Episode 015 — Nicola Ranson

Welcome to Unspun, another episode, a podcast about life inside cults and high control religious groups. We discuss what it takes to rebuild a life, identity, and a sense of self after leaving. This will be a two-part episode. In today’s episode, we will look at Nicola’s journey to recovery and the next episode we’ll explore what it’s like to work as a therapist in this area.

01:07 We are now on YouTube. Please subscribe to the channel, like this episode, and leave us a comment. It’d be awesome to have the first comment being left. It really helps people discover these important stories. Today’s guest is Nicola Ranson, whose story takes us inside the world of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho. Nicola brings a rare perspective to this conversation.

01:33 That of both a former cult member and now a practicing somatic psychotherapist, specializing in trauma. Before we begin our conversation, let me tell you a little bit more about Nicola. For 10 years, Nicola Ranson was a disciple of the Guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, known as Osho. She followed him from India to the cult’s headquarters in Oregon until the

02:00 Commune collapsed amid revelations of criminal activity, including mass poisonings and attempted murder. After she left, she became a somatic psychotherapist specialising in trauma and has worked with survivors from a number of cults. For 17 years, Nicola taught counselling psychology on the adjunct faculty at National University.

02:24 For the past two years she has presented on cult recovery for the International Cultic Studies Association. Nicola was born in the UK, grew up in Canada, and now lives in California with her husband Ron. She is a fan of wild rabbits and democracy. Go wild rabbits and democracy. Her memoir, A Slice of Orange, Loving and Leaving the Osho Rajneesh Cult, will be published by Unsolicited Press in December 2026. I have just finished this book and it’s fantastic. I really loved it. Welcome to the show, Nicola.

03:00 Thank you so much, Alisa. What a nice introduction.

03:03 Yeah. Well, I hope I introduce people nicely. It’s good to get you feeling like—yeah, I think so.

03:09 It’s a good start.

03:12 For sure. Yeah, I love the book. It was—it just felt like such a kind of honest reflection and powerful kind of—I think in a book you can really capture the dynamics and the nuances of what happens in a cult.

03:28 Well, thank you so much. Yeah, I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it. It’s been a very, very, very long labour of love, but nuance was

03:37 Yeah.

03:37 certainly what I was going for.

03:39 Yeah. Yeah, well done. Great. I’m just—I guess we start at your kind of like initial experiences and I’m wondering what your first memories are of being in the cult, if you can remember that far back.

03:57 Sure, I may be

03:59 old, but I can still remember

04:01 Yeah.

04:02 especially having written a memoir, it forces you to remember all that stuff. So

04:05 Yes, for sure.

04:08 I mean it begins of course even before joining because I met people who were involved and I found them absolutely fascinating. And

04:16 Yeah.

04:17 I was really interested in therapy and the Rajneesh group were very much sort of

04:24 bringing together psychotherapy as it was at that time from the human potential movement and Eastern mysticism. So that combination

04:31 Yes.

04:32 to me was irresistible because there were

04:34 Yeah.

04:35 two things that I was fascinated by. So I ended up going out to the ashram in India when I was twenty-four and became a disciple and spent a few months there and then just couldn’t stop

04:49 figuring out, well, how do I get back to do this longer and be closer and be

04:53 Yeah.

04:54 a worker, which was sort of the next level up. And

04:57 Right.

04:58 I was in Canada where I grew up, earning money to get back to India when

05:04 Mm.

05:04 Rajneesh moved to the United States. So I ended up joining up with him in Oregon, which is where the massive commune was for four

05:15 Yeah.

05:15 plus years.

05:16 And I lived there through to the bitter end of that.

05:19 Wow. Yeah. It it’s astounding the amount of work that went into building that and how many

05:26 Ha ha.

05:27 people lived there and yeah, it’s mind blowing. And the amount of work you all did as well.

05:31 It really—yeah. No, you’re

05:34 you’re right, ’cause it’s such a huge scale that it’s kind of hard to comprehend. I think if people have seen the Netflix series Wild Wild Country, they get a sense of what

05:46 Yeah.

05:47 a hundred square miles is, what

05:50 Mm.

05:50 no X thousand going up to some thirty thousand when we had visitors, what that meant, you know, making meals

05:57 Yeah.

05:58 and

05:58 building structures and creating. But that was also part of the adventure for me. I don’t like it to come across as, dear, you know, we slaved to more unpaid labour, which was true.

06:10 Yes.

06:11 but it also was a coming together of a community to create

06:15 Yeah.

06:15 something that we were really into. And

06:18 Yeah.

06:19 as you know from the book, I used to be quite involved in theatre. I studied theatre and it did remind me a lot of how people come together to put on a production. You kind of

06:28 Yeah.

06:28 lose yourself in that. And of course

06:31 Yeah.

