The Well 15
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Richard James and Deprogramming
On Cults and Deprogramming
"When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck." - Richard James Cardinal Cushing (1895-1970)
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| Quacks like a bird - |
Knowing that SRF (Self-Realization Fellowship) has been classified as a cult or sect recently, helps in knowing what we are dealing with, for sects and cults have been studied, and have many common characteristics. And there are ways to deal with them; some of which are decent enough too. Basically, to deal with them all right, just stay away from them. If not, the chances are that you end up in recurrent troubles. And those who are able to realize and not repress their hovering cult member problems, may seem enigmatic to the "blinded", fooled flock of cult serfs. Well, there is that chance.
Members of the sect that get aware of frustrations of unfulfilled or dwarfed lives, may react differently. "There are basically three ways people leave a cult:
- By intervention (Exit counseling, deprogramming)
- On their own decision (walkaways)
- Through expulsion (castaways) [Wikipedia, s.v. "cult"]."
Deprogramming of a Sectarian and Some of Its Problems
One former SRF member, Richard James, alias Yellowbeard, on a discussion board spoke of having a cult-twisted, deranged mind, and blamed SRF for it. That may be true, but yells and loud shrieks don't make a proof. There are rules for how proofs are set up in medicine and social sciences. Also, a man who says his mind has been deranged, may be no good source to lend ear to.Now, James started a discussion board against cultism, especially aiming at SRF. But his overt aims soon showed to be in conflict with underlying aims, which may show up sooner or later, just as a marked desire for money, sex, and influence has popped up in many sectarian leaders with time. Nasty and foolish conduct that runs contrary to one's declared goals indicate great inner conflicts. These need to be settled first. In the end James marred the discussion board so violently that "all left it" - quite so. Some called him ill, not a few came to regard his board a cult, and many denounced him as a dogmatising cult freak. By this we can get an inkling of a former cult member's problem: His mind may still be deeply "set" in the authoritarian way of working that is all too common in sects and cults. it is also possible that his mind was that way first, and he sought to find shelter in a cult that suited his mentality. Both possibilities are to be taken into account, and also that there may be others.
No one may be able to solve a sectarian dilemma by turning cultish and sectarian against cults and sects. Something else is needed, especially fair play - and soda water too, if it can offer some relief. it is so much to be preferred to drinking a lot too much, drugging oneself and go on to delete and administer by whim and freaking out on your said anti cult board.
James also revealed his "addiction" to authoritarian stuff by first going too far in the anti cult direction, by patting a very authoritarian cult buster as if that was another Yogananda to him: powerful, able to understand at a glance, and work wonders in "deprogramming" - which is not far from guruism in another key. He took his deep submission problem and "hooked up" to another authority figure, then. Hence, on 9 September 2003 James posted "Here's an example of a classic deprogramming technique from an interview with the cult buster pioneer, Ted Patrick", sentenced to jail.
When James' schemes made the discussion board increasingly dysfunctional, he gave up - he changed his goals instead of straightening up his attitudes and behaviour.
- Below a sermon-like discourse by Ted Patrick is split up by comments and things that may be worth knowing about.
Deprogramming
The Know-All Plays it High at the Risk of Others
You may have to be delirious to believe in Ted Patrick's maya."The first time I lay eyes on a person, I can tell if his mind is working or not. - Ted Patrick
The key is simple: Is the person alive? If so, his mind is working. Otherwise, watch out for big boasts who operate on the necks of credible guys. Sect dupes are as a rule gutless and may not be cosy to be with, all in all.
Then, as I begin to question him, I can determine exactly how he has been programmed. - Ted Patrick
Here are no small Ted thoughts of oneself. A good therapist may need half a year of sessions, in comparison. Think of that.
From then on, it's all a matter of language. It's talking and knowing what to talk about. I start moving his mind, slowly, pushing it with questions, and I watch every move that mind makes. - Ted Patrick
It seems that it is time to "hyperventilate" (gasp) here. (1) All is far from just a matter of language. Attitudes and orientations go deep, some go deeper than abstract language also. (2) Queer terms like "moving his mind" means "speaking with him". Ted says he watches "every move that mind makes". He is a mind reader then. Let him prove it. Let us get facts instead of tendentious drivel.
