments on TM training at dramatically high rates.

​Cialdini and his colleague spoke with several such individuals, curious to understand their rationale. People had come with a variety of aims: to develop discipline to succeed in one’s profession, to overcome insomnia, to sleep less so one could study more and do better in school. (Yes, those last two are opposites.)

All had their hopes pinned on the solution that the presenters had offered them in TM. The logician’s counter-arguments were so compelling, one attendee admitted, that he did not want to give himself time to go home and mull on that before acting. If he didn’t commit now, he knew, logic would win over. Then he’d be stuck still lacking a way to resolve his problem.

Once people had invested in TM as the solution, it was easier to banish that pesky logic from memory and stay focused on their goals. Humans are more secure in our self-image when we perceive ourselves as sticking to our commitments and behaving in ways consistent with our own past action. Hence, eliciting a commitment, and inviting follow-through later, is an oft-used tactic by influencers.

High Stakes and Big Blinders

If a person can so easily delude themselves simply for an as-yet-unrealized hope, one might surmise that blindness to the truth is even more common when the stakes are high. And for social creatures like humans, who need one another to develop and to survive, the stakes are never higher than in our most important relationships.
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Consider betrayal blindness. Psychologists and researchers Jennifer Freyd and Pamela Birrell write about this subject, with examples as wide-ranging as children abused by parents or other adults on whom they are dependent, cheated-upon spouses who are the last to see it, date rape victims, and sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren’t Being Fooled). Betrayal blindness is the term they coined to describe the “observable, ubiquitous psychological phenomenon” of “systematically not seeing important instances of treachery and injustice.”
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​Betrayal blindness is most likely to come into play when someone must rely on others for their survival or well-being. This dependence may be emotional and/or financial. For children, it involves their most essential attachment bonds to caregivers. In the case of a high control group, it may involve the entire worldview on which the person has built their life.
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Always, there is broken trust. That is the root of the betrayal — someone who was supposed to care about me and support me instead used me.
“Betrayal blindness is almost always a survival strategy,” explain Freyd and Birrell.

Betrayal blindness allows the victim to maintain the status quo, and continue to meet the needs that this relationship is meeting. A housewife caring for small children, lacking her own income, is dependent on the husband to provide for them all — incentive to “forgive and forget” his belitting behaviors (or worse), or not see the signs of infidelity. And what choice does a child have if a parent is the abuser — or doesn’t believe them about another’s abuse? Even bystanders may favor unawareness, so they don’t have to take action or risk their own status and comfort.
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A variety of cognitive, emotional, and social processes can play a role in keeping a person blind to betrayal by one they trusted — someone they should have been able to trust. The information is there the whole time, and bits and pieces may be accessible in memory in isolation, minus accurate interpretation. Sometimes awareness may come and go in flashes, especially with a family member or other close relation — this is called rotating betrayal blindness. But the person will not connect the dots, look directly at the whole picture, and remain consistently aware of the truth.

The repertoire of ways people remain in the dark includes:

• forgetting events or details (the hippocampus, which is key to the formation of memories, has been found to be shrunken in many trauma survivors)
• compartmentalizing or isolation of knowledge, which occurs more frequently when betrayal is by someone we are close to
• suppressing “odd” or “weird” feelings that arise when confronted with evidence of betrayal

• cognitive dissociation that helps keep threatening information out of awareness
• use of distraction or divided attention to keep dangerous knowledge from seeping into consciousness (hmmm… spiritual practices could be used this way — focus the mind somewhere else)
• development of alexithymia; that’s the “inability to know or state one’s own emotional feelings and experiences,” which is correlated with childhood abuse
• pressures from other people to remain ignorant and quiet
• avoiding putting one’s experiences into words — which makes them more concrete and inescapable — whereas unverbalized knowledge is more amorphous
• groupthink and self-censorship

That’s a long and sophisticated list of ways to obscure the truth from oneself.

