http://www.businessportal24.com/en/New_Section_At_Organized_Living_198277.html
Mind power and control secrets now have there own department in the growth of Organized Living World London, UK 15th May, 2007 – Organizing Professional Nathan Shaw has added a strange new dimension to the practical groundbreaking website onorganized living. The new department called Mind Power & Control Secrets will explore the psychological aspects of how we go about trying to make sense of our cluttered world and use the personal organization solutions that are widely available. Still something seems missing. And that is the mind power and control secrets. Organized Living World was New Section At Organized Living World For Mind Control Secrets launched on 16th March and in only 2 months has become a popular visited web site for organizing all areas of life. Covering tips on how to get organized in the here and now right through to the bigger picture of how to organize our entire life and time. Nathan has identified what he calls 5 stages of organized living. The 5th stage being how we use our mind to make good choices or bad and lazy choices with our life.
Nathan said, “Often people start off trying to get clear in their head. Personal development sel-help type stuff. In reality, this puts the person into great struggle because the other side of thecoin is missed out. I.e. Actually being organized.”. He added “Through the first 4 stages of organized living my readers learn the practical details of how to organize and what to organize. And only after that groundwork do I recommend looking directly at a person’s procrastination, laziness, lack of clarity, etc. And that’s why mind power control is the 5th not 1st stage of organized living.” The original 5 categories of Organized Living World were: 1. How To Organize. 2. Organize Your Life. 3. Organized Living Stores. 4. Personal Productivity Software. And 5. Time Management Systems. The two new categories are Mind Power and Control Secrets, and Web 3.0 Efficiency.
Nathan predicts the start of a new era in society based on efficiency. And the latest evolution of Web 3.0 technologies as the greatest indicator that the Efficiency Era has arrived. Nathan continues to receive glowing testimonials and ravingfan mail and is passionate to push forward the site for Organized Living and this shift towards world and personal efficiency. "..'Celestine Prophecy'.. 'A Course in Miracles'. May I say yours ranks well up there with them. My hats off to you. Keep on keeping people thinking." - Dr. Ron MacIntyr "Your principles and techniques go very well along with Napoleon Hill's and complete them... I'm following it to the letter." - Israel David "I am extremely organized right now. I am in the present moment, handling my short-term goals and all activities are in line with my long-term life direction. Thanks to you, this is the most exhilarating time in my life." – Barbara Nwosu, Detroit MI
Waiting for God # 5
Author: John Sweeney
The battleground is YouTube and Scientology's weapon is a clip of me losing it in the "Mind Control" section of a gruesome exhibition. Scientology has fought many battles to keep its secrets off the web, now they are using it to attack my investigation into them. Scientology has prepared an attack video, and they have shown the Scientology v Sweeney shouting match to anyone who would watch it. There is talk of 100,000 copies being released.
Scientology works. That is the message from celebs like John Travolta and Tom Cruise - who is, some say, keen on recruiting new Hollywood arrivals David and Victoria Beckham to what he calls his religion. Others back the Church in various ways: Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley of the City of London police helped open a new £20 million Scientology centre in London, and the authorities in the City of London have granted it cut-price rates. But start asking questions and you see a different face of Scientology. While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists and been chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers. Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law's house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.
I have met mothers who say they have suffered Scientology "disconnects" - meaning that their children have cut them completely out of their life so that they can spend more time with an organisation which a judge in 1984 characterised as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".
Scientology has two faces - nice and smiley, and sinister and dark. If you do not believe me, go and see their exhibition in Los Angeles, Psychiatry: Industry of Death. You enter through a door that is a mock-up of a torture chamber. Scientologists want "the global obliteration" of psychiatrists, who they say were to blame for the rise of Nazi Germany. To prove their point, they showed me hideous images of people having needles stuffed in their eyeballs, of patients undergoing electric shocks and having their brains operated on. Sickening, nasty and wholly unconvincing - modern psychiatry, for all its faults, is not Nazi and to press the point in the way that Scientology does devalues the horror of the Holocaust. Ironically or not, it was in the "Mind Control" section of the exhibition that I lost it.
As often in life, I snapped over something completely different and quite trivial. Top Scientologist Tommy "Don't mention the word cult" Davis had been goading me all week, and on the seventh day I fell into his elephant trap. He shouted at me and I shouted back, louder. If you are interested in becoming a TV journalist, it is a fine example of how not to do it. I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it makes me cringe. I apologised almost immediately, Tommy carried on as if nothing had happened but meanwhile Scientology had rushed off copies of me losing it to my boss, my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss, the Director-General of the BBC.
I lost my voice, but not my mind.
This is the context Scientology will not tell you about. I have met too many good people who say Scientology was founded by a liar, L Ron Hubbard; that it attacks its critics without mercy; and the celebrities who endorse it have not the foggiest idea what it is really like. Take "Rosemary", who is an ordinary mum and lives in England. She had two children and one died. Her surviving daughter was also her best friend. Then her daughter joined Scientology and her mother saw less and less of her. Almost two years ago she received a "disconnect" - a letter cutting her mother out of her life totally. Rosemary received no Christmas cards, no birthday cards, no Mother's Day cards. Rosemary said Scientology was a cult. It was one of the most moving and shocking interviews I have ever done. Out of the blue, three hours after we left, her daughter came round for the first time in almost two years seeking a reconciliation. The next day she begged her mum not to use the interview. So we won't.
In Florida I met Mike Henderson, who with his wife Donna Shannon, spent $1m over three decades on Scientology's path to superhuman powers. When the couple left, they were disconnected from 20-odd family members left inside Scientology. Mike's father - also disconnected - is dying, but five out of his six children will not speak to him because they are still inside Scientology.
After a long day with Mike and Donna we went back to our hotel at midnight, only to find Tommy Davis waiting in the lobby with his own black-clad Scientology cameraman. He harangued me for talking to the heretics. I told him that Scientology had been spying on the BBC and that was creepy. In LA, the moment our hire car left the airport we realised we were being followed by two cars. In our hotel a weird stranger spent every breakfast listening to us. In all, we count 13 strangers - private investigators? - who were following us. Scientology denied sending PIs after the BBC.
Scientology is a pay-as-you-go religion - which is one of the reasons why the Charity Commission in Britain does not class it as a religion. When you have paid as much as £100,000, you get to Operating Thetan Level Three and learn about "The Incident". L Ron wrote that 75 million years ago an intergalactic space alien lord called Xenu kidnapped Thetans to earth, dumped them in volcanoes and blew them up with atomic bombs. Ex-Scientologists have insisted to me that Xenu is part of Scientology. If so, it is a religion that requires its followers not to tell others about its core belief, which is very odd. Critics say that if we all knew about Xenu, then Scientology could not charge people as much as £100,000 to find out about him. Despite all the pressure - the letters from lawyers, the letters from MPs, the strangers knocking up my family and neighbours - if people from "disconnected" families tell me that Scientology is a cult, that will be reported.
Source
The battleground is YouTube and Scientology's weapon is a clip of me losing it in the "Mind Control" section of a gruesome exhibition. Scientology has fought many battles to keep its secrets off the web, now they are using it to attack my investigation into them. Scientology has prepared an attack video, and they have shown the Scientology v Sweeney shouting match to anyone who would watch it. There is talk of 100,000 copies being released.
Scientology works. That is the message from celebs like John Travolta and Tom Cruise - who is, some say, keen on recruiting new Hollywood arrivals David and Victoria Beckham to what he calls his religion. Others back the Church in various ways: Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley of the City of London police helped open a new £20 million Scientology centre in London, and the authorities in the City of London have granted it cut-price rates. But start asking questions and you see a different face of Scientology. While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists and been chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers. Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law's house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.
I have met mothers who say they have suffered Scientology "disconnects" - meaning that their children have cut them completely out of their life so that they can spend more time with an organisation which a judge in 1984 characterised as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".
Scientology has two faces - nice and smiley, and sinister and dark. If you do not believe me, go and see their exhibition in Los Angeles, Psychiatry: Industry of Death. You enter through a door that is a mock-up of a torture chamber. Scientologists want "the global obliteration" of psychiatrists, who they say were to blame for the rise of Nazi Germany. To prove their point, they showed me hideous images of people having needles stuffed in their eyeballs, of patients undergoing electric shocks and having their brains operated on. Sickening, nasty and wholly unconvincing - modern psychiatry, for all its faults, is not Nazi and to press the point in the way that Scientology does devalues the horror of the Holocaust. Ironically or not, it was in the "Mind Control" section of the exhibition that I lost it.
As often in life, I snapped over something completely different and quite trivial. Top Scientologist Tommy "Don't mention the word cult" Davis had been goading me all week, and on the seventh day I fell into his elephant trap. He shouted at me and I shouted back, louder. If you are interested in becoming a TV journalist, it is a fine example of how not to do it. I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it makes me cringe. I apologised almost immediately, Tommy carried on as if nothing had happened but meanwhile Scientology had rushed off copies of me losing it to my boss, my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss, the Director-General of the BBC.
I lost my voice, but not my mind.
This is the context Scientology will not tell you about. I have met too many good people who say Scientology was founded by a liar, L Ron Hubbard; that it attacks its critics without mercy; and the celebrities who endorse it have not the foggiest idea what it is really like. Take "Rosemary", who is an ordinary mum and lives in England. She had two children and one died. Her surviving daughter was also her best friend. Then her daughter joined Scientology and her mother saw less and less of her. Almost two years ago she received a "disconnect" - a letter cutting her mother out of her life totally. Rosemary received no Christmas cards, no birthday cards, no Mother's Day cards. Rosemary said Scientology was a cult. It was one of the most moving and shocking interviews I have ever done. Out of the blue, three hours after we left, her daughter came round for the first time in almost two years seeking a reconciliation. The next day she begged her mum not to use the interview. So we won't.
In Florida I met Mike Henderson, who with his wife Donna Shannon, spent $1m over three decades on Scientology's path to superhuman powers. When the couple left, they were disconnected from 20-odd family members left inside Scientology. Mike's father - also disconnected - is dying, but five out of his six children will not speak to him because they are still inside Scientology.
After a long day with Mike and Donna we went back to our hotel at midnight, only to find Tommy Davis waiting in the lobby with his own black-clad Scientology cameraman. He harangued me for talking to the heretics. I told him that Scientology had been spying on the BBC and that was creepy. In LA, the moment our hire car left the airport we realised we were being followed by two cars. In our hotel a weird stranger spent every breakfast listening to us. In all, we count 13 strangers - private investigators? - who were following us. Scientology denied sending PIs after the BBC.
Scientology is a pay-as-you-go religion - which is one of the reasons why the Charity Commission in Britain does not class it as a religion. When you have paid as much as £100,000, you get to Operating Thetan Level Three and learn about "The Incident". L Ron wrote that 75 million years ago an intergalactic space alien lord called Xenu kidnapped Thetans to earth, dumped them in volcanoes and blew them up with atomic bombs. Ex-Scientologists have insisted to me that Xenu is part of Scientology. If so, it is a religion that requires its followers not to tell others about its core belief, which is very odd. Critics say that if we all knew about Xenu, then Scientology could not charge people as much as £100,000 to find out about him. Despite all the pressure - the letters from lawyers, the letters from MPs, the strangers knocking up my family and neighbours - if people from "disconnected" families tell me that Scientology is a cult, that will be reported.
Source
Religion is all in our heads - according to neuro-biologists
By Steve Paulson of Salon Magazine
May. 15, 2007 | In Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," Alice tells the White Queen that she cannot believe in impossible things. But the Queen says Alice simply hasn't had enough practice. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." That human penchant for belief -- or perhaps gullibility -- is what inspired biologist Lewis Wolpert to write a book about the evolutionary origins of belief called "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast."
Wolpert is an eminent developmental biologist at University College London. Like fellow British scientist Richard Dawkins, he's an outspoken atheist with a knack for saying outrageous things. Unlike Dawkins, Wolpert has no desire to abolish religion. In fact, he thinks religious belief can provide great comfort and points to medical studies showing that the faithful tend to suffer less stress and anxiety than nonbelievers. In Wolpert's view, religion has given believers an evolutionary advantage, even though it's based on a grand illusion.
