All God's Children
THE CULT EXPERIENCE: SALVATION OR SLAVERY?
CARROL STONER AND JO ANNE PARKE
36 The New Religions ... Why Now?
WHAT MAKES THE LIGHT DIVINE?
The Divine Light Mission is attempting to take a more respectable
approach in its efforts to attract new premies (as the devotees are
called), and it will be no coincidence if the new methods are also more
financially advantageous for the Mission. Once Divine Light
proselytized among druggies and dropouts, promising a constant high
without drugs, much as the Krishnas did. But a contemporary premie
recruit is more likely to be a student, musician, artist, lawyer, or
teacher-a well-educated man or woman who is, or is destined to become,
a solid member of the community.
Some of the communal houses where premies live have been
closed, but five of the largest and most successful remain open. Many
of today's young premies are scattered about cities in communal
apartments, rather than together in one large communal house. However,
their physical dispersion seems in no way to have altered their
communal dedication to the Mission. But a whirlpool of controversy
swirls around the system of ashrams (the communal houses where devotees
live together).
In the beginning the group looked for followers who wanted to
devote all of their time to Mission work and their newfound meditative
techniques. Complaints began, charging that the group was a religious
cult out to capture the minds and spirits of unaware young men and
women who had wanted only to expand their minds and improve their
psyches, but instead fell into a full-time premie trap.
Enthralled by the guru's meditative techniques, young people by
the score succumbed to the entreaties of newfound Mission friends to
move into an ashram and devote their lives to Mission work. Once inside
an ashram, they often became as fanatical and as single-minded as
members of the most extreme religious cults. It wasn't long before the
Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission was being called a pernicious
religious cult on the order of the Unification Church, Love Israel's
Church of Armageddon, the Krishna Consciousness Movement, and others
around the country that persuade converts to give up everything for
lives of sacrifice and concentration on new group goals.
In order to evaluate charges that Divine Light is a destructive
religious cult, it is important to compare the Mission to both the most
deceitful religious cults and to the self-help programs which neither
offer communal life structures nor encourage practitioners to give up
all outside interests. Some compare Divine Light's meditative
"knowledge" techniques to the meditation practices of Transcendental
Meditation, explaining that both are do-it-yourself systems that can be
used to enrich one's life.
But the comparison does not work. The Mission's three-pronged
program does not depend solely on the techniques of meditation, but
also on satsang, or reinforcement of a belief in the benefits of
meditation through discussion with others who do it, and on service
work performed for the Mission without pay.
To get the most out of being a premie, a follower is encouraged
to practice vegetarianism and celibacy as well as abstention from the
use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Premies will say that nothing is
forbidden in Divine Light, but they will also emphasize that each
follower ought to give his first allegiance to the Mission.
Consequently fervent believers form new friendships with fellow
believers, eventually cutting ties with disapproving friends outside of
Divine Light and ultimately breaking with their families who do not
condone or endorse their new lifestyles. A college student who sets up
an altar to Guru Maharaj Ji in his dormitory room and sits quietly
meditating may be the subject of derision and scorn. He can be no more
comfortable with his practices while living at home with parents who
are obviously antagonistic toward his new beliefs. The final step in
disassociation with the outside world often comes when a premie leaves
his home and friends to move into the communal living structure
provided by the Mission. Here, with other likeminded premies, he can
practice "knowledge" fulltime and devote his life to the service of his
guru and the Mission.
While the ashrams have often been self-supporting they have not
been a good source of income for the Mission. Unlike the Moonies, the
Children of God, or the Hare Krishnas, Divine Light Mission members do
not sell anything. They do not solicit on street corners, selling
candy, flowers, peanuts, or literature. And unlike the Church of
Scientology, Guru Maharaj Ji's group does not charge for the courses or
the teaching of the techniques of "knowledge." The group gets its money
through gifts and the tithing of its members. The more gainfully
employed a premie is, the higher the tithe the Mission receives.
