The Jonestown Tragedy

The Jonestown Tragedy | Documentary by Mel White

Features exclusive interviews with members of Jim Jones church--the ones who were spared the Jonestown massacre.

https://youtu.be/FQ-FkTLPrAw?si=bm1J9DHZECEY--0M 

Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army TV review — a story of abuse and oppression

A sober, sensitive BBC documentary examines the rise of a British evangelical church, with powerful testimonies from ex-congregants

Rebecca Nicholson

Financial Times

July 21, 2025

This excellent two-part documentary follows the rise of the Jesus Fellowship, the evangelical Christian church which began as a small group of worshippers in Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire, in 1969. Over 50 years, it amassed thousands of converts across Britain, but by the late 2010s, revelations of sexual and physical abuse by church elders had come to light, shattering the movement’s reputation.

Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army takes a sober and sensitive approach to the story. The first instalment explains how its founder Noel Stanton, who died in 2009, was inspired to form the church, following the lead of evangelical and baptist movements in the US. He was particularly successful at recruiting young members, and after a few years, its followers collectively bought farms and local properties, establishing a largely self-sufficient and socially isolated community.

The Jesus Fellowship attracted media interest from its early days, and there is a trove of fascinating archive material for the filmmakers to call upon. A documentary from the early 1970s, The Lord Took Hold of Bugbrooke, shows villagers complaining about congregants singing too loudly; there is footage of followers speaking in tongues and convulsing. Stanton was known for his “charisma”, but as the years went by his beliefs calcified into strict dogma. The idyllic vision of collective living, of distributing goods according to need, and of giving up all Earthly aspirations, darkened into a more oppressive regime, in which arbitrary actions and items — in one case, a packed lunch — were deemed “worldly” and accused of inviting the devil in.

We know this because of the many courageous ex-congregants willing to speak on camera in this film. The history of the movement is broken up with filmed therapeutic sessions with former members conducted by Gillie Jenkinson, a psychotherapist who specialises in cults and was once in a cult herself. These segments invite considerable empathy as Jenkinson gently examines how cults take hold, and how difficult it is for people to notice that they are being indoctrinated. There is an equal sensitivity when looking at the charitable work done by what would be rebranded as the Jesus Army, camouflage-wearing and more militant, launched in the late 1980s. Recognisable in their brightly coloured buses and vans, the Army would go out on to the streets to help those in need, to “move in peace and love” as they evangelised their message.

The first episode ends with revelations that have been hinted at throughout, of violence and sexual abuse, of children raising the alarm and not being believed, of those who questioned Stanton’s authority being excommunicated and cut off. The final episode reveals its hand more explicitly. This is a sad tale, but a powerful one, told with skill and grace.

★★★★☆

On BBC2 on July 27 at 9pm

https://www.ft.com/content/44b53f09-a995-49cf-b9fa-3b4089128f60

OneTaste peddled sexual wellness via 15-minute orgasms. Then everything went wrong

LOVE & SEX

OneTaste peddled sexual wellness via 15-minute orgasms. Then everything went wrong

As Netflix releases a documentary charting the downfall of an orgasmic meditation company likened to a cult, Olivia Petter examines the future of a somewhat tainted sector

Independent
November 14, 2022

Imagine you’re having an orgasm. Not just any orgasm, but one that could cure all of your problems. One that is earth-shattering, transcendental, and unlike anything you’ve ever known or felt. It is an experience that gives you a newfound purpose, community and identity. Oh, and it lasts for 15 minutes.

These were just some of the claims made by OneTaste, a now-defunct sexual wellness company famed for its workshops on “orgasmic meditation”, a trademarked practice involving a man stroking a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes. Peddling progressive and feminist ideologies, the company quickly became much bigger than its headline offering, with workshops and offices spanning the US, while its messianic founder, Nicole Daedone, earned endorsements from Khloe Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow. Then everything went wrong.

A new Netflix documentary, Orgasm Inc, charts the downfall of OneTaste, detailing allegations of sex trafficking, prostitution and violations of labour law. In the film, employees speak about their experiences for the first time, with some claiming that the company ethos perpetuated incidents of sexual assault and exploited vulnerable people, while others compared the organisation to a cult. OneTaste has previously said that “any allegations of abusive practices are completely false”, while Daedone has more or less disappeared. However, the industry that OneTaste more or less pioneered continues to boom. In fact, it’s bigger than ever.

