Cult Lessons

The first grasp: In academic studies of religions, "cults" are subsumed under the neutral label of the "new religious movement". Academic sociology, however, has partly adopted the popular meaning of the word, using it to refer to groups that are seen as authoritarian, exploitative and believed to use dangerous rituals or mind control - typically as minorities in a given society. [Wikipedia, s.v. "Cult"]

Initial Concerns

Christianity started as a tense cult. When cults get large, with members in the millions, they are called religions. Cults have several hallmarks. It could be good to know who they are, since bad cults can breed insanity, and insane guys may be found to gravitate to cults that match their imbalances, disorders and stupidity.

Kinds of disorders. There are many kinds of mental disorders, and different degrees of them. Synonyms for madness abound, and definitions vary. One definition tells that mental disorder comprises "significant psychological or behavioural manifestations that occurs in an individual and that is associated either with a painful or distressing symptom, with impairment in one or more important areas of functioning, or with both. [Ebu "mental disorder"]

On another page ten disorders are delineated. The listed signs of disorder in it, are used by professionals. [Link]

Artistic functioning can help some, and far better brain use can too. Both should be good for man in their own right. Besides, cognitive treatment is a boon in many cases of mental derangement.

Christian Madnesses: Something that is taken to be a sign of insanity in a single person, may be a criterion of a cult member, or maybe "just a Christian" - according to Jesus in two gospels [Matthew 9:12-13; Mark 2:17; John 10:14, 27, 21:16].

Psychopaths are strangely influential, clever, subtle, scheming, and of devious mind. In the United Kingdom, psychopathic disorder is legally defined as "a persistent disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including significant impairment of intelligence) which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned."

Some psychopaths can be next to impossible to ferret out. Often it takes years, and some may escape being diagnosed and sedated altogether. In such cases the near ones are typically made victims of their various forms of nastiness, Tollak Sirnes points out. Hitler was a psychopath, in the opinion of Gabriel Langfeldt, and mind "You don't have to be ill to be a doctor", as the proverb has it. Against this becoming idea there is "It takes one to know one," which is not ideal, then, but which serves quiet reflection. Simply: "After watching ape-programs on TV, you don't have to be an ape to understand the ape more or less imperfectly." [Toh; Daks]

Now, the term 'psychopathy' denotes chronic immoral and antisocial behavior, and is often used interchangeably with sociopathy. The term 'psychopathy' is often confused with psychotic disorders. It is estimated that approximately one percent of the general population are psychopaths. They are overrepresented in politics, law firms, and in the media. It is possible for psychopaths to become successful in many lines of work.

Mental health professional rarely treat psychopathic personality disorders, for they are considered untreatable.

In sects of various kinds, psychopaths will often cause long-term harm, both to their co-workers and the organization as a whole, due to their fraudulent behaviour.

How to diagnose insane ones: The means to diagnose psychopathology are not much refined, but can still be useful and help us detect gross and evident cases. In testing mental sides of others, we have to decide how valid the test can be, taking the conditions into consideration. Validity is "traditionally defined as the degree to which a test actually measures whatever it purports to measure." How reliable the test is, is another important facet. [Ebu "psychological testing"]

Face validity is a danger. Some "great ones" obviously lie to the effect that others flounder beneath them. At the bottom of senseless or foolish drivel many an undiagnosed, mental disorder could lie. Yes, teachings of some sect leaders, "bwanas", may look fine and sound fine, they say they are here to help you, but still fail in actual living. That shows up through putting cherished teachings to actual use by living them for long, or many years. It is this that is called the road-test. The term stems from testing vehicles in actual use. Afterwards we could be more fit than gullible beginners to judge some fruits of the teachings. A better way may be to question experienced, fair ones about how the teachings have affected them. Such a "short-cut" is part of what Buddha advocates. [More]

It may be fit to lend ear to experienced guys when they speak candidly of what they have actually experienced, such as, "The teachings of SRF about teaching the original Christianity of Jesus is charlatanry."

Things to do in suspected cases of unsoundness:

• One should stay away from deceivers, no matter how devout and holy-looking their demeanours are.
• Many of the instructions of Jesus are maiming, not only hard. He says he is not a man of peace, but of splitting families and so on. He owns that his followers are in for bad times, even massacres. That is part of his scheme. Leaders and others - psychopaths - of today's cults are just like it. If undiagnosed they may enjoy their freedom and life to rob many of preconditions of a good and decent life. Normal persons are far better off without their influence.
• Have in mind that road-tests can be made by insincere, deceitful and bad people too - some of them of unsound mind. That is a current sect experience.

