I'm glad you were able to get that off your chest. It does feel good to be able to talk about it and to know that we're not alone in our feelings.

I liked your expression, "manipulation of perception". I think there is a lot of that going on. I remember twice during the time that we worked with the Lazaris Material that we received an unexpected check in the mail for several hundred dollars. I immediately credited the Lazaris material and Lazaris himself with these successes. Well, last week we received another unexpected check in the mail and neither Katie nor I have done any of the Lazaris techniques in months :-)

You asked about credible sources of spiritual information. I hesitate to provide an answer because I don't wish to proselytize. But you did ask, so... The most credible source I've found is Paramahansa Yogananda, the first Indian guru to come to the West. He wrote a wonderful and inspiring book called, Autobiography of a Yogi. His organization is Self-Realization Fellowship. SRF has three magnificent sites in Southern California: the Mother Center, on Mount Washington in LA; the Lake Shrine in Pacific Palasades; and the Hermatage and Retreat House in Encinitas. There is a short discussion about Yogananda in the Masters, Gurus and Teachers section of this Forum.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.

"He gets up before the crack of dawn to meditate and stare at a pink ORB with a white background... Goes to India, I guess gets alot of love from the other "brothers" and "sisters" much like Rajneesh except wierder."

Hello, Audrey,

I was touched by the description of your friend. Your mention of Rajneesh was something I've been looking for due to a personal situation.

My daughter's father joined Rajneesh 25 years ago and he is still with them. He is now teaching seminars in Europe, quite high up in the organization. Meanwhile, he has never bothered to come and meet his one and only child. She has suffered much from his inconsistent advances toward her--when she was 13, after years of not being in touch we tried to reach him, but when I learned that he was still with the cult, I was terribly alarmed and realized we would not be able to stay in touch with him at all. So she has been fatherless. His communication with us has basically been, "Come to Rajneesh." (Now called Osho) It is so, so sad for her, and was very difficult for me as well although we've both survived just fine. Any news out there from readers about the current state of affairs with the Rajneeshies, I'd be grateful. Because I'm wondering if it has gotten any better, if we can try to contact her father again so she can get to know him in this lifetime.

Really, this whole thing with Michaell North, Peny, etc. dying saddens me so, but it is a wonderful opportunity. Come on, guys, it's time to bring it all down. It's time to pull the curtain down, tell it like it is. A class action law suit comes to mind. Or any number of other tactics, organized well, deployed all at the same time. It would be very healing and cleansing for so many people.

When people are hurt, when they are the most vulnerable, when they are suffering deeply from life's many inevitable challenges...these parasites, like ole' Concept Synergy here, stand there and wait. People fall into the trap so easily then. Just when they are the most vulnerable. This manipulation is one of the most despicable forms of cruelty.

We got to bring them all down, and quick. I'll help if I can. This forum is all fine and good, but let's take action here. Let's get real practical, get a pro bono attorney who is willing to take the case. And/or in addition, there are many ways to go about this, but I'll stop short of divulging all the tactics. There are many. We can use them. And we will win. Sooner or later, we will win. For all the poor souls like Audrey's friend, for my daughter's father who apparently like Michaell North abandoned his child, and for us to reclaim ourselves and tell these people that "WE'RE MAD AND WE AREN'T GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE"--for the sake of so many lost souls...we have to get much more practical than this, although this is a superb start.

The goal here would be to set a new precendent, new laws, that protect people from this stuff. There needs to be a standard spelled out for it. Yes, religious freedom needs protection. But mind control and brainwashing, belittling seminar participants in order to break their self-esteem, power trips and hierarchies based on "yes-ism", undisclosed hypnosis, undisclosed psychological tactics--there need to be more explicit laws against that. Heck, you have to disclose what is in a box of Cheetohs, don't you? Well, these organizations need to disclose what they are doing, what tactics they use. By law. While still protecting people's freedom to learn and grow. There CAN be a balance here.

Of course this means you'd be putting most of corporate American in jail, too. Just kidding. But, no, I mean that seriously.

With the Information Age, with the Biotech Revolution, don't you think it's about time we acknowledge the human right to psychic integrity and start to define as a society what exactly this right to freedom looks like and sounds like? Hitler should never have happened, but it was a bunch of well meaning people who said yes to a lunatic.

We'd better get to work and dare to dream about how to creatively legislate this and still retain the precious right to religious and political freedom. I do believe we can come up with this new model. If we can put people in space, surely we can draft something like this.

There probably are laws on the books now about psychological manipulation, but these laws need to be tested more. Any attorneys out there who specialize in this? In fact they got Rajneesh out of the U.S. on tax evasion, they got him just like they did Al Capone. But they ought to have been able to confront him about the brainwashing and nabbed him on that.

