I know those are crazy words. I know that cults are scary and dangerous and lead people to awful places and do terrible things. I know all of this but just like some people are fascinated by bank robbers or serial killers - I have always found myself fascinated by cults.
The weird, marvelous, bizarre, backwards thinking, completely stupid, and ridiculous world of cults, cult leaders, and cult members. As I write this, I am getting ready to head out to spend five days with a cult I recently became associated with. Actually, I don't quite know if I used the right phrasing there.
Let me back up. We'll come back to where I'm going to be heading soon in a few minutes. First I'd love to share a little bit about my history with cults and cult members. As a child, my family lived in Big Bear Lake. - a small mountain town that sits almost 7000 feet above the Los Angeles Basin. It was a mecca for weekenders, nature lovers, and snow skiers. In the mid-1970s - it was also a place where there were plenty of hippies, seekers, and alternative religious folks too.
My parents were fairly normal - I mean to us they were normal. I'm pretty sure my dad was D.B. Cooper and my mom couldn't figure out whether she was a dancer, a hippie, or a fundamentalist Christian - which is likely why she drank so much. At one point while they were trying to make their marriage work, my dad decided to move us all to Mexico for several months - and has never provided a good reason why. Then, when we got back, he spooked again and moved us to Mendocino, way up on the North Coast of California. It turns out he moved us into the house that had formerly been occupied by one of the most famous cults of the 1960s - The Charles Manson Family. This was well after they had vacated, but the house was still creepy as fuck.
This wasn't my first encounter with cults though. My aunt belonged to one of the biggest and most successful cults in America, the Jehovah's Witnesses. She would take us to 'meetings' and 'assemblies' to get us out of the house where our parents were fighting. These people were equally creepy to the Manson house. They all wore what seemed to be fancy clothes from someone's grandparent's old trunk. Faded flower dresses and badly tailored denim suits from Sears Roebuck and Co. As for the teachings - complete madness. Ten thousand people would go to heaven and the rest of us were going to either burn in hell or wake up to paradise on Earth, after being tortured for a thousand years. That's probably not accurate - but it's accurate enough. Even as a seven year old, I could tell that the old man they revered as among the chosen was looking down the teenage girl's tops. They were creepers. So many creepers.
The parents weren't really having a good time together so they branched out and started bringing other couples over for sleepovers. One couple, Mary Beth and Terry, always wore orange clothes. They were Rajneeshees. They were quite nice and they were excited to move to a special town in Oregon where their leader Baghwan Rajneesh was creating a commune for all of them. That didn't turn out too well for them, but I remember one morning when I woke up early Mary Beth taught me how to sit and meditate. I liked it.
The divorce inevitably happened and Terry and Mary Beth moved out of our lives. Our mom moved us out of our house and up to Oregon, not to the Rajneeshee town but close enough that when they started bussing in homeless people so they could outvote the local townspeople and then tried to poison the town water supply (because the non-Rajneeshees didn't really want to rename Antelope to Rajneesh Param) - we heard about it.
Meanwhile mom and her new husband were building sweat lodges and inviting other Oregon hippie drunks over to sit naked in the steam. There were definitely some drugs involved in all of this, but not for us - we were just little kids but we sat in the steam with them sometimes. It was sort of culty - but probably more just drunky.
My other uncle and aunt,in the meantime, had joined more of a 'not batshit crazy' Hindu cult and I think I really benefitted from their sometimes sharing tidbits of actual useful spiritual information with me. Their cult is a nice one started by Paramahansa Yogananda. I'm sure they would say it's not a cult - but let's be clear - all cults say that. The problem is people think all cults are bad but I'm not so sure about that.
At this point I started going to all the Christian Churches in my area. Mostly by myself as a 6th and 7th grader but I would meet nice church moms that would take me in and try to indoctrinate me. Let me be clear - Christian sects are almost all cults. I'm sure if you belong to one, you disagree, but maybe not. The wackiest were the Pentecostal Church of God.
Like all the other cultists I'd met, they were also kind and eager to indoctrinate me. The youth pastor had quite a harem of teenage girls and the youth sleepover nights were nothing short of arousal - at least when the praying was done.
In the church, their speaking in tongues fascinated me. I faked it to see if they could tell. They couldn't. They. gushed over me. I fell down and faked a seizure. They heaped on the prayers and praise. I didn't return, despite missing the youth sleepovers.
