CultNEWS101 Articles: 6/4/2025 (Podcast, Prem Rawat, Neuroscience, Michael Langone, Book)

Podcast, Prem Rawat, Neuroscience, Michael Langone, Book

Living a Conscious Life: The Podcast: Guru Gone Bad? The Unflattering Truth About Prem Rawat: Interview with Paul Drescher

"Don Johnson interviews Paul Drescher, an ex-follower of Prem Rawat.  We discuss our experiences as young men in what we now know was and still is a cult."

Neuroscience News: Genetics, Not Parenting, Shapes Personality

Summary: New research challenges many widely held beliefs in psychology, revealing that genetics may play a greater role in shaping personality than parenting. The findings also dispute common assumptions about gender-based personality differences, the power of subliminal messaging, and the effectiveness of brain training.

Misconceptions about mental illness are also addressed, emphasizing that mental health conditions arise from complex genetic, social, and environmental factors rather than life events alone. The work calls for critical thinking, skepticism toward oversimplified media portrayals, and higher standards for psychological research and classification systems.

Key Facts:

• Genetics Over Parenting: Evidence shows genetics may outweigh parenting in influencing adult personality.
• Mental Illness Complexity: Disorders stem from combined genetic, environmental, and social factors.
• Call for Reform: Greater research transparency and skepticism toward media-driven psychology myths are needed.

Dr. Michael David Langone: A science fiction novel, Called by Name: Birth of a New Christendom

This book may appeal to anyone interested in philosophy, psychology, Christianity and science fiction, especially if all four. There's something for everyone. "Called by Name: Birth of a New Christendom" is self-published, by Dr. Michael David Langone. Here's his bio on his website:

"Michael received his PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979. In 1980 he began working with the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA - then called the American Family Foundation), which he served as executive director for many years until his retirement in January 2023. Over the years he has counseled or consulted with more than a thousand individuals affected by cultic involvements and/or spiritually abusive relationships. His three areas of intellectual interests converged in his cultic studies work: psychology, religion, and philosophy."

Religion is an element of many science fiction works. In this one it's central to the story. His website has a page with a brief description of the book's plot and a page with a longer explanation of how the book came about, which gives you an even better idea of how the book tackles those subjects. 

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The selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view to promote dialogue.

Without the Guru: How I took my life back after thirty years

About the book  "For 30 years Mike Finch gave his total allegiance, his energy, his devotion, his dreams, and his love to Guru Maharaji (the Lord of the Universe, Prem Rawat). He also gave Maharaji and his organizations two inheritances, a house, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. As Maharaji's former chauffeur Mike was close to him personally; he lived as a renunciate in Maharaji's ashrams, and was authorized to reveal Maharaji's secret teachings. The book is a narrative of Mike's time with Maharaji, and his struggle to surrender his life to Maharaji, and to achieve the liberation that Maharaji promised. 

It is a story of being confined within a rigid belief system, realizing it, and learning how to break out from it. It is a story of how he came to live, think, feel, behave, and love, without 'the Guru', meaning both Maharaji, as the actual guru in his life; and in a more general sense of learning to face oneself and the world without any intermediary or negotiator, of any kind, in between."

https://www.amazon.com/Without-Guru-after-thirty-years/dp/1439245045

Dr Michael Robert Finch website:  https://mikefinch.com

CultNEWS101 Articles: 3/14/2024 (Prem Rawat, Maharishi University, Maharishi Finance)

Prem Rawat, Maharishi University, Maharishi Finance

Prem Rawat Is The Lord of Flight

In 1979 the acquisition and customization of a Boeing 707 for Prem Rawat's exclusive use became the dominant focus within the then Divine Light Mission. The headquarters of DLM was moved to Miami and large numbers of the most skilled and dedicated ashram premies were moved to Miami into run-down, rat-filled hotels. Work on the 1961 Boeing 707 was completed in 1980 but it's emissions exceeded legal limits so the plane was soon sold to the more famous and much, much richer Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (he had begun his career working as the accounts clerk for a major Indian religious leader, so he could handle legal details like not letting your family steal your inheritance.) The plane was used by Rawat for a US tour and a trip to Australia and New Zealand and a holiday in Tahiti.

SE Iowa Union: The next film in the Fairfield History Series explores life after Parsons

In 1974, Fairfield was struggling. Over a year had passed since Parsons College collapsed and left a huge hole in the community. Colleges nationwide were failing and Fairfield found it difficult to find a college to purchase the campus from the creditors.