06:31 in a cult we lose ourselves in many ways. But there was an excitement in building a city. It was a

06:39 Yeah.

06:39 it was an incorporated city at some point. So yeah, we worked damn hard. Seven days a week, twelve

06:45 Yeah. Yeah, you did.

06:47 hours a day.

06:48 And I think that’s like at the—I don’t know if this is what you’ve noticed, but at the beginning when cults kind of first start, there’s just this beautiful kind of feeling of community and all working together and it’s such a powerful kind of experience for everybody. And really beautiful in some ways.

07:09 Yeah.

07:09 Well,

07:09 they do tend to attract idealists and you know,

07:14 Yeah.

07:15 we, as you know, join because it’s something we’re already aligned with, or so we think.

07:20 Yes.

07:21 And yeah, there was a lot of idealism. And when I’m talking to people who were there and lived through it as I did, the most nostalgia goes back to India because India was

07:32 Right.

07:32 was much more loose and open, the hierarchy wasn’t so

07:37 clear, especially

07:37 Yeah.

07:38 if you were just a visitor as I was, and there was the excitement and allure of India. And

07:44 Yeah.

07:45 then in Oregon things became much more rigid and the power structure was more rigid, and then eventually

07:51 Yeah.

07:52 all those crimes were exposed. And not that there weren’t some crimes going on in India, but nobody knew about that and it was nothing

08:00 Yeah.

08:00 to the degree that was experienced in Oregon.

08:03 Right, yeah, yeah. I wonder too, ’cause I didn’t hear much about this in your book, were there children at this that lived with you in Oregon as well? Or was that discouraged? Yeah.

08:14 Well, that’s a very good question, Alisa. And

08:18 the former children who are listening to this will be going, Yay, someone asked that

08:23 question. Because it was one of the main complaints residents had about the Netflix series Wild Wild Country, which I happen to think was a very good portrayal, was where were the kids?

08:34 Right. Yeah.

08:35 And for one thing, Rajneesh was very much against people having kids.

08:41 Mm.

08:42 So

08:42 a lot of people were sterilized, that’s one whole issue. So

08:46 Yes.

08:47 we had a birth rate of zero, which is something with a population that got to, you know, five, six thousand. But yes, there were kids. People who’d previously had kids brought kids. No one was born

08:59 Right.

09:00 there, but so kids did grow up, but there weren’t very many compared to

09:04 Right.

09:04 the adults. So

09:06 I kind of understand people who didn’t notice in their research because they really were not that visible.

09:13 Right.

09:14 they had a school in Antelope, which was some 30 miles out of the main ranch. So I, in my four years, hardly ever saw kids, just a few

09:24 Right.

09:25 teenagers who were doing some work around where I was.

09:30 because the kids were living in a separate place. If you worked with the kids, of course, you know, as a teacher and so on, yes, of course you’d be very involved. But kids were not prioritized and it certainly led to abuse and I’m sorry to say sexual abuse.

09:45 Right, yeah. Yeah.

09:48 And I mention that in my book. I was asked not to go into it in detail because it’s not my story, but I feel

09:55 Yeah.

09:56 a great responsibility to say

09:58 Kids were there and the grown-ups let them down by

10:02 Yeah.

10:03 having them grow up in this environment where their well-being was not supported and

10:10 Yeah.

10:11 that’s what happened to the kids.

10:12 Yeah. That’s good to know. Yeah, ’cause often children are, in my experience, they’re often left completely alone or treated like mini adults. Yeah.

10:24 Yeah. Well, mini

10:25 adults was definitely—I think the culture at the time also supported that to some extent, ’cause some of this neglect, I mean, there’s neglect and there’s abuse. No,

10:36 Mm.

10:37 neglect, you know, a lot of people say, Well, what about the parents? Well, why weren’t they keeping an eye on—and no, it’s a good question, but I also see parents thinking

10:46 we’re doing the best possible thing for the kids by letting the guru look after them in the ways that he’s devised with his schools

10:52 Yeah. Mm.

10:54 and they’re living in a separate trailer and so on. And I’ve spoken to a few kids and I’ve certainly interviewed people for when I wrote my memoir. And some of them, you know, have written books and made movies. There’s some excellent things out at the moment. But I also have talked to kids who said, Well, I actually had a great time. You know, that there was a

11:13 Right.

11:14 mixture of

11:15 experiences but some of them were really not pretty and we certainly didn’t equip kids for being in the world after it ended.

11:23 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

11:25 A lot of the education involved, you know, voluntary work projects.

11:31 Yeah.

11:31 Which some of the boys—I worked in video at some point and I say boys ’cause that’s who I remember working there. You know, they were thoroughly enjoying tinkering with audio and video equipment

11:41 Yeah.

11:42 and so on. So it looked to me like, well, that’s—they’re having a good time, they’re learning something.

