Here is the full text of the 1994 article:

UNIVERSITY OF SEX

I know it is going to be a distinctive academic experience when the woman who answers the door at the suburban San Diego house tells me to leave my shoes at the door. I paid $7 to join this "Mark Group" and am not sure what to expect. Some guy is practically dry-humping a woman on the couch, although the pair attract little attention. Other couples are engaging in spontaneous massage, but it remains uncertain who had come with whom.

I keep hearing the phrases: "doing" someone and "getting done by." I sit across from a robust woman who looks like Tip O'Neill. Men outnumber women by a small margin. A woman who describes herself as "a healer, an actress and a travel agent" says that this is not usually the case in the Mark Groups. We go around the room for introductions, which sometimes digress into short autobiographies, the ages run from about 25 to over 60.

There are five masseuses, many real estate people, some brokers and copier salesmen, and one guy with a charter bus business. When asked why she came, a woman in a tight pink sweater responds: "To get turned on." Others say they wanted to meet people and have fun. "I had nothing else to do," one man volunteers, "and this is better than watching LA Law." On the coffee table lays a book on how to lose weight during sex. Another elegant volume looks like it might contain Ansel Adams's prints of Yosemite, but inside are Mapplethorpe-like photos of genitalia, Asian women doing their best
Deep Throat imitations, and naked people probing each other's orifices in creative ways.

Finally, an ostensible leader of the gathering—a man named Aubry with limp hair and an overbite—introduces himself and announces the first game: mimicry. People pair off, and one member of each pair has to immediately repeat everything the other says. This, explains Aubry, "will help you focus attention on the other person and help you grow." The starting phrase is: "The last time I felt really free was..." For a minute or so
the room sounds like a Pentecostal church meeting at full velocity.

Afterwards Aubry asks how people liked it. A few hands go up. Who didn't like it? A rather faded middle-aged woman named Angela raises a hand, "I
thought it sucked," she says in a raspy voice. Aubry announces the rules for the next game, "hot seat." The person so designated must answer all questions, as long as people raise their hands and say thank you. "Are you rich?" someone asks a man who claims he took pictures of one
girl beside his Rolls Royce. "Not really," he says. "Depends what you consider rich."

Someone asks an athletic looking man in a cutoff football jersey why he broke up with his girlfriend. "She said I was conceited, self-centered, and narcissistic," he explains, "but I'm really a naturally loving and giving person." "How big are your chest and biceps?" someone else asks. He has no
idea. Then someone asks about the size of another appendage.

"Twenty-seven inches," he replies. "Ouch!" says Angela, the faded middle-aged woman who thought mimicry sucked and who, during the introductions,
described herself as a "swinger." Then Mr. Jock explains: "Twenty-seven inches from the floor."

This wins him a laugh. Now Angela is on the hot seat, and someone asks why she thinks the mimicry game sucks. "I don't like oneon-one," she says. Angela claimed she has had sex with five men at one time, but she doesn't practice S&M. "I like to stay in control," she says, without explaining how she kept control of the eager fivesome.

"Why is this called a 'Mark Group?'" someone then wants to know. It is a legitimate question. Our host, a freckled blond named Donna, responds. "Victor Baranco compares it to carnival barkers. The people they bring in are 'marks.' Everybody is a mark for something and with
us it happens to be love." Victor Baranco, it emerges, is the founder of More University in Lafayette, California, the institution where the hosts of this "Mark Group" and several of the participants in the session received their professional training. This group in San Diego has not been trying to revive arcane '60s lifestyles, as it sometimes seemed during the meeting, but doing school work, part of More University's recruiting program.

More's courses, the literature explains, include "Basic Hexing," "Aphrodisia," "Mutual Pleasurable Stimulation of the Human Nervous System" and "A Weekend with Vic." The most unique thing about More is that it grants degrees. As California's official Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education verifies, since 1979 the Golden State has approved More to grant Bachelor's and Master's degrees in the humanities and communications, and Ph.D. degrees in "Lifestyles" and "Sensuality." According to recent descriptions, More University’s founder, Victor Baranco, 59, stands six-foot-two and weighs some 300 pounds. He is currently living in Hawaii where he has faced drug charges. He is not approachable.

"Dr. Baranco talks to people who have the proper requisites and three grand," Jackie Van Sinderen, More's Dean of Instruction, told the Contra Costa Times. She was referring to a More University course, "Audience with Victor Baranco," which costs a cool $3,000. When Times reporter Michael Hytha travelled all the way to "Dr." Baranco's hideaway in Pupukea, Hawaii, he found himself confronted by a bare-chested bodyguard named Sam,
who was polishing a white Cadillac in front of Baranco's purple house and who warned, "Vic doesn't like to speak with reporters." Yet as with the presidents of more conventional universities, Baranco has a curriculum vitae, however much he tries to hide it.

More's founder was bora Wilbert V. Baranco in Oakland in 1934, the son of a black jazz pianist and a Jewish woman named Florida Mae. Baranco has claimed he was a gifted child but drummed out of Hebrew school because of "the black thing." He has also claimed he played in the 1954 Rose Bowl, but unfortunately Cal's squad didn't go to the Bowl that year. Author David Felton profiled Baranco in his 1972 book, Mindfitckers, and the portrait was far from flattering.

As Felton explained: "Charles Manson, Victor Baranco and Mel Lyman, he superheroes of the following stories, are mindfuckers simply because they have made it their business to fuck men's minds and to control them. They’ve succeeded by assuming godlike authority and using such mindfucking techniques as physical and verbal bullying and group humiliation." Baranco is the least well known of this threesome, but for all their other achievements, Manson and Lyman never established a school approved by the State of California to grant Ph.D.s in sex. Baranco earned his administrative credentials by joining the Sexual Freedom League in Berkeley in the' 60s.

Followers call Baranco Thought "responsible hedonism," but let Baranco explain: "It's like a boat. The woman is the steerer and the man is the motor. And once you can relax, men, and settle down into slavery in the motor room— what a gas! They take care of you sexually, feed you and clothe you. They take care of all your creature comforts and all you gotta do is shovel coal." Felton portrays Baranco as a wheeler-dealer type, who along with Haight-Ashbury colleagues Robert Kerr and Paul Robbins set up the Institute for Human Abilities (IHA), a real estate corporation, in late 1969. Baranco
and his pals bought derelict houses at low prices, got hippies to fix them up, then resold or rented the places at a handsome profit. But there was more to it than commerce.

The partners also published Aquarius Magazine,which advertised courses such as "Basic Sensuality" and "A Weekend with Vic Baranco," both $45. Another subject of instruction was masturbation. According to Felton, Baranco and his followers had some doubts about intercourse. In the words of a man named Wayne, it is a "haphazard affair." Instead the institute recommended mutual masturbation as "a 'surefire way to a perfect orgasm every time.' He called it 'doing' the other person, and told us how to do a perfect 'do.' "

The managing editor of Aquarius was a guy named Dewey, who ran the operation from a basement closet. Every month, Baranco would send in a taped "parable" for Dewey to transcribe and edit. Dewey said this was his "toughest task." One parable concerned a woman who for a 1ong time
drove by a hitchhiker she saw every day, then finally decided to pick him up. He promptly killed her. (‘There was no moral to the story," said Dewey, "but the heaviness was obvious.")

Another parable was about "a bunch of wretched characters who lived in a concentration camp surrounded by squalor and barbed wire. There was no
toilets, and their food was thrown on the ground with their shit. Every day an executioner would drag one of them to the chopping block and bloodily decapitate his in full view of the others." After several paragraphs of lurid description, it turned out the victims were actual chickens. By one account, Baranco was influenced by the Millionaire, a television program from the '50s in which a man of means gives away $ 1 million to a strange in each
episode.

