The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #680 - Steven Hassan

00:00:00.000 Boom! 0.99

00:00:00.000 What was the original pronunciation? 0.99

00:00:03.000 Well, my understanding is back in the old days.

00:00:06.000 It was Sam the Butcher and Joe the Barber, and my great-grandfather was a chazan, which is a singer of holy songs, like a cantor would be the term now.

00:00:17.000 And when my grandfather came to Ellis Island, he didn't speak English, and they wrote it up as H-A-S-S-A-N. And so I've lived my life being thought of as an Arab, Being persecuted at times by Jews.

00:00:30.000 I'm actually Jewish and I belong to a Jewish.

00:00:32.000 The Jews persecuted you?

00:00:33.000 I've had experiences where people made, yes.

00:00:37.000 Because of your name?

00:00:38.000 Because of the spelling of my name. 1.00

00:00:39.000 And did you have to let them, hey you asshole, I'm one of you. 0.99

00:00:42.000 Well, first I'd say, you know, being a bigot, and then I'd say, by the way, I'm Jewish. 1.00

00:00:47.000 What did they say?

00:00:48.000 I'm so sorry.

00:00:50.000 They would look at me, and then they'd say, you don't look Sephardic, I'm Ashkenazi, but anyway, you know, like, act with some dignity and compassion and kindness.

00:01:01.000 Yeah, especially for no reason.

00:01:03.000 It's not like you did something anti-Semitic, right?

00:01:06.000 The first time I was actually physically assaulted was during the Six Day War back in the 60s when I was in elementary school on a stairwell in Queens, New York.

00:01:18.000 You were assaulted because of your ethnicity?

00:01:20.000 I was assaulted by Jews who thought I was an Arab.

00:01:23.000 Jesus Christ! 0.91

00:01:25.000 And they attacked me and I threw them down.

00:01:28.000 I grew up in my father's hardware business, so I kind of like knew how to pick up hundred pound bags of rock salt and stuff. 0.99

00:01:34.000 So they like fell on the floor and then I said, you schmucks, I'm Jewish. 0.99

00:01:39.000 I like how you use schmuck, that way you let them know. 1.00

00:01:42.000 But isn't Judaism sort of a cult? 0.97

00:01:47.000 Let me just explain what Steve does anyway.

00:01:49.000 Steve Hassan.

00:01:50.000 Hassan?

00:01:50.000 Hassan.

00:01:52.000 Hassan.

00:01:53.000 Yes.

00:01:54.000 You wrote a book, Combating Cult Mind Control.

00:01:59.000 I got ahold of you because of my friend Nate Quarry, who used to fight for the UFC, and he is one who connected me to you, and he was a Jehovah's Witness for a while.

00:02:11.000 He grew up in it.

00:02:13.000 Yes.

00:02:14.000 Yes, he did.

00:02:15.000 And he wrote me a really interesting email about the mind control process of that particular cult.

00:02:22.000 Your book, Combating Cult Mind Control, is right here.

00:02:28.000 It says, number one best-selling guide to protection, rescue, and recovery from destructive cults.

00:02:34.000 Is Judaism a cult?

00:02:35.000 So first, let me just say that book first came out in 1988, and it had a fellow on the front cover who looked a little bit like you, but clean-shaven, and he had a padlock and a chain around his forehead.

00:02:49.000 I hated it.

00:02:50.000 I told the publisher I hated it.

00:02:52.000 Oh, they created the artwork for you?

00:02:54.000 They did the artwork.

00:02:55.000 And anyway, it's been out for 25, 27 years now in hardback, and I've finally bought the rights back, and I've updated it post-Internet, including terrorists and human trafficking, and including people born into cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses.

00:03:11.000 So that said...

00:03:14.000 I grew up in a conservative Jewish family, the youngest of three.

00:03:18.000 My mom was an art teacher.

00:03:20.000 My dad had a hardware store.

00:03:21.000 I was a musician before that and after that.

00:03:25.000 And I really didn't like the Judaism that I was taught, but I was very close to my mom and my maternal grandfather.

00:03:32.000 He was Orthodox.

00:03:33.000 And I grew up with a spiritual feeling and connection, and I still feel that.

00:03:49.000 Mm-hmm.

00:03:53.000 Of ethical influence and unethical influence.

00:03:57.000 And the idea is that one can look at specific behavioral components and determine whether or not it's a destructive cult or a benign cult or a constructive cult.

00:04:09.000 So the word cult in and of itself tends to be pejorative, but...

00:04:13.000 As someone who was quoted in the book called The Cult of Mac as a disciple, myself, in the book.

00:04:22.000 Cult of Mac?

00:04:23.000 Mac being Apple?

00:04:24.000 Yeah.

00:04:25.000 I was literally interviewed by this writer who actually has a website called The Cult of Mac, and he said, my editor said I have to interview you.

00:04:34.000 And I said, what about writing a book about computers?

00:04:36.000 I said, that's weird.

00:04:39.000 That's not the typical interview.

00:04:42.000 What's the title?

00:04:43.000 He said, The Cult of Mac.

00:04:44.000 And I laughed.

00:04:45.000 I said, I've been using Apple since 1982, and I have five Macs right now.

00:04:49.000 But if you still want me to do an interview, I'll be happy to.

00:04:51.000 I do believe that people there are certain people that are in a cult of Mac a hundred percent I noticed it in the 90s when I was on news radio all the people on the staff all the people that work behind the scenes they would get so excited when a new OS operating system came out Apple OS and they would talk about it like we've got a new one now it's gonna be better than Windows it's gonna be amazing yeah there's a science as a social science to creating a cult but again I cite the byte model and cite that you know If there's

00:05:22.000 deception, so there's lack of informed consent, if there's extreme use of fear and guilt, if there's information control where people are being told you can't talk to critics or defectors or you need to cut off from family or friends who are questioning you, I'm concerned about human rights.

00:05:39.000 I think the easiest way to understand what I do as a former cult member myself, it's really in support of the United Nations Union.

00:05:46.000 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

00:05:49.000 So you're not necessarily anti-cult.

00:05:52.000 You are anti-negative cults that have a detrimental effect on a person's life.

00:05:57.000 Yeah, and I would actually blow the frame up a little bit bigger, since I've been doing this work for 39 years, and I would say I'm against undue influence.

00:06:07.000 Undue.

00:06:08.000 It's a legal term for exploitative influence as compared to ethical influence where like a therapist is trying to help somebody to confront their fears or his influence of helping somebody who is addicted to something that's that's killing them.

00:06:25.000 But wouldn't you put a lot of religions in that category then that classification of undue influence?

00:06:31.000 Right.

00:06:32.000 So you asked me, is Judaism a cult?

00:06:34.000 The answer is there are Jewish cults, for sure, and there are lots of other Jewish temples and affiliations that are not destructive cults.

00:06:44.000 So what would you consider them?

00:06:48.000 The positive ones.

00:06:49.000 The positive ones.

00:06:50.000 I belong to Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Massachusetts.

00:06:54.000 Powerful Brookline.

00:06:55.000 I know that.

00:06:55.000 I grew up in Newton.

00:06:57.000 My rabbi wrote the big book of Jewish humor, and he was a comedian for most of his adult career.

00:07:03.000 He became a rabbi later on.

00:07:04.000 What's his name?

00:07:05.000 Moshe Waldach.

00:07:07.000 And he cracks jokes even during Yom Kippur.

00:07:10.000 And he's my kind of rabbi.

00:07:13.000 It's gay-friendly, women-centered, social justice, but we love to sing, we love to chant, we love to daven, we love to do good things.

00:07:23.000 What's a daven?

00:07:23.000 Davening is religious prayer.

00:07:26.000 Oh, okay.

00:07:27.000 Going through the Siddur and learning Torah.

00:07:30.000 I love to go to Torah study.

00:07:32.000 It...

00:07:33.000 Resonates for me in terms of my spiritual path.

00:07:37.000 That said, I've also studied Buddhism, and I have a teacher who's teaching me a Korean form of meditation and movement.

00:07:46.000 He's a martial artist, by the way.

00:07:48.000 Oh, yeah?

00:07:48.000 Korean martial arts?

00:07:50.000 What kind?

00:07:51.000 He's a swordsman.

00:07:52.000 Swordsman?

00:07:53.000 So he does like kendo or something?

00:07:55.000 Something along those lines?

00:07:56.000 A Korean version of it? 0.97

00:07:56.000 Like the real sword thing. 0.97

00:07:59.000 Well, Kendo is a real art of sword.

00:08:01.000 They just use bamboo sticks because they don't want to cut each other's legs off.

00:08:04.000 It is, yes.

00:08:06.000 I learned a little bit of that in the Moonies.

00:08:09.000 In the Moonies, they would teach you Kendo?

00:08:10.000 Really?

00:08:11.000 Hmm, exciting.

00:08:12.000 It's nice to teach you a little something.

00:08:14.000 It's probably just in case they have to take over the world and everybody's out of bullets. 0.63

00:08:17.000 Well, I hope we have a chance to chat about the Moonies at some point.

00:08:20.000 Oh, we will definitely chat about the Moonies.

00:08:23.000 So...

00:08:25.000 So would you say that by doing this, being involved in an organized religion, An ancient organized religion in a sect that you feel is positive.

00:08:35.000 Would it be just more of a community of philosophy and maybe just a nice group of people that like to philosophize?

00:08:46.000 Well, it is a nice group of people, and we are independent, although we're influenced by the renewal movement of Zalman Shakhtar Sholomi.

00:08:54.000 What does that mean?

00:08:56.000 That's the name of a spiritual leader, a rabbi who passed away, who basically said, And he liked the smoke pot, by the way.

00:09:04.000 I like them already.

00:09:05.000 He talked about, like, updating the traditions for the modern time and that we need...

00:09:13.000 The whole point is growth and connection to other beings in a loving, compassionate way.

00:09:19.000 It's not about being exclusive.

00:09:21.000 It's not about putting other people down to be on your path.

00:09:25.000 It's about awareness and consciousness.

00:09:29.000 Well, that sounds like a very healthy perspective.

00:09:32.000 I don't think I would be part of a spiritual community after everything I've been through that wasn't super healthy and giving me more than I was taking from me.

00:09:41.000 Are you allowed to eat bacon in that group?

00:09:44.000 People eat bacon.

00:09:45.000 I personally don't eat bacon.

00:09:47.000 My wife loves bacon. 0.99

00:09:48.000 But we drive to temple.

00:09:51.000 I live several miles away.

00:09:53.000 My rabbi drives to temple.

00:09:55.000 Even on Saturday?

00:09:56.000 On Shabbat.

00:09:57.000 Whoa.

00:09:59.000 It's more important to show up at temple than to miss temple.

00:10:05.000 Than to follow some mystical ancient view of cars?

00:10:08.000 All of the rules should serve the spiritual purpose and not the other way around.

00:10:15.000 That people are just compressed into this rigidity of conformity and obedience and guilt and shame.

00:10:22.000 We're not into guilt and shame.

00:10:24.000 We're into joy and love and laughter and Helping one another.

00:10:28.000 That sounds very ideal as far as cults go.

00:10:31.000 I think so.

00:10:32.000 So it's a cult.

00:10:33.000 It's just a really good one.

00:10:34.000 It's a good...

00:10:35.000 Some people in Boston call it a cult, and I'm a happily say I've been there for 17 years from the very beginning of his invitation to become a rabbi there.

00:10:47.000 And we've had our ups and downs, but it's healthy, it's accountable, the membership makes the agenda, it's not top-down, you know, a dictatorship-type thing, it's the membership.

00:11:02.000 What's the downs?

00:11:04.000 What's the downs?

00:11:07.000 There was some personality power conflicts between an assistant rabbi and Moshe.

00:11:16.000 Isn't that always how it works?

00:11:18.000 There's always some power struggle.

00:11:20.000 You know, human beings, we're, you know, imperfect. 0.99

00:11:24.000 And the key is, you know, if somebody calls you on your shit, That you step back and you listen and you reflect and you either correct your behavior or you don't. 0.98

00:11:37.000 And if you don't and if you're a part of a community like that in a leadership role, then they ask you to leave. 0.99

00:11:44.000 And so that was what was going on there?

00:11:47.000 In that particular case, I think she wanted more say-so.

00:11:52.000 She didn't want to be the assistant rabbi.

00:11:55.000 Can chicks be rabbis? 1.00

00:11:56.000 Oh yeah, we have an assistant rabbi right now, Rav Claudia, who's amazing.

00:12:02.000 Is Rav like the formal doctor?

00:12:05.000 I'm sorry, yeah, it's like rabbi.

00:12:06.000 Rabbi means teacher.

00:12:08.000 But a female you call Rav, or is it a distinction for a male as well?

00:12:12.000 No, you can call a male a Rav also.

00:12:16.000 See, it's so weird to me that you're like an anti-cult guy, but this is clearly, at the very least, a very strong ideology with some pretty rigid sort of classifications of things.

00:12:29.000 Is that fair to say?

00:12:30.000 I mean, Judaism as I practice it?

00:12:33.000 The one that you, yeah.

00:12:36.000 Hmm...

00:12:39.000 It seems like a weird way to get this started.

00:12:40.000 Nobody makes me...

00:12:41.000 It's fine.

00:12:43.000 It's not the typical interview that I'm asked to do, but then again, I didn't expect this to be typical.

00:12:48.000 Well, it's just conversation, really.

00:12:50.000 Try not to interview people.

00:12:51.000 Okay.

00:12:53.000 For me, I just want to grow, and I like being part of a group that's bigger than myself, particularly one that's interested in Helping Boston where members of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization where we're fighting for justice to raise minimum wage to help Get rid of egregious banking fees on immigrants.

00:13:16.000 We bring in pro-Palestinian peace activists to speak.

00:13:21.000 We bring in Steve Hassan to speak about cults.

00:13:26.000 We do all kinds of interesting programming.

00:13:30.000 And I love being part of a community.

00:13:33.000 And on a personal note, when I had cancer nine years ago, At Hodgkin's Lymphoma, people were offering to drive me to the hospital, make us meals, and it was just great to feel like we weren't alone facing that.

00:13:50.000 That's great, and that's what I always hear from people that are in Christian churches that really, really enjoy it.

00:13:57.000 They really enjoy the community, and they really enjoy the bond that they have with all these folks, and that it seems like coming together and sitting together on Sunday or whenever you do it and worshiping, That really, in fact, part of what's going on there is you're all making this sort of agreement to look at the possibility of there being a higher good for all of us and that you all join together in this.

00:14:20.000 And then you get this bonding, this feeling of community that we kind of don't really have that much in this world.

00:14:27.000 A lot of folks don't know their neighbors.

00:14:30.000 I have a buddy who lives in an apartment building.

00:14:33.000 It's like 50 floors. 0.99

00:14:34.000 He doesn't know a fucking single person until That's so crazy. 0.99

00:14:38.000 You live with hundreds and hundreds of people. 0.99

00:14:40.000 You don't even know who they are.

00:14:42.000 Right.

00:14:42.000 And that's part of what needs to be changed, in my opinion, to make the world a healthier place where people do know their neighbors and they do offer help if somebody needs help.

00:14:54.000 Well, that's the beauty of small towns.

00:14:56.000 The beauty of less people is those people get appreciated more.

00:15:01.000 Mm-hmm.

00:15:01.000 It's sort of like, you know, you can have too much stuff and then that stuff doesn't have any value anymore.

00:15:09.000 Or you can have one cherished item that like, wow, this is the baseball glove my dad gave me when I was 10 and I will cherish it forever. 0.98

00:15:17.000 Instead of like a fucking warehouse full of baseball gloves, they don't mean jack shit to you. 0.99

00:15:21.000 And I think human beings are kind of a warehouse full of baseball gloves. 1.00

00:15:24.000 It's just so many of us.

00:15:26.000 That we sort of lose value, lose an appreciation for us because there's so many of us.

00:15:33.000 That's part of it.

00:15:34.000 I also think that, you know, modern culture and civilization and technology has created a false construct of what's important and what's real, where beingness and being part of a family or a community or a tribe Mattered as a central theme of our identity.

00:15:57.000 Now it's consumerism and what status you have at your job or how much you're making or what car you're driving and where you're going on vacation.

00:16:07.000 And this information overload and sleep deprivation that is very troubling.

00:16:13.000 Sleep deprivation.

00:16:15.000 How so?

00:16:18.000 It's probably one of the most studied phenomenon, the effects on the mind and on the brain, lack of sleep.

00:16:26.000 And it's one of the classic techniques used by destructive cults, by the way, sleep deprivation.

00:16:32.000 But if one analyzes American society, my understanding is that the average American is sleep deprived.

00:16:39.000 Isn't that one of the things that Scientology supposedly does to those folks that they have that work for pennies, what do they call them, the C-Core?

00:16:47.000 It's a Sea Org.

00:16:49.000 A billion-year contract.

00:16:51.000 Billion.

00:16:52.000 Isn't that hilarious?

