Like so many other people in the sixties, I was searching. I found my vocation as an actress when I was quite young. I combined this career with my involvement in the counterculture. I appeared in Andy Warhol movies and was touted as the world's "First Nude Actress." Suddenly I was the most "in" thing happening. They had me in Vogue Magazine and Harper's Bazaar. I was on the "Merv Griffin Show" and the "Dick Cavett Show." Being the first nude actress in the country, much less the world, was really quite a happening.

It was sometime in the winter of 1994-95, and I was attending an introductory MSIA seminar, listening to actress Susan Kelly (not her real name). Kelly is a humorous, entertaining speaker, who is especially engaging when talking out of personal experience. That particular evening, she talked about the experiences that had brought her to John-Roger's spiritual movement.

The daughter of American aristocrats, her mother was the fashion editor of Life Magazine. Like many other young people coming of age in the 1960s, Kelly rebelled against her upper-class background to join the emerging counterculture. Kelly attributed the "craziness" of the acting profession with prompting her to seek God. Initially, she became involved with Swami Satchitananda, even joining his staff and teaching yoga classes for his organization.

Kelly's first encounter with John-Roger occurred in 1972, when she was living in southern California. On the fortieth day of a carrot juice fast, she was hospitalized for an inability to void urine. Unable to determine the cause of the problem, her doctors planned a dangerous operation on her spine. Kelly, however, had other ideas. After convincing them to give her an outpass, she walked out of the hospital:

Finally, when I'm far enough away from Century Hospital, I see this newspaper stand. One of the papers catches my eye because it doesn't look like a normal newspaper. So I look and, by God, there's Satya Sai Baba on the cover, and he's got his arm around this guy. And the guy's name is John-Roger.

So suddenly I'm jealous of this guy because he knows Sal Baba -this high, holy person I've been trying to get to come to this country. So the next thing I know, I take a copy of this newspaper - I think it was called The Movement - and suddenly I experience this wave of energy. I just got all blissed out of my little head, and I came back to the hospital and I was fine. So that was my introduction to John-Roger.

While the particulars of Kelly's story are unique, the more general scenario - joining a religious group in the wake of a spiritual experience - is a typical, though certainly not a universal, pattern.

As part of my research, I collected demographic data via a short questionnaire (described in more detail in a subsequent chapter). One of the statistics this survey collected was data on how people become involved in MSIA. Most people become involved with a religious group - whether traditional or nontraditional - through family and friendship networks. Thus, I was not surprised to find the same pattern among MSIA participants (current and past), over half of whom were introduced to the Movement by family or friends.

This statistic, however, tells us only how members were brought into contact with MSIA, and not specifically what attracted them to hang around after the initial contact. In Kelly's case, for example, her initial contact was via an initially impersonal encounter with The Movement newspaper. It was, however, the spiritual experience (described as a "wave of energy" in the above passage) accompanying her examination of the paper that prompted her to regard John-Roger as more than just another spiritual teacher.

One of the few open-ended items on the survey form asked respondents to discuss briefly how they had become involved in MSIA. Some members provided more detail than others. In one particularly rich account, the respondent met John-Roger during a trip in Egypt and subsequently, while taking a bath, had a remarkable spiritual experience related to J-R:

A ball of light formed over my head. Then the ball exploded and I knew everything and saw all my lifetimes with this man (Roger Hinkins) . . . . When I stepped out of the bath, the words in my mind were, "THE SAME" - "HE IS THE SAME. - I went to dinner and a clairvoyant friend said to me, ". . . our Spiritual Master is on this trip! I know because I recognize him as the same as the one in my heart." I knew who he meant because of what I had just experienced. I've been active in MSIA ever since.

More than a few other respondents reported spiritual experiences in the initial stages of their affiliation with MSIA, though in most cases these were less dramatic. By reflecting on such experiences we can understand one reason why people join non-mainstream religions, which is that many alternative religions hold out the possibility of life-transforming experiences - experiences that, to a greater or lesser extent, help one to drop the burden of the past and be reborn into a new and more complete life.

