Quote
The Anticult
ya gotta wonder if CosmicConnie is aware of who Dave Lakhani is, and his covert applied propaganda techniques and bully tactics which have been analyzed in detail in this forum?

[twitter.com] twitter.com/CosmicConnie

Ask CCGAL

Dave Lakhani, cult mind control tactics, covert manipulation [forum.culteducation.com]

Yes, I am aware of who Dave Lakhani is. You needn't be concerned that I have fallen prey to his bully tactics just because I re-tweeted something he wrote today on Twitter. (It was a link to a cartoon that I too found funny.)

I actually first heard of Dave in 2007, when I wrote an Amazon review for a book critiquing The Secret. Dave was one of several co-authors of this book, which was spearheaded by Kevin Hogan (yes, I know about him too). I'm fairly cognizant of the whole "persuasion"/"hypnotic" racket. I'm not signing up for anything with these guys, 'kay?

And in the interests of full disclosure, I have also had some civil Twitter conversations with Mark Joyner, which are cleverly concealed on my public timeline.

The truth is that I have had conversations -- civil and otherwise -- with a number of the folks who have been discussed in detail in this forum, and a few who haven't been discussed but probably should be. It doesn't mean my eyes aren't open, though. In any case, do know that I appreciate the links, Anticult. I have found this forum to be very helpful, particularly your excellent deconstruction of LGAT techniques.

Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
You can find it at "Whirled Musings"
[cosmicconnie.blogspot.com]

A slight restatement after a little more research, James Ray is going to be in serious trouble.
James Ray is used to conning untrained credulous civilians and soccer moms, and unthinking media personalities like Oprah, with double-talk and covert persuasion and propaganda.

That pathetic tripe doesn't fly when dealing with professionals, which is why Ray refused to be interviewed by detectives.
Once he gets professionals like Forensic Auditor Richard Lee Echols [www.prescottenews.com] breathing down his neck, the jig is up, and quick.
Putting bogus statements to the courts is a very stupid idea.

Just like a trained professional in persuasion sees exactly what James Ray is doing in minutes, if not seconds, trained pro's in other fields will be able to do the same thing in those respective areas very rapidly.

There is interesting info in that page, some that appeared in this thread weeks ago!!

________________QUOTE__________________
[www.prescottenews.com]

Here are the entities Echols lists in addition to Ray's personal assets.

James Ray International, a Sub C corporation

Global Harmony Integration, LLC C-corporation

White Wolf International, LLC, a Sub S corporation

Later, he would introduce Quantum Shift, another Sub S corporation, created to purchase a property in Beverly Hills.
___________________________

Cosmic Connie, no worries, that was not a Twitter-police comment!

But a lot of people glance over these links, and its a good idea to represent the full picture for those who do not have the training and experience.

Dave Lakhani is pretty extreme, in what he is doing to people. People without training could easily believe his Dave Lakhani Applied Propaganda(TM) that he is out there helping people to stear clear of getting scammed by the scammers.
But he is NOT.

For example, Dave Lakhani has refused to even prove his alleged Master Practitioner NLP credentials, for starters. [forum.culteducation.com] Lakhani refuses to prove who specifically he studied NLP with, and when, where, and who certified him in NLP as a Master Practitioner.
Why won't Lakhani back up his advertsing claims with proof?
Because lot of guys just fabricate that they are NLP Master Practitioners, along with many other things.

Also, a major major technique used these days by many Anti-Guru covert persuaders is to use "humor" as an opener and a softener. They literally do it deliberately as a tactic, to make people relax and feel good about them. Its very powerful and effective.
Again, this is right in the training manuals. Many of them go out and even get professional comedy training, and study stand-up comics DVD's very carefully. If we did a search of Dave Lakhani material, one can be almost certain he would have a chapter on how to use humor as an opener in covert persuasion.
Dealing with professional persuaders is not like dealing with regular people, who like to make people laugh for fun. For the persuader, its a persuasion reframing technique.

So even though a trained person can see this, most people out there are not even aware of it.
Dave Lakhani is not to be recommended in any way for people to try and deal with covert persuasion or dealing with cult tactics. What he is presenting is a big fat stinking mess of deliberate confusion and also ignorance, and is actually designed ultimately to lure sales prospects into his own hidden "greased chute" sales system, as explained by Ben Mack.
Dave Lakhani gets an F- at best.



Mark Joyner, his day will come, as time permits.

