In which cults is group sex a common practice. Is it a known practice in any famous cults?

The Raelians. [www.rael.org]

I lived close to the base of this cult, a little too close actually!
[falsemessiah.proboards23.com]

they have loads of different names
providence Church, Jesus Morning Star Church, International Christian Association, The Global Association of Culture & Peace

Definately sexual assault goes on, the leader is wanted for rape and whereever he runs to, allegations of rapes are never far behind. His speeches are full of references to his follwers as being the Brides of Christ and he's ushering in an evolution of the relationship between God and Man...old Testement the relationship was one of master / servent, New Testement it progressed to a Father / Son relationship. He's bringing that up to a relationship of equal lovers in this age of the Completed Testement (He's a former Moonie) Despite claiing to be a virgin!!??

I heard some mighty strange stories, which I'm inclined to believe....no make that I'm inclined to believe 100%
Without a doubt his cult is full of some of the most beautiful women in Korea

It's considered a sex cult by most Koreans and that was the opinion of most of the people in the town where I lived...BUT for my brainwashed friends the guy is a virgin, whose read the bible 7000 times and is writing the next Testement of the Bible.


Stories I heard was that yeah group sex went on at the cults home before the guy fled rape charges in korea.
He possibly has with him at all times a group of around 20 hard core female sexy followers who feel mighty blessed to be banging Jesus.
But he's obviously not content to stick with them as his groups recent openly advertised activties at University of Hawaii, UCLA, National University of Singapore suggest.

Also heard that up to 10 girls at a time undress for him and he takes his pick(s)
The guy is rich too, heard he owns a jet.

here's some articles on the group...the pattern is always the same. I think the leader maybe in Hawaii now, having recently fled Hong kong.

[www.taipeitimes.com]
[www.culteducation.com]
[www.culteducation.com]
[www.freedomofmind.com]
[www.orient.pu.ru]

If you've got any questions i might be able to dig up some more details if your interested, let me know
pete

Oh yeah the cults home has a rock garden full of penis shaped statues, I can scan some photos have you want to check them out,
captporridge@hotmail.com

and so did Da Free John.

([i:8da0a2756c]Note: All of these are a layman's speculations and cannot replace counseling with a mental health professional. )

(This discussion refers to group sex that takes place within a context where there is a power imbalance and where trickery and emotional coercion are used to recruit subjects. Play has nothing to do with it. You're being used as an object for the leader's power agenda. The following material does not apply to group sex where everyone is a consenting and conscious adult and all have freely agreed to participate.)[/i:8da0a2756c]

[b:8da0a2756c]From Fantasy to Physicality--The Leader Gets into Your Head Before He Gets into Your Pants[/b:8da0a2756c]

The first step in the seduction process occurs long before physical sex is enacted and is sometimes referred to as 'grooming'

The first step in the seduction is targeting persons who are especially vulnerable to seduction/disorientation. Next, after selecting one's target population, the perpetrator will target specific individuals, touching the devotee's deepest hopes, then linking those hopes to the mythology that has condensed around the guru. First get people to link their hopes and aspirations to the public image of the leader --then exploit that in the seduction/grooming process.

As described by Amy Wallace in her memoir [i:8da0a2756c]Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda[/i:8da0a2756c] Castaneda had such a public reputation, that hundreds, maybe thousands yearned to study with him, meet him. From that large pool of eager devotees, members of Castanenda's 'inner circle' recruited yet more members.

[b:8da0a2756c]The Confusion of Love with Intensity[/b:8da0a2756c]

Intensity is not the same as love. And lovers do not treat you as an object. They see you as a person. Only adults can fully love. A child lacks sufficient empathy to love in the fullest adult sense. Perpetrators are likely to have the psychology of small children but come disguised as adults. Because they are trapped in an early childhood stage of development, they are especially talented at touching the child latent in us all.

One of our discussion board members said that pressuring people into patterns of sexual expression that are foreign to them is a highly powerful way to disrupt core identity.

