07-14-2024, 08:14 PM
Cults, Meditation, Drugs and Psychosis
The Many Dangers of Spiritual Manipulation
A Midwestern Doctor
Feb 24, 2024
Story at a Glance:
•Spiritual practices are a double edged sword. On one hand one’s faith can be profoundly beneficial to their life, but on the other, there is a longstanding problem of spiritual practitioners becoming permanently damaged from their practices (e.g., psychosis).
•Much of this results from spiritual “teachers” promoting practices which give the participant a spiritual high (and hence makes them a loyal customer) rather than the safe and effective practices which are harder to monetize.
•One of the primary reasons cults form is because individuals (especially those in a vulnerable place) are highly susceptible to spiritual manipulation and rarely recognize when one of the common spiritual scams is pushed upon them.
•This article will discuss how spiritual manipulation contrasts with conventional forms of mind control, critical points to understand when attempting to rescue someone from a cult, ways to recognize dangerous spiritual practices, and the overlap between spiritual psychosis and drug induced (e.g., via psychedelics) psychosis.
One of the largest challenges I face with this newsletter is deciding what I want to write about, as since I have a moderately large following, choosing the "wrong "topic can ripple out into a variety of unintended consequences. Conversely, one of the greatest benefits, I have to being anonymous (while simultaneously being viewed as a credible source) is that gives me the wiggle room to touch up on more controversial topics no one else is talking about.
Despite all this, I have still had numerous topics I’ve wanted to discuss, which I have just not felt comfortable diving into. One is the subject of cults, drugs and harmful spiritual practices since on one hand, within the integrative health field, this issue comes up a lot, but simultaneously, discussing it requires you to broach a variety of topics far outside our accepted cultural discourse (which seriously calls my character into question for a more skeptical audience) and it's nearly impossible to go into the subject without rubbing people the wrong way (e.g., people’s egos often very invested in what they are doing regardless of how harmful it is to them).
These issues have repeatedly come up in my life and every 1-3 years I end up getting involved in a fairly stressful cult deprogramming situation. Recently, I found out that my nephew whom I had not been keeping tabs on got involved with a religious group that turned out to be dangerous cult and a lot of my time over the last month went into rescuing him from their clutches (which is part of why I have not written as much recently). Reflecting on what happened, I took this as a sign that I needed to begin exploring that topic here. Conversely, however, I would like to request that if this is not your cup of tea you don’t read this article or if you do, that you don’t hold what’s in here against me or view it as the typical content of this publication.
Note: for those of you who are not spiritually inclined, many of the cult dynamics that will be discussed here were also seen with how many individuals were brainwashed into becoming fanatically devoted to the COVID-19 vaccination program. Likewise, many of the approaches we’ve used to rescue people from cults are also often applicable to other interventions (e.g., someone suffering from drug abuse).
The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Spirituality and Integrative Medicine
One of the rarely appreciated facets of the integrative medicine field is how intertwined it is with one’s faith. For example, I’ve previously alluded to the fact I was privileged to know some of the most talented integrative doctors in the country (all of whom stay under the radar), and the regular success with which they treat otherwise “incurable” conditions has given me a very different perspective than many of my colleagues on what is actually medically possible.
In the article where I discussed their common habits and behaviors, I mentioned that for each of them, their faith and it’s practices was a central focus of their lives. This in turn was because:
•Their devotion to their faith made them much more resistant to being swayed by all the different forms of propaganda in our society that try to hijack your minds (best summarized by the classic adage, “if you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything”).
•Their faith made them strongly prioritize behaving in an ethical manner (e.g., going out of their way to advocate for their patients regardless of the pressures they got to not do so).
•Their spiritual practice helped them develop the perceptual capacity to recognize critical but subtle things occurring within their patients (and conversely, their innate perceptual gifts often was what drove them to pursue a spiritual path).
•Since a subset of the issues patients with complex issues face are spiritual in nature, being well-versed in a faith often made them much more able to help those patients.
Conversely, however, while there are many merits to spiritual practices (e.g., I think good meditation is one of the most valuable things one can do in life), bad spiritual practices can cause a lot of problems, and both I and my colleagues have had a lot of patients who had a lot of problems from unsafe spiritual practices.
In essence, a very analogous situation exists between the wild west of “non-mainstream” medicine and “non-mainstream” spirituality. Some of it is remarkably effective, some of it is marginal at best, and some is quite harmful. This becomes a huge problem because:
1. Very few people have the background which is necessary to recognize who is a good healer or spiritual teacher and who is not. In my case, beyond being extremely lucky to have met who I did, I had decades of experience in the alternative medical field. Because of this, the people I ultimately chose to really studying under were either people a lot of competent colleagues had endorsed or a relatively unknown person I happened to spend a brief period with whom I could immediately recognize was remarkably talented. Had I not had this background (and a willingness to accept people I’d previously spent a lot of time studying under actually weren’t that great) it would have been impossible for me to find my mentors. Since my background is quite rare, most of my colleagues never found people of a similar caliber to study under.
2. No objective criteria exists to evaluate the quality of spiritual teachers or alternative healers (or even for that, often, matter conventional doctors). In the past, this problem was solved by having “lineages” that built their credibility over centuries through the accomplishments of their adherents and maintained strict criteria for who would be certified in the lineage, but that method of quality control has largely died off since:
•Modern society places much less value on a longstanding lineage.
•Many of the existing lineages, like the rest of society have been eroded by the corrupting influences of our society.
•Many of those that remain don’t advertise publicly.
3. The people who tend to be really good do not publicly advertise what they do (as more people than they ever will need come to them through word of mouth and they conversely do not wish to get embroiled in all the issues publicly advertising themselves creates). Conversely, the people who aren’t so good aggressively advertise themselves and hence end up being the people who everyone sees. Because of this, I frequently hear people (e.g., patients) state they had to go through a lot of bad people before they found someone worth sticking with and how grateful they were to have found them.
