On Keith Raniere & NXIVM 3: Jim Heller, Maharaji Comparisons
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Jim Heller is a former Canadian ashram premie. Currently, he is a criminal lawyer in Victoria, B.C., Canada, and a guitarist in a band called Gravel. He has critiqued Maharaji’s past claims and his followers’ evasion of accountability. Heller looks at the parallels between Maharaji and NXIVM’s Keith Raniere, emphasizing manipulation, the surrender of autonomy, and the importance of critical thinking.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Jim Heller. You were a member of a cult, but you got out. I’m focusing on a series about NXIVM and DOS, founded by Keith Raniere, also known as Vanguard. When you reflect on reading a bit about Raniere for this session, thank you for taking the time to do that and for your reflection on time in Maharaji’s cult. What can you note as some of the consistency between these two systems and their leaders? That seems like a good starting point.
Jim Heller: I didn’t know much about NXIVM; honestly, it didn’t interest me much initially. But after you contacted me, I spent a little more time looking into Raniere, and what immediately stood out from the Wikipedia page and other sources I read was a parallel with the cult leader I followed for some time.
Maharaji came from a Hindu tradition, and his followers believed he embodied the cosmic force—essentially, God. He was God in human form, and as bizarre as that sounds, we believed it. We believed it was possible.
We adhered to a whole narrative and ideology: God regularly manifested in human form throughout the ages. There’s always one, only one. It was Maharaji’s father before him. It wasn’t Maharaji’s three elder brothers; it was Maharaji who took on the mantle from his father when he was just a child. We believed all of that. So when I look at Raniere, I think, okay, here’s another guy.Raniere didn’t claim to be God or anything like that, but he had a smooth, powerful personality, and I know how it works. You can create a machine if you get a few good followers to promote you correctly. People can fall under the sway of it, and I’m sure that’s what happened with him. That’s how it was with my guru. Maharaji wasn’t doing this alone, either.When Maharaji first came to the West, he had a coterie of saffron-robed, bald Mahatmas that we considered saints from India. They were propping him up, talking about how their profound meditations allowed them to see how incredibly cosmic and powerful he was. It all worked together as a cohesive narrative, and I’m sure Raniere had a similar setup. When someone is even slightly susceptible to that kind of thing—and I think anyone can be—they’re no match for it.
You find yourself in a group of people, and you won’t be the outspoken renegade because that will immediately push you to the outside. Something within the group dynamic appeals to you, and you don’t want to let that go. With Maharaji, it was the idea of enlightenment. We believed that if we stayed the course with him, overcame our doubts, and received his grace, we could rise higher and higher. One day, we thought, we could become saintly like those same saffron-robed, bald Mahatmas. We were promised incredible meditation experiences and believed we would eventually attain cosmic bliss. Nobody wanted to miss out on that.
Content retrieved from: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/keith-raniere-jim-heller-maharji-comparisons-sjbn/.
