One of the reason's these LGAT guru's get away with basically everything, is because that entire area is totally unregulated. Its beyond the wild west out there.

The only time anyone looks at them, is if they literally kill someone with their bare hands on video, then they might look into it.
But hey, if people die WHILE or after at a LGAT seminar, then no one looks into it.

Part of the problem is people terribly underestimate the LGAT gurus as being idiots due to the goofy ideas they are selling. They are not idiots. That is marketing.
In fact, these LGAT guru's are extremely clever, and know how the laws work.
They hire the best attorney's and PR hacks, and get the best advice.
They know how to push all of their sales-marketing tactics, and everything else literally right up to the edge of illegality, and even beyond.
That is all done very carefully.

They know if something goes wrong, not to talk to anyone, but to just leave the state, and let the attorney's try to find a technicality.
They don't allow themselves to be questioned by a professional interrogator.
They avoid professionals in all areas, and instead target "soccer moms" from the Midwest with the most powerful and destructive influence techniques on earth.

They know they can pay-off some people who get hurt, and then put a gag-order on them as part of the agreement, so they cannot tell anyone what happened.
They choose their customers/victims very carefully, they pick people without the resources to fight back.

They know they can move into "religion" and hide behind that, as "therapy" is regulated. So if they move into some religous ideas, they can do anything they want, and set up tax-free organizations as well.

White collar crooks have been getting caught a lot recently. The LGAT guru's, even when they do not have people die at their seminars, need to be treated like white-collar crooks and con-artists.
But again, the LGAT guru's have thought everything through very carefully, and try to shield themselves from that.
But the main exploitation of the LGAT guru is taking people's money, the psychological damage is generally just the means to the end, of getting their money, free labor, and the rest of it.
The LGAT guru's deliberately exist in the loopholes in the regulations in the USA, which is why they can do anything in the US.
Other countries have put pressure on Landmark, for example.

What will happen is when more regulations and accountability come down on the LGAT guru's maybe from the FTC, they will just move into a new age "religion", and hide behind the religious protections.

Hello Anticult,

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, a follow-up story to explore the suicide issue is not a bad idea.

I'll see what I can do.

Tanya

The other problem is that if any attempt is made to protect citizens by imposing any sort of outside accountablity upon spiritual entrepreneurs/LGATs, guess what?

They'll find a way to make it seem that this is an insulting, oppressive attempt to take away the freedom of citizens to choose for themselves.

My favorite image is that of the crooked card dealer who is running a game using a marked deck. The crooked dealer (if its a he) will make it seem that anyone warning a buddy away from the rigged game is

1) Insulting his buddy by daring to suggest his pal is stupid enough to be taken for a fool. Meanwhile the dealer flatters the marks intelligence saying, Come on a smart guy like you isnt gonna be taken to the cleaners. Your friend is laying a trip on you. Result is the mark hates the guts of his real friend and thinks the crook is his new best friend. And when the mark gets ripped off, he wont want to admit it to himself, and may even hate his real buddy all the more for having been right.

2)The dealer suggests that the buddy giving the warning hates having fun and doesnt want others to have fun either.

Out in the online world, they love to claim Rick Ross is running an 'anti cult cult', and have even dared suggest that The Anticult has a cult following.

All Rick Ross does is, for free, offer an online forum and message board where people can come together, do research, compare notes. Mr Ross has had to fight off several lawsuits to keep this going. And no one has to read this unless they WANT to.

Its the LGATs are the ones who, while speaking the language of freedom, use covert methods of social engineering, create a context of bounded choice which tickles the subjects' neurons by making 'em feel free, while actually imposing cognitive blinkers.

What make education so hard is that to admit an LGAT has this kind of power means the humility of admitting we are social animals who CAN BE FOOLED--unless we learn something about the methods of social manipulation being used against us.

LGATs can help us feel free, but its illusion.

THey tell us to trust our own experience. THing is, our own experience isnt always trustworthy. One can run a dangerously high 101 plus degree fever, yet feel freezing cold. You experience yourself as cold, but a thermometer will show that your body is raging hot.

We have splendid brains, but those brains can be pressured into computing errors.

Feeling free is not the same as actual freedom, folks.

Addicts who cannot live without their fix feel very liberated so long as they're using the stuff, but just watch their actual relationships with their drug dealers.

Quote
tanyamannes
Hello Anticult,

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, a follow-up story to explore the suicide issue is not a bad idea.

I'll see what I can do.

Tanya

You might also research the death of the young man from Houston who commited suicide after attending a Mankind Project 'New Warrior' weekend.

MKP also use a sweat lodge experience to indoctrinate men. And suicides after a MKP weekend are not unknown.

Naked Men: The ManKind Project and Michael Scinto - The organization was supposed to make him a better man. Instead, his parents say, it made him a dead one.

[www.houstonpress.com]

Mankind Project of Houston settles wrongful death lawsuit; some mental health oversight required

[www.culteducation.com]

Mankind Project has not implemented promised settlement

[www.bloggernews.net]

ST.

(link to previous reply to Tanya Mannes) [forum.culteducation.com]
It certainly does seem very newsworthy and relevant to San Diego, to explore what happened with Colleen Conaway and another "death" at a James Ray seminar in San Diego, only 2 months before the Sedona deaths and injuries.

The family of Colleen Conaway has been quoted as saying that Colleen was already enrolled for the Sedona Spiritual Warrior seminar, and that she had PRE-PAID for it.
But she died at that earlier James Ray seminar in San Diego in July.

