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sunglider
I've no agenda coming to this forum. I landed here almost by accident I believe I mentioned in my earlier posts. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy finding this forum. Like most of you, I had some share of grief and even threats from this group and felt a solace among co sufferers. However, I share very little interest in sentimentalism,

There are no accidents. You had to have clicked around! :lol: I googled JG's many names.

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sunglider
wanted to know more info about Chibiyabos, and expressed my love for Chris' music,,

Be careful here. Chibby is allowed his privacy. He was an innocent kid born into the group and not a public figure.

As for the music. I liked it too. I moved recently and found the Mantra Electric cassette and a sealed, never played "Siddha, a very gentle force: This World/A Different World.” It sold for $4.50 in 1975! On the back is an interesting quote that fills the page. Here is part of it with my comments --- [i:603f962280][b:603f962280]"A flower is by nature soft, sweet, and fragrant. So are we....but due to being covered up by layers of material elements we appear hard, even to ourselves...we desire to love and be loved...the rock does not love; matter is dead energy...” [/b:603f962280][/i:603f962280][quantum physicists would disagree! :D ]...[b:603f962280][i:603f962280].”A corpse fails to exhibit love...I want to feel love for you. I don't want to see you or treat you as a 'thing" or object to exploit or use”...[[/i:603f962280][/b:603f962280]LOL! …don't want to exploit anyone or treat as an object!???]..[b:603f962280][i:603f962280].”I want to be friends with [u:603f962280]you[/u:603f962280]...But real friendship is deeper than cocktail party friendship”…[/i:603f962280][/b:603f962280]..[snicker.. :? ]...[He goes on blah blah ..we are all parts and parcel of Supreme Being]...[b:603f962280][i:603f962280]”I want to taste unlimited, eternal love. I am tired of living in a world of hard-heartedness, not just others, but my own also. I'm tired of living, yet being dead. I am tired of having conversations, but never communicating. I'm tired of singing, but being without a song. I'm tired of having friends, yet never knowing them”... [/i:603f962280][/b:603f962280][We too got tired of you being hard-hearted to the needs of many of your followers, of dictating their lives without considering who they really were or appreciating their great efforts and spirits. Your song was the great voices and musicians you [i:603f962280][u:603f962280]used[/u:603f962280][/i:603f962280] to promote your own idol worship. You were never a friend to any of us and did not promote friendship amongst your followers.]...[b:603f962280][i:603f962280]”I humbly ask to be forgiven by anyone of you who may consider me to be a fool or wishful thinker for wanting to go beyond the artificial suffering world which we all know”....[/i:603f962280][/b:603f962280] [blah blah he goes on to invite people to taste the "sweet flavor of Transcendental Sound and be]...[b:603f962280][i:603f962280]”transported to the eternal realm of...Krishna, the real friend of each of us.” ~Siddha, November 1975[/i:603f962280][/b:603f962280]
[hack, hack :? --- and that's not coughing up a hair ball! I'll let the psychologists and theologists analyze all that!]

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sunglider
I thought this forum has more pressing issues other than our past experiences, and I will not apologize for being quite strong about the children which I sadly regret may not be as pressing as I expected here

The problem is that no one is coming forward with information for obvious reasons or don’t have any info. I did not have children until after I left the group, so I don't know anything. I know schools were attempted and kids grew up with many of the problems typical teenagers have. Two kids of top devotees went to juvie hall for stealing a car. I know of one girl who got knocked up and another kid who was a knocker upper! But it wasn't a rampant epidemic at the time. Never heard of any drug usage, but that's all I know.

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sunglider
I enjoy so much reading about your experiences and your understandable hate of Chris and his group,

I don't hate JG at all, but I think he should be exposed for what he really is -- a hippocrite and not a very enlightened human being. People need to know the truth.

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sunglider
Most people I knew had the same suspicion as us, and I will bet my neck that they were there for the congregation. Even if Chris is gone, these people will still be there, whoever the leader is. These are the same people who will constantly join groups, not necessarily cults, but anything they find any sense of belonging, and this forum is not exempted. In fact, if you still find sense of belonging to any group, then you may not have left Chris after all. Physically, yes. But Chris may still be lurking in your minds. May not be Chris but the guru figure.

So true. Good points. The trick is to free your mind, eh. Old patterns die hard. This validates Rick Ross's point about brainwashing a bit. I honestly didn’t like working with most of the people. It was no pleasure being part of the group, but I did bond with a few good people.

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sunglider
There's nothing wrong in belonging to a group but as long as you take it on your own terms and your reasoning always intact and independent. By the way, I never believe until this day that I was ever brainwashed. I joined on my own accord, and I don't make any excuses; I'm responsible and accountable for my acts and for people I brought to the group. I loved the movement, but my reason had always been intact and when challenged I left, just like that. If that is a fact, then you may have to look back and redefine your meanings of your anti-cult views.

I don't think you are alone in feeling this way, that you don't feel that you were brainwashed. It was easy to slip out of the group. But there is a residue that you refered to in the previous quote. The question is how that guru residue got there? Did we bring it with us? Did JG imprint us? Do we carry it away with us and repeat the pattern elsewhere or do we learn from the experience? I believe that upon rejecting JG and going through the initial greif, guilt, and anger that I have a much happier, productive, healthy, and spiritual life for it. At any rate, it is less scary and less embarrassing to think that I was not brainwashed. And now it is a moot point.

.

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sunglider
My loyalty is to reason alone.

A good mistress to have, coupled with the heart. "Where does wisdom lie? In the heart." ~ King Solomon

If you don't think you have been brainwashed, maybe you need to consider that thought again.

