I am not a member of , but a former member of Yogi Bhajan's cult forwarded me your article ('3HO, Yogi Bhajan and The Sikh Way', March 07).

I am a mental health professional, author on two books on cults and mind control.

I have been counseling victims of Yogi Bhajan's cult since 1981, and think that he is giving the Sikhs a very bad name. I personally know some 30 former members (some of them former top leaders) who have told me innumerable stories of the Yogi's alleged misuse of hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, sexual abuse, threats, harassment, encouraging people to cut off from family and friends who were critical of their membership and more.

I know there are lawsuit documents on the web for you to review.

Healthy religions support individual's free will and do not use deception and destructive mind control techniques to take away people's freedom of mind. Destructive cults do this, however.

I know this from personal experience. I was a member of the Moon cult for over two years. If you asked me while I was an indoctrinated member if I was happy, I would have had to say "yes." I would tell outsiders wonderful tales of how wonderful Moon was, how much closer I was to God, how miserable my life was before joining etc. This is standard procedure, for religious cults suppress all negative thoughts and doubts and only do good PR for the group.

While it might be true that some people's lives improve after getting into a totalitarian, dictatorial cult, my 25 years of experience informs me that most people suffer tremendously. The phobias that are programmed into people's minds that "leaving the group equals leaving God", "that they will get cancer", "die of a heart attack", "get AIDS"- is nothing more than phobia indoctrination. Fortunately, phobias are something that people can get over- once they understand that they are simply the same phobias used by every other mind control cult to keep members dependent and obedient.

Please understand that Yogi Bhajan is doing the Sikh religion a lot of harm in my opinion.

Steve Hassan