Scholars have been fascinated with the question of how commitments form, but have shown scarcely any interest in how they dissolve. One exception to this trend is Armand L. Mauss. In his essay, "Dimensions of Religious Defection," he developed a useful way of looking at the intellectual, social, and emotional features of defection from the church.1
Intellectual defection occurs when the individual begins to doubt the central tenets of the church's faith. Social defection results from a weakening of bonds with the members of the church, the accumulation of dissatisfying social experiences there, or the development of strong ties on the outside. Emotional defection grows from deep-seated emotional reactions to the church, as we might find in adolescent rebellion. The first two of these forms of defection-the intellectual and social-seem quite applicable to Divine Light Mission, as we will see in the accounts of three defectors.
Mary Anne
Although Mary Anne was deeply moved by her experiences during the Knowledge session, she resisted commitment to the Mission's organization. Her loyalty was chiefly to Guru Maharaj Ji, although that relationship became tenuous in late 1971 when she rejected her belief in his messianic status. "I've come to realize that Guru Maharaj Ji is not particularly to be put up on a throne to be worshipped as the Lord of the Universe. He is Lord of the Universe, but so am I, and so is everybody else. I think he's come to show us we're all equal. He's come to bring us together. We should all humble ourselves to each other and to the God within us. The true guru is inside and Guru Maharaj Ji is just an outward manifestation of that perfect guru within. I really love Guru Maharaj Ji, but I can't relate to the trip of worshipping him, because I don't think he really wants that. I think he wants people to worship the God inside."
In 1972, Mary Anne was living outside of Boulder on a spiritual commune with a group of other premies who were critical of the movement, while her contact with devout premies was minimal. She did occasionally visit the ashram to attend satsang or to perform some special service, but only when she felt moved to or when the premie community called for her help to meet a deadline.
Although she was fond of other premies, she had a strong aversion for the organization. "I've been living with a group of premies who are not totally connected to Divine Light Mission. We're all connected to Guru Maharaj Ji in our hearts, but we don't feel that the Mission is the freest expression of that. I really love all the people in the Mission and feel they're doing a good thing, but I don't think that Guru Maharaj Ji has come to build a church. Each person has to be free to be a walking temple of God; whereas organization restrains and binds."
Fairly well disenchanted with the movement's beliefs and organization, Mary Anne quite naturally showed little interest in the Mission's rituals. She did meditate on a regular basis, but she felt almost no obligation to attend satsang, to do service at the ashram, to sing devotional songs, or to pass out leaflets on the street, even though such behavior was expected.
Weakly committed, her connection to the movement was extremely delicate midway through 1972. While living in Boulder, her involvement had at least been great enough to maintain her identity as a premie. But when she left for the east coast to join a spiritual commune, her remaining ties to the Mission were severed.
Located in the countryside, the spiritual community she joined made it difficult for her to communicate with premies. Therefore, what little feeling she had for the Mission diminished quite rapidly. Living in the midst of people who were unsympathetic to the Mission, it was not long before her relationship to Guru Maharaj Ji began to deteriorate as well.
Having reached the point of feeling completely removed from the Mission, she began to think of herself as a "former" premie. Outside, she was free to take a new direction. "In the autumn of 1972, I was given the opportunity to go to India for a while, where I spent a couple of months traveling, and another seven months in the ashram of a holy man in South India. I had already fallen away from any active relationship with Guru Maharaj Ji and his organization. What I found with my guru in India was a higher teaching, one that is more open and accepting of everything, rather than one which says, `This is the only way.' I plan to return to India this fall to live for an extended period of time. The most profound thing I learned from my experience with Guru Maharaj Ji was the transient nature of life. Everything eventually must drop away until only one's true self remains. Even one's relationship with God or devotion to a guru must drop away because even those things serve to perpetuate the illusion of duality in the long run. All experiences are steps up the path to oneness. But I am grateful to Guru Maharaj Ji for what he showed me. There is no doubt that he is a very powerful man and that he is doing his best to improve the world."
Joan
Joan was initially confused by the Knowledge session, for she could neither grasp its meaning nor understand her relationship to the Mission. That confusion did not clear up until several weeks later when she met some premies who lived up to her expectations of what a premie should be-open and loving. At that point, she made a decision to become involved; soon she was giving satsang, doing service, and singing the praises of Guru Maharaj Ji.
Prior to the Guru Puja festival in 1972, her commitment to the movement seemed to be strong, for she had accepted Guru Maharaj Ji as the Lord and had moved into the ashram. A new set of regulations governing the ashrams was announced at the festival, which significantly increased the sacrifices required of premies living the re-poverty, chastity, and obedience were to be enforced. The women were told that, if they had any intention of marrying, they should leave the ashram. Since Joan did, she decided to move out and take up housekeeping with some other premies.
