Since primitive times, people began to believe in gods, mysticism, magic and otherworldly forces. This is how religion was born. Major world religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism), national beliefs and pagan cults arose. A new time has come and part of society has grouped around charismatic but dangerous religious leaders. They began to instill in people the idea of the imminent end of the world, frightening them with the inevitable death of humanity. In their opinion, only members of a religious organization can be saved. This is how religious sects arose, which still flourish all over the world, including Russia. Many of them are totalitarian sects and their activities are prohibited by law. Sectarians instill in adherents the false and destructive idea that if parishioners donate money and property to the sect, they will be saved from the coming apocalypse and will find happiness. The creators of a sect most often call their organization a church and are extremely indignant when they are called sectarians. Because of naivety and suggestibility, the people believe these criminals, such as the leaders of sects, who rob and deceive people with crazy ideas that they themselves do not believe in. They collect billions of rubles from the population and lead a luxurious life with these donations. The leaders of the sect frighten believers with all sorts of troubles if they do not follow the recommendations of the spiritual leader of the sectarian community.
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia are recognized as a totalitarian sect and are therefore banned. But despite this, adherents of the Jehovah's teachings hold their meetings clandestinely and place their booklets and issues of the Watchtower in mailboxes. The leaders of the sect convince their flock that there is a God called Jehovah. After the imminent end of the world, he will save those people who believe in him. In meetings, people read a distorted version of the Bible. In the New Testament version of the false holy book, Jesus Christ is not God, but the son of Jehovah. The congregation pays offerings and tithes. They are prohibited from celebrating secular and Christian holidays. New Year, birthday, Christmas and Easter - these and other holidays are strictly taboo. It is also prohibited to vote, serve in the army, or give blood transfusions. All life is full of prohibitions. Entire families from grandmother to grandson come to sect meetings. They, accompanied by noisy music and speeches from the pastor, believe in an imminent apocalypse. For more than a hundred years, a new date for the end of the world has been called, but the planet still lives. Jehovah's Witnesses are thriving throughout the world. In Russia, by court decision, it has recently been recognized as extremist and a reduction in the number of members of the sect is expected. Many of the flock became mentally ill, committed suicide, or refused treatment for serious illnesses.
What is a neo-Pentecostal sect?
There were times when only those who, by the nature of their occupation, studied Western religious movements knew about it in our country. But since the collapse of the Iron Curtain, a great many different preachers have rushed to us, claiming exclusive possession of the truth. Some of them, unfortunately, managed to achieve some success. This primarily applies to the so-called “neo-Pentecostals.” The scale of their activities is so great that the adherents they attract today make up almost half of all Russian sectarians. Even the well-known Jehovah's Witnesses are inferior to them in numbers.
Scientologists
The most terrible sect in the world is the powerful organization of Scientologists. The structure originated in the USA in the mid-20th century, where their main office is now located. Every day, cult leaders collect from 3 to 5 million dollars from people. In many countries of the world, including the Russian Federation, the sect is a banned organization. Governments try to control the activities of the sect through the police. The founder and first leader of the cult, Ronald Hubbard, died in 1986, but left a rich legacy. Now the science fiction writer’s followers are among Hollywood stars, deputies and ministers, they have even penetrated defense enterprises. There is information that the American CIA is specifically trying to infiltrate Scientologists into Russian secret facilities.
According to Scientology teachings, our planet is doomed to destruction. But a person can survive the destruction of the planet, because... is an immortal superbeing. Only followers of Scientology will survive the chaos and destruction of humanity, because... they will learn to operate with the thetan - the part of the human personality located outside the body. To do this, they purchase literature and audio recordings on religious doctrine, spending tens of thousands of dollars on it each.
A sect has a destructive effect on a person’s personality. Sect leaders control every step of their followers. By dividing people into inferiors and superhumans, and by imposing severe psychological pressure on sect members, leaders suppress people’s self-confidence. Adepts forget how to write and think critically. To those who are lucky enough to leave Aum Shinrikyo
The activities of the Aum Senrike sect created in Japan are prohibited in most countries, including the Russian Federation. Everyone remembers how the founder of the extremist teaching, Seke Asahara, carried out a terrible terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway, which killed twelve people. In the 90s, Asahara came to Russia and even held negotiations with Russian politicians. Asaharu's teachings distorted both Buddhism and yoga. Currently, the creator of the sect has been found guilty of 13 crimes by a Japanese court. But when he will be executed according to the court's decision is not yet clear. The Japanese authorities failed to completely shut down the sect. She changed the name to "Circle of Light" and "Aleph", but continues to lie to people about the apocalypse. The terrorist organization has up to six thousand adherents. There are adherents both in Russia and all over the world. Asahara's crimes shocked all of humanity. Therefore, the activities of the sect are illegal and are under the control of the special services.
