The EnlightenMeFree (EMF) Online Debate Forum

Every Halloween the school gives a Neewollah pagan dance where we dress up what we want to be like, or do or have and for a few hours 1000 of us dance in rows in front of cameras. Then they make us to C&E with blinders on, play all sorts of scary techno music, we blow blow until we pass out, get up and for a few hours we have to dance as if we are our costume, blindfolded . Its pretty scary.

Lets hear your ridiculous stories. I have one. An orange salamander costume. So pumped up, dancing, in the moment, throws self in the mud, back when the arena was a big muddy floor and rolls around as if was a salamander for a few hours.
In ecstasy, out of body, in trance, whatever that kind of dancing does to you.

Usually people are blue butterflies, blue pentagrams, roulettes, casino shirts, gold, money..

I guess if you were a tree, during the dance, for the rest of your life you have an affinity and relationship to trees. Thats what we were given as example of what would happen to us.

I am sorry to bring it up. Just trying to make sense of it.

It did feel kind of "witchy"
thank god there were no orgies with antler masked men afterwards. Or ramtha himself. Interested in Joe's explanation.

Bali has long tradition of shamanic trance dancing. the purpose is to 'embody' a god, ancestor, or animal spirit. JZ could have watched this stuff on tv in 1980s. remember to breath normally when you watch these.

http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/vi ... =21&tnr=21

http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/pla ... =11ara9djg

http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/vi ... =21&tnr=21


this is similar to many evangelical/pentecostal Christian exorcism ceremonies:
http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/pla ... =11ara9djg

TRANCE DANCING, LOUD MUSIC

Trance dancing accompanied with music occurs in many religous movements. The Hindu raga and tabla with dancing is primarily a trance--ecstacy format. In Islam, Sufi orders will use 'whirling dervish' as well as a folksy version with loud drumming, marijuana, and head shaking to go into trance and "get messages" from the deity. Pentecostals in charismatic Christian circles combine music, singing and jumping up and down or swaying motions to achieve trance to "receive the Holy Spirit." Old African religions use drums and chanting. Shamans use drumming and drugs to achieve trance and the "mystic flight" or OBE out of body experience.

The key to all this is not whether the trance is wrong or right, but in what context does it take place. People in trance-induced ecstacy will invariably bond psychologically and socially with and in the environment in which the trance was induced.....endorphins are often released in the brain, thus producing that "heroin heaven high" that easily translates into anything the social environemnt [cult] says it is.

R J Lifton calls this "mystical manipulation" when the managers of a milieu purposely require recruits to go through trance excercises. The managers know ahead of time what the result will be but the recruit thinks it is "spontaneous" or auto-generated, thus "It Is My Personal Experience" (a perfect mantra for a narcissist).
And as you know, "personal experience" is the guiding judge-god of RSE as it is with almost any New Age cult.

neat trick, but it works very well. Nearly every destructive cult uses this technique to get people to bond with the group. est/Landmark Forum and all large group awareness trainings [Tony Robbins also] are notrious for using hypnotic [high and low arousal] techniques. It is sad for me to see how easily people will spend tens of thousands of dollars or more merely because they "had a good experience" at some bogus workshop or "training."

Hello Everyone,

Thanks Joe for pointing out that the 'trance-dance' is not exclusive to RSE; although RSE prmoted it as that...
it was sold as a secret practice of ancient mystics.
Vanilla as you also point out:
QUOTE: It did feel kind of "witchy"
The presentation of the practice as something extra-ordinary and special is without a dout, intentional.

In recalling the chatter of participants as well as my own initial experience with the 'trance-dance, C&E and the blue-body dance as they were presented at RSE, it seems that the commmon denominator in all of these was that for the most part they were all new experiences. That somehow made participating in them feel like we were really doing something extra-ordinary...but that was just more of the 'sell' and it served to drive the hook in deeper.

Throw in some suggestions that a particular effect would be the result (like RSE does), and personal experience isn't so personal any more. In fact the suggestions weren't just suggestions either...RSE gave specific guidelines as to how these practices were to be performed, and what was to be visualized; either through prior demonstration or through someone (the Ramtha character/staff) yelling the instructions via a PA system that out-decibeled the loud music.

In fact, the Ramtha character actually stated at one event that the complex instructions given during C&E (hyperventilation type of breathing), were designed to keep participants from being distracted by their own thoughts and thier self-consciousness. We were to just follow the instructions and not think or analyze.
It seems that such new practices are attractive to most, who up until that point have not had these sorts of experiences. Doing them makes one feel like they've partcipated in something special and RSE capitalizes on this.

It has been my observation that when people attend meditation (even basic sitting) classes for the first time that they often are taken aback by the experience and so it is interesting as to how they interpret that experience. For the most part, the tendency is to make something solid out of the workings of the mind. It is at that point that one should be encouraged to more closely examine those 'mind workings' so that they can come to realize that the mind is prone to creating and/or following made up story lines. This sort of analysis is encouraged to help uncover the tendencies of one's own mind, prevent delusion and superstition.

In contrast, RSE suggests that what comes up through these sorts of experiences is real, and that suggestion is a disservice; for it encourages people to be less inclined to analyze their own mind and discover its wandering tendencies as illusion-based. To place a specific suggestion of reality upon the interpretation of 'personal experience' with respect to these and similar sorts of practices in the minds of participants encourages them to become delusional.

RSE grooms/programs people in this way, so that a financial profit can be made from them while doing so. This is abusive mind control driven by greed and lust for power, plain and simple.
There is nothing spiritual or enlightening about it.

How different would it be for RSE and other mind-control organizations to say at the end of such practices,
"See how easily your mind accepts suggestion and programming? It would serve you well, to both realize and analyze that."

With love, Kensho

Great thread, Vanilla, and thank you, Joe and Kensho for your comments and analyses, which have really resonated with me. Spot on.

Also to be remembered is how addictive these practices are. Another hook for the 'managers' to employ!

W.E.

http://ramtha.com/html/pdf/introduction.pdf

this intro to what ramtha is "about" says it ALL. It underscores in spades what I said above. It denies that RSe is a "new religion" or even 'the building blocks of a new church." What happened to the Church I AM????

It says that the teaching is a "unique science."
Clever.
unique it sure is not save by name and the mix of similar techniques used by fringe therapies and cultic activities throughout the ages.
"science" at root means only "knowledge" so RSE can claim that any kind of sloppy or bizarre ideation is "knowledge, therefore "science."

Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.[1] In an older and closely related meaning (found, for example, in Aristotle), "science" refers to the body of reliable knowledge itself, of the type that can be logically and rationally explained (see History and philosophy below).[2] Since classical antiquity science as a type of knowledge was closely linked to philosophy. In the early modern era the words "science" and "philosophy" were sometimes used interchangeably in the English language. By the 17th century, natural philosophy (which is today called "natural science") was considered a separate branch of philosophy.[3] However, "science" continued to be used in a broad sense denoting reliable knowledge about a topic, in the same way it is still used in modern terms such as library science or political science.

wikip.

Of course, only freaky movements like Scientology, Summit Lighthouse, and Christian Science use the word the way RSE does.

and of course, the ONLY way to grasp this so-called science is through

[drum roll and trumpets here]

EXPERIENCE