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[Music] welcome to this two-part miniseries on cult psychology I'm really excited about this topic I've been doing a lot of research on it because there's so much that we can learn from cults so many broader lessons so we're gonna have to first start by talking about the foundation what are cults and how do they work most people don't know what cults are and how they really work so that's what we'll be doing today in part one and then in part two we'll be looking at the broader applications we're gonna zoom out take a big-picture look at the epistemic lessons that we're gonna learn from cults and how that's visible everywhere in society and this is where it's gonna be really practical and this is where the whole payoff of this mini series is gonna be so you want to make sure that you stick around for part two in part two we'll be looking at for example how we see cult-like behavior in business in marketing in politics in religion even in science in universities in your family in your personal life and your relationships so it's gonna get very very practical so if you are under the impression at all well Leo I'm too smart to get suckered into a cult and there's no lessons there for me to learn for my self-improvement I'm just an ordinary person I don't care about joining a cult well watch out first of all many of you actually are foolish enough to get suckered into cults because these cults are extremely deceptive and they will sucker you in so we want to be able to inoculate you against that that will be valuable in and of itself but beyond that what's going to be valuable for you even if you never join a cult or even think about a cult or even experience a cult recruiting you in your whole life then what will be really valuable is part 2 where we look at the broader epistemic lessons so the first reason that this topic is so important is because we're gonna inoculate you against cults and this is something that is quite important actually if you're watching my content because my content is heavy heavily conceptual and theoretical and philosophical so if you're watching my stuff then your priority already leaning in that direction and if you're gonna be studying spirituality self-improvement various kinds of New Age topics that I talked about enlightenment non-duality all of this then you're very likely to run to cults over the next 10 or 20 years of your self-development journey there are a lot of cults that are built upon this information this is very powerful information that can get very easily corrupted and abused by the ego and so you can unwittingly get sucked into one of these cults even though you don't intend to because generally speaking we're not taught about how cults work in school so we're all extremely susceptible even in university they don't teach you how cults really work unless maybe you take a very specific psychology course on that topic which most people don't and even then it's not gonna be very practical it's gonna be mostly theory so we need to inoculate you against cults because these cults can destroy your life they can suck you dry of your entire life savings in all of your possessions they can abuse you mentally emotionally spiritually even physically they can lose you decades of your life these are extremely dangerous and toxic ideologies and they can be very very appealing to people who don't know any better so that's why this topic is so important but also it's important because someone close to you might join a cult even if you don't a friend or a family member and wouldn't it be nice to be able to recognize those signs and to know what to do to be able to give them advice to know where to go find solutions for for this kind of problem because of course as soon as they get sucked in they're gonna try to suck you in and they're gonna try to suck in more of your friends and more of your family so it can it can really turn into a [ __ ] if you're not careful with these cults and the last reason that why is so important to talk about this topic besides all the epistemic lessons here is that you yourself could become a cult leader and that is perhaps the worst case scenario and in fact a lot of very intelligent people fall into this trap here is they think that themselves as being too intelligent and too independent minded to ever join a cult but then they themselves go in start a cult especially if you're the type of person that resonates with my content and watches me a lot then you're probably interested in personal development you might be interested in in teaching you might be interested in becoming a life coach you might even become a spiritual teacher at some point in your life and if you're not careful you could start a cult of your own so watch out so let's begin at the very beginning what is a cult now this word cult is a little bit tricky because it's usually used in two different ways there's the loose colloquial usage that we use casually throughout society where people will just call stuff a cult even though it's not really a cult basically what they mean when they say the word cult normally speaking is they just mean some sort of ideological system that they don't agree with that's by definition to them a cult but that's not really what a cult is there's a more technical definition and that's what I want to share with you today so what is a cult technically it is a hierarchical organization created by a charismatic narcissistic leader which uses mind-control techniques to amass money power and sex you got all that there's a lot there that we need to unpack so firstly one of the most important characteristics of a cult is that it's a hierarchical structure a pyramid scheme quite literally which leeches resources from the bottom of the pyramid up to the very top to the leader and to his top lieutenants depending on the size of the cult if it's a small cult it's usually run by just like one leader and a few of his top lieutenants so it's this kind of structure and the entire structure is designed to serve the narcissistic leader at the very top it's an authoritarian power structure sort of like a little tyranny or a little despotism or a little monarchy but the leader builds for himself and he's doing it for rather very shallow reasons very materialistic reasons because he's got an ego and he wants to feed all of his lower Bay needs the needs for security survival attention approval love power over other people and of course sexual gratification good food luxury all this kind of other otherwise very low cost and stuff now these cults are often started by Zen Devils and if you don't know what a Zen devil is go check out my episode becoming a Zen devil it's pretty important so basically a Zen devil is someone who has had some mystical insight maybe has had an enlightenment experience or two but he's still immature and his enlightenment is half-baked and so whatever mystical States he's attained he hasn't fully embodied them and he still has an ego remaining and saw as a shadow remaining and overall his level of development on the spiral spiral dynamics wise is quite low oftentimes it's staged read or staged orange so it's sort of like a half-assed version of spirituality somebody goes and does some spiritual practice then they think that they've understood the whole world they think they know more than they actually do they misinterpret many of these mystical insights maybe they have a vision or two maybe they have an enlightenment experience or two then their ego seizes on that and says aha look I am God I know everything this kind of idea they're still very immature as a teacher and as a leader they have many aspects of themselves they still need to develop and work on but because they have this silly idea that all well if I just had this one enlightenment experience that's it that must mean that I'm now incapable of error and I'm capable of misleading people and my incapable of deluding myself they they get sucked into that and then they create this sort of authoritarian pyramid scheme in order to serve all of their shadow egoic needs and really if you want to think about essentially what function does does a cult serve really what it is is an egoic distraction created by the leaders ego in order to not fulfill his full spiritual journey see it's very sneaky it's very sneaky how the devil works as I've talked about before in my episode what is the devil that's also very important one to go check that one out see the devil loves to co-opt legitimate spiritual insights teachings and techniques and to use those towards his own devilish purposes and what I mean by the word devil is not some demonization of somebody really I'm using the word metaphorically and really when I say the word devil what I really mean is ego or selfishness that's what I mean I don't mean a creature with horns and a pitchfork so you see as you're going on this spiritual journey and you're having insights and experiences and you're developing yourself all of this is good but it can always turn pathological there can always be a point where your ego even though it's seen something big with some enlightenment experience then it tricks itself because the mind is so self deceptive see my many series on self-deception the mind is so self deceptive that it tricks itself into thinking that it's already arrived when in fact it hasn't and that's really just a distraction from continuing the journey you see so the ego creates this cult and now it's so busy externalizing its actions rather than turning inwards and self reflecting and developing itself further having more enlightenment and realizing still how much more growth it has to do the ego thinks it's done and now it thinks that oh it needs to go out there and spread the gospel proselytize people convert others and transform the world awaken the whole world see and really what that is is just a self-deception mechanism and you need to be wise enough to be able to see through that otherwise you will start one of these cults if you're doing this work so what's tricky about cults is that cults are not all bad it's not all delusion it's not all self-deception the way that most people think most people in mainstream society things like Oh a cult is just some crazy fringe phenomena that I would never get involved with because you know I don't believe such such crazy things but what you're under estimating is that nobody joins a cult under those reasons the cult always lures you in with genuine spiritual insight and self-improvement techniques which are valid but what it does is it twists them around and so it's a it's a mixture a cult is a mixture of genuine spiritual teachings and insights and self-improvement techniques with toxic narcissism egotism hierarchy this authoritarian pyramid structure the leaders shadow and then heaps of ideology and this just creates this very toxic brew which can lead down a very dangerous road if you're not careful so the thing you have to really understand about cults is that on the surface they will seem very appealing you're not even gonna know that you're joining a cult when you join a cult there's not gonna be like a big sign on the front of the building saying come join our cult it's not gonna be like that you're always gonna feel like you're joining some legitimate organization which genuinely wants to awaken the world or to help you or to help others the way that a cult really works is that it tries to create a reality distortion bubble a collective fantasy so together a group of people come together and they create an ideology such that they don't have to actually do spiritual work but they can just coexist in this bubble of self-deception and each one of the people in the group reinforces the self deceptions of all the other people and so it feels to them as though they have awakened but really they haven't and they actually become very blind very unaware to all of the egoic self deceptions that are running within this collective fantasy and they're always constantly having to fight the external world to maintain their fantasy because it's a fantasy because it's false and so falsehood always has to struggle against the truth because in the end the truth always wins out so every cult eventually self-destructs because every cult is ultimately false but until that happens it could take 50 or 100 years or however long and in the meantime a lot of people get hurt a lot of lives will get destroyed as they suck more and more people into this collective bubble of delusion and of course it's precisely because it's a collective bubble of delusion that the cult members have to become such radicals mm-hmm and have to resort to such desperate means sometimes including violence and other criminal acts in order to maintain