00:16:52.000 You sign a billion-year contract.

00:16:54.000 Yeah.

00:16:55.000 And I want to mention that I was part of a five-day seminar in Toronto a few weeks ago called Getting Clear.

00:17:03.000 And some of the top former officials of Scientology were interviewed on stage.

00:17:09.000 I was on stage talking about hypnosis because Hubbard was a hypnotist.

00:17:14.000 And a lot of the processes.

00:17:23.000 Yeah, so to sit with your feet flat on the floor and your hands in your lap and you're closing your eyes and just being there.

00:17:40.000 Not reacting for 20 minutes.

00:17:42.000 The Scientologist will tell you, oh, Joe, you just licked your lips or your knee quivered.

00:17:48.000 No, you've got to just freeze for 20 minutes.

00:17:51.000 It's creating an altered state of consciousness known as trance.

00:17:55.000 And I know we're going to talk more about trance, I'm sure.

00:17:59.000 There's nothing wrong with trance states, but when you're in a trance state you're more suggestible to someone who has authority and who has an agenda to implant ideas in your head.

00:18:12.000 Because you're not in your critical analytic part of your mind.

00:18:16.000 Really?

00:18:17.000 So just sitting for 20 minutes with your hands on your lap and your feet flat would lead you to be more influenced by someone's suggestions?

00:18:25.000 That's the first one.

00:18:26.000 The next one is sitting opposite a Scientologist, three feet away, staring into the Scientologist's eyes.

00:18:35.000 For 20 minutes.

00:18:36.000 That's the next one.

00:18:40.000 Jimmy, it's really hot in here.

00:18:41.000 Is AC on?

00:18:43.000 Turn on.

00:18:44.000 And the next one after that is bull baiting, where you have to stare straight forward and the Scientologist tries to get you to react or respond.

00:18:55.000 It's like a bull with a red cape.

00:18:57.000 Really?

00:18:58.000 Yeah.

00:18:58.000 So they are training obedience...

00:19:01.000 They're desensitizing people from normal social cues and interactions, and they're cultivating a compliant, obedient, trans identity as a Scientologist. 0.96

00:19:17.000 I didn't know that just staring at someone, just staring into someone's eyes can create an altered state of consciousness.

00:19:22.000 A bunch of kids are going to listen to this.

00:19:24.000 Actually staring at a candle, staring at a spot on a wall, that's known in hypnosis language as an eye fixation technique, is a very, very common technique for inducing an altered state of consciousness.

00:19:37.000 Why?

00:19:37.000 Because the eyes are pretty wired to move and scan.

00:19:42.000 And I should also say hypnosis is not sleep.

00:19:46.000 It's an altered state of consciousness that's best characterized as concentration or absorption.

00:19:54.000 And I just want to say one more time, There's nothing wrong with that state.

00:20:02.000 I like that state.

00:20:04.000 I do self-hypnosis.

00:20:05.000 I do meditation.

00:20:07.000 I do many different altered states, techniques.

00:20:11.000 The point is I'm in control.

00:20:14.000 I'm deciding.

00:20:16.000 I don't have somebody who's alienating me from my own inner voice and my own self and trying to imprint me with a totalistic ideology that's black and white, us versus them, good versus evil.

00:20:29.000 So let's talk about you.

00:20:30.000 You got into the Moonies.

00:20:33.000 And you were there for two years?

00:20:35.000 Is that what it was?

00:20:36.000 Yeah, two and a half years.

00:20:37.000 Two and a half years.

00:20:37.000 And that led you to try to get a greater understanding of cults, the cult mind control, and to help people.

00:20:43.000 What was your experience?

00:20:44.000 How old were you?

00:20:45.000 You were 19?

00:20:45.000 Is that what you were?

00:20:46.000 Yeah, I'd skipped eighth grade.

00:20:48.000 I was an extra honors student.

00:20:50.000 I was a creative writing major at Queens College.

00:20:52.000 Humble brag.

00:20:53.000 See that?

00:20:54.000 Just kidding.

00:20:58.000 I was reading Plato when I was eight.

00:21:01.000 I was into utopian novels when I was nine.

00:21:04.000 But aside from that...

00:21:06.000 Utopian novels?

00:21:07.000 Yeah, I was wanting an ideal world and looking around at what I saw in the media and the Russians were going to nuke us and already I was sensitized to global climate change way back then.

00:21:21.000 I was in the last draft lottery to go to Vietnam.

00:21:24.000 Anyway, I had been basically dumped by my girlfriends at 19. Chicks. 1.00

00:21:30.000 They do it every time.

00:21:32.000 And I was kind of bummed, and I was sitting in the cafeteria waiting for the new semester to start, and three women, pretending to be students, dressed like students, carrying books like students, asked if they can share my table, and they started asking me about the books that I had for my course.

00:21:49.000 And they weren't students?

00:21:50.000 No, they were Moonies. 0.90

00:21:52.000 Wow.

00:21:53.000 And it was a deceptive, systematic, which I later learned how to do as a leader.

00:22:00.000 I learned how to recruit people.

00:22:03.000 I had a similar situation in college.

00:22:06.000 Did you?

00:22:07.000 Tell me.

00:22:08.000 Well, there was this Italian class that I was taking.

00:22:10.000 It was this beautiful Puerto Rican girl.

00:22:12.000 She had glasses.

00:22:13.000 She was so hot.

00:22:14.000 And she was always asking me to go to these parties.

00:22:18.000 She's always inviting me to these parties, like, come to this, we're going to the Cape for the weekend, you should come.

00:22:23.000 And I was like, whoa, oh my god.

00:22:26.000 But I was always busy, I was so mad. 0.99

00:22:28.000 I was like, fuck, I gotta find a date where I'm... 0.98

00:22:30.000 I was busy too, I was a waiter on the weekends. 0.98

00:22:32.000 What year is this?

00:22:33.000 Just...

00:22:34.000 I graduated high school in 85. I took a year off before I went to UMass Boston and wasted three years just fucking around there. 0.95

00:22:44.000 So it was probably 86. Okay. 0.85

00:22:47.000 86, 87. Boston Church of Christ?

00:22:49.000 I don't know what church they were in.

00:22:50.000 They were hot and heavy in that period of time.

00:22:53.000 Could be.

00:22:54.000 In Boston.

00:22:54.000 They were inviting me to these retreats, and they had invited me to more than one, and I couldn't go.

00:23:00.000 I was still competing in martial arts tournaments back then.

00:23:03.000 I was always busy.

00:23:04.000 But I really like this girl.

00:23:05.000 She's pretty hot. 1.00

00:23:06.000 And she's very friendly, too.

00:23:07.000 I was like, wow, maybe she's the one.

00:23:09.000 Really friendly, loving, cute, flirty.

00:23:13.000 This is how it goes down.

00:23:14.000 There was an airplane crash in Boston, and it was one of those weird plane crashes where the...

00:23:22.000 Did Trump have an airplane at one time?

00:23:25.000 Did Donald Trump have an airline?

00:23:26.000 Maybe.

00:23:27.000 I don't know why I would connect him to it in some strange way.

00:23:30.000 But whatever it was, this airline, the wheels wouldn't come down.

00:23:35.000 You know how sometimes they make those crazy landings where they skid across the runway and sparks fly and everything like that?

00:23:41.000 So I sat down with these girls and we're at lunch in the cafeteria and I go, did you guys hear about the plane crash?

00:23:50.000 And they go, no, what happened?

00:23:51.000 And I said, yeah, well, some...

00:23:53.000 The wheels wouldn't...

00:23:54.000 It was Trump Airlines.

00:23:55.000 Yeah, that's what it was.

00:23:57.000 I'm pretty sure it was his...

00:23:58.000 You could probably find the actual date that this happened.

00:24:01.000 Find the actual date that Trump Airlines wheels wouldn't come down.

00:24:06.000 So anyway, it said Logan Airport in Boston.

00:24:08.000 Skids, Sparks, the whole...

00:24:10.000 It might have been Boston.

00:24:10.000 It might have been somewhere else, but I was living in Boston.

00:24:12.000 Anyway.

00:24:13.000 Boy, am I getting off track.

00:24:15.000 These...

00:24:15.000 I tell them the whole story.

00:24:17.000 I was in Boston then, too, by the way.

00:24:19.000 So they go, what happened?

00:24:20.000 And I said, well, the wheels didn't come down and they had a skid across the runway.

00:24:25.000 Was anyone hurt?

00:24:25.000 I go, no, no, no one was hurt.

00:24:27.000 They go, oh, praise God.

00:24:29.000 Praise God.

00:24:29.000 And I just went, what?

00:24:31.000 It was just, it was weird.

00:24:32.000 They all clasped their hands together like this.

00:24:35.000 Praise God.

00:24:36.000 It wasn't like, wow.

00:24:38.000 Thank God nobody was hurt.

00:24:39.000 You know, which is like a normal expression.

00:24:41.000 But it was a very pious, like a devoutly religious, praise God.

00:24:47.000 Oh, praise God.

00:24:48.000 And I looked around and I go, okay, what do you guys do? 0.99

00:24:53.000 And then I started realizing, fuck, man, she didn't really want me to come to a party. 0.98

00:24:58.000 Like, there's something going on here. 0.99

00:25:00.000 She's trying to save your soul, man.

00:25:02.000 Yeah.

00:25:02.000 Well, and then I started to ask them, I said, so do you think God saved that?

00:25:06.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:25:07.000 I go, well, why didn't God just make the wheels come down?

00:25:09.000 Why freak everybody out?

00:25:11.000 Good question.

00:25:12.000 And then it got weird.

00:25:14.000 And then it got ugly.

00:25:16.000 And then they never talked to me again.

00:25:18.000 I forget where it went. 0.99

00:25:20.000 I was a dick back then. 1.00

00:25:21.000 I probably said something stupid. 1.00

00:25:23.000 Well, a lot of Bible cults... 1.00

00:25:28.000 Jewish, Christian, and Muslim are into Armageddon. 1.00

00:25:32.000 Mm-hmm. 0.92

00:25:33.000 You know, the apocalypse is coming any moment.

00:25:36.000 Well, it's a good way to get people to sign up.

00:25:37.000 Exactly.

00:25:38.000 The heavy pressure, scarcity, time's running out.

00:25:41.000 Fear.

00:25:42.000 If the world ended tomorrow, are you ready?

00:25:46.000 I'm definitely ready. 0.82

00:25:47.000 Or are you going to hell for the rest of eternity?

00:25:48.000 It doesn't matter if you're ready or not.

00:25:50.000 The world's going to end.

00:25:51.000 You know?

00:25:52.000 It's like, are you ready?

00:25:53.000 But sign over your real estate and your bonds.

00:25:57.000 So you're sitting at this table.

00:25:59.000 These girls come over. 1.00

00:26:00.000 They weren't even students, right?

00:26:01.000 So what are they doing in the school?

00:26:02.000 How'd they get in?

00:26:03.000 They lied.

00:26:04.000 They just walked in.

00:26:06.000 Queens College was City University. 1.00

00:26:08.000 Goddamn shitty security. 1.00

00:26:09.000 Probably can't do that today. 0.99

00:26:10.000 And not only that, but later when I got recruited into the group, I was told to drop out of Queens College from the cult sent back to Queens College to start a student group on campus to get people into the student group so they would drop out of Queens College.

00:26:25.000 That's adorable.

00:26:26.000 It's very slick.

00:26:27.000 So you're sitting there at this table.

00:26:30.000 You're bummed out.

00:26:30.000 You're broken hearted.

00:26:31.000 What was the girl who broke up with you? 1.00

00:26:32.000 What was her name?

00:26:33.000 Let's call her Debbie. 1.00

00:26:35.000 Fucking Debbie. 1.00

00:26:35.000 She was a shoe model. 1.00

00:26:37.000 That's all I remember.

00:26:39.000 A shoe model.

00:26:39.000 She had great legs.

00:26:41.000 And I have no recollection of what her name is.

00:26:44.000 Oh, okay.

00:26:45.000 Let's call her Debbie.

00:26:46.000 So Debbie tears your heart apart.

00:26:48.000 And just leaves you there at this cafeteria, alone and vulnerable.

00:26:52.000 Poor Steve.

00:26:55.000 And you're like, what now?

00:26:56.000 What now?

00:26:56.000 I thought she was going to be the one.

00:26:58.000 And these gals come over. 1.00

00:26:59.000 And were they hot?

00:27:01.000 They were cute, and they were very flirtatious. 0.99

00:27:04.000 They didn't say, by the way, masturbation is a sin, and Father's going to line us up with thousands of people in the sign who you're going to marry, and you have to wait four years to have sex with them. 0.98

00:27:17.000 Is that the Moonies? 0.99

00:27:18.000 Is that how they do it?

00:27:19.000 Yeah.

00:27:19.000 Four years.

00:27:20.000 They didn't say anything about that.

00:27:22.000 And I said, are you part of some religious group?

00:27:25.000 Oh, no, not at all.

00:27:26.000 We're just a group of students who are concerned about modern issues.

00:27:31.000 So what was their approach to you?

00:27:32.000 They sat down, they started talking to you.

00:27:34.000 What did they open up with?

00:27:36.000 Hey, nice classes.

00:27:38.000 No, I think I had, it was the spring semester, I had a pile of books.

00:27:43.000 I was taking philosophy, psychology, and writing.

00:27:47.000 I think I had the Upanishads, I think I had Heideggers being in time, and they were like, being in time is that thick?

00:27:55.000 Oh, wow, you must be really smart.

00:27:59.000 What is that about?

00:28:01.000 Oh, so they start flattering you.

00:28:04.000 Buttering you up.

00:28:04.000 Oh, serious.

00:28:06.000 Serious.

00:28:07.000 The cult is known and other cults are known as love bombing.

00:28:12.000 Pretty sure it's what a Puerto Rican girl did to me, too. 1.00

00:28:15.000 Damn, she was hot, Steve. 1.00

00:28:16.000 It's all about saving the person's soul and step-by-step incremental recruitment, finding out as much as you can about the person, saying almost nothing about what you are about and what the group is about. 0.98

00:28:32.000 Unlike you, I wasn't particularly vulnerable at the time.

00:28:35.000 So it was a good time for them to get after me.

00:28:38.000 Because I was in the middle of some pretty intense stuff.

00:28:41.000 I had a goal.

00:28:43.000 I was pretty focused.

00:28:44.000 I was gonna get roped up in some religion.

00:28:47.000 But if they got me a couple years earlier, I think they could have got me.

00:28:51.000 I was real vulnerable when I was like 18. So the reality is, as human beings, we have life cycle events where we're situationally vulnerable.

00:29:01.000 Death of a loved one, breakup of a relationship, you know, moving to a new city, state or country, illness.

00:29:09.000 There are things that every human being goes through.

00:29:12.000 And for me, it's an overwhelming ignorance of the public to kind of blame the victims. 1.00

00:29:19.000 Like, you were stupid for believing in this. 1.00

00:29:23.000 Like, what was wrong with you? 1.00

00:29:24.000 You were weak for falling for this.

00:29:26.000 As opposed to, tell me about your experience and tell me what happened.

00:29:33.000 You know, there's a principle in social psychology called the fundamental attribution error.

00:29:39.000 I know that's a lot of syllables, but it basically is the single most important principle of social psychology.

00:29:47.000 And what it means is, what I was basically saying before, when people try to understand why other people are doing what they do, they over-attribute individual variables and they under-attribute social environmental variables.

00:30:02.000 Social environment variables are gigantic.

00:30:05.000 That's correct.

00:30:07.000 I think one of the things about a person being older and wiser, you always hear that expression, older and wiser.

00:30:11.000 But if you really look at it mathematically, well, what is it?

00:30:15.000 It's data.

00:30:17.000 It's accumulation of data and the understanding of the relationships between events, reactions, and consequences.

00:30:24.000 And when you're 18 years old, you don't have a lot of data.

00:30:27.000 You only have a few things that are going on.

00:30:29.000 And for me when I was 18, it was the breakup of me and this girl that I was dating and all of a sudden becoming a man, being responsible, having to go to college or get some sort of a job or some sort of a career and just the overwhelming possibilities of the future.

00:30:48.000 And not having any clue as to how it was all going to play out.

00:30:52.000 I was terrified.

00:30:52.000 And if someone came along right then, I feel like they could have got me.

00:30:56.000 I feel like I was real vulnerable around 18. When I met this hot Puerto Rican girl, I think I was about 20. And I was pretty determined at that time.

00:31:07.000 So I was okay.

00:31:08.000 Well, and that said, there are so many different types of destructive cults.

00:31:13.000 So they're not just all religious cults.

00:31:15.000 There can be a therapy cult, a political cult.

00:31:18.000 There can be a cult of personality.

00:31:19.000 That's very important.

00:31:20.000 That's very important because there's a lot of different things that can lock you in and then start to control you and start to suck money off of you and start to really dictate your behavior in a very unhealthy way.