Sect of Grigory Grabovoi
At the end of the 20th century, Grigory Grabovoi founded a sect that became a pyramid. He promised to resurrect the dead and charged 39 thousand rubles for this from each participant in his sermons. Now the founder of the sect is in prison, but he still has many followers. Adherents are instilled with the idea that Grabovoi is the Messiah, and all people have superpowers and therefore can become a god. Anyone who obeys the leader will be able to gain immortality in the future and learn to resurrect the dead. In the period from 2003 to 2005, the sect flourished, but after the arrest of Grabovoi, the number of adherents decreased by about ten times. The ex-leader of the sect is serving a sentence for fraud on an especially large scale. The flock still pays a lot of money to the sect's treasury and attends courses where they are taught to revive people, destroy nuclear power plants and cure incurable diseases. Manipulation of people's consciousness led to the fact that many abandoned traditional medicine and soon died. Others lost their minds and began to see the dead people come back to life. The false prophet has a flock not only in the countries of the former Soviet Union, but even in foreign countries.
Jehovah witnesses
A sect with this name is well known in our country. Many had to meet its members. As a rule, these are quite intrusive people who approach you on the street or call people’s apartments, offering to listen to their sermons. At the same time, they promise knowledge of Divine truths and try to sell brochures. If the person they are approaching shows interest, they become persistent and persuade him to attend their meeting. Their technology for recruiting new members is quite well thought out, modern and based on a good knowledge of human psychology.
The sect's leadership center is located in America, and its branches are open in almost all major countries of the world. Despite the fact that they call themselves Christians, and true ones at that, in reality these people are not at all involved in the real teaching of Christ. All their vigorous activity is based on purely material interests. The staged scope of their meetings is purely American. For example, 100,000 people attended the 1992 convention of Jehovah's Witnesses in St. Petersburg. Once upon a time this structure was among those prohibited in our country, but during the period of perestroika they were legalized.
"Peoples Temple"
The sect was created by the American Jim Jones, who fiercely hated his homeland. He invited people to his sermons, which were similar to political rallies. People were indoctrinated into the imperialist and chauvinist nature of the state. Jones' sermons were attended by many diverse audiences who became his flock. The pastor created the pseudo-socialist commune “Peoples Temple”. The USSR anthem and Lenin's speeches were heard from the speakers. But in November 1978, a terrible thing happened: in the American forests, a thousand adherents committed suicide. There are several versions of what happened. Some believe that the American intelligence services are to blame for everything. Others believe that the US authorities wanted to close the sect and Jim Jones gave all the sectarians potassium cyanide so that they would take it as a sign of hatred towards the unjust American state.
Another sad example
We have already seen what a sect is, whose leaders subjugate the will of their adherents. On this occasion, I would like to recall another religious group, which, fortunately, did not penetrate the territory of our country, but caused a lot of grief to the Americans who trusted its creator. The sect organization belongs to its leader Jim Jones. It was created in 1955 in Indianapolis. The degree of influence on the consciousness of its members exceeds all previously known examples.
Being a pathological hater not only of Americans, but of all people in the world in general, Jim Jones created settlements in the jungles of Guyana where he housed his adherents. Life there was reminiscent of the worst versions of movie scripts about states with a totalitarian regime. Demanding unquestioning obedience to any of his orders, he achieved slavish obedience and universal worship, surpassing all conceivable limits.
The history of the sect ended in tragedy. In March 1978, more than nine hundred residents of the settlements simultaneously committed suicide. This news shocked the world community. The court sentenced Jones to a long prison term, but in 2002 he left prison early for good behavior. Let us only add that this scoundrel had a weakness for the Soviet Union and its totalitarian system. He even named one of the streets of the village after Lenin and expressed his desire to immigrate to our country.