Another influence came from the Lloyd Douglas novel, Magnificent Obsession, in which a character gives away the family fortune to the needy. Baranco established Turn On To America (TOTA), as Felton describes it. ‘to collect government and foundation funds for alcoholics, nonplaceable foster children and paroles.” Baranco acquired the 16-acre Lafayette spread currently houses More University in 1968. The grounds feature a main residence and houses, a studio, a house trailer, some shanties, tennis courts and assorted junk cars. The buildings are all painted a bright purple because that was the favorite color of Baranco’s first wife Suzanne, whom he married in 1959. They bore two children then divorced in 1976. Suzanne, however
continued to live on the Lafayette property, which neighbors call the "Purple Palace" and journalist have dubbed "Fuck U," a tag that fits in ways other than curriculum.

The campus features a lookout tower and guardhouses at each entrance. Armed guards prowl the property and signs warn: "No trespassing, unless you want your feelings hurt" and "Only cowards commit suicide slowly.” Members of More's paying student body arrive in purple Cadillac limousines and get around on campus in golf carts, which travel on paths paved with carpet remains. A 1978 More course catalog explains that the school
was established in 1967 to "expand the physical, spiritual and intellectual capacities, with tolerance for all apparent alien encounters." But the prophet of responsible hedonism found that, even in swinging California, tolerance has limits. In 1978, according to the Contra Cost Times, the county sued and got a court order prohibits more than five unrelated people from living on the property. Baranco simply moved classes elsewhere, then moved
them back when a court of appeals overturned the ban.

Also in 1978, Contra Costa County health officials reported that a three-year-old girl contracted gonorrhea while on the Lafayette property. No charges were brought, but the parents, who lived on campus, agreed to a $3,500 settlement with the county. That same year, Contra Costa sheriff's investigators said they had evidence that four men sexually molested two girls and a boy and that there had been illegal drug use at More. For reasons that remain unclear, the sheriffs called off the investigation, and there were no arrests or charges.

That same year, during the apotheosis of alternative lifestyles under Governor Jerry Brown, Baranco applied to the California Department of Education for approval,which the state granted in 1979 despite the troubling sexual incidents. More University could now award academic degrees.

According to Darlene Laval, who headed the state council that reviewed More in 1986, all one needed to dofor approval at that time was show that they had a certain amount of money and a library, or access to one, "and that was about it." There was no review of the school's faculty,facilities, or curricula. State approval doubtless raised Baranco's self-esteem, even as it enhanced More's recruiting prospects. (Werner Erhard of EST fame even
attended a Baranco class.) But approval did not eliminate the school's public-relations problems.

Dr. Marc Hirsch had been serving as the head of More's Department of Medical Science. In 1980, California's Board of Medical Quality Assurance revoked Hirsch's license on the grounds that he had been prescribing excessive amounts of narcotics and mood-alteringdrugs. The same year Hirsch married Victor Baranco's exwife, Suzanne. During 1981-82, More filed three lawsuits against the Contra Costa Times, which found the university a
lively topic. Although all three suits were dismissed, the school's fondness for legal action was not diminished.

Court records show that Baranco has been involved in nine lawsuits over property rights, including a long struggle with his own parents. The university recently filed a libel suit against the San Francisco Chronicle, which dubbed the school an "Academy of Carnal Knowledge." Still another suit involved Contra Costa County. During this tiff, More lawyer and longtime resident Richard Hyland said, "We'll consider suing everyone."After the suits against the Times were dismissed, More continued its affairs with little publicity. Indeed, few people in the Bay Area know such a place exists, even though it operates a sort of extension campus in the purple More house in San Francisco (although the city at one time shut down Baranco's houses and "sanctuary" programs fqr code violations).

Throughout the mid- 1980s, Baranco was building up a faculty for his stateapproved operation.More's chief executive officer is Alexander Van
Sinderen, 48, who majored in history at Stanford University, served in the Peace Corps from 1967-69 and did graduate work at Syracuse. Van Sinderen also holds a doctorate in lifestyles from More U. His dissertation was titled, "A Married Couple and a Single Woman as a Social and Sexual Unit." He and his wife live with a woman named Marilyn.

Jackie Van Sinderen, 48, Alex's wife and More's dean of instruction, is also a veteran of Stanford, the Peace Corps and Syracuse. A press account identifies Jackie as a former member of More University's boxing team, which was discontinued several years ago. Suzanne Baranco Hirsch,55, received her doctorate in sensuality from More University in 1980. Thus qualified, she has since chosen to pursue a career as dean of More's Sensuality department.

Former sociology major Cynthia Baranco, 40, married Victor Baranco in 1979 and now teaches at More and participates in Bay Area Mark Groups. More boasts a total of 34 faculty members, 15 of whom have doctorates—one from UCLA and 14 from More. The state lists More's
chief administrator as Lilyan Binder, 43, a graduate of Hunter College and a former mental health counselor.

The courses offered at More include:
•Basic Hexing: This course describes hexing as a conceptual game that every human being plays, and of which a very few people are aware. It provides the student with the history, technique, structure and applications of hexing. The extent to which one can control his hexing
is the extent to which one has power in his universe. (2
days; $250)

•Basic Oestrology: describes the frame of reference that explains human experience. ($300)

•Aphrodisid: Inhibited sexual desire is the most widely reported sexual difficulty in the nation today. "Aphrodisia" is a weekend of illuminating information and functional practices that provide the student with overt control over what is considered the most elusive aspect of sensual pleasuring. (Basic Sensuality and Basic Communication prerequisites; $360)

•Weekend with Vic: A totally unstructured weekend in which the instructor will answer any and all questions asked. The content of this course is totally dependent on the student's ability to have [sic]. (Prerequisite: 2 courses;$360)

•Mutual Pleasurable Stimulation of the Human Nervous System: A six-week course that meets for one three-hour session per week. Limited to married couples or consenting adults who agree to be laboratory partners for the duration of the course. Extensive examination of certain conditioned societal limitations on sensory awareness, including sex practices, partner exchange, emotional involvement related to sexing, oral-genital relationships. (Prerequisites: Basic and Advanced Sensuality; $375)

• Expansion of Sexual Potential: This program is designed to introduce the student to the nature of his/her own sexual potential. In a clinical setting, under the hands-on guidance of agreed-upon, selected members of the Department of Sensuality, individuals or couples are led in the exploration of the parameters of their sexual response. Social and sexual resistance to the expansion of this potential and its attendant terrors are identified, and
appropriate methods of overcoming these barriers are demonstrated. Subjects are instructed in techniques of training partners in both causative and effective roles, and detailed methods for survival sex practices are
presented. (5 prerequisites; $10,080)

11 of More's courses were designed by Victor Baranco, who has described the "mutual stimu-:ion" program as "making friends with another crotch." The Expansion of Sexual Potential includes a two-week stay at Lafayette and costs $16,800. According to state officials, More's entire doctoral program will set a student back $43,200. Just how much revenue the school brings in is not clear, however. The Contra Costa Times has reported that the various entities housed at More control $1.7 million in East Bay real estate and generate revenues of about $1 million. These "entities" are an interlocking directorate of non-profits including "Turn On To America" and "The Private Sector," which both deal with the homeless.

To the Institute of Human Abilities Baranco has added Humore Inc., the real estate company in charge of the East Bay properties. Both Humore and the institute are run from a property on Purson Lane in Lafayette, one of several residences owned by Baranco. The Times has also reported
that in 1990 More reported total income of $958,140, though it is not clear what came from where. Baranco's charitable impulses, some reporters discovered, did not extend to his parents. According to probate records, when Wilbert Baranco Sr. died in 1983, he disinherited his son. And when Victor's mother, Florida Mae, died in 1987, she left everything to Victor's two adult children. "As for our son," Florida Mae wrote, "he put us out of his life about 10 years ago. He didn't come to see his father before he died nor did he attend the funeral...he made it clear that he doesn't care about me."

Baranco may have put his parents out of his life, but he could not permanently avoid the scrutiny of the state, which had allowed him to function in loco parentis for years on his Lafayette campus. By themid-1980s, California had tightened its rules for private post-secondary education. A team of educational inspectors were preparing for their first trip to the purple palace, completely unaware of what they would find. "It was an eye-opener," says Darlene Laval, who chaired the state's regulatory council for five years and now works for the Department of Education as a consultant. In 1986 she and two colleagues spent two memorable days at More.