their fantasy because otherwise their fantasy will eventually burst the bubble will burst and then they will realize that the whole thing was just a sham really a cult you could think of it as a psychological cange AAB a con job that you bet you play on yourself and then a con job that you then play on others it's like an infection it's like the plague it infects you and then you transfer it over to other people unwittingly unlike a traditional scam or theft where the thief just wants your money a cult is a little bit more than that a cult doesn't just want to use you for your money although of course it will they also want to use you to control your mind the ego gets off on the power the authority the status that it builds the self righteousness that comes with being part of a cult so be careful about that if you're in your 20s or 30s or you are thinking of following some spiritual or self-development teacher who is in his 20s or 30s you have to be very careful because the default tendency is that for a person in their 20s or 30s without special care the default tendency is that these immature leaders will start a cult even if they don't want to they will follow through this trap unwittingly because they're still so young still so inexperienced still snowy egotistical and underdeveloped still so arrogant and at this age you think like well yeah I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna conquer the world and I'm gonna I know how to save the world I know how to awaken the whole world I have high ideals and I've had a few enlightenment experiences therefore I know what to do and then you go out there and then you start a cult unless you're very very careful and you pay very careful attention to the epistemic issues here that are at play which are very subtle and take a lot of self-awareness to understand cults range in size from tiny to giant some cults can have as few as four members or ten members a cult can literally be as small as one family or cults can be larger with hundreds of members - even thousands or tens of thousands of members and when these cults become very very large they become very dangerous to society actually as a whole to mainstream society because what they're going to try to do in their egotism is because they think they know best they're gonna actually try to take over the levers of power they're not going to be content just maintaining their own little authoritarian pyramid they're gonna actually want to take over the entire government if they can and that's why a lot of these cults have political motives oftentimes they don't tell you about them but they have them and they actually will try to infiltrate political parties organizations universities and take the levers of power because the ego needs to do that in order to protect its bubble of delusion see so the cult is all about self survival at all costs so we're talking about the collective ego here go check out my episode about collective ego it's also a very important one there's different types of cults there are religious cults new-age cults educational cults self-improvement in psychology cults political cults and commercial cults like MLM schemes and labor trafficking rings but of course often a cult will be a combination of all of these pillars because the cult is purely interested in self survival and it's going to do it using any means necessary so often a religious we'll also incorporate some psychological techniques in order to better manipulate people and it'll also be political and we'll have political ambitions and it'll also be commercial of course because it needs money and money is power so usually a cult will be a mixture of all this stuff now it's very important to clear up one very common misconception is that people equate religion with cults and cults with religion but this is too simplistic we need to draw a distinction between these two firstly because cults can be secular for example I could create a cult strictly around self-improvement without ever mentioning God or spirits or anything religious like that or without affiliating myself with Christianity or Islam or Buddhism Earnie mainstream religion I don't think use any of those words to create a cult but more importantly yes it's true that mainstream religion is full of self-deception and delusion and yes it's true that it doesn't doctrine eight children and even adults into its ideology and it can become very fundamentalist generally speaking though the difference between mainstream religion and a cult is that the mainstream religion is not run to serve one authoritarian individual also a mainstream religion does not physically hold you from leaving the religion now of course they can look down upon you they can try to convince you not to leave in certain very fundamentalist sect so maybe of Islam or something they might have been threatened to kill you if you leave but generally speaking you can leave mainstream religion and they won't like physically lock you in a room to prevent you from leaving whereas a cult will a cult might beat you for trying to leave a coat will psychologically manipulate you to keep you from leaving which is also other important difference between mainstream religion and cults is that cults generally use a lot more mind-control techniques than mainstream religion now of course many of you atheists and rationalists in the audience and materialists and scientists will say Oh leo but I mean religion uses all sorts of mind-control techniques that's how it in doctrine needs children and yes of course that's true and we'll be looking more into that commonality in Part two when we're looking at the broader epistemic lessons but generally speaking religion doesn't use mind control and nearly to the same extent that a real cult will and also another important difference is that mainstream religion has ethical standards and checks and balances unlike a cult now of course many atheistic lis minded religious is rationally minded people will say here leo but but I mean look at the Catholic Church they don't have any ethical standards or checks and balances look at all the shenanigans that they're up to look at all the corruption that's in in the church well actually that example sort of proves my point because they do have ethical standards regardless of their certain criminal misconduct that might happen regardless of some rotten apples and regardless of corruption there's yes there's plenty of corruption all most or all organizations including all religious ones but there are checks and balances they are reforming themselves they do take some of these criticisms seriously and they have to address them in a cult there's no checks and balances whatsoever so if you think the Catholic Church is bad wait till you see what it's like inside of a small little cult run by one tyrannical leader it's way worse way worse also it's important to distinguish communes from cults communes are not strictly speaking cults now of course some of them can be but many of them aren't the difference is that a commune is generally not a hierarchical and authoritarian pyramid structure a commune is much more of a flat network rather than a hierarchy and that's quite important communes also don't generally have a rigid doctrine of course they have certain sets of values and principles that they follow but generally it's not a rigid ideology it might just be some loose values some loose hippie values like love and peace and equality and fairness for all and I mean that's that's very different from the kind of very rigid fundamentalist ideology that tends to come with a cult communes will generally not use mind control techniques to manipulate you communes are usually pretty honest about their agenda they don't try to conceal they don't have like a secret political motive most of the time communes generally expel power seekers and narcissists communes don't spend a lot of time and money on recruiting unlike cults communes will not hold members captive so you're just free to leave the community time you want no hard feelings and communes generally pose little danger to society so what are some examples of cults here's a list I'm gonna give you you might have heard of some of these but you might have not heard of other ones so you might just want to google them look at their Wikipedia pages although watch out because these cults are very manipulative and they will modify their Wikipedia pages to make themselves look better than they actually are and to try to convince themselves that they're not cults of course you might disagree with some of the stuff that I put an honest list especially if you're a member of one of these cults you will definitely disagree with me that is a cult but nevertheless here we go Scientology the unification Church otherwise known as the Moonies the Hari Krishna's the Mason family fundamentalist strains of Latter day Saints and Mormonism I don't consider mainstream Mormonism a cult waha BISM al-qaida boko haram Isis suicide bombers terrorism really terrorism terrorism is not a religious problem it's not an Islam problem terrorism is a cult problem terrorism comes from cults now of course they could be Islamic cults but terrorism also comes from white nationalist cults and other kinds as well um Shan Rico this is the Japanese cult that was in the news back the late 90s for a gas attack in the subways in Tokyo I think it was the ralien Church Heaven's Gate seventh-day adventists Jamestown the Branch Davidians Jehovah's Witnesses children of God Aryan Nation the LaRoche organization Rajneeshpuram or Osho's commune and Transcendental Meditation that's a small list there are really hundreds and even thousands of cults just in the United States alone most of them you don't know about most of them don't have a Wikipedia page or a book written about them because they're usually so small most cults will probably have 20 30 50 members in them so you won't know about them now these last two on my list Rajneeshpuram and trans no no meditation you might object that Lee oh these aren't really cults and in a certain sense I would agree with you in a certain sense they're not cults but in a certain sense they are for example with Rajneeshpuram I do consider Osho to be a legitimate enlightened master I don't know if I would go as far as calling him a cult leader per se I think he was a pretty pretty decent teacher but it's also pretty evidenced that he was a pretty poor leader and he was pretty irresponsible in the way that he led his commune and he let he get way out of hand in them even though he himself might not have been a cult leader his uh his right-hand lieutenant Sheila she was definitely fitting into the mold of a traditional cult leader very egotistical very narcissistic didn't actually do any spiritual work was just in it for the power in it for the approval in it for the all the materialistic acquisitions and then Osho let that get way out of hand and and that led to all sorts of craziness and calamity go watch the Netflix special documentary called wild wild country about all the shenanigans that went on at Rajneeshpuram very interesting and it shows you just how bad this stuff can get and Transcendental Meditation while I think Trane's no meditation can be effective and I know people who have had enlightenment experiences using that technique and all that the way that it's structured is very cult-like and is rather manipulative so there you go of course there's a spectrum some of these cults are better than others some of them were crazier than others some of them have less spiritual techniques than others so strictly speaking an ideology alone is not sufficient to qualify something as being a cult so as much as I would like to call the alt-right a cult or in sells cult or libertarians a cult or the KKK even a cult they're not really cults Mormonism is not a cult Islam's not a cult Christianity is not a cult Freemasonry is not a cult Alcoholics Anonymous is not a cult pick up is not a cult Burning Man is not a cult the US Army is not a cult so a lot of these organizations are very ideological and they behave in many cult-like ways but for example Alcoholics Anonymous is not a cult because even though they have a certain value system they teach you a certain ideology when you enter it generally speaking they're honest about their agenda you can leave anytime they you want they don't really charge you much for anything they don't try to mind-control you the US Army is also not a cult because even though it does have a strict hierarchy and it doesn't have a chain of command and you do sign up you sign a contract to join the army for five years or something like that and in that sense you might think well it's very cult-like and you know they're getting doctrine at you when