Once youve crossed that barrier, you'll be confused, a mass of wildly shifting emotions and those emotions can range from rage, dissociation and shame to a peculiar kind of ecstacy. If people equate ecstacy and altered state of consciousness with 'spirituality' they can be easily persuaded that they're undergoing a spiritually beneficial breakthrough, when in fact, they may be suffering trauma and breakdown.

When your core is massively disrupted and your emotions are surging around, then its easy, very easy, for a perpetrator to trick you into believing that you're enlightened or close to becoming enlightened.

Some perpetrators may use some form of trance on you to great effect when you're in this state.

Afterwards, you're likely to be ecstatic, ashamed and very confused, with a big shameful secret to keep.

All that will keep you in the group. The peculiar ecstacy and profound feelings will keep you from facing the full extent to which you were manipulated and disoriented. You feel trapped because you fear anyone outside the group will not understand, or they'll think you're a fool--or that they'll be creepily tintillated by the sordid details.

***One hall mark of bogus gurus is that they teach you to equate intensity, confusion and disorientation with enlightenment.

Its all, deep down, a power trip, and despite the bliss, love has nothing to do with it. Its about power.

It is rather unusual for people to have sex in groups--the shyness factor is powerful.

It is more common for an abusive guru to have multiple partners and call them to the bed room one at a time, or to orchestrate the sexual relationships within the group--like a child playing with dolls. I would consider this 'sex shared within the group' as a form of 'group sex.'

If the leader and members are from cultures that disapprove of non-monogamous sex, the leader will have to come up with some kind of belief system and create in-group 'norms' that justify and rationalize the sexual acting out as good, not bad. This is one situation where a harmful group may be identified by its belief system, as well as its pattern of social behavior.

When abusive, sex-in-groups is about [i:8da0a2756c]power [/i:8da0a2756c]not play, companionship or respect.

Within a rigid power imbalance, play and partnership are not possible.

When I speak of group sex/sex-within-a-group that takes place in the context of a power imbalance, I will call it 'manipulative group sex' to distinguish it from 'playful/consensual group sex.'

**(Note: If your spouse (or current partner) is threatening to dump you or have an affair unless you participate in group sex, or consent to an 'open marriage' , you are under pressure and incapable of freely consenting. You are best off leaving this manipulative individual while your self-respect is still intact. And no, you are not being a prude.)
[b:8da0a2756c]
Problems with Manipulative Group Sex used for 'Spiritual Practice'[/b:8da0a2756c]

The problem is that any spiritual insight you might pick up in the context of manipulative sex will resemble insights obtained through use of psychedelic drugs. The context is so extreme, that once you're back in the outside world, you're likely to have great difficulty integrating those insights with day to day life.

And, thats if you are lucky and have have not 1) gone crazy or 2) been infected with HIV--and 3) you did not have a pregnancy or a baby you were unprepared to have.

For the rest of the discussion, sex-gurus often resemble the alpha male in a pack of animals. In a group sex situation, that's what he (more rarely) she is--in the alpha position, with a troop of favorites, and the the rest of the members lower down in the hierarchy.

Some manipulative leaders pressure abstemious disciples to do drugs or alcohol even when the disciples do not want to. The guru will accuse the disciple of being puritanical and that this is in the service of pleasure.

But the guru's covert agenda is not pleasure, it is power--he or she wants to disorient and confuse the disciples.

On this disorientation principle, disciples who are fond of alcohol and drugs may be pressured to abstain from them.

[b:8da0a2756c]Effects of manipulative group sex:[/b:8da0a2756c]

1) It puts the leader (often male) 'on top' of the group. He's alpha male, has pick of the women. (Some leaders prefer to do it with other men and there are some cases reported where women leaders acted out. But most of the documented cases involve male leaders and women, so for the purposes of this discussion, we will assume that is the gender configuration of the group.)