I know everything it is going to do [. . . ] - Ted Patrick
Ted has reached the ability to divine future doings too, he says. He isn't even sarcastic.
[. . . ] and when I hit on that one certain point that strikes home, I push it. I stay with that question whether it's about God, the Devil or that person's having rejected his parents. I keep pushing and pushing. - Ted Patrick
Nagging wives and children keep pushing too, and sometimes the mind of their victims may "snap" and change. Have the decency to leave others in peace if that is what they like.
I don't let him get around it with the lies he's been told. Then there'll be a minute, a second, when the mind snaps, when the person realizes he's been lied to by the cult and he just snaps out of it. - Ted Patrick
Ted is now the soo-knowing judge - the one to sort out lies and make the minds of others "snap".
It's like turning on the light in a dark room. They're in an almost unconscious state of mind, and then I switch the mind from unconsciousness to consciousness and it snaps, just like that. - Ted Patrick
Any comparison halts. That is basic knowledge. Don't be deceived by comparisions.
It's like seeing a person change from a werewolf into a man. It's a beautiful thing. The whole personality changes, the eyes, the voice. Where they had hate and a blank expression, you can see feeling again." - Ted Patrick
There are no werewolves to change into men. That is the beautiful thing. The whole personality hardly has a chance to change from chats and "power play" of deprogramming. Yes, the tendentious "method" looks like power play. However, deprogramming has become gentler after the 80s, and Ted's marring, violent activities were even earlier. Violent persuasion is hardly the proper antidote to cult embarrassments for years, for lack of self-assertiveness and things like that. On the surface it looks like a very similar, opposing thing, merely. Put differently: Deprogramming may itself work as a form of mind control. Hence, deprogramming is a serious matter, and it frequently needs follow-up, because:
- The emotional ties in the organization (friends) are still very strong;
- Loneliness and disillusionment are strong factors causing a desire to go back to the cult;
- Lingering doubts about a new decision remain for a while;
- Confusion and disorientation about the future haunts them.
Deprogramming Understood
In a cult or sect there may be some plotting to make new members accept a doctrinal body. Thought, knowledge, and loyalities may be affected, eventually. Psychological punishments for non-cooperation may be subtle, affecting such as control and contacts, if reinforcements have failed. Deprogramming may also be reversing doctrinal plotting through intensive psychotherapy and confrontation. Deprogramming has proved somewhat successful, particularly with religious cult members. Depth of changes in attitude and point of view depend on the personality and motivation of the individual, and how supportive the environment shows up to be. [Ebu "brainwashing"]For healing of the ex-cultist there are kind-looking, non-coercive methods, based on talk and agreement. Healing from some cults may take from one to five years, and you can hardly rush the process. Maybe you can supply a liberal social climate to derive benefits from. That could help. You may also help in granting the cult victims clear thoughts, if you reach their cores and different wavelengths of mind. Some are narrowminded, remember.
Deprogramming can mean (1) the freeing of someone (often oneself) from any previously uncritically assimilated idea; and (2) intervening with the goal to persuade a person to leave a religious group regarded as spurious. This last form of deprogramming may be illegal and dangerous, and there is no "standard" deprogramming procedure. Kidnapping may be included in some cases, and discrediting the authority figure, the leader, presenting contradictions between the cult thinking and the realities, expressing oneself too, and transfer of belongingness.
Deprogramming has become less violent with time, although there may still be cases of being threatened with guns, beaten, denied sleep and food, and being sexually assaulted (how it looks like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo according to news reportages -)
At this site we do not advocate abuse, including that of infringing on the airy rights of others, and violent deprogramming. [Wikipedia link] [FA] [FB]
Deprogramming Oneself, a Hard Struggle
A person speaks of her struggle to be freed from a "bad investment" of faith:At some point, I began to feel that I had been duped . . . I discovered that I was seething with resentment over the years of self-abasement, and humiliated by the fact that I had aided my captors . . . Additionally, the inner compulsion to perform ritualistic practices in which I had lost faith, and the need to overcome the fear that abandoning these practices would cause me to suffer terrible consequences, has made for many painful days and nights. . . . Self-deprogramming has taken me to the edge of despair . . . The truth is that one who delivers their belief into the hands of others risks having to fight to get it back.
