There was a time when she felt far from being
ready to abandon the Maharishi. She eventually reached the stage where she felt
a deep disquiet whenever she came close to him and met his eyes, and finally
there were some last straw incidents that pushed her into completely giving up her involvement with him and his movement.
There are some familiar elements and a few coincidences
in what she tells us, and some of the material is useful for adding to the
store of information about how and why people leave cults and what happens to
them afterwards.
The course in Italy
Everything came to a head when the Maharishi
hand picked some people to go on a course of advanced teachings that was to be
held in Italy, in the Dolomites. By then, he was charging selected followers hefty
amounts for the privilege of learning special techniques.
Joyce Collin-Smith was one of the followers
he ordered to go on the course. She felt hijacked, forced into attending.
This was the last course she ever went on. There
was a last straw moment or two; the Maharishi went too far and she just
couldn’t take any more.
For starters, she realised that he was
teaching and presiding over magical practices; not only that, the rituals were very
unsafe and undesirable for westerners.
Then there was the horror story involving
some rejected women.
One of them was a German doctor who had been very
enthusiastic, lively and fit the last time Joyce Collin-Smith had seen her: TM
had had a marvellously rejuvenating effect.
That was two years earlier. She had since changed from being clear-skinned,
shining-eyed and young-looking to someone who looked dreadful. She had become
an old woman with the haunted eyes of a concentration camp inmate.
She had fallen from grace and become an
outcast. The Maharishi had lost his temper with her and dismissed her, giving
orders that she was not to be admitted to the hotel or his presence. She had
become a criminal in his eyes.
The doctor’s unforgivable crime was to have
ideas and methods of her own and not take money for initiations. She refused to
back down when confronted by the Maharishi, and when he realised that he could not
impose his will on her, he banished her as a punishment.
This is very typical of the behaviour
associated with cults: everything she had done for him and the cause counted
for nothing.
Yet she still wanted to get back in his
favour. In Joyce Collin-Smith’s own words:
“She seemed as though possessed, under a
spell. Unable to gain admission to the Maharishi’s presence, she was unable to
cut her losses and go away...”
The doctor turned up every day, begging to be
admitted to the Maharishi’s room. He refused to see her. She had two friends
she had initiated, and they used to wander around talking to the people outside
the hotel. When Maharishi heard about this, he gave orders that no one was to
assist or even talk to them.
The three women sat by the lake together, ignored
by most of the followers but not by Joyce Collin-Smith: she pitied the poor
outcasts and was shocked by Maharishi’s lack of compassion.
On the final day of the course, there was
another incident.
The Maharishi was to perform an invocation from
a flower-bedecked and brightly-lit boat on the water at midnight.
A mean-spirited member of the chosen elite let
some other boats loose and pushed them off so that most of the people on the
course could not go on the lake with the Maharishi. This spiteful act caused
deep hurt and disappointment among the people for whom this would have been the
experience of a lifetime.
She watched Maharishi perform his ceremony on
the lake from the shore. When he returned to land he once again ignored the
three women, who were still waiting in the hope that he would speak to them. He
beckoned to Joyce Collin-Smith but she did not follow him.
That was it.
After leaving Italy, she was never in his
presence again. She cut her losses and faded out. She watched developments from
the sidelines and heard the news from a few old friends but never participated in
any activities.
The sinister aftermath
Joyce Collin-Smith was certainly well out of
it. However, complete escape is not always that easy. There were some horrific
after-effects.
At first she felt a sense of freedom. There
were no more movement-related commitments and activities in her life.
Then she found that her writing ability had
been destroyed. She became more and more depressed. Normal life seemed
meaningless. She fell into the pit of hell and it took many years for her to
climb out.
Perhaps she stayed with Maharishi so long
because she sensed that something like this might happen.
Perhaps what she experienced was withdrawal
symptoms; perhaps it was a psychic attack, the Maharishi’s revenge for being
abandoned. Perhaps it was a consequence of playing with fire: she became
convinced that too easy, too frequent experience of the transcendental state
was responsible for the appalling condition she found herself in.
Other people’s experiences
I suspect that Joyce Collin-Smith is not
telling us everything about what happened during the time she spent with the Maharishi
Yogi. However, what she does tell us matches much of what is already known
about the reasons for joining, remaining with and leaving cults and what goes
on inside them.
Some of it also matches what I have
experienced myself. For example, I too had my last straw incidents. By
coincidence, this was also outside the UK - but in Austria not Italy.
I too was the victim of mean-spirited and
petty-minded people and I too have had to deal with a painful aftermath.
Defectors have told me of similar
experiences: being forced to go somewhere they didn’t want to go and being
prevented from attending something they wanted to go to. This was a political
not a spiritual organisation, but different cults play the same games.
We too monitor developments remotely and speak out about our experiences, anonymously or in person.
We too monitor developments remotely and speak out about our experiences, anonymously or in person.
It is now time to take a short break from the
Maharishi Yogi before looking into his involvement with the occult and covering
the remaining material of interest.
