A Female cult survivor was booted out of a Gold Coast sect after refusing to believe bird flu signaled the end of the world.
"In the end I was kicked out last September because I didn't believe the guru," said former cult member Cara James, 27, of Tweed Heads.
"He had predicted the world would end because of bird flu and I was saying 'no, this is not going to happen'," she said.
"I could see it didn't make any sense but my boyfriend at the time, who was a student (of the cult), unfortunately couldn't see my reasoning and the group told him to kick me out."
"I left, I'd wanted to for a while, but was very scared for him and his son. i could fee some kind of 'Waco' thing going on."
Ms James spoke to The Gold Coast Bulletin this week about her ordeal in the cult which lured members through free meditation classes.
"I moved here about eight weeks ago from the Gold Coast to try to get away but they have found me and continue to try to intimidate me."
She said the cult had several hundred Gold Coast members who gathered at about 30 private homes and community halls and the cult's centre at central beach side suburb.
Ms James first encountered the group when she took one of it's free meditation classes in Sydney in June, 2005.
She said when she started asking for more information, she was told she would have to go to Queensland because the cult's two centres are in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
In August, 2005, she attended her first meeting of the cult's 'students' at a rural property outside Tweed.
"These were people who had got heavily into the group. Over time they had been introduced to more and more teachings from the cult leader's disciples via the deep peace meditation classes, which is the same as progressive relaxation hypnosis, making you highly susceptible to brainwashing in the wrong hands."
"These students get together at this place they call The Farm, which is like a small temple building on a private property."
"I have witnessed them controlling people to leave their relationships, their families."
"A lot of girls live out there, young women my age living in total isolation, and they chant and have an altar where they worship the leader like he is God."
Ms James said she never saw the leader in person.
"Basically, he teaches a form of Krishna consciousness. But rather than the Hindu belief that Krishna is the supreme God, followers of this cult believe Jesus Christ was a pure devotee of Krishna and, more critically, that the leader is a direct link to God."
"He tells his devotees that only he can hear God, and that he is non-different to God, so to question him or insult him is seen as an insult God."
Ms James said the last time the leader was in Australia was in the 1990s and he had since used local 'disciples' to push his teachings.
She said he claimed to know the past, present and future and what people are thinking.
"I have seen the leader's disciplines verbally abuse followers, ridicule people, and say terrible things to them if they ever question the leader's teachings.
"They tell students they are not allowed to talk to outside people and I have seen them put bags over people's head to punish them.
"The disciples watch everything you do and people are scared of them." Ms James said police could not take action unless the cult did something illegal.
"They say it is not illegal to be in a cult but it is illegal to do what they do."
