Hello again, readers, and happy 4th of July to you.I’m back from a month-long writing hiatus. It’s also been a year since I declared my unequivocal blasphemy against the imaginary and fraudulent persona of El Morya. No lightning bolt has struck me down, so I would conclude (with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek) that El Morya really does have no power! Still, the TSL/CUT machine continues to churn away on the fumes of the ‘master’ and his former ‘messengers.’ The holy trinity of Morya, Mark and Mother uber alles–on an unspoiled pre-shelter photo of Taylor Meadows no less–predictably adorns their 50th anniversary conference brochure. I find this disgusting. It was this holy trinity–well, one of them at least–that accomplished the spoiling of that formerly pristine meadow, the so-called “Heart of the Inner Retreat” with its eighteen-hundred-foot-long nuclear-industrial doom complex. If they’re so proud of it, and the belief system that led to it, why not show it–concrete, chain-link fence, gun towers and all?
But I digress. At this point, the organization is in the hands of a Board that is vetted and controlled by a ministerial council. Which means that the traditionalists and fundamentalists have secured a permanent lock on the real (human, organizational) power. No board member may be elected, nor ‘messenger’ serve without the approval of this council. Therefore, any concessions to practicality or secular governance have been permanently forsaken. I take particular exception to this direction, especially since it has consigned the organization forever into the domain of the “scriptural” literalists.
Since I’ve not been present in the organization for 15 years, it’s hard to accurately reconstruct this progression. But this is a broad outline of what occurred to the best of my knowledge. If any readers have better information, please correct me:
- In the late 1980s, the board of TSL/CUT had 4 members and consisted only of its “first family,” which included myself, my sister Erin, Edward Francis and his wife–our mother, Elizabeth Clare Prophet.
- During the shelter period, in about 1989, we decided that disastrous PR argued for a widening of the board so that the organization looked less like a family business. We appointed several new members.
- Within a few years, Erin and I had resigned from the board. Our mother was not satisfied with the level of organizational management and began to seek outside assistance.
- A new president Gilbert Cleirbaut was brought in and my mother relinquished her day-to-day role for health reasons. She retained a ‘spiritual’ office. Eventually Cleirbaut also left the organization, leaving a three-person presidency in charge.
- Sometime after Cleirbaut left, the organization’s bylaws were amended placing the ministerial council in control of the board and giving it veto power over new board members. Effectively, for unknown reasons, the board voted itself out of power and became puppets.
You may wonder why I consider this development important, since I’m opposed to the traditions, presuppositions, and principles on which the church was founded and its continuance in any form. Two reasons.
- The first is what I would call “original intent.” My parents formed the organization to advance goals I strongly support: human freedom, world peace and enlightenment. My mom was a political idealist and once worked at the UN. She gave regular political speeches outlining her vision for an improved society. I may disagree vigorously with her spiritual approach to realizing that vision, but I value the fact that she dedicated her life to trying to make the world a better place. Toward the end of her career, mom tried to liberalize the organization. She also realized her mistakes and abuses of power and tried to make amends and implement changes. Her efforts were opposed and stymied by the fanatics, who were many of the same people who now sit on the ministerial council.
- The second is what I would call the “right of interpretation.” For better or worse, TSL/CUT has a significant following. These followers confer a great deal of power onto those who decide how to interpret the “teachings.” When I say “teachings,” I’m referring to the untold thousands of hours of tapes and tens of thousands of pages of byzantine and contradictory messages my parents left behind. This group is now in control of which of that content is emphasized and which is marginalized. Like the King James Bible, the teachings represent an “alphabet” which the handlers can use to say pretty much whatever they want to say (within broad limits). Yet whatever they decide, whatever their interpretation, they still use the image, likeness and legacy of my parents to bolster their authority. There is no check or balance on this power. We have seen that every successful religion you can name uses this “right of interpretation” to transform itself into a political force quite different from what the founders may have envisioned.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the question of why and how the fanatics came to win. Growing up, they were always a thorn in my side. Their dour-faced conservatism, unquestioning acceptance of the “teachings,” unstylish clothes and monastic demeanor betrayed a woundedness and inability to enjoy their human existence. Having given up on human fulfillment, they became like martyrs in slow motion in their brutal “upward trek” toward their fantasy “ascension.” Their brain starved of pleasure chemicals, (except perhaps when they were praying/decreeing), their natural reward system short-circuited, they seemed to follow the the Puritian ethic of being forever worried that “someone, somewhere, might be having a good time.” Ebullient teens and young adults–bursting with humor, enthusiasm, and sexual elan–drove them particularly insane.