4. While many people in the alternative field are drawn it because of a genuine desire to help people (e.g., I can state with certainty this is the case for many of the prominent COVID dissidents), many are instead drawn to it because they see an opportunity for fame money and power. This in turn leads to the sad situation I frequently observe such as someone speaking the standard lines used to attack conventional medicine (e.g., doctors just profit off treating symptoms because all they care about is money) then do the exact same thing to their patients.
5. Many people who get involved in the alternative field do not fully understand what they are dabbling in and tend to greatly overestimate their knowledge or competence over the subject (which again conventional doctors often do as well). In many cases, this just wastes people’s time (generally speaking I think holistic medicine is much safer than conventional medicine), but in other cases it significantly harms them. This is particularly true with spiritual practices.
Being Influenced
Human society has always revolved around trying to get others to support one’s agenda, and as a result, we are constantly bombarded with attempts to influence us.
Some are relatively harmless. For example, one my goals has been to have this publication be read, seriously considered, and supported by a lot of people. So, I’ve:
•Made sure to consistently publish good quality (and relevant) content.
•Made a point to be compassionate and considerate to those I interact with.
•Tried to be as transparent as possible with my thought process.
•Avoided doing anything I thought was potentially unethical.
In turn, my “influencing plan” successfully met my goals.
However, while many wish to influence others, the strategies they often pursue are often much less ethical and, in turn, highly manipulative people have always existed at every level of society.
Classically, if you want to manipulate someone, there are three ways to do it:
•Psychologically
•Hypnotically or physiologically
•Spiritually
Since the core of human psyche has remained relatively unchanged over the centuries, people inevitably stumble across (or copy) the same methods of manipulation and periodically, someone (e.g., Hitler) comes along who has a great deal of success with them. As marketing is essentially the “science of manipulating people” (to buy your product), in the last century, there has been an incredible degree of systematization and refinement of those existing methods. Worse still, the propaganda industry (termed "public relations") has adopted these tactics and weaponized against the entire society.
In my eyes, one of the biggest problems with manipulation is how resistant people’s egos are to admitting they got manipulated. For example, as I discussed recently, I am still in awe of how effective public relations (PR) is at manipulating people, best demonstrated by the fact the PR campaign used to sell the COVID-19 vaccines got a lot of people who you have never expected to vaccinate (e.g., people who actively spoke out against the childhood vaccine program or the American propaganda apparatus) to receive the most dubious vaccine in history. Likewise, one of the biggest problems with calculating the extent of the COVID vaccine injuries that have occurred is how many people are still in denial about the vaccine they took (and pushed on others) being dangerous.
The one “bright side” to all of this is that while modern science has been able to systematize psychological and hypnotic manipulation, it has not been able to do the same with spiritual manipulation as this cannot be done by a machine (rather it must be done by a human being) and hence cannot be scaled up for the entire population.
This is a “bright side” because spiritual manipulation is by far the most powerful (and hard to recognize) of the three methods but its use has been restricted to individuals who had an innate talent with it. Since individuals with that talent who have no qualms about using it for their own ends aren’t all that common, we only periodically see them rise to power, and most importantly, Public Relations has not been able to manufacture it at will.
However, they’ve tried and many groups try to scout individuals with the inherent capacity to spiritual manipulate others. For example, in the entertainment industry, they use the term “the ‘it’ factor” (defined in detail here) to describe individuals with an inexplicable charisma that talent scouts seek out to recruit and turn into stars (which has been confirmed to me by people in Hollywood). Likewise, I know of a few cases where a rising politician who had “the ‘it’ factor” began to be groomed by outsiders who entered their personal circle and eventually reached a very prominent role (e.g., the presidency).
One of the major contentions with “the ‘it’ factor” (and hence its name) is exactly where that inexplicable charisma comes from. I adamantly believe it is energetic or spiritual in nature, and there are quite a few public figures (e.g., Michael Jackson or Taylor Swift), for whom many in our circle can describe exactly what those individuals are (consciously or unconsciously) doing to influence their audience.
The major challenge we in turn face is how specific to get with elucidating the mechanisms of spiritual manipulation, as on one hand it’s helpful to everyone to know how it’s done (so they can be resistant to it). At the time however, we don’t actually want to tell anyone how to do it as it’s inevitable unscrupulous individuals will abuse that knowledge and we know of many truly tragic examples of this occurring (including some where their teacher admitted deeply regretting having taught the student who went on to do that).
Being Grounded
The importance of being “grounded” (and conversely identifying individuals who are suffering from not being grounded) is widely recognized within the spiritual field. However, while the need to be “grounded” is understood, there is much less clarity on exactly what that means or how to do it (e.g., electrically connecting yourself to the earth to reduce your positive charge will often improve your zeta potential and reduce anxiety is just one type of “grounding”).
Typically, ungrounded individuals are characterized by not being connected or integrated with their bodies (e.g., they are psychologically disassociated, poorly coordinated not in the present, or very much live in their heads). In turn, most reputable faiths recognize the importance of being grounded and emphasizes the importance of being integrated and connected with the physical body (e.g., by making the point always to feel your body).
Unfortunately, while the tendency to disconnect from ourselves has been an issue throughout history, the modern (digital) era has made this problem much worse since more and more of life revolves around rapidly transitioning images, ideas and data rather than being physically connected with reality.
In this article, I want to highlight two of the major issues with becoming ungrounded.
First, a great deal of our basic satisfaction and contentment in life comes from being grounded in our physicality. In turn, once this is lost we become lost souls desperately searching for meaning. Likewise, I and many others believe the two primary causes of anxiety (which is now the most common psychiatric condition as it affects almost half of all Americans) are a loss of physical grounding and the media relentlessly conditioning us to become disconnected from the present (e.g., much of marketing revolves around expectations in the future).
Note: many descriptions of this sense of being lost exist throughout literature. For example, I’ve seen it phrased as: “without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render their adoration.”
Second, physical grounding is one of the primary things that protects each human being from external influences. In turn, as this is lost individuals both become much more susceptible to external influences and much less able to realize what is happening to them. To illustrate:
•One of the things that always made it hard for me to fit in with society was my intrinsic resistance to hypnosis (something which often underlies the cohesion within social groups). This was because anytime I began to be influenced by something, I would immediately notice something in my body was changing (e.g., my heart rate, a muscle tightening up, an inexplicable emotion rising up or the pacing of my thoughts shifting) at which point my first thought would be to try to recognize what was triggering this and then get upset with the trigger for attempting to violate me.