So apparently Colleen paid and was charged for the Sedona Spritual Warrior "sweat lodge" seminar, even though she already had died at a previous James Ray seminar, doing a "homeless exercise".
She also died without ID, as the sweatlodge people also did not have ID on them either.
Thats news.

The family of Colleen is quoted on this very opinionated "hard-hitting" and satirical blog.
[www.saltydroid.info]
QUOTES:
"Had Colleen survived Ray’s July seminar … she would have been in the sweat lodge."
"James Ray International billed Colleen more than $10,000 in July alone"
" No one from James Ray International ever called Colleen’s family :: and no refunds were issued. Not only did Colleen have to pay James Ray for the event that took her life :: She paid him for an event that she was too dead to attend .."
[www.saltydroid.info]

There are all sorts of disturbing things going on like that.
The public can look at the known facts, and then draw their own conclusions.

Was Colleen knowingly abandoned by the James Ray seminar staffers at the Horton Plaza in San Diego? That is a valid question.
Do the James Ray seminars regularly leave attendees behind without ID, money, or a phone? Seriously? They are going to abandon a woman dressed like a homeless person out on the streets ALL NIGHT, without any contact information, money, or phone?

AF Grant said he TOLD the seminar staffers, and that he even told James Ray that he witnessed a suicide.
They never checked that out? When Colleen was missing?
Its all very suspicious.
Would not a company that wants to avoid liability of a seminar attendee dying at the seminar want to distance themselves from the death, and just say they saw nothing, and knew nothing. And walk away?

That is up the to authorities to look into.


A larger point, is that for anyone who studies these types of super-intensive seminars, called LGAT's [www.skepdic.com] there are many many reports of the intense stress from the seminar triggering psychosis and mental breakdowns.
There are regular reports of suicides. So that is a broader point.

But certainly, the fine citizen named Colleen Conaway deserves to have questions asked on her behalf, and those of her family, of what happened at that James Ray CAW seminar in San Diego on July 25 2009.
What did the police investigation conclude?
Was there even an investigation?
Should there be a new investigation since the tragedy at Sedona?
Of course, that is up to the authorities.
But the public have a right to know the facts.

Quote
tanyamannes
Hello Anticult,

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, a follow-up story to explore the suicide issue is not a bad idea.

I'll see what I can do.

Tanya

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2009 11:40AM by The Anticult.

There have been some questions being asked in PM private messages.
If they could ask their questions in the open forum here, anonymously if need be, then people will do their best to answer those questions.

To get an expert to go on the record for a article, one could perhaps contact the moderator of this website?
[www.culteducation.com]

RWRenfrew [twitter.com]


A bunch of James Ray news going on.
multiple seminar cancellations,
a new PR company for 100K a month?

His fathers own webpage contradicts his "story" of growing up poor?
Is A. Gordon Ray really James Ray's father?
[www.tocreateyourdestiny.com]

Speaking of these LGAT seminars, there was a classic LGAT website that had a lot of good info about LGATs, that appears to have disappeared?

The Awareness Page [perso.wanadoo.fr]

Maybe he took it offline, maybe he was forced to take it offline. Many of these LGAT companies will try to force any critical information about them to be taken off the internet.

But now, if you search Google for "The Awareness Page" the first link is IMPACT TRAININGS The Awareness Page.
Impact Trainings is another damaging LGAT seminar with many complaints. [forum.culteducation.com]

Of course they knew about The Awareness Page and all of the information about LGAT's it offered, and co-opted it. These LGAT gurus and companies were not born yesterday.

Impact Trainings even misdirects and misleads people with how they try to redefine LGAT's out of existence on their FAQ page. [www.impacttrainingsresults.com]
They know exactly what they are doing of course, and like every LGAT job #1 is to try and make certain to MISDIRECT the mental focus of those attending.
They want to push people away from analyzing the specific and powerful techniques of group influence.

The Awareness Page can be viewed in the Internet Archive:
[web.archive.org]

The Awareness Page still exists in the internet archive.
For now.
Someone should archive a copy of it somewhere. If anyone went after that website, its probably the Landmark LGAT. [www.culteducation.com]

Notice it does contain links on Impact Trainings, and many other groups.

The Awareness Page.
[web.archive.org]

James Arthur Ray has taken every single technique he can get his hands on out of the LGAT seminars.
Beyond that, he's taken it out of the hotel ballroom and into the wilderness, and into "homeless exercises" on the streets.
There is a whole subset of these LGAT seminars now doing "Wilderness" experiences and boot camps, sometimes with teens and kids, which is ever worse.

These advanced persuasion seminars, variants of the LGAT, are incredibly powerful. They have figured out how to literally crack open people's psyches in just a few days, or a week.
And there is not just the obvious techniques, of 36 hr fasting, sleep deprivation, room temperature, social influence, volunteers, peer pressure, high pressure sales tactics, extremely loud music, emotional breakdowns, confessing your sins on stage and on-camera, 20 hr days with homework, 10K-30K price tags, no refunds, tricky contracts, behavioral conditioning, triggering trauma and PTSD and mania, taking your phone and ID, cutting off contact with family and friends, and LITERALLY at least 100 other techniques all at once.

On top of all that, they are literally using the most advanced and subtle verbal persuasion tactics ever designed.
Its really entered the area of the super-LGAT, and it needs to be studied in great detail.

The problem is that anyone who studies and specific LGAT and publishes will immediately get slapped with a frivolous suit, to keep people silent.
So hopefully some university scholars with a big university behind them will put some SERIOUS study and investigation into the super-LGAT.