In a different thread,
not moses introduced readers to the Pair a Docks blog and wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> https://pairadocks.blogspot.com/2021/04/leaving-cult-may-not-go-well-if-one-is.htmlThanks for these postings. I notice that there are quite a number of relevant blog posts at the "Pair A Docks" blog which I'm very glad to have been introduced to via not moses' posts here. Another interesting "Pair a Docks" blog posting, which is also relevant to Rama/Lenz, is the following one:
How People Leave One Cult - and End Up in AnotherThat posting mentions yet another connection involving the movie
What the "Bleep" do we know? as if I didn't have enough such connections already. One of the directors of that movie, Betsy Chasse, is married to a former high school classmate of mine--my classmate himself has a cameo role in the film. Another of the directors, Bill Arntz, was involved with the same cult group led by Rama/Dr. Frederick Lenz, that I was.
The Pair a Docks blog post talks about cult hopping. The first significant hopping that took place was that, after Lenz' suicide, many of his former members including Arntz but not including me, went on to various other gurus. Arntz ended up in the group led by Ramtha/JZ Knight, where it seems he hooked up with Chasse and the third director, Mark Vicente, and made the film "What the 'Bleep' do we know?" Vicente then went on to further cult hopping and ended up with NXIVM.
Cult hopping has been very common among the students of Lenz. Many went on to hop from one guru to another after Lenz' suicide, and many were members of other groups before Lenz.
While cult hopping describes the behavior of many cult members, it does not describe my own behavior. I seemed to be unusually strongly drawn to Lenz, and far more resistant to the recruiting tactics of most other cult groups. From time to time over the years before and after Lenz, I've checked out other organizations such as Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, Landmark Forum, Ramtha, Sai Baba, Sri Siva, and others. None of these other groups ever attracted more than polite interest from me. But I seemed very strongly drawn to Lenz.
Again--thanks to not moses for introducing us to the "Pair a Docks" blog!
corboy also made the following comment about new (recent) recruiting activities by the Lenz/Rama group:
> They target areas where people with high future
> earning potential attend school.It seems that at least in this way, not much has changed over the years. The 1992-1993 recruiting drive, which brought in many new members including myself, was heavily focused around the areas near campuses where potential high future earners went to school.
In 1992-1993 this seemed to be a precursor to directing all the new members to move to New York as a test of whether they were "serious". Lenz liked New York. The importance of New York to the group, however, seems to have faded a bit over the years, and I suspect current leaders will keep the group in California and other states in the American Southwest.
I was recruited pretty aggressively as a Stanford student studying in a tech field--Lenz was very focused on computers for about the last 10-15 years of his life--but weirdly Lenz showed little interest in working closely with me after I moved to New York. It was, from my perspective, weird.
Another thing that was strange is that when Lenz killed himself, the big tech boom was just starting to heat up. It is as though Lenz spent a great deal of his adult life and that of his disciples preparing for 1999, only to kill himself in 1998. Weird.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2021 10:28AM by DharmaLion2003.