Behavior Regression Ritual(s) -

(Taken from the SGI-USA Cult Retreat FNCC - "Florida Nature & Culture Center")
[www.youtube.com]


Essential Reading Material:
[www.culteducation.com]

Excerpts here - [www.ex-premie.org]
(Peer Pressure & Emotional Manipulation)


- Hitch

Such undignified and inane behavior of SGI leaders captured in the video recorded during an SGI activity at a muti-million dollar SGI retreat facility in Florida. Behavior regression indeed!

I was particularly impressed with the guy that's wearing a huge box on his head. A very nice symbolic representation of all the square-headed never-think-outside-the-box mental skullduggery that is prevalent throughout the SGI cult organization.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2014 01:22PM by Spartacus.

[qz.com]

While this article focuses on Scientology and Landmark Education, it speaks universally to how intelligent, thinking people can be drawn into a cult.

. . . In fact, indoctrination is tantamount to slow, methodical abuse. And just like other forms of abuse, often by the time you realize what what’s happening, it’s too late. Cults like Scientology initially seem to share universal values. They ask you to just keep yourself open to possibilities. Slowly, they keep pushing until, finally, they’ve established their way of thinking, first as the better alternative, and then as the new normal.

So subtle – I remember one of the things that drew me to SGI was its assertion that it was an organization dedicated to world peace and humanitarian causes. As a wilted flower-child, how could this not appeal to me? It was Buddhism, or so I was told . . . the most pacifistic philosophy going! The mysticism was irresistible, and the people I met were so kind and accepting. To someone relatively new in town who hadn’t made many friends, this was an added bonus. By the time I realized that things weren’t quite as they’d been presented, I was willing to go along with it – it was my new normal, you see.

Both Scientology and Landmark also share similar recruiting methods, using its members as de facto evangelizers. In conversations about Landmark, my boyfriend’s mother repeatedly put me on the spot, forcing me to defend my beliefs. Suddenly I felt like the closed-minded one, arguing with a woman who had welcomed me to her family with open arms.

Certainly, it had to have been my own close-mindedness that started questioning things, right? It couldn’t be that I was seeing cracks in the façade of the practice – they kept telling me, over and over again, that the practice was perfect. I was flawed. When I went to my leaders for guidance, they were kind and understanding, and they gently explained what I had to do to correct my mistaken views – chant more, study more, become a heart-to-heart disciple of my mentor who loved me personally and had only my best interests at heart.

When it came to Landmark, she had an answer for each of my hesitations. I lost sleep. I was under impossible pressure not to disappoint. My hair began to fall out; I had a bald spot the size of a quarter. Finally, I agreed to go to a Landmark “Completion” ceremony, believing it to be a graduation ceremony for her and her peers. In reality, the ceremony was a workshop where those who had “completed” their training were supposed to bring in uninitiated friends and family, and put pressure on them to join the Forum.

Of course – an answer for everything, and tricking people into coming to recruiting meetings. All meetings are recruiting meetings, if there is a non-member there. A non-member will be descended upon with more interest, approval and unwarranted affection than they’ve probably ever received in their lives. There is only goal here – to seduce that member into the group. After they leave, they will be flooded with phone calls, home visits . . . whatever it takes to get them to become one with the herd.

That’s when I realized just how deep the indoctrination had reached. This wonderful, intelligent woman had been a part of the Landmark “community” since 1988. She credited her bravery and personal successes to its methods. At this point, questioning its motives meant questioning her own values, her own sensory and emotional perception. How does one explain to someone who they have spent years of their life and thousands of their hard-earned dollars on something that amounts to a cult?

Does this sound familiar? Every success, whether it was personal, professional or financial, had to be credited back to the good old Mystic Law. A cult-member is utterly without their own power – nothing positive can be accomplished without sufficient placation of the Mystic Law. It is the source to everything good, and the gohonzon stands as its portal.

Members become so closely absorbed into the cult that their own identities are lost. Questioning any of its methods or motives becomes personal; they’ve lost their individuality, and they aren’t even aware of it . . . in fact, they refuse to even examine that possibility. To leave the cult would be to lose whom they’ve become. “I am the SGI” is more than just a banal motto – it’s a firmly-held belief. You don’t need to be you any more.

Indoctrination, in this way, is self-sustaining. To not believe would mean losing something very tangible. Organizations like these are in this way self-policed, the same way a simple game like Truth or Dare is intrinsically enforced by groupthink. Organizations are acutely aware of this, using groupthink, itself, is a methodology.

And that groupthink is reinforced at every opportunity. Every meeting opens with gongyo and closes with a trance-breaking sancho. In between, everyone speaks the various company lines and receives plenty of reinforcement from the other members. Good dog! You don’t want to lose their approval, because it has come to mean almost everything to you. Being accused of creating disharmony is less forgivable than holding up a gas-station.

