Quote
patrick-darcy
yes, i see your point. where do u draw the line.

I don't know how it could be put on a legal basis, but the difference I see between a "good church" and a disaster like Landmark is: truth in advertising.
For example, I can go down to the corner church and without any deception they will tell me "We will have communion and hand you some bread and wine and tell you it is the body and blood of Christ, who rose from the dead. It's all in the Bible. Here have a copy. We all gather to help each other pray to an invisible being to solve our problems." I can say "That's nuts!" and run for the hills, but at least it's relatively honest.
Someone from Landmark, on the other hand says "Come to my graduation night so I can share with you my possibilities" but this is an utter lie. The truth is "Come to a hard sell session where skilled manipulators will try to get you to do the Forum without telling you what it is."

Does anyone know if there is legal precedent for an organization being require to have "truth in advertising"?

There are probably a few legal points on which LGATs could be brought to trial:
1. Truth in advertising
2. Declaring false statements particularly in the agreement signed by participants, (Landmark), where LE declares that it is not a Psychotherapy session; (refer the thread somwhere on this site on the LE agreements);
3. As LGATs are practicing Psychotherapy, they are doing so without a licence.

It would be nice to commission a lawyer to investigate the probability of prosecution on these or other points but one would need a serious amount of cash for the research and following through to court.

Oz

I have several friends from church who are very involved in Brian Klemmers seminars.What info is out there about them?I can't find much on them except in a round about way .(He was involved with PSI and still quotes Tom Wilhite-which sounds scary to me)Does any one have current info on this.Thanks

i also want to mention that landmark has the forum
set up and designed , some are for preachers .

they actually have a forum for clergy.

this may sound rather silly to some of u but to some of u it
wont.

imagine in landmarks empowerment process while
the people are wailing and screaming and crying, imagine
while they are completely unaware of what is going
on around them that the form leader, some do maybe not
all, while they are wailing and screaming and crying they
are given a psycological baptism in excrement.

now imagine the preachers in the churches after being
baptized by the cult in increment now goes about their
lives bringing in ever more amounts of victims for the
cuits to work over all the while preaching about the
Bible.

i believe this is prophecy coming true.


to the real christians out there u know what this means.

to the disbelievers it wont mean anything at all.

and to the false christians out there and there are many of them
out there they will continue to do what they have been
doing for so long.they will scream and holler and call u
filthy names.

it all fits together.

Quote
looking for help
However the LE Philosophy is totally contradictory to Christianity. It is more about New Age Mysticism.

Landmark offers a Landmark-centered view of the world, rather than a New Age one.

you make that sound so monolithic when more than anything, incoherence and diversity of memes (do a web search) which characterizes the New Age.

relative to religion, the New Age has a democratic and anarchistic element to it. people operating under a religious framework may not understand this.

to give an analogy, Al Queda doesn't make a distinction between hardcore feminism, Bible belt Christianity, swimsuit models. they all represent evil without bothering to un-tangle the contradictions they have with each other.

LEC has no esoteric component to it. if you don't know what esotericism means, then, again, I urge you to look it up.

if you take the information from Christian sources about what "the New Age" means you will get distortions and half-truths. go to the primary sources and you will a lot closer to the source.

Quote
joe6
For example, I can go down to the corner church and without any deception they will tell me "We will have communion and hand you some bread and wine and tell you it is the body and blood of Christ, who rose from the dead. It's all in the Bible. Here have a copy. We all gather to help each other pray to an invisible being to solve our problems." I can say "That's nuts!" and run for the hills, but at least it's relatively honest.
Someone from Landmark, on the other hand says "Come to my graduation night so I can share with you my possibilities" but this is an utter lie. The truth is "Come to a hard sell session where skilled manipulators will try to get you to do the Forum without telling you what it is."

yes, because LEC runs on a pure business model. and they offer something relatively abstract.

in the last five years the local (Boston area) liberal churches have marketed themselves as places to meet people and hook up.