This in turn is why I’ve always had such a strong interest in propaganda; I would constantly notice subliminal ways the media (e.g., music, the news, the internet, written pieces) were doing this, and as time went on I started noticing how systematically and repetitively it was done (especially by Big Tech).
Note: it’s impossible to avoid influencing someone within human communication. For example, my goal here is to empower people with what I believe to be true and to move readers into a positive emotional state where they are not paralyzed by fear, but while that is arguably “good” to do, it still is me forcing my agenda upon you, which is part of why I try so hard to (concisely) be transparent about exactly what I am doing.
Susceptibility to Influence
At any given time, a constellation of factors determine how susceptible one is to being influenced. Some (e.g., how innately grounded one is) remain relatively static, others gradually change (e.g., how stressful one’s life is or how desperate one is for a life purpose to attach themselves to) and some can change quite quickly (e.g, the current “health” of the individual or how strong of an external influence they are exposed to).
I believe one problem in medicine helps to illustrate much of this.
The medical profession believes a doctor (and healthcare workers) should not under any circumstances engage in sexual relations with a patient. In turn, the penalties for doing so are quite strict (e.g., a consensual relationship is often automatic grounds for the revocation of a license while some states go even further and make the activity a felony) and when the occasional sexual predator who has victimized numerous patients is identified (which seems to happen every few years) the justice system makes it very clear to the public the individual will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
As a result, almost all doctors in practice believe they would not under any circumstances become sexually involved with a patient. Nonetheless, it still happens (I even know of a few cases where former patients who married their physicians).
In all the cases I’ve looked, I noticed two factors were commonly at play:
•First, the doctor (or other healthcare worker) was in a particularly vulnerable place of their life (e.g., a bankruptcy, a traumatic divorce, a new workload which was too stressful for them to handle, a recent death of someone very close to them or another catastrophic loss).
•Second, the individual they became involved with had an energetic presence the doctor had never encountered before which was overpowering and caused them to experience a lot of intense or tumultuous things (e.g., emotions) the doctor had never experienced before which was eventually rationalized as a need to be with the patient.
In turn, when both the first and second were at play and the patient was attracted to the doctor, the doctor often ended up engaging in a relationship they previously believed they would never get themselves into.
While the above example seems a bit extreme and not applicable (as most of you aren’t doctors), the reality is very similar things happen all the time. For example, I’ve lost count of how many people have lamented the relationship they are stuck in, and then noted that one or both of the above factors was what drew them into it.
In turn, I would argue there are two critical points to take from this:
The first is that individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” often have that energetic presence and hence cause many people to be drawn to them even though those drawn can’t put into words why they are.
Note: many other individuals can have weaker versions of “the ‘it’ factor” that only specific people are inexplicably drawn to (e.g., sometimes this is labeled as being convinced the individual is their “twin flame”), while even weaker forms of it are often just referred to as having “chemistry.” This “draw” in turn is often what sparks sexual relationships, and my present perspective is that while compatibility is critical in dating, the stronger this pull is, the less likely the relationship is to be healthy and sustainable (e.g., I’ve watched numerous “twin flames” rapidly transition from being madly in love with each other to permanently despising each other, sometimes in fairly dramatic ways).
The second is that a variety of ways exist to protect yourself from this (e.g., becoming more grounded). I believe one of the most important strategies is simply becoming aware that energetic influences exist so they no longer become this overpowering experience that draws them in. For example:
•One of my close friends crossed paths with a notorious public figure who was notorious for using his “it” factor to both seduce women and gain political power. When he did that to her, she first felt an overpowering draw to him and began to fall into his sway, then took a step back as she had the thought “oh this must be one of the [redacted] techniques my guru told me about,” at which point she completely lost her attraction to him (which left him quite confused for a long time as almost no one else had rebuffed his advances). After that she began to look for it, and realized he just did the same thing again and again on the young women he met.
Note: if you know who I am referring to, please do not mention his name in the comments; that stipulation was what I agreed to with her in return for sharing this here.
•When I was younger I became involved with people I just felt I had to be connected to (e.g., they had an intoxicating presence). This puzzled me as I often did not at all approve of their character, and over time, I realized that the overwhelming experience I had around them was simply a product of how a specific energetic quality they had interacted with me, at which point, like my friend, I became immune to it.
Note: It’s important to recognize this principle does not just hold true for romantic interactions—it can also hold true for platonic ones (e.g., I had friends of the same gender I felt an overwhelming pull towards, became very attached to and ultimately was involved with for years despite it not being at all healthy for me to do so).
Mass Formations
Two years ago, Robert Malone introduced Matthias Desmet’s mass formation hypothesis to this movement. It was controversial since its suggestion that much of the evil we’d seen over the last few years was something which could emerge spontaneously in the correct conditions (as this implied the psychopaths who engineered this were not the ones at fault) but simultaneously embraced by many because they felt it at last put words into what they had been observing.
This hypothesis essentially argues that:
•Crowds can take on a life of their own and before long pull their participants into an altered state of mind where many begin to do unspeakable actions no one imagined could ever be possible.
•The perpetuity of a mass formation is largely based upon whether or not a vocal minority of the population is willing to take on the personal risk required to speak out against it (which is why it’s so important for those who can to speak out against them).
•Certain conditions such as being disconnected from everything or a severe source of anxiety gripping the society make individuals much more susceptible to falling into a mass formation.
Note: these were the exact same conditions that existed during the COVID lockdowns.
•The most successful tyrants in history (e.g., Hitler, Stalin, Mao) controlled a society which was in the grip of a mass formation and enacted a variety of policies and propaganda presentations which further reinforced the mass formation.
Note: while it did not happen to those three, Desmet cited many other cases where the mass formation became a self-perpetuating entity which devoured the society (including those who had initially championed it).
