by Mary Garden Published in the The Humanist, November/December 2009.
A review of Jane Stork’s book, Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom (Pan Macmillan, 2009). This is the story of a spiritual quest that led not to lightness or freedom but to darkness and imprisonment. The title is apt. For those of us who have spent time in religious cults—even if we emerged relatively unscathed—looking back it can seem as if we have been under a spell, and we can be long haunted by the mental seduction that took place. A copy of the article can be found below.