At the turn of the century, Edwin Starbuck published his pioneering work on religious conversion, The Psychology of Religion,1 a study so rich in information and theoretical insight that William James drew from it almost exclusively when he turned to the issue of conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience.2 and rightly so, for it was Starbuck who made the claim, bold for the time, that conversion was primarily a feature of adolescent development and should thus be considered a normal phenomenon. His view opened the way for a large body of psychological research on the subject, which operated from the assumption that conversion was basically a healthy development which increased personal integration and altruism, even when it had pathological origins.

Although Starbuck's theory does not suffice as an explanation for the conversion of these eighteen premies, it has enough power to be useful as we pause to reflect on the preceding four case histories and before we analyze the conversion and commitment of several other followers. After fifty years, Starbuck's theory is still the major source of intellectual inspiration for psychologists studying conversion and, for that reason alone, it is well worth extensive comment.

Through an exhaustive case study approach, Starbuck saw a pattern to conversion which he called "unselfing." Unselfing was basically an adolescent attempt to break out of the confinement of early childhood egoism. When the child reached the first part of adolescence there was a stirring of the will to know and embrace a larger, spiritual conception of life. He saw this need to locate oneself spiritually in the grand order of things as the basis for sudden conversions as well as for more gradual lines of spiritual growth.

Adolescence is the optimum time for conversion, according to Starbuck, because it is during that period when physiological, psychological, and social discontinuities arc strongest, and youth look for a new sense of order and meaning in their lives. This was borne out statistically in his study by the fact that the highest frequency of Christian conversions among males was at 16 years, while females, who mature earlier, tended to convert at 13 years of age. It was supposedly during those years that the spiritual search was begun. As the adolescent reached out for universal truth, Starbuck said, a new ideal emerged to compete with the old self and its bad habits. The ensuing conflict left the teenager feeling full of sin, thus emotionally ripe for a drastic change.

Caught in the conflict between the old self and the new ideal, the adolescent often retreated into the security of old habits, and sometimes even avoided spiritual influences in order to keep the self intact and thus maintain a degree of self-consistency. This period of reluctance, as Starbuck called it, persisted until the time when complete psychological exhaustion eliminated the power of the individual will, thereby unleashing the forces of transformation. Experiencing a collapse of the will, the individual was ready to surrender to higher powers. Conversion was thus an experience of giving in to those powers and allowing the new ideal to be realized. The deep sense of sin gave way to harmony, joy, and peace, often spoken of as "rebirth. " The old life of sin was forgiven; the new life of oneness with God or Jesus Christ awakened a new feeling of freedom, power, and well-being. In the aftermath of the conversion experience, the reborn plunged into their new faith, found great pleasure exercising their newly acquired power, and identified strongly with others in the spiritual community.

Four StoriesIn the brief accounts which follow, you will get a glimpse of the experiences of Walt, Mary Anne, John, and Tina in the realms of family, church, school, and friends.

Walt

Walt was estranged from church, school, and people in general while growing up, although he was fortunate to have a fairly supportive family. "I had a very good family life compared to most people. My mother is really a very wonderful person. But she's always laid her Jewish mother trips on me, like wanting me to be a big success. She definitely wanted me to get good grades and go to college. She wanted me to become a scientist or lawyer 'cause I had tendencies in that direction when I was a kid. But she could see I wasn't going in that direction, so she used to hassle me about it. She laid some heavy guilt trips on me which I had to work through. That was one of my hangups, always thinking there was something wrong with me."

As guardian of the Jewish faith, Walt's mother made sure the rituals of the faith were respected and observed, although, according to him, the spiritual aspects of Judaism did not make their way into her everyday life. Through the insistence of his mother, Walt went to the temple each week until the eighth grade.

When Walt became depressed during his high school years, lie turned to his temple for direction. "I went to my temple a few times hoping to get something out of it, but there was nothing there for nee. There were times when my whole family got together for services and I really got off on the rituals, but there was no spiritual experience whatsoever. It was just a cultural thing. Once, when I was pretty young, I told a guy I didn't believe in God. But what I was really saving was that I rejected the religious bullshit of the church. Actually, I've always believed there was a God, although I never knew what it was. I used to pray to God, like I'd say, `Oh, God, please may this girl not reject me.' I didn't have a conception of God but I knew there was something there."

While Walt's experience with the Jewish faith was disappointing, it was far less devastating than the effect of school and social relationships on him. "When I was little, my relatives fawned over me all the time, treating me like a king. That really had a very serious effect on me because it made me kind of crazy. When I was in nursery school, everything was okay, but when I got into public school, thinking I was the king, I encountered immediate rejection by my classmates. I had a reputation for being intellectually smart, but everybody hated me, or so I thought. I don't remember having any close relationships with people. I was always pretty isolated from the world. When things got really bad later on, I couldn't even force myself to look another person in the eyes. I had a really painful, paranoid feeling whenever I did it."