Facing the Truth

Aside from practical concerns of emotional, financial, and spiritual dependence upon those who have betrayed one — and the need to secure other ways to meet those needs if not through the betrayer — facing a betrayal requires enormous personal strength.

For the knowledge of betrayal brings with it many other challenges:

• a sense of free fall as one’s overall sense of the solidity and safety of the world dissolves

• a loss of trust not only in the particular individual who betrayed one, but in any bystanders or institutions who looked the other way (sadly, institutional collusion in betrayal is both common and particularly toxic)
• the risk of being disbelieved or blamed upon disclosure — which constitutes an additional betrayal, often experienced as even more painful than the original betrayal
• an intensification of mental and physical health symptoms, if a supportive response is not forthcoming

Is it any wonder that victims do not always recognize or confront ill treatment? Freyd and Birrell report, “Numerous studies have discovered that nondisclosure, recanting, and delayed disclosure are common reactions to sexual assault.” The sad fact is that disclosure can make things worse for the victim.

(The researchers also speculate that differences in mental health symptoms between men and women — women suffer disproportionately from depression, anxiety, and PTSD — may trace, at least in part, to women’s higher rate of exposure to betrayal traumas like incest, domestic violence and rape. Betrayal trauma is also associated with chronic health problems and physical illness symptoms.)

As I consider my old meditation group — having recently read/heard disclosures of sexual and spiritual abuse by the founder that I absolutely believe to be true — I feel deep anger and enormous sadness at the scale of betrayal. Most of all, for the teens and young women who were used by the founder — and if they had the strength to confront it, were subsequently disbelieved by members of the community. Even their own family members.
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​At my best, I can also muster compassion for others in the community, who froze because they were unable (or unwilling, but let’s say unable) to metabolize the life-shattering new knowledge of their beloved teacher, to whom they had devoted their lives.
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As long as victims/survivors are still alive, there is still the possibility of offering the healing balm of witness, belief, apology, reconciliation. Indeed, disclosure followed by “respectful reception is so healing” (BtB). If the remaining adherents are going to continue the organization’s work, there are new people who deserve the whole truth, too.

It’s not too late for former bystanders, for the institution, to make different choices. Those who continue to affiliate with the ashram still have open to them a positive pathway forward: seeking support, grappling with these harsh truths, reconciling with victims and all those deceived, and in the process healing themselves as well.

As Desmond Tutu said, writing on the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa (quoted in BtB, as all in this section):

“If we do not deal with the past it will haunt and may indeed jeopardise the future.” ~ Desmond Tutu

I mention support because, to face difficult truths, the leaders and members of my old group must be willing to go through their own free fall experience. Do they have it in them? Will they choose to try?

Perhaps this advice from psychologist Belle Liang could help, on learning “to notice when I’m having a long argument with someone else in my head. That’s a data point … I know that I need to pay attention to how I’m silencing myself in the relationship and move toward unsilencing” (emphasis mine).

​It is my hope that those in the ashram community who may have long been silencing themselves will pay attention to that — and start having those crucial dialogues with each other, out loud.

Outright Deception

A few words about outright deception, which can also play a role in high control groups — as I now believe it has in my former group.

The leader(s) of such a group may carefully manage their own image, or they may have consummate professionals who manage it for them — from clothes, sets, photos and videos, smiling followers, articles and books that tell the story of the leader(s) just so… to omitting inconvenient truths about the founder or group (how many marriages did he have? under what circumstances did he leave X institution? what happened in those years you glossed over?)… to outright lies (did he really complete that prestigious program?).

These facts, too, could be sought and freely acknowledged. It’s never too late to set the record straight.