"Here were all these old limos and people sitting around in their underwear peeling potatoes," says Laval, who describes the place as "really filthy," to the point that "I would hesitate to drink their coffee." A guy named Jim, Laval says, "came out of a building buckling his pants, followed by a woman, who was followed by a child."

One of the teachers also turned out to be a student. "She said she had gotten her degree in sensuality and was now working on her other degree, for which she would have to spend a week with Vic," says Laval. "I said we need to talk to Vic, only to learn that he was 'too busy.' " To maintain approved status, schools must send in a lengthy self-study.

More's version said in one place:
"Equipment to take to class: a towel, a mirror, and all body parts." This caused review team member Roz Elms, who earned her Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley, to crack, "Doesn't that discriminate against the handicapped?" When she learned of the "Weekend with Vic" course, Elms asked, "Is there a weekend with Vickie?"

The inspection team wanted to see the classrooms and attend sessions. They were told they couldn't. In fact, says Laval, "They said none were being held. They said the classes were in Oakland." Aware of past com plaints against the school, the team wanted to see the nursery. They were told that it was closed that day because a child had fallen and was "on the verge of dying." But a staffer did let them see one building that contained a state-of-the-art video studio with a gynecological table as its centerpiece. '■>:

"My mouth dropped," says Laval. She and Elhis, imaginations running wild, asked about the purpose of the table. They were told that this was where Vic "did his sessions" in front of the student body. As Laval recalls, "They had a library of tapes of things like 'Vic's birthday party.' There were hundreds of tapes, in order and labeled. This was the only library we found at the place." Neither was there any required reading.

The team asked to see financial records. Such information was not available, they were told. "There was not one verification for any of the faculty," says Laval, "not one qualification for anything, let alone their speciality." The team then asked to read some theses and were handed a cardboard box containing eleven. "Most were handwritten and none was bound," says Laval. "One woman wrote that Vic had kept a stimulation of a student going for seven hours and why couldn't her boyfriend do this? This was her thesis."

Roz Elms read a dissertation about sexual encounters titled "Recollections of a Married Couple and a Single Woman" and pronounced it "not original research." The paper was for a Ph.D, in Sensuality. Another paper was about pregnancy and contained nude photos. By now the state review team was finding it "hard to be professional," as Laval puts it, and feeling dirty to boot. "They stuck us in this one-room shack, and there was no way for us to talk without them hearing us. They made phone calls with a hand cupped over the receiver, like some B-movie."

But the visitors had seen all they needed to see* More failed 108 out of 111 points of evaluation and the team recommended that approved status be denied. The council agreed, but More's lawyer showed up at the hearing and threatened Elms with a lawsuit for "lying" about the school and performing a "hatchet job." The school's advocate also charged that Laval "didn't know what she was talking about." More University appealed and won.

California was then in the process of changing its regulatory system, and the procedures used to review More were never officially adopted. While new regulations were being drafted, California grandfathered in More and a number of other schools with questionable qualifications. More duly expanded its operations to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta and other cities. The Lafayette campus maintained an uneasy truce with neighbors until the university started to house the homeless in the early 1990s.

One family whose property borders More reported constant noise and garbage, including hypodermic needles, being dumped over the fence. Yet when neighbors complained, More said that it was a witch-hunt caused by the long standing activism of Baranco and others at the university on behalf of the homeless. "They are hiding behind the politically correct stuff," says a woman who asked not to identified. "Nobody wants to be. against the homeless." Morehouse attorney Richard Hyland had learned another PC trick.

He pointed out that Baranco was of "black-and Jewish heritage," and therefore the complaints were "based in racism." But, as it turned out, the homeless issue provided journalists with an opportunity to penetrate the purple curtain that had veiled More's inner doings for so long.

On May 27, 1992, Donna Hemmila and Carolyn Leider, two reporters for the Contra Costa Times, showed up at More claiming they needed a place to stay. A man named "Joe without hair" let them in. They registered at Waipuna Lounge, a 24-hour diner for guests, and here their discoveries began.
At More, the reporters learned, only first names are used. "Do you want clean underwear?" someone asked. Leider, who has examined the records of More's nonprofits in Sacramento, explains that More receives generous donations from corporations, including Jockey.

The reporters also discovered that the campus had been upgraded since the 1986'site-review visit. It now boasted a closed circuit television system. On that evening's "news," the top story was a series of party scenes of a potbellied man dumping ice cubes down a woman's bikini, followed by safe sex tips and gossip. In another feature, a woman sang an off-key version of Peggy Lee's "Fever."

Those described as the campus' "elite" lived on the hill, and the reporters were warned not to get too close. But they did learn that the elite enjoy the service of female servants dressed in skimpy costumes, which they wear sans drawers in spite of Jockey's largesse. In addition to fashion, the faculty was also sensitive to nonhomeless visitors. "They let them in but videotape their every move," Leider says. The communards are also sensitive to communication.

"You don't have any rights here," a More staffer named Tom barked when a homeless guy asked to use the phone. "So don't even think that you do."
The reporters were the only female visitors in a room full of guys they didn't know, many smoking and drinking beer. The pair spent most of the night playing cards and bailed out early the next morning. John Koopman of the Contra Costa Times followed up on his colleagues' discoveries by attending aBasic Sensuality course with three other students: a dentist, an engineer and a veterinarian.

The teacher was Joe Hills, who had the class talk about male and female genitalia and masturbation. He also asked them to strip and use mirrors to take a "visual inventory of [their]bodies." Homework questions asked whether they would have sex with men, midgets, paraplegics and animals.

The course included a "do date," which, Koopman wrote, "usually consists of one person masturbating the other." When Dan Reed of the San Francisco Chronicle went to the More campus, they ushered him into a room with a conference table across from the Van Sinderen menage a trois. More staffers videotaped the entire interview, during which one of the scantily clad maids brought in water.

Reed discovered that More uses its own currency, called "scrip," which was once old Pall Mall cigarette packs embossed with the university seal, but which now resembles Monopoly money and is called "Karma Molecules." Allan Steele, a hypnotherapist from Coral Gables, Florida, who treats sexual disorders, said he and his wife Rochelle paid $47,500 to the university for doctorate courses.

"While I was living on campus there was encouragement to use illegal drugs, including the availability to purchase illegal drugs," Steele wrote in an April 5, 1992, letter to the California Council for Private Postseeondary Education. "They also engage in prostitution," Steele added, "that is, sex for money, with quotas [of conquests], which if not met results in threats of physical violence and exclusion."

Dan Reed reported that in late May 1992 the State Council demanded a response to the accusation but received none from More, which filed a $120 million libel suit against Steele. The hypnotist won't talk but stands by his allegations. More has also sued the Chronicle for libel, but the paper stands by its stories and has published no retraction. More's well-known litigiousness may have scared off A Current Affair, which was interested in doing
a story on the university but wary of getting involved in a prolonged legal wrangle.

The agency currently charged with protecting Californians from educational fraud is the Council for Private Postseeondary and Vocational Education (CPPVE), established in 1991. As its "fact sheet" says, the council certifies "that an institution meets minimum statutory standards for integrity, financial stability and educational quality, including the offering of bona fide instruction by qualified faculty and the appropriate assessment of students' achievement prior to, during and at the end of its program." Further there are "tuition refund formulas" should "the institution breach its contract with
the students."

The state considers the task of protecting consumers from educational fraud so important that it pays the council's director, Kenneth A. Miller, a handsome $82,000 a year plus benefits. Other professional staffers earn in the $60,000 range. As those who try to contact them will verify, these people spend a lot of time away from their desks or flying around the country to conferences. But although it has taken stands on issues involving
race, and gender and multiculturalism in other institutions, the CPPVE has, to date, done nothing about More.

"California is much more tolerant than the rest of the United States," explains the council's Ken Miller. "If something is legitimately new and innovative, they let it go ahead." Miller is vaguely aware of the sexual nature of the courses but allows that there has been "lots of research with Masters and Johnson." He has not visited the campus. Nor has the council's official in charge of More, Dr. Betty Sundberg, who, like Miller, was unaware of the
1986 report of state investigators Elms and Laval.

