I totally agree with you, C-barb, about the Jezebel spirit being in operation in and through people, especially the leadership, in Struthers Church. I read some time ago, the article you have outlined and quoted above. It is spot on, re what is taking place in SMC, including the emphasis on women being in control. Please, I recommend that folk read the article as it's very informative and explains things well.

I also know what you mean, C-barb, regarding the fear and mental torment which can come as a result of sitting and listening to the preaching about demons and exorcism whilst in Struthers Church. I was affected by that too, but am mostly over it now. But I didn't experience that as a child. That kind of thing is totally unsuitable for children to hear about, in my opinion; There's a good article on the Latigo site about deliverance, describing what happens in SMC and also what's in the Bible about the subject.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Hi C-barb and others. It is good to have a chance to continue the chat about all things Struthers.

Yes, you see the false authority thing all the time in Struthers- in fact you rarely see anything else. Once you remove the unjustified authoritative statements (God is here, God wants to bless you, God's is not pleased with you, God has shown me you have a demon etc, etc) there is basically nothing left.

That is going to get harder and harder to justify however, as they have already said they are going to comply with request from OSCR. So, if they have this hot-line to God, why do they need to comply with requests form OSCR? Oops, someone has spotted the emperor has new clothes.

I think that will try to take a line of:

"no, we never claimed that, these poor, stupid followers have just never understood us. You OSCR investigators are much more intelligent that these naughty little people. You can understand how good we are, can't you?"

Apart from being insulting and condescending, there is also the key charities test of benefit/dis-benefit however. There are dozens or testimonies to the trauma caused by being embroiled in Struthers, and there is little doubt that many of us are still affected in different ways. Is that an argument to dismiss the authors of these comments as not worthy of consideration however? I would say exactly the opposite. If I was sitting in OSCR's shoes I would be asking why people are so traumatised by this organisation that it still affects many people decades later. That surely HAS to be investigated.

I seem to remember that even Mary Black, daughter of Hugh Black and the person public recognised as the successor and inheritor of the leadership mantle lost the plot a bit at the end of her life. Can anyone remember the details of that? I think it was mentioned in earlier posts.

What amazes me is that people can stand back and do nothing to help. They will "comply with OSCR's recommendations" but they will not take any proactive action to contact people who have been hurt or damaged to see how they can assist. That tells me a lot, and I am sure others see the same hypocrisy and lack of any real interest in people.

Hello again folks,

Yesterday I wrote letters to Grace Gault, Alison Speirs, Diana Rutherford and the couple from Greenock SMC whom I have referred to on this forum.

In my letters I apologised for personally insulting them in my posts and for the way in which I have treated them.

I have recently repented before God for the way in which I have reacted to the SMC leadership and to some of the members. At the end of the day they are my brothers and sisters in Christ and it is not for me to judge them. One day they will stand before God and give an account of themselves, as will we all.

Some of you may find it hard to understand my change of heart. I was finding that my attitude to the leadership of SMC was a barrier between me and God. I knew that I needed to confess it to Him and then to put things right with the people I have mentioned.

It is emphatically not my intention to detract in any way from the valid points made by those who contribute to this forum. I have simply repented of an unloving and ungodly attitude towards my fellow believers. Your often heart rending testimonies and ongoing pain still stands and the truth remains the truth. However, for me personally, two wrongs don't make a right and an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

I will wait to see if my letters are acknowledged. I have simply done what I felt convicted to do. I do not know what will be said from the platform regarding my letters. In a sense it is not my concern.

I wish you all God's blessing on your lives. It is before Him alone that we stand or fall. God is faithful even when we let Him and each other down.

Happy Survivor.

Hi Happy Survivor,


I will not speak for others, but I think this is great. I do not see it as a big change of heart, just as a genuine action prompted by wanting to do what is right. I too believe that two wrongs do not make a right, and we should not use the behaviour of others as an excuse for our own misbehaviour. Well done!

I have also apologised to others (for example on this forum when I have got things wrong) and would happily apologise to anyone in SMC for things I have done wrongly that have affected them.

I am obviously not going to apologise for telling the truth however, nor am I going to tell lies about what I have witnessed - "Thou shalt not bear false witness" applies as much to telling the truth when you see something is wrong as it does to not making things up, so I have to tell the truth. (Leaders who think they can deny responsibility because they have perhaps not been accused of specific actions please note this responsibility - bearing false witness to what you have seen by turning a blind eye is a large reason the abuse has been allowed to continue.)

It might also be worth mentioning that I would also accept an apology from the leaders of Struthers for things THEY have done wrong. That is not something that has been offered to me or to any others I know.

That is part of the problem I have with the organisation - they make people feel guilty about things (eating black pudding was one of the bizarre ones mentioned on this forum, and even things like the wearing of hats was apparently something that 'blocked spiritual progress' in others, yet somehow became a non-issue when the leaders decided it was OK), but do not feel guilty themselves.

Sorry, but that is upside-down. Why are you, Happy Survivor,and perhaps others, feeling guilty (or whatever - not trying to put words into your mouth) yet they are not? Seriously, your critical comments pale into insignificance beside the harm they have done with their comments and actions. That doesn't mean you are wrong to apologise - not at all. If you feel there is something to apologise for, then by all means apologise. That is the right thing to do and will as you say leave you with a clear conscience on the day of judgement.

In any honest organisation, the leaders would be doing just that - LEADing the way, by apologising to others. The way they work is very much "do as I say, do not do as I do however" and that is simply hypocrisy.

