Soka Univ. of America (The Cult Univ.) -

Looks like they have an annual "International Festival" [www.soka.edu] open to the public and have been holding them for the past dozen years:

This year's - [www.youtube.com]

And another from a few years prior: [www.youtube.com]

Pretty slick public relations ploy for shakubuku and legitimacy efforts.

Incidentally, here is their 2011 commencement video, with Hiromasa's keynote address (starting at ~30:00 min. mark). An extraordinarily BORING and vacuous speech that talks about some photo the dear leader took and donated to the univ., the dear leader's dialogues (lots of name dropping) and an exceptionally lame joke (perhaps ironic?) about the graduation class being known as the class of "7-Eleven" (the convenience store business / "konbini" in Japanese parlance).

[www.youtube.com]

Oh my.

well, The Feynman Lectures on Physics are terrific! Feynman of course was totally opposed to all the flim-flam gobbleygook that was being associated with quantum mechanics, even when he was around it was getting bad.
If Feyman were around today, he would tear the entire New Wage a new one.

Talk about 'enlightenment', the Feynman Lectures are on the net in original audio and pdf. This is the official site.
[www.feynmanlectures.info]
Of course, the Lectures don't promise to make people rich overnight without effort, or to lead to perfect happiness by following a crooked cult leader.

They are about physics...imagine that.

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Hitch
Btw, my offer still stands, I'll be awaiting that Feynman Diagram. (I'm serious.)

Those SGI head-hunting stories are horrifying.
That is worse than Scientology.
Going to these people's houses, peering through windows, banging on all the doors, harrassing them.
That is worse than the Jehovah's Witnesses, who will go away when you tell them.

Anyone who has the faintest hope that SGI is not a "cult"... you have to look at things like taking a group of SGI people to a former SGI person's house, banging on the doors, peering through windows, and then trying to get the person back into the cult.
that is group intimidation, that is bullying, that is using psychological group peer-pressure to try and manipulate people and force them back to where they don't want to go.

For what?
So Ikeda-SGI gets more unpaid workers, so SGI can stockpile more BILLIONS of dollars in financial investments and real estate holdings in tax-shelters?

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The Anticult
well, The Feynman Lectures on Physics are terrific! Feynman of course was totally opposed to all the flim-flam gobbleygook that was being associated with quantum mechanics, even when he was around it was getting bad.
If Feyman were around today, he would tear the entire New Wage a new one.

Talk about 'enlightenment', the Feynman Lectures are on the net in original audio and pdf. This is the official site.
[www.feynmanlectures.info]
Of course, the Lectures don't promise to make people rich overnight without effort, or to lead to perfect happiness by following a crooked cult leader.

They are about physics...imagine that.

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Hitch
Btw, my offer still stands, I'll be awaiting that Feynman Diagram. (I'm serious.)

That's precisely my point (!) Anti-Cult. :-))

(The "red-box" set and his "QED" are essential reading. They are BRILLIANT and also have the extra added advantage of being true.)

Ahhhh! A breath of fresh air!!!

I've got another gakkai cult "experience" to share:

Back toward the end of my time "in", shortly before I decided to "officially" call it quits with the cult that I grew up in, I was dragged along to some meeting that required a bus trip comprised of a bunch of regional members from my area. I normally didn't do this kind of thing much anymore, but went along this time mainly for appeasement and obligatory reasons to keep the peace, as well as get a few people off my back so they would leave me alone.

We are bused out, I mind my own business for the entire trip, reading a book I brought along so I didn't have to engage too much with my fellow 'culties'.

I sit thru the entire meeting and dull speeches, all the meanwhile trying very hard to suppress my desire to roll my eyes and go bang my head against a wall.

Comes time to leave, we are walking in a line (like sheep) to our bus. Up comes some Christians wanting to give us some "literature". Members around me go into "attack" mode and are berating these proselytizers, shoving nmrk pamphlets and cards back at them. These christians are totally inundated, completely surrounded and being yelled at by the gakkai cult 'lions'. I push my way in to the front and ask them for a copy of their material and say, "I respect what you guys are trying to do here and appreciate where you are coming from. Thank you for this material, I'll give it a read. Could you take one of theirs, just to make it even. Thanks. Have a nice day." We continue walking to our bus.