I immediately supported Desmet’s position because it both encapsulated much of what I’d seen throughout my lifetime and also because he provided an unusual degree of accuracy over what had transpired in those totalitarian states I almost never see provided within the literature.
Note: much of what happened in those states is nearly impossible to put into words, and I only know of because I am close to perceptive individuals who grew up within them. The fear many of us have is that we are extremely vulnerable to repeating those mistakes of the past because there are now so few people who are still alive who directly experienced what happened in these nightmares is a large part of what motivates to write here.
Furthermore, I believe there are three important but rarely recognized aspects of this phenomena.
First, much of what Desmet described (e.g., the inexplicable sway people are pulled under, the hypnotic current that forms between them, and the rapid transmission of states of consciousness between the participants) is energetically mediated. This for example is why individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” often initiate the creation of mass formations and why (in the wrong settings such as a war zone) you can watch a malevolent emotion rapidly spread through a crowd, which is following by something inconceivable like a terrifying madness gripping the crowd or them transforming into monsters in the blink of an eye.
Note: it’s very difficult to appreciate what I am describing (or even believe it’s possible) unless you’ve seen it firsthand.
Second, less intense mass formations exist around us all the time. For example, any social group or identity will often develop a shared emotional resonance and linguistic style members of the group will adopt to fulfill their subconscious desire to belong to the collective. This for instance is why many nonsensical ideologies can perpetuate as while their specific words are relatively meaningless, they all reinforce the underlying resonance of the group. To illustrate, a recent article, “The Deadly Rise of Scientism” discussed how randomly generated text (i.e. nonsense) that mimics the cadence of post-modernist or new age writings often can pass for being authentic to members of those groups.
Note: while I strongly believe patients should be informed and have access to support groups, I now often recommend my patients leave them as I find many who participate in these groups latch onto unhealthy beliefs being continually reinforced within the collectives of those groups (e.g., “we are all so damaged” “there is no hope” etc).
Finally, whenever you start to look into cults, you will typically find some type of mass formation is at work. I share this because in a cult deprogramming I was involved in a year ago, I realized what the person was describing perfectly matched what Desmet had shared with Tucker Carlson about mass formations, and in turn, once the individual was at the place they were willing to listen, sharing that excellent interview played a pivotal role in breaking them out of the cult.
Note: one of the major social challenges I faced throughout life was how much internal resistance I’ve had to surrendering myself into the mass formation of a group—something which makes it very hard to fit in.
Cults
Anytime groups of people gather together for a shared ideology, they will develop varying degrees of cult like behavior. Exactly where you draw the line on what degree of that constitutes a cult is hard to say—everyone agrees Jim Jones (who inspired the phrase ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’) was one of the most infamous cult leaders in history, but very different perspectives exist on how to describe the zealots trapped within the COVID-19 mass formation (e.g., many still think they were completely sane, while others ofter refer to them as the “Branch Covidians”).
Note: many of my colleagues refer to modern medicine as a cult because of how deeply held many of its toxic beliefs are and because of how quickly collective psychoses can spread through the medical field (e.g., what we saw throughout COVID-19).
In turn, cults are an enduring issue with almost every faith. For example, by the criteria that exists in almost every one of them, Jesus Christ was a genuine spiritual being and a teacher of great integrity. Yet, since Jesus’s time, countless false prophets claiming to act in his name have done unspeakable acts (e.g., Jim Jones did this) that go against every single teaching of Christ, and sadly I can name individuals who have done the same for almost every other major religion (e.g., I’ve come across a few cults run by a psychopath who has convinced everyone he held the true teachings of the Buddha—and sometimes even genuinely believe he was Buddha’s reincarnation).
Typically cults form in one of three ways:
•A Cult Leader Creates It
•A Mass Formation Emerges On It’s Own
•Both happen concurrently.
Note: mass formations being linked to cults explain why these organizations (unlike other predatory businesses) often become focused on more than than just making money and why they often become so hard for their leaders to control.
Cult leaders in turn tend to come from two sources:
1. Individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” who then use their charisma to attract a following.
2. Individuals who have uncovered something inspiring, get in over their heads while promoting it, get placed into a leadership position, and then rapidly become transformed by their position (which they were not prepared to handle).
In turn, there are a few key points to take from this.
First, the degree of charisma a cult leader has varies greatly. Typically, the more innate charisma they have (due to their energetic makeup), the less they look for outside help. Conversely, as the leader has less charisma, they will resort to some combination of:
•Asking outside forces to provide that charisma (e.g., this is a common reason why people engage in channeling).
•Psychologically manipulating their group (e.g., by coming up with an endless list of reasons why people must devote themselves to the cult, doing lots of things to “unground” them such as subjecting them to sleep deprivation in order to make them easier to manipulate, or isolating them from anyone outside the group so no one can break the leader’s spell).
Note: a good case can also be made that all of the above occurs in many other areas like the training one goes through to become a doctor.
Secondly, since cults (and the energetic manipulation that maintains them) have had much more time to develop in Asia than they have in the Western World, the “marketplace” for cults tends to be more competitive and selects for people who are very good at spiritually manipulating their groups. Conversely, while individuals like that are rare to find in the Western World, modern technology (like NLP) has bridged that gap here.
For example, a common marketing technique is to combine an (often repetitive) activity that invests you in the product with something that triggers a dopamine spike, as doing these in concert with each other creates an addiction to the product.
In turn, many examples exist showing how big tech has done this to increase business (e.g., with blue light from screens creates addictive serotonin releases, I’ve observed certain music playing programs will sometimes slightly speed up your favorite songs which in parallel speeds up your nervous system not unlike a stimulant, and it is now widely acknowledged that social media is structured to create addictive dopamine spikes in the users).
Cults often use similar approaches, especially those that are focused on selling their doctrine to as many people as possible. For example, in a manner somewhat analogous to how Big Tech addicts you to their products, I’ve come across quite a few groups which covertly (or overtly) drugged their recipients with illicit drugs that caused them to have euphoric experiences cult members were trained to associate with the cult’s messages. Likewise these groups often use some type of easy method to create a spiritual high and then convince each follower that high validates the importance of the cult’s doctrines.