I also really wouldn't worry about anything being "a barrier between you and God". That is the kind of nonsense you hear in Struthers, but you won't hear it in other churches. The message in the Bible is that "nothing can pluck you from His hand". We ARE forgiven and accepted. And, what's more, if there is a barrier, then there is nothing we can do that is ever good enough to bridge the barrier between us and God. Writing to the leaders of Struthers isn't good enough, and spending your whole life in penitence and prayer is not good enough either. The good news is of course that something was good enough, and that is the death of Christ!

So, in my view, apologise because it is the right thing to do, but please don't do it because it is a barrier between you and God. It isn't! That is not how it works. You are not meant to go through life worrying about what is a barrier, you are simply meant to accept God's forgiveness and, of course, along with that, strive to do what is right. The "barrier between you and God" is not the issues however, that is just the kind of nonsense Struthers fills your head with. I have to say it is also a typical bullying mechanism that is used to control people, and is exactly why people are so traumatised when they leave.

[Footnote to Clive and any other people reading this who are not convinced of the Christian message. My response is written from a Christian perspective, which is what I believe, but I do not write it this way because of my personal beliefs, it is because the issue raised is in a Christian context "barrier between me and God". It seems to me this specifically warrants a response form a Christian perspective, although other contributions would I am sure also offer insight.]

As always, hope that helps. If it does, great, if not, ignore it!

Hello everyone,

I would just like to elaborate a little on my decision to write the letters I have spoken about in my last post.

When I first arrived at SMC in 2005 I was in a poor state spiritually. I remember the first time I spoke with Grace when I told her that I didn't know if I was saved or truly born again. With the discernment she had she assured me that I was "clean" and need not fear. I was on the first rung of the ladder out of doubt and despair.

I had never been in a Pentecostal church before and there were things that I found hard to understand and struggled with. With time I began to find God in a new and deeper way and to understand what worshipping "in spirit and in truth" really means. There was an indisputable Presence of God in the meetings and I was deeply touched and changed by the Holy Spirit.

I remember spending time with a 90 year old lady from the Isle of Lewis who had been in the Free Church of Scotland all her days. Her denomination had taught her against Pentecostalism and speaking in tongues but she told me "it's in the Bible!" She spoke of a night she found herself in Struthers in Greenock and of how she had "received a blessing". She did not elaborate to me but there was a look in her eyes that said so much about the preciousness of what she experienced that night.

There are a few people I have come across in Inverclyde in different churches who are very hesitant to be critical of SMC even if they do not agree with Pentecostalism. Some have worked alongside Struthers folk or have simply known them and have been deeply impacted by the quality of their lives and their close walk with God.

I do not believe that it is nonsense to speak of the barrier I felt between myself and God. I knew that something was hindering me spiritually and that I had grieved the Holy Spirit. The Bible speaks of how we can grieve the Spirit and quench Him. Jesus spoke of how we should be reconciled with someone who we are at odds with before we offer our gift at the altar.

I could have chosen to ignore the Holy Spirit's gentle convicting but why would I do that? I desire intimate fellowship with my God and am sensitive to His voice.

I spent five years in SMC. I shared deeply the things of God and my life's experiences with Grace and with some others. Grace's spoken ministry touched me deeply on many occasions and Diana's too, when I heard her preach on Saturday nights in Glasgow.

These things cannot be erased and dismissed. They may not match the experiences of others on this forum but that does not make them invalid and of no worth.

There have been things that have not been right in SMC. People have been treated injustly and have been wounded and damaged. Others have been blessed.

For myself, I will thank God for the blessing that came to me through my time in SMC and leave what I do not understand to Him.

I press on to know Christ more deeply and to realise His love for me and for us all, the love that is immeasurable and unfailing.

Happy Survivor.

Well OK, happy to apologise for saying it is nonsense - especially as we are on the theme of being willing to apologise.

I do think there is a danger in going down that route however. I know there have been times that people have almost got to the point that they think they are grieving the Holy Spirit because they put the wrong socks on in the morning, or parking in the wrong parking space, or praying before someone else who was about to pray etc etc. I really don't think we are meant to live in that sort of fear, and one of my points does still apply - you do not see the Struthers leaders living with the kind of concern about grieving the spirit that they somehow manage to instil in others.

Hi folks!

Happy Survivor I was really touched reading your post. I understand exactly how you feel and I also applaud your decision. These are feelings many of the people I know have had on leaving SMC. I yo-yoed for a bit too because I felt 'wrong' and began to think that I couldn't reach God and the presence of the Holy Spirit without the aid of those in SMC.

First and foremost I want to say to you that you are so very right, it's not for us to judge anyone and the Bible is clear about forgiving those who have done you wrong.

You have to do what you feel is right but I also want to share my own analysis of the situation having spent my first 18-20 years in the church and almost as long searching for the answers before I really began to understand the words of the Bible, without the elaborations and taking out of context done in Struthers.

Anyway, I have spent many years researching mass hypnosis in various places and forms and, whether you believe it or not, there is a chemical reaction in the brain which causes that very euphoric and 'spiritual' feeling you mentioned. I first made this connection, as the others will be sick of hearing, during a Red Arrows flypast in Devon - I experienced that self-same feeling which was referred to as 'spiritual' and 'holy' in SMC.

I believe that mass hypnosis is in operation because there are key phrases used by all those 'close' to the platform, there is an active stirring up to hysterical levels by being encourage to yell, bawl and scream till you're hoarse. Yet God tells us to 'be still and listen to his voice'. So how can you hear what God is telling you when your ears are full of a cacophony of sound? This is so typical of mass hypnosis – keep the brain confused then it's easy to work it up to the point of releasing endorphins and giving that 'spiritual' experience. I'm not going to tell you that all spiritual experiences are down to mass hypnosis. But having had some TRUE spiritual experiences since I left SMC, I now know the difference between the real thing and the one conjured up by a bunch of people who believe they and their teachings and techniques are above question and they are therefore unaccountable to anyone. But they are accountable to God.

