Secrecy Beings by Conferring Privilege and Ends by Isolating Us

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Schuon was thus the undisputed leader of the community in principle. As his views and actions were divinely sanctioned, they could not be questioned. In practice, my informants agree, it was his wife Catherine who ruled so far as day-to-day matters were concerned.

The four points where a group transitions to becoming a cult:


Beware any group with a secret doctrine that you have to hide because you are apprehensive society will laugh at you - and your leader -- such that your leader belongs to an aristocracy of the spirit and anyone outside your group is an unenlightened peasant or soul less meat puppet.

* Beware any source of ecstasy and empowerment you cannot discuss outside of the group.

Secrecy/Elitism

To the extent that the group's doctrine brings risk of ridicule/hosility from outsiders, members must maintain secrecy. Keeping secrecy is tiring. Members often reduce or cease contact with families and friends outside of the group.


* Secrecy Brings Dependance

As members reduce and eliminate relationship with outsiders the more dependent they become on their friendships within the group and its leader. As their dependance on the group increases their fear of losing status in the group increases and fear of banishment becomes existential dread.

* Secrecy Brings Dependance Brings Dread Brings Fear Without Solution

* Love and dread are incompatible. You began by loving the guru and the group and feeling empowered by its secret doctrine which gave you special status and structure for your present life -- and future aspirations. Yet now, isolated within the group by fear of outside ridicule and dependent on the group for your whole self worth, fearing a frown or bad mood or yet another smirk from your beloved guru's gatekeepers who look at you and giggle, you suppress indignation and sudden thoughts like these:

How can the Sheikh or Murshid/Murshida or Baba love such a fucking asshole...?

I am damned just to have these doubts!

Baba has God's ear and can read my mind!

I'm gonna make them sick or die by having negative thoughts!!!

I am gonna be banished and go to hell!!!

You are now in the living hell called Fear Without a Solution -- what you love, what you looked to for comfort and gave you comfort -- is NOW the source of your terror - because over the years, you have slowly equated the guru, the secret prestigious doctrine, the group (once democratic and now a degrading dictatorship with the bitchiness of highschool) with your sole salvation -- you have no social life, no identify outside of the group. You might even risk losing your children, your marriage, your career if you leave -- or so much worse -- you are kicked out.

* Infallible unquestionable leader -- society laughs at any human leader who is regarded as infallible. Such a leader must be kept a secret. Run the other way while you still can.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2026 01:01AM by corboy.

a) Increased number of members means proximity to infallible leader (access) becomes a scarce commodity.

b) Hierarchy develops. Access to a scarce commodity (infallible guru's presence) brings prestige. Difficulty of access means loss of prestige.

Denial of access to the leader is loss of prestige and punishment

b) Greedy neurotic abusive persons who control access to the guru become powerful

c) Competition for access to guru/prestige mean egotism in a setting supposed to reduce individual ego and bring transcendence. Human factor conflicts with the group doctrine, the purpose of the guru. Cognitive dissonance.

d) Gatekeepers find themselves having to tell white lies, half truths, hide information, not answer anguished questions from persons denied access to the guru. Corrupting effects of being a gatekeeper/inner circle member are described here:

[forum.culteducation.com]


e) Greedy neurotic abusive persons who control access to the guru become powerholders within the group. Often, they abuse this power. They must be obeyed serviced, placated -- a word from them causes you to gain access to the guru or banishment/punishment You the long time loyal disciple, started out loving and seeing the guru each day --years later, you are groveling to the one who controls access to the guru.

Those who are less socially and psychologically dependent on the guru and group choose to leave.

Those dependent on the guru and group remain. The group becomes more dependent and more obedient to the whims and abuses of the increasingly isolated guru and the gatekeepers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2026 02:07AM by corboy.

Final Step -- Guru and group acquire property that isolates them from society at large.

A large property requires maintenance.

A guru built sanctuary of this type requires LOTS fresh meat - excuse me - new fresh recruits. Devoted servants who will obediently clean it -- and not laughingly tell tales to the outside world.

The owners of this white elephant need your donated labor, need your sweat equity and occupy the servant/lackey/peon/drudge/drone roles.