2) The chosen women compete with each other for the leaders favors, engage in catfights with each other, which is a way to enforce discipline in their ranks. If one women considers leaving the group, the others often pressure her/shame her to stay put. A woman out of favor may return to favor. All this is described by Amy Wallace in her book, [i:8da0a2756c]'The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life With Carlos Castaneda[/i:8da0a2756c]'.

Mean while, the men in the group may be pressured to abstain from sex, or only do it on command from the leader.

3) As a result, the attention and libido of the entire group focus on the leader, since he's monopolizing and orchestrating sexual energy in the group.

The constant tintillating gossip about the leader, whom he's shagging/no longer shagging, who in favor/in disgrace--all the gossip and 'soap opera' distracts the inmates and keeps them from realizing that *they are being used like a collection of toys by an an out-of-control child who is disguised as an adult*.

The ongoing drama provided by the leader's sex life may be so enthralling that people never get around to re-claiming their own spiritual and erotic energy and leaving the group.

Everyone puts up with it because the guru is dangling the carrot that someday when they become worthy or purified, they'll become enlightened. No one understands that the guru/ playing this power game has *no incentive* to share his power by making everyone else enlightened. Because then, he will no longer be unique, his disciples will become his equals and not need him anymore, and they'll all leave and desert him.

4) Meanwhile, male devotees submit to the leader by giving the guru full access to their women. As a result, the women lose respect for the men. The men who allow this to happen are likely to seethe with (justifiable!!!) rage and then be convinced they are spiritually unevolved.

4) Monogamy is socially programmed into us and often becomes part of our core identity, even if quite a few people have trouble being monogamous. Even when most of us interpret it by being 'serially monogamous' most of us have a deep preference to not share a partner *during a relationship*.

Very often, manipulative people will pressure followers to violate their own sexual values by pushing them to engage in expressions of sex that go counter to what they are used to, or by having partnered relationships with persons who do not appeal to them.

When someone is pressurizing you in this manner, the play element does not exist. You cant achieve any sort of spiritual breakthrough under this kind of duress.

Examples: A homosexual disciple may be pressured to dump his male partner and only have sex with women. (Meera told Andrew Harvey to dump his husband, go celibate, or marry and woman and declare that devotion to Meera cured him of homosexuality. Read this in 'The [i:8da0a2756c]Sun at Midnight [/i:8da0a2756c]by Andrew Harvey)

A heterosexual disciple may be pressured into homosexual expression. Or the head chimp will take his or her partner away.

6) Gurus who enjoy throwing people off balance may use another strategy: encourage someone to get attracted to them, the eager disciple volunteers for sex--then the guru condescendingly rejects the disciple's advances.

**A leader may be married while doing all this. When married, this can give the impression that he is 'safe', when in fact he is not--his wife is enduring the situation, possibly even recruiting new prey for him. (When French king Louis XV began losing interest in his official mistress, Mme du Pompadour, Madame du P maintained her hold by recruiting young girls for the king.)

[b:8da0a2756c]Price of Privilige--Old Victims Must Recruit Fresh Victims[/b:8da0a2756c]

Very often leaders devalue and ridicule conventional morality, even seek to dismantle conscience--often claiming that once this is achieved, a brilliant virtuous essence or 'inner nature' will automatically become manifest.

Persons accustomed to monogamy will be accused of middle class values and pressured into group sex. Or they'll be conned into thinking that sex with the guru will improve their energy.

But all too often, after the leader has pressured devotee to discard and devalue conscience and and to demonstrate their departure from conventional ethics and their new devotion to group and guru through participation in group sex, these devotees find they have [i:8da0a2756c]not [/i:8da0a2756c]become brilliant, radiant people.

Instead, they may report feel shaken, disoriented and in chaos. Emotions boil and surge within the distressed disciple, because the grounding effects of values and concience have been disabled. You may feel the wild emotional surges characteristic of very early childhood--bliss alternating with terror. In this newly vunlerable condition, disciples will feel more dependant than ever on the person who has destabilized them--the leader. They may be conned into believing these regressed emotional surges are evidence of enlightenment, when in fact they are evidence trauma. They'll desperately buy into any new philosophy offered to them.