By his senior year of high school, Walt was retreating more and more from social contact. "I got to the point in my senior year where I slept through most of m classes. I kept my conscious mind tuned in so finely that, if the teacher asked me a question, I could kind of respond and give a foggy answer and get by with B's. Generally, I wasn't motivated to try to do well in school. And after school I usually went home and fell asleep, or got stoned on grass. When I wasn't asleep or stoned, I read. Or I got lost in my fantasies. When I was in the ninth grade, I'd take out a piece of paper and draw imaginary countries and then I'd pretend to be a General and lead important battles. All of my fantasies were about me being in a very important position. I could never accept compromises. They just disgusted me, for all I wanted was the highest thing. That's one thing different psychiatrists told me, that my goals were set way too high, and that was why I was so frustrated. They told me if I'd just find a girl I liked and have a nice relationship with her it would be okay, but instead, wanted to be the supreme lover of every girl in the world. I was always looking for the ultimate experience every moment. It was very natural that, by the age of fourteen, I begun to devote myself to getting stoned and drunk all of the time. I also got into sniffing glue, drinking cough syrup, or just about anything I could get my hands on."

Mary Anne

Mary Anne's life was not easy before her initiation into the counter-culture. She had turned to the church for spiritual inspiration and help, only to come away disillusioned. She had a fairly successful academic career, although her social life was difficult, and home was far from sweet. "As long as I can remember, my father was an alcoholic and gambler. In fact, he was partially crippled as a result of his drinking problem. He never worked, so he was always around the house. And it was heavy having him around so much because he was so violent. He always heat up my mother or me, or my brother. If he wasn't beating up someone, he was screaming at us. He was just a very ugly person to be around. And my mother was always tired cause she was the one who worked to support the family, and she was sick a lot, too. Her marriage was so unhappy that the only thing she felt she had out of life were her two children, my brother and me. She kind of put her hope in us to fulfil her own desires for happiness and success."

Mary Anne was not required to attend church because her parents did not believe in God. Yet, desperate for love, she created spiritual friends who could fill that void in her life. "I had friends who were angels. They were very light astral bodies, glowing and very gentle. They were always so sweet and really full of love. Everybody told me it was my imagination, but they were real to me. They came to visit me and I was totally awed by- them because they were so beautiful. My- friends and parents were just gross in comparison to my angel friends. But I forgot about them when I started going to school. "

Receiving no spiritual guidance from her parents, Mary Anne drew a religious viewpoint from outside her family. "All my school teachers talked about God, and we used to say the `Lord's Prayer' until it was outlawed. I had the feeling then that, `Well, since all these people believe in God, maybe there's something to it.' So, I guess that's when I got the idea of turning to God for help when my family situation got rough. In junior high school I began reading religious books and they just confirmed what I had come to believe, that there was definitely a God to base my life on."

For a long time, Mary Anne's religion was a private affair between her and God, until she decided to attend a Presbyterian church on her own seeking the spiritual companionship of others. "I only went to church for a couple of months 'cause I didn't really enjoy it. All I saw were people who'd gotten dressed up to go to the sermon, and who stood around afterwards drinking coffee and punch, talking about things which had no relevance to God at all. All they did was go to church on Sunday because they thought it was the right thing to do. In their day-to-day lives they didn't seem to be living what they said they believed in. They talked about Jesus Christ, but they didn't seem Christlike. Even the ministers didn't seem like holy people and they didn't look particularly happy either. They weren't like those angels of light I remembered seeing as a child."

There was no one Mary Anne could turn to for help. Her brother was not someone she could confide in, and she had few friends. "I was just never outgoing with people. I always thought other people should make the first move as far as friendship went, so I never had many friends. But it never worried me that I didn't have any. I just thought that's the way it was, so I accepted it. A lot of times I preferred to be alone anyway, and I'd shut myself in my room and read or just let my thoughts go by."

School probably provided Mary Anne's most pleasant experiences while growing up, for she was generally a good student, especially in foreign languages. Yet, even though she received good grades, she was bored with many of her classes and disturbed that students were so preoccupied with their social lives. "During high school, I was getting more and more confused. Part of it, I guess, was because I didn't really have a close friend to talk to, so I couldn't express my feelings to anyone who might have understood. Although I had a few pretty good friends, they weren't relating to me on a spiritual basis. I began to look at all the things that were happening in the world, like the Vietnam war, and I started getting really depressed. I didn't have a deep enough understanding of what people were doing in the protest marches or with LSD to know whether things could be changed that way. I kind of lost hope. After I graduated from high school, when I had more time on my hands, I got really, really depressed. I didn't have any specific goal, except to be happy, and I didn't have any idea how to find happiness. Everything I tried just seemed like vanity. I got more and more depressed, to the point where I decided to take a bunch of pills and kill myself. I sat there and my body started to die and I freaked out 'cause I realized I wasn't together enough to know where to go when my body was gone. I realized I didn't want to die after all, so I called for help."

