By the way, can anyone find anywhere else, where the specific techniques of attempting to Engineer seemingly 'Voluntary' Consent in people, are being analyzed?

Because in fact, that is the precise business of the LGAT Guru. Its all in their waivers.
Its doesn't matter what the "content" is, what matters is they have designed very complex and advanced systems which have evolved over several decades, going back to the Godfather Werner Erhard.

The entire LGAT seminar system, from first contact in a book, or now YouTube, to the intro seminar, all the way up to seminars costing 20K-50K, then private coaching for as much money as you have, its all based around one idea.
Influence. Engineering seemingly "voluntary" consent in people.
They want you to think that THEIR idea for you was YOUR idea for you. That is not speculation, that is exactly what they teach in the influence sales seminars. So they want you to think its YOUR idea to spend 10K you don't have on a seminar, when in fact its been programmed in such a way to lead people to that place.

That is done using dozens and probably hundreds of techniques, like all the social influence tech which can operate as simply as Peer Pressure.
Most sophisticated are the tech like Double-Binds, False-Choices, permissive thought-leading, and other subtle tricks. The best are not coervice, but permissive and open-ended.
They might say...."some people have called me a walk-in Spirit, Enlightened Being, a God or the center of the New Age, but is that true?"
Its like saying...don't picture the Blue Man Group in your mind right now. You picture it.

Other techniques are how when LGAT Gurus constantly harp about "Integrity" and "keeping your commitments". That is part of the same sales process.
[twitter.com] "SW participant Stephen Ray says #jamesray preached "non stop about honor, integrity & accountability"

What is the #1 enemy of the salesperson? Ask a salesperson. BUYERS REMORSE. You go home, and THINK and CHANGE YOUR MIND, and then cancel the next day after the salesperson worked on you for hours. That drives salespeople nuts.
So they try to innoculate that out of you, as much as possible, with Integrity and keeping your commitments...to paying them. (this does not apply to James Ray, of course. He's too busy Tweeting all day to reply to Tweets from former customers who he ripped off for thousands).

So James Ray didn't think this stuff up, its all based on decades of trial and error in the advanced LGAT seminars. These guys take dozens of the best LGAT seminars, and copy their methods.
They might not even know how it all works, but just that it increases upselling and profits.
Its about the numbers. Ask anyone in Landmark.

But the entire system, is about how to manipulate and engineer what seems like Voluntary consent, to buy what they want you to buy, and do what they want your to do, and have you think it was your idea.
All they need to do is get you to SIGN THE CONTRACT, and have it last 3 days, then they have it for good. That's the game in a nutshell.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2010 11:50AM by The Anticult.

My apologies for contributing to the mistake over Stephen Ray being a brother of Death Ray, I also jumped to a conclusion as I was aware that his brother has participated at events.

It was my mistake. Thanks JP for the link clarifying it.

If you want to really punish your brain, most libraries have the DVD You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. Its a rip-off of The Secret, New Age talking heads, all Hay House writers.

Interestingly, there is a frame of Louise Hay's first booklet, Heal Your Body, which if you freeze the DVD you can read it, and it lists the seminars/trainings she attended in the 1970's.
Silva Mind Control, SCI, est, Rebirthing, Gestalt Synergy, The Advocate Experience, Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Yes, that's right, Louse Hay also studied NLP in the 1970's, along with Werner Erhard and est.


The movie shows a lonely depressed messed-up mumbling woman in her 30's (demographic?) wandering the countryside, until she finds the secret affirmation, and of course her SOULMATE MAN. No one ever went broke telling people they can find their soulmate man, by buying their product.

Of course, the disclaimer at the end of the DVD says NOT to use the DVD for any mental, emotional, physical, or medical problem! Meanwhile, the entire DVD says the exact opposite.



The worst guy in the DVD extras, is Greg Braden. This guy is off the charts. He claims he knows some "practitioners in China" who are able to "cure cancer in 3 minutes" and make the tumor vanish.
Without even looking it up yet, who thinks there is a secret clinic in "China" associated with Greg Braden, that will charge people with cancer 30K for some hand-waving? Its unbelievable they can get away with this, but they know just how to say it, to not get charged for making illegal medical claims, yet still make the claim.


Wayne Dyer actually demonstrates Applied Kinesiology (AK) in the DVD extras.
You can see Wayne Dyer doing play-acting grunting, to make it more convincing.