Sigh. But see, WE have participated in this. We have paid our good money to say....okay, I'll buy Lazaris--who by the way is apparently a disembodied something or other from who knows where. I'll buy this first lie, and then it was so, so easy to buy even more lies after that. This, they say, is the anatomy of cult creation. If they can pursuade you to believe the first lie, then it is easy to justify believing even more lies after that. "And, even though Peny and Jach are mean and selfish--hey, I'll just pretend that isn't happening, at least for a while, because it feels oh, so warm and cozy in here," we'd say to ourselves.

So we supported this. Now that we have realized we goofed, we need to do more than just whine about it and sound pompous about how we've seen the light. We need to get real grown up about it and do something.

Those are my thoughts for the day, for what they're worth.

Love and Light,
Kaitlyn

Here is a link to a number of articles which contain reports and testimonies about Sai Baba.

http://saibabaguru.com/articles.htm

He us under investigation for allegations of child sexual abuse, and the articles contain much information and testimony about the "miracles" that he creates.

I didn't go through and read any of these articles, but I assume they contain the same information about Sai Baba which I have read on cult-awareness sites.

Be forewarned, this is a very disturbing and sickening read.

If you have the stomach to read through, you will find testimonies of followers who were sexually abused by the Guru, and their explanations of the process of denial and avoidance they went through, even in the face of their own personal experiences.

Some of the processes of separation reported sound identical to those we have read here.

This is another story of fraud, abuse, and manipulation from a Spiritual Authority.

I even found articles on the Krishna org site demanding full disclosure, integrity, and honesty from the Sai Baba org, even though the Krisha's themselves have come under attack as a cult.

Katie

I have been reading the stuff about Sathya Sai Baba and it is very eye-opening. I am amazed at the very strong similarities between him and Lazaris. In both cases their followers seem to be finding out that they are frauds and are having to deal with the shock and confusion from that.

A difference between the two is that many of Sai Baba's followers considered him to BE God (and many devoted their lives to him), while Lazaris's followers just saw him as an enlightened and highly evolved being.

Also, I think it can be safely said that Sai Baba has caused much more destruction than Lazaris, since he is accused sexually abusing young boys and men.

I'd like to share a few quotes I came across while reading. They sound very similar to thoughts that have been expressed in this forum.

Regarding whether Sai Baba is "real":

quote:

---

From other devotees, however, the response has been one of disbelief and denial. 'Sai Baba', says Bailey, 'is a simple sex maniac who's on an ego trip, after money, after power. He is a sheer conman.' No, say others, 'Sai Baba is God.'

---

Getting rid of stuff after being disillusioned:

quote:

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Meloy said he shredded all the pictures he had of Sai Baba in his house the moment he heard the allegations. He knew of former devotees who were now selling their homes, determined to purge any taint of association with Sai Baba from their lives. 'We completely gave away our power.

---

I thought this next one was very interesting. It reminds me of a story Lazaris told about a woman who had an accident in her car and she called out "Lazaris!" and she was not injured or she avoided the crash, don't remember which.
Sai Baba is NOT a holy man yet this person attributed his experience to him:

quote:

---

Over the next 15 years, however, he found himself subject to a range of 'amazing teachings' that he attributed to Sai Baba. The most extreme occurred in 1976. It was a time, he said, when his doubts about Sai Baba were at their greatest. Driving a Porsche Turbo through the Hollywood Hills after a late-night party, he came off the road at 80mph and crashed through a barricade into a 200ft gully. 'I had no seatbelt on. At the moment I knew I was going to die I could feel pressure on my shoulders, and I look and, seemingly to me, there is Sai Baba sitting beside me with his arms around me. The car hits the ground and turns more than a dozen times before it lands upright, totally demolished. And there's not a scratch on me. I'm thinking, this can't be true. Was it him? Was it my imagination? Did I call him and somehow create this belief in my mind that he was there?'

---

And on questioning one's self-trust after being betrayed:

quote:

---

It goes so far into your mind. You ask yourself, how could millions of people be wrong? How could millions of people be tricked? I think a lot of people deny these things are happening because they're afraid of being embarrassed. I felt that myself. We'd spent 23 years raising our family to believe in him, going upstream against a river. You think, how could I have been so wrong?'

Since leaving Sai Baba, he said, the family had been trying to find a basis for faith in their own hearts. He believed following Sai Baba's teachings for 23 years had made him a more humble, honest and kind human being.

'My wife hates him for what he did to our son. I feel betrayed. I think it's despicable. But as I look back over my life I would have to say that I honestly don't regret anything that's happened and that I've grown through all of it.' Finding Sai Baba, and then discarding him, 'I'm happier now than at any point in my life.'

