  Welcome to Cult Busters! Our job is to introduce to the world a hint of reason and sanity. Everyone is brainwashed to some degree. It is very difficult to get though life without being bombarded with crazy ideas of some sort. But here's the interesting thing, your brainfill won't seem crazy to you, only to the people who have been bombarded by a different set of crazy ideas. Their brainfill will seem as crazy to you as yours does to them.
Religion is an accident of birth. If you were born in the West, chances are you were bombarded with Christianity, but if you were born in the Middle East then almost certainly you were bombarded with Islam. Further east then maybe Hinduism or Buddhism, maybe even Taoism. It's hard to escape, especially if the "divine truth" is implanted in your brain during the formative years.
But some people do wisen up. A little chink of light penetrates the darkness. It occurs to them that corpses don't really spring back to life and go walkabouts, or men don't really change into lions and back again into men. No one really road a horse through hell then climbed a golden ladder to heaven. No baby walked from the moment he was born, causing lotus blossoms to spring up where-ever he stepped. No one shifted billions of gallons of sea water with a wave of their hand, dead ancestors aren't really grateful for burned offerings, and wise men don't really fly around the universe strapped inside atom bombs.
Along comes a new trendy savior. He may take the form of an Indian guru or an alien from outer space, or a 'sentient being' who is in direct contact with God. He might even be a combination deity, like Jesus, Mohammed and Buddah all rolled into one. He can probably trace his origins back to King Solomon's temple, or maybe to the Great Pyramids – they usually can. There again he may communicate with whales and dolphins, or perhaps he's just an ordinary bloke who just happens to have been sent by 'God' to enlighten you.
Chances are, your new trendy savior will smile a lot, or at the very least, all his followers will smile a lot. Smiling is very important in cult culture. It's called bliss bombing. Your new trendy savior will have "special powers" – he or she will cure your irritable bowel syndrome or your spina-bifida, he'll blow on you and smooth your way to heaven. He'll banish your body-demons, your evil spirits, he'll rescue your from the flames of hell. He'll connect you with your ancestors. He'll bend spoons as well as your brain. He might even be able to turn you into a superman with Xray vision, for a few thousand dollars you'll be able to see through brick walls.
Don't laugh. Millions of otherwise intelligent people believe this and similar nonsense. People have killed and died for this sort of nonsense. Only, like I said at the beginning, to the believer it doesn't seem like nonsense, to him it is the absolute divine truth. Why is it the absolute divine truth? Because more often than not, someone wrote a book about it and therefore it MUST be the truth.
Thirty years ago I became obsessed with a Tibetan monk named Lobsan Rampa. Lobsan wrote a book called 'The Third Eye' in which he described his ability to astral travel. With correct meditation Lobsan could teach anyone to develop the extraordinary skill of leaving their bodies and travelling in spirit form to any part of the world, and beyond. Turns out that Lobsan Rampa was a plumber from Bournmouth UK who had travelled no further than Portsmouth, about twenty miles away, for his holidays.
But he wrote books. He convinced millions of Britons that he was the real deal. To this day you'll still find Lobsan Rampa books in the non fiction section of book shops and libraries. Why? Because despite his well publicized admission of guilt, that he had deceived millions of readers, people still like to think of him as genuine. They can't bear the thought that they were conned.
That's how the human mind works. Reality kicks in and the first thing we do is kick it out again. Reality is too hard to bear and so we clutch at straws. We move from one deception to another, desperate to find one that fits. As soon as we find one that feels right, with all our heart and all our soul, we buy into it. It MUST be the truth because it feels so right. And when that one fails we move on to the next.
By the way, that word "ancient" has tremendous power. Link it to the word "wisdom" and the world goes crazy. How can anyone resist "ancient wisdom"? Toss in some Magick (with a 'k'), some cabala, some tarot, the whole lot viewed through a sensitive crystal that resonates with your personal vibration, stimulate your aura by stroking your chakras, stir in some runes, contemplate your koan while repeating your mantra, and hey presto! Hooked for life.
You've no doubt seen stage hypnotists making people believe they're Napoleon
Bonaparte or Casanova or a frog. Give them an onion to eat and convince them it's an apple. The brain takes it all on board because it has one almighty flaw – it's succeptable to brainwashing. It willingly jettisons its reasoning faculty. Then with our defenses down we'll believe anything, absolutely anything.
And the reason I'm so concerned about this is because we can no longer afford the luxury of erroneous brainfill. Before 1945 it didn't matter too much. Jews could murder gentiles, Egyptians could murder Jews, Apollo worshiping Romans could murder Christ worshiping Christians, Christians could murder Muslims, Muslims could murder Hindus, Hindus could murder Muslims, Catholics could murder Protestants, Protestants could murder Catholics, Shintos could murder Buddhists... and so on. And on a global scale it didn't really matter. It mattered to the loved ones of the dead of course but the world survived.
The big difference now is that we have the ability to destroy all life on planet Earth. Every nation and every religion is glaring at every other nation and every other religion through the smeary lens of erroneous brainfill. Everyone believes that his or her brainfill is correct and everyone else's is wrong.
Christian fundamentalists are looking forward with gleeful anticipation to the global nuclear war that will result in them being "raptured" up to heaven, and Muslims long to be martyred while murdering innocent people for God. That is a recipe for disaster if ever there was. And few people care – if it happens it happens. And that is all part of the universal brainfill! You should be concerned. You should be worried. You should be terrified. But you're not. The population of the entire world has been so dumbed down by erroneous brainfill that no one is in the least bit concerned about imminent nuclear annihilation.
Change one type of light bulb for another, that'll save the planet... No it won't. What is desperately and urgently needed is universal rational thinking.
And so your swapping from one form of religious silliness to another is only a minute part of the problem. Seven billion people surrendering their reasoning faculty to the god of unreason and madness – that's the problem.
Our job at Cult Busters isn't just to save you from the money grabbing, brain polluting bastards who control and manipulate 99.9% of the human species, our job is to ring bells, thump tubs, flash lights, fire canons, do whatever it takes to provide a wake-up call to the planet.
Join us at ZenGnostics if you care about the survival of life on planet Earth.
LoneWolfe
Armageddon |
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Some people start to question the "divine truth", but now there's a problem because they're left with a vacuum inside their head. It's both an exhilarating feeling and a confusing feeling to be released, to realize that you have been lied to your entire life and everything you've held dear is in fact nonsense. There might be no one to "save" you after-all. Recently freed people suffer the heebie-jeebies and they don't know what to believe or which way to turn. 
And it doesn't matter how absurd the beliefs are, we are easy to sway. A convincing book, a smiling face, plus some swirling music and we're hooked. There is nothing you can think of, no matter how preposterous, that is too stupid for some some people to believe. Divine pigs flying backwards and forwards across the universe to acquire ancient knowledge from His Holiness the Magnificent Yakamac, then passing it onto you for a fee... no problem. I could locate a thousand people tomorrow who would believe it given appropriate brainwashing.