Cult Cops
File under: Satscams and Gurubusting
Today we've been informed we've been added to the blogroll of The Truth about Human Potential Seminars, a site which monitors and warns against Large Group Awareness Training situations. In other words, mind control cults.
While it's not quite the same arena we like to spar in, there is a good overlap 'twixt the two. So we're going to return the favor and add them to our links section.
In the meantime, those of you either afraid of being brainwashed or interested in brainwashing others can check out this handy list of how to pull it off, courtesy of the TaHPS folks:
• Isolate them in new surroundings apart from old friends or reference-pointsSo if your guru likes to talk in a sing-songy voice which goes up and down and varies in tempo, know that the bitch or bastard is trying to hypnotize you and get the hell out of there.
• Provide them with instant acceptance from a seemingly loving group
• Keep them away from competing or critical ideas
• Provide an authority figure that everyone seems to acknowledge as having some special skill or awareness
• Provide a philosophy that seems logical and appears to answer all or the most important questions in life
• Structure all or most activities so that there is little time for privacy or independent action or thought
• Provide a sense of "us" versus "them"
• Promise instant or imminent solutions to deep or long-term problems
• Employ covert or disguised hypnotic techniques
posted by guruphiliac @ 10:04 AM
13 Comments:
"this handy list of how to pull it off, courtesy of the TaHPS folks:"
This sounds like the kind of thing that you might watch out for in a Vipasana course, or short term, in any Bible Church in America.
I liked the satire in Steven Sashen's "How to Become a Millionaire Self-Help Guru..."
http://sashen.com/blog/12/how-to-become-a-millionaire-self-help-guru-its-easy:
"The key here is to engender an AHA! experience ... This is especially easy in a workshop setting where, frankly, if you charge enough money and put a bunch of strangers in an unusual place you’re guaranteed to get 'results'."
This sounds like a discription of every family in the world.
anonymous said,
"This sounds like a description of every family in the world."
It sounds like a description of every business meeting I've ever attended also. (Except for the unmoderated ones ending in screaming fights.)
This must mean that the world is a LGAT mind-control cult! Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!
Kidding aside, that's why mind control works; it's human nature (as opposed to the advaitic "true nature," another mind construct as far as I can tell). We all do it to ourselves and others and have had it done to us since birth.
Any body know anything about Landmark? I know some folk from oregan who are into that. They are into New Age stuff, and gurus, and think traditional psychotherapy is not spiritual. So they go to all of this group potential stuff, flouting it as being just so wonderful, transformational etc..
I enjoyed the Steven Sashen article - fun, but true in so many ways.
I think, as regards the conditions for mind control, one needs to consider the intentions of the person/group that is using these conditions. Also, the intensity of the experiences should be factored in - things like lack of food and lack of sleep - which are deliberately incorporated to make people more suggestible.
In response to Jody's post about my blog on Guruphilliac, I have posted something on gurus and the LGAT-type methods they use.
There is a link there to a great documentary, hosted by Xenu TV, and featuring James Randi, called "The Power of Belief". The blurb for the video is: "An ABC News Special examines the supernatural and our willingness to be deceived. James Randi is the guest."
It is well worth watching. If you do watch, enjoy!
Durga, please visit my blog at http://lgattruth.blogspot.com/
There are lots of good links at which you can find out plenty about Landmark.
The first stop I would recommened is the Rick Ross website - http://www.rickross.com/
Also his message boards - http://forum.rickross.com/ - have a wealth of information. Maybe you would like to join there and ask any questions you have regarding Landmark.
If you have any questions after doing some research, please feel free to contact me at my blog.
Sorry, about jumping in here like this Jody, but it is the only way I can get this message to Durga.
Sorry, about jumping in here like this Jody
No problem! This is exactly why we are here.
Thanks.
"things like lack of food and lack of sleep - which are deliberately incorporated to make people more suggestible."
Not to defend all these group seminars but I had a good experience with one in the mid 80's. Restricting food intake and caffine, etc, is not necessarily for making people more suggestible. It is to help people intensely aware of what they actually feel underneath the mask.
Igattruth,
I read some of the Ron Ross stuff. An ex boyfriend who seems to be easy prey for cults tried to get me to do landmark. I never enquired, but this gives me some insight into the weirdness of the psychology of the people who I know who did it. One was a therapist who leads his own groups and thinks he is above the LPC rules. Just does his own thing and rants about other therapists; and I have seen him violate ethical codes several times, not sexual, but moral, because he thinks he's got the truth and they don't. This guy was heavily into landmark.
Durga, glad you did the reading. Rick Ross states on his website that Landmark is among the most controversial groups out there. His website, on the front page, lists the 10 most referenced groups each day, and Landmark is to be found there, almost without fail.
Nowadays, one has to be so careful. As this website - Guruphilliac - shows, there are plenty of charlatans out there ready to take your money. They use a spiritual angle. Landmark incorporates some of that stuff, and some very sociopathic ideas.
Knowledge is education.
All the best.
Igattruth,
What are some of the sociopathic ideas? I didn't get that far into the reading on the Ross site.
Hi Durga. Please drop me an e-mail at lgattruth@yahoo.com
Then, I can respond in an e-mail to you instead of going into a long post on the comments feature. It would probably be better that way.
Thanks a lot.
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