Help arrived in time and Mary Anne was pulled back from the abyss. As a result of her attempted suicide, she was sent to a mental hospital for a short time, which became a turning point in her life.

John

John was somewhat introverted while growing up. His family and church experiences were positive, whereas school was less satisfying, partly because he had a rather difficult time relating to others. He tended to be a loner with only a few friends, yet, unlike Walt, he was not terribly depressed or unhappy. At home he was aloof and withdrawn. "When I was home I would usually sit in my room and read or listen to the radio. I didn't get too involved in home life. My mother would come into my room sometimes and ask me why I was just sitting around. I guess I was the only one of the kids who just sat alone a lot. There's a total of eight children in my family and we got along fair]\- well. No one in the family had any big arguments. I just went along with the flow of things and didn't question. I just did what my parents told me to do and didn't think much for myself. I never really knew my father very well, being that it was such a large family. But I really liked him. My mother was probably a lot more pushy and cautious. She always worried a lot about her children. She was the core of the family as far as bringing up the children, and my father's major responsibility was bringing in the money."

Being strong Catholics, John's parents insisted that he and his sisters and brothers attend Sunday mass regularly. True to his pattern, he conformed to his parents' wishes, even though he had misgivings about the church. "When I reached my junior year in high school, I realized I wasn't getting much out of the Catholic faith. I felt I shouldn't really be going to church, but I stayed with it because of my parents, especially since I was living at home. I knew they'd freak out if I left the church, so I waited until I moved away to college and then I quit going. I just had no interest and no desire to go. At that point I didn't have any religion or anywhere to turn to find a new spiritual direction."

Due to his moral training, John found it hard to conform to the social pattern of his high school peers. "During my senior year, I didn't have too many friends because I couldn't accept what a lot of kids were doing. On weekends they'd go out and get drunk, and I couldn't relate to that. Early in my high school experience I tried to get everybody to be my friend, but during my senior year I realized there were a lot of people I couldn't be friends with because of the things they did."

College was a replay of John's earlier pattern: He continued his solitary existence, a loner, shy with girls, but not excessively unhappy.

Tina

Tina was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, it a strong Catholic family. She was expected to attend mass each Sunday and participate in the rituals of the church. She was a good student and was popular among her peers. School was a place she liked to be, not just because she was successful there, but because it was a refuge from the conflicts at home. "I can objectively say that my childhood was more intense than that of just about anybody I've met. My parents are strict Catholics. Yet they always fought. They threw things at each other and sometimes heat each other up. My older sister and I couldn't believe how they fought over nothing. So, when my parents got into a free-for-all, which was pretty often, my sister and I went into our bedrooms and completely shut the fighting out. Sometimes it was difficult to escape, though, because they went on and on. We always had to move around the house like we were walking on eggs, because my parents would be very uptight with us all day, and the slightest little thing would start them off."

Emotionally estranged from her mother and father, Tina turned to her older sister for direction, comfort, and help. "The only thing that got me through those family conflicts was my sister. She always told me not to worry about it. So I listened to her and didn't worry. I just could not attach myself to home because it was so filled with conflict. I knew I had to make it on my own because I couldn't rely on my parents for love. I realized that I was an individual and the source of my love and togetherness. If I wasn't together, then everything would crumble. So I developed into a self-sufficient person, to the point where I could fit into any situation. I very rarely got depressed. I know some of my friends got depressed and freaked out, but I never did. I've always had a feeling of peace inside. Very few things ever ruffled me."

Even though Tina's parents fought with each other and clashed with their children frequently, they remained adamant about Catholicism. "My parents always went to church and always said their rosary. We said grace before meals and during Lent we went to church a lot. But, they were only blindly religious. We never sat around and talked about Jesus, even though he was the basis of our religion. There wasn't even a Bible in our house until I started taking religion courses in school."

Tina attended parochial school for several years, where she developed a spiritual outlook. "The nuns always used to say the soul was eternal, that when you die, your soul continues on and, if you're good, you'll be eternally in heaven and, if you're bad, you'll be eternally in hell. The thought stuck in my mind: "Don't do anything bad because you're eternal and you'll want to be holy to get into heaven.' The nuns used to say that becoming a nun was the key into heaven. So I decided I wanted to be a nun because that way I'd be safe."