The mainstream Protestant denominations - Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians - once offered the seeker lifetransforming experiences in the context of revivals and camp meetings. But as these religious bodies settled down into comfortable accommodation with the surrounding (largely secular) society, they lost their intensity. One result of this accommodation was that revivals and camp meetings -and the accompanying intense religious experiences - were relegated to a quaint and mildly embarrassing chapter in denominational histories.

Those of us who are happily adjusted to the social-cultural mainstream often have a difficult time understanding intense religiosity. Academics have not been exempt from this tendency. An earlier generation of sociologists of religion, seemingly obsessed with the issue of conversion to non-mainstream "sect" groups, gave excessive attention to explaining why individuals become involved in such churches.

If, however, rather than dwelling on strange externals, we change our point of focus and attempt to really look at what might attract someone to an alternative religion, such involvement is not really difficult to understand. Is the attraction of transformational experiences, for example, really so hard to comprehend? What if we actually could let go of the burden of our past and be reborn as new people? Such transformation may or may not be attainable, but the attractiveness of the possibility is certainly understandable. Many non-mainstream religions - conservative Christian sects included - hold out the promise of such life-changing experiences. Religious experience is, however, only one aspect of the spiritual life, and only one of the factors that attract individuals to deeper religious involvement.

Among the many approaches to religious studies, one of the older, yet still useful, scholarly analyses was articulated by the influential historian of religion, Joachim Wach. The primary core of religion, according to Wach, is religious experience. Religious experience, in turn, is expressed in at least three ways:

In a community (church, ashram, etc.)

In a doctrine (theology, world view, etc.)

In a "cultus" (ritual, gathering, etc.)

To understand Wach's analysis with a simple example, let us imagine how my experience at the Spring Renewal described in Chapter Three might become the basis for a new religious group.

In the first place, it is easy to conceive of how a community might emerge out of the shared experience of the forgiveness exercise. I spent a week at the Spring Renewal. The exercise took place on the morning of the third day, if I remember correctly. Up until that point, I did not feel like I was really a part of the group: I was from the mainland (most of the participants were island residents). I also tended to keep a reserved distance as part of my academic persona. After the exercise, this changed dramatically. I became quite close to a number of the participants and clearly recall wishing we could just continue to live together in the YMCA camp at which the gathering was held. This feeling of community is a natural result of shared experiences, and it is relatively easy to see how these feelings might form the basis of a spiritual fellowship.

The forgiveness exercise was also such a cleansing, uplifting experience that it is not difficult to see how it might form the basis for a regular gathering - for a "ritual," in the broadest sense of the word. In other words, we can well imagine how the people who had shared the experience might agree to meet on a regular basis and reenact the exercise in order to recapture the original experience. This would become our rough equivalent of a "church service."

Finally, it is also possible to see how the experience might constitute the basis for a new theology: The Sufi teacher who led the group initially provided us with a few quasi-theological notions, such as the "fall-from-Eden" story of the eclipse of matriarchy by "evil" patriarchs. If we extend this quasi-theology to the exercise, perhaps the group experience of forgiveness might become our new religion's equivalent of a salvation experience that restored our souls to prepatriarchal paradise. This application of Wach's analysis, while greatly oversimplified, should give us a basic feel for the fundamental constituents of religion. In outline form, these constituents are:

Spiritual experience

Community

Doctrine/idea system

Gatherings/rituals

Each of these four components sheds light on how individuals become involved in nontraditional religions.

As I have already indicated, many MSIA participants become involved in the group in the wake of a spiritual experience. This factor is particularly emphasized in older academic literature about religious conversion. In this body of literature, the suddenness of the experience is stressed. The implicit or explicit paradigm is the Damascus Road experience, in which the apostle Paul was knocked off his horse by a bolt out of the blue, confronted by Jesus, and converted on the spot. Contemporary studies have found, however, that it rarely works that way. Rather, in most cases, individuals just gradually "drift" into a religious group until they cross a barely perceptible line between outsider and insider, undergoing a series of "mini-conversions" en route.

The stepwise progression involved in such conversions was reflected in a number of the responses to the MSIA survey. To cite one in which the respondent had a number of spiritual experiences before joining:

I had an inner experience of the Traveler's voice. I knew the voice to be that of John-Roger as I'd heard it once at a taped seminar in 1974. I'd gone to [the seminar] because I'd had a mystical experience, believe it or not, when I saw a poster about MSIA. I was very surprised by the experience and very reluctant to get involved. I had a powerful inner experience at the first taped seminar I attended and felt scared. I stayed away for about five years until the next inner experience.