Hi, everybody! I've been gone a really long time from here, but I thought I'd pop back in and see if anybody was around. I was doing some research and ran across an article about yakuza culture, and I was stunned at how Ikeda's early relationship with Toda (per what's written in Ikeda's self-serving hagiography, "The Human Revolution") matches traditional yakuza recruiting and promoting. If you're interested, I've written up a summary here: [www.reddit.com]

The link to the article is at the bottom of the article, and there are some of the excerpts from "The Human Revolution" that seemed to match as well.

Welcome back, ST&P !

Glad you're well.

It is always a good use of time to examine the early background of a cult leader. Charisma, speaking skills, PR and people management are skills that have to be learned.

Many a cult leader makes it seem that he or she was born with these skills or given those skills by divine intervention.

What they do not want us to know is that they were as driven and ambitious as any secular political aspirant, and looked for ways to learn the ropes.

Often, this means finding another guru from whom one can learn the tricks.

In his book, Prophetic Charisma, psychologist Len Oakes describes what he learned by interviewing 20 charismatic leaders. All of them had been driven when young, had a sense of specialness and craved affirmation. All had become avid students of social manipulation. Many had been teachers, some were in sales, others in the performing arts.

None of the twenty were able to enjoy intimate relationships with adult equals. They needed to be top dog in relation to admiring underlings.


* The ability to both charm and fear

* How to find people who are not only recruitable but presentable -- people who will make you and your project look good.

* Identifying talented yet wounded people who are not likely to rebel and become competitors. Make them feel healed, but do not actually heal them. If they are actually healed, they will become able to disagree with you, make you feel rejected, then have the confidence to leave your group.

* Identify potential rebels. Do not recruit them, or dump them as soon as possible after recruiting them, perhaps after exploiting their assets.

* Find ways to get people to work for you at low cost or free and consider this a privilege. (People with skill in building/remodeling, property assessment, accountancy, people with client centered practices such as massage therapists, yoga teachers, hairdressers, psychotherapists who are unwary
enough to let themselves be co-opted)

* Persons skilled in alchemy -- obtaining IRS tax exemption.

* How to get cozy with the police and politicians so as to avoid scrutiny

* Give your people a sense of security and purpose the don't feel they can get anywhere else.

* Instill just enough fear that people will be afraid to leave or inform on you.

*Turn your fiefdom into a surrogate family. Make people think you love them more than their real family does. Make them believe their concerned friends and family members are thwarting adult autonomy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2016 10:24PM by corboy.

You've hit the nail on the head, corboy. That list is pretty much interchangeable, whether you're talking about a cult or a crime organization. If you can meet all of those "qualifications," you are capable of being unquestioningly loyal to the "family."

These "leaders" often have a collection of 'canned' or clichéd expressions.

[forum.culteducation.com]

[forum.culteducation.com]

My portrait of a charismatic person

[forum.culteducation.com]


[forum.culteducation.com]

[forum.culteducation.com]

Quote

People in this mindset HATE being told that predators do prowl the spiritual circuit. Part of the bliss of childhood is oblivousness to danger--which is precisely why tiny children need parents.

As adults we must parent our inner children and make sure only honest kind persons get access to our inner children.

So, while there are many who are glad to get warnings that a cult is operating in their area, others may furiously resent your offer of information. It is very possible that the ones who resent your efforts do so because your reminder that danger exists has disrupted their
plunge into the blissful regression to childish thinking.

This craving for childish regression is PRECISELY what a counterfeit spiritual teacher/group exploits.

A genuine spiritual teacher wakes you up from spiritual childhood--he or she will never trap you in spiritual childhood--and will not molest your inner child.

Len Oakes, author of Prophetic Charisma has this to add:

'A striking thing about the (cult) followers is how little they seek to know about the leader's background. Few ever ask searching questions and critically evaluate the answers. They prefer to let the leader's daily example (often enhanced through carefully scripted social settings, the support of an entourage-my note) serve as the testimony of his truth, and hence as a vehicle for their great work (that is, the followers' deepest hopes for their own transformation). TO QUESTION TOO CLOSELY would be to disrupt the pleasant flow of here-and-now fusion.' (Oakes, p 129)

More similarities between effective organized crime and long lasting cults

* Grow your own talent -- ID talented people and support 'em through law school, accountancy training. Result: in-house CPAs and attorneys.

Some cults, however go further than organized crime -- they create schools of indoctrination for children.

School for Economic Science.

[www.google.com]

School for Practical Philosophy (SES in the United States)

[www.google.com]

3HO Yogi Bhajan -- boarding school in India.

[www.google.com]

Science of Identity (led by Jagad Guru Chris Butler in Hawaii) sends disciple's children to a boarding school in Baguio, in the Philippines.

[www.google.com]

Anthroposophy (Steinerism) "Waldorf schools.

[www.google.com]

[www.google.com]

Create your own bank (Anthroposophy)

[www.google.com]

Create your own university

Transcendental Meditation's Maharishi University



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2015 12:58PM by corboy.

