Anthony Storr

"Constructing or adopting a belief system in which one is either God's prophet or God himself inflates the ego to monstrous proportions. Koresh was more deeply concerned with religion, Jim Jones with r…"

"We must consider the possibility that the conviction expressed by gurus is less absolute than it appears in that their apparent confidence need boosting by the response of followers. As we shall see, …"

"In 20th-century England, an individual announcing that he was the son of God and would return after death in glory would probably attract psychiatric attention; but earlier generations might have rega…"

"Reading his discourses made me realize that Rajneesh was a sad loss. He had an extraordinary range of knowledge and a vision of how life should be lived, but he proved incapable of following his own p…"

"Few subsequent gurus seem to have matched the simplicity and directness of Jesus′s message; but it must be remembered that we have very little information. If the world had possessed a detailed biogra…"

"In other words, gurus generalize from their own experience. Some gurus are inclined to believe that all humanity should accept their vision: others allege that, when the last trump sounds, their own f…"