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Toni
The teachers, including Hagelin, believe that these 'higher level of teachings' (the occult) are withheld at the entry level because novices are not ready for those teachings - it would be like teaching calculus to a five year old, so they say. As one's consciousness expands (and critical thinking diminishes) then the higher level of teachings are introduced gradually. Thus Hagelin believes that he does a service in deception.

Your post is very enligthening (!) in the real sense. Great post!

Let me ask to our community, are there similar "higher levels of teaching" at Landmark as well? We know it is the case for Scientology where Xenu is revealed only at the OT-5 level. Is there anything similar at Landmark? Some secret revelations of the higher order - at a very high price tag? Do Landmark leaders also think they do a "service in deception" ? (this is brillant observation Tony!)

FYI, the Natural Law Party recently changed it's name to the "US Peace Government", a catchy title. It worries me a lot that those New Age gurus are infiltrating DECEPTIVELY our elementary schools and colleges.

There is a 5 min NBC today news report here:

[www.mum.edu]

See also:
[uspeacegovernment.org]


I believe you are right. The movie "What the Bleep..." has political aspirations!

my sister told me that during the Advanced Course the leader annouced that they would reveal the truth or the secret of everything or somesuch, and then showed everyon a Monty Python video.

the latter courses also push the idea of promoting Landmark. they have a course that as far as I know dangles in front of graduates the promise that, yes, they can teach a course, play a larger part in the corporation and so forth.

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Acid Reindeer
my sister told me that during the Advanced Course the leader annouced that they would reveal the truth or the secret of everything or somesuch, put a video in and played a Monty Python video.

the latter courses also push the idea of promoting Landmark. they have a course that as far as I know dangles in front of graduates the promise that, yes, they can teach a course, play a larger part in the corporation and so forth.

???

Why would anyone pay thousands of $$$ to see a Monty Python video???
I really don't get It! Is that all they've got, Emptiness? Surely there must be some secret that is being kept ... or else why is there an endless number of advanced seminars? Where does it all lead to? Selling more "empty and meaningless" seminars?

Perhaps the point they're making is that the whole thing was just a big comedy, and that if you can accept that, you too can rake in the big bucks?
Seems simple enough to me. I just don't think it's a good idea to let the mark know he's been fleeced, but then again, I'm no con artist, so what would I know? Maybe that's just another move in the game.

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midonov123
???

Why would anyone pay thousands of $$$ to see a Monty Python video???
I really don't get It! Is that all they've got, Emptiness? Surely there must be some secret that is being kept ... or else why is there an endless number of advanced seminars? Where does it all lead to? Selling more "empty and meaningless" seminars?

In the advanced course, they often use the videos to illustrate their points. For example, they use 'the karate kid' to demonstrate that only good students who follow landmark's orders and do homework without asking questions or complaints will reap the benefits: "wax on wax off". They also used 'the gods must be crazy' to demonstrate that the same thing can be completely different from different points of view.

I heard about their using the [i:74868e9cd5]Karate Kid[/i:74868e9cd5] clip.

it bothers me particularly because they skillfully use it to evoke anxiety in the viewer that LEC wants to exploit them and then using humor the defuse the fear.

the clip has the protagonist doing a "spiritual exercise" for the guru who admits that he scammed the hero, but it doesn't matter because in the end the guru has the protagonist's best interests at heart and blah-de-blahdetty-blah.

Milton Erickson used stories in the same way as Landmark uses video (with the exception of the Python one) to impart hypnotic messages.

with the Python video they use the hypnotic technique of stunning the conscious mind -- making you punchdrunk with weirdness -- and then filling it before while still in a suggestible state.

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midonov123
???

Why would anyone pay thousands of $$$ to see a Monty Python video???
I really don't get It! Is that all they've got, Emptiness? Surely there must be some secret that is being kept ... or else why is there an endless number of advanced seminars? Where does it all lead to? Selling more "empty and meaningless" seminars?

C'mon, this is really simple. The whole purpose of all the philosophy and gobblety gook that the Forum leaders spew is simply to keep people sitting in their seats and listening. In order for the LGAT to work, people have to be exposed overtime. Thus, they're constantly strung along with the promise of some revelation at the end that'll tie all of the philosophic quotes and illogical arguments together. It's window dressing. Candy coating to help the medicine go down. The medicine being the programming to recruit that the group receives.