Sundberg says that More University recently applied for renewal of its approved status, which must be recertified every five years. Another inspection team will soon be scheduled. Miller concedes that the process will be "interesting." Roz Elms is currently an administrator at the University of Northern Colorado. When she was told that, eight years after her site-review visit, this '60s timecapsule continues to grant degrees with the state of
California's approval, she reacts with stunned disbelief and anger.

"I'm appalled," Elms says. "I can't believe they didn't close that place," which she ranks with academic bottom-feeders such as acupuncture schools and "a guy who was granting doctorates out of a two-bedroom apartment." California educrats have made life difficult for a number of private schools, particularly religious schools, even those whose academic achievement is unquestioned and whose faculty -boast impeccable credentials. And yet
the state has allowed More to thrive since 1979—fifteen years—for the most part undisturbed. Bureaucratic indifference and ineptitude alone cannot explain More's incredible longevity.

California's approval of More stands as a symbol of how American society has been baptized in the ethos of the '60s, An institution like More University could only thrive in the kind of society the '60s helped to create, a society in which, as the late Malcolm Muggeridge put it, "sex is the only mysticism."
—BY K.L BILLINGSLEY

[articles.sfgate.com]

Nicole Daedone's mission of orgasmic meditationNicole Daedone says her orgasmic meditation classes teach women how to harness ancient techniques to heighten sexual awareness and pleasure
June 12, 2011|By Nellie Bowles, Chronicle Staff Writer



Nicole Daedone in the Russian Hill home office of OneTaste, which she founded in 2004 and recently relocated from its Folsom Street site.Credit: Russell Yip / The ChronicleInside a shingled Russian Hill mansion, Nicole Daedone and three elegantly dressed women, glittering with perfect manicures, glossy hair and sparkling jewelry, snack on raw vegan macaroons, lounging on chairs in the ornately paneled living room. Situated just beyond a Beaux Arts balustrade at the Vallejo Crest, this grand old estate is now dedicated to female pleasure. On today's agenda: how to promote the orgasmic meditation classes Daedone teaches there.

"I want to make orgasm an industry in the same way yoga's an industry," Daedone, CEO and founder of OneTaste, tells her staff during a recent meeting.

Daedone, who has been in the orgasm business for more than a decade, recently relocated her South of Market street digs on Folsom Street to the posh three-story manse, which belongs to her boyfriend, Resse Jones, a venture capitalist who bought the home for $2.8 million in 2005.

a brow, the fact that Daedone has revamped and gone upscale was not a surprise to sexologist Carol Queen.

When it comes to sexual exploration, "San Francisco is the capital city, OneTaste on the top of the hill is its penthouse," she said, adding that some nearby residents could already be among her clientele.

The foundation of Daedone's business - she says more than 3,000 people have studied under her - is OMing, or orgasmic meditation, an intense focus on the sensation of finger-to-genital contact.

Critics like Thomas Lacquer, a Stanford history professor and author of "Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation" (Zone Books, 2003), says classes like Daedone's are hardly cutting edge.

Nothing new
"Orgasmic meditation, clitoris awareness is nothing that hasn't been known," he said. "My intuition is that this is a way to get a sex club on Russian Hill cloaked in Eastern history and sexual lore."

Though the fascination with female orgasm isn't new, improved technologies are helping scientists explore the physiology involved. For example, sex educator Barbara Carrellas, recently profiled on TLC's "Strange Sex," had an fMRI scan to show that she could "think off," or reach orgasm with nothing more than mental stimulation.

Daedone's approach doesn't involve high-tech equipment or exotic-sounding tinctures but focuses on ancient meditation techniques to heighten awareness and pleasure.

At the Le Meridien hotel in downtown San Francisco, Daedone recently hosted a Turned On Women's Weekend - a three-day retreat for women to explore her theories on orgasmic meditation, which is based on traditional forms of meditation but focuses on achieving a state of constant sexual awareness. "Every woman is immensely orgasmic," she said.

Throughout the weekend, the eclectic assortment of women, from homemakers to strippers, shared their fantasies and insecurities for $495. In a blazer and jeans, Daedone spread her legs and planted 4-inch stilettos on the ground while addressing the circle of 36 women in folding chairs. She spoke slowly, almost in a purr, making sweeping gestures with almost every sentence.

On sale in the lobby were OMing how-to DVDs, OneTaste lube and OMing pillow sets to build "nests." In a corner of the room, a photographer took portraits of participants' vaginal areas, which were then displayed on the walls to show that each woman is unique. (The women got to take the portraits home as a keepsake.)

Before leading such sessions, Daedone, a Los Gatos native, was on a more traditional track. She began a semiotics doctorate program at San Francisco State before founding the 111 Minna art gallery.

One day she got a call that her father, who had been convicted of molesting two girls, was dying in prison.

In what she says was her way of reacting against her father's darkly repressed sexual world, Daedone quit the gallery to dedicate her life to making sex and pleasure open - public, even. "I have a legacy to bring light into an area of the world where there's a lot of darkness," she said.

She began to explore San Francisco's sexual underground, briefly studying under Victor Baranco, who had been publicly staging women in orgasm since 1976 and founded the Lafayette Morehouse sex cult in Lafayette, which still runs today. Baranco died in 2002, and Daedone said she has distanced herself from his legacy, insisting there is nothing cultish about OneTaste.

She established a 50-person sex commune at 1080 Folsom St. in 2008, but left it in January (though she owns the lease, and it still runs). At Russian Hill, OneTaste has abandoned its old fare - naked yoga, public demonstrations of orgasm and communal living.
The new headquarters, Daedone says, is a center for hands-on couples counseling, workshops, weekend retreats and a coach training program, run by a staff of 15. In the months ahead, Daedone said she plans to shift her attention to a broader media strategy.

"Over 90 percent of what you see from us over the next three years," she says, "will be media - videos, books." In fact, her first book, "Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm" ($24.99, Grand Central Life & Style), was released last month.

Practice makes perfect
For now, OneTaste sends students back to the 1080 Folsom St. commune for daily practice sessions. At these evening sessions, men don latex gloves and learn the tenets of sexual touch, helping women practice daily OMing meditation (extended orgasm meant to last at least 15 minutes).

the coach training program. Intensive couple consultations, run out of hotel suites, can cost anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, if Daedone herself is the coach.

At the mansion, Daedone lounges against a green velvet sofa under a crystal chandelier. She says she envisions a day where her life's work will no longer be considered sensational - or even unusual.

"What was known in interior worlds is making its way out," Daedone says. "We're mainstream now, no longer fringe."

An article from Salon

[www.salon.com]

The worship of female pleasure
Nicole Daedone is trying to spread "orgasmic meditation" beyond alternative circles. Can America handle it?
By Tracy Clark-Flory
iStockphoto/chaossNicole Daedone pulls her long dirty-blond locks into a bun, rolls up the sleeves of her crisp white dress shirt and readies her lube. On the table in front of her there is a woman, naked only from the waist down, with her knees spread wide. The 40-something founder of OneTaste, a center dedicated to "mindful sexuality," is about to give a live and impromptu demonstration of orgasmic meditation ("OMing" for short) in a conference room at the sophisticated Le Meridien hotel in San Francisco. She takes a long look between the volunteer's legs and enthuses to the audience of roughly 40 women: "Oh my god, it's beautiful. It's an electric rose color. The swelling is already beginning."

Before long, Daedone is hunched over and vigorously stroking the woman's most sensitive "spot" -- the "upper left quadrant" of the clitoris -- with just her forefinger. The recipient moans wildly as though she is being taken over by a spirit and Daedone urges her on: "Good girl. Good, good. Reach, reach, reach, reach." As the woman's groans peak, Daedone lets out a throaty exhalation that sounds like it belongs in a Lamaze class. Two audience members overcome by the intensity of the performance are silently crying. The demonstration, which is part of a weekend-long women's retreat, continues for 15 minutes.

It is both arousing and deeply bizarre.