00:31:34.000 And that is so common.

00:31:37.000 There's so many different versions of it.

00:31:39.000 It almost seems to be like a pattern of human behavior and thinking, like a code that you can kind of crack, like a cheat code in people.

00:31:47.000 Mm-hmm.

00:31:49.000 We've experienced a revolution in science and medicine and in psychology, and in particular social psychology.

00:31:59.000 There's been so many, you know, pivotal experiments in the last 50 to 100 years that give us windows into understanding our vulnerabilities.

00:32:09.000 So, for example, when I'm counseling someone who's involved with a destructive cult, I don't start out by saying, hey, you're in a cult, let me liberate you or something.

00:32:18.000 In fact, my whole approach is empowering people to think for themselves.

00:32:21.000 So I ask them questions with respect, because I really want them to think about it.

00:32:28.000 In any case, I show them the Ash Conformity Study, Solomon-Ash.

00:32:33.000 What is that?

00:32:34.000 So the Solomon-Ash Conformity Study was framed to the people coming into it as a visual perception experiment.

00:32:43.000 Basically, they'd be brought into a room with several people in a semi-circle, and there'd be a person in the front with a card with four lines on it, a sample line, And then three other lines of different sizes.

00:32:58.000 Okay.

00:32:59.000 Let's say a three inch sample line, a three inch, a four inch, and a five inch.

00:33:03.000 But everyone is in on the experiment except the person in seat six.

00:33:08.000 And after going around twice giving the correct answer, everyone confidently starts giving the wrong same answer.

00:33:16.000 And the test is how many people will start to conform To giving the wrong answer, even though they can see with their own eyes what the correct answer is.

00:33:27.000 And that study's been replicated thousands of times, and the answer is two-thirds start giving the wrong answer, even though they know intellectually that it's the wrong answer because it feels too uncomfortable to be in the room.

00:33:43.000 And is that the testimony that they give when they're asked?

00:33:46.000 I'm assuming they interview these people.

00:33:49.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:33:50.000 They say it's uncomfortable.

00:33:51.000 And I even show a Dateline, an old Dateline episode, where they asked Anthony Practicanis, who's one of the foremost social psychologists, to actually do the study so they could film it.

00:34:01.000 And they start out with this Asian woman who is the heroic resistor. 0.96

00:34:07.000 Who gives the correct answer, but she's grimacing as she's giving the wrong answer, even though she knows it's the right answer.

00:34:14.000 But because of the social forces, we have mirror neurons we want to fit into the people in the room.

00:34:22.000 It's just human nature.

00:34:24.000 Well, it's how people survive.

00:34:26.000 Exactly.

00:34:27.000 Clan behavior.

00:34:28.000 Exactly.

00:34:29.000 But it's hardwired.

00:34:30.000 So I show that video, that experiment.

00:34:33.000 And I always like to ask people, so tell me something you could do if you were in that situation to scientifically reality test that situation.

00:34:45.000 Scientifically reality test, meaning what?

00:34:48.000 You're in this room.

00:34:49.000 Everyone's saying a 5-inch line is a 3-inch line.

00:34:52.000 What could you do?

00:34:54.000 Well, let me ask you.

00:34:54.000 What would you do?

00:34:55.000 Because you have the data now, okay?

00:34:57.000 You're a cult expert.

00:34:59.000 I'd get up and measure it.

00:35:01.000 Right.

00:35:02.000 But you would obviously understand what's going on.

00:35:04.000 Right.

00:35:04.000 Exactly.

00:35:05.000 But if you asked me prior to my induction into the Moonies, did I understand the Ash Conformity Study or the power of the... 0.93

00:35:13.000 I would have said, no, I'm an individualist.

00:35:15.000 Right.

00:35:15.000 I'm a nonconformist.

00:35:17.000 I had the bumper sticker question authority.

00:35:20.000 Right.

00:35:21.000 I had the ponytail and, you know, the work boots.

00:35:23.000 You were typically unique.

00:35:25.000 Ha! 0.89

00:35:26.000 You fit right in, you rebel.

00:35:29.000 Totally.

00:35:30.000 So anyway, after the Ash Conformity Study, the Milgram Obedience Study, Stanley Milgram did a test.

00:35:36.000 At the time, the dominant theory in psychology for explaining how the Nazis could do what they did was called the Authoritarian Personality.

00:35:46.000 And Milgram said, I wonder if Americans would do the very same thing.

00:35:50.000 And he developed this ingenious shock box, which really was a set of switches that had no electricity at all, but it sounded electrical.

00:35:59.000 And he basically would bring people in, tell them they're doing a scientific experiment that's very important, that tests memory and punishment and learning.

00:36:09.000 And set people up into a situation where they thought they were giving an electrical shock to the person in the next room, and it was all tape recorded, and it would increase 15 volts from mild to moderate to severe to extreme to XXXX. And there'd be a guy in a white lab coat acting very proper who happened to be a high school teacher who was moonlighting for a few extra bucks.

00:36:38.000 And the test was how many people would electrocute a fellow human being in an hour because an authority figure told them they had to because they had made a commitment to do a scientific experiment.

00:36:51.000 And the answer was two-thirds.

00:36:53.000 Yeah, I saw a radio lab, or listened rather to a radio lab podcast on that very thing.

00:37:01.000 In fact, there's a movie that's coming out about it called The Experimenter.

00:37:06.000 And the next study that I'm about to mention, the movie just came out a week or two ago called The Stanford Prison Experiment of Philip Zimbardo, who is one of my mentors.

00:37:16.000 I was trying to get him on the podcast, but I was out of the country when he wanted to come on.

00:37:19.000 I was really bummed out.

00:37:21.000 Well, try to get him back again.

00:37:23.000 He's amazing.

00:37:25.000 He taught a course at Stanford called The Psychology of Mind Control for 15 years and used two chapters of my original book in it.

00:37:34.000 And he was also president of the American Psychological Association.

00:37:37.000 But he...

00:37:38.000 So in his experiment, he randomly divided guys into guards and prisoners, and he did basically control behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions.

00:37:49.000 And people started having nervous breakdowns, and some of the guards started becoming sadistic.

00:37:54.000 And instead of saying, you know what, I don't want to do the experiment anymore, they had gotten so sucked into the experience that their only out was to have a nervous breakdown.

00:38:07.000 Wow.

00:38:09.000 It was extraordinary.

00:38:10.000 So when I'm helping people understand what happens in the Scientology cult, the Mooney cult, the TM cult, or any number of other destructive cults, I want them to first... 0.64

00:38:21.000 What's a TM cult? 0.97

00:38:22.000 Transcendental Meditation.

00:38:23.000 That's a cult?

00:38:24.000 Oh yeah.

00:38:25.000 Really?

00:38:25.000 Big time.

00:38:27.000 I thought that was just like a method of, like, cleansing your mind.

00:38:30.000 I didn't know that there was even a cult behind it.

00:38:32.000 Oh, Maharishi, Masha, Shogi.

00:38:34.000 Oh, yeah.

00:38:35.000 This is not...

00:38:36.000 But people practice it.

00:38:37.000 They practice techniques of Transcendental Meditation alone, by themselves.

00:38:42.000 Are they in a cult?

00:38:44.000 So, the answer is you don't need to be in a room with other people to be in a mind control cult, but it can get inside your head and create a new cult identity that suppresses your real identity and it's not healthy.

00:39:00.000 Well, I have a very cursory understanding of Transcendental Meditation, so if you could, please tell me what exactly does that mean?

00:39:08.000 So, and I have the story of a woman who was raised in TM in Chapter 6 of the new book, Gina Catania.

00:39:16.000 So first of all, there's a thousand or more ways to meditate, and there's not one way to meditate.

00:39:23.000 That everyone has to meditate.

00:39:25.000 In fact, neurologically, it's very detrimental for some people to do a mantric meditation where they're repeating it over and over.

00:39:34.000 It actually increases anxiety.

00:39:36.000 Really?

00:39:36.000 So like Buddhist meditations where they...

00:39:41.000 So, breath meditation.

00:39:43.000 The point is that it's a tool for training consciousness.

00:39:48.000 And ultimately, depending on your level of training, you want to not be a victim of your thoughts or your feelings.

00:39:55.000 You want to not only develop a perspective and a wisdom approach, In consciousness, you want to also get out of the entire frame of self-dialogue and total beingness.

00:40:08.000 But any group that says you have to do it our way or else, or if you're having bad reactions, they say that's good, you're unstressing, keep doing it.

00:40:18.000 Is that what Transcendental Meditation says?

00:40:19.000 I'm afraid so.

00:40:20.000 Well, when you say bad reactions, how so?

00:40:23.000 Ticks, headaches, barking like a dog, I've heard from some people who are meditating.

00:40:34.000 Persinger wrote a book about TM and some of the negative after effects.

00:40:40.000 And what you need to understand about a destructive cult is that there are many levels.

00:40:46.000 If you're just doing a meditation and you're not doing the advanced and the next advanced and then becoming celibate.

00:40:54.000 Oh, that's all in Transcendental Meditation as well?

00:40:57.000 And Maharishi was saying if they didn't have 40,000 cities, which meant people were hopping around thinking they were levitating, that the world would blow up.

00:41:09.000 So he was using the whole fear trip thing to raise a lot of money to get people to be these devotees.

00:41:17.000 Yeah, this yogi flying.

00:41:19.000 It's such BS, buddy.

00:41:21.000 First of all, how dare you?

00:41:23.000 How dare you?

00:41:24.000 These people are flying and you're claiming BS? You're very rude. 0.56

00:41:27.000 No, they're hopping on mattresses.

00:41:31.000 Dude, I've seen it.

00:41:32.000 And they take a picture when they're in the up.

00:41:34.000 See, they're flying.

00:41:35.000 We got the proof.

00:41:37.000 Someone is just like, you're poo-pooing magic.

00:41:41.000 Jamie, have you seen it?

00:41:42.000 Have you seen Yogi flying?

00:41:43.000 It's adorable. 1.00

00:41:44.000 It's hilarious, these fools. 0.99

00:41:45.000 So I want to plug a document. 1.00

00:41:47.000 Look at this.

00:41:48.000 Here it goes.

00:41:49.000 Look at this.

00:41:50.000 I mean, no effort at all, right?

00:41:52.000 You know, Phil Donahue actually did a show on this, and Phil put his legs in Lotus and hopped.

00:41:59.000 Well, what's really funny is, wow, amazing that Phil can put his legs in Lotus, but what's amazing is- Way back when.

00:42:04.000 This guy is getting tired, so his hops, let's go back to the beginning, Jamie.

00:42:09.000 His hops in the beginning were much higher, because he was fresh.

00:42:13.000 See, look at that.

00:42:14.000 Kid's getting some air.

00:42:15.000 Now let's go a little bit further, Jamie.

00:42:18.000 Look, see right there.

00:42:19.000 He's getting tired.

00:42:20.000 I'm a fight commentator.

00:42:22.000 I understand what people are fatiguing.

00:42:23.000 This guy's getting lactic acid.

00:42:25.000 This isn't flying.

00:42:27.000 But Maharishi said, you know, this raises the energy level of the planet Earth so that there are fewer automobile accidents and less war.

00:42:39.000 I feel for all these people.

00:42:40.000 I really do.

00:42:41.000 Me too. 1.00

00:42:41.000 I feel for that guy right there with the glasses in front of this cat because he's fucked. 1.00

00:42:46.000 All these people, they're fucked. 1.00

00:42:48.000 And it's like social anxiety and a lack of friends and a lack of community. 1.00

00:42:54.000 And there's so many different things that can lead someone to want to seek comfort in these ideologies.

00:43:01.000 Or they could have been born into it, or they could have been deceptively recruited by a hot chick. 0.59

00:43:06.000 In a cafeteria.

00:43:07.000 Let's get back to that.

00:43:08.000 Or a hot guy.

00:43:09.000 But the thing is, emotions, if you're having doubts or if you're having bad feelings, it's telling you to look at what's happening and maybe you need to make a change.

00:43:23.000 But if you're in the TM movement and you're having bad feelings about the group, you're told that you need to meditate to get rid of that.

00:43:32.000 And that's known as thought stopping.

00:43:34.000 That's one of the...

00:43:35.000 The techniques in the T of the Byte model to shut down any reality testing.

00:43:43.000 In the Moonies, we were taught to chant, crush Satan, crush Satan.

00:43:47.000 Crush Satan. 0.99

00:43:48.000 Crush Satan. 0.99

00:43:49.000 Glory to heaven, peace on earth.

00:43:52.000 I want to tell you a true story, Joe Rogan.

00:43:56.000 Better not be about Satan.

00:43:58.000 It is.

00:44:01.000 So I'm raised in a Jewish family.

00:44:04.000 We don't believe in Satan at all.

00:44:07.000 Do you believe in God in the Jewish family?

00:44:08.000 Yeah.

00:44:09.000 Well, wait a minute.

00:44:09.000 Yeah, I believe in God.

00:44:10.000 But hold on.

00:44:11.000 If you believe in God, then you have to believe in the God of the Bible?

00:44:14.000 Is that what you're defining God as?

00:44:16.000 Now, you're asking me to define what I was believing as a child?

00:44:20.000 Yes.

00:44:20.000 As a conservative Jew?

00:44:22.000 Yes, I guess so.

00:44:23.000 The God of the Bible.

00:44:24.000 Well, isn't Satan in the Bible as well?

00:44:26.000 No.

00:44:27.000 No.

00:44:27.000 Satan's not in the Bible.

00:44:28.000 No.

00:44:28.000 Not in the Torah.

00:44:30.000 Oh, well, that's the Torah. 0.89

00:44:32.000 The New Testament was an invention later.

00:44:35.000 Of course.

00:44:36.000 Yeah.

00:44:37.000 Constantine.

00:44:38.000 How many bishops, right?

00:44:39.000 Didn't he put it there?

00:44:40.000 300 AD, I believe it was.

00:44:42.000 Yeah.

00:44:42.000 Right.

00:44:44.000 So...

00:44:46.000 Here's the story.

00:44:47.000 So I'm in the frickin' Moonies, if I may curse, because I've watched a few of your podcasts. 0.53

00:44:51.000 I don't think you said frickin' is not a curse. 0.73

00:44:53.000 Okay, good.

00:44:54.000 I don't think you said a curse.

00:44:55.000 Okay, good.

00:44:57.000 Oh, boy.

00:45:24.000 Moon gets up and he says, God made the Exorcist.

00:45:28.000 This movie is a prophecy of what will happen if people leave the Unification Church.

00:45:35.000 Okay?

00:45:36.000 Now, before he gave that speech, we were singing holy songs for three hours.

00:45:43.000 That's after watching this crazy Exorcist movie.

00:45:47.000 And I only remembered the Exorcist movie four years after I got out of the cult and I was studying psychology and we were learning about phobias.

00:45:57.000 And I was thinking back, so how was I installed with phobias?

00:46:03.000 And then I remembered this movie and this lecture. 0.99

00:46:07.000 And it's like, holy crap! 0.94

00:46:09.000 I believed it. 0.98

00:46:11.000 A hundred percent.

00:46:13.000 Satan was everywhere, and only by being in God's holy family.

00:46:19.000 Yep, that's it.

00:46:21.000 And the head just zips around and levitates.

00:46:25.000 Great movie.

00:46:26.000 A lot of fun.

00:46:27.000 It scared the jeebers.

00:46:30.000 In any way, so...

00:46:32.000 How can an intelligent person from an intact family who is gonna be a professional writer and be a college professor get sucked into a cult that wants to take over the world, make an automatic theocracy, abolish Satanic democracy. 0.98

00:46:52.000 Kill everyone that doesn't believe. 0.91

00:46:55.000 It was literally what we were pretty much told by Moon that, you know, we needed to reclaim the earth for God, not unlike ISIS and a few other cults out there. 0.97

00:47:09.000 I was told the Holocaust was necessary because the Jews didn't accept Jesus.

00:47:15.000 I had been educated about the Holocaust.

00:47:18.000 I had been to Israel to the Holocaust Museum.

00:47:22.000 When you heard that, what was your reaction?

00:47:24.000 You're 19 at the time.

00:47:25.000 I had been so...

00:47:27.000 So mind control in the extreme cult example is a dissociative disorder.

00:47:34.000 I'm speaking as a mental health professional.

00:47:36.000 And Steve Hassan, son of Milton and Estelle Hassan from Flushing, Queens...

00:47:42.000 I became Steve Hassan, son of Sun Myung Moon and Hak Jahan, the true parents of the universe.

00:47:49.000 And he needed to be a clone of Moon, and he was evil.

00:47:55.000 And my whole time in the group was suppressing who I was, totally shutting down any element of me.

00:48:04.000 I was sleeping three to four hours a night.

00:48:06.000 I was working seven days a week for no pay.

00:48:09.000 I was recruiting people.

00:48:10.000 I was indoctrinating people.

00:48:12.000 I was doing political events for Moon, including fasting for Nixon during the Watergate.