He has a theory for why religion first took root. He thinks human brains evolved to become "belief engines." Once our ancient ancestors understood cause and effect, they figured out how to manipulate the natural world. In essence, toolmaking made us human. Similarly, early hominids felt compelled to find causes for life's great mysteries, including illness and death. They came to believe in unseen gods and spirits.
Wolpert sees human incredulity all around him -- not just religious faith but all sorts of modern superstitions. His book targets astrology, psychics, homeopathy and acupuncture. Wolpert has participated in public debates with maverick scientist Rupert Sheldrake about telepathy and other paranormal experiences. He dismisses Sheldrake's theory -- that "morphic fields" can transmit thoughts through space and time -- as nonsense.
There's no doubt that Wolpert is a provocateur, but unlike some other prominent atheists, he doesn't come across as a bitter enemy of religion. In conversation, his pronouncements are often punctuated by laughter and mock horror. I spoke with Wolpert by phone about the origins of religion, his doubts about telepathy and acupuncture, and why the debate over religion is so personal for him.
Can you explain the "belief engine" in the human brain?
What makes us different from all other animals is that we have causal beliefs about the physical world. I know that if I throw this glass at the window, it's probably going to break. Children have this understanding at a very early age. Animals, on the other hand, have a very poor understanding of cause and effect in the physical world. My argument is that causal understanding gave rise to toolmaking; that was the evolutionary advantage. It's toolmaking that's really driven human evolution. This is not widely accepted, I'm afraid, but there's no question about it. It's tools that really made us human. They may even have given rise to language.
But there is evidence that some animals have a very primitive form of toolmaking.
There's no question that certain apes are at the edge of causal understanding and they do make some very simple tools. Chimpanzees can break a nut with a stone. They can also take a stick and peel it to get ants out of a tree. But it's still very primitive. Curiously, some crows show remarkable toolmaking, using sticks to get things out of bottles. But on the whole, it's primitive compared to us.
And I suppose the radically new thing our ancestors did was to put two objects together -- for instance, a piece of stone on a wooden handle.
Precisely. You can't do that without having a concept of cause and effect. And once you had that concept, you wanted to understand the causes of other things that mattered in your life, like illness. That's the origin of religion. The most obvious causes were those things caused by humans, so people imagined there was some sort of god with human characteristics. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different gods in different societies.
So once you have an understanding of cause and effect, then ignorance is no longer tolerable? You want to explain everything.
Exactly. You know, we cannot tolerate not knowing the causes of things that affect our lives. If you go to the doctor when you're ill, the one thing you can't stand is the doctor saying he or she has no idea what's wrong with you. And when they do diagnose you, I'm prepared to bet that on your way home, you'll tell yourself a story as to why you got ill.
But which came first: understanding cause and effect or learning to make tools?
They went together, but you cannot make complex tools without a concept of cause and effect. You must remember that no animal has a basket. If they go away from water, they can't take any water with them. They can't carry things. However, we're driven by interacting with our environment and looking for causes that affect our lives.
Are you saying our brains are hard-wired for belief?
Our brains are absolutely hard-wired for causal belief. And I think they're a bit soft-wired for religious and mystical belief. Those people who had religious beliefs did better than those who did not, and they were selected for.
Why did they do better?
They were less anxious. They also had someone to pray to. In general, religious people are somewhat healthier than people who don't have religious beliefs.
Haven't studies shown that religious believers tend to be more optimistic, and that they're less prone to strokes and high blood pressure?
Yes, exactly. Therefore, evolution will select them.
So religion gives us a sense of purpose and meaning, even though in your view it's totally an illusion.
Yes, many people would find it very hard to live without religion. But there is no meaning, I regret to tell you. [Laughs] We don't understand where the universe came from. But to say God made it, well, you want to say, who made God?
To say there's no meaning is a pretty depressing assessment, isn't it?
No, why should there be a meaning? I mean, we want a cause as to why we're here, but I'm afraid there isn't one. I don't find it depressing at all. I think it's remarkable that evolution has brought us into being. We're only here for one purpose, from an evolutionary point of view, and that's to reproduce.
You write that you were once quite a religious child yourself. When did you turn away from religion?
I came from quite a conventional Jewish family -- not Orthodox, but conventional -- in South Africa. I had to say my prayers every night. And I used to pray to God to help me in various things but found it didn't help. So I stopped being religious.
Your son became a fundamentalist Christian after a difficult late adolescence. Is he still an evangelical Christian?
No, he's not. The church he was in broke up. He's still a believer, but he doesn't go to church.
Does his faith bother you?
No. I found that religion was helping him a great deal. It gave him someone to pray to. He became a member of a church where they could discuss their problems. And I think the idea that he would eventually go to heaven gave him a great deal of encouragement.
Has your son read the chapter on religion in your book? It's rather dismissive of religion.
He knows I'm dismissive of it. In fact, I just spoke to him last night on the telephone and asked him, "Did I ever try to dissuade you from being religious?" He said, "No, you never did." I wouldn't agree with him, but I never tried to dissuade him not to be.
Do you find yourself wondering about ultimate meaning? Does that matter in your life?
Never. Ultimate meaning has no meaning in my life. I sound a bit shallow, but I think it's actually quite deep not to be bothered by that sort of thing.
You call David Hume your "hero philosopher." Why do you like him so much?
First of all, I don't like any other philosopher. I think philosophers are terribly clever but have absolutely nothing useful to say whatsoever. I avoid philosophy like mad. But David Hume does say such interesting and important things. He's very good on religion, for example. I like him for that.
Well, he didn't like religion.
No, it's not that he didn't like religion. If you take miracles, for example, there's a lovely quote from David Hume that you shouldn't believe in any miracle unless the evidence is so strong that it would be miraculous not to believe in it.
There are various competing theories about the origins of religion. One is the idea that religion evolved because it helped bind people together in social groups. Essentially, it acted like social glue. Why don't you think that's right?
I don't think it's wrong. There is some evidence that religion does lead to a community with shared views. But you have to ask, Why does religion deal so much with cause and effect? That comes from causal beliefs.
What about Daniel Dennett's idea that religion is a kind of "meme" -- an idea that has infected human cultures and keeps on spreading?
If you could tell me what a meme is, and how useful it is, I'd be very grateful. [Laughs] Please don't misunderstand, I'm a great admirer of Richard Dawkins [who developed the concept of memes]. But what are memes? How do you decide whether something is a meme or not? And what you really want to understand is, how is it passed on and why does it persist? This is never discussed. So for Daniel Dennett -- who's a philosopher, after all -- to get involved with memes, the moment he does that, I just stop reading him.
Virtually all these theories draw on evolutionary psychology. But I wonder if we're losing the flavor of religious experience, the willingness to live in mystery, embrace imagination and intuition.
Sometimes I've thought it must be quite nice to believe in religion. I'm getting quite old. The idea that I might go to heaven -- of course, there's also the possibility, in my case, that I would go to hell -- is quite an attractive one. Unfortunately, I don't believe that for a single second. I mean, the evidence for God is simply nonexistent.
Isn't there more to religion than belief in supernatural beings?
Certainly not.
But many theologians and scholars, such as historian Karen Armstrong, say religion at its root is not really about a set of beliefs. It's more about how to live your life and being compassionate in the world.
Well, many people who are atheists can behave quite well. That doesn't make us religious. No, it doesn't work like that at all.
I grant that. But do you really think religion comes down to belief in the supernatural?
When I talk about religion, I'm talking about belief in the supernatural. In Western society, we're talking about God. I don't believe you can be religious without having some concept of a god.
What about William James? He talked about religion as experience more than belief.
I think "The Varieties of Religious Experience" is one of the best books written about belief. Nothing has really changed since he wrote it a hundred years ago. He did point out that many people become religious because they had a religious experience. And that fits with my idea that we're partly wired to have religious beliefs. If you take the active component of a magic mushroom and give it to a group of people, quite a few of them will have mystical, almost religious, beliefs. It must mean the circuits are there which are turned on by the drug.
So it all comes down to the chemicals that are firing in the brain?
I'm afraid so. Your neural circuits, yes.
What about paranormal experiences like telepathy or life after death? Are those bogus?
Yes. All bogus. I have a very close friend, an artist, who claims to have seen three ghosts. She knew they were ghosts because they didn't have legs, and they told her things about the house she was staying in that she didn't know before. Yes, she had strange experiences. It doesn't mean they were ghosts. And I don't believe telepathy. Rupert Sheldrake, who's an old friend of mine, is a strong promoter of telepathy and things like that. I'm afraid the evidence just isn't there.
Rupert Sheldrake is a biochemist who used to teach at the University of Cambridge.
Oh, he was a very clever plant cell biologist.
He's done various controlled experiments trying to figure out whether people know who's going to phone them, or whether dogs know when their owners are coming home. You're saying none of that is legitimate science?
It's legitimate, but I'm unimpressed by all of it.
Let's talk about one of his experiments. He did a controlled study of what he calls "telephone telepathy." People were asked to give four phone numbers of friends. The callers were chosen randomly and then asked to guess who was calling. The statistical probability was that 25 percent of the guesses would be right. Sheldrake said the responses were more like 45 percent.
I'd like to see someone else do the experiment and have it confirmed. Remember what David Hume said? In order to believe in miraculous things, the evidence should be so miraculous that you could not but believe it. You can't just do one experiment like that on such an extraordinary thing like telepathy. Telepathy goes against everything we know about neurophysiology and physics. If telepathy exists, it would be a miracle. That's why I go back to Hume. The evidence has to be overwhelming.
Listen, almost everybody has a strange, non-normal experience once a year. Many, many people have these. If you take the right drugs, you can have them on order. People taking LSD had the most extraordinary experiences. Those experiences were real, but they had nothing to do with the real world.
Well, telepathy goes against the understanding that the mind is totally the product of the neural processes within the brain, which is certainly the dominant thinking among neuroscientists.
You also have to transmit that message over distances into somebody else's mind. That's just nonsense.
What if there are forces out there -- perhaps energy fields, as Sheldrake would say -- that we just haven't discovered yet?
[Laughs] OK, when he discovers them, he'll let us know. I'm saying you really have to have good evidence. And there isn't any.
When my grandfather was 16 years old, he heard an odd sound, looked up and saw the photograph of his grandfather knocking on the wall in the living room. This was so unusual that he checked the time it happened. Later that day, his family got a telegram saying that his grandfather had died at precisely that time. Is that just coincidence?
Well, that is remarkable and I don't have an explanation. I'm afraid it probably is coincidence. But it does sound as if it's some sort of telepathic experience. And we all have that. You're thinking of someone and suddenly they phone you. You haven't spoken to them for six months and suddenly the phone rings and there they are. OK, I don't have a good explanation for that. But to think that there's some message going across is just most unlikely.
Unlikely yes, but doesn't this get at the limits of science?
No, it's not the limits of science. You've got to find experiments that will really show it. Science can't rely on anecdotes, on single, one-off experiences like this. You've got to find some way of testing them. Maybe the way Rupert Sheldrake goes about it is the right way to do it. But it has to be done extremely carefully, and single anecdotes tell you nothing.
You have written about alternative medicine and are highly skeptical of various healing practices, including energy healing and even acupuncture, which is now used quite widely in the West.
Yes, I know it's used. It's quite tricky because the placebo effect can really confuse these results very significantly. So if you believe the treatment is going to work, you've got a much higher chance that it's going to work. But there's just no evidence for the idea of energy fields, which acupuncturists use for deciding where to put the needles.
But there are thousands of years of experiential evidence going back to ancient China.
But nothing to do with energy. Energy is a well-defined concept. And I'm terribly sorry, no physiologist has ever detected any of these energy fields.
Maybe the scientific instruments that we have at our disposal just can't detect anything about qi.
Sorry. When they invented qi, how in the hell did they know what an energy field was? They hardly had a concept of energy. I mean, if you go back and look at their evidence, I'm afraid it was a nice set of ideas, but I'm terribly sorry, evidence matters. And that's what causal beliefs are really about. If we believe that something has a particular cause, we should be looking for the evidence.
Many people say they've been helped by acupuncture. Are you saying the placebo effect is the only explanation?
I have no idea why it works. But it's extremely unlikely that it's got anything to do with those energy fields. It could be largely due to the placebo effect. And homeopathy, where there are no molecules in the liquid that you take, is even more bizarre. And many people believe in homeopathic medicine.
