Maharishi Yogi: cult leader

The first article in the series inspired by author and journalist Joyce Collin-Smith’s autobiographical book Call No Man Master covered her experience of cult leaders in general.

It was followed by a series of articles based on Joyce Collin-Smith’s account of her dealings with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his organisation.

This final article contains some miscellaneous material of interest, starting with some of the attributes that Maharishi Yogi had in common with other cult leaders of various kinds.

There is a lot of repetition here, but it is a good way to get ideas across. Despite the huge amount of information available, people are still becoming enthralled by cult leaders and falling for their propaganda and manipulative techniques. People are still joining sinister organisations.

Cult leader characteristics

The Maharishi Yogi had some messianic - and to anyone with any common sense completely unrealistic - ambitions, both worldly and spiritual. His modest plan was to regenerate the entire world in three years via his Transcendental Meditation techniques. He wanted world peace; he wanted to create heaven on earth.

Unlimited ambition and a global mission are often found in cult leader types.

He also displayed the Sole Supplier Syndrome. His was the only way; only he had the answer to the world’s problems:

“It was clear that at this time he had not considered that it might not only be the absence of ‘methods’, ‘practices’ and ‘ways’ to higher consciousness that kept the world in its present unhappy state…entirely sure of his success no matter what had been the fate of other teachings.”

As has been mentioned elsewhere, cult leaders all think that theirs is the true and only solution.

Stella Benson and some travel nightmares

In addition to being a novelist, Stella Benson was a travel writer.

Despite her poor health, she took on many challenging journeys. She wrote articles about her travels and later compiled them into books. She also logged everything in her diaries. These records give many examples of the dangers and difficulties that she met and the risks that she took while on the road.

There is one particular episode that looks like a nightmare scenario to me. It has some familiar elements.

The walking tour nightmare

While Stella Benson was exploring the US in 1918, a new female friend in New England proposed a walking tour.

The final leg involved walking 18 miles through the night to catch a train at 05:30.

They left very little margin for error, which was a big mistake. They got lost and went several miles out of their way; it took a while to find someone to put them back on the right road. At 4:00 am they still had six miles or so to go. The backwoods people were infuriatingly unhelpful: no one would give them a lift.

They had only 15 minutes left when they met a man in a milk cart. They offered him money to turn round and take them to the station; after pondering for a while, he refused. Then they met a man in an empty car and waved and shouted. He slowed down a little then laughed, told them to get off the road and drove on.

When they were one mile from the station, they heard the puffing of the train and saw smoke; they gave up, assuming that they were too late. They walked slowly towards the station, feeling awful because after all their efforts they had missed their train.

When they were within 100 yards of the station, they noticed that the train had backed in again. They made one last, desperate, torturing effort, running as never before, and reached the platform only to see the back of the train disappear round the bend.

“Defeated and robbed of pride we threw ourselves on our backs in mid-platform.”

Stella Benson and the nightmare scenario

Joy Grant’s biography of Stella Benson makes her life seem like one long nightmare scenario!

Stella’s deafness, depression, chronic poor health and frequent medical emergencies made much of her life a misery. 

Many of even her worst experiences would not seem so bad to strong, healthy, ‘real’ people with plenty of resources; other ordeals - the Zeppelin bombing raids on London during World War I for example - are not very relevant because she did not experience them as an individual: they were simultaneously endured by many other people. However, one or two very painful episodes in her life stand out; they are of particular interest because of some familiar elements.  

This article features a minor incident that affected her very badly.

The release of Sylvia Pankhurst

By the spring of 1914, Stella Benson had started a new life of independence. She came to live in London. She found work and became involved with the cause of women’s suffrage.

This led to an assignment that turned into a nightmare for her. Acting on instructions previously given, she went to Holloway Prison early one morning to witness the release of leading suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst.

From her diary:

“The policemen laughed at me, and pointed me out to their friends, the wardresses came out to shriek with laughter too. I got fainter and fainter...at last I began actually collapsing on the doorstep of a sort of church. The police, thinking it was a ruse, were more and more amused. I felt I should never see a friendly face again.”

