Millions of U.S. Americans have been involved in cultic groups, with ~500,000 belonging to high control groups at any one time, and something like 85,000 entering and leaving cultic groups each year.[i] These numbers are likely underestimates. That’s because people are often unaware of the nature of such a group while they are in it. Plus, once they become aware (if they do), group-instilled fears and societal stigma may deter people from naming their cultic involvement as such.[ii] The point is, getting involved with a high demand group is a common occurrence. Sticking with Americans for comparison, a similar number of people are likely involved with culty groups each year as the number of people who experience a stroke.[iii] Having gotten engulfed in a high demand group, how — and why — does a person get out? Opting Out The most common way people exit cults is by leaving on their own. These Walkouts, as they are sometimes called, may realize that something is off with the group, without having enough knowledge about high control groups to realize that they were in one. That describes me and the group I left in 2006. In that way, I was typical. Janja Lalich explains, “Some people leave the group … knowing only instinctively that for their emotional or physical survival they had to get out.”[iv] Check. A person often reaches the limit of how many contradictions they can hold about the group while continuing to operate within it. They become “disillusioned, fed up, or burnt out, or they realize the cult is not what it said it was,” explains Margaret Singer.[v] In the early years of my old group — long before my time — the teacher encouraged students to believe they would reach enlightenment in twelve years, a typical expectation in spiritual settings in his homeland. Residents gradually increased their sitting time until they were meditating four hours per day.[vi] Yet, no one attained samadhi. Twelve years came and went, and little changed. Except, so slowly it wasn’t noticed, an escalating level of dependence cultivated by the teacher. The teacher — who never outright said he was illumined himself, though it was everywhere implied and assumed — eventually modified expectations. In the West, he now said, it would likely take them more like 25 years to reach enlightenment. Later, the goal posts were moved again, to 50 years. Finally, the teacher began to convey that it could take lifetimes — and his true students would return for as many lifetimes as it took to reach the goal. The carrot held out by the ashram would forever dangle just ahead of them, never to be obtained. When accusations of sexual impropriety by the founder emerged, a group of his early students could no longer repress their doubts or suspend their disbelief. After fifteen devoted years at the ashram, a dozen people left. They all cited the same reason. The founder had become stifling. “He degenerated from a teacher to a father figure they neither needed nor wanted, and ultimately evolved into a guru whose authority was not to be questioned.”[vii] Fizzling Out If a group’s core charismatic figure disappears from the scene, participation may fizzle out. The leader may choose to leave the group. (Cult leadership can get boring after a decade or two.)[viii] He or she may be convicted of a crime and jailed or deported. Mutinous ex-followers may kick him out of the community. Or, like the founder of my old group, the leader may die. Some explanation will have to be made for this departure. Whether the leader left voluntarily, was jailed, faced a coup, or perished, the community will need a story to make meaning of this turn of events. In a group where all allegiance flowed to the leader — and all power ultimately flowed from him — his disappearance is a major destabilizing force. Some groups don’t make it. My old group was in this stage when I moved cross-country to work for them. For years I chalked up much of the confusion and dysfunction I witnessed (and experienced) there to a haze of grief and disorientation. I now understand there was much more to the story. But that was a piece of it. They have made it several more decades. An early pronouncement that there would be no successor teachers — and the presence of the founder’s widow as heir-apparent — prevented a struggle for rights of succession. There would be no factions, no split, and no large-scale drifting apart. By the time the widow died, remaining true believers had articulated a series of principles the group would follow to ensure it remained true to the founder’s blueprint. A friend jokingly calls this The Purity Wars. I suspect the group’s increasing rigidity in retreats and teachings alienated more than a few people who had started coming closer to the group’s orbit — and decided, instead, to back away while still on the outer perimeter. While there is no named successor to take the place of the founder, just a legal entity and its board, this simply means that soft power prevailed. And thus, those who effectively use soft power have positioned themselves at the top of the hierarchical culture, which continues on. Some groups simply dissolve and disperse after the core charismatic figure is gone, in however short or long a time. Though my group has continued on, I have heard about individuals who chose to leave once the teacher was no longer there in the flesh. I suspect some, at least, have gone looking for sources of charismatic authority elsewhere, to replace the lost supply. I have heard stories of several who wound up in other groups with enthralling teachers. Back in my old group, the remaining true believers may well be following a pattern that is not uncommon in Eastern religious groups when a cult leader dies — waiting for him to reincarnate so they can return to their former way of life, with him at the center.