Was just going through my book shelves with a view to clearing some space with a trip to the charity shops down town, when I came upon my copy of journalist William Shaw's mini-masterpiece Spying in Guru Land - inside Britain's cults. What a great book. It was written after the Branch Davidian massacre at Waco in Texas, Shaw wondered if there was anything similar waiting to happen in the UK, some dangerous and hidden sect ready to take on the forces of law and order. So he decided to spend a year joining as many secretive religious sects and cults as he could find and then, without mocking the beliefs or the people holding them, present an overview of the sort of belief systems that you can get involved if you want, or if you aren't careful.
The result is a charming and wry look at some highly odd ideas, both eastern and western and even mixed together sometimes. Some very colourful leaders and some even deliberately colourless ones too. The usual confused but eager flocks are there, desperate for guidance or just something to believe in in an increasing secular world. I bet the only group anyone here will have heard of are ISKCON - The International Society for Krishna Consciousness - but you are missing out on some gems. My favourites the first time I read it in 1995 are undoubtably The Chrissema Foundation. Named after it's founders Chris Orchard and Emma Lea they were a very small scale but growing outfit having just started to get going after Chris had finished his quest and deciding that he knew the answers to life. In fact, it turned out that he didn't know where to look until he met his girlfriend Emma, who is described as looking like the girl behind the checkout at Boots, all peroxide hair and pink lipstick. The secret of the Chrissemma success is that followers can find enlightenment in observing the perfect relationship of the founders "The dynamic of Chris and I being together is the latest God Technology" says Emma. To be fair they weren't expensive, an hour long session held every week cost each participant £10 which is peanuts. And for that they'd get advice on relationships, career and spiritual matters. Here's a sneek peek; "The other week Emma went fishing and she caught a fish, a mackerel. Afterwards some of you came up and asked how she killed it. The thing is, it is of absolutely no concern how she killed it. There are a few ways to kill a fish - letting it drown in air or hitting its head on something hard - Emma didn't care, it didn't matter to her as she has reached a stage of enlightenment where it doesn't matter how a fish dies. It's just doing the fish thing and if you want to stop it suffering then you have started suffering yourself. It's a very human thing to want to interfere, we hear about a war in Bosnia and we want to stop the suffering but it's a product of our own psyche. If we banish the suffering in our own minds we banish the suffering of others" It's all great stuff, a mixture of nihilism, the surrender to the eventual misery of failed relationships and the inevitability of death and a curious east/west folk therapy. You'll possibly be surprised to find that when Chrissema decided they wanted to move to a different area the whole congregation of their fledgling group moved towns with them, changing jobs and everything! And it isn't like the help they got was particularly useful - staying in destructive relationships etc. I've always thought that each type of spiritual group will attract the people most suited to it this makes me wonder if it's in any way predictable, maybe there's an app we could write that matches a group to an individual? Anyway, I was really enjoying reading about these guys again,and the others in the book like the followers of Holy John, The Gurdjeiff system taught at the misleadingly titled School of Economic Science and The Jesus Army when I started to wonder what they were all doing now and if there had ever been a follow up from Shaw as to the current state - 20 years on - of Britain's cults. It turns out there hasn't so I thought I'd do a review of them myself using the much easier modern method of information gathering, a half hour on Google.... I figured that with increased exposure via the web these groups must have grown exponentially but guess what? They didn't. They've all gone. With the exception of ISKCON and The Jesus Army we are now bereft of all of them, even the wisdom of Chris and Emma, who seem to have disappeared about the same time as the net got popular. How impoverished is our national life now that there are no organised groups like The Emin with their theatrical new age practices and belief in auras and controlling natural laws? I wonder if it's the fate of most religious groups to fail in the first few years, maybe they succeed only with funding from the likes of George Harrison etc. I wondered if the internet might play a role in stopping the spread of small, esoteric groups with it's democratisation of knowledge and it's easy way to spread information. Then I had a look at my Facebook page and realised that sanity isn't about to break out anytime soon in webland. Which perhaps leaves just the evolution of quality to account for the loss of so many promising cult leaders. Maybe it's sites like our Rick's Buddha at the Gas Pump that is responsible. I can't see Chris and Emma's vacant staring going down well with the Skype generation. Maybe it was just time for a new breed with corporate websites and a bit of media savvy. Seems a shame so I shall hold on to the comforting notion that all my favourites from SIGL are actually still going strong and have just decided to somehow evade the modern world entirely. Rather unlikely though, so Shaw's excellent and compassionate book, intended as an introduction to the variety of belief in the UK, is now a historical document. So I shan't be giving it to the charity shops after all. Someone has to remember them. "Chris drives a Ford Fiesta. He believes that we must detach ourselves from the self-importance of the world and the hurry to get irrelevant things done. So he drives at no faster than fifty six miles an hour"
