Taking them in order: (1) things are what they are regardless of what a person thinks. The sunlight one person sees comes from the exact same sun as the sunlight that another sees, and if one argues to the contrary, he is a nut. (2) Minds are parts of a single reality. This means that they cannot precede reality and cannot create reality. Minds can and do, of course, govern and manipulate other parts of reality. (3) Consciousness is a specific and systematic phenomenon. It is flat-out bonkers to maintain that electrons and stones and rain drops have any consciousness intrinsic to them at all. To do so is not only loony, it tears consciousness down to the level of a stone.

The point of the Buddha's bizarre statements is to erode the follower's connection to reality, so that he can be controlled more easily. All religion is psychocognitive warfare. All religion exists solely to control the actions of people, by controlling the thoughts of people.

Establishment intellectual hero Albert Einstein offers his own contribution of garbage:

``the illusion that we are separate from each other is an optical delusion of our consciousness''

Einstein was wrong about nearly everything. He was a proponent of pacifism and world government. He was a key early proponent of developing nuclear weapons. His theory of General Relativity is on the threshhold of being debunked by mainstream science. He neglected his family and was psychologically abusive. He spent the last decades of his life frantically and vainly searching for a non-probabilistic theory of everything, because he found the uncertainty of quantum theory insupportably horrible. It was Einstein who was insupportably horrible.

Addressing the above quote directly: our separateness is no illusion. Our consciousnesses are quite distinct, as are our whole minds and bodies. To believe otherwise is mystical hokum.

New Ager quotes (one from the utterly dreadful Book of Matthew), from http://www.inetport.com/~one:

"The aim should be the development of the habit of meditation all the day long, and the living in the higher consciousness till that consciousness is so stable that the lower mind, desire, and the physical elementals, become so atrophied and starved through lack of nourishment, that the threefold lower nature becomes simply the means whereby the Ego (soul) contacts the world for purposes of helping the race." (The Tibetan)

THIS IS BOGUS "Feed your brothers. Remember that mankind is One, children of the One Father. Make over in trust, the goods of the Earth to all who are in need. Do this now & save the world." (The Teacher) THIS IS BOGUS "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me... Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." (Matt. 25:36,40) THIS IS BOGUS "There is nothing in your world, either alive or dead, that is worth being agitated about, except the alleviation of suffering." (From: "The Boy & the Brothers") THIS IS BOGUS "The cause of all sorrow and woes is desire -- desire for that which is material. ... 'No man liveth unto himself", and no nation either, and ...the goal of all human effort is loving understanding, prompted by a love for the whole." (Djwhal Khul) THIS IS BOGUS "I have said Ye are Gods, and all of you are children of the Most High." (Psalms 82 verse 6)

 

from http://inetport.com/~one/mscoop.html:

Co-operation
by the Master --

Humanity today stands poised for a great leap into the future, a future in which man's essentially divine nature will demonstrate. Little though he may know this, man has passed and is passing the tests which will allow him, in full adulthood, to become the recipient of knowledge and powers with which to fashion the future.

THIS IS BOGUS At present, only to the inner vision of the Guides of the Race may this reality be clear, but such it is, and portends well for the coming time. Wherever men may gather today, can be seen and felt a new urgency, a new sense of commitment to the well-being of the planet and its kingdoms. THIS IS BOGUS Only now, after aeons spent in the struggle for existence and progress, can man be said to have reached maturity, a maturity discernible to Us, albeit well hidden from man himself. THIS IS BOGUS The opportunity arises now for a major advance in human progress, outstripped by fear, in speed and accomplishment, all previous advances. Whereas, until now, a slow and steady progress was desirable, and even preferable, a new dynamic rhythm is being created whose momentum will sweep humanity into the future on a wave of global change. So great are the tensions in today's divided world that only a rapid change of direction will prevent catastrophe. This rapid change, there is no doubt, will present problems of adjustment to many, but many more, by far, will welcome these changes as the opportunity for new life. THIS IS BOGUS We, the Toilers behind the scenes, have every confidence that humanity will set in motion this radical transformation of its structures. They no longer serve man's needs and block the emergence of the new. We watch and guide, overseeing all. THIS IS BOGUS Little by little, a new consciousness is awakening humanity to its inner needs. The old, competitive spirit dies hard, but nevertheless a new spirit of co-operation is likewise to be seen. This augurs well for the future, for it is by co-operation alone that mankind will survive; by co-operation alone that the new civilization will be built; by co-operation only that men can know and demonstrate the inner truth of their divinity. THIS IS BOGUS Co-operation is the natural result of right relationship. Right relationship likewise follows wise co-operation. Co-operation holds the key to all successful group effort and is a manifestation of divine goodwill. Without co-operation nothing lasting can be achieved, for co-operation brings into synthesis many diverse points of view. THIS IS BOGUS Co-operation is another word for Unity. Unity and co-operation are the springboards to the future and the guarantee of achievement for all men. Great reservoirs of power lie untapped within humanity, waiting for the magic of co-operation to unleash. THIS IS BOGUS Competition strains the natural order; co-operation liberates the goodwill in men. Competition cares only for the self, whereas co-operation seeks to blend and fuse the many-coloured strands of the one divine life. THIS IS BOGUS Competition has led man to the precipice; co-operation alone will help him find the path. THIS IS BOGUS The old and backward-looking love competition; the new embrace with joy divine co-operation. THIS IS BOGUS The people of the world can be divided into two kinds; those who compete, and those who co-operate. THIS IS BOGUS Cleanse the heart of the stain of competition; open the heart to joyful co-operation.

 

---

The Master -- is a senior member of the Hierarchy of the Masters of Wisdom. His name, well-known in esoteric circles, has not yet been revealed for various reasons. Benjamin Creme is in telepathic contact with this Master who dictated this article to him. From the files of Share International.

 

A general phenomenon that is a crucial component of the cultural substrate of Maitreyanism is specialism. Here is an excerpt from a presentation by Robert David Steele, President of Open Source Solutions, from God, Man, & Information: Comments to Interval In-House, 1998-Mar-9:

[...]

The reality is that wealth can be translated into information power, and that the apathy of the people is allowing private wealth to control public information. We are very, very close to private tyranny.

There are a few fundamental concepts in public administration, including the concepts of accountability, administrative ecology and power, incremental public choice, information networks and systems of cooperative effort, budgeting as a political manifestation of organized trade-offs, and the moral ambiguities of public choice.

Accountability depends on openness. As John Ralston Saul argues so well in Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, secrecy and the cult of expertise have in fact undermined humanism and created a pathological civilization, a civilization of decline. Consider:

``The invention of the secret is perhaps the most damaging outgrowth of the power produced when control over knowledge was combined with the protective armor of civilization. Until recently very little was considered improper to know. Today the restricted lists are endless.

These restrictions have been counterbalanced over the last thirty years by an apparent explosion in individual freedoms. This breakdown of social order-- rules of dress, sexual controls, speech patterns, family structures-- have been seen as a great victory for the individual. On the other hand, it may simply be a reflection of the individual's frustration at being locked up inside a specialization. These acts of personal freedom are irrelevant to the exercise of power. So in lieu of taking a real part in the evolution of society, the individual struggles to appear as if no one has power over his personal evolution. Thus victories won for these individual liberties may actually be an acceptance of defeat by the individual.

Not since the etiquette-ridden courts of the eighteenth century has public debate been so locked into fixed positions, fixed formulas and fixed elites expert in rhetoric.

In fact, the question which arises is whether the rational approach has not removed from democracy its greatest single strength-- the ability to act in an unconventional manner.''

The ability to act in an unconventional manner. Let us hold that thought as we look at other fundamentals. Administrative ecology, administrative power, incremental public choice. Who is really in charge of our civilization and our commonweal? The Office of Technology Assessment not-withstanding, the reality is that our civilization and our government in particular, but all governments in general, are out of control. Each area of specialization, from defense to energy to agriculture, is the captive of mindless and amoral specialists who have no interest in holistic policy or the public good. In the absence of kinship, of family, of religion, or even of ideas, man has been domesticated in the worst sense of the word.

[...]

The terms Maitreya and Führer are interchangeable. Devout Maitreyans intend to commit an eternal worldwide genocide of individualists - of those who are incompatible with the ideology, and of those who are insufficiently pliable. They plan profuse apologies and tears of sorrow, but they believe devoutly that they must kill, often describing it as a relieving of suffering and/or a deliverance to a better place.

There is more, much more to the connection between the Nazis and New Age. This is all rather roundabout, and the story would be laughable and silly were it not for all the corpses.

The Rothschilds, that great Jewish lion of European banking, were instrumental in bringing the Nazis to power. At the time of Hitler's election, the Farben trust (interest group, I G Farben) was a Rothschild-dominated concern. Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich, also a Jew, discovered antibodies and invented chemotherapy and the first cure for syphilis while at Farben years earlier. In fact the Farben trust was veritably awash in Jewish scientists. Nonetheless, Farben, with the other major industrial trusts of Germany, threw its support behind Hitler's candidacy, precipitating his election. Years later, Zyklon B - the nerve gas used in concentration camps to murder enemies of the Nazi state - was invented by scientists at Farben.

The Rothschild agenda was, at least in part, public and transparent, dating to the nineteenth century. They were and are committed and leading Zionists (a street is named in their honor in Jerusalem), and they (and other allied Zionists) sought to shoo Jews out of Europe and into Israel by making life for Jews in Europe miserable.

Seemingly, they overshot their mark. Or did they? Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a prominent religious leader in Israel, recently repeated an explanation I've heard with some skepticism before, regarding the Holocaust: ``These are incarnations of those who have sinned and made others sin... They were reincarnated to make amends.''

That is, he maintains that the Holocaust was a collosal burnt offering to appease an unnamed god. This constitutes a mystical, fringy sort of Jewish cult ritual run amok. In fact, it is none other than cabalism. The Star of David the Zionists adopted as their symbol and put on their flag is actually an expressly cabalistic symbol. Cabalism is the direct ancestor of modern theosophy as institutionalized in the Third Reich in particular and in New Age in general.

In its modernized form as New Age, the ideology centrally features both reincarnation (in the form of Hindu karma, samsara, and nirvana) and intense anti-Semitism: the premise is that Jews are peculiarly obstinate varmints, having missed two quantum leaps of consciousness (constituting disobedience to Maitreya or ``natural law'' or some other such hogwash), and so must be exterminated to make way for a harmonious global unified consciousness/ awakening.

The swastika (the word is Sanskrit for ``well being prevails'') was borrowed from Buddhism, in which it is an ancient traditional symbol of Buddha's heart, often appearing emblazened on his chest in religious artwork. The Nazis are considered to use only the clockwise form of the swastika, while traditionally the chiral variants are both used, related to each other dialectically, associated with male and female. Since the Nazis often emblazened flags with the swastika, the chiral variants were both routinely displayed.

The Nazis embarked on treks to Tibet, mythical homeland of Maitreya and seat of mystical wisdom. The United Nations, built on Rockefeller-donated land, is closely associated with Share International, which distributes explicitly Maitreyan Buddhist propaganda. J D Rockefeller the first got his start, and made his race to monopoly, with Rothschild money and favors. Rockefeller was a key supporter of the eugenics movement (coercive eugenics is a core doctrine of New Age), and the organization he funded became the Racial Hygiene Society when the Nazis built their apparatus. For more on this, see Anton Chaitkin's discussion on the Rockefeller roots of Nazi eugenics.

I suspect that some mischievous wankers in the intelligence community - critical ground pounders of the nuclear establishment - are using state of the art technology and tactics to create Maitreyan apparitions, as discussed in An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control, published by the Directorate General for Research of the European Parliament and written by Steve Wright.

"We are no longer at a theoretical stage with these weapons. US companies are already piloting new systems, lobbying hard and where possible, laying down potentially lucrative patents. For example, last year New Scientist reported that the American Technology Corporation (ATC) of Poway California has used what it calls acoustical heterodyning technology to target individuals in a crowd with infra-sound to pinpoint an individual 200-300 metres away. The system can also project sonic holograms which can conjure audio messages out of thin air so just one person hears."

and from http://www.techmgmt.com/restore/orange.htm:

AEN News
Carol Valentine (Skywriter@public-action.com)

Pentagon's New Offensive Info. War

The March 31, 1997 Defense Week ran a story "Air Force Organizes For Offensive Info War." According to the article, the US Air Force has created the position of deputy director for information operations. An "offensive information warfare" division will be created under the new deputy director. The division will have the organizational code AF/XOIOW and will be headed by Lt. Col. Jimmy Miyamoto.

Offensive information warfare, which implies attacks on both military and civilian targets, is among the least discussed aspect of the Air Force's moves to organize, train, and equip the service for information dominance, the article admits.

The new Information Operations office will coordinate with the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

New research efforts are underway to support this new program, including:

• Lethal HPM munitions. The USAF Office of Scientific Research is working on developing a small affordable laser and high powered microwave for unmanned aerial vehicles to perform a wide variety of missions, including enemy communications and computer systems.
  
  
• Software viruses to be placed or injected into enemy weapons and information links. These viruses would remain dormant until activated by satellite, aircraft radar, or jamming equipment, etc. When activated, the virus would render the equipment useless, or "better yet, there could be a very subtle change for a finite period of time."
  
  
• Holographic projection. The article describes a quasi-information warfare/psychological operations program that was first discussed in the Air Force after Desert Storm. Holographic projection involves projection of a three-dimensional holographic image in project decoys, or even an "angry god" above the battlefield.
  
  

The Pentagon had listed holographic projections openly as part of its "nonlethal" weapons program. But since 1994, the program has disappeared from view, evidently now a "black" effort, says Defense Week.

In conclusion, the Defense Week article states that the Army's JFK Special Warfare Center and School in late 1991 disclosed that it was looking to develop a PSYOPS Hologram System with a capability "to project persuasive messages and three-dimensional pictures of cloud, smoke, rain droplets, buildings . . . The use of holograms as a persuasive message will have worldwide application."

Carol A. Valentine
President
Public Action, Inc.

from http://www.shareintl.org/maitreya.html:

WHO IS MAITREYA?

He has been expected for generations by all of the major religions. Christians know Him as the Christ, and expect His imminent return. Jews await Him as the Messiah; Hindus look for the coming of Krishna; Buddhists expect Him as Maitreya Buddha; and Muslims anticipate the Imam Mahdi or Messiah.

THIS IS BOGUS Although the names are different, many believe that they all refer to the same individual: the World Teacher, whose personal name is Maitreya (My-'tray-ah). THIS IS BOGUS Preferring to be known simply as the Teacher, Maitreya has not come as a religious leader, or to found a new religion, but as a teacher and guide for people of every religion and those of no religion. THIS IS BOGUS At this time of great political, economic and social crisis Maitreya will inspire humanity to see itself as one family, and create a civilization based on sharing, economic and social justice, and global cooperation. THIS IS BOGUS He will launch a call to action to save the millions of people who starve to death every year in a world of plenty. Among Maitreya's recommendations will be a shift in social priorities so that adequate food, housing, clothing, education, and medical care become universal rights. THIS IS BOGUS Under Maitreya's inspiration, humanity itself will make the required changes and create a saner and more just world for all.

 

---

The process of the Emergence

In recent years, Maitreya has been appearing to individuals ----- important world leaders as well as ordinary people ---- and to groups of people, large and small, all over the world. In this way, He is gradually affecting world events, and making His presence known.

THIS IS BOGUS He appears to individuals in one of three ways: most commonly in people's dreams; secondly, as a vision ---- not in a dream but not totally solid; and, thirdly, as a solid, physical person who suddenly appears before them and then disappears. THIS IS BOGUS On 11 June 1988 He appeared miraculously from out of no-where before 6,000 people at a prayer meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. The people instantly recognized Him as the Christ. He spoke to them for some minutes in perfect Swahili, the local language, and then disappeared as amazingly as He had come, leaving behind some 30 or 40 people completely healed of their illnesses. THIS IS BOGUS Since then, Maitreya has appeared miraculously before large groups of people in Mexico, Russia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czecho-slovakia, Romania, Scotland, Norway, the Middle East, North Africa, India and Pakistan. Near the majority of these appearances miraculous healing water will be found. This has already happened in Tlacote, near Mexico City, Düsseldorf in Germany and New Delhi in India. He will continue to do this until people begin to talk, the media take notice, and He becomes universally known. Maitreya will then be invited by the international media to speak directly to the entire world through the television networks linked together by satellites. THIS IS BOGUS On this Day of Declaration, we will see His face on the television screen wherever we have access. The Bible statement, ``All eyes will see Him,'' will be fulfilled, in the only way in which it can be fulfilled. We will see His face, but He will not speak. His thoughts, His ideas, His call to humanity for justice, sharing, right relationships and peace, will take place silently, telepathically. Each of us will hear Him inwardly in our own language. In this way, He will re-enact on a world-wide scale the true happenings of Pentecost 2,000 years ago. THIS IS BOGUS At the same time, the energy which He embodies ---- the Christ principle, the energy of love ---- will flow out in tremendous potency through the hearts of all humanity. He has said, ``It will be as if I embrace the world. People will feel it even physically.'' This will evoke an intuitive, heartfelt response to His message. Simultaneously, on the outer, physical plane, there will be hundreds of thousands of miracle healings throughout the planet. In these three ways we will know that Maitreya is the Christ, the World Teacher, come for all groups, religious and non-religious alike, an educator in the broadest sense, here to help us fulfill our destiny as Gods in incarnation. THIS IS BOGUS Maitreya and His group of Masters have come to show us the way, to inspire and guide us to create the conditions in which that divinity can correctly manifest. They have come to teach us to know who we are. Maitreya has said, ``I have come to teach the art of Self or God realization. That is the destiny of all people in the world.'' THIS IS BOGUS Those of us now in incarnation have an extraordinary responsibility. That is why we are in the world at this time. Every generation brings into incarnation those who are equipped with the knowledge to solve the problems of their time. We have to solve the problems of today and the immediate future, to decide for all time whether or not the human race will continue ---- to make the choice for justice, sharing, right relationships, and peace, or to destroy all life. Maitreya is in no doubt that we will make the right choice.

 

Barbara Marx Hubbard is a leading proponent of the ideology. Her name, quite appropriately, combines Karl Marx and L. Ron Hubbard under one roof. From her book The Revelation, comments (authored by her) she attributes to the book's Christ character:

"A Quantum Transformation is the time of selection of what evolves from what devolves. The species known as self-centered humanity will become extinct. The species known as whole-centered humanity will evolve" (comments on Rev. 3:4-5, p. 101).

What did Hubbard just espouse? Nothing less than the subjection of the individual to the collective as a mystical gateway to future humanity (not to mention, genocide of the unshakeably self-centered). This is, not to put too fine a point on it, moose droppings. Later this becomes more obvious:

"All the people on Earth will be reduced to the same status. Rich and poor, powerful and powerless, black, white, red, yellow and brown. When all are in total awe of the creative force, the destruction will cease for a time" (comments on Rev. 7:1-4, p. 138)

"Those who have the seal of the living God will be able to take the next step of evolution. They shall hunger no more." (comments on Rev. 7:9-17, p. 140)

"Evangelists are proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is at hand. They are urging repentance and acceptance of Jesus as your personal savior. But they are not laying forth the image of the collective future of the human race as a generation of the saved. They have not yet envisioned what it will be like when everything works" (comments on 1 Cor. 15:45, p. 162).

Hubbard, echoing the Christian bible, dangles the same bait that the communists dangle. The mystical power she drones on about endlessly does not exist.

This idea of a time when ``everything works'' is ridiculous. Such a circumstance is physically impossible, because of thermal and quantum noise. Its hypothetical attainment would, however, constitute the total termination of evolution. This is the real purpose of the program - to arrest evolution, destroying the world (though New Agers do not consciously recognize the latter).

Later in the book Hubbard makes clear that, in her accounting, one is either insane (though she does not put it that way) or evil (though she does not logically exclude the possibility of being both insane and evil, which is consistent with the reality that Hubbard is herself both insane and evil):

"They that dwell on the Earth, whose names are not written in the Book of Life, are they who gave primary reality to 'the beast,' to the things seen and felt with the senses alone; it is they who had no faith in things unseen and unknown, who did not believe in God above all else and love their neighbors as themselves" (The Revelation, The Christs' comments on Rev. 17:7-8, p. 203-204).

If one abandons the most basic of logical premises - that things which exist can be sensed possibly with the assistance of machinery though eventually through human senses, and that the absence of sensation is strongly correlated with non-existence and with sufficiently thorough examination is in and of itself compelling evidence of non-existence - then reasoning about the nature of the universe, and hence about the nature of the self and the true relationship of the self to the universe, is made impossible. An empirical foundation is indispensable. To dispense with it is nothing less than to embrace madness. Her madness continues, and 30 pages later she rants:

The consciousness defect of the illusion of separation will be corrected once and for all. You will never go back again. This is the key to the positive scenario. The cancer of self-centeredness will be consumed by the experience of wholeness.

The plan for your regeneration will begin. Millions will instantly feel a subtle change of electricity in their bodies. . . .

And I will be enabled to contact all of you at once. This is my dream, this is my passion, this is my desire - to have all of you paying attention to me at once through the activation of your inner experience of your potential to be me, rather than relying on priests, mystics, or saints, beloved though they are. Their work is done. Yours has begun" (The Revelation, The Christs' comments on Rev. 20:1-3, p. 235-236).

But, of course, the separation between bodies is not an illusion at all. This separation is critical. A critical characteristic of any lifeform is the manner in which it divides the universe into that portion of the universe which is it, and that portion which is not. To break this down is to exterminate life. Boundaries are prerequisite. Hubbard describes self-centeredness as a "cancer," but it is instinctive or intrinsic self-centeredness which produced the rich speciation of the planet, and conscious, deliberate self-centeredness which produced and produces the overwhelming bulk of scientific, technological, artistic, and cultural innovation. Self-centeredness is not a cancer, it is the natural way of things. Christianity, and Hubbard's ideology, are cancers.

Notice three things about the final paragraph in the above quoted passage. First, the Christ's desire to have everyone paying attention to him is pathetic - it manifests the same self-perception of inadequacy, and the same bogus remedy, as those Ayn Rand's antagonist and antihero characters exhibit (notwithstanding the great address in Atlas Shrugged - an address I deliver to you using the Internet). Second. this system (of sorts) in which the Christ has everyone paying attention to him at once is the ultimate isotropic engine, eradicating chaos with optimal efficiency. This is morbid. Read J. Orlin Grabbe's essay on chaos for a wonderful treatment of the topic.

Third, we (human inhabitants of planet earth) already have the ability to have everyone pay attention to one person at once. It is called radio, and it can relay representations of sounds and moving pictures through the atmosphere, through satellites, around the world, instantly, recreating the sound and image anywhere. And we didn't embrace total madness to make it so - these systems are the product of science and technology, discovered, invented, and built, by the rational effort of self-centered men.

What does "self-centered" really mean? Webster's dictionary offers the following definition for "self": "the union of elements (as body, emotions, thoughts, sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person." "Center" is defined "to place or fix at or around a center or central area or position." For "self-centered," Webster offers the definition "independent of outside force or influence." "Independent" is defined as "self-governing" or "not requiring or relying on something else." In short, a self-centered individual is an individual who recognizes that his own body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations, are his own, and that he is self-governing and self-supporting - that is, responsible for himself. Self-centeredness is not simply compatible with social and environmental responsibility, responsibility demands it. Self-centeredness is cohesive and allows for the construction of robust communities. All of this is manifestly good. However, it is all manifestly contrary to the desires of those who lust after control over other people. Thus, self-centeredness has been demonized for millennia by morbid second handers, and the ideological systems they have contrived and promulgated to that end (Judaism, Christianity, communism, and the other religions) corrode humanity like so many cancerous tumors.

Finally, Hubbard bends the Masonic mottos of the Great Seal to her own purposes - which, to be sure, requires little interpretive amendment.

"It is the purpose of the people who came to the United States of America to be free, to be fully human. It embodies the symbols of the nation which are: E Pluribus Unum; out of many, one; Novus Ordo Seclorum; a new order of the ages; Annuit Coeptis; God favors this enterprise" (The Revelation, The Christs' comments on Rev. 21:2, p. 249)

from The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols (Jason Aronson Inc., 1992), by Ellen Frankel and Betsey Platkin Teutsch, p. 161, from http://www.menorah.org/starofdavid.html:

The evolution of the six-pointed Jewish star, the "Magen David," literally the "Shield of David." also known as the hexagram,
or more rarely, *Solomon's Seal, is long and complex. Although it is now the most common and universally recognized sign of Judaism
and Jewish identity, both within and outside of the Jewish community, it has only achieved this status in the last two hundred years.
Before that it was chiefly associated with magic or with the insignia of individual families or communities. Yet despite its equivocal history,
Jews have long been attracted to this design and have sought to ascribe to it venerable origins. In our own day, its universal Jewish popularity,
especially as the symbol of the State of Israel, has made the question of its origins moot.

     Because of its geometric symmetry, the hexagram has been a popular symbol in many cultures from earliest times. Anthropologists claim that the triangle pointing downward represents female sexuality, and the triangle pointing upward, male sexuality; thus, their combination symbolizes unity and harmony. In alchemy, the two triangles symbolize *"fire" and *"water"; together, they represent the reconciliation of opposites. Some medieval alchemists even borrowed the talmudic pun - ish mayim, fiery water, and shamayim, heaven - to demonstrate the interpenetration of the two realms.¹ Because if this symbolism, the hexagram was even used occasionally as the emblem displayed above a brandy shop.

     The earliest known Jewish use of the hexagram was as a seal in ancient Palestine (6th century B.C.E.) and then eight centuries later in a *synagogue frieze in Capernaum. But these early hexagrams may have been only ornamental designs; ironically, a swastika, another popular ancient motif, appears alongside the hexagram on the Capernaum synagogue wall. In the Middle Ages, hexagrams appear frequently on churches, but rarely in synagogues or on Jewish ritual objects. It was the *menorah that served as the primary Jewish symbol from antiquity until the post-Renaissance period, not the " Jewish star."

     Although scholars have attempted to trace the Star of David back to King David himself; to Rabbi Akiva and the Bar Kokhba ("son of the star") rebellion (135 C.E.); or to *kabbalists, especially Rabbi Isaac Luria (16th century), no Jewish literature or artifacts document this claim. Rather, all evidence suggests that the early use of the hexagram was limited to "practical Kabbalah," that is, Jewish magic, probably dating back to the 6th century C.E. Legends connect this symbol with the "Seal of Solomon," the magical signet signet *ring used by King Solomon to control demons and spirits.² Although the original ring was inscribed with the Tetragrammaton, the sacred Four-Letter *Name of God, medieval *amulets imitating this ring substituted the hexagram or pentagram (five-pointed stare), often accompanied by rampant *lions, for the sacred Name. The star inscribed on these rings was usually called the "Seal of Solomon."

     In addition to such legends about Solomon's ring, medieval Jewish magical texts spoke of a magic shield possessed by King David which protected him from his enemies. According to these texts, the shield was inscribed with the seventy-two letter name of God, or with Shaddai (Almighty) or *angelic names, and was eventually passed down to *Judah Maccabee. The 15th-century kabbalist, Isaac Arama, claimed that Psalm 67, later known as the "Menorah Psalm" because of its *seven verses (plus an introductory verse), was engraved on David's shield in the form of a menorah. Another tradition suggests that Isaiah 11:2, enumerating the six aspects of the divine spirit, was inscribed on the shield in the outer six triangles of the hexagram.³ In time, the hexagram replaced this menorah in popular legends about David's shield, while the five-pointed pentagram became identified with the Seal of Solomon.

The hexagram was also widely regarded as a messianic symbol, because of its legendary connection with David, ancestor of the *Messiah. On Sabbath eve, German Jews would light a star-shaped brass *oil *lamp called a Judenstern (Jewish star), emblematic of the idea that Shabbat was a foretaste of the Messianic Age. The hexagram was also popular among the followers of Shabbatai Tzevi, the false messiah of the 17th century, because of its messianic associations.

Among Jewish mystics and wonderworkers, the hexagram was most commonly used as a magical protection against demons, often inscribed on the outside of *mezuzot and on amulets.

     Another use of the hexagram in medieval times was as a Jewish printer's mark or heraldic emblem, especially in Prague and among members of the Jewish Foa family, who lived in Italy and Holland. In 1354, Emperor Charles IV of Prague granted the Jews of his city the privilege of displaying their own *flag on state occasions. Their flag displayed a large six-pointed star in its center. A similar flag remains to this day in the Altneuschul, the oldest synagogue in Prague. From Prague, the "Magen David" spread to the Jewish communities of Moravia and Bohemia, and then eventually to Eastern Europe. In 17th-century Vienna, the Jewish quarter was separated from the Christian quarter by a boundary stone inscribed with a hexagram on one side and a cross on the other, the first instance of the six-pointed star being used to represent Judaism as a whole, rather than an individual community.

     With Jewish emancipation following the French Revolution, Jews began to look for a symbol to represent themselves comparable to the cross used by their Christian neighbors. They settled upon the six-pointed star, principally because of its heraldic associations. Its geometric design and architectural features greatly appealed to synagogue architects, most of whom were non-Jews. Ironically, the religious Jews of Europe and the Orient, already accustomed to seeing hexagrams on kabbalistic amulets, accepted this secularized emblem of the enlightened Jews as a legitimate Jewish symbol, even though it had no religious content or scriptural basis.

     When Theodor Herzl looked for a symbol for the new Zionist movement, he chose the Star of David because it was so well known and also because it had no religious associations. In time, it appeared in the center of the flag of the new Jewish state of Israel and has become associated with national redemption.

     During the Holocaust, the Nazis chose the *yellow star as an identifying badge required on the garments of all Jews. After the war, Jews turned this symbol of humiliation and death into a badge of honor.

     Today, the Star of David is the most popular and universally recognized symbol of the Jewish People. In his seminal work entitled the Star of Redemption (1912), Franz Rosenzweig framed his philosophy of Judaism around the image of the Jewish star, composed of two conceptual "triads," which together form the basis of Jewish belief: Creation, Revelation, and Redemption; God, Israel, and World. On the popular level, Jews continue to use the Jewish star as it was used for centuries: as a magical amulet of good luck and as a secularized symbol of Jewish identity.

References: 1 Scholem, "The Star of David; History of a Symbol," in The Messianic Idea in Judaism, 271; 2 Gittin 68a; 3 Eder, the Star of David, 73

by Hannah Newman mailto:freeway@netvision.net.il (POB 12136, Ariel, Israel), 1997-Mar, from http://www.mega.nu:8080/clickthrough/http://www.elpro.com/mobl/:

MASTERS OF THE BLINDING LIGHT
WHAT JEWISH PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE NEW AGE

B"H 3/97 - Adar Bet 5757

In a word, the 'New Age' is a political/religious movement which seeks to unite the world under the guidance of non-human spirits, in the process singling out the Jewish people and Judaism for destruction. It is so popular that it is quickly becoming the standard for social, political and religious acceptability. It is consciously supported by a surprising number of prominent and grassroots groups (although not all are aware of the anti-Semitism), and its teachings are being unknowingly absorbed by many more. For these reasons, it is urgent that we be informed as to their platform.

If the reader is thinking, here comes another hysterical conspiracy theory, that is understandable. However, to my knowledge this is the first 'conspiracy' which has proudly called itself one, gone public with details of their program, and shown a confidence and an openness that plainly says (rightly or wrongly) that no one can stop them. What is more unsettling, they are convinced that no one in his right mind will WANT to stop them. Not even the Jews. Their anti-Semitism is projected as benevolent correction which will be embraced by the Jews themselves, once they really understand (not to be confused with similar Christian attitudes - this movement also targets hard-core Christians as 'spiritual Jews'). Here then is a condensed description of the philosophy and plans of the so-called New Age - from their own sources. Everything in this article is publicly distributed by various NA groups. (I have noted key words or people in 'single quotes' for internet searches and for identifying their many networks.)

In this article:

Introductory Notes
A. HOW BIG A CONSPIRACY?
B. HUMAN HISTORY ACCORDING TO NEW AGE
C. THE GODS OF NEW AGE
D. 'THE PLAN' FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
E. DOCTRINES ON JEWS AND JUDAISM
F. MISSIONIZING AMONG JEWS
G. NEW AGE AND NAZISM
H. SOURCES FOR DOCUMENTATION & READING
I. WHAT TO DO: A JEWISH RESPONSE

Introductory Notes:

(1) I emphasize that the material below is summarized from explanations by leading New Age spokesmen themselves or their disciples - not what others say about them. Direct quotes are noted as such with the source. Any comments of my own or non-NA sources are in [brackets]. The last part (Jewish Responses) are completely my own thoughts.

(2) The premises of New Age are most clearly mapped out in a religious society called 'Theosophy' (founded 1875), which coined many of the 'buzz words' found below and which remains a prime source for piecing together NA foundations. Most if not all of them predate Theosophy, according to its founders, pre-existent in classical Hinduism, Buddhism and Babylonian religions. So despite the name "new" age, we are surveying a presumably ancient system.

(3) The discerning reader will notice NA statements that contradict others, especially regarding good and evil, fate and choice, truth and falsehood, and the identity of Maitreya with Lucifer. Pointing out these contradictions to hard-core New Agers will not cause them doubt. Since they have accepted the Hindu worldview that truth, good and reality are whatever each finds within himself (at any given moment), they will patiently reply that your demand for consistency regarding any of these is arbitrary and unnecessarily narrow. Do not expect logical analysis, empirical observation or comparative argument to be taken seriously, as NAers respect subjective experience only (and then only for the one who experienced it first-hand).

(4) Public pronouncements of New Age leaders, although usually in English, can sound like nonsense - recognizable terms used in unintelligible contexts or given contradictory associations. These are known as 'blinds', riddles deliberately coded to convey still-classified information over the heads of the uninitiated or hostile groups. The 'blinds' used in New Age are many and match those used in the occult (per Helena Blavatsky, 'The Secret Doctrine', p.435). Thus, we on the outside can know only as much as New Age spokesmen see fit to tell us; as in all occult groups some information is presumably shared only with top-level initiates. However, the riddles are being publicly unlocked with increasing frequency, indicating that NA sees its power base as sufficient to withstand any hostility to its agenda.

(5) There is a surprising number of people applauding the 'New World Order', 'the Age of Aquarius', or the 'ascended masters', who are woefully uninformed as to where all this is leading. This may be because they have chosen to back one NA issue without checking its foundations, or because they haven't had access to a wide enough range of NA sources. It is likely that many such NA supporters would appreciate knowing the whole truth about their "enlightenment". I recommend passing this article not only to opponents of the New Age but also to its supporters - especially if they are Jews or are married to Jews.

A. HOW BIG A CONSPIRACY?

Contrary to past groups, New Age is quite obliging in identifying the members of their "benevolent conspiracy", whom the leading spokesmen claim are all supportive of 'The Plan' for a 'New World Order' (details of 'The Plan' itself are also available). 'New Age Directories' have been on sale since the early 1970s, and mushroomed in 1975 when the movement 'received transmissions' from 'the ascended masters' (their spirit guides) to go public. One such early directory ('International New Consciousness Directory', 'New Age Media', 1979) contained 10,000 groups (excluding branches) in North America alone.

'The Aquarian Conspiracy' by 'Marilyn Ferguson' (pub. 1980) was the first major book by NA purporting to catalog the extent of their movement. Ferguson had proclaimed then: "There are legions of conspirators... in corporations, universities, hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories, in doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils and the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy-making in the country [U.S.]... [including] at the cabinet level of the United States Government." ('The Aquarian Conspiracy', p.24, 235). However, other NA spokesmen called her description inaccurate, in that she had understated the influence of New Age worldwide, especially in the UN and the EEC.

There are umbrella groups actively 'networking' other organizations into the Plan: the 'International Cooperation Council' (since changed to 'Unity in Diversity' - a network of 300+ organizations), 'Lucis Trust' (publisher of Alice Bailey, once called 'Lucifer Trust'), 'Stanford Research Institute' (educational material, including a 'New Age Manifesto'), the 'Lorian Association' (headed by David Spangler), 'Share International', 'Tara Center' (both headed by Benjamin Creme), 'Amnesty International', 'World Federalists' (world politics), The 'Networking Institute' (prominent in the Far East), 'World Goodwill' (humanitarian aid), 'New Group of World Servers'(social action), 'Whole Earth catalogs' (environment and nutrition), the 'First Earth Battalion' (US Military), 'Planetary Citizens' (global politics), the 'Rainbow Coalition' (interracial unity), New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine (interfaith dialog), the Pacific Institute (courses for management). Prominent individuals who publicly laud the New World Order include Willie Brant (German ex-chancellor), Prof. J. Tinbergen (Nobel Prize winner), George Bush (ex-U.S. president), Robert Kennedy (veteran U.S. Senator, former Attorney General), Margaret Mead (anthropologist), Carl Rogers (psychotherapist), Eric Fromm (psychologist), Barbara Marx Hubbard (Democratic nominee for VP in 1984), Robert Muller (former Asst. UN Secretary General), U Thant (Muller's UN boss and mentor), Aurelio Peccei (founder of the Club of Rome), Isaac Asimov (scientist and sci-fi writer), Alvin Toffler (author of 'Future Shock'), George Christie (founder of Intelsat Consortium of 106 countries), pop singers John Denver and Judy Collins, historians William Irwin Thompson and Theodore Roszak, actress Shirley MacLaine, psychic Edgar Cayce.

Most of the network groups have some connection with 'Planetary Initiative for the World We Choose', run by a 'World Council of Wise Persons' and/or a 'Coordinating Council' [not known if they are the same]. This group publicizes dates of its meetings at the UN, and even names of members, such as Buckminster Fuller, Norman Cousins, Dr. Carlos Romulo, Brooke Newell (VP of Chase Manhattan Bank), Gerhard Elston (ex-director of Amnesty International), Helen Kramer (Int'l Assoc. of Machinists), Robert Muller (Chancellor, UN University for Peace), Donald Keys (of 'Planetary Citizens').

Aggressive recruiting into the New Age, besides the above organizations, is going on through the following more general groups and activities [mostly from NA sources]: Montessori and Waldorf schools, Theosophy and Anthroposophy, Transcendental Meditation, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Zero Population Growth, Planned Parenthood, Hunger Project, Voluntary Simplicity, Bread for the World, most disarmament groups, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome, Skull and Bones (Yale fraternity), the International Legal Commission (UN consultant), UNICEF (UN relief agency), World Council of Churches (ecumenical Christian), 'A Course on Miracles' (interfaith study group), Unitarian churches, Bahai and Sufi sects (Moslem), The Door (NYC medical facility), New Thought courses, many interfaith dialog projects, most health food stores, the entertainment industry. [Note: many well-meaning people participate in these, simply from a desire to further international understanding or make the world a better place. For the innocent souls who have not learned what 'planetary initiation' and 'global cleansing action' mean to New Agers, a rude awakening is coming, especially if they are Jewish.]

According to Ferguson, governmental groups (U.S.) which have embraced New Age include: the Department of Defense (invited Ferguson as keynote speaker at their annual dinner, 1982), the National Institute of Mental Health, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Industrial giants which require their managers to attend New Age seminars: General Motors, AT&T, Chrysler Corporation, several oil companies, Lockheed, Blue Cross-Blue Shield. [Ferguson's list is 17 years old at this point; we can assume the NA influence to be significantly wider by now.]

NA spokesmen have no anxiety about their movement being sabotaged from within, due to their deliberate structure of 'a network of networks'. Described by Ferguson ('Aquarian Conspiracy') as the opposite of a beaurocracy, "Its organizational chart would resemble a badly knotted fishnet... Its center is everywhere... Its life does not hinge on any one [group or leader]." The networks take the same action, she said, not because they collude together, but because they share the same assumptions. Each network is independent of the others and no one organization or leader is indispensable; therefore, anyone causing a PR disaster or deciding to fight the Plan can be eliminated without damaging the network, with others taking over the function. [The Jim Jones Guyana fiasco was a good example: the 'Spiritual Community Guide' of 1972 listed his People's Temple as a 'New Age spiritual center'; after the mass suicide, 'New Age Magazine' branded him as "a dangerous example of Christian fundamentalism" and he was quietly removed from the Guide. See Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, Constance Cumbey, p.60]

Although it is claimed that New Age has no leader or structure, there are numerous organizational charts, a world center ('Findhorn Community' in Scotland), and several 'holy sites' where 'masters' can be found - including Jerusalem [which explains world pressure to delegitimize this city as Israel's capital and internationalize it]. NA has its priesthood too, certain spokesmen whose words are received as law. They include: Helena Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, Benjamin Creme, David Spangler, Marilyn Ferguson, Mark Satin, Peter LeMesurier, Maharishi Yogi, George Gurdjieff, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, H.G. Wells, Nicholas Roerich, Buckminster Fuller, George Trevelyan. New Age "Bibles" (books studied and meticulously applied) include: 'Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom' (Creme), 'Externalisation of the Hierarchy' (Bailey) [containing 'The Plan for the New World Order'], 'The Rays and the Initiations' (Bailey) [defining the problem of the Jews and orthodox religion], 'The Secret Doctrine' (Blavatsky) [the Aryan race theory], 'Revelation: the Birth of a New Age' (Spangler) [describing the 'Luciferic initiation' as a NA requirement], 'The Open Conspiracy, Blueprints for a World Revolution' (Wells), 'The Critical Path' (Fuller) [plans for undermining orthodox religions by use of computers], 'The Armageddon Script' (LeMesurier) [plans to stage a "second coming of Christ" to satisfy Christian expectations].

B. HUMAN HISTORY ACCORDING TO NEW AGE:

1. Mankind as a whole is continually evolving upward, physically and spiritually (there is no meaningful difference between material and spiritual - what we consider "real" is 'maya' [Hindu term for illusion], no different from dreams or imagination). We have evolved through several 'root-races' (the 1st the 'Lemurian', the 2nd the 'Atlantean'), nearing the end of the 3rd, the 'Aryan root-race' [more on Hitler's Aryan race later]. We are now at a 'transition stage' between two 'ages' in the 'planetary evolution', about to enter the '6th subrace'. In order to reach each new subrace, the highest form of mankind must make a collective 'quantum leap'; other inferior strains are left behind and eventually die out as the newly empowered 'root' takes over.

The new subrace is considered literally a new species of man. John White ('International Cooperation Council' Directory, 1979) coined the name 'homo noeticus' which is "a newer and higher form of humanity taking control of the planet... while the older species [homo sapien] dies out from a massive dose of irrationalism. Outwardly these mutant [meant positively] humans resemble the earlier forms. The difference is inward, in their changed mentality, in their consciousness." (p.15)

2. 'New Age' refers to the 'Age of Aquarius' (astrological) which is about to begin, as soon as there is a 'critical mass' of 'initiates' or 'enlightened ones' ready to make this 'leap' to the next race. The 'old age' being replaced is the 'Age of Pisces' which ushered in the 'Christian dispensation'. Conservative Christians are creating an obstacle to mankind reaching this 'critical mass', since they are unreasonably attached to their old dispensation. The Jews, who refused even to leave their 'Age of Aries' (the time of the Torah) to enter the 'Age of Pisces', are doubly behind in their 'evolutionary development'. [implications of this below]

3. This 'evolutionary progress' hinges on three major concepts, 'fortunately preserved for us by the Babylonians and Hindus' - reincarnation, human eugenics, and karma:

3a. 'Reincarnation' (each soul returning many times into different bodies) - Classic reincarnation holds that there is a limited number of souls being recycled over eons through thousands of lives. Obviously there is a problem with this theory, as there are far too many people on earth today to tally with the smaller number of reincarnated souls from the past.

Therefore, there must be empty bodies walking around, ie, subhumans without true souls inhabiting them. The lack in certain circles of 'openness to the light' of NA teaching is explained as one clue that they are among those lacking souls. Other so-called symptoms are severe physical or mental deformities, particularly genetic, and anti-social behavior.

3b. Eugenics (improving the race through breeding) - It is agreed that theoretically it is 'immoral' for soulless or otherwise inferior creatures to use up space and 'limited resources' on our 'overpopulated' 'Spaceship Earth' which should nurture the better-equipped. [note: scientists have been offering proof that the earth is not overpopulated at all, but that the available space, food and resources are not being utilized effectively. However, their works rarely get any media attention.] Moreover, the 'purity of the human race' becomes downgraded as such 'lower orders' reproduce and interbreed with the 'better stock'. Two strategies follow: to strictly segregate the two kinds of humanity from social contact and mingling; and to hasten the demise of the undesired strain by preventing reproduction and by cutting short their natural lifespans wherever possible. Both strategies have been institutionalized in this century on a nationwide level, most notably in the Hindu caste system and in the Nazi racial purity laws. [Theosophy was the conduit from the former to the latter - more in the Nazism section]

A look at the history of 'Planned Parenthood' (until 1942 'The American Birth Control League') will reveal that its founders, Margaret Sanger, Madison Grant and Dr. Lothrop Stoddard, advocated this worldview, which was proclaimed on the masthead of the 'Birth Control Review' as "Creating a Race of Thoroughbreds". For them 'birth control' included not only contraception and abortion but infanticide: "The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it." (Sanger, 'Women and the New Race', 1920, p.67) "Upon the quality of human life all else depends... For race betterment is such an intensely practical matter: when peoples come to realize that the quality of the population is the source of all their prosperity, progress, security and even existence; we shall see much-abused 'eugenics' actually moulding social programmes and political policies... we or the next generation..." (Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 1930) [Stoddard apparently applied his eugenics to white racial purity; the only difference between his and Theosophy's racial purity is who is 'inferior stock' - the rationale and 'solutions' are identical.]

Although Sanger et al proposed a peaceful path to 'racial purification' in which people should be educated and paid to foster "more children from the fit, fewer from the unfit", Nazi articles were printed and Nazi methods praised in the 'Birth Control Review'. [see more under Nazism section]. For a time, the US Supreme Court (see 'Buck vs. Bell', 1927) sanctioned forced sterilization of the poor, resulting in 'eugenics laws' being enacted in 30 states between 1927 and 1933; these laws followed the 'Model Eugenical Sterilization Law' (of the 'Eugenics Record Office') which called for forcibly sterilizing "criminal mental patients, retarded, blind, deaf, diseased, alcoholics, and dependents on society;" these laws also required segregation of the physically and mentally disabled in state-run institutions (where sterilization took place routinely). The State of Virginia added "unwed mothers, prostitutes, petty criminals and children with disciplinary problems" for these 'treatments'. [as we know, Hitler rounded up the Jews only after legislating forced sterilizations and abortions, euthanasia, elimination of the physically and mentally disabled, and disposal of social misfits.] The U.S. eugenics laws were repealed by the Supreme Court only in 1972. [see the Pro-Life Activist's Encyclopedia, the American Life League, Chapter 53, on line via the Web]

While eugenics is today soft-pedaled only through expanding the legal limits of abortion and 'assisted suicide', it is part the NA 'Plan' to educate people that 'quality of life' takes priority over life itself ("Society legalizes abortion to enhance the quality of human life." Dr. H.B. Whittington). Gradual incremental education will increase public tolerance to the point where resistance to 'selection programs' such as infanticide will give way to cooperation: "Most birth defects are not discovered until birth. If a child were not declared alive until 3 days after birth, the doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have." (Nobel laureate Dr. James D. Watson, 1973) 'Quality of life' issues were cited when the US Supreme Court upheld the 'euthanasia', or deliberate starvation, of "Baby Doe" of Bloomington, Indiana (1983).

While most assume from the above quotes that such 'selections' would be up to the individual family, existing laws such as 'Roe vs. Wade' (1973) and the American Law Institute Model Penal Code (1962) give doctors "the basic responsibility" for deciding when to abort. The oft-invoked 'woman's right to choose' has already been suspended in China, where a nationwide forced-abortion program is sponsored by the UN 'Fund for Population Assistance'. Certain forward-looking public figures saw the individual's right to life as secondary to that of the community: "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are basic rights. But they are the rights of the individual and were listed [in the Declaration of Independence] at such a time when the literatures of freedom and dignity were concerned with the aggrandizement of the individual. They [individual rights to life, etc] have only a minor bearing on the survival of a culture." (B.F. Skinner, prominent Harvard psychologist and writer). "The ill-conceived 'love of neighbor' has to disappear, especially in relation to inferior or asocial creatures... in order to secure the maintenance of a hereditarily sound and racially pure people... The life of an individual has meaning only in the light of that ultimate aim." (Dr. Arthur Guett, Nazi Director of Public Health)

3c. 'Karma' [Hindu term] which means that this life contains rewards or punishments for good or bad deeds done in your 'previous lives', meted out by an impersonal mechanism, "the universal law of harmony, which unerringly maintains equilibrium in the cosmos" (William Judge, 'The Ocean of Theosophy'). Not only individuals, but races and even planets are affected by karma; the defects which identify any of these as 'inferior strains' needing eugenic control are ultimately outworkings of karma. It is not explained how the 'punishment' for a certain individual's actions can be passed on to another through genetics, but anyone who inherits a genetic defect is assumed to merit the punishment. Emphasis is made of 'racial karma' in explaining the suffering of the Jews [more later]. This 'cosmic law of nature' literally never makes a mistake. "There is no such thing as pure innocence, even in a tiny babe. Every soul carries within it the scars of centuries of wrong thinking and wrong doing." (Dr. Rodney Romney, 'Journey to Inner Space', p.127) Past lives which are lived wrongly bring about 'karma which must be worked off without complaint', and no one should try to alleviate their own or another's suffering 'lest we interfere with the outworking of their karma and unbalance cosmic justice' [this has long been practiced in India, where sick and starving people 'of low caste' are left to die in the streets]. 'William Q. Judge' taught extensively on this theme ('The Ocean of Theosophy'), and commented on its application to the Jews. The cosmic balance is alternately described in Oriental terms of 'yin-yang' where light and darkness (good and evil) are needed in balanced portions for a person, race or cosmos to be whole.