I'm in no way saying that the members of SMC are not good people, far from it there are many very good people sitting on the pews but they are, in my view, sadly misled.

Many of us here, believe in the gifts of the spirit, including speaking in tongues; but the Bible does not paint this gift as being the most important of the gifts of the spirit. In fact there are a host of gifts from God and it isn't a requirement of God that you should shout and bawl in tongues in order to get closer to him.

On the subject of forgiveness of those who have done you wrong, I don't believe that this law of God applies when it comes to false leaders and teachers. The Bible is equally clear about how you should treat people who try to mislead you.

I guess you have to ask yourself, after 60 odd years of prophesies - many of which were supposed to come to pass within the next year 'The New Year Messages' - not ONE single prophesy has ever come true. The Bible tells us to test the prophets by their works - where are the prophesised works of the SMC leaders?

Let me recount an old testimony, heard many times by the folks in SMC from the sixties through to the eighties. This testimony regarded two local high schools who had a joint camping trip for some of their pupils. I forget where they camped now but, one night after lights out, some of the kids began to see visions of Jesus walking between their beds and by the next morning every kid in the camp gave their hearts to God. Mr Black was one of the teachers on that trip, by the way. Anyway, there is probably only about one of those kids (now much older) left in SMC and yet they all formed the core members of the original church.

Back in the day, revival was prophesised and it actually began to happen all around Scotland and in SMC. Kids were pouring into the outlaying branches of the church and the growth was nothing short of spectacular.

Then, Miss T. Began to take a more active role on the platform and the Jezebel spirit got into SMC. Miss T. Was a very jealous person and was angry that the outlaying branches had bigger congregations than the main church.

She began to harangue the then leaders (all young men in those days) for being too funny on their platforms – yet this was why kids came back week after week because these guys brought life into the church and used various means, including jokes, to get the message across to the youth in their areas.

In fact, I really had to laugh as I believe Grace Gault herself repeated the self-same words of Miss. T. From way back in the day, regarding young men being too funny. And that's in one of the sermons mentioned on Latigo. You see every generation of leader is taught to believe they are untouchable because they have some special anointing but this so-called anointing is not evident in anything they do.

The result of the entrance of the Jezebel spirit was a slow deterioration of numbers and then a mass exodus after the shares fiasco.

Having said all that, you need to do what you need to do but please be careful that the 'barrier' you're feeling just might be the guilt block instilled in you from years of mass hypnosis. Read what the Bible says about prophets and testing them by their works, also read what God says about the treatment of false teachers and prophets. I can assure you He doesn't say anything about forgiving them, although I'm sure that would stand if they repented and made reparations themselves.

I would say, take a bit more time over analysing why you feel the way you do and do have a look at the Derrin Brown videos (you should be able to find them on YouTube) particularly the episode where he makes a young woman have an experience like a 'spiritual' experience – just by using words, the tone of his voice and key words and phrases. If nothing else, just to set your mind at rest but quite honestly, it is amazingly easy to uses suggestive techniques to make people do and feel what you want them to do and feel. Have a look at some of these videos and then have a pray about it.

Also, and I'm not saying this is how it is for you, but when you have been used to regular hits of endorphins, it becomes a bit like a drug to your brain. So when you're no longer receiving this stimulii your brain has a wee bit of withdrawal and craves the blast of endorphins it just can't seem to get elsewhere.

Anyway, you know we all support you fully no matter what you do and we will keep you in our prayers as always but do make absolutely sure about what you're doing because the cold hard facts and evidence show that the leaders of SMC are not what they claim to be and, in my book, that means they can't possibly be Holy, as defined in the Bible.

We would still love to hear from you here though, so do keep in touch with us!

On another note though, I see Rrmoderator has posted that there are still changes going on with the whole Rick Ross site and that the lost posts may well be restored intact at some point in the near future. So that's good news, although he didn't really say very much about the loss of visibility in search engines – but here's hoping that comes back too. We're still here!!

As always biiiiiiig love and huge hugggggggs to all
God Bless xxx

c-barb wrpte
I also want to share my own analysis of the situation having spent my first 18-20 years in the church and almost as long searching for the answers before I really began to understand the words of the Bible, without the elaborations and taking out of context done in Struthers.

Anyway, I have spent many years researching mass hypnosis in various places and forms and, whether you believe it or not, there is a chemical reaction in the brain which causes that very euphoric and 'spiritual' feeling you mentioned. I first made this connection, as the others will be sick of hearing, during a Red Arrows flypast in Devon - I experienced that self-same feeling which was referred to as 'spiritual' and 'holy' in SMC.

I believe that mass hypnosis is in operation because there are key phrases used by all those 'close' to the platform, there is an active stirring up to hysterical levels by being encourage to yell, bawl and scream till you're hoarse. Yet God tells us to 'be still and listen to his voice'. So how can you hear what God is telling you when your ears are full of a cacophony of sound? This is so typical of mass hypnosis – keep the brain confused then it's easy to work it up to the point of releasing endorphins and giving that 'spiritual' experience. I'm not going to tell you that all spiritual experiences are down to mass hypnosis. But having had some TRUE spiritual experiences since I left SMC, I now know the difference between the real thing and the one conjured up by a bunch of people who believe they and their teachings and techniques are above question and they are therefore unaccountable to anyone. But they are accountable to God.

I'm in no way saying that the members of SMC are not good people, far from it there are many very good people sitting on the pews but they are, in my view, sadly misled.

Many of us here, believe in the gifts of the spirit, including speaking in tongues; but the Bible does not paint this gift as being the most important of the gifts of the spirit. In fact there are a host of gifts from God and it isn't a requirement of God that you should shout and bawl in tongues in order to get closer to him. "

These techiques have been studied and described for those of us who want to shed light into dark corners.

