To me, her autobiographical work Call No Man
Master has a similar duality: it is both very interesting and very boring. Some
of the content fascinates me and resonates very strongly while some of it means
very little so I skip over it.
Some of the material has generated
commentaries and inspired the making of some original connections while some of
it is just more of the same or irrelevant so I have no inclination to say
anything about it.
Cults, cult leaders, cult members and cult
leavers have been covered in several articles, mainly in general terms. I found
Joyce Collin-Smith’s account of her involvement with the cult of the Maharishi
Yogi particularly interesting. It is a goldmine; it is independent confirmation
of much of what has already been described.
This article covers my ideas about her stated
reasons for joining Maharishi and for staying with him for several years despite
some reservations and much disillusionment.
Another article will describe how she eventually brought herself to
leave him and his organisation for good.
Joining the cult despite warning signals
As previously mentioned, before she met the
Maharishi Yogi Joyce Collin-Smith had encountered other masters and teachers
and been involved with various groups. Some of her experiences were not good;
she had learned to be wary.
The dim light, the huge eyes and the
telepathy at the lecture would have been warning signals to many people.
When the Maharishi told her to come back the
next day to be initiated, she knew that she needed more time and that there
were many questions to be answered. She wanted to be careful. Yet when she
tried to formulate some questions, she could not produce any coherent ideas.
She decided to go ahead anyway, all the more after seeing some old
acquaintances in the Maharishi’s household.
She did not like to study spiritual
development alone, and felt a strong need for a Master whose feet she could sit
at. Some people want their god to be in human form. Was this enough to make her
join or was she already slightly under the Maharishi’s influence? Did he immediately
sense how useful she could be to him and use his special powers to recruit her?
Did she ignore some warning signals? She
certainly paid for it in terrible suffering if she did.
Staying in the cult despite disillusionment
At first the house was full of life and laughter,
and it felt good to be working with others in such a pleasant atmosphere. The
followers were filled with joy and their lives seemed fresh and new. They had found
the Master they had been looking for.
That was as good as it got.
When Joyce Collin-Smith returned to the house
after a break of some months, the atmosphere had changed - and for the worse.
There was no longer any laughter, warmth or naturalness. She felt that the
Maharishi had changed for the worse too, becoming slightly corrupted by the
world.
She became more and more disenchanted and
gave up trying to re-enter the inner circle.
She saw, heard and experienced some very
troubling things.
The Maharishi compromised the integrity of
his teachings and views in the name of effectiveness and gaining power. There was
also a lot of disorganisation and reorganisation. Followers were ostracised and
banished from his presence.
She noticed that the Maharishi’s influence
got much stronger as time passed. He wanted his disciples’ wills to be
subjected to his. He used hypnotism to control them. In Joyce Collin-Smith’s
own words:
“When Maharishi returned from his travels,
the grave and brooding look he was beginning to wear habitually filled me with
sense of unease. I felt that there was enormous strength in him, but that he
was beginning to be rather ruthless in using it. I began to see that he was
holding his devotees in thrall in a manner that was growing more and more
alarming. He seemed to have definite hypnotic power. Most of us could be
summoned at a distance and would come at the inner command…”
This is very sinister. Many people would have
cut and run at that point, but she was indecisive and ambivalent.
Reasons for staying
In spite of everything that she experienced, in
spite of the ever-diminishing return on investments, in spite of feeling an
alien influence impinging on her, in spite of the realisation that the
Maharishi was not the great, spiritually highly-evolved Master she had thought
him, Joyce Collin-Smith couldn’t bring herself to leave a very remarkable and charismatic
man who certainly had ‘higher knowledge’ and special powers and whose avowed
aim was to help the world. She thought that he could still do very useful work
in the troubled world of the time, a world that seemed to be falling apart with
chaos and conflict everywhere.
She was also influenced by the fact that she
and other disciples had sometimes seen a halo of light around his head.
Yet she drew back, and stopped going
regularly to the courses.
Perhaps it was not only Joyce Collin-Smith’s
mental ambivalence but the Maharishi’s hypnotic influence that prevented her from
giving up on him for so long. Maybe she subconsciously knew - or was warned -
that leaving would entail immense suffering for her.
Maybe she was so torn between wanting to
remain with the god and wanting to escape from the demon that she was paralysed
with indecision. She could neither cut her losses and run nor fully participate
in all the activities.
Leaving would not have been as difficult for Joyce
Collin-Smith as it is for some cult members. She did have other options, and
unlike members of extreme cults she was not completely dependent in every way on
the Maharishi and his movement.
The reasons she gives for staying with him are
few and may have been based on wishful thinking; they are far outweighed by the
reasons she had for leaving.
On the other hand, I know from experience how
difficult it is to admit defeat and find the strength to walk away so long as
there is even the slightest hope of getting whatever it was that we wanted.
Yet
Joyce Collin-Smith eventually did just that.