The Many Dangers of Spiritual Manipulation
A Midwestern Doctor
Feb 24, 2024
Story at a Glance:
•Spiritual practices are a double edged sword. On one hand one’s faith can be profoundly beneficial to their life, but on the other, there is a longstanding problem of spiritual practitioners becoming permanently damaged from their practices (e.g., psychosis).
•Much of this results from spiritual “teachers” promoting practices which give the participant a spiritual high (and hence makes them a loyal customer) rather than the safe and effective practices which are harder to monetize.
•One of the primary reasons cults form is because individuals (especially those in a vulnerable place) are highly susceptible to spiritual manipulation and rarely recognize when one of the common spiritual scams is pushed upon them.
•This article will discuss how spiritual manipulation contrasts with conventional forms of mind control, critical points to understand when attempting to rescue someone from a cult, ways to recognize dangerous spiritual practices, and the overlap between spiritual psychosis and drug induced (e.g., via psychedelics) psychosis.
One of the largest challenges I face with this newsletter is deciding what I want to write about, as since I have a moderately large following, choosing the "wrong "topic can ripple out into a variety of unintended consequences. Conversely, one of the greatest benefits, I have to being anonymous (while simultaneously being viewed as a credible source) is that gives me the wiggle room to touch up on more controversial topics no one else is talking about.
Despite all this, I have still had numerous topics I’ve wanted to discuss, which I have just not felt comfortable diving into. One is the subject of cults, drugs and harmful spiritual practices since on one hand, within the integrative health field, this issue comes up a lot, but simultaneously, discussing it requires you to broach a variety of topics far outside our accepted cultural discourse (which seriously calls my character into question for a more skeptical audience) and it's nearly impossible to go into the subject without rubbing people the wrong way (e.g., people’s egos often very invested in what they are doing regardless of how harmful it is to them).
These issues have repeatedly come up in my life and every 1-3 years I end up getting involved in a fairly stressful cult deprogramming situation. Recently, I found out that my nephew whom I had not been keeping tabs on got involved with a religious group that turned out to be dangerous cult and a lot of my time over the last month went into rescuing him from their clutches (which is part of why I have not written as much recently). Reflecting on what happened, I took this as a sign that I needed to begin exploring that topic here. Conversely, however, I would like to request that if this is not your cup of tea you don’t read this article or if you do, that you don’t hold what’s in here against me or view it as the typical content of this publication.
Note: for those of you who are not spiritually inclined, many of the cult dynamics that will be discussed here were also seen with how many individuals were brainwashed into becoming fanatically devoted to the COVID-19 vaccination program. Likewise, many of the approaches we’ve used to rescue people from cults are also often applicable to other interventions (e.g., someone suffering from drug abuse).
The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Spirituality and Integrative Medicine
One of the rarely appreciated facets of the integrative medicine field is how intertwined it is with one’s faith. For example, I’ve previously alluded to the fact I was privileged to know some of the most talented integrative doctors in the country (all of whom stay under the radar), and the regular success with which they treat otherwise “incurable” conditions has given me a very different perspective than many of my colleagues on what is actually medically possible.
In the article where I discussed their common habits and behaviors, I mentioned that for each of them, their faith and it’s practices was a central focus of their lives. This in turn was because:
•Their devotion to their faith made them much more resistant to being swayed by all the different forms of propaganda in our society that try to hijack your minds (best summarized by the classic adage, “if you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything”).
•Their faith made them strongly prioritize behaving in an ethical manner (e.g., going out of their way to advocate for their patients regardless of the pressures they got to not do so).
•Their spiritual practice helped them develop the perceptual capacity to recognize critical but subtle things occurring within their patients (and conversely, their innate perceptual gifts often was what drove them to pursue a spiritual path).
•Since a subset of the issues patients with complex issues face are spiritual in nature, being well-versed in a faith often made them much more able to help those patients.
Conversely, however, while there are many merits to spiritual practices (e.g., I think good meditation is one of the most valuable things one can do in life), bad spiritual practices can cause a lot of problems, and both I and my colleagues have had a lot of patients who had a lot of problems from unsafe spiritual practices.
In essence, a very analogous situation exists between the wild west of “non-mainstream” medicine and “non-mainstream” spirituality. Some of it is remarkably effective, some of it is marginal at best, and some is quite harmful. This becomes a huge problem because:
1. Very few people have the background which is necessary to recognize who is a good healer or spiritual teacher and who is not. In my case, beyond being extremely lucky to have met who I did, I had decades of experience in the alternative medical field. Because of this, the people I ultimately chose to really studying under were either people a lot of competent colleagues had endorsed or a relatively unknown person I happened to spend a brief period with whom I could immediately recognize was remarkably talented. Had I not had this background (and a willingness to accept people I’d previously spent a lot of time studying under actually weren’t that great) it would have been impossible for me to find my mentors. Since my background is quite rare, most of my colleagues never found people of a similar caliber to study under.
2. No objective criteria exists to evaluate the quality of spiritual teachers or alternative healers (or even for that, often, matter conventional doctors). In the past, this problem was solved by having “lineages” that built their credibility over centuries through the accomplishments of their adherents and maintained strict criteria for who would be certified in the lineage, but that method of quality control has largely died off since:
•Modern society places much less value on a longstanding lineage.
•Many of the existing lineages, like the rest of society have been eroded by the corrupting influences of our society.
•Many of those that remain don’t advertise publicly.
3. The people who tend to be really good do not publicly advertise what they do (as more people than they ever will need come to them through word of mouth and they conversely do not wish to get embroiled in all the issues publicly advertising themselves creates). Conversely, the people who aren’t so good aggressively advertise themselves and hence end up being the people who everyone sees. Because of this, I frequently hear people (e.g., patients) state they had to go through a lot of bad people before they found someone worth sticking with and how grateful they were to have found them.
4. While many people in the alternative field are drawn it because of a genuine desire to help people (e.g., I can state with certainty this is the case for many of the prominent COVID dissidents), many are instead drawn to it because they see an opportunity for fame money and power. This in turn leads to the sad situation I frequently observe such as someone speaking the standard lines used to attack conventional medicine (e.g., doctors just profit off treating symptoms because all they care about is money) then do the exact same thing to their patients.