The Divine Light Mission knows that to close all the ashrams,
which are not only communal residences but also serve communities as a
central meeting place where premies can come for nightly satsang, would
seriously disrupt the group's cohesion. Instead, today's premies,
whether they live in ashrams, communal apartments, or in their own
homes, are encouraged to come regularly to the ashram for satsang or
reinforcement of their beliefs. They are encouraged to remember what
Mission spokesman Joe Anctil told us, "The ashram is a state of mind,
not a place to live."
Premies recruit to their ranks by personal witnessing to
friends and to strangers. A young woman premie who works as a full-time
secretary at a Catholic college says she feels confident that some of
her associates at work will become interested in Divine Light once they
are impressed with her gentle ways and peaceful demeanor, qualities she
is sure are fruits of her Divine Light practice.
The group also appeals through newspaper and Yellow Page
advertising in cities where it has centers. Theirs is a soft-sell
approach, and it seems to work.
There is a heightened interest in mind-expansion techniques in
the United States, so it isn't surprising that continuing numbers of
young people are finding their way to Divine Light centers to hear
about the knowledge. We have attended the introductory lectures that
come before the techniques of meditation are taught to recruits and we
were amazed by two things. There were, each night, more than twenty new
people at the lectures, all of whom were there because a friend had
marveled to them about the fruits of the experience of meditation. And
the lectures were so vague, filled with so much profundity and so
little concrete information that we wondered how the lecturers were
able to keep the attention of the recruits, let alone convert them.
But meditation is intriguing and mysterious and the Divine
Light premies are, individually, compelling witnesses for their faith.
True premies say they are happier than before. They believe that the
liquid they taste when they put their tongues to the back of their
throats in one technique of the knowledge is indeed nectar, not the
mucus of a post-nasal drip. They believe the light they experience when
they press on their eyes is sight through a "third eye," the pineal
gland, which the guru contends is the vestige of an extra eye humans
had at some point in their evolution. Premies don't allow that the
sensation of light might simply be a physiological reaction to pressure
on the cornea. They also believe that the vibrations they feel and hear
when they cup their hands over their ears put them in touch with the
source of all life.
What the premies really have may not be the truth of all
truths, but just another effective method for meditating, for altering
one's consciousness. What they may not understand is that they could
learn to meditate for free and with no continuing obligations from a
book at the library. Meditation, when practiced as a calming, leveling
device, is a method of attaining a degree of inner peace and
tranquility that should not be discounted. However, it does stand
scientifically as a consciousness-altering technique and under its
influence a mind is susceptible to suggestion. It is a medically
accepted means of alleviating the ravages of stress. But when practiced
to excess, meditation can "bliss out" a person to the point of
inactivity and inertia, stifling creativity much the same way
overindulgence with alcohol or marijuana can. These excesses are the
major fears of Divine Light's opponents.
Recruiting 65
Guru Maharaj Ji claims to understand the key to the essence and
spirit of knowledge and truth. He says he is in touch with the force of
life that lurks in the inner recesses of all living things. He promises
the same to those who will follow him. "He who seeks truth, finds it,"
the young guru tells his disciples. If by chance a new devotee doesn't
find what the guru promises when he practices the guru's meditative
techniques, the fault of course is not the guru's but the premies. A
disappointed premie will be told that he "hasn't grown enough" to
experience the "knowledge." Consequently, he will keep coming back to
the oracle for a taste of the truth he has been promised, and so
desperately seeks. It is mystifying to see young people become so
dependent on the praise and promises of a cult or its leader that they
will do nearly anything they are told to do.
Some cult critics, including the controversial deprogrammer and
hero of most anticult parents, Ted Patrick, charge religious cults with
using hypnotism to recruit young men and women into their ranks.
Patrick told the California State Senate Subcommittee on Children and
Youth that these groups use "on-the-spot hypnosis," when recruiting. ".