00:48:18.000 Fasting for Nixon?

00:48:19.000 Fasting for Nixon because God wanted him to be president.

00:48:23.000 That's how you know you're in the wrong cult.

00:48:25.000 So I'll tell you a quick funny story.

00:48:27.000 So my father voted for Nixon.

00:48:28.000 I voted for McGovern.

00:48:31.000 My father was a business owner.

00:48:33.000 He thought Nixon was good. 1.00

00:48:34.000 I said, Dad, he's a crook. 0.99

00:48:35.000 How could you vote for him? 1.00

00:48:36.000 He's pathetic. 1.00

00:48:37.000 I'm in the cult. 1.00

00:48:39.000 I call him up.

00:48:40.000 I say, Dad, we're fasting for Nixon.

00:48:43.000 We're in the capital.

00:48:44.000 And he says, Stephen, you were right. 1.00

00:48:48.000 He's a crook. 0.99

00:48:49.000 I said, Dad, you don't understand. 0.99

00:48:51.000 God wants Nixon to be president. 0.77

00:48:53.000 He said, now I know you're brainwashed. 1.00

00:48:55.000 He's a crook. 1.00

00:48:57.000 I said, Dad, you just don't understand. 0.98

00:48:59.000 And how old were you at the time when this was going on?

00:49:02.000 I was 1920. So I want to take you back to the cafeteria, if you don't mind.

00:49:09.000 So you're sitting in this cafeteria.

00:49:11.000 These girls come up to you. 1.00

00:49:12.000 They start flattering you.

00:49:14.000 They're flirting with you.

00:49:15.000 And then what's the next step?

00:49:17.000 So they're part of an international group of students who are trying to make the world a better place.

00:49:23.000 They happen to have a house, kind of like a commune, which is kind of interesting.

00:49:28.000 Would I like to come over for dinner?

00:49:31.000 So it was the free dinner.

00:49:34.000 Would they cook?

00:49:35.000 I have no recollection.

00:49:39.000 And it's interesting because back then...

00:49:44.000 I was feeding them all the information about myself, how I thought, what my values were, what my interests were.

00:49:51.000 So I was telling them how to manipulate me.

00:49:54.000 In this day and age, you can go on the internet and read people's Facebooks and all their posts, and you don't even need to ask them.

00:50:01.000 You say this, right, but I'm assuming the girls you're talking about are not much older than you, right?

00:50:07.000 Right.

00:50:08.000 So, how would...

00:50:09.000 Weren't they being manipulated themselves?

00:50:11.000 Weren't they essentially a part of this whole thing in that they were really victims along the same way they were making you a victim?

00:50:20.000 Like, they were bitten by the vampire.

00:50:22.000 It's the victim-victimizer model, and their cult identities were...

00:50:27.000 They were sent away from Japan from their family and friends.

00:50:32.000 Oh, they were Japanese chicks? 1.00

00:50:33.000 Yeah, they were Japanese chicks. 1.00

00:50:35.000 Asian chicks.

00:50:36.000 That's what's up.

00:50:39.000 But they knew that they would have to report each other if anyone deviated.

00:50:44.000 So that's why they would not send people out individually.

00:50:47.000 It's like this tattletale system.

00:50:50.000 I get it.

00:50:50.000 But my point being is, if they were not much older than you, if at all, and they were also victims of the same ideology, cult, whatever you want to call it, why would they be looking to manipulate you?

00:51:02.000 Wouldn't they be a part of it?

00:51:03.000 No.

00:51:04.000 So members were taught to believe, as they still are, that the world is headlong into an Armageddon situation of any moment.

00:51:15.000 Judgment Day is happening and as much as you can to bring people into God and save their soul.

00:51:23.000 Saving a person in the moon is meant saving 10 generations of their father's ancestors that are in the spirit world and their mother's ancestors in the spirit world.

00:51:33.000 And they're all looking at you all the time Hoping you're going to make good decisions because if you do good things for God, you're going to make good vitality elements that will feed them in the spirit world.

00:51:48.000 And every cult has its own convoluted yet internally totalistic system.

00:51:58.000 But unlike Scientology, the Moonies are like, save others. 1.00

00:52:02.000 Scientology is like, you know, become a god and control everybody.

00:52:06.000 Control matter, energy, space, and time.

00:52:10.000 Get people to do what you want them to do.

00:52:12.000 Right.

00:52:13.000 But my point was that these people were also manipulated.

00:52:16.000 So they knew that they were manipulating you, but they didn't think that they were being manipulated themselves by the same cult?

00:52:23.000 Like they were trying to find information about you.

00:52:25.000 When you're in a cult, Joe, you're not having that reflective observer looking back and going, hey, what just happened just then, Joe?

00:52:35.000 There's no meta commenting.

00:52:36.000 It's like you're programmed to think the right way, feel the right way, act the right way.

00:52:42.000 And you're self censoring.

00:52:45.000 And in my particular case, I guess, because I'm somewhat competitive on some level, I know you have nothing.

00:52:52.000 No relationship to understanding what it feels like to be competitive.

00:52:57.000 I wanted to be the best Mooney I could be, and I was chosen by Moon and one of his right-hand people to be the model leader in America.

00:53:06.000 So I was hand-groomed to help take over...

00:53:11.000 America and the world.

00:53:13.000 You were only in it for two years, so this had to be a very quick transition from you, Steve Hassan, normal college student, to boom, full-on fasting for Nixon.

00:53:24.000 Yeah.

00:53:24.000 It was very fast.

00:53:26.000 It was about two weeks after my first contact to me.

00:53:32.000 Having what I thought was a spiritual experience and believing that I was being directed by God to this organization.

00:53:43.000 Wow.

00:53:45.000 Yeah.

00:53:45.000 So this misattribution happens a lot.

00:53:49.000 Now, for some of my clients, they're literally at a vulnerable point in their life, maybe they're religious, and they're praying, Dear God, tell me what to do.

00:53:57.000 You know, should I leave my marriage?

00:53:59.000 You know, what should I do?

00:54:00.000 And the next thing they know, the doorbell is ringing, and it's the Jehovah's Witnesses who want to study the Bible, and they're like, Misattributing thinking God just rang the doorbell as opposed to these people are going ringing every single doorbell within a six block. 0.97

00:54:15.000 Of course.

00:54:16.000 Yeah, it's like my friend Gary.

00:54:18.000 He hits on every girl he meets.

00:54:19.000 His idea is that if you swing enough pitches, you never know.

00:54:23.000 You never know.

00:54:24.000 It's like he hits on girls way hotter than him, just way above his head.

00:54:30.000 And he never works out.

00:54:31.000 But he's like, you just got to keep swinging.

00:54:33.000 You never know.

00:54:34.000 Well, he's hopeful.

00:54:36.000 Yep.

00:54:36.000 So that's what they're doing.

00:54:38.000 They're swinging at every pitch, essentially.

00:54:40.000 They're knocking on every door, and every now and then they get that one ball that's in the strike zone, and that's Steve Hassan sitting there with his pile of books.

00:54:49.000 Well, in my case, so I went to this three-day workshop.

00:54:51.000 I didn't want to stay.

00:54:53.000 I was a waiter on the weekends.

00:54:55.000 I was busy.

00:54:56.000 I can't go away on a weekend.

00:54:58.000 And they just kept saying, it's going to be so great.

00:55:01.000 I didn't even know it was a workshop.

00:55:03.000 And after two years of working at the Holiday Inn in Hempstead as a banquet waiter on the weekends, I call up to find out when I'm supposed to report in, and he says, Steve, you won't believe it, but the wedding was canceled, so take the weekend off.

00:55:19.000 And I had just had these women working on me all week, and I was like, well, maybe I'm meant to... 0.99

00:55:26.000 Well, I did give them my word, but I gave them my word thinking I was never going to have a weekend off.

00:55:33.000 And then I was kind of like, well, maybe I'm meant to go.

00:55:35.000 Maybe I should do this.

00:55:38.000 So I say, okay, I'm free for the weekend.

00:55:41.000 Let's go.

00:55:42.000 And we're driving up.

00:55:43.000 It's the middle of the winter through this palatial estate.

00:55:47.000 And they say, by the way, this weekend we're having a joint workshop with the Unification Church.

00:55:52.000 And I said, what?

00:55:54.000 Church?

00:55:55.000 Nobody said anything about church and workshop.

00:55:58.000 Nobody said anything about a workshop.

00:55:59.000 What's up with that?

00:56:01.000 And they did the typical turn-it-around-on-you technique of, Steve, do you have issues with Christians?

00:56:09.000 Are you biased against Christians?

00:56:14.000 And all of a sudden now I'm on the defensive.

00:56:17.000 But there were no cell phones back then in 1974. It's the middle of the night.

00:56:24.000 I have an option of getting out in the snow and trying to hitchhike.

00:56:30.000 I'm like, what am I... Well, just wait for the morning.

00:56:34.000 Just stay here and we'll drive you back in the morning.

00:56:37.000 They slither around your bed like sirens while you sleep.

00:56:39.000 Well, I was in a room where I wasn't sleeping.

00:56:44.000 Yeah, so you've learned a little hypnosis there, Joe. 1.00

00:56:50.000 In any case, the morning comes, the van has left, now you're fucked. 0.99

00:56:56.000 Well, let's just go in and see what you think. 0.99

00:56:58.000 And it was all orchestrated, because I later learned how to orchestrate it.

00:57:03.000 And how many people were in there with you that were also new recruits?

00:57:08.000 So that was another trick, a little bit of a scam, because they had people there that were acting like they were newcomers, but they weren't.

00:57:16.000 Oh, no.

00:57:16.000 So creating small groups where there's the illusion of...

00:57:20.000 So essentially a lot like the study, where they have the one person that's not in on the study.

00:57:26.000 Yeah, it was very systematic.

00:57:29.000 Wow.

00:57:30.000 How'd this guy get so good at that, with this moony character?

00:57:33.000 How did he create all this?

00:57:36.000 Do you want the long...

00:57:38.000 Short.

00:57:39.000 The short, real answer?

00:57:41.000 Yeah.

00:57:42.000 Okay, drumroll.

00:57:43.000 Did he have a background in psychology or something?

00:57:46.000 Drumroll.

00:57:47.000 So Moon himself was apparently in a cult in North Korea, and it turns out that most cult leaders were in a cult themselves, so they didn't learn the techniques out of thin air.

00:57:58.000 But the interesting thing about my former cult...

00:58:01.000 Was that the CIA set up the Korean CIA, because there had been two coups in South Korea to that point, and they were very worried about North Korean brainwashing, and they thought, you know, we need to do something to stabilize South Korea.

00:58:19.000 So they had this brilliant idea of creating a private group that would help to re-educate political dissonance.

00:58:26.000 It's called Victory Over Communism.

00:58:30.000 And I only know about this because there was a Koreagate investigation from 76 to 78 where the founder of the Korean CIA was interviewed and he said he, quote, organized and utilized the Unification Church for use as a political tool,

00:58:47.000 unquote.

00:58:49.000 Wow.

00:58:50.000 And this was at the point where Americans were getting fed up with Vietnam, wanting us to withdraw. 0.70

00:58:57.000 The hawks were very worried about needing a stronger stance against communism.

00:59:03.000 So they thought, oh, yeah, we need to have student groups on campus saying we need to have a military group.

00:59:11.000 Response to communists.

00:59:13.000 We should be in Vietnam. 1.00

00:59:14.000 And the Moonies were used for that, too.

00:59:17.000 Later, I was part of the fasting for Nixon thing.

00:59:21.000 So there's a whole political, very shady piece here.

00:59:26.000 So you go from this, you get out.

00:59:29.000 How did you get out?

00:59:31.000 How'd you figure out that it was all bad?

00:59:33.000 I was rescued by my family, essentially.

00:59:37.000 They didn't know where I was for a year.

00:59:41.000 I drove into the back of a tractor trailer truck on the Baltimore Beltway at 80 miles an hour and basically Nearly died.

00:59:49.000 Broke my leg really badly.

00:59:51.000 Did you fall asleep behind the wheel or something?

00:59:52.000 Fell asleep.

00:59:53.000 Three days no sleep.

00:59:55.000 And two weeks in the hospital, sleeping, eating away from the group.

01:00:00.000 I missed my sister, Thea, who was the only person in my life.

01:00:05.000 My previous life that didn't say I was in a cult or brainwashed.

01:00:08.000 She was always just like, I love you and I don't understand.

01:00:11.000 This doesn't seem like you, Steve.

01:00:13.000 I reached out to her, not because I wanted to leave, but because I missed her.

01:00:17.000 And she was like, you have two nephews.

01:00:20.000 I want them to know they're Uncle Steve.

01:00:22.000 Come and visit.

01:00:23.000 And I'm like, if you promise not to tell the parents, I can arrange it because I'm a leader.

01:00:29.000 And she promised and fortunately she broke her promise and she told my parents and they hired some ex-members and they did a deprogramming intervention with me.

01:00:38.000 Ex-members of the Moonies?

01:00:39.000 Yeah.

01:00:40.000 Wow, so your parents went deep with this.

01:00:41.000 They knew exactly what they were dealing with.

01:00:43.000 They put everything on the table because they knew they could have gone to jail too if it didn't work.

01:00:49.000 One of the one of the team was a woman I had recruited. 1.00

01:00:51.000 They could have gone to jail.

01:00:53.000 Yeah.

01:00:53.000 Why?

01:00:54.000 Because it's illegal to abduct an adult.

01:00:57.000 You were abducted?

01:00:58.000 In my case, they just took my crutches away.

01:01:03.000 I had to cast from my toes to my groin.

01:01:05.000 That's not abduction.

01:01:06.000 Correct.

01:01:07.000 But at the point that I said I want to leave and they wouldn't let me leave, I could have been something about false imprisonment.

01:01:15.000 But the long and the short of it is I was so confident that what I was doing was correct and that I wasn't brainwashed.

01:01:23.000 And at a critical juncture where they were moving locations because the cult was coming after me to rescue me, my father weeped.

01:01:32.000 He just started crying and said, what would you do if it was your son who dropped out of school, quit his job and donated his bank account and got involved with a controversial group?

01:01:43.000 How would you feel?

01:01:45.000 And he was crying.

01:01:46.000 And I never saw my father cry.

01:01:48.000 And it just touched the real me.

01:01:50.000 And my cult self thought he was brainwashed by the communist media against father.

01:01:56.000 But the real me was like, Dad really loves me.

01:01:59.000 And I want to prove to him that I'm not brainwashed.

01:02:03.000 So I said, what do you want me to do?

01:02:05.000 He said, I just want you to talk with them for another four days.

01:02:07.000 Like, have an open mind.

01:02:08.000 And if you want to go back, at least your mother and I will be able to sleep at night knowing we did the responsible thing.

01:02:15.000 And I agreed.

01:02:18.000 And I had this four days where they were teaching me about thought reform and the psychology of totalism, which was a book by Robert J. Lifton about Chinese Communist brainwashing of the 50s.

01:02:29.000 I had all of these experiences that were starting to surface that had been suppressed during my leadership.

01:02:37.000 It's the same mechanism that allows people to be inspired, the same mechanism that allows people to be manipulated.

01:02:43.000 You know, that mechanism being you see something, there's something about it that makes you excited.

01:02:49.000 Like a great performance, a great concert, or an athletic performance where you get out of there, you just feel inspired.

01:02:56.000 A great book that inspires you, it manipulates your brainwaves, it manipulates your consciousness.

01:03:02.000 And it steers you in a certain direction.

01:03:05.000 Is that same sort of mechanism that allows people to be influenced by others what allows people to be manipulated by others in this form, where you can actually literally change the way they think and view the world?

01:03:16.000 That's a big piece of it, I would say.

01:03:18.000 Is it sort of a flaw in the beautiful thing about inspiration?

01:03:22.000 Is it a flaw in that?

01:03:24.000 Because inspiration is beautiful.

01:03:25.000 It's fuel, right?

01:03:26.000 Well, I think you need to have the analytic part of your mind and a consciousness that just because it sounds great and looks great doesn't mean that it isn't great.

01:03:38.000 But you know what I'm saying?

01:03:38.000 You know how sometimes things happen and you're just carried away by them?

01:03:42.000 Like you go see a movie and you're like, God damn, I just want to go do something. 0.92

01:03:46.000 I just feel so good. 0.99

01:03:47.000 It's just like it got you.

01:03:49.000 Did you see Braveheart?

01:03:51.000 I have.

01:03:52.000 I saw Braveheart Man for like two hours.

01:03:54.000 I wanted a sword fight.

01:03:55.000 After that movie was over, I wanted to join.

01:03:57.000 I'm like, freedom!

01:03:58.000 You know, it's like there's those moments.

01:04:00.000 I grew up with watching combat on TV and just, you know, anti-Nazi and, you know, that I don't mean I really wanted to fight.

