How Do People Become Indoctrinated Into
Cults?
Big Think (blog) October 13, 2016
DEREK
BERES
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.