Confessions of a Cult Leader's Son

reply to post by AuranVector


Pandora internet radio has a lenny bruce channel.

I should apologise for my responses, perhaps out of line. Guess i was feeling my oats last night.

Originally posted by Malcher
reply to post by AuranVector

 

Pandora internet radio has a lenny bruce channel.

I should apologise for my responses, perhaps out of line. Guess i was feeling my oats last night.

Thanks for the lead.

Please OP, continue telling your story, start from any point you'd like, but this is a great thread and I would love to hear some more experiances of your. A friend of mine and I actually had quite a descussion about your story. It fascinated me, and I'm very curious to hear how and why it broke apart. I encourage you to continue but I understand if this area may be a bit sensitive and you don't want to talk about it. Thank you for sharing

I too would very like for the story to continue, I keep checking this thread if there's something new and hope to read the whole of the story. Thank you for sharing with us.

Thanks for the continuing interest and all your postive comments, it makes me happy.

I plan to keep on writing this for a while, I'll be tossing out new installments for a while, if there are topics in particular you want to hear about let me know. Those of you who are interested in The Works and a more analytic discussion of theories, that's right up my alley, so maybe I'll put up some of that later. But for now I'll stick more to the general story and the psychological/interpersonal aspects.

I'm back at work after the holidays so my brain's a little slower in my time off. My pace might slow down but I'll try to keep the thread active for a while.

Now, let's see, I'd like to address this question, thanks for asking:

Originally posted by AceWombat04
reply to post by Never Despise

 

You mentioned your mother giving you her blessing with regard to the sharing of your experience and thoughts about life on the commune-turned-compound/community-turned-cult. I was just wondering if in any of your discussions with her, she has ever elaborated more on what "the experience" she and the others had was? I know you said you think to them it was sightless and wordless. But has she ever at least attempted to explain it to you? And if so, what did she say? Even if all she said was that it was indescribable, can you tell us that much?

As I wrote before, all these people, mom and dad included, tended to speak about it with reference to mystical experiences in religious history. That was usually the way it was disccused. The link below is to a decent general short essay on what a "mystical experience" is. Very generally speaking, this was sort of how they talked about it:
www.themystica.com...
(This link isn't affiliated with them at all and I don't know who wrote it, but its very general and its not so different from they basic way they conceived of their experience).

I heard a lot about this growing up, as you can imagine, it was the centerpiece of our religion so it's hard for me to separate my own opinions on it from anyone elses, really. Does that make sense? Also, the definition is vague so my dad could frame it in an almost infinite number of ways, and the way he described it changed with time and also depending on who he talked to. More head games.

But there are few things I can say. One was that in addition to being "visionless and soundless and senseless," it was also timeless. That is, it was an experience, something that unfolds over time (a very short time, granted, like a flash) in our world. But from the vantage of a higher dimension, it was more a place than an event. From the conventional, outside world viewpoint it was a flash or "something that happened." Subjectively, it was timeless, it never began or ended, its still "happeneing," it never really "happened," it's beyond both of these limited ways of explaining, and so on. Smell the patcholi.

There is a way to think about this with dimensions, as if what we experience as time is really another form of space in a higher dimension. So for them, it was like a flash opening into a higher dimension, maybe? I think both my mom and dad would object to any simplistic reductionism like that, though. If I explained it that way, they'd say "Yes, but that's not the whole story; that's a pretty good analogy but its more subtle than that, so don't get trapped by the limitations of this analogy." Actually that's pretty much their answer to any attempt at a reductionist explanation. I don't know whether they were retreating into vagueness as a kind of manipulative strategy to keep you guessing, or if they really believed it was too slippery for a single definition. Maybe both.

(continued from post above - Ran out of space)

Another thing, my mom would often describe it in terms of a shift in perspective. As if, somebody had taken her by the head, lifted her up, twirled her around, and plopped her back down. Suddenly it was easy to explain everything, all questions and conflicts could be resolved, life had grace and symmetry. This was part of the theology, that when the people who had "The Experience" tuned their minds properly, they could put themselves back to the state they were in immediately after it, when everything was clear. When they "reached this state," they were in a kind of visionary trance and people would ask them questions, as if they were oracles. Only the people who had "The Experience" could do this, that is why they had central status in the community. My dad claimed to be, and was thought to be, the best at this. When he'd go into one of these trances, you could ask him questions about the nature of the universe, good and evil, moral and philosophical problems, and he'd roll off his tongue these deep-sounding pronouncements. It wasn't like "where is the shoe I lost yesterday" stuff, not at all personal, it had to be more philosophical. My mom would do this too, when I was young, but she stopped eventually and only my dad did it. As time went on it became less philosophical and more personal, too. More mind games...mindgames were what was for breakfast, lunch and dinner let's not forget.

