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On another thread, The Anticult wrote: April 05, 2008 03:10PM

There are also LGAT apologists. (Corboy--and possibly Guru apologists, too)

I make the argument there are a growing number of LGAT-cult Ambiguity-ologists! They take the approach of appearing mildly critical, and a bit ambiguous and confused about the LGAT.

If I ran a big LGAT, I would get a few followers to go out there covertly pretending to be a 3rd party, and criticize the LGAT and create some Confusion about it. Then in that confusion implant suggestions how POWERFUL the material is, so its NOT for everyone, just "special" people who can handle it.
(In hypnosis and sales that is called Encouraging Resistance and Disarming Objections).
They encourage the Resistance up front, like a type of Judo. I would get some folks out there to set themselves up with blogs and websites that were Anti-Guru's and Against Guru BS, etc.
Then get them to soft-sell the LGAT through the backdoor. (of course, most of them Believe in their group anyway).

So my view is there are a lot of these covert "middle-ground" people out there now, and its growing fast. They hammer hard on their enemies cults, and hammer a bit on their own too, but only to Disarm Objections.
They are not Cult Apologists overtly.
They are Covert.

That way, their overt sales approach works, and they also have a back-door and side-door for referrals as well. The big cults ALL use Front-Groups.

They ALL use fake Front-People, that has been going on for decades.

Landmark uses that all the time.

Approach a seasoned Landmark promoter, and tell him you think Landmark is a dangerous cult. He most likely will...
"agree that its dangerous...yes...very dangerous...not for everyone, I agree. Only a few can handle that kind of power...not everyone should be given advanced technology...like Landmark..."(etc...that was a BS salespitch, which starts from ambiguous criticism).

Once you find more than a few LIES LIES LIES in these groups, then they are FINISHED.

You can't pussy-foot around or be mealy-mouthed. Sometimes you have to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the bathwater is toxic...

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The last post for tonight is a satire from Buddhajones. We've been so serious lately, I hope this lightens the mood in here for a little bit. :)

Notes from a Mystic Law Compliance Officer
by: Nine Lives
Sun Jan 15, 2012 at 13:45:08 PM PST

Our dearest mroaks inspired me to start re-posting items from the "old" BuddhaJones site.

This satirical piece was first published in July 2000.

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I'm here to set you straight -- you and all your pantywaist friends who think Buddhism is about inner revolution, doing your best, and coming to some sort of realization about your life.

That ain't Buddhism.

Buddhism ain't Buddhism unless you're kicking butts and taking names. That's what I do. I'm a Mystic Law Compliance Officer. I carry a badge.

Oh, sure, I've seen plenty of dharma bums like you.

You think the Mystic Law is self-enforcing. You think that the law of cause and effect functions of its own accord and doesn't need any help from me. That's where you're wrong.

You've heard about the parasite in the lion's bowels? Listen up: Buddhism is like a lion that can't be devoured by predators.

But it can be eaten from the inside by a parasite in its bowels. Parasites are people who think they know about Buddhism and claim to protect it, but they destroy it instead.

That's why you need me.

Think of me as a righteous colonic, an enema of Buddhism.

Don't be naïve. This city is crawling with parasites. Maybe you or someone you love is one of them.

Be paranoid. Be afraid.

I was working the Conformity detail out of Rampart the night the call came through.

The lady said her husband was starting to think for himself. He was developing an appreciation for the fluidity and non-dogmatic nature of the dharma. He was enjoying his Buddhist practice, she said.

I'll never forget the sound of her voice: "Enjoying."

It cut me to the core. I see a lot of heresy in my line of work. I never get used to it.

I grabbed a thick stock of scriptural quotations. I

needed the strongest ones, snipped out of context and thus made more maneuverable and suitable to my purposes. I planned to use them as a cudgel----which is the best way to use any religious text, whether it's the Bible, the Koran or the Gosho.

My job is not a pretty one.

As I sped to the scene, I reminded myself that I have security clearance for and access to the Buddha's true intent.

I'm special. I'm not gonna let some punk challenge me and everything I stand for.

When I showed up at the house, things had gotten ugly. The suspect was in his bare feet, sitting on his living room floor with a bunch of dangerous sympathizers, eating refreshments. They were engaged in illicit conversation about the most sacred and secret teachings.

Raving lunatics all.