These guys are a bit more cleverer than the rest, and know the best method is to try and build rapport with critics, and not attack them.
Dave Lakhani failed horribly in that technique in this forum and others, as he tried instead to play hard ball. Perhaps he is learning on the job.

Thanks, AC. I admit I wasn't aware of CCGal's experience with Dave Lakhani till you pointed out the link to her recent comment on one of the threads. Live and learn. CCGal is absolutely one of the nicest people with whom I've ever had an online conversation, and I have to believe she is just as nice in person. The way she was treated by some of these folks was shameful.

Anyway, my eyes are open (despite the fact that some of my snark targets and their followers have declared that my mind is closed). :-)

Quote
The Anticult

This is part of what has been said about James Ray in these threads for 3 years now. People have terribly misunderestimated this guy, yes he is a reckless maniac who's greed drove him to hurt people and have them die at his seminars.
But he knew that, he carefully planned that.
Part of his propaganda posted on his own website, says he told people some people could DIE during his seminars. He doesn't care if some people die, he wanted death to be part of his seminars, as stated in his own documents. Death, some people DYING was part of his seminars.

Can you say more about this, TAC? I can see being so delusional you think you can kill people at seminars and get away with it. But other than that, I can't see anyone thinking, "I'll kill people at my seminars! That'll really help with marketing! Because the authorities will never notice!"

I actually do think it would help with marketing, quite frankly, although not marketing to soccer moms. The problem is there's really no way around the whole kill people --- go to jail thing, unless you run underground Fight Club kinds of workshops, and if you do that, you pretty much can't go on Oprah for publicity.

Surely James Ray understood that he's too well-known to kill people and easily get away with it? And that courts not only hate being lied to, they literally have ways of discovering the truth, whether you tell them or not?

Also, why does he want to kill people, anyway?

'Also, why does he want to kill people, anyway?'

Because he's power-mad, as are all aspiring cult leaders. I think he is motivated far more by the fantasy of holding the power of life or death over his followers than by the money.

As far back as 2005 he was aware that people were losing consciousness and on the brink of death during his sweatlodges--he questioned the worst victim that year, Daniel Pfankuch, about his close death call with great interest and little concern for his welfare, and then started upping the heat year on year to bring others to that point. Pfankuch was hospitalised with heatstroke, which killed the 2009 victims, yet Death Ray put no safeguards in place for subsequent years.

He used these close calls with death as a selling point, spinning them as some kind of spiritual goal that would prove the survivor a warrior. He neglected to mention the very real possibility of a very real death experience. His sweatlodges had to be hotter and longer than any others.

michelle pfankuch transcript



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2010 08:56AM by Stoic.

There was a post on the Droid site by someone claiming to know the Ray family as teenagers. According to this gossip, as a boy JAR used to amuse himself by strangling cats and then claiming to bring them back to life. There is no evidence to support this claim but it sounds like a possible precursor to his later activities taking his customers to the point of death and then 'rebirthing' them as someone new and better.

Whether or not the rumor is true, childhood abuse of animals is a known precursor to adult psychopathy/sociopathy:
[en.wikipedia.org]

Quote
Stoic
There was a post on the Droid site by someone claiming to know the Ray family as teenagers.

Link?

@Christa

There is certainly a sadistic God-complex power-mad aspect to James Ray.
There is a lot of truth to the idea its not just about the money ONLY, as many other LGAT Gurus just focus on bringing in the bucks, and keeping those seminar-junkies at arms length.
James Ray is utterly obsessed with making money for himself.
But James Ray also likes to get personally involved in his superiority mind-games with his seminar followers. So yes, he clearly needs that admiration, and he appears to need to dominate them to the most extreme degree possible.

But EVERY LGAT guru knows that people get seriously injured at their seminars, and that some of them die. Usually not AT the seminar, but perhaps on a break, or in-between LGAT seminars from the terrible STRESS the seminar puts on them, many go into psychoses.
That is a FACT.
Why do some other LGAT's also have a serious injury and Death Clause in their waivers? Because they know people get injured and even die related to the seminar quite frequently.

Injury, death, psychoses clauses, Landmark Forum, PSI seminars, Byron Katie, James Ray [forum.culteducation.com]

But in many cases they are not setting out to kill people, its a side-effect of the dangers of the terrible techniques in the seminar that trigger trauma and PTSD and psychoses and mental breakdowns in people.
The LGAT seminar Guru knows many people get hurt, that has been proven.
What they do is they treat it as a business cost, and FIGHT and CRUSH the person and their family and try to bankrupt them if they try to sue them. If the person who got hurt won't give up, they give them a minimum payout and sign them to GAG orders.
Its the cost of doing business, and a tax write-off.

