These Former Cult Members Now Help Others Escape - Joseph Kelly

Vice: These Former Cult Members Now Help Others Escape

Joe Kelly
"I was involved with two groups in the 70s. One was a group called Transcendental Meditation or TM, that was run by a Hindu guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who became famous for being the Beatles guru. Here, we went from a simple 20-minute meditation technique to being convinced we could levitate for world peace.

Simultaneously, I was studying comparative religions, and was especially fascinated by Hinduism. I met a man—who I thought was my true guru—named Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, who had a group called the International Society of Divine Love. In the 1980s, he took a group of us from TM and established an ashram in Philadelphia, which was more structured and rigid. Some of its members even sued Maharishi for millions of dollars for being a fraud. Swami Prakashanand then used the money to set up a temple outside of Austin, Texas, called Barsana Dham. But the Swami was eventually convicted of abusing his follower’s children, though he ran back to India where he was protected.

After that, the group’s attorneys suggested we attend this conference where ex members of cults talk about their experiences, so we could understand how to evaluate whether someone is a spiritual guru or a conman. That’s when I first understood the psychology and sociology behind these groups, and decided I’d use my experiences to take apart the structures of belief for other people who had gravitated towards cults.

 

People join cults if they are dissatisfied with their family, or want to find their own individuality, and such groups make them believe they will help you realise your true potential. One of the most challenging cases I’ve worked on was with a group that encouraged channeling, which is the concept that there is a world of dispossessed spirits that can educate the people of this world, and give you knowledge to live a better life.

But what they taught was that the use of drugs like ecstasy and LSD could help you gain this knowledge. Their approach was to gain more monetary benefit from the world, and they believed that through positive thinking and believing in prosperity, you can change your alignment with the universe, and it would bestow wealth upon you. It was led by a woman named Katherine Holt, who said she was channeling a spirit from the 17th century of a man named Father Andre, who was theoretically a mystic. She had about 30 followers, and would cause people to couple or decouple. She would ask them to do ecstasy, or have sex with people other than their spouses. I began working with a man named Mark, who had married a woman in the group. While in session, his wife was told to have sex with another man upstairs, while Mark could hear them. The leader told Mark that despite what he was hearing and feeling, he had to separate from that emotion. That he would only be free if he let go of the ego and ownership he felt for his wife, and refused to live by the norms of the society. He was tripping on drugs, but was told not to feel the emotions he was feeling.

At that point Mark realised there was something very wrong there. He went to his parents, who contacted me through the Cult Awareness Network. His dilemma was that his wife and child were in the group, and that child was being breastfed by a mom using LSD and ecstasy. We developed a strategy to reach out to the wife. Her family had a wedding in New England, so we went there. The cult told her to stay away from her husband, who was “evil” because he’d left the group. I was supposed to make him feel calm and try to help his wife see how wrong the group was. But, unbeknownst to me, my mentor had organised for Mark to take his child and move to a safe house in Colorado. It culminated in a long legal battle for custody, but eventually the group’s leader was arrested and the wife left."

Some of the most difficult cases for me are the ones that involve a family. Once there’s a romantic influence or friendship with other members of the cult, it becomes more difficult to break them out of it.  (Cult Mediation website at (cultmediation.com)