@Hitch--but what are those numbers REALLY? Does anybody know the true SGI-USA population count? Since they are known to put everyone and the family pup besides actual members in a household on the list, who really does know? Yup, I remember all the shakabuku madness, particularly the February/August rush. The leaders were always soooo happy when it was a successful night and the projections
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

@Taiten--in reference to Guy McCloskey, yes, it was his son's issues. When bad things happen, die-hard SGI-ers don't know how to handle it. Because it flies in the face of everything mentioned in the above posts. They have to pull a Frame out of the hat. I remember in the WT, after Mr. Aoyama's passing, there was one article about it. Not very big. It seemed to me that
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Life is not always Certain. SGI wants to provide Certainty, because humans desire it. They want to believe that by chanting NMRK, no matter what---it will save them from all disaster and they will triumph--WIN---over ALL adversity. The sad tales of the two ladies who were slaughtered by their husbands speak volumes. The young lady who had participated in KR gongyo a couple of days before he
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sleepy, I can't be 100% sure, but I believe Byrd's blogs were removed because she was a polarizing figure for the SGI. She was a sincere person who wanted to open up the SGI, she saw wrong and wanted it make it more right for the members. From what I've read, SGI leadership make it difficult for her and when she passed away, didn't show much sympathy. One more example of
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

quote sixtyseven]@ shavoy:ikedas doctor titles are for the glossy magazins only and to make the SGI folks bow. An academic title is as we all know a long time of study/ scientific works. Ikeda quit school and had his further education by Toda I've heard. The doctor is a Dr.h.c. as far as I remember you are not allowed by law to use it for official papers, like a passport or a birth certifica
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

The strong encouragement to members to stay away from any negative musings on SGI is part of the Fear Factor----if one dares to venture into "slanderous" territory, then, rest assured, heads will be broken into seven pieces and your life will be doomed and dire. This encouragement to stay away adds to the insularity of the SGI. I agree totally with tsukimoto: I've had the same
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotesixtyseven@rattyboy: I can relate to this what you've posted before about the voices you hear and how they would talk about your objects. I often find myself creating an encounter in my mind what I would say to them. Once a friend on fb had told me, that he bumped into an ex-member on the street and they had a discussion about This and that. Afterwards he had made a story and at the ne
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteTaitenAndProudQuote"Sensei...," she began hesitantly, as if wondering how to broach a difficult subject. "Actually, Yukiko Gilmore and some of the others have collected a dollar from each member because they want to treat us to dinner....Shin'ichi's face clouded when he heard Kiyohara's words. "That won't do" he said. He sent for Yukiko Gilmore an
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@TaitenAndProud---may I say to this post....Viva La Difference! Simple, basic analogy as old as life itself: A lot of people prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla. Some adore Chinese food; others could care less. Millions love sports; another bunch of millions, sports does little for them. Same goes for choices in religious beliefs, no? No one person's DNA is the same as the next--
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Soooooo, how is this a religion? How is this faith? These last several posts have done more than cement that the SGI is really the complete worship of Daisaku Ikeda. I'll digress--yet again--as Hitch said, the Ikeda worship has gone on steroids. Do they really, REALLY think that the USA, for one, is going to go all Ikeda-crazy and sign up in droves? I need some enlightenment on
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteTaitenAndProudYou know, in reading Spartacus's analysis, I think perhaps one of the things that kept me from being drowned in the SGI was that I don't have father issues. Thus, Mr. Williams and Pres. Ikeda never appealed to me. I didn't need a father figure - I had a good relationship with my father; I was his favorite! What I had were MOTHER issues, and thus I ended up tak
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daishastro---we are all human and imperfect, capable of selfish behaviors certainly---Sometimes the SGI message is that by doing the practice, we will become these enlightened uber-compassionate beings, close to perfection. That is not the case, as you know. People can chant and practice all they want (that goes for any religious faith), but unless they can waken up to their own shortcomings
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

If I could crash one of those Top-Secret PR meetings of SGI executives, particularly those in the Western Hemisphere, I'd ask them first: Have you all lost your minds? ..let that sink in for a moment or three- (not that it would sink in) and then proceed to tell them what an idiotic course they have taken for the "widespread of KR"... How they think, for another moment or three
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteHitchQuoteShavoy When I practiced, it was a joke with myself, because I never did gongyo consistently as prescribed. May have chanted on a daily basis, but not a lot of two-times-a-day. I say it is a joke, especially now, because STILL I received benefits and answers to the prayers I was putting out to the universe with NMRK. Got out of some major pickles, which, yes, I attributed to at
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