Like many young Catholic girls with aspirations to be a nun, "Tina gave up the idea when she reached adolescence. Yet, her dedication to the Catholic church remained intact. "I don't know why I didn't question the validity of the church then. It had been ingrained in me that the Catholic Church was the true religion and it didn't dawn on me, until I was in college, that the church was actually very sterile. When I got to college, I quit going because no one was around to tell me I had to go."

Academically and socially, Tina was successful at school. She associated with the most popular students and had many close friends. "I had always been a front-runner in school, starting back in grade school. I was a pom-pom girl and president of this and that but it was never an egotistical thing with me, just a duty. When it became competitive in high school, it completely turned me off. Then I started turning away from rah-rah things."

Psychological Tendencies

It was not difficult to determine which among these eighteen premies had experienced severe emotional problems in their childhood (Walt and Mary Ann) and which appeared to be fairly well integrated and healthy like Tina, but those with moderate emotional problems were not easy to assess. John, for example, did suffer somewhat from feelings of inferiority, especially in the company of the opposite sex, although he was apparently not driven by his psychological problems to convert, or conversion came very slowly for him and seemed quite rational in its development. It is difficult to say whether John is typical of others of his age and class, since, according to recent opinion in psychology, our society has become increasingly neurotic. Feelings of inferiority have supposedly become quite common, while the mentally healthy person, what Abraham Maslow called the "self-actualized" person, seems as rare as good humor among cynics. Since even psychologists do not agree about what is psychologically "normal," I hesitate to use the term here.

Of the eighteen premies studied, seven could be classified, in Starbuck's terms, as converts seeking relief from their sense of sin, while the remaining eleven more closely fit his description of those who convert out of sheer attraction to the spiritual life as a new learning experience. Indeed, these are two important ways people learn: By trying to solve personal and social problems through attempts to reduce, minimize, and eliminate psychological and social conflicts, and second, by entering new experiences in order to attain new knowledge and insight. I see these as the two most important motivating forces behind the spiritual evolution of these young people.

Contrary to the popular belief that people who join movements like Divine Light Mission experience sudden conversions of a highly irrational nature, my experience of these eighteen premies suggests that people are both more rational and conservative when it comes to personal change than is normally supposed, and that radical changes of belief and behavior are rare. Mary Anne's way of changing seemed to be typical. "By the spirit, I was led to all these different gurus to listen to what they had to say, and if I could flow into it without having to take a heavy action, then I knew it would be the right thing to do. If they demanded that I change myself drastically, too fast, then I wouldn't flow into that. I'd gotten pretty mellow by taking drugs and doing yoga, and to do anything intensely different from that wasn't in the flow for me."

Uncaring Institutions

The idealism of these premies was one of the motivating forces behind their conversion. They wanted to create a more caring world. It is true that seven were emotionally in conflict and thus susceptible to conversion, but they were also the most adversely affected by the institutions of family and school and the most anxious to change their lives and the society so that better relationships with others might be possible. Whether we recall the story of Alan, who suffered from many emotional problems, or Marc, who seemed quite well adjusted, there is a similar idealism about the future. Alan needed a more loving family and friends; Helen a more responsive and supportive school atmosphere. Matthew and Marc, both politically active before their contact with the Mission, wanted to create a more positive response from our political system, which was involved in the Vietnam war at the time.

Milton Mayeroff's little book, On Caring,3 nicely expresses the essence of such relationships. To care for people, he says, is to dedicate oneself to the growth and actualization of others as autonomous beings. Caring, then, is the opposite of using another person to satisfy one's own needs. Caring people, he continues, do not impose their own direction on those they are caring for but allow the direction of the other's growth to guide what they do and how they help. They appreciate the other's independence. Caring of this quality means accepting others without conditions, loving them as they are rather than trying to bend their minds and wills to satisfy one's needs for control.

The Family

Half of these eighteen premies testify to a malaise in the American family. This parallels a finding by Armand M. Nicholl II in his study of 17 college student's who converted to Christianity.4 He found that changes within the American family during the past two decades left many of these 17 converts spiritually lost and in need of a religious outlook. The changes in the family he cited as important were: the replacement of spiritual values with materialistic ones, leaving both parents and children confused about basic priorities; the relegation o the care of children to baby-sitters, nurseries, day-care centers, camps, boarding schools, and the television set. Parents, he concluded, play an ever-decreasing role in caring for their children, and become increasingly inaccessible, both emotionally and physically, to their children.

As in many American families, it was not uncommon for the parents of premies to create ideals and expectations for their children which had little to do with their children's needs and which became a source of considerable frustration and guilt. One premie, for example, had a mother with a fixed idea of how her children should be, who worked with every manipulative device she could to meld them into that pattern. Never living up to her mother's ideal for her was one of the factors this premie identified as contributing to unhappiness in her youth. This was also a source of discontent in Walt's life, for he had to deal with the guilt stemming from his failure to meet his mother's expectations that he should become a lawyer or scientist. Mary Anne's mother related to her in a similar way, feeling that Mary Anne should accomplish in her life what she had failed to achieve in her own.