Some Nuts

Think twice about selling out on your freedoms for no good reasons in the first place. And watch out for those who claim to be in liaison with Jesus - rightly or wrongly, since Jesus taught he was not for healthy guys, but rather "only for ill and depraved Jews".

"I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." [Matthew 15:24]

And when he sent out disciples, he said,

"Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach . . . [Matthew 10:5-7]

Compare:

Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. [John 11:51,52]

To put these things straight: unless you are of one of the twelve tribes of Israel - the ten tribes that established a northern Reich, and the Jews - all, stemming from Jacob the Deceiver, what John tells does not apply to you. And since the Jews did not receive him, it shows up he did not die for them either. Jews in general do not accept Jesus as a Messiah to this day.

As for the missionary command at the end of Matthew, it is a later forgery, says Joseph Wheless (bless him). Ask yourself, "Am I like the little lamb in the fable, the one that the wolf ate after a series of pretexts that failed? Am I the kind that "deputy fishers" are allowed to catch and herd and thrive on?" You had better not exist only to become the victim and slave of others. Victimisation takes many forms. [The Lamb and the Wolf]

Further, Yogananda and SRF has a kriya yoga pledge as a control device. [Pledge] [Human Rights]

Psychopaths may feel an inner attunement with these teachings of Jesus:

You will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many . . . will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. [Matthew 24:9-11] . . .

Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. [Luke 12:51 etc]

Don't like to be victimised by psychopathic terror; to surpass Jesus may be so much better. All the apostles and the Holy Spirit left out the sayings of Jesus from the four requirements for non-Jewish followers. You may add one or two "Luckily" to that if you like.

Truly, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these . . . You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. [John 14:12, 14]

If you still should feel unsure and still wish to be martyrised with thanks, take a long look at sayings like these:

1. Jesus looked at them and said, "With God all things are possible." [Matthew 19:26]
2. Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes." [Mark 9:23]
3. "If you have faith ... Nothing will be impossible for you." [Matthew 17:21]

If you can "touch the edge of that cloak" [Matthew 14:36] and be healed of what is the matter with you, you have got something of that helpful faith and maybe means to avoid psychopathic terror - it's not all up to you. If not, the mottoes of Jesus are more or less empty words to you, and you don't really believe him, or don't believe him well enough. Then you must improve yourself to become all right: a little bit of sound self-assertion may do in some situations, too.

A fine book against being manipulated, Who's Pulling Your Strings?, contains sound counsel against coercive influence, and goes against being a target of manipulators. In its third chapter is a rather informal self-test made of sixty questions. "I want everyone to think of me as a nice person", is the thirtieth item them [Wp 30]. If you must say yes, there is reason to consider that you have not even met everyone - have not met all people on earth.

The author thinks that "Anyone and everyone is potentially vulnerable to the control of a skilled manipulator," and many are more vulnerable than otherwise during transition phases [Wp 1]. And yet some people are extremely vulnerable, much more than many others, for example by their way of thinking. We are dealing with that hard issue here. Stop being victimised, is the saying into your ear, and methods have been developed to assist progress in sound self-assertiveness. [More]

Granted all that, sound individuals tend to seek and go for concord more than discord, and try to make the conditions for their children better than those of betrayals, misery and untimely illnesses and deaths. With psychopaths of inflexible, maladaptive, or antisocial behaviour it is not like that. But before we say more on the subject, here is what Britannica affirms:

There is no simple definition of mental disorder that is universally satisfactory. This is partly because mental states or behaviour that are viewed as abnormal or pathological in one culture may be regarded as normal or acceptable in another, and in any case it is difficult to draw a line clearly demarcating healthy from pathological mental functioning. [Ebu "mental disorder"]

It must be good to know. Also consider that folks with mental imbalances may be good on the surface for a long time, if their conditions favour just their kinds of imbalances. Sect-suited people and their sects may seem all right to their victims, those who have been "blinded" from insights that matter to false and crazy members.

Hallmarks of Psychopathology

Among laypersons and professionals there is much confusion about the meanings and differences between psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder and so on.

