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by Boomert - Breaking the Spell by Jane Stork 13 Jan 2010
This book is not just a biography of another person’s spiritual journey, it is a study of how ordinary people, given the right circumstances, can be manipulated into becoming a devotee of a cult. Throughout the brutally honest account of her life in Breaking the Spell, Jane Stork tells of her conventional Catholic childhood in the 1950s, how she became restless with the parameters of her life as she entered her 30s, and joined a meditation centre which, unbeknown to her, recruited followers for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the ‘Orange People’. Ultimately it is a story of how Stork became embroiled in a way of life that demanded complete compliance and unrelenting devotion, even at the expense of her loved ones and ultimately her own mental and physical wellbeing. After uprooting her family and moving to an ashram in India, Stork rose through the ranks to work under Ma Sheela in charge of the Bhagwan created city of Rajneeshpuram in Oregon in the US. Stork’s story is eye-opening and lays bare the organisation which preyed upon susceptible individuals to feed the narcissistic nature of the Bhagwan.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine (April 2009, Vol 88, No 6.) is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

Author Biography: Jane Stork
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Breaking the Spell, Paperback (April 2009)