Those with the most severe problems came from families in which the parents were intent more on having their children conform to parental expectations and needs, than on meeting their children's needs for autonomy. We saw this in Alan's case, when his mother refused to let her children bring their friends home after school. She seemed to have little sensitivity to her children's need for association, or to be willing to meet those needs.

The more emotionally stable tended to come from more caring families, where the parents encouraged their child's independence. Matthew's parents gave him quite a lot of autonomy. Even when they could have pushed him to give up his political convictions, they held back. And when he decided he would rather go to jail than Vietnam, they supported him. Marc's parents also trusted him to evolve in a constructive way and gave him quite a lot of discretion in running his life.

Another premie, who was emotionally well-adjusted, an excellent student, and with many close friends also had a caring family. "My parents are both interesting and wonderful people. I really enjoyed them. I really have a lot of respect for them. My father is a pretty jolly fellow, who doesn't usually get irate about things. He's just an easy-going guy, who is interested in what he's doing and who always takes a very deep interest in his kids. He's always been concerned about me, through my adolescent trials, my drug stage, and now that I've come to Guru Maharaj Ji. The caring attitude of these parents became evident also in their effort to get their children to relate to one another in a more constructive way through professional family counseling.

Helen, too, came from a supportive family. Her emotional difficulties stemmed primarily from the sexually repressive mores of her religious training. In fact, sexual problems were fairly intense for eight premies, which lends some support to Carl W. Christensen's findings5 that sexual conflicts often precede sudden conversions. Eastern spiritual movements might be especially attractive to such people because of the norms of sexual abstinence in the ashrams and the general prohibition of promiscuous behavior.

In considering the influence of family on child, it is important not to adopt a conclusion based on what seem to be safe presumptions: for instance, that if a person comes from an unhappy home then serious psychological problems must definitely follow; or that families with a stable structure (mother as housewife and father as breadwinner), contain built-in guarantees that the child will be cared for and loved; or that a child from an uncaring home will tend to be more emotionally disturbed (Tina's case is evidence that children have enough resilience to survive a poor family situation).

Influences outside the family, such as school, church, and friendship, strongly affect the development of children, and good experiences in these areas of life can compensate for problems at home. Thus, close attention must be given to all four realms-family, church, school, and friends-for no one is significant without the broader context.

Church

The church can play a part in fostering feelings of personal inadequacy in children by indoctrinating them to think in terms of angels and devils, saints and sinners, heaven and hell. The story of the fall of Adam and Eve is a reminder that people are basically sinners in need of salvation, that they cannot be accepted for what they are. Indeed, it has long been known that attendance at revival meetings is a catalyst of conversion, for the evangelist, with his religious invective, makes the listener feel like a sinner, consequently raising the level of fear and guilt, and thus receptivity to conversion. In the fundamentalist churches it is still common for ministers to play on the themes of sin, hell, damnation, and redemption, as we saw in Alan's case. The minister who made him feel that the wrath of God would fall upon the heads of nonbelievers struck fear into his heart, as he realized his belief was shaky. He felt personally inadequate, knowing he was not as good as the minister said he should he, yet thinking; he did not deserve God's wrath either.

A spiritual outlook is precisely what most of these eighteen premies had failed to develop through their religious education. Disenchantment with the church was a common reaction, for the eighteen as well as the larger group of forty-one premies. There is considerable difference, although it was not statistically significant, between the attitudes of premies and the forty non-premie students toward their early church experiences. Premies were much more likely to he harsh in their criticisms of the church. This difference, however, might be explained by the fact that, since premies are immersed in an eastern spiritual movement, they are apt to be somewhat more critical of the conventional churches. Yet, the group of college students was also very disillusioned with the churches and had dropped out in large numbers. In fact, there is scarcely a difference between the two groups on this issue: 87 percent of the premies left the church in adolescence, in comparison to 82 percent of the college students.

The twenty-nine followers of Krishna expressed about the same level of dissatisfaction with organized religion as premies. In fact, in almost all respects, the backgrounds of both groups were similar, although the followers of Krishna were more likely to have come from broken homes and to have expressed more biting criticism of public education, including college. But their dropout rate from the mainstream churches was almost indistinguishable from the premie and college student groups, 86 percent having left the church.

The high dropout rate from the churches for all three groups should make us wonder whether there is a developing spiritual void and crisis in this country, and whether the new spiritual movements are not-responses to the failure of conventional religion. From these eighteen accounts, a drab picture of our religious culture emerges-one of plentiful church buildings and congregations, but little spirituality in everyday life; of ministers who implore their congregations to believe in God, but who offer them no way to experience God. Even among those who attended church regularly, usually at the urging of their parents, there was a feeling the Sunday morning service and Sunday school were good rivals to academia as experiences in boredom.