Even if there is no clear-cut understanding among professionals as to what is mental disorder or not, various hallmarks are used for determining it in a lot of cases. These criteria have to be used with discretion. Even so, there are hundreds and thousands that get a wrong diagnosis only in Scandinavia each year. This is in part due to the fact that so-called abnormal conduct can be rooted in the person involved, in the interplay between that one and close others, significant others, such as in-groups, and the large society too, with the estrangements, nervous troubles, and abuses of others that accompany some sides of it, but not all of them.

To the last points, it is observed in The Prophet, ta widely read book of twenty-six poetic essays in English by the Lebanese artist, philosopher and writer Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931): "When the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also." The Glasgow-born psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing (1927-89) strongly emphasises that point, and finds it very fit to suspect that if a person "snaps", turn insane, it could be the loom of family and other contacts - or lack of them - that is to blame. The warp could be unfit, askew, or suffer from other defects. More specifically, Laing thinks much insecurity may prompt a defensive reaction that can make ill by turns. In Laing's view many mental illnesses may be induced by relationships with other family members, and what is called madness could be a strong "miming" reaction to a more or less common state of alienation. [Ebu "Laing, R. D.]

To enlarge on the subject of insecurity:

Shyness among adults is now escalating to epidemic proportions, according to recent research by Dr. B. Carducci in Indiana and my research team in California. More than 50 percent of college-aged adults report being chronically shy (lacking social skills, low self-esteem, awkward in many social encounters). [Philip G. Zimbardo]

Zimbardo, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University. [◦More]

It could be that individuals who initially suffer from insecurity and/or estrangements may be set adrift on the way to psychopathy through neuroticism that gradually worsens. Sociopaths may come to consider their deviant behaviour as natural, feel no guilt when they harm and ruin others, and resist therapy - or getting away from the sect or cult that have made them like that. They can be very sly and submissive to such ends. Others may get explosive, overly excitable, procrastinating, persistently promiscuous, and paranoid. Strange lack of humour marks some of them.

Not a few criminals suffer from a personality disorder. Some mental disorders involve preoccupation with fantasies. Lack of concern seems to be a key element involved, and much and unsound immodesty also. The expression of symptoms of personality disorders often tends to get less intense in middle and old age.

Back to Daya Mata's Words about the "Crazy Gang" of Yogananda

A mad parish must have a mad priest (Proverb)

Do cult members have what it takes to really know that their leaders - one or more of them - are insane, and not just rascals who are dressed up? More may be added, for example: "Are they crazy who are told to believe that Christianity is perfectly aligned with the teachings of Krishna in Self-Realization Fellowship?" Answering, "Un matto sa più domandare che sette savi rispondere," does not address the topic.

Psychoanalytical diagnosis work and outcomes

We all need to consider how unethical and indecent it is to freak diagnose others and perhaps maim their reputation unjustly by it, and especially those who live far away. Such hard diagnosis work is not alien to psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is an attempt at diagnosing and also treat mentally suffering persons by asking them to talk about past experiences and feelings in order to try to find explanations for their present problems. Childhood experiences may slowly come to the fore as the client seeks to relax and tell.

The Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger's study, "The Case of Ellen West" by Binswanger in 1944–1945 depicts the illness and suicide of a young woman, as Binswanger understands the person and process. He attempts to synthesise existential philosophy and therapeutic practice in the case study.

However, psychoanalytical telling about others have been taken much further than that. The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, applied it to Greek myths as well, to fiction persons he had not met. As a result he came up with such ideas as the Oedipus complex, taking off from the old Greek story of Oedipus, the mythical king of Theben. The father of Oedipus, Laius, had been told by the Oracle at Delphi that his son would kill him. So Laius left Oedipus on a mountain to die. However, a shepherd rescued him. Oedipus returned home many years later but did not recognizse his parents. He slew his father, and as the new, honoured king he married his mother Jocasta.

Years later he learnt that it was his own father he had killed, and his own mother he had married. Where did it take him? For years Oedipus lived in peace, unwitting; but then a great pestilence and famine fell on the city. In his distress the king sent to the Oracle at Delphi to know what he or the Thebans had done to be so sorely punished. From what the Oracle spoke, he learned the truth. Jocasta died, and Oedipus took the doom on himself and left Thebes. Blinded by his own hand, he wandered away into the wilderness. [The story]

The story fuelled the Freudian idea of the Oedipus complex, which is about theorised feelings of sexual desire that a boy has for his mother and the jealous feelings towards his father that this causes. In the psychoanalytical world of ideas there is an Electra complex too, about a young girl's psychoanalytically claimed unconscious sexual attraction to her father.