It isn't every weekend that I find myself watching a woman being repeatedly brought to orgasm in front of a live audience -- but I hardly expected normality when I asked to sit in on the workshop. Instead, I was hoping to get a candid view at Daedone ahead of the release of her book, "Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm," which attempts to market her meditative practice to a broader audience. That is a challenging task when your practice involves a bunch of clothed men (and sometimes women) gathering in a room and manually stimulating half-naked female "research partners" for exactly 15 minutes. Two years ago, a New York Times feature detailed the eyebrow-raising practices at OneTaste's "urban retreat center" in the wacky woo Bay Area and described Daedone as "a polarizing personality, whom admirers venerate as a sex diva, although some former members say she has cultlike powers over her followers." Since that high-profile coverage, OneTaste has become a bit more circumspect, but clearly not so much as to bar spontaneous OMing demonstrations -- and at an event initially advertised as including no "sexual activity." (But, you see, Daedone has a tendency to go off script -- that or appearing so is part of her script, it's hard to say.)

Dig beneath the freaky OMing exterior and the core of her message is very marketable to the mainstream. Consider the demand for "female Viagra," a product estimated to have a $2 billion market. Study after study tells us that women desperately want more sexual desire and more orgasms (or orgasms, period). Female desire and pleasure are what Daedone is all about -- to the point that many criticize her for being too women-centric. (After explaining the OneTaste mission to a male friend, he exclaimed incredulously: "The man never gets a turn? That's messed up!") Just as with the slow food movement, the idea behind "slow sex" is to slow down enough to know when you're hungry or satiated, to identify your cravings, to savor every sensation and to be present in this very moment. As she writes in the book, the aim is to give women the "permission to enjoy the journey, rather than pushing them ever sooner to the finale." With that comes a recasting of what orgasm means: "We have been defining the term 'orgasm' as the traditional definition of male orgasm: climax," she writes. "Climax is often a part of orgasm, but it is not the sum total. Make this distinction, and you change the whole game." (I met a woman at the workshop who says she had OMed 300 or so times and only climaxed once.)

These basic ideas are not especially controversial; they are pretty intuitive as well as having roots in the practice of Tantric sex. More generally, her emphasis on mindfulness -- a sexual take on "be here now" -- borrows heavily from Eastern philosophies. Daedone's background in gender studies also shows: She speaks passionately about negative cultural conditioning around sex and all the ways that women are taught to replace their own desires with men's. Balancing the academic side of OneTaste is the fashionable, cosmopolitan vibe of Daedone and her inner circle, a crew of supremely attractive, sensual and pristinely dressed women in their 30s and 40s. Think "Sex and the City's" Samantha at a Buddhist retreat. Daedone can just as readily sound like a New Age sex guru as she can an everywoman ranting to her girlfriends about frustrations in the bedroom. There is an Oprah-esque strain of feminism here too: In her manifesto, she reveres the sort of woman whose epitaph would read, "She scaled mountains, in hiking boots and in heels." Where there's an Oprah comparison, there is good old-fashioned capitalism: There are products for sale on the group's website, including OneTaste-branded lube, special OMing pillows and an instructional DVD on the practice. There's also a "Slow Sex" coaching program that costs anywhere from $4,000 to $11,000. The weekend retreat I attended was $495.

In between Daedone's workshop lectures, the motley group of women, ranging in age from their early 20s to their 60s, engaged in a series of intimacy exercises. We were encouraged to enter a makeshift photo booth to have our personal "pussy portrait" taken, and then printouts of the - shots were displayed for all to see. At one point we were instructed to gather in the center of the room, standing close enough to one another that we could "feel each other's body heat," and whisper to one another previously unspoken desires; some of these secrets were written on Post-its (the messages ranged from "rape fantasy" to "soft kisses") and pasted on the walls of the conference room.

It's easy to see why some call her a cult leader: When she shines her light on you, you feel special and seen. Before the OMing demonstration, she told the room: "There's all these questions as OneTaste gets bigger about fucking appropriateness ... and there's a reporter in the room," she said gesturing toward me. Daedone narrowed her eyes and continued: "But, quite frankly, as a human being I think you're one of us witchy women" -- then she winked at me, and my insides melted. That's the thing about Daedone: She can disarm you with the bat of her lashes -- or a flick of her index finger. She's an extremely compelling and charismatic character, and all the more so because there is actual substance and intellect behind the sexpert shtick.

Ultimately, she elevates the female orgasm to a level of religious and spiritual practice. "Slow Sex" is at first relatable and approachable but quickly turns woo woo and New Age. Daedone's philosophy is a refreshing counterpoint to the porny mainstream, but it's certainly hard to picture Middle America embracing orgasmic meditation; not even most coast-dwelling liberals are ready to be intimately stroked in a roomful of strangers.

comments from the Salon article

[letters.salon.com]

Saturday, May 21, 2011 02:24 PM ET
The worship of female pleasure
Nicole Daedone is trying to spread "orgasmic meditation" beyond alternative circles. Can America handle it?
Tracy Clark-Flory

Read The Article Post a letter about this article View: Newest First Oldest First Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next Page »
Saturday, May 21, 2011 08:28 PM ET
so this sounds like a good marketing strategy
for either people who haven't discovered the wonders of sex or who are exhibitionists.

If you haven't figured out how to experience great sex, then I imagine this might do it for you.

I would guess the promoters have a lot of men/women hanging around afterword plying them all and charges for expensive drinks and rooms. Nothing new under the sun.

The cover charge sounds quite pricey.

—anataiscreadmeinvain
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Saturday, May 21, 2011 08:40 PM ET
yes, but ...
These basic ideas are not especially controversial; they are pretty intuitive as well as having roots in the practice of Tantric sex


As far as I can tell, most of the sensual / sexual information here comes not from tantra, but from the research of another California group, Lafayette Morehouse, who first demonstrated this mode of extended orgasm in 1976 - Tim Ferris (The Four Hour Body) made the connection for me. Ms. Daedone and some of her co-founders studied with morehouse and students of the morehouse among others.


OneTaste seems to have produced a nice package of mindfulness plus clitoral stimulation in a very "estrogen friendly" atmosphere.

—BerkeleyJ
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Saturday, May 21, 2011 08:42 PM ET
Worship
Is this some trick to get me to go to church?

Can America handle it? On one level, yes - we are perfectly comfortable blending sex and religion, we do it all the time. On the other hand, absolutely not - sex and religion is all about re-direction of the sexual impulse, not the actual expression of it.

—calcareous
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Saturday, May 21, 2011 08:51 PM ET
Yeah
This is expensive, easily commoditized, viewed as Eastern, marketable as "subversive", and poses little threat to the establishment despite the claims of its supporters. It's the sexual equivalent of organic vegetables. America will handle it just fine.

I just dread the inevitable flood of conspiracy theories about how the government and corporate America are keeping this and its practitioners down.

—HistoryPunk
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Saturday, May 21, 2011 09:07 PM ET
Wait, wait, wait....
I missed the part where you explained to me why I should care.

—Silverback66
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Saturday, May 21, 2011 09:40 PM ET
Grow. Up.
It seems that Tracy Clark-Flory never thinks to question the value of any trend or crazy psycho-babble if it comes wrapped up in a sexy package. Grow up. It's not gold just because it shines.(And America can probably "handle" it. What century are you living in? Sex is everywhere. Disrespect is not the same thing as timidity.)

And, "study after study" that say women are begging for a female Viagra are trumped up by the pharmaceutical industry to prey on sexist notions of female frigidity and aging. Check out "Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals". Or the many articles written about this. Or take feminism 101 at your local community college.

Orgasms are directly linked to a woman's feelings of safety, contentment, and confidence. How, exactly, does having an orgasm in front of strangers, or watching a stranger orgasm, deal with any of these complex personal factors? Consciousness raising circles may be in order - something friendly, caring, intimate. Exhibitionism dressed up as therapy is childish and potentially harmful.

—M.M.M.
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Saturday, May 21, 2011 10:04 PM ET
$495.00
My title says all there is to be said. A way of milking rich sexually frustrated women of their pocket change.