Below are excerpts from "Cults in Our Midst" by Professor Margaret Singer.
""

(quoted from below)

Professor Singer wrote "It is my contention that a number of speeches given by certain cult leaders, and some group chants, fit the criteria for producing transient levels of trance.

"For example, one of my graduate students made a comparison of the taped speeches of charismatic cult leaders, television evangelists, and mainstream church leaders, looking for persuasive and trance-inducing qualities.

"Her findings, based on the evaluations of trained raters, showed that the speeches by cult leaders and fundamentalist evangelists had more hypnotic qualities than those of the mainstream church leaders."

www.ex-premie.org/singer

Some excerpts from Professor Singer's book are given here. Educational.

Psychological Persuasion

Hypnosis

Naturalistic Trance Induction

Guided Imagery

Indirect Directives

Peer Pressure and Modeling

Emotional Manipulation

(Quote)Psychological Persuasion [top]

Cult leaders do not have schools of persuasion to attend. They become masters of the folk art of human manipulation through testing and observing what works. They modify their approaches and techniques and use centuries-old manipulative devices to lead people to change. There is no school of persuasion, but there are many ways to learn how to manipulate people. You can go to the library and read how confidence games are run and how street scams and hustles are worked by bunco artists. You can learn from reading newspapers and the popular press and from watching how salespeople operate and how street-smart people lead and hustle others to do their bidding. If you want to study more academic sources, there are good books in social psychology spelling out how influence is manipulated and how group process affects behavior. You can read the classic works on thought reform and brainwashing and catch on to the use of "struggle groups" and the mobilization of peer pressure. Indeed, the folk art of human manipulation and persuasion can be learned and perfected.

There is no end to the ways a person can learn to manipulate others, especially if that person has no conscience, feels no guilt over living off the labors and money of others, and is determined to lead. As parents, teachers, clergy, and others who attempt to get people to change their behavior are painfully aware, however, simply suggesting or hinting to someone that he or she should do something, and even ordering or telling someone to do something, may not evoke that person’s cooperation. Even threats may not gain compliance. So how do some cult leaders manage to manipulate people so successfully?

They use a combination of persuasion techniques: the physiological ones outlined in the previous chapter and the psychological ones described in this chapter. Here, we explore the use of trance and hypnosis, trickery, personal history revision, emotional manipulation, and the all-important peer pressure. No matter which techniques are used, the resultant behavioral change, as we saw in Chapter Three, continues to be accomplished in small incremental steps.



Hypnosis [top]

Hypnosis is classed as a psychological rather than a physiological method because it is essentially a form of highly focused mental concentration in which one person allows another to structure the object of the concentration and simultaneously suspends critical judgment and peripheral awareness. When this method is used in a cultic environment, it becomes a form of psychological manipulation and coercion because the cult leader implants suggestions aimed at his own agenda while the person is in a vulnerable state.

A trance is a phenomenon in which our consciousness or awareness is modified. Our awareness seems to split as our active critical-evaluative thinking dims, and we slip from an active into a passive-receptive mode of mental processing. We listen or look without reflection or evaluation. We suspend rational analysis, independent judgment, and conscious decision making about what we are hearing or taking in. We lose the boundaries between what we wish were true and what is factual. Imagination and reality intertwine, and our self and the selves of others seem more like one self. Our mental gears shift into receptivity, leaving active mental processing in neutral.

Trancelike states can occur during hypnosis, during complete absorption in reading or hearing stories, and during marked concentration. They are sometimes referred to as altered states of consciousness. While in an altered state, for the most part we experience an absence of our usual generalized reality orientation (GRO) -- that is, we are not actively noticing or aware of our environment and our part in it. In normal waking life, our GRO is our frame of reference, serving as background to our ongoing conscious experiences, our awareness. Our GRO shapes a context within which we interpret what is going on. This frame of reference can fade away under certain circumstances: hypnosis, meditation, guided imagery, drug use, fatigue, and sensory deprivation. When our GRO is weakened, we become both more suggestible to outside influences and more influenced by inner fantasies.

A number of cults use techniques that put people into an altered state of consciousness, making them more compliant. I am not saying that cult members walk around mesmerized, tranced out, and hypnotized for years on end. What I am saying is this: many cults and groups that use thought-reform techniques engage members in a fair amount of behavior that induces trances, as evidenced by the types and quality of the lectures and sermons and the required activities, such as prolonged chanting or meditation, and repetitive rote behavior. When transient trance states are induced, they may be inadvertent by-products of the group's exercises and methods of using language, or they may well be induced by design, although often not identified by the group as trance-inducing techniques. The most common procedure used is known as naturalistic trance induction, and many cults have relied on this technique.

One of the best explanations of how to go about inducing human cooperation and compliance in certain settings grows out of studies done of such naturalistic trance inductions. In the professional world of psychology, these indirect trance inductions were designed to bypass the usual resistance of patients who sought help but also resisted change when given direct instructions or suggestions. Naturalistic trance induction is also the model for some of the maneuvers used by cult leaders to change the attitudes and behaviors of their followers.



Naturalistic Trance Induction [top]

The work of Milton Erickson, a renowned medical hypnotist, and his colleagues provides an excellent compilation of the methods and techniques that can be used to elicit cooperation and decrease resistance to change. A number of these techniques are among the processes we see used in cults.

Milton Erickson was interested in hypnosis and trance in a very special way. As both a researcher in hypnosis and an experienced psychiatrist, he knew how difficult it is to help people change, especially when they must change their habit patterns. Dedicated to helping people, Erickson devised a unique way of treating his patients, and his work offers one of the clearest explanations of how ordinary words, conversational style, and careful pacing and leading of an interaction can bring one person to the point of being able to secure the cooperation of another person without using pressure, high-demand announcements, or commands.