Getting conscious

In 1909 Sigmund Freud Freud visited the United States along with Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi. He had been invited by G. Stanley Hall to present a series of guest lectures at Clark University, where Freud and Jung introduced the then little-known psychoanalysis. Freud and Jung also spent about three months touring America.

The American psychologist William James commented on Freudian (psychoanalytic) ideas in a letter to a friend at a time when James was fatally ill,

I hope that Freud and his pupils will push their ideas to their utmost limits, so that we may learn what they are. They can't fail to throw light on human nature, but I confess that he made on me personally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas . . . obviously 'symbolism' is a most dangerous method. [Aih 487]

It appears that James believed that psychoanalysis had little value and was perhaps even dangerous. Freud on his part returned to Germany from a lecture tour in the United States with a conclusion: "America is a mistake; a gigantic mistake it is true, but none the less a mistake." Freud had initially hoped that there might be a future for psychoanalysis in the United States. Yet he was puzzled and somewhat distrustful, not pleased, by what he had seen. American cooking irritated his stomach, and the free and easy informality irked his sense of dignity, writes Baldwin Ross Hergenhahn further [Ibid].

After his trip to the USA, Freud's ideas became popular, and he got many disciples, who in turn broke with him on different grounds. Many early colleagues came to believe that Freud overemphasized sex as a motive for human behavior, and eventually went their own way. Freud on his part saw himself as the founder and leader of the psychoanalytic movement, and he would tolerate no ideas that conflicted with his own. If a member of his group insisted on disagreeing with him, Freud expelled that member from the group.

Freud's theorisied, main ideas have a groundword that includes notions of id, ego, and superego, and of ego defense mechanisms. Freud discerned between three forms of anxiety, including both neurotic and moral anxiety. Since anxiety is uncomfortable, the organism seeks to reduce it, and that is the job of the ego, he postulates. Unsound ego defence mechanism operate to reduce conscious anxiety. Repression, projection, rationalisation and reaction formation are some of these forms of defence.

Freud also considers that sexual pleasure goes through different stages of development as we age and cope - oral, anal, phallic (of sexual organs). The most significant events that occur during this stage are the male and female Oedipal complexes, say Freudians. The next two developmental stages according to Freud are the latency stage and the genital stage. The latter one lasts from puberty through the remainder of one's life, it is held. [Aih 487-92, 500, passim]

The critique of Freud's ideas can be founded on this: "many, if not most, of Freud's concepts were too nebulous to be measured . . . psychic energy, castration anxiety, penis envy, or the Oedipal complex". Science calls for measurement, and many of Freud's concepts are not measurable. [Aih 499-500]

As influential as Freud's theory has been, much of it has not withstood the rigors of scientific examination, and much of it is untestable. Despite the criticisms, many believe that Freud made truly exceptional contributions to psychology, and also that psychoanalysis is one of the best way to understand and treat neuroses, Hergenhahn sums up. [Aih 500-03]

Affirm your predominant developmental needs as life unfolds

Freud contended that the basis of religion - "so patently infantile" - is the human feeling of helplessness and insecurity. To overcome these feelings, we create a powerful father figure who will supposedly protect us, a father figure symbolized in the concept of God. Since Hinduism has a different outlook on heavenly matters, and a panthenon of gods and goddesses, his view does not apply to Hindu believers - and hardly to Buddhists either. Most Buddhists nowadays do not believe in a God, no matter how odd that sounds in the light of the first texts of Buddhism, where it is stated that Brahma, the Creator, asked Buddha to teach what he had realised. As a result of the request, Buddha complied, and taught for forty years too. That is what the Scripture tells. After Buddha's Awakening,

the gods including Brahma and Indra, ask Buddha to preach the Law. By morning he agrees to preach . . . On the way . . . Buddha comes to the River Ganges, and the ferryman refuses to row him across without payment. Buddha flies across the river, and the boatman faints. Buddha arrives in Benares . . . Then Buddha preaches his first sermon, which sets the "Wheel of the Law [Dharma]" in motion. - Lalitavistara Sutra [1]

Thus, in the words of John Powers, "God Brahma appeared before him and begged him to teach what he had learned for the benefit of those few beings who could understand and profit from his wisdom. Moved by compassion for the sufferings of beings caught up in the round of cyclic existence, the Buddha agreed, and for the next forty years he traveled around India, teaching all who cared to listen." [2]

