The closer members got to the supreme leader in the ashram the more it would break them. Even after leaving the group physically, many never psychologically escaped. It could take years, even decades, to recover from the trauma.
This is the fourth in a series of interviews that originally appeared in Canadian Atheist. The interviewer and article author has granted permission. SkepticMeditations.com has republished the interview with edits from the original.
Interview by Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Scott, the Founder of Skeptic Meditations, speaks from experience in entering and leaving an ashram. Here we talk about existential risks for an individual leaving a cult, views of the world only knowing the cult, leaving psychologically and physically from the cult, places for transition, and some who never get over their trauma.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What bigger existential risks exist for the individual who leaves the cult, immediately?
Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: The more the group members lived in the ashrams the more broken was their self-identity. Their self-identity was dismantled and remolded to fit the image of the leader and group. Group members attached their existence to ashram identity, name, and position within the spiritual-organizational hierarchy.
Cloistered spiritual groups tend to rule over followers in an undemocratic and unequal way. Those deemed superior are those closest to the supreme leader[1]. Group members learn quickly how to compete for the leader’s attention and to climb the ladder of the spiritual-corporation. The ashram members sought power, position, and competition for the attention of the leader.
It is difficult to describe what a member feels and thinks after leaving their relationships within a group that for years or decades destroyed, then reformed and maintained their spiritual-ego or self-world identity. Members who leave the group psychologically first, before they leave physically, probably have lower risk of failing to reintegrate into society outside.
When you think about cults, the aim of the leaders and the members who join them, is to break down the former self-world identity. It’s presumed the egoic self is bad, wrong, or evil. In the name of spiritual training ashram residents allowed the leader and his henchmen to abuse, to break the self, the ego of followers.
In cults with an Eastern enlightenment-bent, the spiritual path is purportedly divinely designed to bring follower-practitioners to perfection, to realize self as Self, soul, or God or Nirvana. It doesn’t really matter what the ideal. For the external authority dictates the goal, the path, and everything in between. The ultimate devotee-disciple then is the one who is selfless, egoless, and thoughtless. There were many disciples of meditation gurus who I saw who had the thousand yard stare. Shining eyes and toothy smiles but behind them was not themselves as individual personality but robots, parrots of the teacher-masters words and thoughts.
The aim of selflessness in the Eastern enlightenment sense is by degrees to offer one’s self in total service and obedience to the spiritual teacher. In the SRF ashram we called this attunement. The more we became like the leader or his ideology the more in-tune, spiritual we became. Gradually over years and decades of spiritual training our identity broken. Fashioned in the old self’s place is some new self made to fit the image of the guru and group.
To members inside the outside world is dangerous, evil, or deluded. To be close to the master-teacher is spiritual safety and illumination. The way to get close physically or psychologically (spiritually) was to kill the self and attune to the master. Psychologically cult groups break the member’s sense of self and then reframe follower’s self-world identity. Meditating, chanting, visualizing, affirming one’s Oneness or Unity with some Higher Power, these are cult-like practices. For when coupled with an ideology of seeking perfection or enlightenment the practices break down self-identity, corrupt the senses, and one’s ability to analyze and act independently.
Jacobsen: How does someone view the world if the cult or cult-like group is all they have ever known in life?
Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: Long-time cult-group members fear more than anything to leave the group. It was drilled into the monks in the SRF ashrams that we were special, chosen by God and Guru, just one more meditation away from ultimate self-realization. Divine carrots dangled with a spiritual stick.
The darker side of the story was that if we ever left the master-teacher or left the ashram we not only risked losing everything spiritually but were likely to wander in darkness, suffering, lost in delusion (Maya) for seven future lifetimes (future human incarnations).
The annihilation of self occurs when entering, staying, and leaving the cult. That is perhaps why many former members who leave cults hold onto the underlying beliefs that led them and kept them in the group in the first place. Psychologically it’s all one has known, the cult of an external authority. That’s why many who left the ashram joined other cult ideologies, such as Landmark Forum, Buddhism, spiritual but not religious, or energy healing.
We humans have a deep need to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. Our cultures (cults: familial, social, economic, political, philosophical or theological) breed meaning.
I think this is why existential philosophers, like Nietzsche, declared God is dead and acknowledged that the natural world was a nightmare of horror tinged with moments of art and beauty. Men seek to escape from nature’s horror into an imaginary perfection.
When a member of the cult group, that pretends to offer the ultimate purpose of existence, when that member psychologically or physically leaves the group or ideology, that creates for him or her a crisis of existence.
Jacobsen: How can members who are thoroughly entrenched in the doctrine of the cult’s worldview leave mentally and then physically?
Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: Ashram members who left or who were asked to leave often were not able to leave psychologically. Meaning they did not leave behind the SRF ashram ideology. Which meant then that leaving the ashram physically didn’t make much difference to their underlying self-identity. The held psychologically onto their identity with the ideology of the group.
Several former monks who I talked with after I left, though they physically left the ashram, they clung psychologically to it. Their worldview continued to revolve around Eastern mysticism, spirituality, and meditation practices. They’d tell me their experiences in meditation prove the existence of kundalini (astral energies) awakened in their spine (a Yogic doctrine espoused by SRF and many Eastern-styled meditation groups), as if tickling sensations are deeply meaningful and proof beyond doubt.
How would they know those sensations are what they believe they are? Did they actually come to mystical experience by themselves? Or, did some external authority tell them about it?
Gradually, decades after leaving physically I finally psychologically left the ashram cult; I saw that what I’d believed in was a false doctrine. That the whole thing was a fraud, and that we’d simply been abused. It really hurts to admit that. But to admit I was a victim of abuse has helped me to process, learn, and get through the trauma.
Jacobsen: Do halfway houses or safe transition houses exist for ex-cult members as with women who were victims of domestic abuse?
Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: I’m not aware of organized, physical safe houses for victims of cult abuse in the United States. Though there are some online support groups. In U.S. society, I think, pretends there are no victims of abuses.
Self-reliance is sometimes insufficient. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps, is the attitude in the U.S. society. Members who leave controlling groups or cults seldom get public assistance.
Perhaps the heartlessness of self-reliance is one reason why in the U.S. we have so many religious factions, fundamentalists, and cults vying for mindshare. And, why there is an endless supply of incoming and outgoing members to religions and cults.
So, for the most part, cult members in the U.S. when they leave the group, they pretty much are on their own. Some are fortunate to have supportive family and friends. But, as I noted above, many cult members abandoned or destroyed their former relationships upon entering and obeying the rules of the cult.
However, I do know of a few informal halfway houses for former religious clergy or cult-members to transition back into society.
The Clergy Project, a nonprofit for clergy who no longer believe in the supernatural, provide online resources and sometimes training and funding for former clergy to reintegrate back into society.
There’s Recovering From Religion that provides a toll-free hotline, but it is not focused on cults per se, but on people struggling to come out of religion (which as I mentioned above physically leaving a cult group is not the same as psychologically leaving the religion or underlying doctrine of the cult).
I’ve heard that Leah Remini, producer, and host of the TV documentary series Scientology and the Aftermath, is trying to organize a nonprofit to support Scientology Sea Org (e.g. clergy) who want to leave and to reintegrate into society.
When I left the Self-Realization Fellowship Order, never to return physically, I was fortunate to find the informal support of several members and former monastics of SRF.
Without their material (donations of household items to stock my new apartment) and psychological support (listening and understanding), I may have had a much more challenging reintegration back into society.
Or, if I had left without their support would have felt perhaps totally isolated and alone. (Self-reliance is mostly a myth. We rely on support from others, especially during our crises.)
I sometimes feel alone in my experiences but then I occasionally meet former cult members who I can identify with. More public conversation seems to be happing in the mainstream, but mostly alternative media about cult-groups and members who exit cults.
That kind of vulnerability, feeling isolated and alone, is often what cults and their leaders prey on and target in recruits. So whatever we as society can do to support our member I believe is extremely important for our societal, human, and natural survival.
Jacobsen: Do some never ‘get over’ their experiences, the trauma for example?
Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: Yes. It breaks you to be a committed member of a cult or psychologically controlling group. Members sign-up for the promise of spiritual training, which begins by breaking down the ego, self-identity. Those who take it deadly serious place their entire trust in God, Guru-teacher, and spiritual path. Those who don’t take the group so serious probably will not be broken.
The break-down of self at first can often feel exhilarating, ecstatic, liberating. But this breakdown and reshaping of self-identity through external authority is at best a waste of time, at worst dangerous. For me, I experienced the harms. And, the waste: the many years I spent meditating and in the group was precious time lost. Time that I can never regain. Time that I would’ve instead spent learning skills, building relationships, family, career, intellect, and so on. The ashram cult didn’t just take away my time or money; they robbed me of my right to experience my self-world as it is.
Many former members never really seem to get over their trauma. Many turn inward on themselves: to guilt, shame, or depression, sometimes suicide. The guilt and self-world break-down is by design. It is part of the conditioning, or spiritual training, underlying membership in psychologically controlling groups.
A huge motivation for my doing this interview with you is to speak out about the harms of such groups, to process my experiences, and hopefully help by telling my story and perspectives.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Scott.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal.
Notes
Image credit: escape by boneguitars licensed by CC BY 3.0
1 For more on power struggles in the ashram, read my post The Ashram: Spiritual-Corporate Caste System