. . A person can come up to a person on the street and talk about
anything. They can be singing or playing a guitar and the only thing
they want you to do is look them straight in the eyes for five or ten
minutes and you believe everything and go with these people."
We have yet to meet a cult member, or former cultist, who has
convinced us that he was hypnotized into a new religion. But it does
seem apparent that some religious cults use recruiting practices that
in the world of business would be labelled "deceptive marketing
practices." An honest contract between religion and convert cannot be
made if information about the group, its identity, and the degree of
committment necessary for members to belong is withheld.
Theology 77
The Divine Light Mission (from its Denver offices in a Victorian
building resembling a turn-of-thecentury department store that has been
remodeled, but never renovated) is trying to tell the world that it is
not a religion. While the philosophy of the young Guru Maharaj Ji,
leader of the movement, has no elaborate theology, what theology is has
reflects Hinduism, not Christianity and Judaism, from whose ranks come
the masses of its membership.
The Divine Light Mission gives equal billing to all well-known
religions and their scriptures, the Torah and all the Old Testament,
the New Testament, the Koran, and the Bhagavadgita. Perhaps because the
movement originated in India it emphasizes the teachings of the Hindu
scriptures, the Bhagavadgita. The God of Divine Light resembles the
impersonal concept of infinite power and energy of the Hindu
omnipresence more than it does Western man's image of a rational and
willful God who created the Universe and has a plan for it.
Premies learn that their guru is a messiah in a direct line of
Perfect Masters that includes Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Lord
Krishna, Shri Hans (the young guru's late father), and the guru
himself. The issue of conflict between Divine Light teachings and
Christianity or Judaism is seen in the answer to a premie's question:
"Just who is the Guru Maharaj Ji?"
The answer often given by other premies is, "The Guru Maharaj
Ji is God." Sometimes he is told that the Hindu faith, the springboard
of Divine Light, holds that God can have many manifestations, many
incarnations.
A rabbi reminds us, "For Jews there can be no other God but
God." Christians, who have accepted the divinity of Jesus Christ as the
son, of God and savior of man, do not accept the idea of many
incarnations.
Leaders of the Divine Light Mission contend the movement is not
a religion. They now say their work has been impeded by the Hindu
trappings that many followers have invoked to "enrich the experience of
meditation." But whether premies have promoted "Hindu trappings and
their guru's divinity," in much the same way many Americans and
Europeans have sought the life explanations in Eastern religion and
writing, or whether the Guru Maharaj Ji himself claims that he is God
is a question of some importance.
The methods of self-discipline practiced by premies are (other)
aspects of Hinduism which have found their way into Divine Light
philosophy. Celibacy, abstention from the use of tobacco, alcohol, and
drugs, and the mission's highly touted vegetarian diet are stepping
stones on the divinely lit path to enlightenment. And in true Hindu
fashion, the Mission acts, not as a lawgiver but as a dispenser o:
advice. The disciplines are recommended, not commanded.
Maharaj Ji teaches that God is the source of all life. "God is
an omniscient power that is hidden in the secret recesses of all living
things. ..." The guru claims that he alone has the key to the knowledge
of the source of God. He has promised his premies that with this key
(his meditative techniques), they can get in touch with this source.
His God is, then, an energy that is always present and cannot be
removed by temporal circumstances. Maharaj Ji does not claim to give
God to his devotees, but to put them in touch with the God that has
been present in them all along.
Armed with the knowledge of his own private God, a premie
should be able, according to the guru, to handle any situation with
maturity and strength. "The mind and the thoughts are obstacles to the
experience of God," the guru says. His interpretation of the knowledge
is an experience rather than an intellectualization of the deity.
The young "Perfect Master" of the Divine Light premies, whose
full name is Prem Pal Singh Rawat, was a tiny boy when his father, Shri
Hans Ji, traveled about India spreading 'the word of the knowledge.