4. Back to 'evolution of the human race': Each time a new race is to begin there are great upheavals in human society and also 'birth pangs' in 'mother earth' - also given the goddess-name 'Gaia' (mankind and nature are spiritually 'interdependent' and 'interconnected', so one expresses the turmoil of the other [pantheism]). An example of upheaval was when the 'brilliant and spiritually advanced civilization of Atlantis' was destroyed in a great Flood (also recorded in Genesis 'but with distortions'). NAers are divided on what the Atlanteans did which brought about their destruction; however, it was 'karma' which overtook them, not judgment from a Creator. Another version is that the 'ascended masters' themselves sank Atlantis, considering it a 'failed experiment' due to human unfaithfulness to 'the Plan'. Yet another is that they lost a war with the 'Lemurians', survivors of an older race (today's Jews). [more later]

Since we are on the verge of a new race, we can expect to see great upheavals both in society and in 'mother earth', which include famines, storms, earthquakes, plagues, chaos, social breakdowns, violence and crime, disease, despair, insanity, etc., increasing until the 'new age' is birthed. This stage is predicted to be "terrifying"... "a rapid acceleration truly described as Fires of Hell..." (a NA channeler on his web site) These wrongs are not to be resisted or remedied, however; they are the 'cosmic birthing process' which we must expect to get messy for a time, "a passing away of the old framework" with "the Light beginning to expose and correct malfunctions in the created order... not an age to fear, but to rejoice." (Romney, 'Journey to Inner Space') Global disasters have the benefit of 'weeding out the inferior seeds of humanity' whose 'bad karma' was coming due anyhow. Nevertheless, many NA groups focus on relief projects for both humanity and nature. [Critics have charged, however, that very little money is actually used to relieve suffering. Given this observation, which dovetails well with the attitude expressed above, the only motive NA relief projects could have is to pull sincere social activists into their orbit to indoctrinate them with NA "enlightenment."] Together, these two factors (natural disasters and organized 'selection' programs) help the 'evolutionary progress' by 'purging' the human race of 'residue from inferior root-races', which will increase the 'purity of the root stock' as all 'natural selection' tends to do [echoes of Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' - an explanation why the "theory" of evolution is to be force-taught to school children as "proven scientific fact" (per World Goodwill), even though all the 'missing links' on which this theory hangs are still "missing" links...] [Evolution is obviously the entire origin of life, human and otherwise. -AMPP Ed.].

C. THE GODS OF NEW AGE:

NA Religion is based on a blend of practically every religious and occult philosophy found in the world except Torah-based Judaism and early (pre-Constantine, pre-gnostic) Christianity. The hodge-podge harmonizes surprisingly well, and is outlined methodically in a 19th century Western system called 'Theosophy' (Greek, "knowledge of the gods").

The main tenets of NA religion:

1. God (not a Personal Creator, but 'the Force') is in everything and everything is in God (or is destined to become God), whether people, animals, objects, planets, stars or the Great Void ('Nirvana'). Alternately, the NA messages to the public encourage "faith in a loving Creator" or "thanksgiving to the Lord of Creation", phrased to allow everyone his own interpretation. For themselves, however, the Creator is the head of their 'hierarchy' of spirit guides - a more highly evolved being who once started out on the lowest, physical, plane but has reached the level where he can be considered 'God'. He turned down his right to enter into 'Nirvana', and instead made the 'supreme sacrifice' of turning back to creation and taking the responsibility to 'create' us into gods. [care must be taken to always keep this redefinition of "Creator" in mind when reading their propaganda]

2. Each human is a god in the making. But, according to NA teacher Benjamin Creme, when they pray they are not to pray to themselves, but to 'the God within' or the 'God immanent' - their 'higher self' whom they do not yet know as their self. God being in all, this higher self is in union, or 'at-one-ment', with other selves 'higher up in their spiritual evolution', namely ancient spirits who have 'mastered' their godhood and 'ascended' into 'a higher vibration' (no longer needing bodies). They know of our race's condition and have offered mankind their help in evolving into godhood. [supposedly for no self-serving motive whatsoever - not even the toughest cynics question the integrity of these strangers.] In practical terms, prayer is directed to these 'higher beings' as God, and messages are 'transmitted' from them which the 'enlightened' worshiper is expected to accept as truth, and in doing so he will gain knowledge, power, health and inner peace, and come closer to godhood.

3. All NA perceptions of reality (every possible universe is equally 'real' in your mind, where you 'create your own reality' at will), all NA plans for world domination (mapped out in stages and matter-of-factly dubbed 'The Plan') and all NA value systems (who is 'more highly evolved' than others, how this is determined, how one moves up) are dictated exclusively by 'revelations' from the above-mentioned spirits, the 'masters of wisdom'. These spirits have chosen certain physical spokesmen to transmit their knowledge to the world, who are known as 'channelers' - in Tenach days called witches, spiritists and mediums (unfairly persecuted by a few of the Jewish leaders but welcomed by many others).

Major documents attributed to the 'ascended masters' include 'The Urantia Book', 'The Cosmic Gospels', 'The Secret Doctrine', 'The Externalisation of the Hierarchy', 'The Rays and the Initiations' - to name a few. Each of the human authors merely took dictation, via automatic writing, from 'supermortal personalities' such as 'The Tibetan Master', aka 'Djwhal Khul', the source of all of Alice Bailey's books. There is one all-inclusive document that does not exist on the physical plane, which occultists say may be briefly seen only at the 'highest level of consciousness': the 'Akashic Record', said to be an imprint of all past and future events. Hitler believed he saw these occult records during an occultic experience and read there of his destiny as a New Age agent to purify the Aryan race.

4. At the crucial times of new 'ages' or 'subraces' [see Human History section], a spirit known as 'Maitreya' or 'World Teacher'- the 'most highly evolved being known to man' - descends from a hidden high place or 'power vortex' (the Himalayas, or outer space) and 'overshadows' a chosen spokesman, who relays 'transmissions' to guide the human race into the next 'cycle'. Five times previously (one for each subrace) he chose Buddha, Hermes, Zoraster, Orpheus, and Jesus. [in spite of the Torah starring in the 4th subrace of Aries, there is no mention of Moses...] This being another 'transition' time, Maitreya has made contact with 'Benjamin Creme'. Maitreya, according to Creme, has held the 'office of Christ' or 'master of all masters' for the last 2600 years, [aha! that's why he missed Moses... but then that means he also missed the first 4 subraces he was supposed to guide...] and as such is head of the 'Hierarchy of Ascended Masters'. Another name which Maitreya uses is 'Lucifer'.

5. Lucifer is a Latin word meaning light bearer - he whom the Jews have called "helel ben shahar" (Isaiah 14:12) or 'shining one, son of the morning' ('The Beacon', vol. XLVII, no 9, 1978, pub by Lucis Trust), also the anointed cherub who was in the Garden of Eden (Ezekiel 28:12-15). NAers themselves say that this is the one known as Satan, but that his activity and intentions have been misunderstood (or deliberately slandered - given the name "hasatan" or "the enemy" by the Hebrews and expanded by the Christians). New Agers honor Lucifer as the ultimate being-turned-god, the one who first promised to bring mankind into godhood (appearing to Adam and Eve, and also before that). But since many are not able to accept this name, he allows others to call him 'krishna', 'buddha', or even 'christ/ messiah'. They insist, however, that Maitreya is the one all these faiths are waiting for, including Jews who await Moshiach. They recognize Chinese worship of 'the dragon', and Egyptian/Hindu worship of 'the cobra', as forms which Lucifer takes on. They also approve of witches who worship Lucifer in the form of a goat-man, known in nature cults as 'Pan' (the deity worshiped at Findhorn and credited with their unique agricultural methods - see 'The Magic of Findhorn' by Paul Hawken). Lucifer, Creme preaches, is the only being to have evolved to a '7th degree initiation', as opposed to Buddha (6th) or Jesus (4th) (the latter was briefly classed as a 5th degree, which would have released him from further reincarnation; however, he was found "unworthy" of this level). [the only "master" known to have been "demoted"...maybe because the 'masters' found out he was Jewish??]

Lucifer is personally in charge of our planetary evolution - thus, our 'creator' [see above in gods section]. He (as Maitreya) is quoted by Creme as having "nourished" all the genius which humankind has produced, including Freud, Jung, Picasso, Mahatma Gandhi, Karl Marx and Einstein (all these reaching a '2nd level' initiation). Lucifer arrived here 18-1/2 million years ago from the planet Venus, which became known by one of his names, 'The Morning Star'. At some point Maitreya (now in a physical body) will allow Lucifer to inhabit him, when all are 'freed from the unreasoning fear' of this name - hence the term and goal of the 'Luciferic initiation'. [see below in The Plan section] The number 666, held as Lucifer's sacred number, is to be used wherever possible to hasten his appearance, or alternately, as a 'signal for help' to UFOs whose inhabitants serve under Lucifer. [this number is not meaningful to Jews, but early Christian tradition, while still close to its Jewish roots, called it "the number of the beast", who was an evil creature empowered by "the dragon" to make war against the Jews - see New Testament, Revelation 13.]

6. Creme, since going public in 1981, has urged people to address the New Age messiah as 'Maitreya' or 'Sanat Kumara'. Lately, however (1997), Creme has revised his presentation of Maitreya on his web sites. Whereas Maitreya was always the name of the spirit speaking through Creme, whom no one was allowed to see "until he chooses to reveal himself", now a photograph of a human "Maitreya" is displayed, while the 'master' said to be speaking through Creme "has a name known only to an inner circle" and goes by "Master _" [sic], or the 'Avatar [manifestation] of Synthesis'.

Until recently Maitreya was the highest initiate (7th degree) in the cosmos; Creme now claims that 'Master _' is so much higher that his level cannot be revealed; "we wouldn't comprehend it." [this shift may be a stage of uniting all the diverse titles and images mentioned above under the name 'Lucifer', a necessary step for the planned 'Luciferic initiation' where allegiance to this name alone will be allowed.] Creme still speaks of Maitreya, but his relationship to 'Master _' is unclear, except that he is 'overshadowed' by him.

7. Since all is god, this includes good and evil, which are merely different sides of the divine. David Spangler ('Reflections on the Christ') labels them the 'light side' and the 'dark side,'or 'the Christ side' and the 'Lucifer side,' which are equally necessary for wholeness. Morality and victims then are obsolete concepts from 'the old dualist dispensation'. As Mark Satin puts it, "In a spiritual state, morality is impossible." Because 'karma' has taken over the dispensing of reward and punishment, all injury and suffering is merited, whether the sufferer is aware of his offense or not. On the other hand, those who injure or wrong others need only to be taught that "man is his own satan just as man is his own salvation," and that "evil is not moral guilt but spiritual imbalance.

Evil energies are simply energies that have been used out of timing or out of place, or just not suited to the needs of evolution." (Spangler) In accordance with this, prisons and mental hospitals are investing heavily in 'higher consciousness' training as rehabilitation. Due to reincarnation, there is no such thing as murder, so in the New Age no one can be prosecuted for being the instrument of karma in sending someone on to their next life; on the contrary, it can be counted a service.

D. 'THE PLAN' AS PUBLISHED BY NEW AGE

It should be noted that this 'Plan' is universally emphasized among New Agers as being of non-human origin; it is likewise presented as a non-negotiable package - all who witness the official inauguration of the New Age must submit to 'The Plan' in its entirety or be left out of the 'New World Order': "[The New Age initiate] no longer identifies himself with form or even with soul, but with the will of divinity and the eternal Plan and purpose. It becomes his plan and purpose. He knows no other..." (Bailey, 'Esoteric Astrology', p.92)

The specific stages of the Plan were 'transmitted' in detail through Alice Bailey (apparently from 'Djwhal Khul'), beginning in the 1930s, but were kept classified until 1975, when Bailey (by then deceased) gave the NA leaders instructions to go public. The 'hierarchy of masters' are said to be the ones responsible for concocting and directing 'the Plan' as their organized program to get mankind to the 'next evolutionary level'. Since quality is vital for starting the next 'root-race', only selected 'starseed' people are designated to make the 'quantum leap' into the next level of 'human transformation' and they need careful preparation by these spirits lest they 'burn out' in the transition. The 'Plan' is quite lengthy, and proposes many global changes, but a few speak specifically of the Jewish people:

1. Plans for religion: "1. The reorganisation of world religions - if in any way possible - [including] their out-of-date theologies, their narrow-minded emphasis, and their ridiculous belief... 2. The gradual dissolution - again if in any way possible - of the orthodox Jewish faith, with its obsolete teaching, its separative emphasis... I do not fail to recognize those Jews throughout the world who acknowledge the evils and who are not orthodox in their thinking...[thus all who cling to Jewish identity or Israeli nationhood will be defined as orthodox, not just those who follow Torah] [Bailey and Blavatsky included Jewish Kabbalists among those who have 'freed themselves from orthodoxy'; more later] 3. Preparation for a revelation which will inaugurate the new era and set the note for the new world religion." (Alice Bailey, Externalisation of the Hierarchy, pp.453-454) David Spangler, Buckminster Fuller and Foster Bailey (Alice's husband) confirmed that religious freedom must end in the New Age, to be replaced by a world-state religion. Wells even targeted communism for elimination.

2. Conditioning society to receive the Plan: Certain stages prior to publicizing the Plan were carefully followed (per 'The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,' Alice Bailey), to indoctrinate society with certain 'ancient' teachings: planetary evolution and the ultimate perfectibility of man; the interconnectedness of all life and matter; the 'kingdom of God' as the appearance of 'soul-controlled men' on earth; all men being at different stages in this evolution towards the goal of 'godness'; some men having achieved soul-control already, approaching perfection or godhood; these god-men having a Plan to get all men to their level if we will cooperate. To break down traditional aversion to these alien teachings, NA was to encourage 'paths to higher consciousness' which produce passivity, as tools for mind control [what the same NAers call "brainwashing" when denouncing fundamentalists. Observers at Creme's New Age lectures report that he appears to practice some form of hypnosis, silently panning the audience with a glassy stare, until people begin to exhibit symptoms of a passive trance state; he waits until this condition is widespread, 30-45 minutes, before beginning his lectures. More on other 'paths' below.]

Of course, no indoctrination could get far today without cooperation from mass media. NAers claim that the major networks are firmly in their camp, which gives context to comments like the following: "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." (Richard Salant, ex-President, CBS News) "We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with." (Richard Cohan, Sr. Producer, CBS political news) Not only the contents fed to the public but their timing appears to be a factor. David Rockefeller confirmed this by thanking "The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our [New World Order] meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years." [date and context of comment unknown] [June 1991 Bilderberger meeting in Baden Baden, Germany -compilation editor]

2a. People can be prepared to passively accept the Plan via many different avenues: holistic health, global unity, pagan and eastern religions, animal/tree worship, mind-altering drugs like LSD (endorsed by Bailey and Ferguson as "tools for transformation"), hypnosis, alternative healing such as homeopathy and acupuncture (these favored by Creme as "part of the great shift in consciousness"), yoga, TM, kundalini and chakras, martial arts, science fiction, witchcraft, Freemasonry, Kabbalah, UFOlogy, black or white magic, spiritism, psychic powers, guided imagery, hypnotherapy, EST, psychological rebirthing, self-actualization, Jungian psychology, sex orgies, 'magick' (of 'Aleister Crowley') - to name a few. A 'path' can be high-tech, refined, politically correct - or primitive, bizarre, brutal; there is something to appeal to everyone. The common goal is an 'altered state of consciousness' which all the above try to introduce in some form (ie, trance or dreamlike state, emptying the mind of deliberate thought), which opens one up to passively welcoming 'spirit guides' or invisible 'higher intelligences'. Some can 'accelerate their paths to higher consciousness' through drugs, blood sacrifices or deviant sex acts (as in Hindu Tantrism). Once a person receives spirit guides, who go by various names borrowed from many religions, the paths all 'merge' into one, preparing everyone for the 'mass planetary initiation' into the 'New World Order' under Lucifer's guidance.

2b. While most people are left to their own devices in choosing paths of enlightenment, the New Age sponsors several rallying points to coordinate efforts on a worldwide level and give 'seekers' a boost into 'higher consciousness'. The most widely known is 'The Great Invocation', a poetic prayer now in over 50 languages, distributed by 'World Goodwill' with the promise of 'transforming life changes' if recited often enough. The wording is so vague that any religion can live with it, but its author Alice Bailey was quite clear: the "Plan of Love and Light" is the 'ascended masters' Plan headed by Lucifer; to "let Light descend on earth" (or in an alternate version, "from the Morning Star...let Christ stream forth") is for Lucifer to take over the planet as supreme deity; to "let purpose guide the little wills of men") is for the 'masters' to control men's minds; and to "seal the door where evil dwells" (or, "bolt and charge the corridor where evil spirits tarry") is to eliminate monotheism.

Other NA rallying points are: 'Harmonic Convergence' days (to meditate or pray for world transformation), 'Earth Day' (celebrating the personhood of the Earth and our relations with "her"), Mind-Body-Spirit Festivals (to experience oneness in diversity), 'World Instant of Cooperation' (Dec. 31st of each year, one hour of meditation and 'harmonic resonance' for 'the oneness of life'), 'Declaration of World Thanksgiving' (interfaith effort "honoring the spirit of human gratitude" as a "healing force"). [Prominent rabbis have participated in World Thanksgiving, no doubt unaware that they were virtually the only participants whose "Lord of creation" is not Maitreya or Lucifer. Why are they invited then? Their endorsement is solicited to give NA ideology credibility in the Jewish community which implicitly trusts in its leaders. More in Missionizing section.]

3. The Plan's religious war: The 'masters' aim to reverse the great 'suppression of the wisdom of the Atlantean civilization' - the result of an ancient war between the 'White Lodge' (the 'hierarchy of masters') and the 'Black Lodge' (source of Jewish/Christian teaching). [more on this in the Statements on Jews section]. The masters of the 'White Lodge' were forced to withdraw into space and leave earth in control of the 'Black Lodge' - but they saw to it that 'White Lodge' teachings were preserved in Babylon [through Biblical Nimrod?] to be passed down to 'guardians of the ancient wisdom in each generation' including Egyptians, Aztecs, Incas, Mayans, Hindus, Buddhists Chinese (Taoism), American Indians and assorted 'enlightened ones who left restrictive Judaism and Christianity' (collectively called 'the White Brotherhood'). Among the last two, certain groups are identified: the Knights Templar (especially in 'Holy Grail' lore), Freemasons (established by King Solomon in his more 'enlightened' years), 'gnostics' and Kabbalists (Jewish and Christian or 'Hermetic'). The 'hierarchy of masters' who left are now returning (from a spiritual hideout called 'Shambhalla') to rebuild their 'inner government' on planet earth, which will finally put the 'Black Lodge' out of business.

In short, there is to be a religious war-to-end-all-wars, without which the New World Order cannot be fully established. As a result, 'the worn out Jewish dispensation', which includes Christianity as an offshoot, will be outlawed and replaced by the 'New World Religion'. This will be mandatory and will have to be imposed for a time 'for the good of all'. Along with the end of personal religious choice, Creme and others promise the end of democracy, with democratic states themselves voting it out of existence. There is to be a single government, tax system, currency, identity register, language and religion (latest NA projection for its inauguration is the year 2000) [many web sites are debating this issue].

4. Goal of the Plan - Initiation: All who wish to enter the New Age 'on the physical plane' [alive] must undergo an 'energy activation' or 'rebirth' - usually marked by a subjective trance-induced 'light experience' where one meets either a 'spirit guide' or one's 'higher self' (no difference since 'all is one'). This 'altered state of consciousness' will eventually lead to a 'Luciferic initiation' into the 'new humanity', or a vow of allegiance to Lucifer as god. Those who cannot (no souls) or will not ('not sufficiently developed in their spiritual journey') will be sent on to their next life in a global 'cleansing action' (Alice Bailey, 'The Rays and the Initiations' pp.754-755). [for more, see Doctrines on the Jews, below]

By means of this 'initiation' all will continue on their journey to 'godhood' at the new level, which includes 'personal experience of the knowledge of good and evil'. [sounds like Genesis 3:5, and it's meant to] Since God has both a good and an evil side, and one cannot become a complete god with only one side. "Lucifer comes to give us the final gift of wholeness. If we accept it, then he is free and we are free. That is the Luciferic initiation. It is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will be facing, for it is an initiation into the New Age." (Spangler, 'Reflections on the Christ') NAers confirm that this is what Lucifer offered to Eve in the Garden, and it's being offered again today. Only it's been 'misunderstood due to fear inherited from the superstitious Jews'.

5. Dealing with opposition to the Plan: The only spiritual systems which will not work in this scheme are the monotheistic or 'personal immortality' religions ('fundamentalist' or Bible-based Christianity and Judaism, some kinds of Islam) which 'refuse to abandon their fear and separation' and are 'outmoded and dangerous in their exclusivity'. Even if they were not separatist, Blavatsky explains that they err with "gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the ever unknowable." Likewise Creme brands the Jewish tradition of blood sacrifice as "impossible" and blames Judaism for the Christian teaching of Christ as a blood atonement for sin. These faiths and their adherents are an obstacle to mankind's progress toward the next 'quantum leap'. A brochure by the 'New Group of World Servers', adorned with a '666' design, calls them "religious experiments which spread the virus of hatred and separation" and which "have no part in the New Age".

After the Luciferic initiation, those who refuse to relinquish monotheism and/or Jewish identity will be sent to 'another dimension' or 'level of vibration', outside of this physical incarnation, where they will be happier and better off, according to Alice Bailey, Nicholas Roerich and David Spangler. The latter put it delicately, saying that "those attuned to the old world" would be "transported through the [cosmic] law of attraction" to "another planet, plane of existence or level of earth's consciousness where they can be contained... the main point is that they will lose, for the time being, their access to the etheric planes of power and the ability to control or influence the developments upon earth." (Revelation, Birth of a New Age, pp.163-4) This is known as the stage of 'global purge' or 'cleansing action'. As Benjamin Creme puts it, there is no choice: "It is indeed a matter of share [not only economic resources and governmental power, but religious belief and identity] or die [as a race]." ('The Reappearance of the Christ', appendix, 'How the Plan is Working Out') Creme's term for it is 'a necessary sword of cleavage' (same book) for all who refuse the 'mass planetary initiation'.

5a. The Plan's divide-and-conquer strategy: Until the mass 'initiation', those opposing the Plan are to be fought in two ways. One is infiltration [see Missionizing section]. The other is turning the various remaining orthodox monotheists one against another. The single most notorious tool invented by NA propagandists was 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion'. Composed by unknown sources, the individual who claimed to have "found" the 'Protocols' was Yuliana Glinka, a devoted Theosophist and Blavatsky's personal companion, who "felt it her Christian [sic!] duty" to release it in Russia (alternately called 'The Secret of the Jews'). The book was translated into English by Victor Marsden, a British racial supremacist who fled England to join Hitler, and then circulated in the U.S. by occultist Henry Ford. The latter was applauded for his "faith" by the Theosophical Society ('The Theosophist', December 1938, p.239). Blavatsky herself wrote at least one anti-semitic tract with content similar to 'Protocols', published by the Theosophical Society in 1888. [see The Occult Establishment, James Webb, 1976] The effect of 'Protocols' on the history of Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Moslem relations hardly needs comment - from the NA point of view it was and continues to be a stroke of genius [made more enjoyable, no doubt, by the irony that they didn't have to invent a story - their own racist conspiracy to dominate the world was simply put in the mouths of the Jews; thus, whenever evidence of their own work turns up, their main target for liquidation can catch hell for it!]. To this day, most Jews are convinced that 'Protocols' was a disgusting piece of Christian slander. [Actually, Protocols was crafted by Russians (probably Okrana (Czarist secret police/intelligence) agents in Paris) intent on subverting the influence of a Count Witte, trusted advisor to Czar Nicholas II, who by dint of having married a Jew, was sympathetic to and an activist for their cause. The Russians simply plagiarized a work by Frenchman Maurice Joly, Dialogues in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, or the Policy of Machiavelli in the 19th Century, that protested the abusive reign of Napoleon III, and added some material from German Hermann Goedsche's fanciful 1868 anti-semitic tract Biarritz, and others. They then laundered the document's origins by passing it through the hands of Russian Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus near Saint Petersburg, a man who was successively lawyer, judge, and Greek-Orthodox monk. -AMPP Ed.]

6. Disarmament in the Plan: The first order in 'The Open Conspiracy' (H.G.Wells) was to foster a global anti-war movement. Also according to Alice Bailey, a global disarmament program, especially nuclear disarmament, is vital. This is designed to put nuclear weapons exclusively in the hands of the 'planetary government' for the purpose of "convincing" any national or political entity which tries to oppose the new worldwide political/ religious blend. [Because the implications for Israel can be seen only in the extended quote, I include it here:]

"In the preparatory period for the new world order there will be a steady and regulated disarmament. It will not be optional. No nation will be permitted to produce and organise any equipment for destructive purposes... "The atomic bomb [was] used only twice destructively... its [constructive] uses are twofold at this time: (a) as a forerunner of that release of energy which will change the mode of human living and inaugurate the new age wherein we shall not have civilisations and their cultures but a world culture and an emerging civilisation... (b) as a means in the hands of the United Nations to enforce the outer forms of peace, and thus give time for the teaching...to take effect. The atomic bomb does not belong to [at that time, 1957] the three nations who... own the secrets at present. It belongs to the United Nations for use - or let us rather hope, simply for threatened use - when aggressive action on the part of any nation rears its ugly head... [or for use on] political groups of any powerful religious organisation, who are as yet unable to leave politics alone..." ('The Externalisation of the Hierarchy', by Alice Bailey, pp. 191 & 548) [The only nations which combine religion and politics are the Vatican, the radical Moslem countries, and of course the Jewish State. Of these, the only nation possessing nuclear weapons is Israel. This puts into perspective the increasing pressure from the UN on Israel to sign the nuclear nonproliferation pacts and open her nuclear facilities to UN inspectors...]

7. The success of the Plan thus far: There seem to be some hitches on the global religion issue. Within NA, the Theosophy founded by Helena Blavatsky successively broke into 4 competing religious groups: (1)Theosophical Society (Annie Besant); (2)Anthroposophy (Rudolf Steiner, David Spangler); (3)Arcane School, the 'School of Ageless Wisdom', Lucis Trust (Alice Bailey, Benjamin Creme, Robert Muller); (4)'I AM', 'The Church Universal and Triumphant' (Guy & Edna Ballard, Elizabeth Clare Prophet). [Conflicting theologies were not at issue so much as severe ego clashes. All these offshoots have in common a reverence for Blavatsky's writings, allegiance to Bailey's 'master' Djwhal Khul, and commitment to 'the Plan' of the 'ascended masters' in its entirety.] Also, for reasons unpublicized, the 'Day of Declaration' when Maitreya was to show himself as deity to the world, has been postponed several times (1925, 1982, 1992 - Creme now refrains from date-setting).

7a. Monotheistic influence is also holding up the show more than was anticipated. In 1945, Maitreya announced that he would reveal himself when (among other global reforms) "people are released from authoritarian supervision of their religious thought." By his own admission, he must be invited by mankind to take over on a religious/spiritual level. With each postponement of Maitreya's 'Day of Declaration', there appears to be increasing frustration among NA spokesmen at the refusal of 'the old order' of monotheistic groups to obey the 'laws of human evolution' and die out. Lucis Trust ('World Goodwill Newsletter', summer 1982) cited "three prominent examples" of "rising fanatical religious fundamentalism [causing a rise in] blatant militarism"; they named the U.S. (specifying "those who expect... the biblically prophesied global cataclysm"), Iran and Israel [no specifics - are they that similar?], calling these "frightening... dangerous... a threat to world peace" although they are only "victims of fear". Others are vexed by the organized activism of American fundamentalist Christians, particularly their influence in Congress; the rise of Islamic states (not mentioning domestic tyranny but only terrorism); and the rising numbers of self-assertive Jews, returning to Judaism and/or a national identity. [One obvious letdown for NA was the unexpected swing of the Israeli electorate to the right in 1996. Many media anchormen and liberal politicians reacted in shocked disbelief to Netanyahu's election, some having to interrupt premature celebrations for the wrong candidate. Minutes after hearing the election results, U.S. President Clinton was caught on camera uncharacteristically stammering and avoiding eye contact. Seems none of these had considered that Israel's democracy might not rubber-stamp the Plan for a 'New Middle East'... leave it to those stiffnecked Jews...]

7b. In contrast, the overall political and social cooperation with the Plan appears to satisfy many. In 1976, right after the Plan went public, the 'ascended masters' gave orders to establish world centers in anticipation of the New World Order, according to Creme, with the goal of "gradual transformation of society without disorder and trauma." They are located in New York, London, Geneva, Darjeeling and Tokyo. A nucleus of 'world servers' has also been trained to run these centers, and are stationed "in every country in the world, without exception." International committees have been quietly working on multi-stage programs for implementing the New World Order; many of these have already recruited resources and personnel and need only the signal to become operational.

One key group, the 'UN Commission on Global Governance', hopes to call a World Conference in 1998 "for the purpose of submitting to the world the necessary treaties and agreements for ratification and implementation [of a global government] by the year 2000." The 'UN World Constitution' includes an agreement of "the governments of the nations... to order their separate sovereignties into one government, to which they surrender their arms." Other arrangements include: A UN Trusteeship Council will take control of the "global commons", which includes all international waters and air space; a UN Economic Security Council will set up a global funding and barter system, with the power to withhold funding from uncooperative nations; a single monetary and taxation system will require all commerce to be conducted via a universally registered credit number for each earth citizen; a standing UN army will assume peacekeeping responsibilities in areas of conflict - this, according to Henry Lamb of the Environmental Conservation Organization, "with or without request or permission from the country involved." Lamb also predicts: "The U.S. can be expected to help facilitate the 1998 World Conference on Global Governance, and then lobby Congress to ratify and implement the treaties and agreements necessary to make global governance a reality." [see MP Online, New World Order Update, on-line via the Web]

7c. In spite of the inexplicable setbacks in the spiritual momentum of the Plan, NA leaders like Creme are confident that we are about to see its completion: "There is no doubt that there will be opposition... but the need for change will become so overwhelmingly obvious, that they will find themselves increasingly powerless to stop the momentum." ('Reappearance of the Christ,' 1980) The overall mood of NA is summed up in a popular slogan: "My karma just ran over your dogma." Various comments imply that Maitreya is not above "convincing" reluctant countries through disasters both natural (either triggered or allowed without rescue) and man-made (such as nuclear threats per Alice Bailey's Plan above); while these are regrettable, the end will justify the means: "These peoples will eventually be replaced by the new root race about to make its appearance in a newly cleansed world; nevertheless, for the moment, this is a tragedy." ('Cosmic Countdown,' p.12, 1982, 'Guardian Action Publications'). Any underground resistance movement is viewed as highly unlikely to succeed, as Zbignew Brezhinsky [Brzezinski -AMPP Ed.] (National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter) assures us: "Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files [which] will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." [date of this statement not known] [Between Two Ages, 1971 -AMPP Ed.]

E. DOCTRINES ON JEWS AND JUDAISM

[Notes: (1) It must be kept in mind that NA doctrine makes a separation between Christians and Jews in racial matters, but considers them the same on a religious level, in the case of Christians who recognize historical Jewish roots and the Jewish Scriptures. (2) Most of the quotes following are from Alice Bailey, giving the impression that these were her personal rantings against the Jews; however as the architect of the New Age she - or Djwhal Khul if you will - dictated NA attitudes toward the Jews in the Plan, and her/his doctrines are upheld by every prominent NA spokesman. (3) New Agers sincerely do not consider themselves anti-semitic, since in their view this means hatred of the Jews. They insist that they do not hate the Jews anymore than you would hate someone who is severely deformed or retarded; it's just that one doesn't allow the 'spiritually disabled' to run about unrestrained, damaging the spiritual potentials of those around them - especially if they can be 'sent' to a 'better place where they will be happier'... (4) Many rank-and-file New Agers have no idea of NA anti-semitism and will be truly shocked to read the following.]

1. A few Atlanteans (the 2nd rootrace) survived the calamity which wiped out their civilization, in the process losing (temporarily) many of their 'spiritually advanced' powers. For some unexplained reason, descendants from an 'older, inferior root-race' also survived - the Jews. Bailey variously identified the Jews as the 1st rootrace Lemurians, the 4th Aryan subrace from the age of Aries, or a reincarnated species from the moon and other planets. [either her 'master' didn't see the confusion or didn't care to correct her]. This race stubbornly refuses to die out and give way to the 'superior root': "The Jewish race, who loved the possessions of the world more than they loved the service of light, joined ranks with the rebels against God," becoming the arch-enemy of the Aryan allies of God. "Thus the history of the wandering Jew began and the Jew since has known no lasting peace." (from Alice Bailey, 'Esoteric Psychology, Volume 1') [more on this race-war in The Plan section]

2. NAers identify Lucifer as the serpent in Genesis, except that he was unfairly 'demonized' [are they being cute?] by the Jewish Scriptures. Findhorn leader 'Robert Ogilvie Crombie' (or 'Roc') claims that Pan appeared to him and "sadly" confessed that he was "the devil" or 'Satan' of Jewish- Christian tradition; concerning this "giant faun" Roc said, "...for his purpose he had to find someone who showed no fear of him... It is important for the future of mankind that belief in the Nature Spirits and their god Pan is reestablished and that they are seen in their true light." ('The Magic of Findhorn, p.217) Likewise, the 'ascended masters' were defamed as "fallen" angels [identified with the Hebrew "nefilim" who were on earth in pre-Flood times - Genesis 6:4] ['ascended'? 'fallen'? Which direction they really moved depends on which side is "right side up"...] The Jews/Christians have been trying to suppress the ancient knowledge by recording Satan's offer to Adam and Eve [sic] as an evil deception and their accepting his offer as a 'sin'. These two groups will have to 'lay down their arms' and acknowledge Lucifer/Pan, aka Satan, as god in order to be eligible for the New Age. They will only then understand that Lucifer and Christ/Messiah are just two manifestations of the same godhood. As Spangler puts it ('Reflections on the Christ): "The true light of Lucifer cannot be seen through sorrow, darkness, rejection. The true light of this great being can only be recognized when one's own eyes can see with the light of the Christ." [anyone who knows Jewish tradition can see that this last item would alienate Jews even more than Christians. NAers expect this, and use it as further evidence of spiritual retardation.]

3. Because of their 'racial karma' [see above in Human History section], the Jewish people have a singularly low potential for achieving entry to the New Age, having a 'blood taint' which is impossible to completely overcome. This, together with their stubborn insistence on one exclusive G-d and their uniqueness as a chosen people, makes them rejects for the Age of Aquarius. The continual Jew-hatred among the nations is their 'karma' catching up with them, as Alice Bailey wrote shortly after the Holocaust:

"Today the law [of racial karma] is working, and the Jews are paying the price, factually and symbolically...They regard themselves as the chosen people... [but] it is Humanity which is the chosen people... They demand the so-called restitution of Palestine, wresting it away from those who have inhabited it for many centuries...[ever wonder why this myth never seems to retreat before the facts? Find out how many media CEOs and UN ambassadors are New Agers.] They have never yet faced candidly and honestly (as a race) the problem of WHY [her emphasis] the many nations, from the time of the Egyptians, have neither liked nor wanted them... Yet there must be some reason, inherent in the people themselves, when the reaction is so general and universal. The evil karma of the Jew today is intended to end his isolation, to bring him to the point of ...renouncing a nationality that has a tendency to be somewhat parasitic within the boundaries of other nations..." (Esoteric Healing, 1949, p.263ff) Bailey also commented that "Jews frequently lower the atmosphere of any district in which they reside," but insisted that she herself was not anti-semitic; she was simply stating "an absolute truth" ('Unfinished Autobiography'). However, she alternately blames the "problems inherent in the Jewish race" on the "astrological influence of the third ray when the sun was in Gemini aeons ago, which causes them to be manipulative and to dominate." ('Esoteric Psychology') No solution is offered for the 'inherited deficiencies' which continue to dog them in spite of eons of corrective karma.

4. Along with the Jews, their G-d and their laws are portrayed as similarly outdated, oppressive and fraudulent. Taking their cue from Blavatsky's assertion that the Jews have "a religion of hate and malice toward everyone and everything outside itself," her successors elaborated:

"The word 'love' for others is lacking in Judaism, though love of Jehovah is taught with due threats." (Alice Bailey, 'Problems of Humanity') "The Jew has never grasped the love of God. The God of the Jews is possessive and greedy, Jehovah is not God." (Alice Bailey, 'Esoteric Healing')

"Fundamentalism [Jewish and Christian] minimizes the value of the human being, [in its] tendency... to emphasize the awesome might and power of God transcendent 'above and outside' His Creation [rather than] God immanent within the human heart. This ancient misconceived split between God and humanity has worked great mischief. It has caused people to feel little, expendable and utterly vulnerable unless they rigidly follow certain rules or formulas..." (Lucis Trust, 'World Goodwill Newsletter,' summer 1982)

"The Jews are the reincarnation of spiritual failures or residues from another planet... The Jew represents materialism, cruelty and a spiritual conservatism, under the domination of the separative, selfish mind [ie, their G-d, since all mind is God], that from which all good disciples want to emerge... They have forgotten humanity and that millions in the world today have suffered as they have..." (Bailey, 'Rays and Initiations') [notice how 'separative' and 'conservative' are equated with 'cruel' and 'selfish', a recurring association]

F. MISSIONIZING AMONG JEWS

1. Only those who can abandon their 'narrow religious and nationalistic beliefs' and adopt a 'universal' outlook where 'all roads to god are valid' will be considered compatible. Acting on instructions from the 'Hierarchy', a lot of propaganda is being produced to convince secular Jews and Christians to distance themselves from the Jewish Bible.

1a. The vigorous effort to pull in the Christians quotes the New Testament [avoiding passages which draw on Jewish scriptures] with their own interpretation that Jesus was an 'ascended master' who was only a 'channeler' for 'Maitreya'. Interestingly, the Christian faith can be allowed to retain the dogmas of the 'trinity' (revised as god-qualities) and 'God incarnate' (revised as god-men) - provided they let go of the ideas of "God the all-powerful, all-knowing and unchanging", as well as "God the lawgiver and message-sender... [all of] which are no longer fit ways of symbolizing God." ( Eugene Fontinell, 'Toward a Reconstruction of Religion') [note that all of the rejected elements are those inherited unchanged from Judaism - the goal being to "reconstruct" a Christianity stripped of its roots]

1b. Missionary efforts among secular Jews are concentrated mainly in appeals to world harmony and cooperation as overriding narrow group interests, playing on their sense of responsibility to humanity. The promise is made that if the Jews will let go of their 'outdated nationalistic sentiments', which includes loyalty to both Torah and national identity, anti-semitism will disappear: "The Jews could assimilate if they wanted to, but retain alien views, Oriental views, of honesty that are different from ours. Jews cling to their own people and are the most reactionary and conservative race in the world. The Jews constantly demand redress and blame others for their miseries. The Jew must recognize his share in bringing about the dislike which hounds him everywhere, change his attitude and stop blaming the Gentiles... The problem of the Jews must be solved mainly by the Jews." (Alice Bailey, 'Problems of Humanity') The message is that if Jews will renounce their dogma of distinct peoplehood, and join the 'brotherhood of man' [as if we can't do both], they will be accepted, although at the back of the line. NA sees no conflict in warning the Jews that their 'evil karma' requires them to accept unusual suffering, while at the same time chiding them for thinking they have suffered more than other peoples. [Besides being an unfair guilt trip, you would think this could be easily dismissed by liberal Jews, who are often already in the forefront of humanitarian causes. Yet too many have accepted this idea that Jews have to atone for their existence by denying any unique heritage - even a claim to unique depths of suffering.]

1c. For those who cannot be easily divorced from Judaism, there is an attempt to wean observant and traditional Jews away from the Torah by promoting very Jewish concepts side by side with very un-Jewish ones in the orthodox community. For example, in an interview on BBC's Focus on Faith (Feb.20, 1997), a New York woman identified as "Blu Greenberg, the wife of an orthodox rabbi" was publicizing a conference on "women's equality in the context of Jewish law," advocating wider participation in synagogue prayers, a greater teaching role and other modest reforms. A minute later she said that because the Torah contains laws that "foster male domination and portray a masculine G-d... it's time to ask if the Torah is divine after all." Other examples are posters in Jerusalem advertising seminars mixing Torah and Eastern religious systems such as Tai Chi. [It can be argued that such people do not represent Torah Judaism; however, by openly promoting such ideas in the orthodox community without being disowned, they are successfully undermining the authority of Torah in its own community - an essential part of the New Age 'Plan' as stated above.]

1d. In a similar development on the mystical side of Judaism, NA spokesmen applaud orthodox Jewish teachers for recently releasing Kabbalah from the restricted access imposed on it by past generations of Jewish sages, making its teachings available to all, and even encouraging free exploration without rabbinic supervision. In Israel the Zohar (a major Kabbalistic work) is even being sold door-to-door. [This is strictly forbidden under the 'old order' of Judaism, but NAers are not concerned with proper understanding of the teaching, since Kabbalah is simply one path to their goal of getting as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, into 'contact with the spirit realm']. These teachers are being hailed as 'co-conspirators' who are furthering the NA Plan. [not stated whether deliberately or unknowingly, but the results will be the same.] From the NA standpoint, however, the value of Jewish Kabbalah lies only in its teachings which overlap "the other ancient occult doctrines", specifically: reincarnation; traffic with angels, demons and departed human spirits; 'monism' (light and darkness, good and evil, are all sides of G-d); attributing 'secret messages' or 'hidden meanings' to words or statements which mean something else at face value; self-induced trances, resulting in visions or 'astral' (out-of-body) travels; and harnessing of superhuman powers by pronouncing sacred names. [It is noteworthy that none of these can be supported by a clear (pashat or darash) Torah passage, while some are expressly forbidden; yet they are arguably the best-known elements of Kabbalah today. The fact that they are accepted by so many Torah Jews in spite of their dubious relevance to Torah, only supports the claims of the NA missionaries.] The NA goal is to promote a Kabbalah in the Jewish community which goes through successive 'transformations' until it is finally severed from all links with the Torah, thus 'recovering' its 'purity'.

2. The most vigorous efforts at religious indoctrination by far are directed at the children, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. A spot check of the popular cartoons, movies, toys, pop and rock songs, magazines, computer games, public school activities and literature will reveal almost universal reinforcement of NA teachings mentioned in this article. [Anyone can easily verify this: survey the most widely promoted TV shows, electronic and board games, children's movies, public library books and toys; use as a control group the best of these produced before 1968. You will notice what NA calls a radical 'paradigm shift' around that time towards Eastern and occult orientations, radiating from certain landmarks such as 'Star Trek', '2001, A Space Odyssey' and the Beatles. This of course means that the children innocently absorbing NA religion include also today's young adults who matured during the last 30 years, with everything this implies.] It is hard to find children's entertainment today which does not revolve around foreign (other than Judaic-Christian) customs and heroes, occult legend (such as Atlantis, UFO aliens, dragon lore), psychic powers or magic rites (using real spells, as in 'Dungeons & Dragons'). Virtually all of these have in common disembodied spirits as guides and power sources.

As Western society has become conditioned (see 'The Plan' above), NA religious orientation has become so common that those who reject it are seen as unreasonable (also a calculated part of the Plan). Public schools regularly celebrate pagan holidays, and offer 'transcendental meditation' as part of the curriculum (in spite of the U.S. court ruling that it constitutes an Eastern religion). In Israel, community centers teach TM, yoga, astrology, palm-reading, etc., public radio carries detailed astrological forecasts, and a NA kibbutz thrives, with no comment from the religious community. [compare the average reaction when Christian missionaries touch Jewish children, and we see how well NA has done its work - Israeli kids sit in front of the TV cheering for spirit-guide heroes, devour library books full of pagan mythology, or trot off to martial-arts clubs where they bow to 'ascended masters', and no one notices.]

The missionizing is even more transparent in remakes of classic tales "modernized" by inserting New Age scenes, often without concern for the original story line. For example, a Hebrew-dubbed version of "William Tell" on Israeli educational TV had Tell and his famous arrows empowered by spirit guides - it so disrupted the original plot that half the story had to be rewritten, with several new characters... [Why didn't the producers simply write a new story? I'm guessing that such reworked films are deliberately targeting the families who are trying to filter out overt idolatry, but who relax when they see the title of an "old favorite" which they remember from their own childhood as safe viewing. I would never have suspected that violence had been done to this old story of bravery in the face of tyranny - I just happened to spot it on my way through the TV room.]

Radically altering a famous story while keeping the former title amounts to false advertising and calculated deception. But rather than denying or defending such duplicity in dealing with our children, NA spokesmen respond with a counter-accusation. As Nebraska State Senator Peter Hoagland put it: "Fundamental, Bible-believing people [Jews and Christians] do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs, because we, the state, are preparing them for the year 2000 [to] be part of a one-world global society, and their children will not fit in [if we don't take over their indoctrination]." While this quote refers to the U.S., it hardly needs mentioning that American culture is being exported to children all over the world, including Israel, with the same "preparation" in mind.

3. The above efforts to convert both secular and traditional Jews to NA thinking has but one goal, judging by NA sources - and it is not in order to receive ex-Jewish people into the 'family of man' [although that would be bad enough]. Jews are flatly considered unsuitable material for the New Age, which cannot be rectified until, in the words of Alice Bailey, "they pass through the fires of purification" (explained elsewhere as elimination from this life). The goal of converting Jews then is to make them voluntarily accept the 'cleansing action' which is to remove them from this life. In accordance with Alice Bailey's analysis on the Holocaust, other NA spokesmen continue to preach that the Jews always bring on their own suffering. In other contexts (such as Christian persecution of the 'Christ-killers') this is highly offensive to any Jew. But after accepting reincarnation and some form of 'karma' [such as 'tikkun olam', a Kabbalistic doctrine where G-d rather than a cosmic force sends a Jew into multiple lives to repair mistakes or cosmic imbalance], it will logically follow that since Jews are being targeted for annihilation, they must indeed owe some past debt. [This can neither be contested nor verified, since objective evidence of past lives does not exist, much less what was done in them. But NA believers do not require objective verification, as noted earlier.]

This, like all other NA views, must be received without question from the 'ascended masters'. The NAers are confident that Jews who accept the karmic view of suffering will also accept the karmic requirement of passive submission to whatever befalls themselves and their loved ones, and especially if appropriate spirits of their 'luminaries' [refers to the ranking system for advanced practitioners of Kabbalah, similar to the NA ranking of their 'Iluminati' or 'enlightened ones'] appear to them with promises of a favorable future life as a reward for voluntary submission. These visitations, promise NA spokesmen, will indeed take place liberally at the instigation of Maitreya - his merciful contribution to help ease the passage of the Jewish race from this dimension. For those who cling tightly to Torah-from-Sinai Judaism, even "Moses" is scheduled to appear, accompanied by angels, to command them to obey Maitreya whom he also serves. [if they can come up with a "Moses", no doubt they can supply a "Lubavitcher Rebbe", a "Nahman of Bratslav", and anyone else with a chance of convincing a segment of orthodox Jewry to submit.]

However, taking into account NA missionary efforts directed at Jews, they would prefer that before leaving the scene, the Jews would first put their G-d to death by admitting that their faith was based on a fiction. This would mean a complete victory, as far as the priorities of the 'ascended masters' are concerned.

G. THE NEW AGE AND NAZISM

1. Hitler - Catholic Christian or New Ager? While most Jews are sure that Hitler represented the Christian community, several prominent New Agers have denied this categorically and speak of Hitler as a New Age disciple. Foster Bailey ('Running God's Plan', p.14) tactfully does not name him but describes him as a disciple who tried to put the 'Plan' into action on a regional scale in the Rhine River valley. The 'Department of Interplanetary Affairs' ('History of the Golden Ages' [sic!], web site) speaks openly and glowingly about him. Reasons for Hitler's failure to succeed globally are given variously as: he was premature; he did not coordinate with the 'hierarchy of masters' but tried to build a rival power base [see below for confirmation]; his vision for mankind wasn't 'global' enough; he was blocked by the 'old order'. None cite any 'weakness' towards Christianity.

Hitler from early teen years turned against Christianity and sought his destiny in the occult; he had passed the 'novice' stage by 1913. In 1918 (age 29) he claimed to hear voices saying that he was "selected by God to be Germany's messiah" [The Twisted Cross, Joseph Carr, p.36]; later he made contact with an 'ascended master' whom he identified as Lucifer or "the beast from the pit". He eventually became convinced he was the reincarnation of Woden (or, Woton), a Norse god. He had his SS officers undergo occult initiation vows to replace their Christian faith with early Germanic paganism, and to harness New Age forces. He became obsessed with one NA legend in particular, the 'quest for the holy grail'.

Before enacting his 'final solution', Hitler made an effort to remove all churches and pastors who showed the least resistance to policies already in operation. While he did not feel free to close down many Catholic churches, especially where local support was strong, he vented his rage on Pope Pius XI who issued an encyclical (smuggled into Germany) condemning him as "a mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance" ("Mit Brennender Sorg", Palm Sunday 1937) and who set up 180 safe houses in the Vatican which sheltered at least 5000 Jews. The Nazi national paper called him "the Jew-god in Rome"; Himmler's deputy Heydrich announced, "The Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order [note the familiar phrase, only on a European scale]... He is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals."

But soon after the war, unknown sources were again calling the Pope a "war criminal", only now so named because he had approved of the Nazi regime and kept "totally silent" about the Jewish extermination (as in a German play "The Deputy", Rolf Hochhuch, 1963). In direct contrast, Golda Meir (1958) and Pinchas Lapide (1967) publicly noted that the Pope and other Catholic leaders were responsible for saving anywhere from 700,000 to 860,000 Jews during the Holocaust. [This of course does not excuse the millions of Catholics and Protestants who did remain silent; nor does it follow that other popes were, or are, of the same caliber. But the divide- and- conquer strategy toward monotheistic groups is likely the motive for this revision of history.]

2. The same Aryan Race? Hitler adopted Theosophical teachings (in Germany since 1884) and its Aryan race purity verbatim (studying 'The Secret Doctrine' by Helena Blavatsky), going on to with other former Theosophists to develop a Nordic version. The Thule Society (formed in 1914) was told in a seance that "Lord Maitreya" [none other!] would soon make his appearance as a German messiah to "lead the Aryan race to final victory over the Jews"; Thule leader Dietrich Eckart was charged with the responsibility of 'nurturing' him. [see The Twisted Cross, Joseph Carr, p.110] NA spokesman 'David Spangler' (dedicated to 'anchor the Plan on earth' by establishing 'NA spiritual centers' on the order of 'Findhorn') distances New Age Aryans from Nazi Aryans only in that the "blond, blue-eyed Germanic race which Hitler spoke of" was unnecessarily narrow; the Aryans "are actually a more wide-ranging and ancient super-race". As an avowed disciple of Bailey and Blavatsky, he can be assumed to hold the same views about how to maintain the 'racial purity' of the Aryan race. [Spangler is reportedly teaching at the University of Wisconsin, although he never finished college himself.] Although Hitler turned against Theosophy early in the Third Reich [see below], he saw to it that their teachings were distributed to the German people, and by 1941 had imported at least 1,000 Tibetans to Berlin as teachers.