Such people are everywhere, of course. They gravitate toward churches with their ready-made templates of guilt and fear. It does not matter whether the fanatic is hoping to eventually have sex with 72 virgins, be taken up in the “Rapture,” or to sit in the “ascension chair” at the “Royal Teton Retreat.” The drive is the same: total sublimation of bodily pleasures in exchange for promised future fulfillment–a variant on Pascal’s wager paired with the ultimate in delayed gratification. If they lose the wager (to my reckoning), and find there is no afterlife, they have delayed their gratification precisely forever. And of course, having taken that miserable turn, the fanatic’s job is to make sure everyone else in the group follows suit and becomes equally miserable, if they want to retain group membership.
In addition to the chest-beating performances such fanatics evince–in their self-righteousness and spiritual pride–it turns out there are organizational benefits as well.
Economist Laurence Iannaccone makes the counterintuitive case that people choose to be strictly religious because of the quantifiable benefits their piety affords them, not just in the afterlife but in the here and now.
[…]
According to Iannaccone, the devout person pays the high social price because it buys a better religious product. The rules discourage free riders, the people who undermine group efforts by taking more than they give back. The strict church is one in which members with weak commitments have been weeded out.
[…]
What does the pious person get in return for all of his or her time and effort? A church full of passionate members; a community of people deeply involved in one another’s lives and more willing than most to come to one another’s aid; a peer group of knowledgeable souls who speak the same language (or languages), are moved by the same texts, and cherish the same dreams. Religion is a ” ‘commodity’ that people produce collectively,” says Iannaccone. “My religious satisfaction thus depends both on my ‘inputs’ and those of others.” If a rich and textured spiritual experience is what you seek, then a storefront Holy Roller church or an Orthodox shtiebl is a better fit than a suburban church made up of distracted, ambitious people who can barely manage to find a morning free for Sunday services, let alone several evenings a week for text study and volunteer work.
So it seems that human pleasure, fulfillment and strongly organized religion are irrevocably opposed, and this is no surprise. Successful religions force people to pay that behavioral price, and members get “compensation” for their sacrifices by considering that they are “special,” the “elect.” The ministerial council at CUT made a wise strategic move to consolidate their power in this fashion. Nicely done! Liberalization and secular governance would have made for a weaker church. But this trend had been building for many years. Even before they came to official power, the fanatics had their methods of enforcing the rules. If anyone (including the founder of the organization!) strayed from their orthodoxy, there was hell to pay. Which makes me wonder in retrospect how much my parents were actually controlling the church, and how much they were just riding the wave of believers’ expectations.
This process explains a particularly revealing incident that rankled me and destroyed any remaining faith I may have had following the disastrous shelter period. This incident and many others are recounted in my sister Erin’s outstanding and moving book Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant, available October 1, 2008. Here is my direct recollection:
I was building a deck outside my house in Mol Heron Canyon in the fall of 1992 with my brother-in-law Michael Reed. He mentioned to me that Erin had told him she had recently been in a “clearance session” with mom.
These sessions were intense bouts of shouting and prayer in which my mom sat with another person (there were about a half-dozen such people over the years) and tried to get them to “see” and convey to her spiritual answers to mundane organizational questions. From my perspective, it amounted to her appointing a series of unofficial personal advisors. But nonetheless, she conducted the full drama of holding these sessions in front of altars with burning candles and invoking the presence of El Morya and other personalities.
For a substantial period, my sister Erin was just such an advisor. On this occasion, she had shared with her husband Michael that a member had written a letter to the “altar” objecting to church members drinking near-beer. (The church had a strict no-alcohol rule, and so many staff and community members were relieved that beverages like Sharp’s, O’Douls, and Clausthaler were readily available.) I remarked to Michael that if mom succumbed to that pressure, “maybe I would have to leave the church.” I had such a strong reaction, because the beer was non-alcoholic (less alcohol content than a glass of orange juice) and so the person’s objection was symbolic rather than substantive. They apparently just didn’t like the idea that people in a “spiritual” community were doing anything remotely like drinking beer. Only a fanatic would feel this way, and only a fanatical organization would acquiesce to those feelings.
I said those words to Michael, and was immediately struck by the premonition that this would indeed occur. I didn’t have to wait very long. Toward the end of the year, El Morya gave a dictation: ‘He’ banned the near-beer. ‘He’ even went so far as to say that people taking medicinal tinctures containing alcohol should put them in hot tea and allow the alcohol to evaporate. ‘He’ went on to advise that any amount of alcohol, no matter how slight, was an impediment to the spiritual path.
