Solea, your post above is extremely helpful. Having those kinds of posts from those recently "inside" these types of groups helps a lot of people. Today, next month, next year, some people will read those posts and maybe they will start to connect the dots for themselves.
Lying: in the LGAT field, they all believe that "all beliefs are lies". There is some truth to that, in that all beliefs are "constructs". But they abuse that by saying...since all beliefs are lies, then there is no such thing as a lie. So then they can say anything they want, no regard for the facts. They become Confidence Artists.
I do agree that a lot of men go into an Ego-Trip about how they are the best at being Ego-less!!
They are basically saying...my Ego is so small it doesn't exist, so that means I am the best!!
As Jon Stewart might say...that is very high on the douchebag scale.
Neale Donald Walsch participated in a blatant Love-Bomb technique for Byron Katie as shown earlier in the thread. My guess is that was some type of book cross-marketing deal. I do not know about his groups, but perhaps the problem there would be if they focussed on HIS writings, or like Eckhart Tolle on his writings only. Its weird how the human power dynamic always seems to screw these things up?
One thing I wanted to drop in.
The Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment.
He put normal people into an environment, and they started going berserk with Power. A must read.
More info here. [
www.zimbardo.com]
Zimbardo has a new book that looks interesting.
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, by Philip Zimbardo
This made me think of the Siddha Yoga group.The POWER the leaders ended up having over people led to people literally going berserk with power, sexual abuses on a large scale, and just outrageous behavior. The Power dynamic feeds into itself.
Also about SYDA, it seems some of the former members of Siddha Yoga has some profound "spiritual experiences" at the time.
One wonders how many of them have considered the idea that maybe someone in the Siddha group slipped something into their tea or beverage?
For example Rajneesh- Osho followers often took the drug "ecstasy".
Osho / Rajneesh Cult Introduced Ecstacy to the West
[
forum.culteducation.com]
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to think of a way to drop a little into the tea or water, or even just give it to a few people, or use a little LSD, or a mix of drugs, etc. That clearly happens.
So if a person was slipped that type of drug at an event, even a small dose, they would think it was the practice that did it. But what if it was a drug? If you never feel that again away from the place, it probably was a drug. People get drugged all the time, even by people in bars.
Also, there are those who are promoting so-called "entheogens" (psychedelics, ecstasy, MDMA, Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, etc) to try to achieve altered states of Oneness with the Universe. What are these guys smoking? Well...
One assumes they never learned the first lesson in Rec-Drug use...you NEVER GET THAT FIRST HIGH AGAIN. So when you do ecstacy, you never hit that high again, and you keep going back, trying other stuff. Next thing you know, you are getting "wasted" every week or day. "Wasted" is a better word, more accurate.
The irony is they are simply taking in chemicals which affect neurotransmitters in the brain. Brain scientists are now clearly showing some of these drugs cause brain damage. (of course there are Shamanic traditions, etc, so there is more to the story).
But, the use of drugs has been rampant in this area for decades, so its not a stretch to think some Guru's henchmen use it on groups of people without their awareness.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/04/2008 02:25AM by The Anticult.