3. Hitler's connection with American eugenicists: The Nazis closely followed the writings of Madison Grant (associate of American Birth Control League director Stoddard), who said (among other things) that sentimental beliefs such as Christianity short-circuited acceptance of infanticide, a natural weeding-out process necessary to preserving the species. The Nazis thanked Grant and Stoddard for "awakening in Germany the movement for the preservation and increase of the Nordic race." The League (later named 'Planned Parenthood') also took a great interest in ongoing Nazi methods, and published an article entitled 'Eugenic Sterilization, an Urgent Need', by Ernst Rudin, Director of Genetic Sterilization and founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. A group of American eugenists sat as guest judges in the German 'eugenic courts' in the 1930's, and returned with highest recommendations: "The [Nazi] sterilization law is weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way." (Lothrop Stoddard, 1940) [documentation - Pro-Life Activist's Encyclopedia, the American Life League, Chapter 53, on-line through the Web]

4. Besides the above, New Age shares other common ground with Hitler's Third Reich and the Thule Society: the use of swastikas (its ancient occult meaning explained by Blavatsky in 'The Secret Doctrine'), development of spirit-contacts including Lucifer, a contempt for certain 'amateur' occult practices such as astrology ('higher adepts' such as the leaders of 'Lucis Trust' dismiss astrology and astral arts as worthless beyond achieving initial spirit contact; Hitler also looked down on astrology as a 'parlor game', although Himmler was devoted to it), reverence for Tibetan Buddhism (according to one NA source, Hitler sent SS officers to the Himalayas to consult with the 'ascended masters'), organized initiation into pagan and occult practices, and [virtually unknown] glorification of homosexuality as a 'path to higher consciousness and superhuman power' [In accordance with widespread occult practice, promotion in the SS was conditional on adopting "warrior" or super-masculine homosexuality; effeminate homosexuals were despised and were sent to the camps. See The Pink Swastika, Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, Scott Lively & Kevin Abrams, on line via the Web].

5. An especially interesting tactic shared by both Nazism and NA is faulting the Jews for rejecting Jesus as their Messiah. Like Hitler, no NA leaders accept Jesus's claims as recorded in the New Testament, yet they make much of the fact that the Jews did not either, and include this failure in their tally of the Jews' karmic debt: "Christ came to bring an end to the Jewish dispensation which should have climaxed and passed away as a religion... In the rejection of Christ as the Messiah, the Jewish race has remained symbolically and practically in the [astrological] sign of Aries, the Scapegoat [actually Aries is a ram, as noted elsewhere in this book, but the purpose for this "mistake" is self-evident]. [If they don't accept him in the person of Maitreya] they will repeat their ancient sin of non-response to the evolutionary process. They rejected that which was new and spiritual in the desert [making the golden calf at Sinai]; they did it again in Palestine 2000 years ago; will they do it again, as opportunity is offered to them?" (Alice Bailey, 'The Reappearance of the Christ', p.81)

[Here we have a masterful "catch-22", for if the Jews reject Maitreya as a false messiah, they will 'remain the Scapegoat' and eventually get wiped out as they deserve. If they accept him, they will accept his assessment that past karma requires their annihilation, first total assimilation and then death. The only question is whether they will go out in submission or in rebellion, but go they will...] A related tactic common to the Nazis and New Age is using 'Christian' arguments against the Jews. Christians, coming from a completely different orientation, have made similar charges as above, such as the Jewish dispensation being ended with Christ, and the failure of Jews to accept him costing them their place as G-d's chosen people. New Agers do not hesitate to quote 'Replacement Theology' [perhaps another case of NA infiltration into Christianity?] in support of their own goals even while planning the end of the Christians, as did Hitler in quoting Martin Luther while removing Lutheran pastors who opposed him.

6. Why did the Nazis persecute Theosophists and other occultists? Hitler kept a copy of Blavatsky's 'The Secret Doctrine' by his bedside, ever since being introduced to its teachings by Dietrich Eckart and Karl Haushofer. (see Adolf Hitler, The Occult Messiah, Gerald Suster, 1981). And yet from the 1920's his thugs ruthlessly attacked and killed adherents of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Freemasons and others who shared the same occult doctrines; he banned their groups from the Third Reich, and publicly denounced occultists such as 'Rudolf Steiner' and 'Aleister Crowley'. In contrast, he ignored astrologers, seance mediums, fortune tellers, and similar groups (at least until 1941).

This can be easily understood, however, in terms of perceived threat; Hitler simply recognized occultic power in each of the banned groups which could be used to rival his own occultic 'Order of Magi' reigning from the 'Thule Society', and eliminated them from the field. Those occult groups who presented no threat he left alone. Another theory [see The Twisted Cross, Joseph Carr, p.88-100] is that Hitler was determined to keep the Thule Society's Luciferic roots hidden from the general public; the groups and individuals he targeted for elimination were those who knew of those roots (and who might expose him in opposing his bid to control the 'Plan'). This would explain why the Nazis burned every available book of Thule Society founder Rudolf Heinrich von Sebottendorf which spoke of those roots, why they confiscated (rather than burned) all the books of the occult groups they outlawed, and why Rudolf Hess's defection to the West in 1941 prompted Hitler to outlaw all remaining occultists in the Third Reich, such as astrologers, mediums - and even parlor magicians. Nevertheless Hitler and Goebbels (another star-skeptic) resorted to astrological forecasts at the end of the war when his 'ascended masters' "abandoned" him, holding on to false forecasts of victory.

H. SOURCES FOR DOCUMENTATION & READING

From New Agers:

• (by Alice Bailey) Externalisation of the Hierarchy, The Rays and the Initiations, The Reappearance of the Christ
• (by Helena Blavatsky) The Secret Doctrines, Isis Unveiled
• (by Marilyn Ferguson) The Aquarian Conspiracy
• (by Benjamin Creme) The Reappearance of the Christ and the Ascended Masters (not to be confused with Bailey's book)
• (by David Spangler) Revelation: The Birth of a New Age, Reflections on the Christ
• (by Mark Satin) New Age Politics (lists many NA groups at the end)
• (various periodicals) The Door Opener, Oracle, The Initiator, Lorian Journal, New Age Journal, The Beacon, East-West Journal, Whole Life Times, World Goodwill Newsletter.

From the opposition (no Jewish sources exist to my knowledge - these are Christians):

• The Occult and the Third Reich (Jean-Michel Angebert)
• The Twisted Cross, the Occultic Religion of Hitler and the New Age Nazism (Joseph Carr)
• The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow (Constance Cumbey) Peace, Prosperity and the Coming Holocaust (Dave Hunt)
• (web sites) www.bible.org/bibsac/8594/87a6.htm "The New Age Movement by Norman Geisler"

(these last 3 are each a good general overview)

see also sources mentioned above in passing.

Here is an excerpt from the Jubilee 2000 USA agenda statement (the Vatican is a spearhead for Jubilee 2000), modtime 1998-Nov-30:

[...]

The exhilarating possibility is that the human race will finally undergo a kind of spiritual transformation during which we will forsake all the old social institutions and attitudes that have evolved during the past several thousand years based on the principle of competition, and replace them with an entirely new social arrangement based on the principle of cooperation, resulting ultimately in the coalescence of more than five billion individual humans into a single collective social organism, the mature shape of which is as impossible to imagine as it is to foresee the emergence of a mighty oak from a tiny acorn. We can expect, however, that such a harmonious coalescence would produce a dramatic blossoming of the human spirit, a spectacular display of human creativity, and a miraculous metamorphosis that would lift the human race onto another and higher plane of existence, a spiritual and physical transformation that would surely qualify as the third extraordinary event along this planet's evolutionary path.

However, the other possibility, the terrifying one, is that the human race will continue on its present course, blindly singing the praises of competition while steadfastly declaring that human nature will never change, that this is how it has always been and how it will always be, until one morning we awake to the news that sometime during the night "something went wrong." An unfortunate confluence of events has sparked an uncontrollable political, economic and ecological conflagration, a global firestorm of madness and mayhem, finally reducing the planet to a cold and lifeless rock once again, streaking unnoticed through the universal vastness, a ghostly memorial to what might have been. That, too, would qualify as this planet's third extraordinary evolutionary event.

That we are on the threshold of a profound change -- a third extraordinary event -- is certain. What remains in doubt is which scenario most accurately describes humankind's future. Will it be transformation? Or annihilation? And what, if anything, can we do to affect the outcome? That is the urgent question to which The Jubilee 2000 Project both seeks and proposes an answer.

[...]

The above evidences a critical Maitreyan foil: the doctrinal tenet that individualists threaten the very biological survival of humanity. Because of this, they feel compelled to murder individualists in a great, never-ending global holocaust.

excerpt from A History of the New World Order:

[...]

1934 - "The Externalization of the Hierarchy" by Alice Bailey is published. Bailey is an occultist, taking over from Annie Besant as head of the Theosophical Society. Bailey's works are channeled from a spirit guide, the Tibetan Master [demon spirit] Djwahl Kuhl. [Her teachings form the foundation for the current New Age movement.] She writes: "The hour for the ancient mysteries has arrived. These Ancient Mysteries were hidden in numbers, in ritual, in words, and in symbology; these veil the secret. There is no question therefore that the work to be done in familiarizing the general public with the nature of the Mysteries is of paramount importance at this time. These Mysteries will be restored to outer expression through the medium of the Church and the Masonic Fraternity." She further states: "Out of the spoliation of all existing culture and civilization, the new world order must be built."

[The book is published by the Lucis Trust, incorporated originally in New York as the Lucifer Publishing Company. Lucis Trust is a United Nations NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) and has been a major player at the recent UN summits. Later, Assistant Secretary General of the U.N. Robert Muller would credit the creation of his World Core Curriculum for education to the underlying teachings of Djwahl Kuhl, via Alice Bailey's writings on the subject.]

[...]

from http://www.inetport.com/~one/dkext.html:

EXTRACT FROM A STATEMENT BY THE TIBETAN
(Djwhal Khul), through Alice A. Bailey

Suffice it to say, that I am a Tibetan disciple of a certain degree, and this tells you but little, for all are disciples, from the humblest aspirant up to, and beyond, the Christ Himself. I live in a physical body like other men, on the borders of Tibet, and at times (from the exoteric standpoint) preside over a large group of Tibetan lamas, when my other duties permit. It is this fact that has caused it to be reported that I am an abbot of this particular lamasery. Those associated with me in the work of the Hierarchy (and all true disciples are associated in this work) know me by still another name and office. Alice A. Bailey knows who I am and recognises me by two of my names.

THIS IS BOGUS I am a brother of yours, who has travelled a little longer upon the Path than has the average student, and has therefore incurred greater responsibilities. I am one who has wrestled and fought his way into a greater measure of light than the aspirant who will read this article, and I must therefore act as a transmitter of the light, no matter what the cost. I am not an old man, as age counts among the teachers, yet I am not young or inexperienced. My work is to teach and spread the knowledge of the Ageless Wisdom wherever I can find a response, and I have been doing this for many years. I seek also to help the Master M. and the Master K.H. whenever opportunity offers, for I have been long connected with Them and with Their work. In all of the above, I have told you much; yet at the same time I have told you nothing which would lead you to offer me that blind obedience and the foolish devotion which the emotional aspirant offers to the Guru and Master Whom he is yet unable to contact. Nor will he make that desired contact until he has transmuted emotional devotion into unselfish service to humanity--not to the Master. THIS IS BOGUS The books I have written are sent out with no claim for their acceptance. They may, or may not, be correct, true and useful. It is for you to ascertain their truth by right practice and by the exercise of the intuition. Neither I nor A.A.B. is the least interested in having them acclaimed as inspired writings, or in having anyone speak of them (with bated breath) as being the work of one of the Masters. If they present truth in such a way that it follows sequentially upon that already offered in the world teachings, if the information given raises the aspiration and the will-to-serve from the plane of the emotions to that of the mind (the plane whereon the Masters can be found), then they will have served their purpose. If the teaching conveyed calls forth a response from the illumined mind of the worker in the world, and brings a flashing forth of his intuition, then let that teaching be accepted. But not otherwise. If the statements meet with eventual corroboration, or are deemed true under the test of the Law of Correspondences, then that is well and good. But should this not be so, let not the student accept what is said. (August 1934)

 

---

The Lucis Trust is a non-profit tax-exempt educational corporation founded in 1922. No royalties are paid on the books. Training for new age discipleship is provided by the Arcane School. The principles of the Ageless Wisdom are presented through esoteric meditation, study and service as a way of life. Contact the publishers for information.

---

LINKS

Lucis Trust         The Arcane School         World Goodwill

(The Lucis Trust is the Lucifer Publishing Company)

This evidences a growing trend of employers wielding their authority to the end of religious indoctrination (the ideology of Muhandas Ghandi is relatively benign, it is good to note, but the undercurrent is clear):

from the Tennessean, 1999-Mar-11, by Dorren Klausnitzer:

Boss fired man when he stopped reading Gandhi, lawsuit says

A Franklin man who says he was forced to study the leadership practices of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi at work is suing his former employer, Stinger Industries LLC, saying it violated his civil rights and offended his religious beliefs.

Kevin B. Cundiff, an engineering director, said he was asked to "study certain materials on the life and teachings of Gandhi" during the company's morning staff meetings. He was required to apply what he learned in his job.

Cundiff said he was wrongly fired in November from his $60,000-a-year job after being told he was "incompatible" with the company.

One of the works Cundiff was required to read was A Higher Standard of Leadership, Lessons from the Life of Gandhi, by Keshavan Nair. The suit alleges that the book contains religious and spiritual principles taught by Gandhi, a Hindu and one of the foremost spiritual and political leaders of the 1900s. Gandhi, called the Mahatma, or Great Soul, helped free India from British control by using nonviolent resistance. He taught that truth could be known only through tolerance and concern for others.

Cundiff, who is a Christian, met with company president Gary Coonan, complaining that the materials he was told to study were religious and offended him.

In return, he was told he was being "closed minded" and to continue studying the writings, the suit says.

Cundiff said he was also given assignments to do based on the Indian leader's philosophies and told to prepare materials for discussion, says the suit filed in U.S. District Court Monday.

Coonan, who also serves as the chief executive officer for the Murfreesboro company, which makes fabricated structural material, could not be reached for comment yesterday afternoon.

According to the suit, Cundiff offered to study alternative leadership teachings, but his overture was turned down.

Cundiff is asking for $535,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, attorney fees and a jury trial.

A quote prefatory to the following interview:

"Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
-Obi-Wan Kenobi

Obi-Wan's assertion is that relativism is rampant. Indeed, Hegel lurks in every shadow.

from Time Magazine, 1999-Apr-26, by Bill Moyers, from http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,23298,00.html:

Of Myth And Men

A conversation between Bill Moyers and George Lucas on the meaning of the Force and the true theology of Star Wars

KEEPING THE FAITH: Lucas and Moyers, at Skywalker Ranch, weigh the power of old stories in a new form

MOYERS: Joseph Campbell once said all the great myths, the ancient great stories, have to be regenerated in every generation. He said that's what you are doing with Star Wars. You are taking these old stories and putting them into the most modern of idioms, the cinema. Are you conscious of doing that? Or are you just setting out to make a good action-movie adventure?

LUCAS: With Star Wars I consciously set about to re-create myths and the classic mythological motifs. I wanted to use those motifs to deal with issues that exist today. The more research I did, the more I realized that the issues are the same ones that existed 3,000 years ago. That we haven't come very far emotionally.

MOYERS: The mesmerizing figure in The Phantom Menace to me is Darth Maul. When I saw him, I thought of Lucifer in Paradise Lost or the devil in Dante's Inferno. He's the Evil Other--but with powerful human traits.

LUCAS: Yes, I was trying to find somebody who could compete with Darth Vader, who is now one of the most famous evil characters. So we went back into representations of evil. Not only the Christian, but also Hindu and other religious icons, as well as the monsters in Greek mythology.

MOYERS: What did you find in all these representations?

LUCAS: A lot of evil characters have horns. ``Laughs.''

MOYERS: And does your use of red suggest the flames of hell?

LUCAS: Yes. It's a motif that I've been using with the Emperor and the Emperor's minions. I mean, red is an aggressive color. Evil is aggressive. [This is a toxic meme - evil actually goes with the banality of bankers and accountants, as noted by Hannah Arendt, and good is often aggressive. -Ed.]

MOYERS: Is Darth Maul just a composite of what you found in your research, or are we seeing something from your own imagination and experience?

LUCAS: If you're trying to build an icon of evil, you have to go down into the subconscious of the human race over a period of time and pull out the images that equate to the emotion you are trying to project.

MOYERS: What emotion do you feel when you look at Darth Maul?

LUCAS: Fear. You wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley. But he's not repulsive. He's something you should be afraid of, without ``his'' being a monster whose intestines have been ripped out and thrown all over the screen.

MOYERS: Is the emotion you wanted from him different from the emotion you wanted from Darth Vader?

LUCAS: It's essentially the same, just in a different kind of way. Darth Vader was half machine, half man, and that's where he lost a lot of his humanity. He has mechanical legs. He has mechanical arms. He's hooked up to a breathing machine. This one is all human. I wanted him to be an alien, but I wanted him to be human enough that we could identify with him.

MOYERS: He's us?

LUCAS: Yes, he's the evil within us.

MOYERS: Do you know yet what, in a future episode, is going to transform Anakin Skywalker to the dark side?

LUCAS: Yes, I know what that is. The groundwork has been laid in this episode. The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. The issue of greed, of getting things and owning things and having things and not being able to let go of things, is the opposite of compassion--of not thinking of yourself all the time. These are the two sides--the good force and the bad force. They're the simplest parts of a complex cosmic construction. [This is the Maiteryan ethos. According to Maitreyan doctrine, the highest virtue is self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, and service to others, and the greatest evil is pursuit of self-interest. In reality, self-sacrifice is usually evil, self-abnegation is always evil, and service to others is morbid. The pursuit of self-interest, on the other hand, is in and of itself morally neutral. Innovism provides a metric for what constitutes actual moral virtue. -Ed.]

MOYERS: I think it's going to be very hard for the audience to accept that this innocent boy, Anakin Skywalker, can ever be capable of the things that we know happen later on. I think about Hitler and wonder what he looked like at nine years old. [``Let loyalty and selflessness be your highest precepts!'' (from the Commandments of the National Socialist Party) -AMPP Ed.]

LUCAS: There are a lot of people like that. And that's what I wonder. What is it in the human brain that gives us the capacity to be as evil as human beings have been in the past and are right now?

MOYERS: You've been probing that for a while now. Have you come to any conclusion?

LUCAS: I haven't. I think it comes out of a rationale of doing certain things and denying to yourself that you're actually doing them. If people were really to sit down and honestly look at themselves and the consequences of their actions, they would try to live their lives a lot differently. One of the main themes in The Phantom Menace is of organisms having to realize they must live for their mutual advantage. [This, once again, is Maitreyan doctrine - the idea that an individual lives not for himself, but for others, and is in a very real sense, communal property - a slave of the collective. This, of course, is degenerate and evil. Cooperation is a component of any evolutionary operating system, however, and there is nothing inherently wrong with cooperation. -AMPP Ed.]

MOYERS: Have you made peace with the fact that people read into your movies what you didn't necessarily invest there?

LUCAS: Yes, I find it amusing. I also find it very interesting, especially in terms of the academic world, that they will take a work and dissect it in so many different ways. Some of the ways are very profound, and some are very accurate. A lot of it, though, is just the person using their imagination to put things in there that really weren't there, which I don't mind either. I mean, one of the things I like about Star Wars is that it stimulates the imagination, and that's why I don't have any qualms about the toys or about any of the things that are going on around Star Wars, because it does allow young people to use their imagination and think outside the box.

MOYERS: What do you make of the fact that so many people have interpreted your work as being profoundly religious?

LUCAS: I don't see Star Wars as profoundly religious. I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct--that there is a greater mystery out there. [This is a toxic meme. There is no greater mystery out there. There is no mystical other. People who try to convince you that there is are your enemies. -AMPP Ed.] I remember when I was 10 years old, I asked my mother, "If there's only one God, why are there so many religions?" I've been pondering that question ever since, and the conclusion I've come to is that all the religions are true. [This is neo-Maitreyanism, the premise that Maitreya is actually the savior awaited by people of all faiths. -AMPP Ed]

MOYERS: Is one religion as good as another?

LUCAS: I would say so. Religion is basically a container for faith. And faith in our culture, our world and on a larger issue, the mystical level--which is God, what one might describe as a supernatural, or the things that we can't explain--is a very important part of what allows us to remain stable, remain balanced. [This is blatant hogwash. Faith is definitive delusion and cognitive morbidity. It is the preeminent destabilizer of societies, and sets them to exterminating each other. There is nothing balanced about faith. It is all bad. -AMPP Ed.]

MOYERS: One explanation for the popularity of Star Wars when it appeared is that by the end of the 1970s, the hunger for spiritual experience was no longer being satisfied sufficiently by the traditional vessels of faith.

LUCAS: I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people--more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery. [What mystery? -AMPP Ed.] Not having enough interest in the mysteries of life to ask the question, "Is there a God or is there not a God?"--that is for me the worst thing that can happen. I think you should have an opinion about that. Or you should be saying, "I'm looking. I'm very curious about this, and I am going to continue to look until I can find an answer, and if I can't find an answer, then I'll die trying." I think it's important to have a belief system and to have faith. [And with this exhortation to faith, Lucas urges people to pervert their minds and set themselves down the road to madness and genocide. -AMPP Ed.]

MOYERS: Do you have an opinion, or are you looking?

LUCAS: I think there is a God. No question. What that God is or what we know about that God, I'm not sure. The one thing I know about life and about the human race is that we've always tried to construct some kind of context for the unknown. Even the cavemen thought they had it figured out. I would say that cavemen understood on a scale of about 1. Now we've made it up to about 5. The only thing that most people don't realize is the scale goes to 1 million.

MOYERS: The central ethic of our culture has been the Bible. Like your stories, it's about the fall, wandering, redemption, return. But the Bible no longer occupies that central place in our culture today. Young people in particular are turning to movies for their inspiration, not to organized religion.

LUCAS: Well, I hope that doesn't end up being the course this whole thing takes, because I think there's definitely a place for organized religion. [Eek -AMPP Ed.] I would hate to find ourselves in a completely secular world where entertainment was passing for some kind of religious experience.

MOYERS: You said you put the Force into Star Wars because you wanted us to think on these things. Some people have traced the notion of the Force to Eastern views of God--particularly Buddhist--as a vast reservoir of energy that is the ground of all of our being. Was that conscious?

LUCAS: I guess it's more specific in Buddhism, but it is a notion that's been around before that. When I wrote the first Star Wars, I had to come up with a whole cosmology: What do people believe in? I had to do something that was relevant, something that imitated a belief system that has been around for thousands of years, and that most people on the planet, one way or another, have some kind of connection to. I didn't want to invent a religion. I wanted to try to explain in a different way the religions that have already existed. I wanted to express it all.

MOYERS: You're creating a new myth?

LUCAS: I'm telling an old myth in a new way. Each society takes that myth and retells it in a different way, which relates to the particular environment they live in. The motif is the same. It's just that it gets localized. As it turns out, I'm localizing it for the planet. I guess I'm localizing it for the end of the millennium more than I am for any particular place.

MOYERS: What lessons do you think people around the world are taking away from Star Wars?

LUCAS: Star Wars is made up of many themes. It's not just one little simple parable. One is our relationship to machines, which are fearful, but also benign. Then there is the lesson of friendship and symbiotic relationships, of your obligations to your fellow- man, to other people that are around you [Once again, the conception of the individual as the slave of the collective -AMPP Ed.]. This is a world where evil has run amuck [No, this is a world where the evil that is collectivism has run amock. -AMPP Ed.]. But you have control over your destiny, you have many paths to walk down, and you can choose which destiny is going to be yours.

MOYERS: I'm not a psychologist, I'm just a journalist, but it does seem to me there's something autobiographical with Luke Skywalker and his father--something of George Lucas in there.

LUCAS: Oh, yes. There is, definitely. You write from your own emotions. And obviously there are two sides to the redeemer motif in the Star Wars films. Ultimately Vader is redeemed by his children and especially by having children. Because that's what life is all about--procreating and raising children, and it should bring out the best of you. [This sentiment is pathetic. That is what animal life is all about. We are humans and human life is about much more than eating and rutting. In particular, it is about invention, about the artistic and architectural externalization of the self. -AMPP Ed.]

MOYERS: So while Star Wars is about cosmic, galactic epic struggles, it's at heart about a family?

LUCAS: And a hero. Most myths center on a hero, and it's about how you conduct yourself as you go through the hero's journey, which in all classical myth takes the form of a voyage of transformation by trials and revelations. You must let go of your past [This is a brainwashing tactic. Anyone who tells you you must abandon your identity is your enemy. -AMPP Ed.] and must embrace your future and figure out what path you're going to go down.

MOYERS: Is it fair to say, in effect, that Star Wars is your own spiritual quest?

LUCAS: I'd say part of what I do when I write is ponder a lot of these issues. I have ever since I can remember. And obviously some of the conclusions I've come to I use in the films.

MOYERS: The psychologist Jonathan Young says that whether we say, "I'm trusting my inner voice," or use more traditional language--"I'm trusting the Holy Spirit," as we do in the Christian tradition--somehow we're acknowledging that we're not alone in the universe. [Acknowledging? No, they are evidencing their madness. -AMPP Ed.] Is this what Ben Kenobi urges upon Luke Skywalker when he says, "Trust your feelings"?

LUCAS: Ultimately the Force is the larger mystery of the universe. [There is no such intractible mystery internal to the universe. -AMPP Ed.] And to trust your feelings is your way into that. [To trust your feelings is a way to become less like a human and more like an animal, and thereby make yourself immensely more susceptible to manipulation. -AMPP Ed.]

MOYERS: One scholar has called Star Wars "mysticism for the masses." You've been accused of trivializing religion, promoting religion with no strings attached.

LUCAS: That's why I would hesitate to call the Force God. It's designed primarily to make young people think about the mystery. Not to say, "Here's the answer." It's to say, "Think about this for a second. Is there a God? What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? How do we relate to God?" Just getting young people to think at that level is what I've been trying to do in the films. What eventual manifestation that takes place in terms of how they describe their God, what form their faith takes, is not the point of the movie.

MOYERS: And stories are the way to ask these questions?

LUCAS: When the film came out, almost every single religion took Star Wars and used it as an example of their religion; they were able to relate it to stories in the Bible, in the Koran and in the Torah. [As intended, by the purveyors of neo-Maitreyanism. -AMPP Ed.]

MOYERS: Some critics scoff at this whole notion of a deeper layer of meaning to what they call strictly kid stuff. I come down on the side that kid stuff is the stuff dreams are made of.

LUCAS: Yes. It's much harder to write for kids than it is to write for adults. On one level, they will accept--they don't have constraints, and they're not locked into a particular dogma. On the other side, if something doesn't make sense to them, they're much more critical of it.

MOYERS: So when you write, do you see your audience, and is that audience a 13-year-old boy?

LUCAS: I make these films for myself more than I make them for anybody else. [How ironic, given all his above exhortations to selflessness. -AMPP Ed.] I'm lucky that the things that I believe in and the things that I enjoy and the things that entertain me entertain a large population. Sometimes they don't. I've made a bunch of movies that nobody has liked. So that doesn't always hold true. But I don't really make my films for an audience per se. I'm hoping that a 12-year-old boy or girl will enjoy it. But I'm not dumbing it down. I think I'm making it with enough credibility so that anybody can watch it.

MOYERS: It's certainly true that Star Wars was seen by a lot of adults, yours truly included. Even if I hadn't wanted to pay attention, I realized that I had to take it seriously because my kids were taking it seriously. And now my grandkids take it seriously.

LUCAS: Well, it's because I try to make it believable in its own fantastic way. And I am dealing with core issues that were valid 3,000 years ago and are still valid today, even though they're not in fashion.

MOYERS: Why are they out of fashion?

LUCAS: Because the world we live in is more complex. I think that a lot of those moralities have been degraded to the point that they don't exist anymore. But the emotional and psychological part of those issues are still there in most people's minds.

MOYERS: What do you mean by the "emotional" side?

LUCAS: The importance of, say, friendship and loyalty. Most people look at that and say, "How corny." But the issues of friendship and loyalty are very, very important to the way we live, and somebody has got to tell young people that these are very important values. Young people are still learning. They're still picking up ideas. They are still using these ideas to shape the way they're going to conduct their lives. [This guy is not suited to teaching remedial friendship and loyalty! -AMPP Ed.]

MOYERS: How do you explain the power of film to move us?

LUCAS: It takes all the aspects of other art forms--painting, music, literature, theater--and puts them into one art form. It's a combination of all these, and it works on all the senses. For that reason it's a very alluring, kind of dreamlike experience. You sit in a dark room and have this other world come at you in a very realistic way.

MOYERS: Wendy Doniger, who is a scholar of mythology at the University of Chicago, says that myths are important because they remind us that our lives are real and our lives are not real. We have these bodies, which we can touch, but we also have within us this omnipotent magical world of thought.

LUCAS: Myths tell us these old stories in a way that doesn't threaten us. They're in an imaginary land where you can be safe. But they deal with real truths that need to be told. Sometimes the truths are so painful that stories are the only way you can get through to them psychologically.

MOYERS: Ultimately, isn't Star Wars about transformation?

LUCAS: It will be about how young Anakin Skywalker became evil and then was redeemed by his son. But it's also about the transformation of how his son came to find the call and then ultimately realize what it was. Because Luke works intuitively through most of the original trilogy until he gets to the very end. And it's only in the last act--when he throws his sword down and says, "I'm not going to fight this"--that he makes a more conscious, rational decision. And he does it at the risk of his life because the Emperor is going to kill him. [In this scene, Ghandi's message is reenacted. Though Muhandas Ghandi's method has strategic merit, it is nonetheless emphatically false to hold that anger and aggression are inherently evil. The message of the scene Lucas includes in Jedi is that anger and vigorous self-defense are inherently evil. This is repugnant, and to make this claim is itself an evil act. -AMPP Ed.] It's only that way that he is able to redeem his father. It's not as apparent in the earlier movies, but when you see the next trilogy, then you see the issue is, How do we get Darth Vader back? How do we get him back to that little boy that he was in the first movie, that good person who loved and was generous and kind? Who had a good heart.

MOYERS: In authentic religion, doesn't it take Kierkegaard's leap of faith?

LUCAS: Yes, yes. Definitely. You'll notice Luke uses that quite a bit through the film--not to rely on pure logic, not to rely on the computers, but to rely on faith. [To rely, in short, on nothing and nonsense. This is nonsense! Aaah, but they've got me, because they believe nonsense makes sense. Once one is unreasonable, one is unreasonable, and that is that. -AMPP Ed.] That is what that "Use the Force" is, a leap of faith. There are mysteries and powers larger than we are, and you have to trust your feelings in order to access them. [What crap. -AMPP Ed.]

MOYERS: When Darth Vader tempts Luke to come over to the Empire side, offering him all that the Empire has to offer, I am taken back to the story of Satan taking Christ to the mountain and offering him the kingdoms of the world, if only he will turn away from his mission. Was that conscious in your mind?

LUCAS: Yes. That story also has been retold. Buddha was tempted in the same way. It's all through mythology. The gods are constantly tempting. Everybody and everything. [And the religions do it themselves - the meek shall inherit the earth, the Kingdom of Heaven shall be yours, the victory of the Proletariat, etc. -AMPP Ed.] So the idea of temptation is one of the things we struggle against, and the temptation obviously is the temptation to go to the dark side. One of the themes throughout the films is that the Sith lords, when they started out thousands of years ago, embraced the dark side. They were greedy and self-centered [A sane person has himself at his center. The alternative is morbidity. -AMPP Ed.] and they all wanted to take over, so they killed each other. Eventually, there was only one left, and that one took on an apprentice. And for thousands of years, the master would teach the apprentice, the master would die, the apprentice would then teach another apprentice, become the master, and so on. But there could never be any more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor. And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies.

MOYERS: I hear many young people today talk about a world that's empty of heroism, where there are no more noble things to do.

LUCAS: Heroes come in all sizes, and you don't have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It's just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people--these are heroic acts. [What bullshit. -AMPP Ed.] Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives. You don't have to get into a giant laser-sword fight and blow up three spaceships to become a hero.

Bill Moyers' upcoming PBS specials will include Free Speech for Sale on June 8 and Fooling with Words in the fall

from Salon Magazine, 1999-Jun-15, by David Brin, from http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/15/brin_main/index.html:

"Star Wars" despots vs. "Star Trek" populists
Why is George Lucas peddling an elitist, anti-democratic agenda under the guise of escapist fun?

"But there's probably no better form of government than a good despot."
-- George Lucas (New York Times interview, March 1999)

Well, I boycotted "Episode I: The Phantom Menace" -- for an entire week.

Why? What's to boycott? Isn't "Star Wars" good old fashioned sci-fi? Harmless fun? Some people call it "eye candy" -- a chance to drop back into childhood and punt your adult cares away for two hours, dwelling in a lavish universe where good and evil are vividly drawn, without all the inconvenient counterpoint distinctions that clutter daily life.

Got a problem? Cleave it with a light saber! Wouldn't you love -- just once in your life -- to dive a fast little ship into your worst enemy's stronghold and set off a chain reaction, blowing up the whole megillah from within its rotten core while you streak away to safety at the speed of light? (It's such a nifty notion that it happens in three out of four "Star Wars" flicks.)

Anyway, I make a good living writing science-fiction novels and movies. So "Star Wars" ought to be a great busman's holiday, right?

One of the problems with so-called light entertainment today is that somehow, amid all the gaudy special effects, people tend to lose track of simple things, like story and meaning. They stop noticing the moral lessons the director is trying to push. Yet these things matter.

By now it's grown clear that George Lucas has an agenda, one that he takes very seriously. After four "Star Wars" films, alarm bells should have gone off, even among those who don't look for morals in movies. When the chief feature distinguishing "good" from "evil" is how pretty the characters are, it's a clue that maybe the whole saga deserves a second look.

Just what bill of goods are we being sold, between the frames?

 

• Elites have an inherent right to arbitrary rule; common citizens needn't be consulted. They may only choose which elite to follow.

   

   

• "Good" elites should act on their subjective whims, without evidence, argument or accountability.

   

   

• Any amount of sin can be forgiven if you are important enough.

   

   

• True leaders are born. It's genetic. The right to rule is inherited.

   

   

• Justified human emotions can turn a good person evil.

 

That is just the beginning of a long list of "moral" lessons relentlessly pushed by "Star Wars." Lessons that starkly differentiate this saga from others that seem superficially similar, like "Star Trek." (We'll take a much closer look at some stark divergences between these two sci-fi universes below.)

Above all, I never cared for the whole Nietzschian Übermensch thing: the notion -- pervading a great many myths and legends -- that a good yarn has to be about demigods who are bigger, badder and better than normal folk by several orders of magnitude. It's an ancient storytelling tradition based on abiding contempt for the masses -- one that I find odious in the works of A.E. Van Vogt, E.E. Smith, L. Ron Hubbard and wherever you witness slanlike super-beings deciding the fate of billions without ever pausing to consider their wishes.

Wow, you say. If I feel that strongly about this, why just a week-long boycott? Why see the latest "Star Wars" film at all?

Because I am forced to admit that demigod tales resonate deeply in the human heart.

Before moving on to the fun stuff, will you bear with me while we get serious for a little while?

In "The Hero With a Thousand Faces," Joseph Campbell showed how a particular, rhythmic storytelling technique was used in almost every ancient and pre-modern culture, depicting protagonists and antagonists with certain consistent motives and character traits, a pattern that transcended boundaries of language and culture. In these classic tales, the hero begins reluctant, yet signs and portents foretell his pre-ordained greatness. He receives dire warnings and sage wisdom from a mentor, acquires quirky-but-faithful companions, faces a series of steepening crises, explores the pit of his own fears and emerges triumphant to bring some boon/talisman/victory home to his admiring tribe/people/nation.

By offering valuable insights into this revered storytelling tradition, Joseph Campbell did indeed shed light on common spiritual traits that seem shared by all human beings. And I'll be the first to admit it's a superb formula -- one that I've used at times in my own stories and novels.

Alas, Campbell only highlighted positive traits, completely ignoring a much darker side -- such as how easily this standard fable-template was co-opted by kings, priests and tyrants, extolling the all-importance of elites who tower over common women and men. Or the implication that we must always adhere to variations on a single story, a single theme, repeating the same prescribed plot outline over and over again. Those who praise Joseph Campbell seem to perceive this uniformity as cause for rejoicing -- but it isn't. Playing a large part in the tragic miring of our spirit, demigod myths helped reinforce sameness and changelessness for millennia, transfixing people in nearly every culture, from Gilgamesh all the way to comic book super heroes.

It is essential to understand the radical departure taken by genuine science fiction, which comes from a diametrically opposite literary tradition -- a new kind of storytelling that often rebels against those very same archetypes Campbell venerated. An upstart belief in progress, egalitarianism, positive-sum games -- and the slim but real possibility of decent human institutions.

And a compulsive questioning of rules! Authors like Greg Bear, John Brunner, Alice Sheldon, Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick always looked on any prescriptive storytelling formula as a direct challenge -- a dare. This explains why science fiction has never been much welcomed at either extreme of the literary spectrum -- comic books and "high literature."

Comics treat their superheroes with reverent awe, as demigods were depicted in the Iliad. But a true science fiction author who wrote about Superman would have earthling scientists ask the handsome Man of Steel for blood samples (even if it means scraping with a super fingernail) in order to study his puissant powers, and maybe bottle them for everyone.

As for the literary elite, postmodernists despise science fiction because of the word "science," while their older colleagues -- steeped in Aristotle's "Poetics" -- find anathema the underlying assumption behind most high-quality SF: the bold assertion that there are no "eternal human verities." Things change, and change can be fascinating. Moreover, our children might outgrow us! They may become better, or learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. And if they don't learn, that could be a riveting tragedy far exceeding Aristotle's cramped and myopic definition. "On the Beach," "Soylent Green" and "1984" plumbed frightening depths. "Brave New World," "The Screwfly Solution" and "Fahrenheit 451" posed worrying questions. In contrast, "Oedipus Rex" is about as interesting as watching a hooked fish thrash futilely at the end of a line. You just want to put the poor doomed King of Thebes out of his misery -- and find a way to punish his tormentors.

This truly is a different point of view, in direct opposition to older, elitist creeds that preached passivity and awe in nearly every culture, where a storyteller's chief job was to flatter the oligarchic patrons who fed him. Imagine Achilles refusing to accept his ordained destiny, taking up his sword and hunting down the Fates, demanding that they give him both a long life and a glorious one! Picture Odysseus telling both Agamemnon and Poseidon to go chase themselves, then heading off to join Daedalus in a garage start-up company, mass producing wheeled and winged horses so that mortals could swoop about the land and air, like gods -- the way common folk do today. Even if they fail, and jealous Olympians crush them, what a tale it would be.

This storytelling style was rarely seen till a few generations ago, when aristocrats lost some of their power to punish irreverence. Even now, the new perspective remains shaky -- and many find it less romantic, too. How many dramas reflexively depict scientists as "mad"? How few modern films ever show American institutions functioning well enough to bother fixing them? No wonder George Lucas publicly yearns for the pomp of mighty kings over the drab accountability of presidents. Many share his belief that things might be a whole lot more vivid without all the endless, dreary argument and negotiating that make up such a large part of modern life.

If only someone would take command. A leader.

Some people say, why look for deep lessons in harmless, escapist entertainment?

Others earnestly hold that the moral health of a civilization can be traced in its popular culture.

In the modern era, we tend to feel ideas aren't inherently toxic. Yet who can deny that people -- especially children -- will be swayed if a message is repeated often enough? It's when a "lesson" gets reiterated relentlessly that even skeptics should sit up and take notice.

The moral messages in "Star Wars" aren't just window dressing. Speeches and lectures drench every film. They represent an agenda.

Can we learn more about the "Star Wars" worldview by comparing George Lucas' space-adventure epic to its chief competitor -- "Star Trek?"

The differences at first seem superficial. One saga has an air force motif (tiny fighters) while the other appears naval. In "Star Trek," the big ship is heroic and the cooperative effort required to maintain it is depicted as honorable. Indeed, "Star Trek" sees technology as useful and essentially friendly -- if at times also dangerous. Education is a great emancipator of the humble (e.g. Starfleet Academy). Futuristic institutions are basically good-natured (the Federation), though of course one must fight outbreaks of incompetence and corruption. Professionalism is respected, lesser characters make a difference and henchmen often become brave whistle-blowers -- as they do in America today.

In "Star Trek," when authorities are defied, it is in order to overcome their mistakes or expose particular villains, not to portray all institutions as inherently hopeless. Good cops sometimes come when you call for help. Ironically, this image fosters useful criticism of authority, because it suggests that any of us can gain access to our flawed institutions, if we are determined enough -- and perhaps even fix them with fierce tools of citizenship.

By contrast, the oppressed "rebels" in "Star Wars" have no recourse in law or markets or science or democracy. They can only choose sides in a civil war between two wings of the same genetically superior royal family. They may not meddle or criticize. As Homeric spear-carriers, it's not their job.

In teaching us how to distinguish good from evil, Lucas prescribes judging by looks: Villains wear Nazi helmets. They hiss and leer, or have red-glowing eyes, like in a Ralph Bakshi cartoon. On the other hand, "Star Trek" tales often warn against judging a book by its cover -- a message you'll also find in the films of Steven Spielberg, whose spunky everyman characters delight in reversing expectations and asking irksome questions.

Above all, "Star Trek" generally depicts heroes who are only about 10 times as brilliant, noble and heroic as a normal person, prevailing through cooperation and wit, rather than because of some inherited godlike transcendent greatness. Characters who do achieve godlike powers are subjected to ruthless scrutiny. In other words, "Trek" is a prototypically American dream, entranced by notions of human improvement and a progress that lifts all. Gene Roddenberry's vision loves heroes, but it breaks away from the elitist tradition of princes and wizards who rule by divine or mystical right.

By contrast, these are the only heroes in the "Star Wars" universe.

Yes, "Trek" can at times seem preachy, or turgidly politically correct. For example, every species has to mate with every other one, interbreeding with almost compulsive abandon. The only male heroes who are allowed any testosterone are Klingons, because cultural diversity outweighs sexual correctness. (In other words, it's OK for them to be macho 'cause it is "their way.") "Star Trek" television episodes often devolved into soap operas. Many of the movies were very badly written. Nevertheless, "Trek" tries to grapple with genuine issues, giving complex voices even to its villains and asking hard questions about pitfalls we may face while groping for tomorrow. Anyway, when it comes to portraying human destiny, where would you rather live, assuming you'll be a normal citizen and no demigod? In Roddenberry's Federation? Or Lucas' Empire?

Lucas defends his elitist view, telling the New York Times, "That's sort of why I say a benevolent despot is the ideal ruler. He can actually get things done. The idea that power corrupts is very true and it's a big human who can get past that."

In other words a royal figure or demigod, anointed by fate. (Like a billionaire moviemaker?)

Lucas often says we are a sad culture, bereft of the confidence or inspiration that strong leaders can provide. And yet, aren't we the very same culture that produced George Lucas and gave him so many opportunities? The same society that raised all those brilliant experts for him to hire -- boldly creative folks who pour both individual inspiration and cooperative skill into his films? A culture that defies the old homogenizing impulse by worshipping eccentricity, with unprecedented hunger for the different, new or strange? It what way can such a civilization be said to lack confidence?

In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to "get things done" as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers.

Having said all that, let me again acknowledge that "Star Wars" harks to an old and very, very deeply human archetype. Those who listened to Homer recite the "Iliad" by a campfire knew great drama. Achilles could slay a thousand with the sweep of a hand -- as Darth Vader murders billions with the press of a button -- but none of those casualties matters next to the personal saga of a great one. The slaughtered victims are mere minions. Extras, without families or hopes to worry about shattering. Spear-carriers. Only the demigod's personal drama is important.

Thus few protest the apotheosis of Darth Vader -- nee Anakin Skywalker -- in "Return of the Jedi."

To put it in perspective, let's imagine that the United States and its allies managed to capture Adolf Hitler at the end of the Second World War, putting him on trial for war crimes. The prosecution spends months listing all the horrors done at his behest. Then it is the turn of Hitler's defense attorney, who rises and utters just one sentence:

"But, your honors ... Adolf did save the life of his own son!"

Gasp! The prosecutors blanch in chagrin. "We didn't know that! Of course all charges should be dismissed at once!"

The allies then throw a big parade for Hitler, down the avenues of Nuremberg.

It may sound silly, but that's exactly the lesson taught by "Return of the Jedi," wherein Darth Vader is forgiven all his sins, because he saved the life of his own son.

How many of us have argued late at night over the philosophical conundrum -- "Would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a boy, if given a chance?" It's a genuine moral puzzler, with many possible ethical answers. Still, most people, however they ultimately respond, would admit being tempted to say yes, if only to save millions of Hitler's victims.

And yet, in "The Phantom Menace," Lucas wants us to gush with warm feelings toward a cute blond little boy who will later grow up to murder the population of Earth many times over? While we're at it, why not bring out the Hitler family album, so we may croon over pictures of adorable little Adolf and marvel over his childhood exploits! He, too, was innocent till he turned to the "dark side," so by all means let us adore him.

To his credit, Lucas does not try to excuse this macabre joke by saying, "It's only a movie." Rather, he holds up his saga like an agonized Greek tragedy worthy of "Oedipus" -- an epic tale of a fallen hero, trapped by hubris and fate. But if that were true, wouldn't "Star Wars" by now have given us a better-than-caricature view of the Dark Side? Heroes and villains would not be distinguished by mere prettiness; the moral quandaries would not come from a comic book.

Don't swallow it. The apotheosis of a mass murderer is exactly what it seems. We should find it chilling.

Remember the final scene in "Return of the Jedi," when Luke gazes into a fire to see Obi-Wan, Yoda and Vader, smiling in the flames? I found myself hoping it was Jedi Hell, for the amount of pain those three unleashed on their galaxy, and for all the damned lies they told. But that's me. I'm a rebel against Homer and Achilles and that whole tradition. At heart, some of you are, too.

This isn't just a one-time distinction. It marks the main boundary between real, literate, humanistic science fiction -- or speculative fiction -- and most of the movie "sci-fi" you see nowadays.

The difference isn't really about complexity, childishness, scientific naiveté or haughty prose stylization. I like a good action scene as well as the next guy, and can forgive technical gaffes if the story is way cool! The films of Robert Zemeckis take joy in everything, from rock 'n' roll to some deep scientific paradox, feeding both the child and the adult within. Meanwhile, noir tales like "Gattaca" and "The 13th Floor" relish dark stylization while exploring real ideas. Good SF has range.

No, the underlying difference is that one tradition revels in elites, while the other rebels against them. In the genuine science-fiction worldview, demigods aren't easily forgiven lies and murder. Contempt for the masses is passé. There may be heroes -- even great ones -- but in the long run we'll improve together, or not at all. (See my note on the Enlightenment, Romanticism and science fiction.)

That kind of myth does sell. Yet, even after rebelling against the Homeric archetype for generations, we children of Pericles, Ben Franklin and H.G. Wells remain a minority. So much so that Lucas can appropriate our hand-created tropes and symbols -- our beloved starships and robots -- for his own ends and get credited for originality.

As I mentioned earlier, the mythology of conformity and demigod-worship pervades the highest levels of today's intelligentsia, and helps explain why so many postmodernist English literature professors despise real science fiction. When Joseph Campbell prescribed that writers should adhere slavishly to a hackneyed plot outline that preached submission for ages, he was lionized by Bill Moyers and countless others for his warm and fuzzy "human insight."

Indeed, his perceptions were compassionate and illuminating! Still, a frank discussion or debate might have been more useful than Campbell's sunny monologue. As in the old fable about a golden-haired king, no one dared point to the bright ruler's dark shadow, or his long trail of bloody footprints.

I admit we face an uphill battle winning most people over to a more progressive, egalitarian worldview, along with stirring dreams that focus on genuine problems and heroes, not demigods. Meanwhile, Lucas knows his mythos appeals to human nature at a deep and ancient level.

Hell, it appeals to part of my nature! Which is why I knew I'd cave in and see "The Phantom Menace," after my symbolic one-week boycott expired. In fact, let me confess that I adored the second film in the series, "The Empire Strikes Back." Despite Yoda's kitschy pseudo-zen, one could easily suspend disbelief and wait to see what the Jedi philosophy had to say. Millions became keyed up to find out, at long last, why Obi-Wan and Yoda lied like weasels to Luke Skywalker. Meanwhile, the script sizzled with originality, good dialogue and relentlessly compelling characters. The action was dynamite ... and even logical! Common folk got almost as much chance to be heroic as the demigods. Clichés were few and terrific surprises abounded. There were fine foreshadowings, promising more marvels in sequels. It was simply a great movie. Homeric but great.

You already know what I think of what came next. But worshipping Darth Vader only scratches the surface. The biggest moral flaw in the "Star Wars" universe is one point that Lucas stresses over and over again, through the voice of his all-wise guru character, Yoda.

Let's see if I get this right. Fear makes you angry and anger makes you evil, right?

Now I'll concede at once that fear has been a major motivator of intolerance in human history. I can picture knightly adepts being taught to control fear and anger, as we saw credibly in "The Empire Strikes Back." Calmness makes you a better warrior and prevents mistakes. Persistent wrath can cloud judgment. That part is completely believable.