- One should perhaps leave deprogamming to analysts who know what they are doing and respect their patients' lives and privacy.
- Facts are strong medicine to cultists, maybe too strong for some.
- A cult freak should not try to help others if he has not got well of underlying systemic troubles.
Parental Belongingness: Check Yours
Try to help people strengthen their awareness of their own soul-nature. - Kriyananda
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| Picasso drawn by his cubist associate Juan Gris. |
- They talk far and wide of God being with them: There is fear and much to hide. And the opposite could be true. If we "pray to God when we are in the pucker", much and fervent exposing of "God and me" may be a sign of nervousness and better. Pray in your closet, says the gospel.
- They have misleading parentage and family labels or ties: Nuns become sisters and mothers, monks brothers, and God is turned into some Mom or Dad and so on. The point is: In a life you get a set of real parents and siblings, and substitutes (monks and nuns and God given family member names) probably won't help as much as they. Instead of exploiting the lack of belongingness that mars Western, industrialised societies, you could focus on yourself, the Self, that is, and escape the family fattening farce.
- They ask for donations - money and property - for the cause. Stick to your assets and be happy.
- Love to be good. Not to them, but God - that is, your inner Self, the original teachings say. That is, be good to yourself too. It is your number one responsibility, remember. Love yourself (yourself and your Self), at least twice as much as your neighbour. This is linked to a gospel saying about love. Buddha says it best: "You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person will not be found: You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection." You can remember that when they say you should cry for the Divine Mother to "come to you". Love yourself better than that, meditate expertly instead, and escape one trap of yogis.
The Quack Pack
In the SRF world there are original methods, not so original methods, and unasked-for Yogananda methods. Some of the latter can work harm, especially the extremely frustrating "Cry to Divine Mother and She will come". To the contrary. There is much nervousness in a family where a child tries to get Mom's attention by crying or bullying in other ways. It is much better in a family where the children are happy and contented and develop nicely, in fact. But hard facts are difficult to be had.For example, even after Yogananda wrote warmly for churches being used as psychological laboratories in his magazine East West, in the late 1970 SRF may have felt smug enough to ignore such things; they declined an offer from a well qualified university man and research assistant to conduct some studies into the effects of the methods. The decline could have put SRF 30-50 years back, against the words of its founder, Yogananda.
They had their chance; they blew it. Yogananda and his much-changed kriya yoga has ceased to be interesting to some too. And this may be at the core of major SRF frustrations. Some read what the early Yogananda recommends and goes for with "a big mouth", only to wake up to the SRF realities: dogmatic, "goddy", churchy, marked by things the early Yogananda talked so much against [follow link above]. If you want to make a fool of yourself, do such things. In Yogananda's autobiography, an uncommon drive for "world brotherhood colonies" is seen. SRF has largely discarded that. So those who like me read the Autobiography and were idealistic on behalf of a saner society, such as professor Erich Fromm [Link] spelt out in books like The Sane Society and invited to in The Revolution of Hope [Dsu; Fer], have been in for major disappointments.Religious groups and individual ministers should become more scientifically minded. They should turn to experimental psychology and test[s] . . . in the laboratory of their churches. [Yogananda]
Instead of . . . urging people to believe, the church should convert its premises into universities of experimental psychology. [Yogananda - MORE]
The guru started a church and a monastic order that he could not keep on the track - is that it? Or are there other, more sinister aspects in it? (Wasn't he mighty enough to see through things he talked for? Isn't the guru guidance of SRF leaders infallible or good enough, after all? Etc.) One disappointment seems to open up for many more in this scenario.
Badfingers Board
On some on-line boards one may find undocumented assertions that the SRF methods produce bad mental and bodily states. Most of those who have experience with SRF methods hardly agree with that, though. However, after many or strong disappointments and disillusionments of other sorts, some members quit.