you go to boot camp so Leo doesn't that make the US Army a cult no it doesn't not under the strict technical definition because first of all the US Army is not serving one authoritarian individual secondly the US Army is very open about its agenda you know what you're getting into when you join the US Army there's not a lot of trickery going there you know that you're gonna be learning how to shoot a rifle you know that you will be called into a war zone if there's a war you kind of know what you're fighting for what you'll be asked to do now of course there are certainly abuses within the army certainly corruption within the army it's not perfect no organization is perfect so be careful not to confuse corruption within an organization for it being a cult there's corruption almost every organization under that definition that everything is a cult and in the US Army yes you sign up for five years but you know you are making that a deliberate commitment you know that that's how it works and then you get to leave after those five years are over they're not gonna force you to stay there's also checks and balances within the US Army they have like their own court system they have ethics boards you could even sue the army if they do something criminal or wrong in some way so there's a certain accountability and ethics and standards no not perfect but it's there unlike in a cult and of course the Army's not gonna suck you dry of all your money and yes it will indoctrinate you but still it won't really use the same kind of mind control techniques on you that a cult will so all of the organizations that I mentioned above the libertarians and all right I mean these sorts of movements yes they exhibit a lot of cult-like qualities and we'll be talking about those in part two you have to be careful that if you're gonna call these sorts of ideologies cults then you know that cuts both ways if you're gonna do that then I can also say that science is a cult and that universities are cults and that atheism is a cult and rationalism is a cult because those also exhibit many of these kinds of ideological tendencies and the reason that's something like if you're wondering why they alright is not a cult it's because you can leave the all right the all right is not organized by one particular individual it's a very loose movement no one cares if you come or go into the alt-right you know they're not gonna physically lock you in they're not gonna try to extort you of your money or anything like that as much as I would love to call the alright occult technically it's not so we have to understand about cults is that they use very sneaky recruiting tactics unlike almost any other kind of organization such that you never even know that you're joining a cult because these cults often create fake front organizations with totally different names that have these lofty mission statements usually involving saving mankind so the way that it a cult might recruit you for example if you're a university student on campus they might hold a little kiosk inviting you to a free lecture and they're gonna give you cookies and brownies and punch and they hey they just say hey look do you want to improve your life are you interested in learning meditation are you interested in learning how to be more loving in your relationships come to one of our lectures or free trainings or are you into equality and fairness for all how about we help disabled people our organization helps disabled and sick people and hungry children and and abused animals come come to one of our meetings and we'll show you how you could contribute it's a positive loving community the name of the organization is save the world or save mankind or save the animals and you you're like hey that sounds great I love that kind of stuff you know I've been watching actualised org and I becoming more conscious and I'm becoming more loving so why shouldn't I help the animals and the disabled people of the world and so you go and join and the first meeting you go to it's a great meeting the guy he comes up there and he tells you about how they're helping these people he shows you a video about how many animals they save last year and ask you for a $5 donation and then gives you some some hugs and says some some things about Europe here and says how nice you look and says how how evolved you are house of actualised you are tells you all this sort of stuff and then you sign up for the second meeting and the third meeting and slowly they suck you in they're never honest about their true agenda you don't even know you're joining a cult you don't know the name of the cult you're joining you don't know the cult leader yet in many cases and they often lure you in with legitimate self-help techniques that's what people don't understand a lot of the techniques that I teach in actualised org like meditation visualization and and basically all the advice that I give you can take this and you can sprinkle it in to any kind of cult-like entity and then that will make your cults seem very legitimate because people will use some of these techniques and sure enough the technique will work it'll help you to calm your mind it'll help you in a relationship it'll help you with your life purpose or whatever but that's just the hook that sucks you in see oftentimes when cults recruit they will use a sort of psychological analysis they're very sophisticated this way and they will analyze what kind of profile you are as a human being oftentimes they break it down into four categories you're either a thinker a feeler a believer or a doer and they will find the perfect fit for you in their organization and they will pitch their cult to you to match one of those four categories so for example if you're a thinker if you're a philosopher if you love intellectual stuff if you're a scientist and you love ideas and logic and reason and all this then I is the cult leader if you come to me one of my meetings then I will I will assess you I will I will understand that oh yeah you're a philosophical type of person you're a thinker so for you I'm going to present all of the sophisticated models and theories and maps I'm gonna draw stuff on a whiteboard for you connecting dots showing you all the systems showing you how all the spiritual stuff works and how you can improve yourself and how you can improve the world and I'm gonna present scientific evidence and studies and oh I can I could be making it up but I'll be presenting it as though it's the real thing and you will be a sucker and you'll buy into it and then you will also play that role in my cult you're gonna become one of my lieutenants and then I'll train you to do the same thing and to recruit other thinkers you're going to be the the cult philosopher on the other hand if you're a feeler and oftentimes we and fall into this category feminine women they're feelers and what they really want feelers want love they want a sense of community they want to join a family they want to be helpers they feel that role in society they love to be nurses or to help disabled children physical therapists these types of people doctors if you're a feeler then I'm gonna push those buttons in you to recruit you I'm gonna give you hugs I'm gonna shower you with praise and love and adoration such you're gonna feel so a part of this little community that I've built you're gonna feel like you've found your new family you've finally found people who accept you unconditionally who understand you as a feeler understand that it's the heart that's the most important thing and I'll show you techniques for how to open your heart and how to be more loving and all of that you're gonna think it's all legitimate it's gonna be so wonderful for the first month or two but as that's happy that's just a hook for me to get my claws into you if you're a believer then I will appeal to your faith maybe you're a Christian or you're a Muslim or you're a Jew or Hindu I will I will see that I will then use that in order to hook you in and I will try to align my philosophy in the way that I'm explaining things with your belief system and I will tell you precisely what you want to believe and you'll believe it and then you'll become one of my Believix and I will use you to proselytize others you're gonna be the one that goes up there and gives the speech who convinces others to really believe in our cause because you yourself will believe in it so much for believers for them life is about serving a larger purpose having a kind of an ideology that runs them and a lot of times these are staged blue spiral dynamic stage blue people they're believers they're really ullevål they're really easy to hook all you got to do is you gotta align the beliefs with what they're wants to hear and bam you got him that's a lot of what's going on and in the Middle East if you're a doer if you don't like to think and you don't like to feel you're an action-oriented person you're kind of entrepreneurial you like to get your hands dirty and get stuff done well there's a role for you to play in my cult as well we got so much stuff we need to do we need to organize marketing campaigns we need to run drives we need to we need to build housing need to build gardens we need to build cities and a community there's so much stuff for you to do come and I'll give you all this work to do and you'll be the manager you'll be organizing stuff for me and you'll be doing computer stuff and you'll be doing marketing stuff so we got tons of that for you as well and you can manage people who'd like to be a manager oftentimes doers are good managers and so you might not even really buy into the whole philosophy of my cult but as a doer I'll hook you in as well you see so these cults they're very sneaky and how they recruit where do cults recruit very commonly in schools and universities because people in their early 20s are very very vulnerable they're very idealistic very inexperienced that immature and they're so easily hooked in especially because they know nothing about epistemology they don't know anything about how the mind works and how self-deceptive all this is so watch out if your student at seminars workshops lectures campus events nursing homes also retirement centers cults love to prey on the elderly why is that because a lot of times the elderly are sort of past the peak of their life their life is starting to go downhill they're losing their sense of purpose they feel like they're alone now and nobody really cares about them but also they have a savings but have a life savings they have 401ks they have retirement accounts they have pensions they have houses that can be mortgaged they have cars and property that can be sold and cults love this they can exploit these old folks run circle around them brainwashed them and then robbed them of all their assets see the problem with with a young college student is he he or she has no money they don't have a large credit card line they don't have a substantial investment in their house that can be sold they don't own their car but older folks tend to and older folks love being part of a community because you know oftentimes they're alone and they're lonely and they don't have a lot of friends their family has sort of abandoned them left them in a retirement home or something and so to a elderly person it can feel like oh they're getting a second renewed chance at life by joining one of these cults but of course it never pans out that way they can recruit at parties dances raves and burns meditation and yoga classes are great recruitment opportunities for cults clubs clinics rehab especially people in rehab are very vulnerable and they're desperate for self-help advice and spirituality Bible groups study groups grassroots organizations sales schemes sales seminars weight-loss programs ads and posters around town around campus or even just on the street you can be cold approached by a recruiter why are cults so appealing because they feed off the minds ideological nature which we've talked about many times before when I talked about epistemology what I'm basically talking about is all the ways in which the mind clings to ideas and perspectives and how it gets paradigm locked so the cult will exploit this tendency of the mind and watch out about this common misconception if you think that all Willie abut I'm too intelligent to ever fall prey to joining a cult no you're not you're not it has nothing to do with intelligence or IQ no matter how smart you are your mind is still your mind still has these self deception mechanisms within it which can be easily activated if you know what you're doing your mind is still always ideological it always loves to cling to perspectives it's very easy to delude yourself even if you're intelligent in fact in certain