Other participants come to a seminar, have no remarkable experiences, but keep coming back because they like the people or the teachings. They may even begin subscribing to Discourses with no particular intention of making MSIA their spiritual home. However, if they continue returning, they eventually step across a threshold between "them" and "us," and, before they know it, begin identifying themselves as participants in the Movement. The majority of respondents did not report spiritual experiences as playing a role in their "conversion" to MSIA; for example:

A friend of mine in Santa Barbara and I were searching for a Master in the physical body. She attended an MSIA seminar, then called and told me I might want to check it out. I went to Conference #3 in 1971. After John-Roger's summer traveling, I started going to seminars in El Monte, then moved back to Santa Barbara in November. I heard about Discourses, and started them in December 1971. There were no great fireworks or revelations, just this quiet inner peace that let me know I was on the right path.

There were also a number of people who experienced what might be labeled "minor" spiritual experiences. Thus one respondent visited an acquaintance who "said J-R's name and showed me his photo." This respondent then felt his "heart expand." As a result of this experience, he began regularly attending MSIA seminars. Another respondent was meditating and "saw J-R inside; then I knew MSIA was my path."

Yet other respondents reported having dreams that played a role in their becoming involved in MSIA. Several respondents, for example, dreamed about J-R before meeting him. I was personally interested in these accounts because, as I related in the introduction, a dream experience had provided me with a key for understanding the Movement in the initial stages of my research:

I met some ministers from Australia who gave me a Wealth 101 tape. J-R and John Morton showed up in a dream that evening (I did not know either of them personally). I recognized J-R, but did not recognize John Morton. Later I saw a photo and realized it was the same person. This intrigued me.

Other respondents described roughly similar experiences; for example:

I met some people who worked with John-Roger. I bad a dream in which john-Roger appeared (before I knew what be looked like or what he did). I then met J-R in person and the part of me seeking someone with greater awareness recognized a greater awareness in him. I chose to listen to him and check out his teachings.

Moving even further away from the realm of unusual spiritual phenomena, but still within the arena of direct experience, some respondents reported that they initially became interested in MSIA as a result of meeting members who impressed them in some way; for example:

I began massage therapy with a woman in 1977, who was, and still is, a minister in the Movement (MSIA). Her gifts continually opened my eyes and my heart, although she never proselytized, and only spoke of her faith in response to my questions.

Other respondents described parallel experiences with MSIA participants; for example:

While living in New York I met a person who seemed "at peace." This is quite an accomplishment for living in that city. His friends (who I later found were in MSIA as well) also bad this peace. I became interested.

Closely related to the phenomenon of becoming involved in MSIA via an exceptionally "together" individual is the pattern of being attracted to the group as a consequence of the strong fellowship among MSIA participants.

More generally, the community dimension of any religious group is the key element in initially attracting new members. We live in a society that would have been an alien world to our ancestors. Surrounded by masses of people, we rarely know the names of our closest neighbors. In traditional societies, by way of contrast, everyone in a particular village knew everyone else and took care of everyone else: If, for instance, you saw someone have an accident, you didn't call 911; instead you ran over and helped out as best you could. Some churches and most alternative religions recreate this kind of community among their members.

The fellowships that come into being around churches are, in a certain sense, second families. In modern society, our families are not the close emotional units they were in traditional societies. A small religious group many times recreates the sense of belonging to a family. If one has never experienced the closeness of a traditional family, it is easy to understand how the sense of belonging to a family unit would be attractive and even healing.

The sense of having found a very attractive community of people came through in a number of different ways in the MSIA survey. One respondent reported that when he came through the door of MSIA headquarters he "was instantly struck by the loving energy - even before meeting one person." Another person reported being "really impressed by the goodness of these people. There was a certain energy about them that I found to be very loving and kind - they also laughed a lot."