11:45 Yeah, yeah. It’s a useful skill. Yeah.

11:48 Right.

11:49 In your experience, if someone pushed back or doubted, what would happen? What were the consequences of that?

11:57 Well, not great, sort of typical cult stuff. I mean, first of all,

12:02 Mm.

12:03 we were trained to see doubts as our problem. No, if you’re

12:08 Yeah.

12:08 sort of witnessing what is my mind doing and you’re taught that this mind is not a very good thing, it just yadders on all the time and we need to just be with it, which to some extent I think is true. But

12:21 Critical thinking is also an important part of the mind. So negativity, we were told, was basically our flaw. So there was this whole aspect of shame and blame, which was subtle because

12:34 Yeah.

12:35 this was a group that was about, let’s, you know—initially Rajneesh would

12:40 talk about, you know, I accept you completely, you know, you’ve got to be yourself. This was about freedom. It wasn’t one of those coercive groups. So actually acknowledging that, I’ve got negative feelings about something, that was something to process. That was something you worked through. That was something, if you wanted to confess that to your boss, you know, they would help you with that.

13:03 Yeah.

13:04 but it was very much frowned upon and it was very much a source of shame.

13:08 And as a therapist, I think this is one of the really harmful things to teach people that there are such things as negative feelings like

13:18 Yeah.

13:18 anger and resentment and so on, rather than, maybe those feelings are telling you something important. So

13:25 Yeah.

13:25 people who fought back or really challenged the system, they might get a chance or two, but

13:32 Really the message was, if you don’t like it here, the road’s right there, you know, get out.

13:38 Yeah.

13:38 not that that was an easy thing to do, but the result was that we were terrified of being kicked out if we spoke up and said, I really don’t like this and so on.

13:49 Yeah. So they use often, and I guess this was true for your cult, was they use—they take away your ability to be critical and kind of swap that out with, you know, there’s no negativity here. And if you do have negativity or critical thinking, there’s shame and ultimately shunning really, in a sense. Yeah.

14:13 Ultimately shunning for sure.

14:15 Being, you know,

14:16 Mm.

14:16 kicked out from all the people you love and your partners or whoever.

14:20 Yeah. What do you

14:22 Yeah, it’s important.

14:23 think, yeah. When do you think the first cracks started to appear for you?

14:28 Well, there were some massive cracks and those were the ones I noticed. And then of course in retrospect you can go back and say, well, I never quite liked that and I never really liked that, but everything else was so great, I made these mental gymnastics to get around those pieces.

14:48 Yeah.

14:49 the big cracks were really when the Share-A-Home project

14:54 started. And that was

14:55 this bizarre event where suddenly we were told our commune, which was a pretty protected meditative space in many ways, was going to be home for thousands of homeless people from all across the United States, which was a very different demographic and it really shook up our little white privileged

15:19 group for the most part.

15:21 Yeah, a bit.

15:23 And the truth was they actually outnumbered us. So we ended up—and I think we were about 4,000 and the homeless were about 5,000, something around that. And so it was massive. And just

15:33 Wow. I didn’t realise it was that many. Wow.

15:38 coincidentally, they were all American citizens. And coincidentally this was before a big election coming up where

15:46 Uh-huh.

15:46 we were electing a county commissioner who was going to confirm whether the city could remain incorporated because the incorporation had been challenged. But we were told this was about sharing our bounty with those who need it. And that struck me as really weird because charity and social justice was not the direction that Rajneesh went.

16:11 Bribes.

16:12 actually criticized Mother Teresa of all people, you know, who does that? It was so mean. But

16:16 Yeah. I know, that blew my mind. Yeah. Yeah.

16:23 but I mean, so that you could say that was a red flag back in the day because that stuck in my craw. Like, what? You know, why would he do that? But the explanation or justification was, well, if we focus on our own spiritual growth,

16:39 we’re gonna do so much more for the world than one person, and she’s doing it out of ego and looking good, all kinds of accusations he made, which in retrospect looked like, you know, he didn’t like the competition. That’s my judgment.

16:54 Yeah. Right.

16:56 But having come from India, where there were so many opportunities to do good, to help the community around, and it did not happen.

17:05 To suddenly have this project in Oregon happen was very weird and very uncomfortable. We managed to bring in rival street gangs and there were fights and there were attacks and all this stuff. It’s like, my God, where’s my commune gone? But

17:20 It blows my mind, like the

17:22 political manoeuvring plus also again the logistics of that whole

17:28 Yeah.

17:29 exercise.

17:30 Yeah. Logistics were definitely our thing. It’s like, okay,

17:33 Mm.

17:34 go and build ten platforms for six thousand or, you know, figure out how to grow more food for X thousand, you know, all these ridiculously large tasks that

17:44 Mm.

17:45 were then taken on and succeeded.