I start getting angry and disgusted looks from my fellow "members" as I slip the christian material in my pocket. They are eying the material as if I'm holding dog feces in my hand. The looks slowly morph into whisperings and mumblings. As we are boarding the bus, a cultie zealot approaches me obviously very unpleased and says, "aren't you going to throw that stuff away?!?" (meaning, the christian doggie doo-doo literature). I reply, "No, because I promised them that I would take a look at it. Maybe after I read it, I will." They get really pissed, throw a gakkai pamphlet at my chest and abruptly walk away hot as hell. Not that it bothered me, but I was 'persona non grata' for the entire ride home.

There's one example of the cult's so-called 'interfaith dialogue' and tolerance in action.

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Hitch
I've got another gakkai cult "experience" to share:

Back toward the end of my time "in", shortly before I decided to "officially" call it quits with the cult that I grew up in, I was dragged along to some meeting that required a bus trip comprised of a bunch of regional members from my area. I normally didn't do this kind of thing much anymore, but went along this time mainly for appeasement and obligatory reasons to keep the peace, as well as get a few people off my back so they would leave me alone.

We are bused out, I mind my own business for the entire trip, reading a book I brought along so I didn't have to engage too much with my fellow 'culties'.

I sit thru the entire meeting and dull speeches, all the meanwhile trying very hard to suppress my desire to roll my eyes and go bang my head against a wall.

Comes time to leave, we are walking in a line (like sheep) to our bus. Up comes some Christians wanting to give us some "literature". Members around me go into "attack" mode and are berating these proselytizers, shoving nmrk pamphlets and cards back at them. These christians are totally inundated, completely surrounded and being yelled at by the gakkai cult 'lions'. I push my way in to the front and ask them for a copy of their material and say, "I respect what you guys are trying to do here and appreciate where you are coming from. Thank you for this material, I'll give it a read. Could you take one of theirs, just to make it even. Thanks. Have a nice day." We continue walking to our bus.

I start getting angry and disgusted looks from my fellow "members" as I slip the christian material in my pocket. They are eying the material as if I'm holding dog feces in my hand. The looks slowly morph into whisperings and mumblings. As we are boarding the bus, a cultie zealot approaches me obviously very unpleased and says, "aren't you going to throw that stuff away?!?" (meaning, the christian doggie doo-doo literature). I reply, "No, because I promised them that I would take a look at it. Maybe after I read it, I will." They get really pissed, throw a gakkai pamphlet at my chest and abruptly walk away hot as hell. Not that it bothered me, but I was 'persona non grata' for the entire ride home.

There's one example of the cult's so-called 'interfaith dialogue' and tolerance in action.

Hitch, thanks for continuing to share your experiences. The one with the that poor, unwilling "YMD"...something so priceless about it. It's so ingrained in these leaders' brains--once again--that Happiness/Good Fortune Carrot--that they are making yet one more fantastic cause by doing EVERYTHING in their power to shake the cobwebs off "taitens". Yay for that guy and his girlfriend!

As far as your experience on accepting Christian literature soo boldly in front of the members---another example of mass mindthink that Hell is the next stop for the bus for even holding such slanderous literature...

I wanted to pose a question here: Did anyone have the experience of being discouraged to socialize with fellow leaders (if you were one) and/or other members outside of SGI activities? The reasons I got at the time were that "it had the potential to sway one away from the Correct Practice" or something like that.

I just finshed reading SHO-HONDO by Mark Graber. In his preface, he states "The readers will notice some glaring flaws in the 1973 NSA organization,: militarism, male chavinism, aggrandizement of leaders, repression of sexual relations, arrogance toward other religions, and certain Japanese customs and superstitions being mistaken for the teachings of Nichiren. These defects have long since been corrected. The present day SGI-USA organization is very different than what is depicted in these pages."

HUH? These defects have long since been corrected? From what I can tell, the structure of the org has remained substantially unchanged. Does anybody know if this Mark Graber is in SGI, he doesn't say what his status is, except he is not representing SGI in an official capacity.

That said, I don't think I could have survived YMD! Besides the difficulty in keeping whites clean when you have no time to wash clothes, YMD seems like you were in the Army or something. Also, there was no repression of sexual relations in Chicago, YMD and YWD (and sometimes MD and WD) were constantly "dating", if you know what I mean. There was quite a bit of non-NSA socializing back in the day, I mean we went to parties together, some people partook of mind-altering drugs together. It was natural, you spent so much time with these people that it made sense to just do things together. That was part of the "hook", if you left, you lost these "friends". Fake musicianship was common in Kotekitai also, girls were told to just move their fingers if they didn't know the song. I'm sure this did a lot to advance the cause of cousin rufus. Silly, none of this band stuff advanced anything except organizational control over people's lives.

