What are some of the benefits for ashram residents and their leaders? What keeps followers stuck inside an abusive relationship or cult?
This article is third in a series and originally appeared in Canadian Atheist. It is republished here with the author’s permission. Skeptic Meditations has edited the original for the article below.
Scott, Founder of Skeptic Meditations, speaks from experience in entering and leaving Self-Realization Monastic Order, a Hindu-inspired ashram headquartered in Los Angeles and founded by famous Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda. Here we talk about some of the benefits of ashram residents and their guru-leaders. Also, we discuss the drivers that keep people stuck inside an abusive relationship or cult.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to take a 25-degree slant on the conversation around cults. What small benefits came from the extensive training found in the ashram?
Scott from SkepticMeditations.com:
Yeah, you’d hope there were some benefits from spending a decade and a half of my life in an ashram. A few benefits were: I got exposed to people from all over the U.S., Canada, India, Australia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Interestingly, other than India, there were no monks from other parts of Asia. Of course, the SRF monks in the ashrams were similar in their spiritual beliefs and renunciate worldview. But I got to enjoy traditional recipes from around the world.
Some other benefits while in the ashram: I learned to prepare and cook food, to cut hair, to grow herbs and vegetables. The ashram routine taught me how to be orderly and tidy, to clean toilets, clean dishes, and community areas of the ashram. The monks lived the cliche’ “cleanliness was next to godliness”. Mostly though the ashram rules and duties to clean and be orderly reflected the unlivable renunciate ideals of living a life of perfection, sanctity, and purity.
Jacobsen: Did any big benefits come to you? It seems odd to ask because the focus is on the negative, but, with a hint of humor, only a small percent of all things are ever all bad.
Scott:
The monks, individually and in groups practiced meditation for four hours everyday. The monastic routine[1] forced me to introspect, to go within, to meditate and police my thoughts. There was nothing like a meditation chapel full of stilly sitting monks to force you to sit still, though often times my mind could be racing. Sometimes I quieted my thoughts. There were times when I had so-called mystical experiences. Many altered-states of consciousness I understand now have alternative explanations[2] that are more natural than supernatural.
Perhaps there’s no other human experience quite like living as an ascetic, like a hermit or a monk. Professional monkhood demands total self involvement. Taken to extremes monkhood becomes about being self-absorbed. Despite much rhetoric about how spiritual aspirants must be selfless and surrender ego to a higher authority, frankly my experience was most ashram residents were pathologically self-absorbed. We just relabelled self-absorption as spiritual, blissed out, or communion with God. Later I learned that meditation can sometimes have negative side effects[3], like depersonalization and psychosis.
When the honeymoon wears off, after the first two or three years, the routine in the ashram became mindlessly deadening. The ashram is a place where people go to let individuality, creativity, and intellect die.
Any benefits become traps. The ashram routine of meditation and renunciation stifled psychological growth. In the SRF ashram, developing intellect and self-expression is considered egoic. There might be a few exceptions but ashram residents had to seek their own secret outlets for creative self-expression. I remember one monk telling me he’d listen over and over to Jimi Hendrix ‘All Along the Watchtower’ to relieve his frustrations. Another monk got emotional outlet by listening to Opera. (Only SRF approved music was considered spiritual, and opera was not). Most long-time monks had to live a secret inward double life to cope in a stodgy ashram.
Jacobsen: What is the need fulfilled by the joining of a cult for those that do join them? What need does this serve?
Scott:
Well for me, joining the SRF ashram and becoming a monk was a way to escape the world on the pretext of spiritual searching. It’s not that I was insincere in my search. It’s just that looking back I realized what I searched for was answers. The kinds of answers where I no longer had to search. No longer had to think or grapple with difficult questions. It was, in a warped way, an exhilarating freedom to hand over my authority and responsibility to a divine master and his spiritual predecessors who presumably had all the answers. All I had to do was follow, to obey, and everything would be bliss and roses. A culture of non-thought is rewarded with its own benefits. Ignorance is bliss: until disillusionment sets in.
Outwardly the ashramites presented themselves as pious disciples. As ascetics, hermits, monks they were special or different from most people in Western culture. Inwardly though the monks were no different really, or perhaps different in the worst ways, loaded with desires, neuroses, and insecurities. Renunciates are forced to pretend outwardly that everything is wonderful. Else their ashram existence is a sham. Outwardly monks had to present themselves as holy, pious, and pure. Inwardly though many monks felt empty or worse, doomed to suffer for the master, and unworthy of happiness in the present life. At first the double life of a ashram resident starts with little violations of ashram rules: They install a coffee maker in their bedroom (consuming caffeine is against the rules, even though chai tea was served on special occasions). They’d secretly install a TV in their room or sneak out to the movie theatre. Or, in some cases the vows of outward celibacy (no sex or romance with mortals) occasionally erupted into sex scandals. There were several incidents when renegade monks ran off with nuns and others who sexually exploited SRF lay members. (In this context, lay member is pregnant with double meaning).
I digress. Back to your question. The needs change for members who join these groups. Followers of cult-like groups join for idealized, starry-eyed, spiritual purposes: to transform the world, to bring techniques for self-realization to the planet, to spiritualize self and humanity. On the outside these motives for joining appear to be peaceful, harmonious, and noble. Inside though there is a psychological battle with many contradictions. Spiritual advancement is often equated with position, power, and authority over others in the ashram. Self-importance is tied to outward markers in how often one is recognized, promoted, or praised by the leaders or members. So the ashrams become a nasty breeding ground for bringing out the best and more often the worst, passive-aggressive behaviors, in residents. It’s a psychological trap that once followers invest in psychologically becomes difficult to get out[4]. It’s a very confused existence really because of the contradictions inherent in the unlivable ideals.
