The documentary film Kumare is brilliant, hilarious, and a profound examination of human psychology and the need to give away your power or have faith in something bigger than yourself. In our largely post-Christian and postmodern society, the New Age, the occult, or Eastern religions often fit this bill.
I was watching Kumare (thinking, Borat: Part Deux?), having a hoot, just got to 24:25 and could not believe my ears ... someone chanting "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo". Back in the day when I was studying philosophy at Chapel Hill, my first real (live-in) girlfriend was an exchange student from Japan. She was in the linguistics department, and was smart enough at playing the game (extra help from mostly male teachers, slightly editing the same paper to turn in for different courses, etc.) that she graduated with honors, and then spent some time at Harvard working under the then head of the linguistics department, Susumu Kuno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susumu_Kuno.
Despite her calculated cleverness in that academic domain, she was a religious fundamentalist of the Buddhist Nichiren Shu sect, particularly the Soka Gakkai. I love the writings of Suzuki Daisetsu on the common sense of zen, not so different from climbing Wittgenstein's Ladder. But she, having been born into the sect, and having met charismatic-king Daisaku Ikeda, would not even entertain alternative ways of looking at the world.
As she was a leading member of what was then called "SGA" ... Sokka Gakkai of America ... she cajoled me into attending a meeting where about a dozen other Americans kneeled in front of the gohonzon (inscribed altar), closed our eyes, placed our hands in a pose of prayer, and chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo until the cows came home. Then we would break, circle up, and a few individuals would testify to the power of the gohonzon and chanting. One guy said that thanks to sincere belief, he had found a $10.00 bill on the sidewalk, and another was astonished at how prolonged sincerity had resulted in finally being able to buy the 2nd hand car he had been cherishing.
On hearing these tales of wonder and power, I bit my tongue and glanced at my beloved, whose face betrayed nothing of what she thought. I was gobsmacked and flabbergasted at this exotic, cos-play, kabuki show — the same old prosperity theology I had spotted at the one Amway meeting I had attended.
When we got home, I teased her a bit by asking what she thought of those testimonials. She shrugged it off with a twist of the no-true-Scotsman fallacy ... "the real truth takes time to sink in."
Sometime later that year, we went to a small art theatre screening of Akira Kurosawa's "Dodes'ka-den" (Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of a steam locomotive) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065649/. One scene popped up where the main character, a mentally deficient man, kneeled by his worried mother, and copied her chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in front of the gohonzon ... and in an intentionally uncomprehending and hilarious manner. I howled with laughter. She fumed.
Ironically, long after we had parted ways and I had been living in Japan for decades, Soka University https://www.soka.ac.jp/ was the first in a line of schools (including Waseda, Keio, Tokyo Univ., Sophia U.) to be a judge at their All Japan English Speech Contests. Busy with my own students and not wanting to facilitate zero-sum games, resume building, or making the "right" connections ... I agreed, provided they double the honorarium and then donate it to a charity of their choice. But the Sokka kids were an odd bunch. I agreed to help them three different years, and I noticed they always dedicated the contest to "great man" Daisaku Ikeda ... portraits of him showing his status by shaking hands with other "great men", plastered all over the auditorium. Elvis Presley in crushed velvet.
The last time I saw reps from the school was at Tokyo University's contest (the last one I judged). They recognized me and asked for advice because no one was coming to their contests. I modestly suggested they set themes addressing real world problems, particularly at the local level, and ask for advice and collaboration from local NPOs dealing with those problems. But they decided not to risk reaching out beyond the gates of their prophylactic bubble.
All the above being said ... I have friends who follow a number of religious traditions, and friends who are somewhat less traditional 'spiritual naturalists' (for lack of a better word) ... that "god as a metaphor for nature-in-its-entirety thingy. I've. found no correlation between specific beliefs and virtues I value such as courage and Platonic ideals. But I DO feel betrayed by those too-clever-by-far who have perverted the heuristics of science or art into cult-based (thanks, One Existence) institutions led by charismatic sociopaths for less than noble reasons.
Meh, the more I read, the more I believe it has always been so. Maybe I am just waking up to it. Authentic adults in the room may have always been few and far between. And they pay a heavy price for it.
Maybe it is just that I had too little sleep last night, but I am really having trouble reading this post. It is very confusing as to who is quoting whom, and what is your (Mathew) own writing. I don't know how formatting works in Substack, but is there a way you could format articles like this to make that aspect more clear? I'd appreciate it.
As to the substance of the article, you do have deep interests in the obscure! I had not heard of NVIXM, so had to go off and read up. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that so many of these groups **do** recruit at high levels. And that some fraction of the movers and shakers are vulnerable to recruitment, since they are looking for any competitive edge they can find, as well as networking opportunities. Corruption breeds corruption?