But then, in "Return of the Jedi," Lucas takes this basic wisdom and perverts it, saying -- "If you get angry -- even at injustice and murder -- it will automatically and immediately transform you into an unalloyedly evil person! All of your opinions and political beliefs will suddenly and magically reverse. Every loyalty will be forsaken and your friends won't be able to draw you back. You will instantly join your sworn enemy as his close pal or apprentice. All because you let yourself get angry at his crimes."

Uh, say what? Could you repeat that again, slowly?

In other words, getting angry at Adolf Hitler will cause you to rush right out and join the Nazi Party? Excuse me, George. Could you come up with a single example of that happening? Ever?

That contention is, in itself, a pretty darn evil thing to preach. Above all, it is just plain dumb.

It raises a question that someone should have asked a long time ago. Who the heck nominated George Lucas to preach sick, popcorn morality at our children? If it's "only a movie," why is he working so hard to fill his films with this crap?

I think it's time to choose, people. This saga is not just another expression of the Homeric archetype, extolling old hierarchies of princes, wizards and demigods. By making its centerpiece the romanticization of a mass murderer, "Star Wars" has sunk far lower. It is unworthy of our attention, our enthusiasm -- or our civilization.

Lucas himself gives a clue when he says, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away."

Right on. "Star Wars" belongs to our dark past. A long, tyrannical epoch of fear, illogic, despotism and demagoguery that our ancestors struggled desperately to overcome, and that we are at last starting to emerge from, aided by the scientific and egalitarian spirit that Lucas openly despises. A spirit we must encourage in our children, if they are to have any chance at all.

I don't expect to win this argument any time soon. As Joseph Campbell rightly pointed out, the ways of our ancestors tug at the soul with a resonance many find romantically appealing, even irresistible. Some cannot put the fairy tale down and move on to more mature fare. Not yet at least. Ah well.

But over the long haul, history is on my side. Because the course of human destiny won't be defined in the past. It will be decided in our future.

That's my bailiwick, though it truly belongs to all of you. To all of us.

The future is where our posterity will thrive.

Here is some material that revisits the portion of the previous chapter on the psychology of religion.

The first item was written as guidance and encouragement for cult victims. The stunning reality is that, nearly word for word, it is sound guidance and encouragement for members of the mainstream American public. American society has become a cult. Families are predictably flabbergasted when well-adjusted family members disappear into the bowels of cults like the Garbage Eaters, but there is no real grounds for surprise here. Only those who are susceptible to brainwashing (hijacking of the soul) are well-adjusted in the cult of modern American society in the first place.

from CSNetwork Magazine, Spring 1996, by Janja Lalich, from http://www.jps.net/aanetwork/janjacult.html:

Repairing The Soul After A Cult

I was recruited into a cult in 1975 when I was 30 years old. The previous year I returned to the United States after having spent almost four years in exile abroad, where I lived the most serene life on an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. If someone had told me that within a year I would be deeply involved and committed to a cult, I would have laughed derisively. Not me! I was too independent, too headstrong, a lover of fun and freedom.

But there I was, new to the San Francisco Bay Area and before long cleverly recruited into a group that preached Marxism and feminism and a passion for the working class.

I was told that we would be unlike all other groups on the left because we were led by women and because our leader was brilliant and from the working class. I was told that we would not follow the political line of any other country, but that we would create our own brand of Marxism, our own proletarian feminist revolution; we would not be rigid, dogmatic, sexist, racist. We were new and different -- an elite force. We were going to make the world a better place for all people.

The reality, of course, was that our practical work had little if anything to do with working class ideals or goals. Our leader was an incorrigible, uncontrollable megalomaniac; she was alcoholic, arbitrary, and almost always angry. Our organization, with the word democratic prominent in its name, was ultra-authoritarian, completely top down, with no real input or criticism sought or listened to. Our lives were made up of 18-hour days of busywork and denunciation sessions. Our world was harsh, barren, and unrewarding. We were committed and idealistic dreamers who were tricked into believing that such demanding conditions were necessary to transform ourselves into cadre fighters. We were instructed that we were the uninstructed and that we must take all guidance from our leader who knew all. We were never to question any orders or in any way contradict or confront our leader. We were taught to dread and fear the outside world which, we were told, would shun and punish us. In fact, the shunning and punishment was rampant within; but blinded by our own belief, commitment, and fatigue, in conjunction with the group's behavior-control techniques, I and the others succumbed to the pressures and quickly learned to rationalize away any doubts or apprehensions. I remained in that group 10 years.

Who Am I?

When I got out of the cult in early 1986, I had to begin life anew. I was a decade behind in everything. Both my parents had died, and I had lost touch with former friends. I had to play catch-up, so to speak, culturally, socially, economically, emotionally, and intellectually. But most important of all, I had to repair my soul. Who am I? How could I have committed the many unkind acts while in the group? Where do I belong now? What do I believe in now? Will I ever restore my faith in myself and in others? These are the kinds of questions and dilemmas that troubled me. Over time, and most recently through my contact and work with former members of many types of cults, I've come to see that the single most uniform aspect of all cult experiences is that it touches, and usually damages, the soul, the psyche.

Creating A New Personality

All cults, no matter their stripe, are a variation on a theme, for their common denominator is the use of coercive persuasion and behavior control without the knowledge of the person who is being manipulated. They manage this by targeting (and eventually attacking, disassembling, and reformulating according to the cult's desired image) a person's innermost self. They take away you and give you back a cult personality, a pseudo personality. They punish you when the old you turns up, and they reward the new you. Before you know it, you don't know who you are or how you got there; you only know (or you are trained to believe) that you have to stay there. In a cult there is only one way -- cults are totalitarian, a yellow brick road to serve the leaders whims and desires, be they power, sex, or money.

When I was in my cult, I so desperately wanted to believe that I had finally found the answer. Life in our society today can be difficult, confusing, daunting, disheartening, alarming, and frightening. Someone with a glib tongue and good line can sometimes appear to offer you a solution. In my case, I was drawn in by the proposed political solution -- to bring about social change. For someone else, the focus may be on health, diet, psychological awareness, the environment, the stars, a spirit being, or even becoming a more successful business person. The crux is that cult leaders are adept at convincing us that what they have to offer is special, real, unique, and forever -- and that we wouldn't be able to survive apart from the cult. A person's sense of belief is so dear, so deep, and so powerful; ultimately it is that belief that helps bind the person to the cult. It is the glue used by the cult to make the mind manipulations stick. It is our very core, our very belief in ourself and our commitment, it is our very faith in humankind and the world that is exploited and abused and turned against us by the cults.

Repairing the Soul

When a person finally breaks from a cultic relationship, it is the soul, then, that is most in need of repair. When you discover one day that your guru is a fraud, that the miracles are no more than magic tricks, that the group's victories and accomplishments are fabrications of an internal public relations system, that your holy teacher is breaking his avowed celibacy with every young disciple, that the group's connections to people of import are nonexistent -- when awareness such as these come upon you, you are faced with what many have called a spiritual rape. Whether your cultic experience was religious or secular, the realization of such enormous loss and betrayal tends to cause considerable pain. As a result, afterwards, many people are prone to reject all forms of belief. In some cases, it may take years to overcome the disillusionment, and learn not only to trust in your inner self but also to believe in something again.

There is also a related difficulty: that persistent nagging feeling that you have made a mistake in leaving the groups --perhaps the teachings are true and the leader is right; perhaps it is you who failed. Because cults are so clever at manipulating certain emotions and events--in particular, wonder, awe, transcendence, and mystery (this is sometimes called mystical manipulation) -- and because of the human desire to believe, a former cult member may grasp at some way to go on believing even after leaving the group. For this reason, many people today go from one cult to another, or go in and out of the same cultic group or relationship (known as cult hopping). Since every person needs something to believe in -- a philosophy of life, a way of being, an organized religion, a political commitment, or a combination thereof -- sorting out these matters of belief tends to be a major area of adjustment after a cultic experience.

What to Believe in Now?

Since a cult involvement is often an ill-fated attempt to live out some form of personal belief, the process of figuring out what to believe in once you've left the cult may be facilitated by dissecting the cult's ideological system. Do an evaluation of the group's philosophy, attitudes, and worldview; define it for yourself in your own language, not the language of the cult. Then see how this holds up against the cult's actual daily practice or what you now know about the group. For some, it might be useful to go back and research the spiritual or philosophical system that you were raised in or believed in prior to the cult involvement. Through this process you will be better able to assess what is real and what is not, what is useful and what is not, what is distortion and what is not. By having a basis for comparison, you will be able to question and explore areas of knowledge or belief that were no doubt systematically closed to you while in the cult. Most people who come out of a cultic experience shy away from organized religion or any kind of organized group for some time. I generally encourage people to take their time before choosing another religious affiliation or group involvement. As with any intimate relationship, trust is reciprocal and must be earned.

After a cult experience, when you wake up to face the deepest emptiness, the darkest hole, the sharpest scream of inner terror at the deception and betrayal you feel, I can only offer hope by saying that in confronting the loss, you will find the real you. And when your soul is healed, refreshed, and free of the nightmare bondage of cult lies and manipulations, the real you will find a new path, a valid path--a path to freedom and wholeness.

Janja Lalich is a cult information specialist and consultant in Alameda, CA. She is co-author with Margaret Singer of Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives (Jossey-Bass, 1995). Ms. Lalich is also a member of advisory committees of AFF, publisher of The Cult Observer.

(This article, slightly edited here, first appeared in CSNetwork Magazine, Spring 1996, pp.30-33.)

Here is some germane material from DSM III (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of psychiatric dysfunctions, version of ca. 1992):

• Profile of dependent personality disorder, as a prototype for susceptibility to subjugation by cults
  
  
• Profile of narcissistic personality disorder, as a prototype for ``suitability'' as a cult leader
  
  

Also, from DSM IV (the current version), care of Free Republic, here is a brief on Histrionic Personality Disorder. This profile is particularly relevant to Scientology and other cults that target Hollywood types.

Diagnostic Criteria

A pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. is uncomfortable in situations in which he or she is not the center of attention
2. displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions
3. consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to self
4. has a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail
5. shows self-dramatization, theatricality, and exaggerated expression of emotion
6. is suggestible, i.e., easily influenced by others or circumstances
7. considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are

Associated Features

Depressed Mood
Somatic/Sexual Dysfunction
Anxious/Fearful/Dependent Personality
Dramatic/Erratic/Antisocial Personality

from http://www.jps.net/aanetwork/evaluate.hassan.html:

Ways to evaluate a group's control over personal freedom

[From Chapter Four of "Combatting Cult Mind Control" (Park StreetPress, 1990) by Steven Hassan]

Destructive mind control can be understood in terms of four basic components, which form the acronym BITE:

I. Behavior Control
II. Information Control
III. Thought Control
IV. Emotional Control

These four components are guidelines. Not all groups do every aspect or do them extremely. What matters most is the overall impact on a person's free will and ability to make real choices. A person's uniqueness, talents, skills, creativity, and free will should be encouraged, not suppressed. Destructive mind control seeks to "make people over"in the image of the cult leader. This process has been described as "cloning". This "cult identity"is the result of a systematic process to dissociate a person from his or her previous identity including important beliefs and values as well as significant relationships. The result is the creation of a dual identity, what I refer to "John-John" and "John cult-member".

I. Behavior Control 1. Regulation of individual's physical reality a. Where, how and with whom the member lives and associates with
b. What clothes, colors, hairstyles the person wears
c. What food the person eats, drinks, adopts, and rejects
d. How much sleep the person is able to have
e. Financial dependence
f. Little or no time spent on leisure, entertainment, vacations 2. Major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals
3. Need to ask permission for major decisions
4. Need to report thoughts, feelings and activities to superiors
5. Rewards and punishments (behavior modification techniques - positive and negative).
6. Individualism discouraged; group think prevails
7. Rigid rules and regulations
8. Need for obedience and dependency II. Information Control 1. Use of deception a. Deliberately holding back information
b. Distorting information to make it acceptable
c. Outright lying 2. Access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged a. Books, articles, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio
b. Critical information
c. Former members
d. Keep members so busy they don't have time to think 3. Compartmentalization of information; Outsider vs. Insider doctrines a.Information is not freely accessible
b. Information varies at different levels and missions within pyramid
c. Leadership decides who "needs to know"what 4. Spying on other members is encouraged a. Pairing up with "buddy"system to monitor and control
b. Reporting deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership 5. Extensive use of cult generated information and propaganda a. Newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.
b. Misquotations, statements taken out of context from non-cult sources 6. Unethical use of confession a. Information about "sins"used to abolish identity boundaries
b. Past "sins"used to manipulate and control; no forgiveness or absolution III. Thought Control 1. Need to internalize the group's doctrine as "Truth" a. Map = Reality
b. Black and White thinking
c. Good vs. evil
d. Us vs. them (inside vs. outside) 2. Adopt "loaded" language (characterized by "thought-terminating cliches"). Words are the tools we use to think with. These "special" words constrict rather than expand understanding. They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, platitudinous "buzz words".
3. Only "good" and "proper" thoughts are encouraged.
4. Thought-stopping techniques (to shut down "reality testing" by stopping "negative" thoughts and allowing only "good" thoughts); rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism. a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking
b. Chanting
c. Meditating
d. Praying
e. Speaking in "tongues"
f. Singing or humming 5. No critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate
6. No alternative belief systems viewed as legitimate, good, or useful
IV. Emotional Control 1. Manipulate and narrow the range of a person's feelings.
2. Make the person feel like if there are ever any problems it is always their fault, never the leader's or the group's.
3. Excessive use of guilt a. Identity guilt 1. Who you are (not living up to your potential)
2. Your family
3. Your past
4. Your affiliations
5. Your thoughts, feelings, actions
b. Social guilt
c. Historical guilt 4. Excessive use of fear a. Fear of thinking independently
b. Fear of the "outside"world
c. Fear of enemies
d. Fear of losing one's "salvation"
e. Fear of leaving the group or being shunned by group
f. Fear of disapproval 5. Extremes of emotional highs and lows.
6. Ritual and often public confession of "sins".
7. Phobia indoctrination : programming of irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority. The person under mind control cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group. a. No happiness or fulfillment "outside"of the group
b. Terrible consequences will take place if you leave: "hell"; "demon possession"; "incurable diseases"; "accidents"; "suicide"; "insanity"; "10,000 reincarnations"; etc.
c. Shunning of leave takers. Fear of being rejected by friends, peers, and family.
d. Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group's perspective, people who leave are: "weak"; "undisciplined"; "unspiritual"; "worldly"; "brainwashed by family, counselors"; seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.

---

The Three Stages of Gaining Control of the Mind

[Adapted from Kurt Lewin's three-stage model as described in Coercive Persuasion (Norton, 1961) by Edgar Schein]

1. Unfreezing a. Disorientation / confusion
b. Sensory deprivation and/or sensory overload
c. Physiological manipulation 1. Sleep deprivation
2. Privacy deprivation
3. Change of diet d. Hypnosis 1. Age regression
2. Visualizations
3. Story-telling and metaphors
4. Linguistic double binds, use of suggestion
5. Meditation, chanting, praying, singing e. Get person to question self identity
f. Redefine individual's past (implant false memories, forget positive memories of the past) 2. Changing a. Creation and imposition of new "identity" done step by step 1. Formally within indoctrination sessions
2. Informally by members, tapes, books, etc. b. Use of Behavior Modification techniques 1. Rewards and punishments
2. Use of thought-stopping techniques
3. Control of environment c. Mystical manipulation
d. Use of hypnosis and other mind-altering techniques 1. Repetition, monotony, rhythm
2. Excessive chanting, praying, decreeing, visualizations e. Use of confession and testimonials 3. Refreezing a. New identity reinforced, old identity surrendered 1. Separate from the past; decrease contact or cut off friends and family
2. Give up meaningful possessions and donate assets
3. Start doing cult activities: recruit, fundraise, move in with members b. New name, new clothing, new hairstyle, new language, new "family"
c. Pairing up with new role models, buddy system
d. Indoctrination continues: Workshops, retreats, seminars, individual studies, group activities

Remember, cult mind control does not erase the person's old identity, but rather creates a new one to suppress the old identity (John-John and John-cult).

Thought Reform

[Adapted from Robert Jay Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (Norton, 1961) (now reprinted by the University of North Carolina Press)]

Dr. Lifton's work was the outgrowth of his studies for military intelligence of Mao Tse-Tung's "thought-reform programs" commonly known as "brainwashing." In Chapter 22, Lifton outlines eight criteria for when any environment can be understood as exercising "thought-reform"or mind control.

Lifton wrote that any group has some aspects of these points. However, if an environment has all eight of these points and implements them in the extreme, then there is unhealthy thought reform taking place.

1. Milieu control Environment control and the control of human communication. Not just communication between people but communication within people's minds to themselves.

2. Mystical manipulation Everyone is manipulating everyone, under the belief that it advances the "ultimate purpose." Experiences are engineered to appear to be spontaneous, when, in fact, they are contrived to have a deliberate effect. People misattribute their experiences to spiritual causes when, in fact, they are concoc ted by human beings.

3. Loading the language Controlling words help to control people's thoughts. A totalist group uses totalist language to make reality compressed into black or white;" thought-terminating clich_s."Non-members cannot simply understand what believers are talking about. The words constrict rather than expand human understanding.

4. Doctrine over person No matter what a person experiences, it is the belief of the dogma which is important. Group belief supersedes conscience and integrity.

5. The Sacred Science The group's belief is that their dogma is absolutely scientific and morally true. No alternative viewpoint is allowed. No questions of the dogma are permitted.

6. The Cult of Confession The environment demands that personal boundaries are destroyed and that every thought, feeling, or action that does not conform with the group's rules be confessed; little or no privacy.

7. The demand for purity The creation of a guilt and shame milieu by holding up standards of perfection that no human being can accomplish. People are punished and learn to punish themselves for not living up to the group's ideals.

8. The dispensing of existence The group decides who has a right to exist and does not. There is no other legitimate alternative to the group. In political regimes, this permits state executions.

Hopefully, this summary will motivate you to read the entire Chapter 22 and possibly the entire book. It is considered to be one of the most important descriptions of political mind-control programs. It is also important to note, that now there are 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation mind-control groups and the patterns have evolved and become more refined and sophisticated.

from http://student.uq.edu.au/~s101663/general/snapping.htm:

Snapping

1995
Flo Conway and Joe Siegelman

IN ALL THE WORLD, there is nothing quite so impenetrable as a human mind snapped shut with bliss. No call to reason, no emotional appeal can get through its armor of self-proclaimed joy.

We talked with dozens of individuals in this state of mind: cult members, group therapy graduates, born-again Christians, some Transcendental Meditators. After a while, it seemed very much like dancing to a broken record. We would ask a question, and the individual would spin round and round in a circle of dogma. If we tried to interrupt, he or she would simply pick right up again or go back to the beginning and start over.

Soon we began to realize that what we were watching went much deeper. These people were not simply incapable of carrying on a genuine conversation, they were completely mired in their unthinking, unfeeling, uncomprehending states. Whether cloistered in cults or passing blindly through the world, they were impervious to the pain of parents, spouses, friends and lovers. How do you reach such people? Can they be made to think and feel again? Is there any way to reunite them with their former personalities and the world around them?

A man named Ted Patrick developed the first remedy. A controversial figure dubbed by the cult world Black Lightning, Patrick was the first to point out publicly what the cults were doing to America's youth. He investigated the ploys by which many converts were ensnared and delved into the methods many cults used to manipulate the mind.

He was also the first to take action. In the early seventies, Patrick began a one-man campaign against the cults. His fight started in Southern California, on the Pacific beaches where, in the beginning, organizations such as the Hare Krishna and the Children of God recruited among the vacationing students and carefree dropouts who covered the sands in summer and roamed the bustling beach communities year round. The Children of God approached Patrick's son there one day and nearly made off with him. Patrick investigated, was horrified at what he found, and immediately set out on a course of direct action. His first-hand experiences with cult techniques and their effects led him to develop an antidote he named "deprogramming," a remarkably simple and-when properly used-nearly foolproof process for helping cult members regain their freedom of thought.

Before long, Ted Patrick was in action all over the country on behalf of desperate parents. Through the seventies, he made front page headlines in the east for his daring daylight kidnappings of Ivy League cult members. He made network news for his interstate car chases in the Pacific Northwest to elude both cult leaders and state troopers. And eventually he made American legal history. In his ultimate defense of the U.S. Constitution, Patrick challenged the confusion of First Amendment rights surrounding the cult controversy and drew an important distinction between Americans' guaranteed national freedoms of speech and religion and their more fundamental human right to freedom of thought. In precedent-setting cases, U.S. courts confirmed Patrick's argument that, by "artful and deceiving" means, the new cults were in fact robbing people of their natural capacity to think and choose. To that time, it was never considered possible that a human being could be stripped of this basic endowment.

In many courtrooms, however, Ted Patrick lost his case for freedom of thought, gathering a stack of convictions for kidnapping and unlawful detention. In unsuccessful attempts to free cult members from their invisible prisons, Patrick was repeatedly thrown into real ones, in New York, California and Colorado. In July 1976, during a time when Americans were celebrating their two hundredth year of freedom, Patrick was sentenced to serve a year in prison for a cult kidnapping he did not in fact perform.

Patrick confirmed our own perspective when he described the method of control used by many cults, beginning with the moment the recruiter hooks his listener.

"They have the ability to come up to you and talk about anything they feel you're interested in, anything," he said. "Their technique is to get your attention, then your trust. The minute they get your trust, just like that they can put you in the cult."

It was in 1971 that Patrick infiltrated the Children of God, the cult that had tried to recruit his son, Michael, one Fourth of July on Mission Beach in San Diego. His initial concern over the cults was personal but it also had a public side. Worried parents had already appealed to him for help in his official capacity as head community relations for California's San Diego and Imperial counties. Patrick had moved to the area years earlier and became active in local politics working against discrimination in employment. During the Watts riots is Los Angeles in 1965, he helped calm racial unrest in San Diego. His public service caught the attention of then California's Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, who appointed Patrick, an active Democrat, to the community relations post.

"Thinking to a cult member is like being stabbed in the heart with a dagger," said Patrick. "It's very painful because they've been told that the mind is Satan and thinking is the machinery of the Devil."

Having gained personal insight into the manner in which that machinery may be brought to a halt, Patrick developed his controversial deprogramming procedure, the essence of which, he explained, was simply to get the individual thinking again.

"When you deprogram people," he emphasized, "you force them to think. The only thing I do is shoot them challenging questions. I hit them with things that they haven't been programmed to respond to. I know what the cults do and how they do it, so I shoot them the right questions; and they get frustrated when they can't answer. They think they have the answer, they've been given answers to everything. But I keep them off balance and this forces them to begin questioning, to open their minds. When the mind gets to a certain point, they can see through all the lies that they've been programmed to believe. They realize that they've been duped and they come out of it. Their minds start working again."

That, according to Patrick, was all there was to deprogramming. Yet since Patrick began deprogramming cult members, both the man and his procedure had taken on monstrous proportions in the public eye. Patrick's legendary kidnappings, a tactic he employed only as a last resort, often brought him into physical confrontation with cult members who had been warned that Black Lightning was an agent of Satan who would subject them to unimaginable tortures to get them to renounce their beliefs. Cult members who managed to escape their parents and Patrick before being deprogrammed frequently ran to the media with horror stories about the procedure. One young woman charged on national television that Patrick had ripped her clothes off and chased her nude body across the neighbors' lawns. Other active cult members claimed to have been brutally beaten by Patrick, yet no parent, ex-cult member or other reliable witness we talked to ever substantiated any of those charges. In truth, Patrick told us, and others later confirmed, many of the distortions that had been disseminated about deprogramming were part of a coordinated campaign by several cults to discredit his methods. In the end, he said, the propaganda only worked to his advantage.

"The cults tell them that I rape the women and beat them. They say I lock them in closets and stuff bones done their throats." Patrick laughed. "What they don't know is that they're making my job easier. They come in here frightened to death of me, and then because of all the stuff they've been told, I can just sit there and look at them and I'll deprogram them just like that. They'll be thinking, What the hell is he going to do now? They're waiting for me to slap them or beat them and already their minds are working."

In the beginning, Patrick admitted, he developed his method by trial and error, attempting to reason with cult members and learning each cult's rituals and beliefs until he cracked the code. Refining his procedure with each case, he came to understand exactly what was needed to pierce the cult's mental shield. Like a diamond cutter, he probed with his questions the rough surface of speech and behavior until he found the key point of contention at the center of each cult member's encapsulated beliefs. Once he found that point, Patrick hit it head on, until the entire programmed state of mind gave way, revealing the cult member's original identity and true personality that had become trapped inside.

We asked him to describe a typical deprogramming from the beginning and, then, how he knew when a person had been deprogrammed, that is when he could say for sure that he had done his job.

"The first time I lay eyes on a person," he said, staring at us intently, "I can tell if his mind is working or not. Then, as I begin to question him, I can determine exactly how he has been programmed. 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. I know everything it is going to do, and when I hit on that one certain point that strikes home, I push it. I stay with that questionwhether it's about God, the Devil or that person's having rejected his parents. I keep pushing and pushing. 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. 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."

It was Patrick's term this time - we hadn't said the word for what happens in deprogramming. And in almost every case, according to Patrick, it came about just that suddenly. When deprogramming has been accomplished, the cult member's appearance undergoes a sharp, drastic change. He comes out of his trancelike state and his ability to think for himself is restored.

"It's like seeing a person change from a werewolf into a man," said Patrick. "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."

Snapping, a word Ted Patrick used often, is a phenomenon that appears to have extreme moments at both ends. A moment of sudden, intense change may occur when a person enters a cult, during lectures, rituals and physical ordeals. Another change may take place with equal, or even greater, abruptness when the subject is deprogrammed and made to think again. Once this breakthrough is achieved, however, the person is not just "snapped out" and home free. Deprogramming always requires a period of rehabilitation to counteract an interim condition Patrick called "floating". Patrick told us, he recommended that his subjects return to everyday life and normal social relationships as quickly as possible. In that environment, the individual, must then actively work to rebuild the fundamental capacities of thought and feeling that have been systematically destroyed.

"Deprogramming is like taking a car out of the garage that hasn't been driven for a year," he said. "The battery has gone down, and in order to start it up you've got to put jumper cables on it. It will go dead again. So you keep the motor running until it builds up its own power. This is what rehabilitation is. Once we get the mind working, we keep it working long enough so that the person gets in the habit of thinking and making decisions again."

Deprogramming added a whole new dimension to the already complex mystery of snapping. In one sense, deprogramming confirms that some drastic change takes place in the workings of the mind in the course of a cult member's experience, for only through deprogramming does it become apparent to everyone, including the cult member, that his actions, expressions and even his physical appearance have not been under his own control. In another sense, deprogramming is itself a form of sudden personality change. Because it appears to be a genuinely broadening, expanding personal change, it would seem to bear closer resemblance to a true moment of enlightenment, to the natural process of personal growth and newfound awareness and understanding, than to the narrowing changes brought about by cult rituals and artificially induced group ordeals.

What is it like to experience the sudden snap of a deprogramming? As a result of Ted Patrick's efforts, and others, there are now thousands of answers to the question. Patrick claims to have personally deprogrammed more than two thousand cult members; thousands more have been deprogrammed by other deprogrammers and professional "exit counselors" who have since entered this fledgling field. In our first round of cross-country travels, we spoke with dozens of ex-cult members, many of whom had been deprogrammed by Patrick. As far as we could see, his clients showed no scars, either physical of mental, from their deprogramming experience. Most seemed to be healthy, happy, fully rehabilitated and completely free of the effects of cult life.

In contrast to the many tales of cult conversion that we heard, which after a while began to sound virtually identical, each story of a Patrick deprogramming was its own spellbinding adventure, rich with intrigue and planned in minute detail. The first step in the process was almost always to remove the member from the cult, which might be accomplished by abduction, legal custodianship or, as Patrick seemed to prefer, simply a clever subterfuge.

One puzzle of snapping that the deprogramming process illuminates is the enormous amount of mental activity that takes place in the unthinking, unfeeling state many cult members are drawn into. Ironically, most people we spoke with fought desperately to preserve their blissed-out states, although they often were saturated with fear, guilt, hatred and exhaustion. In the beginning this seemed to present a disturbing contradiction: How could an individual whose mind has apparently been shut off, who has been robbed of his freedom of thought, display such cunning and initiative? What the deprogramming process demonstrated is that cult members do not simply snap from a normal conscious state into one of complete unconsciousness (and vice versa during deprogramming). Rather, most pass from one frame of waking awareness into a second, entirely separate, frame of awareness in which they may be equally active and perceptive.

We talked with an ex-member of the Church of Scientology, one of the oldest and cagiest of America's cults, who took steps to preserve his cult frame of mind during his deprogramming, until Patrick's adept conversational skills caught his attention and he snapped out.

"I tried to pretend that I was listening," this former Scientologist told us, "but I also tried to stay spaced out and not really pay attention. Occasionally, something would go pop and I would suddenly be listening to him. From his continuously talking like that, he just snapped me out of the spaced-out state I was in. All of a sudden I felt a little flushed. I could feel the blood rushing through my face."

Through two decades of legal battles and repeated periods of imprisonment and probation, few people spoke up in defense of Ted Patrick or the pioneering work he was doing, ultimately, at his own great personal and financial expense. No mainstream mental health organization or established social institution has yet taken a stand on behalf of his concept of freedom of thought. Part of the problem, especially in those years, was attributed to Patrick's manner of action. In his single-minded focus on rescuing cult members, he minced no words and wasted little time on social niceties. As a result, he often irked and alienated those parents, clinicians and law enforcement officials who might otherwise be his natural allies.

Yet, regardless of his style, the grave questions Patrick first flamboyantly brought to public attention are not the ones we can choose to like or dislike - nor will they simply go away if we ignore them. Is an individual free to give up his freedom of thought? May a religion, popular therapy, political movement or any other enterprise systematically attack human thought and feeling in the name of God, the pursuit of happiness, personal growth or spiritual fulfillment? These are questions that Americans, perhaps more than others, are not prepared to deal with, because they challenge long-standing constitutional principles and cultural assumptions about the nature of the mind, personality and human freedom itself.

In the months after our trip to the Orange county Jail we spoke with many people about Ted Patrick: parents, ex-cult members, attorneys, mental health professionals and others who, at the time, were only dimly aware of the building controversy over some alleged forms of religion in America. Some denounced him as a villain and a fascist, others hailed him as a folk hero and dark prophet of what lay ahead for America. Yet Patrick himself showed little concern for titles or media images.

Through the eighties, Black Lightning remained a lightning rod, a target for aggressive counterattacks and disinformation campaigns waged against deprogramming by major cults and more mainstream fundamentalist Christian sects. By the mid-nineties, he was widely presumed to be out of commission, but Patrick was still active, working mostly on voluntary deprogrammings and rehabilitation counseling. In the interim, swayed by a changing religious, political and social climate, courts across the country grew cold to deprogramming. Another pioneering deprogrammer, New York cult counselor and private detective Galen Kelly, was prosecuted on criminal charges in two separate cases but was convicted and spent more than a year in prison on the second before an appeals court overturned his conviction.

Those cases and others brought a global chill. In the new climate, judges were deaf to the pleas of the parents and families of cult members, and the precarious deprogramming profession was largely eclipsed by the efforts of the new generation of cult "exit counselors." Exit counselors we talked with, many of them one-time sect members themselves who had gone on to acquire clinical training and credentials, were testing a wide range of eclectic approaches, some more successful, some less so. Many were generalists, counseling cultists and families across America and, increasingly, in other countries. Some specialized in counseling ex-Moonies, members of Eastern cults, of controlling charismatic groups and extreme fundamentalist sects.

Most confirmed a pattern we, too, had noted: the new methods of voluntary deprogramming and exit counseling, while far less controversial and much safer from a legal standpoint, prompted fewer cult members to experience a sudden "snapping out" of their controlled states of mind. Instead, most experienced a slower process of emergence, or as Rick Ross, an exit counselor from Arizona, called it, a gradual "unfolding" from the cults' ingrained altered states. Afterwards, many required additional counseling, specialized rehabilitation and, for some, ongoing psychotherapy to recover their personalities and regain full control over their impaired powers of mind.

But, two decades later, public understanding and professional support were still in short supply.

from http://www.crl.com/~thelema/crowley.html:

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Edward Alexander (Aleister) Crowley [rhymes with "holy"] was born October 12, 1875 in Leamington Spa, England. His parents were members of the Plymouth Brethren, a strict fundamentalist Christian sect. As a result, Aleister grew up with a thorough biblical education and an equally thorough disdain of Christianity.

He attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, leaving just before completing his degree. Shortly thereafter he was introduced to George Cecil Jones, who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was an occult society led by S.L. MacGregor Mathers which taught magick, qabalah, alchemy, tarot, astrology, and other hermetic subjects. It had many notable members (including A. E. Waite, Dion Fortune, and W. B. Yeats), and its influence on the development of modern western occultism was profound.

Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1898, and proceeded to climb up rapidly through the grades. But in 1900 the order was shattered by schism, and Crowley left England to travel extensively throughout the East. There he learned and practiced the mental and physical disciplines of yoga, supplementing his knowledge of western-style ritual magick with the methods of Oriental mysticism.

In 1903, Crowley married Rose Kelly, and they went to Egypt on their honeymoon. After returning to Cairo in early 1904, Rose (who until this point had shown no interest or familiarity with the occult) began entering trance states and insisting to her husband that the god Horus was trying to contact him. As a test, Crowley took Rose to the Boulak Museum and asked her to point out Horus to him. She passed several well-known images of the god and led Aleister straight to a painted wooden funerary stele from the 26th dynasty, depicting Horus receiving a sacrifice from the deceased, a priest named Ankh-f-n-khonsu. Crowley was especially impressed by the fact that this piece was numbered 666 by the museum, a number with which he had identified since childhood.

The upshot was that he began to listen to Rose, and at her direction, on three successive days beginning April 8, 1904, he entered his chamber at noon and wrote down what he heard dictated from a shadowy presence behind him. The result was the three chapters of verse known as Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law. This book heralded the dawning of the new aeon of Horus, which would be governed by the Law of Thelema. "Thelema" is a Greek word meaning "will", and the Law of Thelema is often stated as: "Do what thou wilt". As the prophet of this new aeon, Crowley spent the rest of his life working to develop and establish Thelemic philosophy.

In 1906 Crowley rejoined George Cecil Jones in England, where they set about the task of creating a magical order to continue where the Golden Dawn had left off. They called this order the A.'. A.'. (Astrum Argentium or Silver Star), and it became the primary vehicle for the transmission of Crowley's mystical and magical training system based on the principles of Thelema.

Then in 1910 Crowley was contacted by Theodore Reuss, the head of an organization based in Germany called the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). This group of high-ranking Freemasons claimed to have discovered the supreme secret of practical magick, which was taught in its highest degrees. Apparently Crowley agreed, becoming a member of O.T.O. and eventually taking over as head of the order when Reuss suffered a stroke in 1921. Crowley reformulated the rites of the O.T.O. to conform them to the Law of Thelema, and vested the organization with its main purpose of establishing Thelema in the world. The order also became independent of Freemasonry (although still based on the same patterns) and opened its membership to women and men who were not masons.

Aleister Crowley died in Hastings, England on December 1, 1947. However, his legacy lives on in the Law of Thelema which he brought to mankind (along with dozens of books and writings on magick and other mystical subjects), and in the orders A.'. A.'. and O.T.O. which continue to advance the principles of Thelema to this day.

Love is the law, love under will.

excerpt from the web site of the Ordo Templi Orientis, from http://www.otohq.org/history.html:

[...]

In Ascona, Reuss held an "Anational Congress for Organising the Reconstruction of Society on Practical Cooperative [emphasis mine -AMPP Ed.] Lines" at Monte Verità from August 15-25, 1917. This Congress included readings of Crowley's poetry (on August 22) and a recitation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass (on August 24 -- for O.T.O. members only). The announcement for this congress stated: "There are two centres of the O.T.O., both in neutral countries, where enquiries can be lodged by those interested in the aim of this congress. One is at New York (U.S. of America), the other at Ascona (Italian Switzerland)." Crowley was living in New York at the time; so, evidently, he and Reuss were the only active National Heads of O.T.O. in 1917.

[...]

Also see the Manifesto of the O.T.O. by Aleister Crowley.

from The Walt Disney Company, from http://asp.disney.go.com/disneyworld/db/seetheworld/themeparks/facilities/attraction.asp?id=79&landid=8:

The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter

Brace yourself for a sensory thrill hatched from the imaginations of Disney and the one and only George Lucas. An experiment goes dangerously awry when an Alien is accidentally teleported into the room, in the dark. So if you feel its hot breath on your neck, try not to make any sudden moves.

from the fan website of Londoner Chris Gibson, from http://www.mickey-mouse.com/wdwtomorrowland.htm:

[...]

The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter - After you've seen the pre-show, you be led away to witness an amazing experiment. However, the experiment goes frighteningly wrong - it's something you'll never forget. Probably not suitable for real young children, or those who are lily-livered scaredy-cats. Be brave, get in line for Alien Encounter, you'll be talking about it for days!

[...]

from the Skeptics Society's Skeptic magazine hotline, 2000-Mar-15, via Ian Pitchford's Evolutionary Psychology Forum, 2000-Mar-16, by James Oberg, 2000-Mar-10:

Disney's Legendary 'Alien Encounters' Sneak TV Documentary Quotes

Several years ago, the Disney company aired a major one-hour television Special, with no advance notice, on stations in only 5 US cities. Thanks to a few viewers who were able to roll their vcrs and capture it, we have a record of the startling quotes and statements it contained.

In light of the current, purported 'rift' between Disney and NASA over the content of Disney's new film, "Mission To Mars", I thought it pertinent to revisit those quotes.

My thanks to my colleague Michael Lindemann of CNI News for his file containing the many arresting and downright shocking statements in that Disney special...which appears now, as it did then, to have been a definite probe to measure public reaction to news of the reality of visitation and interaction with various forms of non-human intelligent life.

Remember, the quotes you are about to read were delivered by Disney CEO Michael Eisner and program narrator Robert Urich with straight, matter-of-fact, totally serious cadence and inflection.

Script excerpts from "Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland" All quotes were spoken by host/narrator Robert Urich unless otherwise noted.

INTRO sequence, over various UFO photos and film: "This is not swamp gas. It is not a flock of birds. This is an actual spacecraft from another world, piloted by alien intelligence, one sighting from tens of thousands made over the last fifty years on virtually every continent on the globe. Intelligent life from distant galaxies is now attempting to make open contact with the human race. And tonight, we'll show you the evidence."

Michael Eisner [standing in front of what looks like a military hangar, guarded by about a dozen heavily armed troops]: "Tonight we celebrate the New Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World in Florida with a television special that's out of this world. Hello, I'm Michael Eisner, head of the Walt Disney Company. At a top secret military installation somewhere in the United States, there are those who believe that the government is hiding the remains of an alien spacecraft that mysteriously crashed to earth. With more and more scientific evidence of alien encounters and UFO sightings, the idea of creatures from another planet might not be as far-fetched as we once thought. In fact, one of you out there could have the next alien encounter. Enjoy tonight's special. I'm going to walk over and see if I can sneak a peak. (soldiers raise weapons) Maybe not!"

Urich: "Scientific verification of extraterrestrial life forms routinel arriving on earth -- top secret reports from ongoing military investigations -- compelling home videos of alien craft captured within the last few months -- world figures who have gone public with their own extraterrestrial experiences -- the shocking history of government misinformation programs designed to prevent widespread panic -- and personal accounts of those who have been abducted and studied against their will...

"From beyond the boundaries of our perceptions, intelligent beings are beckoning mankind to join the galactic community. It's an invitation which is both wondrous and terrifying. This is the nature of alien encounters.

"Now as we approach the new millennium, mankind is in the midst of the most profound event in history -- actual contact with intelligent life from other planets. For nearly [fifty? -AMPP Ed.] years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth, and thousands of people have seen or experienced this alien presence. Yet many others still refuse to acknowledge the obvious evidence all around them. What is it like to be confronted by a creature whose intelligence and skill is far beyond the comprehension of mankind? Would it be enlightening? Would it be an exercise in terror? Or perhaps both?

"At the Walt Disney World resort near Orlando, Florida, these concepts are brought to life as guests experience their own alien encounter, a sensory thriller from Disney and George Lukas. We'll give you a sneak preview later in the show. But first, we must prepare you for the future with some shocking insights from the recent past.

"Alien ships seem to arrive in waves, and if the last few years are any indication, planet Earth is experiencing a tsunami of sightings... In the last few months of 1994 and lately in 1995, Gulf Breeze, Florida has been ground zero for alien encounters. Especially during the day, extraterrestrial craft have become common ornaments in the uneasy skies....You would think these alien sightings would be front-page news. So why have they received almost no national attention? The answer is simple. For governments determined to maintain their authority, extraterrestrial contact is pure dynamite.

Kevin Randle: "There's beings from another planet. We don't know where they come from, we don't know what they're doing here. There's nothing we can do about it...Any time a technologically superior civilization comes in contact with a technologically inferior civilization, the technologically inferior civilization ceases to exist. Not necessarily through conquest, not necessarily through invasion, but because the technology changes the underlying social structures of that civilization, and it disintegrates."

Urich: "Those fears are reflected in a 1960 federally funded study by the Brookings Institution, which warned that public knowledge of alien life could cause civilization to collapse."

"Why have aliens chosen to visit our small blue planet, hidden on the distant fringes of an insignificant star cluster? Well, we invited them here.

"When we return: What is attracting alien visitors to planet earth -- Extraterrestrials take aim on America's military -- a crashed saucer becomes a top-secret bombshell -- the nation's capital becomes a cosmic cross-roads -- and later, how Disney imagineers have disigned a way to prepare humans for their inevitable alien encounter."

"There have been reports of alien encounters throughout recorded history, often buried in the obscure poetry of mystics. But since the end of World War II, alien encounters have adopted a darker, more menacing demeanor. No longer just spirited lights dancing in the sky, UFOs turned more brazen, announcing themselves with surprising ferocity."

"Most alien activity on earth in this century seems to have been sparked by the single most profound technological achievement in human history. The atomic bomb did more than blow away every conventional notion of combat. It also saddled mankind with the awesome responsibility of life and death for the entire planet. But what the world didn't know in 1945 was that the atomic bomb's brilliant burst of energy would also be mankind's cosmic calling card, announcing to the universe that a technological society had evolved on a small blue planet in the backwaters of the stars...So as the world celebrated the war's end in 1945, aliens who heard man's atomic trumpet were already charting their course toward earth, responding to our open invitation.

"As early as 1947, the large alien ships began to arrive, navigated by living creatures. Their advanced physics allowed them to traverse the galaxy and pierce earth's atmosphere with amazing speed. The U.S. military immediately went on the alert against the unknown menace. Sightings were perceived as threats to the security still reeling from the edgy consciousness of war. And the sightings were taking place all across the country...

"Occasionally the tables were turned. More than one alien craft crashed and was recovered for secret U.S. military research. The most famous case took place in July of 1947 just outside the community of Roswell, New Mexico -- famous, because local officials openly admitted they had retrieved an alien ship before their commanders instructed them to keep the story confidential. What you can't explain, they reasoned, you must deny.

"This is the actual site where the Roswell saucer was discovered, along with the bodies of three extraterrestrial missionaries who didn't servive the collision. The debris and the dead were impounded and taken away for top secret study, while a classified investigative committee called the Majestic Twelve was organized by President Truman, and a government cover-up was initiated with a calculated disinformation campaign....

"But while the Pentagon refused to publicly admit aliens had arrived on earth, their top secret internal memos told a different story, even detailing the various ships and the creatures they had autopsied...

"By the early 1960s, UFOs were having a chilling effect on our defense operations. Their tremendous speed often caused them to be misidentified as incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles, putting American air bases on red alert. There needed to be some way for the U.S. and the Soviets to distinguish between nuclear attack and alien visitors.

[Newsreel footage about installation of Hot Line]

Clifford Stone: "The Hot Line between Moscow and Washington was set up so that they could go ahead and make last-minute pleas, that 'We're not attacking you, and you're not attacking us.' The purpose of this was to insure that a nuclear war would not be touched off by a UFO appearing on the scopes and being mistaken for enemy aircraft."

Urich: "The Hot Line eased some international tensions, but it didn't halt the intereaction between the military and the aliens, which continues to this day."

Stone: "November of 1975, essentially every SAC base in the United States was visited by UFOs. We have reason to believe that the UFOs went ahead and had some effect on changing the codes within the missiles, within the launch control facility, to change where the missiles would hit. 1976, September, Iran, two F-4s try to intercept a UFO and shoot at one of the UFOs. The weapons systems of the planes go dead, the communications systems go dead. These are just two examples of cases that cound like they came out of science fiction, but in reality, they're from government documentation, documents released by the State Department."

Urich: "Indications are that government, military and scientific leaders will soon release nearly a half-century of official documentation of ongoing alien encounters on earth. Perhaps they feel it would be too embarrassing NOT to reveal the truth, before the truth reveals itself. But these FBI files acquired through the Freedom of Information Act outline nearly fifty years of UFO reports investigated by federal agents all across America, overwhelming evidence that something sinister is at work."

"The fact is, everyone encounters alien lifeforms each day. We've just become accustomed to ignoring the evidence. We expect the first visitors from outer space to arrive in flying saucers. But there are new scientific suggetions that the microbiotic organisms which routinely invade human bodies in the form of viral disease may have extraterrestrial connections. These minute alien life forms may very well be the advance invasion force, leading the way to test earth's environment for more complex and determined creatures....

"Life is plentiful in the universe, and eerily tenacious. Lately, scientists have found extraordinary numbers of unknown organisms which have gained a biological foothold where we once thought survival would be impossible. They grow in deadly ammonia gas. They are resistant to ultraviolet radiation. They thrive inside the radioactive cooling systems of nuclear power plants. And they can even survive the vacuum of space, re-animating themselves when air and water become available. Riding inside the stone cacoon of a meteor, life can travel virtually anywhere, and a good deal of it lands on planet earth.

"But just as we explore the genetic package of alien life, visitors from space are routinely examining human specimens, abducting men, women and children in order to conduct disturbing biological experiments...

[long sequence on abduction, clips of Budd Hopkins and numerous abductees.]

"This particular report from October of 1969 was filled out by Jimmy Carter. He was still Governor of Georgia at the time he witnessed a luminous object suspended in the twilight sky. Later, when he assumed the office of President of the United States, his staff atempted to explore the availability of official investigations into alien contact. As this internal government memo illustrates, there are some security secrets outside the jurisdiction of the White House."

[picture focuses on a few words of a document suggesting info not available to certain officials, but not enough words are visible to determine exactly what is said.]

"Every year, NASA routinely propels about two dozen astronauts into a low earth orbit aboard the space shuttle, a loud, lumbering, somewhat primitive rocket ship. But most Americans will likely explore outer space aboard crafts of alien origin. Statistics indicate a greater probability that you will experience extraterrestrial contact in the next five years than the chances that you will win a state lottery. But how do you prepare for such an extraordinary event?

"Here in the New Tomorrowland at Disney World, scientists and Disney engineers have brought to life a possible scenario that helps acclimate the public to their inevitable alien encounter.

"Welcome to the new Tomorrowland Convention Center in the Magic Kingdom, where humans can enjoy their first taste of the future, as well as advanced extraterrestrial technology, and begin to understand the disturbing facets of alien intelligence...

[scenes of new ride emphasize the "extra-terror-estrial" quality of the event, as both technology and alien life forms run amok.]

[conclusion] "Planet earth has always been a laboratory for alien life forms which can drop in from space or slowly mutate into bizarre fleshy organisms at our feet. [holding a large mushroom] Understanding the nature of these strange creatures from above, and below, is the greatest challenge of our age. We now know that our future, indeed the future of earth itself, rests in the balance of the solid and the ethereal, of common sense and the irrational, in our relationship with alien life as grotesque as a fungus, or as glorious as the heavens."

Read A Die-Hard Issue: CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90, by Gerald K. Haines, National Reconnaissance Office historian, from Studies In Intelligence Vol. 01 No. 1, 1997 (a classified publication of the Central Intelligence Agency, partially declassified after initial publication).

from WorldNetDaily 1999-Feb-12, by S.L.Goldman:

© 1999 S.L. Goldman

My goodness Toto. I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
-- Dorothy

LOS ANGELES -- It's 11:00 a.m. and a small group of people gather outside the door of a small pink and green stucco house in West Hollywood. There is something curious about the people. Somehow, all their faces seem expressionless, gray.

On the lawn a sign is posted. THE ATHEERIUS SOCIETY. DIVINE SUNDAY SERVICE BY METROPOLITAN ARCHBISHOP, HIS EMINENCE, SIR GEORGE KING. 11:00 A.M. SPECIAL COMMEMORATION FOR THE EVICTION OF THE ALIEN. FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL 467-HEAL.

Inside the house more of the gray-faced people are seated in folding chairs. Nobody talks. Many of the people wear robes, and most have a large Earth-medallion affixed around their necks. Eerie music drones in the background.

After a bit, a man bespectacled, dour-faced man takes the pulpit and leads the people in a "prayer." In unison, the group chants, "Om, shanti, shanti. OM, SHANT SHANTI ... OMMMMMMMMMMM." Following the prayer, the man announces, "His eminence, Sir George King!"

A man attired in regal gold papal robes and helmet and brandishing an Egyptian ankh cross takes the lectern. People bow as he passes. Rather than a pope, the man somehow recalls Emperor Ming of Flash Gordon fame.

For the next half hour, King delivers his sermon. It's a bit difficult to follow, but primarily, it revolves around bits of wisdom channeled through him through him by a group from other planets called the Elevated Masters of the Solar System. These elevated Masters include Jesus, Master Atherius, Saint Goo-Ling and a fellow calling himself Mars Sector 6. Later -- via tape -- the Master Jesus (who sounds uncannily like Vincent Price) issues a warning the churchgoers of the dark times ahead. After the sermon is over, the gray faced people gather and talk.

Many of them have an odd, glazed look in their eyes. The people talk in hushed tones, about the work they are doing to save the planet. Some buy books which are sold at a small table in the foyer of the house The group gathered are all members of the Atherius Society, which, according to the L.A. Times is "the most structured and perhaps the most strictly rigid of all the UFO cults."