Disillusionment with organized religion occurred while premies were in their teens, although many did not defect until they left home for college. One premie quit because the Catholic church changed its mass to English and also because her family had moved to a new parish whose priest she disliked. John simply lost interest and became bored by it all, attending only for the sake of his parents, like many others. Both of these premies quit attending church when they arrived at college, which was a safe distance from their parents. It is possible that parental control had a detrimental effect on their interest in religion, but that view is weakened by the fact that some were not forced by their parents to attend church. This latter group attended on their own initiative but withdrew after becoming disenchanted.

One of the major condemnations premies leveled against the church was that it was hypocritical, that going to church seemed to have almost no spiritual impact on people's lives and in fact, in some cases, appeared to have a harmful influence. They learned this from their own experience. Tina, for example, had to contend with the hypocrisy of her parents who had one fight after another, while both were dogmatic Catholics who attended mass every week, performed the rituals of the church, and expected Tina to do the same.

The most typical expression of discontent with the hypocrisy of the church was expressed by another premie. "My wife's parents are very religious. They go to church all the time, but they're not very spiritually realized. They have no love, no genuine feelings for others. They'd talk about brotherhood and then go home and its `Shoot them niggers and kill them hippies.' What I experienced at church were a bunch of people who got very dolled up and were having a big social function. That's all it was. Church had no bearing on their everyday lives, no effect whatsoever. Monday through Saturday, they didn't think about religion."

It would be easy to dismiss this criticism as coming from converts to an eastern religion with a spiritual chip on their shoulders were it not for the overwhelming evidence which supports their claims and confirms their experiences with churches. In a national sample of church-goers, for instance, Milton Rokeach's findings, which were strikingly similar to a large number of other studies, showed that the religiously -devout were on the average more bigoted, more authoritarian, more dogmatic, and more anti-humanitarian than the less devout. He found that those who placed a high value on spiritual salvation tended to be more anxious to defend the status quo and less sympathetic to the plight of black people and the poor. They had reacted with fear or even glee to the news of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and resisted the church's involvement with social and political issues in our society. Yet these very people, as active Christians, claimed to believe in compassion, caring, and forgiveness, which led Rokeach to say: "If hypocrisy is a discrepancy between a person's espoused values and his conduct and his position on important contemporary issues, then these data from a representative sample of Americans strongly suggest a hypocrisy deeply embedded within many religiously oriented individuals. And by implication, the data point to a hypocrisy deeply embedded within organized religion as a social institution." 6

It was this sense of hypocrisy which many of these young people responded to in their adolescence. They saw that church-goers who espoused the value of love had lives that were conducted in an uncaring way. Ironically, the fact that all groups-premies, college students, and the followers of Krishna-defected from the churches in droves during adolescence may have been a blessing,-for the evidence reported by Victor Sauna in his review of the scientific literature on the subject points to the conclusion that "religious education as it is being taught today does not seem to ensure healthier attitudes, despite its emphasis on ethical behavior. This should raise a major point of discussion among religious leaders to determine whether possibilities exist to remedy this failure to communicate the ethical aspects of religion rather than its ritual." 7

All major religious denominations are represented in these eighteen cases: Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. Only the fundamentalist Protestant churches seem to be under represented, which is perhaps not surprising when we stop to consider that there are still strong pressures within fundamentalist Christian circles to ensure the conversion of youth; whereas, the mainstream churches no longer seem to operate in a way that demands the spiritual conversion of the young. Having become both more rationalized and secularized since 1900, there is, fact an opposing tendency which frowns on eruptions of deeply mystical feeling and thus places a tabooo on the emotionally charged conversions which had been recognized at one time as a sign a person was ready to become a part of the spiritual community. Carl Christensen has come to a similar conclusion: "lt is my impression that the incidence of religious conversion is decreasing. Within the framework of the large Protestant denominations increased sophistication in the urban and suburban churches is not conducive to religious experience." 8

Even in the Catholic Pentecostal movement we see a strong prohibition against uncontrolled spiritual outbursts, due and primarily to the movement's close association with the church and the clergy, both of which support a more calm and rational religious approach. Michael Harrison has mentioned this in his research on the Pentecostal movement, noting that violations of the rational norm are treated with firm but gentle control. Unlike classical Protestant Pentecostals, he says, Catholic Pentecostals learn not to shout, to gesture violently, or otherwise to display emotional extremes. Although people at meetings are intensely involved, they usually appear in full control of themselves, even when praying in tongues. On one occasion when a participant's prayer became too loud and turned into sobbing, several leaders quietly led him from the room. 9

With the churches discouraging spiritual experiences, the awakening which Starbuck observed before conversion in adolescence failed to materialize for these eighteen young people. Instead the became bored, then disillusioned by the excessively social atmosphere and the apparent hypocrisy of the church.