Embracing Truth

Truth is a universal moral and spiritual value. I conclude here with some quotes that speak to me of the guiding light of Truth.
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Make me always ready to come to you
with clean hands and straight eyes,
So when life fades as the fading sunset,
my spirit may come to you without shame…
Let me remember always that you give the gift of a new day.
Never let me be burdened with sorrow by not starting over.
~ Native American tradition

The Self desires only what is real, thinks nothing
but what is true. Here people do what they are told,
becoming dependent on their country, or their piece of land,
or the desires of another, so their desires are not fulfilled
and their works come to nothing, both in this world and in the next.
~ The City of Brahman

What is meant by wholehearted devotion to God alone?
It means that in every act, public and private,
the aim and purpose should be purely work for God’s sake,
to please him only, without winning the approval
of other people.
~ Rabbi Bahya ibn Pakuda

In your word, speak the truth.
In the world, seek peace.
In personal affairs, do what is right.
~ Tao te Ching

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
~ John 8:32 of the Christian Bible

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Here are some other articles you may enjoy 👇
A Spiral Season …….. What I Found — At the Inscrutable Ashram

Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.

Here I explore the first two of five reasons a person involved in a high control group (aka cult) does not comprehend who the leader/group really is — and what is happening to them — as they are pulled in.
But first, let’s set the scene.

A Conflicted Experience

“A cultic experience is almost always a conflicted experience.” So says Janja Lalich, sociologist, cult survivor, and my favorite general writer on high control groups (in Take Back Your Life). She writes this in reference to all the reasons it is hard for someone to leave a group in which they have become deeply involved — even when they have negative experiences.
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The benefits of involvement with one’s group are crystal clear. One is constantly sold on those benefits, and experiences them (the real ones, anyway) directly.
The difficulties encountered with a high control group, at least in my experience, emerge more slowly — and are much more slippery.

It is tough to recognize and name what is happening, while in the midst of a subtly coercive group. Most people leave controlling groups on their own. They often find it hard to put their finger on what they were involved in and why they needed to leave. (TBYL)

It is only now, nearly twenty years after I left a high control group — prompted by new (to me) and shattering stories emerging about the founder — that I have pieced together a clearer picture.

A keen intellect does not protect one. On the contrary, intelligent, educated people are more likely to be drawn into high control groups. I have two graduate degrees. I once learned that based on test scores, I qualify for Mensa membership. I have the cognitive functions (INFJ) that give me all the advantages a person can have in understanding people in all their complexity (and am a 5w4 to boot). Yet, after four years of increasing involvement, when I decided to move cross-country to work for my group, I had little understanding of what I had gotten myself into.
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Perhaps the above helped me, eventually, to pull on the thread and find my way to the truth, more easily than I otherwise would have. But it didn’t keep me from being taken in in the first place. And the same goes for so many bright, caring, idealistic people who were drawn to the same community as I was, and to other groups with soaring ideals and a glow of deep meaning.

​Why is it so hard to see what’s really going on? Why is the most important information the last to be discovered? Why does the gestalt reality of the group not “pop” early on — if it ever does? Let’s get into those dynamics.

Unseen Levers of Influence

The process of recruitment and indoctrination into a high control group typically draws upon some or all of the techniques of persuasion to which humans are almost inevitably vulnerable. I draw here from Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (new and expanded, 2021).

Consider the fixed-action patterns used by animals. A mother turkey will nurture and protect an animal that goes “cheep cheep” just like a turkey chick, for example — even if it’s not a turkey chick. Like when a researcher substitutes, for an actual chick, a stuffed polecat emitting a turkey-like cheep cheep noise. The turkey’s mothering program, and similar automatic behaviors exhibited by a variety of animals, serve their survival most of the time.
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People display such shortcut behaviors too. In the hundreds of judgments and decisions we make each day, we can often save time and energy by following unconscious rules of thumb. If certain “trigger features” are present, we move into automatic mode.

​Humans can acquire fixed action patterns through social learning, as well as instinct. In fact, life today makes it likely we will use these shortcuts more often. There is so much stimulation, so many decisions, so much information overload, that we would suffer analysis paralysis otherwise.

