Evaluating a teacher or group

What it is

A set of questions to put to any spiritual teacher, community, course or lineage before committing anything you would mind losing.

It is not a test that produces a verdict. Nothing here proves a group is dangerous, and plenty of entirely healthy traditions will trip one or two of these — monasteries are demanding, retreats do restrict contact, initiatory orders do keep some material private. What matters is the pattern, the direction of travel over time, and above all what happens when you push back.

Where it came from

Two quite separate sources converge here, which is part of why the questions are worth taking seriously.

From outside, there is the research literature on coercive groups. Robert Jay Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961) set out eight characteristics of what he called totalist environments — among them milieu control, loading the language, demand for purity, and what he termed the dispensing of existence, the claim that those outside the group are not fully real. Steven Hassan later built the BITE model, organising control into behaviour, information, thought and emotion. Margaret Singer's clinical work through the 1970s and 80s added a large body of case material.

From inside, the traditions were there first. Buddhism's Kālāma Sutta advises testing teachings against your own experience rather than accepting them on the authority of a teacher, a scripture or a tradition. Tibetan guidance has long held that a student should examine a prospective teacher for years before accepting them — and, unusually, that the teacher should examine the student too. The instruction to check carefully before you commit is not a modern sceptical import. It is old, and it is internal.

How it is done

Work through these slowly, and write the answers down. The point of writing them down is that groups which do become a problem do so gradually, and a note from six months ago is harder to argue with than a memory.

Money

• Is the full cost visible before you join, or does it emerge in stages?
• Are there escalating tiers, and does status inside the group track spending?
• Is there pressure to recruit, or to make purchases you had not planned?
• Would leaving cost you money you have already committed?

Exit

• Can you leave? Genuinely — this is the single most useful question here.
• What happens socially to people who leave? Can you talk to any of them?
• Are former members described as fallen, poisoned, negative, or lost?

Information

• Can you read criticism of the group without penalty or shame?
• Are there teachings you cannot see until you have paid or committed further?
• Is the leader's history — training, credentials, past groups, legal record — checkable?

Accountability

• Is there any authority the leader answers to, or any process they can lose?
• What happened the last time someone made a serious complaint?
• Is there a policy on sexual conduct between teachers and students, and has it ever been enforced?

Your life outside

• Is contact with family and old friends encouraged, tolerated, or subtly discouraged?
• Are sleep, food, income or medical care being affected?
• Has anyone suggested you delay, reduce or stop medical treatment? Treat this as decisive.

Language and thought

• Does the group have terms that end conversations rather than open them — where being labelled makes your objection disappear?
• Are doubts framed as a spiritual failing on your part?
• Is there urgency: a closing window, a rare transmission, a price rising on Friday?

The early feeling

• Was the welcome unusually intense, and did the intensity depend on your continuing?
• Were you at a low point when you arrived? Recruitment is not random. Bereavement, divorce, illness, job loss and relocation are when people are most open, and groups that cause harm are often genuinely good at noticing.

What we can and cannot say

We can say that these questions are drawn from decades of case material and are broadly shared across researchers, clinicians and former members, and that some of them — the medical one especially — track real and documented harm.

We can say that the exit question does most of the work. Groups that harm people are generally distinguishable from groups that merely demand a lot by what happens when someone tries to go.

We cannot say that any checklist is diagnostic. Academics disagree substantially about the underlying models: the coercion or "brainwashing" frameworks associated with Lifton, Singer and Hassan have been influential and clinically useful, but sociologists of religion — Eileen Barker prominent among them — have argued they overstate how passive recruits are and underplay how many people join, benefit, and leave under their own steam. Both positions have real evidence behind them. Treat the questions as a way of paying attention, not as a diagnostic instrument.

We should also say the obvious thing. Almost everyone believes they would notice. The people this happened to believed that too, and most of them were bright, sceptical and busy. The useful move is not confidence that you would spot it. It is keeping at least one close relationship with someone outside the group who is willing to tell you the truth, and continuing to listen to them when it becomes uncomfortable.

Further reading

• Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961) — the eight criteria, still the most cited framework in the field.
• Steven Hassan, Combatting Cult Mind Control (1988, revised since) — the BITE model, written for families and former members.
• Eileen Barker, The Making of a Moonie (1984) — the major sociological counterweight, and worth reading precisely because it disagrees with the others.
• The Kālāma Sutta (Aṅguttara Nikāya 3.65) — available free in several translations; short, and startling if you expect scripture to demand belief.