Krishnamurti and Me

Part 4 - Illusions and Freedom

        While K's teaching thus unwittingly helped me to initially join the movement, it also helped me to get out of from it. Not only K's teaching, but my previous studies of Theosophy or similar teachings. These are the type of things I recount in the story on my web page.

        After I quit Scientology, I discovered the New Age movement, with groups like Findhorn and others, and several other esoteric teachings, like the Rosicrucian's or the Alice Bailey's one. All the while, however, and even if I hold Alice Bailey's teaching as the highest form of esoteric teaching around, I seemed, by now, to draw my own light from within. K, in this respect, is still the stronger "influence" (he would hate this word). He helped me to find my strength and purpose from within, not relying on anyone or anything else, all the while being fully opened to everything, without fearing to put in question my deepest convictions. That the Truth, if such a "thing" exist, should be allowed to reveal itself.

        There was another aspect I got interested in as I came out of Scn, though. This was the mechanisms by which someone could be forcefully made to change his beliefs. IOW, the phenomenon of deprogramming, in which someone is kidnapped and harangued day and night until he recants and adopts his kidnappers' explanation instead. Was it a form of brainwashing, or was it on the contrary a form of liberation from brainwashing induced by the "cults"? Is there something as "mind-control" to start with? I spent most of the 80s to try and find out, all the while "rebuilding" my life as well, picking up on jobs, settling down, and so on.

        My conclusion on this issue is that neither the cults nor deprogramming are really brainwashing, although deprogramming, involving physical coercion, contrary to the cults, is definitely closer to what could be called brainwashing. It isn't possible, however, to somehow magically change someone else's belief at will.

        "Mind-control", as it is being defined by the anti-cult faction, or as the cults alleges its opponents to practice, simple doesn't exists.

        There certainly exists a form of "mind-control", if you want, in which fear, hope, guilt, is used in order to influence someone into accepting a belief. Such is, for example, the fundamentalist's approach in which fear of eternal hell is being played upon you, while you are harangued into confessing your sin and while you are being promised eternal heaven if you conform, but there is a huge gap between this form of "mind-control" and the type of "mind-control" promoted by fanatical cult opponents in which they claim that the freedom of choice of the individual is effectively being overwhelmed and which justify a coercive intervention. There simply is no such thing. Even under actual hypnosis, it has been shown that the basic individual responsibility and freedom cannot be annihilated.

        These topics have been raging, sometimes extremely
violently, in alt.religion.scientology, in which I posted for about two years. Some rather clear lines have emerged, though. I will attempt to summarize them on my web page if I can free up enough time.

        Lastly, the page is also aimed at warning about the danger of the fanatical anti-cultism, headed by the fallacious doctrine of mind-control. Strangely enough, anti-cultism has turned into a cult in its own right, which once more tend to prove that what you resist, you become.

        Much of my own 80s decade was also spend trying to fight the abuses and dangers of this anti-cult movement (acm). Believe it or not, we passed 1984 very closely to the type of things that what was predicted by Orwell. The acm, indeed, almost succeeded to pass a law in which one could be incarcerated and psychologically abused into conformity. All things that I will document in due time, for those interested. Luckily, by the end of the 80s, the acm has been overall defeated, but its a long story and I believe not quite the topic of this list. Democracy and human rights prevailed, and once again, I gained considerable insight in these matters through this issue.

        While both cults and anti-cults do have a part of truth just as well, they nevertheless constitute extremes and are actually not that interesting beyond what they can teach us. This is why I plan to add a third dimension to my web page. A spiritual one, either as an integral part or a separate one. At the end of the day, all of these are but some aspects of the spiritual search, and the many pitfalls, idiocy, and illusions, we can fall into.

        The spiritual search and the freeing of the thousands of illusions we can get into is still what is, IMO, the most important issue of all. Is there such a thing as Truth and infinite intelligence, infinite wisdom, infinite love? I believe yes, but it doesn't always manifests itself under the form of what we conceive spirituality to be. It isn't just enough to delight oneself in abstract light and sensations, however beautiful it is. Such intelligence, wisdom and love needs to find its way in action, and through action, attention and observation, constant learning and unearthing, to discover for ourself what is so precious, so valuable, and so subtle, that it constantly escapes the thousands forms in which we would like to hold and capture it.