At this point, the newly vulnerable disciple may then be pressured by the leader to go to the next level--recruit new victims for the orchestrated sex.

Members of the inner circle who have already morally compromised themselves by becoming procurers will add to the pressure. They dont want to see someone holding onto their integrity and making them look bad!

In her book, [i:8da0a2756c]Sorcerer's Apprentice[/i:8da0a2756c], Amy Wallace describes how, after being recruited by a pair of Carlos Castaneda's consorts, she slowly came to understand that one of her duties as a member of his harem would be to recruit other women.

In such circumstances, membership in the leaders inner circle will become a horrible blur of being both oneself and then recruiter of fresh victims for the leader . This seduction into collusion makes it horribly difficult to wake up to the situation and then leave. Price of regaining one's conscience and returning to the world of conventional ethics means realizing 'Oh God, look what I became. And look what I did to harm other people!'

It is so much more tempting to keep one's conscience from re-activating, to deny one has been abused, and go on believing in both the leaders 'love' and to believe that he's is right and that conventional morality is just a trap and a snare for unevolved people.

Group sex isnt just a matter of bed hopping. It can be orchestrated by a in other ways. The leader may demand celibacy, then suddenly declare that more people in the group need to be in sexual relationships and then assign people to relationships with no one being allowed to choose their own partners.

Inmates often insist that the leader loves them. (To face that you've been used this way by someone who does not love you is unbearably painful to contemplate.) The subjects are confusing intensity with love--something the whole culture encourages us to do--and is readily exploited by predators.

Unfortunately, the leader does not love. He is verly likely treating devotees as objects, using and throwing them aside, just as a bored two year old uses and discards toys at whim.

The leader has created an atmosphere of *intensity* and does this by manipulating people's fantasies. [i:8da0a2756c]He begins sculpting the situation by targeting and tintillating people's fantasies long before he persuades them to shed their clothes. [/i:8da0a2756c]

Moral: Nothing, not even 'enlightenment' or any amount of esoteric knowledge is worth selling out your soul or your health.

Anyone who tries to mess with your self respect and sexual energy in the name of spirituality, give him or her the finger and just walk away.

You will feel really good about it the next morning. (grin)

Self respect is a wonderful thing. If you have it, honor it.

And if you've lost it--just take back your power and refuse to be fooled that way again.

* The ability to recruit and groom vulnerable people, manipulate their unconscious fantasies and cultivate an atmosphere of intensity may [i:8da0a2756c]feel [/i:8da0a2756c]like love, but it is not love. You're being treated as an object in a power game, no matter how ecstatic you feel. If traumatized this way, you may come out of it distrusting your own aliveness, because it was so ingeniously used against you.

Facing this is so very painful that many people cling desperately to the belief that the leader loves them. It is a very difficult fantasy to give up.

Sometimes the only way some people wake up is when they get evidence that they are [i:8da0a2756c]not [/i:8da0a2756c]the special person in the leader's life, that they are one among many.

This is a hideous trauma and very hard to work through--you have to face the extent to which you were thrilled by feeling special and then give up that feeling of specialness.

"Energy work" -- another word for group sex or rituals -- also took/takes place in the Gentle Wind Project. For more about this, you could look at a message posted on this forum today under the heading "Gentle Wind Project."

Former members from this group have also published accounts of day-to-day life in Gentle Wind at [www.windofchanges.org.]

Corboy's summary of this phenomenon in such groups is very accurate, as far as our experience in GWP. It's one of the best explanations we've read about this.

Thanks,

Wind of Changes
[www.windofchanges.org]

(former members of Gentle Wind Project)

The writing above touched me deeply because this is exactly what happens during the Miracle of Love Intensive. Love is mistaken with Intensity. I'm still suffering from the the abuse happening at MOL and I'm very grateful for this message board. I hope it will prevent abuse and educate people more and more.
Unfortunately, there is an inosense at the heart of all of us, longing for something higher and that is easely taken advantage of!