I see that as as inevitable trend, really. religions have started to see belief systems as products and themselves as competitors in a marketplace and to see themselves as competitors in that marketplace.

they have started to act a lot more "nice", hip, fun and a lot more accepting 'cause if they don't they know their parishioners will just up and go to a more nicer, more fun, etc. church down the street.

the tradtional demoninations, continue to use the old if you don't behave you will not get re-born as a Brahman/you will go to Hell model.

esoteric

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]
Esoteric \Es`o*ter"ic\ ([e^]s`[-o]*t[e^]"[i^]k), a. [Gr.
'eswteriko`s, fr. 'esw`teros inner, interior, comp. fr. 'e`sw
in, within, fr. 'es, e'is, into, fr. 'en in. See In.]
1. Designed for, and understood by, the specially initiated
alone; not communicated, or not intelligible, to the
general body of followers; private; interior; acroamatic;
-- said of discussions of technical topics and of the
private and more recondite instructions and doctrines of
philosophers. Opposed to exoteric.
[1913 Webster]


landmark does have number one

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of
this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to
understand them. --De Quincey.
[1913 Webster]

2. Marked by secrecy or privacy; private; select;
confidential; as, an esoteric purpose; an esoteric
meeting.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.]


landmark does have number two


Esoteric \Es`o*ter"ic\, n. (Philos.)
(a) An esoteric doctrine or treatise; esoteric philosophy;
esoterics.
(b) One who believes, or is an initiate, in esoteric
doctrines or rites.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.]

WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]
esoteric
adj : confined to and understandable by only an enlightened inner
circle; "a compilation of esoteric philosophical
theories" [ant: exoteric]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]
155 Moby Thesaurus words for "esoteric":
absolute, abstract, abstruse, anagogic, arcane, auricular,
between the lines, between us, cabalic, cabalistic, censored,
certain, classified, close, closed, concealed, concrete,
confidential, covert, cryptic, dark, deep, deep-seated, defined,
definite, delitescent, detailed, determinate, different, distinct,
distinguished, dormant, eerie, enigmatic, especial, exceptional,
express, extramundane, extraordinary, extraterrestrial, fey, fixed,
heavy, hermetic, hibernating, hidden, hush-hush, hypernormal,
hyperphysical, immanent, implanted, implicit, in petto,
inalienable, individual, indwelling, infixed, ingrained, inherent,
inner, inside, internal, intimate, intrinsic, inward, inwrought,
irreducible, latent, lurking, metaphysic, minute, muffled,
mysterious, mystic, not for publication, noteworthy, numinous,
obfuscated, obscured, occult, off the record, otherworldly,
particular, personal, possible, potential, precise, preterhuman,
preternatural, preternormal, pretersensual, private, privileged,
profound, psychic, recondite, resident, respective, restricted,
sealed, secret, several, singular, sleeping, smothered,
solipsistic, special, specific, spiritual, stifled, subjective,
submerged, superhuman, supernatural, supernormal, superphysical,
supersensible, supersensual, suppressed, supramundane,
supranatural, theosophical, theosophist, top secret,
transcendental, transmundane, ulterior, unalienable, unbreatheable,
unchallengeable, under privilege, under security,
under the surface, under wraps, underlying, undisclosable,
undisclosed, undivulgable, undivulged, unearthly, unhuman,
unmanifested, unpublishable, unquestionable, unrevealable,
unrevealed, unspoken, untellable, untold, unutterable, unuttered,
unwhisperable, unworldly, veiled, virtual



THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]
ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult.
The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, -- _exoteric_, those that
the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and _esoteric_,
those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most
profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in
our time.


yes landmark does have an agenda.

Quote
Acid Reindeer

Quote
joe6
For example, I can go down to the corner church and without any deception they will tell me "We will have communion and hand you some bread and wine and tell you it is the body and blood of Christ, who rose from the dead. It's all in the Bible. Here have a copy. We all gather to help each other pray to an invisible being to solve our problems." I can say "That's nuts!" and run for the hills, but at least it's relatively honest.
Someone from Landmark, on the other hand says "Come to my graduation night so I can share with you my possibilities" but this is an utter lie. The truth is "Come to a hard sell session where skilled manipulators will try to get you to do the Forum without telling you what it is."

yes, because LEC runs on a pure business model. and they offer something relatively abstract.

secrecy in their techniques and what it is u are supposed to get
could be a business model. if u prefer a secrective type
of business model.


it also fits another model. it fits the model of a cult.






in the last five years the local (Boston area) liberal churches have marketed themselves as places to meet people and hook up.