Gardening, cleaning the toilets.

After you absorb the teachings and equate your salvation with submission to the group, and are relied to to keep secrets, then you will be cooking the upper class disciples food, minding their children, enduring tantrums from elderly powerholders.


Take home lesson:

Any time you see a large, expensive property, you will be expected to be one of the servants, especially if you are young and fit. If you have $$$ they may trick you to believe your donated labor is needed to reduce your ego.

Advice -- clean your own place. You'll have the same sense of accomplishment and it will be for a much worthier cause.

The leader (Murshid, Pir, Sheikh, Guru, Baba) takes you aside.

You may have been told a day or so before that you are going to be summoned to see the leader to learn something important. Perhaps you did not sleep the night before. Perhaps you were made to wait for several days or more.

At last, you are summoned to a private interview with the leader.

You dare not bring up the subject. After some chit chat, the leader speaks.

You are informed of several possibilities:

* You have a special destiny

* You are a future saint

* You have been selected

* You are especially cherished by God --- You are also especially vulnerable to attacks and temptations by the Devil (Or Mara or whatever)

Upshot:

You are not to discuss this with anyone - not your friends, your spouse, your therapist, etc.

You cannot discuss this with the leader. The leader must iniatiate future discussions on the subject.

Above all, if you THINK about this too much you plunge into egotism and risk loss of contact with God and risk damnation.


You're told you are privileged and special, yet exquisitely vulnerable.

You cannot reveal this to your friends and loved ones etc so you are isolated.

If you even think about this too much you risk losing this same privilege and becoming damned.

Anyone who tells you such a thing is out to trap you not enlighten or sanctify you.

This, friends, is a devastating double bind.

A crazy making double bind.


It brings on a state of love comingled with dread. Your emotions on the subject are so heightened that calm objective scrutiny of the situation is made nearly impossible.

It may be a prelude to physical sexual exploitation -- or an embedded psychological bondage. It guarantees your attention is so fixed on the leader that he or she can easily employ trance induction during future gatherings/darshans or private interviews.


Ask yourself IF the leader has told of other people the same thing.


He or she probably has.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2026 01:21AM by corboy.

Avoid anything calling itself sufi where there's unspoken pressure to meet Western beauty standards - and you gotta smile all the time and pretend your body and life and family are all perfect and under control.


Malang Sufi dervishes of Pakistan

[images.search.yahoo.com]

Sufi Pilgrims India

[images.search.yahoo.com]

[forum.culteducation.com]

The predator does not only seduce the targeted child - he or she also beguiles, seduces, grooms parents (if the target is a child) or if you are an adult, charms your friends -- and will take care to charm the school or church or group

Corboy dares to state that the whole spiritual 'crazy wisdom' approach popularized by Chogyam Trungpa, Gurdjieff, Lee Lozowick, etc was tragically successful in empowering abusers and charlatans.

I've decided crazy wisdom is a contradiction in terms. The chronically unpredictable anxious environment generated by 'crazy wisdom' teachers merely replicates the traumatic environment too many of us grew up in, does not support student autonomy and worst of all triggers dissociative states that masquerade as healing.

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Creating an eccentric or quirky persona

When we already have an unfavorable view of someone we detect red flags. When we are suspicious or dislike someone, flaws are magnified. But when we are captivated by them or love them, flaws become cute quirks or silly habits. Part of a predator’s grooming of the community is to make his red flags seem like quirks. This is why only in hindsight people will find ‘obvious’ red flags.

Calling himself ‘the touchy-feely type,’ or ‘a kid at heart’ will allow the predator to regularly touch the child, and play games involving touch, all aimed to desensitize the child to touch as well as to persuade other adults such behavior is excusable. Inappropriate touch will be mixed with appropriate touch, with the fact that there is just too much overall touch going unnoticed on account of his ‘quirk.’

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corboy
Corboy dares to state that the whole spiritual 'crazy wisdom' approach popularized by Chogyam Trungpa, Gurdjieff, Lee Lozowick, etc was tragically successful in empowering abusers and charlatans.

Agreed. It's abuse, covered up by gaslighting, covered up by gaslighting about the gaslighting.