When I flashed my badge, the suspect menaced me with the following statement:

"I have to find the Buddha within me and within others. No one can do this for me. So why should I bow to a religious authority who is ultimately arbitrary and impotent?"

His group of pitiful dupes turned their glassy eyes to me.

I had no choice but to hit them hard with a quote about demons, evil, and hell.

"That doesn't scare me," the suspect said. "Would you like a cookie?"

The suspect then lunged at me with a deadly platter of presumably drugged bakery items. I subdued him with a quote about not accepting snacks from slanderers.

"OK, then," he said. "Why don't you sit down and join us?"

Maybe I was getting through to him. Maybe the gravity of his error was dawning on him.

I recited the 26 Admonitions of Nikko Shonin, read the suspect his Miranda rights, and reminded him of his duty to protect the Mystic Law by exterminating parasites.

Suddenly, his eyes gleamed. He asked, "How do you know that you're not a parasite?"

That's when I called for back up. We shot ten canisters of veiled condescension through the windows. And, after a sustained barrage of spite, we bulldozed his house to the ground.

I didn't waste my breath on the answer to his impertinent question. How do I know that I'm not a parasite?

I know. I carry a badge.

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These accounts are readily available to anyone interested in researching them, and much useful and disturbing information can be found in William Yenner's American Guru book and Integral World essays (cf. [5]) as well as Be Scofield's related Integral World essay, all of which describe Andrew Cohen's abusive behavior toward his students in striking and alarming detail [7]. But to quickly give a glimpse of some of the anecdotes and episodes that have made the strongest adverse impression upon me and is motivating me to continue to try to raise public awareness about what I will refer to as Cohen's "mis-integration of spiritual philosophy into life," here are some of the most notable things that come to my mind.
• Cohen ordering that a woman receive four buckets of paint spilled on her head for her lack of appropriate standards of conduct, resulting in the woman going through a traumatized state
• Cohen ordering that "ego" destructive cartoons be continually shown to highlight and make fun of various students' weaknesses of character
• Cohen orchestrating frequent hard face-slapping as a means of disciplining his students
• Cohen requiring students (especially his women students) to spend hours in freezing lake water submerging themselves and reciting incantations to atone for misdeeds, which resulted in severe physical repercussions for at least one student
• Cohen requiring that students give him lavish gifts and frequent large sums of money to "buy back" his good graces to get back into the community once they "falter"
• Cohen requiring students to shave their heads for long periods of time - frequently for a few years - as a demonstration of working to control their problematic ego
• Cohen deciding and ordering who a legitimate partner is for his students to enter into romantic relationships with and/or to marry and possibly have children with (if Cohen permits them to do so)
• Cohen ordering a hoax of his medical doctor student bringing out her surgical kit to amputate one of his student's fingers as a punishment for this student having difficulty writing an introduction to one of Cohen's books, with this student subsequently entering into a traumatized state
• Cohen finding much enjoyment in his ordering extreme physical labor inclusive of digging large ditches with a small shovel, for students who have had continued difficulties in overcoming their egos or have disobeyed his specific instructions
• Cohen overseeing his wife physically beating up a student for disobeying Cohen's instructions for this student to not give advice to another student
• Cohen's extreme condescending behavior toward women, inclusive of his belittling women for not being able to achieve a "universal" perspective on life, which resulted in his "women conditioning" program

These are just some of the highlights that have made it into my immediate consciousness (for the details that support these highlights, see [5], [6], ]7]), and I believe it gives an indication of why I am so concerned about Cohen being promoted in the way that Barbara Marx Hubbard has been promoting him in my course

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I recently read Cohen's 2011 Evolutionary Enlightenment book (cf. [4]). Cohen's book was strongly promoted by Hubbard for us to read in my course, and many of the luminaries in the field of spiritual evolution, including Ken Wilber, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard, wrote lavish praise of the book, which included a spirited forward by Deepak Chopra who expressed how appreciative he is toward Cohen for making him realize that he is now living in a wonderful time to be enlightened. I admit that I did not want to like the book, but in truth I must say that I believe the book has its merits, and that its philosophy is very much in line with that of Barbara Marx Hubbard, Steve McIntosh, Carter Phipps, and that of conscious evolution, although there has also been some strong criticism on the Integral World site in regard to these conscious evolution ideas [10].

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But the infliction of pain on young children, social deviants, and other weaker beings is only one half of a binary solution Dobson has prescribed to his followers for curing America's social ills. As Dobson has consistently made clear to his flock, they must first purify their own souls of sin before striking out, literally, to purify the land.