Freud Again

The great majority of [Western] mortals would never be able to rise above the religious view of life, Freud thought. He was largely pessimistic about human nature, but although pessimistic, he wanted people to live more rational lives. To this end they had to understand the workings of their own minds: "Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself!" he said. And he hoped that religious illusions would eventually be replaced by scientific principles as guides for living. [Aih 492-93]

What might help some of us is affirming our inherent worth and manifest it as fit self-esteem, and that is shown through an "I'm OK" frame of mind that keeps manifesting in sincere dealings over and over to remain healthy. Within our limitations we simply are to like who we are as we keep on improving where we can. Also, personal development needs to be well guarded against downfalls. The chances are that if you like yourself at bottom, you feel less need for copying others. Maybe you need to take some small risks to nurture yourself, and maybe you need to take a little rest rather often to resist common propaganda.

The meaning behind all the above is that it is your worth that brings about straight self-esteem. If you develop massively you may also need grace to escape acts of violence and abuse by other persons who would like you to remain static, as it suits them. Your moral development may meet with both rewards and punishments by tamers, but a healthy self-esteem is its own reward, sort of. Sound humour and laughter is not so bad as you go on treating yourself with enough respect for your healthy uniqueness. Books, music, and films should be able to give you experiences to appreciate or enjoy, lovely sunsets, stories, and much else. A book that mentions things like these and offers concrete surveys of things to do to boost your self-esteem, is Boosting Self-Esteem For Dummies by Rhena Branch and Rob Willson [Bsd].

Supernatural or Gigantic Causes of Insanity

Craziness or madness is marked by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Some crazy ones may violate and debase norms in their societies and become dangerous to themselves and others. 'Crazy' or 'insane' is often used as rather informal terms denoting mental instability. In the medical profession the term is now avoided. Diagnoses of specific mental illnesses are used instead. 'Psychopathic' is one of them. Moreover, "psychopathology" is largely preferred for "madness, craziness and insanity.

In ancient Israel it was held that disturbances of the mind or emotions were caused by "supernatural forces" or their angry God. The Old Testament contains many references to kings and commoners that go insane. Also, Jewish prophets were thought to be psychologically abnormal too, because they acted in strange ways and talked in bold imagery of possible, future events that few managed to appreciate.

Later, the Greeks came to believe that afflictions of the mind did not differ from diseases of the body, and suggested imbalances some way or other. Much later, during the 1700s, the French and the British introduced asylum treatment of "the clinically insane": those with speech disorder, speech impediments, epilepsy and depressions. Mental hospitals were used to isolate the mentally ill, or socially troublesome, and others who were socially ostracized from society. The idea was not to cure them or maintain their health, but to keep them subdued - bound with rope or chains, often to beds or walls, or restrained in straitjackets.

Today the term insanity serves as a legal term, and hallmarks of various key disorders are listed in manuals. It matters to know whether a perpetrator knew that he or she acted against the law, was in control of their behaviour. And because 'insanity' nowadays is a legal term, the judge or jury are allowed to make the final decision about the person who stands trial and pleads insanity or is accused with it.

For example, the Mafia boss Vincent Gigante pretended for years to be suffering from dementia and was often seen wandering aimlessly around his neighborhood in his pajamas muttering to himself. However, informants and surveillance showed that Gigante was in full control of his faculties the whole time, and ruled over his Mafia family with an iron fist, so his insanity was deemed to be feigned.

The informal-looking 'crazy' might be taken to mean 'confused'

If others that you depend on are not just nervous and unfair but obviously crazy too, do not invest trust in them. How can we discern the crazy ones? It is not always easy. An ancient Chinese philosopher says:

He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; he who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion . . . the biggest fool will end his life without ever seeing the light . . . And with all the confusion in the world these days, no matter how often I point the way, it does no good. Sad, is it not? [Co 139-40]

We take many other reminders by Chuang Tzu into account as we go along. Some may appear to be crazy due to handed-over, ceremonial plots or rituals, like those who like to tell listeners that the long gone dead will rise again - sometimes - just wait, and all that bull. It is better to discard unfounded faith for the sake of good observations accompanied by measured, rational handling, for that approach does not go against having a sound mind. Those who give harmful commands to others, may also say, like Jesus, that healthy ones do not need them. Jesus was only for ill Israelites, was his words.

Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. . . . I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." [Matthew 9:12,13; cf. Mark 2:17 and Luke 5:31]

Christian Sinners Include Hypocrites in Vast Numbers

The Christian sinner is, for example, someone who has eaten blood food without asking forgiveness, maybe not showing repentance. [Acts 15:28-29, and 21:25] The Bible holds the eating of blood food for a grave transgression, or something too wicked. "None of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood." [Lev 17:10, 12, 14]: [More]

As for the long row of commands of Jesus, he said he taught and served Jews only, which further confirms that the four pillars of the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15 is what non-Jews are to take as their guideposts.

Against it, a misled Christian is

a man who behaves like everybody else. Our professions of faith have no longer any discernible bearing either on our public conduct or on our private state of hope. The sacraments do not work on many of us their spiritual transformation; we are bereft and at a loss where to turn,

writes Heinrich Zimmer in Philosophies of India [Phi 13-14]. In contrast to all who are backed up by that New Deal - that is, the Apostolic Decree of ca. 50 CE - many seem to freak out as mere quasi followers of Jesus. "Quasi" because they tell they have faith, but without most of the hallmarks of the faith Jesus talks of. "Quasi" because they are not Jews. and "Quasi" because they do not even try to live up to all the commands anyway. They do not take to self-molesting, and seem to imagine that as long as they don't do as Jesus tells, in large, large numbers, he will not condemn them as he has promised to do connected with his "Why do you call me, "Lord, Lord," and do not do what I say? [Luke 6:46]"

How would he respond, says he? "I will tell them plainly, "I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!" Among those "evil-doers" you might find folks who have prophesied in his name, driven out demons and perform many miracles - and maybe lots of so-called good Christians [Matthew 7:22-23].

It should be good to be forewarned. Faking tends to become hypocricy, which Jesus condemns at length. Regardless of that, hypocricy goes against genuineness, and if genuineness is dwarfed, not updated, and hurt, much may go worse that it had to.

But there is a way out, according to the Bible: the poor, floundered "Christian" of faking needs to understand what the New Testament actually tells: Jesus and his teachings were dispensed with for non-Jews, and Christians are given far greater freedom. Acts 15 is about it. Against it, one may be made insane by foolish adherence to insensible commands of Jesus along with the coercion, internal control, intrigues, pressures, inconsistencies and lies of a cultish, freak environment.

The sum of cultish influences and mind-batterings may cause "mind-slaves" full of fears, repressions, suppressions and misplaced aggressions - far too many who by-and-by get influenced toward sectarian isolation, which is a wide-spread problem. Mind battering (brainwashing) has many forms, and cult studies reveal some typical expressions of the results.

The gospel message was changed later, much likely through forgeries, when the original scheme failed. Can you hope to heal others if you band with Jesus? Jesus, who is credited with being the originator of the tense sect of Christianity, flashes many of the hallmarks of psychopathy.

Get Away from Cults and Psychopaths

"In an ideal world", take care of yourself and stay away from psychopaths you are aware are that, and resist joining those that you very strongly suspect are so too, if you can. The next best thing is to get away from them. The third good thing could be to avoid buffoons and other sorts of fools, for some of them act to your harm.

Some psychopaths create havoc by confusing innocents. To confuse people, playing on their inexperience and decency and good will, is a cause of later nervous disorders that may get progressively worse.

Illusions of grandeur - on behalf of oneself and maybe vicariously - are among the signs of psychopathy, and so is hostility and telling lies wilfully. Maybe a few "rotten eggs" or psychopaths who claim to be God, suffer from megalomaniac disturbances and "destroy the whole basked", that is, brings shame on the good avatars - God-descensions. All those who want to be with God through vicarious sacrifice, through butchering of innocents, lack something called decency or appropriateness, something called evolved moral fibre, and are hardly healthy and fair individuals. That is what I think.

Suitable and decent people can be nice to be with. Buddhism tells such things and also main criteria of who are true and able friends, for the long-range good of good guys. [More]

If Public Disorders Control what is Meant by Soundness -

In an unhealthy environment, demanding unhealthy, unfair, unfit adaptations along with initial, basic soundness, could be behind the manifestations of some mental disorders. That is a main point of the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing.

Be on the outlook for painful or distressing symptoms, impairment in one or more important areas of functioning. Is there rigour, lack of frivolity and free will? Are others made to pay although they put their faith in vicarious suffering? The church is in part for all that.