Although he was the son of a wealthy family, Shri Hans took his
ministry to the poor. When little Prem's father died, his mother,
ignoring the Western tradition of primogeniture, named the youngest of
her four sons as the inheritor of his father's mission.
Together the family continued to minister to the poor for
several years and the widow and her four sons became known in their
region of India as the "holy family." Divine Light came to the United
States after a drug-dealer, in India to close a deal, tumbled upon the
ministry and persuaded the teen-age guru to visit him in the United
States. The discoverer of Guru Maharaj Ji (Great King) put a strong arm
on his cohorts, back in Boulder, Colorado, to finance the trip, and
they obliged. Maharaj Ji's benefactors had no apparent intention to
capitalize on the crusade they designed for him, but they did provide
the boy guru with all the public relations acumen known to the world of
pop culture. One 0f the members of the group had worked for the rock
group "The Grateful Dead" and was well-versed in the promotional
tactics of the recording industry.
And so the chubby holy boy and his religion were "sold" to the
American people using the same gimmickry Procter & Gamble employs
to sell soap. More than 80,000 "souls" have, during the past few years,
received the guru's knowledge. He has become wealthy. The Divine Light
Mission grew from a tiny band of missionaries to a massive business
empire. The guru began leading a life that was not in keeping with his
image as a holy man, and his mother fumed. He countered by saying that
the "souls" in the United States were "poor in spirit but not in body,"
which by implication says one must live frugally only when trying to
evangelize among the poor, and not the affluent.
Today the Mission of Maharaj Ji stands mired in controversy.
Joe Anctil, spokesman and public relations director for the group,
seems determined to lift the Mission from the muck, even if it means
changing its doctrine, as well as its image. At one time the premies
called their guru "Lord of the Universe". Now the Mission tells them to
call him a teacher.
Anctil and his staff are using the same highpowered public
relations techniques to change the Mission's image that the guru's
original benefactors used to promote the movement in the first place.
Divine Light leaders seem to think their Mission has more of a future
if it concentrates on becoming a business which trains people in the
techniques of meditation and discipline than it does if it continues as
a religion, worshiping the contemporary incarnation of God.
"This is not India," say Divine Light leaders today. "The Hindu
trip is all right there, but for Americans it's phony." And yet the
Guru Maharaj Ji says, as Vedantic Hinduism also purports, that the
creator-god (Brahman) has incarnated Himself many times in human forms,
and will do so again and again. Vedantic Hindus call these
incarnations, "avatars," or super-saviors.
"The truth is one, sages call it by various names,"
Ramakrishna, a leader of the Vedantic Hindus once told his followers.
Maharaj Ji and the Divine Light Mission seem to agree.
And so the Mission denies no God, but asserts that its guru is
on an equal plane with all Gods. The group says it is compatible with
other religions. But for those who recognize the God of the Israelites
or the Divinity of Christ, Divine Light is surely a compromise.
Messiahs and Gurus 103
GURU MAHARAJ JI
Thousands of sunsets had faded behind the Rocky Mountains since
a small band of acid dealers brought a pudgy thirteen-year-old Indian
holy boy to a teepee on a mountainside in Boulder so he could teach
them and their friends how to meditate and get high without drugs.
Since 1971 the young guru has grown into a less rotund but far
richer young man. He's moved from the mountainside teepee, first to a
large $86,000 house with a pool in Denver, and then to a
half-million-dollar Malibu estate complete with pool, tennis court, and
ocean view. He's owned Mercedes Benzes and Maseratis and has been
stopped forspeeding. He's had ulcers and has married and become a
father. In his early twenties, he's in control of a
multimillion-dollar-a-year religious business, the Divine Light
Mission.
He had some trouble hanging onto his religious enterprise in
1975, after he married his tall, blonde, and older secretary, Marolyn
Lois Johnson, a former United Airlines stewardess from California.
Maharaj Ji's mother back in India didn't approve of the marriage, or
the young man's gaudy lifestyle. At sixteen he was not old enough to
marry without parental permission in Colorado, so he petitioned the
court.
