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The Shadow
Landmark (aka EST) is technically not a cult. However it IS cultish in the techniques it uses. It does not have one "guru" or leader that people follow, rather it has several.
Just to add that all Landmark Forum "leaders" try their best to copy Werner Erhard as closely as they can in style, gesture, voice, delivery, script, etc., etc. They spend hours and hours watching old tapes of him and in front of a mirror attempting to recreate every move he made. They also tend to worship him in some pretty repugnant ways and refer to him as "Source."
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In my opinion Landmark Education Corporation (keep in mind that a business Incorporates to protect itself from liable) is WORSE than a cult, because people are lulled into a false sense of security.
I agree. Because they appear to be "secular," people don't assume them to be a cult.
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Landmark (EST) preys on the lonely, sad and vulnerable. The brainwashing starts from the very first moment you walk in the door. It is so slow and insidious you don't even know what is happening to you.
Even if you aren't lonely, sad, and vulnerable, they can convince you you are by making you focus on past troubles, failures, wounds, old heartaches, and "unfinished business." They do this using the guise of "putting the past in the past" or "completing the past" but these are really ways to get you to bring them into consciousness so they can hook into you and start to lever you around with their other tricks.
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Up till now, people have not had much success sueing Landmark, but that is going to change, once people understand that they have been hypnotised without their concent.
At Landmark they call their hypnotic inductions "processes," some of which were copied from scientology, including the use of the word "process."
(I and several others have put up a ton of information about hypnosis on alt.fan.landmark for anyone who is interested. Just google within the group.)
Ellen