Things to look out for and try to stay away from are anonymous postings, drivel, and too little principled thinking, and vile clowning. Fair play is a gem. Now, the (first) moderator of the Badfingers Board writes:
Kriya . . . subdues ones critical thinking abilities . . . (3/3/04 12:36 am), post 78]It is only one man's version, and that man kicks away his own legs (credibility). Quite opposite tales are told by others. You need many more than one voice (referee) to be able to build some average-rooted over-all picture in the social sciences - perhaps 23 different stories may be what it takes to detect salient trend, or, if you try a qualitative study, less than that, but more than one story anyhow. An anecdote in this context is "one man's story". Based on heuristics (qualitative studies and findings) and quantitative analyses, main patterns or features may emerge and we may treat the data or stories with budding confidence.
Back to the moderator with two wooden legs: According to his own descriptions he is one of the brainwashed ones, perhaps counter-brainwashed on top of that, having his cult-twisted, nay destroyed mind. These are basically his own words. Do you feel confidence in his words?
What do you say?One may also wonder: "Has he been hurt by a sect, or did he fit in through some defect sides he already had? Or is it the other way round? Can such things work both ways?" — These are interesting and relevant questions.
Some neat reserve may pay.
A neat point to observe for fellows who feel they succumbed to one or more cults and cult thinking, is to stop doing the cult blunders: Quack or fugitive idealism against dogmatism and demagoguery can be quickly sacrificed for dogmatic foolishness. When charging against the cult of Yogananda there should be evidence. We accept life stories though. Many such stories put together form good stuff for study.
However, accusations and decrees without good documentation, are far from as good as can be. All who want to act largely differently than sectarians, should stop submitting bluntly to authority without thinking for themselves, should stop hoping, stop being all too patient to their harm, should stop asserting this and that without fair and fit evidence. They should not want to program others and model their minds. They should stay away from cult ways when struggling to liberate themselves or others from cult ways. Some fall from that. Hanker not for followers, is the stand needed.
"A stitch in time saves nine". It is not blunt and bad belief that will help one on and up, but attunement to what works, and that includes facts of life. So no matter how many there are who believe as they find comfortable for hidden or other reasons, keep up looking for facts and attune yourself to sound reasons for what you are doing. Facts can be far better than stupid, narrow beliefs sectarians repeat and enforce among themselves. Also consider that maturity does not come by itself, and it does not come to all, the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow suggests. [Pusb]
Some can do better than forming and sticking to a dogmatic board of anonymous writers, a board marked by proof-unrelated, and unclear messages or narrow-minded poor fellows. Telling a joke or scrubbing the floor could be more valuable, and let us give warm thanks to Buddha for this counsel:
One should dare to ask the liberating "Isn't there something better to do?" And perhaps in 99,9 % of the time there might be.Avoid company with fools (for your own good). - Buddha
On an Yogananda-all-devoted board someone writes that "Readers should seriously keep in mind the characteristics/leanings and generally mentally and spiritually unhealthy attitudes of persons who work on these sites." Maybe it works both ways.
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| A mothership |
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| Literature | SECTION | First Page |
Ak: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man's Eternal Quest. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1975.
Ap: Mieder, Wolfgang (main editor), Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie E. Harder: A Dictionary of American Proverbs. (Paperback) New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ay: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 1st ed. New York: Theosophical, 1946. Online. [oaks.nvg.org/pv6bk12.html]
Dsu: Fromm, Erich. Det sunne samfunn. Oslo: Pax, 1967. [The Sane Society. New York: Rinehart, 1955]
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006.
Fer: Fromm, Erich. The Revolution of Hope: Toward A Humanized Technology. New York: Bantam/Harper, 1968.
Op: Simpson, John, and Jennifer Speake. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Pa: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 11th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1971.
Pusb: Maslow, Abraham. Motivation and Personality. 3rd ed. New York, HarperCollins, 1987.
Say: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Sayings of Yogananda. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.
[FA] Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. "Chapter 6: "Black Lightning" in Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, 2nd ed, 1995. On-line: Link]
[FB] Randall Watters. Deprogramming and Exit-Counseling: Are They for Christians?
Reprint of the Bethel Ministries Newsletter, Jan/Feb 1990.
www.freeminds.org/psych/deprog.htm
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