I always used to wonder how any person with half a brain could join a cult.
Now I know.
It happened innocently enough. I was attending a free lecture on “The Future of Toilet Paper—9 Ply: Dream or Possibility?,” but I’d wandered into the wrong room by mistake. A man with a shaved head and wearing an orange robe and sandals was addressing a handful of people. Realizing my mistake I started to leave, but something stopped me. It was the eyes. I’d never seen such a pair of piercing blue eyes. They were in a little wooden box, which he passed around the room. He said he’d bought them at a flea market in Taos.
Almost as if hypnotized, I took a seat and listened raptly to Kushna Baba Dev explain the nature of man, God, and the universe in a way I’d never heard before. He had somehow managed to combine the essence of Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and the Chili’s lunch menu into a powerful theology. He even worked in elements of the prosperity gospel. Baba Dev taught that if you fully accepted him as a true prophet of God and followed all of his teachings, in the next life you would be rewarded with CDs paying up to 7% interest. He said that our bodies were merely “extended stay hotels” for our souls, which at the time of death didn’t really die, but were transported by Royal Caribbean cruise ships to another dimension. (It used to be Princess Cruises, but they switched when a lot of the folks got diarrhea on the way to the next dimension.) In this new dimension, we would be greeted by an angel who would lead us to a large showroom where we would choose our new bodies and be offered various extras and lease options.
And that quickly I was a true believer. I suppose I was easy prey for someone like Baba Dev (who I would later learn was actually Murray Teitelbaum). I had spent much of my adult life searching for something—usually my house keys, but also meaning and purpose to my life. Now Baba Dev had given me that.
I moved into the Church of the Divine Truth compound in Nacodoches, Texas. Following Baba Dev’s instructions, I cut off all communication with family and friends and signed over to him all my bank accounts and the deed to my house. (Spoiler alert: I would come to regret this.)
Along with the fifty or so other devotees, I spent eighteen hours a day praying, meditating, listening to daily lectures from Baba Dev, and doing assigned chores. (My chore was to chauffeur Baba Dev to and from the day spa. On the days he got skin peels, I would also have to apply hydrating moisturizer twice a day.)
While all this may sound crazy to you, you must understand when you’re in the cult, it all makes perfect sense. I was quite content, in fact, for many months. It was only as the cult membership mushroomed and the money began to pour in, that I started to have doubts about Baba Dev.
He began exhibiting signs of megalomania. He went from describing himself as a prophet of God to proclaiming he was God. He changed his diet from vegetarian to eating only foods that started with the letter “T,” and then cut back further, limiting himself to just Tater Tots. And because he liked them with ketchup, he declared that henceforward the condiment would be known as “Tketchup.” He also insisted on having his robe dry-cleaned twice a day while he was wearing it.
And he began spending huge amounts of money. Baba Dev bought four Rolls Royces and commissioned a half-million dollar statue of himself. When it was completed, he accused the sculptor of “failing to capture my grandeur.” He hired another sculptor at twice the cost to do a second statue, this one in marble, but once again was dissatisfied with the finished product, claiming “it makes my thighs look chunky.”
In no time, the church’s money was all gone, and, desperate for more, Baba Dev masterminded an illegal scheme to defraud old people of their teeth. Eventually, the authorities caught up with him and surrounded the compound. Baba Dev decided it was time for a mass suicide. First, he had us all put on life vests for the Royal Caribbean trip. Then he handed out croquet mallets and instructed us to hit ourselves over the head repeatedly until we were dead. Luckily, only half the followers complied.
Soon I was reunited with my family. Sadly, even though it had been less than six months, my wife had remarried and my children were much happier with their new father. I couldn’t hold a grudge, not for more than twenty, thirty years anyway. And as for Baba Dev, while he initially evaded the police, he was arrested a few months later in Kentucky, where he was posing as a store mannequin.