On the surface, there appeared to be little change in her commitment. She held tight to the Mission's beliefs and traditions while she religiously attended satsang and did service each day at the ashram. Yet there was a subtle change, for her withdrawal from ashram life gave her more time and greater freedom to participate in another movement, The Church of World Messianity. She had been initiated into the church before coming to Colorado and had befriended premies who were active in both movements.
Before embarking on the trip to India, she seemed secure and happy with the way she had been able to combine devotion to Guru Maharaj Ji and channeling light, a spiritual healing practice in The Church of World Messianity. In India, however, the Mission's leaders were impatient with her divided loyalty. "Before I went to India, I was sort of gung-ho about Guru Maharaj Ji and optimistic about the trip. I had a lot of confidence in the path I was on. But in India I experienced the organizational part of the Mission and the power it was holding over people. A lot of people were sick, so I was spending a lot of time channeling light. I couldn't believe it when people within the Mission's organization became hostile toward what I was doing. Some of the Mahatmas even said that channeling light was the work of the devil. When I first entered the Mission, the path was pretty mellow. People were saying that Guru Maharaj Ji was a Perfect Master and a high spiritual being, but they were willing to accept other directions too. To me, the freedom to choose different spiritual paths was important. So, when the leaders told me to drop my beliefs in The Church of World Messianity, to stop channeling light and just follow their path, I knew there was going to he a confrontation."
Even against the orders of the Mission's leaders, she continued channeling light to the sick, although she did so outside of the hospital and out of public view. This decision to deviate from the Mission's position reflected her growing alienation from the organization. She felt distressed and angry that such strong measures would be employed to stop her from performing a service she regarded as completely in harmony with the Knowledge.
She had not consciously decided to leave the Mission when she returned to Colorado, but there were signs she was beginning to defect. On the pretense she had heard too much satsang in India, for example, she decided not to attend evening satsang when she returned. She also quit making her daily trips to the ashram to do service. Yet she felt a close relationship to Guru Maharaj Ji and persisted with her meditations.
Her skeptical attitude about the organization began to erode her ties to the premie community. Soon she was associating more with the members of The Church of World Messianity than with premies. Pressures to quit the Mission were beginning to accumulate, especially from among her close friends who had already defected.
Drifting out before even fully aware of it, she began to criticize the Mission's beliefs, particularly those tenets which imputed super natural powers to the guru. "I finally got fed up with their narrow approach to God, their thinking that everything that happens to you is the will of God, that either God or Guru Maharaj Ji caused it. I couldn't buy the view that if you tripped and fell that God or Guru Maharaj Ji caused it. I believe that people have their own free will, that we choose our life, that we choose things to happen. It's not God or Guru Maharaj Ji doing everything."
Joan's emotional bond to Guru Maharaj Ji began to dissolve. She ceased looking up to him as the Lord, then stopped looking up to him at all. Where she had felt a deep love for him, only a shadow of respect remained.
Having essentially abandoned the Mission, Joan completed her departure when she gave up its meditation techniques for praying in the tradition of The Church of World Messianity. This change completed her retreat. She was free to enter a life of service by channeling light. Recently, however, she has deserted that calling too and is now involved in still another eastern movement.
Matthew
Matthew had been a political and spiritual loner before his contact with the Mission. Confused by the Knowledge session, he might never have become involved had he not been appointed to an official position within the ashram in order to keep it operating while the bulk of the premie community went off to India. He had lightly volunteered to donate money toward the purchase of an ashram building and was recruited on the spot, somewhat against his own inclinations. Caught quite by accident in this new position, his commitment to the organization began to develop until, within a relatively short time, he had become a devotee. His dedication to the Mission seemed quite intense in 1972. He had moved into the ashram and spoke with conviction about the Mission's great potential and Guru Maharaj Ji's plan to change the world.
The first noticeable change in his commitment occurred during his trip to India in 1972. He had been immersed in the premie community up to that point, while being bound by the requirements of his position as an ashram official. However, before his departure, he was relieved of his office, which removed him somewhat from the social influences of the organization. Even in New York City, while waiting for his flight to India, he was beginning to feel vaguely removed from the community. "I began looking at the people who were active in the Mission and feeling I was not like them. I didn't think I was an ashram type. In fact, I was feeling detached from the whole ashram scene."
In India, he was more an observer than a participant. His criticisms were nourished by a growing sense of estrangement. "There were a lot of Mahatmas there and premies were really playing up to them, like touching their feet. It seemed so phony and ridiculous to me. I also felt that some of the Indian traditions which the Mission had taken up were unnecessary. For example, there's a belief in celibacy. I heard Mata Ji tell a group of mothers, `Well, now that you've made your mistake, you'll have to live with it.' To say that having children was a mistake was a position I just couldn't accept. I began to think those traditional values were not of any use to a western person.