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When Dobson first entered public life, his understanding of politics was amateur at best. Colson became his counsel, providing him with high-level Republican contacts and help devising a strategy to transform his growing flock into an influential political bloc. Colson could never have fulfilled the strategy on his own. Indeed, no figure in the burgeoning evangelical movement shared Dobson's psychological understanding of his audience on an intimate level. Only Dobson recognized events such as the hard-hat riot as integral parts of a gathering backlash against liberalism. His advocacy of corporal punishment was carefully intended to channel the violent backlash in the streets into a coherent grassroots movement with himself as its guru.

Dobson's teachings resonated on a profound level with the back-lashers. By 1976, Dare to Discipline had been reprinted eighteen times and sold over a million copies. His success propelled him into the rapidly expanding evangelical broadcast industry. Dobson's new radio show and ministry, Focus on the Family, became immensely popular as well.

Now, the followers eager to implement his harsh methods had grown into a belt-wielding army of millions. Corporal punishment was back with a vengeance.

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Dobson's self-purification process, adapted from his father's Nazarene faith, compels his followers to confess their darkest transgressions before pleading for forgiveness. Finally, to attain what Dobson and others in the evangelical culture call "holiness," a permanent state of spiritual perfection, followers must submit their individual wills to the order of a higher power — either God, or men of God such as Dobson. Every sinner who submits must be convinced that, as Dobson has insisted, "Pain is a marvelous purifier."

Dobson's emphasis on pain, simultaneously inflicted on weaker beings and the self, reflects the sadomasochism at the core of his philosophy. As Greven noted, books such as Dare to Discipline that urge parents to beat their children are hardly distinguishable from S&M manuals such, as Larry Townsend's "The Leatherman's Handbook,'' which advise men on erotic techniques of "discipline" and "punishment."

The principal distinction between the two is that the methods Townsend advocates are applied to adults who have chosen to participate, whereas Dobson's techniques are wielded against the wills of small children.

***(Corboy italics: And...in the kink community, unlike the Integral community, the Dominator/ex is considered responsible if the submissive incurs harm. In Dobsons world and the Wilberian Integral scene, the Disciplinarian, whether the Angry God or punitive parent is considered blameless and actually virtuous by being powerholder and thus the responsiblity is shifted to the punished one)

"Wherever children suffer from painful physical punishments and humiliating submission to more powerful authorities, sadomasochism will be present," Greven wrote. "Sadomasochism is thus one of the most enduring consequences of coercive discipline in childhood."

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When it comes to spiritual teachers, there are those who are safe, gentle, consoling, soothing, caring; and there are the outlaws, the living terrors, the Rude Boys and Nasty Girls of God realization, the men and women who are in your face, disturbing you, terrifying you, until you radically awaken to who and what you really are.

And may I suggest?: choose your teachers carefully.

If you want encouragement, soft smiles, ego stroking, gentle caresses of your self-contracting ways, pats on the back and sweet words of solace, find yourself a Nice Guy or Good Girl, and hold their hand on the sweet path of stress reduction and egoic comfort. But if you want Enlightenment, if you want to wake up, if you want to get fried in the fire of passionate Infinity, then, I promise you: find yourself a Rude Boy or a Nasty Girl, the ones who make you uncomfortable in their presence, who scare you witless, who will turn on you in a second and hold you up for ridicule, who will make you wish you were never born, who will offer you not sweet comfort but abject terror, not saccharin solace but scorching angst, for then, just then, you might very well be on the path to your own Original Face.

Most of us, I suspect, prefer our spiritual teachers to be of the Nice-Guy variety. Soft, comforting, non-threatening, a source of succor for a worn and weary soul, a safe harbor in the samsaric storm. There is nothing wrong with that, of course; spirituality comes in all sorts of flavors, and I have known some awfully Nice Guys. But if the flavor tends toward Enlightenment instead of consolation, if it drifts away from soothing dreams toward actually waking up, if it rumbles toward a God realization and not egoic fortification, then that demands a brutal, shocking death: a literal death of your separate self, a painful, frightening, horrifying dissolution—a miraculous extinction you will actually witness as you expand into the boundless, formless, radical Truth that will pervade your every cell and drench your being to the core and expand what you thought was your self until it embraces the distant galaxies. For only on the other side of death lies Spirit, only on the other side of egoic slaughter lies the Good and the True and the Beautiful. "You will come in due course to realize that your true glory lies where you cease to exist," as the illustrious Sri Ramana Maharshi constantly reminded us. Your true glory lies on the other side of your death, and who will show you that?

