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Have you seen this interesting documentary on Netflix? Our lord appears in a brief shot along with a pic of one of the Rolls Royces and a reference to foot kissing. But it is mainly about Ted Patrick and his controversial methods of deprogramming. it features Rick Ross, Moonies, Jonestown and a lot of other cults. I remember back in the 90s that Rawat was being sued by someone who had been deprogrammed or was it the other way round? Does anyone remember anything about it?
Related link: http://www.onnetflix.co.uk/deprogrammed/25923
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There was a young woman in the DC cult whose parents had her grabbed by Ted Patrick. I think her name was Emily. I knew a couple cult people who participated in her "rescue" from Ted. This may be what you refer to but details were sketchy then due to secrecy and vague now due to time. Maybe other DC folks here can add to this.
Also, we were at first Kissimmee cult fest when Jim Jones did his thing. I stopped by my parents' house on the way back. They were really happy to see me since they were thinking the worst.
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So many quotes in this article but this stood out. Leonard Deitz said. "It was confirmed to me when she said, 'Dad, you can be Jewish and belong to this group, too.' That was a line fed to her by the cult."
I said the same thing to my Catholic parents.
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Yes, thanks Cynthia and all of you for the links. Just goes to show I'm getting lazy and didn't do my research. There's a lot of interesting reading here. This quote from Cynthia's link stood out "adolescent guru who seemed to them to be nothing more than a charlatan with a weakness for cliches and a talent for fatuous analogies. "
So, no change there then. 
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yes that Washington Post article was good. This is the bit that stood out to me
"the intellect appears to lose a great many IQ points; the capacity to form flexible human relationships...is impaired and all reality testing functions are hard to mobilise so that judgment is poor."
yikes. was it really that bad, yes it was.
I still can't quite believe that parents thought it was a good idea to forcibly detain their children tho. IQ points dropping all over the place.
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also in philly there were 2 premies who were"deprogrammed" initiated by their parents - using ted patrick in the middle or late 70's that a bunch of us were friendly with - many people in the community became paranoid that their parents were going to do the same.
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Her name was Emily Deitz and here is the page on EPO that has a Washington Post article about the whole situation.
When I lived in Hartford, CT premie community, in 1976 Ted Patrick and gang kidnapped a much loved premie woman. She was able to be legally brought back to Hartford from Philadelphia (where her parents lived) but was kidnapped again, and she never came back nor was heard from again.
While I was living at the Broadripple ashram on Collins Ave., Miami Beach, an instructor was kidnapped by Patrick but after a day or so she pretended to agree to go back to her parents (pretending to be deprogrammed), then she tricked the Patrick thugs into taking her to her Broadripple room where she told them to fuck off, and was protected by some ashram brothers who escorted the thugs off the hotel property. I wasn't present for these events because I was working at DECA so I spent little time at the Broadripple ashram. The premie grapevine thrives.
http://www.ex-premie.org/pages/wp_article1.htm
Modified by Cynthia at Wed, Nov 16, 2016, 14:01:52
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Interesting phenomenon, I know one here who had some sort of intervention too. A sweet woman, the last time I saw her she claimed to be quite content to have her money go to Rawat. I guess I would call her naive, and another example is when I went along with them all to a program at the Shrine in LA, she wanted to help the zillions of homeless Junkies, and we had to pull her away. She seems to be amongst the several here who perhaps have personality conflicts and thus drops off envelopes of cash for whatever the "community" is raising funds for. I checked and that new film is not yet available here, though I do have Netflix. It seems like Ted Patrick is another interventionist, similar to trying to get loved ones off drugs or booze. I certainly see the similarities of Christians spending their whole life preaching about the imminent return of Jesus to those who overlook the massive wealth of Rawat while still waiting for the world peace.
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Cynthia:
Somehow I had it in mind that she came back for the station wagon. Pretty sure it was hers.
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Hi Kelly,
yeah I remember something but I'm not sure if it was Rawat being sued by a deprogrammed premie or a reprogrammed premie suing his parents. or both?
it was messy for sure with the kidnapping.