Stella Benson cried and cried when she got back to her boarding house, fearing that she might not be strong enough for the life she hoped to lead.

On top of all the horrors she had endured, she was distressed to learn that Miss Pankhurst had been released the night before and her suffragette society had not bothered to let her know.

Magic and the Maharishi Yogi

This article is yet another in the series inspired by Joyce Collin-Smith’s account in Call No Man Master of the time that she spent with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1960s.

This topic for this article is the Maharishi’s magical practices; any remaining material of particular interest will be covered separately.

Levels of operation

I have described how I use a systematic, multi-level approach  when looking for causes and explanations, giving as an example someone who had behaved unprofessionally and out of character.

This approach also works well when looking for the reasons for the powerful effect that some people have on others.  People with a very strong influence, cult leaders for example, often operate on several levels.

Diana Wynne Jones’s fictional witch Aunt Maria used her powers and influence on several levels; the Maharishi Yogi is another person of interest who seems to have done the same.

Marianne and the nightmare scenario

Stella Benson and Charlotte Brontë are not the only people whose descriptions of nightmare scenarios have inspired some articles.

The Marianne Trilogy by Sheri S. Tepper gives an example of someone who, just like Lucy Snowe in Villette, gets into the exact nightmare situation that she dreads the most.

In the article about the Marianne books I mentioned a laundry world. This alien dream world appears in Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods, the second book in the trilogy. The city that Marianne has been banished to by the evil witch Madame Delubovoska has a very strange attribute: it changes its name and rearranges itself every day around midnight, so the inhabitants need a new map for each day.

The rules are very strict; maps must be bought on the previous day, and it is a both a crime and extremely dangerous not to have one. Being without a map is something to be avoided at all costs.

Marianne runs a public laundry in the city. Her worst fear comes upon her one day when she forgets to buy her map for the next day. Despite increasingly desperate efforts in dangerous surroundings, she fails to get a new map.  This puts her into even more danger, and there is a good chance of permanent homelessness and destitution.

It all ends with a safe return to the laundry, but not before she has gone through a terrible ordeal which she has had to cope with entirely on her own.

Charlotte Brontë and the nightmare scenario

Stella Benson’s fantasy novella Living Alone (1919) ends with the arrival in New York of her autobiographical character Sarah Brown, who is ill, alone and penniless.

This scene in the book is my idea of a nightmare scenario.

Stella Benson put something of her own experience into the New York episode. She travelled by ship to America in July 1917. She had more in the way of resources than Sarah Brown did, but it was still an ordeal. Approaching New York Harbour, she was:

“...sick with excitement and fright at such an unknown day before me.”

She wrote in her diary on the evening of her first day in New York:

“I never wish for a more wretched thirty hours than this last.”

She was so overcome by loneliness, confusion and the great heat that she started to cry. She awoke the next morning from dreams of death and despair.

The Living Alone scenario and others from Stella Benson’s life sound familiar; they remind me of other writers’ accounts of permutations of isolation, desperation, dangerous situations, going into the unknown, lack of resources and dreadful inner states.

The many common elements make me wonder whether these scenarios are engineered, perhaps subconsciously or perhaps by sinister unseen influences.

Some of Charlotte Brontë’s writings are of particular interest here; they say to me that she knew the terrible feelings well and had experienced a few nightmare scenarios of her own.

How the bureaucrats’ plans backfired

A recent incident provides a good example of the backfiring feature, which I something I have mentioned a few times in various contexts as I find it fascinating.

The bureaucrats who sometimes behave like cult members called another meeting. We decided to go, as there were some more points to be made and we wanted to ensure that the right people heard them.

The enemy turned up in large numbers; they sat in rows and in such as way as to split us up. This was probably an attempt to intimidate my neighbours and me.

Their schemes didn’t work; we were not intimidated and the bringing in of extra people backfired on them.