Can cult group mind control techniques reverse your aging process?

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January 31, 5:37 PMSkepticism ExaminerRandall Fitzgerald


It was an experiment that didn’t set out to demonstrate how mind control techniques used by cult groups can work effectively in practice. But that’s one of the results from  a behavioral study done to test whether elderly people isolated together could so completely convince themselves they were young again that their bodies actually would begin to morph ‘backward’ in resonance .

What Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer wanted to know was whether the body clock of a group of men in their 70s and 80s could be re-set to 1959 by their collective mindset.

These old codgers were isolated at a New England hotel that had been decorated with only what the men would have seen there in their youth. They were instructed not to reminisce about that period in their lives, but to actually talk to each other as if that period was really happening again in present time. They were surrounded by reading material and television programs from that era to reinforce the effect. They had no access to current events or cell phone and computer distractions to break the spell.

After just a week, those in this experimental group (compared with a control group of similar aged men) measured significant physical and mental changes in a range of areas:
         --They had less arthritis;
         --More joint flexibility;
         --Improved posture and gait;
         --Better hearing and eyesight;
         --Sharper minds and better performance on mental tasks;
         --Elevated spirits and optimism about life.

Those in the experimental group even looked younger, as assessed in photos by outside observers. This was after only seven days! How far could they have progressed toward youthfulness if the experiment had lasted months or years?

Cult Group Programming Methods

Whether the cult group was the Heaven’s Gate UFO devotees in San Diego or the David Koresh religious zealots outside Waco, most cultic followings have evolved certain characteristics in common. Among them:
             --They are in a type of quarantine and mostly isolated from the influences of the outside world.
            --They follow instructions to repetitively act and even think in a particular way using programming ‘filters’ dictated by authority figures.
            --They generally set an intention and eventually come to expect a type of experience outcome, both individually and collectively. (I will delve into this angle as it relates to the creation of anomalous group phenomena in a future column.)

As a generation, Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are a kind of cultural cult group anyway. We identify, as do most generations, with our own set of experiential yardsticks—in our case, rock music, drug and consciousness raising experimentation, sexual liberation, mistrust or rebellion against authority institutions, ‘do your own thing’ individualism mixed with ‘the greater good’  group and planetary awareness, and a contagious nostalgia for what could have been or should have been.

What Professor Langer’s study findings seem to point us toward is the capacity for an entire generation to coalesce beliefs and attitudes and expectations into a coherent model or engine for self-transformation. Cult groups have farmed this territory before, mostly with toxic results.

But here, with Langer’s work, we have been shown the potential for creating a non-authoritarian and non-coercive formula for long term health, self-healing, and the delay, perhaps even the reversal, of an aging process most of us have taken for granted as irreversible and inevitable.

Come Together Right Now         

Imagine how the implications of these findings could reverberate to revolutionize the nursing home and retirement home industries.

 Imagine retirement communities in the near future modeled as Epcot-like theme parks. Woodstock Nation could cater to retirees for whom 60s cultural trappings might inspire a return to youthfulness. City streets of that era –such as Haight-Ashbury—could be re-created as a ‘flower child within us’ community center.

People could live in Star Trek-themed settings, Renaissance festival villages, or for the more traditional mindsets, Normal Rockwell painting recreations, Eisenhower ‘missile gap’ golf courses, or cowboy dude ranch adventurelands.

There could be Swingersville for the sex-conflicted and Prayertown for the God-addicted and Ozland for the fantasy-afflicted.

You could surround yourself with whatever floats your lifeboat and stimulates your precious bodily fluids to keep those hormones rejuvenating those body cells. Add to this mental programming a regimen of human growth hormone supplements, new replacement body parts as needed, and shoot fire, we’re good to go for the rest of this century!

Of course, there may be a downside for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The longer we draw Social Security, the faster that system will accelerate into bankruptcy, making our offspring wage slaves to our unconscious if not conscious yearning for immortality.

As for me, my ‘bucket list’ is still full. Fill it to the brim! Die now or pay later! Take a walk on the wild side! Wooden ships on the water! One pill makes you larger! Love the one you’re with! All we are is dust in the wind! Break on through to the other side!

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