I started reading Illuminatus by Robert Anton Wilson and became a huge fan of the cult of conspiracy theory. I left Oregon, churches, all the hippie cults behind and moved back to Big Bear with my dad. He was more about Hell's Angels at this point - which, in my opinion, is just another cult. The standard definition of a cult is:
a relatively small group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader, who tightly controls its members, requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant
Sonny Bargar was as much a cult leader as David Koresh. That's not the only similarity. I would simply say that the Hell's Angels were much more open about their perversions and rituals whereas most cults seem to try to hide behind some sort of heavenly facade.
My Jehovah's Witness aunt had left her husband by this point because he wasn't into the cult. He was, by the way, best friends in high school with a very famous cult leader, Jim Jones. The guy who popularized the term "Don't drink the Kool Aid" by getting all of his followers to suicide with him in Guyana.
By this point, I was in high school and had nothing to do with religion of any kind, my grandmother, however - took my sister and I to an 'alpha awareness session' with a different kind of new age guru, Arlo Wally Minto. I've gotta be honest here, I think if Wally Minto had a cult, it would be a good one. To this day, I still have his book and use some of the methods he wrote about. Wally had no interest in being a cult leader though and I'm grateful for that. I feel like his alpha awareness training has been really helpful in not becoming indoctrinated. Gratitude to my grandmother and Wally.
Shortly after that, I joined the most dangerous cult in the world. The U.S. Marines. While only a relatively small group in comparison to the other branches of the military in the U.S. we had full on indoctrination, beliefs and practices that can only be defined as deviant, unwavering devotion, tightly controlled members, and a charismatic leader in the commandant. Four years of that was enough, I managed to remain unbrainwashed, but sometimes I think I should have just let them have me. The fight was exhausting.
Post Marine Corps, I joined the cult of Coast-to-Coast Radio with Art Bell. It was fun before conspiracy turned from wacky to dangerous. I attended PSI seminars, I became a stock broker - and let me tell you - stock broker bros - that's a fucking cult. The leader is whoever makes the most money and money is the god. I lasted six months in the cult of stocks.
I joined a Buddhist cult - Sokka Gakkai International - also known as the Japanese cult Buddhists who chant for money. Nam Myoho Renghe Kyo. There's more to it - but ultimately -the cult label fits there really well. I left that but I still like to chant for things sometimes or for nothing at all.
Most recently, I attended a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat. 10-days of no talking, meditating 10-12 hours a day, no tech, silence. It was awesome and they went to great lengths to explain that they are not a cult. But they are. It's totally a cult. Don't let anyone tell you different. Goenkaji may be dead, but he is still speaking to people from the videos and the indoctrination is totally cultish. I got a lot out of it. I enjoyed it.
However, there have been multiple cases of people being very damaged by Vipassana. That much meditation isn't right for everyone. The organization tries to cover it up or say that the people were previously damaged - but in truth - they are also very dogmatic about what you can and cannot do, how you should do it, and what is right and what is wrong.
When I wrote about my experience, I heard from several people who were upset that I had deviated from the set practice. Still, it was awesome. I recommend it, but only to those who can keep their consciousness and not lose themselves in the practice. I'm actually going back today.
This time it's a five-day retreat and I'm volunteering to 'serve'. I'll still be meditating and taking part in it all, but I'll be cleaning or maybe cooking or helping to facilitate. Vipassana retreats are always free and this is one way that I can give back in appreciation for that.
I should also point out that my fascination with cults continues. I started one of my own - which seems like a very mid-life-crisis kind of thing to do. My cult was called Baldism. The cult leader was Bald Jesus (not me- an imaginary person). I wrote a holy book for it called the Holy BJBLE. The Baldism Cult was centered on Web3 and creating Bald Jesus artwork and publishing it as NFTs. The only commandment was 'Don't Be a Dick'. I took the best of all the cults I have encountered and blended it together -
- but, I must admit, it was flawed. I've written extensively about that so I won't go into it here, but effectively, the issue was that I was taking a piss on someone else's sacred cow which was blatantly violating the only commandment. So I turned my back on Baldism took everything I'd learned, tried my best to construct it in such a way that people would not fall under the control of any one charismatic leader, left the door open for any and all beliefs that might bring about a better world, and tried to construct it in such a way that practitioners would be completely uncontrollable by anyone. What I wanted to build was the anti-cult.
It's called Baoism.
Maybe you've heard of it.
If not - check it out. It's not a cult (but they all say that...)
If I don't get brainwashed over the next five days, I'll come back and share about my upcoming Vipassana experience next week.