UFO cults are relatively new. But belief in UFO's and their occupants are not. They have been with us forever. They have been called the Elders, the Gods, the Watchers, Sky People, angels, faeries -- and most recently, aliens, or Visitors. Whatever they are, they have been around since the beginning of time.

The flying saucer craze hit America in 1947. Today, in addition to the Atherius Society -- cults abound which worship assorted hodgepodge of otherworldly beings, including the MarkAge Metacenter, the Solar Light Center, the Urantia Group, the Solar Cross Foundation and the School Of Thought.

Not all UFO believers are cultists. In fact, they're a reputable lot, including such luminaries as General Douglas MacArthur, Jimmy Carter, Jackie Gleason -- who had his house built like a UFO -- Shirley McLaine actors Robert Davi, Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

But today, one thing is for sure. UFO's and their occupants have hit the bigtime. According to a Gallop poll 25 million Americans say they've seen a UFO, and 68% of those surveyed saying that they believe they are real.

There are more than 50,000 silent contactees -- people who've had up close and personal contact with aliens -- in the U.S. alone. TV has jumped on the bandwagon. Last Wednesday night, NBC devoted two hours of prime time to a UFO special (hosted by actor Robert Davi, who walks through the woods in a black trench coat while reading his cue card throughout the entirety of the show). "Confirmation: One of the reasons UFO's are so hot is that they've become a staple of one of the most solid markets on the planet (forgive the terminology), the New Age Movement. Shirley MacLaine -- former Big Mamma of the NAM gave UFO's a big push in her first book, "Out On A Limb," and -- along with a contingent of other Hollywood "biggies" has continued to claim the reality of our alien "brethren."

 

If one doubts the connection between the UFO and the New Age Movement, all one need do is to check the ads in any of the UFO magazines. The top sellers, UFO and UFO Universe are chock full of ads hawking everything from Reich Orgone Accumulator Blanket, Light Wands, courses for coming into contact with aliens, healing crystals. There are weekend "consciousness raising" retreats. One group called Extraterrestrial Explorations offers such a weekend, complete with "guided meditations and visualizations, information on ET civilizations, abductions and missing time" for just $275 per person.

Indeed, many of the "beings" (always anxious to keep up with the times) are space entities. Robert Shapiro, a channel working out of Arizona channels such beings as Zoosh -- a "being of Light from Alpha Centaur," Joopah -- "a spiritually evolved being fro Zeta Reticuli," Then there is Zeohmah, "a kind and compassionate feminine energy," who channels through Hollwood's Douglas Benton.

These days no one particular channel seems to have a contract on who he channels; therefore Shapiro warns his people that other people channel these as well. Shapiro charges $55 per hour for "bringing through" his beings.

Other people, however don't need a channel. These people -- who call themselves Walk-Ins -- claim that they are the original owners of bodies have left this plane and that the bodies are now inhabited by aliens from any one of a number of spheres. Alpha Centauri seems to be the most popular.

 

---

"The night skies are filled more often with thousands of cosmic eyes. More and more people are stopped on lonely roads by strange forces which reprogram their minds as easily as we alter and reprogram computer tapes.," These ominous words are from John Keel author o numerous books, including "Disneyland Of The Gods.

"This may sound like the stuff of horror films, but that's what's happening. Today, people are being kidnapped right out of their bedrooms, cars, what have you and being whisked off to spaceships where they have operations performed on them," Keel says.

"We're not talking about crazies or whackos--you know--the people walking around with tinfoil on their heads to keep themselves from getting zapped by Martian rays. No, we're talking about ordinary folks, just like you and me," he continues.

The typical abduction experience has a definite form to it. With slight alterations it goes as follows: The abduction generally takes place at night. It can happen in a car, or the person may wake up in bed. Initially, the person is hit by a blinding white light. He then finds himself paralyzed, unable to move. The person then sees a being -- who come in various shapes and sizes. Most of them are of the small, friendly looking "ET" variety. Big heads, large eyes. We're all familiar with this little guy by now.

The person may then find himself in a room, aboard a spacecraft undergoing an operation. Abductees report having needles inserted into their brains or in the abdomen. Men report having their sexual organs examined and sperm samples taken. Women find themselves impregnated, and the fetuses later removed. One fellow on the NBC special on Wednesday claimed, tears flowing from his eyes, to have fathered nine alien children.

Following the abduction, several different scenarios may occur. The first is that the abductee may entirely forget the experience. He may remember it at a later date or not at all. Often, a series of false memories, called "screen memories" or "confabulations" are implanted in the contactees mind, which may, or may not be removed at a later time. In the case the contactee develops further contact with his captor, he is told that he has been "chosen," or that he is part of an elite group to help humanity save itself. Some abductees are loyal to their captors. Others feel controlled by them.

Many abductees develop increased IQ's, acquire heretofore unknown knowledge, including the ability to speak foreign languages.The abductee often gains psychic powers. He may develop the talent for OBE(out of body experience) astral projection, levitation, and a host of other disciplines of the New Age.

Less happily (and more often) abductees seem to go into psychological tailspins after their encounters. Many wind up in psychiatrists offices, lose their marriages, go bankrupt. Some commit suicide Given that the abduction experience is, more often than not, a highly unpleasant one, it's curious to find so many people reading about it, even seeking it. But these days, with the New Age Movement popular like never before, it seems that anything that guarantees a raising of the consciousness will sell. So be it.

Basically, the UFO movement is divided in two camps. Believers and skeptics. Of course, most of the Believers say they're skeptical, but it's quickly obvious that they are anything but.

Two of the Believers who've gotten much noteriety are authors Budd Hopkins and Whitley Strieber (both whom were featured on the NBC special). Hopkins is, what in UFO terminology, is referred to as a "nuts and bolts" man. This means simply that he believes wholeheartedly in the extraterrestrial theory, which maintains that the UFO beings come from other planets in space rafts. Much of Hopkins' recent work revolves around the sexual relations between the aliens and humans. Hopkins espouses the theory that an extraterrestrials are impregnating humans, whose fetuses are being removed and then transplanted into the wombs of extraterrestrial females. Hopkins says that an extraterrestrial breeding experiment is underway, and that perhaps a hybrid race is being formed.

Whitley Strieber, author of the best-selling books "Communion," and several follow-up books, is the much more esoteric (and therefore popular amongst the Believers) of the two. Strieber believes that the Visitors -- as he calls them -- are here to raise our consciousness, and that they are not necessarily from another planet, but perhaps inter- dimensional rather than extraterrestrial. Despite his many painful, often terrifying experiences, Strieber believes that contact with the Visitors may be the only way for man to escape his limited consciousness. "Fifteen minutes with them," according to Strieber, "can equal fifteen years of meditation." (Of course, if one thinks that meditation is a total waste of time, this isn't saying much).

The skeptics, of course, don't buy any of it. The leader of this side of the movement is Phillip J. Klass, a rather jovial fellow who seems to relish his role as the enfant terrible of the UFO movement. Klass states that after more than 21 years of investigation, he has not encountered one single case that did not have a prosaic explanation. Klass' position is that it's all hokum. In order to prove his point, he issued a $10,000 offer to any UFO abductee who can prove his case- provided that FBI substantiates the kidnapping.

Klass is a member of the Skeptics Society, or the (CSICOP), and has been gleefully debunking UFO believers since 1966. Unfortunately, the bulk of the members of CSIOCP are -- unlike Klass -- a rather humorless lot. Headed up by humanist Paul Kurtz, their position is that the supernatural does not exist, that everything under the sun has a rational or prosaic explanation. This puts the skeptics in the uncomfortable position of coming up with explanations for things which in fact have no rational explanation, and of looking, on many occasions goofier, more obsessive and certainly more tight-assed than the UFO buffs themselves.

Two of the better known UFOlogists, John Keel and Dr. Jacques Vallee, fall somewhere in the middle of all this. Though they both believe that something is happening, they have both rejected the exterrestrial theory. Rather, each has come to see it as a historo-religious phenomenon, and more importantly, to note its links with the world of the occult. Says Vallee, in Dimensions, "To put it bluntly the UFO phenomenon does not give evidence of being extraterrestrial at all. Instead it appears to be inter-dimensional and to manipulate realities outside of our own space time continuum."

Keel, the author of the cult classic, "The Mothman Prophecies," and "Operation Trojan Horse, likewise gives short shrift the notion of space creatures here to save us. "The modern UFO scene is a sociological minefield because it has produced a worldwide propaganda movement of willing evangelists advocating the existence of people from another planet who altruistically intend to save us from ourselves. Yet there is no more hard evidence for the reality of UFOs than there was back in 1947," Keel writes in "Disneyland Of The Gods."

Moreover, both Keel and Vallee contend that the UFO phenomenon is nothing new. It has, in fact, always been with us. States Keel. "This phenomenon has always existed and lies at the root of all our religious beliefs, our myths and superstitions, the ancient arts of witchcraft and black magic, and the fundamental fictions that have given us most of our social and political ideas."

But what is "it"?

 

"I don't know," said Keel from his home in New York, "but whatever it is, it's been around since the beginning of time. The Bible is full of this stuff. The bible is full of missing time cases. Go back and read it...it's all there. Forget about the theology, just go back and read it. It's all there."

Whether or not they know what it is, both Valle and Keel agree as to the results of the contact experience on the contactee. Says Vallee, "They come out of it with a religious perspective. But all the details are contradictory and confusing. The outstanding characteristic of the contactee is incoherence. They are like people after an auto accident. All they know is that something very serious has happened to them."

from Agence France-Press, 1999-Feb-20:

Istanbul UFO conference hears "evidence" of extraterrestrial life

ISTANBUL, Feb 20 (AFP) - Thousands of UFO aficionados flocked to a conference center here Saturday to hear international experts present "evidence" of the existence of extraterrestrial life.

 

 

At the two-day First International UFO Symposium of Turkey, the panel Erich von Daniken, who has written several bestsellers on the issue, and Travis Walton, a woodcutter who said he was abducted by aliens for five days in 1975.

 

 

According to the organizers, the Istanbul-based Sirius UFO Space Sciences Research Centre, it was the first such meeting in eastern Europe or the Middle East.

 

 

"Evidence shall be presented proving that we are not the only intelligent beings in the universe and that our planet is being visited by extraterrestrial beings," a statement by the organizers said.

 

 

The conference's theme -- "We are not alone in space" -- was illustrated by an exhibition of reproductions of ancient statues from around the world that, in the view of "UFO-logists", depict visitors from outer space.

 

 

More than 2,000 people were counted on the first day of the conference, with an equal number expected on the final day on Sunday.

 

On the morning of Sunday 1999-Feb-21, while station surfing, I came across a segment running on the local Catholic station, on the subject of extraterrestrial life. A scientist was interviewed, and the message was clear: it's not crazy to think that intelligent extraterrestrials are visiting earth, and the probable existence of intelligent extraterrestrials prompts a fundamental rethinking of theology. My interest piqued, I waited a few minutes for the show to end, at which time it was mentioned that the show was produced in affiliation with Radio Vatican. What to make of this? It appears (as evidenced from this item, and from statements by the Pope in his 1994 Jubilee address) that the Vatican is edging Catholics toward Maitreyanism.

"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."

-Henry Kissinger in an address to the Bilderberg organization meeting at Evian, France, May 21, 1992. Transcribed from a tape recording made by one of the Swiss delegates.

 

In the opening paragraphs of the introductory essay of this compilation, I described Chris Carter's "X Files" and "Millennium" as chaffe and flares. In "X Files," a UFO believer group called "MUFON" crops up periodically. This is actually a real group. "The Smoking Man" has initials C.B.G., making it obvious that he's a fictionalized C.B.Jones. The "X Files" is not a benign weaving of tales at all. It's a deliberate set-up intended to program the public. Remember the stories of the Queen of England being an avid viewer of "X Files?" What alternative is there to the conclusion that X Files is a PsyOp?

Here is a tidbit to drive home the point, an excerpt from an interview with silent film restoration expert and score director Gillian Anderson, from http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=2987:

[...]

G: I hope there's more to come. Anyway, I have to ask -- are the "X-Files" fans getting annoying?

GA: Yes. In fact, in just the past month or so I've been interviewed about that. A couple of years ago a fan magazine listed my phone number as hers. I still get calls, and sometimes faxes in the middle of the night. I live in Washington, D.C., which is apparently where her character works, and some of the fans -- I don't want to insult them, but some of them seem to have a problem separating fantasy from reality.

[...]

from the New York Daily News 1995-Aug-24, from http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/dvettrk.html:

Billionaire Urges Clinton: Probe UFO Mystery

President Clinton is being pressured to reopen supersecret government files on the world's most baffling UFO incident. The man who wants the secrecy ended is billionaire philanthropist Laurance S. Rockefeller, a personal friend of the president. UFO experts believe the government covered up a UFO crash in 1947 near Roswell, N.M., from which alien bodies were recovered. This mystery was the basis of a highly-rated show on the Fox television network which was repeated Sept. 5. "Many are convinced that Roswell marks the beginning of government secret about UFO's" says Rockefeller in a letter to the White House obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. "Whatever the truth of Roswell, a definitive statement about it from the government would be very important." the letter continues.

Rockefeller hosted President Clinton at his western ranch during the chief executive's recent vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming - and insiders believe he bent Clinton's ear about the UFO issue. He also wrote to President Clinton's science advisor, John Gibbons, to urge that all UFO-related information be released. UFO enthusiasts have long cited the Roswell incident as the most blatant example of government cover-up. They claim that after an alien space craft crashed, the bodies of the ET visitors were autopsied and then secretly flown to an Air Force base in Ohio. In his letter to the White House, Rockefeller suggests that a cover-up may very well have been imposed by jittery bureaucrats. "While much in the public sector has been written about it, the govt. has had nothing to say about it .." says Rockefeller. He called on the President to promise there would be no persecution for those coming forward and revealing their eyewitness accounts of the New Mexico incident. "In addition to lifting classification about Roswell, consideration should be given to granting amnesty on an individual basis to allow those with knowledge about the incident to speak without fear of prosecution: There is a reason to believe that there are individuals who would provide information about the incident under that circumstance."

The Roswell Incident has been repeatedly dismissed by the Defense Dept.

from http://www.mcs.com/~kvg/smear/v43/ss960401.htm:

[...]

We have two companion volumes here, the first entitled "Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document - The Best Available Evidence" (169 pages) and the second much shorter volume entitled "Executive Summary" of same. Both are written by FUFOR's Don Berliner, with Marie Galbraith and Antonio Huneeus. Both are presented as a joint venture of "The UFO Research Coalition", consisting of CUFOS, FUFOR and MUFON, and both are financed by multimillionaire Laurence Rockefeller. We obtained these books mysteriously, and have learned that they are not available for sale. The present limited edition of 1,000 copies will be sent free to "decision makers" and other supposedly important people thought to be sympathetic to the UFO Cause. (We are somewhat reminded of the old days of NICAP's "UFO Investigator", which went free to supporters, but suspected enemies could not buy it!)...

[...]

from http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/rockrept.html:

Date: Tue, 02 Apr 1996 18:58:49 +0200
To: "David T. Vetterick" {veterick@ix.netcom.com}
From: John Joseph Mercieca {mufor@maltanet.omnes.net}
Subject: Rockefeller Report

Hi Dave,

You probably have already seen this. If you haven't, here it is!

---

UFO BRIEFING DOCUMENT SHOWS "BEST AVAILABLE EVIDENCE"
Rockefeller-Financed Report To Be Sent To World Leaders

by Michael Lindemann

In recent years, 85-year-old philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller has given financial support to a number of prominent researchers of UFO and alien phenomena, including Dr. John Mack and Dr. Steven Greer. He has also urged President Clinton to acknowledge the reality of UFOs, both indirectly, through Clinton's science advisor John Gibbons, and directly -- if well-placed rumors are true -- last fall when Rockefeller hosted the president at his ranch in Wyoming.

Now Mr. Rockefeller has financed the creation of a 169-page document intended to present "the best available evidence" on UFOs to a very select audience: heads of state and other key world figures, who may be almost entirely ignorant of the evidence but who could, if sufficiently moved, very quickly undo the atmosphere of secrecy that has surrounded this subject for decades.

Reportedly, only 1,000 copies of the special briefing have been printed, and it will not be offered for sale. Distribution of the briefing has only begun, and so far no feedback from high-ranking recipients has been reported. However, ISCNI has received a copy of the briefing, along with permission to describe its contents to the readers of this newsletter.

Titled "Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document" and subtitled "The Best Available Evidence," the report is conservatively packaged, with a plain blue softcover binding and black-and-white illustrations throughout. It was written mainly by Don Berliner, a long-time respected UFO researcher, author and senior associate of the Fund for UFO Research. Co-authors were Antonio Huneeus and Marie Galbraith. Chairman of the Fund for UFO Research Richard Hall also wrote a separate executive summary. Joint credit for the material in the report is given to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and the Fund for UFO Research. A letter of endorsement signed by the heads of these organizations appears at the front of the report.

The report is in three parts. First is a brief Overview, discussing the general case for UFO reality and the problem of government secrecy. Part two, the most lengthy, presents nineteen case discussions deemed "the best evidence" now available. Various experts will no doubt quibble over the inclusion or exclusion of some cases, but in general the selection is well thought out and impressive. Part three is comprised mainly of quotes from various world figures on the reality or possibility of UFOs and alien contact.

Notably absent from the report are any cases involving alleged abduction of humans by UFO occupants. In fact, the report includes only one case of the "third kind" (CE3) involving direct observation of apparent alien beings. Over half of the cases are of the "first kind" (CE1), that is, observation of unusual craft or airborn objects. The rest are of the "second kind" (CE2) in which the object or encounter left clear physical evidence behind.

According to this report, the "best evidence" includes:

 

- "Foo fighters" sighted by WWII fliers during 1944-45, notably on August 10, 1944 over the Indian Ocean, and December 22, 1944 over Hagenau, Germany;

 

- Kenneth Arnold's famous sighting of nine aerial objects over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State on June 24, 1947;

 

- bold incursions of unidentified craft over several Strategic Air Command bases during late October and November, 1975, including Loring AFB in Maine, Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan, Malmstrom AFB in Montana; Minot AFB in North Dakota and Falconbridge in Ontario, Canada;

 

- a "dogfight" between a UFO and two F-4 jets over Tehran, Iran in 1976;

 

- the strange sightings in the Rendlesham Forest between Bentwaters and Woodbridge RAF bases in England in late December, 1980; and

 

- visual and radar sighting of an aerial object "two times bigger than an aircraft carrier" by the flight crew of a Japan Airlines 747 freighter over Alaska on November 17, 1986.

Another of the "best cases" involved photos of a Saturn-shaped UFO over Trindade Island in the South Atlantic, taken from the deck of a Brazilian Navy ship on February 21, 1958. Brazilian president Kubitschek later gave the photos to the press. Reportedly, extensive testing showed no signs of hoax and the numerous eyewitnesses included credible military personnel. However, the U.S. military labeled the case a fake.

On July 28, 1989, a UFO was clearly observed for a period of two hours over a Russian army missile base at Kapustin Yar, Astrakhan region. The KGB file on this case detailed the testimony of seven military witnesses, with drawings. According to the report, "Observed characteristics are: disc is 4-5 meters (13-17) feet in diameter, with half-sphere on top which is brightly lit. It moved sometimes abruptly, but noiselessly, at times coming down and hovering over the ground at an altitude of 20-60 meters... while over a rocket weapons depot, a bright beam appeared from the bottom of the disc, lighting the corner of one of the buildings, lasting for several seconds."

Also highlighted in the briefing document is the extensive series of sightings and aerial encounters over Belgium in 1989 and 1990. Numerous drawings and photos by witnesses show a huge triangular shaped craft with bright lights at each corner. In several instances, the UFOs showed on multiple military radars simulatneously, including both airborn and ground-based installations. F-16 jets were sent aloft to engage the UFOs but found that the strange objects could perform maneuvers that would probably kill a human pilot. Belgian military spokesman, Major General (then Colonel) Wilfred De Brouwer, stated on television that the observed behavior of the objects was "outside the performance envelope" of any known aircraft and could not be explained.

One of the most unusual reported encounters of the "second kind" took place at mid-day on May 20, 1967, near Falcon Lake, Manitoba, Canada. Amateur prospector Steven Michalak reported seeing two glowing red objects hovering in the air. One flew away while the other landed nearby. Michalak said it appeared oval and disk-shaped and was about 35 feet in diameter and twelve feet high.

While he was observing the craft, a door opened and he heard voices coming from inside. He tried communicating in several languages, but got no reply and saw no one. He approached the craft and saw intensely brilliant light coming from within. Moments later, the door suddenly closed. Then a blast of hot air hit Michalak in the chest, emitting from an "exhaust vent." His shirt caught fire. As he ripped off his burning clothes and stumbled back, the craft took off. Within moments, Michalak had a pounding headache and nausea. He staggered back to his nearby motel, vomiting along the way.

In the following weeks, Michalak developed numerous symptoms of radiation sickness. He was eventually examined by 27 different doctors, none of whom could fully account for his condition. Of particular interest was a geometric pattern of burn marks on Michalak's chest which, he says, corresponded to the "exhaust grill" of the UFO. This case was extensively investigated by Canadian government authorities. The complete official report has not been released.

As previously noted, the "best available evidence" makes reference to only one case involving the sighting of unusual beings, that of police officer Lonnie Zamora near Socorro, New Mexico, on April 24, 1964. Zamora said he witnessed an egg-shaped craft on four thin legs, along with two small beings in white coverall-type outfits, when he went to investigate an apparent explosion in a rural area outside of Socorro. Zamora said he saw the craft take off and fly away moments before the arrival of his backup, Sgt. Sam Chavez. Then, he and Chavez went down to the landing site and found abundant physical evidence that something had been there. This case is undoubtedly one of the best-documented, best-attested CE3 cases on record. Even a classified memo to the CIA, recently declassified, mentioned this case as the "best" of its kind that Air Force Project Blue Book ever found.

ISCNI thinks it odd, however, that this important report on "best available evidence" does not list any other cases involving the claim of "aliens." Apparently, the authors and sponsors of this project intend to maximize their credibility by minimizing any sensational aspects of the subject. ISCNI hopes this approach proves successful where other approaches have so far failed.

We will continue to report on this story as new information becomes available.

 

---

From: ISCNIFlash@aol.com
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 20:01:59 -0400
Subject: ISCNI*Flash -- Vol. 2, No. 3, Part 1 -- April 16, 1996

==+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++==+++==
ISCNI*Flash -- Vol. 2, No. 3, Part 1 -- April 16, 1996
==+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++==+++==


ISCNI*Flash is the twice-monthly electronic newsletter of ISCNI, The Institute for the Study of Contact with Non-human Intelligence.
ROCKEFELLER NOT BELIEVER, BUT WANTS END TO UFO SECRETS
Marie Galbraith Explains Rationale For New UFO Report

[The following text is excerpted from a story that appeared in the New York Observer on April 8 under the title, "Rockefeller Greets Aliens! A Rich Guy's UFO Dream." For a detailed discussion of the contents of the Rockefeller-funded "Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence," see ISCNI*Flash 2.2, April 1, 1996.]

"You know, there are 200 billion star systems in the galaxy, and there are 200 billion galaxies in the universe," said Marie [Bootsie] Galbraith, a trim blonde woman in her 50's, as she reclined in her sun-dappled, sparsely furnished office on Madison Avenue, her diamond bagatelle rings flashing. She lifted her blue eyes heavenward. "We're just a little zilch."

But some zilches have deeper pockets than others. Last year, Mrs. Galbraith, who is married to Evan Galbraith, the investment banker and former Ambassador to France, went to Laurance Rockefeller, the 85-year-old environmental activist and venture capitalist, and got him to fund a 169-page document titled "Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence." The report was co-authored by Mrs. Galbraith and Virginia-based aviation writer Don Berliner, who is affiliated with the Fund for UFO Research. [UFO researcher Antonio Huneeus is also listed as a co-author. - ed.]

In an interview in her office, [Mrs.] Galbraith discussed Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein, Westinghouse and General Electric, secret weather balloons and photographs of alien autopsies on the Internet. "We have to challenge basic assumptions," she said.

She is distributing her report to "leaders of the world."

"We're only giving it to really top people," said Mr. Berliner. "Not ordinary people like you and me. I guess the only reason I have a copy is I wrote the thing."

In the acknowledgments page, Laurance Rockefeller is listed first, "for his vision and support, financial and otherwise."

Fraser Seitel, Mr. Rockefeller's spokesman, confirmed that Mr. Rockefeller funded the report at a cost of around $30,000. But he said that Mr. Rockefeller did not endorse the findings. "He is interested in Government disclosure of reported activities in this area," said Mr. Seitel. "Laurance's feeling is that he is not convinced one way or the other. But he is interested in learning what the Government has on file... He's really quite an eclectic person."

Mr. Seitel said Mr. Rockefeller would not comment on the report.

In recent years, Mr. Rockefeller has become known as a supporter of eclectic ventures. He funded embattled Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack, whose work with alleged alien abductees was loudly criticized last May by his colleagues at Harvard. In fact, from 1993 to 1995, Dr. Mack's Cambridge-based, nonprofit research institute, the Center for Psychology and Social Change, received about $250,000 a year from Mr. Rockefeller.

According to Michael Luckman, director of the New York Center for UFO Research, Mr. Rockefeller has financed at least two recent meetings of a group called the Starlight Coalition, which Mr. Luckman said is "composed of former intelligence officers and military officials from the Pentagon who are prepared to talk about extraterrestrial contact."

Mr. Luckman said Mr. Rockefeller has also held a UFO conference on his JY Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

"He's primarily interested in conservation and the environment, and venture capital," said Mr. Seitel. "He's also interested in the whole area of spirituality." Mr. Rockefeller majored in philosophy at Princeton, Mr. Seitel pointed out.

As the sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr., the brothers -- Laurance, John D. III, Nelson, Winthrop and David -- strode the earth as business and political titans. Nelson served as Republican governor of New York; David ran the Chase Manhattan Bank. Now, only two brothers remain; David, who is in the process of buying back Rockefeller Center from Mitsubishi, and Laurance.

Born in 1910, Laurance was a pioneer of venture capital in the 1940's. In the 1950's and 1960's, he was a champion of environmental causes, serving as the director of the Outdoor Recreation Resources and Review Commission under President Kennedy. In 1965, Mr. Rockefeller traveled the country with Lady Bird Johnson on her "beautification bus" as part of the Task Force on Natural Beauty. But he began to draw criticism from environmentalists in the late 1960's for developing resorts in the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Vermont and Yellowstone National Park, under the cloak of conservation.

Mrs. Galbraith said she approached Mr. Rockefeller last year to provide the backing for her report. As an early supporter of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, Mrs. Galbraith saw her role in the UFO debate as a promoter of "frontier science," which she described as "science that is on the cutting edge, like cold-fusion study, unified field theory, anything that has to do with people working on integrative devices." She paused. "It is a science which is heavily challenged, so it has to prove itself more dramatically."

The report is indeed a dramatic document. "Secrecy, like power, lends itself to abuse," reads the opening chapter, titled "Government Secrecy." "Behind the shield of secrecy, it is possible for an agency or service to avoid scrutiny and essentially to operate outside the law. Accountability to the taxpayers and to the Congress can be conveniently avoided."

The second part of the report consists of case histories of UFO sightings around the world: "'Foo Fighters' Over Europe and Asia" in the 1940's; "U.F.O. Dogfight Over Tehran"; the "U.F.O. Sighting Wave in Belgium" in 1989-90; "Multiple Witness Case at Russian Missile Base" in 1989.

In the third part of the report, government spokesmen and politicians are quoted on the subject of UFOs. "I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on earth," Harry S. Truman is quoted as saying on April 4, 1950, at a White House press conference.

The report concludes:

 

"When studied as a group, these case histories exhibit clear patterns which strongly suggest that they belong to a distinct new class of phenomena, rather than being a formless collection of disparate observational errors... It is this large quantity of evidence of the existence of something completely baffling which motivates many of us to urge the governments of the world to release all they know about UFOs so that the people of the world, and especially scientists, can begin to come to grips with a mystery that has far too long been subjected to secrecy and ridicule."

"Our goal is to have elected officials decide what is secret and what is not," said Mrs. Galbraith. "Because now the bureaucrats keep all the secrets. They don't even keep the Congress and the President informed."

However, Mrs. Galbraith added:

"I think to be skeptical is extremely healthy because I was, when I started out. Only because I've just been with the head of the Belgian Air Force and the head of French intelligence do I take it seriously now."

from http://www.io.com/~hambone/web/rockefeller.html:

Laurance Rockefeller

Provided original funding to the Human Potential Foundation, and funnels hundreds of thousands of dollars through them to John Mack and his research.

---

Supporter of the Green Earth Foundation, headed up by Terrance "DMT Elves" McKenna.
(Chevalier, Remy, "When Cosmic Cultures Meet", Paranoia, Issue 10, pg 11)

---

Reportedly, Rockefeller has stopped funding Mack. He continues to fund PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research), and is a Funding Advisor to the Joseph Campbell Foundation. He also funds the Starlight Coalition, which claims membership of several former government and military personnel who want to end government secrecy on UFOs.

---

from http://www.io.com/~hambone/arch/rock.html:

Who is Laurance Rockefeller?

by Alex Constantine

 

Laurance, vetted by the U.S. Naval Reserve, rose to the rank of lieutenant commander during the war, assigned to the Bureau of Aeronautics as liaison between the Navy and aircraft production plants - despite huge financial investments in Hitler's Holocaust machine by family-owned businesses, as documented by George Seldes and Charles Higham - who dreamed of transforming the postwar world with advancements in communications, nuclear power, aviation and computers. The defense industry fostered experimentation with new technologies and they intrigued Laurance Rockefeller, especially those with the potential to significantly transform everyday life.

When Hitler's Germany rolled out the armaments to flatten Europe, young Rockefeller launched into an intense study of military aviation. He joined the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, was a director of Eastern Airlines and a trustee of Air Affairs, a quarterly international journal. Laurance and his brother Winthrop mustered the Air Youth of America, an aviation training program.

Laurance may have been less visible than his brothers, but he was equally steeped in the sordid world of covert intelligence and disinformation. In the 1950s, he served on a panel that released a report penned by Henry Kissinger, International Security - The Military Aspect, calling for successive escalations in defense spending of $3 billion per year to 1965. In 1973 he was named a director of Reader's Digest, a fount of CIA cold war black propaganda. (To indulge in a bit of necessary guilt by association, Melvin Laird, a Digest officer, is also a director of SAIC, the "remote viewing" sponsor.) Rockefeller is a trustee of M.I.T., a director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Olin Mathieson, etc., etc.

Renato Vesco traced immediate postwar development of the Nazi saucers to the UK. Vesco, the Italian Werner von Braun, plodded through a detailed investigation of the technology transfer in Intercept, but Don't Shoot, published in 1967. British defense officials, he discovered, hoped to barter advancements in saucer propulsion and design to the United States in exchange for classified nuclear research data. A priority was placed on making the saucers faster, leading to experimentation with a number of rocket propulsion systems. Wind tunnel tests demonstrated the disks could easily slip through the sound barrier when the friction layer was drawn through a multitude of pinholes punched in the hull. Normally, the layer of air that builds along an aircraft's surface slows it down. The air pulling on the craft, otherwise known as the buoyant layer, was eliminated in the saucer design with suction along the entire surface of the vehicle, in place of the conventional jet design. The pinholes sucked away the buoyant layer and pumped the air through a thruster, like an ordinary jet.

When the war ended Laurance was off to Europe, according to Alvin Moscow's sanitized Rockefeller biography, "to examine the latest British experiments with jet propulsion for military aircraft. He looked into the technology of the German Rockets used in the blitz of London." The author doesn't mention a visit to the British Air Force saucer section, but if developments were shared with anyone, it was Laurance Rockefeller, the most influential military aerospace scion in the country.

Laurance and his namesake progeny have been lavish godfathers to UFOlogy organizations that attribute saucer overflights and abductions to the "alien" invasion. A panoply of aircraft defense firms swelled with an infusion of funds from Laurance Rockefeller. The most imposing is McDonnell-Douglas, founded in 1930 by a prodigy of aircraft design, James S. McDonnell of St. Louis. McDonnell shares with Laurance Rockefeller the taint of war profiteering. Periodic postwar investigations of his aircraft company by the General Accounting Office have exposed a deep, chronically overfunded well of fraud. In 1967 the company merged with Douglas Aircraft, the primary subcontractor of Western Electric, a subsidiary of AT&T.

Howver cerebral, James McDonnell had one foot firmly planted in the occult. He was a principal donor to the famed J.B. Rhine psychic research center at Duke University, a forerunner of Psi-Tech, and supported psychic experimentation at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor Rhine and his wife Louisa joined the faculty of Duke University in 1927 to explore the paranormal with Dr. William McDougall, chairman of the psychology department. In a few years, according to Parapsychological Institute literature, "Dr. Rhine was conducting the groundbreaking research that demonstrated under rigorous, scientific conditions that certain persons could acquire information without the use of the known senses. He introduced the term extrasensory perception (ESP) to describe this ability and adopted the word parapsychology to distinguish his experimental approach from other methods of psychical research."

Among the key early supporters of the Rhine ESP center was Medtronics, a medical technology firm in Minneapolis. The connection is chilling in the context of forced human experimentation. Bear in mind the horrors of the surgical table described by abductees, circled by "alien" doctors, when paging through the Medtronics catalog: "The company's neurological business produces implantable systems for spinal cord stimulation and drug delivery.... The Itrel II spinal cord stimulation system is the most advanced and flexible implantable neurostimulation device on the market today."

Another financial supporter of the Rhine center was insurance magnate W. Clement Stone, whose name was the very first on Richard Nixon's list of presidential campaign contributors.

[ ... ]

Escerpt from "Virtual Government" by Alex Constantine

from http://www.wufoc.com/ufofiles/english/issue_2/ukrocke3.html:

Subject: UFOSearch: Big Money and UFOs - (5/8)
Date: 7 May 1996 17:05:30 -0600
Organization: A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Enterprises
By: Val Germann, Columbia, Missouri

This message will concern the Laurance Rockefeller who is/was a brother to Nelson, Winthrop, David and JDR3. The Laurance Rockefeller who is helping bankroll John Mack could well be the same person you will read about below.

Laurance Rockefeller (b. 1910) became interested in high tech firms in 1938 with the foundation of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. During World War II Laurance was in the Navy overseeing the production of patrol bombers before being shifted to the fighter desk by his good friend James V. Forrestal. At this time Laurance owned 20 per cent of McDonnell aircraft which had been founded by Laurance's college friend James S. McDonnell, with some help from Laurance. It seems that both were at Princeton.

In 1947 there was talk of a Congressional investigation of Navy contracts vis-a-vis McDonnell during the period that Laurance was in the Navy. But, that investigation never seemed to get off the ground, no pun intended. Thus Laurance sailed on, later forming a consortium with family friends C. Douglas Dillon and Felix DuPont to make a fortune out of helicopter production during the Korean War. This consortium also owned Nuclear Development Associates, the original power behind civilian nuclear reactors, and a little company called ITEK, which would make the spy cameras for the U-2 and America's spy satellites. The capital for these ventures would come from brother David's Chase Bank, the very center of Rockefeller power and the prime force behind the great war scare of 1948, which I have documented earlier.

In 1950 Laurance hired Lewis Strauss, former Kuhn, Loeb banker who had been an assistant to Herbert Hoover in World War I, an offical in the 1930s of the company that later became UniRoyal, and the lawyer/banker who had helped Kodak market Kodachrome and later aided Dr. Land and his Polaroid. Strauss spent World War Two in the Navy and had been made an Admiral by his good friend James V. Forrestal. Funny how things like this worked out.

In any event, in 1950 Strauss was overseeing the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and was heavily connected into the high-tech yscience world. He left Rockefeller employ to become the chairman of the AEC under Eisenhower, just as Laurance put together a company called United Nuclear which had the inside track on the development of civilian atomic power. Also at this time ITEK was created, begun when a Boston University scientist advised his good friend Laurance Rockefeller that Ike's Administration was going to liquidate Boston University's Physics Research Lab.

I wonder how they knew of this in advance? Probably just luck. Anyway, Laurance bought the thing and put his good scientific friend in charge of it. It made millions out of the U-2 and the Discovery satellites, both of which were promoted relentlessly by Rockefeller operatives, including Nelson (!), inside the former Council On Foreign Relations member's (Ike) administration.

Later on, Laurance would be a power behind LBJ's administration and his wife would give Lady Bird the idea for her beautification of America scheme. In 1969 Laurance would use his connections into the world of "conservation" to help push through SLAC, the Stanford Linear Acclerator, over the objections of the people who actually lived there. By that time he would have been president of the Jackson Hole (WY) Preserve society for decades and his family would own large tracts in the West.

Also by the middle 1970s Laurance and his brother Nelson would have created several "conservation" societies revolving around the family's Pocantico estate (47,000-plus acres) on the Hudson River. How many folks investigating UFOs know that the so-called Hudson Valley Object has been flying for years over an area that is more or less a Rockefeller private preserve? Do you think the family might be interested in that, or MORE than interested?

So, to recap: there aren't any ET-built UFO's shuttling around planet earth, and there haven't been any this century. This is an extremely elaborate hoax, of utility to the elite, as detailed by Kissinger in his address to the 1992 Bilderberg attendees. Laurance's job is to keep the UFO/paranormal pot bubbling. The fables promoted by Laurance-funded "researchers" are the subject of Chris Carter's TV shows, where they are dramatized with almost no changes.

The following is a compilation of wordbites on the topic, with substantial overlap with mind control and cult activities detailed elsewhere in this chapter and in the chapter on manufacturing madness. Though I was tempted to place it in a separate file, the relevance and signal to noise ratio are so high that I've put it right here.

To skip to the next item ("Altered States: The Light Show Within") follow this link.

collected by Richard Shand, created 1996-Nov-8, from http://home.fireplug.net/~rshand/streams/ufos/abductees.html:

Implanting Memories

The Abductees

(1) The Oz Factor

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder."
     - Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

"I've now worked with over a hundred experiencers intensively. Which involves an initial two-hour or so screening interview before I do anything else. And in case after case after case, I've been impressed with the consistency of the story, the sincerity with which people tell their stories, the power of feelings connected with this, the self-doubt -- all the appropriate responses that these people have to their experiences."
"There are aspects of this which I believe we are justified in taking quite literally. That is, UFOs are in fact observed, filmed on camera at the same time that people are having their abduction experiences.
"People, in fact, have been observed to be missing at the time that they are reporting their abduction experiences. They return from their experiences with cuts, ulcers on their bodies, triangular lesions, which follow the distribution of the experiences that they recover, of what was done to them in the craft by the surgical-like activity of these beings. All of that has a literal physical aspect and is experienced and reported with appropriate feeling, by the abductees, with or without hypnosis or a relaxation exercise."
     - John Mack, Nova On-line

David Webb did "a study of 300 abduction reports from HUMCAT, a database of UFO encounters involving humanoids....In 39% of the cases, no on-board abduction information was obtained using hypnosis." Yet reports in which on-board abduction information was obtained mainly with hypnosis "were remarkably similar in content."
"According to "a study of 200 abduction cases by a student of folklore named Thomas E. Bullard....Although American cases show markedly fewer instances of the tall beings than non-American cases, abduction cases from different parts of the world nonetheless tend to be highly uniform. Well-publicized cases seem to have no detectable impact on abduction reports. Also, abduction stories are highly stereotyped, and they show a much smaller range of variation than is found, for example, in science fiction. It seems that abduction stories don't follow the patterns expected of folklore."
     - Richard L. Thompson, Alien Identities

"First is the most familiar aspect or fit, which is a traumatic event in which a blue light or some kind of energy paralyzes the person, whether they're in their home or they're driving a car. They can't move.
"They feel themselves being removed from wherever they were. They floated through a wall or out a car, carried up on this beam of light into a craft and there subjected to a number of now familiar procedures which involve the beings staring at them; involves probing of their body, their body orifices; and a complex process whereby they sense in the case of men, sperm removed; in the women, eggs removed; some sort of hybrid offspring created which they're brought back to see in later abductions."
     - John Mack, Nova On-line

British ufologist Jenny Randles "says her studies who that many UFO witnesses experience what she calls the Oz factor, 'a sense of timelessness and sensory isolation' in which 'the witness feels the UFO has temporarily sucked him into a kind of void where only he and the phenomenon coexist.' This might occur, she speculates, when a person who is in a state of consciousness below normal waking reality interprets some natural condition, object, or event - a bright planet, for instance - as being preternatural in origin.
"Randles further theorizes that in some rare cases the witness's subjective impression is strong enough to manipulate objective reality. In other words, a person who is caught in the grip of the Oz factor may actually be able to photograph something that he or she see, even though it does not, in a completely objective sense, exist...It may be, she says, that outworlders are contacting humans through consciousness alone rather than with sophisticated technology."
     - The UFO Phenomenon

It is revealing to note that the preponderance of UFO abductees report that their experience occurred when they were coming out of deep sleep. The feelings of immobility, weightlessness and helplessness can all be explained by the "sleep paralysis"which accompanies the REM state.
     - Barry L. Beyerstein, Lecture before the BC Skeptics Society (22 April 1994)

"Blackmore [University of the West of England in Bristol] suggests some normal features of sleep conspire with particular properties of certain brains to represent alien abductions. For example, limb muscles are largely paralyzed during dreams, presumably to keep people from acting out whatever they're dreaming. There are cases where people awaken while this 'sleep paralysis' persists, producing a sensation of being constrained by some evil force.
"'Alien abductions may just be a modern equivalent of a sleep paralysis myth,' says Blackmore."
     - "Do Magnetic Fields Play Role in Alien-abduction Memories", Buffalo News, 02/05/95

"Sleep paralysis provides a fertile setting for hypnopompic hallucinations. In the hypnopompic state, the brain cannot instantaneously switch from dreaming to a waking state, and the dream extends into the waking period. The brain circuits activated during dreams then send signals - such as the image of a succubus - to the cerebral cortex, where they are processed as if they came from the outside world. Thus, dream images extend into waking and the sleeper sees visual images (or has sensations in other modalities) within the context of the real bedroom."
     - Ronald K.Siegel, Fire in the Brain

Siegel has also detailed how the visual components of UFO abduction experiences resemble form constants [see below] produced by hallucinogens acting on the brain.

"The ancients knew the importance of maintaining an intimate conversation with one's double or daemon, called ' genius' in Latin, ' guardian angels' by Christianity, ' reflex man' by Scots, ' vardogr' by Norwegians, ' doppelganger' by Germans. The idea was that by taking care to develop one's ' genius,' this spiritual being would provide help throughout the mortal human's life and into the next. Humans who did not attend to their personal Other became an evil and menacing entity called a ' larva,' given to hovering over terrified sleepers in their beds at night and driving people to madness."
     - Keith Thompson, Aliens and Angels

"In a great majority of the 95 [abduction] cases, the subjects indicated that their own residence (generally the bedroom) was the abduction point. However, 15 subjects have also (or instead) reported some other location. Ten of those were taken from their automobiles and six from a cabin or campsite.
"Whether purposeful or inadvertent, over a fourth (28%) of the subjects in the study have sensed an alien presence other than visually. This often occurred in the hours, minutes or seconds before visual confirmation. In other cases, an unseen presence was felt in the midst of a cluster of episodes but with no known CE-4 on that night.
"The recognition was sometimes obvious - an electrical tingling, a buzzing or beeping in the person's mind, rappings and other 'poltergeist' activity. In a few cases, the subject 'just knew' that the intruders were present."
     - Dan Wright, "The Entities - Initial Findings of the Abduction Transcription Project" (A MUFON Special Report)

"...18% of our respondents say they have wakened up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something else in the room."
     - Budd Hopkins. David Michael Jacobs Ph.D, Ron Westrum, Ph.D., "A Report on Unusual Experiences Associated with UFO abductions, based upon the Roper Organization's Survey of 5,947 Adult Americans"

Such hallucinatory experiences are called night terrors. Once before awakening, Ronald Siegel experienced the sensation of being held down and raped by a succubus [a female demon] . He felt as though he were being crushed by the weight of the entity on top of him and could hardly breathe. The ordeal was terrifying but Siegel recognized the phenomenon for what it was - a night terror. Later that morning he was able to objectively recount the event to his college class.
Amongst his many encounters with aliens, which usually occurred while in the twilight state between sleep and wakening, Whitley Strieber reported the following:

"'Whitley' ceased to exist. What was left was a body in a state of fear so great that it swept about me like a thick, suffocating curtain, turning paralysis into a condition that seemed close to death. I do not think that my ordinary humanity survived the transition..."
     - Whitley Strieber, Communion

 

---

(2) Psychic Projections?

"I have come to have an operating hypothesis... that this phenomenon, whatever it is, has a direct link with human consciousness. It is indeed tricksterlike, here one moment, gone the next, dazzling us with amazing shows and feats of derring-do."
     - Whitley Strieber

"Almost all the data associated with UFOs have their analogies in spontaneous psychic phenomena, or have been noted to occur in the seance room."
     - Berthold Schwarz, UFO Dynamics: Psychiatric and Psychic Aspects of the UFO Syndrome

"There is a small solid core of parapsychological data indicating that both animate and inanimate entities can be created (presumably under mental auspices) not only piecemeal, as a sort of intrusion into a more ordinary reality, but as a completely coexisting reality."
     - Jule Eisenbud, Parapsychology and the unconscious

"The abduction is a real physical event, but it reflects concerns or traumas buried within the subject's unconscious. It might be called an 'objectified' dream - i.e., a system of symbolic imagery which suddenly erupts into the three-dimensional world."
     - D. Scott Rogo

"Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space. The body can become an internalized holographic object embedded in a solid-state, hyperdimensional matrix that is eternal, so that we each wander through a true Elysium."
     - Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival

"So far as I know it remains an established fact, supported by numerous observations, that UFOs have not only been seen visually but have also been picked up on the radar screen and have left traces on the photographic plate....It boils down to nothing less than this: that either psychic projections throw back a radar echo, or else the appearance of real objects affords an opportunity for mythological projections."
     - Carl Jung, Flying Saucers, a Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies

"More and more psychologists, sociolgists and folklore researchers are treating these phenomena not as mere illusions but as alternative potential realities."
     - Jenny Randles, Alien Contact : Window on Another World

"Phenomena such as UFOs, appearances of the Virgin Mary, fairies, and so forth, as 'protean-psychoid'. They are 'protean' because they are all part of the same chameleon-like phenomenon that changes to reflect the belief structures of the time. They are 'psychoid' in that they are a paraphysical phenomenon and are related to the psychological state of the observer.
     1) The "perpetrators"of protean-psychoid phenomena reveal many mythological characteristics.
     2) Protean-psychoid phenomena reveal no over-all malevolence or benevolence. They follow the rational of an entity in a dream, and at any moment their nature can fluctuate.
"The myth that UFOs are generating us is just as valid as the myth that we are generating them. Every UFO sighting/observer functions as a self-excited system. Like the entities in a dream, one is not more real that the other. In an omnijective universe, real and unreal have no meaning."
     - Michael Talbot

 

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(3) The Abductee Personality

"Typically the patient might enter therapy with complains about anxiety, depression, phobias or a pattern of frightening dreams. The patient might also be bothered about an incident involving an unexplained time gap in memory. In many respects the patient might present symptoms typical of post-traumatic stress disorder. However, patients will often withhold memories of the more bizarre UFO-related events, either out of fear that they will be rejected or because the patients do not connect them with the symptoms. One woman known to Hopkins stated that she had been in therapy for seven years and yet said nothing to her therapist about her consciously remembered UFO experiences. This reticence is not unusual. These patients might also have dreams or vague remembrances of such images as hospital operating rooms, bright lights, huge-eyed alien beings, or even 'impossible' animals such as very large owls or spiders. Careful questioning -- especially under hypnosis -- may reveal that these patients have specific memories of having been immobilized by impassive alien beings who remove them, typically from a car or home, and then transport them into a UFO. There, various physical procedures are performed upon the abductees while they lie upon examination tables, naked, frightened and paralyzed. There may be a substantial number of such recollections associated with either childhood or adult experiences, or both. The patient may also have one or two unexplained scars on the legs -- or occasionally the upper body -- which he or she feels are the result of these quasi-medical examinations."
     - Budd Hopkins. David Michael Jacobs Ph.D, Ron Westrum, Ph.D., "A Report on Unusual Experiences Associated with UFO abductions, based upon the Roper Organization's Survey of 5,947 Adult Americans"

"When we compared our experiential respondents to our controls on such factors as (1) allergies, (2) sensitivity to light, (3) hearing acuity, (4) mood fluctuations, (5) psychic abilities, and (6) healing gifts, we found that our extraordinary experiencers were anywhere from twice to four times as likely to assert that they are now characterized by such qualities.
"In a phrase, there appears to be something about these encounters that ends to move our experiencers in the direction of becoming an electrical sensitive."
     - Kenneth Ring, Ph.D., The Omega Project

"...People who were high on temporal lobe sensitivity scores also showed increased suggestibility, that is, hypnotizability."
     - Michael Persinger

See Altered States [see below] to learn more about the relationship between temporal lobe sensitivity and mystical experiences.