01:04:09.000 What I'm trying to get at is when you see things and when information and data gets into your mind, it influences you in this very strange way that can be positive and it can be inspirational, like whether it's seeing Michael Jordan put on an incredible performance or Ronda Rousey beating someone.

01:04:28.000 Those moments where someone does something truly great and it's fuel for you.

01:04:33.000 It's fuel.

01:04:34.000 Is that the same sort of mechanism that they kind of tap into to change your mind?

01:04:38.000 Definitely.

01:04:39.000 It's a piece of the emotional and the brain stimulation.

01:04:43.000 So it's like they hack your mind.

01:04:45.000 It's kind of like hacking...

01:04:46.000 I talk about, in the book, like a virus that gets in and corrupts your operating system.

01:04:52.000 You still have your original one, but now this malware has been inserted, and now you're working.

01:04:58.000 You think that it's you, and I thought it was Steve, just the true Steve.

01:05:04.000 And that the old Steve was the fallen Steve.

01:05:08.000 But stepping back and getting perspective and seeing the patterns of mind control and manipulation in other groups and then reflecting back on your own experience is one of the basic tenets of what I do in my work,

01:05:25.000 helping family members to rescue loved ones or helping people who were either born in a cult or recruited into a cult.

01:05:32.000 So in a sense, this experience that you had when you were 19 was incredibly beneficial for your career.

01:05:39.000 Yeah.

01:05:41.000 I have mixed emotions when I hear you say that, because I don't want to do this work, to be completely honest.

01:05:50.000 Really?

01:05:51.000 Really.

01:05:51.000 Really?

01:05:52.000 You don't want it because you don't want it to be work that could be done.

01:05:55.000 It's traumatic.

01:05:56.000 It's helping people who are suffering.

01:05:59.000 But don't you get a benefit out of that?

01:06:01.000 I get a fulfillment that I'm doing something really helpful to individuals.

01:06:08.000 I'm trying to help people around the world to understand this phenomenon.

01:06:13.000 I'm trying to counter some of the major forces against totalitarianism.

01:06:17.000 But to suggest that, you know, wow, you know, you have the Moonies to thank for doing this career.

01:06:25.000 Yeah.

01:06:25.000 I'm saying it's beneficial for you having a negative experience.

01:06:28.000 You don't have anyone to think.

01:06:29.000 So it's a wounded healer model, yes.

01:06:32.000 Yes.

01:06:33.000 Yes.

01:06:33.000 It definitely deepened me in a way that I could not have been deepened before.

01:06:38.000 Because when you wake up from being in a group like this, the shame, the embarrassment, the confusion...

01:06:45.000 I felt like I didn't know who I was.

01:06:48.000 I didn't know what was real.

01:06:51.000 I literally had to have my family and my friends show me videos of who I was before to remind me.

01:06:59.000 To go to places that I used to go to.

01:07:03.000 I had a belief, and this is very common, and I want to touch on Stefan Molyneux, which is how I learned about you, seeing your interview with him.

01:07:13.000 But I believed I had an abused childhood.

01:07:17.000 It was part of how they conditioned this new cult identity, suppressed my old identity, was they poisoned me against my past and recoded everything.

01:07:28.000 So what did they tell you happened about your childhood?

01:07:32.000 It wasn't that someone stood over me and told me, but it was part of the whole indoctrination system, listening to other people talking about abuses in their families, etc.

01:07:45.000 But I literally, when I first got out of the group, I thought I was miserable, depressed, that my father was physically abusive.

01:07:53.000 And when I said to my sister, well, dad was physically abusive, she went, what?

01:07:59.000 You really thought it?

01:08:00.000 So you have false memories?

01:08:01.000 I believed it, yes.

01:08:02.000 Wow.

01:08:03.000 Yes.

01:08:04.000 But did you have an actual image in your mind of your father doing it?

01:08:07.000 So I had one real memory that everything else was built off of, and it was an actual event that happened.

01:08:15.000 I think I was 11 or 12. My father wanted to know where the change was for lunch, and I had bought baseball cards or something, and I lied, and my father slapped my face.

01:08:28.000 That was the one time my father hit me.

01:08:33.000 But I really believed it. 0.97

01:08:35.000 And my sisters were like, Dad never hit us because his father beat the crap out of him.

01:08:41.000 Dad's issue wasn't he didn't want to hug us or hold us, but Dad was not physically abusive.

01:08:47.000 So just one moment where he lost his patience with you and you...

01:08:51.000 Just formed false memories based on that right and what what Scientology does is they have you go back and and and remember abuse from the past But then once you're done remembering whatever happened then you go into your past lives to remember all the abuse.

01:09:07.000 That's where it's really And it keeps going on and on.

01:09:10.000 But don't they, when they're doing that, in that auditing process, aren't they trying to get you to let it go?

01:09:15.000 Like, isn't the idea that you repeat a traumatic event so many times that it means nothing to you? 0.99

01:09:21.000 Like, if you've ever been around someone who doesn't swear, like your grandma or something like that, and she says, fuck, you're like, whoa! 0.99

01:09:27.000 What the hell? 0.99

01:09:28.000 Like, your grandma doesn't swear. 0.99

01:09:30.000 But if you're around one, like, Jamie, this kid's got a total potty mouth, just comes flying out of him.

01:09:35.000 You know what I mean?

01:09:35.000 Like, if you're around certain people, they swear all the time, it seems normal, and then the word loses its meaning.

01:09:40.000 It just becomes a part of the normal vernacular.

01:09:42.000 But if you're around someone and it's very, very, very rare, it becomes like this big moment.

01:09:49.000 Well, the idea being that you repeat this thing, this event, over and over and over and over again, so it loses its meaning.

01:09:55.000 It loses its impact.

01:09:57.000 So...

01:09:57.000 Is that what they do?

01:09:58.000 So, there's a...

01:10:01.000 Qualitative difference between desensitization around a word or something and actually trauma processing.

01:10:07.000 Harvard was using a very old model of catharsis, that you have to remember the abuse and you have to re-experience the abuse over and over and over again.

01:10:17.000 And that's been thrown out by the mental health profession decades ago.

01:10:22.000 Why?

01:10:23.000 Because you're re-victimizing people.

01:10:26.000 Having them suffer the experience over and over and over again.

01:10:30.000 If I want to help someone who's been abused, I tell them you have to be in your body, in the here and now, and you have a window or a TV screen seeing the younger you.

01:10:41.000 But you're safe.

01:10:42.000 You're here.

01:10:43.000 The abuse happened over there.

01:10:45.000 And I don't want them to have associated memories.

01:10:49.000 I want them to know that they're safe, that that did happen, but it's just incorrect to think the brain and the emotions are a battery and all you need to do is drain it and then it's gone.

01:11:04.000 It's just not true.

01:11:05.000 It doesn't work.

01:11:07.000 These theories about how to approach Various past traumas, traumatic incidents.

01:11:13.000 These theories are essentially a variable, right?

01:11:16.000 Like what work with one person might not necessarily work with another person.

01:11:20.000 And a lot of these ideas that you put into practice, I mean, aren't they flexible?

01:11:27.000 There have been therapy cults.

01:11:30.000 We opened this up by talking about different types of cults.

01:11:34.000 And if any ideology that's black and white and that you're trying to compress human experience into the ideology is worrisome because no model is true.

01:11:45.000 Everyone's different.

01:11:46.000 Everyone's different.

01:11:47.000 But the goal as a therapist is do no harm and empower the person to be functional.

01:11:54.000 Right?

01:11:55.000 The goal isn't to trauma process.

01:11:58.000 So in the last few years I've been trained in a form of attachment therapy where People who have personality disorders, which were hitherto believed to be permanent,

01:12:13.000 can actually be cured in two to three years.

01:12:16.000 And the technique is basically using hypnotherapy technique where you're asking the person to go back to a key traumatic moment in their childhood and asking them to imagine if they had the ideal mother or the ideal father that was uniquely suited to them.

01:12:35.000 And they did exactly what you wanted them to do in that situation.

01:12:40.000 And ask their imagination to fill in the scene.

01:12:46.000 The person literally can create a positive reference point of safety Of security, of love, of connection, all the things that children need to experience to have a healthy sense of self.

01:13:05.000 And people know that they were abused.

01:13:10.000 But they're reparenting, to use another term.

01:13:13.000 They're internally using their imagination.

01:13:16.000 They're reparenting themselves.

01:13:18.000 And what is now proven neuroscientifically is there's neurogenesis and neuroplasticity to the point where people can know that they were abused, remember it, but they can act as if they had that healthy mother and their healthy father and a healthy childhood.

01:13:38.000 And be functional.

01:13:39.000 Doesn't that seem delusional?

01:13:40.000 And it works.

01:13:41.000 I mean, you say it works.

01:13:43.000 It works.

01:13:43.000 Act as if they believe.

01:13:46.000 I mean, this sounds like fantasy.

01:13:48.000 Am I reading it wrong?

01:13:52.000 Well, it's interesting for me to hear you frame it like that.

01:13:56.000 People are not coming out of a therapy like that thinking that they had a great childhood.

01:14:02.000 Right.

01:14:03.000 But they're no longer walking around Bleeding all over the place, afraid to trust somebody, having self-doubt, unable to touch and have sexual contact that feels good, because they've created these reference experiential states for themselves.

01:14:23.000 Now these reference experiential states that they create, these theories and these practices of therapy, someone has to invent these.

01:14:35.000 Like someone has to look at the problems, they have to figure out what's the best way to approach these things and come up with an idea and hope that it works.

01:14:41.000 And as you said, there's like the L. Ron Hubbard methods that he was using that were really ancient.

01:14:48.000 They thought that was going to work and it didn't work.

01:14:50.000 Yeah, and he was never a mental health professional, but he was arrested for practicing medicine without a license, and they did call it a religion to try to...

01:14:59.000 Right.

01:14:59.000 But these ideas, they're essentially people come up with ideas of how to treat people that have various ailments, right?

01:15:09.000 And then they apply them to people.

01:15:12.000 I mean, how do they practice this stuff?

01:15:13.000 I mean, this is not like something like, hmm, I need to figure out how to chop this tree down.

01:15:17.000 I'm going to try to invent an axe.

01:15:19.000 Like...

01:15:20.000 In my case, I was out of the cult for four years when I first saw a formal hypnotist do a trance on somebody, and my reaction was, I used to do that when I was doing lectures.

01:15:36.000 Like, I had no awareness that I had been taught to do hypnotic methods.

01:15:41.000 I was told to model the older brothers, and it was kind of a behavioral modeling kind of thing.

01:15:50.000 And I started wanting to learn hypnosis.

01:15:53.000 I wanted to understand what it was, what it wasn't, how to do it ethically.

01:15:59.000 And essentially, there has been a lot of trial and error and a lot of people have gotten hurt by the misuse of it.

01:16:06.000 But if you're in a professional organization where there's a strict code of ethics...

01:16:12.000 Where there are clear boundaries and people can trust that you're there just to help them.

01:16:19.000 It's not about keeping you as a client forever.

01:16:24.000 It's like the faster you can get out of treatment and just live your life, the happier the therapist is.

01:16:30.000 And the more you can teach the person about how And how to know themselves and how to control their feelings or control their thoughts, etc., the better.

01:16:40.000 What is happening right now in Europe, because of socialized medicine, is they really are testing a lot of these approaches and demonstrating that people, for example, with narcissistic personality disorder actually get cured after two to three years.

01:16:59.000 That's Jamie.

01:17:05.000 But coming back to my work, when I was first doing this work and I was struck by people who were saying, but you were recruited at 19. You had an identity before.

01:17:18.000 I was born into the group.

01:17:19.000 I don't have a pre-cult self.

01:17:21.000 What do I do?

01:17:23.000 I didn't know what to say to them other than make one up.

01:17:27.000 And they started doing that.

01:17:30.000 Now, 39 years later, it's actually a treatment modality.

01:17:34.000 I'm not taking credit for it.

01:17:36.000 So they make up a successful, happy, positive childhood. 0.93

01:17:42.000 Free of this ridiculous, confining ideology.

01:17:44.000 Well, it's like if your real life is this storyline, and you create an alternate one that you use as a default, where instead of a parent beating you when you're asking for help,

01:18:05.000 Yeah.

01:18:29.000 The modeling that they learned and beat the crap out of their kid, but actually behave like a healthy person would want to act.

01:18:39.000 It's beautiful that all these theories are being developed and tested and applied.

01:18:45.000 But it seems to me like it's all a work in progress.

01:18:47.000 Is that incorrect?

01:18:48.000 It's not like there's any hard, fast method for definitely curing people of weird psychological ailments or cult-like thinking.

01:18:55.000 I think the human species is evolving.

01:18:59.000 I think we're at a very low level of evolution in terms of our understanding of things.

01:19:08.000 People are able to get out of the most horrendous abuse of childhoods and be functional and not just commit suicide or be drug addicts or be psychotic in a mental ward, but they're able to function.

01:19:23.000 And what we're learning about the brain is just wonderful.

01:19:28.000 I'm excited about the future in terms of that.

01:19:31.000 That said, There's a huge potential for abuse of the techniques.

01:19:35.000 By you saying that you don't like doing it, is it just because it's too taxing on you?

01:19:41.000 Or is it because you really wish that this wasn't something that you really needed to do?

01:19:45.000 Correct.

01:19:46.000 Right.

01:19:47.000 Yeah, I mean, we can all sort of empathize with that.

01:19:52.000 Of course, anybody who has children will look at, if you love your children, you look at people who were abused as children or abused especially by their parents, and it's just this unbelievably painful thing to hear.

01:20:05.000 Forget about witness or be a part of, but to hear about someone being beaten by their parents or abused in some sort of a way.

01:20:13.000 I had my friend Barry Crimmins on the podcast yesterday.

01:20:17.000 Great stand-up comedian from Boston, and he has a new movie that's out today.

01:20:21.000 It's called Call Me Lucky that Bob Goldthwait directed.

01:20:24.000 And it's about his... 0.95

01:20:27.000 He was raped when he was four by his babysitter's boyfriend. 0.97

01:20:32.000 Multiple times. 0.99

01:20:33.000 It's this horrible, horrible, horrible traumatic story.

01:20:37.000 And a big part of his life is his...

01:20:40.000 His perseverance and overcoming this thing that happened to him when he was four.

01:20:45.000 He's 62 years old now.

01:20:46.000 Right.

01:20:46.000 You know, I mean, this trauma has sort of like defined him in some ways and strengthened him in other ways that his ability to overcome it, showing his perseverance.

01:20:57.000 But fuck, man. 0.99

01:20:58.000 Right. 1.00

01:20:58.000 And often people who've been suffering a trauma like that, if they become comedians, they're compensating to try to counterbalance the pain. 1.00

01:21:09.000 And maybe cult members, right?

01:21:12.000 Because that would be someone who'd be vulnerable for someone who, you know, would have some reaching for a utopian view of the world or some better way, because you know the horror of the abuse, right?

01:21:26.000 Yeah, so the truth is that the bigger cults don't want people who are seriously emotionally disturbed.

01:21:36.000 Really?

01:21:36.000 Because they can't control them.

01:21:38.000 If they're seriously disturbed, they don't want them.

01:21:44.000 Okay, so if you're a Scientologist...

01:21:45.000 They want your money, but they don't want you on staff, and they don't want you to be part of the pyramid.

01:21:51.000 Okay, so do they have hierarchies?

01:21:53.000 Totally.

01:21:54.000 So if you joined Scientology or something like that, here's your book.

01:21:57.000 I'll show you that.

01:21:57.000 If you go to Scientology and they give you one of those personality tests, which I took, by the way.

01:22:02.000 It's hilarious.

01:22:03.000 They make you hold on to these Folgers coffee cans.

01:22:06.000 This is the pyramid.

01:22:08.000 Right.

01:22:09.000 So if you're in the Sea Org, you're in the upper quadrant of the pyramid.

01:22:14.000 The leaders.

01:22:14.000 If you're Tom Cruise, you're in the fringe.

01:22:16.000 He's a fringe?

01:22:17.000 He's not a leader?

01:22:17.000 I think he's a leader.

01:22:18.000 I think you're wrong.

01:22:20.000 I think he got a medal, dude.

01:22:21.000 I saw his gold medal.

01:22:23.000 Yeah, but he's not staff.

01:22:25.000 He's more like a symbol, and he gives tons of money, and he's good for recruiting, but he's not running the group.

01:22:31.000 What do you think is going on with that?

01:22:32.000 You think he's gay?

01:22:38.000 I've yet to hear anything but bi, I would say. 0.96

01:22:43.000 John Travolta apparently is very gay. 0.92

01:22:46.000 John's gay and he's bi? 0.96

01:22:48.000 Tom's bi?

01:22:50.000 That's my impression, but I've not heard from any former Scientologist.

01:22:55.000 If we could all just accept people being gay, would Scientology go away immediately? 0.96

01:22:59.000 Well, it's homophobic. 0.99

01:23:00.000 It's totally homophobic.

01:23:02.000 Scientology is?

