Yes. I was responding to the previous post by Wright Again that included speculation about drugs.

Thanks for pointing out that no drugs were found in your sister's case.

This is consistent with my experience and that of doctors treating patients affected by LGATs.

Hi

Sorry I am not yet used to this forum. I did "fertile thoughts.org" (infertility issues) which moved in real time and was moderated later. The post refered to had not appeared as yet on my site - I was confused about the reference to drugs.

A psychologist I consulted mentioned this possibility and I thought it possible. But we have the results and toxi (post mortum) is clear ie. no drugs of any kind.

The Internet is great but just learning how this forum works.

Kate, i am very sorry about your loss.
At the moment i have been dealing with religious 'cult' group/family issues. I began looking at the LGAT posts on this site as an aside to my research, and i feel that these groups are even worse than what my family is involved with. I realise though, that the same processes/techniques are present in the group dynamic.
Over here in Perth there is a christian based service called Concerned Christian Growth Ministries, whom i have been accessing of late. They are extremely knowledgeable with regard to unethical processes that run across all types of groups (including non-religious based), and the effects and behaviours that people can develop after even short group experiences.
I wish i knew of a psychologist/psychotherapist in Sydney who is educated on mind control groups, but i don't know of anyone over there.

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nutrino

In my original EST training, the trainer explicitly stated that our integrity issues would absolutely, positively cause us to die of cancer. Interesting hypnotic fear installation there... not doing things their way, by their rules would put us at risk of dying of cancer.

Despicable. They know there are always people who are paranoid about getting cancer and that those people will be easily "hooked" by their offer of a preventitive. (This is reminiscent of John-Roger's "offer" to keep Peter McWilliams from getting aids.)

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Then that had this ludicrous, and I do mean ludicrous, piece of the most ass backwards epistemilogic idiocy called The Model Of The Mind where the trainer started drawing wildly all over a blackboard until it was covered with chalk... this was an accurate representation of how the mind worked, got it ? Are there any questions ? No ?

If memory serves, that "Model of the Mind" stuff was a direct lift from L. Ron Hubbard.


Thanks for posting. Any more comments? What impact did the est stuff have on you, if any?



Ellen

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KateLH
Hi

Sorry I am not yet used to this forum. I did "fertile thoughts.org" (infertility issues) which moved in real time and was moderated later. The post refered to had not appeared as yet on my site - I was confused about the reference to drugs.

A psychologist I consulted mentioned this possibility and I thought it possible. But we have the results and toxi (post mortum) is clear ie. no drugs of any kind.

The Internet is great but just learning how this forum works.

Hi Kate,


So very sorry to hear of your loss - another bit of evidence of the "potential" for distaster when rank amateurs go mucking about in the delicate, complex, and fragile areas of the human mind.


There are lots of people here who understand how these groups work and how their methods can produce tragic results. People suffering psychotic breaks during or after these programs are not all that unusual and starting showing up in hospital emergency rooms back in the 1970s.


There are stories in the literature of the early days of hypnosis about traveling show-men or "medicine men" of some kind who would put a bunch of people into a trance and make "suggestions" which the people would then be "locked" into because these men didn't know how to bring them out. The men left town and the people were left to deal with psychosis and suicide and various other problems which was why hypnosis was banned in some areas. Of course these groups will never admit that they use hypnosis or something resembling hypnosis. They refer to their inductions as "processes" or "meditations" or "visualizations" or something similar.


Again, my condolences.



Ellen

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If memory serves, that "Model of the Mind" stuff was a direct lift from L. Ron Hubbard.


Thanks for posting. Any more comments? What impact did the est stuff have on you, if any?



Ellen

EST was a freakshow. The most distressing aspect of the EST traing was observing the ease wth which seemingly rational people could be pulled into their line of "reasoning", to use the term loosely. It was so patently manipulative. They did an afternoon devoted to bogus faith healing where you were supposed to "re-create" your problem. If you did a good enough job of "re-creating" the problem was supposed to go away spontaneously. So they had this jovial young kid in the room, he might have been 14 or so, and the trainer treated him like the most lovable mascot, he could have been a plant for all I know, and the trainer then coyly asks if anyone has a problem they want to work on, so the kid pipes up and says he has a migraine headache and he routinely suffers from migraines, and the trainer goes all mushy-nicey on the kid and says, so "re-create your headache", whatever that was intended to mean, so the kid, all bright and shiny says "yes, I re-ceated it !!" and the trainer then coos, "well do you still have your headache ?" and the kid triumphantly exclaims " NO, my headache is gone!!!"... Lord Be Praised... what a big win that happy bundle of mother love just had... so then Mr. Trainer Demigod shares with us that this is proof positive that all you have to do is "re-create" whatever it is that ails you, and it spontaneously vanishes. Uh, right. Then Mr. Trainer Demigod shares a very special personal note. Werner himself told all the trainers that they were supposed to "re-create" Werner. Not emulate, learn from and grow according to one's own experience, or be a diligent student of, but be a psychological and spiritual clone of Werner. At that moment a philosophical paradox reaered its' inconvenient head. If perfect "re-creating" caused something to vanish, then wouldn't re-creating Werner cause him to dissappear too ? Not to be troubled by such glaring logical incongruities, we learned of the great struggle all trainers went through to be impeccable Werner replicants. It comes as no surprise that vulnerable people would have mental problems after a steady diet of this contradictory bloviating.

I've had a look at the Turning Point website in Australia.
I'll be interested to see where this police investigation leads to, if anything.
The seminars are available in Perth also, so i'll check out the weekend newspaper, as these kind of events often have small ads in the paper.

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nutrino

They did an afternoon devoted to bogus faith healing where you were supposed to "re-create" your problem. If you did a good enough job of "re-creating" the problem was supposed to go away spontaneously.

Now this I know came from scientology. W.W. Bartley, Werner Erhard's "official" biographer, had to insert a disclaimer regarding this ~creation~ and ~disappearance~ stuff in his fawning, worshipful book so that he wouldn't look like a total idiot.

Werner Erhard was neither schooled nor principled. He picked up odd bits and pieces of anything he though he could use on his mesmerized flock, including this bit of garbage.


(The worst insult a scientologist can utter is (supposedly) "I could disappear you with a thought." They actually believe this and think, if they study long enough and work hard enough, they can learn to vaporize or obliterate people with the power of their minds.)



Ellen

Thank you - all your replies have been very helpful. At first I thought no one would believe my family that the course was responsible for my sister's psychosis and death. But it seems these types of outcomes are widely known in relation to a whole underworld of LGATs. I will be passing what I have learnt onto the Police investigating my sister's death. They have been quite receptive to this input.

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KateLH
Thank you - all your replies have been very helpful. At first I thought no one would believe my family that the course was responsible for my sister's psychosis and death. But it seems these types of outcomes are widely known in relation to a whole underworld of LGATs. I will be passing what I have learnt onto the Police investigating my sister's death. They have been quite receptive to this input.

A while back there was an Australian reporter looking for information about Landmark and people who had gone through it who were not happy about the experience. She was having trouble finding anyone who would speak publically or on camera. I don't know what became of her research or if the story was dropped or if she is still working on it.


Ellen