Edith Fiore's "Encounters chronicles 14 different accounts of people who, under hypnosis,reveal widely divergent experiences with extraterrestrial beings. We have the predictable 'Gray' abduction scenario most of us have come to expect, complete with physical exams and egg/sperm extraction. Much more riveting are some of the accounts with other beings, such as the tall benevolent ones with high-back collars who are doing healing work on thousands around the planet. 'Dan' remembers, under hypnosis, being a commander in a human Star Fleet and has now chosen to take over the body of a five-year old child on earth as part of his 'earned retirement' program. 'Diane', a psychic, began having telepathic contacts with extraterrestrials at 13, accurately predicting so many things that her school and her family ordered her to stop, for fear of witch recrimination. 'James', a doctor in his midthirties, is developing healing technologies shown to him on-board a spacecraft."
     - John Winston, "Women of UFOLOGY"

Hypnosis, used to recover the "repressed memory" of the alleged abduction, is actually a form of guided fantasy.
     - Barry L. Beyerstein, Lecture before the BC Skeptics Society (22 April 1994)

"In hypnosis, the client is highly motivated to respond with historical reconstructions at the request of the therapist, even if they do not have sufficient details to reconstruct past events accurately. This is related to what is called the 'response criterion problem' in experimental hypnosis research. (Klatzky and Erdely, 1985).
"Hypnosis also has some notoriety in this regard because of the clinical phenomenon for which Milton Erickson coined the term 'vivification', where vividly imagined events are difficult or impossible to distinguish from ongoing sensory perceptions or from recollections, and the possibility that such a vivid imagining could be remembered as a veridical life event."
"There is no known reliable way at this time to verify whether a particular recollection was actually introduced as a so-called 'false memory'. The most promising research in this area seems to point to the possibility that we may someday be able to more reliably pick out the 'fantasy prone', at least as a relative number on a scale, but this still leaves the question open as to cause and effect. Did a severe early trauma provoke the need for escape into a rich inner fantasy world, or was the remembrance of a traumatic past solely the result of a therapist taking advantage of 'fantasy proneness''?"
     - Michael Corbin (Paranet)

"'Abduction accounts may be similar, not because the aliens are all similar, but because our brains are,' Blackmore writes in the journal Nature....Blackmore writes in another article in New Scientist 'Studies of abductees have shown that they are of at least average intelligence, from a wide range of social classes and show no particular signs of mental disturbance or pathology,' writes Blackmore."
"Other critics suggest that abduction reports may stem from 'false memories' induced under hypnosis. But Blackmore notes that some abductees have not been hypnotized and false memories can be implanted without hypnosis. 'The key thing here is that 'false memories' are not so different from "true memories",' she writes. 'In a sense, all memories are false.' Memories represent a lot of complicated neurochemistry and electrical activity, so memory of an 'abduction' may really be the brain's way of representing something else."
     - "Do Magnetic Fields Play Role in Alien-abduction Memories", Buffalo News, 02/05/95

"In a blind study carried out for Hopkins by psychologist Elizabeth Slater, nine ostensible abductees were given a standard battery of personality tests. They proved to be non-psychotic, but tended to suffer form anxiety and hypervigilance. The self-concept appeared to be damaged in some of the cases, particularly in relation to sex. The protocols and Dr. Slater's interpretation were checked by a second psychologist who agreed with the initial assessment. When the subjects' abduction claims were made known to Dr. Slater, she considered that their symptomatology was consistent with what might be expected if indeed such events had taken place."
     - Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs and Ron Westrum

"...While this is a heterogeneous group in terms of overt personality style, it can be said that most of its members share being rather unusual and very interesting. They also share brighter than average intelligence and a certain richness of inner life that can operate favorably in terms of creativity or disadvantageously to the extent that it can be overwhelming. Shared underlying emotional factors include a degree of identity disturbance, some deficits in the interpersonal sphere, and generally mild paranoia phenomena (hypersensitivity, wariness, etc.)"
     - Slater, E., Ph.D. "Conclusions on Nine Psychologicals"

"...Persons who as adults report UFOEs or NDEs [near death experiences] are not as children especially inclined toward a world of fantasy, but they are apparently already sensitive to nonordinary realities."
"There is a consistent tendency for both UFOErs and NDErs to report a greater incidence of childhood abuse and trauma....Overall, individuals who report UFO encounters and NDErs appear to have a greater likelihood of showing dissociative tendencies in their psychological functioning."
Psychological absorption "is the ability to concentrate and focus one's attention on the figures and features of one's inner reality to the exclusion of events taking place in the external environment...This quality seems to be the hallmark of what we might call 'the encounter-prone personality'."
     - Kenneth Ring, Ph.D., The Omega Project

"Robert E. Bartholemew, Kieth Basterfield, and George S. Howard...analyzed 152 subjects based on biographical notes for characteristics of fantasy-prone personality [FPP]. They did not do an analysis for mental illness. The only statement they make about mental illness is in the abstract, where they say 'these subjects are remarkably devoid of a history of mental illness. However, in 132 cases, one or more major characteristics were found of what Wilson and Barber(1981) identified as the 'fantasy-prone personality'. They only go into details about their analysis for FPP traits in their test group.

1.) "132 out of 152 have one or more FPP traits (87%)!

2.) "In Wilson and Barber's work, 58% of their FPP subjects spent a large part of their childhood interacting with fantasized people or animals, reporting to have 'clearly seen, heard, and felt them in the same way that they perceived living people and animals'. Also a high proportion of FPP subjects reported physiological effects in conjunction with fantasies."
     - Robert Huss, (rhuss+@EDRC.CMU.EDU)

"Most said they had experienced quite frequently throughout their lives something such as the following: becoming physically ill when they thought (incorrectly) that they had eaten spoiled food or developing an uncomfortable and continous itch when they (incorrectly) believed that they had been contaminated with lice..."
     - Bartholemew, Basterfield & Howard, "UFO Abductees and Contactees: Psychopathology or Fantasy "Proneness?", Professional Psychology Research and Practice; 1991 Jun V22 pp 215-222

3.) "The major FPP traits that they checked for were psychic abilities, out of body experiences, automatic writing, healing, apparitions, religious visions, physiological effects, and spirtual themes.

4.) "Aside from their analysis of the data, they discuss the possible interpretations of a therapist when encountering a client who reports abduction or alien contact. They advocate considering the client fantasy prone, rather than psychopathological. They admit that the labels are arbitrary, and that either case can still be considered abnormal."
     - Robert Huss, (rhuss+@EDRC.CMU.EDU

"One thing we have learned when we have gone into the background of persons who claim to have been abducted by UFOs, to have had contacts with the UFOs, or to have received messages from space people is that for the most part they have a history of being battered children or to have had sad histories in other ways."
     - Jim Lorenzen

"Each time an abduction experience is uncovered, a psychological inquiry into the life of the witness would indicate that he or she was undergoing a life-crisis at the time or was recovering from a psychological trauma."
     - D. Scott Rogo

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Behind the Machinery

(1) The Collective Species Unconscious

"Highly dissimilar people produce strikingly similar accounts of abductions by UFO occupants. The basic scenarios are highly concordant in detail and events. This is surprising in light of the widely divergent cultural, socio-economic, educational, occupational, intellectual and emotional status of abductees. Further, the scenarios themselves do not seem to show the same layering of affect and symbolic richness present in other fantasy endowed material. Instead, symbolic and conceptual complexity centers around the meaning of the experience for the individual, not around the shape, form, activity, intent, etc., of the aliens and their environment. This is in stark contrast to the expected complexity and diversity of thematic and symbolic elaboration found in our fantasy material."
     - Rima E. Laibow, M.D.

"It seams to us that rather than being 'extraterrestrial' in any simple sense, UFOs could well be part of the same larger intelligence which has shaped the tapestry of religion and mythology since the dawn of human consciousness."
     - Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience

"Perhaps there are fundamental mechanisms which involve the total number of human beings immersed within a single pattern of connection.... Space would be irrelevant as a source of distribution since the primary factor would be the means by which they are functionally connected. This functional connection would be formed from time to time during transient disturbances of the earth's environment. During this connection, the external representations of the problems, expectancies, and biological properties of the total individual units would transiently occur."
     - Persinger, Lafreniere, Space-Time Transients

"The collective species unconsciousness is vastly more powerful than a personal unconsciousness, and under appropriate conditions it can directly materialize a thought form, which may be of an object or even of a living being. The emerging thought form (tulpa) starts as an archetype in the collective...unconscious and is progressively altered, shaped and formed by the shallower layers of unconsciousness which it must traverse on its way to materialization. UFOs, fairies, angels, sasquatches, Lock Ness monster, etc., are thus tulpa materialization from the unconscious - i.e., they are 'dreams' of the race."
"The more intense interest there is, the more photos that are taken, and the more investigation that is done, the easier it is to find evidence...because the additional infiltration of the material and the thought form into more and more unconsciousness provide more and more tuning stages."
     - Thomas Bearden, "Species Metapyschology, UFO Waves and Cattle Mutilations"

"The extraterrestrial is the human oversoul in its general and particular expression on the planet...It is actually the most intelligent organism on the planet, regulating human culture through the release of ideas out of eternity and into the continuum of history. The UFO is an idea whose purpose is to confound science, because science has begun to threaten the existence of the human species and the entire ecosystem of the planet. And at this point a shock is necessary for the culture - a shock equivalent to the shock of the Resurrection on Roman imperialism."
     - Terence McKenna

 

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(2) UFO's as a Reality Transformer

"At close range, the UFO phenomenon acts as a reality transformer, triggering for the witness a series of symbolic displays that are indistinguishable from reality. These displays, which frequently begin with a bewildering series of blinking colored lights of extraordinary intensity, induce a state of intense confusion for the subjects who are vulnerable to the insertion of new thoughts and new visual experiences."
     - Jacques Valleé, Messengers of Deception

"My contention is that these different forms of contact are related and that in all likelihood a single source of intelligence is using whatever openings it can find to penetrate our collective mind and modify our basic ideas of how reality works."
     - Michael Grosso, Mind at Large

"Our interest in [UFOs] should center of how the spreading and deepening convictions about them subtly, yet irreversibly, remold not just peripheral religious or metaphysical ideas, but entire constellations of culture and social knowledge. In this connection, UFOs can be depicted as what I would can ultraterrestrial agents of cultural deconstruction."
     - Carl Raschke

Longtime UFO observer Jacques Valleé focuses "not on stages leading to eventual 'contact' but rather on what he calls the 'recursive unsolvability' of the overall phenomenon. In mathematics a recursive function is one in which a solution can be reached not by predictable linear operations, but rather through continuous, partial tallies, each of which gradually redefines the problem itself. Valleé notes that the UFO phenomenon began with the expectation of an imminent, concise, and straightforward solution, but through successive, partial tallies has revealed an increasingly murky horizon."
     - Keith Thompson, Aliens and Angels

"What we see emerging in the UFO phenomenon is not gradual contact but rather gradual control - of our beliefs, expectations, fears, hopes and dreams...We know from behavioral psychology that the best schedule of reinforcement is one that combines periodicity with unpredictability [citing the ongoing pattern of intense UFO activity followed by quiet periods when it seems to have gone away entirely]. Learning is then slow but continuous. It leads to the highest level of adaptation. And it is irreversible. It is interesting to observe that the pattern of UFO waves has the same structure as a schedule of reinforcement."
     - Jacques Valleé

Through use of hypnotic induction creating confusion, "setting the stage for reframing thus becomes an important step in the process of affecting second order change and of 'showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle'."
     - Watelaurck, Weakland and Rush

"...I cannot help thinking it is we who are in need of dire examination; it is we who have to place ourselves on an 'operating table.' It looks to me as if something- some intelligence- is 'examining' and 'operating on' us. Medical operation implies a need for healing. The latest development in UFO symbolism contains a message about healing ourselves.
"...If we interpret the symbolism of the abduction experience as a strange kind of species dream, the message is that our world, symbolized by the otherworld, is a dying wasteland and that we have to evolve into a higher (and hence much more adaptable) species."
     - Michael Grosso, Mind at Large

"I believe there is a machinery of mass manipulation behind the UFO phenomenon...UFO contactees are the tools of a global plan. These silent agents are walking among us unseen, placing social time bombs at strategic spiritual locations. Some fine morning we may wake up from our 'scientific' complacency to find stranger walking through the ruins of our establishments."
     - Jacques Valleé, Messengers of Deception

"One can argue that one of the primary effects of the UFO phenomenon, for those who take it seriously, is to fracture their Western, scientific view of reality. In addition, reported UFO communications containing theological material often promote an impersonal or pantheistic conception of God, and some specifically attack the foundations of particular devotional faiths - notably Christianity.
"One hypothesis to explain all this is that there exist beings endowed with mystic powers who are trying to indoctrinate human society with a spiritual philosophy based on cosmic evolution of consciousness and an impersonal conception of the absolute. Some of these beings are humanoids that visit people in UFOs, and others may be humans like ourselves who have acquired mystic powers through the practice of yoga. For the latter, their impersonal philosophy may have its roots in historical traditions such as Buddhism and the Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. The purpose of the indoctrination program may be to save humanity and the earth from the perils caused by modern materialism.
     - Richard L. Thompson, Alien Identities

"There are UFOs or there have been contacts - if only signals - from outer space, but the evidence reveals the aliens are interested only in observing us...But public knowledge of these facts could become a threat. If the existence of UFOs were to be officially confirmed, a chain reaction could be initiated that would result in the collapse of the Earth's present power structure. Thus, a secret international understanding - a conspiracy - has been agreed to by the world powers to keep the public ignorant of and confused about contacts or visitations from beyond the Earth."
     - Victor Marchett (once executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA), Second Look, May 1979

 

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(3) Intracerebral Implants

"Creatures from outer space invaded this planet, captured human beings, and took them to their space ship. When they had the earth people bound and anesthetized, they planted little electrical receivers in the back of their heads. The invaders held the controlling transmitters and returned the earthlings to their jobs and society. Some of the people on remote control [...] committed despicable crimes, and changed their life styles into parodies of their former selves because their thoughts and actions were being controlled by these extraterrestrial invaders.".
     - Hal Lindsey, Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth, p.98, 1972

"Perhaps the most interesting pieces of evidence surrounding the abduction phenomenon are the intracerebral implants allegedly visible in the X-rays and MRI scans of many abductees. Indeed, abductees often describe operations in which needles are inserted into the brain; more frequently still, they report implantation of foreign objects through the sinus cavities. Many abduction specialists assume that these intracranial incursions must be the handiwork of scientists from the stars.."
"The abductees' implants strongly suggest a technological lineage which can be traced to a device known as a "stimoceiver", invented in the late '50s-early '60s by a neuroscientist named Jose Delgado. The stimoceiver is a miniature depth electrode which can receive and transmit electronic signals over FM radio waves. By stimulating a correctly-positioned stimoceiver, an outside operator can wield a surprising degree of control over the subject's responses.
     - Martin Cannon, The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abduction

"Radio stimulation of different points in the amygdala and hippocampus in the four patients produced a variety of effects, including pleasant sensations, elation, deep, thoughtful concentration, odd feelings, super relaxation, colored visions, and other responses.".
     - Jose Delgado, Physical Control of the Mind: Towards a Psychocilvilised Society

Of one experimental subject, Delgado notes that 'the patient expressed the successive sensations of fainting, fright and floating around. These 'floating' feelings were repeatedly evoked on different days by stimulation of the same point..." Ufologists may recognize the similarity of this sequence of events to abductee reports of the opening minutes of their experiences."

"In a fascinating series of experiments, Delgado attached the stimoceiver to the tympanic membrane, thereby transforming the ear into a sort of micro-phone. An assistant would whisper "How are you?"into the ear of a suitably 'fixed' cat, and Delgado could hear the words over a loudspeaker in the next room. The application of this technology to the spy trade should be readily apparent. According to Victor Marchetti, The Agency once attempted a highly-sophisticated extension of this basic idea, in which radio implants were attached to a cat's cochlea, to facilitate the pinpointing of specific conversations, freed from extraneous surrounding noises. Such 'advances' exacerbate the already-imposing level of Twentieth-Century paranoia: Not only can our phones be tapped and mail checked, but even TABBY may be spying on us!"

"Robert G. Heath, of Tulane University, who has implanted as many as 125 electrodes in his subjects, achieved his greatest notoriety by attempting to 'cure' homosexuality through ESB. In his experiments, he discovered that he could control his patients' memory; he could also induce sexual arousal, fear, pleasure, and hallucinations. Heath and another researcher, James Olds, have independently illustrated that areas of the brain in and near the hypothalamus have, when electronically stimulated, what has been described as 'rewarding' and 'aversive' effects.
"Both animals and men, when given the means to induce their own ESB of the brain's pleasure centers, will stimulate themselves at a tremendous rate, ignoring such basic drives as hunger and thirst. (Using fixed electrodes of his own invention, John C. Lilly had accomplished similar effects in the early 1950s.)" "Bryan Robinson, of the Yerkes primate laboratory has conducted fascinating simian research on the use of remote ESB in a social context. He could cause mothers to ignore their offspring, despite the babies' cries. He could turn submission into dominance, and vice-versa."

"In his autobiography The Scientist John C. Lilly (who would later achieve a cultish reknown for his work with dolphins, drugs and sensory deprivation) records a conversation he had with the director of the National Institute Mental Health in 1953. The director asked Lilly to brief the CIA, FBI, NSA and the various military intelligence services on his work using electrodes to stimulate directly the pleasure and pain centers of the brain. Lilly refused..."
     - Martin Cannon, The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abduction

"Dr. Antoine Remond, using our techniques in Paris, has demonstrated that this method of stimulation of the brain can be applied to the human without the help of the neuro-surgeon; he is doing it in his office in Paris without neuro-surgical supervision. This means that anybody with the proper apparatus can carry this out on a person covertly, with no external signs that electrodes have been used on that person. I feel that if this technique got into the hands of a secret agency, they would have total control over a human being and be able to change his beliefs extremely quickly, leaving little evidence of what they had done."
     - John C. Lilly, The Scientist

"Despite his avowed phobia against secrecy, a careful reading of The Scientist reveals that he continued to do work useful to this country's national security apparatus. His sensory deprivation experiments expanded upon the work of ARTICHOKE's Maitland Baldwin, and even his dolphin research has - perhaps inadvertently - proved useful in naval warfare. One should note that Lilly's work on monkeys carried a "secret"classification, and that NIMH was a common CIA funding conduit."

"Only recently has the barrier cannon been rolled out of the Pentagon's burgeoning vault of black projects. One NASA report written in 1970 by Thomas Fryer of Ames Research Labs concerned 'Implantable Biotelemetry Systems' (the gadgets that turn up with unnerving regularity in the bodies of UFO abductees)."
     Alex Constantine, Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A., p.34, 1995)

"Over the years, certain journalists have asserted that the CIA has mastered a technology call RHIC-EDOM. RHIC means 'Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control'. EDOM stands for 'Electronic Dissolution of Memory.' Together, these techniques can - allegedly - remotely induce hypnotic trance, deliver suggestions to the subject, and erase all memory for both the instruction period and the act which the subject is asked to perform.
"RHIC uses the stimoceiver, or a microminiaturized offspring of that technology to induce a hypnotic state. Interestingly, this technique is also reputed to involve the use of INTRAMUSCULAR implants, a detail strikingly reminiscent of the 'scars' mentioned in Budd Hopkins Missing Time. Apparently, these implants are stimulated to induce a post-hypnotic suggestion.
"EDOM is nothing more than missing time itself - the erasure of memory from consciousness through the blockage of synaptic transmission in certain areas of the brain. By jamming the brain's synapses through a surfeit of acetocholine, neural transmission along selected pathways can be effectively stilled. According to the proponents of RHIC-EDOM, acetocholine production can be affected by electromagnetic means. (Modern research in the psycho-physiological effects of microwaves confirm this proposition.)"
     - Martin Cannon, The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abduction

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Contactees and Cults

(1) The Glow of the Super-religious

In a "so-called contactee case...a person known as a contactee meets with beings from other worlds on a friendly basis. Contactees may claim to have been selected by these beings to carry their message to humankind, and sometimes they claim to have been taken on visits to other planets in spaceships."
"Channeled communications have frequently taken place in contactee cases..."
     - Richard L. Thompson, Alien Identities

"We have previously told you, our brothers, our sisters of the earth planet, there will be an attempt to lift off certain of the children of Light, or what you have termed the children of God or the innocent from the surface of your planet before an axial flip takes place."
     - Sut-ko, allegedly channeled by Aleuti Francesca

This message clearly plays upon traditional Christian expectations.

 

"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."
     - Paul, I Thessalonians

"Many of the contactees have what we psychiatrists call dissociative personalities, in some cases even multiple personalities. They are susceptible to trance states, which makes them, by the way, unusually good hypnotic subjects."
     - Berhold Eric Schwarz

"Many UFO contactees also develop the glow of the super-religious who have 'seen the light'."
     - J. Mishlove

"A great many of the contactees purvey philosophies which are tinged, if not tainted, with totalitarian overtones."
     - Paris Flammonde

"A catalogue of contactee themes includes the following: intellectual abdication, racist philosophy, technical impotence and social utopia. Beyond the attention of academic science, below the dignity of official history, there are groups, cults, and sects that serve as "leading indicators"of mass movements."
"The symbols attached to the UFO phenomenon are the primary images of life: blood, death, sex, time, space, and sky."
     - Jacques Valleé, Messengers of Deception

"...One familiar leader of the UFO fringe -- a man well-known for his espousal of the doctrine of 'love and light' -- is Virgil Armstrong, a close personal friend of General John Singlaub, the notorious Iran-Contra player, who recently headed the neo-fascist World Anti-Communist League. Armstrong, who also happens to be an ex-Green Beret and former CIA operative, figured into my inquiry in an interesting fashion: An abductee of my acquaintance was told -- by her 'entities', naturally -- to seek out this UFO spokesman and join his 'sky-watch' activities, which, my source alleges, included a mass channelling session intended to send debilitating 'negative' vibrations to Constantine Chernenko, then the leader of the Soviet Union. Of course, intracerebral voices may have a purely psychological origin, so Armstrong can hardly be held to task for the abductee's original 'directive'. Still, his past associations with military intelligence inevitably bring disturbing possibilities to mind."
     - Martin Cannon, The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abduction

There are also suggestive indications of links between Werner Erhard, the CIA, the former Soviet KGB and UFOs at Esalen near Big Sur, California.

"Even more ominous than possible ties between UFO cults and the intelligence community are the cults' links with the shadowy I AM group, founded by Guy Ballard in the 1930s. According to researcher David Stupple, 'If you look at the contactee groups today, you'll see that most of the stable, larger ones are actually neo-I AM groups, with some sort of tie to Ballard's organization'. This cult, therefore, bears investigation. Guy Ballard's 'Mighty I AM Religious Activity', grew, in large part, out of William Dudley Pelly's Silver Shirts, an American NAZI organization. Although Ballard himself never openly proclaimed NAZI affiliation, his movement was tinged with an extremely right-wing political philosophy, and in secret meetings he 'decreed' the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. The I AM philosophy derived from Theosophy, and in this author's estimation bears a more-than-cursory resemblance to the Theosophically-based teachings that informed the proto-NAZI German occult lodges.
"After the war, Pelley (who had been imprisoned for sedition during the hostilities) headed an occult-oriented organization call Soulcraft, based in Noblesville, Indiana. Another Soulcraft employee was the controversial contactee George Hunt Williamson (real name: Michel d'Obrenovic), who co-authored UFOs Confidential with John McCoy, a proponent of the theory that a Jewish banking conspiracy was preventing disclosure of the solution to the UFO mystery [How remarkable that such idiots figure out such fundamental halt-truths. -AMPP Ed.]. Later, Williamson founded the I AM-oriented Brotherhood of the Seven Rays in Peru. Another famed contactee, George Van Tassel, was associated with Pelley and with the notoriously anti-Semitic Reverend Wesley Swift (founder of the group which metamorphosed into the Aryan nations).

"The most visible offspring of I AM is Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant, a group best-known for its massive arms caches in underground bunkers. CUT was recently exposed in Covert Action Information Bulletin as a conduit of CIA funds, and according to researcher John Judge, has ties to organizations allied to the World Anti-Communist League. Prophet is becoming involved in abduction research and has sponsored presentations by Budd Hopkins and other prominent investigators. In his book The Armstrong Report:: ETs AND UFOs: They Need Us, We Don't Need Them [sic], Virgil Armstrong directs troubled abductees toward Prophet's group. (Perhaps not insignificantly, he also suggests that abductees plagued by implants alleviate their problem by turning to 'the I AM force' within'.)"
     - Martin Cannon, The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abduction

 

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(2) New Age Themes

1.) Earth as a prison planet
"Human beings appear to be a slave race languishing on an isolated planet in a small galaxy. As such, the human race was once a source of labor for an extraterrestrial civilization and still remains a possession today. To keep control over its possession and to maintain Earth as something of a prison, that other civilizations has bred never-ending conflict between human beings, has promoted human spiritual decay, and has erected on Earth conditions of unremitting physical hardship. This situation has existed for thousands of years and it continues today."
     - William Bramley, The Gods of Eden

[Perhaps not coincidentally, Bramley has precisely described the tactics of the establishment. -AMPP Ed.]

2.) A species awakening
"...I take the flying saucer to be an image of the future state of humanity. It is a kind of millenarian transformation of the human where the soul is exteriorized as the apotheosis of technology. It is that eschatological event that is casting enormous shadows backward through time over the historical landscape. That is the siren singing at the end of time, calling all humanity across the last hundred millennia toward it. Calling us out of the trees and into history, and through this series of multileveled cultural transitions to the point where the thing within the monkeys - the creature of pure language and pure imagination whose aspirations are entirely titanic in terms of self-transformation - that thing is now emerging, and it will emerge as humanity leaves the planet."
     - Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival

"Are these 'somethings' aspects of a greater existence, distorted perhaps by the subject's perceptual filters? Are they first glimpses of a 'larger earth'? To a frog with its simple eye, the world is a dim array of grays and blacks. Are we like frogs in our limited sensorium, apprehending just part of the universe we inhabit? Are we as a species now awakening to the reality of multidimensional worlds in which matter undergoes subtle reorganizations in some sort of hyperspace? Is visionary experience analogous to the first breathings of early amphibians? Are we ourselves coming ashore to a 'larger earth'?"
     - Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body

3.) Feminine mythology
"My own experience, as I have mentioned in both Communion and Transformation, seems to involve an immensely powerful female figure. Certainly it is full of symbolic imagery that relates to ancient feminine deities and feminine mythology."
     - Whitley Stieber in The Watchers

"Children of the northern peoples, you wander in impenetrable darkness. Your mother mourns."
     - Betty Andreasson (UFO abductee under hypnosis)

"I believe the strong tendency of the unconscious to produce stories is connected with a desire of the unconscious - the 'female principle' - to divert and entertain."
     - Stan Gooch, The Paranormal

from http://home.fireplug.net/~rshand/streams/ufos/states.html:

Altered States

The Light Show Within

(1) Sensory Deprivation

"Normal memories, the 'perceptual release' theory [formulated by Hughlings Jackson in 1931] assumes, are suppressed by the flow of sense information from the outside world. New information inhibits the emergence and awareness of previously processed information. If the new input is decreased or impaired while awareness remains, stored images may be released and experienced as hallucinations or dreams."
     - Louis Jolyon West

"The daylight (sensory input) is reduced while the interior illumination (the general level of arousal of the central nervous system) remains bright, so that images originating within the rooms of the brain may be perceived as though they came from outside the windows of the senses."
     - Ronald K. Siegel

"Numerous studies in sensory deprivation show that once a well-reinforced thinking process which dominates in everyday life stops, the mind is overwhelmed by a flood of non-ordinary imagery. In one study conducted at McGill University in Montreal by psychologist Donald Hebb, student volunteers experienced what we call childish emotional responses and hallucinations after twenty-four hours."
     - Regush

"From real studies on suggestibility in sensory deprivation conditions, Vernon found that suggestibility in all ways could be increased after two to three days and become four times greater than before. But he also found that it was lost no longer than two days after the experimental conditions were terminated, if gains were not consolidated thereafter.
"Why should one become suggestible in such conditions? Vernon explains that the brainstem reticular formation acts as a way station for all messages coming in and going out of the brain. Normally it inhibits some messages and enhances others, thus dictating which ones get paid conscious attention. Conditions of sensory deprivation probably reduce the amount of information passing through the reticular formation..."
     - Denise Winn, The Manipulated Mind

"If this is the case, then the 'importance' of any given sets of neural events may be greatly enhanced. Said more simply, under the conditions of sensory deprivation, the human may be able to content himself with ideas or cognitions that he would otherwise simply dismiss."
     - Prof. Jack Vernon, Inside the Black Room

 

---

(2) Hallucinogens

Analogous to the perceptual-release theory of hallucinations, "the daylight (sensory input) is reduced while the interior illumination (the general level of arousal of the central nervous system) remains bright, so that images orginating within the rooms of the brain may be perceived as though they came from outside the windows of the senses."
     - Ronald K. Siegel

"Hallucinogens produced vivid descriptions. First, organized geometric patterns appeared. Slowly they took on blue tints and began pulsating. Thirty minutes into the voyage, lattice and tunnel forms increased significantly, along with some kaleidoscopes. When nearly two hours had passed, colors shifted to red, orange and yellow. Explosive, rotating lattice tunnels predominated, overlaid by complex images drawn from the subject's life. The scenes and forms all danced together around a bright light in the center of the image."
     - Brian Van der Horst

Form Constants (produced by hallucinogens)
     1) Bright pulsating light
     2) Images of tunnels and/or tubes
     3) Varied but intense colors
     4) Rotating or spiraling images
     5) Geometric patterns
     6) Erratic moment of imagery
     7) Subject becoming part of imagery or participating in the experience
     8) Multiple "tv screens" often displaying autobiographical data
     9) Integration of memories into the experience
     10) Various "complex imagery" (i.e., recognizable (often cartoonlike) human, animal and other forms)
     Large, domed rooms are common
- Categorized by Ronald K. Siegal

 

"The shapes formed by the spirit-fire are only empty colors and forms. The light of human nature [hsing] shines back on the primordial, the true."
     - The Hui Ming Ching

 

---

(3) NDE's (Near Death Experiences)

"Although 'death' narratives do not always follow an identical sequence of events, many of the described phenomena are consistent with details from abductions. Similarities include: (1) a bright light; (2) a humming (musical or annoying); (3) a sense of 'floating' out of body; (4) moving through a 'tunnel' or 'tube'; (5) approaching a 'door' or border of some sort; (6) encounter a 'being of light'; (7) telepathic communication with the 'being'; (8) a rapid review 'as on a TV screen' of events in the witnesses life; (9) a kind of 'moral examination' (roughly akin to the abductee's physical exam) which involves past deeds; (10) a moral 'message' of some kind; (11) a 'return'; (12) an aftermath in which the witness experiences varying degrees of personality change."
     - Alven H. Lawson

NDE's may also involve bodily dismemberment such as that experienced in shamanistic trances.

"The bright light is characteristic of many types of metal imagery; it is due to stimulation of the central nervous system that mimics the effects of light on the retina. It can also occur when the electrical activity in the brain is altered in such a way that the threshold for perception of phosphenes (electrical activity in the visual system) is lowered and bright lights are seen in otherwise dark surroundings. This point of light creates a tunnel perspective and individuals will report viewing much of their imagery in this regard."
     - Ronald K. Siegel in Science and the Paranormal

---

Temporal Lobe Transients

"...The brain can discriminate and respond to different kinds of very subtle, external magnetic fields, without the individual necessarily being aware of it, except through their imagery."
"We attempted to determine if the light flashing frequency in conjunction with, that is, synergistically, a magnetic field being applied to the brain would enhance suggestibility and imagery. What we found was there was indeed a change in imagery, and that the imagery was specific to those kinds of properties that are unique to temporal lobe activity; feelings of floating, movement, certain complex visual sensations."
     - Michael Persinger

"There is little doubt that the class of experiences that comprise mystical experiences in general, and NDE's in particular, is strongly correlated with temporal lobe activity....Kate Makarec and I have found that all of the major components of the NDE [near death experience], including out-of-body experiences, floating, being pulled towards a light, hearing strange music, and profound meaningful experiences can occur in experimental settings during minimal electrical current induction to the temporal region due to exogenous spike-and-wave magnetic field sources."
"The hypothesis that temporal lobe excitability is tied to these kinds of experiences goes back to the clinical literature, in which we know that there are ceratin personality and subjective experience features that are associated with electrical foci in the temporal lobe, specifically epileptic foci....We found that the normal population shows these symptoms, too, and that they appear to lie along a continuum."

"The personalities of normal people who display enhanced temporal lobe activity... usually display enhanced creativity, suggestibility, memory capactity and intuitive processing. Most of them experience a rich fantasy or subjective world that fosters their adaptability. These people have more frequent experiences of a sense of presence during which time 'an entity is felt and sometimes seen;' exotic beliefs rather than traditional religious concepts are endorsed."
     - Michael Persinger in Report on Communion by Ed Conroy

Arnold Mandell at UC San Diego has identified the septo-hippocampal-amygdaloid circuit of the limbic system which can be sent into oscillation by feedback from drumming, sensory deprivation and drugs. The result is a state of temporal lobe epilepsy in which the individual experiences transcendent states (auras) and often feelings of possession or terror. Smells, such a brimstone or heavenly fragrances, are often involved indicating the involvement of the limbic system which is also known as the rhinocephalon or "smell brain". These events are often accompanied by feelings of intense meaningfulness or great portentousness.
     - Barry L. Beyerstein, Notes from a lecture before the BC Skeptics Society (22 April 1994)

"...Movement, odd visual experiences, the profoundness, the fact that it's true reality, the intense meaningfulness, the cosmic significance of it all, the desire to proselytize, to spread the word, the sense of the personal, as if one is particularly chosen- these are all classic temporal lobe signs."
"...The whole context of feeling that there's another self giving you information, whether it's identified as the Great Spirit, an extraterrestrial, or just another personality, that whole operation is extraordinarily similar to temporal lobe phenomena."
     - Michael Persinger

The effect of electromagnetic fields on the temporal lobe have been used to explain some of the phenomena associated with close encounters with "UFOs".

According to Peter Fenwick, sensitives selected by the London Society for Psychical Research showed a high incidence of head traumas at some point in their lives. Michael Persinger has noted that the soft neural signs associated with mystical experience correlates with temporal lobe transients which "color" attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Four percent of the population is "fantasy prone" according to Banber(?) and Wilson's scale. A study of a science fiction group showed a correlation between fantasy imagery, temporal lobe transients. and esoteric beliefs.
     - Barry L. Beyerstein, Notes from a lecture before the BC Skeptics Society (22 April 1994)

"The cerebellum is the source of sexual excitement and of orgasm. If man's evolution is the result of a conflict between the old and new brain, resulting in a degree of reconciliation, then is it not conceivable that glimpses of higher consciousness are the result of a momentary integration of the old and new brains?
"Elmer and Alyce Green of the Menniger Foundation discovered that hypnogogic images are accompanied by strong theta rhythms, which suggests that the cerebellum is the source of theta rhythms. Their research into biofeedback also showed that, while relaxation states are accompanied by alpha rhythms, deeper states of reverie produced long trains of theta rhythms. This led them to speculate that states of creativity might be accompanied by theta rhythms, since so many poets and scientists have received sudden bursts of inspiration when they were in states between sleeping and waking."
     - Colin Wilson, Mysteries : An Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal, and the Supernatural

"The transcendent state is characterized by 'resting-state alpha' and relatively high-amplitude, synchronous slow-wave activity in the median of the central cortex accompanied by regional (commonly temporal) gamma (30-hertz-plus) brain-wave activity."
     - Murray Cox in Omni, October '93

by Dick Farley (cloudrider@aol.com), from http://home.navisoft.com/wes/aliens/false.htm:

FALSE MEMORY SPINDROME

Here's the list forwarded to me the other day of the FMSF's advisory board, from their most recent online version of their False Memory Syndrome Foundation newsletter. I've simply been "watching" these folks for a while. Some of these names are VERY interesting given their research histories. Well known, many are. So...here's what's happening:

UCLA identifications: Louis Jolyon West; John Hochman; Rochel Gelman.

Others at Berkeley (Singer; Crews; Ofshe). Stanford & Harvard, of course. (Odd, yes, that being John Mack's baliwick, too? "Aliens?" Bah, humbug! "Alien-Nation?")

The "Amazing" James Randi (of CSICOP and allegedly "CIA" consultant on magic and debunk/disinform fame). His presence sort of gives away who and what this FMSF scam is about. Odd also, yes, that Randi got into a "pi**ing" contest with former Navy signals scientist Eldon Byrd recently (1992-1993) and the two fought it out in a slander suit Byrd filed against Randi? Something to do with Byrd's alleged plea bargain to some kind of mail-porn charge, which Randi allegedly had hyped up publicly to be more than that. Byrd won, but Randi pleaded "destitution" and Eldon got an award of $1.00. (It was tried in Baltimore, back in 1993. Baltimore Sun reported it, and Byrd told me about it over dinner at C. B. "Scott" Jones home one evening of several we spent together back in '92 and '93 there.)

Byrd said that Uri Geller put up $10,000 for his legal costs. Byrd and Geller are good friends, from back in the '70s, and Geller and Randi's bitter adversarial relationship is well known and goes way back, too. (You might want to read Andrijah Puharich's "URI" if you've not yet.)

Byrd says he had been "set-up" by postal inspectors, part of some initiative to discredit him because he was too public with his personal interests in "psi," etc. He'd allegedly had some Navy security clearance issues dog him, which contributed to his early retirement as one of their senior most civilian scientists. Of course, he could have been "living his cover," much as Jones allegedly was doing when he retired from active Navy Intelligence duty in the mid-1970s to create his "new" identity as fatherly "Professor Jones," of the Psi-Institute for Hot Oil Massages.

Even more bizarre: When he was still with the Navy, Dr. Byrd was the contract manager for some of the research Michael Persinger did (see FMSF list below), on "neuro-impacts" of various EMFs and ELFs. Something about wave-propagation and influences on submariners if somebody "beeped" them with mind- influencing EMF signals, etc., that kind of thing. Pretty small club, these folks. "Mind-benders" all.

The Orne's are now at Penn, of course. Most government "mind- influencers" we (the taxpayers) funded have now turned their misshapen medical ethics to work for the Dark Side. You've seen them in your Psych-Lit data base searches I suggested? Their work is funded by the big foundations (Hughes, etc.) and is buried so arcanely in technomedbabble as to be difficult...but not impossible...to excavate.

Not to omit the aforementioned Michael Persinger, up at Laurentian University, in Canada, where MUCH of this kind of work has been undertaken...(no pun intended) ...because of Canada absence of a Bill of Rights and First Amendment, not to mention a more restrictive National Security apparatus regarding disclosures. He was previously funded by Navy, and is/was a big buddy of C. B. Jones (Jones says) and other gov't signal propagation experts...for whom Persinger does/did work on "receptivity" and neuro-effects of external signals. See Psych-Lit and other refs.

The "web" of slime balls who have diddled with the knobs on the planetary consciousness is laid out here. But: Sunlight is the best disinfectant! There it is.

Best,

Dick (cloudrider@aol.com)

P.S. - Did you see the tantalizing "blurb" on Rather Dan's CBS News last night? It was a "read only" story with a graphic, about "researchers have mapped auditory hallucinations in the brain." Dan showed a computerized brain-scan "of a normal person," and then one of the distributed activity of "a schizophrenic while hearing voices." That was it. Hmmm. Do you have a citation for what that may have been drawn from?

Due to the Powell Colin-ectomy from the Newt-onian Presidential Campaign, Rather Dan apparently truncated the brain piece. My guess is it came from a journal "press release," but he didn't say which one. No other info given.

Interestingly, immediately following that little tid-byte, Rather had a story about "subliminals" in computer games (and other "retail" places). A new CD-game entitled "EdorFUN" was featured, and a benign history of the field was presented.

("Oh, 'Brave New World' that has such people in it.")

The "Eye on America" segment reported in some depth about (it said) "alleged" subliminals. I was amused to see a couple of identifiable "experts," saying the stuff doesn't work, etc., etc. We were left by CBS "not to worry" about yet one more scientific uncertainty with "unlimited market potential."

No surprises there.

But lingering out in the "aethers," there WAS that BBC news report back in April 1993, which was shot when we (Human Potential Foundation...the Pell/Jones thing fueled by Larry Rockeybucks) had a couple of visiting Russians over to demo their "Psychocorrection" software for a bunch of intell types. Included at that private but unclassified symposium we threw (in Tyson's Corners, at offices of Systems Integration Research, who were competing to get the Russians' "brokers" to set up a U.S. defense-intell deal to exploit this technology), were guys like Dr. Richard Nakamura (sp?), the head neuro-guy (there's another pun) from the NIH/NIMH. Also some CIA guys (Pandolfi & Green, who's ex-agency); some "Star Wars" office types; and of course your usual smattering of blue-suiters from USAF & DOD.

(Both Newt and Al Gore, not to mention the White House, are very aware of all of this. Given that it was a Rockey and Pell-Winkle Adventure, what might that tell you? Right! Especially given the Rockey-funded "UFO" Initiative trying to set up the Clintonistas, and Larry's funding and advocacy for "alien abductions" guru John E. Mack up at Hahvahd Yahd. Not to worry. It's still America because WE say it's still America. By the way, anybody SEEN Alien Ambassador Steve Greer lately?)

The BBC came and shot a separate segment of the Russians' "subliminal attitude adjuster" for their 12-minute segment on "Non-Lethal Weapons" and doctrine, (a la John Alexander, Janet & Chris Morris, etc.) which was all the rage during the earlier Clintonista period as "dueling defense budgets" evolved. Les Aspin died for our sins, so that debate is VERY black now, with Deutch of MIT and Sheila Widnall, also of MIT, carrying CIA and USAF. (Funny, that Bosnian-Serb party going on over at Wright- Patterson AFB, in Dayton. Maybe old "Hangar 18" is going to be the new Geneva, and the "Gray/EBEs" invited the Serbs in for some strawberry ice cream?)

The Russians said "it works." And "our side" was quietly amazed that the Russky doctors had apparently "figured out the algorithm" we've spent gazillions working on. And these ex- Soviet scientists had it working on an IBM-386 platform (at least the version they showed us). The later stuff was "at home" on another board.

Of course, the Russians said THEY had refused KGB funding, and their work was aimed at helping bend the minds of alcoholics and drug addicts back to the sanity of service to the state. But OTHER scientists, former colleagues of these guys, had NOT been so "ethical," the Russkies said, and had indeed gone ahead and helped the KGB guys with their nefarious experiments. Right.

That's why Rockefeller was funding Cdr. C. B. Jones to showcase this little bit of what they called "subliminal negotiation" technology to the intell community. Just think...millions and millions of little school kids, watching "Channel One" and having their plastic mind "Newt-ralized." Voila! No more pesky consumers with consciousness, let alone citizens with conscience. A marketer's (and corporate labor negotiator's) dream? Truth is what is believed, right? And people will fight and die...and even kill...for what they can be made to believe. Just ask the Rabins.

Did you ever see that BBC segment? It ran all around the world but here in the US of A. That's a tad odd, isn't it? That the whole world was watching us think about "non-lethal" doctrine except ourselves? Ah, yes. The most effective kind of "mind control" is simply to control the flow of information. Then, while the people believe they are making "choices," it is the "gatekeepers" who are setting the agenda and presenting the alternatives, guided by their "enlightened self interest."

I am reminded of Dan Rather's "mugging" some years ago, when the fellow ran up to him outside "Black Rock" (CBS News HQ), shouting..."Kenneth...what's the frequency?...Kenneth...what's the frequency?" (My guess: probably a little "demo" for Rather Dan about what COULD happen if instead of asking about a frequency, the "wild and crazy guy" might be delivering some OTHER kind of message. Some of these guys on the FMSF "advisory board" list could tell you all about those things.)

---

[brace yourself for FM-SPINdrome Foundation spammage -d4]

(From the FMSF newsletter...last few pages...as forwarded to me. Can't vouch authenticity.)

The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a qualified 501(c)3 corporation with its principal offices in Philadelphia and governed by its Board of Directors. While it encourages participation by its members in its activities, it must be understood that the Foundation has no affiliates and that no other organization or person is authorized to speak for the Foundation without the prior written approval of the Executive Director. All membership dues and contributions to the Foundation must be forwarded to the Foundation for its disposition.

WHAT IF?

WHAT IF, parents who are facing lawsuits and want legal information about FMS cases, had to be told, "I'm sorry, there isn't any such thing available?"

WHAT IF, your son or daughter began to doubt his or her memories and called FMSF only to get a recording, "This number is no longer in operation?"

WHAT IF, a journalist asks you where to get information about the FMS phenomenon, and you had to answer, "Sorry, I don't know?"

WHAT IF, you want to ask a question that only an expert, familiar with FMS can answer, and find out that FMSF can no longer provide that information? Where would you turn?

WHAT IF the False Memory Syndrome Foundation did not exist?

A frightening thought, isn't it?

Please support our Foundation. We cannot survive without your support!

Reprinted from the August 1994 PFA (MI) Newsletter

YEARLY FMSF MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION 

Professional - Includes Newsletter $125______ 

Family - Includes Newsletter $100______ 

Additional Contribution: _____________ 

Visa: Card # & expiration date: ____________________ 
Mastercard:: Card # & expiration date: ______________ 

Check or Money Order: Payable to FMS Foundation in U.S. dollars 

Please include: Name, address, state, country, phone, fax 

3401 Market Street suite 130, Philadelphia, PA 19104, 
(215-387-1865) 

Pamela Freyd, Ph.D., Executive Director 

---

[and of course, the cocktail-party list]

FMSF Scientific and Professional Advisory Board, November 1, 1995:

• AARON T. BECK, M.D., D.M.S., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• TERENCE W. CAMPBELL, Ph.D., Clinical and Forensic Psychology, Sterling Heights, MI
• ROSALIND CARTWRIGHT, Rush Presbyterian St. Lukes Medical Center, Chicago, IL
• JEAN CHAPMAN, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
• LOREN CHAPMAN, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
• FREDERICK C. CREWS, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, CA
• ROBYN M. DAWES, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
• DAVID F. DINGES, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, The Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, PA
• HENRY C. ELLIS, Ph.D., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
• FRED FRANKEL, M.B.Ch.B., D.P.M., Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
• GEORGE K. GANAWAY, M.D., Emory University of Medicine, Atlanta, GA
• MARTIN GARDNER, Author, Hendersonville, NC
• ROCHEL GELMAN, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, CA
• HENRY GLEITMAN, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• LILA GLEITMAN, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• RICHARD GREEN, M.D., J.D., Charing Cross Hospital, London
• DAVID A. HALPERIN, M.D., Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY
• ERNEST HILGARD, Ph.D., Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
• JOHN HOCHMAN, M.D., UCLA Medical School, Los Angeles, CA
• DAVID S. HOLMES, Ph.D., University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
• PHILIP S. HOLZMAN, Ph.D., Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
• JOHN KIHLSTROM, Ph.D., Yale University, New Haven, CT
• HAROLD LIEF, M.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• ELIZABETH LOFTUS, Ph.D., University of Washington, Seattle, WA
• PAUL McHUGH, M.D., Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
• HAROLD MERSKEY, D.M., University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
• ULRIC NEISSER, Ph.D., Emory University, Atlanta, GA
• RICHARD OFSHE, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, CA
• EMILY K ORNE, B.A., University of Pennsyllvania, The Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, PA
• MARTIN ORNE, M.D., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, The Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, PA
• LOREN PANKRATZ, Ph.D., Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR
• CAMPBELL PERRY, Ph.D., Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
• MICHAEL A. PERSINGER, Ph.D., Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada
• AUGUST T. PIPER, Jr., M.D., Seattle, WA
• HARRISON POPE, Jr., M.D., Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA
• JAMES RANDI, Author and Magician, Plantation, FL
• HENRY L. ROEDIGER, III, Ph.D., Rice University, Houston, TX
• CAROLYN SAARI, Ph.D., Loyola University, Chicago, IL
• THEODORE SARBIN, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz, CA
• THOMAS A. SEBEOK, Ph.D., Indiana Univeristy, Bloomington, IN
• LOUISE SHOEMAKER, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• MARGARET SINGER, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, CA
• RALPH SLOVENKO, J.D., Ph.D., Wayne State University Law School, Detroit, MI
• DONALD SPENCE, Ph.D., Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center, Piscataway, NJ
• JEFFREY VICTOR, Ph.D., Jamestown Community College, Jamestown, NY
• HOLLIDA WAKEFIELD, M.A., Institute of Psychological Therapies, Northfield, MN
• LOUIS JOLYON WEST, M.D., UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA.

---

Date: October 24, 1995
To: Frontline (frontline@wgbh.org)
From: Dick Farley (cloudrider@aol.com)
Re: "In Search of Satan" / Satanic Ritualistic Abuse, etc.

Air Date: Tuesday, October 24, 1995, at 9 p.m. EDT.

As a journalist who has spent several years examining the various threads which make up the very bizarre tapestry of "SRA" and "alien abuctions," as well as alleged MPD and "induced multiples/alters-as-secret agents for _____", I was saddened that you folks apparently were so easily led astray. Unless, of course, Washington "intelligence personality" Dan Smith is correct and some of your contractual producers and on-board staffers are what he has called "company men," i.e., having CIA or other intelligence community connections. I'll leave all that for Dan and his Capitol Hill friends to sort out.

By way of brief background in this field, I am a journalist and public policy professional, having a varied background in non- profits doing environmental and science policy work. I won the Associated Press "Mark Twain" Award for Investigative Reporting in our Mid-Atlantic region, in 1990.

I worked for several years with an organization called the "Human Potential Foundation," chartered in Washington, DC and based in Falls Church, Virginia. It was founded by U. S. Senator Claiborne Pell and funded primarily by Laurance S. Rockefeller as one of his several current philanthropic initiatives seeming to promote alternative religious and psychiatric/psychological paradigms, including so-called "UFOs" and "abductions," having "Global Mind Change" potentials. Rockefeller put more than $700,000 through the "HPF" from 1991 to 1994, as Common Cause Magazine recently reported (Fall, 1995. Page 7). The network of allied scientists and medical experimenters runs throughout academic, military/intell and government-related specialists in mind-influencing, psychobiology, "political psychiatry" and "exceptional human performance," and makes efforts at reaching into the highest echelons of our elected government...with dubious intentions and reprehensible ethics.

You will see my name (listed as C. Richard Farley, Jr.) in the "Acknowledgments" of the 1993 book about purported "alien abductions" by John E. Mack, M.D., of Harvard. Although I have been portrayed variously by some of the principals of the "HPF" and Rockefeller minions as a "disgruntled ex-employee," that is not the case. I was working for the organization, after being recruited, as Director of Project Development, addressing the various scientific and educational paradigm-shifting foci the organization's principals espoused in their IRS filing and their brochure and internal documentation. I took myself "off" the so- called Rockefeller "UFO Initiative" to the White Houes (on which I worked from Oct. 1992 through April, 1994). Later, the HPF reduced its staff and laid all paid employees off, moving operations to the Falls Church basement in the home of Jones.