Moonies
In the 1950s, the Korean Sun Myung Moon created an international empire, which has several different official names. Moon and his wife now live in the States. There are hundreds of thousands of adherents in the ranks of the organization, Moon owns factories and shipyards. In Moscow, sectarians bought a cinema building for their meetings. They do not allow strangers there, and the mayor’s office is not yet able to return the building back. The flock lives in small groups of 5 to 10 people, breaking all family ties. They get up at four in the morning and immediately begin a long morning prayer. You cannot have sex before marriage, and the “other half” for marriage is appointed by the top of the sect. Most often, future spouses see each other for the first time after Moon's approval without their consent, and the wedding takes place three years after they met. All income of the flock goes to the organization's treasury. According to the ideology, Moon bears divine blood and is sent to Earth to cleanse humanity. To do this, he needs to sleep with sectarian women so that they give birth to as many “special” children as possible. The psyche of the flock is destroyed. They imagine Jesus Christ, Stalin and other great personalities. Adherents run around the stage with terrible screams and distorted faces, uttering screams and stupid speeches. The police are fighting the sect because they evade taxes, commit fraud and violate visa regulations.
Sects: a modern view
Modern sects, or as they are often called today - “totalitarian sects”, “neo-cults”, “destructive religious organizations” - have little in common with what was denoted by this word in Soviet dictionaries. A modern sect is not a community that has broken away from the Church, or any brotherhood that has adopted its own doctrine of faith. Today's sects are focused not on spiritual search, but on enriching leaders. Despite the very different ideas that they propagate, they have one goal - to recruit as many people as possible, achieve their complete subordination and use them for their own personal, selfish purposes.
The doctrinal base of the sects is a vinaigrette of various heresies, sometimes logically incompatible, but at the same time with an invariable claim to ancient origin. In some cases, the fact of “inventing” one’s own religion is not hidden precisely for the purpose of making money. And always - double standards. For the lower levels of adherents there is one “truth”, for the upper ones - another; management has a “secret” hidden from everyone. Some former adherents of neo-cults who have reached a high position in them note that as they move up the career ladder and approach the secrets of leadership, “ideologicalness” becomes less and less.
It is easy to explain how neo-cults differ from traditional religions with just one word: “freedom”. Religions respect the right of the individual to freely choose his own faith; they do not use psychotechnics, do not make believers dependent on their mentors, and do not persecute apostates. That is, the fundamental difference is that in religion the creative originality of the individual is the basis of man’s similarity to God. In neo-cults, a person is only a tool to achieve certain goals, and not least to obtain benefits.
Hare Krishnas
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded in 1966 in the United States by an immigrant from India. The doctrine strongly contradicts the beliefs of Hinduism. In the Russian capital, Hare Krishnas at the beginning of the 2000s tried to take a large plot of land to build a temple. But the anger of the public was such that the authorities of the Mother See did not allow it.
There are up to four thousand adherents of this sect in the Russian Federation. They wear Indian clothes, eat the national food of India, pray from morning to night and study a distorted version of the Hindu holy book. They consider Krishna to be the creator of the Universe, who started the wheel of reincarnation. You can get out of samsara by becoming concubines of God. That's why both men and women happily get themselves high at meetings. Thus, they are trying to depict sexual intercourse with the effeminate youth Krishna. Hare Krishnas regularly go into trance. At this time, they scream and laugh heart-rendingly, dance, jump and hug, roll on the ground and even spit. In this way they are trying to enter the heavenly palace of Krishna. Mental illness among many has become so severe that there are known cases of members of the organization raping small children and cutting off the heads of Christian clergy.
Neo-Pentecostals or Charismatics
More than half of Russian sectarians belong to the Word of Life organization. Neo-Pentecostals have several other names: “Church of the New Generation”, “Calvary Chapel”, etc. The charismatic movement originated in America in the 70s of the last century and now seriously influences the social life of different countries. In the Russian Federation, there are up to 300,000 people who belong to the Pentecostal sect. They consider themselves Protestant Christians, but this is not so. Occultism in the sect is so developed that real Protestants consider them sectarians. After all, charismatics laugh and scream at meetings, supposedly feeling the Holy Spirit.