I loved the reference to a NSA singing group in the book, we had a group in Chicago composed of three male singers called the Star-Tels. They were quite popular and performed at most of the bigger gatherings. Entertainment for cousin rufus!

Mark's description of the pilgrimage was pretty accurate, the food was not that good (except for the one dinner at the home of a Japanese member), the accomodations sparse (no gold-plated fixtures for us commoners!), and the time in front of the Dai-Gohonzon very limited. Like the author, I spent money I really could not affort to go on the pilgrimage, and instead of feeling joy, was depressed quite a bit of the time. This was supposed to be a major "good cause" though, worth the sacrifice. Members who went on "tozan" were accorded higher status than those who couldn't, for whatever reason, this org was/is very status conscious. I wanted that recognition since I wasn't getting it any other way, but it still did not happen. Again, my being overweight was a bigger obstacle than going on tozan could overcome! I missed my first semester of college for this! And now the temple is gone and the authenticity of the dai gohonzon is in dispute, poof, what was sacred then is no more. How can this be a valid "philosophy" as we used to call it, when there is no real core?

Actually, the "core" is the well-hidden (to members) agenda of enrichment of SGI on the backs of members, and building a larger political and economic power base. Ugh, if I has any idea that this was what I was really supporting, I would have run for the hills.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2012 08:48AM by Freeheartandmind.

Both on the bookshelf for ages.
Also this Feynman book is terrific,
The Character of Physical Law.

The live audio of Feynman, which was the source for the Lectures, is great, fun to hear his Brooklyn voice.

Why get brainwashed with SGI cultic nonsense and wreck your life, when you can listen to a smart, practical, funny guy like Feynman explain stuff like that?
Especially now its on the net for free.

Replacing New Wage cultic nonsense, with real science and real philosophy and real psychology...that is one way out of the rabbit hole.

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Hitch
[

(The "red-box" set and his "QED" are essential reading. They are BRILLIANT and also have the extra added advantage of being true.)

Ahhhh! A breath of fresh air!!!

Exactly like I said!
:-)
Ikeda and SGI copied the fanatical and fascistic 'mind-control' techniques from the Japanese military which were developed and used in WWII, and then modified and used in other ways after the wars.
SGI picked up some of those techniques.

And no, SGI did not correct these. They CONCEALED THEM with more propaganda.
SGI-USA has systematically hired PR firms, and experts to fine-tune the overt SGI-USA message to appear more commercial and mainstream.
They ditched the Stalinist propaganda, and went with stuff that is more acceptable to USA folks.
Ikeda doesn't care, he wanted those USA billions, and he got them.

SGI-USA has hired countless consultants and ghost-writers to come up with the current FAKE SGI-USA image. Their website is nauseating, like it was designed by some standard public relations marketing company.
Ikeda wanted to make SGI-USA like McDonalds, and he did.

But the dark roots of 'mind-control' are at the core of SGI and SGI-USA, its behind everything they do, just concealed with an overlay of marketing propaganda.

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Freeheartandmind
I just finshed reading SHO-HONDO by Mark Graber. In his preface, he states "The readers will notice some glaring flaws in the 1973 NSA organization,: militarism, male chavinism, aggrandizement of leaders, repression of sexual relations, arrogance toward other religions, and certain Japanese customs and superstitions being mistaken for the teachings of Nichiren. These defects have long since been corrected. The present day SGI-USA organization is very different than what is depicted in these pages."

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Shavoy
As far as your experience on accepting Christian literature soo boldly in front of the members---another example of mass mindthink that Hell is the next stop for the bus for even holding such slanderous literature...

Agreed. If the bus had had an accident on the way back, I'm sure it would have been my fault, too (in their eyes)! Also, in their eyes, I was tainting all the good "fortune" they were accumulating from attending the meeting. I heard the ol' "plus, MINUS, equals = ZERO" manipulation (i.e., appeal to adverse consequences) line: you make a "good cause" by going to a meeting, but you essentially erase all of your efforts by engaging in such slander. (Insert eye-rolling emoticon here . . . )

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Shavoy
I wanted to pose a question here: Did anyone have the experience of being discouraged to socialize with fellow leaders (if you were one) and/or other members outside of SGI activities? The reasons I got at the time were that "it had the potential to sway one away from the Correct Practice" or something like that.

We were only really discouraged from getting too close to YWD, lest nature take its course and our pure faith be somehow overtaken by our raging hormones. Other than that, I can't say it was really discouraged.