I see that as as inevitable trend, really. religions have started to see belief systems as products and themselves as competitors in a marketplace and to see themselves as competitors in that marketplace.

i would agree with that. but not all belief systems do this.
many do.


they have started to act a lot more "nice", hip, fun and a lot more accepting 'cause if they don't they know their parishioners will just up and go to a more nicer, more fun, etc. church down the street.

true.


the tradtional demoninations, continue to use the old if you don't behave you will not get re-born as a Brahman/you will go to Hell model.

now there are more than one group that does this.

u can use the going to hell routine on people to keep them
in line. u can also beat your wives and children and this
will usually keep them in line.

the christian right does both. they are teachin their people
that once they have been baptized that they can then
"do anything u want to ". i have been told this many many
times by members of the christian right.

the christian right is not christianity. it is new age religion.

they do as u mentioned above use the more traditional
ways to keep their people in line and they also use
some of the new age ways. they are a quite powerful
political group. they have become so powerful that they
now control the house and the senate, the president and the
vice president also.

they like landmark also have an agenda. the christian
right intends to change the united states into a so called
chritian nation. if successful they will insist that people
that dont beat their children do so, and if they dont they
will insist they take control and do it for them.

an example of this is the shock and awe groups in florida.
there may be others. the right wing has initiated shock
and awe for the children.

landmark is growing politically , they just dont show it
yet. general motors , ford, and im not sure of now about
chrysler but in the past all three groups reimbursed their
employees who take landmark courses.

its seems that ford and general motors are examples
of landmarks new way of thinking. landmark is a business
of course and if u were to talk to employees of gm or or ford
and maybe chrysler u will find these people have an allegiance
to landmark, not to their companies.

big american business is acutually paying landmark to
take the minds of their people and lead them in some kind
of new way of being.

its interesting, i believe that as the big corporations have
grown so large that they have sowed the seeds of their
own destruction, at the very least their independence.

what i find fascinating that the christian right takes loads'
of big business money. i believe i read an article a while
back that tom delay mentioned that in the future businesses
that wanted their interest in legislation would have
to agree not to give any to the democrats but only to the
republicans. he has been admonished by his own part
for giving people a hard time that did give to democrats.

it appears that large so called christian groups are also
selling themselves to big business.

well if landmark is controlling the minds of the employees
of big business and right wing groups are selling
themsels to big business for moneythen it would appear that landmark is well on its way to power.

of course people tell me "that could never happen in
america" even while its happening.

i would just disagre with u that landmark has no hidden
agenda. they do. if u were to ask them they would say
it isnt so, or they might throw out some jargon and say
it doesnt mean anything. they would tell u anything but
the truth, but then they dont have any.

if u study landmark they they insist they dont have any.

now we have millions of americans getting themselves
mind washed by a group that up front tells them, "this
isnt the truth" and yet so many choose to belive it anyway.

go figure

I meant esoteric in the specific meaning of belonging to the Eastern or Western Esoteric Traditions. esoteri[i:cb31475642]cism[/i:cb31475642]" versus the merely esoteric. like I said, you would learn by doing a web search on this and reading something about what this means.

one of the universals of these traditions involves the preparation.

in traditional societies, because you would have learned the tribal lore both by osmosis and directly, since birth, you would know what to expect.

in other cultures you learn from books or get introduced slowly to the new way of thinking and doing, after a process of months or years.

you don't get thrown into the ocean as with LGAT's where you may drown or may cling to the lifeguard (by which I mean the Forum Leader) for fear of going under.

the one historical figure known to us who used to throw naifs into the ocean (Hassan i Sabbah) used to do that to program men into killers using hashish, from which we get the word assasins.

I didn't, by the way, say LEC did or didn't have a hidden agenda though I don't know whether you mean a truly hidden agenda (i.e. one only the management will have heard about) or one the public doesn't know about (Transform the World by 2020, unless they have changed the date).

I don't consider them immune to the process that I talked about in my last post, though, just slower about it.

hard for me to figure out why you described right wing christianity as new age.

Quote
whoknows
I have several friends from church who are very involved in Brian Klemmers seminars.What info is out there about them?I can't find much on them except in a round about way .(He was involved with PSI and still quotes Tom Wilhite-which sounds scary to me)Does any one have current info on this.Thanks

I attended a Klemmer Associates course (Personal Mastery) last summer. One of my wife's friends convinced her to go and she took me along.

I saw very little in the course that was of actual value, but quite a bit of coercive tactics, which all led to the end of the last day where they pushed like mad for us to sign up for the next course (at a price of several thousand dollars).

Jeff