School

Interestingly enough, most premies reported good experiences at school, although it was the social rather than the academic side which was the source of satisfaction. This was also the case at college. Although ten of the fifteen premies who were admitted into college dropped out before coming into contact with Divine Light Mission, they had warm feelings for their college experiences on the whole. 'Their attitudes were not significantly different from thsoe of the nonpremie college students. Both groups were critical of the academic side of college while they praised the opportunities for personal growth outside of the classroom.

Even premies who characterized their college experience as "good" judged the academic sphere harshly. The following was typical of their feelings. "The intellectual aspects of college were very dull, but college was a meeting place for all sorts of interesting people. Such varied life experiences I had there opened me up personally to a lot of things."

Nonpremie students who considered their college experience to have been good or very good were just as likely as premies to condemn the academic atmosphere. One student commented, for instance: "I think college is absurd. It bums me out that they insist you get grades and take final exams. But still I learn for myself as much as possible. I like learning on my own, with the professors as guides."

Another was somewhat more critical. "Academically, my college career has been a farce; no special direction, doing requirements, putting in as little time as necessary into the classes I dislike, but putting in lots of time for the classes I like. Socially, I like the place. It allows me to be. It gives me the time for exploration, experimentation with people and relationships which have made me realize some things about myself."

There were also angry feelings. "Most of it's bullshit, but I will graduate because I'm not going to let this asshole institution take my money and sweat without giving me my seal of approval."

Eight of the ten premies who left college dropped out; Alan was expelled for dealing drugs, and Mary Anne flunked out after she lost interest and quit attending classes. The eight who left voluntarily may seem like a large number, but this proportion is actually not too far from the national average.

They had many different reasons for leaving. Helen could no longer tolerate the sense of social alienation she felt there. Matthew left to pursue his spiritual interests. One premie quit when she realized that, as a hippie, school should not be a part of her daily agenda, since "good" hippies were not supposed to work. Another became disgusted with his teachers, feeling they were either extremely lazy or else not interested in their students. Still, all but Mary Anne were doing well academically and most were well accepted by their peers.

Aimlessness and Alienation

Striking among these people is the fact that after high school and well into college they had no strong sense of what they wanted to do with their lives. Aimlessness was thus an experience they had in common. This confirms Nicholi's finding that 75 percent of the seventeen Christian converts he studied described a "vague restlessness" and confusion about the meaning of their college experience and what they wanted to do with their lives. It is true that Marc and Matthew had a definite purpose in mind when they first entered college, Marc to be an engineer and Matthew a physicist. Both, however, changed their majors to disciplines in which their aims were much more diffuse and less oriented to a specific career. And, of course, Matthew eventually dropped out.

Having no idea what to do with their lives, these eighteen premies were freer than their peers to enter the counterculture, for they were not restrained by career commitments.

I think we can safely say that without a strong career objective, or aim in life, there would be a crisis of meaning. While premiesthemselves did not generally talk about an absence of meaning, there was a strong undercurrent of meaninglessness in their social drifting, in the recurrent suicidal thoughts of the most depressed, in the ritual of counterculture life with its hedonistic practices.

While I feel uncomfortable mentioning a crisis of meaning as an influence in their spiritual development, largely because they seemed not to have talked in those terms, we should not discount this as one of the most important factors in their eventual conversion, for, as George Anderson has argued, it is the search for meaning which makes mankind religious, whether the seeker be mentally healthy or not. 10

As a premie from the Kansas City ashram put it: "It would be easy for you to think that the phenomenon of Divine Light Mission is happening because a group of people feel some psychological need and want to believe that the Knowledge will fulfill it. Actually, we do feel a need, the need of humans to know a lasting love, to feel secure, to feel that this life has some meaning. And yon should seriously consider, as an alternative explanation, the theory that there is a simple, pure energy which is making this creation and, at the same time, permeates it, and that the purpose of humanity, as the crown of that creation, is to he conscious of that energy, to fulfill the scientific law that all energy returns to its source."

Social alienation is another common theme in these accounts. Not unlike Americans in general, many premies spoke of feeling estranged from others, especially those with the most severe emotional problems. Overall, half had trouble relating to others. Some tried to overcome their feelings of estrangement through drugs. Others fell into a pattern of promiscuous sexual behavior, hoping to create the bond of affection which eluded them in their ordinary associations. Still, if we compare the group of forty-one premies with the forty college students, we find the early experiences of premies, prior to their contact with the Mission, fairly typical of young people their age. There were no statistically significant differences between their respective evaluations of family, church, and friendship patterns. Moreover, premies were no more likely to have come from broken homes than the college students. Nor were they less likely to have come from homes in which the father was the dominant authority.