Until Erickson's work became known, most persons who employed trances -- whether they were stage hypnotists, scientists studying hypnosis, or dentists and others using it to reduce pain and anxiety -- relied on formal trance inductions, procedures clearly announced to the patient -- "I am going to hypnotize you. Please close your eyes and relax." Erickson redefined hypnosis, seeing it as an interchange between two people in which the hypnotist gains the subject's cooperation, deals in various ways with resistance to cooperation, and promotes acknowledgment from the person that something is happening. Through this process, the hypnotherapist indirectly suggests the behavioral changes the patient comes to make.

During Erickson's naturalistic inductions, he did not announce, "We are now doing hypnosis." Nor did he even mention that "this is hypnosis." Instead, he "paced and led" the person he was working with into whatever levels of trance the person could attain at a particular time. People who went to him knowing his fame as a medical hypnotist found themselves sitting talking with him, hearing him tell tales and chatting along disarmingly, unaware that what was transpiring between them was producing trances of varying depths. As a result of these interactions, the patients' attitudes toward themselves and life were changing. Erickson's development of naturalistic trance induction was a major contribution to therapeutic intervention.

A critical difference between Milton Erickson's work and cult leaders' methods is that Erickson kept the best interests of his patients foremost and did nothing self-serving with what he recognized as a very powerful means of changing people. He used influence techniques to help his patients change for their own betterment and based his treatment methods on decades of astute and careful observations of patients. Nevertheless, Erickson's carefully noted observations on influence help us recognize and label the techniques put into play in cults and thought-reform groups. In Chapter Three, I outlined what thought reform is and the three stages unfreezing, changing, and refreezing a person's attitudes and behavior. Erickson's work gives us a way to understand the context in which the moment-to-moment alterations take place and the methods used during the process of change induction.

It is the naturalistic trance induction that is likely to occur in cults, thought-reform groups, and some New Age groups. Most leaders of these groups probably do not consider what they are doing as trance induction. However, even when trances per se are not produced, the activities of skilled recruiters and cult leaders capitalize on the essential ingredients of pacing and leading, exploiting positive transference (discussed later in the chapter), and making indirect suggestions, all of which are central to the processes of hypnosis and trance.

It is my contention that a number of speeches given by certain cult leaders, and some group chants, fit the criteria for producing transient levels of trance. For example, one of my graduate students made a comparison of the taped speeches of charismatic cult leaders, television evangelists, and mainstream church leaders, looking for persuasive and trance-inducing qualities. Her findings, based on the evaluations of trained raters, showed that the speeches by cult leaders and fundamentalist evangelists had more hypnotic qualities than those of the mainstream church leaders.

Cult members are also trained and rehearsed in certain styles of presentation and taught to look for the desired effects in as many listeners as possible. For example, a man who had become an elder in a Bible cult was presented with typed-out lectures and instructions from his leader in how to repeat phrases over and over in specially cadenced singsongs. The leader taught him how to make a short one-page lecture with biblical quotes stretch out for an hour or longer. An informal survey of ministers and people familiar with giving public speeches shows that a similar page would take them about three minutes to present aloud, even a bit slowly. The man said he knew church members were being "tranced out" as he spoke, and he was given great prestige in the group because he followed the coaching well and could imitate the leader's ways of giving the sermons.

One widely used trance induction process, described in the work of Hillel Zeitlin, is to evoke universal experiences, as is done in these words: "Who among us has not stood on a hillside, looking out over a valley...and felt some mysterious emotion welling up in our heart?" Evoking a feeling or universality in a person helps the speaker solicit cooperation from that person.

Sometimes the induction method is speech filled with paradox and discrepancy -- that is, the message is not logical and you are unable to follow it, but it is presented as though it were logical. Trying to follow what is being said can actually detach the listener from reality. A good example of this technique comes from cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's comments at an initiation ceremony in which he gave each disciple a new name along with directives to wear first orange- and then plum-colored clothing and a necklace with his picture on it. Reading what Rajneesh said can give you a feeling for what words can do to cause a person to enter a light trance, or space out.

First, the picture is not mine. The picture only appears to be mine. No picture of me is really possible. The moment one knows oneself, one knows something that cannot be depicted, described, framed. I exist as an emptiness that cannot be pictured, that cannot be photographed. That is why I could put the picture there...The more you know the picture -- the more you concentrate on it, the more you come in tune with it -- the more you will feel what I am saying. The more you concentrate on it, the more there will not be a picture there.

Rajneesh perhaps was aware of the common human response to doing something repetitively: the repeated act can lose meaning. Children catch on, for example, to how they can say their names over and over until they have no meaning. In the quotation, Rajneesh is capitalizing on the way words commonly lose meaning through banal repetition. In relation to a trancelike state, he is also implanting the suggestion that "the more you concentrate on it, the more there will not be any picture there."



Guided Imagery [top]

Indirect trance induction also grows out of storytelling and other verbal experiences. Cult leaders often speak repetitively, rhythmically, in hard-to-follow ways, and combine with these features the telling of tales and parables that are highly visualizable. They use words to create mental imagery, commonly called guided imagery.

In these guided-imagery exercises, the listener is urged to picture the story being told. The speaker may say, "Stop reflecting. Just go with the picture." Those who do stop reflecting on their nearby circumstances and go with the picture suddenly feel absorbed, relaxed, and very focused. And guided-imagery stories lead many people to experience altered states of consciousness.