01:23:02.000 Oh, yeah.

01:23:03.000 It's a degraded human being if you're gay. 1.00

01:23:06.000 In fact, Hubbard's son, Quentin, was gay, and he either killed himself or was murdered. 0.97

01:23:12.000 So when you saw Going Clear, were you happy that...

01:23:16.000 I'm in the middle of the book right now. 0.97

01:23:18.000 It's goddamn amazing. 0.98

01:23:19.000 It's amazing when you go over L. Ron Hubbard's past and how absolutely ridiculous it was. 0.98

01:23:24.000 How many times he lied about things, all the nonsense that he said, and all the different times he was caught lying, and all the different people in his life that he would just make up crazy stories about being this World War II hero. 0.50

01:23:37.000 Nuclear physicist.

01:23:39.000 Oh, God.

01:23:39.000 He was blind, and he...

01:23:41.000 He's fucking completely crazy. 1.00

01:23:42.000 He's completely crazy. 1.00

01:23:43.000 It's amazing that a guy that's that damaged could get that many people to buy his nonsense. 1.00

01:23:50.000 Yeah, true.

01:23:52.000 So Larry Wright and HBO did a documentary based on that book.

01:23:58.000 Larry Wright, Janet Reitman.

01:23:59.000 They all took their material from my friend John A. Tech, who was a former member, OT5, who wrote a book called A Piece of Blue Sky.

01:24:08.000 And John put together this conference in Toronto called Getting Clear.

01:24:14.000 The website is gettingclear.co.

01:24:16.000 And we debunked not only Hubbard, but the entire policies inside the organization.

01:24:24.000 I was explaining mind control, and it's going to be made live on the internet that people can watch.

01:24:32.000 The reason that he did this and why I encouraged him to do this was people were leaving David Miscavige's Church of Scientology but starting their own splinter group of Scientology where they were still idolizing Hubbard and still doing the tech and we wanted to debunk the whole thing from start to finish and I think it was done very masterfully.

01:24:56.000 So, they were starting, like, subgroups where they came up with their own stuff?

01:25:00.000 No, they were doing, they were taking, they were on automatic pilot of all the indoctrinations.

01:25:04.000 He's trying to get you to bring that microphone closer up to your face.

01:25:07.000 Yeah, sorry about that.

01:25:09.000 No worries.

01:25:11.000 So, for example, the number two man and number three man, Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, had left the group and were spilling all the secrets of what, you know, all the criminal activities that were being done.

01:25:22.000 They were creating independent Scientologists and trying to keep doing auditing and keep doing the processing.

01:25:30.000 And it's like, dudes, come on, like, wake up.

01:25:33.000 Wow.

01:25:34.000 The whole system was warped and weird and, like, get free.

01:25:39.000 So were they trying to, like, find some beneficial aspects of what they had based most of their life on?

01:25:44.000 Is that what it was?

01:25:45.000 Right.

01:25:45.000 Trying to, like, salvage some of it?

01:25:46.000 Right.

01:25:47.000 Well, like, to use the cult identity thing, their cult identity was trying to, you know, redo things.

01:25:54.000 That Miscavige guy is a trip.

01:25:56.000 Listen to him talk in those conversations, and especially that giant speech that he gave, you know, when they got tax-free status.

01:26:05.000 Mm-hmm.

01:26:06.000 Wow.

01:26:07.000 That was amazing.

01:26:08.000 So there's a really good book by Tony Ortega.

01:26:11.000 It has the blog.

01:26:12.000 If anyone listening wants to know about Scientology, it's TonyOrtega.org.

01:26:16.000 He wrote a book called The Unbreakable Miss Lovely about Paulette Cooper, who was a friend of mine when I left the Moonies in 1976. She wrote a book called The Scandal of Scientology.

01:26:27.000 And the book is all about her life story and how this group harassed the hell out of her.

01:26:34.000 Scientology.

01:26:35.000 Yes, because she told the truth about Hubbard and the organization.

01:26:39.000 And Hubbard said, never defend, always attack.

01:26:42.000 And they did all these criminal activities systematically, which still goes on to this day.

01:26:48.000 Whew.

01:26:49.000 By the way, I'm having a book release party after this, and you're invited if you want to meet some of the people in the Going Clear.

01:26:56.000 I don't know if I can handle it.

01:26:57.000 I don't know if I can handle it.

01:27:00.000 I'm too busy today.

01:27:01.000 No worries.

01:27:02.000 But you're doing that, you're doing something at the Steve Allen Theater?

01:27:06.000 Yes.

01:27:06.000 Tomorrow night, the Steve Allen Theater.

01:27:09.000 Steve Allen, by the way, son was in a cult for 11 years, and he was a big I watched you on the Steve Allen show.

01:27:16.000 That was one of the first things I saw of you.

01:27:18.000 Yeah, he was a substitute host on CNN back in 88 when the book first came out.

01:27:23.000 And he gave me a big plug and I loved him for it.

01:27:26.000 And now I get to be at the theater named after him talking about the book again, but the new edition.

01:27:33.000 And these days I'm particularly focused on helping victims of pimps and traffickers.

01:27:38.000 Pimps?

01:27:39.000 Pimps and traffickers, yes.

01:27:41.000 Is that like sort of a form of a cult in some ways?

01:27:44.000 It is a commercial cult.

01:27:46.000 They do all the bite model, the behavior control, information control, thought control, emotional control, make people over into a new identity and they are dependent and obedient.

01:27:57.000 And I've co-developed a curriculum to help survivors to end the game to understand because that's what pimps call what they do, the game.

01:28:08.000 So to basically understand that they don't love You know, the women in their stable, that they're products for exploitation, and the only way to win the game is to end it and get out and have a life.

01:28:23.000 It's fascinating that you equate those, because it makes sense, but I've never done it before.

01:28:27.000 I've never put it in my head and thought of a pimp and a prostitute being like the pimp runs a cult.

01:28:32.000 So, if you read some of the manuals online by pimps, how to brainwash the hose, is their terminology for women, I actually tell the story in Chapter 6 of Rachel Thomas who was recruited while she was a junior at Emory College.

01:28:49.000 She's a beautiful black woman and she was recruited by a pimp Who basically said, you're beautiful. 0.97

01:28:55.000 You should be a model.

01:28:57.000 I want to take your picture, put you in some rap music videos, which he did. 0.98

01:29:02.000 And then he started beating her up and farming her out for sex and threatening to kill her family if she told anybody. 0.95

01:29:11.000 Fortunately, she turned to the FBI. He's in jail. 0.89

01:29:14.000 She's doing a project to help young girls, and we've co-developed this because she read my book.

01:29:21.000 She said that this really helps me to understand how he did it to me.

01:29:26.000 Have you ever seen those documentaries like Pimps Up, Hose Down, or American Pimp?

01:29:30.000 Yes, yes.

01:29:31.000 That's a big part of it is they would talk about how they would find people that came from broken homes or that had daddy issues.

01:29:38.000 They would foster this feeling of family.

01:29:40.000 Right, right.

01:29:41.000 Well, and the cult that I was most experienced with helping victims of was a cult called the Children of God, which the leader was Moses David Berg.

01:29:52.000 And he was a pedophile and he had to leave the U.S. because he was going to be arrested. 0.71

01:29:57.000 And in his cult, he had women be happy hookers for Jesus, and he basically told people they had to have sex with two-year-olds, three-year-olds, four-year-olds. 0.99

01:30:09.000 So it was a sex cult. 0.97

01:30:11.000 And when people would be either kicked out of that cult or run away, my theory is that pimps found them on the streets and started learning from them, the religious terminology, the family, etc.,

01:30:29.000 And so sex trafficking.

01:30:32.000 And then the other thing that is occupying a lot of people's consciousness is terrorist cults like ISIS, Boko Haram, which are trafficking women, by the way. 0.99

01:30:44.000 And they're taking not just weak, stupid people, but, for example, one of the architects of ISIS's social media recruiting network was the Son of an endocrinologist at Mass General Hospital, 0.98

01:30:59.000 someone who was raised in Boston, went to a Catholic high school, and unfortunately or fortunately he was killed by a drone strike a few months ago, this kid. 0.99

01:31:11.000 But my heart goes out to them, you know, people who get deceptively recruited and mind-controlled because it happened to me.

01:31:20.000 And if I hadn't been deprogrammed, I could have done horrible acts of violence.

01:31:25.000 That's how I was trained.

01:31:27.000 Wow.

01:31:27.000 So they were training you to sword fight, you said?

01:31:31.000 Yeah, they basically trained me to die or kill on command.

01:31:35.000 And they trained me that if I allowed a doubt when I was given an order by my superior that Satan was going to be invading me a la Exorcist.

01:31:46.000 And so, you know, whatever I was told to do, I did.

01:31:52.000 And it's incredibly frightening.

01:31:55.000 Literally, when I saw the bodies face down at Jonestown, my first thought was, I could have done that.

01:32:03.000 And when I saw the planes going into the World Trade Center, I thought, yeah, I could have done that too.

01:32:09.000 That's part of my passion and what propels me so many years later.

01:32:13.000 Because the problem hasn't gone away, it's gotten worse.

01:32:17.000 Have documentaries like Going Clear, the HBO documentary, has that helped?

01:32:21.000 Definitely.

01:32:22.000 It's been great.

01:32:24.000 My gripe about his book and the documentary is that it didn't deal at all with mind control or brainwashing.

01:32:32.000 It didn't give anyone who was watching the documentary or reading the book tools for how to protect themselves or if they were in a cult to self-reflect and analyze what was happening.

01:32:44.000 Well, he's only got enough time to just fill an hour and a half or whatever it was, two hours.

01:32:49.000 Right.

01:32:49.000 But...

01:32:49.000 There's so much...

01:32:50.000 So my rant, Joe, when Wright's book first came out, I did a short video rant.

01:32:57.000 I said, saying Going Clear is the definitive book on Scientology is like saying you've written a definitive book on cars and leaving out gas combustion engines.

01:33:08.000 That was what I said.

01:33:11.000 So I was frustrated, in other words, because you have brilliant people like Paul Haggis, who has an incredible Hollywood career, saying, I was stupid for believing this for 30 years and giving so much money to them.

01:33:24.000 And what has happened to those guys? 0.99

01:33:25.000 And he's not stupid! 0.99

01:33:26.000 Right. 0.91

01:33:26.000 What has happened to those guys? 0.91

01:33:27.000 Are they being attacked?

01:33:30.000 The group has changed dramatically because of former leaders coming out and speaking out.

01:33:36.000 The group Anonymous helped a lot initially by wearing masks and saying, come on, let's protest.

01:33:44.000 It scared them and it created a culture where people were more empowered to speak out against them.

01:33:51.000 Right now we want the tax exemption to be stripped.

01:33:55.000 There's no reason in the world we should be subsidizing a group that's paying millions of dollars to harass former members.

01:34:02.000 That was one of the most disturbing aspects of the movie, when you find out how they achieve tax-exempt status by a litany of lawsuits they propelled against the IRS. And also hiring PIs to dig up dirt on the IRS commissioners, and hiring powerful lobbyists,

01:34:18.000 and it's dirty.

01:34:19.000 The whole thing is dirty.

01:34:21.000 It just seems too easy.

01:34:22.000 Like, how can they be so easily influenced to give these... 0.99

01:34:27.000 I mean, all you have to do is read one of his fucking books, and you go, this guy? 0.99

01:34:32.000 This guy wrote Scientology? 1.00

01:34:33.000 The guy wrote Battlefield Earth? 1.00

01:34:35.000 I'm like, fucking Christ. 1.00

01:34:36.000 Right. 0.99

01:34:37.000 So, but...

01:34:40.000 The bottom line is that if there's a totalist group that has a black and white, us versus them, good versus evil, simplistic ideology that says that we have the vision for how the world has to be,

01:34:58.000 or we have the tools for how to be the best person you can be, One needs to operate with some consumer awareness and say, who is this person?

01:35:10.000 What is his background?

01:35:11.000 Is he trustworthy?

01:35:13.000 And whatever it is, seek critics and ex-members and know that if it's true, it will stand up to scrutiny.

01:35:19.000 And if it isn't, You know, if it isn't true, why would you want to invest your time and your energy and your money in something that's not real?

01:35:28.000 Don't you think people are just searching for meaning?

01:35:30.000 I mean, that's what a lot of this is.

01:35:31.000 People are searching for meaning to make their life a better place.

01:35:35.000 Well, that's how they suck you in, right?

01:35:36.000 I mean, they suck you in with Dianetics.

01:35:38.000 When I was living in California for the first time in 94, there was no internet, or it hadn't been on yet.

01:35:46.000 It was just starting to get on.

01:35:47.000 I think I might have gotten a computer around then.

01:35:50.000 There was a late-night television commercial for Dianetics, and it was a volcano.

01:35:54.000 Remember the volcano?

01:35:55.000 Of course.

01:35:56.000 The OT3 story of Xenu and the Galactic Dictatorship.

01:36:00.000 Yeah.

01:36:01.000 Well, the volcano just looked like unleashing your potential to me.

01:36:04.000 Like, yes, Dianetics, powerful.

01:36:06.000 I had listened to some Anthony Robbins books on tape, and I was ready to rock and roll.

01:36:10.000 I was trying to benefit myself.

01:36:12.000 So he was studying Ericsson and NLP, and that is basically covert hypnotic Can you have a happier marriage in 1989?

01:36:20.000 Page 111. How can you have more job satisfaction in 1989?

01:36:25.000 Page 227. Yeah, this was the commercial.

01:36:27.000 So I bought the book.

01:36:29.000 I ordered it online.

01:36:31.000 I don't even remember how I paid.

01:36:33.000 I guess I had a credit card. 0.99

01:36:34.000 And these fucking people would not stop sending me things. 1.00

01:36:39.000 Right. 0.99

01:36:39.000 I mean, for years, like every week or so, every month or so, whatever it was, I would get something in the mail inviting me to this, inviting me to that. 0.99

01:36:48.000 I mean, it was just amazing how persistent they were.

01:36:51.000 You were counted as one of the 8 million followers, even though there's really 20,000 or less.

01:36:55.000 I was a follower?

01:36:57.000 You were counted because your name, exactly.

01:37:00.000 Am I in a database, like a Dianetics member or Scientology?

01:37:04.000 So am I in Scientology?

01:37:05.000 Was I at one point in time?

01:37:07.000 No.

01:37:07.000 Well, how would I count it then?

01:37:10.000 Because cults like to fudge statistics and claim that they're much bigger than they really are.

01:37:16.000 So what is the actual number of Scientologists?

01:37:19.000 I think the number that my friends tell me is it's 20,000 or less.

01:37:23.000 That's not that many.

01:37:24.000 In the world.

01:37:26.000 That's it?

01:37:26.000 Yeah.

01:37:27.000 So how do they have so much real estate?

01:37:28.000 They have billions of dollars.

01:37:30.000 They've sucked a lot of wealthy people dry.

01:37:33.000 That's incredible. 0.94

01:37:34.000 Paul Haggis paid a shitload of money, right?

01:37:37.000 That's one of the things he talked about.

01:37:38.000 Yeah.

01:37:39.000 Hubbard was into money and power.

01:37:42.000 Money and power.

01:37:43.000 Sex is the three universals with all destructive cults.

01:37:47.000 Yeah, like the Waco thing, right? 0.98

01:37:49.000 They always want to have sex with everybody's wife. 1.00

01:37:53.000 Yeah, power, money, sex. 0.94

01:37:56.000 Interestingly, I met Byron Sage last December, who was the lead FBI negotiator with David Koresh at Waco.

01:38:04.000 Is he the guy that sent the tanks in to burn everybody up?

01:38:06.000 I'm afraid so.

01:38:08.000 Or somebody in the FBI. Not such a good negotiator.

01:38:11.000 No, he was clearly unhappy.

01:38:15.000 And he more or less said that we didn't know what we were doing, and we wish that we had known what to do.

01:38:23.000 He was clearly unhappy with the result?

01:38:25.000 Yeah, he knew that they screwed up. 0.65

01:38:28.000 Well, that's a nice way of saying they murdered a bunch of people.

01:38:31.000 Mm-hmm.

01:38:31.000 Because that's what they did.

01:38:32.000 Mm-hmm.

01:38:33.000 The videos clearly established.

01:38:36.000 Well, they should never have gone in with guns in the first place.

01:38:40.000 David Koresh was molesting miners, and they were making automatic weapons.

01:38:45.000 But they could have lured him into town and arrested him, and they could have taken away the guns.

01:38:50.000 They were sure that he molested miners?

01:38:52.000 Oh, yeah.

01:38:53.000 Yeah?

01:38:54.000 How old were the miners?

01:38:56.000 Ten.

01:38:56.000 Oh, God.

01:38:59.000 Harry Jewell testified before Congress as one of his victims.

01:39:05.000 I want to come back to how I learned about you and your good work with Stefan Molyneux, if I may, and Free Domain Radio.