Although his experiences in India had weakened his ties to the Mission, Matthew had no plans of leaving the movement when he returned. For two weeks he recuperated from an illness contracted in India. After his recovery, there was little for him to do, since he no longer had an official position within the ashram. "I didn't really have a role I could sink into. In fact, there didn't seem to be any roles which were really right for me."
Eventually, he did assume responsibility for opening a Mission operated secondhand store, but by that time he was already beginning to feel a strong desire to leave the ashram. "Finally, I just said to myself, `Okay, I'm going to move out.' The morning I left I went to the person in charge and told her I was leaving. I tried to tell her why in order to make her understand, but I was very defensive because I really didn't know what I was doing. I was just trusting an urge in me which was telling me to get out. I didn't want to face any other people in the ashram. In fact, I just packed my stuff and snuck out the door when no one was looking."
Matthew had no intention of leaving the movement at that point, for he still considered himself a premie and intended to remain active. He kept up his attendance at satsang and continued doing service in order to maintain his contact with the Mission. Yet he was entering a critical stage, for he was starting to seriously question the movement's beliefs, its view of service, and its apparent intolerance of spiritual directions other than its own. Alongside of this questioning attitude were pressures from his best friend, a former premie, who was apparently encouraging him to defect.
Matthew could not have been much better prepared for a final break. "They had a big reshuffling of the organization after I left the ashram. It was going to be split up in order to create a place where premies could do the service that felt right for them. People were talking about creating a more loving and free situation, where premies could perform the type of service they wanted. That really sounded good to me. Then one day I stopped by the Mission's secondhand store and there were some people there from Denver, who were higher up in the organization. They needed some people to hand out leaflets and they asked me if I wanted to go. I told them I didn't. But they told me I did and they continued telling me that. That really upset me, especially after I'd heard about the changes in organization which were going to take place. So, I just walked away from them. I never went back to that store or to the ashram again."
Once he had left the ashram, it was a relatively easy step for Matthew to leave the movement. "The situation at the store that day was the breaking point for me, as I definitely began to lose my feelings for the Mission. In fact, I found myself wanting to avoid it entirely because I didn't want to be drawn back into its frame of reference or language. I didn't want that to happen, so I avoided any contact with premies."
Outside of the Mission, Matthew returned to his solitary spiritual search. He continued to meditate, using techniques similar to the Mission's, and took up the study of western psychology and eastern religion. After two years of study on his own, he joined another eastern spiritual community, where he is currently following its guru.
Taking Leave
Departure from a social movement is achieved in an incremental fashion it seems. Social bonds are gradually broken with the members, while new ones are formed in the outside world, until the individual has attained complete separation. There appear to be layers of disenchantment quite similar to those described by Mauss in his discussion of defection from the church. Certainly Mary Anne, Joan, and Matthew became disillusioned with the Mission's organization, doubted some of the main tenets of its ideology, and questioned its authority. Questioning the Mission at that level, they reduced the number of social contacts with premies while they increased their interactions with people on the outside, many of whom possessed a strong aversion for the movement. Contact with the Mission's critics reinforced their own misgivings, which, in turn, deepened their own feelings of disenchantment, drawing them further outside of the movement's worldview and sphere of influence. Thus they felt freer to deviate from the expectations which had shaped their identities as devotees. Daily rituals changed. It became more and more uncomfortable being around premies. They found more to be critical about. Feeling an aversion for the premie community and finding themselves agreeing with the community of dissenters, their emotional attachment to Guru Maharaj Ji began to weaken, then break. At what point they abandoned their identity as a premie is unclear, but the realization that they were no longer followers of the guru must have been a critical moment, for their bond to him had been their strongest link to the Mission. Having come to admit that they were no longer premies, they eventually discarded or modified the Mission's meditation practices, a symbolic gesture of their independence from the movement.
Their unconscious effort to minimize conflict during the period of withdrawal was one of the interesting undercurrents of their defection. For they took the path of least resistance whenever possible. To avoid social conflicts, for example, Joan stopped her daily visits to the ashram. Matthew escaped conflict with his premie friends by sneaking out of the ashram and by consciously avoiding contact with them once he had left the movement.
Self-deception was one of the creative ways they managed their inner conflicts, believing they were still committed even while they were slipping out of the movement. Joan did not realize she was breaking her ties to the movement when she decided not to attend satsang, on the pretext that she had heard too much satsang in India. Matthew found it much easier to leave the ashram after he had convinced himself he was not leaving the movement, even though there were signs of disillusionment with the organization, its beliefs, and its traditions. By viewing himself as a premie-at-large, he avoided having to face the more difficult choice of departing from the movement directly out of the ashram. Self-deception helped these premies stay clear of conflict with their friends in the movement while it allowed them to withdraw their commitments with a minimum of anxiety and guilt.