—Amerigo
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Saturday, May 21, 2011 10:12 PM ET
everyone is capable of constant orgasm
but the vast majority of people, both men and women, learn how to short circuit this native capability in themselves.

I look forward to getting this book, to learn a few more tricks for my own arsenal.

I too am bothered by the exclusive focus on women and orgasm. Men are perfectly capable of the same response on the same level, but nobody seems interested in pursuing it.

In this way, men are much more trapped in their gender limitations society has set for them.

Me? Since I was a young pup, I was very interested in the orgasmic response and have been into yoga and tantra on and off for decades, to the point where today I can valley orgasm, which is what this essentially is, with the best of them. And I am a GUY.

All it takes is knowing your body, relaxing in certain patterns and ways, focusing, noticing certain cues, breathing into the pleasure, etc. I know only because I have been at it for decades.

I consider myself one of the lucky few. Most guys haven't a clue. Nor do most women, really, but that's another thing altogether.

—Liberty2Day
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Saturday, May 21, 2011 10:13 PM ET
sounds pretty goofy
especially the part about the two women who break into tears because of the "intensity" of watching some woman get stroked. it's pure voyeurism wrapped in a bullshit sandwich of eastern-like claptrap. just get a good vibrator and stop acting like coming is the center piece of some mystical experience. it's goofy and creepy at the same time.

—tejano
Another charismatic whack job.....
...who's crazy like a fox!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2011 07:57AM by corboy.

It never hurts to return to the old classic, preserved only here, from the Dont Date Him Girl site

[forum.culteducation.com]

Blech, what terrible "articles". Not a shred of insight in them.
And full of deception about OneTaste is really about, all these things are talking about is the "bait" and not the "hook".
They are misdirection and marketing.

But that is what old fashioned bags of money for marketing buys.

Looks like ole moneybags who is bankrolling OneTaste, is using OneTaste as a big tax-write-off...with fringe benefits.

Even though the Salon "article" is simply marketing for OneTaste, some of the comments (which are not shills) are much more realistic and accurate.
Some of the more vulnerable, are about to be duped, used and abused by yet another sex cult, as OneTaste tries to expand and make profit.
Using sex to make money in a cultlike situation, is very common.

[letters.salon.com]
-------comments quote-------------
Sunday, May 22, 2011 12:00 AM ET
"...my inside melted."

So, two years after the NY Times writes the story a Salon "reporter" brings her wisdom to the subject, including the observation that once the game was afoot "...my insides melted." Reporters don't insert themselves into the story. I guess bloggers do, but that makes for bad reporting, with the result that some of us don't care. Poor reporting, poorer writing. I'd delete the whole thing with a flick of the finger, if only I could.



Sunday, May 22, 2011 09:19 AM ET
Another charismatic whack job.....

...who's crazy like a fox!

Now why can't I come up with a money-printing gig like that? All I need is some half-cracked sorta crazy cult-like hook, and I'll be in the money.
Barnum was right - there IS one born every minute.

-----------------------------------

To add to our portfolio, get and read a book review published a couple of weeks in the Wall Street Journal.

UC Berkeley Professor Thomas Laqueur was right--the One Taste people are rehashing material that has already been peddled out before--except they are tarting it up with a glaze of rhetorical feminism.

Its only appealing to people who have enough money and free time to fret about this sort of thing.

(Oh for the sanity of Woody Allen. In his film, Manhattan. When a woman at a party says, 'I finally had an orgasm and my doctor told me it was the wrong kind, Allen replies, 'Gee, even when I have a bad one, its right on the money.'

The WSJ article noted how Wilhelm Reich was given support by gullible intellectuals.

These days its worse. Journalists are now gullible and failing in their duty to fact check, rather than surrender to someone's charisma and patter.

[online.wsj.com]

Cached version.

"(quote)Wilhelm Reich was a prophet of salvation through perfection of the orgasm, sometimes referred to as the "apocalyptic orgasm."
"

Quote

Adventures in the Orgasmatron

By HENRY ALLEN
This maddening, saddening account of Wilhelm Reich's crash-and-burn life leaves you yearning for a poet or philosopher who understands a fundamental truth: Nothing explains everything. (I recommend Shakespeare.)

Reich did not understand this truth. He was a disciple of Freud (who later excommunicated him). He was a world-famous psychoanalyst back when psychoanalysts could be world-famous, a crusader for sexual freedom back when that cause belonged to intellectuals, not Hugh Hefner or Lady Gaga. He was a prophet of salvation through perfection of the orgasm, sometimes referred to as the "apocalyptic orgasm."

The spiritual hysteria that Reich inspired in the America of the 1940s and early '50s is as hard to explain now as the madness that 1920s crowds felt hearing Bix Beiderbecke play the cornet, especially when you consider that most Reichians were supposed to be educated skeptics and cultural critics. Even—or especially—intellectuals are not immune to America's chronic and recurring religious revivals in their various forms.

View Full Image

REICH
Dave Plunkert
REICH
REICH
Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Dwight Macdonald, J.D. Salinger, Paul Goodman, William Burroughs and other bohemian culture heroes were among his followers: examples of what Lionel Trilling unsettlingly called "the moral urgency, the sense of crisis and the concern with personal salvation that mark the existence of American intellectuals." Reich won a particular following among intellectuals, artists and cultural spokesmen who were looking for a new revolution after becoming disillusioned with communism.

They had retained their credulity, however—they saw little suspicious in Reich's claim to have explained everything with his discovery of the very ur-stuff of the universe, called "orgone," in a pot of beef stew, among other places.

He said he could trap it in boxes that he sold, called "accumulators." People sat in them and absorbed orgone, thereby curing everything from cancer to the common cold. The process provided William Burroughs with a "spontaneous orgasm—no hands." Reich had so much fame and scientific respect that, shortly after his arrival in America in 1939, he could get Albert Einstein to test an orgone box. Einstein's response was cool.

When Reich tried to patent the box, a patent officer wrote back to him: "Do you think I want to go out on a limb and to make myself look ridiculous?"

Yet there would come to be countless adherents less well known—professors, medical doctors, disgruntled seekers "burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo of night," in the famous formulation of Allen Ginsberg, who himself underwent Reichian therapy in 1948. And they're still out there, with their magazines and websites.

America has long been a land of opportunity for spiritually inclined theorists, especially if they have foreign accents, along the lines of G.I. Gurdjieff, with his magnetic treatments in the first half of the 20th century, or Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, with his mantras in the second half.

Working in Reich's favor was his timing. The 1940s and '50s in America were the age of the Kinsey Reports and wife-swapping. Of women worried about "frigidity" and of their men, who worried about it even more.

Near the end of his life, Mailer spoke with Christopher Turner about his quest for the apocalyptic orgasm, confessing that he'd never attained it, adding: "Intellectuals never had good orgasms." Yet in Mailer's youth, Mr. Turner writes, "the orgasm became a battleground: was the 'apocalyptic orgasm' the key to revolution, as Reich and Mailer claimed, or a false aim that camouflaged the hipster's narcissistic and hedonistic selfishness?"

The title of Mr. Turner's book—"Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the Sexual Revolution Came to America"—is misleading. This is a biography of Wilhelm Reich, not a cultural history, but it's easier to sell if it has a title with a word like "orgasmatron," which may have first appeared in the 1973 Woody Allen movie "Sleeper."

Reich was big, handsome and sexy, with a frenetic innocence about him, along with a martyred air that was emphasized by the stigmata of severe psoriasis. The German accent helped—would any American have paid attention to Freud if he'd been Seth Hawkins from Brattleboro, Vt.? Reich was greeted as a rogue saint by educated progressives who had been inspired to rebel against puritans and Victorians by sexologists such as Havelock Ellis and by birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger.

His spirit hovered over the orgies of Greenwich Village and San Francisco's North Beach. It influenced other psychotherapy—Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif., and Arthur Janov's primal therapy, which involved much flailing about while screaming "The Primal Scream," as Janov's popular book was called. (Mr. Turner reports that Mailer lined one of Reich's "orgone accumulators" with soundproof carpeting so that he could absorb Wilhelm's orgone while screaming along with Arthur at the same time.)

