For readers who are interested in the Werner Erhard 'tech' utilized by Muktananda and his successors in SY, you can read here exactly how it was done.
Guy was heavily involved and had it on his conscience what he had done to people.
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gc4062 was one of our correspondants
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Manipulating the room set up..a key ingredient of how these large group formats operate.
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Landmark is the current version of EST--the tech Werner Erhard taught to Muktananda
What Zorro says here is just as true for the senior members of Siddha/SYDA yoga
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Shad,
I believe that often times the staff and leaders may be victims themselves. From what I saw everyone at some point started out as a guest of someone to either the Landmark Forum or EST. Then they latched on to Landmark/EST ideology and decided to dedicate themselves to transforming peoples lives, through various degrees / levels of participation such as leading a introduction, being a course leader, etc.
This leads me to another thing.....Some of these people are people with good intentions originally that wanted to help out others. But don't realize that in actuality that through Landmark they are actually doing more harm than good. That is even more sinister to think about it....recruit people, brainwash them (the ones with leadership qualities) and use them to go and brainwash more people. Makes me want to hurl my breakfast.
Landmark really wanted me to be a leader and some even told me that they could see me leading a Forum (which gave me chills even then). I wasn't afraid to take on leadership resposibilities and have the outward characteristics and personality that would make a good leader for the Forum or a Seminar.
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Zorro
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When I helped to set the rooms for an ILP weekend they were totally anal about the chairs being aligned correctly and having the right number of chairs. We worked late into the night moving and arranging chairs. It bordered on the ridiculus. Especially because the people incharge couldn't even make up their mind on how it should be set up. They couldn't think for themselves. I kept asking....don't we have any notes on how this place is supposed to be set up?.....how did you do it the last time?....Their reply was no we don't have any. It's supposed to be this way. I was shocked :shock: because such a large so called professional organization didn't even know how a room was supposed to be set up.
Maybe it was a mind control tactic the people in charge we using on us drones?
Landmark is totally anal about having a room set up correctly. At each break the rooms are set up again for the students. They are anal right down to how paragraphs are written on a chalk board. I saw a guy spend hours writing a paragraph on a chalk board. Paying excruciating detail to how each letter was formed and the spacing between them. If something was wrong with how it was written, it was a big deal.
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Zorro described how he/she was persuaded to get involved
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I'm interested in knowing how people got lured into Landmark?
I got lured into Landmark because I thought I was going to be taking classes that would help me out in business and investing. A friend of mine (currently still in Landmark) told me it would help me out and that it had helped her out in business. I met her right before she went into Landmark. Then after a few months she bought a much nicer car and a really cool house. I thought if it works for her it'll work for me! So without doing any research I just signed up, and later went to an introduction. I treated it like any other educational class I had taken. I was already taking a lot of classes on Real Estate Investing and had just finished two weeks of corporate sales training.
I looked at the Landmark website and the types of classes they offered. The titles reminded me of what I have seen listed in Local Community colleges. It also reminded me of stuff I'd seen listed on Corporate Training sites.
My friend did tell me at one point that people might say it was a cult but to not believe them. No one I knew at the time even knew what Landmark was. I thought it strange that she said that to me so blew it off.
I took the Forum and was surprised at the beginning on how it started out. I kept wondering when they were going to get into the meat and potatoes of this stuff? When are they going to start discussing real business concepts? I thought it strange we couldn't take notes. I thought it strange when at one point the instructor told every one we could leave if we wanted to and our money would be refunded. I thought it strange that it was going to last so long during the day. At one point I think I did wonder what I had gotten myself into. I had never in my life seen anything like this. I wish now that I had gotten up and left and got my money back.
But instead I decided to stay because I had taken a day off of work and spent money on the course. I figured I might as well stay and try to atleast get my money's worth out of the thing and maybe I'd learn something eventhough nothing really made sense. I got really bored during the Forum so inorder to pass the bordom I decided to try to make sense of the stuff. After all I believed in trying to educate myself and learn stuff.
I basically got screwed because I was looking to improve my skill sets, was not willing to walk away and loose my money after the chance to get my money back had passed, and naievely trusted a trusted friends advice with out checking things out. I know that my friend was only trying to help me out because she believed I could be more successful. I realize now that she was / is merely a Pawn of Landmark.
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And what did Zorro get out of it?
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Vic-Luc,
Exactly!
I have a career in Industrial Sales where I not only have to convince people and corporations to buy my products and services I have to provide help to the customer whenever I'm called on. I'm disgusted at the thought that I was even associated with Landmark. I feel that it has actually jepordized my career and I'm currently doing damage control because of it. Try that on for size (racket) Landmark! Not only did I waste about 9 months of time and effort, it actually set me back about a year and a half or more overall.
I wonder how many careers and reputations Landmark has torpedoed. I would like to hear from some people that have had this happen to them. Luckily I managed to catch on before things got to out of hand. I wonder how many people have gone from being successful to down and out because of Landmark and using its methodologies.
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So, once again, if any one who was in SY (Siddha Yoga or SYDA Yoga) is still blaming him or herself for missing it and fears being weak willed for missing something he or she now knows to have been harmful and built on lies--you were exposed to Werner Erhard's LGAT tech and this was done to you by Muktananda--and by Gurumayi.
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Stuart Resnick wrote
When I lived in Muktananda's Indian ashram, I played chess with fellow devotee Swami Shankarananda, who now heads Shiva Ashram in Australia. (Back in the 70s, Swami Shanks was one of those crazy hippies who went to India with Ram Dass to see Neem Karoli Baba.)
on this same page of his website Resnick wrote:
LGATs (Large Group Awareness Trainings) were all the rage when I was growing up in the 70s. They include Werner Erhart's now-defunct est, its successor The Forum (aka Landmark Education), Lifespring, and many spin-offs.
I've never attended these, though the many Intensives I experienced with Swami Muktananda were heavily influenced by Werner, and gave me a strong taste of the group dynamic. The Truth about Human Potential Seminars is a blog covering the LGATs; The Awareness Page offers many links they say will help Awareness consumers make conscious informed decisions; and Rick Ross' site has the video Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus, a 2004 French TV report with hidden cameras inside an actual Landmark training.
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Corboy note: LGATs were more than group dynamic. Read what Guy and Zorro and the others have written.
No exit counseling from SY will be complete unless you examine the technology of Large Group Awareness Trainings as used by Werner Erhard and also the more up to date and potent methods of trance induction concealed within story telling.
The finest analyses provided here are by The Anticult
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More here
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It is imperative for anyone who has been in SY to face all this. Converational trance induction is being used more widely than ever, even in advertisements and you will be at risk of being re-triggered unless you understand that this was a hidden ingredient in the brew fed into you at SY