01:39:16.000 You could say good work.

01:39:18.000 It was just a conversation where I asked him some questions.

01:39:20.000 But it helped a lot of members wake up because they respect you and they got to listen to their divine leader lie.

01:39:33.000 And it was powerful to hear him say, oh no, I don't tell people to defoo, or I always tell people to go to therapists before they cut off from all their family and friends.

01:39:44.000 And people knew that that was a blatant lie, and it took a chink out of the mysticism of people who were true believers. 1.00

01:39:55.000 Because you held your own with him.

01:39:58.000 You know, he didn't, you know, wrap you around his finger as he's used to doing with the followers and their respect for you.

01:40:06.000 So my hat's off to you for that.

01:40:10.000 Well, thanks.

01:40:10.000 It wasn't my intention.

01:40:13.000 My intention was just to have a conversation with him and trying to figure out what he's doing or what his thought process is.

01:40:18.000 He's got some really good ideas about things.

01:40:21.000 It's fascinating.

01:40:22.000 He's a very eloquent guy and he's very smart, obviously, and he has some really interesting concepts, but he's very firm in his belief about certain things as well to the point where One of the things that I talked to him about, we played a video of him yelling about someone,

01:40:40.000 if you believe in the state, that you want him killed. 0.89

01:40:43.000 You want me killed. 1.00

01:40:44.000 And that you should get rid of all of your friends that believe in the state. 0.99

01:40:49.000 And the idea of anarcho-capitalism or anarchism, like you don't want any government whatsoever.

01:40:56.000 Who's going to fix the streets?

01:40:57.000 And there was no answers to those.

01:40:59.000 Who's going to pay for anything?

01:41:01.000 Who's going to organize?

01:41:04.000 This is not a well-thought-out thing.

01:41:08.000 Someone said it best that he's an incredibly eloquent man that is screaming north while pretending to be holding a compass.

01:41:16.000 That's interesting.

01:41:18.000 Well, he's another one of those, you know, anti-corporations while he's owning a corporation type people and, you know, saying that he's liberating people and he's in fact enslaving people into a totalistic belief system.

01:41:35.000 Do you think this is just something that sort of happened along the way?

01:41:40.000 Like as he was doing his philosophy?

01:41:44.000 I don't know enough about him.

01:41:46.000 I was hired by a family to consult to help a young man who was getting sucked in, and they were worried that he would try to cut off contact.

01:41:55.000 And fortunately, he's okay.

01:41:57.000 So it was a relatively new phenomenon for me, but what was particularly interesting about this particular cult was that he was recruiting over the Internet.

01:42:06.000 And that's how ISIS is largely recruiting as well.

01:42:10.000 So it was an interesting...

01:42:11.000 Well, you say recruiting, though.

01:42:13.000 How does he recruit?

01:42:14.000 He just does videos where he kind of talks about his ideas.

01:42:18.000 Right?

01:42:18.000 Right.

01:42:19.000 And he gets followers to tell other people to watch the videos.

01:42:23.000 And they watch for hours and hours and hours.

01:42:26.000 And he rewires their thought processes to the point where he gets them to question their own belief systems, their own value systems.

01:42:39.000 And because he's a bully and he's a loudmouth and he talks so confidently about a lot of things that he doesn't really know very well.

01:42:47.000 Like what? 0.59

01:42:51.000 We talked a little bit before about Robin Williams.

01:42:54.000 Yeah.

01:42:54.000 And that as just one small example.

01:42:57.000 Yeah, the Robin Williams one really disturbed me.

01:42:59.000 It's one of the things that I questioned him on because he said that he believed that Robin Williams... 0.98

01:43:03.000 He made a video where saying that Robin Williams killed himself because of all the women that were addicted to free shit, I think is the way he described it. 1.00

01:43:11.000 That these women who were addicted to getting money from him, they sucked him dry. 1.00

01:43:16.000 Robin and I had the same agent.

01:43:18.000 He was worth millions of dollars when he died.

01:43:20.000 He was not broke in any way, shape, or form.

01:43:23.000 He certainly was diminishing in his ability or his ability to earn money was diminishing as he was getting older, but that's just normal for actors.

01:43:32.000 Right.

01:43:33.000 You know, he was...

01:43:35.000 He had real depression, and he also had Parkinson's, and the Parkinson's medication that he was on, one of the side effects was severe depression.

01:43:45.000 Also, there's a good friend of mine, Dr. Mark Gordon, he's done a lot of work with people with traumatic brain injuries.

01:43:56.000 We're good to go.

01:44:10.000 And that it's a physiological response to your body being under in anesthesia for long periods of time, plus the physical trauma of the actual surgery itself, the injury, and your body's healing.

01:44:24.000 Especially as you're older, that is a massive task to heal a heart that has been cut open and stitched up and your chest plate has been spread apart.

01:44:35.000 It's very traumatic.

01:44:36.000 Physically traumatic and that oftentimes can lead to a diminished state of consciousness and then depression sets in.

01:44:44.000 Also the reality of mortality sets in on a lot of people.

01:44:48.000 So I was upset at that because I just didn't understand why he would do that.

01:44:51.000 But I didn't have that conversation with him.

01:44:56.000 Like trying to expose him.

01:44:58.000 I had that conversation with him just to ask him questions.

01:45:00.000 And then after it was over, that's when all these videos started coming out and that's when I realized that he was deceptive about a few things in the conversation.

01:45:09.000 Yeah, I was initially fantasizing that you would invite him back and I would be here and then some families who've been cut off from their loved one would be here and we could be like...

01:45:21.000 You know, dude, tell all your followers to get a therapist and reconnect with their families.

01:45:28.000 Wow.

01:45:28.000 Like, if you really care, like, do something.

01:45:32.000 Yeah, the de-fooing thing was one of the things. 0.98

01:45:35.000 Fooing is family of origin. 0.58

01:45:37.000 F-O-O, family of origin.

01:45:39.000 And he apparently is fond of telling certain people to get rid of...

01:45:46.000 All of his followers and not just your family though, your friends, your childhood friends that have nothing to do with your family.

01:45:53.000 Because he wants people not to have other influences in their life that can say, hey dude, what are you doing?

01:46:01.000 But do you think this is conscious?

01:46:02.000 Do you think this is a conscious thing or do you think this is a natural state of someone trying to achieve power?

01:46:07.000 What is the mechanism behind that?

01:46:11.000 I don't know about him specifically.

01:46:14.000 I would say most cult leaders are not cold, calculating con artists.

01:46:20.000 They're delusional.

01:46:22.000 They often were victims of mind control themselves and are kind of playing out of...

01:46:28.000 An identification with the aggressor type scenario.

01:46:32.000 I don't know enough about him to comment intelligently, but for me it's about wanting people to reclaim their personal power.

01:46:42.000 And I want to say to anyone who's involved with Molyneux who may be listening to this is...

01:46:48.000 Take time out.

01:46:50.000 Step back.

01:46:51.000 Learn about mind control.

01:46:53.000 Learn about cults.

01:46:54.000 Talk to former leaders.

01:46:56.000 Talk to former members.

01:46:58.000 Reflect over your own experience.

01:47:01.000 Ask yourself, when you were first getting involved with Molyneux, what did you think you were getting into?

01:47:06.000 When you were first getting involved, did you believe you were going to be cutting off from your family, your friends, your life, dropping out of school, turning over your trust funds?

01:47:16.000 What do you mean, turning over your trust fund?

01:47:18.000 Turning over your money.

01:47:20.000 What do you mean?

01:47:21.000 Who's turning over money?

01:47:23.000 I can't quote a particular person, but that's the pattern with all these groups, is if they know that you have money, they want it.

01:47:30.000 Because they need it more than you.

01:47:32.000 He's not asking people to give them all their money.

01:47:34.000 He's not doing that.

01:47:35.000 He's not asking people to turn over their trust fund.

01:47:37.000 He might ask for small donations, but I don't think it's fair to say that he's asking people to...

01:47:41.000 Turnover trust funds.

01:47:43.000 I don't want to misspeak.

01:47:44.000 So if you are sure about that, I will...

01:47:47.000 Yeah, I've never heard that.

01:47:48.000 I've never heard that accusation.

01:47:49.000 But my impression from him when I first met him is that he's very intelligent. 0.99

01:47:53.000 And oftentimes very intelligent people are frustrated by really stupid people that are around them. 0.98

01:47:58.000 And when he has solutions for a particular... 0.99

01:48:02.000 Yeah.

01:48:04.000 Yeah.

01:48:19.000 And then having people come to you for advice.

01:48:22.000 And sometimes you get ahead of yourself.

01:48:24.000 There's momentum in that.

01:48:26.000 And sometimes you get in front of the wheel and you can't stop it.

01:48:30.000 And then you're just spouting off about everything.

01:48:32.000 Like you would do these videos, the truth about this or the truth about that, the truth about people that died.

01:48:37.000 And you're talking about people that had very complex lives. 0.98

01:48:41.000 They lived a hundred years or whatever the fuck they lived. 0.96

01:48:43.000 And you can't just boil that down into one video. 0.94

01:48:49.000 With very little research, especially when you're doing a hundred other videos a week and you're doing all these interviews and doing podcasts and doing all these things, you're talking about someone's life, man. 0.94

01:48:57.000 You can't say the truth about Lincoln unless you fucking study Lincoln for a long period of time. 0.68

01:49:03.000 And even then, like... 0.98

01:49:05.000 Dan Carlin is my favorite historian.

01:49:07.000 He doesn't even call himself an historian, but as a podcaster.

01:49:11.000 He's brilliant in his podcast, Hardcore History.

01:49:14.000 One of the best things about it, he will offer opposing points of view.

01:49:17.000 He will say, some people believe that this is what happens.

01:49:20.000 There's some dispute about this, because it seems to be that certain schools have thought about why this took place.

01:49:26.000 I think that's super important.

01:49:28.000 So whenever you start saying the truth about something, like, man, you're just...

01:49:33.000 You just can't do that, you know?

01:49:34.000 And that's why the truth about Robin Williams, as a professional stand-up comedian, was particularly offensive to me.

01:49:41.000 Because I'm like, come on, man.

01:49:42.000 You know, you're talking about this beloved guy who had this incredibly complex relationship, not just with his ex-wives, but with show business, with life, with depression, with drugs.

01:49:52.000 Like, this is not something you can just boil down to a one-hour podcast or a one-hour YouTube video and just call the truth about someone.

01:50:01.000 Right.

01:50:02.000 So I want to mention there's a retired child protective agency social worker named David Coopersen, who wrote a book about corporal punishment, because that's one of Molyneux's claims, etc.

01:50:17.000 And Coopersen has studied a number of Molyneux videos and the whole ideology.

01:50:23.000 And he's written a great book, by the way.

01:50:25.000 It's on StopLegalChildAbuse.com is David's website.

01:50:30.000 And he just more or less says, as someone who's worked with children who've been traumatized, whether it was beaten by their parents or their foster parents or sexually abused, the best thing is not to cut off contact with the abusive family.

01:50:47.000 It's to have therapists and to have a healthy frame to work within it and not just to impose from the outside or by some authority figure who says that they know what's better.

01:51:00.000 For them.

01:51:01.000 Because even kids who are being abused still have feelings towards their mother or father that are positive because of the way we're wired.

01:51:09.000 So anyway, I wanted to get a plug-in for his book and the fact that...

01:51:14.000 And then I wanted to mention Molly Koch.

01:51:17.000 Molly B. Koch, K-O-C-H dot com, wrote a book on parenting called 27 Secrets to Raising Amazing Children.

01:51:24.000 And she, too, when I asked her to comment as an expert on parenting about What Molyneux was saying, was saying this is not going to help people to be healthier human beings, to cut off contact from family and friends,

01:51:40.000 no matter what happened in their childhood.

01:51:43.000 But the best thing is with therapy, and ideally with a family therapist, To approach it to the extent that people are protected so they're not further abused by their family of origin.

01:51:56.000 Well, this seems very black and white to me because if you're coming from an incredibly abusive family and your family was brutal and they beat you and they did horrible things to you, which I know people have come from, I think cutting them off is a great idea.

01:52:09.000 I disagree.

01:52:10.000 Really? 0.99

01:52:11.000 So you think if your father sexually abused you, rapes you, beats you up, comes home in an alcoholic rage and breaks your skull, you should still call that guy? 1.00

01:52:20.000 I didn't say that. 0.99

01:52:21.000 But what do you mean?

01:52:24.000 I'm saying you should be in therapy if that's happened to you.

01:52:29.000 And your therapist should consider, depending on the course of treatment, approaching the father or the mother and getting them into therapy.

01:52:40.000 Maybe they need to get off of alcohol or drugs, or maybe they need therapy.

01:52:48.000 Just cutting off your entire background and past as a chop it off, for me, is really not a healthy long-term solution.

01:52:58.000 I'm not even saying cutting off your entire past.

01:53:00.000 I'm saying don't have contact with someone who is horrible to you.

01:53:05.000 So what I'm trying to say, Joe, as a therapist, and I've seen these situations, I'm also involved with parental alienation cases where there's a divorce and the custodial parent brainwashes the children against the father or against the mother,

01:53:20.000 which is horrendous.

01:53:22.000 People can grow.

01:53:23.000 People can change.

01:53:25.000 People can evolve.

01:53:29.000 Whatever is, also there's false memory syndrome where people were getting with not good therapists or using hypnosis or getting into cults and being like I was, believing I had this horrible childhood.

01:53:44.000 Just cutting off and saying I can't ever talk with them again is not a healthy choice in my opinion.

01:53:50.000 Being with an ethical therapist and finding a way to evaluate what's happening with them and getting them into treatment and then potentially to have some type of family therapy situation.

01:54:04.000 If it's not going to be helpful ultimately, then of course, don't revictimize yourself.

01:54:10.000 Don't allow yourself to continue to be abused.

01:54:13.000 But this kind of This notion of lopping off your father, your mother, your sister, your brother because they were shitty to you 20 years ago or 40 years ago I think is a mistake as a therapist.

01:54:26.000 You think it's a mistake across the board?

01:54:28.000 I do. 0.99

01:54:29.000 But there are gotta be scenarios where you shouldn't be hanging out with your brother because your brother used to rape you or your brother used to beat you up. 0.99

01:54:37.000 I'm not talking about hanging out. 0.97

01:54:39.000 I mean even communicating with them.

01:54:40.000 Why have any contact with someone who horribly abused you?

01:54:44.000 Just because they're family?

01:54:46.000 Would you do that to a friend?

01:54:47.000 So this idea that blood and DNA somehow or another make you inexorably connected to some person that was horribly abusive to you. 0.97

01:54:55.000 If you had a friend that you grew up with and your friend used to rape you and beat the fuck out of you, are you supposed to still contact them because they were your friend and they'll always be in your life? 0.97

01:55:04.000 I think a friend who raped me is a different category than a father, a mother, a sister, a brother. 0.99

01:55:11.000 How is it different? 0.96

01:55:13.000 Because it's blood, I guess.

01:55:15.000 That seems crazy.

01:55:16.000 That seems like ape thinking. 0.56

01:55:18.000 That's like monkey thinking.

01:55:19.000 That doesn't even make any sense.

01:55:20.000 I mean, if someone was horribly abusive to you and they're an evil person, and we both agree that there are evil people in the world, right?

01:55:26.000 Yeah.

01:55:26.000 If someone was evil to you 30 years ago, the question is, are they still evil today?

01:55:32.000 Why find out?

01:55:34.000 Why not?

01:55:35.000 Because there's not enough time.

01:55:36.000 A hundred years if you're lucky. 0.98

01:55:39.000 Do you want to really try to fix someone who raped you and beat you up most of your childhood? 0.89

01:55:44.000 Or would you rather just move on? 0.79

01:55:46.000 I don't know.

01:55:46.000 I work with people who were raised in the children of God and they were raped by their brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers.

01:55:54.000 Want to have a healthy relationship with their children because they realize that's the past.

01:55:59.000 It's not now.

01:56:00.000 And that they were doing the best they could under those circumstances because that's how they were indoctrinated to be.

01:56:07.000 Right, but this is a different thing.

01:56:08.000 You're talking about people having, you just said people having a relationship with their own children. 0.96

01:56:12.000 You're not talking about people that, the people that rape them and abuse them.

01:56:16.000 You're not talking about people having a relationship with those people. 0.98

01:56:19.000 So, for example, I mean, when they were in, for example, a cult like the Children of God, they weren't thinking that their father and mother were raping them and their aunt and their uncle were raping them, but they were having abusive sex. 0.58

01:56:34.000 That was not something that they were ready for or wanted to have and it hurt, etc. 0.98

01:56:40.000 Now they're out.

01:56:41.000 And for me to just say, look, you know, cut off all contact and assume there's no possibility that they could grow, they can change, they could evolve, they could apologize, they could make it up to you.

01:56:55.000 For me, that's not the ideal.