See you soon...

reply to post by Never Despise


Thanks for that, (though I was getting annoyed at the lack of clarity at first), I mean, I couldn't understand anyone following a 'leader' whose experience couldn't be explained or clarified in any way!

The fact they were able to go into trance states is obviously the proof that their followers needed.
It reminds me of the Ra material (channeled material), where Ra states that negative or positive entities can make contact, often with the negative entity starting out initially sharing positive information, but ultimately being a negative influence in the long term.

Also, what were they doing when they had this experience?
Were they camping, fasting etc? Where did this happen? (Bush, beach etc)
Thanks heaps, loving this!!

Originally posted by jewells
reply to post by Never Despise

 

Thanks for that, (though I was getting annoyed at the lack of clarity at first), I mean, I couldn't understand anyone following a 'leader' whose experience couldn't be explained or clarified in any way!

I could understand it, because often stuff like that is secondary to what draws people into cults in the first place. These are runaways, hippies, and "working girls" wink wink that he seems to be talking about, right? These types of people are dragged into these types of groups for emotional reasons, not intellectual ones, I think. They want the feeling of belonging, maybe responding viscerally to a leader's charisma, maybe lured by the sense of respect and warmth, who knows...under the right conditions people will swallow anything if it serves other purposes. Ultimately you can poke logical holes like crazy in all of the world's religious dogmas, all the theolgies and scriptures are self-contradicting and contain baffling things that "can't be explained or clarified in any way." And yet religion is alive and well. Especially in cults, the central attraction can't be theory for most people, it gotta be the way it makes them feel and how it satisfies all these other needs, I think. Right?

reply to post by FailedProphet


Yeah good point.
I suppose I find it so difficult to understand because even at my lost ,most darkest times, when I have been desperately searching for answers, I still wouldn't/couldn't just follow blindly........much as I friggin wanted to at the time!! (Hey I was all of the above at one time!! Jokes!!!!) ; )

reply to post by Never Despise


Thanks very much for the clarification. That makes total sense to me on a couple of levels.

Firstly, there are plenty of times when someone has an experience or sees something (even something mundane like, say, trying to describe a particular ache or pain to a doctor) that can't effectively be described because of how subjective or, perhaps, because of how incomplete it is. Going with the pain analogy (as someone with a lot of chronic back pain, I feel like I can say this lol,) I often frequently find myself saying to my doctor, "It's kind of hard to describe," because I feel as though stating it in any - as you put it - reductionist means of description would fail to do it justice or detract from its meaning. This can be very frustrating. So I can imagine someone having some sort of - for them - epiphany or revelation in their life, and being reluctant to frame it or minimize it through language and semantics (especially given how subjective semantics can be.)

Secondly, if they began to discover that the "experience" wasn't really as final or be-all end-all as they imagined (in terms of its practical applications,) yet had already invested considerable material, psychological, labor, and time capitol into the idea that it was all they needed to make up the core of their functional worldview or reality paradigm, then I can see them accepting that vagueness as a reasonable cop out to retain its paramount position in their lives and dealings with other people. Cognitive dissonance (again,) basically. When challenged with questions and obstacles that "the experience" couldn't provide answers or solutions to, being vague and falling back on "you just don't understand" or "to answer would be to limit its true magnitude," etc. can preserve this all-important concept in their minds, if not for anyone else beyond themselves.

Or I could just be totally off base. But it makes sense to me.

Thanks again and please feel free to continue at your leisure.

The early 80s: Morining in America

As the new women joined, some of the older women resented them, naturally, and the attention they were getting from the men. You can imagine it I’m sure. Catty stuff. My dad loved it, I can see in his diary he takes an almost malicious glee in inter-feminine conflict. It riled things up, kept people off-balance, off kilter. I think he liked that. The community was changing, and whenever there is change, there is fear in whoever holds the most power, because unless they control the change, they have the most to lose. My dad was on some level happy with the blossoming of female jealousies and infighting, because it kept the girls divided and from ganging up on him in any way. Women have a great strength in numbers, when they are together they can work and unite very well, utilizing their empathic qualities. When they are set against each other, they are isolated and much easier for somebody like my dad to manipulate individually or in small groups to his heart’s content. After much thought, I think this is the source of his delight in conflict and chaos around this time, although of course he hid it from himself and others. It comes out in his diary, though. Here’s one passage:

March 12, 1981: Today was a kind of nothing day. I wanted to start getting those posts put in, so I went to [town name] and contacted [person] who has Deere and something to sleeve the post holes with. We sat around and he filled me in on some town politics…[omitted] When I got back, S was fit to be tied, she was shrieking at L about a lost hairbrush. Third time this week S has exploded at L, and S is looking at me with those big brown eyes like "hint hint." Yes I'm not stupid I know you are trying to tell me something but I like watching you put your heart into it, fair girl, ha-ha. You get mad when you think I'm dense, its so cute. Meanwhile S kept screaming and L just sat there looking down at the floor, she has to because she’s a bud [Note: this was a word for a new recruit, like “flowerbud,” not yet opened -ND]. I wondered how much she would take and if I would have to step in, but I held back and actually I had to choke back the laughter when I saw how much she would put up with. Stupid, she’s been kicked around before too much I guess. We’ll get her on her feet, she is a fine woman underneath. Finally I decided S had had enough fun with L, and I sent S to do cleanup in the kid’s wing, which I know she particularly hates. L is clearly most at home in a yang-over-yin scene, and I will have to see about moving her over to V’s room because the show she and S are putting on is growing tiresome.

There’s pages of this stuff, it’s nuts.

The new scene was a lot less “philosophical” than the old one had been, and my dad was slipping up on providing rigorous training and spiritual practice for all the new girls. There were a lot of them, and he seemed more preoccupied with finding new and ever-seedier adult-entertainment ways for them to make money than he did with their spiritual growth. They still had to adhere to the order and routine of the community, though, which involved study of religious theory and meditative practice as well as work around the compound. Substantial money was now starting to come in, and we got lovely brick buildings, architect-designed, new cars, more land, and a whole host of new comforts around this time. Big walls went up, and advanced (for the time) security measures. My dad was raking in enough cash with “the girls” (as he always called them, and as they called themselves) to have enough to invest, and he was sinking it into real estate around the area for the most part, as well as stocks and other areas.

Our group was getting big enough to attract heightened attention from various authorities. Regulators, child protective service people, town bigwigs of various sorts. I have no way of proving it, but I think certain palms were getting greased with bribes (and maybe sometime “time alone with one of the girls”) to keep the authorities from getting too close. Also, it was a different world back then, people left each other alone more, especially in rural New England. Out of sight, out of mind, our group could be left alone as long as we left everyone else alone. My dad’s relationship with the authorities was never perfect, full of ups and downs, and mistakes that would come back to haunt him later.

In 1983, there was a period when a lot of the remaining “old people” started to leave. I remember it quite vividly, I was 11 and I was heartbroken that so many old friends (who were really more like family) were taking off. My dad seemed strangely unconcerned with this exodus. I’d seen him get furious when other people left or talked about leaving, but this time, nothing at all. I thought at least it would wound his vanity. For a long time this was puzzling to me, and it wasn’t until many years later that I realized he wanted them to go, simply because he was bored with them and they weren’t as exciting as the new people. They remembered him from the old days, too, when he was a less lofty figure, so they didn't give him as much "worshipfulness" as the newer girls. He was growing more remote and distant, more "imperial" in his manners. So he manipulated the situation to squeeze some of the older people out, arranging things so they would decide to remove themselves, and it wouldn’t look like he forced them. Sneaky, sneaky. By summer 1983, there were 64 people listed, and maybe less then ten had been there since the beginning.

I guess in some ways, the early and mid-80s was the peak. There were more people than ever, more money than ever, my dad was very positive and on top of the world. None of the more serious problems that would plague the community later had started yet.

Originally posted by WhiteDevil013
You mention, this was during the "Age of Aquarius" and yet the Age of Aquarius does not actually take place for another seven hundred years or so.

It takes place a whole lot sooner than seven hundred years.

In fact Aleister Crowley reckoned it actually started in 1900!

Just reading the forth bit, good story / tale.

reply to post by Never Despise


This is interesting, a wierd theory I have about back then was that the decade of the 1980s started off fairly well and did peak at about the point of the mid-1980s.
Then after that point, some state 1986 or '87 as the exact year things began to descend and helter-skelter a bit and lead into a whole different timeline or pathway.
Now I've already heard that something wierd caused it but I wasn't sure what it was.