Sect leaders collect tithes and other donations from their flock. It is suggested that the more money you bring to the organization’s treasury, the closer you will be to God, the happier and healthier you will be. The leaders of the sect show pseudo-sessions of healing the blind and lame, and the hypnosis sessions look cooler than those of Kashpirovsky. Newcomers are recruited right on the street, supposedly invited to a cool party. The magic of persuasion is such that many people decide to come to large halls. They begin to dance with the others to noisy music and listen to the speeches of the “pastor.” As a result, people begin to think that everything is cool and wonderful in their lives, although in reality they have a lot of problems. Some people's psyche is completely shaken, others realize the untruthfulness of religious teachings and try to commit suicide. At that time, they had already lost all their financial savings, giving them to the sect’s budget. A number of adherents committed brutal crimes: rape of young children, murder. In 2001, charismatic parents in Moscow strangled their little sick daughter and sick granddaughter, suggesting that the illnesses of these children were a divine curse.
Alexander Dvorkin about the structure of sects in an interview with Gazeta.Ru
— Alexander Leonidovich, tell me, are all sects dangerous and can they be classified?
— There are different types of sects: for example, classical and totalitarian (or destructive). Classic ones do not pose a social danger. The only thing we can note is their cultural and religious limitations. But totalitarian sects carry certain dangers on four levels: at the personal level, at the level of the family, society and state. You can also add a fifth level of danger - the international aspect of their activities.
— At what point did sects begin to appear?
— In general, they have always been there, but they emerged as a noticeable phenomenon with the advent of Christianity. In the pagan world there was no one established doctrine, just as there was no one established organization. The Church became the first organization to exist in the world—worldwide, global. Well, and, accordingly, the first parodies of the church began to appear, which were similar in some ways and which tried to attract people to themselves.
Totalitarian sects are rather a product of the 20th century. Many factors contributed to this: post-Protestant fragmentation, when the understanding of truth shifted from organization to personal revelation and personal understanding; scientific and technological progress, thanks to which fast transport appeared, reducing distances between countries and parts of the world; increased contacts between people; positive thinking of the end of the 19th century that science conquers everything, conquers everything, will soon embrace the whole world, all humanity is one and religion should be one. That is why all sorts of incompatible religious systems began to unite and more and more new attempts to synthesize a wide variety of religious systems appeared.
Also influenced by the emergence of political totalitarianism, the emergence of psychoanalysis and, as a result, the development of a number of methods of manipulating consciousness, the youth drug counterculture of the 50-60s and the entire psychedelic experience of altered consciousness.
It seems to me that the catalyst for all these processes, which did not intersect with each other, was Hollywood film production. In the post-war period, it became absolutely global, took into account all the trends that were in the air, combined them and simplified them to the level of understanding of the simplest person. For example, there was an unknown little dusty Shaolin monastery in China, but when a Hollywood film came out showing how deftly the monks hit their enemies in the ear with their heels, everyone wanted to be like them, and a large number of “Shaolin masters” began to appear, who no one knows where they came from, but they promise enlightenment and the ability to hit your ear with your heel.
—Where does a sect begin?
— Any sect begins with a leader who creates an organization around himself in his own image and likeness. He has an idea, and with this idea he begins to attract people and build an organization that bears a very clear imprint of his personality.
There are traits that unite leaders of all sects in general - a thirst for power and narcissism.
My colleague in Canada, a professor of the sociology of religion at the University of Edmonton, spent many years researching the personalities of the leaders of totalitarian sects and came to the conclusion that they all suffer from the so-called malignant narcissism, which is characterized by narcissism, the desire to be in the center, the desire for universal worship, veneration , adoration.
For example, take Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. Hubbard, on the one hand, strived for power and even in his youth, in his pensive thoughts, he often wrote down the phrases “all people are my slaves,” “the whole world obeys me,” and so on. He tried himself in different fields, but he couldn’t find success anywhere, he even tried to be a writer and is credited with a phrase that he repeatedly said in different circumstances: “Writing, getting paid a cent per word - that’s ridiculous. If you want to become rich, you need to start your own religion.”
He eventually wrote a book, Dianetics, subtitled The Science of Modern Mental Health, which became a trend. Then, in the late 40s, psychoanalysis was in vogue. Despite its popularity, it was a very expensive pleasure, and only Hollywood stars had their own psychoanalysts. At the same time, ordinary people read about it, and they all also wanted to have their own psychoanalyst. The book that Hubbard wrote was perceived as psychoanalysis for the poor. The book became a bestseller, began to spread, and ultimately it all turned into Scientology.
At the beginning of his career, Hubbard said, let's sell these people a piece of blue sky.
Scientology is an organization that sells pieces of blue sky.
Promises a person everything: he is told that he will first increase his IQ, improve his health, improve his memory, and ultimately they promise that he will become the ruler of the universe, will be able to move planets with a wave of his finger, leave his body and return to it at will , move to any point in the universe. But the result, of course, is completely different.