Fascinating analysis, corboy - thanks for bringing that to the board! Here is an example that illustrates the following points:

- None of the twenty were able to enjoy intimate relationships with adult equals. They needed to be top dog in relation to admiring underlings.

- The ability to both charm and fear

- Instill just enough fear that people will be afraid to leave or inform on you.

From Polly Toynbee's account of meeting with Daisaku Ikeda: "The Value of a Grandfather Figure"

> Our host's style of conversation was imperious and alarming -- he led and others followed. Any unexpected or unconventional remark was greeted with a stern fixed look in the eye, incomprehension, and a warning frostiness.

> Worldly he seemed, down to the tip of his hand-made shoes, earthy almost, without a whiff of even artificial spirituality. Asked to hazard a guess at his occupation, few would have selected him as a religious figure. I have met many powerful men -- prime ministers, leaders of all kinds -- but I have never in my life met anyone who exuded such an aura of absolute power as Mr Ikeda. He seems like a man who for many years has had his every whim gratified, his every order obeyed, a man protected from contradiction or conflict. I am not easily frightened, but something in him struck a chill down the spine.

> An icy look passed across Mr Ikeda's ample features. He looked as if he might summon a squad of husky samurai to haul us away.

We can add Soka University in So. CA and all the Soka schools over in Japan (including kindergartens and elementary schools), as well as the (failed) attempt to sneak a Soka charter school under the radar - the "Spirit of Knowledge Academy" in Massachusetts. Notice the initials O_O It closed - read all about it here: [www.reddit.com]

Hey, corboy! I have an old friend who was in the US Yogi Bhajan yoga cult for, like, 7 years! She was even *married* within that cult!

Over at our anti-cult anti-SGI activist site that we've been running for a coupla years now, I just got a couple of responses from SGI members, and I can't resist sharing! Here we go:

Hey you there! SGI member Over here, I have something to say to you all craaaaazy dickwads. You all bunch of Anti-SGI clowns are crazy, like nutty crazies. You spend your time here badmouthing SGI for issues after issues of endless bitter experiences from boo-hoo 1995 as you have had in the organization that you people cannot move on from. Its really sad and abnormal, really. Most human beings would just forget their experiences and move on with their lives but you people are deadly obsessed about SGI and its past and present activities. I think you all have a mental disorder, especially this BlancheFromage who thinks she is some kind of a anti-Religion hero that will liberate members from SGI. Hahahaha, keep telling yourself that idiot. Listen stooges, When Hell freezes over, thats when SGI members will be convinced of your ridiculous and exaggerated emotional stories. Honestly, while it is true of the bullshit that SGI had in many years past, you people still lose the argument because SGI has changed itself to accomodate the normal people who dislike religion, formality and ritual. SGI has accomodated various religions (except the Shoshu school of course) and atheist individuals who dislike religion and formality in general. Furthermore, what sets them apart from lunatics like you people is that SGI does not core on hate. You people thinking like its still the 1990's Shakubuku days are gone.. gone! gone from an era that has changed. Your endless bitterness and ranting against SGI is virtually non-existent. The organization has changed to become more friendly, more transparent, more kind and understanding towards peoples varying religious beliefs while you brady bunch here are still mulling over the Temple issues of 1979 like some sort of retarded kids. ITS NOT THE same SGI like before kids. They ain't angry and zombie no more. SO Get over it. Serious SGI members today don't believe a word that you say because they experience positivity, friendship and reinforcement of good values in their community center. Yes there still is the resistance against Temple doctrines, because they are presented as authoritarian and openly dictatorial-------which is TRUE anyway! SGI PRESENT leadership on the other hand is not the same bullshit you people experienced ages ago. They are friends, friendly and will still maintain friendly even if you quit. Not like your bad experiences from the past that was YES... "More Culty". You all bitter bunch need to let it go and find something entertaining to do with your lives. SGI isnt going away. It isn't dying. The temple devotees are not going away either. They are both growing in numbers. So when you people die off this earth, so will your bad experiences. SGI has grown and changed for the better. It was not perfect before because it was still going through the Japanese pioneer days of conservative values/modern change. Now its completely modern, open and free to debate and argue. I personally will stay in SGi because I abhor religion, and it aligns my desire against nuclear power, while supporting peace and cultural activities. People are real and friendly, and we dont need to believe in organised religion and ritual of Shoshu to be happy. As far as President Ikeda, if you like him great, if you dont then fine. SGI members are encouraged but not forced to donate so quit your lies. As far land Management and decision management, will always be centered in Tokyo, SGI is not planning to become your happy peppy democracy group and it is not an American institution so stop wishing something impossible. Only you bunch are the ones hanging from a dead tree trying to beat a dead horse. You all need mental medications, fools. Not even President Ikeda can save you from your mental problems if he wished. - CarlAndersen

Nice, right?