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One term that can be used to describe such groups are “radicalized expressions of religious commitment,” Dinges said. Characteristics include having a distinct boundary between it and others; being demanding of members; being galvanized around a charismatic personality; and having an intensified sense of mission.

Like Miller, Dinges says determining whether such groups are dangerous is subjective. Among the factors to weigh is whether they make it emotionally impossible to leave, whether they maintain members’ dignity, the amount of freedom they give members and whether there is a structure for airing and addressing conflict.

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Sometimes that happens because a group engages in false recruitment activities, he said. Other times it’s because people jump into situations without thoroughly understanding them.

“You have to educate yourself and, in a sense, know yourself. Trust your intuition.”

Ron Enroth, a professor of sociology at Westmont College in California, says all the spiritually abusive groups he has studied share common characteristics. They’re so similar that when he talks to ex-members and starts hearing details of their stories, “I almost feel like saying, ‘Stop, let me tell you the rest of the story.’ ”

One feature of such groups, Enroth said, is control-oriented leadership. Communication with outsiders is limited and questioning isn’t allowed inside the group.

Sometimes the control extends into intimate areas of followers’ lives, he said. In such cases, members are expected to ask permission to take vacations or switch jobs. Lifestyle rigidity is also common, with some groups having an almost unfathomable list of rules. One he studied outlawed striped running shoes because they supposedly were connected to homosexuality, he said. Another forbid members to use the word “pregnant.” Instead they were commanded to say a woman was “with child.”

Such groups are also spiritual elitists, Enroth said. They use arrogant or high-minded terms to describe themselves and often have disparaging descriptions for other churches, he said.

“They present themselves as the model Christian church or the model Christian organization...and say they provide unparalleled fellowship and superior spirituality,” Enroth said.

In addition, such groups are usually paranoid and perceive any criticism as persecution, Enroth said. They paint people who leave as defectors and say attacks against them are ultimately the work of Satan.

“By describing criticism as slander, they can almost be shielded from criticism,” Enroth said.

Enroth believes the number of spiritually abusive groups is growing due to a spike in the number of independent churches in evangelical and fundamentalist circles. People like them because they are less formal and less hierarchical than traditional churches, he said.

But with that independence also comes the potential for trouble, he said.

“They are, in a sense, spiritual Lone Rangers,” Enroth said. “That’s where the potential for sliding off the cliff comes into play.”

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It's the seeker or student that creates or enables a cult, or even makes a cult out of something that is not

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Both the older Rajagopals and Krishnamurti had grown up in the hot-house atmosphere of the Theosophical Society and it's ideas about the new world messiah that Krishnamurti was to be. Rajagopal himself was a boy protegé of Leadbeater and was the "reincarnation" of St Bernard of Clairveaux, he was a brilliant student and at the insistence of the Theosphical hierarchy took over the role of Krishnamurti's factotum after Krishnamurti's younger brother, Nitya, after Nitya's death in 1925.

The Rajagopal's sexual relationship ended after the Radha's birth at his request, the reasons for this are never gone into, understandably enough this is not a topic a child usually wants to investigate. Krishnamurti and Rosalind began a secret, sexual relationship in the spring of 1932 at his instigation and this continued until the 1950's when it petered out in a welter of long-term recrimination over Rosalind's suspicions about Krishnamurti's infatuation for Nandini Mehta and their general growing-apart and aging.

Rosalind Rajagopal was a very warm and compassionate person who's information and veracity on this subject could not be questioned. She was held in high esteem by most who came in contact with Krishnamurti. She was so liked by the Huxley's that she was present at the death of Aldous Huxley.

between the public portrayal of Krishnamurti as the idealised, enlightened, chaste being and his all too human pettinesses. For most of us in the 1990's his long term monogamous, sexual relationship with the woman whom he was acknowledged as closest to, would not be considered particularly negative, indeed many would consider it, at worst, morally neutral. The secrecy of the relationship could even be rationalised as a bow to the conventional societal/sexual hypocrisy of the times - a harmless deception to prevent scandal preventing people appreciating the purity of the teaching.

But not many would be able to accept the three secret, illegal (and therefore dangerous) abortions that Rosalind had of three children of Krishnamurti and the lies, recriminations and emotional trauma that all of the protagonists endured in the 1950's. It will be extremely difficult for anybody interested in Krishnamurti's teachings to see them as coming from an authentic source who has transcended any of the worst of the human condition and without the "authentification" of Krishnamurti's supposed enlightenment and the romantic glamour of his idealised portrayal, they are just another set of utopian concepts.

Willie Weidemann was the brother-in-law of Rosalind Rajagopal and manager of the farm and orange orchard at which Krishnamurti lived.

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"Although he was at the core of all our lives, Willie never had any interest in the philosophical side of life around Krinsh. He helped in all the financial and practical matters, the mailing lists, the books, even sitting behind the table to sell the publications at the talks.

"He told me once many years later, after he had retired, that the reason he had no interest in what Krinsh had to say was because he had witnessed early on the discrepancy between what Krinsh said and what he did.

"Willie never commented on this to anyone as he did not consider it his business but quietly made up his mind that he would find his own path, as he always had - and indeed as Krinsh himself publicly recommended."

[www.prem-rawat-bio.org]