Leaving, physically, an abusive group is not the hardest part. It’s leaving the relationship psychologically, recovering your psyche.
The core of this interview originally appeared in Medium: Humanist Voices. Republished here with permission for the interviewer and edited here by SkepticMeditations. Our interviewer is Scott Douglas Jacobsen of Conatus News and Founder of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing.
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 big existential risks are there immediately for the individual who leaves a cult-like group?
Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: Based on my experiences of leaving the cult-like ashram of Self-Realization Fellowship, I would say the big existential risks immediately upon leaving:
1) Feelings of despair and meaninglessness upon leaving the group.
A huge attraction for joining is the promise of ultimate meaning and purpose in life. Gurus and authoritarian leaders short-circuit or bypass our natural process of individually grappling, struggling, and resolving for ourselves the meaning or meaninglessness of existence. After I left and later read Nietzsche, Camus, and Kierkegaard I understood the value of seeing life and the universe as ultimately meaningless. Each of us ought to grapple individually with the meaninglessness of our existence, and create what meaning is in our lives. Otherwise, we either sink into emptiness and despair or mindlessly follow some external authority who tells us what our purpose in life is.
2) Leaving a cult-like group only physically.
There is leaving physically, which is perhaps easiest to see, to grasp. You split from the ashram and move out. Although the longer you are in the group the harder it is. In the ashram I lived members were given $40 a month total and were dependent completely on the group for food, shelter, clothing, and relationships or community.
Leaving the group psychologically is much more complicated. For reasons cited in my response in #1 above about our human desire to find ultimate meaning, purpose, answers.
The existential challenge of leaving a cult-like group includes:
- Loss of psychological identity: Years inside a cult-like group makes followers ideologically consciously and unconsciously fit into the group’s doctrines or worldview. Leaving psychologically will likely take as many years as it did to stay in it to unbind the language, worldview, and subtle manipulations of the group.
- Leaving the group physically is no guarantee of leaving the group psychologically. Close proximity to the group’s “headquarters” or “center” puts follower-disciples at greater existential peril psychologically.
- Fear of not being “good enough” from being kicked out or leaving the group, not living up to the group’s ideals of spiritual or ideological perfection, obedience, and loyalty.
There’s an excellent collection of essays titled: The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad which I recommend and have written about in my articles, including: Manipulation Techniques of Meditation Peddlers, Escaping the psychological trap of meditation techniques, and Double Bind of Eastern Enlightenment.
3) I prefer to use the term “cult-like” instead of only cult. For cult-like encompasses the attributes of common behaviors, such as:
- Unquestioning obedience to authority,
- Promising ultimate purpose and meaning in life,
- Dismissing or berating anyone who questions or challenges the group, leader, ideology.
Cult-like behaviors are on a spectrum. They are common in our society and manifest in degrees, like a bullfrog that is first comfortable in a cooking pot of lukewarm water. Gradually as the flame burns underneath and boils the water the frog is cooked. We are all born into cult-like influences. But each of us is influenced in various degrees by these external authorities.
Jacobsen: How can they — those for who the entrenchment and indoctrination are arguably the most thorough — leave mentally and then physically?
Scott: The way I left mentally or psychologically the SRF systems of undue influence was through a gradual, years-long process. I lived in the SRF ashrams as a monk for 14 years. I believe it took me the same amount of time, 13-14 years, before I was able to psychologically come to grips with what had happened to me. During those 13-14 years I was engulfed mostly in catching back up with decades of my life lost while living in a closed-cloister. I was reintegrating back into the world: getting professional training and experiences, going back to school to complete college education, building a home, paying the bills, and learning about being in the world outside the ashram.
The harder part, in hindsight, was unpacking the layers of psychological manipulations that go way beyond just one cult-like group experience, like SRF. I’m talking about layers of cultural and societal indoctrination since birth. The education of youth in being obedient to authority and so on. Of being raised Catholic and being asked to have faith in the Church, Pope, and God, Jesus. The whole thing about unquestioning authority feeds into an entire worldview, an existence, psychologically. Like a fish in a bowl of water. The indoctrination is the bowl but more critically the unconscious water all around the fish.
In some strange twist of chance, it actually was the fellow members of the ashram where I’d lived that allowed me to openly begin questioning ashram authority and the teachings of SRF.
The monks at that time started these encounter-like groups. We had begun to confront our existence, it’s meaning, individually within the community.
For instance, we would sit in a circle of maybe 10–50 monks and discuss questions such as:
- If SRF ashram was an instrument to our feeling the bliss, joy, and love that our guru, Yogananda (1893–1952) promised followers-disciples then why were we mostly feeling fear, despair, and hopelessness?
- Why were the leaders of SRF seemingly indifferent to our despair?
- Could it be that the leaders and the organizational systems gained its very power over the fear-based systems of psychological controls?
These and many other questions were hashed out over a year or two by many of the SRF monks in the ashram. Until the SRF President and her lieutenants shut down the conversations and banned the open “encounter” groups. Also, the leaders of the encounter groups, the Spiritual Life Committee, were all replaced by compliant lieutenants of the President. And the President fired the two outside professional psychologists who had facilitated any encounter sessions.
Jacobsen: Do halfway houses or safe transition houses exist for ex-cult members as with women domestic abuse victims?
Scott: I’m not aware of any halfway or transition houses for members who leave cult-like groups. There are some members or former members from outside some cult-like groups like Scientology, SRF, or Mormons, who may temporarily take people into their homes, provide occupational training, or donate household items to members who leave the group to establish a home or place to live outside the group.
On Netflix sometimes you find some interesting documentaries. I remember one called Amish: Shunned that reminded me of my experiences in and outside the SRF ashram. Also, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief also helped me process my experiences and see how disturbing are these cult-like behaviors.
Jacobsen: Do some never ‘get over’ their experiences, the trauma for example?
Scott: Correct. Some, perhaps most, if not all ,who spent many years within high-control groups, may never get over the abuse or controls.
Why would we want them to get completely “over” it?
For me, the lessons I learned getting out of the ashram cult-like situation, both physically and psychologically, was perhaps one of the most defining experiences of my life, of my psyche. I learned so much that is nearly unspeakable. And, that continues to unfold. That’s not to say that I don’t regret living in the SRF ashram for 14 years. I do regret staying so long.
I have scars and trauma lurking underneath my psyche. On the outside I live a fairly ordinary life, with fairly unremarkable job, car, family, friends and accomplishments. Most of the people I know do not know I lived for a decade and a half in an ashram, cult-like group. Or, if they do know we seldom if ever talk about it. Perhaps it’s also my introverted nature that keeps me from speaking much about my experiences.
That’s why for me to talk or write about it is so healing. It allows me to process my thoughts and feelings. In some strange, macabre way I get fascinated as to what drives people to join, stay, and leave cult-like groups.
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.
Featured photo, Gilbert Sopakuwa on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons
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