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Moral Rearmament with the Lid off

What Miss Walker revolted against was the total lack of privacy. She and one of her companions, T. Ananda Krishnan, described the Assembly "as a high pressure and emotional attempt to change' everyone, an attempt which bordered on brain-washing." Other visitors revolting against the pressure came to her for advice on how to avoid the brain washing technique. As a result of this she was regarded by M.R.A. people as the leader of the counter-revolution at the Assembly, and was eventually told she had to leave only 20 minutes before her boat left the island. Without her permission, her bags had been packed in her absence. Her private papers and plane tickets were handed to her only after Mackinac was some thousand miles behind—they had been entrusted to an M.R.A. woman returning to Australia whom Miss Walker described as her "gaoler".

Upon arrival each non-M.R.A. member was allotted to the care of six or seven M.R.A. people, Miss Walker said, who made sure their visitors were never alone and were constantly "protected from themselves". "It was impossible even to run upstairs for a handkerchief without an M.R.A. person either offering to go too or asking where I was going," she said.

The visitors' first introduction to M.R.A. practice on the morning after they arrived was to "guidance". At 6 sum. everyone rose and meditated on how to organise their day and on reviewing their past day's conduct "Guidance" which came to them was written down and later shared over breakfast. "The guidance period lasted for about an hour or as long as you could manage." The sharing of guidance with the six or seven mentors over breakfast the Melbourne students described as "excruciating to the newcomers, involving the innermost searchings of the soul."

Despite the lack of privacy, Miss Walker said that guidance was valuable in that it encouraged everybody to assess the consequences of their own actions. However, she said, guidance could easily be used by unscrupulous people to gain their own will.

Krishnan said that one Malayan student who wanted to go home, but was not given his return ticket, announced four morning in a row during the sharing of guidance: "The good Lord says 'Go and have intercourse.'" On the fourth day he was sent home.

The mode of appeal to visitors was carried subtly through the conversation of the group and more directly through the three main meetings of the day. Each of these meetings was supposed to be spontaneous, but in fact speakers were approached a day before. Speakers were required to hand in their talks for vetting some hours before presentation. One of the Malayans submitted a talk and was later told that he would not be required to speak.

The 7.30 a.m. session was chaired by an M.R.A. leader and fixed on a particular need for personal change or on a problem of one of the countries represented. The 11 a.m. session was also led and the speeches were on the theme of how M.R.A. could solve the world's problems. The leader of this session interrupted speakers so that the audience en masse could repeat significant sentences like "If M.R.A. fails, the world fails," and "M.R.A. is the hope of me world." The two-hour session was broken by an international chorus singing M.R.A. hit-parade type songs. The third session, from 5-7 p.m., was always segregated and consisted of a series of stories about conversions, past sins, and problems and how M.R.A. had solved them— "so dramatic and fantastic," Miss Walker said, "that they were at first unbelievable and later just didn't sink in."

Meals were a vital part of M.R.A's approach to the visitors. Lists showing where everyone would sit for each meal had to be submitted two hours before each meat and once again non-M.R.A. people were always balanced with groups of people who had "changed". The meals, which were formal and sumptuously presented, lasted for up to two hours and the conversations dealt exclusively with M.R.A. For each of the two hour periods there was a flow of personal stories in incredible detail of how people at the table met M.R.A. "'I heard stories about radicals born in Quaker families, about prostitutes, illegitimate children and many more, on the assumption that there would be a story which would move me," Miss Walker said.

At night plays were presented which the Melbourne students described as superbly produced and acted. Although these were different each night the theme always followed a pattern of chaos and disintegration until someone saw the light of M.R.A. and by example resolved the situation.

The segregation which obtained at the 5 p.m. session was standard throughout the whole assembly. At meals and at mixed meetings men and women always sat apart. Once when Miss Walker was talking to Krishnan, an M.R.A. man took Krishnan aside and told him that he must resist his urges in talking to women and said that he had had the same problems but had withstood them. This man was shocked by Krishnans immediate reaction. Miss Walker said that at the end of one week when she had never been alone except to have a shower, she revolted and told the members of her group that she was fed up.

During the course of that day other non-M.R.A. people who were similarly affected had asked her what to do and she advised them to adopt absolute honesty and to tell their mentors how resentful they were. As a result she was watched more closely, but in the next two days Miss Walker made a very large number of friends from all parts of the world whose reactions were the same as hers.

Krishnan, too, was one of the few men who continued smoking at the Assembly. Rebels came flocking to him as he stood smoking like a beacon on a counter-revolutionary hill.

As a result of these contacts the Australian visitors arranged a mixed dinner for one evening meal "which was met with freezing expressions and brought mutterings of disapproval from other tables." Miss Walker said, "We laughed so much at that meal that one of the male members of our party said there was not time for one impure thought to pass his mind while the onlookers were madly thinking impure thoughts about us."

The night before Miss Walker was sent home a man told her that she was a "distracting and disturbing influence and the sort of person who knocked down all the work of M.R.A. in one blow."

The next day she was summoned to afternoon tea "with a few friends". At 4 p.m. the party went to one of Mackinac Island's old colonial homes and was treated to a terribly refined afternoon tea, in the course of which Miss Walker was told: "We have decided it is time for you to go." In response to her questions the group would not specify reasons for their decision, but talked about her influence upon the Australian boys and hinted at the necessity of observing the second standard of absolute purity. They told her that in constantly talking to the Australian boys she was wilfully arousing urges. She said that they could see nothing natural or healthy about ordinary conversation between men and women.

Miss Walker said the reason why she was sent home was that she was absolutely honest in accordance with their first standard, and that they could not stand it.

However, she said that she had returned a far better Christian than she had left, since she was most strongly impressed by the necessity for the sort of understanding and compassion that was so lacking at Mackinac.

Krishnan said that the unhealthy mode of segregation led to an unnatural concentration on sexual problems among the men of the conference and also led to a curious attitude toward matrimony.

Krishnan also said that the standard of moral conduct which M.R.A. principles involved-could have very real effects in improving international relations and also industrial relations. But, taken to the unhealthy extremes to which fanatical devotees of M.R.A. took them, they often produced as much harm as good.

(Abridgement of an article in "Farago", journal of the S.R.C., Melbourne University.)