Dick Sutphen, a man who trains others in hypnotic techniques, wrote this in an article warning people of unethical influence:

IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF MAN, NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN BRAINWASHED AND REALIZED, OR BELIEVED, THAT HE HAD BEEN BRAINWASHED.

He also wrote: If you think you can attend such gatherings and not be affected, you are probably wrong.

The article can be found at [www.dicksutphen.com]

Brad69:

Dick Sutphen used to do "past life regression" weekend seminars.

He would gather a group of people together that paid him fees for a weekend and Sutphen would hypnotize them and then suggest that they had past lives.

Sutphen's subjects would then recall memories from their supposed past lives and relate them to a curent problem before the group.

One of his group gatherings was filmed for the documentary "Captive Minds" made by a Canadian crew for public television.

Sutphen comes off as very manipulative and something like a con man.

But he does know how to induce trance through hypnosis.

Nevertheless, the above quote, "IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF MAN, NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN BRAINWASHED AND REALIZED, OR BELIEVED, THAT HE HAD BEEN BRAINWASHED", retains it's importance, if it's true.
Is there reason to dispute Sutphen's assertion?

No. There is nothing wrong with quoting or referring to Sutphen.

It is also interesting to note Sutphen's background and how he came to know about the subject of "brainwashing."

FYI--I have heard from literally thousands of people that were "brainwashed" by cults or "cult like" groups and they acknowledge this as a fact.

If Sutphen means that people who are brainwashed, don't acknowledge that they are while still under that form of undue influence, this is typically true.

This highlights the problem of deciding which groups are destructive and which are benign. Presumably the majority of people wouldn't join a group they knew to be in the destructive catagory, but after having joined they lose the ability to judge the group's nature.

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rrmoderator
No. There is nothing wrong with quoting or referring to Sutphen.

It is also interesting to note Sutphen's background and how he came to know about the subject of "brainwashing."

FYI--I have heard from literally thousands of people that were "brainwashed" by cults or "cult like" groups and they acknowledge this as a fact.

If Sutphen means that people who are brainwashed, don't acknowledge that they are while still under that form of undue influence, this is typically true.

That's what he meant, no doubt.

Dick Sutphen is in the "takes one to know one" category, in my opinion - kind of like a burgler who tells people how to protect themselves. He does profess somewhere to have been sickened and disgusted by the ease so many charlatans have of fooling people. A con-man with a conscience, perhaps? Or does he really believe the past-lives stuff? I don't know.

You might be interested to know that Werner Erhard used the past lives thing in the earlier est trainings. I think he got it from L. Ron's "timelines." Someone must have whispered in his ear that it might make him look silly to those "successful," upwardly-mobile, social strivers with bank accounts and credit cards he was hoping to attract.


Ellen

I don't think Sutphen believed personally in what he did, at least that is the way it looks on the documentary.

He is filmed using carefully contrived and organized hypnosis techniques in a controlled environment.

"It takes one to know one" seems to sum up Sutphen.

sunglider and Shanti-

My purpose on this forum is threefold. One is to tell the truth about the group and expose the hypocrisy to others who may feel a pull into the group. Two, is to share the history and fill in the gaps for me. And three, to examine how a charismatic leader can make us alienate our families, core values, and undermine our very sense of self to follow him. I am also interested in the people who had the strength to leave and why. Also, many people suffered after-effects that lasted for years after leaving the group.

Peoples’ stories are special, important, and sacred. The past gets buried and excavated so we can learn from it. There is wisdom to be found in shared experiences. After the holocaust, many people refused to speak of it, but thank God, enough have spoken out so it can not be denied or happen again. I am not comparing the JG group to the holocaust in its violence and extremes, only in that it harbors a harmful ideology and exploits innocent people.

It was a magical time, with a confluence of extraordinary people that came together to serve JG. But their talents were stolen and much went undeveloped because they went under the feet of the guru. Years went by, youths were sacrificed, and if one stayed, they led a life of dependency, fear and immaturity.

I had a friend who played the same Hare Krishna chant for weeks over and over. When you are in the group they play the same chants over and over in their cars and their houses. They have pictures of Krishna all over, and it is all depressing. Something just snapped ... the same Krishna chant over and over and over, the stink of vegetables and herbs, I dont know if it was the stink of herbs and pumpkin or the chant. I think a combination of both. I just couldn't stand it anymore. It took me 20 years to wake up ... What is even more depressing is that they and even me had given up on life, everything is a sine qua non, that is, taken for defeat. Everything you do, everything you say, everything you are, is defeated by the material energy, and so, if you were to give the sustenance of the human life form into their hands, everything would slowly die, because nothing flowers in their hands. Their is no hope ... except to escape the karmic wheel of life. What they dont understand is that it is the simple person, the basic form of life, that keeps them and this planet going ... all the bureaucrats, all the karmis, all the meat eaters, we keep you on the road, we keep your administrative systems going, we keep your food and stinkin vegetables in the stores, we keep your roads roadworthy, we pay your taxes, we keep your lights on at night, the ordinary karmi person makes your life GO ... yet you turn your nose down at us. In my experience, the people I have met in this movement, are the most immature, spiritually unenlightened people, selfish, inwardly turned, childish, single minded people, on the planet. Spiritually the most advanced, NO, no, no, no, no .... they are but children, in an adult body ... refusing to accept responsibility as adults ... lost in a lie ... that gives them absolution from fronting up to their responsibilities as members of the human race .... they sit back on the cushions of human existence provided by the people that they most despise ...