sense intelligent people are even easier to dilute so all I have to do is appeal to their intelligence cults love to prey on the emotionally vulnerable especially when you are feeling depressed or lonely or you just got a divorce or you're you've got an illness or you're dealing with a substance addiction problem or you're just feeling like you're in a slump and you're stuck in life and you have no sense of purpose or direction that's when you are the most vulnerable to be recruited into a cult and that's so common these days that pretty much that's everybody right thinner most people have one of those problems so also these cults are so appealing because they do offer valid spiritual insights they actually can feel like they're helping you at first they're also very appealing because they offer an easy sense of life purpose so instead of taking my life purpose course and really working through the exercises and wracking your mind trying to figure out your life purpose and spending years developing and building your life purpose and developing mastery in something and figuring all that out rather than doing that the legitimate way to get a life purpose instead what people do is they just find some cheap easy shortcut to a life purpose through a cult and that's a really easy way to lure people in because the ego needs a sense of purpose and a sense of meaning it's life that's what gives it a sense of direction and motivation and so if you want to motivate somebody very easily offer them a cult they'll become so motivated at least at first of course they'll what are they going to be motivated towards towards good or towards evil well with the cult it's going to be towards evil or devil devilry as call it when I say evil all I mean is just selfishness and also cults are so appealing because our epistemic education is so poor we're not taught about any of these ideas in schooler and university think about what a cult offers you psychologically a call offers security status friendship family community meaning purpose financial support spiritual connection approval love feeling special a sense of identity especially if you don't like your old identity and escape from responsibility and work and legitimate wisdom think of how that that appeals to the mind that hits every button you have that right there that list of stuff is basically what you want right isn't that why you're listening to me in the first place you want some of that you want some security in your life you want some connection you want some higher purpose you want love you want to feel special you want a new identity because you're not happy with your old one you want wisdom well I can very easily exploit that if I want to satisfy all of my personal needs so now let's get to the master list of all the characteristics that define a cult this is what you want to take notes on the cult makes you totally dependent on them for financial and emotional support that's one of the defining characteristics of a cult they want to make you dependent they want you to join them and to quit your old job and cut off all your old friends you don't need them anymore you're part of this loving family now it's your second family the family you've never had before you know your old family they didn't love you they didn't appreciate you but we as the cult we will and so as we're as we're showering you with approval and love and a sense of purpose and you're buying into all that we also make you financially and emotionally dependent on us such that then if you want to leave well you quit your old job you're working for us I'm paying you as the cult leader I'm gonna be paying you some tiny amount or we're gonna be exchanging some Goods like maybe you get to stay in my in my cabin or something and live on my compound and that's kind of nice right if you're like a college kid you don't know how to support yourself you don't want a lame nine-to-five job where you have to go work it Walmart or something you don't want that come come join my compound stay on my stay in my cab and you can have all the free food and stuff you want just you don't eat from the compound cafeteria will have free snacks for you and brownies on Fridays and all this free weed come come join you know that's gonna look very appealing because to you you're thinking well damn you know why go work at Walmart when I can just like live here so like a little spiritual community everyone they're so loving and nice this is kind of like self-development right and of course then that's how we get you financially and now you want to leave my compound well you can't you don't even have enough money to buy a bus ticket unless I approve it and buy it for you because you're so dependent on me and then you're also going to be psychologically dependent on me as well because now as your new surrogate family and circle of friends this cult will be giving you approval and opportunities for relationships and friendships and sex all of that stuff that you want that you can't get usually and and so are you gonna leave all that just on a whim you know it's gonna take something serious a serious epiphany for you to be able to pull yourself out of that we're gonna try to addictive a cult is gonna undermine your ability to think independently like hyper conformity we're gonna try to replace your authentic identity the one you've had your whole life with a new false identity oftentimes this will be a spiritual identity or an identity of an awakened person and we will use various kinds of mind-control techniques to program that into you of course the identity that we will be programming into you is precisely that one that serves me as the authoritarian leader so everything you're gonna be programmed with will subtly try to reinforce that authoritarian pyramid scheme that I want to build a cult is usually focused on acquiring power for its top leaders most cult members are true believers first they delude themselves into believing in the mission of the cult and then they delude you and then you delude others and so in that sense it really is a pyramid scheme and because the cult is always losing members because people are getting disillusioned with the cult and leaving after wasting a few years in it and losing a bunch of money and being abused emotionally and physically and sexually in all this eventually they leave so the cult is always losing people so it always needs to recruit more people which is why cults places a strong emphasis on recruitment because without recruitment they would basically lose their members and the entire pyramid would collapse just like any other pyramid scheme oftentimes in a cult the cult leader genuinely believes that he is the Messiah he is the chosen one that is there to save mankind that he is special he is the Anointed One and a lot of times this can come from legitimate mystical experiences maybe he did see vision on a you know a vision of Jesus on the mountain and Jesus told him that he is like some reincarnation of Jesus or whatever you know some something like this about a lot of times what's happening there is that the ego because the ego is not fully purified because it's still a relatively low level of development and it's not aware of the self deception mechanisms what it does is that misinterprets a narcissistic ego with the big shadow will misinterpret mystical insights and visions and then use them towards egotistical purposes this is the modus operandi of the devil so of course the devil will always think of himself as an angel as the savior of mankind that's what allows them to be so effective and so confident in his devilishness almost always the lieutenant's that serve the leader of the cult are themselves very underdeveloped immature power-hungry materialistic fearful and greedy which makes them such good pawns to be manipulated into becoming lieutenants and they become very loyal because they're they're also leeching and benefiting from this pyramid structure almost always the cults mission is portrayed as benevolent in order to give a sense of divine purpose to its members a sense of confidence and direction a sense of motivation oftentimes you will start to think of yourself when you join this cult as the savior of mankind and that you have a special place in history it's like our cult has has arisen right now at this perfect intersection within human history where you know the world and the environment is all collapsing capitalism is collapsing and right now this cult it's like humanity's last chance to save itself and you can if you just join the cult and you just pay me some money and you in you buy into my ideology then you will take this special place beside me in history and you will go down in the history books as having helped awaken mankind redeem mankind that's kind of how it's phrased and this sort of sense of divine purpose and power becomes very very addictive this is what I would call a pseudo life purpose it's a bastardization of what life purpose is really about rather than going and finding your own personal inner life purpose which is what my course is about with a cult you're gonna join some sort of collective conformist life purpose which is really just going to be a bunch of fantasies and illusions and it's true motives will always be materialistic and very shallow you're not actually going to be saving mankind in fact you're gonna be contributing to mankind's demise but it's gonna be very addictive because so few people have life purpose that's one of things I discovered with creating my course is just how few people actually have a sense of life purpose that I can see how susceptible they are to this stuff especially if you've got nothing else going in your life you've got no good relationships no interesting career prospects what do you got to do join a cult get a quick sense of life purpose BAM you're ready to go you're motivated you're engaged life feels like it finally has juice it feels exciting you're excited to wake up in the morning and there you go you're hooked like we already said a cult has no internal checks and balances because it's basically like a small monarchy and the Marr monarch has absolute power gets to say whatever he wants and basically the cult is usually run on the whims of the leader so whatever my whims are if I want to have sex with you if I want to take money from you if I want to have you fly somewhere that's how the cult is gonna work cults have a total istic ideology that's one of their characteristics which means that they try to sell you on one perspective which purports to solve all of life's problems with this ideology a cult will blend doctrine with reality doctrine becomes reality which is really the opposite of what true spirituality is about true spirituality is actually getting you to realize the distinction between reality or actuality and your concepts and ideas and beliefs about it whereas the cult does the exact opposite for the cult reality doesn't matter reality flies out the window the doctrine and the concepts they become the reality that's what we mean by that creating a this bubble of delusion or fantasy cults almost always push a dualistic a dualistic view of the world as a battle between good versus evil of course we as the cult members were the good guys and people out there who are trying to interfere with our cult activities they're the evil ones they need to be stopped they are the enemy and so a cult will usually spend a lot of time demonizing certain elements of society other people other races other groups creating an external enemy that's what the ego loves to do because then it's busy fighting the lesser jihad and never has to really fight the true jihad the energy HOD the greater jihad by going inside and self reflecting and actually conquering the ego so it's a very sneaky distraction mechanism also characteristically cults tend to engage in a lot of black and white thinking us versus them there's very little room for interpretation or considering multiple perspectives or really being holistic and integral cults tend to reduce complex issues to cult cliches in order to prevent you from thinking independently and often this is done using jargon language which is very effective at reducing independent thinking what do I mean by jargon language well a cult will almost always have certain words and labels that it attaches to Outsiders verses insiders the labels attached to the insiders the good guys will be all positive and the labels attached to the outsiders the enemy the evil ones they will always be derogatory and have negative connotations and also they'll be very simplistic so for example a really really great example this is with social justice warriors this label is basically a cult mind-control technique so people who are against the