Do you have any superstitions yourself?
[Laughs] I touch wood occasionally, I'm ashamed to say. And I don't ever like to say that I'm really happy because I think the gods may not like it.
Are you joking? Or is there some little part of you that really believes this?
I suppose this is part of the soft-wiring for mysticism. There's a lovely story -- I've forgotten the physicist -- who had a horseshoe over his door. He said it didn't do him any harm, but might do him some good.
Pascal's wager, right? You decide you're better off believing in God, even though the existence of God seems unlikely.
[Laughs] No, I don't go as far as that, but I am a little superstitious, yes. A tiny bit.
If you look into your crystal ball, do you think we will always have religion? Or will reason win out at some point?
I believe we will always have religion. Churchgoing has declined in England, but the number of people who believe in God is still quite high. And in America, it's very high. And you just have to look at the Muslim world. It's very strong there. I'd be very surprised if it disappeared.
So the project of Richard Dawkins -- basically, to try to turn us all into atheists -- is just a pipe dream?
I believe it to be a pipe dream. The idea that you could persuade people not to be religious is in my view a hopeless aim. It comes from people's personal experience, rather than logical arguments.
But isn't this what you're doing in your book, arguing for the virtues of reason over religious belief?
Not at all. I'm trying to understand what determines religious belief. I'm not trying to convert people out of religion. Not for a moment. But if they then want to impose some of their religious beliefs onto other people -- for example, in relation to abortion or not using contraceptives -- then I ask them to look at the evidence. I ask them to be much more careful about their beliefs.
May. 15, 2007 | In Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," Alice tells the White Queen that she cannot believe in impossible things. But the Queen says Alice simply hasn't had enough practice. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." That human penchant for belief -- or perhaps gullibility -- is what inspired biologist Lewis Wolpert to write a book about the evolutionary origins of belief called "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast."
Wolpert is an eminent developmental biologist at University College London. Like fellow British scientist Richard Dawkins, he's an outspoken atheist with a knack for saying outrageous things. Unlike Dawkins, Wolpert has no desire to abolish religion. In fact, he thinks religious belief can provide great comfort and points to medical studies showing that the faithful tend to suffer less stress and anxiety than nonbelievers. In Wolpert's view, religion has given believers an evolutionary advantage, even though it's based on a grand illusion.
He has a theory for why religion first took root. He thinks human brains evolved to become "belief engines." Once our ancient ancestors understood cause and effect, they figured out how to manipulate the natural world. In essence, toolmaking made us human. Similarly, early hominids felt compelled to find causes for life's great mysteries, including illness and death. They came to believe in unseen gods and spirits.
Wolpert sees human incredulity all around him -- not just religious faith but all sorts of modern superstitions. His book targets astrology, psychics, homeopathy and acupuncture. Wolpert has participated in public debates with maverick scientist Rupert Sheldrake about telepathy and other paranormal experiences. He dismisses Sheldrake's theory -- that "morphic fields" can transmit thoughts through space and time -- as nonsense.
There's no doubt that Wolpert is a provocateur, but unlike some other prominent atheists, he doesn't come across as a bitter enemy of religion. In conversation, his pronouncements are often punctuated by laughter and mock horror. I spoke with Wolpert by phone about the origins of religion, his doubts about telepathy and acupuncture, and why the debate over religion is so personal for him.
Can you explain the "belief engine" in the human brain?
What makes us different from all other animals is that we have causal beliefs about the physical world. I know that if I throw this glass at the window, it's probably going to break. Children have this understanding at a very early age. Animals, on the other hand, have a very poor understanding of cause and effect in the physical world. My argument is that causal understanding gave rise to toolmaking; that was the evolutionary advantage. It's toolmaking that's really driven human evolution. This is not widely accepted, I'm afraid, but there's no question about it. It's tools that really made us human. They may even have given rise to language.
But there is evidence that some animals have a very primitive form of toolmaking.
There's no question that certain apes are at the edge of causal understanding and they do make some very simple tools. Chimpanzees can break a nut with a stone. They can also take a stick and peel it to get ants out of a tree. But it's still very primitive. Curiously, some crows show remarkable toolmaking, using sticks to get things out of bottles. But on the whole, it's primitive compared to us.
And I suppose the radically new thing our ancestors did was to put two objects together -- for instance, a piece of stone on a wooden handle.
Precisely. You can't do that without having a concept of cause and effect. And once you had that concept, you wanted to understand the causes of other things that mattered in your life, like illness. That's the origin of religion. The most obvious causes were those things caused by humans, so people imagined there was some sort of god with human characteristics. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different gods in different societies.
So once you have an understanding of cause and effect, then ignorance is no longer tolerable? You want to explain everything.
Exactly. You know, we cannot tolerate not knowing the causes of things that affect our lives. If you go to the doctor when you're ill, the one thing you can't stand is the doctor saying he or she has no idea what's wrong with you. And when they do diagnose you, I'm prepared to bet that on your way home, you'll tell yourself a story as to why you got ill.
But which came first: understanding cause and effect or learning to make tools?
They went together, but you cannot make complex tools without a concept of cause and effect. You must remember that no animal has a basket. If they go away from water, they can't take any water with them. They can't carry things. However, we're driven by interacting with our environment and looking for causes that affect our lives.
Are you saying our brains are hard-wired for belief?
Our brains are absolutely hard-wired for causal belief. And I think they're a bit soft-wired for religious and mystical belief. Those people who had religious beliefs did better than those who did not, and they were selected for.
Why did they do better?
They were less anxious. They also had someone to pray to. In general, religious people are somewhat healthier than people who don't have religious beliefs.
Haven't studies shown that religious believers tend to be more optimistic, and that they're less prone to strokes and high blood pressure?
Yes, exactly. Therefore, evolution will select them.
So religion gives us a sense of purpose and meaning, even though in your view it's totally an illusion.
Yes, many people would find it very hard to live without religion. But there is no meaning, I regret to tell you. [Laughs] We don't understand where the universe came from. But to say God made it, well, you want to say, who made God?
To say there's no meaning is a pretty depressing assessment, isn't it?
No, why should there be a meaning? I mean, we want a cause as to why we're here, but I'm afraid there isn't one. I don't find it depressing at all. I think it's remarkable that evolution has brought us into being. We're only here for one purpose, from an evolutionary point of view, and that's to reproduce.
You write that you were once quite a religious child yourself. When did you turn away from religion?
I came from quite a conventional Jewish family -- not Orthodox, but conventional -- in South Africa. I had to say my prayers every night. And I used to pray to God to help me in various things but found it didn't help. So I stopped being religious.
Your son became a fundamentalist Christian after a difficult late adolescence. Is he still an evangelical Christian?
No, he's not. The church he was in broke up. He's still a believer, but he doesn't go to church.
Does his faith bother you?
No. I found that religion was helping him a great deal. It gave him someone to pray to. He became a member of a church where they could discuss their problems. And I think the idea that he would eventually go to heaven gave him a great deal of encouragement.
Has your son read the chapter on religion in your book? It's rather dismissive of religion.
He knows I'm dismissive of it. In fact, I just spoke to him last night on the telephone and asked him, "Did I ever try to dissuade you from being religious?" He said, "No, you never did." I wouldn't agree with him, but I never tried to dissuade him not to be.
Do you find yourself wondering about ultimate meaning? Does that matter in your life?
Never. Ultimate meaning has no meaning in my life. I sound a bit shallow, but I think it's actually quite deep not to be bothered by that sort of thing.
You call David Hume your "hero philosopher." Why do you like him so much?
First of all, I don't like any other philosopher. I think philosophers are terribly clever but have absolutely nothing useful to say whatsoever. I avoid philosophy like mad. But David Hume does say such interesting and important things. He's very good on religion, for example. I like him for that.
Well, he didn't like religion.
No, it's not that he didn't like religion. If you take miracles, for example, there's a lovely quote from David Hume that you shouldn't believe in any miracle unless the evidence is so strong that it would be miraculous not to believe in it.
There are various competing theories about the origins of religion. One is the idea that religion evolved because it helped bind people together in social groups. Essentially, it acted like social glue. Why don't you think that's right?
I don't think it's wrong. There is some evidence that religion does lead to a community with shared views. But you have to ask, Why does religion deal so much with cause and effect? That comes from causal beliefs.
What about Daniel Dennett's idea that religion is a kind of "meme" -- an idea that has infected human cultures and keeps on spreading?
If you could tell me what a meme is, and how useful it is, I'd be very grateful. [Laughs] Please don't misunderstand, I'm a great admirer of Richard Dawkins [who developed the concept of memes]. But what are memes? How do you decide whether something is a meme or not? And what you really want to understand is, how is it passed on and why does it persist? This is never discussed. So for Daniel Dennett -- who's a philosopher, after all -- to get involved with memes, the moment he does that, I just stop reading him.
Virtually all these theories draw on evolutionary psychology. But I wonder if we're losing the flavor of religious experience, the willingness to live in mystery, embrace imagination and intuition.
Sometimes I've thought it must be quite nice to believe in religion. I'm getting quite old. The idea that I might go to heaven -- of course, there's also the possibility, in my case, that I would go to hell -- is quite an attractive one. Unfortunately, I don't believe that for a single second. I mean, the evidence for God is simply nonexistent.
Isn't there more to religion than belief in supernatural beings?
Certainly not.
But many theologians and scholars, such as historian Karen Armstrong, say religion at its root is not really about a set of beliefs. It's more about how to live your life and being compassionate in the world.
Well, many people who are atheists can behave quite well. That doesn't make us religious. No, it doesn't work like that at all.
I grant that. But do you really think religion comes down to belief in the supernatural?
When I talk about religion, I'm talking about belief in the supernatural. In Western society, we're talking about God. I don't believe you can be religious without having some concept of a god.
What about William James? He talked about religion as experience more than belief.
I think "The Varieties of Religious Experience" is one of the best books written about belief. Nothing has really changed since he wrote it a hundred years ago. He did point out that many people become religious because they had a religious experience. And that fits with my idea that we're partly wired to have religious beliefs. If you take the active component of a magic mushroom and give it to a group of people, quite a few of them will have mystical, almost religious, beliefs. It must mean the circuits are there which are turned on by the drug.
So it all comes down to the chemicals that are firing in the brain?
I'm afraid so. Your neural circuits, yes.
What about paranormal experiences like telepathy or life after death? Are those bogus?
Yes. All bogus. I have a very close friend, an artist, who claims to have seen three ghosts. She knew they were ghosts because they didn't have legs, and they told her things about the house she was staying in that she didn't know before. Yes, she had strange experiences. It doesn't mean they were ghosts. And I don't believe telepathy. Rupert Sheldrake, who's an old friend of mine, is a strong promoter of telepathy and things like that. I'm afraid the evidence just isn't there.
Rupert Sheldrake is a biochemist who used to teach at the University of Cambridge.
Oh, he was a very clever plant cell biologist.
He's done various controlled experiments trying to figure out whether people know who's going to phone them, or whether dogs know when their owners are coming home. You're saying none of that is legitimate science?
It's legitimate, but I'm unimpressed by all of it.
Let's talk about one of his experiments. He did a controlled study of what he calls "telephone telepathy." People were asked to give four phone numbers of friends. The callers were chosen randomly and then asked to guess who was calling. The statistical probability was that 25 percent of the guesses would be right. Sheldrake said the responses were more like 45 percent.
I'd like to see someone else do the experiment and have it confirmed. Remember what David Hume said? In order to believe in miraculous things, the evidence should be so miraculous that you could not but believe it. You can't just do one experiment like that on such an extraordinary thing like telepathy. Telepathy goes against everything we know about neurophysiology and physics. If telepathy exists, it would be a miracle. That's why I go back to Hume. The evidence has to be overwhelming.
Listen, almost everybody has a strange, non-normal experience once a year. Many, many people have these. If you take the right drugs, you can have them on order. People taking LSD had the most extraordinary experiences. Those experiences were real, but they had nothing to do with the real world.
Well, telepathy goes against the understanding that the mind is totally the product of the neural processes within the brain, which is certainly the dominant thinking among neuroscientists.
You also have to transmit that message over distances into somebody else's mind. That's just nonsense.