Estimated to be worth more than $19bn (£16.5bn), sexual wellness is arguably one of the fastest-growing sectors today. And yet no one can agree on what this vague term actually means. The World Health Organisation has no official definition but defines sexual health as “a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing in reference to sexuality”. Google “sexual wellness”, though, and you’ll get results on anything from buying a new vibrator to, er, having a vagina facial.

“Sexual wellness has become somewhat synonymous with self-care these days,” says Gigi Engle, certified sex educator at 3Fun and author of All The F***ing Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love and Life. At its core, the concept is a noble one. “It’s about embracing and investing in your pleasure without shame,” adds Engle. “It’s a big step away from the purity culture, shame-based views of sexuality we’ve had in the past and is about being able to express the need for pleasure and sexuality as a means to maintain a healthy and balanced life overall.”

Inevitably, with such an umbrella term, the industry has sometimes been characterised by woo-woo. Consider the vaginal egg, a product Paltrow once sold for $66 (£50) on her wellness website, Goop, claiming that inserting one daily could provide women with a “spiritual detox” and remove negative energy. In 2018, Goop agreed to pay a settlement of $145,000 (£112,514) for making unscientific claims about the health benefits of the eggs.

Then there are the sexual practices these companies are peddling. Remember vaginal steaming? Again, this was something previously endorsed by Goop; it involves sitting over a boiling bowl of hot water infused with herbs to “cleanse” and “freshen” the vagina. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in 2019, the treatment was widely criticised after a 62-year-old woman sustained second-degree burns while attempting it.

Today’s leading sexual wellness brands tend to focus on creating new sex toys and sexual aids, such as lubricants, serums and oils. As Engle points out, many of them can be helpful and bring about positive change in someone’s sex life. But consider how these products are marketed – there’s a lot of pink packaging – and how they use the language of hyperbole. These products will heal you, we’re told. Make you feel fully alive. Nourished. Satiated. Transformed. Watch one of Daedone’s Ted Talks and it all starts to become eerily familiar.

Over recent years, the wellness industry as a whole has faced a backlash. Back in 2016, the #cleaneating movement was linked to sparking eating disorders, like orthorexia, and major proponents of the movement were vilified (bestselling authors and clean eating pioneers, The Hemsley sisters, went their separate ways following the fallout), or revealed as frauds (Belle Gibson lied about having cancer to promote her wellness blog). Consequently, it’s generally considered wise to approach the contemporary wellness industry with a degree of scepticism. But if the OneTaste scandal has taught us anything, it’s that nowhere is this more vital than with regards to sexual wellness.

When you break it down, OneTaste was founded on the same exact principles today’s sexual wellness brands perpetuate – healing, pleasure, liberation – and whether it’s packaged up in a pink flowery box or a $300 workshop, the end goal is always the same: orgasm. It’s a powerful one, too, when you consider the so-called orgasm gap – just 65 per cent of straight women usually or always orgasm during sex compared to 95 per cent of straight men – and the fact that roughly 10 per cent of women have never had an orgasm.

The idea is predicated on people not being sexually self-sufficient and needing products or courses to help them. But applying a supply and demand model to something as intimate as sexuality is risky business. The stakes are higher, and as we’ve seen with OneTaste, so is the propensity for damage. Many of the people drawn to OneTaste were survivors of sexual assault, or people who had experienced some sort of sexual trauma. Either that, or they had come from a background where sex and sexuality wasn’t explored openly, and so were more susceptible to Daedone’s teaching.

“Most people don’t have adequate education around sex and sexuality – so when someone makes it accessible for you, it can become very powerful,” says Dr Steven Hassan, renowned expert on cults and author of Combating Cult Mind Control. “Orgasms are ecstatic experiences that flood our brains with chemicals that make us feel good. But what happens when you’re in a sexual experience is your critical thinking goes offline, so you’re vulnerable.”

OneTaste is an example of what happens when that vulnerability is exploited to the extreme. There’s no disputing that we all need to be sexually well, so to speak, but whether or not we need this to be commercialised is something different altogether. “I think sexual wellness is a meaningless term,” says Dr Jen Gunter, gynaecologist and author of The Vagina Bible. “It has no clear definition and seems to have been purely created to sell products, coaching, and to establish the harmful narrative that a woman should always be hot and horny, meaning if that isn’t you, we have things to sell you.”

