I drove west, toward the Pacific Ocean, the ashram shrinking in my rearview mirror.

I hadn’t been there for almost two decades, since a confusing year as a meditation center employee that ended with my quiet return to the Midwest. At the moment I did not feel stirred up by this visit to the site of spiritual trauma. I wasn’t sure what I felt.

A beach was just ten minutes away. I had planned to let the healing power of the ocean wash over me, as I walked and walked at its edge, and ate my lunch from a high cliff, and let my being settle, after all the feelings and sensations of the visit.

I drove through the small resort town and down the bluff to the beach parking lot. Leaving my shoes in the car, I walked barefoot over the cool sand to the water’s edge.

The cold water on my feet grounded me in my body as I strolled through the surf. Waves crashed rhythmically onto the beach. Ah…

I drank in the sensations of wind and water, my mind quiet for some time.

Wave 1… Purpose

Twisty vines with tiny pink flowers rose out of the sand. They shimmied in the breeze.

So much had gone unspoken during my visit to the ashram. Why had I danced around the tension, been so diplomatic, avoided the elephant in the room?

Learning to lean into conflict, when called for, in healthy ways, has been one of my biggest areas of personal and professional growth over my life. I had been direct and transparent with the organization’s leadership when I first learned startling new-to-me history — sharing what I had uncovered, and asking for answers and accountable action. Yet, I had not done that today.

Would I come to regret this missed opportunity? I wanted them to initiate an independent investigation that took seriously the allegations that I now knew had been made by multiple women over the decades: that the group’s beloved teacher had abused his power monstrously, using others for his own sexual gratification — adolescents as well as young women — gaslighting them all the while, as he told them that it was for their own spiritual advancement.
​

For survivors of sexual abuse: 
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​The beach narrowed as a bluff rose up to my left. Hardy plants grew over the rocky curves. Resilient succulents matted the ground. Some sections held their red-green color palette, while other sections dried to gray.

After having the courage to speak their truth, it had to have been devastating for the sexual abuse survivors to be dismissed and written off, indeed, regarded as traitors, by their former ashram “family.” A subsequent betrayal like that can rival the original abuse in the pain caused.

Not to mention all the people hurt by the deception of decades of propaganda and cover-ups. It had been a collective project of many in this community to style the founder as a spiritual teacher on the world stage.

I now understood that, whenever reality threatened to dissolve the mirage they had created, they had zealously protected it. They coached public-facing folks, like retreat presenters, on how to steer people away from problematic pieces of the founder’s history. And there was a stream of hagiography about him, too, telling his story just so. That began well before he died in the late 90s, and has never let up.

Up on the bluff, bright yellow flowers popped from corkscrew blades of green. Insects crawled silently among the sunny florets.

Over the half-century since it formed, my old group had lured many soft-hearted seekers into successively deeper layers of the onion structure of the group — including my cohort. As I was reminded by the presence of Shelia (or her mother, whichever it was) on the access road at the ashram today, they are still continuing to ensnare people in their web of half-truths and lies.

Would it have been the perfect time, while Madelyn and I were connecting over the challenges that come with leading an organization, to express my disappointment in the way the leaders responded to my questions? (They basically smeared the victims, and then proactively coached others away from even learning about the allegations, lest they disturb their minds and impede their spiritual progress… classic DARVO and spiritual bypassing.)

I could have spoken from the heart about all this, but I hadn’t. These questions hummed through me, more in the form of swirling feelings than succinct thoughts, as I paced over the sand.

Ancient bits of rock, skeletal remains of marine life, and disintegrated plant matter made up the grains underfoot. The stories they could tell would span eons. The evolution and extinction of species. Ice ages and meteoric events. Human happenings that might or might not still be alive in the oral histories of indigenous peoples. The westward push of colonization that met the ocean here, with its own mythology of manifest destiny, its own economy of extraction, its own hagiography of the cowboy and the pioneer.

No, I did what I came to do. Accountability and truth-telling were not the point of this visit. My own healing was.

Perhaps my escapee-survivor friends and I will find ways, eventually, to prevent the organization from continuing to deceive and harm (as many) people. But that was not why I had asked to set foot on the ashram today.

Long-term, my own aims will likely be broader, fostering healing and prevention in relationship to high control groups in general, not just my old group.

