Internatiional Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019 95
This Synergia at Quanbun Station in Australia
was in one of the harshest climates on the planet.
Temperatures during half the year can reach
more than 100°F in humid conditions. Rainfall
was a seasonal monsoon, so windmills to pump
well water were necessary. One cow might need
hundreds of acres for grazing. During his first
years at this Synergia, Hawes lived in the most
primitive conditions in tents and shacks. He
wore second-hand clothes that he slept in for
weeks at a time on a moldy mattress. He had to
steal food such as granola and snacks from
“idiots” who would not share with children or
“people.” Hawes earned a pittance per month for
his hard labor, barely enough to buy loose
tobacco for his smoking habit.
My first encounter with Allen’s cult was in 1975
when I heard stories from people who had
attended Synergia workshops. In 1976, I met
cult members at a Synergia construction site in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. The main Synergia
Ranch was 14 miles south of the city. I recall
hearing from noncult workers on Synergia
projects, saying how strange the members were
and how no one stuck to their skill set (if they
had one), being challenged from day to day to
do jobs they had not done before. This may have
been good for therapy, but it created major
delays from mistakes and poor workmanship.
During 1971, Laurence Veysey, a history
professor, lived on the New Mexico commune
near Santa Fe as an undisguised participant–
observer. This says a lot about Allen’s ego at the
time because he believed he would win over the
researcher. Veysey published The Communal
Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Counter-
Cultures in America in 1973. In Chapter 5 (more
than 125 pages long), “New Mexico, 1971:
Inside a ‘New Age’ Social order,” Vesey did a
masterful job revealing the nature of Allen’s
cult. Veysey changed names (Allen is “Ezra”),
but otherwise there is no disguise of behavior
and setting. In his Australian Synergia
experience, Hawes underscores everything and
more that the scholar Veysey noted in New
Mexico, from enneagram symbols on the walls
to required theater classes, to the requirement of
sitting in silence at meals while Allen or a
subleader pontificated and criticized “idiots.”
Although attachments in relationships were
roundly repressed, sex was available on demand
by simply knocking on someone’s door and
asking, “May I come in?”
One personal anecdote regarding the Biosphere
2 project in Arizona that placed Allen and his
Synergias into world news: Hawes (then 19)
mentions the Biosphere 2:
My sister, Lavice, had grown into a fine
young lady. ..She had been sent to
Quanbun [in 1989] for failing to live
according to John Allen’s wishes while
she was working on Biosphere 2 ...a
Synergia that was a three-and-a-half-
acre self-contained system, located
...near Tucson. (p. 154)
I toured the Biosphere 2 in 1991 the day before
launch, when eight Biospherans, four men and
four women in Star Trek-like costumes, would
enter the impressively sealed ecosystem and try
to thrive in it for 2 years. The grand plan was
designed as a first step toward a self-sustaining,
sealed community on Mars. Four of the
Biospherans were devoted to Allen, thus
predictably producing tensions with the ones
who were not. I asked my guide, a Synergia
devotee, “Will data be gathered from
psychological monitoring of the Biospherans?”
No, she said, “because of privacy concerns.” I
found that answer ludicrous, if telling. It came
out later that Allen was secretly communicating
with his Biospherans all along, though the claim
was that he would have no communication.
In 1991, the parents of one of the Biospherans
hired me to fly down to Arizona with them to try
to convince their adult child that this was more
about brainwashing than science. They were
justifiably afraid that the Biospherans might die
in the experiment. I did meet with their
Biospheran for less than an hour and shared
some information, but the intervention had little
effect. We left the meeting on a positive enough
note for the family not to feel cut off in the
future. I doubt the Biospheran ever kept or read
the literature I shared.
Biosphere 2 was a failure before getting out of
the gate for a host of reasons, not the least of
which was Allen’s grandiose vision coupled
with delusional, deficient science. In the end, the
This Synergia at Quanbun Station in Australia
was in one of the harshest climates on the planet.
Temperatures during half the year can reach
more than 100°F in humid conditions. Rainfall
was a seasonal monsoon, so windmills to pump
well water were necessary. One cow might need
hundreds of acres for grazing. During his first
years at this Synergia, Hawes lived in the most
primitive conditions in tents and shacks. He
wore second-hand clothes that he slept in for
weeks at a time on a moldy mattress. He had to
steal food such as granola and snacks from
“idiots” who would not share with children or
“people.” Hawes earned a pittance per month for
his hard labor, barely enough to buy loose
tobacco for his smoking habit.
My first encounter with Allen’s cult was in 1975
when I heard stories from people who had
attended Synergia workshops. In 1976, I met
cult members at a Synergia construction site in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. The main Synergia
Ranch was 14 miles south of the city. I recall
hearing from noncult workers on Synergia
projects, saying how strange the members were
and how no one stuck to their skill set (if they
had one), being challenged from day to day to
do jobs they had not done before. This may have
been good for therapy, but it created major
delays from mistakes and poor workmanship.
During 1971, Laurence Veysey, a history
professor, lived on the New Mexico commune
near Santa Fe as an undisguised participant–
observer. This says a lot about Allen’s ego at the
time because he believed he would win over the
researcher. Veysey published The Communal
Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Counter-
Cultures in America in 1973. In Chapter 5 (more
than 125 pages long), “New Mexico, 1971:
Inside a ‘New Age’ Social order,” Vesey did a
masterful job revealing the nature of Allen’s
cult. Veysey changed names (Allen is “Ezra”),
but otherwise there is no disguise of behavior
and setting. In his Australian Synergia
experience, Hawes underscores everything and
more that the scholar Veysey noted in New
Mexico, from enneagram symbols on the walls
to required theater classes, to the requirement of
sitting in silence at meals while Allen or a
subleader pontificated and criticized “idiots.”
Although attachments in relationships were
roundly repressed, sex was available on demand
by simply knocking on someone’s door and
asking, “May I come in?”
One personal anecdote regarding the Biosphere
2 project in Arizona that placed Allen and his
Synergias into world news: Hawes (then 19)
mentions the Biosphere 2:
My sister, Lavice, had grown into a fine
young lady. ..She had been sent to
Quanbun [in 1989] for failing to live
according to John Allen’s wishes while
she was working on Biosphere 2 ...a
Synergia that was a three-and-a-half-
acre self-contained system, located
...near Tucson. (p. 154)
I toured the Biosphere 2 in 1991 the day before
launch, when eight Biospherans, four men and
four women in Star Trek-like costumes, would
enter the impressively sealed ecosystem and try
to thrive in it for 2 years. The grand plan was
designed as a first step toward a self-sustaining,
sealed community on Mars. Four of the
Biospherans were devoted to Allen, thus
predictably producing tensions with the ones
who were not. I asked my guide, a Synergia
devotee, “Will data be gathered from
psychological monitoring of the Biospherans?”
No, she said, “because of privacy concerns.” I
found that answer ludicrous, if telling. It came
out later that Allen was secretly communicating
with his Biospherans all along, though the claim
was that he would have no communication.
In 1991, the parents of one of the Biospherans
hired me to fly down to Arizona with them to try
to convince their adult child that this was more
about brainwashing than science. They were
justifiably afraid that the Biospherans might die
in the experiment. I did meet with their
Biospheran for less than an hour and shared
some information, but the intervention had little
effect. We left the meeting on a positive enough
note for the family not to feel cut off in the
future. I doubt the Biospheran ever kept or read
the literature I shared.
Biosphere 2 was a failure before getting out of
the gate for a host of reasons, not the least of
which was Allen’s grandiose vision coupled
with delusional, deficient science. In the end, the