Incidental to your program of tonight, and my purpose for writing this, is that I worked from August, 1991 through at May, 1994, the HPF and its President, who is retired naval intelligence officer Cdr. C.B. "Scott" Jones, Ph.D. Jones also was a contractual consultant (KamanTEMPO, Inc.) to the Defense Nuclear Agency (1981-1985) before next working for Senator Pell as Special Assistant (1985-1991), ostensibly looking after Pell's "paranormal" interests. (Jones is also listed in Mack's book, as is L.S. Rockefeller.)

During part of that period and after I'd left the organization (Oct. 1992 through May, 1995), Cdr. Jones and what was left of the HPF (after he got rid of his only two full-time staffers, and with Pell eventually resigning as we have "closed in" on these guys), focused almost all of his public energy on Mr. Rockefeller's purported fascination with so-called "UFOs" and purported "alien abductions." Rockefeller is alleged, based on credible online data and published information, to have made a contribution of prestige and perhaps money to help Harvard's Dr. Mack resist efforts there to censure him for his "alien abduction" beliefs, as he claims is his "diagnosis" of the experiences of his "exceptional experiencers." But that's not all of it, and this certainly isn't about a doddering billionaire with a fascination for the bizarre. It's about power and abuse.

Basically, what tickled me about your program this evening was your reference to Ms. Gloria Steinem, whose magazine published an early and influential report about purported SRA, as your film revealed. What was fascinating is that you did not pursue this high-profile person's involvements further, back to her funding sources and political linkages, which lead to the same sources that have funded "alien abduction research, and the promotion of such scenarios by what "UFO" critic (and top space and reconnaissance technical writer) Philip Klass has repeatedly said is a "highly placed UFO cult."

What you also missed, and what I do know from my personal contacts with some of your "consultants" like Mr. Gus Rousseau in the Washington area, and others, is that Frontline has a deep understanding and much primary information about the range of phenomena and cross-linkages often termed "UFOs," as well as "recalled memories," etc. Your recent repeat of your earlier "debunking" of recalled memories and MPD, in which you had featured a well-known CIA-related psychiatrist purporting to "plant" MPD identities in the Hillside Strangler, I believe, was fairly transparent, especially if one knows the actual history of that psychiatrist. One would almost be led to conclude that your intention was "creative deflection" of mainstream public scrutiny of these phenomena...not as "metaphysicalities," but rather as techniques and applications of technologies in human hands. Hopefully you have thought all of these choices through? Gloria Steinem's "friendship" with the afore-mentioned Cdr. C.B. Jones, who demonstrably is and has been one of the higher placed "connections" among so-called paranormal researchers and "street-level" uses of what is termed in tradecraft as "applied anomalous phenomena," would have borne examination, especially given the reported "timing" of the appearance of SRA on the psychiatric scene. Whether "agents" or "assets," all of these folks are very closely connected and "inter-locking."

Funding for the work of Dr. Braun at Rush-Presbyterian also would have been of more than passing interest to Frontline's viewers, as would have been a more circumspect examination of the so-called "Greenbaum" lectures and Cory Hayward's allegations. There is independent corroboration of some of what he asserts, some of it from government publications or "gray literature" that is low-profile, but certainly not secret.

Although I'm certain you have known of it and have decided to pursue "other threads," I must also call your attention to the reports of legal cases emanating from CIA's admitted abuses of psychiatric patients at Allen Memorial Institute, in Canada, by CIA-sponsored (and Rockefeller-funded) practitioner, the late Dr. Ewen Cameron...who once was president of the World Psychiatric Association. Who funds Dr. Braun? Let me guess.

See: Thomas, Gordon. "Journey Into Madness." Bantam. 1989 (hardback) and 1990 (paper). Page 200-201 in the latter, will get you started just fine. Basically, other literature alleges that some of the "cult-like" contexts of so-called memory induction (allegedly to stimulate MPD's and "coded access" to these so-called personality fragments by hypnotic suggestion) has been routinely used to protect couriers and operatives who are destined for insertion behind enemy lines, or who have had exposures to highly (dangerously) classified information which is so sensitive that extreme psychological protection measure such as that alleged is, at least theoretically, justifiable. Also, the film's dismissive references to pre-WWII funding of "Nazi" (more accurately, Nazi-influencing) psychiatry and mental- health related "eugenics" practices, in Germany and in the U. S. before and after the war, can readily be traced to the Rockefeller funding. This is consistent with that family's long- standing interest in "selective breeding" of the human race, supposedly to eliminate the "useless eaters" and other rif-raff among us, who apparently don't measure up to their econometric standards of "citizenry." Often, according to some published accounts, justifications for these kinds of beliefs have come from one or another of "occult doctrines" or trendy belief- systems frequently dabbled in by self-styled "elites."

Suffice it to say that some of us who have been analyzing the apparent Frontline strategies of related topics getting your "treatment" were not disappointed, at least insofar as our analyses are concerned. Journalistically, that's another story. But "if you bring the football, you can make the rules," and your wealthy patrons, who funded the films you have packaged on these topics to the exclusion of a serious and balanced inquiry into human victimizations, and the intentions of whoever it is allegedly victimizing these folks, do get what they've paid for.

That you seemed to paint the alleged SRA excesses reported on tonight's program as motivated by financial greed was also a most clever disinformational strategy. To those of us who have seen the primary documentation, and interviewed many of these victims of some of these alleged mind-influencing experimental programs...and who also have documentation that links prominent people and their minions to such abuses, your reluctance to probe more deeply remains sadly frustrating.

It's understandable, considering your money sources and your vulnerabilities to political manipulation, particularly there in Boston where Harvard has been so desperate to keep its sordid complicities under wraps. But it's disappointing, nonetheless. While I wish that the phenomena you "exposed" in tonight's program were indeed as ephemeral as you (and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, "CIA" and various psychiatric perpetrators) wish it might be, the actuality is even more sad.

Various techniques of hypnosis, personality reformulation and technological / pharmacological enhancements, which are not supposed to exist, have been used...and abused...in the name of science and "national security." That our enemies certainly did the same...and prompted at least some of our national response... is also clear. But for Frontline to maintain the "cover-up," in the disguise of an "expose'," is a very slippery slope for us all.

We'll hope that more information and additional courage will come your way. Until then, some of us just wanted you to know we're "out here" as X-Files alludes, wrestling with "the truth." For you, it appears that, "Truth is what is believed." That is an unfortunate and cynical world-view. May it not come to haunt.

Best regards,

Dick Farley
P.O. Box 106
Frostburg, MD 21532

cloudrider@aol.com

FACTnet background on cults, your choice of poisons:

3HO    Amway    Ananda Marga    Anatmananda    Aum Shin Rikyo    Avatar    Boston Church of Christ (BCC)    Boston Church of Christ (International Church of Christ)    Boston Movement    Brethren, The    Brothers and Sisters, The    Bruderhof, The    Bruderhof Communities    Children of God    Concerned Christians    Cooneyites    Earth Liberation Front    Eckankar    est    Family, The    Frederick Lenz, III    Formation, The    Forum, The    Garbage Eaters    Hare Krishna    Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization    Heavens Gate    Hoffman, Terri    Hutterian Brethren East    Indian Gurus    Insight Seminars    International Churches of Christ (ICC)    Jehovah's Witnesses    Landmark Forum    Larouche    Lenz, Frederick, III    Local Church of Witness Lee    Mahikari    Millenium Cults    Mother of God    Multi-Level Marketing    National Labor Federation (NATLFED)    National Law Party    Neo-Tech    No-Name Church    Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO)    Provisional Communist Party, The    Rajneesh    Roberts Group, The    Satanism    Scientology    Siddha Yoga    Society of Brothers, The    Soka Gakkai    Transcendental Meditation    Truth, The    Two by Twos    UFO Cults    Unification Church, The    Way International, The    Witness Lee's Local Church    Yogi Bhajan    Zen Master Rama    Zonpower

FACTNet International (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Inc.) maintains a web site that vigilantly monitors cult activity in all its forms: Scientology, Moonies, Aum Shin Rikyo, etc. They even have some coverage of militia terrorism and eco-terrorism.

from CNN 1997-Mar-27, from http://cnn.com/US/9703/27/suicide.interview/index.html:

Associate of group member says deaths linked to UFO, Hale-Bopp

RANCHO SANTA FE, California (CNN) -- The quasi-religious group whose members died in an apparent mass suicide in California left videotapes announcing their intentions to join a UFO, an associate of a former member said Thursday.

In an interview with CNN's "Morning News," Nick Matzorkis of Interact Entertainment of Beverly Hills said he and one of his employees, known as Rio, went to the group's mansion, found the 39 bodies and notified authorities in San Diego and Beverly Hills.

"When he first came out of the house, he was as white as a sheep," Matzorkis said of Rio. "He said, 'They did it. ... They left their containers. They committed suicide.'"

Matzorkis said Rio, who left the group recently, received a package Tuesday containing two videotapes and a letter that described the group's intentions.

In the videotapes, members said their farewells and were "quite joyous" about "leaving this planet," Matzorkis said. The letter said that by the time it was read members would have "already shed their containers," he added.

According to Matzorkis, the group believed their souls transcend this life.

"They believed they were going to be taken away, as odd as this sounds, ... by a UFO -- that a UFO would come by and pick them up," Matzorkis said.

He added that seven months ago the leader of group, whom Matzorkis said was among the dead, told him the UFO was hiding behind Comet Hale-Bopp.

Investigators interviewed Matzorkis overnight, and the videotapes have been turned over to authorities. Matzorkis said investigators interviewed and released Rio.

from CNN 1997-Mar-27, from http://cnn.com/US/9703/27/suicide.web/index.html:

Group designed Web sites, worked as contract programmers

RANCHO SANTA FE, California (CNN) -- The group linked to Wednesday's apparent mass suicide in California operated a business-oriented Web site that made no mention of religious issues.

By Internet standards, the Higher Source's Web site was a well-maintained site that featured backgrounds of stars and links to other Web sites. It also offered programming, systems analysis and computer security services.

San Diego Polo Club General Manager Tom Goodspeed told CNN members of the group provided his club with a Web site that has been posted since last spring.

"They really knew their business as far as computers," Goodspeed said.

He said he met 10 Higher Source members over the course of eight months.

"There were men and women, ages late 20s to mid 40s -- very genuine, nice people, but what was odd is they all had buzz cuts and dressed similar," Goodspeed said. "No-collar shirts, darker clothing and basically gave the appearance they were all cut out of the same mold."

He said they told him they were members of a monastery, and that he once suggested the group hire other salespeople to help boost their business.

"Their presentation wasn't really that strong, but their talent was," Goodspeed said. "They told me they all belonged to a monastery and that's why they had that look, but they never ever pushed their religious beliefs on myself or anyone I'm aware of."

The group's Web site describes "The Difference" of its members:

"The individuals at the core of our group have worked closely together for over 20 years. During those years, each of us has developed a high degree of skill and know-how through personal discipline and concerted effort. We try to stay positive in every circumstance and put the good of a project above any personal concerns or artistic egos. By sustaining this attitude and conduct, we have achieved a high level of efficiency and quality in our work. This crew-minded effort, combined with ingenuity and creativity, have helped us provide advanced solutions at highly competitive rates."

from http://cnn.com/US/9703/27/suicide.list/index.html:

(CNN) -- Notable mass suicides or cult-related deaths within the past 20 years:

March 23, 1997 -- The charred bodies of three women and two men were found inside a house in Saint Casimir, Quebec. All were members of the Solar Temple, an international sect that believes ritualized suicide leads to rebirth on a planet called Sirius.

 

December 1995 -- Sixteen Solar Temple members were found dead in a burned house outside Grenoble, in the French Alps.

October 1994 -- The burned bodies of 48 Solar Temple members were discovered in a farmhouse and three chalets in Switzerland. At the same time, five bodies, including that of an infant, were found in a chalet north of Montreal.

April 19, 1993 -- At least 70 Branch Davidian cult members died after fire and a shootout with police and federal agents ended a 51-day siege of the compound near Waco, Texas. The sect's leader, David Koresh, who had preached a messianic gospel of sex, freedom and revolution and told followers he was Jesus Christ, died of a gunshot wound to the head sometime during the blaze.

October 1993 -- Fifty-three hill Vietnamese tribe villagers committed mass suicide with flintlock guns and other primitive weapons in the belief they would go straight to heaven. Officials said they were the victims of a scam by a man who received cash donations for promising a speedy road to paradise.

December 1991 -- Mexican minister Ramon Morales Almazan and 29 followers suffocated after he told them to keep praying and ignore toxic fumes filling their church.

December 13, 1990 -- Twelve people died in a religious ritual in Tijuana, Mexico, apparently after drinking fruit punch tainted by industrial alcohol.

November 18, 1978 -- The Rev. Jim Jones led more than 900 followers to their deaths at Jonestown, Guyana, by drinking a cyanide-laced grape punch. Cult members who refused to swallow the liquid were shot.

from FACTnet, 1998-Nov-18, from http://www.factnet.org/headlines/jonestown.html:

20 Years Later: Jonestown Memorial

November 18, 1998 marks the 20-year anniversary of the mass tragedy at Jonestown, Guyana, in which 912 members of the People's Temple died after suicide orders were issued by leader Jim Jones, who they called "Dad." Those who refused to drink the cyanide-laced punch were forced to drink at gunpoint or shot. Mothers administered the poison to their babies using eye-droppers. Of the 912 dead, 276 were children.

Jones ordered the deaths after People's Temple members killed Congressman Leo Ryan, who had gone to Jonestown on a fact-finding mission. After only a day at the Jonestown compound, a member tried to stab Ryan. The injury was minor, but Ryan decided to leave and a couple dozen People's Temple members decided to leave with him. Other members followed the group to the airstrip and opened fire, killing Ryan, three journalists, and one of the departing members.

Within a few months of the mass deaths, other People's Temple members who had survived also committed suicide, with one mother slitting the throats of her three children.

A year later, ex-People's Temple members Jeanne and Al Mills, who had been speaking out about their cult experience, were shot to death along with their daughter in their Berkeley, CA home. They had become among the most vocal People's Temple critics and feared for their safety.

Each year, a memorial is held at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, CA where 260 People's Temple children are buried. Due to the lack of dental records, the children were never able to be identified and thus were buried together there.

In memory of the tragedies at and surrounding Jonestown, especially for the children who suffered, FACTNet presents the following informational web sites with the heartfelt hope that public awareness of the severe dangers of cults may help avert similar future devastation.

FACTNet links

Death at Jonestown http://www.irish-times.com/irish-times/paper/1998/1114/fea6.html

Jonestown: The day I should have died http://www.smh.com.au:80/news/9811/17/ text/features2.html

An extensive collection of U.S. State Department records on Jonestown and the Peoples Temple www.icehouse.net/zodiac/

Jonestown: A Tragedy Made in San Francisco www.e-media.com/jonestown/

A collection of writings on Jonestown, compiled by researchers in Rice University's Religious Studies Department: www.owlnet.rice.edu/~reli291/ Jonestown/Jonestown.html

Making Sense of the Nonsensical: An Analysis of Jonestown http://jmcneil.sba.muohio.edu/Private/ Jones_Private.html

from Knight-Ridder/Newshound, 1998-Aug-26, from http://www.factnet.org/cults/aum_shin_rikyo/aum.htm:

AUM cult reviving, survey finds

TOKYO, Aug. 26 (Kyodo) -- The AUM Shinrikyo religious cult has been rebuilding its organizational setup and collecting money from affiliates since it escaped being outlawed in January this year, according to results of a survey by the Public Security Investigation Agency, unveiled Tuesday.

After the Public Security Commission, an independent body, announced in late January that it had decided not to outlaw AUM, the cult resumed activity, including the collecting of money from affiliated personal computer sales companies, the results said.

AUM is accused of carrying out the Tokyo subway sarin nerve gas attack in March 1995 which left 12 people dead and thousands injured, as well as an earlier sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, central Japan, in June 1994, which killed seven people, and other crimes.

AUM founder Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Asahara, is currently on trial on charges involving 17 criminal cases, including responsibility for the two gas attacks.

Of 427 AUM officials and followers arrested in connection with a series of AUM-related crimes, 138 have already returned to the cult, the survey results said. As of the end of July, the number of AUM ''priests'' stood at more than 500, they said.

The cult has been pressing former followers, in particular those with special knowledge about science, to return to AUM, saying that they would otherwise go to hell, they said.

When the Public Security Commission made its decision against banning AUM on Jan. 31, the Public Security Investigation Agency was able to confirm continuing activities of only four departments of the cult, including its supreme decision-making and judicial affairs bodies, according to the survey results.

But AUM has since established 10 new departments and sections, including an accounting department and a business department overseeing personal computer shops, they said.

''The cult has been restoring its organization to rival that in 1995, when the Tokyo subway gas attack took place,'' an official of the agency said in commenting on the survey results.

AUM's local organizations had been closed due partly to the authorities' investigations, but the cult has succeeded in reorganizing its branches in Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, Mito in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Takasaki in Gunma Prefecture, eastern Japan, Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, and Matsumoto, they said.

The cult has also set up a new training hall in Tokyo, which can accommodate more than 100 people, they said.

The survey report said that the cult now has 15 branches and one training hall in Japan and that there are AUM followers living in about 110 places across the nation.

At cult seminars, AUM followers still look up to Asahara as the absolute being and are again being taught a dogma that justifies even murder on behalf of the cult, they said.

In Tokyo and elsewhere, the cult owns 12 companies and five shops, among which are personal computer sales companies dealing in products on the Internet, assembling personal computer parts imported from Taiwan for sale in Japan and handing their income over to the cult, the report said.

The Public Security Commission rejected a request that the 1952 Antisubversive Activities Law be used to outlaw AUM, filed in July last year by the Public Security Investigation Agency, saying, ''The cult can no longer pose a threat to Japanese society.''

Akio Kanazawa, head of the agency's No. 1 research department, said that the department continues to check up on the cult even after rejection of the banning request and is compiling survey results every three months.

''At present, there are no signs the cult is engaged in acts of destructive violence. If dangerous signs emerge again in the future, our agency might have to ask (the commission) to reconsider outlawing the cult,'' he said.

from http://www.charismamag.com/stories/cn196105.htm:

Hooked on Hollywood Religion

Visit a theater near you and you'll discover that the New Age movement is alive and well. Some of the nation's most popular celebrities are out to win souls for the occult.

By: Paul McGuire

Several years ago actress Shirley MacLaine cried out, "I am God!" on a TV special based on her best-selling book, Out on a Limb. Almost overnight, it seemed, "New Age" became a household term in America.

Today the New Age movement represents what I believe is the greatest counterfeit spiritual revival the world has ever known. [...] A sort of satanic "Pentecost" of New Age, occultic, cultic and Eastern mystical ideas is sweeping the globe.

[...]

Because I've written several books on the subject, I am often asked, "How will I know if the New Age and the occult are in my town?" Unfortunately, that kind of question reflects a common lack of understanding about the pervasiveness of the New Age, cults and the occult in America.

The fact is that Eastern mysticism, the occult and counterfeit religions [all religions are counterfeits -AMPP Ed.] have infiltrated every single sector of our society. It is now ingrained in our culture, and interest in psychic power and false spirituality is at an all-time high.

Fueling this rise is the involvement of many of our national icons--movie stars, sports figures and political leaders who captivate our national attention and, by their high-profile participation, give the New Age a semblance of respectability. Basketball great Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls, for example, is involved in Zen meditation. Singer Dionne Warwick promotes psychic readings on TV infomercials.

Ex-Beatle George Harrison, fashion designer Calvin Klein, and actresses Elizabeth Taylor and Laura Dern have studied under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Even President and Mrs. Clinton have consulted New Age teachers Tony Robbins and Marianne Williamson.

The Hollywood Connection

When it comes to New Age promotion, Hollywood and the entertainment industry lead the pack. Even a casual moviegoer or TV-viewer probably notices the dramatic increase in programs and films that deal with psychic and supernatural themes, such as the popular X-Files, numerous "psychic hotline" commercials on television and the feel-good film Phenomenon.

Shirley MacLaine is, of course, the grande dame of Hollywood New Age spokespersons. But a newer crop has come of age. For example, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Kirstie Alley and John Travolta all subscribe publicly to Scientology [about which much more in a separate section below -AMPP Ed.], a combination of high-tech Buddhism and New Age ideas that has taken Hollywood by storm.

Travolta's recent success in Phenomenon (in which his character displays supernatural powers) has given him a platform to testify how Scientology has changed his life for the better and how principles taught by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard have enabled some followers to physically heal people by laying hands on them.

Talk-show star Oprah Winfrey has embraced "A Course in Miracles," an occultic teaching promoted by Marianne Williamson. This "course" presents a counterfeit gospel that was "channeled" to its author and frequently uses the terms "miracles," "Son of God," "Jesus Christ," and others, although the Jesus it talks about is clearly not the one in the Bible.

Two years ago Winfrey also promoted the beliefs of Betty Eadie, author of the best-selling book Embraced by the Light. Eadie, a Mormon, told Winfrey's talk show audience that Jesus showed her during a near-death experience that all religions lead to God. Then Winfrey chimed in and said, "That's what I believe."

"All religions lead to God" is a key tenet of New Age philosophy. It's an idea that appeals to sinful human nature because it denies the reality of a holy and righteous God who judges evil. And it is a philosophy that even seduces naive Christians.

Many occultic and New Age ideas are packaged quite neatly and deceptively as motivational seminars, relationship strategies, inner wisdom, sports performance techniques and alternative medicine.

But certain key terms can be indicators of a New Age influence: metaphysical, karma, soul mate, past life regression, channeling, holistic, higher consciousness, Christ consciousness, intuitive, aura, rebirthing, transformative, spiritual psychotherapy and self-realization, among many others.

Lining the Bookstores

To see how significantly New Age philosophy and practice has permeated our society, one need look no further than the local secular bookstore. Most New Age sections are large and crowded with people browsing through volumes on meditation, astrology, witchcraft or channeling.

One of the most popular New Age authors is physician Deepak Chopra, who wrote the best-selling Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. Although many people have naively assumed that Chopra is only a medical doctor who focuses on nutrition and psychology, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, Chopra is heavily involved in Hinduism and Eastern mysticism. He was at one time slotted to replace his mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru who founded Transcendental Meditation (TM).

Chopra appears regularly on public television lecturing on meditation and other Eastern mystical topics. Actress Demi Moore is a devoted follower of Chopra, and many other Hollywood stars credit him with changing their lives.

Many other popular authors are involved in the New Age. Pop secular psychologist Wayne Dyer, author of the best-sellers Your Erroneous Zones and Real Magic, has talked about "higher consciousness" and "spiritual power" during TV interviews. John Gray, whose book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus has been translated into 19 languages, has been involved in transcendental meditation. Until recently Gray was married to Barbara De Angelis, a former TM teacher and the developer of the Making Love Work seminars that are heavily promoted on TV infomercials.

Author M. Scott Peck, who wrote The Road Less Traveled, has publicly endorsed the book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, in which author Matthew Fox promotes a counterfeit gospel called "creation spirituality." Futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard put a New Age twist on the book of Revelation in her own book, The Revelation: Our Crisis Is a Birth, which she wrote after talking to the "voice of her higher self" and the "Christ voice." The diabolical nature of New Age teaching comes out in Hubbard's suggestion that Bible-believing Christians are "negative" people who stand in the way of evolution and are unfit to enter the "New Age."

Infiltrating the Boardroom

Most people are unaware that New Age and higher consciousness teachings--packaged as sales and motivational seminars--are rampant in corporate America. Such major companies as Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, Westinghouse, IBM, RCA, TRW, Procter & Gamble and Polaroid, as well as many smaller businesses, regularly offer employee seminars that contain some degree of New Age practices such as mind control, visualization, self-hypnosis, channeling, biofeedback, Eastern mysticism or psychic activity.

One international electronics corporation has funded an Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) laboratory with which they hope to spark a new technological revolution using psychic research. According to a research director for the company, their goal is "to discover the consciousness of all humanity."

New Age organizations such as Scientology, Lifespring and Werner Erhard's Est (renamed The Forum) have been only too happy to meet the "spiritual needs" of the business world. Seminars for business and sales professionals that are filled with New Age concepts are available from teachers such as Jack Canfield, developer of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. Ironically, the Chicken Soup books--full of seemingly harmless advice about the power of human potential--are now sold in many Christian bookstores.

In the Halls of Government

The New Age movement also has been successful in influencing government at the highest levels. It is well-known that although former president Ronald Reagan believed in the Bible and biblical prophecy, Nancy Reagan consulted astrologers, such as Joan Quigley. More recently, Hillary Rodham Clinton sought the counsel of New Age teacher Jean Houston, who encouraged the first lady to imagine entire conversations with dead leaders such as Eleanor Roosevelt.

Reports recently have revealed the Pentagon--center of American military intelligence--spent millions of dollars in a failed experiment to use psychics for military intelligence work. In an effort to keep up with Soviet psychic warfare research, the U.S. Defense Department invested more than $20 million over 20 years to employ psychics to use occult powers against foreign nations. Psychics were used in 1993, for example, to try to determine if North Korea possessed the plutonium necessary to make nuclear weapons.

The United Nations has played a significant role in the international promotion of New Age, Eastern mystic and occultic belief systems. One U.N. department, for example, has been printing and distributing literature about Lord Maitreya, a self-proclaimed messiah. The U.N. has also promoted the worship of "Mother Earth" with its emphasis on "Gaia," the belief that the planet is itself a living being.

Another international New Age force is the Unification Church, founded by Sun Myung Moon. The church currently owns one of the most influential conservative newspapers in the world, the Washington Times. Moon's empire has also spent tens of millions of dollars in international investments. In Uruguay, for example, it purchased the nation's third largest bank. And Moon continues to sponsor large international gatherings of political and religious leaders in South Korea.

[...]

About the Author: Paul McGuire is an author, Bible teacher and speaker. His latest book is From Earthquakes to Global Unity (Huntington House), which deals with the New Age movement and Bible prophecy.

Recent history has seen the growth of Christian cults such as Kip McKean's International Churches of Christ. ICC works as follows. Chapters are established which recruit from college campuses. Raw recruits are instructed to enumerate all the "sins" they remember committing (akin to the Catholic confessional), and the administering operative works to draw details out of the recruit. The information provided by the recruit is then circulated among Church operatives, as the primary weapon in a campaign to crush the recruit with guilt. The recruit is then assigned as the "disciple" of a "discipler," and obedience to the discipler's instructions is the basis of approval. The recruit is instructed to sever relationships with those outside the group - particularly, girlfriends and boyfriends - and to place the Church ahead of family. The recruit is saddled with onerous study and service responsibilities. He is instructed to recruit prospective members. He is instructed to pay onerous dues, selling most of his property to raise the funds. And from start to finish, he is warned that failure to follow these instructions leads inevitably to eternal damnation to hell, which is graphically described as a place of endless burning pain. The recruit is also warned that reparation for the "sins" he admitted to is prerequisite to salvation, and that obedience, recruiting, and donations, are the methods of making reparations. The institution of "discipling" constitutes a command hierarchy. This architecture in toto is an engine that amasses power and money for the organization's élite, using the ugliest of psychomanipulative tactics.

an excerpt from comments by "Sidney," an ex-ICC'er, from http://home.inreach.com/lesid/icc/matt28.htm:

If you are a member of the International Church of Christ, you'll be asked to perform an x amount of hours of work for them in the form of pulling people over and telling them how awesome the ICC. First, they invite them to a Bible Talk. If the person likes it, then they schedule Bible studies. Basically, they sell the ICC to the potential convert and since the potential convert believes that there is some kind of God and Jesus, they figured that they can control them by using Bible scriptures. Thus, the potential convert usually has no choice but to follow it since the Bible obviously says it. Normally, every Christian has to follow what the Bible quotes because God says so. In fact, this business of following scriptures is continuing to be practiced for the last 1,962 years. What I put here is based on my own analysis and comparing different versions of the Holy Bible, specifically the King James Version and the New International Version (which the ICC uses). Some came from my own observation since I started living around thiis group. This is specifically observed on Matthew 28:18. Therefore, you have to be careful with what you do when you associate with these people because this is how they will sell you their church and they're basically out there for one purpose - that is numbers (the more numbers, the more tithes) and money (since they use Malachi 3 on the imposition of guilt of robbing God).

an exerpt from "DISCIPLES OF ABUSE?: A LOOK AT THE INTERNATIONAL CHURCHES OF CHRIST (BOSTON MOVEMENT)" by John W. Morehead (a fundamentalist Christian adherent), modtime 1998-Apr-13, from http://members.aol.com/SRauch4321/disabuse.html:

The International Churches of Christ (ICC, also known as the Boston Movement)¹ is one of the fastest growing religious groups in North America. It includes 312 churches in 124 countries, with 155,000 attending services worldwide on any given Sunday.² Yet, they are also one of the most controversial groups as well. Colleges and universities that have banned the ICC's recruiting efforts on campus, or have denied it registration as a campus organization, include American University, University of Lowell (MA), Birmingham University (United Kingdom), University of Manchester (United Kingdom), Boston College, Marquette University, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, University of London, Vanderbilt University, University of Miami, Northeastern University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Smith College, United States Military Academy, University of Southern California and York University (Canada).³

from the Common Conservative, 1999-Mar-1, by Michael E. Kreca:

Clinton A Cult Leader?

``For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.'' Matthew 24:24

Bill Clinton is a cult leader. Like The Unification Church's Rev. Moon or the People's Temple head guru Jim Jones.

What else can accurately explain to the adoration so many have for a leader who is so obviously and appallingly criminal, abusive, vengeful, depraved and power-hungry?

Cult leaders very easily deceive many folks who lack a clear sense of self. The USA's socioeconomic and legislative history in the last few decades seems to have as its key principle that individuals can do nothing for themselves and need a huge, expensive government program, law or entitlement to help them get by from day to day. Hence, a significant number of people brought up in the past 35 to 40 years have been indoctrinated, overtly or subconsciously, with this sense of "dependency."

When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, many had thought the Soviet people breathed a massive sigh of relief. Not so. Even after years of Stalin's ruthless purges, savage political oppression, endless state terror, total war and horrible privation, many people were saddened their "Great Father Stalin" was finally gone. A number of attendees at his funeral were actually trampled to death.

Thousands of mourners present wept aloud saying, "Our great father is dead, what do we do now?"

The king is dead. Long live the king. So to speak.

Clinton's biggest defenders, like those Soviet mourners and Uncle Joe's international sympathizers, are those who are of a generally leftist orientation. Leftists' habitual fixation on centralized collectivist government and obsessive focus on if not intense identification with the problems and presumed needs of those deemed "disadvantaged" in some way reflect their own deeply rooted beliefs in their own inadequacy and inferiority. And they believe the same of those ``disadvantaged'' persons for whom they reflexively claim to have so much ``compassion.''

They want government to lead them and everyone else because they believe they cannot live their own lives, or be truly self-reliant or personally accountable for anything in any way.

Presto! Perfect suckers for a Slick Willie, a Great Father Clinton.

And, to the Great Fathers satisfaction, one is born every minute.

Leftists and their sympathizers cannot or will not separate the President as the person from the Office of the Presidency. To them, they are one and the same.

Dictatorships are like that too. They are also called ``personality cults.''

That is exactly why Clinton gets so much shameless, fawning adoration although he has repeatedly shown nothing but colossal contempt for the intelligence and decency of the American people whose "work" he obsessively claims to be "doing." The most recent was his snotty Buffalo speech last month in which he arrogantly intoned that average Americans are too stupid to spend or invest their money "right" and must have government do so instead. Bill Clinton's chameleon-like performances appeal most to those with low self-esteem, unresolved dependency needs, nagging personal insecurities, high levels of ignorance or just monumental stupidity. Thus, his populist, class-warfare rhetoric, despite the absence of meaningful content or little connection with daily reality, usually does also.

Witness the reactions of seemingly thoughtful, intelligent people who support Clinton. They suddenly suspend their reasoning faculties when Clinton's name is spoken. They use words like "love," "caring," and "so what" and "he has done so many good things," almost like children fascinated with a flashy but rigged carnival game they cannot win no matter how often they play. Ironically, these people are the very same ones who can't understand why so many Germans blindly followed a former German Army lance corporal of Austrian extraction surnamed Schicklgruber.

A further irony is that Clinton probably needs his followers even more than his followers need him, emotionally that is. They have the ideal codependent relationship--he gets the adoration and power he needs to survive, they get the appearance of security, "belonging," and comfort they need to function.

I just hope that the congregation of the Church of Clintonology isn't too shocked or outraged if and when it comes time to ``prove its undying love and loyalty'' via pistol, poison or spiked grape Kool-Aid.

Michael E. Kreca lives in San Diego and has written for Business Week, the Financial Times of London and Knight-Ridder Financial News.

excerpt from The Truth About Sun Myung Moon:

[...]

When I was recruited into a front organization of the Moon group (The International One World Crusade) in 1974, and was told to drop out of college, quit my job, donate my bank account, and follow, I was anidealistic, nineteen year old who wanted to make the world a better place. I was almost immediately selected by Takeru Kamiyama, then one of the top Japanese Moonie leaders in America, to be one of his top twelve American disciples.

At that time, Mr. Kamiyama was in charge of all New York members, all U.S. fundraising operations, all real estate purchases, all special projects (such as Moon's speech at Madison Square Garden, and Yankee Stadium). I was told that "Father" (Sun Myung Moon) was displeased with all of the American leaders and ordered the retraining (120 days) of all the U.S. leadership. I was personally indoctrinated by Kamiyama, and received a personal exemption for the training by Moon himself. I was told that "I was too important tolose". Kamiyama knew that if I went to Barrytown for retraining he might lose control of me to Mr. Ken Sudo, then director of the training program.

I adopted a bizarre and twisted set of beliefs that turned me against my own mind. I was taught that if I have a doubt about Moon or the group, that it was a result of evil spirits which were having give and take with my mind. The solution was to cut off "give and take" with negativity and pray or chant or read the Divine Principle (his new bible) to recenter myself on God. What I didn't understand at that time was this was a powerful behavior modification technique called "thought-stopping". By doing this technique on myself, I unwittingly short-circuited my critical, independent thinking process. When a person automatically shuts down any "negative" thoughts, and is only "allowed" to have positive thoughts, no independent thinking or reality testing can take place. I allowed myself to be controlled by fear and an unhealthy dependency on "central figures", the term used for leaders within the group.

[...]

from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's EXTRA, 1987-Aug/Sep, by Fred Clarkson, from http://www.fair.org/extra/best-of-extra/washington-times.html:

Behind the Times: Who Pulls The Strings at Washington's No. 2 Daily?

The Washington Times, the right-wing daily that bills itself as an alternative to the Washington Post, is owned and influenced by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. But most journalists seem unable or unwilling to consider the political implications of this fact -- despite the role of Washington Times executives in the Koreagate scandal of the 1970s and the Iran-contra scandal today.

Since its inception in 1982, the Washington Times has gained a circulation of about 100,000 and the endorsement of President Ronald Reagan, who reads it every day. Founding editor and publisher James Whelan resigned in July 1984, charging that top Unification Church (UC) officials had taken over the paper in violation of UC guarantees of independence. In 1987, Times editorial page editor William Cheshire and several staff members also resigned over UC interference.

The Washington Times public relations line -- printed as fact in a Time magazine profile (6/15/87) -- maintains that the newspaper is "owned by a group of Korean investors affiliated with the Unification Church." These "investors" -- the Korean-based Tong-II Industries -- do not seem to view the Times as a profit-making venture. Current Times editor-in-chief Arnaud de Borchgrave told the Washington Post (5/6/87) that a Tong-II executive described one of the company's factories as "the logistical tail of the Washington Times." "They are very conscious of the fact that a certain portion of their profit comes to us to meet the subsidy," de Borchgrave said.

A 1978 congressional committee disclosed that 53 percent of Tong-II was owned by the Unification Church. But there is no proof that Tong-II is the sole, or even the principal, funder of the Times. New World Communications (NWC), the privately held parent company of the Washington Times and other Moon media outlets, is neither obligated under the law nor willing to disclose its financing.

Three NWC executives are not only top Unification Church officials, but have also had high-ranking posts in the Korean CIA (KCIA). Sang Kook Han, a "personal assistant" to the KCIA director in the early 1960s, later served as South Korea's ambassador to Norway and Panama. In 1984, Han was installed at the Washington Times, precipitating the resignation of editor James Whelan. Currently senior vice president of New World Communications, Han is described by Whelan as the "de facto publisher" and "inspector general" of the Times.

Kim Sang In, another NWC executive, was KCIA station chief in Mexico in the '70s. There, according to U.S. congressional investigators, he functioned as the "control agent" for Tungsun Park, who bribed U.S. officials to gain favors for the South Korean government in what became known as "Koreagate." Congressional probers disclosed that illegal espionage operations linked to Koreagate were carried out by the Unification Church at the behest of the KCIA.

Bo Hi Pak, the president of NWC, served as liaison to the U.S. intelligence community while posted in Washington as South Korean military attache in the 1960s and early '70s, according to the Koreagate inquiry. Pak is also president of CAUSA (Confederation of the Associations for Unity of the Societies of the Americas), the political arm of the Unification Church. CAUSA was instrumental in providing aid to the Nicaraguan contras.

What are the intentions of those who own and control the Washington Times? The Koreagate probe revealed that the Moon organization functions as a highly integrated unit; each component may maintain the appearance of independence as a means towards larger ends. James Whelan believes he was forced out of the paper because he was too independent.

Opposition to constitutional democracy is a theological premise of The Divine Principle, the basic text of Unificationism. Moon's speeches are riddled with contempt for "American-style democracy," which he denigrates as "a good nursery for the growth of Communism." "We must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world," Moon has declared.

Former top UC official Steve Hassan believes that the Washington Times is a "Trojan horse" within the conservative movement. Hassan told EXTRA!, "Conservative politics is glad to have a voice through the Times, but ultimately it has nothing to do with conservatism. It has to do with fascism."

Here is a catalog of Moonie tentacles.

from chochi@moon.act.uji.es (http://moon.act.uji.es/~chochi/cos.html):

Are You full of Dead Space-Aliens?

The "Church" of Scientology* says you are. That is after you have handed over about $50,000 to them to reach this privileged secret level. They reveal to you that you are full of the souls of dead space aliens who were brought to Earth, 75 million years ago, by an evil galactic ruler named Xenu in an attempt to solve galactic overpopulation . Trillions of aliens were supposedly frozen in a mixture of alcohol and glycol and flown across space, from neighboring solar systems, in DC-8 identical space-planes. They were then stacked around volcanoes on Earth and nuked with H-bombs, after which their souls clustered together and now infest our bodies as "body thetans"

$440 per hour to exorcise your dead space-aliens

The cost for ridding yourself of these "body thetans" is $440 per hour, according to a recent price-list. And since you are supposed to have about 2,500 of them then this could take a hundred hours or more. Another $50,000 or so to this insane cult that calls itself a "Church". After ridding themselves of these imaginary space-aliens, the deluded and out-of-pocket practitioners hope to gain supernatural powers. If not, they can always pay $1100 per hour for what is called the "L Rundowns". Another $100,000 or so to the cult, and still no supernatural powers, of course.

Who started this madness?

Scientology was the invention of L. Ron Hubbard, a pulp science-fiction writer who told his fellow authors that if a person wanted to get rich they should start their own religion. He did just that. He turned his puerile science-fiction fantasies into a religion and at last made the money he couldn't make from writing. A great deal of money, in fact. When he died, his fortune was estimated at around 400 million dollars. Scientology did not die with Hubbard, though. Others were quick to take over the leadership of this "Church" and its vast income.

Why do people get involved in it?

Almost nobody would get involved with Scientology if they knew what awaited them with regards to these dead space-alien "body thetans". People are sucked in through lies and deceit. Normally, it all starts with a 200 question personality test. This is then used to indicate flaws and failings in their character and they are pressured into doing a Dianetics* course to cure these failings. In this way, "Churches" of Scientology masquerade as a non-denominational group improving peoples Scientology masquerade as a non-denominational group improving peoples minds and abilities in order to help create a better world. When the person attends their first course, however, they undergo a form of semi-hypnotic regression therapy called "auditing". This causes a temporary feeling of elation that seems to be addictive, since after that, some people will spend all the money they have or can borrow to buy more and increasingly expensive "auditing".

$360,000 for spiritual freedom

To do all the courses in Scientology and to receive all the auditing needed to reach a supposed higher spiritual level costs about $360,000. Some people have actually paid this amount, spending all their money, selling their cars and their homes, borrowing to the maximum extent possible, raiding their business finances and even cashing in trust funds left to their children to feed their addiction to this "auditing". They believe they will reach an exalted spiritual state where they can leave their bodies at will and create events just by intending them. By then, their minds are so deranged they will not think to check on the claims made by Hubbard himself about this state.

Hubbard goes to Venus

Hubbard once boasted that he had transported himself to the planet Venus -- where he was nearly run over by a freight locomotive. A made-up claim by critics, perhaps? No, you can actually hear him say it if you have a connection to the Internet and a soundcard. There is a soundfile of this at http://www.xs4all.nl/~xemu/rams/Venusloc.ram . That Scientologists believe this, as well as other absurd claims of Hubbard's, must prove beyond doubt that they have been mentally damaged through their involvement with this cult.

If you can't afford Scientology?

If people don't have the $360,000 to spare to feed their addiction to Scientology "auditing" then they can always join staff. There they will be bullied by the cult and forced to work ever harder for an insulting $30 per week. While they are doing this they are pressured into doing courses costing tens of thousands of dollars. If they try to leave then they are expected to pay for these courses. They are financial prisoners -- slaves to the cult. They won't be given much in the way of the "auditing" they craved, though. But then there is always the elite corps of Scientology called the Sea Org where they sign a billion year contract and work for one hundred hours a week, again for $30 per week. Many young and idealistic people join this group because they are tricked into thinking that Scientology is helping to create a better world and that their help is needed. Again, they won't get much in the way of the "auditing" they crave. Children born into this organization (if they escape the cult's strict policy on aborting pregnancies) will be housed in appalling conditions, improperly cared for and fed until they are old enough to work for the cult for the same slave-like conditions.

Is your family safe?

If you think your family and loved ones are safe from this cult, then think again. The cult has front groups that conceal their connection to Scientology. They will enroll a person and only when they feel the person is hooked will they reveal the connection. This "Church" and its front groups have left a trail of lost fortunes and broken families in their wake. The trick they use when their spouse, partner or relations raise concern about their involvement in the cult is to convince the person that those trying to get them out of the cult are concealing crimes against them. They tell them that Scientology can make them more able and can find things out about other peoples crimes. So if their spouse or partner is critical of Scientology then they must be covering up their cheating on them or suchlike and don't want them to find out. This has caused many once happy families or relationships to break up. What you think is your happy relationship or stable marriage could one day be torn apart by this cult in a matter of minutes.

opening passage to, and important subsequent excerpts from, The Total Freedom Trap: Scientology, Dianetics And L. Ron Hubbard, by Jon Atack:

The work of L. Ron Hubbard has been surrounded by controversy since he first announced his "modern science of mental health" in 1950. His followers assert that he is not only the reincarnation of Buddha but also Maitreya, who according to Buddhist legend will lead the world to enlightenment.

To Scientologists, L. Ron Hubbard is quite simply the wisest, the most compassionate and the most perceptive human being ever to draw breath.

Yet, Hubbard was dubbed "schizophrenic and paranoid" by a California Superior Court judge, and Scientology dismissed as "immoral and socially obnoxious" by a High Court judge in London. Scientologists have been convicted of criminal offences in Canada, the USA, Denmark and Italy.

An enormous amount of documented evidence demonstrates that Hubbard was not what he claimed to be, and that his subject does not confer the benefits claimed for it.

The Church of Scientology is an enormously wealthy, global organization, with over 270 churches and missions. Using profoundly invasive hypnotic techniques, Scientology has managed to inspire the at times fanatical devotion of tens of thousands of previously normal and intelligent people.

[...]

The Scientologists have boasted that Hubbard "rose to command a squadron". Factually, he oversaw the refitting of two small vessels in U.S. harbours. His second such command was withdrawn after a cruise down the west coast. During the course of this journey, Hubbard managed to involve a number of craft in a 55-hour battle against what he believed to be two Japanese submarines. The incident was reviewed by Admiral Fletcher who pronounced "an analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area ...The Commanding Officers of all ships except the PC-815 (commanded by Hubbard) state they had no evidence of a submarine and do not think a submarine was in the area."

Hubbard completed this "shakedown cruise" by firing on a fortunately uninhabited Mexican island. He was removed from command, and Rear Admiral Braisted wrote in a fitness report, "Consider this officer lacking in the essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation. He acts without forethought as to probable results ... Not considered qualified for command or promotion at this time. Recommend duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised."

[...]

With his separation from the Navy, Hubbard abandoned his first wife and their two young children to take up the practice of "Magick". Hubbard had experienced a peculiar hallucination in 1938, while under nitrous oxide during a dental operation. He believed that he had died during the operation and while dead been shown a great wealth of knowledge. Upon his recovery, he wrote a book called Excalibur, but was unable to find a publisher.

Hubbard's interest in the occult also led to a brief membership in a Rosicrucian group. He told a friend that he believed himself protected by a guardian spirit whom he called "the Empress"; and he was to repeat this claim to one of his followers many years later. In 1945, Hubbard took up with Jack Parsons, head of the Pasadena lodge of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis.

Crowley styled himself "the Beast 666", servant of the Antichrist, and advocated the use of addictive drugs and bizarre sexual practices. Jack Parsons was a chemist and an early member of Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, but his passion was Magick (as Crowley respelled the word). Hubbard and Parsons performed sexual ceremonies to summon a woman willing to become the mother of "Babalon", the incarnation of evil.

The affair ended with Hubbard running off not only with Parsons' girl Sara, but also with his money. Hubbard married Sara Northrup bigamously, and started to write pathetic letters applying for a war pension. In October 1947, when according to later accounts he had "cured" himself through Dianetics, Hubbard admitted to suicidal tendencies and begged for psychiatric help in a letter to the Veterans Administration.

[...]

"We've got some new ways to make slaves here."
-L. Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course lecture 20, 1952.

by Alex Constantine, from http://chronic.lpl.arizona.edu/~corleyj/wwolf/truth/text/ciamind.txt:

"Psychic" Spying at the Stanford Research Institute Or CIA Mind Control?

Concrete evidence that electronic mind control was the true object of study at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was exposed by the Washington Post in 1977. When the Navy awarded a contract to the Institute, "the scientific assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, Dr. Sam Koslov, received a routine briefing on various research projects, including SRI's. As the briefer flashed his chart onto the screen and began to speak, Koslov stormily interrupted, 'What the hell is that about?' Among the glowing words on the projected chart, the section describing SRI's work was labeled, 'ELF and Mind Control.'

 

 

"'ELF' stands for 'extremely long frequency' electromagnetic waves, from the very slow brain frequencies up to about 100 cycles per second.... But the 'Mind Control' label really upset Koslov. He ordered the SRI investigations for the Navy stopped, and canceled another $35,000 in Navy funds slated for more remote viewing work." Contrary to Koslov's attempt to kill the research, the Navy quietly continued to fork out $100,000 for a two-year project directed by a bionics specialist. The "remote viewing" team at SRI was really engaged in projecting words and images directly to the cranium. It was not a humanitarian pastime: the project was military and test subjects are subjected to a lifetime of EM torture plied with the same thorough disregard for human rights as the radiation tests conducted at the height of the Cold War. To be sure, the treatment subjects have received at the hands of their own government would be considered atrocities if practiced in wartime.

 

 

Mind control was also used in domestic covert operations designed to further the CIA's heady ambitions, and during the Vietnam War period SRI was a hive of covert political subterfuge. The Symbionese Liberation Army, like the People's Temple, was a creation of the CIA. The SLA had at its core a clique of black ex-convicts from Vacaville Prison. Donald DeFreeze, otherwise known as "Cinque," led the SLA. He was formerly an informant for the LAPD's Criminal Conspiracy Section and the director of Vacaville's Black Cultural Association (BCA), a covert mind control unit with funding from the CIA channeled through SRI. The Menlo Park behavior modification specialists experimented with psychoactive drugs administered to members of the BCA. Black prisoners were programmed to murder selected black leaders once on the outside. The CIA/SRI zombie killer hit list included Oakland school superintendent Dr. Marcus Foster, and Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, among others. DeFreeze stated that at Vacaville in 1971-72, he was the subject of a CIA mind control experiment. He described his incarceration on the prison's third floor, where he was corralled by CIA agents who drugged him and said he would become the leader of a radical movement and kidnap a wealthy person. After his escape from Vacaville (an exit door was left unlocked for him), that's exactly what he did.

 

 

EM mind control machines were championed at SRI by Dr. Karl Pribram, director of the Neurophychology Research Laboratory: "I certainly could educate a child by putting an electrode in the lateral hypothalmus and then selecting the situations at which I stimulate it. In this was I can grossly change his behavior." Psychology Today touted Pribram as "The Magellan of Brain Science." He obtained his B.S. and M.D. degrees at the University of Chicago, and at SRI studied how the brain processes and stores sensory imagery. He is credited with discovering that mental imaging bears a close resemblance to hologram projection (the basis for transmitting images to the brains of test subjects under the misnomer "remote viewing"?).

 

 

The SRI/SAIC psi experiments were supervised at Langley by John McMahon, second in command under William Casey, succeeding Bobby Ray Inman, the SAIC director. McMahon has, according to Philip Agee, the CIA whistle-blowing exile, an affinity for "technological exotics for CIA covert actions." He was recruited by the Agency after his graduation from Holy Cross College. He is a former director of the Technical Services Division, deputy director for Operations, and in 1982 McMahon was appointed deputy director of Central Intelligence. He left the Agency six years later to take the position of president of the Lockheed Missiles and Space Systems Group. In 1994 he moved on the Draper Laboratories. He is a director of the Defense Enterprise Fund and an adviser to congressional committees.

 

 

Many of the SRI "empaths" were mustered from L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology, Harold Puthoff, the Institute's senior researcher, is a leading Scientologist. Two "remote viewers" from SRI have also held rank in the Church: Ingo Swann, a Class VII Operating Thetan, a founder of the Scientology Center in Los Angeles, and the late Pat Price. Puthoff and Targ's lab assistant was a Scientologist married to a minister of the church. When Swann joined SRI, he stated openly that fourteen "Clears" participated in the experiments, "more than I would suspect." At the time he denied CIA involvement, but now acknowledges, "it was rather common knowledge all along who the sponsor was, although in documents the identity of the Agency was concealed behind the sobriquet of 'an east-coast scientist.' The Agency's interest was quite extensive. A number of agents of the CIA came themselves ultimately to SRI to act as subjects in "remote viewing" experiments, as did some members of Congress."

