'I visited a UK city as a tourist - but ended up living in a cult for 20 years'
A tourist who visited Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe ended up in a cult for 20 years - and now she's written a book about her experience.
Former teacher Anthea Church was forced to get up in the middle of the night to dress in white and meditate as part of the strict regime of Brahma Kumaris. The 66-year-old, originally from Tunbridge Wells, is now speaking out about her experience, in a new novel called liftman.
The Brahma Kumaris was founded in India back in 1937, boasting special meditation centres across the world, and viewing people as souls instead of bodies. According to Anthea, she first became aware of the cult during a visit to Edinburgh in 1980 after graduating from Oxford University. She was just 20 at the time, later finding herself living at a communal house in Willesden Green, London for almost 20 years.
She said: “I thought they were completely bonkers, but I had been taught at Oxford to deconstruct every theory. We spoke about the soul and then completed a meditation. It was a spiritual experience that I could not argue with.
“My mother rang up the BBC and said ‘my daughter's been kidnapped’. They were absolutely traumatised. They didn’t really talk to me about it, they obviously thought it was very weird, but loved me throughout.”
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Some of the rules of Brahma Kumaris encourage complete celibacy in followers, early morning meditation and wearing white clothes to symbolise purity. People in the cult must bathe or shower after every bowel movement, and only eat a lacto-vegetarian diet.
Former teacher Anthea Church was forced to get up in the middle of the night to dress in white and meditate as part of the strict regime of Brahma Kumaris (Getty Images)EdinburghLive reported that to follow her beliefs, Anthea would continue to work in her teaching job, but set her alarm for 3.30am to fit in her "punishing" routine. She added: “In the first ten years I was happy and glad to be free of the mundane aspects of life.
“Later on I couldn't sleep at all. It became very difficult to get up. The whole thing unravelled for me because it was just too hard to sustain that routine. I’d go to bed relatively early. You were expected to continue with your professional life, or some would surrender to the whole thing and not have a job. They would just work to keep the community going.”
In 1997, she moved out of the shared home when she was promoted to head of English at a school in Kent. She said: “I remember the day I left and I had all my possessions in one car. A lot of people who left either fell in love or started to think that the teachings were not right.
“I didn't think I was leaving – I just thought I was getting a new job. I would go back to London sometimes and still participate in their teachings. However I was extremely tired and not well. I started to gradually distance myself.”
Athena's third novel 'Liftman' is inspired by her ordeal, which was published on January 30. She added: “Part of me felt like I was betraying that group by writing that story.
"I do scrutinise and show the dangers of it. I hope that it might allow people who are on the edge of that group to feel validated in questioning the teachings.”
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