The judge agreed that the boy guru was old enough to marry,
saying that he had an income and appeared mature beyond his years, a
point confirmed by his most devout followers and disputed by others who
tell of water pistol battles and legendary bouts of childish temper.
The couple married in 1974 in a posh ceremony at a nondenominational
Christian church outside Denver. They now live at the California estate
with their two small children when they are not traveling on Mission
business. The organization still maintains the Denver home as a place
for Maharaj Ji to stay when he is in the city. But most of the time,
premies live in the house. When their guru comes to Denver, they move
out.
After his marriage, the young guru's mother, Rajeswari Devi
(known as Mata Ji to premies) disowned her youngest son, saying she had
made a mistake when she named him to succeed his father as head of the
religious movement, and named the guru's older brother Bal Bhagwan Ji
to direct theMission. Maharaj Ji's reaction was to fight for his place
as spiritual master of the Mission, and he went to India, where he and
his brother became entangled in a series of legal suits and
countersuits. Ultimately the two young men agreed, in a New Delhi
court, to drop all charges. Now it appears that while Maharaj Ji is
firmly in control of the Divine Light Mission in the United States, his
mother and brother have taken the reins of the movement in India.
The Mission's tax-free annual income, revealed by Mission
spokesman Joe Anctil as about $3.78 million in 1976, came from gifts,
tithings, and annual business earnings. Robert Mischler, the Mission's
executive director, has said the group considers itself a religion only
for tax purposes. As a religion it is exempt from taxation. Under the
Internal Revenue Service regulation no part of the net earnings of a
religion may go to a private individual.
Anctil says that 60 percent of the Mission's $315,000 monthly
income goes to support the international headquarters in Denver, the
homes around the country where the guru and the 250 member staff live.
The Mission makes the mortgage payments on both of Maharaj Ji's homes
and spends about $200,000 annually from the Mission coffers to support
the Mission's full-time premies, its guru, and its business activities.
Michael Garson, a former premie who worked in the Denver
headquarters, has a different idea. In an affidavit presented in a
British Columbia court he said, "My analysis of the accounts of the
Divine Light Mission indicated that approximately 60 percent of the
gross receipts are directed to maintain the lifestyle of the Maharaj Ji
and those close to him."
In photostats of Mission financial records submitted with his
testimony, Garson pointed out an entry of $139,925 marked "special
projects." He said it was money "advanced directly to the Maharaj Ji
for purposes related directly t0 his own maintenance."
It is no secret that the Mission has overspent in its brief
history and has run up some monumental debts. The guru's millennium
celebration at the Houston Astrodome in 1972 left the group sadly in
arrears in making payments on debts it incurred at that time. Anctil
says at one time the Mission owed more than $650,000 but had been able
by late 1976, to reduce that debt to $80,000.
However, the Divine Light Mission is still feeling a financial
squeeze. In selling real estate around the country the Mission has
closed ashrams. With the closing of ashrams came a decline in income.
Where premies move out of the ashrams they no longer turn over their
weekly paychecks to the Mission. 1t must then rely on their voluntary
contributions. In December 1976, Anctil said the monthly income from
contributions had dropped from a high of more than $100,000 a month to
$80,000.
In response to the declining income the Mission has had t0
consolidate its operations. In addition to the disposal 0f real estate
in Denver and elsewhere the Mission has sold its printing business. The
business was sold to a premie who, operates it in Denver and charges
the Mission for printing work. The computer, which the Mission once
used to keep track of its membership around the country, is gone. It
was dropped when the costly lease expired.
With the printing business gone and some of the other Mission
business activities shut down, premies who worked in those enterprises
have had t0 reconsider their life's work. Many are being encouraged t0
g0 back into the world, get a job, and contribute to the Mission by
tithing.