I was furious. I had never confronted my mother quite this strongly before, but this ‘dictation’ was over the top. After the dictation, I stormed into her sacristy behind the altar and shouted “what have you done?” She looked at me sheepishly and said, “Sean, I had to. There were barrels of empty beer bottles all over the place. People were getting upset.” She knew it was a deal-breaker for me. But I was not prepared for what she said next. “Sean, I don’t mind if you want to have it. It’s OK. Just be discreet about it.”
I glared. So this was it. She was basically admitting two things to me: She was in control of the dictations–not El Morya, and more importantly, she was out of control of policy in her community–so much so that she was willing to act from the altar against her own instincts. Community standards were now in the hands of the fanatics. The inmates were running the asylum. I made up my mind right then and there to get the hell out. Less than a year later in the fall of 1993, I tendered my resignation and made good on my statement to my brother-in-law. It was the best decision of my life.
It’s with a heavy heart that I read the TSL’s 50th Anniversary conference brochure, and see them offering “blessings” with my dad’s “bishop’s ring” and my mom’s lab-grown Chatham ruby. It makes me sad that there are people who don’t realize those stones are unremarkable hunks of rock–the ruby a product of science no less. It makes me sad that these hunks of rock are being used to manipulate people into contributing money in support of a belief system that induces guilt and takes away their human freedoms, instead of reinforcing them.
I rack my brains to understand this mentality. Either the whole universe is sacred or nothing is. Focusing on such talismans destroys the sacredness of everyday life, of breath, of love, of personal achievement. Everyone is already sacred by the fact of sentience and because we possess the means to attain self-knowledge. We don’t need to be “touched” by some rock to be whole.
We don’t need to be constantly looking forward to an afterlife, or a “coming golden age” or some “Christ mind” or divine blueprint for existence, or spiritually “mitigating prophecy.” Instead we need focused and concerted human action now to clean up our planet and promote a sustainable and just society. Every joule of human energy wasted on fantasy nonsense takes attention away from solving the urgent problems of renewable energy and climate change which grow more pressing with each passing day. (Ironically before too long, oil prices may make it too expensive for most people to travel to such a remote part of Montana, USA.)
In a spirit of realism and hope, I encourage you to make this Independence Day holiday a time to declare your independence forever from these particular destructive superstitions–and every superstition for that matter. We need to get on with building a bright future for humanity. There’s no time for nonsense, we have important work to do.
25 comments
I was present for this dictation and at the time it wasn’t much of a shocker…
My previous conference included a teaching on how caffeine was a nephilim created substance brought here from the twelve planet, and that chelas of El Morya were to avoid it at all costs…
Throw pretty much all forms of modern music, masturbation, and any other behavior labeled as ‘riotous living’ and ‘feeding the carnal mind,’ yadda, yadda, yadda.
I don’t recall being even a tad bit surprised by this new restriction. I was already a full-on, head-bobbing, yes-man by this point.
Took a good dozen too many, “WTF, you’ve got to be kidding me!” moments to shake me out of that.
The above, and many other revelations in your sisters book will be good for many to hear. I look forward to reading it. Though, I don’t doubt the die-hards will be hurling all kinds of nonsense in your (and your sisters) direction as a result of this.
It’s no irony that all this bullshit trickled all the way down through the teaching centers and study groups world wide. Anyone who has held a position on a board ANYWHERE knows exactly what I am talking about.
Anyway, for my part, I am done with all of it.
For all the sweet folks that I met in that organization, there were more jackasses and full-on kooks, some of them genuinely mentally ill. I had to stomach them all for 8 years.
Nice thing about NOT being a part of the TSL & CUT, sweet folks exist out here in the ‘carnal’ world too. For the people who are mentally ill; I can recommend they get genuine help, not Astrea that condition away. If you ask me those rapid fire Astrea decrees only exacerbated the condition, rather than improve anything…
and to the jackasses…
So gratifying to give the middle finger; WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY DESERVE!
HEH.
;)
Louis,
Great comment. I remember always hearing about unbelievable bickering in local study groups. I experienced some of it myself in the Chicago TC in the early 1980s. The teachings seemed to have absolutely no effect on people’s interpersonal rivalries or morality. In most cases, the teachings became a smokescreen that allowed rampant abuses.
Not one but two consecutive heads of the Chicago teaching center were caught in sexual indiscretions during the one year that I was there, one of them was having trysts in his van, the other (who took over after the first guy was kicked out) was married and was banging someone else right there in the TC under his wife’s nose!
The first guy (with the van) has now gone on to run a so-called “Ascension” website.