Being a “wounded healer” may bring some gifts to those endeavors, so long as I am sufficiently healed myself. And my journey back to the center of my own spiritual trauma felt quietly powerful in that regard.

Wave 2… Settling

Iridescent purple shells on the sand enticed my eyes and fingers. Across the bay, Point Reyes drew nearer as I progressed down the ocean’s edge.

Would I write about this visit? It had crossed my mind at the ashram to take a picture, if only of my canary’s (approximate) resting place. But I wanted to respect the trust Madelyn had extended to me by letting me come. I doubted the Center’s leaders would want me taking and posting pictures. So I had dismissed the idea as soon as it had occurred to me.

No doubt they’d prefer I not write publicly about the visit, either. While I was at the ashram I didn’t think I would. On the beach, I wasn’t so sure. I could already feel the pull of my preferred mode of processing. For me, writing has always been one of the best ways to make sense of my life experiences.

I had brought my little Yellowstone composition notebook with me. At one point, as gulls glided overhead, I cracked it open and wrote a few paragraphs. That was all I could do on the beach, though. The words weren’t ready to come.
​
As the waves lapped the shore, I was much more in my body than my mind. Settling my nervous system — that was my immediate need. The processing would come gradually, in layers of feeling and reflection. The perceptions grounded in my animal being would integrate in their own time with the verbal and other faculties of my mind.

​Like a Gold Rush prospector panning for precious metals, in the days that followed I would sift through the events and emotions of my ashram visit. I would accept whatever nuggets of insight rose out of the stream of memories.

This process ebbed and flowed during the rest of my week in the Bay Area. It would continue in the background all the way home, as I drove through the Sacramento valley, over the Sierra Nevadas, across sage-covered desert mountain territory from Nevada to Colorado, and back into the plains.

Only later, when I was re-anchored at home, would I be able to put fleshy words on the bones of all that swirled within, as I meandered along the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Wave 3… Idols & Golden Eras

Here and there on the sand, skeletons of tiny creatures caught my eye. What were they? What kind of lives did they live?

One translucent form was so complete, I wondered if it was still alive.

The circle of life was palpable here. Not so at the ashram, frozen in time. Walking through it felt like visiting a museum.

I recalled something a friend observed, that the long-timers looked back to the 60s, 70s, early 80s as the golden era of their experience with this group. Perhaps much as I still remember fondly (though not without mixed feelings) my early retreat experiences. They were full of spiritual exploration, connection, sensory renewal, and peak experiences — what felt like genuine, positive growth. In both cases, the anchoring memories were before things went awry. Or at least, before one’s misgivings demanded real attention.

For the long-timers, the before and after might be marked by the period in the early 80s when doubts and dark experiences began to be shared aloud, and the teacher threatened to abandon them all — they had to shape up (and shut up), or he would ship out. A dozen people departed; others ended up all the more tightly trauma-bonded to the teacher.

I remembered what Liahna told me about pilgrimages to the ashram, and how the center has created sites of homage throughout the compound. As the real, all too flawed man gets farther and farther from them in time, the most fanatical grip all the more tightly to their idealized image of the teacher — and present him to others accordingly.

More marine forms caught out between tide pools appeared between my feet on the sand.

I had collected a few shells, but had no interest in touching the bones of decomposing creatures. Nature would take its course, drawing them back into the sand and the sea. They could nourish new life, no less singular or precious for their anonymity. Let them be.

Scanning to my left, I watched a pair of teens wading into the water with boogie boards. They caught waves as they could.

Wave 4… Control

I passed an unknown object on the sand, a reddish… shellfish? How did such a creature survive, in the ocean swells and scouring sand?

There was another one. I bent to inspect its form. I saw no legs. Was it still alive?

Flashes of my conversation with Madelyn came back to me. The way she responded to my expression of concern for her future, uncomprehending and unphased.

She has been “putting others first,” effacing herself, for so long — what was left? I could only guess what was going on beneath her courteous exterior. How many layers down did she know herself?

I wove between fleshy bulbs and seaweed reeds washed up on the shore. My mind returned to the film I had watched on my tablet the night before. Wicked Little Letters had been in my Netflix queue for some time. As my ashram visit neared, this tale from another time had promised to distract and amuse me.

Wicked Little Letters turned out to be a story of deception, control, betrayal, and survival. Comedy, yes. But on the beach, it struck me that it was also a fitting allegory for the ashram.