- But do the sect leaders understand that this all looks like nonsense or do they also believe in it?
“It’s hard to say what they think; we can’t look into a person’s skull.” Even if the leader himself does not believe in his promises, he must appear very convincing. We can only guess what the head of the sect is thinking about, but apparently there is a certain combination of faith and a certain cynicism. On the one hand, Hubbard cynically said that you need to create your own religion, but on the other hand, at the end of his life he wrote letters in which he proclaimed himself the Antichrist and talked about his second coming.
The leader of the Mother of God center, John Bereslavsky (whose real name is Veniamin), claims that the Mother of God appears to him daily. He undoubtedly believes in this, it’s obvious. The question is about the nature of his visions: is it a frustrated imagination, or something else. At the same time, his visions are periodically quite material in nature. So, in the early 90s, when people still had quite a few imported cars, the Mother of God allegedly asked him why the prophet (that is, himself) drove a Volvo car when it was high time for him to switch to a Mercedes.
But we must also take into account that sect leaders are the most unfree people. Members of the sect can at least leave the organization; it is difficult, but possible. But the higher a person is in the sectarian hierarchy, the more difficult it is for him to leave.
And it is absolutely impossible for the sect leader to leave. He is a slave to his position, his environment, his infallibility, he is used to it and can no longer refuse it. Lord Acton also said: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In addition, around the sect leader there is a circle of people who have also achieved a certain position in this system and will never give up this position. I know of cases where leaders became inconvenient and were simply removed. However, I do not know of a single case in the 20th century when a sect leader announced that he had made a mistake and dissolved the organization.
- So, the leader of the sect must have not only a thirst for power, but also a thirst for profit?
— There is a widespread opinion that the sect is created for profit. But sect leaders are primarily interested in power. Money is needed, yes, but money increases power, and power increases the amount of money. But there are sect leaders who lead a very ascetic lifestyle. There are few of them, but they still exist. At the same time, I do not know a single sect leader who would not be a pathological power-hunger. Some people have enough power, but they lead a very modest life.
— Many sects promote a person’s leaving the family. For what?
— Sects do not tolerate competitors. The person must fully belong to the organization. And family is always a competitor and always divided loyalty. A family can tear a person away from a sect.
Anti-family sentiment is “normal” for sects.
If part of the family does not belong to the sect, then, according to the concepts of the sect, these people are enemies who must be abandoned, otherwise they can lead the newly formed sectarian away from the most important path that he has. It happens that a family is created in a sect, but the conditions of existence there are such that it is very difficult to call it a family.
Again, an obvious example: in the Muna sect, the groom does not choose the bride and the bride does not choose the groom - they are brought together. Whoever is appointed will be there. Moon always tried to appoint people of different races and different nations, who often did not even have a common language. And in the Jehovah's Witnesses sect (an organization banned in Russia) there are many different prohibitions. One American researcher collected all the prohibitions from various sources and came up with a list of several pages of text. So, there is a ban on explicit expression of signs of pleasure during marital intimacy. If you think about it, it becomes scary. How does the sect know who was expressing signs of pleasure and who was not? This means that spouses must inform each other that in the most intimate moments of married life there is a third person invisibly present nearby, and this third person is a sect. Then the offending spouses are summoned to a disciplinary commission and individually questioned in detail. A family cannot exist in such a situation.
— Why are sects dangerous for society, the state and the individual?
— The sect enslaves the individual. Traditional religions interact with and enrich society. There are, for example, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Islamic cultures. This is an objective fact. But we know nothing about sectarian culture, we do not know sectarian philosophers, artists, thinkers, composers. Obviously, they simply don't exist. Sects do not enrich people, they only draw juices and resources from society, recruit people who are completely torn out of public life, and draw finances from society into their own closed and opaque systems. All this resembles a cancerous tumor that draws juices from the body until it kills it. If a person has become a Jehovah's Witness, he most likely will not become a teacher or a doctor, and if he was, he will leave his job and work in a night cafe so that during the day he will be able to go from house to house, which is what Jehovah's Witnesses encourage.
As for the danger to the state: any sect is actually a miniature state within a state with its own judicial system, penal system, and legislation. The good of the sect is the highest moral standard, so if for the good of the sect it is necessary to break some laws, then the sectarians will naturally do it.