When will people ever learn to stop being ashamed of their desires? I mean the guy with the van obviously needed to get laid, but he had set himself up as a role model and example which made it wrong and hypocritical. Especially since he was in a position of trust and power and abused it. This is the same problem the Catholic Church has been dealing with and proves the absurdity of trying to enforce celibacy in religious orders. It’s a prescription for disaster and should be flat-out prohibited. Human’s primary purpose is to propagate and when sex is repressed or denied it turns us into twisted monsters who will do anything to get our rocks off.
For me, I have love and compassion for those who are being so duped or who have duped themselves. On the other had, my compassion runs out when people become fanatical and accusatory toward anyone who would dare question their dangerous beliefs or hypocritical repressions. I’m more interested in dialog with those people than the middle finger. But with some people, they are so disconnected from their rational and animal self that the middle finger is all they understand.
Hello Sean and Louis,
All I can say at this point is Wow!
My last appearance in CUT was in March of 1990, when the “attack” mode was in full swing. I had decided a while before that time that this garbage was not for me, but I had my mother and my older sister pressuring me to come to Montana, that it really was IT this time. Remember, we all grew up with impending doom. I recall that after 1987 everthing was supposed to fall apart. I can also remember the many times I had to go to staff decrees for a month and “Astrea” away my questioning child self. I well remember the fanatics – one day as I was going to dinner, I was standing in line reading a Nancy Drew mystery. I was a voracious reader; it helped me escape all the craziness. One of the staff members (a woman named Kathleen somebody or other that I did NOT like,) saw my book and loudly asked those around her if Nancy Drew books were approved reading material. I just looked at her in absolute disgust. I wish I had known about the “middle finger” then; she probably would have had a heart attack right there!
I was never really around as an adult, so my memories are mostly of childhood. My mother told me many times that the children of my generation were the “guinea pigs,” that the church had really never done anything like this before, that they needed to learn, and she was oh so sorry that I felt I had been so put upon and mistreated. And, oh yes, the church still does have a school, but things are so different now, and everyone is so happy. Yeah right!.
It’s simply amazing and interesting at the same time, how different one is, I am, after years free and done with, with the ‘teachings’. Looking over your web site after so many years with that behind me, has brought back so many thoughts and feelings, Mostly of a deep embarrassment that I actually immersed myself in all that for 5/6 years, Embarrassing because it’s all such a ridiculous fantasy. Such a very interesting fascinating process to actually come back and look at that part of my life, embarrassing as it may be.
Louis, ‘WTF’ is right!
Wow, how I have cringed with shame and anger at myself, and laughed reading the many articles in your web site. Sean, (Remember the radio interview you did and the interviewer interrupted you asking you to explain when you casually talked about Alpha and Omega and the Great Central Sun or Sirius, or wherever they come from, (man am I glad I don’t remember such things anymore!) That was hilarious, that particular moment in the interview is, as funny as it was, was incredibly powerful and revealing. Standing on the outside looking in with a rational intelligent person who has never experienced that maddening fantasy is simply a very embarrassing and at the same time a healthy hilarious experience. I simply have to laugh out loud, no doubt a coping mechanism.
Can’t imagine how it must be for those who share the same feelings and thoughts about the teachings, and actually volunteered on staff. Which brings me to the very sad and troubled part of all this, the many who suffered and maybe still suffering because the gave up so much for an outlandish fairy tale. There may sometimes be positives coming out of the worst situations, but even so.
One thing I would like for you, Sean, to explain when you say that ECP ended up believing her own lies. I don’t really get that! An actor may dwell into a character’s role so much that he/she can embody that role eclipsing his /her true identity, but eventually when the last scene is shot and the director and camera man is gone, the actor resumes hi/her normal role. It’s very difficult to believe that ECP didn’t have those moments, ‘when she just took 5, lit a cigarette and drank a beer, resting before the next curtain call’. I just find that simply amazing, I can understand me and you believing and living the fantasy but we were’nt its authour..
Anyway, I’m free, at last. What a feeling! At first I simply walked away from all that because I realized that I had become a very miserable sad and angry person, that everyone around me connected to the teachings were all the same, miserable, sad, critical and so so limited. It contributed to the end of my marriage my difficulty in a professional direction and most important of all in the tangible fear of the possibility of loosing my children. It was only with time away from that madness I slowly began to realize how ridiculous all that was. No doubt the VERY BEST THING ever was to have walked away from that suffocating death pit. I am happy, I try to enjoy life to the fullest and when I hear about the teachings I laugh out loud with a childish embarrassment.
Great site Sean, don’t know how you keep all this up.. I will buy your sister book, maybe, most probably, depends. Have you read it? will I laugh?!
