Recently, I started taking up meditation again after throwing out techniques which I used for the longest time. I learned meditation from the Berkeley Psychic Insititute, but I have since stoped using there methodology. I found it to be quite disconcerting to constantly be needing it and finding out that I was really going into an almost imperceptible hypomanic state. Not good. Now I have taken more up a more zen meditation and simply use it to relax and get some deep rest in addition to recovering after a hard workout.

Well just the other day, I came across something in my mind. Something which makes me extremely angry. I found the mental construct which was placed in my mind durring my indoctrination into the Berkeley Psychic Institute. Slowly over time I have been chipping away at it not even knowing it was there. But now everything is gone and I finally can see exactly what was done to me and why. Lewis Bostwick, the founder of the Church of Divine Man and former Scientologist was indeed conditioning people to become what he felt was the proper way of being. And he did it deliberately!

I now really see these leaders for what they are. They are not spiritual leaders, they are intent upon destroying all critical thinking skills in their followers and indeed making them into almost pure automatons for both their pleasure and income. When you become worn out, you are discarded like an old sock. If you need help, and I mean real help you don't get it from these churches.

How many others out there have found that you have been manipulated through meditation to accept almost blindly a belief system which has no basis in fact or reality? I would love to open this up further for discussion and critical analysis of cult leaders and manipulation through meditation.

If at some point, you can describe this mental construct it would be very helpful and informative.

I grew up in a secret ridden family. One construct that took me decades to identify was something I learned to do as a young child, before I was even old enough to examine my own thoughts. (I call this sort of pre-verbal training 'pre-formatting')

I learned to how to keep secrets without anyone even having to tell me 'Keep this a secret'.

Without any awareness that I was even doing this, I'd identify non verbal cues, recognize something belonged to a zone of silence, and I'd know I wasnt to say anything about it, either.

And I had no recognition that I was doing this until a very unusual set of circumstances in my life, plus a lot of exposure to therapy came together I could identify the mechanism.

Must mention that I too was helped by using a form of Zen practice.

Again..if you could at some time describe the mental construct and the methods used to implant it, this would be educational for the rest of us.

This is going to take a bit but the best way to describe it is that inside my mind were placed a series of beliefs that were codified and reinforced through hypnotic sugestion and trance states. The core belief is that one is psychic and that what causes everyone elses problems are other people energy in your space, and additionally that you are responsible for all the experiences and things which happen in your life. The core was built around a series of beliefs the you are a spirit inhabiting a body and that when other energies get inside of your space, you will leave your body. This was taken as fact and the oversimplification of the whole psychodynamic process was accepted as dogma.

Initially, we were just taught how to meditate and how to use spirit guides for self healing. However, as one progressed in the classes one was taught less and less techniques and was given more and more dogma. Ultimately the capstone was when one took the clairvoyant training program where they could "see" all of this by using their clairvoyance. The further along you got within the church the more secrecy there was involved. In the clairvoyant lectures we were told that the cause of our pain, fear and suffering were caused by "spiritual" snakes and spider and other "beings." Everyday experiences and coincidence were thought to be created by our "spirit" instead of just normal phenomenae. Does this story sound familiar? Well it should to those who know of the Xenu/Scientology mythos. Compared side by side, the stories I was told and the Scientology mythos are almost exactly the same in outcome if not context. The snakes and spiders came from other universes where they ultimately destroyed their own worlds and were forced to come to our world. Quite a good story, but nothing more than that.

Mr Lewis S Bostwick was quite a lazy man and stole everything from Scientology and simply put it into a different context, but ultimately his goal was to convernt people to way of thinking. A full analysis of Mr Bostwick reveals that he was either Bipolar or Schizophrenic. I suspect Bipolar, as he has all the traits and problems associated with the recurrent cycling going through Mania and then into deep depressive states. He rationalized his whole experiences as "spiritual" energies in his space. I observed his behavior first hand and witnessed moments of complete dissociation and indeed mania. The thing which made him dangerous was the fact that he knew hypnosis and mind controll techniques in addition to being Bipolar with mixed episodes.

After having so much taken from me, I began asking the question who am I? The answer eventually came to me in a moment of complete insight. The answer is that I am! The ultimate core of who and what I am goes beyond so many things and then I was able to see that I could redefine myself through various principles, morals and ethics. Shortly thereafter, in my meditation, I saw the "spirit" construct and became free from its influence. Since this has happened, the fear of the Church doing something to me "psychical" has dissapated and I have seen the fact surrounding the whole experience. It is not good.

I am not a spirit inhabiting a body, I am not a spirit having a physical experience, these are false dichotomies which ultimately fall down in the face of both deep insight and indeed critical thinking and indeed in the face of almost all faiths and religious practices. I am not rulled by a mental contruct which was overlaid on my core personality in an attempt to redefine my entire existence through psychotic delusional beliefs.

This is very interesting to me because I was a member of the Diamond Way cult which used very similar techniques with hypnosis and brainwashing disguised as meditation.

The 'meditation' is often used in cults to increase suggestibility, where you are then fed more dogma, because you are more likely to accept it in that state.

That was my experience, anyway. Interesting post above - Thanks for posting.

When I was in the Soka Gakkai, we would chant for anywhere from a half hour to an hour -- always at the start of meetings. The leaders would start talking about how wonderful President Ikeda was and the members would be cheering. To me, it felt very programmed, and I thought that the members' responses were just due to the group environment...if everyone else is excited, you feel as if you should be too. I'm sure that peer pressure is a big part of it. Yet, you're right, the chanting also would have added to our suggestibility.

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