Janja Lalich is an emerita professor of sociology at California State University, Chico. She is an expert in extremism, cults, and situations of undue influence.
In this third part of our investigation, we are going to present her model, followed by my comments on how it applies to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s organizations, the Transcendental Meditation Organisation (TMO for short), and the Raja Kingdom, officially called Global Country of World Peace (GCWP for short). My comments are all based on my long thirty years deep relationship with Maharishi’s organizations, and I will give a score from 1 to 10 for each category, 1 being the lowest indicator of cultism and 10 being the maximum indicator of cultism.
Plus soundtrack recommendations are dedicated to our loyal readers for the fun of it, to get the mood of this Lalich model.
Here is Janja Lalich model:
“There are four dimensions to a cultic group that we see across the board.”
1. Charismatic leader
The charismatic leader is the originator of the group. Charismatic leaders are people who are great manipulators, they’re charming. They know how to read people. They come along and offer a message that is going to resonate with somebody. Once they get a few followers, that’s all they need and then those people go out, recruit more, and build up an aura around the leader.
Comment: Charismatic power is the power that derives from the capacity of an individual, with exceptional personal qualities, to influence others. It doesn’t have to be necessarily a negative thing, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King Jr. are examples of charismatic leaders who were forces for good. I will presume Professor Janja is using the term here only in a pejorative sense.
Maharishi was a man with tremendous charisma, and he used that charisma to get what he wanted from those who fell under his spell. This is known to many of us who worked with him how he would brutally get rid of someone, when he felt they had served their purpose, and became, in his own words “useless”. It seems however that the main pull for thousands of young Baby Boomers who joined the TM movement was the overarching beneficial power of TM. That was truly the hook!
This phenomenon is no different from what happened with many other gurus who came from India before Maharishi. Starting with Vivekananda, Yogananda, and Meher Baba at the beginning of the 20th century, and ending in the multiple Indian masters who came with the explosion of the counter-culture in the 1960s, and this without even mentioning all those who came from the different Buddhist traditions in that same period. More than charisma, we are talking about discovering the riches of Sanatana Dharma, with its vast deep knowledge and traditions on the Science of Consciousness, especially its meditation techniques.
Score: Here I have to give a 3, a very low cult indicator. A cool start.
Recommended soundtrack to play at this point:
Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin), to feel the mood of it.
2. Transcendent belief system
Most religions and even political groups are going to have a transcendent belief system, meaning they’re stating how to get to a better place. But what’s different in cultic groups is they have their way to get you there. It’s what I call the recipe for change. To be part of the group, you have to go through a transformational process, which they dictate to you and you can’t be there otherwise. That’s the indoctrination program.
Comment: Transcending is not a belief, it is an experience by those who practice regularly TM. Did those who practice TM end up in a better place? For the most part, and I have little doubt for most meditators, the answer is a resounding yes (I include myself in this opinion). We are more peaceful, happy, and fulfilled with TM, we can say without much hesitation that we are better human beings thanks to TM. There is definitively a before and after TM in our lives I think we all can agree.
The problem begins when we start to analyze the extravagant promises Maharishi made, compared with the results obtained over decades of TMO history. Examples (literal Maharishi and TMO statements in quotation marks): “Enlightenment in five years of TM practice”; “200% of life” is 100% of material life fulfillment, and 100% of spiritual life fulfillment, “Superpowers” with the practice of Siddhis, “Perfect Health” with Maharishi Ayurveda products and treatments, “total support of Nature” with Maharishi Vedic Charts, Maharishi Yagyas, Maharishi Sthapatya Veda, world peace a with a big group of meditators and the establishment of Sidhalands, and on and on.
Instead what becomes obvious is that all these promises of Heavens on Earth gave back very little in return. The Maharishi brand brought hundreds of millions into Maharishi and TMO pockets, as we are all aware. It certainly wasn’t used for the planned and systematic growth of the movement. Today nothing is left except a fake kingdom with an even bigger fake king.
It is obvious an indoctrination program was put in place, and thousands of meditators gave thousands over thousands of dollars throughout the years, to get the next fix, that magic potion that would finally bring the greatest promised award of all: enlightenment for the individual and enlightenment for the world.
Score: I’m forced to give it a 8 for promises that were so exaggerated, that they became impossible to deliver. Cult Indicator hot.