The boxes were Reich's most famous invention, more so even than the orgone cannons that he said could make rain and shoot down flying saucers. The accumulators looked like stunted wooden phone booths with a hole cut in the door. Reich himself couldn't quite explain why orgone accumulated in these things. And what was orgone, anyway?

In a letter to President Eisenhower, Reich said that it was "the primordial, mass-free Cosmic Energy that fills the Universe. This energy rules all living processes and the lawful behavior of celestial function; it determines our emotions, our First Sense of Orientation, judgment and balance."

It was something that explained everything.

Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the Sexual Revolution Came to America
By Christopher Turner
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 532 pages, $35

He found orgone everywhere. The great aha! moment had happened in the late 1930s, when Reich threw meat, potatoes, vegetables, milk and eggs into a pot of water, cooked it for half an hour, drew off some of the broth, then studied it under a microscope.

He saw movements, he saw colors, but most importantly he saw orgone where other scientists saw only bacteria or ordinary Brownian motion. Further studies persuaded him that orgone changed the weather, made the sky blue and accounted for gravity. He said he'd seen it emanating—a blue glow—from a copulating couple.

Reich's appeal was emotional, not rational—the appeal of a born loser who never stopped believing that he was a winner. As such he was a perfect complement to American intellectuals—born winners who never stop thinking they're losers. He had wives who worshiped him and then left him, only to defend him later; his children speculated that he was either syphilitic or manic-depressive, and then they continued his work.

Mr. Turner describes in detail Reich's life as a refugee who never quite found refuge. He was born in 1897, in what is now Ukraine, to a rich Jewish landowner who forbade him to play with the Yiddish-speaking children in a nearby village. He spied on his mother's trysts with his tutor and watched his father abuse her until she killed herself. He came to believe that his father was a spaceman, a heritage that accounted for his own alienation, he said.

Reich survived fighting on the losing side in World War I, but his family lost its money. He went to shrink-wrapped Vienna and became one of Freud's anointed ones until a schism over orgasms. He decided that Freud had erred in using libido as a metaphor instead of seeing it as a physical force that could lead to world peace, freedom and personal salvation. (As we said in the Reich-inspired '60s, "Make Love, Not War.")

After an argument with Freud in 1929, he left Vienna for Berlin, joined the Communist Party and claimed that better orgasms would prevent fascism. The communists ejected him, and the Nazis persecuted him as a free-loving Jewish communist. Denmark tossed him out because of his threat to the morals of youth. Reich did indeed argue the virtues of sex between children, and he approved the teaching of masturbation, thereby suggesting the possibility that there are human beings who can't figure it out for themselves.

Shunned as a crank and menace in one northern European country after another, Reich embarked in 1939 for America, where his ideas found support in radical journals. He became famous and influential, but his eventual downfall was as swift as his rise. Consumer advocates in the press began to draw attention to his questionable medical claims, and Food and Drug Administration agents started investigating the orgone accumulators and the pamphlets and books that Reich sold across state lines.

Reich moved his headquarters from Forest Hills, Queens, to the isolation of a farm in Rangeley, Maine. Inspired by Gary Cooper in "High Noon," among other western stars, he took to wearing a cowboy hat. He bought a lot of guns. He drank himself into stupors. He assaulted his female partner and threatened to kill her. He believed that the airplanes flying over Rangeley and over his son's school in England were sent by Eisenhower to protect him and his family.

In the 1950s, a court ordered Reich to cease and desist from selling his wares. He violated the injunction and ignored a summons to a trial. The government handcuffed him and hauled him into court. He rejected legal counsel and represented himself. The judge suggested an insanity defense. Instead, Reich pushed on. The jury deliberated between 10 and 15 minutes before pronouncing him guilty.

He was sentenced to two years in a federal prison. He died in his cell in 1957, after serving one year and days before a parole hearing that would probably have freed him.

The FDA did him one favor. It turned him into a martyr by smashing up his orgone accumulators and burning his books.

More than half a century after his death, Reich still lures believers. Amazon lists more than 100 books on or by Reich. (I stopped counting.) There's the American College of Orgonomy, founded by a Reich disciple, and the Institute for Orgonomic Science. The Orgoneblasters site promises that it will use orgone to protect you against aliens, in the spirit of Reich in Arizona.

The sexual revolution no longer has any spiritual or political claims. By now, it has devolved into ubiquitous pornography (of which Reich disapproved), the nihilistic hedonism of college students and the much-publicized oral sex among middle schoolers. (Reich favored only genital sex.) Saul Bellow would end up describing the sexual revolution as "a 30-year disaster."

In fairness, we should put this disaster in context. Unlikelihood is the cornerstone of many faiths and cults, and intellectuals are at least as apt to join them as the average client of a roadside palm reader. One thinks of all the well-educated conspiracy theorists who cannot accept the fact that everything cannot be known, who lack what Keats praised as "negative capability," people who are not "capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

Then there is the problem of belief by the very intelligent that intelligence can explain anything, a belief that led Noam Chomsky from brilliance in linguistics to gnomic rants about politics or Nobel laureate William Shockley from inventing the transistor to theorizing about racial inferiority. And let us always remember psychology's "recovered memories," which led to a national panic over satanic child-sacrifice rituals in the 1980s.

Maddening and saddening. And how banal and tedious accounts of sexual politics can be after a while, especially when Mr. Turner's occasional lapses of organization and transitions suggest that his book was either over- or under-edited. Most readers will be more interested in the book's social history of radical American intellectuals since World War II and its demonstration of their startling and even dangerous gullibility.

There is also the tragic spectacle of a tortured man and his terrible earnestness. Shakespeare would have understood.

—Mr. Allen, a former writer and editor for the Washington Post, won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2000.
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Additional freebie--quotes from sex researchers

[sexuality.about.com]

What a farce.
Reese Jones, the gazillionaire internet venture capitalist investor, who lists in the fine-print, that he has interests/associations (or something) to Wikipedia, is still completely expunged from OneTaste and Wikipedia in general.
Why?
He has be taken out repeatedly.
Why and how?

As shown here, Reese Jones has now admitted in the fine-print that he is somehow involved with Wikipedia. [forum.culteducation.com]
[forum.culteducation.com]

So how is he involved?
Did he put money into it at the start, or currently?
Is he on some type of unpublished board?
What is the deal?

And if so, who is the Admin at Wikipedia that keeps the whitelist of "friends of wikipedia" that keeps their name out of wikipedia?
It is so obvious. All it will take is one tech journalist to look into this, and it will be news story of backroom influence at Wikipedia.


Reese Jones Google+
Trustee Singularity University [plus.google.com]
"Trustee at Singularity University, experienced entrepreneur, biophysics theorist, Chairman of Genome Compiler Corporation & other boards, inventor: twisted pair networking, sound on internet & telephone controlled entertainment"
Words related to Reese Jones:
"...Wikipedia, founder board trustee Singularity University, open source, creative commons, DSM, EFF, TED, FutureMed, internet archive & open source public education."


Meanwhile, the One Taste wikipedia entry reads like a paid advertisement.
And Reese Jones name has been deleted from it, when his name comes up as being the Registrant/Admin/Billing/Tech for a OneTaste website domain!
As well as previously admitting to being the moneybags for the operation. Of course, investing and probably owning a OneTaste sex group/sect might jump out on the CV, so it needs to be left out.

