The moment I started reading it, I thought about tossing and deleting it. It has nothing to do with the type of cult I had in mind. It's a different cult altogether. But, to the credit of these authors, I didn't put it down. It was just interesting enough to keep me going.
This is a kind of horror story in itself, but the kind that may have happened. On the cover is written "A True Story of a Suburban Manhattan New Age Cult." So, it would seem to be autobiographical.
George, the antagonist, starts off as a kind of new age energy pseudo doctor. With his machine and some crazy ideas about metaphysics, he is able to rope in Elizabeth and her mother. His tactics reveal a man who is deeply narcissistic. As time goes on, he develops an ability to suck more and more people into his cult. As it grows, so too does his sense of worth and he begins to see himself as a kind of messiah.
As they say when it comes to abusive relationships, as time goes on the abuse does not lessen or change into something positive, it simply gets worse. So too does the abuse in this cult. Elizabeth's instincts seem to scream at her, but she refuses to listen to them.
Many of the members experience induced illusions. They start shoveling more and more money into George's pocket. The few people who try to get away often come back begging for more.
As the story progresses, George gets worse, and more powerful. But he is never able to move beyond the physical constraints that he has placed on himself. The house that he holds his meetings in can barely manage to contain the group. Had he expanded his room, perhaps he would have grown the following. But, fortunately for everyone, he never does.
They get into politics, business, but at every venture pretty much fail. The only person able to succeed at all is Elizabeth. But she is often brought down by allowing herself to be surrounded by George's daughter who takes over the business.
The break seems to be coming from a lady named Judy (my guess, Judith L. Carlone). But the irony here is kind of funny. Judy has her own delusions. But her delusions are in a far more mature cult: the Catholic church. She believes in god and all that mythology, and has her own 'energy' thing going on. While Catholicism has had its ultra violent past, by the time Judy gets to Elizabeth, the Catholic church is far less fanatical (though there are regions where people are still whipping themselves).
Elizabeth shows signs of moving over to her new friend, Judy, but in much the same way as she was brought into George's control. That is to say, there's this 'energy' and she has early signs of gravitating towards her in the same way.
That said, Judy is most likely a vast improvement, and choosing the Catholic idol over the idol of George is probably going to be a positive change.
The story has taken on Judy as an alternating narrator. Though, the story is still largely told by Elizabeth.
Some of the similarities between the beliefs of Judith in her religion and Elizabeth in hers are remarkably similar: where George's symbols are rocks, Catholics use the cross. Where prayer can heal, George's energy can heal. The difference between the two is that George is alive, while Jesus is dead. There is no opportunity for Jesus to do anything at all or say anything to anyone. Everything is individually made up in the minds of his 'followers.' By contrast, George is able to rant and rage, manipulate, belittle, etc., his followers. Judy even notices some similarity between her religion and that of George's. George tells his followers that they will be rewarded for their giving to him by getting something back in 'some other way.' She calls this 'the spiritual Law of Reciprocity for his own benefit.'
The similarity between Judy's beliefs in Jesus and Elizabeth's beliefs in George are later expounded when she writes, "...(George's) goal to become a Messiah endowed with powers of miracles, healing, and the ultimate--resurrection." This gives me pause for thought: the difference between the two cults can be suggested as: the one who believes in Jesus refuses to believe that anyone else can do it, sheltering that person from further frauds. On the other hand, there are many Christians who still believe in frauds purporting to be speaking and acting on behalf of Jesus and god. So, perhaps this difference isn't really very different.
Judy makes a few mistakes in her study of George when she finally decides to investigate the cult. She ends up blaming George's abusive mother. But, where did she get the information that George's mother is abusive? Does she discard all the other lies but believe in this instance that this is the truth? There is no way to verify that George was abused and that his craze has any justification. In fact, as she writes, "He hates any kind of nurturing or feminine behavior and demands that the women eliminate all expressions of love and affection by convincing them that this is 'mothering' and part of the destructive 'female game' whose sole purpose is to manipulate men." However, this sounds more like the complaints of the father about the mother. I'm curious about the truth of George's past, and am inclined to hypothesize that his mother left his father and that he didn't have a mother at all, and that the father beat up the memory of the mother in such a way that George may have believed the things that were related to Judy.
Eventually, George, her mother, and the other older members of the group die. The group dies with them.
At the end of the book is an interview with George. Some of what he says makes sense, and doesn't really seem to make him hypocritical. That is to say, he preached selfishness, and he lived it. He believed he was god and immortal. He believed he didn't need money, but took probably millions from his followers. Yet, he didn't spend the money as far as I could tell from the book.
The references to George and his cult I couldn't find. The novels that his daughter, Serena, published, I could not find. I think that the names are changed, while the authors may be true. The flash cards that she writes about are on sale on Amazon.
Some introspection: the whole idea about faith. How we believe in things... I'm at a moment in my life where I am losing faith in myself and in whatever positive destiny I might have believed in. I don't follow any religion. I don't believe in gods or goddesses or anything of that sort. Yet, I do not claim to know anything about spirituality. I don't know if the end is blank, or an empty space, or if there is anything worthy of mentioning, or if our 'souls' get recycled back into another life. But I do believe in essence that I am god. Not that I believe that I created the world or the universe, but that without me to hear it, see it, taste it, or otherwise sense it, from my point of view, it won't exist at all.
There is a questionaire at the back of the book. I don't know if she's really asking readers to comprehend the story or if she is wondering if anyone has answers that might help her with understanding them herself. They seem more like questions for herself than for anyone. I will try to answer some of them for her. Some of the questions are abbreviated for purposes of respecting copyright:
Search for Spirituality
1. What is a cult.
A cult is any religion. People have faith in some kind of mythology and seek answers to questions that cannot be answered.