[ix] From this perspective, it doesn’t matter if the group meets “success” by worldly criteria. In the fullness of time, its purpose can still be met. If the few remaining true believers slowly die off, until no one is left, they can still sustain themselves with this story that all will be united again in cosmic time. Dying Out In other situations, it is not (only) the founder, but one or more followers in a high control group, who leave the group through death. Cults whose violence risks, and sometimes takes, lives may be among the better-known examples of high control groups. You’ve probably heard about the 1978 murder-suicide of almost a thousand people in Jonestown, British Guyana, at the behest of Jim Jones, founder of the Pentecostal-leaning People’s Temple. Almost the entire commune died from cyanide-poisoned fruit punch, or like Jones himself, gunshot. I remember well coverage on Waco, Texas, in 1993. In a showdown between the feds and David Koresh at his Branch Davidian compound, he and eighty followers lost their lives. Government actors made poor decisions that contributed to the tragedy, but one cannot help but wonder why Koresh didn’t let his people go. It seems that cult leaders tend to prefer martyrdom to surrender. Another headline-grabber was the apparent mass suicide, in 1997, by members of the UFO cult Heaven’s Gate in San Diego, California. ![]() Heaven’s Gate was memorialized in my mind by one of my favorite movies, Contact. The film’s torn-from-life news sound bites includes a bit about “the recent cult deaths near San Diego.” And a subplot sees Jodie Foster’s astronomer character having brushes with an anti-science Christian fundamentalist, who ultimately blows up the space-traveling machine that will carry Foster away for an extra-terrestrial encounter. (Image: Jake Busey as the zealot / terrorist in the 1997 film Contact) Another group with violent events in this same time period, though one I don’t recall hearing about then, was The Order of the Solar Temple (OTS). It was noteworthy for ritualistic murders and suicides of 69 people in Canada, Switzerland, and France in 1994 and 1995. A fringe New Age group, OTS members believed they were on earth to fulfill a cosmic mission. When the group self-destructed, two leaders talked about their desire for a “departure … even more spectacular” than in Waco. These and other examples of headline cult news — with in-depth attention to Heaven’s Gate and the Democratic Worker’s Party — are explored in Bounded Choice, which endeavors to understand how true believers become motivated to take such drastic actions.[x] Departure by death need not always be dramatic. In my old group, now 50-some years after the ashram’s founding, a number of long-time residents have met their natural death. This may be the ultimate exit for the remaining true believers there. And some of the tragic deaths that end cult members’ lives happen on a smaller scale. For example, 38-year-old Ian Thorson died in the Arizona desert after being ejected from Diamond Mountain University, a neo-Buddhist organization then led by Michael Roach. At this point in 2012, Thorson and his wife appeared to suffer from mental health issues and be mutually dangerous to each other.[xi] But a high control group does not invite scrutiny from law enforcement or mental health providers, not even when lives are at risk. A cult will always put organizational interests over those of individuals. So at the behest of university trustees, instead the couple with a known history of domestic violence was — together! — banished from the community, with nowhere to go and no one to help them. Thorson’s death was attributed to dehydration. But it reads to me like it might more accurately be described as the result of being squeezed out from the group, as soon as he became more liability than resource to the organization.[xii] Which brings us to those who leave because they are … Squeezed Out A high control group always places its own needs first, above those of individual participants. Anyone who is deemed as a threat to the organization — or fails to contribute enough time, money, obeisance, or prestige to the group — may simply be pushed out. These Castaways, as they are sometimes called in the cult literature, may struggle with guilt and shame, taking at face value the rationale given for their ejection — which is likely to blame them for not measuring up. Without sensitive support from someone who understands cultic dynamics, they may be gripped by grief and loneliness. They may even develop suicidal impulses.[xiii] My old group provides several illustrations of different ways people can be squeezed out. There was one troubling incident related to my group that I learned about when I researched them online, before moving there. A long-time ashram resident had been arrested, while traveling, for indecent solicitation of a child — a person he believed was a 14-year-old girl. The group treated this as an aberration completely unrelated to the community’s culture. They responded by banning the offender from the ashram. When I learned about this illegal and immoral behavior, I had heard no other concerns tied to the ashram. So, to my later regret, I accepted the organization’s explanation that this was one bad apple, not reflective of the group’s ethics. This man had strayed badly from the founder’s teachings, they said. I now believe that this student was actually repeating behaviors of the founder. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as the expression goes. The relevant point here is that the group had to kick out the person who had so publicly offended, who might besmirch their reputation. More recently, since people have begun learning about gutting allegations against the founder — and his own transgressions with females at the ashram, including adolescents — those who ask questions or express concern have been squeezed out. A woman — I’ll call her Theresa — had been living at the commune for some years. She loyally participated in its lifestyle of spiritual practices, group meals and so on. When Theresa learned about the allegations, she took them very seriously. She personally knew one of the victims and believed what she had conveyed about her experience as a young teen. Before long, ashram leaders asked Theresa to meet with them. They informed her that she was being “relieved of kitchen duties.” (The implication — she was impure and should not touch their food. You can’t make this stuff up!) Theresa suggested to them that they were deliberately shunning her in hopes that she would choose to leave. The leaders did not deny this. Instead, they piled on — accusing Theresa of dishonoring their spiritual practice, their beloved teacher and so on. A student of nonviolence, Theresa clung to the truth as she understood it in that situation. She told the leaders that she cared about them, and that how they are responding is not spiritual and only reinforces the concerns that people have. The kicker: the leaders did not show any sign of caring. Theresa shared that they “just nodded at me like I was full of [crap].” She went on, “I wished them both well and then told them the meeting felt really creepy to me.” (Theresa also tried to find out, while in the process of moving out, if she could still meditate in the group’s meditation hall. The response that came back was, “Only [teacher’s] students may meditate [there]” — meaning, not Theresa anymore! She gently asked to have this guidance put in writing. But the leader, looking nervous, declined and scooted away.) People in not-so-inner circles have also been cut off — without notice. When they learned of concerns about the founder, members of a nearby meditation group affiliated with the ashram started discussing them together. The simple act of reading materials, trying to understand what is true and considering together what to do, was evidently reported back to the ashram by someone tied to the group who also works for the organization. That person indicated she and her spouse would not remain in the group unless it decided to continue working strictly with teachings of the ashram, its founder and spiritual program. Only one person in the group (other than the employee) had any contact directly with an ashram representative. In the course of a brief phone conversation — basically friendly chit chat after addressing a practical question — this person mentioned she was aware of some controversy going on at the ashram. The representative flatly denied anything was happening that was affecting ashram folks at all, and he promptly ended the call. Soon after, the caller discovered she had been omitted from a special mailing that she normally would have received; it appeared she had been dropped from a circle she’d previously been part of, simply for having used the word “controversy.” Subsequently, the entire local group — with one traveling member now back in the area — concluded their discussion about the allegations. They made the decision to disaffiliate from the ashram, and turn to other spiritual resources. This was shared with the person in the group who worked for the organization, for her own decision-making. No other contact took place with the ashram. A week later, many members of the group (now minus the employee and spouse) were left out of a mailing about upcoming retreats. Some stopped receiving print publications or emails they routinely received from the meditation center before, too. It appears a number of changes were made to the meditation center’s contact lists, reducing or eliminating communication for some group members — though on what basis is not entirely clear. This is nothing new for the organization. People who left in an 80s exodus were more overtly shunned, when they would later come across ashram residents in town. Loyalists would cross to the other side of the street to avoid the the defectors, averting their eyes. So much for family-like bonds. Shunning is a serious issue in high-control groups. It is “a silent form of bullying and rejection.” Psychology tell us that “the brain registers exclusion as physical pain that cuts deeper and lasts longer than bodily injury.” For innately social creatures like human beings, shunning can cause long-term mental health difficulties.[xiv] Counseled Out [xv] The other way people may leave a controlling group is through an intervention. Just as loved ones may gather around a person to express concerns about drinking, drug use, or hoarding, they can observe how group involvement has negatively affected a person, and ask them to learn and reflect on this. An intervention is typically arranged by family members who are working with a team of professionals, or at least an exit counselor — someone experienced in educating group members and their families about cultic dynamics and the methods of influence they systematically use. The aim is to provide factual information about the specific group, how such groups work in general, and to provide a safe, supportive space apart from the controlling group where the member can re-evaluate their involvement. The presence of someone else who has successfully left the group can be extremely helpful as “proof of life” after cult involvement. Groups often implant fears about what happens to those who leave, so a counter-example can be freeing. There was a time when some interventions were conducted without the person’s consent. That was a response to some groups’ increased vigilance against letting members out of their grip even temporarily, lest they be presented — and choose to take — the opportunity to engage in an educational process and reassessment of their membership. If coercion is the very thing you want to combat, you should not use it yourself. Forcibly removing someone from what they consider their home and family can cause trauma, no matter how well intended. Fortunately newer, cooperative ways of working with members and families have been developed. A mutually-agreed process of learning and consultation has now long been the