“The form and pace of modern life is not allowing us to make fully thoughtful decisions, even on many personally relevant topics,” writes Cialdini. Thus “we depend increasingly on our shortcuts to handle them all.”

Cialdini drew from experimental research, and supplemented that with his own direct experience as a participant observer among what he calls “compliance professionals”: people who sell things, raise money, market products or services, recruit people, or otherwise influence people’s behavior in a particular direction.
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Cialdini describes seven of the shortcuts that are common in human social life. When a persuader is in relationship-building mode, the favored strategies include reciprocation, liking, and unity. When the persuader needs to reduce uncertainty in a prospect, social proof and authority are highly effective. And when it comes to motivating their prospect to action, a compliance professional most often leans on the principles of consistency and scarcity.

​Hayley Lewis’ sketchnote, above, nicely summarizes Cialdini’s original six levers of influence. The more recently added one is unity. It refers to the experience of shared identity with others, which ties in with feelings of mutual belonging, regard for one another’s welfare, and increased likelihood of shared endeavors.

If we do not understand how such automatic behavior patterns work, we will be more vulnerable to those who do.

Cialdini draws upon the martial art of jujitsu to illustrate how this works. A practitioner of jujitsu can make the most of gravity, inertia, leverage and momentum to conserve her own energy. These invisible forces can enable the martial artist to defeat even a physically stronger rival. Likewise, a compliance professional — or a savvy con artist — can quietly, systematically use the ordinary levers of influence that people usually respond to unthinkingly.

As Cialdini observes, this gives the persuader “the ability to manipulate without the appearance of manipulation. Even the victims themselves tend to see their compliance as a result of the action of natural forces” — and their own free choice — “rather than the designs of the person who profits from the compliance.”

These principles help me understand why my experience in a high control group felt similar to other experiences with groups of people — largely positive experiences — and why I did not recognize that such social principles were being used in cumulatively coercive ways.

Cialdini regards high control groups as a long-term influence situation. When the levers of influence are used over time in a cultic setting, the social pressures exerted are extreme.

It helps me to be reminded that it is human nature to be vulnerable to such pressures. Cialdini told cult survivors and experts (as quoted in Lalich, Take Back Your Life): “We can be fooled, but we are not fools. We can be duped, but we are not dupes.”

Dissonance Dissolved

Another category of proscribed awareness relates to what we may initially see, but sooner or later suppress or settle.

Lalich observes that a “high level of cognitive dissonance … may be present in a cult.” For someone who sticks around long-term, this is most often resolved through “a dramatic change of identity.” (Take Back Your Time)

Like the dissonance in music — where two or more adjacent notes rub against each other — dissonance within a person occurs when the ideas they hold in their mind do not hang together harmoniously. Or, the ideas may be at odds with the person’s emotions or actions.
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It is natural to want to fix that discord. Consider how satisfying it is to the ear and emotions when a musical suspension or dissonant chord resolves into major harmony. Ah, that’s better. Cognitive dissonance similarly nags at a person until it ceases.
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​I remember that nagging experience, viscerally. When I wrote about my journey seven years after I left the ashram vicinity, I put it this way:

“All along with [the spiritual disciplines], with retreats, I found I had an inner tussle between what ‘they’ taught and hearing my own inner voice. I felt a reaction to certain teachings and authority role and always had to go back home and let things settle out to feel what was right for me and trust that.”

I can recall some of the things that bothered me in my early years of affiliation, when I was just a retreat-goer. Some examples follow.

One concern was about the teaching that all people need to reduce their own egos and focus on meeting others’ needs; this seemed like a problematic over-generalization to me, especially given my past training and work at a domestic violence shelter and rape crisis center. Doesn’t this vary from person to person, I asked? Women, for example, are socialized to accommodate others and often need to learn to value their own needs and to set healthy boundaries.