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This whole issue of kidnapping and deprogramming is still a tough subject to reconcile for me. I speak from personal experience, having been grabbed 6 weeks before HJ '79 in Kissimmee, Fla. Then spending 5 weeks under lock and key, being verbally harassed and ridiculed for my beliefs. The agent was a protege of Ted Patrick, Joseph Alexander along with his gang of mercenaries, a sizable organization and well funded.
I wont go in to further details, but what has remained throughout the years is the psychological fallout from that event. As a young idealized spiritualist, it never occurred to me that the weight of that travesty would affect me for the next 35 years. Let me explain.
For many years as an ashram premie, life was exciting, inspired, rewarding, fulfilling and held immeasurable promise. Practicing knowledge was beyond lifestyle it was a pursuit of peace and beauty. But I never felt caged or corralled by our mini religion, it just felt right to be involved. I could come and go with other interests or associations but nothing like a do-or-die dogma.
Then I endured the above mentioned ordeal. I survived in tact. My independence was not compromised, I was not dissuaded to leave, I maintained my dignity and returned to life with GMJ (three days before the festival). I had been released thinking they had successfully deprogrammed me, somehow able to bluff through many layers of scrutiny. But things were never the same again after that.
At first I was relieved and thrilled to have beaten the odds. I felt elated and empowered. Then little by little the stress of it all started to take its toll. I became withdrawn and moody, critical of premies around me, angry and deeply agitated by the religiosity around me. And also pessimistic about Rawat himself. I had invested so much into this pseudo-reality and now it was disintegrating before my eyes.
The reality was that if my parents had not hired these goons, I probably would have drifted out of the cult just by virtue of growing older and the desire to explore the world. But the fallout...was really more like a backfire. From that time forward I clung to my convictions more than ever, determined to never again be challenged or confronted that way again. I would not be budged or coerced into anything that I didn't trust. But now I didn't trust Maharaji anymore either. For all of his Perfectness, he had allowed a world of hurt and darkness to invade my life.
And the bottom line was that he didn't even care to offer the victims of kidnapping any form of solace, psychological counselling, legal advice, and scant physical protection. The statistics were that over 50% of failed first attempts were followed by a second or third attempt. This created a situation of constant hypervigilance, and never feeling safe. A nightmarish anxiety ridden daily routine, and precursor to later psychological distress.
I think that one reason Rawat closed the ashrams was because of things like this. His cute little Indian melodrama was not playing well with educated western audiences and the conflict was having painful consequences in the lives of every day premies. We were the ones absorbing the dissonance and making excuses for him constantly.
Eventually I was able to break free and looking back, I am amazed that I gave him so much authority and power over my intellect, my heart, my instincts, and my innocence. We were so much more holy than he ever was.
sorry ass excuse for a human being
It is worthwhile to note that Ted Patrick and Joe Alexander were sued into utter pennilessness for their deeds. Methods that I can only characterize as barbaric, a normal backlash against fear of the unknown I guess. It was a time of Jim Jones and Charles Manson after all.
Modified by Manincar at Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 20:51:29
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yes it has to be a terrible breach of trust between parent and child. And deprogramming seems to me to be such a horrible method. Forcing you to change your beliefs? sorta puts you at odds with yourself just as much as getting the religion in the first place did. Even if it's successful it's put you in a double bind.
It reminds me of the next thing that came up to change people's minds - hypnotherapy. That's still a coercive technique and an irritant to the soul.
I saw this movie and at the start of it a man is having this terrible nightmare with grey billowing smoke and the end of the world. Turns out this is the nightmare implanted by the hypnotherapist should he light up a cigarette. He quits smoking.
At the end of the movie which I can't remember what it was about, he takes up smoking again. The only way back out of the nightmare is to face it up and dispel the hypnotherapy programming.
The good thing I guess, that you can take out of your parent's actions is that they went to such lengths to get you back.
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Manicar, I am so sad that happened to you. That sounds like a whole layer of pain added on top of being in a cult. Taking away a person's freedom is wrong and it doesn't matter the motive they were wrong. I used to wish I had been deprogrammed. Obviously, I was wrong to wish that. Thank you for sharing this.
