Cult Books

“A psychologist came to me for a personal meeting and said, "It's good that it's not a cult." There are two kinds of people, who come to spiritual teachers and spiritual organizations. The first kind is the power people and the second kind is the awareness people. The power people focus on the outer world. They focus on creating rules, ideologies , hierarchies, churches and organizations. The awareness people focus on the inner world. They focus on meditation, love, silence, truth, freedom, creativity and the divine. Often these two kinds of people come in conflict in a spiritual organization.
I do not belong to any spiritual group or tradition any longer, I am just interested in exploring what it means to live with open eyes.
People in spiritual organizations tend to get caught in ideas of how it should be, and in the need of the ego to create hierarchies of power, status, roles, ambition and obedience.
Spiritual Masters teach on many different levels at the same time. Some people take what they can and some take something deeper.
Padma, my beloved friend for many lives, recounted during satsang with me that she told a visiting therapist during an individual consultation at a meditation center in Stockholm that she did not feel at home at the center. The therapist replied, "That is because you don’t belong to the collective unconscious at the center."
The members of a dysfunctional and unconscious group structure play the three roles: aggressor, denier (the denier is the role of "I have not seen anything,, "I do not understand what is going on", "I do not say anything" and "I do not hear anything" - like the three apes, who do not speak, see or hear) and the third role is the victim of the dysfunctional group.
This is the psychological structure in both alcoholic families, in dysfunctional groups and in cults. A dysfunctional group is a neurotic group, where there is no real love. The core of the dysfunctional group is instead neurotic, and the group does not really want to change, so any attempts from the outside for change will be met with resistance, silence and aggressive attack.
The basic sign of a dysfunctional group is that the members of the group play three roles and positions: aggressor, denier and victim. It is always easier to follow the group without reflection or awareness, than to trust your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, truth, wisdom and creativity. It is not always easy to follow your own heart, but it always leads you right.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the Heart