 

from the Boston Herald, 1998-Mar-5, by Joseph Mallia, from http://www.bostonherald.com/scientology/sci35a98.html:

Church wields celebrity clout

It is the year 3000 and the earth is enslaved by invading aliens, evil 9-foot-tall "Psychlos" with glowing amber eyes.

Now mankind's only hope is the heroic Johnny Goodboy Tyler - in an MGM film to be produced by actor John Travolta, based on a Church of Scientology novel titled "Battlefield Earth."

Thanks to Travolta's Hollywood clout, audiences worldwide may soon see this film, and get a dose of the philosophy of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

"Mankind ... is imprisoned not so much by aliens who dominate the planet, but by superstition, until the hero Johnny Goodboy Tyler...(becomes) the first to break free," Hubbard wrote.

Critics say this film, along with other Scientology media efforts, is a veiled attempt to gain converts and influence.

With books, sophisticated TV and print advertising campaigns, a 30,000-page Internet site, and its celebrity members' clout on TV sitcoms and major films, Scientology uses a range of modern media to gain influence, church critics say.

How much clout does the church have?

Apparently a great deal.

President Clinton may have sided with Scientology against the German government in hopes of having Travolta soften his portrayal of a Clinton lookalike during filming of the movie "Primary Colors," a recent report in George magazine said.

Since the church was founded in 1954, Hubbard encouraged his followers to enlist celebrities.

The policy, observers say, has paid off.

Since Travolta became a Scientologist in 1975, he has been joined by other acting heavyweights, including Tom Cruise, Cruise's wife Nicole Kidman, Travolta's wife Kelly Preston, and TV sitcom stars Kirstie Alley ("Cheers" and "Veronica's Closet") and Jenna Elfman ("Dharma & Greg"). All are outspoken church members.

"It was everything I had been looking for, answers to questions I had been asking forever. They finally got answered for me," Elfman said in an interview published in a January Sunday newspaper supplement that reached millions of readers.

And last week, Elfman, Preston and other Scientology celebrities were scheduled to appear in Boston and other cities to promote Hubbard's book "The Fundamentals of Thought."

Jazzman Chick Corea - a Chelsea native who reportedly hopes to open a nightclub in Massachusetts - leads the church's publicity battle against the German government, which is investigating Scientology for alleged fraud and anti-democratic acts.

And locally, musician Isaac Hayes hosted a reception at Roxbury Community College in Boston three years ago that helped local Scientologists bring their World Literacy Crusade learn-to-read program into the Randolph Public Schools and various inner city Boston youth agencies.

Other Scientology celebrities include actresses Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart on "The Simpsons"), Juliette Lewis ("Natural Born Killers"), Anne Archer ("Fatal Attraction)," and Elvis Presley's widow and daughter Priscilla and Lisa Marie.

The musician and congressman, Sonny Bono, who died in January, was a longtime Scientologist.

Others who took Scientology courses, or who were members - some briefly - according to published reports, include football legend John Brodie, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, author William Burroughs; singers Van Morrison, Al Jarreau and Leonard Cohen; actors Emilio Estevez, Rock Hudson, Demi Moore, Candice Bergen, Brad Pitt, Christopher Reeve, Jerry Seinfeld and Patrick Swayze; and O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark.

Also, the Observer newspaper of London recently linked actress Sharon Stone to Scientology.

Ex-Scientologists the church would like to forget include members of the suicidal Heaven's Gate cult, who were church members in the 1970s; and mass killer Charles Manson, who took church classes during a prison term that ended in 1967, before he and his cult followers massacred Sharon Tate and others.

Meanwhile, the church is conducting an 18-month advertising and publicity blitz, with 38 different TV ads aired to reach 70 percent of North American households. This campaign is intended to counteract negative publicity from Germany and from the death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson, a Dallas native who died during a church retreat in Florida, according to an August report in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.

Scientology-linked groups including Narconon also advertise on local cable channels in the Boston area, said anti-cult activist Steve Hassan of Cambridge.

Critics say, however, that the church's celebrities never have to face the hardships faced by ordinary Scientologists, who often can't afford to pay the required tens of thousands of dollars for courses and instead must trade their full-time labor.

excerpt from The poor and famous Hollywood Scientologists, from Premiere magzine, by John H. Richardson, 1993-Sep:

[...]

SCIENTOLOGY'S MEAN STREAK is deeply rooted in church doctrine. Founded by pulp novelist Hubbard in the 1950s, Scientology promises to heal the psychic scars caused by traumas in present or past lives through auditing, a therapy aided by a simplified lie detector called an E-meter. Excited by the rapid progress stimulated by the E-meter, many students eagerly begin the climb "up the bridge," course by course (costs range from $30 for introductory audio tapes to more than $14,000 for the Hubbard Key to Life/Life Orientation Course special package). According to former members and press reports, the few who attain the highest level of instruction learn the following secret theology: 75 million years ago a tyrant named Xenu imprisoned other aliens near volcanoes on Earth and then nuked them, leaving their spirits, or "thetans," to wander the planet and attach themselves to humans--to be purged through further courses. While Scientology officials dispute this account of their beliefs--spokesman Rinder calls it "garbage, completely untrue"--they refuse to provide a more accurate version, saying upper-level church beliefs are for insiders only.

What distinguishes Scientology is Hubbard's bile and paranoia, which is clearly demonstrated in much of his writing. Representative is this "policy letter" written in 1969: "We must ourselves fight on a basis of total attrition of the enemy. So never get reasonable about him. Just go all the way in and obliterate him." There are many other examples.

Furthermore, one of the central tenets of Scientology philosophy is that 20 percent of mankind is "suppressive," a Scientology term that seems to mean "evil" and "meanspirited." Of that 20 percent, Hubbard wrote, 2.5 percent are "truly dangerous." Such people, Hubbard wrote, "should not have, in any thinking society, any civil rights of any kind...."

As a consequence, Scientologists are always on the lookout for suppressives. "When we trace the cause of a failing business, we will inevitably discover somewhere in its ranks the antisocial personality hard at work," Hubbard wrote--and to Scientologists Hubbard's writings are considered scripture. "Where life has become rough and is failing, a careful review of the area by a trained observer will detect one or more such personalities at work."

As Cruise has told Entertainment Weekly, "I look at certain people that aren't doing well and say, 'Well, who's around him? Do they want to see this person do well?' And often I might find one person that really doesn't want to see this guy succeed."

Hubbard left little doubt about how suppressives were to be treated. Consider rule number twelve in Scientology's official code of honor: "Never fear to hurt another in a just cause."

And Scientologists take their code of honor very seriously. "I remember having a choking anger against anyone who ever said anything against Scientology," says actress Diana Canova (Soap), a former member. "I would get crazy, I was just so angry. I would have done anything for them."

[...]

from FACTnet, 1998-Oct-12, from http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/irs_infiltrated.html:

IRS again infiltrated by Scientology cult

In yet another bizarre twist in the Scientology-IRS war, it has just been revealed that Scientology's tax exempt status and billion dollars in tax forgiveness was aided by the efforts of an IRS official secretly working for the cult.

This information was revealed to FACTNet by Scientology defector Jesse Prince in interviews concerning Scientology's criminal activities and near unlimited spending on covert operations. Jesse Prince was second in command of all of Scientology under David Miscavige, the cult's current leader. Jesse disclosed that while a Scientology executive, he overheard conversations between David Miscavige and other top level Scientology executives regarding Scientology's efforts to obtain tax-exempt status in the US. The conversations of Scientology's leaders revealed that Scientology had recruited an IRS official to secretly assist Scientology in obtaining the long-sought-after religious tax-exempt status. The conversations also uncovered that the employee was retained through one of Scientology's law firms. The law firm had contacted a former IRS executive, who used his contacts at the IRS to recruit Scientology's new IRS insider.

Meanwhile, several months ago, FACTNet received a call from a Washington ally warning that FACTNet and its directors would likely be audited. The ally said a source at a federal government office had informed the ally that the IRS was planning retaliatory audits of FACTNet and its directors, because FACTNet had criticized the IRS's handling of Scientology. FACTNet has written a number of articles on the IRS's secret tax deal with Scientology, which in 1993 was the ultimate result of Scientology's great efforts to gain tax-exempt status. The secret agreement, just made public last year by the Wall Street Journal, not only reversed the IRS's 30-year stance on Scientology by granting it tax-exempt status but also reportedly forgave almost a billion dollars in taxed owed.

The first of the IRS audits on FACTNet and its directors has already occurred, with FACTNet's audit last month. According to FACTNet's CPA, audits of a small non-profit like FACTNet are most unusual. One is compelled to ask whether Scientology's IRS insider is active again, perhaps trying to protect oneself from detection by attacking the messenger.

The following is one of our earlier editorials on Scientology and the IRS, "Did the cult Scientology bludgeon the IRS into a billion dollar tax revenue give-away?" This early editorial does not include this newest information that Scientology had an IRS insider working for it, but does provide a comprehensive background on the IRS and Scientology. See http:// www.factnet.org/ headlines/ give-away.htm.

from FACTnet, 1998-Sep-30, from http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/judge_tampering.html:

Scientology's foolproof method of judge tampering

I recently spent about 20 hours interviewing a Scientology defector named Jesse Prince about his experiences in the leadership of Scientology. He was second in command of all Scientology's operations worldwide. In these conversations we talked about many of Scientology's covert criminal activities decreed by Scientology's top executives and law firms. One area of particular interest was how Scientology secretly tampers with judges and doesn't get caught.

I have already submitted to the FBI the names of certain judges who were tampered with, along with other information from my interviews with Jesse Prince, but I am somewhat conflicted about making this information public. On one hand, Scientology's judge-tampering tactics are so effective and ingenious that once they are public I believe other ruthless organizations will soon begin using them. On the other hand, to conceal these tactics would corrupt critical ongoing litigation involving Scientology around the world. Notwithstanding this conflict, I will continue.

To understand Scientology's methods of judge tampering, one must be aware of the `sacred scripture' behind Scientology's notorious intimidation tactics. It is called The Art of War by Sun Tzu. This text, written in China more than 2,400 years ago regarding the planning of military operations, has been adopted by Scientology as a training manual for its staff. Scientology requires its intelligence division to know the text inside and out.

The Art of War describes tactics of knowing one's adversary, especially knowing his or her connections and vulnerabilities. According to my conversations with Jesse Prince along with knowledge I have acquired elsewhere, here is how Scientology uses Art of War tactics to tamper with judges and get away with it.

Step 1: Collect information necessary to blackmail the judge

According to Jesse, EVERY judge that sits on a Scientology case is the target of two types of data collection by Scientology's private investigators and attorneys. One is `overt data collection,' or `ODC'; the other is `covert data collection,' or `CDC'.

In overt data collection, every source of legally-obtainable information on the judge is tapped, and a complete profile on the judge is assembled including legal rulings, legal documents, personal and professional connections, and life history. With little concern of the cost, the judge is researched in utmost detail: what the judge likes and dislikes, where the judge eats, drinks, and plays. The judge's past and present friends, acquaintances, and colleagues are interviewed for `friendly' or "near invisible" information gathering.

While or after over data collection is being done, covert data collection is done as well. This process involves the illegal acquisition of documentation on the judge, including tax returns, phone records, bank records, medical records, credit card records, and any other private records. Again, cost seems to be no concern. These records are minutely reviewed for anything that could be as a source of leverage over or embarrassment for the judge. They are looking for information to signal the judge that someone knows enough about his or her life to cause ruin.

In addition to compiling the above records, covert data collection can also include confrontational interviews (as opposed to the `friendly' interviews during overt data collection) with the judge's past and present connections. Investigators now delve much more deeply into the judge's personal habits, indiscretions, embarrassments, and/or family problems. Anyone holding a grudge against the judge is particularly courted for damaging information as well as referrals to others with ill will for the judge.

The type of information investigators seek includes anything and everything that could prove damaging or embarrassing for the judge, such as: credit charges for pornography or sex services, illegal money handling or financial problems, conflicts of interest within judicial duties, connections to unsavory characters, and family, marital, mental, or medical problems.

Step 2: Reveal damaging information to the judge without putting Scientology at risk for tampering

This step is the real genius of Scientology's foolproof method of judge tampering. Here, they hire new people to go to the judge's personal and professional connections. Through seemingly innocuous conversations, in seemingly safe settings, Scientology's messengers speak to the judge's former law partners, former clerks, friends, ex-wives, girlfriends, golf buddies, bartenders, etc.

In these meetings, two important messages are to be conveyed by Scientology's hired messengers to the person affiliated with the judge. One, the judge's connection is given some subtle but disturbing piece of secret information regarding the judge's private life. And two, during another part of the conversation, Scientology is mentioned. The Scientology messenger either makes favorable comments about Scientology, or mentions "by the way" that they heard the judge was handling a Scientology case and the judge should go easy on Scientology because Scientology is such a good religious group.

The reaction on the part of the judge's connection to the disturbing revelation and subtle promotion of Scientology is predictable. The connection gets in touch with the judge and inquires about the rumor. The judge likely wants to know who delivered the information and may or may not discover that Scientology came up in the discussion.

What makes this a truly powerful tactic for leveraging the judge is that rather than coming in one sudden single impact, it comes through a number of impacts, accumulating and compounding the distress caused to the judge. The judge will not hear potentially damaging information from only one acquaintance, but rather from many, interspersed over time, each relaying a different alarming personal secret. After a number of these calls, the judge begins to confirm fears that someone can expose vulnerable spots. Sooner or later the judge also discovers that a favorable discussion of Scientology is always associated with each of the disclosures to the judge's connections.

A clever aspect of this subtle leveraging tactic is that Scientology cannot be connected to it. No one from Scientology is delivering the messages to the judge. It is the judge's own connections who are duped into delivering Scientology's messages, via their personal and legitimate concern for the judge's well-being.

The judge is stymied too. Obviously, there is no basis for turning in the friends and former associates to the authorities. Although as a group they in effect have delivered a veiled threat to the judge, they acted of their own volition and out of friendship or professional concern for the judge, they had no idea they were working on behalf of Scientology, and no single person delivered a message of intimidation complete enough to be a clear and obvious effort to tamper with the judge. The individual messages have presented a threat so subtle, the judge can't bring it to the attention of the authorities without seeming foolish or paranoid.

Therein lies the brilliance of Scientology's judge-tampering procedures. Only through the accumulation of partial messages do all pieces of the puzzle spell the clear threat: `Go easy on Scientology or every secret of your life will be exposed.' The threat looms, and yet it isn't connected to Scientology. The judge can't do anything about it.

Part 3: Entrapment

If the above tactics do not seem to alter the judge's rulings so that they are more favorable to Scientology's interests, the next step to take is covert entrapment operations. By this point, Scientology has accumulated all the information needed to set up the judge in a `sting' operation. One of their favorites is the sex sting. Scientology once spent over $260,000 to set up a judge on a yacht in Florida with two prostitutes. For more information on Scientology entrapping judges, go to www.factnet.org/ Scientology/ adversa.htm (Scroll down to sections on judges).

Recently there have been some rulings so bizarre by judges in Scientology cases that even the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial on how odd they seem (see http://www.marcab.com/whyte.txt). Maybe there is more going on behind the scenes than we know. Hopefully judges currently sitting on Scientology cases around the world will read this, notify their clerks, and find some way not to let their judicial integrity be compromised by this ruthless cult.

based on story from the Providence Journal, 1999-Feb-1, from http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/business_morgan.htm:

Scientologist acquitted for firing employee

"The fact is, she didn't want to believe in Scientology," said defending attorney Renee Bushey of her client Susan E. Morgan. "Susan Morgan didn't want Scientology crammed down her throat," she said, according to the Providence Journal.

Nevertheless, on January 28, 1999, a Superior Court jury ruled that dentist Roger N. Carlsten did not discriminate against Morgan, his former receptionist, based on her religious beliefs when he fired her in January 1992.

The civil suit, brought by Morgan, who sought $12,063 in lost wages, medical benefits and costs, alleged that Carlsten fired her on the grounds that she refused to take a Hubbard Administrative Technology course that Morgan asserted was "thinly veiled Scientology."

Carlsten and another key witness, Randy Baxter -- a Scientologist who said Carlsten hired him to boost his dental practice -- testified that Morgan was "unsuited" to her job, that she was "insubordinate" regarding a computer, failed to maintain patient recalls, kept "horrible" accounts receivable, and dressed unprofessionally.

Bushey, however, suggested Carlstens' insistence that Morgan take the Scientology-based course was clearly "a little suspect from the start," that the only people licensed to teach the Hubbard Administrative Technology courses "are from the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises," one reason her client was fearful that the courses might be used as recruitment device into Scientology.

"Let's see," recapped Bushey. "The courses are promoted by a Scientologist, written by L. Ron Hubbard (the founder of Scientology), and employed terms and principles it shared with Scientology such as 'the God dynamic,' 'dev-T,' and 'MEST' (matter, energy, space and time). Does this sound like a standard business course to you?"

In her closing argument, Bushey reiterated to jurors that Morgan was a competent employee, who "has a right to be free from her employer's religion in the workplace." She went on to add that "this country was founded on religious freedom," and that "the government can't make you follow any gods. I implore you. Don't let employers."

Here is an index of Scientology resources, including a list of Scientology-controlled businesses.

excerpts from the Italian Government Report on Scientology of 1998-Apr-29:

[...]

Nowadays the sect is present in 107 countries and claims to have 8 million followers.

Its permanent staff should include 13,000 people, of whom a part, having taken vows to serve the cause for eternity, make up the Sea Org, a community with both monastic and military characteristics (the name comes from the fact that between '66 and '75 its members adopted navy uniforms and used a number of ships as religious cult locations).

[...]

In particular, the scientologists' recruiting technique consists in submitting anyone who would like to "understand their real problems" to a test, free of charge, as a "personality measurement", in the form of a questionnaire of about two hundred "revealing" questions (actually aimed at obtaining a better knowledge of the subject's character). Afterwards, having singled out those subjects which are easiest to influence, scientologists offer to "cure" them by means of "auditing sessions".

In this phase, through the recollection of traumatic experiences corresponding to the various "engrams", the "patients" end up confessing intimate particulars of their private life, which afterwards the organization will later be able to use as a means of blackmail.

Those who decide to continue the therapy are persuaded to attend more and more expensive dianetics courses, during which they are subjected to physical strains (overwhelming work, hypervitaminic and hyperproteic diets) as well as psychological strains (forced reading, pressures and intimidations) in order to reduce them to a state of total subjection, putting into practice the system of "mental conditioning" already described (see note 13 p. 11).

[...]

from the Mirror of Los Angeles, 1951-Apr-23, from http://www.rickross.com/reference/Scien61.html:

Dianetics Author Crazy, Wife Charges

Torture, kidnapping and bigamy charges today were made by his wife against L. Ron Hubbard, 35, fabulous leader of Los Angeles' "Dianetics" cult.

Mrs. Sara Northrup Hubbard, 25, daughter of a wealthy Pasadena family, charged in suing Hubbard for divorce that "he is hopelessly insane and crazy."

She expressed fear for the life of their daughter, aged 131/2 months, victim of an alleged kidnapping by Hubbard and Richard B. DeMille, son of Producer Cecil B. DeMille.

Torture Charged

She also charged Hubbard, head of the $1,000,000 Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation, 2300 S Hoover St., "repeatedly subjected her to systematic torture."

It included "loss of sleep, beatings, strangulation and scientific torture experiments," the young wife declared in action filed in Superior Court by Atty. Caryl Warner.

Following one ordeal of torture, the suit charged, Mrs. Hubbard was hospitalized for five days and kept under guard by her husband, who, she said, had been diagnosed as insane by competent psychiatrists.

Mrs. Hubbard also accused her husband of marrying her bigamously Aug. 10,1946, and asked $500,000 damages if the court proves her bigamy charges true.

Hubbard, head of a new psychology whose followers practice self-analysis, "dominated her physically, mentally and emotionally," her suit alleges. It quoted Hubbard as telling her once:

"I do not want to be an American husband. I can buy my friends whenever I want them.''

He "further said that he did not want to be married, yet divorce was impossible for a divorce would hurt his reputation," the suit charges, "and that she should kill herself if she really loved him."

Mrs. Hubbard declared her 131/2 -month-old daughter, Alexis Valery, was "abducted from her crib" last Feb. 23 by Hubbard and Frank B Dressier, a "Dianetics" associate, and hidden from her by them and DeMille.

Nightmare Told

Her suit detailed a nightmare incident at 1 a.m. the following day in which Mrs. Hubbard allegedly was "dragged out of bed attired in a nightgown" by Hubbard, DeMille and Dressler.

"By use of threats, strangulation, torture and false promises to return her child," the suit said "they carried and kidnapped her to Yuma, Arizona."

Hubbard is still in Yuma and the child-"if alive"-is in hiding under an assumed name in West Los Angeles, Mrs. Hubbard charged.

"Even now she would not bare the truth to the world," the suit declared, "except for the compelling advice of [her] attorney that she tell the truth, for the truth will bring back her baby, if alive."

In torturing her, Mrs. Hubbard said, her husband once kept her awake in their Hollywood apartment for 96 hours, then gave her an overdose of sedatives which resulted in her hospitalization for five days.

On another occasion, she declared, Hubbard caused her "serious personal injury" by starting up the car "intentionally" as she alighted from it.

"By reason of the foregoing crazy misconduct of Hubbard," the suit said, "she is in hourly fear for both the lives of herself and her infant daughter."

Seeking divorce, annulment or separate maintenance, the suit also asked the court to compel Hubbard to submit to psychiatric examination. Competent psychiatrists, the suit declared, already have recommended that he be confined "for treatment of a mental ailment known as paranoid schizophrenia."

The suit charged Hubbard "frequently" strangled his wife and that shortly after last Christmas "he violently strangled her and sadistically ruptured the Eustachian tube in her left ear, resulting in an impairment of hearing."

Hubbard kidnapped the child and abducted his wife to Yuma, she said, when he learned that she had informed his superiors in the "Dianetics" cult of his mental condition.

Mrs. Hubbard's 12-page complaint identified Hubbard's previous wife as Margaret Grubb Hubbard, of Bremerton, Washington, whom he divorced December 24, 1947, in Port Orchard, Washington, over a year after his present marriage began.

from the Phoenix New Times, 1999-Feb-21, by Tony Ortega, from http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/1999-01-21/feature2.html:

Picket Fencing
Scientology critic Jeff Jacobsen helped get the Church in hot water over a Florida death. Now, Church members have figured out where he lives.

Residents of a quiet south Scottsdale neighborhood received an unusual present the day after Christmas. In their mailboxes, homeowners found a flier with a picture of one of their neighbors.

THE FACE OF RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY

"Your neighbor Jeff Jacobsen is not all that he seems. When he's not stirring up hatred on the streets, Jacobsen is poisoning the Internet by filling it full of religious bigotry and intolerance! Jacobsen's hatred puts families at risk. Next time you see this man, recognize the face of religious bigotry."

Sherry Kinner found the leaflet in her mailbox and walked out to confront one of the men who was distributing it.

It wasn't the first time Kinner had caught people targeting Jacobsen, who lives two doors down from her. She'd spotted private investigators staking out Jacobsen's house. Her son had been questioned by a private eye, and her husband had tried, to no avail, to get the detective to say why he was keeping an eye on their neighbor.

 

One night when Jacobsen was out, Kinner saw two women picket his house, carrying signs denouncing Jacobsen as a bigot. They scurried away when Kinner's husband threatened to call the cops while citing, correctly, an Arizona law that prohibits picketing a private residence.

Now one of Jacobsen's enemies was leafleting her street.

"Don't ever put that trash on my mailbox again," she told the man. She says he warned her that she didn't know the entire truth about her neighbor. She replied that she knew full well why Jacobsen has been targeted.

Kinner then collected the leaflets from neighboring houses and delivered them to Jacobsen.

Jacobsen says he was grateful. He had been labeled a bigot before, but never had his detractors distributed fliers in his neighborhood.

Normally, he's picketed at his job.

Lisa McPherson, "to us, represents all of the other people who have been hurt by Scientology." -- Jeff Jacobsen

If the Church of Scientology believed in a Devil, he might look a lot like Jeff Jacobsen.

His name produces a virulent reaction from the local church's leader, Reverend Leslie Durhman. "Jacobsen is in league with the worst kind of bigots -- kidnapers, forcible deprogrammers, Internet terrorists who promote killing Scientologists and blowing up our churches," she tells New Times.

Scientologists have denounced Jacobsen as a bigot in picket lines at his home, at his work, and even thousands of miles away when he was visiting in Florida. A church member's Web site, meanwhile, includes Jacobsen on a list of nine of Scientology's all-time worst enemies.

The mild-mannered, single man of 43 seems hardly satanic in appearance. Tall and reserved, Jacobsen seems about as dangerous as a church mouse; it's hard to believe he's the archnemesis Scientologists make him out to be.

Jacobsen is one of the most dedicated of the church's many critics. Never a member of the religion, Jacobsen participates with other critics in an Internet debate about Scientology. And like several other hard-core local critics, he occasionally pickets the Valley's lone Church of Scientology on University Drive in Mesa as well as churches in California and Florida.

Unlike most of his cohorts, however, Jacobsen has been singled out for retaliation. And that's probably because of his role in what has become the most embarrassing debacle in the church's 45-year history.

The 1995 death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson at a church-owned hotel in Clearwater, Florida, has brought the controversial religion negative publicity like nothing before. It's also brought the church two criminal indictments.

Jacobsen's role in Scientology's disaster has never been publicized. But the church itself seems well aware of his contribution.

For his part, Jacobsen clearly enjoys being a thorn in the church's side. Despite the retaliation he's suffered, Jacobsen spends vast amounts of time researching and criticizing Scientology because, well, it's fun, he says.

"It's nonviolent. It's effective. It shows the church that it has critics and that we're not afraid. If you go to Disneyland, what happens? You take a ride and you know it's going to be safe. But if you go to Los Angeles and picket the Church of Scientology, you don't know what's going to happen. You might be followed by a private investigator. When you picket, will the Scientologists harass you, will they run away? You have to be careful. You have to plan. But it's still pretty neat," he says.

Besides organizing road trips for his fellow debunkers, Jacobsen maintains several Web sites containing hundreds of pages of information about the church and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. To counter Scientology claims that Hubbard had a stellar college career resulting in two doctorates, Jacobsen found Hubbard's actual college records in a court file and posted them for the benefit of Internet users. The records show Hubbard actually earned a D average in two years of work at George Washington University, took a single course in nuclear physics (Hubbard later claimed to be a "nuclear physicist") and earned no degree.

 

What motivates Jacobsen to search through arcane records for such gems, he says, is that he objects to Scientology practices he says are harmful to its adherents. He also dislikes church policies that encourage lawsuits to harass critics, as well as efforts by the church to shut down its Internet detractors.

Scientologist attacks on Jacobsen, however, are more muddled. Signs carried by church members denouncing Jacobsen display odd messages that only make sense if you know something about Jacobsen's family and background. The church obviously knows something about that background, which explains the private investigators who showed up in Jacobsen's neighborhood and at his family's businesses in South Dakota.

As a result, Scientologists in both Phoenix and Florida blame Jacobsen for strange things. A recent issue of the National Enquirer contains a story about Scientology and two of its most famous believers, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. An inside photo portrays a demonstration in Florida attended by Jacobsen. If you look carefully, you can see part of a sign held by a Florida picketer with a slogan Scientologists have frequently aimed at Jacobsen: "Jeff Is a Porno King."

Jacobsen says the sign refers to two things. He works for his father at Single Scene, a tame weekly for lonely Phoenicians looking for love. Jacobsen's father also owns a chain of video stores in South Dakota that stocks adult videos along with the latest releases. Scientologists have labeled Jacobsen a pornographer for those connections.

Jacobsen's "religious bigotry" is never spelled out in leaflets or picket signs; nowhere do Scientologists identify themselves on their protest materials. On a church member's Web site, meanwhile, Jacobsen's character and family business are maligned: "Like a housewife who constantly harps about her neighbors, when you open Jeff's closet, all the dirty diapers and dishpans fall out."

Ironically, Jacobsen is one of the least vitriolic of Scientology's critics. Some of the church's detractors, particularly former Scientologists, push at the limits of free speech and good taste in their attacks on the church. It's obvious some of them enjoy provoking Scientologists, who have long endured reputations for being litigious and retaliatory.

"You have to ask yourself what would motivate someone to spend their time at such a vicious activity. We want him to go away and stop harming people of goodwill." -- Reverend Leslie Durhman

But Jacobsen is nearly as reserved in his Internet joustings with the church as he is in real life. Something of a computer nerd, Jacobsen thinks of himself as a sort of cyberspace Gandhi, preferring conscientious debate to angry name-calling.

He says he's careful not to do anything on the Internet that would get him sued, and he doesn't support other critics who violate Scientology copyrights by posting secret church materials illegally.

Despite those precautions, Jacobsen has still attained Luciferlike stature in the minds of Scientologists.

But that all started when Jacobsen, computer geek, Internet hound, noticed a police department's electronic cry for help in solving the mysterious death of a Clearwater, Florida, woman.

Scientology describes itself as the "only major new religion to emerge in the 20th century."

Founded by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the church's seminal text is Hubbard's 1950 book Dianetics. The self-help book was described at the time of its publication as a sort of poor-man's psychoanalysis and was promoted by Hubbard as an alternative to traditional mental-health care. Through a process somewhat analogous to psychotherapy that he called auditing, Hubbard claimed that the unhappy could improve their lives by erasing the effects of traumatic memories. Hubbard called these memories engrams and said they acted like scars on the mind; only after extensive auditing and the removal of all engrams, including those left over from past lives, could a person achieve a new state of inner freedom. Hubbard said such an engram-free human being, which had never appeared on Earth before, would be known as a clear.

Hubbard's clears would be capable of amazing feats. Impervious to sickness, clears would have clairvoyant powers, perfect recall, and would be able to leave their bodies. In the summer of 1950, Hubbard announced that he had produced the world's first clear, a young woman named Sonya Bianca. But at a demonstration in Los Angeles, Bianca's supposedly perfect recall was embarrassingly underwhelming. She couldn't, for example, remember the color of Hubbard's tie after Hubbard was asked by a spectator to turn around.

Nonetheless, by 1954, Hubbard had convinced enough readers of the power of Dianetics that he organized his followers in a formal religion he called Scientology. Today, 13 years after Hubbard's death, the church claims a worldwide membership of eight million. Critics say the real extent of the church is far smaller. The Mesa church claims a statewide membership of 1,000, and Reverend Durhman says that about 200 members attend church events.

New church members work toward becoming clears by attending increasingly expensive classes and auditing sessions. A church magazine encourages members to make pilgrimages to a church center in Los Angeles to complete their journey across "the Bridge" to become clears. Critics estimate the total cost of that journey to be about $100,000 to $200,000. Once a clear, a Scientologist is also known as an operating thetan, or OT, referring to the ability to communicate with his or her inner thetan, an entity somewhat analogous to a soul. Members then continue their spiritual journey, moving to levels such as OT II and OT III and up to OT VIII, the highest current level attainable. John Travolta is reportedly an OT V.

It's only at OT III -- a step that alone costs more than $8,000, according to a recent church price list -- that a believer is told the true nature of the thetan inside him or her.

According to materials made public in a lawsuit brought by a former believer, Scientologists who reach OT III are told that thetans are space aliens exiled to Earth 75 million years ago by Xenu, an evil galactic overlord.

 

Numerous ex-members have confirmed the authenticity of the OT III materials from the lawsuit, but the church has never officially acknowledged that Xenu is, in fact, a key figure in its theology.

Hubbard himself wrote that the OT III materials sometimes proved too much of a shock for his believers, and he emphasized that they not be revealed to a pilgrim too soon.

Critics point to such writings and charge that Scientology is more a money-making scheme than a religion. What other church asks its believers to pay such huge sums to find out what the church is about? they ask.

Increasingly, outside observers have asked the same question. In 1991, Time deemed Scientology a "ruthless global scam" -- on its cover. The church responded with a $415 million lawsuit against the magazine. Eventually, a federal judge dismissed all but one of Scientology's claims of libelous statements.

Two years after the Time story, a new forum for discussions about the church emerged: a newsgroup on the burgeoning Internet. Called alt.religion.scientology, or a.r.s for short, the newsgroup rapidly became one of the busiest in cyberspace. If Scientology operated by holding back information from its members, the Internet provided a way for the church's critics to make those secret teachings available instantaneously and all over the world. Pro-Scientology retaliations to postings on a.r.s -- in the form of illegal message cancellations -- eventually brought the newsgroup to the attention of computer geeks with no interest in the Scientology debate. Someone was canceling a.r.s postings critical of the church, a violation of federal law, and Internet sleuths tried, with little luck, to identify who was pushing the delete button. When a Scientology lawyer tried to have the entire newsgroup removed, the battle over a.r.s became for many computer enthusiasts a struggle for free speech in general.

The church sought help from the federal government to combat the posting of its secret, copyrighted teachings -- teachings that critics argued had been made part of the public domain through numerous court filings. Armed with federal warrants, church officials raided the homes of several computer critics they believed were behind publication of OT materials. Computer enthusiasts, meanwhile, howled in protest.

And some of them, including an Arizona contributor to a.r.s named Jeff Jacobsen, began to picket churches of Scientology.

For Jacobsen, the Internet gave him an outlet for his most abiding passion: his interest in cultish new religions.

Since 1984, Jacobsen has helped his father and sister publish Single Scene. He also runs Friday-night dances sponsored by the paper at several Valley resorts.

But Jacobsen's real interests lie in what he believes are churches that wield undue influence over their members.

He says he belonged to such a church as a young man, a strict Christian sect in South Dakota. Jacobsen now calls that particular United Pentecostal Church a cult, and says that for six years he lived like a slave for the demanding religion.

Today, he says he belongs to a more open Christian church, but his experience left him with a curiosity about other cultish organizations.

For years, nearly all of his attention has been devoted to a single church -- Hubbard's Church of Scientology.

"The more contact I had with Scientology, the more I could see it was much more dangerous than the group I was involved in," he says. Jacobsen began a methodical study of the religion in 1987, and has collected hundreds of volumes of the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. He also regularly participates in the debate on a.r.s, and has helped coordinate national pickets of Scientology churches with other members of the newsgroup.

In March 1996, Jacobsen and 17 other critics traveled to Clearwater, Florida, the church's spiritual headquarters. Jacobsen and the others spent a day of uneventful picketing outside a church-owned bank and then returned home.

Six months later, Jacobsen says, he started thinking about rallying the troops for another trip to Clearwater, but this time he decided they should target one of Scientology's holiest sites, the Fort Harrison Hotel. According to a church brochure, the hotel is a religious retreat where Scientologists come "from around the world to participate in advanced auditing and training."

Before organizing the trip, Jacobsen surfed the Internet for information on Clearwater, and landed on the city's home page. Clicking his way to the police department's site, Jacobsen noticed that homicide detectives were asking for the public's help in solving the "suspicious death" of a woman named Lisa McPherson. The notice asked anyone who had information about McPherson to contact the police. It also included McPherson's last known address.

 

Jacobsen realized, to his surprise, that he recognized that address. It was the same street number as the Fort Harrison Hotel, the Scientology mecca Jacobsen had planned on picketing. Although the police notice made no mention of either the hotel or Scientology, Jacobsen suspected that McPherson's "suspicious death" might involve the church itself. He typed up a brief mention of McPherson in a newsletter he sends to other church critics, and mailed a copy to Tampa Tribune reporter Cheryl Waldrip.

Jacobsen says Waldrip did nothing with his tip until she realized that no obituary or any other information about McPherson's death had appeared in print. That made her suspicious, Jacobsen says, and led her to look into the police investigation.

Articles in the Tribune and other papers, and the church's changing story about what happened in McPherson's death, soon led to national coverage. Newspapers questioned Scientology practices and printed accusations that adherents, like McPherson, are held against their will. The attention turned an obscure death investigation into a highly publicized battle between police and Scientology. Eventually, the church was indicted for abuse of a disabled adult and unauthorized practice of medicine, both felonies. McPherson's family, meanwhile, has filed a civil lawsuit against the church.

The death of Lisa McPherson has become the most publicized controversy in the church's 45-year history. Stories about McPherson have appeared in nearly every major American newspaper as well as foreign publications and on numerous television programs.

Jacobsen, meanwhile, maintains an extensive archive of information about the case on several Web sites and, through the help of other a.r.s members, in four foreign languages.

McPherson was a 36-year-old member of the church who had belonged to the religion for 13 years. In November 1995, McPherson had finally crossed the Bridge to become a clear. But she told friends and family that she was unhappy at her job at a Scientology-owned publisher and that she planned to leave it and return home to Dallas.

On November 18, McPherson was involved in a minor auto accident. When paramedics arrived, they found that McPherson, who appeared unhurt, had disrobed. "I need help. I need to talk to someone," she told them. Paramedics noted McPherson said she had been doing "wrong things she didn't know were wrong."

McPherson was taken to a hospital, where a doctor recommended that she go through a psychiatric evaluation. Scientologist friends of McPherson arrived, however, and objected, saying that psychiatric evaluations are forbidden in their religion.

With Scientologists at her bedside, McPherson told hospital workers that she wanted to go home with her friends. A doctor advised against it, but ultimately released McPherson, noting that the Scientologists promised they would provide 24-hour care for the troubled woman.

McPherson checked into the Fort Harrison Hotel for, the church said, rest and relaxation. Seventeen days later, she was rushed in a Scientology van to a hospital 24 miles away, bypassing four closer hospitals in order to get to a Scientologist doctor. McPherson was dead by the time she got there.

An autopsy performed by the county medical examiner found that McPherson had died from a blood clot brought on by "bed rest and severe dehydration," according to the examiner's report. McPherson hadn't had anything to drink for five to 10 days and was unconscious for one or two days before her death, said the medical examiner, who added that McPherson's arms were covered with what appeared to be cockroach bites. The autopsy also found evidence of a staph infection, and the church argues that it was the infection, which came on suddenly, that caused the clot and killed McPherson. Church officials insisted that McPherson's time at the hotel had been pleasant and that she had exhibited no medical problems until her final day.

But the church's own records, released on a judge's orders, show that McPherson's mental and physical condition plummeted during her stay. Notes kept by the hotel's health-care staff show that she was violent, incoherent, and seemed unable to care for herself. Other notes indicate that McPherson had tried to leave the hotel, and that she had hallucinated that she was L. Ron Hubbard.

As details of the McPherson case gradually emerged, Jacobsen and other Scientology critics began telling reporters that McPherson had been subject to a Hubbard technique called the "introspection rundown."

In a 1974 technical manual, Hubbard wrote that a person "in a psychotic break" should be isolated. "No one speaks to the person or in his hearing," Hubbard instructed. The subject under introspection rundown could not be released until he could provide, in writing, persuasive evidence that he had reformed. If not, he should be told: "Dear Joe. I'm sorry but no go on coming out of isolation yet."

Jacobsen says the introspection rundown is simply a Scientology policy of holding people against their will. Although the church insists that McPherson was cared for in a posh hotel environment, Jacobsen points to the insect bites on her arms and suggests that McPherson was held, forcibly, in a hotel basement. Several former church members have claimed that the same thing happened to them. One former member, Stacy Young, told the St. Petersburg Times she had been ordered to guard a woman who was kept for two months in isolation during introspection rundown in a dirt-floor shack east of Los Angeles. Scientology officials say Young and the others are lying.

Each new development in the case is watched carefully by Jacobsen and other critics. Scientologists, meanwhile, complain that Jacobsen has no real interest in McPherson and instead cruelly exploits her death for his own purposes of criticizing their religion.

When Jacobsen pickets Scientology churches, he carries a sign with a photograph of McPherson and the years of her birth and death.

 

"She, to us, represents all of the other people who have been hurt by Scientology," Jacobsen says. "Why did people wear bracelets for soldiers lost in Vietnam? They didn't know those soldiers. How could you care about somebody you don't know? You do. You just do."

We are not the first church he's attacked, and doubt we'll be the last one," says Reverend Durhman, who leads the Mesa congregation. "In fact, he has made attacking churches a lifelong career.

"You have to ask yourself what would motivate someone to spend their time at such a vicious activity. We want him to go away and stop harming people of goodwill."

Durhman blames Jacobsen and other demonstrators for an environment that encourages vandalism of their church. "There was some graffiti, and some property was damaged. Some benches in the back were thrown into the canal," she says.

She acknowledges that church members have been picketing and leafleting Jacobsen's work and home. "It's the parishioners that are concerned about this and want to get out the truth about him," she says.

She dismisses Jacobsen's complaints about retaliation against Internet critics and about Scientology's withholding of information from adherents.

"It isn't that this stuff is weird or sinister or hidden or whatever. It's just that it's understood that when you have a good body of theology, you don't just dump the whole thing on somebody at the beginning," Durhman says.

She herself has not attained the level of OT III, and so she could not comment on the revelations about Xenu the galactic overlord. Durhman did object to the dissemination of such materials over computer networks.

"Well, of course we don't want it for free on the Internet. Don't you understand that? It's copyrighted material. It belongs to parishioners when they are at that level of spiritual attainment. We have the right to receive donations for all of our services. So it's not right for people to criticize us for how we operate," Durhman says.

One of Durhman's parishioners who has picketed Jacobsen is also a familiar local personality. Realtor Russell Shaw, whose advertisements frequently run on radio and television, maintains a Web site denouncing Jacobsen as an "A.R.S. Bigot."

Shaw couldn't be reached for comment on his Web site. His wife, Wendy, says that he is in Los Angeles and could not be contacted.

But Shaw's Web site makes clear his feelings about Jacobsen. Comparing Jacobsen and eight other critics to Adolf Hitler and Ku Klux Klan members, Shaw writes that Jacobsen's "always disparaging comments have the effect of creating violence, discrimination and hatred. . . . When you open Jeff's closet, all the dirty diapers and dishpans fall out."

Shaw criticizes Jacobsen for "aligning himself" with other critics who have criminal records. (One, for example, local deprogrammer and Scientology critic Rick Ross, pulled off a 1971 jewelry heist in his early 20s and was put on probation, a decade before he began counseling members of authoritarian religions.)

Shaw also castigates Jacobsen because his father was convicted of tax evasion in South Dakota. "Jeff works for his father and surely must be aware of the tax avoidance schemes going on in the business."

Jacobsen explains that South Dakota recently passed a new law that taxes newspaper distribution. His father objected to it as an unconstitutional infringement of free speech, and refused to pay it. "He lost in court, paid a $1,000 fine, and spent a day in jail," Jacobsen says.

Shaw also criticizes Jacobsen because his father's South Dakota video chain rents adult films, and Shaw takes a swipe at the family business: "They make a living providing advice to 'singles' on how to make relationships work. Surprisingly, Jeff and his sister have not been able to make relationships work for themselves and are both approaching middle age single."

Jacobsen says he considers the site "goofy," and only objects to Shaw's statements about his father. "My father's not involved. And he's distorting the facts about my dad. To get at me, Shaw attacks my family," Jacobsen says. "That's Shaw's only Web page. It doesn't promote his business. It's for nothing but to denigrate critics of his church with smear campaigns," he says.

Besides his Web barrage, Shaw has also targeted Jacobsen by picketing one of his Friday-night dances.

Jacobsen plays music at the weekly events, held at resorts such as Mountain Shadows in Paradise Valley, where readers of Single Scene gather. Four times, Scientologist picketers have demonstrated outside, carrying signs with slogans like "Jeff Is a Bigot," "Jeff Is a Porno King," and "Say No to Religious Hatred."

On two of those occasions, Jacobsen says, the picketing occurred on a darkened sidewalk where no hotel workers or guests could see what was going on. He says he wouldn't even have known he was being picketed if a friend hadn't come in and told him.

Jacobsen's protesting of the Mesa church is far more visible.

On a recent afternoon, Jacobsen and four other church critics carry signs outside the church. Rush-hour traffic whizzes by in a loud roar punctuated by frequent honks.

Kristi Wachter walks with a sign hanging around her neck. It reads: "UFO Cult."

Wachter is an a.r.s devotee from San Francisco who dropped by to picket while traveling through Phoenix. She says since she began protesting against the church, Scientologists have frequently retaliated by showing up outside her California home, where private residences can legally be picketed.

Bruce Pettycrew, meanwhile, hefts a sign that reads "Scientology Kills." It refers to Lisa McPherson, he says, but Jacobsen adds that the slogan is also meant to counter a sign Scientologists frequently carry that reads "Psychiatry Kills."

Pettycrew is a Phoenix software engineer who began picketing the church after Internet users were raided by church officials. He estimates that he demonstrates more than once a week, and last year he was sued by the local church for his frequent protests. The lawsuits have been dropped, but Pettycrew says he's still under a court order not to cause noise that can be heard in the church.

Pettycrew says he's motivated to expose Scientology because of its secretive nature. "The world has a problem with pseudoscience. I feel Scientology's one of the grossest examples of that, and I think it's a good place to press the attack," he says.

Pettycrew says out-of-town a.r.s devotees set up pickets about twice a month. Jacobsen, meanwhile, tries to go to Los Angeles and Clearwater for road-pickets several times a year. On December 5, the anniversary of Lisa McPherson's death, Jacobsen helped organize a vigil in Clearwater that drew 100 people.

Inside the Mesa church, Reverend Durhman and others keep an eye on the demonstration. Durhman comes outside to greet a visitor and to allow her picture to be taken.

Later, in a telephone interview, she says, "Jacobsen and his picketer pals are the ones harassing our church and spreading lies about us. What he does to our religion is no different than someone painting a swastika on a synagogue or burning a cross in a black family's yard -- no different whatsoever."

Contact Tony Ortega at his online address: tortega@newtimes.com

from http://www.rickross.com/reference/Scien46.html:

Another View of Scientology's "ScienoSitter"

July 15, 1998

By Rick Ross

Scientology now seems to have offered objective proof (i.e. the "ScienoSitter") that it is engaged in the use of thought reform. They have distributed software, the so-called "ScienoSitter", for Scientologists to filter their Internet access. This software blocks Web sites, names or other information they find objectionable (e.g. critics or criticism of Scientology). That is--any outside frame of reference that might discuss or otherwise offer another opinion about Scientology, its founder, leaders or practices that they did not originate and/or approve.

Information control is a well-recognized facet of thought reform--often called "brainwashing". Totalistic organizations are largely dependent upon controlling information to maintain a mindset (e.g. Nazi Germany, Communist Russia or Mao's China). This is called "milieu control" --or control of the environment. Such control is much like George Orwell's vision of "1984". Simply summed up--totalists seemingly cannot tolerate an outside frame of reference, alternate views or objective feedback. This is especially true concerning the claims of what can be seen as their "sacred science".

Noted psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton explored the area of thought reform and published his observations through his seminal book "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" (see Reading to order this book). Within Chapter 22 of his book Lifton lists eight criteria necessary to establish a thought reform program. Two listed are "Milieu Control" and "Sacred Science".

Scientology's animosity regarding the mental health profession is long established. This too--can simply be seen as yet another example of their intolerance of any outside feedback that might permeate their "milieu control". Moreover, mental health professionals have offered insightful analysis concerning the techniques and results of Scientology--that the organization finds objectionable.

In plain language--Scientology and its leaders seem to like what they control and not like what they don't control.

The net result for Scientologists on the Internet is now the so-called "ScienoSitter", which enables the organization to filter information and block out any feedback they don't control--regarding their organization, its beliefs, practices and problems. This appears to provide objective proof, from Scientology itself--that the organization is actively involved in "Thought Reform".

Here is the basis for one of Robert Jay Lifton's (eight) criteria:

Milieu Control

"The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication [e.g. information]. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual's communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads or writes, experiences, and expresses). It creates an atmosphere uncomfortably reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984.

They [e.g. Scientology?] look upon milieu control as a just and necessary policy, one which need not be kept secret. At the center of this self-justification is their assumption of omniscience, their conviction that reality is their exclusive possession. Having experienced the impact of what they consider to be an ultimate truth (and having the need to dispel any possible inner doubts of their own), they consider it their duty to create an environment containing no more and no less than this "truth." In order to be the engineers of the human soul, they must first bring it under full observational control".

"If it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck--it just might be a duck."

For further information about Scientology's "ScienoSitter" visit the following Web sites:

"A Web of Their Own--Salon Magazine"

"Scientology Censors WWW for Members"

"Church of Scientology Censors Net Access for Members"

"The Scientology Net Censor"

An Index for downloading regarding the "ScienoSitter"

More Information on Scientology

from the Associated Press, February 3, 1999, by Jan M. Olsen, from http://www.rickross.com/reference/Scien88.html:

Scientology Boss Expects Acceptance

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- The Church of Scientology's struggle to gain recognition from European governments should pay off in the next decade, the head of its international branch said Wednesday.

The Los Angeles-based church created by late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard has been persistent in attempts to become recognized as a legitimate religion, said the Rev. Heber Jentzsch, president of Church of Scientology International.

``There is a shift,'' he said. ``Scientology has become visible. It will happen in the next five years, maybe 10 years.''

For now, the church is considered an economic enterprise in Germany and its 30,000 adherents are banned from public jobs and closely watched.

France registers the church on a list of 173 groups that should be tracked to prevent cult activities. A Greek court closed operations in that country in 1997. Most other European countries also don't accept it as a religious community.

``It's not been easy. But we never thought of withdrawing,'' Jentzsch said from the church's European headquarters in Copenhagen. ``Any new religion, any new ideas will be fought. There is an old guard that is threatened by anything that is new.''

Jentzsch said much of the problem stems from misinformation that remains from U.S. investigations into the church in the 1960s and 1970s. He also rejected reports that people who want to leave the church are harassed.

The church didn't win tax-free status as a religion in the United States until 1993, he noted.

Hubbard founded the church in 1954 to teach that technology can expand the mind and help solve problems. Five years later, he opened a first European office in Britain.

The church heads into its 40th anniversary in Europe with 53 offices and about 3 million members, Jentzsch said. Worldwide, it is represented in 129 countries and has almost 9 million members worldwide, including movie actors John Travolta and Tom Cruise.