Sikhs & Kundalini Yoga students reading here may know Yogi Bhajan cult members who will be leaving in the next few days for the big celebration of cult indoctrination in Espanola to mark the 10th anniversary of Bhajan's death. 3HOers be dressed all in white & strapped into a totalistic universe "that sucks the best out of people in terms of time, money, energy and potential, simply so they can be exploited as unpaid publicity agents and walking billboards."

This is from an ex-Jehovah Witness site. The ex-JW has put together a thorough website for his fellow Watchtower survivors.

He takes a page from exit-counselor Steve Hassan when he describes how to talk with friends or family using other cults as an opening for non-threatening conversation. A video is included:

http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/comparing-cults-the-most-effective-way-to-wake-up-a-loved-one

Few things are more distressing than being reduced to a helpless bystander as a husband/wife, father/mother or son/daughter plunges deeper into an endless cycle of subservience to a damaging cult – a cult that sucks the best out of people in terms of time, money, energy and potential, simply so they can be exploited as unpaid publicity agents and walking billboards.

It was this very issue that I raised with cult expert Steven Hassan during my recent trip to London to attend a workshop on how to undo undue influence (or “mind control” as it was formerly referred to).

Staging an intervention with someone who has been caught off-guard by a cult a few weeks or months ago is one thing, but how can we help those who have been indoctrinated over many years, even decades? Steven’s answer was very insightful.

“Don’t start by talking about controversial stuff about the group that they’re in,” he told me (among other things). “Talk about other groups or other circumstances, because one commonality with all of these groups is that when you’re in a totalistic group you don’t think it is, but you can see other ones. It’s very obvious that there’s something wrong.”

Those of us who have spent years as indoctrinated Witnesses will immediately identify with this advice. When a Witness is confronted with negative information about the organization, the shutters immediately go down as cognitive dissonance goes into overdrive. No matter how relevant or accurate the information is, he or she simply is not receptive to it, because they are programmed to dismiss it as ‘apostate lies’.