A metaphor that was frequently employed when respondents explained why they joined was that they felt "at home" with the Movement almost immediately after encountering MSIA; for example: "When I discovered MSIA, I felt like I was `home."' The feeling of at-home-ness can, of course, have different shades of meaning, not all of which connote feeling part of a community of people. In other words, one may have a feeling of at-home-ness with the teachings and practices rather than with the community. There were, however, a significant number of respondents whose expression of at-home-ness clearly carried the sense of having found a community of spiritual brothers and sisters. This set of respondents emphasized the experience of feeling accepted and unconditionally loved by MSIA members; for example:

He [an MSIA minister] shared such a spirit of loving and unconditional giving with me, my socks were blown off. That [experience] began my journey on this path, which has brought me a profound sense of relief, as I know I had been looking for something for many years. Coming into MSIA was truly like coming home.

However, as important as the fellowship dimension is for understanding the attractiveness of MSIA, it should be pointed out that some individuals are acutely aware that many participants are with the organization for primarily social purposes. In a few cases, survey respondents explicitly noted that their involvement was based on other factors; for example:

I am "in the Movement" because of the inner experiences I have had. I do not utilize any of the classes for social purposes.

Another respondent, whom I cited in the introduction, stated that:

I chose MSIA . . . because of my own inner experience, not necessarily the John-Roger seminars or Discourses or the group connection, but because of what I experienced as an individual consciousness.

While most Discourse subscribers participate in MSIA events, one can be a member in good standing entirely through the mail without ever seeing another MSIA person, except during initiations. Thus, as powerful of a factor as fellowship is in understanding the involvement of many participants, it can be overstressed.

Two other important factors are MSIA's teachings and the general world view of MSIA. In a traditional society, beliefs about the ultimate nature of the universe are largely taken for granted. In contemporary society, by way of contrast, nothing can be taken for granted except death and taxes. We are taught to be "nice" by our school system, but this moral teaching is not grounded in an ultimate source of value. We are also instructed in the basic skills necessary to operate in society, but public school teachers are quiet about the greater questions of death, purpose, and the meaning of life.

We may place a positive or a negative evaluation on this relativistic education, but in any case we have to acknowledge that our culture's ambiguous approach to socialization departs radically from the socialization strategies of earlier societies. The results of this ambiguity may be liberating to some people, but to others it is confusing. Without some kind of ultimate grounding, this is necessarily the case. While ethical teachings within different spiritual movements vary widely, they generally share the trait of grounding morality in the Divinity.

Once one has stable criteria for what is good and true, this clarity and stability can then free one to go about the business of working, loving, and living life without debilitating anxieties about transcendent meaning and value. There is a song that Way International (a nontraditional Christian group) members sing called "Standing on Solid Ground," and I think this title captures the flavor of what I am trying to call attention to. Or, as one respondent to the MSIA survey wrote, "I have a solid foundation inside to draw on."

Only a relative handful of survey respondents emphasized what we might call the "intellectual" dimension of MSIA teachings as the primary factor in their initial attraction to the Movement. One respondent in this category wrote that:

I was very impressed with MSIA's philosophy. It was the most advanced, profound religion I had ever been exposed to.

Another respondent praised the teachings as the "highest" on the planet, though in the same breath was careful not to depreciate other teachings:

The Mystical Traveler's teaching is, in my opinion, the highest teaching available on the planet today. This is not meant to imply that all the other teachings it has been my privilege to encounter are not also great teachings, or that the mystery teachings of the past in India and Egypt were not of the highest, but only to state that at the present time, this is it!

More often than not, when respondents mentioned MSIA's teachings it was in terms of the resonance between themselves and the teachings, rather than to remark on their philosophical profundity; for example:

I found in MSIA teachings [what] I already believed in yet could find no one else that put it in words and print-I found my truth.

The impression that, for most participants, the attraction to MSIA is predominately nondiscursive is reinforced by the fact that very few people became involved in the Movement as a direct result of reading John-Roger's books (a finding that surprised me, considering that J-R is a N. Y Times bestselling author, with over a million copies of his books sold). In my survey of 500 current and former members, only two mentioned such books as being primary factors in prompting their participation in the Movement.

