How I Ended Up In A Cult. 1981-1985

“There’s one born every minute. (P T Barnum).  

Was I just gullible? Possibly, but I like to think the story was more complex than that.  

My father died in 1978, dropping dead instantly with coronary thrombosis a month short of his 50^th birthday.  Naturally, the whole family were devastated.  I took it very badly, largely as my grand-parents told me repeatedly that I (then 16) was now ‘the man of the family’. My first task as such was taking my Dad’s place giving my sister away at her first of three weddings.  I felt my childhood had died with my Dad but I didn’t feel grown up or mature at all.  

Me as a miserable teenager with my Mum & Dad. Photographer unknown.

I lost interest in my education and just drifted aimlessly. I left with just a few O’Levels.  The job market was volatile. This was Thatcher’s Britain, with 3 and a half million on the dole.  A morose kid with barely any qualifications and no work experience had no chance.  

My Book Shelves

I used what little spare cash I had to buy second hand books.   At a monthly book fair, I met a lady (I’ll call her Martha, not her real name) who was one of the traders. I asked her out on dates twice with no luck, but the next time we met, she invited me out, to a Manchester University (UMIST Campus) lecture on meditation.  I had zero interest in the subject but I knew I’d be in her company, so I agreed to go.  

There was a table laid out like an altar, with flowers and candles surrounding a photo of a young Indian man. Some attendees, including Martha kissed the photo and bowed before it. I started to feel a mixture of discomfort, alarm, curiosity and also a sense of adventure.  

The lecture was a mix of pop songs like Lennon’s Imagine and talks by followers of the photographed figure who they called Goomradjie. (An affectionate abbreviation of his title. 

The first talk was by a girl talking with some emotion of how she had almost died through drug addiction and praising how finding Goomradjie had saved her.  Out of politeness, I started applauding, only to find I was the only one among 200 who was clapping.  Martha told me that applause was only for Goomradjie, not his followers, who were blessed by his ‘Grace’.  

After the talks, several attendees crowded round me. My clapping obviously told them I was a new potential convert. They were all slightly glassy eyed and sporting beaming smiles. They seemed genuinely in awe of everything I said. 

I had lots of questions, and startled them by pointing out that I was an atheist (though raised Roman Catholic). They told me they were not a religion, but had the Knowledge (note the capital K) in the form of four meditation techniques. I asked what these techniques were. I was told I was not ready.  

Martha withdrew while others spoke to me and occasionally hugged me. I asked on person a question, but someone else answered, so I was getting disoriented.  

Curiosity kills cats and I was hooked. I went to more meetings, often at houses called Ashrams. (temples where followers lived, but renting directly from the movement). I wanted to know these mysterious mediations at least and I had silly ideas about pointing out it was all a scam enough to get everyone quitting with me.  

At first, my Mum & sister found them amusing but with time, they realized I was finding their jokes offensive rather than funny.  

My Aunt Pauline - Photographed by me

I met my favourite auntie, Pauline, who had given me my first copy of The Hobbit.  She knew about the group already and even told me they were The Divine Light Mission (news to me as they rented halls under the names Divine Understanding Order & World Welfare Society).  Pauline had nearly been recruited by a woman called Martha, yes the same one who got me in). Martha was giving Pauline a lift to a meeting, but Pauline was worried by her glazed fanatism, and jumped out of the car at some traffic lights and ran away.  

I still asked questions, and one night I was denied admission to the usual meeting at the Ashram. I was told to talk to an Ashram co-ordinator who told me bluntly that my questions were evil mind-speak, and making others doubt their faith. I was told to quit questioning or leave all together. The Co-0rdinator told me that I was obviously hooked as I kept coming back for more. I felt like a junkie at risk of having his heroin supply cut off.  “Face it, Arthur. We’ve got you.” This was a pee or get off the pot ultimatum. He hammered home that leaving would make me feel like a failure, riddled with doubt and never seeing the glory so tantalisingly close.  I vowed to quit questioning and they let me attend the last of the talks (called Satsangs, Hindi for ‘being in the company of truth).  

Without questioning and supressing my doubts, my recruitment intensified.  Then came exciting news, Guru Maharaj Ji was coming to Manchester for the first time ever.  As Aspirants, those due to get The Knowledge, we had a chance to attend at the Free Trade Hall.   

Maharaj Ji was a very charismatic speaker, and I convinced myself that I could see lines of energy reaching from him to touch everyone. I felt I was seeing God incarnate. I was now fully converted.  

Weeks later, six months after the first meeting, I received the four meditation techniques called the Knowledge. They were not new. They are mentioned in the Bhagavat Gita. They are (and I share this despite an oath not to as I now see the cult doctrines as worthless).  

