I'm continuing with her video.
At 42:00, she's continuing to trash those who leave: "It comes up to some challenge in their life, they're not willing to face it, then they bail, and then you've gotta be the bad guy, so they can stay in denial, or their pity party, or whatever it is that they are, you know, hell-bent on doing. Just go do it! Go do it! You know. But uh. Again. You know the... the... one the other things, that's the saddest things that I see, is people come here, and they get out of some bondages,
and they leave and they go right back to it, whether it's drinking, whether it's... you know... I... drugs. Drinking. Whatever it is. While they're here, for a time, they get their act cleaned up. And they get grounded, they get centered, and they start going forward, and then they throw it away. They throw it away. I don't get it. I don't get it. So anybody watching this video. If you're gonna send me a letter that says 'i'm leaving, i'm out of here' i'm going to tell you '
good luck with that'. This is not a cult. I'm not going to chase you."
So the way I interpret this statement is that she's trying to instill dread in her followers who might consider leaving her little slice of "paradise". She's basically saying "sure, you're free to leave, but if you do, you're going to to be miserable!". A while ago I managed to go back and visit (more like protest) the group I was in. Before the group went into full-on siege mode, I managed to talk to one of the members. He had recognized me from when I was in the group back in 2001 (this was in 2007). I asked him what he was still doing there. He said basically that it was not safe for him to leave. That the group was the only place safe for him. Left to his own devices, he would self destruct. He "free" to leave any time he wanted, and yet he was so sure he would fail -- so terrified of life without the group -- that he was willing to spend his life (or at least as long as the cash kept flowing) in a bubble.
Cults rarely keep people against their will. As Margaret T. Singer says in the chapter "Brainwashing/Thought Reform" of "Cults in Our Midst", "I and others who study these programs emphasize over and over that imprisonment and overt violence are not necessary and are actually counterproductive when influencing people to change their attitudes and behaviors." Later on in the book, in the chapter "Leaving the Cult" she lists "Dread" as one of the 5 main things keeping people from leaving cults. She states "4. Dread, because of beliefs instilled by the cult that a person who leaves will find no real life on the outside"
Elsewhere in the chapter "Brainwashing/Thought Reform" Margaret T. Singer states in describing Lifton's Mystical manipulation "Cult leaders tell their followers, "You have chosen to be here. No one has tole you to come here. No one has influenced you," when in fact the followers are in a situation they can't control owing to social pressure and their fear. Thus they come to believe that they are actually choosing this life." Is that what's going on here with Guru G? Is Guru G trying to make people dependent on her by implying they would have no life without her?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2013 08:16PM by psyborgue.