Both the church and the cult within it or adjoined to it - just like mental illness - can have an effect on every aspect of a person's life, including thinking, feeling, mood, and outlook and such areas of external activity as family and marital life, sexual activity, work, recreation, and management of material affairs. Most denominations and mental disorders negatively affect how an individual feels about himself and impair or limit severely his or her capacity for participating in mutually rewarding relationships.

Baits to hook members are many. There is good reason to aim for developing one's self-awareness against many untoward influences and passes. It rests on one's willingness to explore our own inner world and paying particular attention to problem areas and potential problem areas. The pyramid of needs that Abraham Maslow devised, may help us to discern what needs murky plotters and great manipolators play on. If you aim for self-esteem, it should help to be aware that "Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves," and that emotional problems may be due to low self-esteem also [Lcd 44-49, passim]

Some may fondly think that the effects of a deceiving church on persons is not so bad, but devout and useful for most part. For example, the faith that long rotten and gone corpses will rise again "some day", is false, fit for freak shows and scary films, and the folly or idiocy of it is likely to serve ulterior ends, probably control of members or even masses. Fraud and foolish faith are not good. There is reason to stop calling foolish fraud holy and godly.

Tracing Jesus

What does Jesus stand that is so offensive? To other than Israelites that were morally ill, he and his commands probably mean nothing, on his word - gospel sayings, that is. Many have not learnt it, though, and imagine that self-mutilation, impoverishment, non-assertive non-retaliation and claims that vicarious sacrifice is for good and that it is righteous among them. The poor, fooled sheep.

You, on the other hand, should have the good sense to stay permanently away from the church that wants anyone to go for a wicked kind of living as Jesus instigated for Jews who rejected him anyway, just to stay on the safe side. You could ask, "Why should folks imbibe unhealthy or insane ideas in the name of a faith?"

For example, when someone says you are guilty of sin if you have not done anything, that one becomes suspect. Jesus does. If you have had only an urge for sex with someone that is not your partner, for example, the mutilator tells you to tear out your "offending eye", hand, foot or member. Before you let him dictate you at all, consider what is insanity and what is not divine, and bear in mind the Holy Ghost and all the disciples dropped all the commands of Jesus for Gentile followers - that is, for Christians - and kept only four points [Acts 15; 21:25].

What is insanity? First, it is a label you give someone you want to get rid of, more or less. Jesus should have learnt that - or maybe he did too well as he went overboard from the Jewish society. Some who are called insane, are too troublesome in their environment. Then even their relatives want to get rid of them, for example by pushing them to death from a cliff, just as the relatives of Jesus wanted to do to him, after he had delivered some self-promoting excerpts from the Old Testament and told his villagers that they would not get healing from him:

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. [Luke 4:28-29]

One may figure the brothers and other relatives of Jesus were among the people in the synagogue too.

Farcical

What is being insane? It can be what judges in court call you to put an end to a long, expensive case. There is a memorable case in Norway about a man. The sheriff found him too troublesome about some significant matter. Bureaucrats put away the man in a mental hospital, where he did not quite fit in. So they called him bad and furnished him with some insanity label.

Diagnosis of mental diseases often function in a labelling manner, you should know, assisted by observation and possibly relevant investigations, all of which do not have to be regular, long, or fair.

With this man things seemed to go from that bad to much worse, for after several years in mental institutions he had become so "bad" - read: non-adapted - that they threw him out. Smell a rat.

It was then he started "protest camping" in a tent outside the gate of that institution, Gaustad, and got much public sympathy. He came to be a celebrity too.

Notable psychologists now came to his rescue too late, and said he was not mentally diseased at all. His case ended in a court. One expert said he was insane, and the other he was sound. Finally the judge - who was not an expert on such matters at all - decided he was unsound. As if he could know.

Long after the brave man died, it came up that he had been right in the first place, back home, when he first had been put away.

❖ When someone is called worse and worse and then finally thrown out of an asylum, smell a rat. Those who do not adapt well to asylums, may not belong there, also for good reasons. Experts in their halting labelling trade diagnose many wrongly.

❖ When someone who is no expert on insanity is put to judge whether you are or not, smell a bigger rat still.

❖ Incompetence in power is troublesome to deal with, like corrupt camaraderie in high places.

"Not so much what you believe, but how, and how many and how influential - that matters"

There are yearly, public statistics on how many are wrongly diagnosed.