Recommended soundtrack to play at this point: Smoke On the Water (Deep Purple)
3. Systems of Control
They think they’re joining something that’s going to give them purpose and meaning. Slowly the heat gets turned up and you go through the rituals or the study sessions that get you more and more drawn in. As this process goes on, the person begins to adopt this new worldview that requires new behaviors and which most often requires cutting off from the past. There are all kinds of control mechanisms, which are the rules and regulations. You’ve got to dress this way or that way.
Comment: It’s impossible to dismiss this category, as it is so close to home. First, we joined willingly and with joy, the youth factor counts here. We met likeminded minds, we found a community that shared our spiritual needs and aspirations, and we became a family of sorts. We made friends for life, fell in love with the movement, got married, and had our own TM babies, we moved across the country to live together. Let’s bring enlightenment to the world was our battlecry Sadly, the joy of living and a sense of higher purpose turned in time, slowly into something else.
Not everyone cut with the past, and not everyone cut with the world, a balance of sorts was kept by thousands of us. Many just meditated and moved on with their lives. For those who got more involved with the “movement” as we called it, something creepy started to grow in our midst. Language reflecting a more dogmatic culture of “us and them”, showed its face. We were the “evolved ones”, our meditation was “better than all the rest”, our “master was greater than all the others” and “the greatest of all time”, any spiritual knowledge that was not taught by Maharishi was dismissed automatically as inferior. Some to show their “devotion” even went as far as to declare with pride they didn’t care reading about others masters, and this was no exception, this became the norm as I observed directly when I worked Vlodrop, where Maharishi lived.
Then later very unpleasant instructions started to appear: how and what to eat, how to dress and in which colors, how to think and talk, which haircuts to wear, and even (God have mercy on us) how to behave sexually (Vedic society = sex just for procreation for married couples, celibacy for Purushas, Mother Divine, and those close to the guru). All this was done in the name of “fast track for enlightenment”, and what we wouldn’t do for enlightenment!
Score: High 9 here, no doubt about it. Cult indicator on fire.
Recommended soundtrack to play at this point: Highway to Hell (AC/DC)
4. Systems of influence
Then there are the more subtle influences like peer pressure. Older members will be a model for the new members on how they are supposed to behave. Before you know it, you’re so enveloped in this other reality that you don’t look to anything else. You don’t allow yourself to be open to any other explanations. Your mind has become completely enclosed in with the new worldview. So the connections to the belief system are kind of the glue that keeps you there. This is your only hope.
Comment: There was the acceptance without contestation the exponential rise of prices for TM (without any discussion and consultation), and the TM teacher recertification course (or risk being expelled), of course, the dysfunctional and unrealistic projects ordered by Maharishi (for example world’s tallest building), that never came to fruition and no explanation of why the projects failed, with millions of dollars in donations pocketed and never returned. The attitude was “obey and never oppose” because the guru always knows best, he is cosmic and all-knowing, and his “Brahman consciousness” status means he can do whatever he wants, without having to explain himself, without any form of accountability. The belief was those who resist are dwelling in “negativity”, are “unstressing”, and are incapable of seeing that “knowledge is different in different states of consciousness”. These attitudes became the understanding that those who saw things differently, because of their lack of “purity” and “devotion”, were viewed as “Rakshasas”, literally “demons”!!!
This system of influence, as defined by Janja Lalich is a hallmark of a full-blown cult.
This belief system, (because it is a belief system and not anymore just a benevolent spiritual movement to simply spread a meditation technique), was finally written in stone with THE guru’s ideology formatted in the small booklets named “Maharishi’s Absolute Theory of “X”. X was one of these: Government, Defense, Education, Health, Rehabilitation, Law and Order, Economy. There was also the Apaurusheya Bhashya, Maharishi’s supposedly cognized commentary on the Rik Veda.
So we have a political-religious totalitarian belief system fully developed. The culmination of this totalitarian belief system ended with the establishment of the Raja Kingdom, and the enthronement of former Tony Nader, MD, as Maha Raja (from the Sanskrit “great King”), the crowned ruler of the Global Country of World Peace.
Score: Nothing less than a perfect score of 10 will do here. The cult indicator exploding! Recommended soundtrack to play at this point: Back in Black (AC/DC)
The total of the lowest cult indicator is 4, and the total of the maximum cult indicator is 40. The sum of all the dimensions/categories of the Janja Lalich model for Maharishi and his organizations (TMO and the Raja Kingdom), gives a total of 30.