          (Spoilers ahead!)

The story centers on Edith Swan, played by Olivia Colman. An upright young woman, Edith has been receiving hostile, profanity-laced letters. The missives upset the pious home she shares with her mother and father. Neighbor Rose Gooding, a single mother and Irish immigrant with a vivid vocabulary and a zest for life — complete with bawdy humor — is suspected of writing them. Thus begins a lighthearted whodunit.

All was not what it seemed. Inspired by a scandal that rocked the seaside town of Littlehamptom in Sussex, England, in the 1920s, the plot twist at the end of the film felt all too familiar to me.

Beneath the laughs, through a slow drip of revelations, the movie illustrates the dynamics of control. Edith was the good daughter, keeping house for her father, exuding modesty and virtue. When she stepped out of line, her father’s anger and entitlement was palpable. He had her copy out Bible verses as punishment/training.

Edith’s mother had learned not to think — in one scene, when asked her opinion on events, she averred with relief that she had none. Edith knew she was supposed to stay on the (subservient) sidelines too. She did her duty at home, and welcomed every opportunity to burnish her saintly image: gracefully enduring, like Christ, as the initial target of the letters; self-effacingly quoting hallowed words (Saint Francis included) as she encouraged others to turn the other cheek with Rose; allowing herself to be persuaded to speak on the matter in church, and to accept compliments in the press for her cheerful forbearance.

Beneath the nicey nice manners in Edith’s home, darkness lurked. Edith’s father, it turns out, was the cause of her called-off engagement some months before the letters began. Locals thought Edith had changed her mind. But her father had actually secretly driven away her suitor, in order to keep his eldest daughter at home, as his domestic servant.

Edith’s family, local law enforcement, and the community at large blithely blamed the colorful character Rose for the letters — easily believing what confirmed their worldview. Meanwhile, an intrepid ‘woman officer’ and a few local women in cahoots with her unraveled the mystery: straight-laced, scripture-quoting, demonstratively humble Edith was the true author of the wicked little letters!
​
Edith had not started out with a plan to frame Rose. It becomes clear to the viewer that Rose’s friendship had actually been good for Edith, helping her to lighten up. Edith’s quashed feelings of resentment and anger at her position in life simply came out sideways, through the letters. While reflexively patronizing toward her moral inferior and foil, Rose, Edith only threw her under the bus — playing up the idea that Rose must be the culprit, after others would not let it go — so that she would not be caught out herself. The betrayal of her friend was a matter of survival.

It was only when her fiancé and new married life mysteriously went *poof* that Edith found anonymous outlets for her unacceptable (for a female) feelings, using the alternate persona to vent her vitriol and provoke her parents.

Her anger at her lost agency and stuckness is perfectly understandable. I empathized with Edith when she explained to Rose late in the movie that she had never meant all this to happen — once she’d started, she just could not stop writing nasty notes. Inadvertently, the person who was controlled herself became a deceiver and manipulator. Her one-time friend Rose was collateral damage to the rage and pain that Edith otherwise had to keep in check behind a decorous façade.

I did get the sense toward the end of the movie that Edith was finally breaking free of the cage of spiritual aspiration and daughterly duty. At Rose’s trial, when cracks began to show in Edith’s story, exposing her, she instinctively insisted to her father that all was well. The smile fixed on her face corresponded to a state of willed denial.

But as she was being hauled away to prison, her father stated that he knew it could not have been her. Now he was in denial. Defiantly, Edith shouted at him that yes, it WAS her! She threw in a few epithets to underscore the point. She then broke out in spontaneous laughter, at her audacity, a genuine smile lighting up her face.

The truth set her free, at least in spirit. Rose applauded Edith’s verbal exploits, and to the audience, too, she was redeemed.

In the days that followed my ashram visit, starting on my beach walk, bits and pieces of the film would echo back to me, resonating with ashram ways.

The passive-aggressive patterns, polite stiffness on the surface, deep currents of tension palpable at the gut level.

The father figure who manipulated others for his own selfish gain.
​
The misappropriation of spiritual words and ideals, used to paper over and avoid what was difficult.

A striving that locked people in, instead of setting them free. Where tools that once helped them cope became part of the trap, limiting what one can see — or be.

How the controlled person may, in desperation, turn to deceit and denial.
​
The “friends” betrayed.