standard for exit counseling. While a small percentage of people leave cultic groups this way, it is a valuable option for friends and family concerned about a loved one. The Official Story In its telling of its own history, a group can choose to acknowledge former members — or not. If it does acknowledge them, it can offer its own story about why they left. One former member — who I now understand to have been a sexual abuse victim of the founder — was sometimes written off as having been mentally unbalanced, and having to leave the group on that account. Trusting meditators, of course, might not think to ask which came first — the group involvement or the mental illness. It seems quite likely to me now that, like someone in a violent domestic relationship, it was the situation that was crazy-making — not the person who was, on her own, off-balance. Sexual and spiritual abuse by your supposed spiritual teacher, and institutional betrayal by the community you had considered your family, would do a number on anyone. Some past walkouts from my group were described by long-timers who stayed as simply not committed enough to stick with it. In other words, if there was any fault to be found, it would be attributed to those who left, not to the group. I suspect for others of us who came and went — many in my cohort of young adults — that pattern was publicly chalked up to being “on a family path,” in contrast to the monastic lifestyle that became the norm at the ashram. (Notably, it hadn’t originally been the norm — many of the founder’s first generation students had families and raised children at the commune. The founder probably felt he couldn’t get around at least some among original young adult students — the critical mass that made it possible to establish the ashram — having that inescapable desire. But that first generation certainly steered later ones away from doing likewise there. For more on the control of sexuality, including reproduction, see The Roots of Control.) Mostly, I don’t remember my group talking about those who had come and gone in the past. Official publications barely acknowledge this fact. Explanations would only be offered if asked. Thus, silence on the subject of past members may be the norm. If I had known, prior to moving out there, how many people had come and gone before me, I would’ve asked a lot of questions about that before making my own decision. So, omissions that are part of a cult’s deception are not just about the teacher(s) or group and its history. The (deliberately) missing information is also about past participants. Upshot Most people opt out of cults — walking away when they realize something’s not right, or that the group isn’t delivering on its promises. Others fizzle out when the leader is gone and a group disintegrates. Some members are squeezed out, while yet others remain members until they die — be it a natural death at the end of a long life, or a premature one in which the cult had a hand. Finally, a few have the opportunity of a supportive intervention, and manage to wake up and choose to leave at that time. If you are in a group, and considering any kind of change that would put you significantly more in the group’s field of influence, I will give you the advice I wish someone had give me before I took such a step: Find out who has already come and gone, and how, and why. And don’t just take the group’s word for it. Look for neutral third-party sources, or better yet, locate and ask the ex-members themselves. The only way to know for sure what led people to leave a group — and what they experienced while they were in it — is to ask them directly. 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. Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life. Endnotes [i] Per Michael Langone, former executive director of the International Cultic Studies Association, in Prevalence, accessed 1–2–25. [ii] Ibid. [iii] According to Stroke Facts from the Centers for Disease Control, accessed 1–2–25, almost 800,000 people per year experience a stroke. [iv] Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich (1994, 2006, 2023). [v] Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace by Margaret Thaler Singer (1995, 2003). [vi] The events I’m recapping here are described in a news feature published by a California newspaper, chronicling events from the mid-80s: “A Split at the Razor’s Edge” by John Hubner, San Jose Mercury News (April 30, 1989; accessible to subscribers of the newspaper). [vii] Ibid. Ironically, I understand it was ashram officials who had taken the initiative to invite this coverage — perhaps having expected they could shape the story consistent with their own aims. [viii] The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad (1993). [ix] Take Back Your Life, Lalich. [x] Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults by Janja Lalich (2004). [xi] “Psychosis, Stabbing, Secrecy & Death at a Neo-Buddhist University in Arizona” by Matthew Remski, in Elephant Journal (May 4, 2012). Accessed 1–2–25 at https://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/05/psychosis-stabbing-secrecy-and-death-at-a-neo-buddhist-university-in-arizona/. [xii] Ibid. [xiii] Take Back Your Life, Lalich. [xiv] “How Religious Shunning Ruins Lives” by Fern Schumer Chapman, 3–27–24, Psychology Today (article online here). [xv] This section draws from two previously cited works — Lalich, Take Back Your Life and Singer, Cults In Our Midst.
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Article ListA list of all articles by title and date, grouped by topics. - Go to list - About ShariUU minister, high control group survivor, and mama bear on savvy ways to seek meaning, belonging, purpose, and well-being in these turbulent times. More SubscribeWant to get an email in your in-box every time I post? To subscribe, you can go here and follow the instructions at bottom. Archives
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