17:48 Yeah. So that was one big kind of red flag, would you say?

17:52 It

17:52 was a red flag, and then things cracked when we were called to a general meeting, and Sheela, who was Rajneesh’s secretary at that time, was presiding over this meeting, and she suddenly made this announcement about we opened our home to you, speaking to the homeless folks, and you’ve treated us so badly and in return

18:16 you’ve attacked us and you’ve desecrated—I mean, people there were a lot of mentally ill people in that crowd.

18:24 Yeah.

18:25 so there definitely were problems. She was not completely wrong, but she made it this enormous accusation of how dare you do this and your time, you know, you need to leave now. And there were buses outside the large temple building we were in waiting to go.

18:44 So these people had the choice of coming up and grovelling in some way and saying, you’re right, I’m so sorry, I’ll do everything to stay and apologise, or get on the bus. And I think they already had designated certain people that they wanted out. But I was

19:01 Rise.

19:01 there in this massive audience witnessing this and going, What is going on? This is not only wrong but cruel.

19:10 Because people were not taken back to their living accommodation. They were not given their possessions, their coats, or whatever. And some of them were screaming. And I’m—I heard this woman screaming, Don’t, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to leave. You know, and they’re being dragged out in the cold weather. And I just knew this was wrong. This was absolutely

19:32 Yeah.

19:33 wrong and cruel. And I didn’t

19:36 have the courage to say anything, and it would have been pointless to have said anything because they would just say, Okay, you go too, which everyone acknowledged, because the people driving the buses afterwards said, you know, that was awful. And some of them were instructed to take the coats away. I mean, it was a very cruel thing. And then

19:54 yeah.

19:55 they were dumped in a lot of neighbouring Oregon towns. So that

20:00 Right.

20:01 was sort of a screw you to

20:02 the people of Oregon with whom we were battling and all this litigation. But that so

20:04 Right, yeah. Yeah.

20:07 that was no—not a red flag, that was a volcano.

20:10 Yeah, right. That was kind of almost the tipping point by the sounds of it.

20:16 Almost. Some

20:18 of us it takes a few tipping points.

20:20 Yeah. Yeah. To be pushed beyond whatever you think you can handle, I guess, in some sense.

20:27 What was the moment or event or the realisation that made you understand you couldn’t keep living inside that world?

20:35 Well, I think mine is a sort of an unusual situation ’cause usually that’s someone’s story of exiting a cult. But

20:43 Yes.

20:44 what happened for us was the leadership left in the middle of the night. Sheela and all the top leadership. Suddenly we were told in the morning, they’ve gone. You know, they’d left on a plane. So we were absolutely bewildered and

21:00 Must have been a real shock.

21:02 it was

21:03 It was a real shock because no one could compute it. Well, I certainly couldn’t. She—I always thought she was divinely devoted. Why would she suddenly leave? And then Rajneesh himself called a meeting, which was unheard of, and he just started saying, look, all these crimes have taken place, my commune has become

21:23 a concentration camp and Sheela was in charge and people were poisoned and so this was all news. It’s like, what the hell is he talking about? So this sort of devolved into the FBI coming in because what we didn’t know was that there’d been a grand jury investigation going on and some subpoenas were coming down and

21:49 he must have had, I think he did have advanced notice of this. So in a way it was a really good thing that he broke the silence about these crimes and invited the FBI in because we didn’t have a standoff situation.

22:03 Yeah.

22:04 But they came in and an investigation was underway, and he had more and more bizarre meetings, and suddenly journalists from all over the world

22:12 world were there and there were thousands of us in the state of shock and cognitive dissonance. You know, we were about

22:18 Yeah.

22:19 love. Over seven hundred and fifty people were poisoned. And that’s only one of the crimes. There were multiple crimes. So

22:25 That’s incredible.

22:26 and then we were told at some point, you know, he was eventually arrested and made a plea bargain and he left. And still I didn’t leave. And most of us didn’t leave. So I can’t—I mean

22:39 I have friends who did leave, but they were really the minority.

22:43 Yeah.

22:43 so I didn’t leave until we were told, it’s done, we’re broke, you have to go. So

22:48 Yeah.

22:49 I still can’t say that I saw through it. I was questioning, I didn’t know what the truths were, I was trying to find out, but I was just sort of scrambling to function at that point. So

23:02 Right.

23:03 it wasn’t until after I left and I had a bit more

23:06 time to think it through and start to wonder who can I talk to? Who is sharing my doubts? Who is sharing my questions about what we were given as the story, which was

23:19 Yeah.

23:19 Sheela was responsible for all these crimes and she’d gone, so there was no problem. And a lot of people still believe that, but I didn’t, you know, I felt like it was just too slick.

23:28 Hmm. Yeah.

23:31 So really it was a long extrication process over the next few years.