The Japanese WD went out and had their shindigs all the time. I went out a few times with fellow youth div. and it was odd to see your "senior leaders" acting somewhat "normal." I say 'somewhat' only because they weren't completely normal in that some still had a tendency to order you around a bit and a lower leader still retained the diehard habit of brown-nosing his superior, no matter what the circumstances. Hanging out with the MD was probably my preference, because they weren't so anal about things and were most laid back (HAHA!)

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Freeheartandmind
I just finshed reading SHO-HONDO by Mark Graber. In his preface, he states "The readers will notice some glaring flaws in the 1973 NSA organization,: militarism, male chavinism, aggrandizement of leaders, repression of sexual relations, arrogance toward other religions, and certain Japanese customs and superstitions being mistaken for the teachings of Nichiren. These defects have long since been corrected. The present day SGI-USA organization is very different than what is depicted in these pages."

HUH? These defects have long since been corrected? From what I can tell, the structure of the org has remained substantially unchanged. Does anybody know if this Mark Graber is in SGI, he doesn't say what his status is, except he is not representing SGI in an official capacity.

I loved that part, too.

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Freeheartandmind
That said, I don't think I could have survived YMD! Besides the difficulty in keeping whites clean when you have no time to wash clothes, YMD seems like you were in the Army or something.

Not many bothered even trying to keep their milkman uniforms clean. I remember, some were pretty disgusting. It was always a readily available and easy excuse for getting yelled at - having unclean (or unpressed) whites. Some people's were so dirty and wrinkled that it looked like they had slept in and crawled through the gutter over night (no joke).

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Freeheartandmind
Fake musicianship was common in Kotekitai also, girls were told to just move their fingers if they didn't know the song. I'm sure this did a lot to advance the cause of cousin rufus. Silly, none of this band stuff advanced anything except organizational control over people's lives.

HAHA! Same thing in the brass band, too! Some of those people couldn't play if their life depended on it. We were told to just play louder to cover it up. Some of the practices sounded, appropriately, like feeding time at the zoo.

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Freeheartandmind
Members who went on "tozan" were accorded higher status than those who couldn't, for whatever reason, this org was/is very status conscious. I wanted that recognition since I wasn't getting it any other way, but it still did not happen.

You know, this is something that I had completely forgotten. You're right, "tozan people" were definitely afforded a "special" gold status over those who never went. I did "tozan", too.

I equate the experience to be the equivalent of 24/7 immersion into a cult retreat world; its sole purpose, to heavily and deeply indoctrinate you and reform your thought and behavior processes. Essentially, an attempt to implant permanent gakkai cult filtered contact lenses into your eyes, so you view everything and respond to the entire world differently thereafter. You are no longer an individual and become part of the group. The group and Cousin Rufus take all precedence and are all that exist and all that matters. You cannot think for yourself, you cannot move by yourself and you have absolutely no freedom except for a few DESIGNATED hours towards the end of the trip, specifically tasked to go pick up some souvenirs and do some personal shopping. Otherwise, it was constant "GO!, GO!, GO!, HURRY UP & WAIT!, GET IN LINE!, DO THIS!, DO THAT!, NO!!!, FASTER!!, GO!, GO!, GO!." The whole experience was like a kind of whirlwind journey of controlled epic chaos that never let up.

If you didn't show up for something that you were scheduled/told to do (soka-han, baggage, planning, practice, whatever), somebody would come looking for you, to yell at you, and physically drag you to where you were supposed to be. The ideal member was one who would do everything they were told to do and nothing else. They higher the "leader" you were from the outset, the more that was expected of you. I would be telling a lie if I didn't admit that some of us regular ol' ymd common members didn't sneak away when we weren't supposed to and dally around the streets of Japan on our own. We never got caught and it was a lot of fun for us precisely because it was against "gakkai" law (HAHA)! Maybe because I did that, I didn't undergo the complete immersion that others did.

I definitely felt the tugs pulling me in, though, but it all ultimately had the opposite effect on me. It made me further realize just how warped, manipulative and extreme things could potentially go if one gave in to it all. In a way, I'm glad I went, though, because it gave me a much better perspective and understanding about what the cult is TRULY all about. You were also treated differently once you went. You were more readily accepted and trusted more by the sheer virtue of simply having gone thru such an experience together along with your peers. It was like some sort of official 'initiation' into their world. It kind of made you a true "insider." I'm sure that senior salaried leaders all also have their own version of this kind of stuff, too (tailored to their "level", etc.).