Much depends on corruption, and whether the so-called troublemaker is isolated, impoverished, let down or has social back up, for example by being a member of a big group and thereby being backed up by the "power of many". Jesus was let down, was called a trouble-maker and executed as a blaspheming devil or lunatic (what is the difference?) Now he is believed to be God, Lord, and Master Jesus to many, as a result of the Church coming into power in the Roman Empire in the 300s CE, in part by selling out the old turn-the-other-cheek parts, so that Christians could serve as soldiers in the Roman army from slightly before 400 CE. Bishops saw it fit to let believers fight for more dominance, against words by their "God Jesus". Things change. Lots of things change, and not always for good.

They also took to indoctrinating children as the centuries rolled by, to get a hold ont he goody-goodies who served them and supplied their honour and meals, and all that.

Being a Liberal Is Advocated

Liberalism is a source of the modern welfare state, but does not refer to social liberalism alone. Philosophically, liberalism is marked by "richness and diversity" in views on the meaning of humanity and society. Being an individualist, egalitarian and universalist - also against pressures of social collectivism - also in matters of belief and of the heart otherwise - is acclaimed. Scholars of our times have praised the influence of liberal internationalism. Most of the world's richest and most powerful nations are liberal democracies.

We humans can do worse than holding fair, balanced, liberal views and go for venting them well in some large social network. [More]

In sect and large sects - religions - members are typically told what to believe, how to act - they are doctrinated and dictated, and often do not see the guys "in the back room" who are served by their folly and willy-nilly conduct, which tend to get grave consequences too.

Will the dead rise again? Really? How do you know they will?

In Norway the faith of the official state church is that the dead will rise again. If you don't think the dead rise again after hundreds of years in the soil, have the courtesy to quit the church of clowning.

Paul and his former comrades in killing

Paul said that before his conversion, he had taken part in killing early Christians. He was a mass murderer earlier [Acts 22:29 to 23:6-8].

This does not ridicule or deny the possibility of rising recent corpses, where there is something that can get up and going. It is when there is nothing left it may be all too foolish to expect such a miracle.

Do the dead bury anyone, and is scapegoating healthy?

To believe that the dead are to bury their dead, seems insane. The gospel says Jesus taught it. "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." [Matthew 8:22] Does this mean that all those who bury their dead relatives are dead themselves? Or sick, because they are followers? [Matthew 9:12-13]

One should never fall for the idea that scapegoating of innocent victims, scapegoating that is masked as religious and righteous, is high-standing. [More]

Insanity - Definitions Vary

To revert to recognised insanity: In criminal law there are different principles to decide by in different countries. Laws differ, in other words. Also, "Various legal tests of insanity have been put forward, none of which has escaped criticism," says Encyclopaedia Britannica. [Ebu "insanity"]

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary helps us to circle in on what insanity might be by defining it for us. What can be meant by it:

• A deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia);
• A mental disorder;
• Such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility;
• More loosely: extreme folly or unreasonableness, in other words something utterly foolish or unreasonable.

The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus helps further by saying insanity is a "grave disorder of mind that impairs one's capacity to function safely or normally in society." That is a good one. having delusions may be a sign of insanity, and so is behaving irrationally, unreasonably. It is seen to be in contrast to behaving sensibly, wisely, rationally, reasonably, wholesomely, then. To seem reasoned, sensible, healthy, sound and clean looking should pay, then . . . and why not being shown reverence as God Himself? A "delusion of grandeur" could be so masked. In some cults and sect the phenomenon is well known. Interestingly, Christianity started as a tense sect.

We may enlarge on the subject further by "mentally disordered", "demented", "of unsound mind".

These few inroads to "insanity" may also serve as a way of summing up much of what this page is about. There are textbooks and other books on deranged minds, and very helpful symptom lists (called inventories) that seem to catch main marks of various mental illnesses. Before we go into that, may it be said that neuroticism lets itself be cured, whereas some mental diseases are beyond treatment by today's standard procedures. Besides, understanding of just what is health is not clear-cut.

Onward

On the next page there is neutral information about "the liberals".

The page after that again serves to introduce you to main criteria that are used today to ascertain a compulsive personality disorder and many other main disorders of the mind. We go into these massively used checklists, and find - although tentatively - that Jesus looks like a madcap according to evidence furnished in the New Testament. It is not a very difficult endeavour, given the amount of gospel evidence.

We have to assert ourselves, including our fit and fair insights, in order to get to grips with essential material that goes against very common faith. What is more, the first steps on the road toward rational maturity in faith matters is seldom pleasant. It may be a great source of stress. "If you cannot stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen." Consider yourself warned through that proverb.