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Over the years, I have had brushes with several cults, but luckily have never been sucked in myself. Back in the mid 90’s while living in Seattle, I went to a “free meditation workshop” sponsored by Sri Chinmoy’s organization, which I had never heard of before then. I enjoyed the workshop, but at the end, the workshop leader said that if we wanted to do more workshops, he would need to take our pictures which he would send to Sri Chinmoy along with signed letters to him (I forget what we were supposed to put in the letters). He then regaled us with how wonderful Sri Chinmoy was, how he was an amazing athlete, composer, and painter. I was rolling my eyes at this point. My internal cult detection alarm was ringing loud and clear. I never went back, although I did occasionally patronize a Sri Chinmoy vegetarian restaurant in the University District. Decent fare, low, low, cult-labor prices.

After this experience, I occasionally saw Sri Chinmoy’s name pop up. For example, I saw a display of his paintings in an airport. O’Hare? Denver? I don’t know, but they were appropriately bland for their setting. The guy was clearly a quack, but at least he was a pretty successful one.

Today I heard an interview with Jayanti Tamm who just wrote her memoir about coming of age in the Sri Chinmoy cult Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult . The interview confirmed my intuition about Sri Chinmoy, fleshing in some details: Sri Chinmoy cut his inner circle off from their families and non-cult relationships, controlled every detail of their lives, and particularly cultivated useful relationships with celebrities like Carlos Santana, Bill Clinton, and Nelson Mandela.

I’m glad Tamm was able to escape the cult. The guru, Sri Chinmoy, died in 2007, and though the group has shrunk, there are still thousands of active members. Of course they aren’t allowed to go online or read book reviews so I don’t know how much impact her memoir will have on them. I hope it does help create a bit more awareness of how cults operate for the rest of us though.