stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

478 STRIPPING THE GURUS
person accounts of Butterfield, van der Braak, Milne, Franklin or
Strelley which would match Singer’s assertion of “active, sophisticated
and unrelenting proselytizing” on the part of the relevant
organizations (re: Trungpa, Cohen and Rajneesh). The Gurdjieff
Society and his eponymous Institute likewise “never advertise and
never recruit” (Washington, 1995).
The same is true even of Adi Da’s group, at least with regard
to non-celebrities: “[S]o far as I know, the community has never
gone in for active recruiting, preferring to let people be drawn by
Da Free John’s writings” (Lowe, 1996). Layton’s experiences in being
pulled into the People’s Temple, however, did include flattering
attention/pressure from Jones himself. Underwood’s (1979) and
Hassan’s (1990) reported experiences in becoming involved with
the Moonies likewise fit much more closely with Singer’s assertions.
In any case, for those nontraditional organizations which do
actively recruit, university campuses remain the primary area of
focus:
University students are often vulnerable recruitment targets
for potentially harmful groups (Smith, 2004).
College campuses are the chief recruiting centers of most [alleged]
destructive cults, and virtually every college campus
in the country has been and continues to be visited by these
organizations....
At the University of California—Berkeley, for example,
it is estimated that at least two hundred different religious
sects on and off-campus are recruiting from the 30,000student
campus (in Rudin, 1996).
In a survey done in 1980 by Zimbardo of more than one thousand
high school students in the San Francisco Bay area
54% reported a [so-called] cult had attempted to recruit them
and 40% said they had experienced multiple attempts (Ross,
2002b).
Indeed, in one survey (Singer, 2003) it was found that 43% of
former “cult” members were students (in high school or college) at
the time when they became involved with their respective organizations.
Further, of those students, 38% dropped out of school after
joining their groups.