— Who is influenced by sects?
- All. In order for a person to join a sect, it is necessary that two conditions coincide: first, that the sectarian lure corresponds to the interests of the person himself. People are not invited to join a sect. They invite you to free English language courses, to an amazing diagnostician-doctor who will see all the diseases - those that exist and those that will exist, to a fun youth party, to Vedic cooking or oriental dance courses, to a yoga or martial arts class , for an interesting highly paid job, courses for unlocking inner potential, personal growth, how to become a winner, how to learn to draw in one lesson, for a lecture on the ancient philosophical heritage. These are just a few options, in fact there are many more. There may be a sect hiding behind all this. Therefore, if a person approaches you with an offer that interests you, this is already the first step. And the second condition is that a person must be suggestible. There are people who are more suggestible, there are people who are less suggestible, but there are no people who are not suggestible at all. When we experience stress, suggestibility increases. The greater the stress, the greater the suggestibility. Therefore, if at the right moment a person comes up with the right offer, or rather, at the wrong moment with an unnecessary offer, then the likelihood that any of us will end up in a sect is very high.
Among sect scholars there is such a sad saying: “Every person has his own guru, and you will be lucky if you never meet him.”
— There is an opinion that most often unsettled people who, for example, have problems in their family, end up in sects...
- This is stress. But stress doesn't have to be caused by unhappiness. Sometimes it’s enough to go on vacation. Vacation is also stressful. For example, some doctor of science is sitting, working a lot, and he is sent on vacation, they say, stop sitting at the computer, it’s time to relax. He went, he doesn’t know what to do there. He had everything planned out at work, and now he has a lot of free time, he’s bored, trying to meet someone, chat. He is torn out of his usual environment, and if they approach him with the right offer, something that can interest him, he can be lured into a sect. There is a saying that there are no sick doctors. When a doctor becomes seriously ill, he often loses his medical skills, just as a doctor can turn to some grandmother, because illness is stress and occupies all his thoughts and all his medical skills recede into the background.
— How do you understand that you are in a sect?
If you understand that being in a sect is already great, then you are already on the way to leaving the sect. But this doesn’t happen too often - usually, while a person is inside, he categorically disagrees with the fact that his organization is a sect.
Therefore, it is most important to identify the sect at the recruitment stage. If you are promised a lot of things at once and for free or very cheap, there is reason to be wary, because free cheese only comes in a mousetrap. If you are asked to make a decision now, immediately, because later it will be too late, this is also not a good sign, because truth is not afraid of doubts and tests. If it exists, no matter how much you check it, you will be convinced every time that it is the truth. If you are being asked to make a decision now, it means that information is being withheld from you, knowing that if you find out a little more, you are unlikely to agree to it. If a stranger treats you like your best friend after just one and a half minutes of dating, that's something suspicious, because true friendship takes years to develop. Apparently they are trying to manipulate you. These are the most basic signs.
And we must also remember that on foreign territory we are much more suggestible, so the task of any sectarian recruiter, whether he acts on the street, through social networks or through acquaintances, is to drag you into sectarian territory, where it is much easier to process you. You should not immediately go where you are invited. If you are very interested in the offer, then it is better to come there yourself at a time convenient for you and preferably not alone - with a friend or girlfriend. If this is a sect, they will try to take you to different corners of the room. There is a sectarian principle of recruitment called a sandwich. That is, newcomers should never communicate with each other. The newcomer must be between at least two sectarians who deal with him and cut off attempts to talk with other newcomers. This all looks natural, but if you come and somehow it turns out that you find yourself in different corners, you should approach each other again, and if you see that they are purposefully trying to separate you several times, this is a reason to say "goodbye" organization.
— How does the behavior of a person who falls into a sect change?
— A person changes very dramatically in a totalitarian sect and does not change for the better. It is impossible not to understand and feel it. One day a woman called us and said that her husband had started working for Amway. I understand that he says that this is not a sect, but for some reason he behaves like a sectarian. And we explained to her that the observation was correct, only the conclusions were incorrect, because a commercial cult is the same totalitarian sect, only without religious teaching. Religious teaching in sects is not a mandatory feature.
— Is it possible to get a person out of a sect without consequences for his psyche?
“Everything is possible, but in general, being in a sect is dangerous for the psyche.
If a person has been in a sect for some time, the consequences for the psyche will not go away.