social justice warriors they will just call anyone that they disagree with some liberal or whatever they'll say oh look look at a social justice warrior see and this is becomes part of the lingo of the alt-right and others who oppose biodynamic sage green and so they just label the whole thing they smear the whole thing is social justice warriors and just those three letters are enough you know sjw to never even think about what is the perspective of the social justice warriors what do they want now I'm not saying that social justice warriors are perfect in every way and if they don't have their own delusions and problems they certainly do I'm just saying that using these kinds of labels simplifying entire world using perspectives are just simple three words three letter combinations and then just rejecting out of hand that entire perspective this is precisely what cults do this is how they engage in black and white thinking of course cults try to squash all diversion points of view just in the way that you would expect an authoritarian or a tyrant to do you know tyrants will censor tyrants don't allow a free press tyrants don't want criticism they don't want to be humiliated so the outlaw comedy right so you would expect the same sort of stuff in a small tyranny of this cult and that's exactly how it works the cult seeks to monopolize the truth so even if it does glimpse the truth through some meditation technique or through a mystical experience on psychedelics the problem is that if the ego is not fully transcended the ego will want to seize on that truth monopolize that truth package the truth make the truth its own make the truth exclusive to itself the truth is not something Universal that everyone can access the truth is something that I have accessed that now I need to deliver to you now I can sell it to you because I have the truth and do you think for example that someone in a cult like in a Christian cult or Islamic cult if they actually have a mystical experience how are they gonna interpret that are they gonna interpret that as a universal truth that applies to everyone that everyone can access through different means and different perspectives and their different ways of interpreting this no of course not they're gonna interpret it as a validation of whatever ideology and doctrine they had so when a Muslim experience you know fundamentalist Muslim experiences some mystical experience that's gonna be Allah the validation that that Allah is true that is that Islam is the one true faith and that all others are delusion that's how he's gonna interpret it and what a Christian has a mystical experience he's gonna interpret that as the light of of the Christian God the one in the Bible is gonna be Jesus it's gonna be an angel or something like this and in his mind that's gonna justify demonizing all the other religions Buddhism and Christian action but Judaism and Islam as being the false ones see so in this way the ego misinterprets valid mystical insights and visions in a cult because they have this sense of benevolent self righteous purpose this will be used to justify any means towards reaching their ends and they will have no ethical qualms or standards so in a cult lying cheating stealing violence blackmail rape even murder becomes acceptable for the greater good of the mission of the cult because our mission is the best mission there is and we're actually gonna save mankind so what does it matter if we if we steal some some money here or we cheat somebody there or we even blackmail this person here we even rape this or murder that person there it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things according to how the cult thinks the cult believes themselves to be above the law oftentimes a cult will have apocalyptic overtones in order to help motivate action there will be this sense of impending doom the world is ending capitalism is collapsing the environment is collapsing it's all unstable come join our cults come work for us because it's gonna happen in the next three to five years why three to five years because that's the perfect timeframe because if it's gonna in one year that's too soon people will catch on that it's not actually gonna pan out but you know if I say 10 or 20 years that's that's your mind can't deal with those time frames it's not relevance I gotta motivate you so to motivate you I say three to five years is when the apocalypse will come now what happens if you're in my cult four or five years and the apocalypse doesn't come that's only better because look how I'll all spin this cults use all sorts of spin and reframing techniques so let's say you come to me and say hey Leo where's the apocalypse it's been five years it's not here and what I'll tell you is of course it's not here because you guys have been working so hard for five years you've been recruiting more people and you've been meditating so hard you've been visualizing and you're really serious your intention is pure for saving mankind and awakening the world and it's because of that that we have been granted five more years to recruit more people in five more years who recruit so many people that actually our cult will make a difference in the world so it's your hard work that has bought us these extra five years that's how it's reframed and that just makes you buy into it even more all the errors of prophecy only make the true believers even stronger true believers through this kind of the spin doctoring cults will use sophisticated and subtle psychological mind-control techniques and a lot of times what makes this tricky is because these techniques can be legitimate spiritual techniques a lot of these techniques I have episodes about and I tell you that you should do them for example chanting mantra prayer affirmations singing meditation visualization hyperventilation fasting sensory deprivation these sorts of techniques these are powerful techniques these are legitimate techniques that can be used to improve your life to attain enlightenment and so forth but they can also be bastardized and misused for example I could have you visualize how good our cult is and how divine our purpose is and let's say I get you to do something unethical and shady for example I tell you to go rob that people's house over there rob those people's houses and get more money for our cult and you go and do that but then you start to feel bad about it of course because you have a conscience and you feel guilty so you come to me as the leader and you say well leo but I feel bad I think we're doing something wrong here we're violating some ethical standards maybe maybe we're not as good as we think we are and I will say no that's just a psychological and spiritual weakness within you see you haven't finished your self-development work what you need to do is you need to take this visualization technique that I've been telling you about and you need to go visualize how actually this theft that you've been doing this is actually all in the greater good of our purpose yes you might be harming a person here there but in the larger scheme of things none of that matters because we're gonna awaken all of society if we just keep going down this direction so go visualize that see go do some mantra and some affirmations about that hyperventilation that's the common techniques that cults use otherwise known as shamanic breathing I have an episode about shamanic breathing well you know that can be misused in order to then program you with all sorts of doctrine which will perpetuate the cult you see that's what that's what it means for the cult to be all about its own survival is that really everything the cult is doing all of its work all of its activity all of its ideas will be designed first and foremost not to reach the truth not to really awaken you not to really save mankind but to save itself and that's selfishness 101 everything you do is really for your own survival but then you rationalize it in your mind as being something loftier than that that's the self-deception often times the cult will appeal to very low consciousness emotions within you in order to motivate you and manipulate you this is very characteristic of cults and the top emotions that they will try to appeal to is fear guilt and shame they're not going to appeal to your to your highest consciousness emotions they're gonna try to fear and guilt you into doing what needs to be done oftentimes they will use the technique of public confession of sins where we all get up in a circle and I ask you all to be honest and to confess your sins and of course you do it because everyone else is standing up and doing it it's just conformity and then you maybe confess a sin from from your past or maybe you had sex with someone you shouldn't have or maybe you were abused when you were a child or maybe you did some drugs that you're embarrassed about telling your family about but as you're confessing all that of course I have a tape recorder secretly under the table I'm recording a whole conversation I have video cameras I'm videotaping the whole thing I'm gonna put all that all these into my library of blackmail material which I will use against you if you ever decide to leave the cult or if you ever question me or if you ever refuse to give us a donation you know the yearly donation that your do you refuse to give it well hey you know maybe your parents will find out about that bad stuff you did maybe somehow this this audio tape will end up in their email see that's how that's why it's so sneaky that's what makeup makes cults differ from traditional organizations traditional organizations would never do that but in the cults mind that's all totally acceptable because the mission of the cult is so noble a cult will try to destroy your self-esteem that's one of the ways how we get you to be emotionally dependent on the cult we robbed you of your self-esteem we make you feel bad we make you feel like you won't be able to survive without us that you need us very common techniques that cults use is gaslighting where they will actually blame the members for the sins of the cults so for example if the cult gets public criticism in the media or something like that and then maybe maybe you come to me and say leo we're getting we're getting bad publicity and the media bla bla bla bla bla I'm rather than admitting that yeah maybe you know maybe we do deserve some criticism what we're gonna do is we're gonna reframe all of that we're gonna Gaslight I'm gonna say no it's actually the media who's the evil one or it's one of the members we're gonna take a member in the cult I'm gonna skate Goldman scapegoat them and say look it's that guy it's it's it's Mary it's because Mary hasn't been doing her job and she hasn't been praying hard enough and she hasn't been faithful enough and she hasn't been recruiting hard enough and she hasn't doing been doing the marketing properly that now we had an ex-member leave and now that member ratted us out to the to the to the media and now we have this problem on her hands so really it's Mary's fault oftentimes a cult will train to suppress negative emotions and feelings and train you to reject all criticism of the cult so this is a deliberate indoctrination that happens because this needs to happen otherwise you will be facing criticism from the outside you too have tools for how to deal with that how to kind of block it off in your mind to keep your bubble of delusion going a lot of times cults will give you techniques for suppressing negative thoughts for example if you have a critical thought of the leader the leader will tell you look you're just not doing your spiritual work hard enough because if you were truly spiritual you wouldn't have negative thoughts so go do that mantra and remove all the negative thoughts and feelings that you have this feeling of guilt that you feel for robbing that person over there that's just a lack of your spiritual development go do some more techniques cults try to enforce extreme conformity and one of the ways they do that is everything is done together as a group we eat together we meditate together we sing together we do mantras together we recruit together everything together to the point where some cults will actually force you to be with a partner I don't mean sexually I just mean with a partner like 24/7 you sleep in the same room you eat in the same room you go out together you go make food together you go shopping together like all of that so that you're always under the watchful eye of somebody who then can recruit you know report back to the higher-ups also conformity is a reinforced through praise and Punishment so really it's kind of like training a dog that's how they'll train you as soon as you stand up and you question their dogma or their doctrines or