Part of the issue here is that a significant percentage of MSIA's basic teachings are not unique to John-Roger, so that no great leap is required to make the transition from some other group in the New Age/metaphysical spectrum to MSIA. Many people, for example, came to MSIA already convinced of the truth of the notions of reincarnation, karma, and the idea that the ultimate goal of life is to escape the cycle of death and rebirth. The more specific issue around which "conversion" occurs is an individual's accepting the notion that MSIA is the best path to enlightenment for himself/herself.

This pattern is not unusual. It is infrequently the case that people without a prior disposition become deeply involved in an intensive religious group. If they do, they rarely remain for any length of time. In The Making of a Moonie, a benchmark study by the eminent British sociologist Eileen Barker, evidence was presented which supported the assertion that people who remain affiliated with the Unification Church for more than a few years were already grappling with some of the issues addressed by Unification theology long before they encountered that movement. This finding can be extrapolated to other religious groups.

People join alternate religions for the same sorts of reasons one would join any other religion, namely fellowship, a satisfying belief system, and so forth. When these needs are no longer being fulfilled in an acceptable manner, people leave, much as one would leave an unsatisfying marriage. The majority of people who responded to the questionnaire had been seeking an appropriate spiritual path for many years before encountering MSIA. The following excerpt from one of the surveys is not atypical:

Before MSIA, I was interested in meditation and yoga at a Kundalini Ashram. I lived there for approximately six months, and then spent a short time with Stephen Gaskin's "The Farm" group. I also studied with Guru Maharaji and went to India. I spent a month there. I also directed a choir with a metaphysical group originating in France.

Within the metaphysical/New Age subculture, this kind of sequential experimentation with one religious group after another is not unusual. Sociologists of religion have even coined a phrase for this pattern -the "conversion career" meaning that the overall pattern of such individuals' spiritual lives is switching from one group to another.

However, the problem with this phrase as well as with the whole project of examining spiritual experimentation in the New Age subculture through the perspective of prior research on conversion in traditional religions is that "conversion" implies a rejection of one's earlier religious group as false while simultaneously embracing one's new faith as true. This is based on a tendency within traditional religions to emphasize the sharp transition from a nonenlightened or nonsaved state to enlightenment or salvation. In contrast, contemporary occult/metaphysical spirituality emphasizes gradual growth, expansion of consciousness, and learning across time, including growth across different lifetimes.

This gradual spiritual expansion constitutes a kind of evolution of the soul, and the metaphor of spiritual evolution is often expressed in the literature of this subculture. As a result, one's earlier involvements are not viewed as dead ends on the path to enlightenment, but, rather, as stepping stones, appropriate for the stage one was in at the time. Thus another MSIA seeker, in her contribution to an early (1974) compilation entitled Across the Golden Bridge, described her pre-MSIA journey in the following words:

I studied Unity, Physiciana, Seekers of Truth, and became a 4th degree initiate, and then studied Divine Truth and Divine Science for three or four years. I was a doctor and licensed in the New Thought Movement, and a licensed minister in the Spiritualist Church, and also in Practical Christianity. From each of these groups I gained a deeper understanding, but something was missing.

As reflected in the above passage, this person's experiences of other groups are viewed as incomplete rather than as false - as partial truths that led up to, and prepared the way for, her "conversion" to MSIA. This passage also reflects the dominant metaphor used to describe the process of spiritual evolution: learning.

The tendency to utilize educational discourse and learning metaphors to embody essentially religious meanings is pervasive within the New Age/metaphysical subculture. For example, in the introduction to John-Roger's The Way Out Book, J-R talks about life experience being the "teacher" that prepares us to "graduate" from the cycle of death and rebirth. In addition, as I have stated in Chapter Four, the dominant "ceremonies" in this subculture are workshops, lectures, seminars, and classes rather than worship ceremonies per se.

For some participants, the pattern of sampling one teaching after another does not stop after they join MSIA. John-Roger's teachings are tolerant and open-ended - an openness one member described as a lack of "religious walls." Furthermore, J-R is careful not to denounce other religious groups as false (although he does suggest that a serious student study with only one spiritual teacher in order not to split his/her energy and in order to give the teacher a fair chance of working with the student). As a consequence, members feel free to experiment with non-MSIA spiritual techniques and paths. In the words of one respondent:

MSIA is the only set of teachings I have found to satisfactorily answer all life questions, and also feels right to participate. I have continued to sample other spiritual paths as a check that I'm still on the right path for me. I use a scientific approach to verify the correctness of my choice of spiritual association.