Of course, that’s not to say people shouldn’t enjoy the sex toys and sexual aids that are on offer today. “But don’t call it ‘sexual wellness’,” says Gunter. “That’s just called exploring sex. I would encourage people to not use an umbrella term like sexual wellness and instead think what it is they would like to try to change or learn about and then find real experts in the field. Sex is hard to talk about for a lot of people, and that is sad. But lots of people selling wellness in this space seem to be exploiting that gap.”

In fact, some would argue that it’s questionable to monetise sexual wellness in the first place. If you’re going to invest in helping people to have better, healthier sex lives, surely that money is best spent on sex education. “The sexual wellness industry is worth billions of dollars and, as such, there is a big consumer and capitalist drive behind the companies making pleasure products,” says Engle. “There are so many brands out there making wonderful, healthy products – but they’re often overshadowed by bigger companies who can make cheaper products that aren’t as good. Between the low-quality products and the lack of sex education, it puts the consumer at a big disadvantage.”

“From the perspective of a sexual health and sex education specialist, I do not think pleasure should not be branded or sold,” says Anne Philpott. “It needs to be recognised as something globally we all have the capacity for – rich or poor.”

That’s not going to stop this industry from growing. “Sexual wellness” taps into so many zeitgeist trends: empowerment, feminism, self-love and being assertive about our desires. But caution should be applied, by both companies and consumers. As Huet puts it at the end of Orgasm Inc, OneTaste offered people “love, connection, belonging”, things that most of us surely want, but in an industry that's vague at best and exploitative at worst, “things can become dangerous”.



https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/onetaste-orgasm-inc-netflix-true-story-b2224545.html

IndoctriNation: A weekly podcast covering cults, manipulators, and protecting yourself from systems of control

Rachel Bernstein, LMFT has been working with victims of cults and emotional abusers for 27 years. Given the right set of circumstances, it's all too easy for anyone to fall prey to sociopaths and manipulators.

"I wanted to start a show that gives survivors a chance to tell their stories and for experts to teach us what they know. My goal for IndoctriNation is to empower our listeners to protect themselves and those they love from predators, toxic personalities, and destructive organizations".

Please support this important resource!

New episodes every Wednesday.

To Err Is Human, To Forgive Divine w/ Chanon Bloch - S3E13pt2

"This episode, titled after the Alexander Pope quote, is a small component to a deeply thought out response from Chanon Bloch and Rachel. After receiving large amounts of both positive and negative comments, the two respond to the backlash of their first episode (link below) by pointing out that this is precisely how a majority can continue to remain indoctrinated.

Using South Africa's apartheid as his personal example, Chanon opened up a few weeks ago and challenged listeners to examine their own biases and behavior. Challenging thoughts by nature are not easy to accept, and are easily confused as a threat. He believes indoctrinated prejudice is a force that must be conquered in order to fully hold ourselves accountable; breaking and ending biased views instead of allowing them to manifest a new form."