Tracy Soltis,
Funny thing is, I had the entire Hardy Boys series which I read enthusiastically when I was between about 9 and 12. My mom bought them for me. Maybe she felt sorry for me after dad died (I broke my leg about a month after he passed away, so I got the double royal treatment).
I think what happened later in the community is that if something was even questionable, people felt free to denigrate it. You know “is that really contributing to your Christ Consciousness and chelaship??” If the answer was at all in doubt, someone would be right there to offer the latest CUT reading material. After all, new pearls came out every week. Have you read yours this week?
There were literally dozens of books that could be studied on the “spiritual path.” It was not possible for someone to have read them all. So if you were reading something else, I think it always raised the question as to why you weren’t more spiritual. It was a no-win situation. But I think the people who spent the most time reading CUT published books (and other occult and new-age trash) were the most confused. The “down to earth” people in the community seldom bothered to read any of it.
I’ve been meaning to do a retrospective analysis of some of them. Starting with “The Science of the Spoken Word.” They’re gobbledygook. Now when I look back at them, I’m appalled. They wouldn’t pass the most basic muster as a college paper–let alone as some kind of “wisdom of the ages.”
I.N.
Yes, it was far beyond “method acting” I’m afraid. I think my mom believed in who she was until her last lucid day. Even after she admitted having abused power, she still blamed it on “embodiments on Atlantis” when she had “been a high-priestess.”
She became her own mythology, and even when it was unraveling, it still followed the narrative. I don’t think it’s possible to understand the extent of it without having actually seen the distant look in her eyes and the earnestness with which she would discuss these made-up events and lifetimes. They were real for her.
When she let down her hair, she would do things that would have been shocking to her followers. On less than half a dozen occasions, I saw her drink wine. But other times it was steaks, ice cream, or other food indulgences. She also conducted relationships without regard to community standards. (After all, what could she do, ask herself for permission to date someone?) In the end, some of her romantic indiscretions are classic symptoms of the loss of inhibitions that accompany Alzheimer’s. As such, they had little to do with her following or not following community rules.
But long before the Alzheimers, she was always the center of attention and had her pick of staff men. The first was our stepfather Randy King. She then dated another man for awhile who we all thought she would marry. But I think he refused to knuckle under to her conditions and abruptly left. Then she married Edward, which was her longest and most steady relationship (17 years).
Never saw my mom smoke or drink beer. Dad used to have a cigar and a beer on rare occasions.
How do I keep the site up? Well, sometimes it feels like tilting at windmills. But truth and mockery are the only things that stand in the way of delusion and insanity. Even if only one person were to benefit, it would make it worthwhile for me. I consider that I was lied to and betrayed by nearly every single adult who helped raise me (except Walter Maunz who taught me to love science). No child should have to experience that. I want to utterly destroy these mills of superstition so that in the future every child’s question of “Why?” can be honestly answered instead of betrayed with confusion and fairy tales.
Yes I’ve read Erin’s book. You will laugh at some parts and at the end you may cry (I did).
I am so glad I found your site! I enjoy reading your behind the scenes memories!
I grew up in the CUT from the age of 2 to 15 years old (1984 to 1997). We lived at the RHQ for many of those years. By the time I reached my pre-teen years I began questioning the CUT’s policies on music, food, relationships etc. Thankfully my mother packed up my sister and I and left for the outside world in 1997.
I consider myself to be on a religious break. After growing up in a community where religion was intertwined into every aspect of everyday living, I needed a vacation.
It is funny that the near-beer ban was just to make peace with the fanatics.
My step dad, who my mom married the night before the shelter cycle as Mother had said marry him now (after only three dates) or spend the many years underground alone, drank the near-beer and I thought he was so cool and such a rebel.
He turned out to be a schizophrenic bipolar mess who was emotionally abusive. When my mom asked for a divorce Mother told her that she could not allow it as my mom needed to balance her karma with him and that it would take many years, maybe a lifetime. Thankfully she divorced him anyway a few years later.
Looking back I find it comical that they spent their honeymoon underground in a bomb shelter.
I have many fond memories of growing up in the church and thought of many of the CUT members as family, but the shelter cycle casts a dark shadow on those memories. During the shelter cycle I was told that my dad, step-mom, brother, grandparents and everyone in my family that was not a part of the CUT, and so did not have a place in the shelter, would perish. I started wetting the bed at night and developed an anxiety disorder as well as a facial tick. That was a lot to bear for a six year old.
I am now a wife, mother, and teacher and can look back on the mix of terrifying and wonderful memories safely through the fog of time.