What if there are forces out there -- perhaps energy fields, as Sheldrake would say -- that we just haven't discovered yet?
[Laughs] OK, when he discovers them, he'll let us know. I'm saying you really have to have good evidence. And there isn't any.
When my grandfather was 16 years old, he heard an odd sound, looked up and saw the photograph of his grandfather knocking on the wall in the living room. This was so unusual that he checked the time it happened. Later that day, his family got a telegram saying that his grandfather had died at precisely that time. Is that just coincidence?
Well, that is remarkable and I don't have an explanation. I'm afraid it probably is coincidence. But it does sound as if it's some sort of telepathic experience. And we all have that. You're thinking of someone and suddenly they phone you. You haven't spoken to them for six months and suddenly the phone rings and there they are. OK, I don't have a good explanation for that. But to think that there's some message going across is just most unlikely.
Unlikely yes, but doesn't this get at the limits of science?
No, it's not the limits of science. You've got to find experiments that will really show it. Science can't rely on anecdotes, on single, one-off experiences like this. You've got to find some way of testing them. Maybe the way Rupert Sheldrake goes about it is the right way to do it. But it has to be done extremely carefully, and single anecdotes tell you nothing.
You have written about alternative medicine and are highly skeptical of various healing practices, including energy healing and even acupuncture, which is now used quite widely in the West.
Yes, I know it's used. It's quite tricky because the placebo effect can really confuse these results very significantly. So if you believe the treatment is going to work, you've got a much higher chance that it's going to work. But there's just no evidence for the idea of energy fields, which acupuncturists use for deciding where to put the needles.
But there are thousands of years of experiential evidence going back to ancient China.
But nothing to do with energy. Energy is a well-defined concept. And I'm terribly sorry, no physiologist has ever detected any of these energy fields.
Maybe the scientific instruments that we have at our disposal just can't detect anything about qi.
Sorry. When they invented qi, how in the hell did they know what an energy field was? They hardly had a concept of energy. I mean, if you go back and look at their evidence, I'm afraid it was a nice set of ideas, but I'm terribly sorry, evidence matters. And that's what causal beliefs are really about. If we believe that something has a particular cause, we should be looking for the evidence.
Many people say they've been helped by acupuncture. Are you saying the placebo effect is the only explanation?
I have no idea why it works. But it's extremely unlikely that it's got anything to do with those energy fields. It could be largely due to the placebo effect. And homeopathy, where there are no molecules in the liquid that you take, is even more bizarre. And many people believe in homeopathic medicine.
Do you have any superstitions yourself?
[Laughs] I touch wood occasionally, I'm ashamed to say. And I don't ever like to say that I'm really happy because I think the gods may not like it.
Are you joking? Or is there some little part of you that really believes this?
I suppose this is part of the soft-wiring for mysticism. There's a lovely story -- I've forgotten the physicist -- who had a horseshoe over his door. He said it didn't do him any harm, but might do him some good.
Pascal's wager, right? You decide you're better off believing in God, even though the existence of God seems unlikely.
[Laughs] No, I don't go as far as that, but I am a little superstitious, yes. A tiny bit.
If you look into your crystal ball, do you think we will always have religion? Or will reason win out at some point?
I believe we will always have religion. Churchgoing has declined in England, but the number of people who believe in God is still quite high. And in America, it's very high. And you just have to look at the Muslim world. It's very strong there. I'd be very surprised if it disappeared.
So the project of Richard Dawkins -- basically, to try to turn us all into atheists -- is just a pipe dream?
I believe it to be a pipe dream. The idea that you could persuade people not to be religious is in my view a hopeless aim. It comes from people's personal experience, rather than logical arguments.
But isn't this what you're doing in your book, arguing for the virtues of reason over religious belief?
Not at all. I'm trying to understand what determines religious belief. I'm not trying to convert people out of religion. Not for a moment. But if they then want to impose some of their religious beliefs onto other people -- for example, in relation to abortion or not using contraceptives -- then I ask them to look at the evidence. I ask them to be much more careful about their beliefs.
Row over Scientology video
Row over Scientology video
| By John Sweeney BBC News |
The battleground is YouTube and Scientology's weapon is a clip of me losing it in the "Mind Control" section of a gruesome exhibition.
Scientology has fought many battles to keep its secrets off the web, now they are using it to attack my investigation into them.
Scientology has prepared an attack video, and they have shown the Scientology v Sweeney shouting match to anyone who would watch it.
There is talk of 100,000 copies being released.
Family 'disconnects'
Scientology works. That is the message from celebs like John Travolta and Tom Cruise - who is, some say, keen on recruiting new Hollywood arrivals David and Victoria Beckham to what he calls his religion.
Others back the Church in various ways: Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley of the City of London police helped open a new £20 million Scientology centre in London, and the authorities in the City of London have granted it cut-price rates.
| | If you are interested in becoming a TV journalist, it is a fine example of how not to do it. I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine ... it makes me cringe |
But start asking questions and you see a different face of Scientology.
While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists, brain-washed - that is how it felt to me - in a mock up of a Nazi-style torture chamber and chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers.
Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law's house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.
I have met mothers who say they have suffered Scientology "disconnects" - meaning that their children have cut them completely out of their life so that they can spend more time with an organisation which a judge in 1984 characterised as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".
Psychiatry battle
Scientology has two faces - nice and smiley, and sinister and dark. If you do not believe me, go and see their exhibition in Los Angeles, Psychiatry: Industry of Death. You enter through a door that is a mock-up of a torture chamber.
Scientologists want "the global obliteration" of psychiatrists, who they say were to blame for the rise of Nazi Germany.
To prove their point, they showed me hideous images of people having needles stuffed in their eyeballs, of patients undergoing electric shocks and having their brains operated on.
Sickening, nasty and wholly unconvincing - modern psychiatry, for all its faults, is not Nazi and to press the point in the way that Scientology does devalues the horror of the Holocaust.
I felt as though I was being brain-washed - and that if I did not fight it, they would have taken over my mind.
Ironically or not, it was in the "Mind Control" section of the exhibition that I lost it.
'Exploding tomato'
As often in life, I snapped over something completely different and quite trivial.
Top Scientologist Tommy "Don't mention the word cult" Davis had been goading me all week, and on the seventh day I fell into his elephant trap. He shouted at me and I shouted back, louder.
If you are interested in becoming a TV journalist, it is a fine example of how not to do it. I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it makes me cringe.
I apologised almost immediately, Tommy carried on as if nothing had happened but meanwhile Scientology had rushed off copies of me losing it to my boss, my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss, the Director-General of the BBC.
I lost my voice, but not my mind.
This is the context Scientology will not tell you about. I have met too many good people who say Scientology was founded by a liar, L Ron Hubbard; that it attacks its critics without mercy; and the celebrities who endorse it have not the foggiest idea what it is really like.
Take "Rosemary", who is an ordinary mum and lives in England. She had two children and one died. Her surviving daughter was also her best friend. Then her daughter joined Scientology and her mother saw less and less of her.
Almost two years ago she received a "disconnect" - a letter cutting her mother out of her life totally.
Rosemary received no Christmas cards, no birthday cards, no Mother's Day cards.
Rosemary said Scientology was a cult. It was one of the most moving and shocking interviews I have ever done.
Out of the blue, three hours after we left, her daughter came round for the first time in almost two years seeking a reconciliation. The next day she begged her mum not to use the interview. So we won't.
Pay as you go
In Florida I met Mike Henderson, who with his wife Donna Shannon, spent $1m over three decades on Scientology's path to superhuman powers. When the couple left, they were disconnected from 20-odd family members left inside Scientology.
Mike's father - also disconnected - is dying, but five out of his six children will not speak to him because they are still inside Scientology.
After a long day with Mike and Donna we went back to our hotel at midnight, only to find Tommy Davis waiting in the lobby with his own black-clad Scientology cameraman.
He harangued me for talking to the heretics. I told him that Scientology had been spying on the BBC and that was creepy.
In LA, the moment our hire car left the airport we realised we were being followed by two cars.
In our hotel a weird stranger spent every breakfast listening to us. In all, we count 13 strangers - private investigators? - who were following us. Scientology denied sending PIs after the BBC.
Scientology is a pay-as-you-go religion - which is one of the reasons why the Charity Commission in Britain does not class it as a religion.
When you have paid as much as £100,000, you get to Operating Thetan Level Three and learn about "The Incident".
L Ron wrote that 75 million years ago an intergalactic space alien lord called Xenu kidnapped Thetans to earth, dumped them in volcanoes and blew them up with atomic bombs.
Ex-Scientologists have insisted to me that Xenu is part of Scientology. If so, it is a religion that requires its followers not to tell others about its core belief, which is very odd.
Critics say that if we all knew about Xenu, then Scientology could not charge people as much as £100,000 to find out about him.
Despite all the pressure - the letters from lawyers, the letters from MPs, the strangers knocking up my family and neighbours - if people from "disconnected" families tell me that Scientology is a cult, that will be reported.
Illuminati, The New World Order & Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists (PCTs)
What is at stake is more than one small country [Kuwait], it is a big idea - a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law. Such is a world worthy of our struggle, and worthy of our children's future. --President George Bush in his state of the union address, January 16, 1991
The Illuminati was a secret society in Bavaria in the late 18th century. They had a political agenda that included republicanism and abolition of monarchies, which they tried to institute by means of subterfuge, secrecy, and conspiracy, including the infiltration of other organizations. They fancied themselves to be "enlightened" but they had little success and were destroyed within fifteen years of their origin (Pipes 1997).
Paranoid conspiracy theorists (PCTs) believe the Illuminati cabal still exists, either in its original form or as a paradigm for later cabals. Many PCTs believe "that large Jewish banking families have been orchestrating various political revolutions and machinations throughout Europe and America since the late eighteenth century, with the ultimate aim of bringing about a satanic New World Order."* What George Bush was talking about in his state of the union address in 1991 was no less than the establishment of a single world government with the anti-Christ (whom some say is Bill Clinton (or is he a decoy?), but could be Pat Robertson or George W. Bush) at its head.
In the paranoid mind, the Illuminati succeeded in their goals, and have now infiltrated every government and every aspect of society. They are responsible for every evil and every unjust act that ever occurs anywhere; the fact that absolutely no evidence of their existence can be found only serves to make them stronger and more frightening. They are the demon in the closet, and will probably never disappear from the paranoid fantasy world of right-wing conspiracy theorists.
--New England Skeptical Society
Their are several "sects" of PCTs. Among the more popular are the militant Christian fundamentalist branch and the UFO/alien branch. They each think the others are evil or nuts but their paranoia has the same focus: the end is near.
the Illuminati and the anti-Christ
The Illuminati are hastening the coming of the anti-Christ and the end of the world.
For those of us who still accept the Bible as God's revealed will to man, it's a matter of great concern to see the increasing propaganda for, and emergence of, a New World Order.... both Old and New Testaments warned us that the culmination of history would be marked by the reunion of the nations of the old Roman Empire in Europe; the restoration of the state of Israel (and the increasing hostility of all nations toward her); the implementation of a one-world governmental system; the imposition of a world-wide cashless monetary system; the development of a synchretistic [sic] world religion, based upon man, and presided over by a false prophet; the rise to power of a benign world dictator, who (once firmly in control) would eliminate individual freedoms, demonstrate iron-willed ferocity and cruelty, and make himself the object of worship; and world-wide apostacy [sic], coupled with active persecution and execution of believing Jews and Christians.
---Jay Whitley
Mr. Whitley is prepared for Armageddon, however. He sells Emergency Dehydrated Food Kits.
the major players
Here is a typical set of the PCT's notions, extolled in a review of an author who claims he has exposed the Illuminati:
Who really controls world events from behind-the-scene? Years of extensive research and investigation have gone into this massively documented work [Bloodlines of the Illuminati]. In almost 600 pages, Fritz Springmeier discloses mind-boggling facts and never before revealed truths about the top Illuminati dynasties. Discover the amazing role these bloodlines have played--and are now wielding--in human history, with family names such as Astor, DuPont, Kennedy, Onassis, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Russell, Van Duyn, and Krupp. You'll also learn of the secretive, Chinese Li family, which operates with impunity in the U.S.A. and around the world. Along the way you'll find out why President John F. Kennedy and actress Grace Kelly were killed; who created the United Nations; who controls the two major U.S. political parties; how the Rothschilds invented and control modern-day Israel; who secretly founded false religions such as the Jehovah Witnesses; and much, much more. A literal encyclopedia of rare, unbelievable information!*
The "information" is certainly unbelievable, but it is not rare enough. Another PCT "sect" holds that it is the aliens who rule the Illuminati who rule the world, etc.