Other episodes

• Polyamory Problem-Solving w/ Eve Rickert - S3E14pt2
• Problematic Polyamory w/ Eve Rickert - S3E14pt1
• National Racism and Fear w/ Chanon Bloch - S3E13
• If Hubbard Didn't Write It, It's Not True w/ Joey Chait - S3E12pt2
• Crossing the Bridge w/ Joey Chait, ex-Scientologist - S3E12pt1
• Charisma over Content w/ Ron Burks, The Gold Coast Covenant Church - S3E11pt2
• Accepting Your Deception - Ron Burks & Gold Coast Covenant Church - S3E11pt1
• ONE YEAR Call-In Anniversary Show - S3E10
• Faced Away From the Family - Phil & Willie Jones' Billboard - S3E9
• A Hamster Wheel of Self-Help w/Matthew Remski - S3E8pt2
• Wounds Are A Kind Of Ink. w/ Matthew Remski - S3E8pt1
• Admit You're Wrong, Then We'll Get Along w/ Dan Shaw - S3E7pt2
• Emotional Vampires - Narcissists and Cult Leaders in Relationships w/ Dan Shaw - S3E7pt1
• I Was Best Friends with the Messiah's Children w/ Lisa Kohn - S3E6
• Some Kind Of Magic Path To Healing w/ Jolie Holland - S3E5pt2
• "If It's Not Witness Brand Truth, It's Garbage" w/ Jolie Holland - S3E5pt1
• All Basic Human Privilege Was Taken From Us w/ Nick Gaglia - S3E4pt2
• If You Leave, You're Going To Die w/ Nick Gaglia - S3E4pt1
• A Well Oiled Machine of Manipulation w/ Kim & David Atkins - S3E3pt2
• It's God's Will That Our Girlfriends Should Become His w/ Kim & David Atkins - S3E3pt1
• There Was Never Really Any Love w/ Donna Andersen - S3E2
• A Bond That Was Life-Saving w/ Cynthia Lilley and Cathryn Mazer - S3E1pt2
• Whisked Away By The Moonies w/ Cynthia Lilley and Cathryn Mazer - S3E1pt1
• A Matter of Conscience w/ Wesley David Ringel S2E14
• Welcome To Your New Family w/ Karen - S2E13
• Guilt & Shame & Love & Fear w/ Dr. Janja Lalich - S2E12pt2
• The Cookie Cutter Messiah School w/ Dr. Janja Lalich - S2E12pt1
• I Have To Ask You Before I Talk To My Son? w/ Daniel O'Brien - S2E11
• To The Finish Line w/ Nathan Rich - S2E9pt4
• What Kept Me Going w/ Nathan Rich - S2E9pt3
• You Can't Just Open Up A Brain & Wash It w/ Eileen Barker, Officer of the British Empire - S2E10
• The One Billion Year Contract w/ Nathan Rich - S2E9pt2
• Third Generation Scientology w/ Nathan Rich - S2E9pt1
• Mind Control, Hypnosis, & Undue Influence w/ Professor Alan Scheflin - S2E8
• They're Trying to Deprogram You! w/ Robert & Alexandra Menna - S2E7pt2
• Denying Your Intuition w/ Robert & Alexandra Menna - S2E7pt1
• The Mind Puppets of the Ascended Master w/ Joe Szimhart - S2E6
• Maybe Jesus Isn't Coming Back Next Tuesday w/ Andie Redwine - S2E5
• Escape From NXIVM w/ Catherine Oxenberg - S2E4
• The Commune Kid w/ Dhyana Levey - S2E3
• The Shroud of Turin In My Toast w/ Yuval Laor - S2E2pt2
• Fervor & Awe w/ Dr. Yuval Laor - S2E2pt1
• Home Invasion - S2E1
• Scientology's Belly Of The Beast w/ Tony Ortega - S1E15
• The Ripple Effect w/ Hoyt Richards - S1E14
• The Preventative Approach w/ Jon Atack - S1E13pt2
• Hovering Over The Room w/ Jon Atack - S1E13pt1
• Gangs and Families w/ Adrian Reveles - S1E12
• An "Inherently Flawed, Bad Woman"? w/ Rebecca Leon - S1E11
• God's Bride w/ Rachel Neverdal - S1E10
• I Met My Cult Leader At the Beach w/ Hoyt Richards - S1E9pt1
• The Scientology Truman Show w/ Tory "Magoo" Christman - S1E8
• The Hidden World of Jehovah's Witnesses w/ Tony DuShane - S1E7
• Narcissistic Seduction and Manipulation w/ Donna Andersen & Sophie - S1E6
• For the Love Of Maharishi: Trapped in Nirvana w/ Pat Ryan - S1E5pt2
• For the Love Of Maharishi: Learning to Fly w/ Joe Kelly - S1E5pt1
• Prisoner of the Mind w/ Chris Shelton - S1E4
• The Euphoria of Belief w/ James Underdown - S1E3
• The Secret Family History of L. Ron Hubbard w/ Jamie DeWolf - S1E2
• Life After Jonestown w/ Patricia Ryan - S1E1

https://soundcloud.com/indoctrinationshow/

Courts Are Rarely Kind to 'Brainwashed' Victims

Allison Mack in 'Smallville'

Months ahead of the NXIVM sex trafficking trial, we take a look at how juries react to cults.
Sarah Berman
VICE
July 9 2018

Though we’re still months out from a trial that will test whether or not alleged cult leader Keith Raniere and former Smallville actress Allison Mack broke sex trafficking and forced labour laws, there’s an uncertain buzz surrounding the case. To an outsider the details sound pretty intense—nude photos kept as “collateral,” a dude’s initials burned into women’s skin, texts about wanting a “fuck toy slave”—but perhaps the most incomprehensible part is that so many women seemingly chose to submit and some even felt “empowered” by the group’s chilling controls.