But it all makes sense now, why James Ray promotes Applied Kinesiology.

You can make a Applied Kinesiology home-test. Get a scale, and put it on a flat table, and zero it. Then push down 2 ways with one arm, once with the back of the hand, then with the palm. With the palm down you can easily press with 2x the force, as the muscles are stronger.
That is the scam of Applied Kinesiology.
The guy pushing your arm down is able to apply more than 2x the force, of you trying to push your arm up. Worse, when you push up in AK, you can't use your body weight, like when you push down, so the guy on top has perhaps 4x the force.
Even worse, if a male like James Ray is pushing down on a females arm, he easily would have much more than 4x the force, especially if done standing.
Some AK is done with the victim on their KNEES while the lazy AK is sitting, that must function as a special bonus for the AK guy, to have the client on her knees.

So Applied Kinesiology (AK) gives James Ray COMPLETE CONTROL of your responses to his questions.

They sell AK as a lie detetector, so James Ray can ask his inner circle female followers any question, then control the answer. Its being used by guys like Ray as another tool, to control what the victim thinks is "true".
Engineering consent, and actually taking control of what the person believes is "true".

Of course, there are many AK people who "believe" in what they are doing, and of course make money doing it. But James Ray is not one of those people, he sees how it works, its a tool of control.

If anyone asks to do AK, just reverse the arm position. Have them try to PUSH UP with the back of their hand, and you PUSH DOWN with your palm, and then you can control the process. Grunt a bit to make it seem you are pushing harder when you are not.
Its another outright scam that gives the person ON TOP total control, and in the hands of someone like James Ray, a powerful tool to take ABSOLUTE CONTROL on a personal level of his inner circle followers sense of what is "true", as they ask deep personal questions to be answered.
That is truly diabolical.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2010 10:24PM by The Anticult.

Has this video been posted in this thread yet? I can't remember and I can't find it.

[www.youtube.com]

The video above is most illuminating. It's a demonstration of AK performed by James Randi, not James Ray. One difference between these 2 Jameses is that Randi's not trying to sell anyone anything.

Shimon, all conmen use the principle first perfected by the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

She covered her house with candy and treats so she could lure children into her oven. Festooning the house with broccoli and spinach wouldn't have worked as well, and decorating it with skulls and crossbones wouldn't have worked at all.

IOW, you can't put the kids in the oven, or the butts in the seats, unless you can get them in the door. Sure, you could go out, tackle people into the trunk of your car, and then drive them to your venue, but that's strenuous, time-consuming, and overtly illegal.

Much better to offer people something they want, so they walk through your door of their own "free will". The cops can't arrest you for that, and your victims will blame themselves (cause there are no victims and everyone should take 100% responsibility for their actions) when they realize they were duped. If they ever do realize that.

Because, as the Sedona Death Lodge demonstrates, even when people are roasting in an oven they don't always realize some con artist lured them to their deaths.

I think what you're missing, Shimon, is not some "manipulation" of the test. You're missing the manipulation itself.

Of course our bodies have wisdom; our central and peripheral nervous systems run throughout our bodies. But can AK access that wisdom? I'm convinced it can't, but I think it would be totally great if it could. It certainly looks plausible enough, but look again at the candy-covered witch's house: looks deceive.

Trimming the house with wonderful, delicious candy served the witch's interest; bedecking it with skulls would have served the children's interests. But at first glance it doesn't look that way, does it? Free candy!! YAY!! Scary skulls!! YUCK!!

James Ray did not "turn" from any sort of teachings and become a monster. He's always been a monster. He's never followed or practiced any philosophy he's promoted. He's just been looking for whatever will attract the public. If you go to the Wayback Machine and look at his website from 2004, he was pimping Speed Reading courses! Really, it's embarrassing.

Quote
shimon

Quote
Penelope
James Ray Recommends Hawkins and Demonstrates Applied Kinesiology


i watched this video with james ray. i have seen similar ones, by wayne dyer and other new age teachers, they all like to use this demonstration i think. it is kind of powerful, and makes a point. there might be some truth to it too. the body might indeed know what is good and what is bad for it. i do not believe in ktesting as hawkins does with regards to rating people and things, but this kind of test as demonstrated by ray seems legitimate.

this is the hard thing for me. i watch a clip like that and james ray doesnt seem so bad and seems to share some good teachings, about go towards what strengthens you and avoid what makes you go weak. how did he turn from that, those teachings into the monster he was where he let 3 people die and many others get injured. was he not weaking himself by controlling them and not encouraging them to leave the sweat lodge, but encouraging them to stay. he is not following or practicing what he is teaching. but isee not any harm in this video. but maybe i am missing something and all these teachers are manipulating the test, i dont know. but thank you for posting it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2010 10:34PM by Christa.

