Inside Cults: with Rick Alan Ross.

for ex-BKs to discuss matters related to experiences in BKWSU & after leaving.
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jann

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Inside Cults: with Rick Alan Ross.

Post28 Aug 2015

And how it relates to BK.


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ex-l

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Re: Inside Cults: with Rick Alan Ross.

Post10 Sep 2015

I made some notes of the script ...
The video include an interview with Rick Ross who himself was sucked into the Moonies at one point in his life and became a recruiter for them, despite coming form a Jewish background.

The nucleus of cults is;

1) The presence of an absolute authoritarian leader.

2) The process of thought reform, breaking people down and "refreezing" them in a new mindset dependent upon leader and allowing undue influence, one that leads them to make choices not in their own interest but the cult's interest.

These coercive persuasion and influence techniques have been recognised, based on research.

3) The group does harm

Not all Destructive Cults are equal destructive, others just want money or free labor.

The best defence is education.

There are basic warning signs but there is no common profile to who gets sucked in but it tends to happens at a vulnerable time in their life. The cult claims it can help you, that it has answers for your all questions. A common thread is that people were at a vulnerable time and had bad luck to be approached by the cult. (They mention illness and it made me think immediately of the story of Neville Hodgkinson's, the BKWSU PR man, who suffered from a life threatening food poisoning case and then fell back into the hands of the BKs who he had just met).

Such groups are all very deceptive.

They are run a 'bait and switch' confidence game. What they say is "the bait", what they are bringing people into, "the switch", is entire different.

Abuse in cults is not individuals acting outside of the doctrine of the church, such as in Catholicism. Abuse is mandated rather than tolerated. An expected by-product of the machine, the group. It is inherent in the way the group happens. A machine which produces victims, it's inherent, it's part of the design.

The difference between mainstream religions and cults is that you can find out what the they believe for free, not have to pay for it; and mainstream religions don't tell you that "everyone can become part of the club". They have clearly delineated rules. Deception starts from the very beginning. Specific beliefs kept hidden. You pay (or invest yourself more) to find out. Other religions give away what they believe.

Cults wielded their followers like a weapon. There's a point of no return for followers, e.g. committing crime under undue influence.

Discussing Scientology, he states, that the founder was genius at creating a machine, a process of coercive persuasion, a synthesis of influence techniques, who mechanised the system and put it into play. The genius of Hubbard was creating this machine which puts a person through a process, making them not think about the box created for their mind. This is thought reform or brainwashing to gain undue influence and to turn people into puppets. A step by step process by which one loses one self, accepts the cult value verbiage, mind set world view, and becomes a clone.

Discussing the Kaballah Center in California - which itself alone is worth $100s m, he describes it as having anti-intellectualist values, leading followers instead to just buying materials. It also targets women ... but it's just marketing, selling books, "a class for stupid people" where they are encouraged to tell intimate details and fed information which hooks them in. Scientology is $ billions of dollars.

He then goes on to discuss how cult intervention has evolved since the 1970s, when it was first developed by deprogramming started by Ted Patrick, and how it is an intensive education process, not a therapy, with success rate around 75%. It works by intensively educating individuals into recognising signs and parallels of Destructive Cults and leads them to a make more informed decisions involving their family who he has sitting with them. It take 4 days.

He talk about Destructive Cults look out for those with "special talents" to utilise but generally commit labour violations, (having workers overworked, underpaid and without rights) and how they exploit addictive cycle, but said that something being unusual or eccentric does not make a cult alone.

He warns that when someone makes a supernatural claim, that cannot be proven, about a higher power they claim to represent ... when they start asking you to stop paying mortgage ... to leave your wife or to stop talking family .. it's time to get involved to drill down to find out what is it is really about, and see if they really have nothing to hide.

Likewise, when you are at a breaking point, to stop and drill down again. To know who they really are ... before you hand them the cash. To be sure they are good.


Listen to to him, it is very clear that Brahma Kumarism has many, many parallels to the symptoms he is describing above. The claims they make, the language they use might be different from other Destructive Cults, but the modus operandi is the same.

Where other cults might appeal to the ego's desire for power, or special spiritual gifts, it seems that the Brahma Kumaris USP (Unique Selling Point) is the mother and child relationship, turning adherents into child-like states whilst they act out mother type figures.

Perhaps they appeal most to individuals whose own real family backgrounds were not happy experiences for some reason? Or those who wish to escape the hardships and demands of the real world and retreat back into a child like state?

In their case, Lekhraj Kirpalani and then others within the inner circle were those responsible for systemising it. A process or history we do know know enough about and is not published. But, absolutely fairly, all the rest is true; deception, hiding real beliefs, exploiting workers, adherents and puppets, money making, family breaking etc etc ... it's all there in BKism.

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