If you ask cult researcher Janja Lalich, there are many reasons why victims of alleged crimes would think or act in strange and contradictory ways. We’ve all heard of “brainwashing”—the idea that through a mix of threats, isolation and indoctrination people can be made to do things that no free-thinking human would otherwise do. But while we’re familiar with the concept and may even feel some sympathy, court cases of the last few decades show juries are rarely kind to so-called brainwashing victims. VICE reached out to some experts to shed some light on why that is.

Stephen Kent of the University of Alberta told VICE the West’s first wave of “brainwashing” panic came in the 1950s when American soldiers captured in the Korean War reportedly came back with communist ideas. The term gained some traction as it was applied to new North American religious and political sects through the 1970s. For a short time, brainwashing expert Margaret Singer was “winning a lot of cases hand over fist,” says Lalich, who was mentored by Singer.

But the public soon turned on the concept of brainwashing, which at the time was based on new and admittedly much simpler psychological theory. Religious studies experts began giving counter-testimony arguing there was no such thing, and that brainwashing claims undermined religious freedom and free will. This set a more critical tone for decades to come.

One of the most high-profile brainwashing cases involved an heiress to a newspaper fortune who was kidnapped, confined and allegedly abused by a radical militia trying to start a revolution. Within weeks Patty Hearst joined her captors, who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, and was seen holding a machine gun during a bank robbery. Hearst’s conviction on robbery charges, according to Kent, turned out to be “the first and biggest failure of the brainwashing argument to get someone exonerated from a crime.”

Ever since, the people who study high-control groups have been trying to present the phenomenon in a way that more fully accounts for free will and our natural skepticism. “It became kind of a problem to use the concept of brainwashing in court,” Lalich told VICE. “That’s part of the reason I’ve developed this new framework in my book Bounded Choice, where we get around the brainwashing and still get a point of view across.”

Today, Lalich provides expert testimony on cults in court cases across the country, though she now talks about coercive influence—a concept that more closely resembles US laws around undue influence. Even so, she’s found that juries are inconsistent and sometimes harsh in how they judge victims (and perpetrators) who act against their own self-interest.

Modern cases vary from efforts to shut down gay conversion therapy in New Jersey to a defence of the young, abused follower of a Washington, DC sniper. In the latter case, Lee Malvo was 17 years old when he helped kill 10 people—a plot he believed would earn them $10 million in ransom to start a commune of young black orphans in Canada. He was convicted on murder charges, but avoided the death penalty thanks in part to testimony by psychologist Paul R Martin.

Lalich has testified about why the wives of a charismatic leader in El Dorado named Ulysses Roberson didn’t call police the night he murdered his four-year-old child. She’s also argued for damages in a civil case against an Arkansas Walmart distributor, which required employees to participate in bizarre New Age training exercises that included walking across hot coals. According to Lalich, victims of cult abuses tend to see more success with civil trials, as ex-Scientologists have won tens of millions.

What lessons can be taken across all these trials? For one, there’s rarely enough time in court to fully explain less obvious coercive dynamics. Kent calls the cult indoctrination process a “series of acquiescences” that gradually take away a person’s ability to meaningfully change course. Cult members often fear shunning, humiliation, and calamity if they go against the will of their leader. In some cases they’ll even defend their abusers on the stand. “You know exactly what you have to choose to stay in the group,” Lalich said. “I think that can be the issue with a jury, to get them to understand these rather complicated concepts.”

Kent says it’s clear that in all these cases, coercive influence can get a sentence mitigated, but not dismissed entirely. For someone like Allison Mack, who has been charged with serious crimes while a long-term member of a high-control group, that means she may not face a very sympathetic New York courtroom. As for the other women who may take the stand—who may not have reported alleged abuses in a timely or straightforward way—Lalich says there’s a chance. “I think women jurors tend to get it more than male jurors,” she told VICE. “And anyone who’s been in the military gets it. So surprisingly having vets on the jury can help.”