5. Many people who get involved in the alternative field do not fully understand what they are dabbling in and tend to greatly overestimate their knowledge or competence over the subject (which again conventional doctors often do as well). In many cases, this just wastes people’s time (generally speaking I think holistic medicine is much safer than conventional medicine), but in other cases it significantly harms them. This is particularly true with spiritual practices.
Being Influenced
Human society has always revolved around trying to get others to support one’s agenda, and as a result, we are constantly bombarded with attempts to influence us.
Some are relatively harmless. For example, one my goals has been to have this publication be read, seriously considered, and supported by a lot of people. So, I’ve:
•Made sure to consistently publish good quality (and relevant) content.
•Made a point to be compassionate and considerate to those I interact with.
•Tried to be as transparent as possible with my thought process.
•Avoided doing anything I thought was potentially unethical.
In turn, my “influencing plan” successfully met my goals.
However, while many wish to influence others, the strategies they often pursue are often much less ethical and, in turn, highly manipulative people have always existed at every level of society.
Classically, if you want to manipulate someone, there are three ways to do it:
•Psychologically
•Hypnotically or physiologically
•Spiritually
Since the core of human psyche has remained relatively unchanged over the centuries, people inevitably stumble across (or copy) the same methods of manipulation and periodically, someone (e.g., Hitler) comes along who has a great deal of success with them. As marketing is essentially the “science of manipulating people” (to buy your product), in the last century, there has been an incredible degree of systematization and refinement of those existing methods. Worse still, the propaganda industry (termed "public relations") has adopted these tactics and weaponized against the entire society.
In my eyes, one of the biggest problems with manipulation is how resistant people’s egos are to admitting they got manipulated. For example, as I discussed recently, I am still in awe of how effective public relations (PR) is at manipulating people, best demonstrated by the fact the PR campaign used to sell the COVID-19 vaccines got a lot of people who you have never expected to vaccinate (e.g., people who actively spoke out against the childhood vaccine program or the American propaganda apparatus) to receive the most dubious vaccine in history. Likewise, one of the biggest problems with calculating the extent of the COVID vaccine injuries that have occurred is how many people are still in denial about the vaccine they took (and pushed on others) being dangerous.
The one “bright side” to all of this is that while modern science has been able to systematize psychological and hypnotic manipulation, it has not been able to do the same with spiritual manipulation as this cannot be done by a machine (rather it must be done by a human being) and hence cannot be scaled up for the entire population.
This is a “bright side” because spiritual manipulation is by far the most powerful (and hard to recognize) of the three methods but its use has been restricted to individuals who had an innate talent with it. Since individuals with that talent who have no qualms about using it for their own ends aren’t all that common, we only periodically see them rise to power, and most importantly, Public Relations has not been able to manufacture it at will.
However, they’ve tried and many groups try to scout individuals with the inherent capacity to spiritual manipulate others. For example, in the entertainment industry, they use the term “the ‘it’ factor” (defined in detail here) to describe individuals with an inexplicable charisma that talent scouts seek out to recruit and turn into stars (which has been confirmed to me by people in Hollywood). Likewise, I know of a few cases where a rising politician who had “the ‘it’ factor” began to be groomed by outsiders who entered their personal circle and eventually reached a very prominent role (e.g., the presidency).
One of the major contentions with “the ‘it’ factor” (and hence its name) is exactly where that inexplicable charisma comes from. I adamantly believe it is energetic or spiritual in nature, and there are quite a few public figures (e.g., Michael Jackson or Taylor Swift), for whom many in our circle can describe exactly what those individuals are (consciously or unconsciously) doing to influence their audience.
The major challenge we in turn face is how specific to get with elucidating the mechanisms of spiritual manipulation, as on one hand it’s helpful to everyone to know how it’s done (so they can be resistant to it). At the time however, we don’t actually want to tell anyone how to do it as it’s inevitable unscrupulous individuals will abuse that knowledge and we know of many truly tragic examples of this occurring (including some where their teacher admitted deeply regretting having taught the student who went on to do that).
Being Grounded
The importance of being “grounded” (and conversely identifying individuals who are suffering from not being grounded) is widely recognized within the spiritual field. However, while the need to be “grounded” is understood, there is much less clarity on exactly what that means or how to do it (e.g., electrically connecting yourself to the earth to reduce your positive charge will often improve your zeta potential and reduce anxiety is just one type of “grounding”).
Typically, ungrounded individuals are characterized by not being connected or integrated with their bodies (e.g., they are psychologically disassociated, poorly coordinated not in the present, or very much live in their heads). In turn, most reputable faiths recognize the importance of being grounded and emphasizes the importance of being integrated and connected with the physical body (e.g., by making the point always to feel your body).
Unfortunately, while the tendency to disconnect from ourselves has been an issue throughout history, the modern (digital) era has made this problem much worse since more and more of life revolves around rapidly transitioning images, ideas and data rather than being physically connected with reality.
In this article, I want to highlight two of the major issues with becoming ungrounded.
First, a great deal of our basic satisfaction and contentment in life comes from being grounded in our physicality. In turn, once this is lost we become lost souls desperately searching for meaning. Likewise, I and many others believe the two primary causes of anxiety (which is now the most common psychiatric condition as it affects almost half of all Americans) are a loss of physical grounding and the media relentlessly conditioning us to become disconnected from the present (e.g., much of marketing revolves around expectations in the future).
Note: many descriptions of this sense of being lost exist throughout literature. For example, I’ve seen it phrased as: “without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render their adoration.”
Second, physical grounding is one of the primary things that protects each human being from external influences. In turn, as this is lost individuals both become much more susceptible to external influences and much less able to realize what is happening to them. To illustrate:
•One of the things that always made it hard for me to fit in with society was my intrinsic resistance to hypnosis (something which often underlies the cohesion within social groups). This was because anytime I began to be influenced by something, I would immediately notice something in my body was changing (e.g., my heart rate, a muscle tightening up, an inexplicable emotion rising up or the pacing of my thoughts shifting) at which point my first thought would be to try to recognize what was triggering this and then get upset with the trigger for attempting to violate me.