I do have a question for you: Mother named my sister and I and I was wondering if the naming was like the near-beer dictation, knowingly just made up, or if the naming of babies was taken seriously. I did know a Helios and a Zarathrustra (sp?) FYI We are both named after Mother.
Thanks
Hi Sean. I read your letter to your mother, found at Cheri Walsh’s site and was floored, flummoxed and flabbergasted. that’s about as close, I imagine, as she ever came to renouncing the so called AM’s. I actually SMILED at the thought. I feel better as more and more time seperates me from my years in CUT. I remarried, found a vital life in writing, singing and my church (I won’t get into a discussion about religion nor take you to task for how you live or what you believe. Life is too short for that). am I happy? heck, yes!
I look forward to seeing your documentary on the shelters. what a time that was.
thanks Sean. the things you post about CUT have helped me more than words can say.
Charles
Charles, hello, we do not know each other, but who knows, maybe bumped here in there at confrences. I am a former member as well, since I was 5 yrs old, now 36. Just curious if uv turned to evangelical Christianity or an other type of New Age Chritianity? I personaly have come to look at religion at a psychological level, a reflection of our psyche as human beings. Not literatly any more. Look forward to ur response, if it’s not to much trouble? Thks!
As devout christian catholic I respect 10000000 times more honnest atheists or agnostics, explaining the reasons for which they don’t believe in God than wrong prophets or deluled people, of which the faith is based upon illusion, stupidity, perversity and personal interests. Let us found an common front of all rational people (beliver and non believer) of this world against New-Age perversity !
Hello Sean, my fallout with AM crap happened not with CUT, but with an offshoot called ARJ although it was primarily comprised of CUT people. go to askrealjesus.com for some laughs. I was actually considered a messenger and gave dictations especially from that douchebag el morya and all that while living in mount shasta of all places!
but seriously, once my sensibilities kicked in I was embarrassed to believe in such utter dog shit! I declared my independance, I wish there was some way to reach these people, but currently I am more focused on the dumbshit christian fundamentalists because they are a real danger these days. Have you ever read anything from the Jesus seminar? All thier stuff is very good and is way more effective in terms of debating knowledge than dawkins and hitchins et al…
I'm glad you could break free of that stuff, now THAT is salvation!
anonymous, I will check out ARJ. Funny, it sound like a parody site, but from a cursory look, they are quite serious. Even to the point of listing out the seeker personality types. Are people really that naive as to look at that and say "that's me!" and sign up? I guess so.
anonymous, I will check out ARJ. Funny, it sounds like a parody site, but from a cursory look, they are quite serious. Even to the point of listing out the seeker personality types. Are people really that naive as to look at that and say "that's me!" and sign up? I guess so.
Sean, first of all I do believe that El Morya was able to speak through your mother, because I have experienced his presence (though I am not a member of CUT, in fact I am a member of ARJ which Anon mentions above) and I also do not doubt what you said about your conversation with her. She may have made it up, in order to please the crowd. No one needs to be perfect in order to be a messenger of God, it was never a requirement. But because everyone believes you need to be perfect in order to work with God, people are often quite reluctant to share their own personal imperfections, especially when seen in the position of messenger.
But you see this problem of needing a perfect messenger goes way beyond just your mom and dad, the entire planet is infected by it. Just think of what great lengths Muslims go through to say Muhhammed was perfect, or Christian's Jesus. I'm sure even members of CUT say the same things about your parents! (especially after all the things that you've written about them) It's people who are insecure in themselves who need a messenger of God to be perfect, because then they will forever have someone to blame, and not take responsibility for themselves (because after all the "perfect" leader told them what to do). If we could just let go of this psychology, then people wouldn't be so ashamed of their mistakes and could then actually LEARN from their mistakes instead of tying up all of their energy trying to fanatically hide them from both God and from each other. Perhaps this angle will help you see your parents from a different angle, and maybe forgive them (which I think you have done) and rethink whether or not God exist.
Your site made me think a great deal, and I hope what I say may provoke some thinking in you as well.
Hi Michael,
My position is not that messengers need to be perfect, since that's impossible as you said. My position is simply that what they say has to be independently verifiable. That pretty much rules out any divine or supernatural communication. (Which is ruled out anyway once you reject notions of spirit-matter dualism).
Perfection and purity are just two attributes which would be among the many archetypes which seem to create endless fascination in believers. It goes back to the concept of Platonic forms, which were said to not be able to exist in space or time, but only in the afterlife or spirit world. A more modern understanding of forms or archetypes would consign them to the theoretical, or the realm of ideas. It's not that a perfect circle doesn't exist–it just doesn't exist materially. But a perfect circle can be described mathematically without resort to a supernatural explanation.
