There is no difference between the fundamentalist Christian belief that those who don't accept Jesus Christ will go to hell, and SGI saying ex-members will be damned to their own hell of Incessant Suffering. Superstition is a powerful thing, yes. As Wakatta1 and other great people here have testified, their lives have not gone to Hell in the Handbasket. Quite the opposite! If you c
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotesimplifyFor those of you with strong stomachs. My district leader still sends me links to our UK SGI e-bulletin every fortnight. I clicked on it and wish I hadn't. But maybe you might enjoy trying to find if there is anything about Nichiren Buddhism in the bulletin. Here's the link. It seems to be all about 'Sensei' (surprise) including this wonderful quote &q
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteJeeniaWow a load of comments to read. My friend is involved in it and so is her mother. Her husband is going to be getting stationed in Japan in 2012 (Shes happy to be going home) but I am afraid for her if she does think for herself and tries to leave. I was told the Japan SGI owns a whole city and they have meetings everyday, also you HAVE to attend all the activities. This is what one of
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

So I guess the world-wide goal of Kosen-rufu is really smoke-and-mirror! I have to say, there are members over the years who have sincerely claimed mondo benefit from making the contributions. These weren't leaders. They were just "regular folk". I have also heard stories like the one quiet one shared...about people in precarious mental/physical health straits who were encourag
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotewakatta1@Tsukimoto - another great post, thanks. You don't post often but when you do, it's always a doozie. @Jeenia, @Missy66 - Welcome to the ark. It's good to see that there are still members who can think for themselves. Ex chicago south-sider and north sider here. Regarding the nobel prize for Ikea, maybe he can get the Bernie Maddoff special mention for swindlin
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QuoteMiss66I think about that too and if some would ever get it. The member I just mentioned who sleeps in one bedroom with her husband ad two children one almost a teenager (they could afford a two bedroom but theyr're money goes to the fat jap) said SGI is her life! How pathetic and brainwashed is she,like I said her programming and brainwashing is so deep she's like a little zombie!
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

More amazing stuff. I was thinking again last night about how in this past year, the great push for contributions via monthly auto-deducts from bank accounts was started and massaged into the masses. And how, new members have no choice but to take out a subscription to the WT, which is now 50$, I believe, as it's lumped together with Living Buddhism. This is mandatory for membership @M
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteTheVoidsure it has already been mentioned, in the history of this thread and Nichijew will know for sure what the original source is. I think it was in a book dating from the 70's that it was claimed that Ikeda is a Buddha. Soka Gakkai got in a heap of trouble from Nittatsu about this. Also like everyone else on here, If find it quite bizzare that Gakkai claimed that following the H
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteTibbsI just don't understand the whole Ikeda-as-Mentor concept. Your mentor is someone you try to emulate, isn't that right? How exactly am I supposed to pattern my life like Daisaku Ikeda? Start my own muti-billion dollar religious empire? Dupe good people into giving me their money? I'm a 45 year old white woman, so transforming myself into an elderly Japanese Billionaire do
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

I want to bring up something I'm fascinated with...the all-out crescendo of the Mentor-Disciple business. In one WT this past year, PI talks about how he and Mrs. Ikeda speak "incessantly" about their mentor, Josei Toda. Soooo, members read this and the die-hard ones absorb into their heads that, if PI does this, we must do it, too! Talk incessantly about our mentor, Daisaku Ike
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteMiss66Hello Shavoy, I still have my gohonzon. It went on 7 years this past September that I've been a member. I've been MIA for the past year and a half. I haven't had any home visits for a little over two years,after they asked me about a leadership position,and I refused they just kind of gave up. The home visits would start with me wanting to take a break f
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteMiss66Wel they certainly do that. I have also seen them pursue people relentlessly to come back. It is true though when you start complaining to much and they relaize you're not that controlable it's like they decide not to waste their time on you anymore. They can tell within a couple years how easily prorammed one is. Thats why when they were "havin gproblems" with
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoterattyboyIn addition to the "joined a cult" experience that a leader shared during a contribution campaign time, the leader was talking about the members' contributions going to pay the leaders' salaries. "and believe me, they need it!" the leader said. I immediately thought 2 things (besides rage): I had heard about or read that "Believe me" is an obvi
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

