For all the families that are worried about loved ones, for people trying to recover, for those wondering about becoming involved and for those that are harboring doubts I offer the following reflections as a part of a series on Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.

First, run. Second, run faster. Third, keep running!

When you're in a safe contemplative place ask yourself this question. What is a cult? A shorthand definition of a cult is that the 500 enchanted students endlessly and highly emotively cry out to anybody that will listen that UM is not a cult. While another 50 million people on the planet go, "mate, you're in a cult!".

Another way of defining a cult is that the spiritual, social and personal identity of 'students' or 'members' becomes solely and exclusively defined in terms of their group membership, which becomes conditional on following the prescriptions and proscriptions of a single person who asserts some kind of higher enlightened status, in this case Serge Benhayon, who makes significant financial gains from their existential dependency.

It is in this way that individuals are 'lost' inside and to the cult irregardless of whether the walls that separate that person from the rest of the world are literal or psychological as is the case with UM. This distinguishes a cult.

By contrast, when someone goes to a church, the religious leader doesn't spend their time denigrating the friends and families of that person as being loveless and evil - that your friends and family hold you back from being who you 'truly' are. Nor does the religious leader proclaim, or make inferable, that they have all the answers to the universe, are smarter than anyone else, higher than anyone else, be the greatest lover in the world, know more than any scientist or to be on the same level as Jesus Christ. When individuals go to university to study, the university doesn't alienate, or have an investment in alienating, the student's families and friends. When one person in a family goes to Jenny Craig, that organisation doesn't fill their heads with the idea that the rest of the family eating other food is pranic and evil. Or that if you follow Jenny Craig you're on a higher and better path than everyone else or that even going near McDonalds will fill you with evil Big Mac energy that will later engorge your family in their sleep.

Or when somebody wants to leave the cricket club, it doesn't take years of psychological treatment and deprogramming. And, importantly, the cricket members don't abuse, attack or shun you because you've left the club.

By definition Universal Medicine is unarguably a cult.

And why is it important to identify Universal Medicine as a cult. I'll leave that to next time.

Dear readers, why is it important to identify universal medicine as a cult?

In the end, as Wittgenstein has noted, all such attempts to scientifically describe or define objects are just word games. But with practical and signifying ends.

This point is not lost on 'cult' members, least of all, whose existential self-esteem is entirely conditional on holding the absolute Truth. Hence their endless announcements of knowing the truth, holding the truth, being in the truth and feeling into the truth. One truth and guess what, its their cult's truth. Regardless of the objective fact that, as demonstrated on this site, there are thousands of cults all with members/students/followers/whatevers all protesting that they hold the only absolute truth handed down by their particular chosen one.

Dear Lordy, sometimes you get the feeling that there are so many cults holding the absolute truth that anyone not in a cult and not holding the absolute truth will be the last one out the door and will need to turn the lights out.

It is holding this 'Truth' that protects them from the feeling of worthlessness, emptiness and lovelessness that drives people to join the cult in the first place. This would also help to explain reported correlations between histories of addiction, deep seated feelings of inadequacy, co-dependency and holding the absolute truth.

Accordingly, it is not surprising that this particular word game about whether Universal Medicine is a cult or not, or can be defined as a cult, is of such importance to cult members themselves and is so stridently and aggressively opposed. To do otherwise would plunge them into the abyss of their feelings of worthlessness and meaningless. It represents a fall of grace not just into normalcy and existential poverty, which was already previously unbearable, but also into self-ridicule.

On the other hand, it is equally important for the families, friends and loved ones of cult members to identify any particular cult as a cult. In precisely the same way that providing a diagnosis of a dis-ease or 'mental illness' provides the families, friends and loved ones of a practical way of understanding what is going on - of making sense of a person's behaviour that has changed so radically that it is experienced as irrational, bewildering and disturbing. Understanding that the family member is in a 'cult' allows the family to make sense of the sudden shift in personality that takes place when a cult member, in lived contradiction, believes that they are more loving, more enlightened, more gentle, more honest, while they are objectively acting increasingly hostile, judgmental, accusatory and suspicious. Understanding also opens up the possibility of taking action to protect yourself and your family by getting professional support, seeking information and ending self-blame. Its not you its definitively them!

Identifying that your partner, mother, sister has fallen psychologically prey to a cult also allows the recognition that you are in fact objectively the strong one, full of love who still loves that person and who holds a rational truth of what is actually going on: they've fallen prey to an insidious cult.