I recognized it all in my own experience with the ashram, and in the stories that others of multiple generations have shared with me.
​
Nearby on the beach, dogs splashed around in the tide pools, tails wagging. Their joy was infectious.

From my body I could feel that in the visit I’d just made, dynamics of control had unfolded once again.

The way I had to get permission to visit, and how grateful I felt after Madelyn said yes, after having first said no. (Ah, intermittent reinforcement, you are such a trickster.)
​
Threading the needle of conversation — staying on “safe” topics, leaving so much unspoken. Hearing party lines from Madelyn and neither agreeing with nor challenging them.

Squashing the impulse to take a picture, or the thought of writing about this later. That came partly from genuine respect for Madelyn, wanting to keep to the terms I had presented for my visit. Eschewing pictures still felt like the right choice on that count.

But mixed in with appropriate boundaries were echoes of the loyalty the group instills in people. For so long it had inhibited me from talking openly about my negative experiences there; I self-censored, as people do in authoritarian systems. Today at the ashram, I had walked among ghosts from my past, and re-absorbed a bit of their unspoken code of silence.
​
I wanted to shake that off, to leave behind that rekindled bit of conditioning. Let it wash energetically back to the ashram, like the water on the sand sliding back into the sea.

Wave 5… Time

As I sat on a grassy ledge of sand, watching the waves crash under a gray ceiling of clouds, another bit of the conversation with Madelyn played back in my mind’s eye.

She had pointed to patience as a source of challenge and growth. As a leader of the group, perhaps Madelyn’s welcome of me was an example of this very principle — an act of prudent patience for the institution.

In the past, the true believers at the ashram had seen trials as a test of loyalty. Did Madelyn and her contemporary counterparts see the recent set of questions and allegations about their teacher similarly? Probably so.
​
And patience might well be a key part of the strategy for dealing with those of us who find the allegations credible. The center had guided people to focus on the purity of their minds, and steer clear of information that might trouble them — rather than actually address that information directly and transparently. This don’t-think-about-it response was both telling and troubling.

Perhaps those currently orchestrating the organization’s course expect to wait us out, the seekers of truth and justice — just let those questions die down, let whoever falls away from the organization fall away, keep cultivating new crops of meditators, and wait to reap a harvest of goodwill and major gifts from those future supporters. There have been so many waves of meditators and retreat-goers and donors already, over the past half a century. They’ve gotten very good at this process.

Perhaps this attitude of patience even helps explain Madelyn’s switch from no to yes, in response to my inquiry about visiting. Once it became clear that I had not come with ill will, or intent on confrontation, but rather was focused on my own healing journey, they might have decided to go with the “catch more flies with honey than vinegar” approach with me. Expecting to be done with me once I left California on this once-in-a-lifetime trip. Which they may well be.

Point Reyes was small in the distance as I turned back to survey the span I had traversed. The ashram, too, would recede in time. Not just in physical distance but in emotional weight.
​
My spirit cleansed, I strode through the sand to my car and headed back east.

Wave 6… Casting Off

On the drive back from the beach to my temporary home base, it dawned on me that there was one item I’d intended to do something symbolic with, which was still waiting for attention.

I owned a bathrobe that I’d received as a hand-me-down from one of the ashram residents when I worked there twenty years ago. The long charcoal robe, made of soft wool, had kept me warm on many winter evenings and mornings. It had come with me back to Indiana when I left my ashram job, and then on subsequent moves to Texas and Nebraska.

Over the past couple of years, though, since I had learned of the deplorable abuses of power by the meditation group’s founder, I had not been able to pull the robe off its peg. I could not put this garment on anymore.

The teacher was credibly accused of sexually abusing adolescent girls — girls my own daughter’s age — specifically, as part of a bedtime ritual. (Multiple adult women had told of his misconduct with them, too.) I could not look at that robe without thinking of this long-hidden history. And even wondering if any such betrayal had happened in proximity to the robe.

I had considered carrying out some ritual action with the robe to vent my feelings about the group and its fallen founder. Shred it with scissors? Burn it?

I had never felt moved to do so at home. While I’d certainly had angry streaks, and considered that a perfectly healthy response, I did not feel like destroying the robe would actually be cathartic for me. It was a mismatch for my healing trajectory.

I had considered taking it to Goodwill instead. But if that robe actually *had* been around for sexual assault at the ashram, did I want someone else to end up with it? No. I really didn’t.