Jacobsen: Obviously, the main benefits of cults come to the leaders, whether finances, followers, or, apparently, people to have sex with for an extended period of time. These seem like casual observations of consistent phenomena. What seems like the main driver for the highest leadership in a cult?
Scott:
In a recent blog post I wrote how the supreme leader-guru gains his superpower from his devotees. The guru needs disciples for his identity. The disciples need guru for theirs. The guru-disciple relationship is based and maintained in this power exchange.
Allegations of sexual impropriety are common among Hindu gurus in the U.S. The guru-disciple relationship is built and maintained on a power exchange and often by sexual attraction. Here’s some examples I will quote.
“Yogananda was also formally accused of impropriety by Swami Dhirananda in 1935 and Sri Nerode in 1940; these two men worked originally with Yogananda to spread Kriya Yoga” wrote Lola Williamson, a religious studies professor at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS and researcher of Hindu-based groups in the US, in Transcendent in America: Hindu-Inspired Meditation Movements as New Religion.
Yogananda was apparently never found guilty of abuses by a court of law. However, there’s been numerous out of court settlements and testimonies of disgruntled former followers.
One disillusioned female student of Yogananda wrote in a letter dated 1938:
“…After we started living at Mt.Washington [ashram], Swamiji [respectful for Swami Yogananda], whether at Encinitas or here, had me come to see him every night….On these nightly visits to his rooms he always had me lock the door or he did it; then all he’d do was either to sit and look at me or talk about his experiences with beautiful women on his tours and of sex….Before this time he had me take an oath of unconditional friendship to him promising never to reveal what he tells me to another person. He says there should be no conditions, no barriers between us now that I took the oath…He said I was creating a barrier between us by not letting him kiss me, or at least not wanting him to. He kissed me every time I went to his rooms after the first time although it was against my liking. Sometimes he tried to stick his tongue in my mouth but I wouldn’t stand for that! He says that nothing he would ever do to me could possibly hurt me but bless me since it was God manifesting through him.
“He has told me that any place his hand touches that person is blessed. At times he has placed his hands on different parts of my body and made suggestive movements to put his hand inside my dress and would have if I had not pushed it away. If he would do such things as this on just a few months friendship, what does he do with the girls who are with him constantly and wait on him like slaves?
One afternoon up in his office here at Mt.Washington we were sitting on the couch and he pulled me back on his big lotus pillow and kissed and held me so tight I had to fight to get my breath. This was not an unusual occurrence however. We had been discussing the barrier which he said I had erected by resisting him (he always brought this subject up until finally I got so sick of discussing it I refused to say any more on it) when he told me this about Jesus Christ. He said that a spiritual man can touch a woman and it won’t be in the physical plane. He said Jesus “had” Mary Magdalene in a certain way.”
These allegations are not surprising. I would expect disgruntled students to come forward to testify of abuses. No matter how sincere the leader-guru, students get used for the master’s own self-interest. The followers make the master. And the master needs the students. Whatever abuses occur occur within that dynamic of self-interest exchange between master and disciple[5].
Jacobsen: When it comes to followers somewhere in the privileged circle of the leader, what benefits accrue to them? Why do they keep following when they must see the hypocrisy and faults of the leader more closely than others at the bottom of the cult pyramid?
Scott:
The inner circle of followers, those closest to the powerful leader, have much control of the followers further outside the circle. They often act as the conduits of the master. They have the information power over disciples who have lesser access to the master. I don’t believe followers can remain long in the inner circle of the leader if they focus on the leader’s hypocrisy and faults. There would be too much cognitive dissonance (inner psychological conflict) for the follower who disbelieves in the infallibility of the leader. Or, in some rare cases some monks or follower disciples might be able to go through the outer motions, pay lip service, while inwardly not believing in the teachings, doctrines, or edicts of the church and its leaders. The guru-disciple relationship demands total obedience to the master. Otherwise, it won’t work.
What keeps “followers” following the master or cult is complicated. The longer followers follow–especially an ascetic, renunciate, monastic life that is dependent on the church or spiritual organization–the harder it is to break free of the group. It’s extremely difficult for to abandon one’s entire psychological identity and the community that props it up. In the SRF ashram monks were given food, clothing, and shelter from the horrors of the “outside world”. Remember these groups, like SRF, paint the outside world and the people in it as dangerous or “evil”.
The Clergy Project[6] is a community of current and former religious clergy who no longer believe in god or the supernatural. As a member, I have heard many, many stories of clergy who can’t leave or who finally left but couldn’t without support from groups like Clergy Project, other former cult-members, family and friends. Having left a high-control group, the SRF ashram, I understand how difficult it is for followers inside these groups and the longer they stay inside the group the more difficult it leave. Is it really surprising that people stay in abusive relationships? Relationships are powerful and difficult to break from the longer we are in them and the more our identity (i.e. psychological survival) is tied to them. It is often an existential fight for survival to question or to break away from an abusive, long-term relationship.
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
1 For more on the inside of SRF Order, read my post A Monks’ Ashram Weekly Routine.
2 There’s many natural explanations for mystical experiences. Read my post Re-Interpreting Mystical Experience.
3 My index of posts Adverse (Side) Effects of Meditation contains numerous examples and research studies.
4 My post Double Bind of Eastern Enlightenment goes into details about the psychological traps inherent in renunciate worldviews.
5 For more details, read my post Sexuality in Guru-Disciple Relationship.
6 The Clergy Project website: For current and former religious professionals without supernatural beliefs.