01:56:59.000 It's not what my position as a healer, as someone who's worked with so many other people.

01:57:05.000 Now what I'm not saying is, If you've been hurt by someone, to just call them up and then have them hurt you.

01:57:13.000 I'm not saying that.

01:57:14.000 I'm saying use professionals as mediators to see what's possible in terms of constructive, healthy change.

01:57:22.000 But you're putting this in this family context, and this is where it confuses me.

01:57:26.000 Like, you should do that because they're your family, but you shouldn't do that if they were your friend.

01:57:32.000 I guess I'm not meaning to sound so absolute, and every case should be evaluated individually, but I do have, I guess I've had too many cases where it was this kind of total cutoff.

01:57:44.000 Right.

01:57:45.000 I see what you're saying.

01:57:48.000 Maybe it's justified, but maybe it's not.

01:57:51.000 Maybe the person really, you know, got great therapy and they are incredibly remorseful and they want to apologize and they're a decent human being.

01:58:00.000 You can keep carrying the pain and the judgment and say, no, I'll never talk with you again, or try to accept them for where they are now and see whether or not they're going to be beneficial to your ongoing therapy.

01:58:15.000 But shouldn't the onus be on the person who victimized you?

01:58:19.000 If someone raped you and beat you, shouldn't the onus be on them to come and apologize to you or attempt to apologize to you?

01:58:24.000 I agree. 0.65

01:58:24.000 Not to seek them out and bring them to therapy and try to hash it out with them. 0.65

01:58:29.000 I would agree with that.

01:58:30.000 Yeah.

01:58:30.000 I would agree with that.

01:58:31.000 I think everyone ultimately has to take responsibility for their own lives and their own actions.

01:58:36.000 I mean, I felt terrible for a lot of the things that I did in the Moonies, and I did my best to reach out to people I had recruited who I Whose lives I had interfered with.

01:58:46.000 And it was a burden for many, many years as long as they continue to be in the group.

01:58:51.000 And they're all out now, but virtually no one wants to talk with me.

01:58:56.000 I think they still harbor really bad feelings towards me.

01:59:00.000 Wow, that's got to be so strange for you to be in the position that you're in now, to have these people that look at you as someone who victimized them in the very way you're trying to shield people from today.

01:59:12.000 Mm-hmm.

01:59:13.000 So that's probably flavoring this idea that you want people to always try to hash it out or work it out because of your own personal experiences.

01:59:23.000 Well, and I think people can grow and people can change.

01:59:26.000 They can or they cannot.

01:59:27.000 Right.

01:59:28.000 But I'm an advocate for change. 0.98

01:59:31.000 I am too, but I also believe there's some people that are just beyond fucked up, and there's nothing you can do about them. 0.99

01:59:36.000 It's not a bad idea to cut them off. 1.00

01:59:38.000 I know a lot of people have cut their parents off, and they're very happy because of it, because their parents were evil, and their parents are fucked up. 0.95

01:59:45.000 I mean, and every time they would be with them or communicate with them would just be incredibly damaging, and they would have to deal with it for months on end, and the stress and the pain were just not worth it. 0.98

01:59:54.000 And ultimately, they felt better to forgive that person, but not communicate with them.

02:00:00.000 See, here's where we differ.

02:00:04.000 I guess I have more of the Jewish angle on forgiveness.

02:00:10.000 Like, I don't believe in forgiving people who don't apologize and don't offer compensation and don't promise never to do it again and then never do it again.

02:00:21.000 That's kind of the Jewish formula. 0.58

02:00:23.000 Only then is the person who is wrong in a position to forgive.

02:00:28.000 But I'm not of the thing of just forgive.

02:00:32.000 But I guess I think ultimately the more sense of fullness, of wholeness, of knowing that we do everything that's within our power, our sphere of influence to do,

02:00:48.000 to be a good person, to bring goodness to the planet, is the way to operate.

02:00:54.000 And I think that For me, with my father, he didn't beat me, but he didn't hug me.

02:01:02.000 He didn't, you know, give me a lot of praise when I was growing up, because his father never gave him that.

02:01:09.000 And instead of, when I was in therapy, instead of being angry at him, me stepping into his shoes as a child, realizing he was doing the best that he could.

02:01:20.000 And at 30, I just, when I saw him, I just started Hugging him and he'd be like a board.

02:01:27.000 And I'd just say, stand there because I need a hug.

02:01:31.000 And by the time he was in his 80s, he was actually wanting the hug.

02:01:37.000 Took 50 years?

02:01:38.000 Yeah.

02:01:40.000 Yeah, it took 50 years.

02:01:41.000 He actually said, I love you and I'm proud of you.

02:01:44.000 He died at 92. But I got to see my father evolve.

02:01:50.000 But there's a big difference between that and someone who beat the shit out of you and raped you. 0.99

02:01:54.000 That's a lot of people's reality when they're dealing with their parents. 0.99

02:01:56.000 I mean, your dad doesn't sound abusive.

02:01:58.000 He just sounded like he's the victim of his own upbringing.

02:02:01.000 He wasn't abusive.

02:02:02.000 And I had a relatively normal, boring in many ways, because they didn't smoke, they didn't drink, they didn't have affairs.

02:02:10.000 I lived in the same house.

02:02:11.000 I wasn't moving all over.

02:02:13.000 I wasn't a child of divorce.

02:02:15.000 But I guess I want to just come back to everyone needs to kind of...

02:02:23.000 I think?

02:02:40.000 Find out what's going on and I'm not saying put yourself in a position where you can be harmed, but you can use third parties to find out what's going on there and there could be some really radical positive changes that happen that could be a really good thing.

02:02:57.000 I see your point in up to a certain degree.

02:03:01.000 There's a certain degree of abuse that I think some parents have enacted on their children.

02:03:06.000 There was a story that someone told me recently about this brother that was raping his sister, and this went on for years, and then the dad found out about it, and the dad joined in.

02:03:16.000 And this went on for more years. 1.00

02:03:19.000 Those people can both go fuck themselves. 1.00

02:03:22.000 If I was that girl, and if I knew that girl, I would tell them to never contact them. 1.00

02:03:27.000 Never talk to them.

02:03:28.000 There's no need.

02:03:29.000 Just because they're your blood, that doesn't mean anything.

02:03:31.000 That's nonsense.

02:03:33.000 You know, you can have family that's not related to you, the people that you love and trust, and if you treat them like their family, they'll treat you like family, too.

02:03:41.000 I think you choose the people that you can be in contact with, and that's the problem that a lot of people have with this whole idea of family, is that you're born into them.

02:03:50.000 It's like you just get a random hand of cards.

02:03:55.000 You know, and that's your family.

02:03:56.000 And you just have to accept that for the rest of your life. 0.98

02:03:58.000 And then when they fuck up, you have to keep trying to forgive them or help them or bring them together. 0.99

02:04:03.000 Or not. 0.99

02:04:03.000 I say not. 0.99

02:04:05.000 I say with certain people like that girl whose brother and dad raped her, there's no fucking need to bring those people into your life. 1.00

02:04:12.000 If you can get away from them, stay away from them. 1.00

02:04:14.000 Hopefully they're in jail now.

02:04:16.000 I don't know what happened in that particular situation, but... 0.93

02:04:19.000 I grew up with a father that beat the fuck out of my mother, and I saw it a bunch of times when I was little.

02:04:24.000 I was five years old and my mom left, so these images are very old and they're very distorted, but they're 100% real. 0.80

02:04:34.000 There's certain things that were undeniable about the physical abuse.

02:04:38.000 And I have had no desire to talk to that person ever since.

02:04:42.000 And I don't ever want to.

02:04:44.000 I don't need it. 0.99

02:04:45.000 You know, this idea of blood, that this person had sex with my mom and made me, that I have to forgive this dummy and spend time with him and try to work out why he beat the fuck out of my mom in front of me. 0.99

02:04:55.000 I don't need that. 0.99

02:04:56.000 And I don't think you need that to heal and grow.

02:05:00.000 I don't think it's necessary.

02:05:01.000 And I'm not imposing my point of view on you.

02:05:05.000 I'm just sharing my perspective.

02:05:06.000 My point of view as a therapist who's seen literally hundreds and hundreds of different cases and people can change.

02:05:15.000 I also want to come back to the false memory point because there's a lot of people who went into therapy or they got into a cult and they came to have the belief that they were in a satanic cult or they were beaten and tortured by By their family and it's not true,

02:05:33.000 but they're still acting as if it is and there's no effort to reality test, to actually talk to the siblings or talk with the neighbors or Most sexual predators have multiple victims.

02:05:46.000 They're usually not just enacting on one particular person.

02:05:52.000 And what I've been saying from the beginning is, you know, find a good therapist who's experienced with trauma and sexual abuse and such and do your process and consider I think there are hundreds.

02:06:19.000 Really?

02:06:29.000 Learn about mind control.

02:06:30.000 Learn about cults.

02:06:32.000 Read the book.

02:06:32.000 I watched a video that was put online by a follower of Molyneux who was, you know, had just left.

02:06:41.000 And I reached out to him.

02:06:43.000 I said, I've got free videos on my Freedom of Mind website.

02:06:47.000 Check out my book.

02:06:48.000 And he just emailed me literally yesterday, it was this morning, saying, you know, it's given me a new understanding about everything.

02:06:56.000 Thank you so much.

02:06:58.000 And if you have cut-off contact for years and years and years, find someone to reach out to your family and create a way back.

02:07:08.000 Because a lot of people are afraid to even reach out, and they're confused still.

02:07:14.000 Because they're embarrassed.

02:07:16.000 Yeah.

02:07:17.000 I've had some people who've left Scientology, for example, come to me because they...

02:07:23.000 Many years of being in the cult didn't go to mom when she was dying in the hospital or they didn't go to their brother's wedding.

02:07:30.000 And they were supposed to be the best man or they borrowed money over and over and over again. 0.95

02:07:36.000 The family's like, screw you. 0.96

02:07:37.000 We never want to hear from you again. 0.99

02:07:39.000 Now the person's woken up.

02:07:40.000 They've left Scientology.

02:07:42.000 And nobody in the family wants anything to do with them.

02:07:45.000 And I feel like I at least should make an effort to say to them, you know, there is such a thing as mind control.

02:07:52.000 And they were doing what they thought they were supposed to do by being in the cult.

02:07:57.000 And, you know, you were right to be angry at them for not being there for mom and for not being there.

02:08:03.000 However, it doesn't mean that they're bad, bad people and that there isn't some value in reconnecting again.

02:08:10.000 It was one of the more disturbing parts of going clear was seeing the people that were just emotionally devastated by the fact their family wouldn't talk to them anymore because they had been excommunicated.

02:08:20.000 Right, so this disconnection, the JWs call it disfellowshipping, it's a common mind control technique to manipulate people to cut them off from family and friends if people are breaking rules or questioning the authority, 0.60

02:08:36.000 etc.

02:08:37.000 It's not something that should be done by any legitimate religion, certainly not any legitimate organization, telling people you can't talk to your sister, your brother, your mother, your father, because some authority figure says God doesn't want it or that you've violated the rules.

02:08:57.000 They're taking it to another level, right?

02:08:59.000 They're saying you can't talk to them.

02:09:01.000 It is against the rules to talk to them.

02:09:03.000 They're not encouraging, defooing, you know, getting rid of your family of original origin. 1.00

02:09:09.000 They're encouraging.

02:09:11.000 They're saying there's no rule.

02:09:13.000 There's a rule.

02:09:14.000 I mean, it's not encouraging.

02:09:16.000 They're actually saying, like, you can't talk to them.

02:09:19.000 Right.

02:09:19.000 And if you do talk with them, then you risk being kicked out of the group, too.

02:09:25.000 Right.

02:09:25.000 That's the threat.

02:09:26.000 Now, one of the things about mind control cults is, like I was shown the exorcist.

02:09:33.000 If I was going to leave the Moonies, part of my unconscious saw that little girl with the, etc. 0.88

02:09:39.000 In the mind of someone under mind control, they can't visualize themselves out of the group being happy and fulfilled.

02:09:46.000 Mm-hmm. 0.73

02:09:47.000 And in the mind of Scientologists, if you leave, you're going to go insane, you're going to commit suicide, you're going to become a drug addict.

02:09:58.000 And they put phobias in members' minds against any mental health professional.

02:10:02.000 So if you're feeling suicidal, if you're having major migraines, only do auditing, only do Scientology techniques.

02:10:12.000 And at the point that, I think it was Paul Haggis that refused to refute his gay daughter when he learned that Scientology came out against the bill in California.

02:10:27.000 That was his wake-up call because his love for his daughter trumped the cult ideology.

02:10:34.000 How bizarre is that, that Scientology has anti-homosexual ideas?

02:10:41.000 I think it's very bizarre, but a lot of cults are very anti.

02:10:45.000 But why?

02:10:47.000 Because Hubbard was a homophobe.

02:10:49.000 Is that what it is?

02:10:49.000 Yeah.

02:10:50.000 Probably he had sexual drives towards men that he couldn't deal with, so he decided to make a rule and make it into a horrible thing.

02:10:59.000 So how does it fit with a guy like John Travolta, who's allegedly gay?

02:11:04.000 That seems so bizarre. 0.97

02:11:07.000 It's incredibly horrible.

02:11:10.000 Because essentially, the cult identity does not want to acknowledge the person's true self.

02:11:18.000 And every time he acts out his true nature, he feels bad.

02:11:23.000 But the speculation is that they have some dirt on him.

02:11:26.000 The speculation is that through the auditing process or the files that they keep on you, that was what they implied in the documentary, that they have these stacks of files on weird massages.

02:11:34.000 And they do.

02:11:35.000 PC folders, etc.

02:11:37.000 They said that in the Time Magazine cover story in 1990. There's a huge amount of fear and threat that if you leave the group or speak out against the group, they're going to come after you and ruin your life.

02:11:51.000 Unfortunately, a lot of people have fear. 0.97

02:11:54.000 For me and other people who've left, you kind of have to rise above it and say, screw you.

02:12:02.000 I'm not going to live like that. 1.00

02:12:04.000 Go and tell whatever you want to tell, but screw you. 0.72

02:12:08.000 For certain people, though, the ideology of Scientology, the tenets or the principles, seem to help them, give them some sort of structure. 0.93

02:12:17.000 I mean, is there any way that there's anything beneficial to the way they...

02:12:22.000 I mean, there's a lot of successful people that are Scientologists, and they seem ambitious and motivated.

02:12:28.000 It seems like there's part of it, and I'm not trying to support Scientology, but I'm trying to look at this in a balanced perspective.

02:12:34.000 Seems like at least some of what they're doing is trying to enhance your ability to function as a person, right?

02:12:41.000 Is that not true?

02:12:43.000 They say one thing, and what they do is another thing.

02:12:47.000 They say that they're going to give you power over your mind, over your body, over matter, energy, time, and space.

02:12:54.000 But a lot of it comes down to the belief.

02:12:57.000 Thank you.

02:12:58.000 That's programmed into the Scientology identity that you have this higher truth, that you understand the nature of reality, that a certain technique is going to work.

02:13:09.000 But what we know from the placebo effect, the power of authority and the power of suggestion is what's happening here.

02:13:16.000 It's not the techniques itself.

02:13:18.000 It's not the ideology.

02:13:20.000 And also the feeling of being empowered by being a part of a successful group, a successful group and the motivation that they give you.

02:13:29.000 You got a boogie?

02:13:30.000 Yeah, it's pretty late.

02:13:31.000 It's 5.30.

02:13:31.000 We're supposed to end this half an hour ago.

02:13:33.000 Your bladder's talking?

02:13:34.000 Go ahead, man.

02:13:35.000 There's a bathroom right over there, and we'll just wrap this up, and I'll tell everybody.

02:13:38.000 All right.

02:13:39.000 We're going to wrap this up here.

02:13:40.000 Combating Cult Mind Control, Steve Hassan, and you can get a hold of Steve on Twitter.

02:13:47.000 His Twitter handle is...

02:13:49.000 Hold on one second.

02:13:51.000 It is cultexpert, at cultexpert on Twitter.

02:13:58.000 Fascinating conversation.

02:13:59.000 I don't know if I agree with him on everything, but obviously a very knowledgeable guy and a very nice guy. 0.99

02:14:05.000 So that's a wrap, you fucks. 0.97

02:14:08.000 We'll be back tomorrow. 1.00

02:14:10.000 That's right, bitches! 1.00

02:14:12.000 The Fight Companion returns tomorrow, 7 p.m. 0.99

02:14:15.000 Pacific Time.

02:14:16.000 Eddie Bravo, Brennan Shaw, Brian Cowan, the full boat. 0.99

02:14:20.000 God damn it. 0.97

02:14:21.000 And it'll be fun. 0.99

02:14:24.000 All right.

02:14:24.000 We'll see you soon.

02:14:25.000 Much love.

02:14:26.000 Bye-bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 07, 2015

Joe Rogan Experience #680 - Steven Hassan

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