@sleepy--It says a big Something that the SGI thread is the biggest one in this category. 500 pages+? Plus all the views? (You know there have to be at least some current members AND leaders checking in regularly). When you mentioned about socializing with other members outside of SGI activities being frowned upon, that happened with me and one of my closest friends at the time back in the
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotesleepy skunkHi all, I'm a recently departed member and I was wondering what to expect from the former members since I have known many of them for as long as I was in to, get to know some actually nice people who are unfortunately mixed in with the nuts. I'd say it in a nicer way but that is actually being so in this case. Everyone probably knows by now and I'm expecting a wind
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteTaitenAndProudOne of the more troubling aspects of SGI and Ikeda for me was the use of language (all the win, fight, victory, victory victory, struggle, enemy, defeat, lose, win, on and on ). Even though I was hardly knowledgable about Buddhism outside of the organization, I felt instinctively that there was something terribly wrong with this language-- the emphasis on conflict, the emphasis
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteHitchQuotesixtyseven I think as far as I can remember, Anticult mentioned it before. The chanting/ meditation technique can switch off our higher intelligence, the reasonable mind, the critical thinking and operates directly on those deeper layers - far beyond the good and the evil. The gakkai cult org. also has a trick to deal with members who attempt to switch back on their higher intel
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QuoteHitchQuoteShavoy Kosen-rufu is not democracy. Very much agreed. The brainwashed gakkai cult members would have you believe it's all about compassion. BS. Cousin Rufus is the manifestation of that intolerance that we've just been discussing in this thread. QuoteShavoy And as we know here, people aren't jumping onto the KR bandwagon, they are just not. Extreme emphasis
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotesixtyseven@thatsmeinthecorner: Welcome and thanks for your participation! For a lot of years I had fooled myself and belittled their psycho games they've played on me. After reading in this forum for months I needed no more proof and I decided to quit and have mailed back the magical scroll manipulation tool to the HQ. I made my resignation at the district's authority and they &
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteNichijewThey are lead by the bridle like so many horses. SGI teaches much that is false and they package it neatly in their periodic study exams for the purpose of brainwashing the members. This is one reason SGI members reside in the realm of darkness. Another reason is that they have neither seeking spirit to study other than the SGI materials nor do they exercise their powers of critic
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Don't know if you guys ever checked out of curiosity, but I have yet to find ONE volume of Daisaku Ikeda's published works in the public libraries I've frequented. There was only one time, in a city where I lived earlier--one of the earliest installments of the Human Revolution. Everywhere else, Senor Ikeda is not represented at all among various and numerous Buddhist books.
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I'm wondering if Hiromasa even wanted the baton. I've not seen much of him, but it feels like he is doing it because Dad expected him to. Maybe I'm way offbase. Of course, there is the huge monetary incentive. The image that sixtyseven posted of the 3 leaders---Toda was a businessman, can we say first and foremost? He certainly started the SGI $$$ motor revving with all the
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

There is really no NMRK anymore, really. It is all Repaying the Mentor the Eternal Debt of Gratitude that is "owed" to him. It is all about praising him--always praise, NEVER (constructive, even) criticizing! Where's the NMRK? It is ALL about Daisaku Ikeda.
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteTaitenAndProudWelcome to all board newcomers! Congratulations on opening your eyes and getting out of the cult that is SGI. Thank you! Never been happier! Crazy pot smokers, abusive behavior, so-called "fortune babies", I won't restate it all here, but at various points in the thread I have described my experience with all of these things as an unfortunate "Youth!
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteTaitenAndProudI practiced with the SGI-USA for over 20 years - I got my gohonzon in August, 1987. You can do the math ;) If I hadn't been moving around so much, I probably wouldn't have lasted so long - most of the time, I was practicing on my own. I have a personal experience of the fascistic and authoritarian atmosphere of the SGI-USA organization. Being a white American, I
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

@leeduffield----that would not surprise me either. I know I'm an old broken record on this, but if SGI thinks that America is going to become The Land of Ikeda, they are mistaken. All there is to it.
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteTaitenAndProudI was a group leader when the SGI-USA was rolling out their "membership cards" campaign. As I live in the San Diego area, I was able to attend a leaders' meeting with representatives from Los Angeles, from the National HQ. I believe this was in about August 2006, but I'm not quite sure of the year. Anyhow, in that meeting, the LA representative was tellin
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Somehow, I think this whole rush to proclaim Sensei Ikeda as a "sovereign" and all the manic love-bombing for Sensei is his vow to himself before he goes: complete validation that he is a Man of All Men, one of the greatest human beings to grace the planet. All for his ego alone. What does anything else matter? It no longer has anything to do with one's faith and practice. I
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QuoteHitchQuoteShavoy Hitch, I tried to download this gem with no success again---but I noticed along the right side at the bottom of that particular list of SGI videos one titled "My Mentor and Me". Just the pic alone, a very large hand reaching down to a small human figure spoke volumes. You have shared many videos here, was this also one you shared? I don't believe I'v
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families