Social Rescue

"There is an ironic twist to the problems of personal inadequacy, aimlessness, and alienation: while they are sources of discontent, they are also mechanisms of change, for people experiencing such feelings will strive to overcome or minimize them. They will seek out those areas of life which offer opportunities to become a whole person.

'I'he early lives of these premies uncover an interesting phenomenon which I will call "social rescue," the capacity of one positive realm of social experience to compensate for another which is causing problems, where the individual is failing to be loved unconditionally or is falling short of success. A look at these accounts shows a persistent pattern; a child from an unhappy home was often rescued by a good school experience or one who failed to make friends was backed up by a loving family. The need to be cared for and successful seemed crucial.

When one sector of social experience left those needs unsatisfied the child tended to look to another sector where the potential for gratifying them seemed greater. So it is that children use school as a substitute family or channel their energies into academic pursuits when friends are not there to fulfill them.

One premie captured the essence of social rescue when she said of her alliance with her sister: "One person would feel bad, but two people could just laugh about it [her mother's manipulative behavior]. It was always my sister and I against my mother." Her sister secured her from their mother's uncaring attitudes and behavior. School was also an escape for her, for she was beyond the reach of her nagging mother during the time she was there. Another insight emerges from these personal histories which has led me to reassess my own feelings about public education in this country. For some time now I have wondered why children should be required to attend school for such great periods of time each day. I saw schools as institutional babysitters, relieving parents of the responsibility of caring for their children. Now I realize school may be secure territory for children with uncaring parents. For instance, of the eighteen, six found school a pleasant contrast to their miserable home lives. In school, they felt safe from one or both of their parents. In fact, Mary Anne's sole source of support was school, where she became absorbed in her studies to such an extent that she could temporarily forget her violent father.

What happens to children when they lack places where they arc cared for or successful? Let's reexamine Alan's history in this light. He felt separated from his mother and siblings. The family situation did not produce much love, which might have bound the family members together, even in his father's absence. At school, he could not concentrate on his studies, consequently his academic performance was only average. He was unhappy at school and tried to make friends, but failed. His early church experiences had produced little but anxiety and, in adolescence, he became totally disillusioned and quit attending. He even tried political activism, but found it difficult to get along with the people he met.

Alan was the only one among these eighteen premies who could not find love or success at home, in school, at church, or among his acquaintances. In short, he had no emotionally secure territory. Alone, he came very close to committing suicide before coming into contact with Divine Light Mission.

Social rescue points up the importance of love in human development. Without love, social alienation drives the individual into isolation. People like Alan may have been susceptible to the appeals of Guru Maharaj Ji not simply because they were running from their problems, but because he promised them a way to find love when they were looking for a community to join where people cared for each other.

It is important not to attribute a single motive to premies, as if there were a simple way to explain their eventual conversion. There were several different motivations arising from their early experiences: the need to deal with emotional problems, to work for a more caring society, to find purpose and meaning in life, to encounter love and community. Discontent by itself is not a good predictor of conversion, for there are many other ways people can respond to personal and social dissatisfaction: by excessive conformity, by turning to alcohol or drugs, by psychological repression, by entering a career of crime.

Another important factor in the early background of these young people, however, was the extent of their flexibility, their freedom to embark on a new course. That they were church dropouts, for example, freed them from established religion so they could eventually assume a new spiritual identity and commitment. That they had no strong career ambitions or aims in life made it simpler for them to leave college and join the counterculture.

Notes

1. Edwin D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Study of the Growth of Religious Consciousness (London: Walter Scoot, 1914).
2. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: American Library, 1958).
3. Milton Mayeroff, On Caring (Evanston, New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
4. Armand M. Nicholi II, "A New Dimension of the Youth Culture," American Journal of Psychiatry 131 (April 1974), pp. 390-401.
5. Carl W. Christensen, "Religious Conversion in Adolescence," Pastoral Psychology 16 (September 1965), pp. 18-19.
6. Milton Rokeach, "Faith, Hope, Bigotry," Psychology Today 3 (April 1970), p. 58.
7. Victor D. Sauna, "Religion, Mental Health, and Personality: A Review of Empirical Studies," American Journal of Psychiatry 125 (1969), p. 1211.
8. Christensen, "Religious Conversion in Adolescence," p. 24.
9. Michael I. Harrison, "Preparation for Life in the Spirit: The Process of Initial Commitment to a Religious Movement," Urban Life and Culture 2 (January 1974), pp. 394-98.
10. George C. Anderson, "Maturing Religion," Pastoral Psychology 22 (April 1971), p.20.