So once we realize and accept that perfection and purity are archetypal and not real, then we can let go of this kind of idolatry in all types of leaders. Indeed the perfect is often the enemy of the good. So what we have to hang our hats on is the degree of probability or reasonableness of a proposition. In this case, the idea that El Morya exists or has ever spoken through anyone is problematic at best. It's a typical straw-man argument to use the idea of imperfect channels to bolster the plausibility of the existence of masters. Let's cut to the chase and examine the evidence (or lack thereof) for such beings.
Beyond lack of evidence, El Morya doesn't even make sense. As Thomas More, he tortured heretics. His book Utopia has been the inspiration (along with Plato's Republic and other philosophical works) for the despotic and collectivist regimes of the 20th century. Not a very favorable character, even if he were speaking through various messengers, which I highly doubt.
You should take another look yourself at the "existence of God." The problem of evil alone puts the nail in that coffin. Not sure if you've taken a look at the arguments, but an all-knowing, all-powerful benevolent God is incompatible with the suffering we see in the world. Even if you use the free-will theodicy, you still are left with the suffering caused by natural disasters. CUT theology puts this all in terms of reincarnation and past wrongs, but again, the mathematical odds against everyone in a particular earthquake zone being deserving of death from past misdeeds are staggering. No theodicy in the world can save you from that one.
If there are past lives, then it may be probable that a significant amount of people in an area had participated in wars, or just simply stood silently by during times of wars or other tragedies. It isn't necessarily that they are the "worst" sinners, but that it might be valuable for them to learn a lesson during this lifetime, or for the next one.
If you want to see life as an arbitrary in which you have little control over, then the things that happen to both you and everyone else will always seem arbitrary.
The argument of numbers and odds goes both ways.
What are the mathematical odds of this planet being able to sustain higher life forms such as ourselves? Or that atoms are held together with exactly the right amount of force that allows for all of form to exist? The odds that water would be denser in liquid form then in solid form, which allows for fish to live underneath the water which allowed for the totality of evolution?
"If there are past lives."
That's an awfully big assumption. Still, even if there were, you gloss over what would be a gross injustice. This is another theodicy often used to say "who are we to question God's judgment or methods?" Natural disasters simply cannot be justified. Either God has a lesser concept of justice than the lowliest human (is therefore imperfect) , or we have to conclude he does not exist or is not all-powerful.
You refer to the Anthropic principle. This ignores the idea that if those constants governing physical reality were not what they were, a very different universe would have evolved and we would not be here talking about it. Some other life forms would be, or there would be no life at all. Physicists have theorized that there may be many universes, each with a different set of cosmological constants. We just happen to be a product of this particular universe. It still doesn't prove that it was designed for us, though that is how it appears viewed in retrospect.
Any attempt to show a first cause or design fails to take into account the fact that any sufficiently complex being as to create the universe and/or set up cosmological constants would have had to have an even more complex creator. The whole idea of a creator fails of infinite regress.
The typical apologetic response is to say again that God is beyond our meager comprehension, or exists outside time or space.
I declare foul. Either you use reason and empiricism to resolve such questions, or you have to admit you're taking it totally on faith. When theological arguments encroach upon the territory of science, they fail even more utterly than when they stay within their own territory.
We do not know how or why the universe came into being or came to support intelligent life. But religion does not offer any additional testable information on the question.
You are going through great lengths to deny faith in God. But yet you have faith in these untested and in fact untestable scientific theories. You may not even believe them, but the fact is is that you are using them. I do believe that there may be multiple universes as well, but I suppose I'll have to take that one on faith too.
Ultimately all intellectual arguments for and against the existence of God all come up short. If you really would like to understand then sincerely seek a direct experience with him, otherwise you can continue on with your somewhat inane and farfetched theories (yes I know evolution is just a "theory" too, but it has some pretty damn good logic behind it). If you are going to argue with me and tell me not to use then fact, then consider that not everything you believe is fact either. God isn't to be experienced or denied in the head.
OK Michael, now we're talking past each other. Remember, I was in the church for 30 years and a minister for 7. So you can't play the "direct experience" card with me.
I don't deny faith in God. Obviously it exists. I once had it. You have it, as do many other people. I deny that there is, or has ever been, convincing evidence for God. Claims for the existence of God are ultimately scientific claims, not merely religious ones. They are statements about the very nature of the universe.
I've written lengthy articles regarding the idea of "faith in science." That's equivocation. But no matter. I don't think we can get much further in this discussion.