their activities they will punish you and they will withdraw their love from you and then as soon as you do something in conformity that they like that serves their survival agenda then they will praise you and then that becomes how they hook you often times cults will have indoctrination camps and training camps and often times these will be held in faraway places isolated from your social network and environment so oftentimes they will do a a retreat up in the mountains where it's cold and far away or in the desert in the middle of desert or you don't have a cellphone access you can't call your friends or your parents you're outside of your environment and you know spending a few weeks there they can really brainwash you such that then when you come back you're you're gonna have a new sense of identity and you're not gonna be connected to your social network anymore because your social network and your old environment is really what keeps you grounded in what you call reality so if we want to brainwash you and create a new sense of reality this fantasy bubble we need to snip all those cords that attach you to your old reality and your old identity and a lot of times that's done for example by asking you to change your name change the way you dress change what you eat change what time you wake up change all this stuff and through this we're gonna create a new fake identity for you that serves the cult another very common technique in cults is that they keep very tight schedule you kept too busy to think or ask questions you're literally engaged activity from morning to sunset you don't really have time to truly meditate truly self reflect or to read a book or to consider an alternative perspective or to really question what you're doing because it's just like it's all cylinders firing full steam ahead to prevent the apocalypse sort of mentality another trick that they will use is they will make you recruit other members and in doing so that helps your mind to convince itself that what you're doing is good because in order to recruit somebody you have to become a true believer in the stuff that you're preaching it's a very sneaky self-deception mechanism you know why people proselytize so passionately it's because they themselves actually don't believe deep down the thing that they're preaching they themselves are doubtful about it they themselves have not actually done the work to embody it so instead what they do is they externalize the spiritual journey to proselytize others without actually having themselves attained the spiritual fruits that they're supposed to attain it's a it's just a red herring cults will teach you to ignore your inner hearts and inner voice because those are an obstacle to living in the fantasy bubble they will teach you to stop paying attention to your perceptions which is which is very disastrous because if you think about it perceptions are the only thing that grounds you to reality if not for your perceptions you really have nothing but fantasies and concepts and beliefs but that's exactly what they want to Santa sees concepts and beliefs not perceptions so unlike in true spirituality where we actually do the opposite we try to get you to pay hyper attention to your perceptions that's really the point of meditation is to ground yourself purely in perception without any interpretation filtration concepts beliefs or doctrines ground yourself in actuality remember my episode what is actuality that's what that episode try to do but a cult will do the opposite they will try to get you to deny perceptions and ignore them in order for the doctrine to really run your whole life common tactic they'll use when recruiting is called love-bombing they will shower you with love and praise and approval they will tell you how nice your smile is how nice your clothes are how wonderful of a human being you are and how much amazing stuff you've done in your life and they'll be really interested in you they'll listen to you but only for like the first few weeks for the first month during the honeymoon period in order to reel you in and then once you're hooked and reeled in then they get to work on you and they suck you dry and they have used you and they manipulate you and the love stops but for that first month during the honeymoon period it will feel like oh my god for the first time I'm I'm fully accepted by this group of people unlike my old family no because chances are you had a mother or father or a brother or sister that didn't accept you that bullied you that criticized you and so that that hurts that hurts and you're still living with those wounds so now when you come into a community that love bombs you all you're so susceptible to that but it never lasts because they don't really love you they're just manipulating you to serve their ego the ego is not capable of love the only thing the devil loves is really himself and even that he can't really fully do he loves himself in a neurotic sort of way fellow members in your cult will be in denial that this is a cult so in a sense talking to a cult member using the word cult as if like I could say to a friend let's say I have a friend who joined a cult now say look dude you're in a cult that's not gonna work because in his mind he doesn't think of it as him having joined a cult he's part of a religious organization or he's he's saving mankind or he's pursuing enlightenment or he's you know he's doing something he's part of a business scheme but he's not in a cult no member of a cult thinks of themselves as being in a cult they're in denial about it of course they are oftentimes you will be asked to live in group housing this group housing will have cameras and microphones in it to get nice juicy blackmail material on you and also while you're in this group housing they can monitor you very easily to see if you're conforming oftentimes cults will force you to do long hours of grueling work without pay or with very little pay because they want you dependent and to the point where you can be working 14 16 hours a day seven days a week you know pulling in 80-hour workweeks for this cult destroying your own health driving yourself crazy thinking that you're doing something very important for the mission of this organization when really is just a way to explore you to get what they need done without having to actually pay people to do it a common red flag and cults is loose and careless polyamory and multiple wives if you see the cult leader adopting multiple girlfriends multiple wives that's a huge red flag right there that you need to leave that organization that never goes well and you can clearly see that they're doing it for egotistical purposes even though of course they're gonna rationalize it all as part of spiritual awakening and all of this but that's just all more self-deception oftentimes a cult will use physical abuse and threats of violence if you don't do what they say or if you try to leave they have very irresponsible leadership the cult leader usually has a shady background he has a criminal record in the past he's a liar he's a thief he's a con artist he's a phony he's a rapist he he was kicked out of a other cult or another organization he was kicked out of the country this kind of stuff so research the backgrounds of the people that you're following oftentimes almost always these cults charge exorbitant membership fees where they have some kind of tiered system of courses seminars books workshops trainings that you need to pay thousands of dollars sometimes tens of thousands of dollars just like these ridiculous fees in order to join this cult and to be part of this cult I think I was reading a book about Scientology and in that book it said some amazing figure like do you know what it costs to go through all the different levels of achievement in the in the in the hierarchy of Scientology like they become the highest level of Scientologists I think you have to spend like four hundred thousand dollars if you add up all the courses all the seminars all the trainings all the workshops all the books all the manuals all that stuff all of it it's like four hundred thousand dollars to get to the top that's that's how they get you and believe it or not slowly you know it's kind of like boiling a frog in water you know if you do it slowly enough then you sucker people in nobody's stupid enough to pay four hundred thousand dollars up front but they will sucker you in and they will leech you of all your money and not just your money but even your assets anything valuable you own paintings computers cars houses you know whatever they will get that from you of course the cult will try to manipulate your relationships with your friends and family that's another dead giveaway that you're inside of a cult you know in a legitimate organization they won't try to manipulate your relationship with friends and family they won't tell you what to think about your friends and your family they won't ask you to disown your friends and your family on ideological grounds so watch out for that a lot of times your friends and family will be demonized as the unawakened ones the ones who don't understand us and therefore you shouldn't call them shouldn't talk to them you shouldn't see them anymore because they just they're not awoke enough to understand our lofty mission and our purpose and they they're just gonna drag you back down to your old bad sinful ways oftentimes the cult will ask you to quit your career or education to join them that makes you very dependent that makes sure that you don't have any other alternative routes in life and that can be especially bad for for young people make sure you finish your education and get a solid career going so that you have financial independence and you have a sense of self-efficacy that you can you can pay your own bills in the world so you're not dependent on others then you're much less likely to be manipulated and controlled cults engage of course at information control which all tyrants and dictators must do to maintain this reality bubble this reality distortion bubble they try to prevent exposure to new perspectives books videos the internet news telephones this sort of stuff they want to try to get you to force to be forced to rely on the cult for all of your key information of course inside of a cult very little time is actually spent on true spiritual work because all of your attention is externalized outwards cults will try to control who you can date and marry they will try to control your children if they can they will try to of course indoctrinate your children because that's a really great way to hook in parents is indoctrinating the children a dead giveaway that you're inside of a cult is if they don't give you freedom to leave the organization if they physically try to coerce you to stay if they try to brainwash you that leaving is bad and sinful and wrong often times is exactly what a cult will do is they will subtly plant seeds in your mind plant little phobias that then blossom into larger phobias that if you leave the cult you're never gonna be happy you're never gonna find love you're never gonna awaken you're never gonna get enlightenment you're never gonna be spiritual are never gonna find a life purpose you're never gonna be able to support yourself or to to overcome your addictions and bad habits you're never gonna be able to progress in life you'll be depressed and suicidal and eventually your whole life will collapse cults will program that into you such that you never want to leave and that if you even think about leaving already there's so much pain thinking about all the repercussions they programmed you with that you don't even consider it a a real possibility such that even though the door might be open you or you're free to walk out but it doesn't even occur to you to walk out because how much fear and guilt and bad Association they have programmed you with about leaving cults discourage health fitness good diet and proper medical care so oftentimes cults will suck people dry they will make them work long hours without break for weeks and months and years on end until they run themselves down and then of course as soon as you become a liability to the cult by developing a health problem maybe let's say you you break your leg while working for this cult are they gonna care for you are they gonna provide you with medical care are they gonna give you time to rest in all of this no of course not they're probably gonna kick you out of the cult because now you're a liability caring for you paying for doctors fees you know tending to you while you're while you're hurt and suffering and ill they don't want that because they're so selfish so of course they kick you out as soon as you become a liability you should be so lucky you'd