23:35 And it’s interesting that you say that because I guess that question that I asked kind of assumes that people just kinda get up and walk out the door. But actually leaving a cult can be quite a long, messy, drawn out process. Yeah. I left mine in very bizarre circumstances and over a court case to do with my children. I thought, well, I’ll just leave and then it won’t be a problem. But I was still in

24:03 I guess, psychologically.

24:04 Hmm.

24:05 So yeah, it is an example of how it’s not just like you walk out the door and start a new life.

24:12 It’s years and years and years and years.

24:15 Yeah,

24:16 yeah.

24:17 It’s—and the process doesn’t end.

24:20 Yeah. What was the most difficult thing about leaving for you?

24:24 The division in the community between those that we call the true believers and those who really questioned the guru essentially. I was lucky I came to San Diego, I’ve been here ever since, and we’ve had a pretty nice community where those two factions

24:45 speak to each other and get together sometimes and their parties. Rajneeshis are very good on parties.

24:53 Yeah.

24:53 but it still makes a big barrier between people I really care about who are, for example, now pissed off with me for writing a book and using the word cult in the title. You know, it’s

25:06 Right.

25:07 so those divisions I think are the hardest.

25:10 Yeah, yeah. And cooking all your meals? I just—that sounds amazing.

25:11 I miss people doing my laundry too. Yeah, that was really nice. And—and see

25:19 I like the music, the dancing, the community. The coming together.

25:21 Yeah. Yeah.

25:24 I’m glad we’ve salvaged some of that. But

25:26 Yeah.

25:27 there’s also, you know, hostility within and, you know, the stuff that goes on on Facebook groups of people, you know, sniping at each other. It’s like, you know, this was a spiritual community. Can’t we just disagree, please, people? But apparently not. Exactly. It reminds me

25:42 Can’t we just be spiritual about it? Kind and loving. Yeah.

25:50 of my mother, you know, at some point when—no, my parents were really upset about this whole thing.

25:55 Mm.

25:56 But I remember at some point, you know, going, being defensive and my mother sort of saying something like, Well, I can see you’ve really become

26:04 spiritual. This has really helped you a lot, you know? This was always like, but Mommy, I’m so happy, you know.

26:08 red flag to a bull. Yeah.

26:13 Yeah.

26:14 Yeah, I think there’s a lot of, yeah, for me coming out and doing this work, the podcast and kind of talking about my experience, there’s been a significant amount of kind of, what are my old friends gonna think of me? And I know they don’t think it’s a cult and, like, I grew up with these people, they’re like brothers and sisters to me and it’s a

26:37 A tough thing to face.

26:39 Did you grow up in a cult? And was

26:41 Yes, yes, yeah.

26:43 it a more conservative? Is it one I’ve heard of?

26:46 It’s called Subud, have you heard of it?

26:48 No.

26:49 It was started in the fifties in Indonesia by a man named Bapak. It has a kind of Muslimy culture to it. And my parents joined—they found it in New York, kind of amidst all the kind of resurgence of Islam in the sixties and seventies. Yeah.

27:09 So yeah, that was a long journey. Yeah, so I was born into it.

27:13 Yes, it’s a very, very different story.

27:16 Yeah. Yeah, I think it is for sure. Yeah.

27:20 Well, I think

27:20 it’s important that, you know, and we’ve been late to it for cult survivors to acknowledge the experience of second-generation and third-generation.

27:29 Yeah.

27:30 I mean, it’s—I used to think—I mean, it’s hard because I chose to join. I

27:36 Yeah.

27:36 was an adult, or so they say. But how much of an adult one is at twenty-four, it’s hard to accept that too.

27:42 Who knows? Yeah.

27:45 But certainly, you know, I’d had experience of another world, I had friends from before, I had an education, and kids did not who grew up there.

27:56 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think

27:58 And I don’t know

27:59 I think I’d like to do a panel on that, like what’s the recovery like for people who are second generation and people who choose to join. I think it’d be an interesting topic. Yeah.

28:13 Please do, ’cause it’s an important

28:14 topic and so many former kids have died by their own hands, and that

28:20 Yeah, yeah.

28:21 is a very, very important thing to address.

28:24 It is, yeah. When did you realise that leaving was only one part of it and that you also had to deconstruct what had happened to you?

28:34 Well, I guess that question probably makes more sense for someone who’s left rather than someone whether the cult left me, because I

28:42 Yes.

28:42 see the whole actual mental leaving was deconstruction. No,

28:48 Right.

28:49 asking, well, first of all, the deconstruction of what really happened and who was responsible and

28:58 Do I hold the Guru responsible or his secretary? Or is it a combination? Because I was very concerned with the criminal acts, like

29:07 Yeah.

29:07 who perpetrated them and why? No, they made no sense to me at all. And in fact, I was talking to a friend about this not long ago at the ICSA conference, and I was talking about the homeless project and

29:22 Mm.