Regards, Franz

This letter by Dr. Len Oakes, author of [i:d4f773b8ac]Prophetic Charisma [/i:d4f773b8ac]spells out the problems that arise when persons incapable of long term adult relationships set up as sex gurus and lead followers into bogus tantric relationships:

[www.wie.org]

Scroll through the letters until you find the one by Dr. Oakes

Quote
corboy
Self respect is a wonderful thing. If you have it, honor it.

And if you've lost it--just take back your power and refuse to be fooled that way again..

Oh, that is SO true!
MolVictim ... glad to hear you got out! Enjoy having your self respect! Thank you for having the courage to post. I think it is the intense shame that keeps so many exMOlers from coming forward. Anybody can be dupped, you have nothing to be ashamed of. And your experience can be used to help others. thank you!

The MOLer who I was with for 5 yrs (I never attended MOL anythings) used to tell me that i was 'too wholesome' -- well I am a good Mom, I like to quilt, hike and ride bicyles... but i'm not exactly June Cleaver, by any stretch of the imagination!

He used to also say "I can't feeel you. Stop holding back"
Now I understand it was the lack of the serotonin surge from the Intensive. That can never be duplicated in a real relationship!

Another conversation (after we'd broken up), once I'd said that love is a verb... love is expressed through action and communication. He said that not for him, love is a feeling only.

He also said that The Lady was the highest form of love that he'd ever experienced.

oh so sick..... sigh... even 2 yrs afterwards, I still have the creeps from being so close to such manipulations! and incredibly grateful that I am clean of all Sexually transmitted diseases!

oh, live and learn. humility about our own vulnerability it good.
Now to learn to trust again....

When our innocent aliveness is sung to, touched, and then cynically exploited by a predatory person or group---the worst injury we suffer is to being resentful and terrified our own capcity for aliveness, because we may experience that innocent aliveness as something that could be fooled and tricked into betraying us--like a 2 year old child who has innocently let a burglar into the house.

Our inner child needs to be accompanied by an inner parent.

Legitimate spiritual practices show us how the inner child and inner adult can and should function collaboratively.

Predatory spiritual groups try to split the inner child from the inner parent, usually by devaluing adult critical thinking--just the way child molesters try to isolate children from adults who could protect them.

When a predator instills shame, shame disables adult critical thinking and makes it hard for us to apply critical thinking to a situation where someone has harmed us.

What I think has happened is that in many abuse situations innocence is left unprotected because a predator has tricked us into devaluing our adult instincts, which leaves our inner children isolated and unprotected. And certain organizations do very select recruiting, and target us when we are at vulnerable times in life--exactly those times when it is most difficult to activate adult critical thinking skills, and when, without realizing it, we are feeling like motherless children.

When our adult faculties have been distracted or disabled, and our innocence is left unprotected, then thrilled and seduced, all too often, we emerge from such trauma feeling afraid of and perhaps even enraged at the innocence in us that was so seducible, that let itself be thrilled by a molester. We dont realize that before this occurred, our adult selves were tricked into self doubt/manipulated through group pressure, chanting, dancing, stress into a state where [i:b91cced183]we could not protect our innocence[/i:b91cced183] from the ones who aroused that innocence, then molested that innocence.

So we may risk hating and fearing that sweet, alive childlike part of ourselves, choke off our aliveness and then stay on guard, afraid ever to trust again, hope again, thrill again, aspire again.

This is only my guess, but perhaps recovery means discovering a way to feel compassion for that innocent child in us who was taken advantage of, turned on. Thing to do is create a conscious link between that inner lively, innocence (to which the cult gained access and then [i:b91cced183]thrilled and exploited[/i:b91cced183])and our adult discernment (which the cult gained access to, and then [i:b91cced183]confused and disabled[/i:b91cced183], leaving our inner child unprotected and accessible to exploitation).