be lucky in that case because at least then you leave very commonly they would demonize and harass ex-members that's not their very common dead giveaway that you're in a cult they need to because the ex members will usually try to expose the inner workings of the cult to the outside public which of course is terrible for recruiting which of course they need in order to sustain the whole pyramid scheme so they will try to demonize and use blackmail to harass these ex members and of course cults will spend a lot of time manipulating their public self-image with massive PR campaigns to try to dis inform the public that their image really is just good and innocent so you got to watch out for that and of course if you're inside the cult and you're probably gonna spending a lot of your time working on these massive PR campaigns so that's the general list of characteristics of a cult there now as you can see it's not enough that an organization just exhibits one or two of these characteristics that won't make it a cult you need a combination you know a significant number of these on the list is what really determines if the group is a cult or not because any general organization will have a little bit of some of this stuff going on for example they might have your responsible leadership or they might force you to work long hours but you know just because your boss forced you to work long hours doesn't mean you're inside a cult necessarily also what I want you to see here kind of zooming out a little bit the bigger picture is what's happening with what this cult is doing all these four tactics is that this is a massive collective ego and a collective shadow at work see my episode about collective ego to understand what that really means but there's also sort of like I could have a shadow here like I said you're gradually boiled alive like a frog you don't know that you're really getting sucked into any of this stuff until you're really deep in it and it's kind of too late you're probably gonna be a few years into the cult before you realize that maybe I joined a cult and even then you're gonna be in denial about it and as you can see here all of these techniques this is the epitome of how devilry works this is the epitome of what the ego does it's blind self-preservation you should be familiar with many of these methods and slights of hand already because I've covered them so much in the past and many of my epistemology episodes so what do you do if you find yourself in one of these cults maybe you're in one right now how do you get out first of all what I recommend is that you educate yourself you need to read some books about cults and how they work and how to escape and there are many great books available I'll be adding three new ones to my book list already have one there I'll be adding three more new ones with a lot of great information written by authors who themselves were ex cult members and who escaped and who now work to help other people escape and they they offer a lot of great advice so I'll be adding that to my book list in the next week or two so look out for that read those books or find other books if you like whatever just to educate yourself because even though the information I provided here is quite good it's not enough if you yourself are actually in a cult you need you need to really understand the phenomena that you're dealing with also as you're reading these books you're gonna realize that there are many recovery options available to you there are people you could call their accounts lers or trained cult deprogramming experts who could help you to understand and how to take back your life take back your old identity also research your cult if your cult is on large side it probably has X members that you could contact you can talk about you could share your stories with you can get advice about you can get some solidarity there but of course if you're in a very small cult then it'll be difficult for you to research your specific cult if you're in a small cult your cult probably doesn't have a Wikipedia page probably doesn't have documentaries and books written about it but many other cults do like various strands of Mormonism Scientology the Moonies and so forth there have been many books written about how those organizations work how manipulative they are and you could find ex members who you can get some solidarity with so try to do some of that research next make sure you actually admit to yourself explicitly that I am in a cult that's very important because otherwise you're still gonna be in denial about it after doing the research admit to yourself okay now I'm sure that I'm in a cult and as soon as you say that then now you know you're gonna have to leave that's not a sustainable situation don't think that you can just like somehow make this work I'll I could just I could just suck it up and and just kind of keep going with it it'll all work out no it's not gonna work out you got to leave the sooner the better just leave yes there will be some cost and pain associated with that just leave but even before you do that make sure that you forgive yourself for having joined this cult don't lay on the guilt don't tell yourself how how can I've been so stupid for joining this cult why why was that why more self conscious and self aware and why didn't I understand epistemology hid this is very common it's very common for people get too sucked into this kind of stuff you just weren't properly educated and that's okay because our education system is very dysfunctional right now we're still developing our education system so that's totally understandable love yourself love yourself for who you are for who you were for the good that's inside of you all right don't let them rob you of your self-esteem remember to listen to your heart and to start to think independently research stuff for yourself ground yourself back in your perceptions and in your Higher Self and your inner voice spend time alone thinking and self reflecting as much as you can try to reclaim your old identity go back to the old name you were using go back to your old style of dress your old way of speaking go back to your old friends at least for now now of course your old identity wasn't really your true identity anyways all of these identities whether your old one or the new one that you got in the cult it's all fake ego identity anyways but at least the old one was more healthy than this cult one that they try to program you with that one is really fake that one was just designed to serve them so reclaim your old identity then you can go back and work and improve that old identity of course just leave walk out and leave oftentimes it's just as simple as walking out and leaving getting into a car just leaving change cities change states change countries you know whatever you got to do to leave cut it off cold turkey cut off all your relationships with people in that cult your friends even if you have family members that are cut it off at least until you can get back on your own feet and remember nothing bad will happen to you for leaving I mean not inherently I mean the cult could be after you for whatever reasons but nothing bad like you're not gonna be depressed or suicide or any this kind of nonsense that they programmed you with in fact by leaving you are gonna be restarting your life this is the most optimistic and hopeful thing you can do and really by leaving now you finally have a foundation upon which you can do real personal development and spirituality on your own independently of any cult and really when you get it to true spirituality and true personal development on your own the way that I talk about with all of my content on actualised org and you sort of do some of these techniques for real not as part of a cult then you see the power of it and you see how much you can transform your own life and that gives you a sense of hope and optimism so that whatever issues you had before any kind of childhood traumas addiction problems self-esteem issues maybe didn't like how you looked you didn't like how your family treated you you didn't have friends or you couldn't find someone to to lob or have sex with all of those issues can be addressed your financial insecurities those can be addressed your sense of life purpose you can create a beautiful sense of life purpose for yourself all of this can be done without a cult and you'll see you'll progress so much faster and you'll feel so much better doing it on your own which is sort of what I teach with actualize that work so cheer up about that and what I recommend you do is also some self esteem exercises because chances are if you've been in a cult that had you have a low self-esteem and you need to work on that I recommend doing Nathaniel Brandon's self esteem sentence completion exercises you can find those in his books or in his courses so go check that out do some of those for a year or two that will help to get you back on your feet and lastly what I recommend is that you make a serious study now after having left the cult of epistemology and metaphysics in the way that I teach it which is not as a Dogma or as an ideology but rather it's becoming more conscious of the self-deception mechanisms of the mind becoming conscious of how ideology works how happens it belief work how paradigms work and just what reality is you start questioning reality you start self inquiring you question everything you question all of your beliefs you have no sacred beliefs until all of it is questioned away and then eventually you purify yourself through this process and that's how you truly free yourself that's how you truly become happy and in that process you will also deprogram all of your cult brainwashing you both have cult brainwashing in your mind and you also have mainstream cultural programming that brainwashed you as well and you're gonna have to deprogram both of those things we'll talk more about the second one in part two so next week we're going to be looking at part to the broader epistemic lessons we want to take a look at all the stuff we talked about here that we see in cults and we're gonna start to notice how all of that also exists everywhere in society and that will be really exciting that's really the whole point of this miniseries is to talk about part two like I said I will be adding those three cult books to my book list soon so check those out those are great very eye-opening lots of interesting antidotes and stories and and more detailed explanations of how sneaky these mind-control techniques of cults really are and how dangerous they can be in many case studies of how lives were destroyed and also how people escaped successfully and how they deprogram themselves successfully and the last thing I'll say is just kind of a warning that right now in the 21st century we're entering a new era the Internet age the social media age were actually I predict a rise in cult activity over the next 50 years because there's still so many easy ways to exploit search engines social media Wikipedia pages in order to draw people in also YouTube a lot of cults these days are getting started on YouTube so watch out watch out who you're following what kind of people you're listening to be very careful there's a lot of movements now which are pseudo cult-like the alt-right red pill this insel phenomenon with Jordan Peterson some of the people that follow sam harris is kind of new atheism stuff like there's a lot of very dogmatic stuff which poses itself as not dogma of course which which the devil always does so be very very careful and also watch out for those self development teachers that you're following any spiritual teachers that you're following really assess them carefully can be careful with these online forums that you can get into these social media rabbit holes these 4chan rabbit holes and these reddit rabbit holes you can go down because this is how cults will be started in the 21st century online not probably through a brick and mortar front organization but through an online sort of front organization so be careful and now of course I have to address the issue of but Leo isn't actualized org a cult well take a look take a look at all of my work and see how does it stack up against this list of characteristics that I talked about with cults what you should see is that from the very beginning I place a very strong emphasis on epistemology I placed a very strong emphasis on trying to go deep with you into the mechanics of how belief systems work and the dangers of that the dangers of ideology the dangers of collective ego the dangers of paradigm lock I've even criticized academia and mainstream science for having cult-like qualities that's how strict my standards are from the very beginning I knew that actualize