This is why, after ignoring the robe since I learned what I’d learned, no longer using it myself, it still hung on my bathroom door. For a year and a half, it had been a visual reminder of the whole mess at the meditation center. I didn’t want it in my house. But I was stumped as to what to do with it.

So I had tucked the robe in a bag in my car when preparing for this road trip. Perhaps, I’d thought, my friends and I would do something with it as part of our reunion of apostates. But the day of our group hike, already past, it had slipped my mind. All this bubbled up as I drove away from the beach.

What if I gave the robe back to the ashram?! That felt perfect.

I shouldn’t have to figure out what to do with this thing. Give it back where it came from, and let them deal with it. Yes! That was what I wanted to do.

Alas, at this point the bag with the robe was back at the house where I was staying during the Bay Area leg of my road trip. Otherwise I would’ve stopped at the ashram on my way past it, just long enough to drop off the tainted-by-association garment.

When I got back from the beach, I called Madelyn. My voice mail explained that I just wanted this robe off my hands. I would just pop in and set it by her office door, tomorrow on my way to lunch plans in the area; I did not need to see or talk to anyone, no big deal.
​
Madelyn called me back later. In a tight voice, she instructed me NOT to come by the ashram and drop off the robe.

I’m not sure if she was aghast at my line of thinking (which I had glossed over, but still), or if she was annoyed practically at the idea of having to figure out what to do with it herself, or if she was just following orders. But she wasn’t happy about it. I thought my solution was imminently reasonable; she wasn’t having it.

Arg.

More control.

Whatever.

What was I going to do with this thing? It gained more symbolic weight the longer it remained with me. I did NOT want to take it back home to Omaha.

I considered my options again. I still did not feel like destroying it; my overriding feeling toward the ashram at this point was deep sadness, not anger.

I recalled a relevant new tidbit I had just learned during conversations in the area. The woman who gave me the robe was a thrifter. Apparently, picking up nice finds and giving them to others was a pattern of hers. It was a high-quality robe. She might even have been responding kindly to my Midwesterner’s adjustment to the less-robust heating systems of the Bay Area, which left me chilly in the damp winter. In any case, probably neither she nor anyone else at the ashram had ever worn the robe.

I was also surprised to learn that she was not, as I’d thought, one of the “first generation” students — those who had been at the ashram since the founder and his fledgling group settled in there fifty years ago. She had come in the 80s, after the big split (and, I’d heard previously, after insiders started mindfully keeping the teacher from being alone with women). Ergo, nothing horrible would’ve happened in that robe. Whew!

With this new information in mind, I decided to donate the robe to a local thrift store. I dropped it off on my way to a lunch visit the next morning.

California, you can keep your culty crap. I give it back.

​As I walked out of the Goodwill, through the parking lot, and drove away, I felt lighter.

Wave 7… Home

​Back home after my 3-week road trip, I was reunited with my people and place. Between unpacking, laundry, being with my beloveds, going through photos, re-anchoring in my home and habits, and mentally preparing for the end of my sabbatical, I began to write about the trip.

Yes, I would write about my visit to the ashram. I stopped ceding my power to them a long time ago. I will not censor myself now.

I will continue to share my processing, because other ex-associates of that place have told me how helpful it has been to them.

And because it may be helpful to others too, loved ones of those who’ve had ties to that meditation center, and people involved in other groups with high demand dynamics.

A few days ago, as I was decluttering some surface in my house, I came across a passage on patience. Madelyn’s voice from the ashram visit floated back to me, wondering aloud what patience really is.

​The pushpin-sized hole at the top of the page tells me I once had it posted on a bulletin board. I don’t remember how or when it came to me, or what it meant to me then. It feels full of fresh meaning to me now.

Patient Trust
​
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability --
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually — let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

​       ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

There is no need to be complete, or perpetually relieved of oneself, or “established in God.”

Accept being imperfect and incomplete. Accept the stages of instability as potentially a part of some greater good.
​
Let ideas shape themselves, let all unfold in its own time. Savor the journey.
​
It is enough, and enough, and more than enough.

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Meanwhile, here are some other articles that may interest you.
​Moving On from Your Spiritual Teacher … A Year of Getting Free … The Roots of Control … Seeking Safely: Tips for Meditators … Teaching Safely

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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.
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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?

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

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.

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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