A small California college connected with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (famous for having taught meditation to the Beatles) was interested in purchasing the campus. Residents investigated Transcendental Meditation (™) and despite some lingering questions and concerns, they welcomed the newcomers in the fall of 1974, albeit with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The sixth film in the highly popular Fairfield History Series will tell the historical account of "When Maharishi Came to Town."

For the upcoming documentary, "When Maharishi Came to Town," Producer and Director Dick DeAngelis interviewed Gordon Aistrope (left), former bank president and chairman of the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce, and Roger Leahy of Overland Outfitters and who was one of the first of the MIU students to arrive."

The Daily Beast: Ivanka Trump's Gurus Say Their Techniques Can End War and Make You Fly

Celebs from Katy Perry to Ivanka say Transcendental Meditation helps them focus. The movement's chief promises more: quasi-magical powers and the ability to steer world events.

"When the David Lynch Foundation held a gala for Transcendental Meditation at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., last year, it drew a star-studded crowd. Comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Margaret Cho were there. So was the singer Kesha, as well as White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who had recently published a self-help book that included a section extolling TM's benefits.

It was a pleasant, 77-degree June evening in the District. The guests wore cocktail attire, and the event was set up almost like a Hollywood premiere, with pre-show celebrity interviews on a red carpet. That's where Kesha asked for a hug from Seinfeld, who brusquely refused her request while cameras were rolling (she later got one from Bob Dylan). Seinfeld laughed with Jay Leno for the cameras; Hugh Jackman, who co-hosted the event with Katie Couric, posed with real estate developer Jeffrey Abramson and his wife Rona. Jay Leno, Ben Folds, singer Angelique Kidjo, classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, and Seinfeld, Cho, and Kesha performed for the assembled luminaries.

The event was yet another sign that TM, with its lengthy (and growing) client roster of the rich and famous, had cemented a place among America's cultural elites. Although independent estimates vary, TM officials claim that roughly 10 million people have learned the technique, which is meant to control anxiety, reduce stress, and increase their overall well-being.

"Transcendental meditation is a practice I picked up several years ago and I couldn't do half of what I do in a day without it," Ivanka Trump wrote in her book. "Twenty minutes is ideal for calming the mind, eliminating distractions, and boosting my productivity."

The fundraiser promised to provide TM instruction so that underprivileged kids, military veterans, and trauma survivors could avail themselves of its benefits."

" ... David Vago, a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist who studies the effects of meditation, pointed out that all of the Maharishi Effect studies are basically correlation without causation.  "As much as I'd like to believe that crime rates will reduce in a causal response to group meditation increases, I have a hard time buying this kind of correlational research," Vago told The Daily Beast.

Clinicaltrials [.] gov, which tracks accredited clinical research studies, found 910 studies of mindfulness currently underway, but only 14 studies of TM—half of which began before 2002. While TM officials often note that the National Institute of Health has funded research in TM to the tune of $24 million, that funding ended in 2010.

In 2014, an independent meta-analysis of meditation research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association for Internal Medicine found "insufficient evidence that mantra meditation programs [such as TM] had an effect on any of the psychological stress and well-being outcomes we examined." An earlier review of TM data by the NIH also found insufficient evidence that TM lowered blood pressure as claimed.

Other assertions have been fact-checked to TM's detriment. The organization's American home base of Fairfield, Iowa has a population of roughly 10,000 residents. In 1993, reporter Scott Shane inquired about the crime rate in the area, figuring that crime must be virtually non-existent with all the advanced meditating going there on all the time. "Crime here is about the same as any small town in rural America," Fairfield police chief Randy Cooksey told Shane. In fact, Cooksey said, "I'd say there's been a steady increase. I think, based on my statistics in Fairfield, I can show they have no impact on crime here.""

" ... Dennis Roark, the former chairman of the physics department at Maharishi University has described TM's research as "crackpot science." Roark said he resigned his position after being told to link TM's effects to legitimate physics—a notion he described as "preposterous."

"Although there is substantial work in the physics of quantum mechanics giving to consciousness an essential role, even a causal role, there is no evidence or argument that could connect some sort of universal consciousness to be subjectively experienced with a unified field of all physics," Roark wrote. "In fact, the existing scientific work suggests just the opposite."