David Icke, another pundit of the Illuminati, believes humans have been getting messages from alien "Illuminati-reptilians" for thousands of years. The reptiles explain such things as the Gregorian calendar.
The whole senario [sic] was planned centuries ago because the reptilians, operating from the lower fourth dimension, and indeed whatever force controls them, have a very different version of "time" than we have, hence they can see and plan down the three-dimensional "time"-line in a way that those in three-dimensional form cannot.*
Icke fancies himself "The most controversial author and speaker in the world."* For him, the origin of the Illuminati is extraterrestrial. He knows this because he is sure we have been contacted regularly with messages from beyond by the alien lizards. He explains it all in several books, especially The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World.*
Jim Keith
Another expositor on these hidden agendas and worldwide conspiracies is Jim Keith, who died on September 7, 1999, during surgery to repair a leg he injured at the Burning Man Festival. Keith, a former executive Scientologist and author of nine conspiracy books (including Saucers of the Illuminati) could see things the rest of us don't. Was this because he was better at seeing or because his imagination ran wild? He watches a Coke ad and sees fellatio and anal penetration.* You can imagine what he sees or hears when he gives his attention to world history.
Ken Adachi
Ken Adachi has a fine conspiracy page. He leaves no event unaccounted for as part of the plot to take over the world and hasten the Apocalypse. The Illuminati, however, is only one aspect of the occult cabal. He has transmogrified the New World Order into a cabal itself. According to Mr. Adachi
An extremely powerful civilian dominated cabal, the New World Order, includes Majesty [sic] Twelve [MJ-12], The Illuminati, Order of the Quest, The Bilderberg Group, The Trilateral Commission, The Executive Committee of The Council on Foreign Relations, The PI-40 Committee, The Jason Group [sic], The Club of Rome, The Group, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Open Friendly Secret Society [the Vatican], The Rosicrucians, The Brotherhood of the Dragon (or Snake), The Russell Trust, The Black Families (of Europe), Skull & Bones, the Scroll & Key, The Knights of Malta, the Illuminati arm of The Freemasons, and many, many other secretive groups.
What is most amusing about Mr. Adachi's page is that even though the end is near, he still asks us to please support his sponsor, an organization that can help with debt consolidation or a home loan. What is not so amusing is his identification of the Freemasons as a subversive cabal. This idea is popular among PCTs, especially with those on the religious right like Pat Robertson, who are also prone to be anti-Semitic.
Myron Fagan
Mr. Adachi may have a fine conspiracy WWW page but he seems to have borrowed everything from Mr. Fagan, who undertook to explain all of world history as a plot of the Illuminati to establish the New World Order. Waterloo, Diamond Jim Brady, the French Revolution, any war you care to name, homosexuals in the State Department, JFK, the United Nations, the ACLU, Jewish bankers, the Communist conspiracy to control Hollywood and make films that would hasten the arrival of the New World Order, etc. ad nauseam. Fagan's audiotape, "The Illuminati," is available online.
Fagan, born ca. 1888, was a playwright, director, producer, editor and public relations director for Charles Evans Hughes, Republican candidate for president in 1916. In 1930, Fagan came to Hollywood and worked as a writer and director. In 1945, he says he saw some secret documents which led him to write Red Rainbow and Thieves Paradise. The former portrays Roosevelt, Stalin and others at Malta plotting to deliver the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Berlin to Stalin. The latter portrays the same group plotting to create the United Nations as a Communist front for one world government. Until his death, Fagan relentlessly uncovered plots for almost every historical event of any note. Fagan is the archetype for the PCT.
Milton William "Bill" Cooper
Cooper was a leader of the Arizona militia movement until his death in a shootout with a sheriff's deputy. Cooper opened fire on the deputy when he tried to issue a warrant for assaulting his neighbor. Cooper wrote The Secret Government: a Covenant with Death - The Origin, Identity, and Purpose of MJ-12, a paper given in Las Vegas at a MUFON meeting in 1989 focusing essentially on his belief of a cover-up of an alien crash at Roswell. He also wrote Secret Societies/ New World Order. He claimed that he got his information "directly from, or as a result of my own research into the TOP SECRET/MAJIC material WHICH I SAW AND READ between the years 1970 and 1973 as a member of the Intelligence Briefing Team of the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet." (PCTs seem to like to use CAPS for EMPHASIS.) Cooper's veracity about his career in the Navy and his access to secret documents has been questioned publicly on alt.alien.visitor, as have other aspects of his personality. Cooper ran williamcooper.com, a site which promoted his many rants, including an autobiographical page that might be of interest to certain mental health professionals.
Cooper's "investigations" uncovered the usual conspiracies, although he also included some of the new ones such as the conspiracy to use AIDS to thin out the population of blacks, Hispanics and homosexuals, a notion he put forth in a book called Behold a Pale Horse. What Cooper lacked in hard evidence he oversupplied in detail and imagination.
Robert Gaylon Ross, Sr.
Ross is owner of Ross International Enterprises (RIE) and is the author of nine books in progress. RIE is "a private company chartered to do anything that is legal, ethical and moral, anywhere in the world." Ross started RIE when he couldn't find a publisher for his manuscript, Who's Who of the Elite, an expose of the elite. Says Ross, after you visit his site
you will have been exposed to the REAL TRUTH about the conspiracy behind the Bilderbergs; Council on Foreign Relations; Trilateral Commission; Skull & Bones Society; Bohemian Grove and Bohemian Club; the CIA's involvement in trauma based mind control, drug smuggling and money laundering; where are the Wealthiest in the World; who really owns the Federal Reserve System; and the more accurate theories found in "Logical Physics" [by Cecil Ross].
Robert Gaylon Ross's unique twist is to relate the "alternative physics" of Cecil Ross to the world of conspiracies.
Why?
To enter the world of the PCTs is to enter Bedlam. It would be pointless here to examine, much less attempt to refute, the delusions of people who think they have been turned into assassins by mind-control techniques so that they can carry out the will of inbred dynasties, that aliens are controlling the world, that none of the laws of science are actual, that the imagination and the thought of what is possible are better guides than the "physically manifested world," etc. A rational person might think many of the PCTs are joking. There are Internet sites that seem to be parody sites but it is difficult to tell, since there seems to be no belief, however inane or absurd, that the PCTs can't fit into their bizarre worldview. A rational person who never heard of Pat Robertson might well read his New World Order (Word Books, 1994) and think it must be a joke. Could anyone actually believe his rambling paranoia regarding Jewish bankers, Freemasons, Muslims, homosexuals, foreigners, etc.? Apparently so. Still, one wonders why PCTs exist and their numbers seem to be growing.
Of course, governments and some of the very rich have conspired to rule the world in one form or another. There are enough real conspiracies to satisfy even the greatest Pollyanna that one's government and the extremely rich and powerful don't play by the same rules, if they play by any rules at all, as decent folk. Those of us who have watched the U.S. government support one fascist dictator after another because he was "anti-communist" are uncomfortable to find that there are people who are so far to the right of the right-wing that they too want to expose the cover-ups. It is of no use to point out to the PCTs that our government led coups of democratically elected governments, assassinated leaders of nations and provided military and financial aid to thugs and murderers around the world, in a misguided belief that they were saving the world from communism, as well as opening up new markets for capitalist expansion. Many of the leaders and top agents in our government are and were evil and incompetent, but, as inept as they tend to be, even they would recognize the limits of their ambitions.
But, it is pointless to argue here because the PCTs are expert pseudohistorians: contradictory evidence is used to support rather than refute their notions. Does the U.S. Government go after the world's richest man, Bill Gates? Hah! It's a charade, aimed at getting us off the scent. Wasn't Hitler the one who thought he could rule the world and didn't the Allies stop him? Hitler was a dupe, used to advance the sinister plot to rule the world by the Illuminati.
some speculation
One can only speculate as to why PCTs exist. It is easy to explain their proliferation: modern mass communications has made it possible for anyone to become his or her own press and propaganda machine. But why PCTs in the first place? The only other experience I've had with such thinking was when I had to get involved with some mentally ill people. I am not joking here. A relative had a "psychotic break" and severe paranoia. We (a group of relatives) were all targets of assassination by some unknown evil people. They could be partially identified by their license plate numbers. If the number started with a "5" then they were evil. No amount of logic or reasoning as to the preposterousness of the notion that anyone would want to kill a person of absolutely no political significance was of any use. No amount of reasoning as to how license plate numbers are assigned was of any use. Phone calls could only be made from "secure" lines, which involved either going to the fire department or talking your way up through a series of supervisors until you got a "good one." Through my ill relative I met others who were also afflicted with delusions and incredibly faulty judgment. They did not lose their ability to reason--in fact, my relative seemed even more intelligent in some ways when manic--but their assumptions were taken from sources inaccessible to the ordinary mind. They put vast faith in their intuitions and thought their ideas were brilliant insights when they were little more than the fancies of diseased brains. When I compare reading the literature of the PCTs to entering Bedlam, I mean to be taken literally.
For example, many PCTs consider the Great Seal of the United States and the motto Novus Ordo Seclorum (new order of the ages) to be Masonic and to mean New World Order. These "facts" are considered evidence in the argument to prove the vast conspiracy of the Illuminati. It is useless to argue against these "facts" with PCTs. They consider us dupes who would note that the Latin is usually translated as New Order of the Ages and that the symbol of the eye in the pyramid relates to a poem in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.* Even granting that the Great Seal of the United States and the symbols on our dollar bill are Masonic (which they are not) and that novus ordo seculorum means New World Order (which it does not), nothing significant follows, certainly not that there is a vast conspiracy to take over the world.
Providence and eschatology
I think it is likely that many PCTs in the West are initiated into their peculiar way of thinking by their religious training, in particular by their study of the Bible. They have been taught or they assume that everything happens for a purpose and that God ultimately has a reason for every event occurring just as it does. As it becomes more and more difficult to see this world as designed for anything, the theories get more and more preposterous to keep the teleological delusion alive. The war on evolution and homosexuality--encouraging the abandonment of science and stimulating murderous assaults--so obviously disproportionate by any rational standard, is difficult to explain without seeing the militant fundamentalists as beyond the last stages of desperation. The intense campaigns to expose possible alien abductions, UFOs, and mind-control is likewise preposterously disproportionate to any rational standard. It is becoming nearly impossible to account for the events on this planet with the assumption of a Divine Creator who has a plan and a rationale for everything. The systems of thought that must be created in order to maintain Divine Providence get more insane by the minute. (Explain Hitler, Slobodan Milosovich, or Ishii Shiro. Or, for that matter, explain Waco, Gulf War Syndrome, or any of a number of actual conspiracies engaged in by businessmen such as Bill Gates or political leaders such as Oliver North and his "neat" idea of a government within the government answerable to nobody, or Richard Nixon and the Watergate conspirators, or our formerly secret biological warfare programs.) There is, in fact, a New World Order emerging: the world of Alternative History, Alternative Physics, Alternative Medicine and, ultimately, Alternative Reality.