The added benefit, from Landmark's point of view, is that all this philosophy, the inspirational poster tidbits, sound encouraging and promising to the listeners. Then, at the end, the group is hit with a revelation that is no revelation at all. It's a let down, really. The power of group dynamics, however, is that everyone is left nodding their head knowlingly and clapping in amazement. Each and everyone of them is likely thinking, "I don't get it," but no one wants to look dumb in front of the rest of the group by admitting it. It's classic con.

Better still, Landmark spent all that time warning people that if they missed one minute by being late back from lunch, or disobeying all of the ridiculous rules, they might not get the big revelation. Thus, the attendees are left blaming themselves for sneaking that snack, sleeping during the fear exercise, or being late back from the break (conveniently started a couple minutes earlier then stated.)

Now, broken down and left with a powerful urge to promote/recruit for Landmark, they're unable to explain the hollow message they received during the Forum. Instead, they tell those that they invite that they have to attend and experience it all for themselves because its just too complicated.

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Ether Dragon
C'mon, this is really simple. The whole purpose of all the philosophy and gobblety gook that the Forum leaders spew is simply to keep people sitting in their seats and listening. In order for the LGAT to work, people have to be exposed overtime.

Yes, it's the exposure and control over time - not merely playing a movie. The playing of movies in the seminar is carefully timed to induce a predetermined reaction from the group.

See "Brainwashing" by Kathleen Taylor.

Taylor is an Oxford faculty scientist. She blends the fields of neuroscience and social psychology, to explain how the participants are influenced.

It's not about the philosophy per se, nor about paying thousand$ for the movies they show. It's about the "experience" - the methodology of artificially induced high from the LGAT setting, and then the skewed philosophy is given and reinforced onto a receptive slate. This causes the growth of new neural branches and synapses - physical structures in the brain. With repitition and reinforcement, these induced neural structures predominate over prexisting synapes.

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Coldnosesandfluffytails
Third, a Dec. 27, 2005 New York Times article entitled "Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest Theory," just about floored me. Scientists have successfully acheived a "cat state" in half a dozen beryllium atom; that is, they managed to make individual berylliuim atoms spin both clockwise and counterclockwise simultaneously. And the truly miraculous aspect of it is that you only have to do this to one atom, and then the rest will instantaneously mimic the first one distance irrelevant. According to the theory that has been confirmed by this experiment, there seems to be a force at work that exceeds the speed of light.

The "cat" state in the experiment at NIST refers to the "cat" paradox published in 1935 by Ernest Schrödinger. This thought experiment is fundamental to the concept of the "creation of reality" by an act of "Consciousness" as is being proposed by New Agers and the movie "What the Bleep...". Here is why.

A cat (yes!, a live cat "animal") is put inside a box together with a mechanism that includes a radioactive atom and a poisonous vial that will kill the cat if broken. The vial will be broken depending if the radioactive atom will decay (disintegrate) spontaneously or not after a certain time.

According to Quantum Mechanics (QM), the atom has a "probability" of one-half to decay after one half-life (suppose 1 hour). Since QM is a complete theory, it describes nature accurately and completely (this is fundamental!). So, what it means is after one hour, the atom is in a "mixture of states", meaning it is both "decayed" AND "not-decayed" at the same time (this is one of the strange feature of QM and reality)!

If the system is left unaltered and "unobserved", the extension of the QM description of reality from the microscopic atom to the macroscopic cat means that the complete system (atom-vial-cat) is in a mixture of both states where the cat is both dead AND alive (atom decayed+vial broken = dead cat; atom not decayed+vial intact = cat alive). However, it is not clear where the QM description of reality breaks down between the single atom (microscopic) and the 10^26 atoms that constitute the cat (macroscopic world). The NIST experiment has now demonstrated the QM description extends to at least 6 atoms, 25 orders of magnitude short of explaining the cat's fate!

This is where New Agers abandon science altogether to adopt a philosophy based on pure speculations. New Agers will claim that, yes indeed, the cat is both "dead AND alive" (some will say in parallel universes). This is the "world of infinite possibilities" as Landmark claims for example and this is exactly what the movie "What the Bleep ..." is all about. The speculation continues and the "creation of reality" comes in when a "conscious observer" looks inside the box to see what happened to the cat. As soon as the observer "looks" inside the box, the dual "dead AND alive" cat state collapse to only one of the two "possibilities". This is described as the "collapse of the wave function" in QM. It is also what is meant by the "creation of reality" by an act of "consciousness". The movie "What the bleep.." talks about "a world where reality is created by every thought".