29:23 the tie-in with the election. And this is an ex-cult person, and he said, it was for an election? You know, he still hadn’t put that together. No, he thought it was actually a charity project.

29:33 Or wow.

29:36 No, and so this sort of deconstruction of, well, why did that happen? And why did that happen is an ongoing process. And whenever I talk to someone who was there, and especially if they had a job

29:49 Where they were a little higher in the hierarchy and knew more about what was going on, things are still clicking into place. So there’s that

29:56 Yeah.

29:57 deconstruction of what were the facts? What’s my best possible assessment and understanding of the facts? And that I’ve tried to portray in the memoir. And then

30:07 Mm.

30:08 the other piece is really the question I ask at the beginning is: how do we

30:14 How do we come to believe things so very, very differently? How could I think I was part of a group that was committed to love and peace and making the world a better place? And the FBI saw my group as a threat to humanity, or I don’t know to what level, but we were

30:34 Yeah.

30:35 the origins of the largest

30:37 bioterror attack in modern American history. No,

30:40 Wow.

30:41 that’s saying a lot. That was, you know, over seven hundred and fifty people poisoned. And the reason I say modern American history, because the one before that was bringing in measles and germs to the Native Americans through blankets and so on. So

30:55 Right, yeah.

30:58 I don’t like to say it was the first bioterror attack, but it was certainly one of the most serious

31:04 Yeah.

31:09 Yeah. And so

31:10 seeing what I’ve tried to portray in the book is how does a belief system operate? ‘Cause that’s what bewildered me. When I was walking around this state of shock and cognitive dissonance, it was like, Well, how can I believe something with all the certainty, a hundred percent, and find out, you know, I was completely wrong. And I actually think that’s a fair

31:34 fascinating question and I’ve been sort of thinking about that for, you know, forty years.

31:40 Yeah. Yeah. It I think for me it really rocked my sense of

31:46 How do I make decisions if everything I was so certain about was never right?

31:52 Yeah, right.

31:53 How do I know that I’m doing the right thing? Yeah.

31:56 That is the journey back, isn’t it?

31:58 It absolutely is. Yeah.

32:01 Were there fears that stayed in your system even after you no longer kind of—after that kind of deconstruction process, I guess, or?

32:10 Fears?

32:11 Yeah.

32:13 Well, sure I’ve got plenty of fears. I still sometimes have a dream of trying to leave, which is interesting to me.

32:20 Right.

32:20 because when I lived there I was never consciously trying to leave, you know, I wanted to stay. But I have a dream of the long—the twenty-plus-mile road to get out and there’s no

32:34 transport and I had no money. So some sort of fear around that and fear

32:39 Yeah.

32:40 of groups, not wanting to join groups when I feel

32:43 Yeah.

32:44 especially the lovey-dovey, we’re all in this together, let’s sing happy songs. Are those the sort of

32:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

32:53 fears you’re thinking of?

32:55 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The New Age kind of spiritual movements and things. Yeah.

33:02 Yeah, the fear of trusting

33:05 Mm.

33:05 trusting leaders, but some of those are really healthy fears.

33:09 Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Was there a moment when you stopped saying it is just your personal struggle and started recognizing, I guess, the systems around it or the systems that allowed it to happen?

33:23 Absolutely. And also when we talk about personal struggle, I still feel a lot of positivity about my experience. And I always say that with hesitation because I think, is some of that still denial? Is that some of that’s still a dissociative element? Maybe, yeah.

33:39 Yeah.

33:40 And I also think it’s very important to acknowledge the joy and acknowledge the friendships and acknowledge the love.

33:48 Remind me of the question again. Where were we? Where was I headed with this?

33:50 when you stopped seeing it as your personal struggle and started recognizing like the systems around it that allowed it to happen.

33:58 Well, the systems per se, I did a master’s in social work a few years later. That was sort of my way back into the psychology field that I’d always been interested in.

34:10 Mm.

34:11 And the class on organizational systems absolutely entranced me because I saw some of that as, you know, systems have their own way of operating and

34:23 they want to survive and they are going to do what they have to to survive.

34:29 Mm.

34:29 And that fits so perfectly. And because when you look at, well, who did this and who did that and who was criminally responsible, survival was a big factor in why people did these things. And there was a sense of this movement has to survive, this organization has to survive, and then people were doing

34:48 nefarious things to make it survive. So in that way I think systems was very important to me. And then, you know, groupthink and all that was fascinating.

34:58 Yeah.

34:59 Yeah. What did you learn about groupthink that was interesting?

35:03 I think the enormous influence humans have on one another and how we’re all programmed for wanting love and acceptance and people are willing to overlook a great deal in order to get that. And

35:20 Yeah.

