Host: I think the same thing happened with Esau and Jacob. Caller #10

Losing the relationships that I had with all the people that were involved was difficult, as my life revolved around that group of people. When I left, I was an outcast. I had to start all over again materially, because I had given everything I owned and I left with nothing. I also had to start all over again in terms of building new relationships and so on.

We have a diversity of opinion in this country; that's one of the principles that we cherish the most. It is through the competition of all these different ideas that the choice exists for each individual to make his decision.

On the other hand, there are practices of certain groups where once they have a person in their sway, they then systematically rob that person of any capacity to be able to leave the group. In fact, they try to deliberately hold that person and exploit them for economic gain.

Host: How do they try to rob them of an ability to leave? What kind of methods are you talking about?

Bob: First of all, they strip them of their financial independence. The way that this is done is to have them live in some kind of communal situation. Ultimately, if possible, they try to get them into one of their monastic type living situations where they are actually under vows of poverty.

Anything that they produce doesn't really belong to them, it belongs to the organisation. Therefore they really haven't got any financial capacity on their own. All of their possessions have been turned over to the organisation. In addition to this, they also have the individual systematically sever their ties with anyone who doesn't believe as they believe. This includes family members, former friends and associates. An effort will be made to convert family members and former friends. After a certain point, they are just supposed to leave contact with these people altogether.

Over a period of time, what happens is that everything on a physical, emotional and psychological level is really being controlled by the group. That gives a tremendous kind of ability to manipulate the individual.

Host: What about spiritual blackmail, in terms of salvation?

Bob: Well, that's part of it as well. When you have a person in this position, you condition them with fear. The fear is that if they leave, they will suffer some horrible fate. I think that, whether you're talking about the Hare Krishnas, the Moonies or the Divine Light Mission members, they believe that their belief is the truth. If they leave that, they are subject to all kinds of eternal damnation.

I know that the Maharaji threatens his devotees at certain levels, once he gets them to the point where they've sacrificed everything. At this point they will have become initiators, which is the final degree of surrender. He threatens them with eternal damnation if they ever leave.

Inner experiences not due to the power of Maharaji

What I would usually try and tell them was to try and keep some respect for the individual's experience and for their faith in their beliefs. If the family member suddenly challenges that, and says: 'How could you believe such a stupid thing?', it reflects on the individual as if to deny their experience altogether.

These people really do have a

n experience. They may be mistaken in attributing whatever inner spiritual peace they find within themselves to the guru. In fact, he really doesn't have anything to do with it, but they are sincere in placing their faith in him.

We must try to help them see that the guru really isn't responsible for whatever positive benefits they are deriving from their belief, and that therefore they shouldn't continue to allow their lives to be dominated by subservience to the guru.

Friends and relatives are going to have to try to understand the experience enough to be able to really relate to the people by not regarding them as mental defectives. A lot of the conversations have centred around just how to make a much stronger contact. I know that a lot of the people involved are getting a lot of psychological strokes from the individuals that they associate with.

If the parents just treat them as naughty children and take a disapproving attitude, they tend to take that personally as though the parents were disapproving of them as a person. This not only further alienates them, but actually severs those ties altogether. In that sense, it actually aids and abets the cult.

Look at all these hypocritical practices that the guru engages in. There was never any response from him. Of course, he couldn't really respond. To respond, he would either have to admit it, and he is not likely to do that, or he would have to deny it. If he denied it, we could get into a whole protracted court battle.

'Need to believe' masks truth about Maharaji

I haven't said anything about him that I'm not capable of proving. So consequently they tend to just try and ignore it, hoping that they control the communication within the premies' world strongly enough to be able to weather it out. To that extent, I think it is up to relatives and friends to actually use that relationship to get the person to listen to the truth as it gets exposed, and not to just let it get shoved aside as though I were some crackpot.

I mean, I was the President of the Mission for five and a half years. Somebody who was essentially responsible for organizing the Mission throughout the United States, and was the personal secretary to the guru, is not just any crackpot who comes along! The things that I'm saying are true. If they can't deal with that truth, if they tend to just ignore it, well, I think that their need to believe is so strong that there's really not a whole lot we can do.

Persistence on the part of people like yourself who have a relationship with members is probably the most important thing.

You'll find, as I did when I no longer believed as they believed, that it is a completely different story. All of that love and brotherhood that we had shared was suddenly gone. It's because the belief that they have is all-encompassing.

Part of the way that this technique of thought reform works is to get you to come to the meetings. When you come to the meetings, you are subject to the influence of the group. I'm talking about the psychological influence that takes place just when you're in a group of people who all believe in a certain way, and you don't necessarily.