A considerable number of different guided-imagery techniques are used by cult leaders and trainers to remove followers from their normal frames of reference. One technique is to tell long detailed stories that hold listeners' attention and get them absorbed, while lowering their awareness of the reality around them. As a result, they enter a trancelike state in which they are more likely to heed the suggestions and absorb the content of what is being said than if they were listening in an evaluative, rational way. The leaders who use guided imagery and other verbal techniques navigate through these exercises according to how much the listeners seem to be attaching to the words, how submerged and quiet they become.

For many persons, entering a trance state is pleasurable. It provides a respite from thought about the woes of everyday life. Thus, for example, about sixty years ago, people used to get together to read trance poetry. This poetry was an aspect of Romanticism, a nineteenth-century literary, philosophical, and artistic movement that was a reaction to an earlier neoclassical movement focused on intellectualism. Among the influences on Romantic poetry were mesmerism, the opium-induced hallucinations of British writer Thomas De Quincey, and Germanic authors' stress on imagination. When read aloud under suitable circumstances, a number of poems from this period have a decided trance-inducing effect. Poems such as Poe's "Annabel Lee," Gray's "Elegy," Tennyson's "Bugle Song," and Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" are of this type. Early in this century, groups would gather to have a good reader read such poetry aloud in order to induce a condition of rapt attention and intense emotional responsivity in a sizable portion of the audience. Some reported the experience was intense enough to be called "sublime ecstasy." These group readings, as well as solitary silent readings of certain kinds of poems, produced what are best called trance-augmented aesthetic experiences.

Students of this phenomenon have listed six qualities of trance-inducing poetry: (1) freedom from abruptness, (2) marked regularity of soothing rhythm, (3) refrain and frequent repetition, (4) ornamented harmonious rhythm to fix attention, (5) vagueness of imagery, and (6) fatiguing obscurities. It is these very qualities that can be identified in analyzing the speech of many cult leaders, particularly when they are addressing groups of members and sympathizers.

Some leaders combine storytelling imagery with shouting, rhythmic clapping, and dancing to induce altered states. These processes, the reader will recognize, combine both overbreathing and trance induction in one event. So not all guided imagery is quiet, and surely not all cult leaders know the details of how trance induction through absorption works or the intricacies of hyperventilation. But from what has been described to me and others, I believe that the successful cult leaders monitor, observe, and learn from what they try and, as needed, revise and reformulate the folk art of persuasion.

One leader of a Bible cult repeated long, colorful tales of his childhood as the content for his guided imagery. The history he told was later found by ex-members to be mostly fictional. The main thrust of his tales was to point out how pure and clean and innocent he was as a child. He explained that these traits led him to his special mission as a leader. Ex-members recalled that they spaced out during his tales and left the meetings feeling subdued and obedient. Interestingly, they said his guided imagery often was about achieving a mind such as he had had as a child: "Get your mind as it once was, the mind of a child, free and innocent, not a thought in your mind. Let me think for you."

Some of the psychotherapy cults and thought-reform groups use guided imagery to regress members back to childhood. The purpose is to stir up recall of past pain and loneliness and, at the same time, induce members to blame their parents for allowing them to be alone and neglected when they were children. The following brief sample of a regression technique comes from a man who had been in a group that used a great deal of visualization. He was told:

Close your eyes and go back in time to your childhood. See yourself at about age six. It is like a dream. you see yourself in a woods. You are you young and all alone. You walk between the trees to a clearing in the center. You see an old wall with a wooden gate that opens easily. You step inside, look around. you see some toys from when you were very young. The stuffed animal you loved, but it's cast aside, all alone and neglected. You look over across the way and see some clothes torn. You see the blanket you used to take to bed with you. You see your old bed across the way. You begin to feel as lonely now as you did as a little kid in bed, all alone. Who did you long for? Did they come? Why are you crying all alone in your bed? Think about all those lonely times and all those broken promises. Dad forgetting to come home to play, Mom not coming to put you to bed. All those broken promises. They are still deep inside, pulling at you, you are crying out alone and no one comes.

This guided imagery has the psychological goal of stirring up emotions, causing you, the group member, to return to childhood memories and recapture sadness. It also has the goal of implying that there are even more painful memories yet to be found, intimating that your parents caused all the miseries in your life. This allows the leader then to show you the way to happiness through learning his message and way of life: to come to find your new family and to feel loved here, blame those awful parents and don't go near them.

Guided imagery can have any content, and the group process of hearing others cry and sob as they recall past traumas has a powerful impact, for it induces a contagion of feeling and participation that can be heady for most persons.



Indirect Directives [top]

Cult members often say to their families and friends, "No one orders me around. I choose to do what I do." Getting members to think that way is one of the manipulations mastered by cult leaders who have become skillful at getting acts carried out through indirection and implication. Accomplishing this task is easier when the member is in an altered state, fatigued, or otherwise anxious or under stress.

Indirect, or implied directives are not found only in cults but are commonplace throughout society. For example, recently the Los Angeles Times was about to enter a photo for a Pulitzer Prize but withdrew the picture as a "fabrication" after rumors circulated that the picture had been staged. The photo showed a firefighter dousing his head with water from a swimming pool while a luxurious home was consumed by flames. There was no longer water pressure to fight the fire, nothing to spray on the flames. The paper tracked down the firefighter, who said the photographer had suggested that he go to the pool and pour water on his head. The photographer defended himself by saying, "I deny categorically asking or telling any fireman to pose for me in front of a pool. I may have been guilty of saying this would make a nice shot, but to the best of my recollection, I did not directly ask him to do it." This photographer got cooperation in the same way that cult leaders do: namely, imply that something should happen, and it does. Especially if the person hearing the suggestion is generally cooperative, tired, and does not quite know what to do next. What a frustrating and worn-down state the firefighter must have been in -- facing a raging inferno of flame and having no water with which to fight it. In such a suggestible and vulnerable frame of mind, the firefighter took the photographer’s hint as a directive.