Sam said the experience had brought him to see his life in 'a whole other perspective. It made me realise, all my life I've spent following some other human being around, trying to do what he says.' Freed from the prison of false belief, he said, 'I'm just trying to live up to myself.

---

And a couple of comments that also apply:

quote:

---

How does this happen? In an imperfect world, we crave some evidence of perfection, some symbol of ineluctable goodness. The guru becomes the expression of the dream.

---

quote:

---

The grief any cult’s unveiling causes honest spiritual seekers, is monumental. To find that the path, which took one away from family, friends and loved ones is only a mirage.... To find oneself deceived, betrayed; to have one’s trust broken.... To find the love promised is conditional and those one thought were ‘family’, now turn away with cries of ‘Judas!’....
It’s a devastation of self worth, and seemingly a terrible waste of time. But of course it is not.

One thing is self evident. All here on the planet are having experience, and the consequence of experience - especially spiritual experience - is wisdom, and freedom from dependency.

Leaving a cult is like experiencing a death of a loved one. There is a grieving process which will take time. Time to process the feelings of confusion, loss, guilt, disillusionment, anger, and lack of trust engendered.

For a little while I felt very angry, to think my long held love of God the Creator had been exploited in this way - ‘detoured’ as it were, along a pathway that I hadn’t consciously asked for; enticing me into giving my power away to a master of deception.

But this feeling didn’t last for long, I was soon able to accept that the whole experience was one I chose, and my grief and anger - also part of the experience.

In time the negative feelings were replaced with a sense of freedom, and the joy of returning to the real world.

The gift in all of the above, was a profound realisation that for me the ‘age of the guru’ is dead. No longer willing to give my trust to outer teachers, I now at last, follow the message all true spiritual masters have given down the long halls of time - by seeking within, the kingdom of heaven.

In conclusion, I can tell you from our own experience, the pain you suffer will heal. There is life after Sai Baba, and as you claim back your own power, you will be enriched, and find the pathway now illuminated, wonderful.

I wish you a fulfilling and self realising journey.

Faye Bailey

---

quote:

---

Where to now?
No more gurus for me.
Once more, for me the true connection with God is inside me.
No more giving my power away.
To sit still quietly and talk to God within, I find gets real answers.
To accept who I am in this life, and to do my best with my gifts, knowing that I am part of the Great Picture, is enough.

---

These quotes came from "The Findings," by David and Faye Bailey:

http://www.npi-news.dk/page152.htm

and

NHNE Special Report Update:
Sai Baba: Divine Downfall
Monday, October 30, 2000

http://162.42.164.146/specialreports/srsaibaba2.html

Sorry this is so long, but the parallels are quite fascinating. I really appreciate you leading me to this info. Thank you.

Nancy

Hi All,

I thought you might find this article interesting.

CONFESSIONS OF A THERAPY JUNKIE
I'd written letters to my inner child, sculpted energy fields, and taken "truth serum" in my quest for fulfillment. Why couldn't I stop?
By Sheila Munro

http://www.saturdaynight.ca/Articles/topstory1.asp

I'm beginning to think these therapy groups are much much worse than the Con:Sin experience, unless you happen to be employed by them, or otherwise sucked into close proximity, then I think it's worse. Those of us on the "outside" are the fortunate ones.

This story is a real kicker, well written IMO, and very pertinent.

Katie

If you have time sometime, could you give us a brief synopsis of what Aleister Crowley is all about? I skimmed http://www.otohq.org/oto/ which seems to be the official site of the Ordo Templi Orientis, but I didn't see anything interesting. But then, I don't have much patience to wade through long pages of boring text. I never heard of OTO or Crowley before George mentioned it.

Thanks!
Susan

You wrote:

quote:

---

I remember a saying from some guy called Ram Dass I read years ago which always stuck in my mind: 'BE HERE NOW'

---

Yes, Ram Dass is cool. I met him a few times and he has a wonderful presense. He formed an organization called the Siva Foundation, whose primary focus is curing blindness in developing countries. He wanted to help, but knew he could not cure all the ills of the world, so he decided on one issue where he could make a big difference. It seems there is a type of blindness that is easily cured, but tha access to the cure is not available in many places. Ram Dass' organization make the cure available. Many thousands have been cured. But he doesn't claim to love the recipients of his help "forever and a day". That would be much easier, but much less effective.

You wrote:

quote:

---

BTW I happened to flick through my appointments diary today and came across May's entries. I had a five meditation a day routine all planned out with various tapes and issues listed.

---

Well you better get back into your adult. The Consensus Reality, which is too ignorant to save themselves, are depending on you mapmakers