As we’ve seen with sexual assault cases, Lalich says ex-cult victims of crimes are often too embarrassed to pursue charges in the first place. “Cult people will get discouraged by others from doing that,” she told VICE. “It’s very traumatic to go through a trial, as they’re just going to trash you. Ex-members will often say screw it—I’m just going to cut my losses and get on with my life.” On top of that, lawyers are generally reluctant to take on such messy cases, which means even fewer cult abuses go to trial.

For perspective, it’s worth noting that authorities outside the United States courts tend to be more open to the concept of brainwashing and coercive influence, and prosecuting the people responsible. “They’re not hung up on religion like we are—we don’t hold religions accountable in this country like we do any other organization. Just because you’re a religious group doesn’t mean should be able to break the laws,” Lalich said. “I think most other countries take a harder line.”

With months to go before Mack and Raniere stand trial, and more charges expected, it’s still too early to speculate on how US prosecutors will present NXIVM’s alleged sex trafficking victims in court. But like other high-profile sexual abuse victims before them, we know they won’t have an easy time explaining their actions to a jury.


https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/kzyqwz/courts-are-rarely-kind-to-brainwashed-victims

School board will debate settlement in teachers-cult lawsuit

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AVON

March 17, 2018

A school board will debate a proposed settlement of a lawsuit that accuses four educators of "indoctrinating" three sisters into a religious cult that celebrates death.

The Avon Board of Education in Connecticut is scheduled to discuss and possibly vote on the proposal Tuesday. Settlement terms have not been disclosed. Lawyers revealed earlier this month that an agreement had been reached.

The sisters' parents sued the Avon school district, three teachers and a guidance counselor in federal court nearly four years ago. They alleged the Avon High School educators indoctrinated their daughters into a cult, causing them to suffer severe personality changes, become secretive and speak a strange language.

School officials denied the allegations.

The lawsuit alleged the girls' civil and constitutional rights were violated and sought undisclosed damages.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/school-board-debate-settlement-teachers-cult-lawsuit-53818282

How Do People Become Indoctrinated Into Cults?

DEREK BERES
Big Think
October 13, 2016

How did it happen? No question has been uttered more often in regards to cults. Throughout recorded history (and probably much longer) humans have been susceptible to charismatic leaders that have, either by nature or training, understood the psychology of acquiring followers. Even though we’re aware of the dangerous mechanisms of cult machinery, people continue to fall, again and again.

How does it happen?

The immediate hurdle is recognizing you’ve been indoctrinated. Cults appeal to our in-group mentality. If that group has some, to borrow a term from Alan Watts, “inside dope,” then in your mind it’s not a cult at all. You’re part of a group that’s special, destined, blessed—you feel complete.

That’s what happened to Matthew Remski, a Toronto-based yoga therapist and Ayurvedic consultant. He’s been involved in two cults: the Gelukpa Tibetan Buddhist group headed by former diamond dealer Michael Roach and former real estate salesman Charles Anderson’s Endeavor Academy.

Discussing the documentary film, Holy Hell—Will Allen’s harrowing inside look at the West Hollywood Buddhafield cult led by actor and hypnotist Michel (still active in Hawaii)—Remski told me there’s no easy answer regarding indoctrination. He did, however, relate this process to the current American electoral cycle.

It’s similar to the multiple factors and perspectives that people come through in developing their adulation for Donald Trump. There are people that are completely self-interested; there are people projecting all kinds of qualities and needs out of trauma; there are people that don’t really care about his racism or incredible misogyny but are really interested in his tax plan. There’s a riot of motivations.

Some are drawn in by the leader; others for social support. Seeking a sense of purpose or a substitute family factor in. Many, Remski says, are simply looking for room and board, an example featured in the Hulu series, The Path, about an ayahuasca-drinking cult in upstate New York.

All religions begin as cults. Christianity was once a cult, as was Islam. Judaism, Buddhism, the countless local faiths now lumped under the term Hinduism—all cults. There are cults within cults, like the two thousand or so accepted faiths that borrow from Christian doctrine: Mormonism, Eastern Orthodox, Catholicism, Protestantism, Lutheranism, Scientology, Christian Science. Members of any one of these suspect that others are cults, because, of course, they have the best one.