I was told this teaching did not mean we should all be doormats. Stories of tender firmness, when called for, were shared to underscore the point. In time I stopped pressing on this, accepting that the group’s message was a corrective for the average me-centered American; I could interpret it appropriately for myself, or so I supposed.

I was intrigued by many Hindu concepts, and found value in some. But I felt I had been misled as, over time, it became clear that the teacher and his program were not just inter-spiritual or syncretic, honoring wisdom from many sources. Rather, at root, the teachings remained firmly grounded in the founder’s native Hindu perspective.
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While saints and scriptures from the West were liberally quoted too, the underlying worldview was Eastern. Reincarnation was assumed in the teacher’s talks and writings, for example. The issue came up only occasionally, abstractly. So I decided I could just remain agnostic about that question, and set it aside. In other words, this dissonance felt modest enough to tolerate.

​What was more emphasized in the teachings was the idea that the goal of life is Self-Realization or Illumination. Which means, dissolving the small-s self to merge with the large-S Self. I never bought into full-blown God-Realization as MY goal. It wasn’t what motivated me to start meditating, nor did I see it as my personal purpose in life, which was more about making a difference. (And anyway, wouldn’t focusing on MY illumination be self-focused? Which we weren’t supposed to be?)

But I did come to absorb, to some extent, the group’s beliefs about what illumination means — that this is an attainable state for any human determined enough to pursue it wholeheartedly (likely with some grace); that an illumined person has overcome the foibles and temptations that snag most of us mere mortals, and so is a model for others; that an illumined person will be a gift to the world, benefiting those around them and perhaps our human collective in some way. If other people felt drawn to that goal, I felt, fine for them. Different strokes and all that.

I also struggled intermittently with how the inner circle of the community related to the teacher. As my relationship with the group grew, the supposed benefits of us newbies doing likewise were subtly communicated. Experimentation was encouraged so that one might “discover for oneself” if those benefits accrued.

Whether or not one consciously adopted the founder as teacher in a personal way, like a traditional sadhak, the desired behaviors and attitudes were built into regular practices: reading the teacher’s writings before bed, watching his video talks in our local meditation group weekly, getting plenty of video darshan at retreats, and so on. If you continued to participate, you would do those things.

A few years after I came and went from working at the ashram, I tried to explain how continuous immersion in the group milieu shifted things for me. I wrote:

“[I] had experienced an inner dynamic of testing the boundary between others’ teaching and what I take as true for myself. Before I got close, this was fine; I could have my inner rebellions during a retreat, and scribble in my journal, challenge a point or raise a question and hear the facilitators’ response; and then go home to my safe space and listen for what my heart, mind and experience told me about whatever. The lessons were more explicit then — they were verbalized and discussed, were designed as curricula.

But when I was chronically close, the struggle was more ongoing, and confusing. Much teaching was then not so much consciously spoken and heard through the ear, as transmitted through ways of being and absorbed through culture. Not quite visible, but powerfully felt.”

​Either consciously or quietly, cognitive dissonance has a way of resolving. People “tend to reduce the uncomfortable feeling caused by the dissonance by bringing their attitude in line with their behavior rather than changing the behavior” (Bounded Choice by Janja Lalich).

And so, though I don’t remember choosing the teacher as My Guru, whom I trusted as a personal guide, as I continued the disciplines taught by the group — and absorbed their attitudes — gradually I did come to feel more grateful and reverential toward him. (There were artful ways of slipping that in, too. Including the surprise ritual I described here.)

By adopting the group’s program — practicing the behaviors that were taught and modeled — my thoughts and feelings gradually shifted to match those actions. That resolved the most significant of the internal inconsistencies. Even if I hadn’t intended that outcome. And even if I didn’t notice the changes in myself.

In the next installment, I unpack a few more factors that keep the workings of a culty group opaque: Surprises, Blinders and Lies.


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Reading Between the Power Moves … What I Wanted … What I Found

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