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THE PRISONER OF SAN JOSE: HOW I ESCAPED FROM ROSICRUCIAN MIND CONTROL |
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PROLOGUE In the literature of mind control, I believe there have been, so far, two somewhat discrete phases. The first is embodied in the work of people like Robert Jay Lifton and Edgar Schein, inspired by the dynamic psychological work of Kurt Lewin. I would call this first phase "the study of brainwashing." Its most important fruit was the study of coercion of people in captivity based on research focused on interrogation and coercive techniques practiced on prisoners in Communist China and Korea. In brainwashing, mind control influences are vested in the captor, the victim being an actual physical captive under the complete physical control of his jailer, interrogator, or state bureaucrat. The second phase was developed by cult experts like Steven Hassan, Margaret Singer, and the team of Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad. In this phase, there was an analysis of similar techniques involving religious, psychological, political, and commercial cults. I call this phase "the study of cult mind control." In this phase, captivity is largely voluntary but under direct influence by the cult leadership. There are no physical constraints, but the point of contact to create compliance is very physical and environmentally immediate. Cult mind control study had two progressive outcomes. Initially, it produced a form of psychological reconditioning designed to remove people from cult mind control constraints on their emotions and thought processes, which was called deprogramming. After that phase resulted in certain unfavorable psychological and social consequences, including the possibility of deprogrammers facing legal and personal consequences, including kidnapping, a new cult reconditioning protocol evolved. It was called exit psychology and involved a less coercive, more subtle approach to removing the influences of cult mind control. I would like to see my book as part of a third phase, a phase where mind control techniques are explored largely apart from any type of physical environment. In my case, both recruitment into a cult and the imposition of mind control techniques were largely remote from any type of physical environment, although there was a human influence through the culture of a fraternal lodge. Still, in the cult that I grew up in, most of the indoctrination occurred in the privacy of my own home or, when I was homeless, the seclusion of a lonely bench or a temporary station in a laundromat. In one sense, you could say all three phases of analysis focus on how organizations can change a human personality vested with an individual, independent frame of mind (perhaps influenced to some degree by family and sociopolitical milieu) to a fully compliant, cult-directed personality. In fact, there are, in my mind, three methods of creating a cult personality from an ordinary human being.
If you think about it, the ability to remotely control and transform a person's thinking and personality is not new. Indeed, this was one of the principal activities of the National Socialist Party in Nazi Germany and other groups in many Communist states. Unfortunately, these techniques are also utilized in activities as contemporary as the training of terrorists, beginning with the dogmatic schooling in the madrassas of various Arab countries and progressing to the military and religious indoctrination of young suicide bombers -- the second, and often final, phase of their indoctrination. Political parties, even in the United States, as discussed later when commenting on the latest work of Al Gore, utilize television as a hypnotic device for embalming the human mind in rigid thinking and predictable voting patterns. Commercials use these same sound bites and branding techniques, substituting jingles for political slogans and cute, visually memorable logos for red elephants and blue donkeys. In my view, remote indoctrination is not all that rare. Still, when a bona fide religious cult embodies it, it is easier to see its actual mechanics and its chilling effect on real human beings. That is why I think it is important to bring my story to the attention of the larger world. And I am hoping that it will help those who might entrap themselves as I did or who need to free themselves from the inner constraints imposed by a mind control cult -- hopefully sooner than I did. But, beyond that, perhaps I am laying a groundwork for further probing of the mind control techniques in politics, in more conventional religious philosophies, and in global terror. Mind control, used in any area, only contributes to the deterioration of human judgment and liberty. Now more than ever, in a world approaching cataclysmic political, social, and environmental change, we desperately need free, inquiring minds, and compassionate, loving hearts to face the important new challenges of this next, very critical century, in order to ensure the survival of the human race and planet Earth.
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