I was speaking to a wise Jew I sometimes visit when I'm travelling overseas about this (he's a story of his own).
This guy is among a few of those I know who has 'the touch' you might say on surmising things with amazing clarity.
It's almost like he can take a serious question, analyse it's meaning, then crystalise the laymans truth back to you but do so in laymans talk.
Yet do so with incredible sense and truth. He's pretty 'dialled in' basically.

So with this bugging me (as it has for a while) I specifically asked him what caused this

He reckoned that all across the earth there's a sequence of stones, that when 'aligned' cause a 'shift' in conciousness.
He told me that these 'stones' were moving into alignment (late 70s to early 80s) and actually aligned perfectly in 1986 - 87, then moved slowly out of alignment again.
He was in a big city when '86 and '87 were going on and in his words 'many people were kind of crazy', or 'possessed by a kind of madness' for that period.

I nodded at this and his response and then he went a bit quiet before thinking again a bit.
He added (and this was interesting)
'They didn't expect it to happen, they thought it would happen in a few thousand years time.'
I think he was speaking about the ptb not reckoning about the perfect alignment maybe?

Anyway, If that's correct (which it could be), I'd be willing to wager that places like your dad's cult were especially vulnerable or even attracted to that 'amplified downturn'.
The 'hangover' period being in the 1990s and even to this day I think.

Originally posted by jewells
reply to post by Never Despise

 

Thanks for that, (though I was getting annoyed at the lack of clarity at first), I mean, I couldn't understand anyone following a 'leader' whose experience couldn't be explained or clarified in any way!

The fact they were able to go into trance states is obviously the proof that their followers needed.
It reminds me of the Ra material (channeled material), where Ra states that negative or positive entities can make contact, often with the negative entity starting out initially sharing positive information, but ultimately being a negative influence in the long term.

Also, what were they doing when they had this experience?
Were they camping, fasting etc? Where did this happen? (Bush, beach etc)
Thanks heaps, loving this!!

Yes, their trances were similar to what happens in channeling, but I use the word "oracle" instead because they were not claiming to channel any entity or being, as channelers do (or claim to do). They remained the same person, but they believed their consciousness was expanded in such "episodes." The Experience itself could never be recapitulated -- although in a sense, all of cosmic history was seen as identical with the single moment of The Experience, so wandering around in your daily life, you were also within The Experience, it embraced you and once grasped it would never abandon you, Ommmmm....The trance states were not seen as identical with The Experience, but rather as recapitualting the mental states immediately after the experience, when they had returned from their lofty mystical heights and found their tongues again. Can ya dig it?

Anyway thanks for the complements. "The Experience" happend on a camping trip in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA. They were half-way up the mountain when it struck them all, and they reeled around at the side of the road and were all agog and consumed with the fires of divine illumination, and all that good stuff.

Wow! This thread is amazing. Thanks for posting, OP. I'll be following along!

FWIW, someone very close to me lived on "the farm" a long time ago, around the same time in New England as well. Your posts mean very much to me and I appreciate gaining additional perspective.

My editing time has passed, but I want to clarify: I don't beleive the person I know was in the same group, and I don't think her group was actually called "the farm."

Originally posted by Never Despise

"The community was changing, and whenever there is change, there is fear in whoever holds the most power, because unless they control the change, they have the most to lose."

This is the essence of what is happening in the larger world. TPTB have the most to lose in this changing world, and the clamps of control are coming down harder on the masses (us).

Originally posted by Never Despise

Anyway thanks for the complements.

"The Experience" happend on a camping trip in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA. They were half-way up the mountain when it struck them all, and they reeled around at the side of the road and were all agog and consumed with the fires of divine illumination, and all that good stuff.

Normally, profound mystical experiences happen when one is alone. That's what makes this story unique: that all seven people would supposedly experience the same thing at the same time. If they were not able to communicate this experience verbally, I'm wondering how they knew they had shared an identical experience simultaneously.

Did they all step into a special power spot? Some type of dimensional doorway?

I strongly suspect they were all tripping on the same hallucinogen. There have been reports of telepathic communication between people on drugs.

In any case, their "mystical" experience was not of the highest order. The evidence is in the way they lived their lives.

reply to post by Never Despise


I forgot to add, I'm really enjoying your story -- fascinating stuff and full of worthy insights.

Keep your posts coming.

I'm soooo glad I found this thread. Good readin'.

The OP is a very smart and articulate person who has a great insight into psychological matters. I wonder if this is something he inhereted from his father too, besides writing skills, hmmm?

Either way you strike me as a remarkable person. It would be quite something to know a person like you in real life I think.

Cheers and keep them coming. When I was reading this I thought of this song, its lyrics for you:

Be well, mister man.