PART I
IN-AND-OUT CULT EXPERIENCES

In Chapter 6, Leaving a Cult, Lalich and Tobias, correctly discuss the immense differences between cults, which contributes to the differences in the way members join a cult and then leaving it. AMORC is radically different than cults that personally recruit members, have them go to meetings and then make it inconvenient for them to leave or bombard them with so much love and attention that they feel compelled to stay.  This type of radical and quick group indoctrination is very powerful and often involves deceptive practices.  I have related in detail Steven Hassan’s rapid and lightening fast entrance into the Unification Church and the great price he had to pay because of the speed of its very powerful mind control indoctrination techniques.  Leaving a cult like this is very, very difficult.

            The opposite situation occurs when a person is born into a cult and knows little or nothing about the life outside cults until they have virtually reached young adulthood. There are heart-breaking stories about boys growing up in polygamous cults who are actually forced to leave suddenly when they show signs they could compete with the pool of young women the senior members wish to absorb into their own families. They have been called “the lost boys” and their trials after coming from a super insulated religious cult are awesome. They have to adjust to changes in common language, clothing, food, understanding of holidays, work or educational opportunities, etc. The psychological challenges, coupled with the extreme unfairness of their rejection from a life they had embraced since sometimes infanthood, can be profound.

            After leaving a cult, according to Lalich and Tobias, things are also very different. People may experience-

-a variety of emotional or psychological difficulties, ranging from inability to sleep, restlessness, and lack of direction to panic attacks, memory loss, and depression. To varying degrees, former members may feel guilty, ashamed, enraged, lost, confused, betrayed, paranoid, panicked, sad, unreal, or as if they are living in sort of a fog.

            AMORC relies heavily on its mind control protocols to retain members.

            But because there is no oversight and the fact that it all depends on how seriously members take their daily tasks, as described in the monographs, the effect of the mind control varies greatly. For some, like myself, who studied them in depth, from the very beginning, the effect is very great and real indoctrination can set in immediately. For others, for whom AMORC is a kind of a hobby, who more or less dabble without holding daily court in their home sanctums, there is very little effect and they could actually leave the cult without so much as a headache.
            In AMORC, after I joined, my normal character, motivation, sensitivities, cultural and intellectual direction and normal ambitions and a realistic capacity to strategize my success in the world was abruptly changed. As a result, leaving the cult was torturous and the after effects were profound.