In a couple of cases, respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the Movement, indicating that they were ready to drop their MSIA affiliation as soon as something else more attractive came along. Unsurprisingly, even people who had left MSIA tended to view their membership period positively, as a learning experience. In addition to current participants, questionnaires were also sent to people who had formerly been active in the group. Out of the 53 ex-members who responded, most felt they benefited in one way or another from their participation in the Movement. This feeling of having benefited from involvement was explicitly measured by an item on the questionnaire that asked respondents if their MSIA involvement had helped or hurt them:

How has your involvement in MSIA influenced your life, for better or for worse?

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 5.1 below.

Table 5.1 - Better/Worse for the Experience

Count Percent

Better 38 71.1

Worse 4 7.8

Mixed 3 5.7

Neither 6 11.3

N/R 2 3.8

With almost three-fourths of the sample willing to assert unambiguously that they feel they are better off for having been participants in MSIA, it is easy to see how so few ex-members felt a need to castigate the Movement, the teachings, or the founder. This situation is perfectly understandable if we realize that most of the people who have left MSIA still consider themselves "on the path," in the larger sense, and continue to participate in some form of metaphysical New Age spirituality. Such people thus regard their membership period as part of their larger quest, and, as a consequence, positively value the time and energy they invested in MSIA.

The pattern of responses to another questionnaire item that assessed the value of the membership period reinforces this interpretation. This item asked ex-member respondents to imaginatively place themselves back in time at the point where they initially became involved in MSIA:

If you could be transported back to the time you began your involvement with MSIA, you would probably:

1. Do it all over again with few or no changes

2. Do it all over again with many changes

3. Not get so deeply involved

4. Not get involved at all

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 5.2 below.

Table 5.2 - Would You Do It All Over Again?

Count Percent

1 32 60.4

2 5 9.4

3 5 9.4

4 7 13.2

N/R 4 7.5

Here once again we have an exaggerated pattern of response. In this particular case, the great majority of the sample (more than three-fifths) assert that, if they had their membership period to do over again, they would "do it all over again with few or no changes."

The ex-member survey form also contained an open-ended item that asked respondents how their involvement in MSIA had influenced their lives, for better or for worse. Parallel to responses from current members indicating that their earlier affiliations had prepared them for MSIA, ex-members tended to view MSIA as a prior stage in their development; for example, to cite from one questionnaire: "I view MSIA as a preparatory phase for what I am doing now." Also, as we might have anticipated, some former participants couched their responses in terms of what they had learned; for example:

One of the most useful things I learned was about karma - that our soul is here to learn and experience things that we incarnate onto this planet to do. It has helped me not to be judgmental of other people and myself.

Another way in which the term "conversion" carries connotations inappropriate for interpreting organizations like MSIA is that such movements are not conversionist in the traditional sense. A general belief in the New Age/metaphysical subculture is that, in J-R's words, "not one soul will be lost." In other words, in sharp contrast to Christianity and certain other traditional faiths, no one is going to be damned to hell for eternity. If not a single soul will be lost, there is, as a consequence, no burning need to "bring everyone into the fold," at least not immediately.

If anything, MSIA's spiritual atmosphere seems to be permeated by an anticonversionist ethic. I received the impression that if anyone were to attempt to collar strangers and bring them to MSIA events, he or she would be censured by other members, or, at the very least, perceived as not embodying the spirit of the Movement. The anticonversionist ethic was reflected in the MSIA questionnaire in a number of ways. For instance, at least a dozen survey respondents reported that, far from experiencing proselytization, they had to twist their contact person's arm before he/she revealed his/her religious affiliation.

Furthermore, MSIA's anticonversionist ethic was often cited as a significant (though never the primary) factor in attracting people to the Movement. This "conversion aversion" was described by several survey respondents as "noninflictive"; for example:

I have appreciated the community of MSIA and feel comfortable around the people and the noninflictive approach.