According to this new set of "beliefs" (remember this is not science), the collapse takes place inside the "brain" of the observer and thus, the observer "creates" and "chooses" the cat to be "dead OR alive".

This is the QM origins of "creation of reality" by an act of "consciousness". And this is what I mean when I say that this concept is an over exaggeration and extrapolation (by 25 order of magnitudes) of the fundamental concepts of QM. It's not science, only "beliefs". And this gives rise to all sorts of speculations, like the "creation of your own cancer" for instance. New Age gurus will instill the beliefs that "you create you're own reality" this way. Some will even claim that by "training" your consciousness (like with TM), you can gain "control" over matter and "choose" whetever reality is best for you. Gurus will claim that you can achieve "higher levels of consciousness" and thus be "rich" and "healthy" or be whaterver you "choose". For example, Deepak Chopra, a promoter of Quantum Healing claims in one of his best selling book that "by an act of consciousness, you can tell your body not to age". So, why is he growing old??? maybe he "chooses" to (LOL)!


If you look at the history of the Physics of Consciousness Research Group (PCRG) that was funded by Werner Erhard in 1975, this is exactly what you will find. Why is this of interests to New Age gurus like Werner Erhard? It's because if you "create your own reality", you are fully responsible (thus blamed) for everything good or bad that happens to your life (being sick, healthy, or swept away by a Tsunami !!!). This way, the guru is always right and you're always wrong (when convenient for the guru).

I am convinced that most Landmarkians don't even know about this ... since this is "what you don't know that you don't know". It's probably one of the secrets that are being kept because if they were to tell such nonsense openly, they would loose skeptical participants, and this is bad for the business.

Another great post, mid!

BTW, regarding skeptical participants - they don't mind losing skeptical participants. They want to avoid skeptical participants. They target those in time of need, seeking help, and less skeptical.

Yes, Quantum Healing.. Chopra's stealing from TM-physicists..over a disagreement about publication royalites w/ Maharishi.

All that you write about the New Age physics is as it's taught.

Additionally - if you have problems in your life, it is because you are not appropriately in touch w/ the Field of All Possibilities.

My mother told me today - the recent leak in my roof is because I'm not appropriately attuned with the energies of the unseen universe (not because of excessive rains in my part of the world)! ... typical... Like I could have stopped the rains last week? Oh, the rains stopped now - maybe because my neighbor attended LE?
I digress..

To live in the world of Infinite Possibilites, you must continue with more LE courses, or TM courses, or to 'do your work' w/ more Intensives, have another au-naturale healing regime for your aura, cease mainstream medications that interfere w/ growth of consiciousness, or visit your Guru / Spiritual Master again and again...all with great praises for your commitment to growth into all possibilities. Continue money flowing to the source of denial. IMHO, it's emotional/psychological prostitution.

About QM. There was something from Domash in early 1970's about Helium 8. That was an important basis for QM-y teachings.
If you describe Helium 8, I can probably remember how the properties of Helium 8 were applied to consciousness - something about it overflowing and not being containable under certain conditions. I remember the video graphics - early 1970s.

I'll watch "What the Bleep" this wknd and see what else I remember for you. I pointedly avoided the film thus far.

I finally reviewed the links you provided above, from NBC news and also about the tour of Lynch and Hagelin. shudder... This is distressing.

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midonov123
This is the "world of infinite possibilities" as Landmark claims for example and this is exactly what the movie "What the Bleep ..." is all about. The speculation continues and the "creation of reality" comes in when a "conscious observer" looks inside the box to see what happened to the cat. As soon as the observer "looks" inside the box, the dual "dead AND alive" cat state collapse to only one of the two "possibilities". This is described as the "collapse of the wave function" in QM. It is also what is meant by the "creation of reality" by an act of "consciousness". The movie "What the bleep.." talks about "a world where reality is created by every thought".
........
For example, Deepak Chopra, a promoter of Quantum Healing claims in one of his best selling book that "by an act of consciousness, you can tell your body not to age". So, why is he growing old??? maybe he "chooses" to (LOL)!
........ It's probably one of the secrets that are being kept because if they were to tell such nonsense openly, they would loose skeptical participants, and this is bad for the business.