Not the Nice Guys and not the Good Girls. They don't want to hurt your feelings. They don't want to upset you. They are here to whisper sweet nothings in your ear and place consolation prizes in the outstretched hand of the self-contraction, balm for a war-torn weary ego, techniques to prop it up in its constant battle with the world of otherness. In a sense, it's very easy being a Nice-Guy teacher: no muss, no fuss, no wrestling with egoic resistance and exhausting confrontation. Be nice to the ego, pat it on the back, have it count its breaths, hum a few mantras.

Rude Boys know better. They are not here to console but to shatter, not to comfort but to demolish. They are uncompromising, brutal, laser-like. They are in your face until you recognize your Original Face—and they simply will not back off, they will not back down, they will not let up until you let go—radically, fully, completely, unhesitatingly. They live as Compassion—real compassion, not idiot compassion—and real compassion uses a sword more often than a sweet. They deeply offend the ego (and the greater the offense, the bigger the ego). They are alive as Truth, they are everywhere confronted with egos, and they choose the former uncompromisingly.

Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, used to say that nobody comes to a therapist to get better (although they always say they do); they really come to perfect their neurosis. Just so, nobody comes to a spiritual teacher to get Enlightenment (although everybody claims they do); rather, they come to a spiritual teacher to learn more subtle and sophisticated egoic games—in this case, the game of "Look at me being really spiritual."

After all, what is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the Spirit in you, since that is already enlightened and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher: you want to see yourself in the presence of the spiritual game, you want to meet yourself tomorrow as a realized being—in plain language, you want your ego to continue into a spiritual paradise.

And what's a poor teacher to do, confronted with such egoic cunning? Everybody who comes to a spiritual teacher comes egoically motivated. And teachers have two choices in the face of this onslaught of the separate selves, this conference of the self-contractions: they can play to the audience, or they can blow the entire building up.

Andrew Cohen is a Rude Boy. He is not here to offer comfort; he is here to tear you into approximately a thousand pieces...so that Infinity can reassemble you, Freedom can replace imprisonment, Fullness can outshine fear. And that simply will not happen if all you want is consolation, soothing prayers, ruffle-free platitudes, "It will all be okay." Well, it will not be okay if you want Enlightenment. It will, in fact, be hell, and only Rude Boys are rude enough to tell you that, and to show you that—if you can stand the rudeness, stay in the fire, burn clean as Infinity and radiate as the stars.

Every deeply enlightened teacher I have known has been a Rude Boy or Nasty Girl. The original Rude Boys were, of course, the great Zen masters, who, when faced with yet another ego claiming to want Enlightenment, would get a huge stick and whack the aspirant right between the eyes. And that was just the beginning, that was the easy part; things got nastier fast—but at the other end of that brutality lay ever-present Realization, a shocking jolting death of the self and the radiant resurrection of infinite Spirit as your very own true nature: if you could stand the heat. Rude Boys are on your case in the worst way, they breathe fire, eat hot coals, will roast your ass in a screaming second and fry your ego before you knew what hit it: undo your self-contracting fear and sizzle your well-honed defenses: if you can stand the heat.

I have often heard Nice-Guy teachers say that Andrew Cohen is rude, and I think, "You don't know the half of it." I have often heard it said that Andrew is difficult, offending, edgy, and I think, "Thank God." In fact, virtually every criticism I have ever heard of Andrew is a variation on, "He's very rude, don't you think?" And I smile the biggest smile you can imagine. If it weren't for the Rude Boys and Nasty Girls of God Realization, Spirit would be a rare visitor in this strange land.

Andrew's magazine What Is Enlightenment?, for example, is the only magazine I know that is deeply, truly, outrageously Rude: which is to say, the only magazine asking the hard questions, slaughtering the sacred cows, and dealing with the Truth no matter what the consequences. The magazine is expressive of the very rudeness necessary to shatter egoic complacency, a complacency sick and thick, cloying, suffocating, drowning in its own self-smugness. You do well to be deeply offended by Andrew; he is, indeed, damn rude.