1/. THE LIGHT.  Placing the index finger on the temple between the eyes and closing your eyes in as total darkness as you can get, you concentrate and see a light, supposedly brighter than a 1,000 suns.  This is described to you as seeing God. It is just over-stimulation of the Pineal Gland – the so called third eye.  

2/. THE MUSIC (OF THE SPHERES).  The thumbs are pressed into the ears and the sound is listened to as divine melody. It is just your blood roaring past your ears. 

3/. THE HOLY BREATH or THE VIBRATION.  A breathing exercise, breathing in deeply, slowly and then breathing out but before quite fully expelling all the air in your lungs you breath in again, and keep going as long as possible.  

4/. THE NECTAR – The breathing again, but with a gross, even dangerous addition. You move your tongue as far back as you can in the throat and hold it there, supposedly tasting all the sweet sensations in the universe. You are actually just tasting your own  snot spilling down from the back of your nostrils.  Some followers arched the tongue back hard enough to snap delicate tendons holding it in place. Though I never heard of anyone swallowing their tongues it seems frightfully likely.   

The techniques (The 4 Kryjas) moved me from ASPIRANT status to fully converted PREMIE (Lover of God/Goomradjie)   

The Guru was in Europe, in Rome and we all decided to go there to see him. During his shows there, where we reacted like The Beatles had reunited), he danced like Kryshna,  and we received the first (for me) of many DARSHAN’s (Being in the presence of the living perfect master_ 8,000 of us queued up to file past his throne and bow down to kiss his feet.  Pretty sure I’d have kissed his backside by the time I was this far gone).  

Life was now a routine of meditation (an hour in the morning and an hour before bed), Satsang (sharing how wonderful our Guru was to us), and Service. The latter was working for free to raise money for the cult. We sold potatoes and home made first aid kit boxes door to door.  We never told the customers who we were). We also had stalls at the 1983 and 1984 Glastonbury festivals.   

3 & a half to 4 years in, cracks began to show.  A drunken Premie revealed that she was on the short-list of about twenty members entitled to speak at public recruitment members.  We had all been told until then that any of might be picked at any time.  I started dating a German girl I met and invited her to come to a Satsang. She was treated with hostility for asking awkward questions and for luring me from meetings for our nights out together. I found her crying as someone had shoulder charged her, slamming her right into a wall.  She declined to tell me who it was.  Goomradjie now made radical changes to the movement. All Hindi lingo had to be dropped. He was never again to be called Guru, Goomradjie or Satguru (Living Perfect Master). His name was now to be spelt Maharaji.  The movement itself was now to be officially changed to Elan Vital (French for Vital Force.  All private informal house meetings were to stop immediately. Only formal co-ordinated events were allowed.  

The most devastating change was the international closure of the Ashrams.  I was never living in one, but those who were found themselves evicted overnight.  

Many members quit in the next few weeks and I made my first attempt to leave, but I felt too addicted to quit and went back. No one seem to notice I’d gone for weeks.  

Then Maharaji visited for the last time while I was a member.  He spoke at London’s Albert Hall. As Service I offered to help behind the scenes. Another scandal surfaced. It  was found that the best seats at his visits were being sold to the highest bidders, and in response to this, they were trying a total random seat allocation system.  This created a security headache as normally potential hecklers and trouble makers had been seated in the back rows, so security could drag them out without disrupting the show for everyone else.  Now, the awkward ones could end up anywhere, so my job was to be part of the team assigned to follow the suspected problem makers to their seats and point out to security where they were. I felt like a detective in a film noir shadowing goons, and also wondered who might be following me. 

Then I got my ticket, three rows from the front, closer than I’d ever been  before, in a seat someone might have paid hundreds of £££ for before this.  

Maharaji seemed boring rather than  charismatic to me.  His comments also reminded me that I’d barely meditated formerly since the night of the big changes.  Somehow I didn’t care.  Then came his rare Question And Answer finale. Without thinking, I put my hand up and he picked me out.  I asked him how important it was to him that his followers loved each other as much as we loved him.  He liked the question, but his answer was sarcastic. “Just love me. You can’t love everyone or you’d be French Kissing the postman every morning.”  

I was torn between disappointment in his answer and being smug about getting to directly communicate with him.  Back in Manchester, ordinary Premies were in awe of me, but the Co-ordinator tore into me for not asking permission of him first, so he could vet what I might say. I have no doubt my raised hand would have been ignored if I had.   

I left fully within a few meetings of that and never returned.  I found I was snapping into involuntary meditation trances for a few years afterwards. My mum later told me that I once zoned out like a zombie for two hours and could not be snapped out of it.  

It took a while for me to truly feel free.   

Arthur Chappell