Nonetheless, just because they are your friends, and because they are all looking to you, thinking: 'Isn't this wonderful, and now you're going to get into it too', you're under a great deal of pressure to conform, just out of your own social nature.

If you go to enough meetings, you'll probably then begin to get interested in what they call 'knowledge' and that's the whole idea. Once you get interested in receiving knowledge, they've got you on the way to having this whole process take place.

In order to receive knowledge, you've got to be an aspirant. As an aspirant, you're already subjected to so much social pressure. You are under this incredible pressure to succeed. The way that you succeed is to be selected to receive knowledge. When somebody says: 'You are finally ready to receive knowledge' you just go along with it.

In the knowledge session, you come out afterwards and everybody says: 'Isn't it wonderful, it's your spiritual birthday. You're a new person. Quite likely, by that point you are, because your ego has been reformed. It has been reformed around a whole new belief system. You asked what you were getting into; well, it's an idol-worship cult. The idol is Guru Maharaj Ji and the role of the premie is to worship him.

Maharaji's family & 'Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?' book

So we tried to get people to question themselves. Who is this Guru Maharaj Ji? What kind of a person can make these claims? The idea was that he really was somebody special and he really was going to unfold a plan for world peace. That's what he told us he was going to do, and we were going along with him.

We set up a program in the Houston Astrodome in the same year that the book was published. That was in 1973. We had media from all over the world there.

Caller #15: Can you tell me some of the fallacies in the book?

Bob: Try reading the whole chapter on the Holy Family. Then get the premies that you know to explain that to you. In that book, it talks about his Holy Family. They have a story about how every one of his brothers and his mother are divine incarnations. If they are, where are they now?

Caller #15: I don't know. Where are they?

Bob: Well, they had a fight over who was going to control the Mission, and they split up. The mother and the two eldest brothers are now running their own Divine Light Mission in India. They don't have anything to do with each other. There was a big fight; lots of court battles and so on. My point is that this book isn't a Gospel of any sort, believe me!

Caller #16: I'd like to ask your guest: What would you say is the current average age of the followers of the guru?

Bob: The people in their teens and early twenties are now getting on, because it's been seven or eight years now. They don't necessarily drift away. Most do; most of the people who have been initiated have left. But there is a real 'hard core' of people who have been involved for a long time.

There have always been a number of older people. There has always been a spread in the membership from the really young, I mean teenagers, to elderly people. At one point, even children were being initiated in the very early years, but that changed after the first couple of years.

It's not just that it appeals to young people, although young people, especially those in their late teens or early twenties, are prime targets. This is because they are going through a natural kind of ego reformation at that point in their lives anyway. So they are very susceptible.

Caller #16: I just wondered if, with the particular insight that you have, you have considered writing some kind of book.

Bob: A number of people have suggested that to me. About a year and a half ago, I worked up a proposal and circulated it to a number of book publishers. I just received rejections; nobody was really interested in publishing a story about a guru cult.

Caller #16: The reason that I brought this up was that I think there should be a publisher somewhere who might have more interest in it. They might urge you to consider re-drafting your proposal and circulating it again. I think there are a lot of people who would like to have something like this. I think it would be a great service to a lot of people.

I don't look upon what you have to say as necessarily just insight into the DLM, as much as it is insight into any religion, whether it be called 'cult' or 'mainstream religion'. To me, it's a real problem when people just get so blind that common sense just wanders astray.

I'd like to add one more thing: I certainly would like to offer my empathy to you. When you say that you are not a practising believer in anything, I can very easily understand that. You had a few callers inquiring about what your present belief is. After going through this, I am sure that if you want to place your faith in something else again, it is going to have to be earned. You've been 'burned'; anyone who doesn't understand that is a little out of touch with how the human being works.

Host: Well, it would be something akin to Paul suddenly saying: 'I made the whole thing up because I wanted to get a bunch of disciples or Moses saying: 'Look, I'm really an Egyptian, and I was trying to get you to follow the same guy that Akhnaten was talking about'. It would cause some waves!

Caller #16: Right. I thank myself that I have been as well educated as I have. I continue to reach for knowledge and hope I always will. But we're always, always in need of more information about this kind of thing. In my particular area, I deal with a lot of people. I just really feel that nobody should ever get into a thing where any human being becomes so almighty and important. It just seems counter-productive to me.

Maharaji cries on Bob's shoulder

Unlike what he advocates, he is not capable of dealing with it by means of meditation. He ends up drinking excessively in order to cope with the stress. It was very sad to see him drinking himself into a stupor day after day.