Science is very clear about what is testable and falsifiable, and what isn't. There's a big difference in stating a scientific hypothesis such as parallel universes and one that's been proven like evolution by natural selection. Everything in science is provisional until it isn't. Show me a religious claim that's subject to revision upon discovery of new information– It just doesn't function that way. People often hold to their beliefs in spite of all contrary evidence, long past the time when a reasonable person would have conceded and walked away. It's because for them it's not about truth, but about comfort, social reinforcement, psychological needs, and desire to live forever.
My direct experience is that every theist eventually starts playing these word games (equivocation) about proof, facts, "faith in science," etc. You've got nowhere else to go. If you want to continue with a faith position, you have a lot of company. But argument from popularity is also a fallacy. Just remember that other people in other faith traditions hold to extremely different views about God, and they are just as adamant as you about their "experience." None of it has any basis. There are thousands of competing traditions and claims, and each thinks they have the ultimate truth.
Direct experience is woefully unreliable unless subjected to rigorous controls.
You have to overcome your confirmation biases and employ multiple observers if you want to discover the nature of reality. Otherwise, without that, you see what you wish to see.
In my experience, people with your mindset rarely get out of it. I wish you all the best.
I am not too concerned with popularity, nor with clinging to comfortable doctrines. And mostly I am not afraid to be wrong and to try a different approach.
However, I figured we would reach this point, (where we begin to talk past each other) there isn't much more to discuss. I enjoyed our conversation and suppose it is time to "agree to disagree" because we ain't going nowhere anymore.
It is so refreshing to read this website. I can see how I have put all this behind me mostly but had no idea there were others who came to the same conclusions. It was a painful time figuring it all out on my own..wading out of the illusion. I guess our real 'tests' were to see how well we survived these times within the org. There was some good to be said about it, but that was mostly on a one-to-one personal level. Tho for all the suffering and falsehood…the org. sure knew how to print quality books and pictures and put on fabulous retreats. That ability to pull people together for a common goal I have rarely if ever seen matched 'out in the world', and I have had ample opportunity to do so. Thanks Sean. You were just going in and getting out of the military during my time there at Camelot and IR. Love your/this site!
Sean was in the military? I don't think so.
Creepy icon–to each their own. But no I was not in the military.
To be a sheeple instead of your own Source of light and knowledge is always the desire of the common system
To be your own "Guru" (what brings you from darkness into light) and a self empowered person is a couple
of examples of what i liked so much about the first Teachings i ever read about Saint Germain.
The work with different kinds of energy is well proved on a scientific basis: read and search for all the Reiki
an Pranic Healing investigations arround the world and the aplications in hospitals
The funny thing is that eventhough i felt attracted so much for some Teachings, i was never attracted to "churchs"
or to any human organization arround an external image of the Masters. They told in the first channelings that
NO image should be used for teaching. No repeating the same mistakes is still esential for spreading deep
knowledge which is very powerful and can confuse the channels easily.
I say thanks to you for publishing your truth and your experiences and insights. But also remember that we always
have the posibility of connecting with higher sources of inspiration and creativity wihtout the necesity of having
a "general" who tells us what to do, believe or think!!!!
FReedom is the first condition for opening and preparing the mind for higher levels of information, which complexity
can impress the newies but it challenges the more advanced or experienced persons.
Its very sad for me to see that we humans get lost very easily on that part, and i am glad that we have that special
sense of "rightfulness!" and that we can see with our own eyes
I believe this kind of events marks us as generation for closing this chapter of piscis era of repeaters and sheeple….but the
but there still is so much work to be done for healing this humanity and planet….
We have done enough damage for even thinking of separate us more because those kind of fanatism
let Divine Love be our real guide and our intuition and soul our compass
PS: how much i hate sects and cults!!! i preffer free interchange of thoughts, experiences and coordinated actions
Sean, the apex of hypocrisy is when the perpetrator blames his/her victims not only for having been stupid enough to have been duped but then also blames them for having permitted the perpetrator to be successful in duping them. This is exactly what Trump has done. It is also what your parents, Mark Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet did, and what YOU, Sean the atheist, are doing in this post of yours: YOU blame your parents' followers for having followed your parents' teachings and then proclaim that your parents could never have misled anyone but for the fact that people gave them the power to mislead them. Whatever KIND OF CRACK is running your brain, Sean, is also running Trump's brain and his GOPies. The BULLSHIT runs DEEEEEEEEEEEP in your family, Sean.
Of course you will NOT approve my post, Sean, because if you DID approve and post it, it would reveal your fathomless hypocrisy and you will not allow anyone to expose you on your own website.