The author who escaped a cult
No one joins a cult. They join interesting groups, where they feel special, which give them solace, hope and answers. They may feel more alive and happier than they ever have in their life.
I joined one such interesting group in India in 1973. It was run by an enigmatic yogi Balyogi Premvarni whose secluded ashram in the Himalayan jungle north of Rishikesh is not far from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Ashram that the Beatles went to in 1968. Some years after I’d escaped, I wrote my book The Serpent Rising: A journey of spiritual seduction, an account of heaven and the hell that went with it. Sadly, since then, there has been no end to yoga teachers ‒ many claiming to be enlightened or God himself ‒ behaving badly. Such as Narcis Tarcau, a Romanian who calls himself Swami Vivekananda Saraswati and features in New Zealand investigative journalist Anke Richter’s new book Cult Trip.
Richter also writes at length about Bert Potter's Centrepoint. I remember seeing flyers around the Auckland University campus in 1972 that advertised Potter's therapy workshops. It was one of the darkest years of my life ‒ I was struggling with depression and loneliness ‒ and I was tempted to go. Instead at the end of the year, I visited a yoga ashram at Henderson and my life was changed forever. I was soon off to India in search of enlightenment and my true guru.
After three years in the clutches of Premvarni ‒ along with the mind control and manipulation, I was badly beaten, had two abortions, was often sick and became malnourished from the restricted diet ‒ I returned to Auckland. There I met up with some Rajneesh sannyasins. Bhagwan Rajneesh (he later renamed himself Osho) was an Indian guru whose ashram was at Pune, India. He was a controversial and iconoclastic teacher, mocking religions and mainstream society, challenging his followers to find their own way to inner truth. His sannyasins were nothing like the spaced-out devotees of other gurus. They seemed grounded, authentic, and full of life.
I began hanging out with them, attending their parties, doing the exuberant dynamic meditation, and listening to discourses of Rajneesh. I fell under his spell. Becoming a Rajneeshee or follower was easy. I simply wrote to him. Within weeks I received a letter informing me my new name was Ma Prem Sagara, meaning "ocean of love". That made me feel pretty good. The envelope enclosed a mala ‒ a necklace with 108 wooden beads and a locket containing a photo of Rajneesh ‒ to wear around my neck.
Rajneesh was the first Eastern guru to embrace psychotherapy. Many of his group leaders had trained at the Esalen Institute in California, where Bert Potter spent time in the early 1970s. I decided to go to one of Potter’s workshops, as I’d been told they were similar to what would be on offer at the Rajneesh Ashram in India, where I was planning to go as soon as I had funds.
And so I attended a workshop at his house in Gillies Avenue. He was affronted by the fact that I was a disciple of Rajneesh. He got really stuck into me about it, made some nasty comments about Rajneesh and criticised me for joining that group. (Oddly, he was to visit Rajneesh the following year, but as an observer, lurking around, seeing what he could copy for the new community he’d establish at Albany on his return.)
Despite his belittling of me, I thought Potter was quite a cool guy. He had clear penetrating blue eyes, was affectionate and attentive, and I found him charismatic. The other people at the workshop were friendly. There was lots of hugging. It felt like one big happy family.
During the lunch break, women were invited downstairs, in turn, to his bedroom. Afterwards, he reported back on each one, if they’d had an orgasm and so forth. I was the only woman not invited. He said it was because I was one of those Rajneeshees. I felt completely mortified and humiliated. Talk about misplaced shame. What a sordid little creep and how pathetic was I.
Could I have become a devotee of Bert and ended up at Centrepoint? Perhaps. I was lucky I went to Pune, instead. That turned out to be my half-way house out of hell and my guru addiction.
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There are several chapters on Rajneesh in Richter’s book Cult Trip. Most harm is done in groups which live together, in a closed compound or ashram. In Pune most of us did not live inside the ashram. We lived independently outside, renting huts or apartments. No one told us what to do, controlled us. We were at the periphery of things. I for one was oblivious to some of the darker things going on in the inner circle around Rajneesh himself and his therapists, including the sexual abuse of underage girls. Their stories are only now being shared, with several memoirs to be published in 2023. Those still making excuses for this Rasputin-like sexual abuser should hang their heads in shame. Those still trotting out Osho quotes should open their eyes.