In the words of the great George Benson, for all the family members seeking support for someone lost to any cult, including Universal Medicine, 'I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadow'. There's a lot of people trying to hide behind Serge Benhayon's small shadow while you can hold your head up high in the sun.

Next why Universal Medicine, like all cults, need anti-cult cults.

Why does a cult need an anti-cult cult?

Well, first, lets have a good look at the cult vs anti-cult cult rhetoric. What is obvious is that it is all about the audience. Basically, the absolute truth is that both sides need each other. Because the other provides the reason for standing up on stage. There would be no reason for standing up on stage to an audience, who is either cheering or booing, but regardless, totally engrossed with the actor on the stage, without the other. Can you imagine a football game without any opposition? There would be no football game and therefore no audience whose only purpose in being an audience is to see their team win against the opposition. But more importantly there can be no football stars without an audience. Without an opposition there would just be a couple of people throwing a ball around. For fun. No audience. No stars.

And just importantly, like a football game. Its us and them. 'We' won they say. What they really mean is "we are one". Its a kind of false togetherness.

So the whole thing is self-evidently symbiotic egotism where the other provides the absolutely necessary foil for their own self-righteousness. Imagine all that endless shouting into a nameless void. All the shouters would be nothings and nobodies in emptiness. Actors without an audience. Certainly not stars on a stage. As Saussure suggests, this is the semiotics of cult and anti-cult cult where each gives the other meaning.

This would seem to contradict what we already know about both truly spiritual people and whistle-blowers. They both try to avoid the audience. In fact they do everything and anything to avoid an audience. So the story goes, Christ went into the desert, alone. The Buddha sat under the Boddhi tree, alone. And whistle-blowers try to avoid all public attention. They have no need of comparison or an audience (and arguably comparison is always for an audience) because comparative judgement before an audience arises from and serves the ego. On the one hand, the spiritual person is specifically interested in having a relationship to the universal, which necessarily requires, so it would logically seem, transcending the confines of the ego. On the other hand, the true whistle-blower is motivated by the moral issue alone. Certainly not the attention of the audience.

The corollary of this is that what's really at stake in this endless talk of good and evil is an identity struggle whose underpinning function is egotistic aggrandisement. That's why the cult needs the anti-cult cult.

On a lighter note for next time. What is all of this about a cup of coffee and piece of cheesecake?

Avalon:

This is about behavior not belief.

No one cares about benign groups that don't hurt people.

The issue is groups and leaders that harm and/or exploit people through deception, manipulation and undue influence.

When groups and leaders are benign there is no need for whistle-blowers.

Most people hurt by cults don't speak out, but when some do it's most often helpful to society.

Some basic warning signs see [culteducation.com]

Defining a destructive cult see [culteducation.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2016 09:51PM by rrmoderator.

I'm sorry but, isn't the point about HOW you whistle blow?

Hi, I was a student of UM. I can verify that Serge did claim to be Leonardo da vinci many times. I read he said there was no proof of that recently in a byron bay paper. It confirmed to me that he is not who he says. He also used to say he would never back down from his claims but he seems to back down everytime. Its hard to say as I spent so much time and money with him and their services but I now know for certain he is a fraud. I just had to share this to vent. I feel so bloody annoyed that I had to vent especially when I see that they have stopped some of their critics from commenting on other blogs. I was also part of their effort to report journalists and critics so I know that they are terrified of anyone asking any questions. I now know are very valid. My warning is stay away from them as you think you are a part of something amazing when it is really really the opposite.

Glad to hear you made it out the other side. I hope you are now able to rebuild your life, reestablish connections with your family and friends and put this behind you.

So what's all this hooha about a piece of cheesecake and a cup of coffee? (btw both were thoroughly enjoyed - especially the baked New York Cheesecake).

Well, its a well researched fact that when you stress a population of rats they become absolutely neurotic about food. Its the same with people. When we become stressed in a really stressful world, food often becomes the object of our neurotic attempts to control stress, and distress. After all it is probably the one very personal activity that we have control over! What we eat, what we don't eat and when we do and don't eat and who we choose to eat it with or not, as the case may be. And the beautiful thing is that we can control our diet in endless ways. Which means that when the goal of eternal bliss isn't actually met you can always 'perfect' and continually change our diet.