The sooner a person leaves the sect, the less of these consequences there will be. This is all very individual, it depends on what kind of person he got into, how suggestible he is, what sect he was in, it depends on the sect itself and on many other life circumstances. But for some, these consequences go away quickly, for others they remain for a long time, for others they never go away at all. Let us repeat that all this is very individual.
— Are recruiters trained in special techniques?
- Yes, sure. They are the same sectarians and, as a rule, among the recruiters there are a lot of newcomers who have just joined the sect and are immediately sent out to engage in recruitment, for example, on the street or on the Internet. Because the best way to convince a person of something is to force him to convince others of it. By convincing others, he identifies himself with the sect, and the further he goes, the more he convinces himself of its correctness. Especially if he encounters a fairly negative attitude from others, this convinces him even more of the sectarian truth; in the sect they tell him that only we have true love, we truly treat each other well, and these people - corrupt, corrupt, perverts, you lay down your life for them, you bring them the most important truth for their salvation, and how they meet you, now judge for yourself where the truth is.
“Some sects have existed for so long that their leaders have already died. How do sects continue to live on?
— The vast majority of totalitarian sects do not survive their leader. Sects that exist for the second generation are in the minority. I know of only two sects that have existed for several generations. These are Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.
David Miscavige, the current head of Scientology, managed in the struggle that arose in the sect after Hubbard’s death to prove that he was his only legitimate successor, executor, successor, most faithful disciple, and so on. And on this basis the sect exists today. Whether it will continue after Miscavige's death, I doubt it. He's still around 50, so they still have about 20 years left.
As for the Moonies sect, the organization began to fall apart during Moon’s lifetime, and his children began to squabble over their inheritance. There were three surviving sons of his, among whom he divided the inheritance, but now all three have been removed and his former wardrobe servant has come to power in the sect. It is unclear how long he will stay there. The Moonies are still in complete disarray, but the leader’s widow is still alive. After her death, it seems to me that everything will completely fall apart.
— When a leader dies and a sect falls apart, do sectarians feel a sense of despair?
— There are often serious problems, sometimes it even ends in mass suicide. We know many such cases. Then either the former sectarians adapt to normal life and socialize, or from the ruins of the sect other sects emerge from high-ranking sectarians who begin to modify the sect and create their own organizations. Many, having trampled a little and not finding a place for themselves in life, end up in other sects.
— Do the sects somehow compete with each other?
- Certainly. Each sect strives for absolute power, so they really don’t like others. True, while they feel weak, they can cooperate, but this is only so, on the external level. If one sect takes more strength and power and feels itself on a different level, it immediately abandons the others and drowns them in every possible way. You can recall the history of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party: while it was a small sect, they collaborated with the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. When the party came to power, it began to get rid of its “fellow travelers.” The occult sect “National Socialist Party of Germany” also behaved in the same way.
— Many totalitarian sects use psychotechnics. Do they undergo special training or have a high ability to suggest?
— The human psyche is very malleable, so basic techniques are enough. When recruiters are taught different techniques, they don't even know that they are special techniques. They are simply told to do this and that, and that is quite enough. We must take into account that our behavior determines our thinking.
If you force a person to behave in a certain way, very soon his thinking adapts to this behavior. If you force a person to behave like a cultist, he will behave like a cultist.
The main thing is that, again, a person is more suggestible when he is experiencing stress. This means you need to create a situation where your entire stay in the sect is constant stress. Stress is when there is no time to stop, no time to think, a whirlwind of pressure, a complex of instilled guilt, excessive praise or extremely cruel punishments, group pressure, a certain diet, a reduced amount of sleep, etc. These are all quite simple things, but if they are applied in complex in the system, this gives quite serious results.
— Some sects have rituals when people go into a trance and roll on the floor. Why does this happen?
- This is Ericksonian hypnosis, which is also quite easy to teach. And a person with average abilities can easily master this simple skill. Achieving the desired state is helped by certain music with certain frequencies to warm up a person, endless walking around the stage in a white shirt - the effect of a pendulum, the soft insinuating tone of the preacher's voice, which is replaced by a sharp shout, these are multiple repetitions of the same words, working with the audience, when people must stand up on command, hug, sway and something else. It gives results quickly. But you cannot manipulate a person’s consciousness if the person does not allow them to be manipulated. All the people who come to these meetings know that rolling on the floor and falling on the floor is the highest manifestation of religious life, then the Holy Spirit descends on them. They strive for this. They want it. If you strive for it and want it, these techniques will quickly work. I've gone to a lot of different neo-Pentecostal meetings and it didn't affect me because I know what's going on.