But the Mission doesn't show any signs of closing. As Joe
Anctil says, "We are changing our image." It appears that the Divine
Light Mission and its guru will be around as long as they can determine
what :he public wants and give it t0 them. And the guru has what looks
like a long life ahead 0f him.
Contrasts 181
DIVINE LIGHT
Meditation is enjoying an immense popularity these days and it
isn't something that goes on only in the ashrams of Asiatic gurus like
Maharaj Ji. It is happening in the living rooms, family rooms, and
bedrooms of affluent middle - aged housewives and executives as well.
Why then are these same people incensed when their children want to
practice meditation?
In the case of the Divine Light Mission, the question seems to
be complicated by one of the oldest questions in history: How can
intelligent, rational people prostrate themselves at the feet of
selfproclaimed gods or those who claim to be representatives of God?
And why do human beings allow others to direct their spiritual and
temporal lives?
What then makes the lives of the young premies in the ashrams
of the Guru Maharaj Ji so suspect, so criticized? Do premies give the
control of their lives to the group, or to their guru? Or is
"knowledge" nothing more than a system to enrich and deepen spiritual
lives? We went quietly into the ashrams to study the Divine Light
techniques and to observe the way of life.
The house the premies chose for the ashram in one large Eastern
city is a lovely Victorian mansion with leaded glass windows and
intricately carved woodwork that reflect the home's original use as the
city seat of a turn-of-the-century industrial magnate. It sits on the
edge of the city, in a neighborhood that is "changing" and therefore
affordable. The streets are still safe enough for the area to be
inhabitable and it is well kept enough to be respectable, bordering on
one of this country's most affluent and sprawling landscaped hospital
grounds and college campuses.
The mansion has seen both better days and worse. It was being
used as a day-care center when the Mission negotiated to buy it a few
years ago. They paid a modest figure considering the building's size,
location, and condition.
The interior architectural detail is reminiscent of convents,
rectories, and the manses that are often part of church properties.
There is a definite religious feeling in this house, but instead of
pictures of Christ and crucifixes, it is now adorned with the signs of
the Divine Light Mission and the young people who live here. In every
room, including pantries and bathrooms, there are portraits of Guru
Maharaj Ji, the premies' Perfect Master.
The young people have left their mark in other ways. Huge bay
windows now hold jungles of houseplants. Just inside the massive carved
oak and leaded glass entrance door is a cloakroom, always filled with
shoes: leather boots and sneakers along with high-heeled platforms and
sandals. Premies, like Moonies and Krishna devotees, do not wear shoes
indoors. They pad around the house quietly in socks and slippers.
On one side of the enormous wainscoted entry hall is a
staircase that leads to sleeping rooms for the fifteen permanent ashram
dwellers. Premies, we are told, sleep two to a room here. On the other
side of the hall are floor-to-ceiling carved-oak sliding doors that
lead to the living room where nightly satsang is conducted. Here,
premies meet to discuss their experiences with Maharaj Ji's knowledge
to reinforce their own practice and to convert visitors to the practice
of Divine Light meditation.
Beyond the hall is a dining room, with tables set for far more
than the handful of premies who live here. Food is important to
premies. Vegetarianism is a way of separating them from their previous
lifestyles and their families. It is a factor that gives them a sense
of commonality. Nearly all the meals here are prepared by Alice, the
ashram housemother, and Carol, her assistant. The two are sisters.
Alice is in her mid-to-late twenties and says her life as cook and
housekeeper is the most satisfying she has ever had. She devotes full
time to directing the housekeeping, the grocery shopping, and running
the kitchen. The quality of the diet in the ashram is dependent on her
skill, and one suspects the kitchen is a gathering place because Alice
encourages it. Alice says that as housemother she feels appreciated and
important in this group she needs and loves. According to her, the life
she led before Divine Light was not a directed or purposeful one. In
and out of schools, Alice says she was not the daughter her mother
wanted. Although Alice and Carol's mother does not approve of the
"religious part" of their premie existence, she does profess to approve
of the newfound order the two young women have instilled in their
lives.