That is exactly how cult leaders get many of their wishes carried out. Few need to scream out commands. Here are several cult-related illustrations:

After Synanon leader Chuck Dederich sat musing over his microphone about how greedy lawyers were and how he wanted some of their ears in a glass of alcohol, two young male followers, members of his Imperial Marines, took a rattlesnake and put it in a lawyer’s mailbox. In a media interview, Synanon’s resident PR man said, "No one is ordered or forced to do anything against their will….Dederich may advocate it – yes, he’s a great advocate. But he is very careful not to order it." (This infamous event is discussed further in Chapter Nine.)

One former cult member told me, "I had never been directly told to kill my father, but I knew that if I should see the need to save the group, I would do it without any direction beyond what I knew I must do."

Another former cult member said, "Our leader never told me to whip my son, but I knew that when he didn’t smile when I told him to be quiet that I must spank and spank him until he smiled. I couldn’t get him to, and he was bruised all over his legs and bottom before I stopped. I just knew I must do it."

In another cult, the leader often said during lectures that people who don’t obey must be punished. This was a repetitious theme backed up with many examples. Shortly after such a lecture, during a group work session, one woman began to shake and slap another woman who wasn’t working hard enough. Later she said, "It was his words and how much I wanted him to like me. I saw myself doing as he would. He didn’t have to be there, he didn’t have to tell me when or who or where. I wanted to do just what he wanted, so I began to shake and slap one woman. I realized I was flailing away at her. It was if he and I were one at the moment."




Peer Pressure and Modeling [top]

The old maxim "When in Rome do as the Romans do" underlies much of our adaptation to new social groups. It is both convenient and congenial to adapt. We look around and see models, and we comport ourselves to be like them. Most cults train new members, either through overtly stated policies or by more implicit shaping, to act in ways desired by the group. To increase members’ recruiting potential, typically cults train members to smile, appear happy, be outgoing, and give attention to newcomers.

Peer pressure is an effective means to get people to fit their behavior to group norms. In cults, this works for new and old members alike, going far beyond what is generally seen in society at large. In an atmosphere that states or implies that there is only one way to be and this is it, it is most important to have models around to imitate. Robert Lifton speaks of the totalism of the person meeting the totalistic ideology of a group, an idea that suggests why adaptation filters down to the clothing, the smiles, the language – all the details of behavior that are either approved or shunned.

For example, a number of women, particularly those from religious and political cults, told me that without being aware of it and without ever being told to do so, they slipped from dressing in ordinary clothes into wearing dark colors, long skirts, flat heels, and no makeup. Those who had been in psychotherapy cults tell me they were chastised if they did not provide "deep" revelations from their past. In the section on historical revision earlier in this chapter, we saw the importance of peer pressure and modeling in getting members to conform. Other ex-members have told me of seeing peers write letters to parents and friends based on sample letters provided by leadership. Several cults label some of these model letters disconnect letters.

In these activities, there is no need for cult leaders to full and belabor followers, as parents and teachers are wont to do with children and students. The clever cult leader or mind manipulator manages to use the innate tendencies toward group conformity that we bring with us as a powerful tool for change. No one has to announce the rules to us. Most of us look around and discern what they are and how we should behave. And most cults weed out "bad actors" at the point of recruitment: the disobedient, the unruly, the delinquent, the hard to handle and difficult to influence are turned away. They take too much time and thus are not cost effective to change, and they break up the atmosphere the leader wants to keep in place, the ambience that by fitting in things will go better.



Emotional Manipulation [top]

When leaders do not browbeat members into conformity but instead make use of the way people in groups learn through what they see other group members doing, personal behavioral and attitudinal changes are less noticeable to individuals. As one former cult member after another has told me, "I changed without being aware of it." This unconscious change is partly due to the power of the contagion of mood in groups. Cults induce feelings of guilt, shame, and fear, and use sex and intimacy controls to keep members dependent on the group. Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist who studies automatic influence, mindless compliance, and why people say yes without thinking, is interested in how exploiters, cult leaders, con artists, salespeople, and other "compliance professionals" can get individuals to fall into blind patterns of obedience. Some of our tendencies to engage in fixed-action patterns serve us well most of the time, but our propensity for patterned behavior can also be used by manipulators to dupe and control us.

According to Cialdini, the majority of the thousands of different tactics that compliance professionals use fall into six categories, and each category is based on a psychological principle that directs human behavior. These six principles are:

Consistency. We try to justify our earlier behavior.

Reciprocity. If somebody gives us something, we try to repay in kind.

Social proof. We try to find out what other people think is correct.

Authority. We have a deep-seated sense of duty to authority figures.

Liking. We obey people we like.

Scarcity. If we come to want something, we can be made to fear that if we wait it will be gone. The opportunity to get it may pass. We want to take it now – whatever is being offered, from an object to cosmic consciousness.

Looking at this list and thinking about our own behavior makes it easier to see how a manipulative person can move someone along a given pathway – depending on his or her skills and the person’s state of being and circumstances. We can see how transformations occur when the six principles are skillfully put into play by cult leaders and cultic groups. For example:

Consistency. If you have made a commitment to the group and then break it, you can be made to feel guilty.

Reciprocity. If you accept the group’s food and attention, you should feel you should repay them.

Social proof. If you look around in the group, you will see people behaving in particular ways. You imitate what you see and assume that such behavior is proper, good, and expected.

Authority. If you tend to respect authority, and your cult leader claims superior knowledge, power, and special missions in life, you accept him as an authority.

Liking. If you are the object of love bombing and other tactics that surround you, make you feel wanted and loved, and make you like the people in the group, you feel you ought to obey these people.