— Is the state trying to suppress the activities of sects?
“He may be trying, but he can do little without public support.” In any European country where counteraction to sects was somehow established, it all started with people creating their own committees, demanding from local authorities that they do something, somehow solve their problem. Local authorities realized that they did not have a legislative basis, they began to pull at the central government, the central government understood that there was no escape from the problem, they created a parliamentary commission of inquiry, it was already developing legislation, and so on. That is, there can only be work from the bottom up. Without this, even the most well-meaning government officials will do nothing. They have neither a legislative framework nor a collection of facts in order to apply the law to a particular sect. There will be no complaints from people, there will be no these facts.
— Is there a legislative framework in Russia?
— No, in most cases there is no legislative framework.
And even in cases where it would be possible to carry out some kind of process against a sect, there are often no facts that prove a violation of the charter on the part of this or that organization, because people do not consider it necessary to complain, they believe that this will lead nowhere that this is unnecessary, that they will never be answered.
Until this changes, there will be no other situation.
— In Moscow, some sects have their own premises for entire churches. That is, it is not difficult to obtain premises for an organization, even if it is considered a sect?
— The Hare Krishnas, for example, have a problem with this. They do not have permanent premises; they first received a free hectare of land from Luzhkov on Leningradsky Prospekt, but then the public rose up and began to protest. They proved that there were certain violations there and this land was taken away from them. True, they are still sitting there, but they are sitting illegally, there is some kind of temporary shelter there. They were given another land - 2 hectares outside the Moscow Ring Road, and for free. But they didn’t start building anything and, as far as I know, this land is also being taken away, as prescribed by law.
How Scientologists managed to purchase an entire building on Taganka and completely rebuild it is a mystery.
The Church of Scientology is in a difficult situation from a legal point of view: it did not undergo re-registration under the 1997 law on freedom of conscience and religious organizations. True, they managed to reach the Supreme Court and prove that they could not be liquidated on the grounds that they had not undergone re-registration. So they still exist in a regulatory gap, but nevertheless they found money for a new luxurious premises and are actively involving people. Although, I must say, their image in the public consciousness is below par. I have almost never met people who do not know that Scientology is evil (of course, except for the Scientologists themselves).
"Heaven's Gate"
At the end of the 20th century, the creator of the Gates of Heaven sect, Epwhite, was able to convince 39 sectarians to commit suicide. People believed that our planet would soon collide with a dangerous comet and the death of humanity would occur. They were told that after suicide they would leave their bodies and go into space on a rocket. Adepts prepared for future space travel, studying religious books wearing hoods, gloves and sterile clothing so as not to touch each other in order to avoid sinful desires. They were forbidden to communicate verbally; they could only write notes to each other. The sectarians watched each other and told the sect leader about the sins of the others. The bodies of all 39 sectarians who committed suicide were found in the spring of 1997 in a California villa. There were 21 men among them, the rest were women. People ate sweets, sleeping pills and washed it down with strong alcohol. All the sectarians were dressed identically and neatly covered with a purple blanket. Before dying, they tightly covered their faces with plastic bags so that they could die in their sleep from lack of air.
"Anastasia"
In 1995, a certain Puzakov, nicknamed “Maigre,” imagined the appearance of a strange woman, Anastasia, in the remote taiga. This superwoman supposedly lives with her family away from humanity in harmony with nature. Puzakov began to instill in people the idea that they need to create ecological communities, eat pine nuts and make love right in the garden. Some of the leading people believed such crazy ideas and began to buy cedar seeds and plant them around the house. They bought modest village houses with funds from the sale of a comfortable apartment in the city. The congregation began to wash their feet in basins and water their gardens with this water.
About thirty such strange communities arose throughout the country, including in the Moscow region. People became adherents of the new sect. They began to buy supposedly miraculous cedar oil from Puzakov at an incredible price. In order to join the sect, you have to pay a fee of 30 thousand dollars, but there were plenty of people willing. “Maigre” collected so much money from his flock that he was able to buy a huge mansion near Vladimir and live happily there.
The “Anastasians” have so far been poorly studied by specialists. But they noticed regressive changes in the psyche of the followers of the dangerous teaching. People began to contradict themselves in any conversation, they forgot how to think coherently and logically.
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