It is a very natural trait to try to make sense out of the world. The PCTs are trying desperately to make sense out of a world they can no longer relate to. The world is too complicated, too mean, too cold, too unsatisfying for them. In the real world, they are considered nothing and despair of ever being anything but on the outside looking in. They see science as telling them they are an accident and their lives are without meaning. In their alternative world, they rule and are hopeful. Everything is in its place or will be put in its place. There is order and meaning. Life is significant.
the end is near
The actual mechanism by which PCTs arrive at their weird notions is not that difficult to ascertain. The mentally ill people I came to know couched their paranoid fears in terms of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. They had no communal reinforcement of their delusions, however. No talk show host or publisher invited them to share their delusions with the world. They are under treatment, have been hospitalized, arrested, etc. They know that those around them will not accept their delusions. This is not true of religious or UFO groups. They reinforce each other and strengthen each other's resolve. They encourage each other to accept possibility as equal to probability, material experience as inferior to dreams, hallucinations, and out-of-body experiences, etc. They have no watchdog equivalent to I. F. Stone, and the mass media is too busy chasing tabloid rumors and celebrities to serve as a watchdog of anything. And since the PCTs function almost completely outside of the normal arenas where they would be challenged and forced to produce evidence in place of speculation, they flourish relatively unscathed and await their next appearance on the Art Bell or George Noory or Pat Robertson show, seemingly oblivious to the absurdity of such behavior during the final days of planet earth.
a concluding remark
The Cheney/Bush administration has acted remarkably like an administration whose goal is world dominance. It poses as pious while invading countries to make war on them. It allows torture* and spying* on its own citizens in the name of patriotism and defense of liberty. It practices many human rights abuses that it condemns in its enemies. The appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank seems too good to be true if one is looking for support of this
Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper! --George W. Bush???, November 2005*
hypothesis. It seems impossible that such bright guys went to war because of bad intelligence. To some it must seem as if the Cheney/Bush regime is trying to encourage terrorism rather than stop it. The more fear they can arouse the longer they can continue their aggression in the name of defense. Even so, there is little evidence that they are part of a global conspiracy. Yet, it's not surprising to see conspiracy websites like that of Alex Jones, who thinks the U.S. has become a police state. (If we were truly a police state Mr. Jones wouldn't have his website or his films.) It also will not be surprising to see a great increase in the number of people who believe in the Cheney/Bush illuminati cabal.
See also alien abduction, Area 51, creationism, Freemason, mind control, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Roswell, and UFO.
further reading
- 9/11 conspiracies: the war on truth by Robert T. Carroll
- The Illuminati by Edward L. King
- "Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference" by Evan Harrington
- Freemason -- from the 700 Club to Art Bell, an Object of Conspiracy Thinking by Conrad Goeringer
- 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time
- The Bilderberg Group
- Journal of The Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York -parody by Michael Shermer (to find Shermer's piece, do a search for 'illuminati')
- Symbols and Mottoes on the Great Seal
- How the Pyramid got on the Great Seal
- Pat Robertson Quotations
- Are the MJ-12 documents for real? About.com
- Does May Day actually commemorate the birth of the Illuminati? 04-Feb-1982 - The Straight Dope
Abanes, Richard. End-Time Visions: The Road to Armageddon (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998).
Camp, Gregory S. Selling Fear: Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia (Baker Book House, 1997).
Roberts J. Mythology of the Secret Societies (MacMillan Publishing Company, 1972).
Can You Hypnotize Women? - By James Malone
The question is always there whether they ask or it not. When someone learns you are a hypnotist, either stage or clinical, there is the suspicion that you possess some sort of ability to compel others to do your bidding-for good or evil.
“Can you make people do things, can you hypnotize women? Imagine that!”
The innuendo is that through hypnosis you can influence the behavior of others in a direction that would normally be resisted. Kind of appealing to a would-be seducer. And kind of frightening to an unwilling would-be conquest!
So what gives, can hypnosis turn a frog into a prince so to speak? Consider the definition of hypnosis that states that it is “a naturally altered state of mind where a person becomes more willing to change his or her perceptions about self, other people and the world around us.” Change perception and behavior changes with it.
So hypnosis is a tool that increases what is described as suggestibility. However, it also true that persuasion takes place all the time with or without a formal hypnosis process.
Now in order for hypnosis/persuasion to take place there must be a strong bond of rapport between the two parties. Without rapport, suggestibility dwindles down to virtually nil. And the way that rapport is developed and strengthened is the essential paradox of the persuasion equation.
The truly persuasive person realizes that he must focus on the hopes, dreams and fears of the other person, not his own. This is what builds rapport. It is no accident that truly hypnotic people have the ability to make you feel as if you were the only person in the room. Is there anyone less spellbinding than the person whose favorite topic is himself?
So can you hypnotize women? Can you hypnotize men? The answer is yes, there are verbal and non-verbal hypnotic techniques you can learn that will increase your powers of persuasion. However they do depend on the ability get of your own way and focus on the other person instead. Imagine that!
= = =
James Malone, DCH, is a Certified Hypnotist from New Jersey. Do you wish to learn more about the art and science of hypnosis. If so, consider paying a quick visit to the author's Hypnosis & Mental Mysteries Page for some additional information you may find helpful.
“Can you make people do things, can you hypnotize women? Imagine that!”
The innuendo is that through hypnosis you can influence the behavior of others in a direction that would normally be resisted. Kind of appealing to a would-be seducer. And kind of frightening to an unwilling would-be conquest!
So what gives, can hypnosis turn a frog into a prince so to speak? Consider the definition of hypnosis that states that it is “a naturally altered state of mind where a person becomes more willing to change his or her perceptions about self, other people and the world around us.” Change perception and behavior changes with it.
So hypnosis is a tool that increases what is described as suggestibility. However, it also true that persuasion takes place all the time with or without a formal hypnosis process.
Now in order for hypnosis/persuasion to take place there must be a strong bond of rapport between the two parties. Without rapport, suggestibility dwindles down to virtually nil. And the way that rapport is developed and strengthened is the essential paradox of the persuasion equation.
The truly persuasive person realizes that he must focus on the hopes, dreams and fears of the other person, not his own. This is what builds rapport. It is no accident that truly hypnotic people have the ability to make you feel as if you were the only person in the room. Is there anyone less spellbinding than the person whose favorite topic is himself?
So can you hypnotize women? Can you hypnotize men? The answer is yes, there are verbal and non-verbal hypnotic techniques you can learn that will increase your powers of persuasion. However they do depend on the ability get of your own way and focus on the other person instead. Imagine that!
= = =
James Malone, DCH, is a Certified Hypnotist from New Jersey. Do you wish to learn more about the art and science of hypnosis. If so, consider paying a quick visit to the author's Hypnosis & Mental Mysteries Page for some additional information you may find helpful.
How to Detect Mind Control
Name Calling
This can include being called negative names (used inappropriately) like liar, psychotic, paranoid, crazy, communist, etc. The purpose, intentional or unintentional, of the usage of these names is to discredit the person they are being used on, without discussing the facts of the debate or topic. Sometimes names are used to shock the listener, which may put the listener into a more susceptible mind state and not critically think about the topic but simply accept the negative name or opinion subliminally.
Glittering Generalities
Democracy, capitalism or other ideas are often discussed in these terms. These terms may be described positively without a critical analysis of all sides of the issue.
The important thing is to look at the ideas behind the terms and analyze them critically. A group may also only discuss the positives of the organization, ignoring any negative criticism about the group. The important thing is to check out any group or organization as completely as possible before joining. But I believe it is also important to trust people when they are safe, so that we can recover by sharing and connecting.
Exaggeration
A user of propaganda may use terms like "many," "a lot," "numerous," or "a few" without backing up these numbers or statistics. The usage of these words may make a person or organization look better or worse without data or substantial proof.
Emotional Manipulation
Sometimes it is important to look at the argument(s) with as little emotion as possible, and try to see the facts only.
From http://carmen.artsci. washington.edu/propaganda/fear.htm, "...there
are four elements to a successful fear appeal: 1) a threat, 2) a specific recommendation about how the audience should behave, 3) audience perception that the recommendation will be effective in addressing the threat, and 4) audience perception that they are capable of performing the recommended behavior." Groups may also use these techniques on their members. They may say, "If you don’t do this, then the world will end, we will close, etc." For members that are very needy or attached to the organization or person making the statement, this threat may be very difficult to ignore.
In E-mail, this may be caused by the use of capital letters or other techniques. The writer may say things like, "apples are always red," and then, "apples are always blue," to cause confusion in the reader and make them more susceptible to the ideas in the E-mail. While the mind is trying to figure out which statement is true, the reader’s mind may become more susceptible to the suggestion or idea.
Sutphen in his article talks about "Shock and Confusion," how people go into a meditative state when scared and are more likely to be compliant to the second suggestion. If people are made to feel guilty that they were given something, they are more likely to follow the next command, like give money, etc.
For survivors, I think the important thing is to realize when these techniques are being used on us. To fight the second suggestion and not follow it blindly. This may entail leaving the area immediately and going to a safe spot. Online this may mean reading certain E-mails with support people present. And to avoid those that may use these suggestions on us whenever possible. Learning how to develop safe support systems and safe resources can help with this. I believe it is dangerous to believe that we can’t be MC’ed.
Guilt may also be used as a technique, especially on survivors. Making people feel like they haven’t done enough for a particular group or organization, asking people to do things without considering all sides of the issue or their own needs.
Neediness can also be used. Survivors may be looking for approval, acceptance and a place to discuss their feelings. So they may not be able to critically decide what support systems may be the safest for them. Groups will first be very nice or overly nice to them (love bombing), but this will often disappear later and emotional manipulation and threats or guilt may be used to try to cause the desired behavior.
Subliminal Commands
The techniques used to create subliminal commands can vary. I believe they usually create a meditative state in the individual. I have heard that TV can cause these states. "Glassy eyed stares" or "being spaced out" are often used to describe this state. Shock or fear or other extreme emotional states may also be used to create meditative states. These commands may help the writer bypass the reader’s conscious mind.
Specific triggers may be used on survivors. These may sound like the ideas of those that do not believe in the existence of recovered memory or ritual abuse. These can include calling a person paranoid, psychotic or crazy (see "name calling") and allude to the fact that a person’s paranoia is connected to a psychotic disorder, which, I believe, usually isn’t the case. This can be used to try and get the survivor to doubt their own reality and the reality of their memories. (See SMART issue #27 for the low rate (less than 5 percent) of "false" memories.)
Subliminal triggers may also be used intentionally or unintentionally to remind a survivor of a specific ritual or past program. Repeated use (or the one time use) of certain terms, that could be triggering for survivors, could qualify. The writer may be using these terms to scare or trigger the reader.
A colleague of mine wrote me and told me that she uses three criterion to determine online if a person may be a perpetrator of MC.
1) If the person uses guilt.
2) If the person tells them to "f_ off." (Could be considered a technique to shock the reader.)
3) Using lots of triggers to control their actions.
I think the one thing that all 3 above have in common is they entail some sort of emotional manipulation and/or trigger.
Changing the Topic
Rather than deal with the specific topic, a group or person may try to change the topic, or discredit the other side, rather than deal with the criticisms or arguments in the debate. A variety of propaganda techniques may be used to try and do this. This technique has occasionally been used by politicians and others.
Repetition
One way of remembering something is to constantly repeat it. This is one way we learn to remember new words and songs. Rather than debating the points of the debate, a debater may simply continue calling a person a liar or crazy or a traitor, etc. (see "name calling") without backing up their statements. How often is an idea in an argument presented without a source or logical backing. This is one place in a debate or argument where a debater may show their "true colors." Are they interested in debating the points of the argument or are they using propaganda and mind control techniques?
Testimonials
Individuals that are not qualified to discuss the particulars (the specific facts) of a debate or product may join the debate or ad campaign and make statements that may have little or no logical backing or factual basis. Organizations and companies may use a variety of techniques to encourage such participation.
Band Wagon
The user of propaganda may encourage people to join the cause without asking them to think about the facts and other side of the argument. This may include a kind of hero worship, including fancy clothes, high expenditures, claims of a large following, etc. I think the most important thing is to follow your instincts and recovery, not someone else. Other people may have valid and helpful things to say, but I believe our recovery has to be our own.
Logical Fallacies
These will be intentionally used by the user of propaganda to manipulate opinion.
Example: John likes apples.
Hitler liked apples.
John likes Hitler.
This can be used in politics. Equating communism to fascism because one or several communist governments may have been fascist is an example of this. A person may agree with someone on one topic and disagree with the same person on another topic. The user of propaganda may try to lump the two people or a group of people together that disagree with them, suggesting a conspiracy, when it may only be people agreeing on a certain topic.
You might hear that we can’t trust anyone if certain people aren’t safe. This is a logical fallacy and isn’t true. It may take time for the survivor to trust again, but I think we need to keep trying to trust safe people, so we can heal.