So along comes a pineapple king. In this case Serge Benhayon: the pineapple king of Goonellabah. So the pineapple king exploits that neurotic impulse by designing an entire neurotic list of good and evil foods (sorry, fiery and pranic foods). So it really mines the super-egoistic drive underpinning the neurosis - am I a good girl/boy or a bad girl/boy and should I be punished or loved and is it really mummy's and daddy's fault that I'm this way? The sheer pranic genius of this particular pineapple king is that he's confabulated a holy and unholy board game of snakes and ladders all around food. Each food has its own numerical score. Up you go if you eat boiled carrot soup for breakfast and down the snake you slide if its a turnip.

Just when the players feel like they're beginning to master the original snake and ladder food game, the pineapple king has a craving for lamb, and suddenly the rules are changed. Up you go if you eat a piece of lamb and down you go if its a poor old Angus. Better still, like all good neurotic endeavors there is no final resolution - because the Pineapple King just keeps on 'impressing' new rules to the game. This includes rules that are impossible to predict. Such as, its not holy enough to be eating that sugar free, dairy free, gluten free cake, if all the while you're desiring something that actually tastes like baked New York cheesecake. Because the pineapple king will know that the pranic energy is the same and it is 'thus' 'embedded' in the fiery cake...down the snake you go! Which is just as well because it means that no one can be as holy as the pineapple king from Goonellabah. The suffering and struggling with evil is the point of neurotic impulse in the cult anyway. Its the point of difference between the holy and the unholy. No walls necessary for this cult.

Which is a nice segue on to the next point. The pineapple king is always preaching that the body is a marker for the soul. No truer word could be said for this cult. The neurotic obsession with good and evil food results in a neurotic obsession with the way people LOOK and what they talk about. This is the marker for who is in and who is out, who is good and who is evil. This is the reason why players non-stop brag or guiltily confess what they eat and also who they eat what with. So there's absolutely no need for secret handshakes, armbands, walls, crosses or any other physical sign, because players are immediately identifiable by their extremely low BMI, pallid complexions, lank thinning hair, lined faces, sunken eyes and bright red lipstick. In other words, they are very very thin. Everyone else just looks normal. Of course the really special players do need extra identification. Hence they need to resort to not just thinness or golden triangle pendants, but now secret, secret pendant symbols. (But its not a cult).

Of course this prescribed neurosis around eating means that the players are kept separate from 'normal unholy' folk eating evil foods. Hence they don't normally eat with the unenlightened and potentially evil others (that's us cheesecake eaters), but if they do it becomes a point of super-egotistic superiority. Again food is a marker for who is in and who is out. Who is good, better and bad. No walls necessary. This is a world-wide cult without walls, as long as when we get up at 2AM we all have our carrot soup, and message each other that we've just had carrot soup and not cheesecake for breakfast.

Finally, given that our whole society endlessly objectifies the worth of women in terms of their looks and their excessive underweight, and what they eat and when they eat and how often. It is 'thus' not surprising that the pineapple king from Goonelabah has made many, many millions by exploiting and reinforcing these insecurities, particularly among the dominant white educated middle class. Nor is it therefore a surprise that over 80% of the players are women. Similarly, it is equally unsurprising, that the pineapple king has exploited women's ill health, by making additional millions and millions in his snakes and ladders game. The pineapple king's endless talk about honoring women is just smoke and mirrors. It serves to camouflage the millions he has made perpetuating the same symbolic violence on women where thinness of the body is the only measure of a women's worth.

So what's all this business about cheesecake and coffee? Its about millions and millions in the pineapple king's pocket, by perpetuating and preying on misogynistic values deeply embedded in our society, and embodied in the insecurities of women. All hail the pineapple king!


To all our appreciated and appreciative readers our next tale will be the 'Pineapple King's New Suit' where we come to see how the pineapple king only has a white middle class audience, who chose to see what they are told to see.

I love this analogy.

The Pineapple King's New Suit: where we come to see how the pineapple king mainly has a white middle class audience who choose to see what they are told to see.

So why is it that the followers of Serge Benhayon, are almost exclusively white, educated and middle class? Lets start with the most obvious. The Pineapple King only locates his business, church, university and halls of ageless wisdom in demographics that are ripe for the picking. That is, demographics comprising a largely white,educated and middle class population, which especially includes bored Stepford Wives with expendable incomes looking for meaning. For example, in Australia, its Wollongbar, which is right in the heartland of the alternative, middle class lifestyle demographic. In the UK, its Frome, adjacent to the same alternative middle class lifestyle demographic of Glastonbury.

