I visited Edinburgh and ended up in a cult for 20 years – my mum screamed I’d been kidnapped
Published By admin with Comments 0
A FORMER teacher has told how she ended up in a cult for 20 years amid her family’s fears she had been kidnapped following a trip to the Edinburgh fringe.
Anthea Church, of Tunbridge Wells, used to get up in the middle of the night to wear white clothes and intensely meditate before work as part of her membership of spiritual cult Brahma Kumaris.
Founded in India in 1937, Brahma Kumaris has a number of meditation centres across the globe.
They say they wish to spread their belief in “personal transformation and world renewal.”
The group teach a type of meditation that identifies humans as souls rather than bodies.
Ms Church stumbled across the group when she visited the capital’s international festival in 1980 – shortly after graduating from Oxford University studying English aged 20.
But after the chance encounter with the group, Anthea later found herself living at a communal house in Willesden Green, London for almost 20 years.
The now 66-year-old spoke to Kent Online about the two decades where she lived a double life.
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.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/10347873/edinburgh-fringe-cult-mum-kidnapped-twenty-years/.