Unwarranted Extrapolation
This is another logical fallacy. A person receiving a criticism may claim that a critique of themselves or their group may cause divisiveness in society or their movement. ("Love it or leave" is an example of this.) The repetition of this idea may reinforce the idea in the reader’s mind. An alternative way of looking at this is that the same critique could also make the movement stronger, by encouraging people to think about their choices and use caution before making those choices. It may encourage all those in the movement to become healthier, making the movement even stronger.
In all logical fallacies, and in terms of propaganda in general, try to see the other possible conclusions of the argument, not simply those presented by the user of propaganda.
How to Avoid Blindly Accepting Propaganda and Being Mind Controlled
(Please note: these are only suggestions. You may want to analyze each of them to see if they have any value to you and if necessary, add some of your own.)
"The subjects easiest to influence are usually young, trusting, gullible, and non-critical people from protective backgrounds or people who may be particularly vulnerable because of some recent unsettled transition (my note: survivors may also fit in this category)...the rejects are likely to be individuals who have easy access to accurate, critical, or counterbalancing information. Insolent, self-centered, street-wise, highly critical or recalcitrant individuals are generally culled out..." Though everyone is susceptible to some degree.
1) Try to find out both sides of the story.
2)Learn about propaganda and mind control techniques and learn how to recognize them. If necessary, learn to avoid those using these techniques (this may be online or offline.) The media and advertisements may be a good place to start either learning about these techniques or avoiding them. At times, advertisements don’t even discuss the product or its attributes at all.
3) When in a potential situation where you can be MC’ed or propagandized, learn how to recognize the feelings of going into a meditative state and learn some of the techniques for getting out of these states. (Details are at "Conference trigger management and safety" are available via E-mail, snail mail (for $1.00 US only) or at http://members.aol.com/ smartnews/page5/NBpresentation99.htm) I believe that avoidance of these situations is usually the best way to keep from being MC’ed or propagandized.
4) The user of propaganda or mind control techniques may exhibit a "lack of morals," lying and/or disregarding the rules of the debate, list, group or society. This is similar to the "us vs them" or may be justified by "the ends justify the means" arguments organizations may use, see SMART #29 (Cult Information Article.)
5) Try to use your gut feelings. If something doesn’t feel right, step back or remove yourself from the situation. I believe that a legitimate group or organization will give an individual the time and room to make their own choices (see "Emotional Manipulation" above).
I believe the following statement also applies to being MC’ed and/or fooled by propaganda. From FactNet, "No one "joins a cult." People recruited into destructive groups think they are doing something else, something beneficial and worthwhile. Anyone can be recruited given the right sales pitch and the right conditions in one’s life. We are all potential victims." While I believe it is necessary to learn from our mistakes, I think that feeling too much guilt doesn’t help. It may be necessary to make an amends when safe. This may be simply by getting healthy and possibly educating others.
As always, please use your own judgement and try to research everything as fully as possible. Don’t accept anything anyone says simply because they say it or claim to be an expert or whatever. Try to check it out for yourself. I am not an expert, and I am continually learning new things about myself and the above topics.
Neil Brick
Sources
Please note: These sources are listed for educational information only. We are not necessarily recommending them as resources for survivors.
"The Battle for Your Mind," by Dick Sutphen, "Persuasion and Brainwashing
Techniques Being Used on the Public Today," is at
http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/sutphen/brainwsh.html
"Propaganda Techniques," by Aaron Delwiche and linked pages at http://carmen.artsci. washington.edu/propaganda/contents.htm (pictures may be triggering)
"Q & A on mind control," FactNet, Inc., http://www.factnet.org/ rancho2.htm#one (Please note: at http://www.factnet.org/cris_xpt.htm (which may be triggering) FactNet lists names on their cult experts page, SMART has heard allegations about a couple of these people and several may not be pro-survivor.)
Hypnosis is Scary (Let's Welcome in the Devil :-)
Psychologists and Psychiatrists Warn Us
HYPNOSIS THE DESTROYER
THE TERRIBLE DANGER OF HYPNOSIS
Hypnotism is rapidly becoming a major part of psychological, psychiatric, and professional counseling technique. Medical doctors are also increasingly employing it. Its use has dramatically increased since the development of Ericksonian hypnotism a couple decades ago. Classical (formal) hypnotism required that the client be put into a sleep-like stupor, but Erlcksonian (Informal) hypnosis enables the operator to embed thoughts and feelings during casual conversation, without the client's realizing where they came from. This new method of hypnosis has opened the way whereby, every professionally-trained counselor can do what the psychiatrists used to do: put people Into a hypnotic trance and suggest changes In values, wishes, wants, likes, dislikes, fears, and hopes.
All of the basics of a person's personality and character can be affected through hypnosis. You are a unique combination of information, attitudes, and principles. But all that can be changed through hypnotism.
Your character is your thoughts and feelings combined, both easily changed through hypnosis. "You should keep off from Satan's enchanted ground and not allow your minds to be swayed from allegiance to God. Through Christ you may and should be happy and should acquire habits of self-control. Even your thoughts must be brought into subjection to the will of God and your feelings under the control of reason and religion. Your imagination was not given you to be allowed to run riot and have its own way without any effort at restraint or discipline. lf the thoughts are wrong the feelings will be wrong, and the thoughts and feelings combined make up the moral character. . "-5 Testimonies, 310 (italics ours).
In addition, hypnotism weakens the will and the power of self-control, and those are the two elements that determine the strength of one's character. "Strength of character consists of two things-power of will and power of self-control."-Child Guidance, 161.
WHERE HYPNOSIS ORIGINATED
Hypnosis is basic to the Eastern religions. Just as psychotherapy is taking the West to the East, so hypnosis is having the same effect.
"The reader should not be confused by the supposed differences between hypnosis, Zen, Yoga and other Eastern healing methodologies. Although the ritual for each differs, they are fundamentally the same.” -William Kroger and William Fezler, Hypnosis and Behavior Modification: Imagery Conditioning, 1976, p. 412.
Torrey, a research psychiatrist, tells us this:
"Hypnosis is one aspect of the yoga techniques of therapeutic meditation."- Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game, 1972, p. 70.
Kroger explains that hypnosis is used to bring the subject to the gods of yoga.
“The fundamental principles of Yoga are, in many respects, similar to those of hypnosis. Yoga is not considered a religion, but rather a 'science' to achieve mastery of the mind and cure physical and emotional sickness . . There are many systems of Yoga, but the central aim—union with God—is common to all of them and is the method by which it achieves cure. "-William Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (2nd Ed), 1977, p. 122-123
Those who wish to use hypnosis, or consult those who do, need to realize what they are getting themselves into. "We cannot call hypnosis a science, but we can say that it has been an integral part of the occult for thousands of years."-Martin and Deidra Bobgan, Hypnosis and the Christian, 1984, p. 43.
"For centuries, Zen, Buddhist, TIbetan, and Yogic methods have used a system of meditation and an altered state of consciousness similar to hypnosis."-William Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. (2nd Ed.), 1977, p. 126.
LEARNING MORE ABOUT HYPNOSIS
Hypnotism can have powerful effects on people. Not only can it radically change their thoughts and feelings, —it can even remold their mind patterns into something quite different. By the choice of the hypnotist—or the spirits guiding him,—the hypnotized subject can think he is in a totally different location, or fully believe he has become an animal!
"Like meditation and biofeedback, hypnosis can open the way for a person to enter a wide range of discrete states of consciousness, or, more rarely altered states." Daniel GoIeman and Richard Davidson, Consciousness: Brain, States of Awareness, and Mysticism, 1979, p. 46.
It is well-known among professionals that the deepest states of hypnosis are the ones that many psychologic counselors prefer to put their clients into so the "most beneficial therapeutic work can be done" on their minds. Yet the deeper states are the most dangerous!
Francuch, a psychiatric researcher, describes 500 levels of trance that people can be put into by hypnosis. "Up to the five hundredth, one goes through various states and levels that reflect different states and levels of the spiritual world and its conditions. At the 126th level, there is a state that corresponds to the state (Nirvana] described by the Eastern mystics.” -Peter Francuch, Principles of Spiritual Hypnosis, 1981, p. 79.
Then he describes levels beyond the 126th.
"The subject emerged from the 126th state, or state of void, nothingness, Nirvana, as a new-born individual with a high level of individuation, differentiation, and at the same time, absorption of the Universe and creation within and without, being simultaneously one with and different from Creation. This state is impossible to describe in words, because nothing exists in the human vocabulary that corresponds to it.
"I was told that once we break the 1,000 level, all laws, rules, and regulations as they are known to all levels of spirituality and the natural world will be broken, and something completely new will appear."-Op. cit., p. 80. Such mystical talk as that is given to convince foolish people to let hypnotists work on them. But the result is only changed personalities and heavily weakened wills. Instead of producing some glorious experience, it actually corresponds more closely to a dog that has been trained by his master to respond instantly, have no will of his own, and do exactly as he is told.
Hypnosis is actually spirit possession. Or to say it more clearly: demon possession. Earnest Hilgard, a psychiatric researcher, describes trances in which possession clearly occurred. In one, the individual "becomes possessed by the Monkey god.” In another, the one under hypnosis is told to select from several spirits that could possess him. (Which is somewhat unusual; in this one instance the subject was permitted to choose something himself! Usually it is all done for him by other minds: the operator and the demons.)
"The spirit would possess him and then answer questions, particularly making recommendations for the cure of illness, including the special curative powers of a charmed glass of water. "-Earnest Hilgard, Divided Consciousness: Multiple Controls in Human Thought and Action, 1977, p. 168.
You will recall in our earlier set of studies, Hypnotism Enters Adventism, we told of the "self-help" hypnotism cassettes that would answer whatever questions you asked while they were playing (!). Now we know how that is done. The tape puts you into a low-level trance, and then you imagine it is answering your questions,— when actually a devil is talking to you.
Weakened will, control by men and devils, and the embedding of strange, new atheistic standards of thinking and believing;—all this comes from hypnosis. But here is an associated danger: the problem of mind emptying. During hypnosis and afterward, there is a tendency for the mind to empty out so that, passively, it awaits other minds and powers to control it. What a dangerous way to live!
The following passage bears strikingly on the subject at hand:
"Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty . . Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first."-Matthew 12:44-45.
"Any technique or practice that alters the consciousness to an empty-minded state of passivity should be avoided." -David Haddon, "Meditation and the Mind," Spiritual Counterfeits, January 1982, p. 2.
But hypnosis always brings that empty-mindedness to the one foolish enough to fall under hypnosis.
"While those kinds of [hypnotic) techniques are often taken up for the supposed benefits rather than as spiritual disciplines, the user's intention will not prevent experience of the passive mental state with its attendant hazards. . It opens the mind to false ideas about God and reality. . [and] opens the personality to demonic incursion ,"-Ibid.
DEVILS WORKING WITH MEN
Hypnosis is nothing more than a contractual agreement between devils and men. The men are given power to do unusual things, so that thereby the devils may gain access to men and women that they previously could not control. The operator is proud of his strange power, and the demons are enabled to gain control over new victims.
"What happens when a hypnotist begins hypnotizing someone?
If a hypnotist leads an individual into a state of hypnosis through a process called induction. Few people realize that hypnotic induction often involves subtle forms of deception. Even if a hypnotist attempts to make only true and honest statements, deception may enter in through the distortion of reality, which begins during induction and continues throughout the hypnotic trance.
"One form of deception employed by hypnotists is double-bind suggestions. Medical doctor William Kroger and psychologist William Fezler, two well-known authorities on hypnosis, describe induction by saying that it 'consists of a sequential series of double-bind suggestions.' Double-bond suggestions are comments made to the subject to indicate that his response (no matter what it is) is an appropriate one for moving into the state of hypnosis. The suggestions are arranged to elicit the subject's confidence and cooperation so that he may relax. Kroger and Fezler suggest such things as:
" 'If the patient's eyes blink or the individual swallows, one can say, 'See, you just blinked,' or swallowed, as the case may be. These act as reinforces to suggest that the patient is doing fine.'
"Other such reinforcements are used by Kroger and Fezler to lead the person more quickly into the trance. "Milton Erickson, known as the 'grand master of clinical hypnosis' [and the originator of Ericksonian informal hypnosis], used the double bind to give his patients a pseudo-choice, the patient could choose a light trance or a deep trance but, either way, the patient ended up in a trance. Hypno-therapist Peter Francuch says, 'It is very important to utilize every reaction of the client to deepen his trance.' It -Martin and Deidre Bobgan, Hypnosis and the Christian, 1984, pp. 15-16.