35:20 all those experiments that were done where people would

35:24 completely deny what they were seeing because everyone else in the room was saying, no, that’s three lines. And the person who sees the four lines goes, yeah, yeah, it must be three lines. You know, it’s just how human beings operate. And there was that

35:37 Yeah.

35:38 book, Sebastian Junger, I think, wrote a book called Tribe. And it was simply about our human need

35:47 to be in tribes. We’re mammals. We need other

35:50 Yeah.

35:50 warm-blooded folks around to survive. And we

35:54 Absolutely.

35:55 all have these tribal instincts. So he wrote this book about tribes, had, you know, absolutely nothing to do with cults, but it made so much sense to me for explaining cults and when I talk to people who’d be so stupid as to join a cult sort of field.

36:15 you know, I talk about, well, who’s your favorite rock musician and do you go to those concerts and, you know, people have become fans and make it their whole lives. I mean, we have many,

36:26 Yeah.

36:27 many, many different sorts of tribes. So of course the human need to connect is, thank God, in us all.

36:35 Yeah, it is. And cults just offer this romantic perfect way of kind of being with other people, often

36:44 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

36:46 mixed with that kind of prayer or worship practices that kind of bring these heightened experiences of oneness and yeah, when you have

36:57 That’s right.

36:58 Yeah, a group of people, you’re all feeling this kind of really powerful state and then community on top of it. It’s almost like the perfect solution in some sense.

37:09 So I do miss some of that. Yeah,

37:11 Mm.

37:12 I miss—I loved ecstatic states. And

37:16 Yes. Yeah.

37:18 joining with people in song. I mean, I really think we

37:22 Mm.

37:22 all need more song and more music and more community. And I know, yeah, and dance

37:26 Dancing. Yeah.

37:28 exactly. And our Native American community, if—when they get together and they’re having a powwow and the public’s invited, it’s like

37:35 this is really something that there’s rhythm

37:38 Yeah.

37:39 and you sit there all day long listening to, sort of calming down and joining in and yeah, great stuff.

37:47 Yeah.

37:47 Yeah.

37:48 Sorry, I’m just getting myself together for a question. If someone was at the beginning of their process, what would you want them to know that helped you the most?

37:58 Mm.

37:59 I think trust your distrust because people are trying to find how to trust again

38:06 Mm.

38:07 and that’s it’s a slow process but no one should be rushed into it.

38:13 Mm-hmm.

38:15 And to share how many there are of us now out here in the world all over the world.

38:23 Yeah.

38:23 Who’ve been

38:23 in this wide, wide variety of cults. There’s such a diversity of cults. That’s what I love about conferences like your Decult in New Zealand.

38:31 Yeah. Yeah.

38:33 that share these similar patterns and are willing to help. I mean, I think sometimes people, when they leave, they do—they’re so desperate for help, they also might rush.

38:45 To something that looks like help that might not be, it might turn out to be another cult. That’s why I say trust your distrust, you know, and

38:54 Yes.

38:54 a lot of people, you know, don’t want to go to therapy. They don’t want another top-down person telling them something.

39:01 Hmm.

39:02 I’ve personally found friends and peers the most useful support. Well, that’s something I would say. If you can’t trust the peers in your own cult, find some from another cult.

39:13 Yeah.

39:13 No, there’s

39:13 there’s a whole cross-understanding between cults, you know. We really—we can help each other.

39:19 Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, absolutely. We’ve started a support group here in Christchurch and the thing that I notice is that we’re all from wildly different backgrounds. All our stories are the same. You know? Yeah, really powerful. Someone’ll Puddon?

39:34 Isn’t that interesting? Yeah. What would you tell people as the

39:40 what would you, if you were to answer that question, what would you tell someone starting out?

39:44 actually along the lines of what you’re saying, because I—for me when I left I was so naive. I—I—it was just such a vulnerable state to be in because I was

39:58 Yeah.

39:58 so distressed. I had no idea where the distress was coming from.

40:03 So I just would reach for things that would soothe that distress and often got me in a lot of trouble.

40:07 Mm, mm.

40:10 And I—I my hope is that we start educating health professionals and counsellors on how to kind of pick this up or how to

40:21 Mm.

40:22 teach people leaving cults discernment and how to

40:26 make good decisions for yourself. It’s

40:28 Hmm, mm.

40:30 such a kind of rocky journey in many ways for many people. Yeah.

40:36 I think I’d add to that that the world is not this hostile place you’ve been taught. That’s

40:42 Right, yes, I

40:43 it’s a mess, but it’s a human mess, and there are really good caring people as well as some others, and that’s where the discernment comes in.

40:52 Yeah. Exactly.

40:55 Yeah. And how do you discern where these good caring people are? And yeah, yeah, for sure. I’ve just got a couple of kind of three quick questions before we wrap up and we ask these questions of all our guests. If you could go back and speak to yourself the day you left, what would you say?