To be clear, the term ‘cult’ was initially used for a ritual act—cultus comes from Latin, meaning ‘worship.’ Throughout the world the word is still used to cite a religious group. Americans, perpetually paranoid about foreign ideas, began using ‘cult’ to describe faith healers about a century ago. Since then it has taken on a negative meaning, essentially reserved for “any ideology I don’t subscribe to.”

Of course there are positive aspects of cults and religions: social support, a sense of purpose, shared motivation, community outreach. This happens in groups of ten or ten million. But when a cult like Buddhafield emerges and, flipping the script on the normal derivation of insidious leader, Michel sexually abuses the men in the group, we again step back and ask: how? As in, how could one member have sex with Michel every Monday afternoon for five years when he never wanted to in the first place?

Remski does not like the question as it focuses on the potential psychological flaws or moral failures of the initiate. He can only answer anecdotally, which offers insight into the indoctrination process:

My attraction toward Michael Roach was primal. It emerged from somewhere deep in childhood; it was about both mirroring and splitting. I felt that he was like me, but fifteen or twenty years older. He looked like me. I felt his body in my body, the same gangly awkwardness, the same hiked-up shoulder, the same thoracic kyphosis when he sat in meditation. It was like he was me, but perfected in this way that I imagined.

Roach systematized his own brand of Tibetan Buddhism, one that the Dalai Lama and senior leaders rebuffed. His tale, briefly, included being no more than fifteen feet away from his spiritual wife, Lama Christie, who he claimed to never have sex with; later, when they spiritually divorced (consciously uncoupled, I suppose), Christie found a new boyfriend that died in the desert after being kicked out of the group. Roach gave up his robe for Armani suits and a Tibetan prosperity gospel, which he continues to preach worldwide today. (Remski documents Roach’s journey exceptionally here.)

Those robes were also part of what drew Remski in. They reminded him of his Catholic upbringing, one filled with violence and abuse, yet, as he says of Roach, “represented a demilitarized, more feminine version of the robes of my childhood.” Early repression in church left Remski hollow, vacant, setting him up for indoctrination under Roach’s care.

I couldn’t see what is true of all human beings: that he has an unconscious, and he doesn’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing, and that some very deep, difficult stuff is likely beneath the surface. I just thought that he had perfected himself. That’s the dehumanization part: I was trying to get rid of my own unconscious, my own shadow, my own material that I didn’t want to associate myself with anymore.

Remski created an alternate universe to deal with the actual reality he couldn’t deal with. This is where trauma enters. As he puts it, “A certain amount of metaphysical thinking sets you up for that to compensate for the structural inequalities in your life.” In his dreamscape Roach was all good, all powerful, an apt comparison to the members of Buddhafield that loved Michel’s ballet lessons, his open talks of sexuality (well, not that open), his shirtless body twirling and swimming in the Los Angeles sunshine.

What drew the Buddhafield members in, what drew Remski in, what continues to draw in Scientologists and Creationists and all other cults, is this ‘other’ existence. But, Remski continues,

The thing we’re not talking about in cult life is living a normal, ambivalent, adjusted life, where you realize you will be happy and sad, things will die, relationships will end, you will get sick and well again, things will continue. Most cult ideologies have a profound loathing for that description of the human condition.

Remski admits to his intense drive for “crisis-type experiences of love” that left him feeling manic. Only after leaving Roach and, later, Anderson’s group, could he understand that he had been starving even though food was right in front of him. He couldn’t understand the everyday was nutritious—the mundane and banal provide all that we need. There were so many scars to heal, too many insecurities to face. Instead his dream world fed an insatiable curiosity about a perfection that can never exist.


There’s something about the peak experience and the drive towards it that is a sign of something broken—the simplicity of daily rhythm is not enough because you were just not able to enjoy it. You couldn’t relax somehow. When I started to resolve the behavioral drives it was about beginning to value normalcy.


Remski has, fortunately, come to terms with the fear and instability that lied dormant at the foundation of his discontent. There is no single path to a cult, but there are patterns, and by recognizing his own, Remski was able to understand what Joseph Campbell famously stated regarding Arthurian tales, among other mythologies: freedom is in the wound.

Derek Beres is working on his new book, Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health (Carrel/Skyhorse, Spring 2017). He is based in Los Angeles. Stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter.


http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-do-people-become-indoctrinated-into-cults