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I agree w/Susan. What a horrible experience both getting in and out. I've often wondered what my parents and sister said about my cult involvement.
Probably just said it was a fad. I could ask my sister now but she has other issues.
Those 2 Kissimmee cult fests were the greatest mind fucks ever. I kept listening to tapes`into the 90's believing the asshole was saying something of value......Then, I was told to burn those tapes since he never said that.
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When I first became a premie it was after being taken away from London to a remote farmhouse in the countryside, under false pretences. (on many levels )
The world of Maharaj Ji and Knowledge was NEVER a blissful wonderland for me but a ghastly place of torment. I had left everything safe and familiar behind and was under the tyranny of a fundamentalist premie who , once I was miles from anything or anyone that I knew, proceeded to insist I stay at that place ( through fear...Guru Maharaj Ji wants you to be here....) and by mocking me for not being steadfast enough. There was a whole brow beaten group of us working in slave labour and obeying all kinds of radical rules. I was in a constant and sometimes agonising state of turmoil that sounds very like the state Manincar found himself in AFTER he was deprogrammed. It makes me feel that, because I had fallen among strict and radical premies living in weird , cold and hungry circumstances, it was the equivalent of being deprogrammed overnight from my relatively comfy and "normal" pre-premie existence. So kind of the opposite of Manincar but a similar feeling.
While I was living at the farm, a group of my previous friends came to kidnap and rescue me. These had been my best friends but I had been brainwashed to believe that they weren't really my friends. I refused to go with them because I would have been ( in my addled brain) "turning my back on the Lord "........honestly....what a crock ! And what lovely friends to have tried to save me
I escaped from THAT PLACE after a few months but it was another 30 years before I extricated myself from the cult altogether , thanks to this forum and stalwarts like Cynthia, John and Jim ( and all you others...much appreciated )
Thankyou Manincar for your sincere, heartfelt post. Certainly food for thought.
Modified by lexy at Sat, Nov 19, 2016, 07:32:20
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Thanks guys, EPO has been a great resource for support and sharing perspectives. I think back to the glory days and realize, we were in a constant battle to deflect weirdness. Either coming from above or from the community oddballs. It was basically a relentless assault on all sensibilities normal to human living.
No wonder we sought the refuge of inner peace, the outer world had been replaced by a sticky social order that fed on itself. I think that is why friendships were so important within the cult. Someone, anyone who would listen and share their honesty. And honestly cults are mine fields for wayward souls.
But oh how good it feels to be free. It only took most of a lifetime, but happy to have come out the other side.
cheers
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What a gruelling story Manincar and what a thing to go through. Thanks for telling it. Yes thank goodness we were able to deprogram ourselves with a little help from our friends here. What a long strange journey its been. I was tempted to ask if you regret it, but I resisted! You too lexy, what a horrible thing to happen. I'm wondering if that farm was in Wales?
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" I'm wondering if that farm was in Wales?"
No Kelly.....although I think these weird "religious" communes were not that unusual in the seventies. I did hear that there was at least one which linked itself to "Divine Light Mission" in Wales and people associated with that one have written on this forum in the past. My weird unofficial DLM ashram/commune was at a place called Robin Farm in Itteringham, a beautiful hamlet in NORFOLK, East Anglia. I was told that we were doing it "properly" unlike those spaced-out official ashrams !!
Modified by lexy at Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 07:24:59
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I would guess he closed the ashrams for at least the reason it was costing a lot of money for health care ect.
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Thank you, manincar.
The presence of Ted Patrick (and J's kidnapping in Hartford) brought the threat of violence to daily living, as a premie.
(I was not worried about contemporaries doing us harm; nor neighbors nor co-workers)
I remember thinking something along the lines of 'even if ...' (throw in some reason why deprogramming had some possible pragmatism associated with it) '.. even if, the damage and the violation would be awful' or something.
I'm pretty sure I was preparing arguments to present to my family, during my kidnapping, if it came about.
Yeah, that's probably the sorts of things I was thinking about: arguments to be used to end the awfulness, somewhat ahead of schedule.
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