Carol, too, wants an ashram life. She transferred to the East
when her Midwestern ashram closed as part of the Mission's effort to
consolidate their holdings. Alice, who had been the assistant
housemother, took over her new responsibilities when the old
housemother decided to live outside the ashram with another premie and
to continue her practice of "knowledge" on a part-time basis. The
former housemother now works as a secretary at a Roman Catholic college
just down the street from the ashram. She still visits the ashram
regularly and she is almost as involved as she was before she got her
own apartment.
The day of our visit was the Guru's birthday celebration, and
premies had traveled from ashrams in other cities to this big home and
its day-long festivities. While Carol served lunch to a houseful of
visitors, we washed dishes. And we observed the young men and women who
were diligently working at cooking and cleaning the kitchen. Their own
mothers would have been impressed by the dedication and concentration
surrounding this "thankless" work. Not that the kitchen help was
behind-thescenes. Here, premies wandered in and out of the room,
helping themselves to tea, helping with dishes and other chores. The
normal isolation of the housewife and cook became a communal,
everyone-pitchin-and-help festival.
In the butler's pantry between the kitchen an dining room there
was a constant supply of h water. Spiced and flavored teas, honey,
milk, ar cups were set out for convenience and the pan:was, for many,
the hub of the day's events.
During the visit and on previous occasions when we visited
ashrams as undeclared aspirants, there was no persuasion or cajoling
for us to become part of this group. We did feel a sense of calm and
peace in the ashrams. Most of the premies seemed sincere and rational.
They appeared to be in control of their own lives and seemed to be
achieving some measure of peace as a by-product of a lifestyle they
feel is constructive and healthy.
Yet one week later the Guru Maharaj Ji came to Atlantic City,
New Jersey, and the same young people were there too. In their guru's
presence they lost control, sobbed, swayed, and knelt to kiss his feet.
They say he is their guru, not their God.
The program for the celebration said, "Guru Maharaj Ji, my life
is within you. From you I was born and to you now I go. Forever I'm
yours. My longing is endless."
The chubby little man, whose corpulence suggests he hasn't
nearly the self-discipline he inspires in his .fllowers, came to
Atlantic City to minister to his :1evotees and to receive their
adulation. (There is always a hubbub of anxiety when the guru is
schedsled to appear, since he has often failed to show up at
celebrations and festivals in his honor.)
The guru entered the ballroom of the Atlantic City Convention
Hall-where the annual Miss America pageant is held-and mounted a satin
throne his remies had set there for him. The assembled deotees welcomed
their master with frenzied screams, 'obs, and outstretched arms. The
young, Indian's folowers came one by one to bow before him and to ;iss
his feet.
They heard the little guru tell them, "You cannot battle the
mind. It is too complex, too sophisticated. You'll lose. To beat the
mind you must ignore it." Our newfound friends were ecstatic,
entranced-as though they were not the same people we'd visited a week
earlier.
264 Cult Life
The second of Lifton's conditions is Mystical Manipulation, and
it is evident in nearly all religious cults. Here the potential convert
is convinced of the higher purpose within the special group and is
shown his individual responsibility in the attainment of that goal. He
must be convinced that he is of those chosen by God, or the group
leader, for this work for the greater glory of the world.
Never is this condition more apparent than in a satsang lesson
of the Guru Maharaj Ji. He has told his devotees, "So whatever extra
you have got, give it to me. And the extra thing you have got is your
mind. Give it to me. I am ready to receive it. Because your mind
troubles you give it to me. It won't trouble me. Just give it. And give
your egos to me because egos trouble you, but they don't trouble me.
Give them to me. So whatever extra you have in your mind, or your mind
itself even, give it to me. I can bear it. It won't affect me. So just
try to be holy and try to be a good devotee, a perfect devotee of the
guru, who is himself perfect, who is really perfect.