This in turn is why I’ve always had such a strong interest in propaganda; I would constantly notice subliminal ways the media (e.g., music, the news, the internet, written pieces) were doing this, and as time went on I started noticing how systematically and repetitively it was done (especially by Big Tech).
Note: it’s impossible to avoid influencing someone within human communication. For example, my goal here is to empower people with what I believe to be true and to move readers into a positive emotional state where they are not paralyzed by fear, but while that is arguably “good” to do, it still is me forcing my agenda upon you, which is part of why I try so hard to (concisely) be transparent about exactly what I am doing.
Susceptibility to Influence
At any given time, a constellation of factors determine how susceptible one is to being influenced. Some (e.g., how innately grounded one is) remain relatively static, others gradually change (e.g., how stressful one’s life is or how desperate one is for a life purpose to attach themselves to) and some can change quite quickly (e.g, the current “health” of the individual or how strong of an external influence they are exposed to).
I believe one problem in medicine helps to illustrate much of this.
The medical profession believes a doctor (and healthcare workers) should not under any circumstances engage in sexual relations with a patient. In turn, the penalties for doing so are quite strict (e.g., a consensual relationship is often automatic grounds for the revocation of a license while some states go even further and make the activity a felony) and when the occasional sexual predator who has victimized numerous patients is identified (which seems to happen every few years) the justice system makes it very clear to the public the individual will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
As a result, almost all doctors in practice believe they would not under any circumstances become sexually involved with a patient. Nonetheless, it still happens (I even know of a few cases where former patients who married their physicians).
In all the cases I’ve looked, I noticed two factors were commonly at play:
•First, the doctor (or other healthcare worker) was in a particularly vulnerable place of their life (e.g., a bankruptcy, a traumatic divorce, a new workload which was too stressful for them to handle, a recent death of someone very close to them or another catastrophic loss).
•Second, the individual they became involved with had an energetic presence the doctor had never encountered before which was overpowering and caused them to experience a lot of intense or tumultuous things (e.g., emotions) the doctor had never experienced before which was eventually rationalized as a need to be with the patient.
In turn, when both the first and second were at play and the patient was attracted to the doctor, the doctor often ended up engaging in a relationship they previously believed they would never get themselves into.
While the above example seems a bit extreme and not applicable (as most of you aren’t doctors), the reality is very similar things happen all the time. For example, I’ve lost count of how many people have lamented the relationship they are stuck in, and then noted that one or both of the above factors was what drew them into it.
In turn, I would argue there are two critical points to take from this:
The first is that individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” often have that energetic presence and hence cause many people to be drawn to them even though those drawn can’t put into words why they are.
Note: many other individuals can have weaker versions of “the ‘it’ factor” that only specific people are inexplicably drawn to (e.g., sometimes this is labeled as being convinced the individual is their “twin flame”), while even weaker forms of it are often just referred to as having “chemistry.” This “draw” in turn is often what sparks sexual relationships, and my present perspective is that while compatibility is critical in dating, the stronger this pull is, the less likely the relationship is to be healthy and sustainable (e.g., I’ve watched numerous “twin flames” rapidly transition from being madly in love with each other to permanently despising each other, sometimes in fairly dramatic ways).
The second is that a variety of ways exist to protect yourself from this (e.g., becoming more grounded). I believe one of the most important strategies is simply becoming aware that energetic influences exist so they no longer become this overpowering experience that draws them in. For example:
•One of my close friends crossed paths with a notorious public figure who was notorious for using his “it” factor to both seduce women and gain political power. When he did that to her, she first felt an overpowering draw to him and began to fall into his sway, then took a step back as she had the thought “oh this must be one of the [redacted] techniques my guru told me about,” at which point she completely lost her attraction to him (which left him quite confused for a long time as almost no one else had rebuffed his advances). After that she began to look for it, and realized he just did the same thing again and again on the young women he met.
Note: if you know who I am referring to, please do not mention his name in the comments; that stipulation was what I agreed to with her in return for sharing this here.
•When I was younger I became involved with people I just felt I had to be connected to (e.g., they had an intoxicating presence). This puzzled me as I often did not at all approve of their character, and over time, I realized that the overwhelming experience I had around them was simply a product of how a specific energetic quality they had interacted with me, at which point, like my friend, I became immune to it.
Note: It’s important to recognize this principle does not just hold true for romantic interactions—it can also hold true for platonic ones (e.g., I had friends of the same gender I felt an overwhelming pull towards, became very attached to and ultimately was involved with for years despite it not being at all healthy for me to do so).
Mass Formations
Two years ago, Robert Malone introduced Matthias Desmet’s mass formation hypothesis to this movement. It was controversial since its suggestion that much of the evil we’d seen over the last few years was something which could emerge spontaneously in the correct conditions (as this implied the psychopaths who engineered this were not the ones at fault) but simultaneously embraced by many because they felt it at last put words into what they had been observing.
This hypothesis essentially argues that:
•Crowds can take on a life of their own and before long pull their participants into an altered state of mind where many begin to do unspeakable actions no one imagined could ever be possible.
•The perpetuity of a mass formation is largely based upon whether or not a vocal minority of the population is willing to take on the personal risk required to speak out against it (which is why it’s so important for those who can to speak out against them).
•Certain conditions such as being disconnected from everything or a severe source of anxiety gripping the society make individuals much more susceptible to falling into a mass formation.
Note: these were the exact same conditions that existed during the COVID lockdowns.
•The most successful tyrants in history (e.g., Hitler, Stalin, Mao) controlled a society which was in the grip of a mass formation and enacted a variety of policies and propaganda presentations which further reinforced the mass formation.
Note: while it did not happen to those three, Desmet cited many other cases where the mass formation became a self-perpetuating entity which devoured the society (including those who had initially championed it).