MSIA's noninflictive approach flows out of its perceived acceptance of human diversity. In the words of one respondent:

One of the key concepts which touched me deeply was hearing J-R say one evening that, "There are as many roads (paths) to God as there are beings on this planet. "

With the notion of human diversity at the core of the Movement's teachings, it follows that MSIA can be the appropriate path for only a certain number of people. In line with this idea, John-Roger has said that those who will meet up with the Traveler in this lifetime "have it marked on them."

Thus, as I have heard many participants articulate in a variety of ways, the individuals whom the Movement is meant to attract will find their way to the teachings. When these people stumble across MSIA, they will recognize that they have found their spiritual "home" and will eventually join the movement.

At the same time, people for whom there is no preexisting resonance with MSIA should not be persuaded to participate, matter how universal and wholesome one might feel the movement to be. In most cases, such people will affiliate only briefly and then leave.

This aspect of the teachings leads to an ambivalence about Movement's growth. Participants are generally happy and want to share their happiness, but at the same time do not want to "inflict" their beliefs on others. This has led to, among other things, a Movement-wide ambivalence about growth. In the 1970s, MSIA expanded rapidly until it had grown to about five thousand members. At that point, growth in total numbers stopped. Over the years people have come and gone, while the overall membership figure has remained about the same.

In terms of this nonexpansion, MSIA presents a profile of being like a traditional lineage in the Hindu tradition centered around a guru and his intimate disciples. Normally, this kind of movement does not attempt to grow beyond a close community of teacher and students. Using this model as a lens through which to view MSIA, it is not surprising that the group has essentially the same number of members as it did twenty years ago. This pattern sharply contrasts with the media portrayal of MSIA as an aggressively expansionist organization out to convert as many members as possible.

The general sense of open-endedness within MSIA allows participants to drop in and out of active membership in the organization, resulting in a kind of "revolving door" phenomenon that one rarely encounters in other small religious groups. As John-Roger once informed me, "People come in and out of the Movement as circular doors. Some are there for a week, some a month. They leave for five to ten years and return as though they never left." J-R has also pointed out that more than a few people who would be regarded as "ex-members" from an organizational perspective continue to actively maintain the spiritual practices they learned while participants in MSIA: "Many of the people who have `left' are still doing the meditations and establishing their Light and Sound connections, and the only one knowing all of that is the Mystical Traveler."

As I bring this chapter to a close, I should note a number of other factors influencing certain respondents' initial affiliation with MSIA. One of these was that at least three survey respondents were adult children of MSIA members. Given the freedom to become involved or to stay away from the organization by their parents, these individuals chose to join the "fold"; for example:

My parents became involved when I was two. They have always encouraged me to explore other religions, however, which I have done. It wasn't until recently that I decided MSIA was for me.

I could not determine if this pattern was typical or atypical of individuals raised in the Movement, since this was not something that the survey specifically addressed.

Another factor for some members was that John-Roger had been their high school teacher; for example:

I have known about MSIA since high school, when John-Roger (then Mr. Roger Hinkins) was my English teacher. About two years ago I was reminded of MSIA by a series of what I call significant events, so I decided to check it out.

Only a relative handful of currently active participants had J-R as a high school teacher.

Finally, more than a few respondents indicated that one of the factors that attracted them to MSIA was the organization's emphasis on the Christ. This initially surprised me, as the Movement departs markedly from traditional Christianity. Theologically, MSIA's Christology is comparable to the Christology found in many metaphysical religions. (From MSIA's perspective, Jesus was a Mystical Traveler.)

While Christology (the theological interpretation of the person and work of Christ) is not at the core of MSIA's teaching, members nevertheless generally regard themselves as "followers of the Christ Consciousness," as I stated in a previous chapter. And while John-Roger feels free to draw upon all traditions, he most often draws upon the teaching and example of Jesus. A number of survey respondents found this tendency comforting; for example:

What I was taught as a child, within a traditional Protestant setup, has "come alive." Jesus, the Christ, and his teachings mean so much to me, and MSIA has helped me in the journey.

For at least a dozen respondents, a factor attracting them to MSIA was its "Christian" aspect. One should also note, however, that several other respondents reported being "turned off" by this emphasis, or, at least, by John-Roger's Christian languaging of certain concepts. One respondent, for example, reported having difficulty stomaching "words like Christ and Holy Spirit," though she became involved in spite of MSIA's Christian dimension.

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