"The style of research they use is what I call 'painting the bullseye around the arrow,'" says ex-TMer Patrick Ryan, who attended Maharishi International University, the progenitor to MUM, against his Navy master chief father's advice, and spent 10 years in the movement as a "spiritual warrior" before quitting in the 1980s. "If a bunch of TM meditators get together and the stock market goes up, TM made it happen. If there's another course and crime rates go down, or if accidents go down, TM created that. Find a positive thing that's happened and take credit for it.""

" ... The relentless focus on money is one of the main reasons Southern California meditation teacher Lorin Roche left TM in 1975.

"The whole focus of TM in the United States became to get all the teachers and all the half-million or more people who had learned TM, to go take expensive advanced courses and learn to levitate," Roche wrote on his personal blog. "Soon there were tens of thousands of Siddhas trying, but failing, to levitate, all across the United States and around the world."

Roche "benefited from TM tremendously, but it was a different organization when I was there," he told The Daily Beast. "Once it became worth a billion dollars, it just changed."

One billion may be a low estimate. According to The Economist, the Maharishi's land holdings alone were worth $3 billion in 1998. A 2012 investigation by India Today estimated Maharishi's real estate assets at the time of his death 10 years later to be worth Rs 60,000 crore—roughly $9 billion.

Although private donations have dwindled in recent years, from $31.6 million in 2008 to $1.5 million in 2015, there still seems to be plenty of money around, and there are dozens of separate but related TM organizations across the globe. The Daily Beast's detailed review of TM-related financial documentation revealed a byzantine tangle of non- and for-profit corporations, global land holdings, and hundreds of millions of dollars—maybe more—flowing each year through the various entities that make up TM."

Athmavidya Foundation: Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Finance

" ... In 1970, after having trouble with Indian tax authorities, he [Maharishi Mahesh Yogi] moved his headquarters to Italy, returning to India in the late 1970s. That same year, the City of Hope Foundation in Los Angeles gave the Maharishi their "Man of Hope" award."

" ... In January 1988, offices at the Maharishinagar complex in New Delhi were raided by Indian tax authorities and the Maharishi and his organisation were accused of falsifying expenses. Reports on the value of stocks, fixed-deposit notes, cash and jewels confiscated, vary from source to source. The Maharishi, who was "headquartered in Switzerland" at the time, reportedly moved to the Netherlands "after the Indian government accused him of tax fraud".) Following an earthquake in Armenia, the Maharishi trained Russian TM teachers and set up a Maharishi Ayurveda training centre in the Urals region.  Beginning in 1989, the Maharishi's movement began incorporating the term "Maharishi" into the names of their new and existing entities, concepts and programmes."

" ... The GCWP unsuccessfully attempted to establish a sovereign micronation when it offered US$1.3 billion to the President of Suriname for a 200-year lease of 3,500 acres (14 km2) of land and in 2002, attempted to choose a king for the Talamanca, a "remote Indian reservation" in Costa Rica."

" ... The Maharishi is credited with heading charitable organisations, for-profit businesses, and real estate investments whose total value has been estimated at various times, to range from US$2 to US$5 billion. The real estate alone was valued in 2003 at between $3.6 and $5 billion. Holdings in the United States, estimated at $250 million in 2008, include dozens of hotels, commercial buildings and undeveloped land. The Maharishi "amassed a personal fortune that his spokesman told one reporter may exceed $1 billion". According to a 2008 article in The Times, the Maharishi "was reported to have an income of six million pounds". The Maharishi's movement is said to be funded through donations, course fees for Transcendental Meditation and various real estate transactions.

In his biography of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Story of the Maharishi (published 1976), William Jefferson suggests that the financial aspect of the TM organisation was one of the greatest controversies it faced. Questions were raised about the Maharishi's mission, comments from leaders of the movement at that time, and fees and charges the TM organisation levied on followers. Jefferson says that the concerns with money came from journalists more than those who have learned to meditate."

" ... Just four years after his death, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Rs 60,000 crore fortune is at the centre of an ugly battle between two groups of followers

Maharishi died in February 2008, leaving behind more than 12,000 acres of land across India. all vested with the Spiritual Regeneration Movement (SRM) Foundation, set up by the guru in 1959. The guru established several societies with the SRM Foundation and Maharishi Global University based in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh at the top of the list. The other four educational institutions are Maharishi Shiksha Sansthan, Maharishi Ved Vigyan Vidyapeeth, Maharishi Gandharva Ved Vidyapeeth and Mahila Dhyan Vidyapeeth that run 148 schools in 16 states across India."