I immediately supported Desmet’s position because it both encapsulated much of what I’d seen throughout my lifetime and also because he provided an unusual degree of accuracy over what had transpired in those totalitarian states I almost never see provided within the literature.
Note: much of what happened in those states is nearly impossible to put into words, and I only know of because I am close to perceptive individuals who grew up within them. The fear many of us have is that we are extremely vulnerable to repeating those mistakes of the past because there are now so few people who are still alive who directly experienced what happened in these nightmares is a large part of what motivates to write here.
Furthermore, I believe there are three important but rarely recognized aspects of this phenomena.
First, much of what Desmet described (e.g., the inexplicable sway people are pulled under, the hypnotic current that forms between them, and the rapid transmission of states of consciousness between the participants) is energetically mediated. This for example is why individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” often initiate the creation of mass formations and why (in the wrong settings such as a war zone) you can watch a malevolent emotion rapidly spread through a crowd, which is following by something inconceivable like a terrifying madness gripping the crowd or them transforming into monsters in the blink of an eye.
Note: it’s very difficult to appreciate what I am describing (or even believe it’s possible) unless you’ve seen it firsthand.
Second, less intense mass formations exist around us all the time. For example, any social group or identity will often develop a shared emotional resonance and linguistic style members of the group will adopt to fulfill their subconscious desire to belong to the collective. This for instance is why many nonsensical ideologies can perpetuate as while their specific words are relatively meaningless, they all reinforce the underlying resonance of the group. To illustrate, a recent article, “The Deadly Rise of Scientism” discussed how randomly generated text (i.e. nonsense) that mimics the cadence of post-modernist or new age writings often can pass for being authentic to members of those groups.
Note: while I strongly believe patients should be informed and have access to support groups, I now often recommend my patients leave them as I find many who participate in these groups latch onto unhealthy beliefs being continually reinforced within the collectives of those groups (e.g., “we are all so damaged” “there is no hope” etc).
Finally, whenever you start to look into cults, you will typically find some type of mass formation is at work. I share this because in a cult deprogramming I was involved in a year ago, I realized what the person was describing perfectly matched what Desmet had shared with Tucker Carlson about mass formations, and in turn, once the individual was at the place they were willing to listen, sharing that excellent interview played a pivotal role in breaking them out of the cult.
Note: one of the major social challenges I faced throughout life was how much internal resistance I’ve had to surrendering myself into the mass formation of a group—something which makes it very hard to fit in.
Cults
Anytime groups of people gather together for a shared ideology, they will develop varying degrees of cult like behavior. Exactly where you draw the line on what degree of that constitutes a cult is hard to say—everyone agrees Jim Jones (who inspired the phrase ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’) was one of the most infamous cult leaders in history, but very different perspectives exist on how to describe the zealots trapped within the COVID-19 mass formation (e.g., many still think they were completely sane, while others ofter refer to them as the “Branch Covidians”).
Note: many of my colleagues refer to modern medicine as a cult because of how deeply held many of its toxic beliefs are and because of how quickly collective psychoses can spread through the medical field (e.g., what we saw throughout COVID-19).
In turn, cults are an enduring issue with almost every faith. For example, by the criteria that exists in almost every one of them, Jesus Christ was a genuine spiritual being and a teacher of great integrity. Yet, since Jesus’s time, countless false prophets claiming to act in his name have done unspeakable acts (e.g., Jim Jones did this) that go against every single teaching of Christ, and sadly I can name individuals who have done the same for almost every other major religion (e.g., I’ve come across a few cults run by a psychopath who has convinced everyone he held the true teachings of the Buddha—and sometimes even genuinely believe he was Buddha’s reincarnation).
Typically cults form in one of three ways:
•A Cult Leader Creates It
•A Mass Formation Emerges On It’s Own
•Both happen concurrently.
Note: mass formations being linked to cults explain why these organizations (unlike other predatory businesses) often become focused on more than than just making money and why they often become so hard for their leaders to control.
Cult leaders in turn tend to come from two sources:
1. Individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” who then use their charisma to attract a following.
2. Individuals who have uncovered something inspiring, get in over their heads while promoting it, get placed into a leadership position, and then rapidly become transformed by their position (which they were not prepared to handle).
In turn, there are a few key points to take from this.
First, the degree of charisma a cult leader has varies greatly. Typically, the more innate charisma they have (due to their energetic makeup), the less they look for outside help. Conversely, as the leader has less charisma, they will resort to some combination of:
•Asking outside forces to provide that charisma (e.g., this is a common reason why people engage in channeling).
•Psychologically manipulating their group (e.g., by coming up with an endless list of reasons why people must devote themselves to the cult, doing lots of things to “unground” them such as subjecting them to sleep deprivation in order to make them easier to manipulate, or isolating them from anyone outside the group so no one can break the leader’s spell).
Note: a good case can also be made that all of the above occurs in many other areas like the training one goes through to become a doctor.
Secondly, since cults (and the energetic manipulation that maintains them) have had much more time to develop in Asia than they have in the Western World, the “marketplace” for cults tends to be more competitive and selects for people who are very good at spiritually manipulating their groups. Conversely, while individuals like that are rare to find in the Western World, modern technology (like NLP) has bridged that gap here.
For example, a common marketing technique is to combine an (often repetitive) activity that invests you in the product with something that triggers a dopamine spike, as doing these in concert with each other creates an addiction to the product.
In turn, many examples exist showing how big tech has done this to increase business (e.g., with blue light from screens creates addictive serotonin releases, I’ve observed certain music playing programs will sometimes slightly speed up your favorite songs which in parallel speeds up your nervous system not unlike a stimulant, and it is now widely acknowledged that social media is structured to create addictive dopamine spikes in the users).
Cults often use similar approaches, especially those that are focused on selling their doctrine to as many people as possible. For example, in a manner somewhat analogous to how Big Tech addicts you to their products, I’ve come across quite a few groups which covertly (or overtly) drugged their recipients with illicit drugs that caused them to have euphoric experiences cult members were trained to associate with the cult’s messages. Likewise these groups often use some type of easy method to create a spiritual high and then convince each follower that high validates the importance of the cult’s doctrines.