-----------------------
Domain ID:D17378415-LRMS
Domain Name:ONETASTE.INFO
Created On:20-Apr-2007 02:34:18 UTC
Last Updated On:19-Feb-2010 08:22:45 UTC
Expiration Date:20-Apr-2013 02:34:18 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Network Solutions (R122-LRMS)

Registrant ID:C10729790-LRMS
Registrant Name:Reese Jones
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street1:592# Pleasent Valley Road
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Vacaville
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:95688
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.70744#####
Admin ID:C10729790-

Admin Name:Reese Jones
Admin Organization:
Admin Street1:592# Pleasent Valley Road
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:Vacaville
Admin State/Province:CA
Admin Postal Code:95688
Admin Country:US


Billing ID:C10729790-LRMS
Billing Name:Reese Jones
Billing Organization:
Billing Street1:592# Pleasent Valley Road
Billing Street2:
Billing Street3:
Billing City:Vacaville
Billing State/Province:CA
Billing Postal Code:95688

Tech ID:C10729790-LRMS
Tech Name:Reese Jones
Tech Organization:







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Words related to Reese Jones: Berkeley, biophysics, patents, phones, broadband, telephone controlled entertainment patent, phone controlled thermostats, sensor network energy management, 2600, first twisted pair networking for computers, telephone wire, CAT5, COAX, RJ11, RJ12, RJ45, 10BaseT, voice, speech, first sound in computers, first sound over internet, media on internet, human limbic networks, LAN, PET, MRI, fMRI, PhoneNET, Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, 802.3, BPL, BaseT, MacRecorder, Soundedit, Timbuktu, Farallon, BMUG, Macintosh's origin [youtu.be] Tax policy, inet, Netopia, 10 BaseT, Broadband, WiFi Standards, DSL, DLNA, HPNA, COAX MoCA, Wi3, wideband, cellular Picocell, Femtocell, wireless sensors, mesh, smart grid, smarter power grid, super grid, enernet, wires, wireless, cellular sensor networks, biological networks, limbic system, limbic connection, limbic networks, quorum sensing, limbic resonance, voice internet, memes, bemes, electronic life, SpeakSoft, 411, 118, kgb, RCDb, Blu-ray, BD-Live, Netflix, Amazon, Chabot Space/Science, Maya Skies, Bill Nye Climate Guy, Digital Dome, X Prize, Moon X, Space X, Zero G, Moon Express, Google Lunar X Prize, Tricorder, Intellimedicine, Self Health, astrobiology, space science, NASA, NEO asteroid mitigation UN treaty, synthetic biology, synthetic theology, bioinfomatics, read/write design DNA, Genome Compiler Corporation, GCC, innovation, evolution, forecast, future, entrepreneurship, start up, VC, Accel, August, Telesoft, Sequoia, Liberty, Current Group, CCV, brand, design, digital media, venture capital, strategy, Stanford, UCSF, QB3, CITRIS, LBL, LBNL, Brain Imaging, Nuclear Medicine, [13C]Carbon, NMR, fMRI, rtfMRI, PET Carbon-11, [11C]choline, [11C]methionine, SAMe methylation biochemistry in schizophrenia, bio-psychiatry, brain research, Definitive Stories, Wikipedia, founder board trustee Singularity University, open source, creative commons, DSM, EFF, TED, FutureMed, internet archive & open source public education.


Occupation
Venture Capital Strategy

Employment

Singularity University
Trustee, 2009 - present
Netopia
Farallon
Current Group LLP
RCDb Related Content Database
LiveBooks
Jobvite
Lawrence Berkeley Lab (LBL, LBNL)
Chabot Space Science Center
BMUG
UCSF
Smaato
Mediabolic/Rovi
Brightstar
Definitive Stories
UC Berkeley
Rotani Wireless
Wi3 Inc
Moon Express
IntelliMedicine
Genome Compiler Corporation
Self Health Network



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2011 04:28AM by The Anticult.

Reese Jones still shilling for the bogus orgasmic meditation, and shilling for Nicole Daedone to get her own TV show on the OWN Oprah network.
Yeah, Oprah needs to foist even more crazy cultic garbage down people's throats.

James Arthur Ray, recently convicted in the deaths of his own seminar attendees, also got his big break on Oprah. [forum.culteducation.com]


Nicole Daedone, still selling it with Robert Kandell.
A real un-amusing quote from Daedone about a "sexual predator", considering the context.
Talk about a Freudian slip.

This entire thing is a creepy freak-show, like a real life version of Stanley Kubrick's movie Eyes Wide Shut. Except this One Taste show, is far weirder and more disturbing than the Kubrick movie, considering the targets.


[twitter.com]

NicoleDaedone Nicole Daedone
"I'm in Los Angeles where Ihop has valet parking and there are sushi rolls called "the sexual predator". Ha! I'm at home!"
22 Oct

[twitter.com]

Reese_Jones Reese Jones
"Orgasmic Meditation can be meditation"
6 Oct

Reese Jones
Reese_Jones Reese Jones
Why Meditation And Orgasm Feel The Same To The Brain huff.to/obwsMb via @huffingtonpost
6 Oct

Yelp SF has some very blunt but truthful reviews of the reality of OneTaste, that even with the wealth of Reese Jones and his connections, One Taste haven't been able to get removed.
Yes, they can control and influence Wikipedia, but not Yelp, not yet anyway.

And of course, One Taste members try to fill up Yelp with their nauseating shill advertising posts.


Some truthful reviews archived below, in case Mr Moneybags twists some arms and tries to get the truth expunged. (so much for open source public education on the internet).
One Taste, a real creepy organization, using very powerful persuasion techniques on people.
And the flashing of the public is not random, its probably a combination of people losing normal boundaries, and also street-marketing to bring in paying male customers.
Sounds like the One Taste recruiters are either on commission, or some sort of OneTaste Points system based on recruits brought through the door.

All of this garbage about OMing, its just the distraction of the magicians hand, while the real magic trick happen where you are not looking.
Its very obvious, and anyone with ANY training in these types of persuasion techniques sees EXACTLY what they are doing in about 5 minutes.
One Taste are very very obviously using quite powerful persuasion and influence techniques on their targets, who have ZERO knowledge or training in the techniques being used on them.

The average person at best, just feels weirded out and manipulated, which is a good start.
But the techniques of One Taste are a graded system, starting with basic meetings, and then escalating, just like old Victor Baranco did.
MindFuckers, like the book says.
They lure people down the garden path, and one they get into people's sexuality, and start messing around with it, all bets are off.
Such incredible intellectual dishonesty from those shilling for One Taste, its truly revolting.

They are even going as low as to do basic Behaviorism on people. That is, to dangle "pleasure" in front of them, like Pavlov dangling a steak over a dog and ringing a bell.
One Taste marketing Pleasure, is just a cynical marketing move, which is based on old school behaviorism, where people are treated like meat.
When you see such a crass style of manipulation, its time to run. Its grotesque.

But this social engineering project is doomed to fail, human's are not "human limbic networks" or electronic switches on a phone to be manipulated and monetized for profit. (see above).
Really, the dishonesty is epic and brazen.
And they are not going away, more money is being invested in it, more marketing.
It will probably be a number of years before the chickens come home to roost.


-----------------Yelp excerpts for archive and research-----------------

[www.yelp.com]

5/8/2011

Uck. Nasty. AVOID.

::shudder::

the members are sketch and often playing peek-a-boo out the windows flashing passersby on the street with their boobs or junk when they aren't outside chain smoking on the benches. and they are ALWAYS outside chain smoking on the benches!!!



6/1/2011

This is a sex cult straight up. If you value your integrity and sound mind, start running now, I can't believe thus place is still in business. Basically recruits young impressionable women to be the sex toys of older men. So disgusting and wrong, seriously, that is Nicoles job for her boss in NY. Hasn't been the first sex cult and it won't be the last. OMing- I can't believe people actually think that this group sex thing is healthy. Yuck, double yuck.



6/18/2011

Three separate people on three separate occasions have tried to recruit me to "visit their community" at OneTaste. I have three cheesy business cards to prove it. Two of them looked really strung out and desperate for recruits, but the third and final one really tried to sell me...

The last time I was propositioned, the recruiter went out of the way to say "ITS NOT A CULT," followed up by "Its a cool group, you can walk around naked all day and finger as many women as you want". I suppose OneTaste give a whole new meaning to cult "members" but I digress.

Listen, OneTaste, its really nice that you occasionally let your cult members out in public once and while, but it shouldn't be at the public's expense.




8/8/2011

oneTaste is a cult, straight up. Just do some real research on google and see for yourself.





1/11/2010

This place creeped me out when I went. I think it's a cult. They kept calling me repeatedly after I didn't come to any more meetings also.


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2011 06:46PM by The Anticult.