Much has been made in the media of the rampant sex and sex orgies that occurred at the ashram. Richter mentions this too. These reports are exaggerated as Satya Bharti, who was in the inner circle, writes. I missed out. Sex was the last thing on my mind. In the year I was there I never witnessed or was part of any sex orgy, although they occurred in the Encounter workshop, which I did not consider doing.
When I first arrived, I did several workshops, including Zen meditation. I found the personal growth therapies of benefit, although they were a bit extreme. But catharsis and externalisation of emotions ‒ especially my long-repressed rage ‒ helped me in a way meditation and yoga never had. I’d been taught by my parents, teachers, and then Hindu gurus, that emotions were bad, especially anger. A good scream and howl and raging were just what I needed. One of the therapists had me beating Premvarni to a pulp for what he’d done to me. And howling in grief over the abortions I’d had. Also, other stuff from further back, my childhood in Tauranga which had been punctuated with bullying from all sides.
I was happy in Pune. I wrote glowing letters back home. My uptight mother, trapped in a cold unhappy marriage, said she considered flying over to join me. Letting out some of her grief and anger could have done her a lot of good.
But I left the Rajneesh movement in 1979 shortly after the Jonestown mass suicide. I remember thinking at the time, "Oh, my god, this could happen here." I’d also become increasingly disturbed by changes in the ashram, including the posting of armed guards at the gates. I got out just in time.
My old yoga teacher is still up to his old tricks, and he has no remorse. He has said I am possessed by an evil spirit
The group relocated to Oregon, America, where they bought a 70,000-acre ranch and established a self-sufficient compound they called ‘Rajneeshpuram’. The community morphed into a truly destructive cult as portrayed in the six-part Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country, which focused on the crime saga that played out in Oregon, and not, as Richter points out, the psychological damage suffered by followers. Nor does it mention the neglect and sexual abuse of children.
Watching from afar from suburban life in Brisbane where I was now married and back on earth with two young children, I felt a sense of horror watching this saga unfold. What had I got caught up in?
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Although Cult Trip focuses on the harm caused by alternative groups, Richter reminds us that the same dynamics of control and influence are present in mainstream society, with institutionalised harm done in the name of religion and politics, from paedophile priests to state care.There is also abuse that occurs in dysfunctional families. In the 1950s and 1960s, many of us grew up with authoritarian and harsh fathers. My father was cruel and controlling and could be violent ‒ in many respects no different from Balyogi Premvarni. Perhaps many of us wannabe spiritual pioneers of the 1970s were unconsciously fleeing our past, looking for a loving and kind father figure and a group where we felt at home.
This is where many of us went wrong. We needed counselling and psychological help, not yoga, meditation, or a guru who thinks they are enlightened or God.
Richter writes, "Charismatic leaders turn their followship into parallel societies that look like safe havens in an insane world but cause harm." Leaders who proclaim to be enlightened or God invariably end up exploiting their followers sexually, emotionally, and financially. Rather than spiritual lights, these gurus turn out to be deluded conmen. A few are downright psychopaths.
I wanted to howl in frustration when reading about the lack of remorse of perpetrators. It’s the most troubling thing about the stories that Richter tells in her book. It triggers me, stirs my own trauma, from all those years ago.
My old yoga teacher is still up to his old tricks, and he has no remorse. He has said I am possessed by an evil spirit. It took me a long time to realise that all the bad stuff that happened to me was not my fault, my bad karma.
I don’t know what it was in me that had the courage to write my book well before its time ‒ to expose the little bastard and others like him, to warn others ‒ but that’s the one good thing that came out of it all.
Cult Trip: Inside the world of coercion and control by Anke Richter (HarperCollins, $37.99) is available in bookstores nationwide.