Clearly, the entire process is simple enough: low-level mind-control, ever deepening into greater and greater mind control. It begins by stating facts as though they were suggestions already carried out, continues as alternative suggestions leading to deeper levels of control, sinks down to the giving of commands which are followed, and ends with devils which already control the operator-now controlling both operator and subject. It does not sound very pleasant, does it?
Instead of a noble mind submitted only to its' Creator, the God of heaven, the man or woman becomes a kennel dog which obediently does whatever another created being tells it to do.
TAKEOVER OF THE WILL
Well, by now the takeover of the will through hypnotism is a foregone conclusion. The will would have to be overcome and brought into total submission, in order for the operator-and the devils he is knowingly or unknowingly working with-to do such dramatic things with the vision, hearing, senses, thinking, and feelings of the victim, —pardon me, the client.
Here is an interesting statement in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:
"The relationship of a hypnotizable patient to the hypnotist does not differ in any essential way from the relationship of a lunatic to the superintendent of an asylum." -Martin Orne and Frederick Evans, "Social Control in the Psychological Experiment: Antisocial Behavior and Hypnosis," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 1, No, 3, p, 199.
And the following statement is an equally significant one, from a college textbook, no less!
"Hypnosis can be described as an altered state of intense and sensitive interpersonal relatedness between hypnotist and patient, characterized by the patient's non-rational submission and relative abandonment of executive control to a more or less regressed, dissociated state."-Alfred Freedman, Harold Kaplan, and Benjamin Sadock, Modern Synopsis of Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry III, 1976, p. 905.
Hilgard says it well:
"Within the hypnotic contract, they will do what the hypnotist suggests, experience what they are told to experience, and lose control of movements [not directed by him]."Earnest Hilgard, "Divided Consciousness in Hypnosis: The Implications of the Hidden Observer, " in Ericka Fromm and Ronald Shor (eds.), Hypnosis: Developments in Research and New Perspectives, 1979, p. 49.
Bowers explains it further:
"The perception of the world of outer reality fades away . . and there comes a time when the voice of the hypnotist is heard as if within the subject's own mind, and he responds to the will of the hypnotist as to his own will." -Margaretta Bowers, "Friend or Traitor? Hypnosis in the Service of Religion, " International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Vol. 7, No. 205, 1959, p. 208.
USELESSNESS OF THE PROCEDURE
In spite of all the high praise heaped upon hypnosis for its marvelous personality improving and medically healing powers, the experts, after using it for years, recognize among themselves that it is really useless. Because of this, they privately discuss its "placebo effect” to Because hypnotism helps no one, the professionals like to think that, at least, it makes a good placebo; that is, people imagine it is helping them, so they get better! ("Placebo": a preparation having no medicinal value, given to soothe or humor a patient.]
"The power of hypnosis is the power of belief!"-William Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (2nd Ed.), 1977, p.135.
Trying to find some medical benefit in hypnosis, Kroger and Fezler declare:
"Faith in a specific cure leads to the success of that cure! . . Every psychotherapist owes it to his patients to utilize his unquestioned placebo effect at the highest level—hypnosis. " - William Kroger and William Fezler, Hypnosis and Behavior Modification: Imagery Conditioning, 1976, pp. xiii, 138.
By that they mean that the patient comes to the doctor, believing in advance that somehow he may be able to help him. So a potential placebo effect is already there as he enters the doctor's office, But in order to really change that potential into reality, Kroger and Fezler tell the doctors to be sure and hypnotize the patient before he leaves! If they utilize Ericksonian hypnosis, that should not be too difficult to do.
"Our thesis is that if the placebo is (to be made] effective, then hypnosis employed prudently by a competent physician for a valid indication will serve the patient's best interests. "Op. cit, p. 139.
Shapiro and Gillis put it even more bluntly:
"Psychanalysis—and its dozens of psychotherapy offshoots—is the most used placebo of our time. "-Arthur Shapiro, in Martin Gross, Psychological Society, 1978, p. 230.
"Humanitarian fervor aside, it's the therapist's job to take power over the patient, push ahead with solving the problem, then convince the patient he or she is better, even if it means being devious." -John S. Gillis, "The Therapist as Manipulator," Psychology Today, December 1974, p. 91.
LYING MEDIUMS AND SPIRITS
There is nothing as devious as hypnosis. It is lying and deceptive from the start to the finish of the hypnotic process, and also in the "beneficial results" claimed for it before and afterward. Janet, one of the leading early pioneers in hypnotherapy, said this:
"There are some patients to whom . . we must tell part of the truth; and there are some to whom as a matter of strict moral obligation, we must lie."-Pierre Janet, Psychological Healing: A Historical and Clinical Study, Vol. II, 1925, p. 338.
Not only are lies told in order to put the client under hypnosis, lies are told to him afterward.
"[We must convince the] client that the therapy is definitely working, apart from any objective evidence of change (or improvement],"-John S. Gillis, "The Therapist as Manipulator," Psychology Today, December 1974, p, 92.
These mind-healers are working with lying spirits, and it is those spirits that guide both the operator and his client. You do not think that lying takes place? Read these lying "memories" embedded into a man during hypnosis:
"One man who suffered from migraine headaches reports [under hypnosis] the feelings he had when his mother suffered headaches while he was in her womb. Then he 'remembers', In a previous (reincarnated] life he was captured by Indians and leather bands were twisted and tightened around his head. He describes the intensity of the pain. . later he moves into a 'different life' in which he is an Indian and this time a metal band is around his head. . After several other accounts, he 'recalls' the birth experience of his present life. Voices are saying that his head is stuck and he feels metal on his head as he is pulled through the birth canal. After the fourth session of hypnotic regression, his migraine headaches had vanished."-Martin and Deidre Bobgan, Hypnosis, and the Christian, 1984, p. 21.
Lying spirits embed lying memories that were never there before.
"This [these so-called 'birth memories'] all flies in the face of the well-known, neurological, scientific fact that the myelin sheathing (the coating on the nerves] is too underdeveloped in the prenatal, natal, and early postnatal brain to store such memories. David Chamberlain, a San Diego psychologist, paradoxically reports that people 'can indeed remember their own births in extraordinary detail' through hypnosis, but that the birth memory is not stored in the brain! This raises a question: If memories are not stored in the brain, where are they stored?"-Op. cit., p. 22 (italics his).
They came directly from devils.
ILLEGALITY AND IMMORALITY UNDER HYPNOSIS
Half a century ago, there was a controversy in professional circles over whether a person under hypnosis could be told to kill someone—and he would actually try to do it. It was recognized that if a person could be made, under hypnosis, to do this worst of all wrong acts, then, surely, he could be made to do any kind of wrong act!
Then, in a well-known research experiment, a man was placed under hypnosis, handed a gun, and told to shoot the next man that entered the room. When the man entered, he raised the gun in a fury of anger and shot at him! Unknown to the hypnotized subject, a thick glass wall separated him from the doorway and the man who entered the room.
Thus it is clear that, hypnosis can turn a kindly man into a vicious monster. "We consistently underestimate the power of techniques like suggestion and hypnosis. .. -E.F. Torrey, The Mind Game, 1972, p. 107.
"Since a person under hypnosis would do something if it is made plausible and desirable, and since reality is distorted under hypnosis, violation can occur through the fact that the subject is in a more highly suggestible state and the trance propagator can make almost anything plausible and desirable. Hypnotist Simeon Edmunds cites numerous cases in his book, Hypnotism and Psychic Phenomena to illustrate his belief that it is possible for a hypnotist to perform an illegal act against a subject, and that is even possible for a hypnotist to cause a subject to perform an illegal act." -Martin and Deidre Boban, Hypnosis and the Christian, 1984, p. 35.
So there you have it. Hypnotism ought to be outlawed! There is no valid reason for any longer permitting this devastation of the human mind. It is fiendish, devilish, and originates in the most pagan savagery.
"How can witchdoctors, relying primarily on such techniques as suggestion and hypnosis, achieve as good results as Western therapists who use techniques so much more sophisticated?"-E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game, 1972, p. 107.
"Sophrology" is the latest fad in the medical/psychiatric world. According to Brain/Mind, it is a combination of Eastern and Western lore and mind/body disciplines, and over 5,000 physicians in North America and Europe have already been trained in its use and are now using it! ("Sophrology: Neutralizing Stress, Enhancing Physical Performance," in Brain/Mind, October 26, 1981.) It primarily consists of Raja yoga, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhist religious exercises.
"Patients can no longer afford the luxury of failing to determine the spiritual status of those who treat them. Failure to ascertain that may be more costly than a yearly medical bill. Practices that look entirely innocent. . can become the means of occult bondage."-John Weldon and Zola Levitt, Psychic Healing, 1982, p. 7.
Intertwined with these hypnotic practices is TM (Transcendental Meditation), which is used both by medical doctors and professionally-trained counselors and psychologists to "heal" a variety of physical and emotional problems. In addition to sophrology and TM, other Eastern cultish techniques are being used by medical and psychological personnel: yoga, astrology, the I Ching, Tantr, Tarot cards, alchemy, and Actualism. Yet all of these are occult practices derived from Eastern religions.
It is significant that those who have been "healed" through hypnosis, frequently later develop a different physical or mental problem-and often a worse one, within a year or two. But, in reality, everyone who undergoes hypnosis will have increased problems later. The reason is simple: hypnosis was actually an initiation into spirit control. Only resolute fleeing to God for protection can stop the invasion of those spirits in coming months.
"The original organic illness is shifted higher into the psychical realm, with the result that while the physical illness disappears, new disorders appear in the mental and emotional life of the person concerned, disorders which are in fact far more difficult to treat and cure. Magical healings are therefore not really healings at all, but merely transferences from the organic to the psychical; level."-Kurt Kock, Demonology: Past and Present, 1973, p. 121.
"We would expect that most if not all of those who are occultly healed are likely to suffer either psychologically or spiritually in some way." -John Walden and Zola Levitt, Psychic Healing, 1982, p. 195.
The whole thing is really a séance. The one doing the, hypnotizing is the medium and the one hypnotized receives the spirits brought in.
"Although certain Christian workers believe that some types of healing mesmerism are dependent on neutral rather than mediumistic powers, I would say that I have personally hardly ever come across a neutral form. Many years of experience in this field have shown me that even in the case of Christian mesmerisers the basic mediumship has always come to the surface in the end." -Kurt Kock, Occult Bondage and Deliverance, 1970, p. 40.
A PSYCHIATRIC ATTORNEY LOOKS AT HYPNOSIS
Bernard Diamond is both an attorney and a clinical professor of psychiatry. He often appears as "expert testimony" in court trials. Few men in America have the professional qualifications that he has. The California Law Review, asked him some Questions, and obtained the following answers:
"Can a hypnotized person be free from heightened suggestibility? The answer is no. Hypnosis is, almost by definition, a state of increased suggestibility.
"Can a hypnotist, through the exercise of skill and attention, avoid implanting suggestions in the mind of the hypnotized subject? No, such suggestions cannot be avoided.
"After awakening, can the hypnotic subject consistently recognize which of his thoughts, feelings, and memories were his own and which were implanted by the hypnotic experience? No. It is very difficult for human beings to recognize that some of their own thoughts might have been implanted and might not be the product of their own volition.
"Is it rare for a subject to believe that he was not hypnotized when in fact he was? No. On the contrary, very often hypnotic subjects refuse to believe they actually went into a trance.
"Can previously hypnotized persons restrict their memory to actual facts, free from fantasies and confabulations? No . . Out of a desire to comply with the hypnotist's suggestions, the subject will commonly fill in missing details by fantasy or confabulation. "After the hypnotic subject is awakened, do the distorting effects of the hypnosis disappear? The evidence. . is that the effect of suggestions made during hypnosis endures. "During or after hypnosis, can the hypnotist or the subject himself sort out fact from fantasy in the recall? Again the answer is no. No one, regardless of experience, can verify the accuracy of the hypnotically enhanced memory."-Bernard L. Diamond, "Inherent Problems in the use of Pretrial Hypnosis on a Prospective Witness," California Law Review, March 1980, p. 333-337.
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