Dear friends and users of this message board:
Cult Education has a wealth of information--archives, lists of articles and books.
However, there are items that are pre-internet or that may not fit exactly into the criteria used for inclusion but that some of us have personally found useful.
Mention them here.
I'll go.
Online searching
Want to find out if a group's leader or guru has published anything? Go to www.bookfinder.com
Even if you don't purchase anything, this site will list titles, editions and dates. You can order items from your library by loan if you cannot afford to purchase them.
Two, if doing in depth research on a particular group, study all editions of particular book published for use by its members. Content may change. And those changes may be very important.
Amazon.com (include the Amazon.com.uk and Amazon.com.ca to look at what UK readers and Canadians have to say. )
Look at the one and two star reviews as well as the 5 and 4 star reviews. Some valuable information may turn up in such reviews. Be patient and read.
I have not yet read this but learned there is a book, Google Hacking. If you are serious about this stuff, have a peek. Run a google search and see if you can read some excerpts.
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www.bookfinder.com]
putting something between a pair of quotation marks "AAAAA" means only citations containing AAAA show up first.
An asterisk * stands for any character, even a blank space. So if you are not sure if it is Tammy Sam or Tommy Sam you can use T*mmy Sam in your preliminary search.
Your initial search may turn up stuff that has nothing to do with what you are interested in. Suppose you run a search for family and your search pulls up citations for the rock band with that same name.
What you want to do is tie your search to a term that restricts the search in some places and reduces the number of citations for the rock group.
You can do this various ways. You can put a minus sign in front of terms such as music, musicians, lyrics singing -music -lyrics -singing. Using the minus sign programs your search to exclude citations including those terms.
Suppose you think your group (group A) is based only in one town or state in the US (Arizona).
If you program the search to include just "group A" and "Arizona" that can help you zero in.
But...once you get to the group's material, do some reading. They might have opened some new ashrams in other states or even other countries. Run your next search and include those countries.
Variant spellings. Investigate those. In one case, a guru (now deceased) had different spellings of his name: Ramsuratkumar and Ram Surat Kumar.
One interesting method is to put the group or guru's name in the search slot. And then, in exact quotes try things like
"I left" or "lost my boyfriend, husband, fiancée, girlfriend, sister, brother, mother"
And...always take care to run searches about money and property.
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Be aware that many groups have become internet savvy. They may Complaints about them may be online but may be buried, while the positive descriptions and glowing testimonials predominate. They may find ways to incorporate 'cult' into their own literature so as to frustrate searches. Don't be deterred.
Terms that can be helpful:
state of, federal, county of, finances, money, settlement, alleged, allegation, appellate, defendant, court, plaintiff, defendant, fire regulations, zoning regulations, immigration. If something has landed in legal records and those have not been sealed, you may find something if anything done by the leader or group is public record in legal proceedings. That's the terminology used in such reports.
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If the group or leader that concerns you claims to be Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu (or Native American)
it helps tremendously to learn about the culture and belief system from which your leader and group claims to originate--or claims to have superseded.
Key thing is learn to use material written by people who respect a culture but have no vested interest in romanticizing or mythologizing it.
For example, on Hinduism one does well to learn things about India--modern life and its history, especially the phase during the mid to late 19th Century when the 'Hindu Renaissance' developed.
For India, certain items that I have found useful have been:
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta - In his chapter on gang (black collar) crime, Mehta met assassins for Hindu and Muslim gangs. The men in both groups were deeply spiritual.
Holy Cow Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald
Has your guru claimed to be a sadhu or sadvi? This gives the inside dope on what it takes to be a real one.
(Tough reading but valuable) Wandering with Sadhus by Sondra L. Hausner
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www.google.com]
Does your leader claim to be Baul?
Seeking the Bauls of Bengal Jeanne Openshaw. Openshaw found that one isn't a Baul just by calling oneself one, having nasty manners, and making music. It entails a great deal of social pain and estrangement. Having a bunch of people catering to one's whims isn't what its about. To be Baul is to be other, in relation to the social context one is in. So it is a rather fluid state. A guru, sometimes several gurus, figure large in the life of a Baul couple, but its the practice that matters. Reifying a guru into some fixed authority figure runs counter to the fluidity that Bauls cherish. They respect their gurus but are ready to become skeptical even quite satirical if anyone becomes too arrogant and clingy to the role of guru--either as a guru or as a guru enabler/apologist.
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www.google.com]
Tantra (very, very many have written on tantra. This is just one item. Before you go spending big bucks on some western tantrist, do your homework first. Its cheaper to do that in the long run, anyway. And you'll have interesting material to discuss at parties.)
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www.google.com]
Much of what is today taught as yoga and as Hinduism is not ancient, but originates from variations of material taught by Vivekananda, who was given a Western education and had an agenda to modernize India by eliminating the legitimacy of
Sanskrit scholarship. He is responsible for the huge emphasis on the Bhagavad Gita, which today functions as a badge of identity. This article is very difficult, may need to be re read many times. But it is worth it. Corboy assures you it is worth it. I had to read it more than six times before I could get a grasp of it.
The Hindu Renaissance and Its Apologetic Patterns by Agehananda Bharati
This IssueThis Title
The Journal of Asian Studies >
Vol. 29, No. 2, Feb., 1970
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www.jstor.org]
Vivekananda claimed learning was an impediment to spiritual realization. Agehananda Bharati tells us, how can one know learning is an impediment if one doesn't bother to acquire any learning. This also plays into the hands of charlatan gurus who use it to discourage students from doing background reading that would expose the charlatans for what they are.