But when Lord Pineapple gets it wrong it goes really wrong. So for example when he attempted to infiltrate a similar audience in Sydney he first tried Leichardt. Leichardt is multicultural and not alternative. It was a flop. He then made a beeline for Manly, not multicultural and much closer to the hipster alternative moneyed demographic. In other words, Lord Pineapple goes where the middle class money is.

We may wonder why Lord P'head doesn't target the really wealthy areas of say Bath or Vaucluse. The simple answer is that the really wealthy are quite happy with their lot. They don't need a God to lead them to Valhalla. They're already living there. Nor did they get rich by giving their money away to snake oil salesmen from Goonellabah. Another way of thinking about this is to recognise that the really wealthy are already at the top of the social order. The Goonellabah God wants to reshuffle that social order where he's on the top. Not surprisingly they are not interested.

Conversely, the Goonellabah Pineapple God doesn't target the poor working class. They don't have any expendable income. What's more, they are not about to hand over the little money they have for the dubious promise of an upgrade in the next life. Especially from Mr Slick. They are far too grounded to be conned. That is, they are far too grounded in the real world of what is actually happening to be seduced by mere words.

Which takes us to the second reason. The middle class have a special relationship to language and words. In a sense doing things with words to describe reality is more important than the reality itself. Being the masters of language they are also its victims - because they are much more likely to fall under the spell of language. So if someone, lets say Serge the Impressor, comes up with a couple of invented words describing why it is much more evil to leave your inheritance to your children than to him - then they're goners. Or the fact that you can have a bloke out the front teaching the women how to be women, or that by clapping him you're really clapping yourself, or by giving him wealth you're really making an investment. Really? Pull the other one people... it plays Jingle Bells!


The third reason is a bit similar. Lets think about what the white middle class as a whole are really good at. Going to school. Of course that means that you have to be good at words. But it also means that they're really good at being told what to do and being led by someone who has the answers. So the middle class have a predisposition of deference and compliance. Of course, not all the middle class are attracted to cults, but it certainly goes some of the way to explaining what the prerequisite for Universal Medicine membership is. A predisposition for being told what to do within a patriarchal hierarchy. To go further we'd need to recognise that the vast majority of UM'students' are ex-Catholics or ex-other mainstream religions. They are pre-disposed to confession. Additionally, and not coincidentally, an overwhelming number report how they were addicted to substance or alcohol abuse. That is, they have histories of dependence. Furthermore, if you take a straw poll you will find an unusual number of the 'students' either grew up with their family in a cult or have already have been in a number of other recognised cults. That's why they 'know' this one isn't a cult! Haven't these people ever seen Life of Brian? "He's the Messiah. I ought to know because I've followed a few!"

Then along comes the Teacher's-Teacher with his, guess what? - 'School' where the 'students' are endlessly confessing to each other about past indiscretions, how their parents screwed them up and how they've been saved. It's a miracle! And all from the one and only Pineapple King. Here the student's have to endlessly comply with the teacher's lessons: walking gently, eating the right foods, listening to the right music, going to bed at the right time...before the witching hour, speaking and thinking the right way, watching the right shows, talking the right talk and most mindless of all - being told to leave loved ones who 'keep you from yourself'! Its like they have a Woody string that they themselves pull, repeating over and over not "Howdy!", but "I'm feeling into myself"..."I'm feeling into myself!"

Its a perfect co-dependent match! Teacher's-Teacher and eternal students. They even have prefects with special badges.

So returning to the analogy of the Emperor's New Clothes we can see that it has been 'impressed' that the 'school student's' are told what to see and do with psuedo-erudite language. Moreover, they are desperately wanting to be told what to do, see and believe so that they can fit in and belong and so that they can quickly find their place and get the 'right' answer. Of course under these circumstances it is little wonder that they are shocked, defensive and aggressive towards any innocent child/pranic person who is not so needy and isn't easily seduced by the palava.

Next time folks we will explore why a 'Religion', needs to use recruitment tactics akin to a McDonalds advertising campaign of photo-shopped, air-brushed before and after pics to recruit new devotees.