that org could easily be turned into a cult and that's precisely what I did not want because I know that that's the minds default tendency and I have to be very hawk-like to watch myself such that I don't become a cult leader you know if I wanted to I could easily turn actualize that org into a cult I could create a whole pyramid structure with myself at the top I can get so much more money I could make millions of dollars I could create my own compound I could recruit people I can recruit lieutenants I could get multiple wives all this stuff would be so easy for me to do at this point and yet I spend a lot of my time shooting videos talking about basically how to help you to avoid doing that and even though I'm playing my part you also have to play your part because even though I don't want actualize I don't de turn into a cult you in the way that you handle this material in the way that you philosophize about it and mentally masturbate about it and trying to turn these ideas into into some sort of doctrine or religion you could easily turn it into a cult and I don't want that and that would really go against all of my teachings so I'm actually very deliberate not to create a hierarchical organization out of actualized org now sure we have a forum but no one's forcing you to be there it's a very loose organization structure you know I've actually I've had many opportunities over the last five years of running actualized at org to really ramp up my business ramped up my marketing hire people hire a PR person hire a business development person hire salespeople you know I could have easily done that I deliberately didn't and that has cost me hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars by this point I could have easily created expensive courses a whole series of expensive courses to to suck you in and charge you tens of thousands of dollars in the end I could have easily done all that so so there you go I hope you appreciate that of course I have no desire to do it so I'm not just doing it because because I shouldn't I just don't have a desire to do it hmm and you know it was funny when I was like younger when I was like 15 years old or something like that I was really into philosophy but I was against religion and one of the things that like one of my worst nightmares was like oh whatever what if I ever become one of these people who starts a religion and in my mind I'd be like now religion is so stupid I would never do that and then and then now after a various enlightenment and mystical experiences that I've had now basically like I'm looking at actualize I don't I'm like yup this is basically a religion this is how religion starts you see people to understand about how religion starts is that no religion starts as some fundamentalist rabid crazy doctrine of ideas that you need to believe in some supernatural weird outlandish stuff that's not how religion ever starts it always starts with genuine insights about the nature of mankind and life and how to be happy and how to relate to other people how to be more conscious and how to understand what reality is it always starts that way but of course that's not what we call a religion so what you see with actualize that already is really the kernel that was there in every single religion in Judaism in Islam and Christianity in Buddhism in Hinduism in yoga and Sikhism and anything else like that every major strand of religion it all started like this but then after hundreds of years thousands of years a lot of corruption a lot of ego individual ego collective ego it all devolved and ossified into dogma and ideology and that's precisely how it works and so I sort of expect the same thing to happen with actualize that org at some point it's just a question of like will I ever become famous and well-known enough for that to actually happen or I'll just be forgotten in the annals of history it would actually be better almost if I was forgotten because otherwise if if actually that org becomes too successful after I'm long dead people will turn this into a cult and into a religion like it's guaranteed to happen which is precisely why I'm spending so much time trying to inoculate people against doing that but even though I'm saying all this it will still happen see that's the crazy thing about it it's not enough to say it because these words they fall on deaf ears to an ideologue because really you have to be at a certain level of development and consciousness in order to be able to actualize and embody these teachings in a way that's not cult-like because if you have too much ego and too little development and too little consciousness you will inevitably no matter what I say turn all these ideas into mental masturbation and just fuel for the ego your ego we'll we'll weaponize all this so watch out alright that's it I'm done here please click that like button for me and come check out actualize that org that's my website you'll find my blog on there you'll find a life purpose course you'll find the book list with some of those cult ebooks I'll be adding soon there's one already there and and come check out the forum where you can get some help if you're stuck in a cult come on the forum explain your situation we might help you out and give you some emotional support and advice and the last final thing that I'll say is I hope you appreciate the rarity of listening to actualize that org now I know that sounds very self-serving and egotistical but that's not what I mean what I mean is I mean the following specific thing I know people in my life who are close to me friends and family members who know about actualize that org who know that there's hundreds of hours of video about advanced stuff on here but nevertheless they're too lazy to just click the play button and to even listen to a couple hours of it let alone two three hundred hours of it it's very rare that somebody finds actualised org in the first place it's rarer still that they find it and then stick around long enough to actually watch a good two to three hundred hours of it's such that you really start to see the big picture that's how long it takes you're not gonna understand all of life and how everything interconnects and how to become happy and how to find your life purpose and how to avoid all the psychological and and egotistical traps that exist in just a couple of hours or in a couple of five-minute videos it's never gonna happen this is a very deep and broad area of study you could have an entire ph.d program on this thing where you study this stuff for ten years I mean I basically have been studying this stuff for 10 years now and I still feel like I'm ignorant and have much to learn and if I think about where I was five years ago when I started this this whole thing I was just totally it's it's cringe-worthy how ignorant I was so my point is that if you found this resource make sure you actually utilize the resource which means you actually have to watch the episodes and take notes on them and kind of piece it together in your own mind it all starts there I'm not even talking about right now taking a bunch of action going to a bunch of meditation retreats and doing a bunch of psychedelics before you even get there most people will never even get there because they haven't just watched 200 hours of the content such that they can see how it all interconnects and why they should be doing all that stuff if you're struggling with installing a meditation habit or eating healthy or finding a life purpose or or whatever the reason that is because you don't yet understand the significance of the things that are being taught here it's way more significant than you ever possibly imagined or conceived asking 200 hours of you is not too much really it's just like the bare minimum in my mind think of how many years you've spent in school learning math learning English learning history you spent 12 years basically doing each of those three things in school and never once did you say or raise your hand in the class and say well isn't this a waste of time should we really be spending thousands of hours learning math and English in history but now all the sudden when you come actualize that organ now you're being you know your mind is being blasted with all this psychological and metaphysical and epistemic stuff and it's complicated is it's nuanced and it's all interconnected and it's kind of messy and it connects with your own personal life so now when you're learning all this practical psychology which of course they never taught you in school or in university now that you're learning all this now all the sudden you help with the objection is like well Leah but a hundred hours 200 hours that's a that's a waste of time this is philosophy man that's mental masturbation dude it took you 12 years to learn how to do [ __ ] math and you still suck at it how many hours how many thousands of hours do you think it's gonna take you to master the things that I'm talking about here to master your entire life your psychology your motivation your emotions your how you relate to other human beings your life purpose financial independence understanding what the hell is going on here in life do you think you're gonna do that in a hundred hours no way forget it never never ever ever all you will do 100 hours is delude yourself with half knowledge half truths and then you can go start a cult you need to delude other people so you need to appreciate the the importance and the depth of this work and you need to apply care and time and energy to it this is serious work this is not some ten minute YouTube video about some obscure quantum mechanical topic or some psychological factoid here or there some some stupid video like that there's tons of these kinds of videos on YouTube you can watch as many of those you want and they're addictive and maybe they're fun and maybe if you feel like you're you're getting somewhere watching those but you're not you're not really understanding what's going on you're not understanding what life is you're not understanding how to really master yourself now of course actualizing is not the only resource you should use there are other good channels out there that teach you self-improvement and spirituality so by no means am i trying to monopolize these insights here but but by and large most videos you're watching are not serious most of the books you're reading you're not serious they don't really have a grasp of what's going on at the big picture level of life and even if they're giving you some self-improvement tips here and there it's all surface level mostly it's not really gonna change your life it's not really gonna address the issue of your depression of your ennui of your um your sense of lack of direction your your your lack of satisfaction with life these are very deep issues you're in authenticity your inability to be authentic around other people these are very deep issues that require that you go beyond the psychological level beyond self-help and to the metaphysical level to the epistemic level so that's why my videos are so long of course it's also very convenient excuse I do also love to I hear myself talk so that's also why they're long so don't feel bad about spending time watching these videos these videos are way out of the matrix they are part of the matrix but they are the part that will help you to break out of the matrix and before you can break out of the matrix first you got to learn about how the matrix works and you're not gonna learn how the matrix works in just a couple of hours it takes 200 hours or even more why is that because the matrix is very complex there are so many traps so many ways to deceive yourself so spend some time educating yourself you know education is the key to your to your ultimate liberation stay tuned with me over the next year I have a lot of deep topics yet planned that have not been talked about in 2019 I plan to talk about very fundamental topics we're gonna talk about evolution we're gonna talk about science we're going to talk about emotions there's so much more I need to say about emotions about fear about anger about we're talking about survival we're talking about self bias we're talking about self justification we're gonna talk about how brains work and neuroscientist of that hasn't been covered yet so I hope you're excited about that listen to this content make use of it because man I'm blown away I'm blown away that friends of mine who know about this stuff they're just too lazy to watch it and I can see that they're struggling it's like they're trying to understand all this stuff but slike do just watch to hundreds of videos psych no I don't want to do that that's too long well well good luck with your life then good luck with your life alright that's it I'm out you