2. What can one find in a cult.
People who believe and have faith in something or someone. Catholics refer to their own religion as a cult.
3. What does 'spirituality mean' to you.
Spirituality is what people try to understand about the ethereal world. It attempts to connect to the unseen and unknown.
4. Compare and contrast spirituality to religion.
Religion is a full doctrine of myths and symbols. A single religion might be a collection around such things. Spirituality would be the personal feeling-connection to the ethereal world.
My Past
1. Describe Elizabeth's relationship with her mother.
Elizabeth is always looking for a nurturing person. But, her mother doesn't know how to. She herself, perhaps, never had that nurturing person to show her what it meant or how to show it.
her father
Her father might have given her the seedlings of care and love. When he died, and was left with the mother who could not give her those things, it left her open to a world where those feelings were not nurtured. However starved that tree was, it never died.
2. What caused Elizabeth's vulnerability?
Everyone is vulnerable. The problem is that there were profiteers who prayed on her vulnerabilities and exploited them for various reasons, mostly money and their own ego.
3. Why did her mother and others need gurus?
A guru is a kind of spiritual teacher. The word is associated with Indian spirituality, or the Americanization/radicalization of the word. I am sure some are well intentioned with some doing good and others evil, while others are not well intentioned and simply use it as a means of control and profit. In the case of George, I don't think he meant to do evil or to exploit people. He was really crazy. He believed his own lies.
Jan-Dec 1980
1. Was George professional in his first meeting with Elizabeth.
Define professional. He did not belong to any association. He made a ton of money off of it and made a lot of people miserable. As I said before, he probably believed his own rhetoric. He was crazy, and brought people into his craze.
2. George's agenda with Joe
George probably thought he was doing the right thing. It wasn't his fault that Joe got hit by a train, no matter how distracted he was. He caused him emotional pain, and he can be faulted for that. But clearly Joe was the man standing between him and having control over a young and impressionable prospective member.
3. Joe's death effect on Elizabeth's connection to George.
Absolutely the death of Joe has an effect on her connection to George. Would she have gone the same way without Joe's death? It's hard to know. But I know that a close death has a profound effect, making people vulnerable to answers to their questions (which, in this case, were very harmful). If she hadn't been depressed, surely her reaction would have been different, one might suppose. However, there were other women in the group who seemed to have good families who were nonetheless sucked in. So, it's really hard to say.
4. How did George create dependency?
George was a master manipulator. He found people who were at hard points in their lives seeking answers. He provided answers that made them feel good. Then, when they began to depend on him, he would have control over them. He then trained them mercilessly.
5. Is there any truth to his program, state of society, social conditioning?
I'm sure there is a lot of truth to much of what he says. We are harming our planet. Our methods of living are causing serious problems. We do have problems with our society. We are socially conditioned. However, the details in his analysis, not to mention his conclusions, are problematic. The worst, of course, is his answer on how to overcome these challenges, which is how he distinguishes himself as being absolutely bonkers.
6. How is his (sic) rational logic hypocritical.
I don't think he's as hypocritical at the core of his philosophy: the me, I'm everything, I'm god, I control all, I am immortal. He seems to believe these things. When they fail, it's someone else's fault. When there's any delusion of success, he believes it was his 'energy' that enabled it. While his demands of his followers are different from his demands of himself in many ways (health insurance, taking his kids to the doctor), he can be also seen following his own rhetoric: he doesn't see the doctor about his leg. While Burchard doesn't mention this, I infer that his wife probably compelled him to do things like buy health insurance and that he himself probably would not have. The death of the dog after her leaving him would be evidence to support my hypothesis.
7. George's childhood and its affect on personality and his goals.
I talked about this already a little. Clearly something happened, but I don't believe that his mother was responsible. Him blaming his mother is consistent with his blaming everyone else rather than taking personal responsibility. I feel it more likely that he got this attitude from his father. Where were his parents throughout the book? We never see or hear from them at any point. Only Judy alludes to his mother controlling him. But she doesn't know this and I think her beliefs are based on lies that she got from someone else who'd heard it from him. If I had any guess at all, it would be that his father blamed his mother for leaving them or for anything else. As Judith mentions about her own childhood, she witnessed the abuse of her mother, which was not at all unusual since there were screams like her mother's all around her neighborhood. Blaming women is an old game. Some women, I'm sure, deserve it. But I don't think that's the case for George.
8. Why the headshaking and was that a form of hypnosis?
I think George believed in it. If he was faking... what actor shakes his head for hours a day to fake it? He probably damaged his brain from doing it. Did it hypnotize? That's a good question. Was his head like the shiny watch at the end of a necklace swinging like a pendulum? Whatever it was, it identifies him as being 'special' and 'unique.'
9. Define hypnosis. What other ways might someone induce hypnosis other than the watch.
Fasting lowers mental resistance. Eating is mentioned several times as something unnecessary. Sleep deprivation is another. So, clearly there were several factors helping in this group delusion. Herd instinct would also contribute: people want to belong in a group. They see others who believe, then they themselves believe. The story about the foolish naked emperor comes to mind.
10. Why do cults ask members to give up family and friends?
This is definitely a staple of the cult mentality. It can also be seen in religion. They are tempters of the devil while those in the cult are the only ones who know. Family and friends may lead one 'astray.'
There are a lot more questions. I'm not going to spend another few hours trying to answer all of them.
It's a good book and it has definitely given me some things to think about. The irony, however, is that Elizabeth has merely replaced one cult for another. But, rather than following the ramblings of a madman, she is exploring her own internal sense of spirituality. Her friend is nurturing rather than destructive. I'm sure she is leading a much better life with her new cult than her old.
No comments:
Post a Comment