Scarcity. If you are told that without the group you will miss out on living a life without stress; miss out on attaining cosmic awareness and bliss; miss out on changing the world instantly or gaining the ability to travel back in time; or miss out on whatever the group offers that is tailored to seem essential to you, you will feel you must buy in now.

Keep these six compliance principles in mind as you read this example of emotional manipulation:

Having graduated from high school in a small town, "Beth" wanted time before her college classes began to get acquainted with the area and the campus, and maybe make a friend or two, so she moved into the large state university dorm early. As she was leaving one morning to go exploring, a young woman sitting in the dorm lobby cheerfully jumped up and began talking with her. Before long, the woman invited Beth to accompany her to a country farm, supposedly sponsored by students in a group studying world hunger.

After a few days at the farm, Beth was tired. She felt bombarded with many ideas that made her feel all wrong and uncertain. Yet she liked the woman who had brought her and felt surrounded by happy, smiling people who kept hugging her, complimenting her, and begging her to stay. At one point, she began to cry over the conflict she felt between wanting to stay at the farm, where it seemed so secure and loving, and going back to the huge university.

The male leader of the group lectured vaguely but emphatically about the ecology of the mind, the restoration of true harmony versus artificiality, and how to be an activist. Beth did know why, but she began to feel inadequate. The abstractions the leader spoke about were not ideas Beth was familiar with, but the other members, almost all women, nodded knowingly and adoringly as the leader lectured.

Before coming to college, Beth had been concerned about being from a small farming town in another state. Now the vague philosophy of the lectures made her feel guilty that her parents could afford to send her to a large, expensive university while there was so much hunger on the planet. Finally, during a lecture on how "educational institutions, even your own families, throw out good food while little children around the world are starving," Beth began to cry uncontrollably.

At this emotional outburst, which she said she was later trained to watch for in newcomers, some of the other group members hugged her and told her feelings were an indication of her great depth of sensitivity. She could become a leader of women, they said. She should spend her time with them and start college later. Beth felt relieved and stopped thinking about leaving. The group made parents sound slothful and cold, and all the new members soon stopped calling, writing, and accepting visits from families and old friends because they were not with "the movement".

Two years later, Beth finally ran away from the farm and called her parents. She had spent the time fund-raising and deceptively recruiting other young persons who worked to support a self-designated messiah who claimed he was appointed "The Guardian." Beth did not find out about the leader’s sexual abuse of some of the women in the group, nor did she question where the money she and others raised in the name of "ecology studies" went until a few months before she finally was able to plan how she would get away from the group.

It takes vigilance, stamina, and unending internal fortitude to live life and use our minds. We must pay heed to what humankind has learned about how free minds and free humans build better worlds cooperatively – something that does not occur under the dominion of a self-appointed exploiter who does not really have our welfare or the welfare of humankind as his central aim but merely his own temporal security and comfort
(Unquote)

""

Happy Survivor, I agree that It's always good to ask forgiveness if we feel we've done wrong and to keep in right relations with fellow-believers. However, I tend to agree with The Petitor's view that perhaps you are experiencing a "Struthers mindset" type of guilt. I have experienced this and that's why I know what it's like. Now that I am out of SMC and in a good, healthy church, I no longer get that type of guilt experiences, but I do get conviction of wrongdoing and then I simply pray and ask The Lord to forgive me and cleanse me. And because of grace, He does so, immediately. Only rarely do I feel the need to go and speak to someone and ask forgiveness, and then in most cases, there is a happy response and all is well and it's over. That didn't seem to happen when I was in SMC, because there is such a climate of fear, sternness and condemnation.
However, I hope you are OK and I wish you well.

A few points. SMC leaders' discernment has not always been accurate although they like to think it is and to lead people to think it always is. There are a number of people in SMC who have led the leaders a merry dance for years, and the leaders didn't know it. A man was sitting drinking alcohol in the meetings and they didn't pick that up, or, if they did, chose to ignore it (which is even worse). They covered over some serious issues and yet were unkind and nit-picking to people who were genuinely struggling and trying their hardest to follow God. They told off young folk who didn't know any better, yet ignored the bad behaviour of people they favoured. That doesn't seem like accurate discernment in operation. As The Petitor says, they haven't been quick to send apologies to those they have deeply hurt either.

Similarly to what C-barb says above, It isn't wrong to expose false teaching, false prophets and shepherds who hurt the flock. In fact, it's Scriptural. In the New Testament Paul writes, in various of his letters, warning about false apostles, deceitful workers, disciples who deserted him, disciples who stirred up trouble, legalistic teachers etc. He even mentions some by name. That didn't mean that Paul was unforgiving and unloving. He had to warn Christians of the dangers of false or abusive teaching. Let us go on doing so too!

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for your words of encouragement and also for pointing out the pitfalls of some of SMC teaching. I find it very hard to know what to retain and what to jettison. Yesterday was very difficult and painful for me as Sundays often are.

I have not as yet had any response to my letters to the 3 leaders and to the couple from Greenock. I included my phone number as well as my address.

One would hope that Grace, Diana and Alison are prayerfully considering Christ's words when He said to His disciples that if they did not forgive the sins of others then God would not forgive their sins.

They may also be meditating upon Paul's words in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 where he urges the leaders of the church to "forgive and comfort" the one who has grieved them "lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow". He concludes the matter by saying "Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him."

The couple from Greenock may have had to wait before contacting me until they have spoken to Grace and asked her how they should respond to my letter. It would be important that all the parties involved present a united front and sing from the same hymn sheet.

I have apologised for being insulting and unkind, and asked for forgiveness. As someone pointed out on this forum in other churches this would be graciously accepted in a spirit of love. I await a response from the anointed leaders of a movement that "God has raised up".

Happy Survivor.