recommended I check out Mystical Manipulation from Robert Jay Lifton’s book,“Thought Reform and the Psychology of TotalismAfter I shared my own experience of a "visionary experiences"back in 1973 as proof the boy Guru I was following at that time must be enlightened and Godlike.. I remember receiving 'Holy Darshan' in London whree I was required to kiss the feet of this 16 year old Indian boy Guru Maharaji
where I almost collapsed in bliss
this led me to seven years of devotion worshiping this Guru who was basically controlled by his mother who was also relatively clueless except for making money. Its a very important subject I would like to understand more. Check out the Joe Rogan interview with Rebecca Lemov who explores Mystical Manipulations in her new book ""The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control and Hyper-Persuasion," I recently posted on EMF
Thank you Joe
CIA, MKUltra: Mind Control Techniques are Being Used Today & How To Protect Yourself
EMF Link: viewtopic.php?t=3156
Robert Jay Lifton’s book,“Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of ‘Brainwashing’ in China.
Mystical Manipulation
The inevitable next step after milieu control is extensive personal manipulation. This manipulation assumes a no-holds-barred character, and uses every possible device at the milieu’s command, no matter how bizarre or painful. Initiated from above, it seeks to provoke specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that these will appear to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment. This element of planned spontaneity, directed as it is by an ostensibly omniscient group, must assume, for the manipulated, a near-mystical quality.
Ideological totalists do not pursue this approach solely for the purpose of maintaining a sense of power over others. Rather they are impelled by a special kind of mystique which not only justifies such manipulations, but makes them mandatory. Included in this mystique is a sense of “higher purpose,” of having “directly perceived some imminent law of social development,” and of being themselves the vanguard of this development. 3 By thus becoming the instruments of their own mystique, they create a mystical aura around the manipulating institutions — the Party, the Government, the Organization. They are the agents “chosen” (by history, by God, or by some other supernatural force) to carry out the “mystical imperative,” 4 the pursuit of which must supersede all considerations of decency or of immediate human welfare. Similarly, any thought or action which questions the higher purpose is considered to be stimulated by a lower purpose, to be backward, selfish, and petty in the face of the great, overriding mission. This same mystical imperative produces the apparent extremes of idealism and cynicism which occur in connection with the manipulations of any totalist environment: even those actions which seem cynical in the extreme can be seen as having ultimate relationship to the “higher purpose.”
At the level of the individual person, the psychological responses to this manipulative approach revolve about the basic polarity of trust and mistrust. One is asked to accept these manipulations on a basis of ultimate trust (or faith): “like a child in the arms of its mother,” as Father Luca accurately perceived. He who trusts in this degree can experience the manipulations within the idiom of the mystique behind them: that is, he may welcome their mysteriousness, find pleasure in their pain, and feel them to be necessary for the fulfillment of the “higher purpose” which he endorses as his own. But such elemental trust is difficult to maintain; and even the strongest can be dissipated by constant manipulation.
When trust gives way to mistrust (or when trust has never existed) the higher purpose cannot serve as adequate emotional sustenance. The individual then responds to the manipulations through developing what I shall call the psychology of the pawn. Feeling himself unable to escape from forces more powerful than himself, he subordinates everything to adapting himself to them. He becomes sensitive to all kinds of cues, expert at anticipating environmental pressures, and skillful in riding them in such a way that his psychological energies merge with the tide rather than turn painfully against himself. This requires that he participate actively in the manipulation of others, as well as in the endless round of betrayals and self-betrayals which are required.
But whatever his response — whether he is cheerful in the face of being manipulated, deeply resentful, or feels a combination of both — he has been deprived of the opportunity to exercise his capacities for self-expression and independent action.
Much more here...
https://cultrecovery101.com/chapter-22- ... -totalism/