" ... Maharishi Nagar Colony in Sector 39 of Noida, which the guru's followers built in the late 1970s, is in a state of neglect.The colony, spread over more than 900 acres, currently houses four buildings, each with more than 800 rooms. Most rooms lie in total neglect. A helipad once used by the guru is now dedicated to grazing cattle. Local real estate agents peg the worth of the land at Rs 15,000 crore. "The global university no longer operates from here.500-odd devotees of the guru stay in the colony, doing odd jobs to run the ashram.A mere four years after his death, the Maharishi's legacy in India is in tatters."

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Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.

The Man Who Saves You from Yourself Going undercover with a cult infiltrator

Harper's REPORT — From the November 2013 issue "The Man Who Saves You from Yourself Going undercover with a cult infiltrator"
By Nathaniel Rich

Nobody ever joins a cult. One joins a nonprofit group that promotes green technology, animal rights, or transcendental meditation. One joins a yoga class or an entrepreneurial workshop. One begins practicing an Eastern religion that preaches peace and forbearance. The first rule of recruitment, writes Margaret Singer, the doyenne of cult scholarship, is that a recruit must never suspect he or she is being recruited. The second rule is that the cult must monopolize the recruit’s time. Therefore, in order to have any chance of rescuing a new acolyte, it is critical to act quickly. The problem is that family and friends, much like the new cult member, are often slow to admit the severity of the situation. “Clients usually don’t come to me until their daughter is already to-the-tits brainwashed,” says David Sullivan, a private investigator in San Francisco who specializes in cults. “By that point the success rate is very low.”

Sullivan became fascinated with cults in the late Sixties, while attending Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado. It was a golden age for religious fringe groups, and Boulder was one of the nation’s most fertile recruiting centers, as it is today. (There are now, according to conservative estimates, 2 million adults involved in cults in America.) “You couldn’t walk five steps without being approached by someone asking whether you’d like to go to a Buddhist meeting,” says John Stark, a high school friend of Sullivan’s. Representatives from Jews for Jesus and the Moonies set up information booths in the student union at the University of Colorado, a few miles down the road from Fairview High. Sullivan engaged the hawkers, accepted the pamphlets, attended every meditation circle, prayer circle, shamanic circle. When the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi led a mass meditation session at the university, Sullivan was there, watching from the back of the lecture hall.

Read compete article at Harper's 

In Search Of Meaning, Ireland 1972

In Search Of Meaning, Ireland 1972

There has been a growth in popularity of religious groups like The Children of God and Divine Light Mission (DLM) who are meeting the needs of some young people looking to find meaning in their lives.

Dundalk born Tom McGuinness who goes by the biblical name of Zibiah claims to have found new meaning to his life as a member of the religious group ‘The Children of God’. Tom, along with other members of the group, are spreading the word of ‘The Children of God’ at St Stephen’s Green in Dublin.

The Children of God is 

"A religious sect which originated in California in 1968 and which has since spread throughout Europe."

The sect appeals mainly to young people who find themselves at odds with society. Each member is a missionary who believes that their work is to spread the word of God and to inform people that God loves them. Their message is The Bible, Jesus and joy largely through song and dance.

Another religious group seeking new devotees is the Divine Light Mission (DLM) which operates from the Dandelion Market in Dublin. Dubliner Joseph Burn was among the first to join the Divine Light Mission. The group was founded in 1960 by Guru Hans Ji Maharaj in northern India. Their message of inner peace is achieved through meditation.

(Guru Maharaj) has come onto this world to show man how to experience his true identity.

One member of the DLM first heard about it while living in London and knew she had found what she had been looking for. Another member says that Guru Maharaj has shown him how to experience his soul.

At a house in Santry, the Mahatma who is second in line to the Guru, teaches lessons in Satsang meditation and preaches the message of DLM. Dublin housewife Mrs O’Reilly is one of the many converts who has been convinced by his message.

I have complete peace of mind. I have an absolute understanding of my own religion. As a Catholic, I can go to mass now and understand what the gospels are about, and for the first time I can fully realise the presence of God.

Mrs O’Reilly says that DLM is not a religion but rather something to help you to understand your own religion.

Both The Children of God and Divine Light Mission forbid both alcohol and tobacco use amongst their followers.

No need for such drugs, they say, if you receive Jesus into your heart.

This episode of ‘Tangents’ was broadcast on 17 October 1972.

https://youtu.be/_tmRzhygBFY?si=DGr3uj2-M3wbY2Qr