I quoted The Anticult here, at another thread next door.

The google searches are my own.

[forum.culteducation.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2010 10:34PM by corboy.

One of the sadder things that have been reported, is that there are apparently some followers of James Ray who had been seriously injured in previously sweat lodges, that kept following him and going back?
On top of that, they are going to spend every dollar they don't have to keep coming back and pay to WORK at the seminars, to get hurt even more.

Virtually every LGAT seminar system, has a core group of seminar junkies in that position, who have been lured in, and are being almost totally influenced, managed and controlled.
As seen in the James Ray situation, often their families have never really heard anything about the Guru, as of course sometimes the Guru tells them to keep it a secret. (of course so the family doesn't start sticking their nose into things, like where all their money has gone).

The Guru casts a wide net lookinf for his targets, lures them in, recruits who he wants, wounds them repeatedly, breaks them all the way down, sometimes uses sex to create deep emotional bonds, takes every dollar they can borrow, gets them to PAY to work for him for years, and when they are spent..then what?

Then she is another Jane Doe to him.

'By the way, can anyone find anywhere else, where the specific techniques of attempting to Engineer seemingly 'Voluntary' Consent in people, are being analyzed?'

There has been quite a lot of academic analysis of this in the political and marketing spheres, in fact most disciplines are aware of the subject in a peripheral way that pertains to the discipline--as an example psychologists are supposed to be aware of and guard against inappropriate transference, scientists reveal their own bias to be taken into account etc. but I doubt that a complete picture of a complex con using such methods has been analysed elsewhere on a public access board.
(I don't doubt that some obscure academic has studied and analysed such a thing somewhere and I would like to see it if such a thing has been done.)

For me sales and PR has to be the most obvious area to look at as that yields the most reward, politics seems to lag well behind big business in structuring workable solutions to its problems.

I don't have much interest in such areas myself and the most interesting I find are the general commentators, modern philosophers such as Zizek, mainly because struggling with his ideas forces me to think for myself, particularly about whatever subject is obsessing me at the time.

There are some interesting links that I found, Bernays of course formalised this as a tool of control:
[classes.dma.ucla.edu]

and Chomsky wrote extensively on it, though I have to say that I found reading him so painfully boring that I quit. You can find the same stuff in other places if you know what you are looking for:
[en.wikipedia.org]

I am told that the political scientist Howard Zinn who died recently is worth reading but I haven't read much of his beyond a few short articles.

Of course 'engineering consent' is about the unwitting transfer of power and no-one who is able to reliably do this is going to spread that knowledge across the internet for any old Tom Dick or Harry to bone up on and use to cook people to death. You have to pay untold thousands of bucks to a tricky NLP charlatan to get even close enough to get a whiff of that particular philosophers stone ;-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2010 10:40PM by Stoic.

Weird coincidence about the AK Applied Kinesiology test, which was posted before seeing the question. Psychic powers? (not)
AK Applied Kinesiology is a scam about muscle power. That is a fact.
Reverse the arm position as described above, and watch the AK person sweat like Nixon in the TV debate.
Then they will say...you can't reverse the arm position!
Its all about muscle strength FORCE imbalance. And that is real FORCE, as in actual basic physics.
AK Applied Kinesiology is a SCAM. Some AKers are self-deluded, some are not.
James Ray was not, he uses it as a tool of POWER.

If anyone wants to experiment for fun, try the Ideomotor Response from self-hypnosis. [www.skepdic.com]
But only by yourself, not by some Guru. You can ask any question, and get a Yes/No response. Its as spooky as the Ouiji board game. But its not accurate, its a parlor game.

But please stay away from all AK Applied Kinesiology people, as due to the muscle force imbalance, they can and will take TOTAL CONTROL of your responses, and you won't notice. Some of them are self-deluded, some are not.
That is extremely dangerous when you think about where it can lead.
No wonder James Ray picked up on AK Applied Kinesiology.
In his hands, literally, its a tool of absolute POWER over your responses.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2010 10:49PM by The Anticult.