That way, we link the best of both functions: the playfulness, liveliness and 'beginner's mind' of a child, with the 'street smarts', patience, and critical thinking skills of an adult.

Exploitative cult leaders prey on the innocent child that lives within us all. What they do is seduce and manipulate our inner children and simultaneously disable our inner 'adult'--by witholding information needed for informed consent, using confusion to shame us into mistrusting our critical thinking.

Any situation where you're made to feel ashamed or a 'party pooper' for asking questions and doing research---where you're told 'Dont be close-minded, just trust your feelings' --thats a set up thats designed to confuse and distract your inner parent--and could then be used to coax your inner child into the molester's get-away car.

A legitimate spiritual teacher shows us how to combine the vitality and plafulness of the inner child with the alertness, prudence and critical thinking of the inner adult.

I saw a situation that may symbolize how child-self and parental adult-self can productively collaborate:

A mother was with her two children--a baby in a stroller and her 2 year old daughter. They had to cross a street, with a timed street light. A big pile of cars waited impatiently. In the middle of the cross walk, the two year old girl, who had no sense of future consequences, no sense of danger, decided to test Mom's limits and she refused to keep walking. She was doing what all 2 years olds need to do--test limits.

But Mom, as an adult, saw things her child could not see--that the light was 10 seconds from changing to red, and that cross walk was not a good, safe place to have a temper tantrum.

Without getting mad at her child, Mom protected her child by picking her right off the ground, and carried her to safety. Child and Mom were both 'doing their jobs'. The kid was testing limits, and Mom was making sure the child stayed safe while testing those limits.

We need to preserve both our inner functions--the vitality and playfulness of the inner child, and the long-term wisdom and 'Bullshit Detector' of the inner adult/parent. The inner adult will know when its time to get out of the room and carry the child to safety, even when the child is feeling thrilled and wants to stay put.

The inner adult is there to ensure that the inner child's playspace remains safe--and a cult leader is someone who would try to trick that inner adult into allowing that inner child to be exploited.

One thing that makes such recovery difficult is that we get so many messages from the culture that being spiritual means regression, means rejection of critical thinking. Feeling is exalted at expense of intellect, when in fact the two need to function collaboratively, not one at the expense of the other. This pre-existing bias to exalt emotion and devalue criticalt thinking and fact-checking can be easily exploited by predatory persons and groups.

This paper on traumatic abuse in cults by Daniel Shaw may provide some resources.


[members.aol.com]

Dan Shaw was in a group that manipulated ecstacy through yoga and adoration of a guru, rather than by LGAT methods. His take is many people feel bliss and relief because thier suffering is sealed and suppressed by an artificially produced mood state within the group, and devotees defend the group and its leaders quite fiercely because they dread that if their bliss, purchased by idealizing the leader's propaganda, is disrupted by scandal or exposure to disillusioning reality, the suffering previously suppressed by bliss and denial will come back to torment them.

Some gurus exploit this dynamic by predicting that anyone who leaves will suffer all kinds of ghastly consequences, so it becomes a terrifying self fulfilling prophecy unless the individual is fortunate and given convincing explanations for why this is happening. That is why so many who are booted out by brutal groups and gurus will continue to idealize their tormentors--the minute they stop idealizing their abusers and see them as merely human, all the unfinished business they suppressed through idealization will come back and haunt them--along with the trauma of being ejected. Its a double whammy and many people are terrified to face it.

Basic thing to remember is that the people who orchestrate ecstacy in these exploitative ways are actually unable to allow themselves to be intimate or vulnerable in any genuine way. That may be why they constantly demand intimacy and vulnerability from their followers--for through our vulnerability, these predators temporarily experience a vitality that they are unable to summon within themselves by honest means--they can only steal it from us.

We actually have something these predators do not have--which is why they keep recruiting.