This is why they hide their assets, they know people get hurt, and frankly they don't care. They depersonalize their followers, they are just objects to them.

Why do car companies measure cuttings costs against injury/death claims? To make more profit.
Same with the LGAT leader. They treat injuries and deaths as the cost of doing business.
The LGAT companies go through hundreds and often THOUSANDS of customers every year, they are just numbers on a page to them to make money from. They don't know them, and don't want to know them. Its a huge business involving millions of dollars a year.


Do they get away with people getting injured and dying? Of course they do. Even in this forum, there are many reports of suicides and psychoses from these LGAT seminars, and they ALWAYS get away with it.

After all Colleen Conaway died DURING a James Ray seminar, and in California the San Diego police appear to have NOT done a damn thing about it, not even questioning. It was pointed out in this forum October 14, 2009 Conaway, Colleen Marian (1963 - 2009) [forum.culteducation.com]
So James Ray & Co got away with the death of Colleen Conaway DURING his actual seminar, and he kept rolling into Sedona.
So why should James Ray NOT think he can't get away with deaths happening at his seminars before Sedona? They did.

In their minds, they sometimes use the story along the lines of climbing Mt Everest, where about 1/10 people die climbing it, about 10%.
As a matter of fact, this is the type of thing James Ray posted on his website, that people signed a waiver that said they could DIE at his seminar.
So of course James Ray knows people could die at his seminar, they wrote the waiver saying people could die.

Now of course, everyone knows these waivers are spin-doctored, and contradicted verbally, and given to people at the last minute, signed in a rush and people don't read them, people are actively DECEIVED in the LGAT seminar environment about the risks.

So why should the LGAT Guru not think he can't get away with people dying and getting seriously injured at his seminar? They get away with it almost every time.
When they move into these Wilderness seminars, which are really wilderness LGAT seminars, then people are going to get killed as human lives are being risked.

Why do they do it? Greed, cost of business. And in more extreme cases, a perverse God-complex phantasy of holding the power of life and death over humans? That seems to be the pattern.

And yes, they do think they can get away with people dying and getting horribly hurt at their seminars for good reason. Because they do get away with it.

Believe it, at this point they think they are going to get away with it, as a type of "accident" like someone falling on a wilderness adventure hike.
Obviously, that was not what happened here, but that is up to the courts.

This was bound to happen. People have been getting hurt, burned, broken bones, broken legs at many LGAT's like this.
And that is not even the worst.

The WORST are the ones like Byron Katie and others, where they actively take people with untreated serious trauma in their past, and they trigger and magnify their PTSD, and the person completely falls apart, gets all their money stripped from them, and then is kicked to the curb, usually literally. As in, when they start to flip-out and have a mental breakdown, they literally kick them out of the seminar into the street on the spot.
[Byron Katie (the Work) and PTSD suicide attempt rates] [forum.culteducation.com]
Traumatic PTSD is a suicide machine. If someone ever was able to get the names of seminar attendees, and count up the suicides, it would be carnage.
But the LGAT Guru just says they had nothing to do with it. The blame the victim.

James Ray's own reckless and malignant personality just made him go further than the others. But there are many other wilderness LGAT's doing very extreme techniques as well.
If Sedona would have happened in California, would the authorities have done anything at all?

How many LGAT seminar leaders have been prosecuted or even investigated in California for injuring or having people die at their seminars? Can anyone think of even one?

California has a terrible record in this area.
Jonestown children [forum.culteducation.com]


James Ray's media cheerleaders and business partners have also walked away without any questions at all. Who has asked Oprah why she promoted James Ray on her TV show, when her own Oprah message boards had SERIOUS COMPLAINTS about James Ray BEFORE he appeared on her TV show, about people being injured...people getting ripped off 10K, and lots of people burning their feet in his "fire-walk" and not being allowed to go to the hospital. [forum.culteducation.com]
No one in the media will ask Oprah that, the networks won't touch it.

The LGAT gurus are generally much more clever than they make themselves appear in the media, and they know all these things of course, and have bigshot legal teams and millions in a warchest to keep them in business.

So they do it, because they get away with it, and have gotten away with it for decades.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2010 02:31PM by The Anticult.