So, can you stand the heat? Or would you like more soft and consoling words of comfort, more consolation prizes for an Enlightenment that will continue to elude you? Would you like a pat on the back, or are you ready to be skinned and fried? May I suggest this? If you can stand the heat, you will indeed come to realize that your true glory lies where you cease to exist, where the self-contraction has uncoiled in the vast expanse of all space, where your separate self has been roasted and replaced by infinity resplendent—a radical Release much too obvious to see, much too simple to believe, much too near to be attained—and your real Self will quietly but surely announce its Presence as it calmly embraces the entire universe and swallows galaxies whole.

In short, if you are ready to recognize your own Original Face, if you are capable of standing in the very middle of a raging fire that will melt your Heart and open it to eternity, then you have come to the right place. In the following pages you will see that Andrew Cohen is a Rude Boy who acts with uncompromising integrity, an integrity that shows compassion to your real Self and a very big stick to your ego. If you can stand the heat, then enter the real kitchen of your own soul, where you will find nothing other than the radiant God of the entire cosmos. For it is radiant Spirit that is looking out from your eyes right now, speaking with your tongue right now, reading the words on this very page, right now. Your real Self is glorious Spirit in this and every moment, and it takes a very, very Rude Boy to point that out and to stay in your face until you recognize your own Original Face, shining even here and now.

Ken Wilber
Boulder, Colorado

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Erich Fromm, in his book Escape from Freedom, insisted that sadomasochism was more than a sexual kink. It was, he claimed, a defining characteristic of the authoritarian personality, finding its most dangerous expression in the political sphere. "The essence of the authoritarian character," Fromm wrote, "has been described as the simultaneous presence of sadistic and masochistic drives. Sadism was understood as aiming at unrestricted power over another person more or less mixed with destructiveness; masochism as aiming at dissolving oneself in an overwhelmingly strong power and participating in its strength and glory."

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At 6/01/2009 1:56 PM, Anonymous Spiritual Enlightenment said...
Now, I don't like talking bad about people but if someone is new on the path to enlightenment like I was, I still wish to share my experience as a word of caution.

I did my first meditation retreat with Cohen and was a bit shocked. One lady went to the hospital after a mental collapse, another one I had to pull back, and in general his treatment was pretty hard core.

**(Why cant they call it "cruelty?" Corboy)

I took some beating and after the retreat his behavior was treating. After returning back home, I went to his center for some time until I received the same kind of beating from the leading students at the center.

After this treatment I left the center and started to read some of his books and books about him. Notable was two things:

1) Even though Andrew thought he was enlightened, his former teacher did not think so and even told people who had been hurt by Andrew to come to him for an appology.

2) In his own books he often used the word "sword" when talking about truth - something that sounds a lot like Christian fundamentalists.

In in end I came to the conclusion that his devoted students must have been used to beating from their parents since they chose to continue this practice with Andrew.

Finally, I totally agree that the truth does not hurt and enlightenment is not aggressive.

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At 6/01/2009 2:07 PM, Anonymous Spiritual Enlightenment said...
...I see the same conclusion that I come to has been refered to here. I clearly see Enlightenment as teaching with love and compassion and its aim is to get you out of what ever karma you carry with you from your parents. What Cohen does it to increase the karmic pattern and the damage carried on by his student.

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At 11/03/2009 6:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
I was a disciple of Andrew when he first came to the US after teaching in Europe, back in the 80's. I had been skeptical, but had to check it down since the satsangs were right down the road. I had some dialogue with Andrew, and received a jolt of energy that almost knocked me over.

That evening, I went home and had a dream where Andrew was the antichrist (which to me means: "looks like, sounds like, acts like... etc., but is actually the polar opposite"). In my dream, my Sufi teacher had to come and save me. I did not got back to satsang for a week, but then felt choicelessly drawn back (forgetting the dream) and went to satsang daily for the next few years.

When Andrew moved to Marin, I left my husband, job and home (definitely ncouraged) to join Andrew in Marin.

I suffered for years in the name of "enlightenment", beating others emotionally and being beaten by others emotionally, cutting myself from anyone who was not a member of the satsang, and ignoring my children (all strongly encouraged).

I finally left (only because I could not see being homeless with my two children for doing some "bad" thing which I was berated for even asking what it was).

Although on the one hand I am very glad to have been willing to follow my spiritual inclination even if it ended as it had, it took years to recover from the emotional and psychological abuse. I am grateful to have been able to get out, and saw many many others who were not so lucky.