I'd like to hear more about your experience in a Gurdjieff-inspired group, please, Jupiter. No matter how strange or trivial you think the story, let us know here. Insider information about these groups is hard to come by. Thanks.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I like this thread about dismantling Scientology and showing how it is just a hodge-podge culmination of past ideas and not, as Scientologists would like you to believe, the fountainhead of all modern, enlightened thought. Here's an example. Anyone relying on official Scientology propaganda might be led to believe that the engram is a radical new idea by Ron. From Wikipedia: QuoteThe
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteSaneAgainRs, Rico is a set of laws used against the mafia, for racketeering i.e. mafia business like fraud. Rswinters and upsidedownnewspaper: Your discussion about philosophy vs business model has got me thinking about Noam Chomsky and his book "manufacturing consent". His basic theory is that in an authoritarian state the rulers control the media and use blatant propaganda
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

No problem. No offense intended or taken! You are researching Scientology and have decided it forms the fountainhead of all subsequent LGAT forums. Counter to this, I think this is just an idea promoted by Scientology in order to garner the feeling of exclusivity and importance. I think you may be falling into the trap of thinking Scientology promotes something other than a closed, exclus
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

I disagree. It is not the philosophy at fault, it is the business model. We are all capable of thinking about life. Even the most staunch opponent of new age philosophy might have occasion to think momentarily that life is all good or everything is as it should be, or we all might be aliens...how about that! We are all free to cast our minds in these directions. The mistake is to start b
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

A link to the Yahoo news story.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

You want John Travolta, who recently stood before a camera and said that with Scientology the likes of Anna Nicole Smith and Elvis would still be with us, to stand before a camera and account for this latest tragedy. But he won't.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

The young woman who stabbed her father and sister to death in Australia this week was a Scientologist who had been denied psychiatric treatment by her family.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Rswinters, I just replied at length, got logged off and of course, my reply vanished. I'll try to be more succinct! I have read your several posts lately suggesting Scientology is the fountainhead of new age LGAT therapies. I think you are falling into a trap. Scientology would love for you to think they have measured the perimeters of a new way of thought and that all else ste
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteON2 LFI don't know who Voltaire is or was but he must have heard of 'the secret' and landmark education.... "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." --Voltaire Voltaire wrote Candide in 1758 and anyone frustrated by The Secret should read it. I like to imagine the philosopher, Dr Pangloss is Rhonda Byrne: absurdly maintaini
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Is it just me or is Scientology undergoing a new phase of its existence as a controversial religion?? As James Packer and his new wife marry under intense media scrutiny and in the presence of Scientologist friends Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and while Oprah increasingly openly celebrates her deep friendships with John Travolta and Tom Cruise and Kirstie Alley, and in light of what I see as t
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

(I may have asked this of you before, richardmgreen. Is it Lubavich Chabad Judaism that is depicted in Potok's My Name is Asher Lev?)
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Excuse me: Tralfamadorians.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Someone reviewed Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 on television tonight and remarked how interesting is the book's representation of the Troglamites' view of human time. Troglamite's see human time, past, present, future, all existing all of the time; every event in a human lifetime is perfect, everything happens as it is supposed to... I see parallels between this view of
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Thanks for your clear post regarding Gurdjieff groups. I have a friend involved in the School of Economic Science/School of Philosophy that I understand follows Gurdjieff's teachings. In your post, you talk about followers of the Gurdjieff movement thinking about what makes them uncomfortable. From your readings or experience, do you have any concrete examples of how this technique is
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Anyone can see that this is going to blow-up at any minute. Oprah has dug herself into a massive pit. On an egotistical bender, she has signed up for The Secret guff and has manifested herself a schoolful of her "new daughters" (she has used that very megalomaniacal term) and now, when the problems start happening -- because they do, in schools, generally, let alone with a media scrum
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Madshus, I've found that when you ask for believers of The Secret to follow the logic to its absurd conclusions, you are frequently attacked for "taking it too seriously."
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

What of nagging symptoms of sickness: should one go to a doctor? Or is that going to compound my medical problems? And the gambler who is certain that this is the moment for his windfall? How does one know if one's understanding of the law of attraction is in need of a tweek? One gambler hits the jackpot, the other goes home broke: which one successfully applied LOA? Any ideas?
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Thanks, elena, for that link. It was refreshing. Oprah's recent big altruistic giveaway show (she gave everyone in the audience $1000 and ordered them to give it away) is further proof that the kind of good will she espouses is pure, unadulterated egoism. They had a follow-up to that giveaway show which showcased an audience member who used her $1000 to bus homeless men to screenings
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

The one thing this secret bizo has going for it is that it places power in your hands. I like that as opposed to people handing me a volume called Dianetics and telling me, "This will improve your life," or a self-appointed trainer in front of a roomful of people expounding platitudes of self-important dogma, as sincere as he is misguided that he has the secret. The secret tears tha
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Another episode about the secret on Oprah? I'm tired of the idea already. What are the chances this thing will roll over and die before it starts? Well, I'm already trying to manifest that...if I could just summon the mystic laws...
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

I see the awful "technology" there, though. Bait people with the idea that the universe is in their individual control and when they respond angrily that they never willed into existence their lot, life in a wheelchair, say, or a past riddled with trauma, give yourself a balloon for having unearthed, in a way, the source of a person's anger or resentment or guilt that is prevent
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteJack Oskar LarmThere's a lot to be said for 'staying positive'. I don't think anyone in their 'right mind' can deny it. But, and this is a big BUT, anyone in their 'right mind' can see that single-minded postive thinking/feeling will either lead to single-minded depression or a need to refill that Prozac prescription.Quote And I expect when anyone gr
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteGulab JamonQuoteupsidedownnewspaperOh yes! The rock bizo. That's right. There was this cheesy reconstruction in the movie to justify the selling of ordinary rocks for $40 a piece. You've just got to believe, remember. I didn't get that from the movie AT ALL. As I remember, they were actually joking about the fact that the guy wanted to buy an ordinary rock that had com
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Oh yes! The rock bizo. That's right. There was this cheesy reconstruction in the movie to justify the selling of ordinary rocks for $40 a piece. You've just got to believe, remember. Are we to assume Oprah is stupid or in on it?
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

And a movie. "The Secret" was a movie partially funded and produced by Australia's Channel 9. Australia's The Age newspaper had a feature story a couple of weeks ago but I can't find it on the net to reference it. Channel 9 didn't see the mass appeal and so shelved it for a while or something, and only decided to screen it late one night recently. It came acros
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

I've been known to slide Scientology texts under shelves.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

And Scientology helps you not get angry when you lose your wallet, says Milton. These "technologies" really do seem to amount to remedial schooling.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

MelliFobian is a robot who has sent the exact same message out to other messageboards I frequent, with just a change of subject matter. Save your respective breaths.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Yet another elitist successmonger whose aim is to promote himself and his own inflated image by discounting individual experience. Robert T Kiyosaki pulls the trick of claiming modern-day schooling not only fails to impart the magic recipe for financial success but is actually counter-productive to the idea. What we learn at school, apparently, works against monetary success. "Forget
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"