41:14 The day I left, let’s see.

41:16 I think I would really want to

41:19 Tell myself that I wasn’t wrong.

41:22 Mm.

41:23 That

41:23 I was following my heart and my ideals, and they’ve led me into all kinds of places, some of which may not have been great. But that doesn’t mean that I was wrong to try to follow what felt right to me. Because

41:40 Yeah.

41:41 I think we’d lose that. And understandably it gets very confusing, but I think going back to

41:48 to find out because I feel like my ideals and my path now are very much what they were before and

41:55 Yeah.

41:56 even during. They just weren’t given much nurturing and

42:00 Yeah.

42:00 support, and I wasn’t encouraged to individuate, you know, the very, very opposite. But it doesn’t make me wrong. I—I feel like the self-compassion piece.

42:11 is just an enormous part of recovery. That’s what I found actually in writing my memoir, which I hadn’t expected because I felt like it really—I finished it so many years later.

42:22 Mm.

42:23 So I’d had worked through a great many things. But I was shocked by, my gosh, I’m actually feeling compassion for this young girl and really seeing her, honey, you—you were really

42:38 trying hard.

42:39 Yeah.

42:40 It’s not so bad to want to make the world a better place. You know, it’s understandable

42:43 Yeah.

42:45 that you trusted these beautiful people. So that sort of voice I think, the gentle compassion, no, it’s

42:53 Yeah.

42:54 not—it’s not wrong. It was just part

42:56 Yeah.

42:56 of the zigzag of life.

42:58 Yeah. If you could name one thing that supported you the most, what do you think that would be?

43:04 What comes to mind is my friend Julia. She was really my first close non-disciple friend I met. And

43:12 It’s embarrassing still to say it, but I hadn’t really thought people could be spiritual outside of my cult. So

43:20 that’s not surprising.

43:23 to meet this woman I was working with and go, well, she’s gotten incredibly rich in her life and we became business partners and lived together for a while and I felt that it was

43:34 my relationship with this non-sannyasin, whom I really trusted, that was a huge support. And

43:42 Yeah.

43:43 plus the fact that we were business partners, because one of the big problems so many people have, and I certainly did, is how do you start with zero money, zero

43:52 Yeah.

43:53 resume, zero credit cards, zero credit history?

43:56 Yeah.

43:57 that’s a big help that anyone leaving needs—financial

44:02 advice, support, jobs

44:03 Absolutely.

44:04 and I wish the cult organisations could—no, they always need money themselves, but it really is such an important avenue of recovery.

44:14 Absolutely. Yeah, it’s crucial. What would you like people to know about people leaving cults?

44:21 Well,

44:21 I think they’re not so different to you, I would say, because I think people love to think they’re so different to themselves,

44:28 yes. Yeah.

44:30 because then it’s not threatening that, well, that’s them, those

44:32 Yeah.

44:33 mindless zombies or whatever. And I’ve written the book, you know, hoping that the journey of one person that people might identify with will bring that to light. It’s like, no, we’re not so different.

44:46 But I think also really

44:48 being incredibly gentle. No, the degree of vulnerability of someone exiting. I mean, I felt it as if my skin had all been taken off and I was walking naked in the world because I could feel sort of every vibration. No, I hadn’t been around this noise, these cars, this—what was this ATM machine thing? What was this? No, how do

45:09 Yeah.

45:10 you do this? So we have to pay at the gas station. You know, it’s a huge, huge shock. So

45:16 Yeah.

45:16 A lot of gentleness and slowness is required. But you’d be surprised. I would say, I’m talking as you, the outsider, no, you might really have something to learn from someone who’s been in a cult because they’ve experienced something of the human condition and the need to belong, and how our minds work and how belief systems work that I think is valuable to the outer society and

45:43 what we see going on politically and what you see

45:46 Yeah.

45:47 about leadership and all kinds of work environments and health club

45:51 Yeah.

45:51 environments or whatever it is, there’s something to really be learnt from people who have deconstructed how does this stuff operate. You know, I think we’ve got a lot

46:01 Exactly.

46:03 of skills.

46:03 Yeah. Thank you, Nicola. And now we’re

46:06 I’m—I’m tempted

46:07 to put my hands together, isn’t that very culty?

46:09 Yeah. Ha ha ha, why not? And now we wrap

46:13 up another episode of Unspun. A huge thank you to you, Nicola. I’m sure your story will inspire and give hope to many people. Thank you for spending time with us. Unspinning these stories takes courage to speak, to listen and to feel. If anything came up for you today, please take care of yourself. Pause.

46:34 Breathe and reach out if you need to. You’re not alone in this. We honour everyone who shared today and everyone who is quietly doing their healing work. Thank you for walking alongside us. Until next time, this is Unspun.