It seems to me that it's one of the oldest saws in the world and speaks for the ol' human element of greed, ego, power and control. What this practice gave me was awareness of this and how to recognize it in myself and rise above it, if you will, for greater good. That will not leave me. And this was influenced by P.I. guidances, like I said in the earlier post! If the top man is
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Great posts from Simplify, Tsukimoto, Nichijew, rattyboy.... For me, the knee-jerk, gut reactions started last year with the Human Revolution, before I knew about this forum. The way Shinichi Yamamoto was presented, like what has been expressed here, as an All-Knowing Omni-Man always at the top of his game, and everyone else well, not quite. Knee-jerk reaction? Umm, this is really smacking
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

bobze, thanks for passing along Tsukimoto's quote. I've been reading The Human Revolution again, the one that was published back in the 70's, not to mention WT's from the 80's and 90's. The message is more subtle, but it's still there. Having to defend and protect and never, ever criticize the mentor or the Soka Gakkai. Otherwise, bad, bad things will befall
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotebobze39The way SGI conducted (and continues to conduct) defamation campaign against me was very cynical. Here are just few examples. When I was a graduate student at USC School of Music, many of the teachers at the music department were gay. SGI told everybody that I was homophobic. At that time I lived in Korea Town area of Los Angeles, which was full of immigrants, Mexican and Korean, so S
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Quotebobze39Quotebobze39Quotetennpeach Her name was Kimi L., I remember meething her for the 1st time when I was 15 years old, I think she was a similar to my mother--so she might have been about 35~40 years old at that time. I returned from out-of-country in '86. Then the split happened--she contacted my mother around 1991 to let her know that SGI leaders were trying to dig up any kin
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotedoubtful@tsukimoto and The Anticult who wrote: "As Anticult has said, SGI is VERY wealthy -- and yet it's almost unheard of in most parts of the United States. This was no accident. An organization doesn't make that much money from happenstance and dumb luck; it takes a well-planned, long-range strategy. This policy of flying under the radar is deliberate -- and comes from the
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotesimplifyAnother thing that has been worrying me lately is those awful 'Sensei's videos'. They are truly terrible, but it is not just the content that is disturbing. I'm wondering if they are being used to send subliminal messages to the viewers. I know this sounds a bit far fetched, but actually nowadays it is really easy to do. I've done it myself (to myself
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotesimplify! Perfect Simplify. You brought tears to my eyes. Mark Thanks for your kind words Mark/Nichijew. The trouble with enabling people to see that SGI is a cult if you live in the UK is that a lot of the red flags have been toned-down here. Or at least that is my experience in the districts I have practiced with. Up until the Mentor/Disciple personality cult stuff started
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteNichijewQuoteShavoyQuotedoubtful@Ogi who wrote, "It was an encouragement that stated the spirit of the SGI would actually make it a buddha. It said people would actually talk about "Buddha Soka Gakkai" in the future." Welcome to this forum. I look forward to your posts. For just about all of my 21 years with SGI I would avoid people or resources critical of SGI. However,
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotedoubtful@Ogi who wrote, "It was an encouragement that stated the spirit of the SGI would actually make it a buddha. It said people would actually talk about "Buddha Soka Gakkai" in the future." Welcome to this forum. I look forward to your posts. For just about all of my 21 years with SGI I would avoid people or resources critical of SGI. However, for much of that time u
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotebacknforthThere is a new definition of the Gakkai Spirit!!! Who can guess what the Gakkai spirit has been all these years? I want to see if I remember right by seeing what you'all think. Well, the new definition is "The Gakkai spirit of . . . . . . you guessed it . . Oneness of Mentor/Disciple" Wow, isn't that great how SGI can just randomly change concepts to
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotebribriHi Shavoy, Yes, the property near Toronto has a huge center on it worth millions. But in reality these are only a drop in the bucket of their investments. One of the biggest money makers is the SGI run cemetery and funeral services in Japan. I believe they also have a major share in an international Bank and the Mitsubishi corporation. Keep in mind, the gakkai has been able to profi
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Happy Memorial Day to everyone! When Tsukimoto talked about how all religious organizations solicit funds from their flock, it reminded me of back in the 70's with Oral Roberts. He had two books out then, which were heavy on tithing and reassuring his followers that with their donations, they were planting the seed for financial protection and prosperity. It was called Seed of something
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotesunmoonstarsGood morning all! Another digression from me. I am having problems thinking about certain things that I have categorized as "warning signs" having learned from the Gakkai BUT which it seems to me that many religions do and the key thing is to distinguish between the negative expression of them and the positive expression of them: - Asking for money. OK: One re
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotesunmoonstarsHi Guys, I'm sorry to keep talking so much. I guess I never really processed any of this stuff once I drifted away from the Gakkai. I just put it all in a box in the back of my head and didn't think about it and now it's all coming up. I guess I have to figure out now what I really think as opposed to what the Gakkai told me to think and it's causing me t
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotebribriHi Shavoy, I want to answer the questions you posed the other day. I work at a college and the term has just come to an end so now I'll have more time to participate on this board. >> How have some of your ideas about Nichiren Buddhism shifted, if you don't mind another query? I let go of my ideas on what I thought Buddhism was about may years ago when it becam
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteFindingmywaytodayMy other fear that frustrates me is that if I leave SGI, members will say that I didn't want to face my human revolution, or I don't want to deal with my life. Do you think that is true? I just hate how they have hooked me into thinking how I act in regards to this organization is how I want to act with my life. I want to improve myself, but not with those people a
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families