Breaking Free: Helpline

We receive messages to this site from people worried about friends or relatives who are slipping under Maharaji's control, asking for advice on what they should do. In his radio interview, Bob Mishler offered this advice:

What I would usually try and tell [people concerned] 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 an 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.

Here are a few sites offering helpful advice. If you come across any others, please let us know by clicking here.

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