That said, we need to be careful to remember that association does not mean causation in science, nor does association mean (knowing) collaboration in social networks. I have several social affiliations. No doubt I'm only 2 or 3 degrees of separation from some seriously flawed individuals and organizations. Most of us are. So these kinds of relationship network diagrams are interesting but potentially quite misleading if they lead us to infer anything beyond association, without further evidence. It is like the celebrity photos of various people with presidents--they get a selfie taken in a reception line, and then they post it, and then when they later run afoul of the law, opponents of the president trot out the photo and say the president was associated with so-and-so. This happens all the time to presidents (and others) of both parties. It means little except that they were invited to the event. Now, that might lead an investigator to find reasons **why** they were invited, which might in turn implicate the president, but until then, it is not a red flag (maybe just a tiny, pale, pink one).
For a few months now a thought has been nagging me. That what we are experiencing today is actually all imagined and orchestrated by occult societies from late 19th and early 20th century. And how WW2 continued ON.. but in a silent mode.
You are spot on about scientologists. There is also a slew of alt-health-channels on yt. Like the one from Eric Berg - who is a scientologist.
Also, Robert Sepher - who lies about his ethnicity while divulging BIG esoteric "secrets".
I honestly don’t know what to make of this situation. I personally found the CIC presentations exceptionally informative and was grateful to discover them early on. To me, they were performing yeoman’s duty by interviewing scientists, doctors, and other legitimate experts exposing the propaganda and lies.
Like with anything, I assessed the speakers on their own merits, and there were some whose claims I found questionable. But overall, simply providing a venue for reasonable people challenging the narrative was a godsend at a time when voices of sanity were exceedingly rare.
That is why I was honored when I was invited to present my findings on the depopulation agenda in July 2022:
Both Reiner and Wolfgang were highly engaged and respectful. Viviane’s rudeness was so noticeable, it led one person to make a joke about my hat pissing her off 😆 I tried not to take it personally because it was evidently fairly typical behavior for her, but in retrospect, I realized it may have been indicative of narcissistic personality traits.
Based on my own interactions, Reiner was a gentleman who seemed passionately committed to truth-seeking. I feel he made some poor decisions regarding the funds, although they appear to have been done legally. It is possible he has been influenced by suspect individuals with dubious agendas, particularly if they came from the scientology camp. Often, people of goodwill can be suckered by faux spirituality and gurus. You would think they would know better because they spot the cons in other arenas, but their judgment is impaired when it comes to religion (Gell-Mann amnesia effect, I suppose). I’m not making excuses for anyone but just trying to understand the situation from the vantage point of having interacted with the key players.
The more you know the more you want to just not. I’ve met these clusters of uniformed people on the street and you never forget it. This is not a game.
I’ve wondered about Todd Callender… he is a likable guy but when he talks about how earlier in his career he had litigated for Pfizer and pharma companies it raises some flags.
Very interesting and, of course, Leigh piqued my curiosity from my research here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/russell-brand-and-leigh-dundas. And in the grand tradition of eating crow, I'm considering whether you might have been right all along about Russell. :-/
Great documentary. It challenges all the rigid forms of the documentary genre to present the audience the ultimate truth.
--
I think it's quite common the visits with gurus before and after financial chaos.
There's the case of Rodrigo Rato, who was Minister of Economy in Spain between '00 and '04 in a Neocon Government. Then, he went to the IMF. Then he retired. Then he was a major figure in the banking reform of Spain following the '07/'08 crisis. Then he was arrested in 2015 and convicted in 2017 for embezzlement.
I like the word piracy better.
But in 2015 or 2016, Rato went to meet with a Spanish yoga guru, Ramiro Calle, who went to India in the 1960s and went back to Spain to explain how everything was wrong. The next book by Calle was titled "Emotional Engineering" and had a foreword by Rato.
So. Yeah. I'm sure there are many stories in the World about public characters who go visit a "saint" or a "teacher" to get permission to do something financially or politically, or to repent for having done something financially or politically.
Speaking about piracy and mind control, Rato studied high school under the Jesuits during the 1960s, and then he went to College, and then he went to UoC Berkeley in the 1970s.
The Fuellmich case is going to be quite confusing for many people.
Fuellmich is the German version of Malone. Just does lawyering instead of lab work. … . Lots of flapping of wings, feathers flying - with what results ?
The documentary film Kumare is brilliant, hilarious, and a profound examination of human psychology and the need to give away your power or have faith in something bigger than yourself. In our largely post-Christian and postmodern society, the New Age, the occult, or Eastern religions often fit this bill.
I’m completely confused. And maybe that’s the goal. But who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?
LOL ... Hi Mathew.
TL,DR unless you have the time to be entertained.
I was watching Kumare (thinking, Borat: Part Deux?), having a hoot, just got to 24:25 and could not believe my ears ... someone chanting "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo". Back in the day when I was studying philosophy at Chapel Hill, my first real (live-in) girlfriend was an exchange student from Japan. She was in the linguistics department, and was smart enough at playing the game (extra help from mostly male teachers, slightly editing the same paper to turn in for different courses, etc.) that she graduated with honors, and then spent some time at Harvard working under the then head of the linguistics department, Susumu Kuno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susumu_Kuno.
Despite her calculated cleverness in that academic domain, she was a religious fundamentalist of the Buddhist Nichiren Shu sect, particularly the Soka Gakkai. I love the writings of Suzuki Daisetsu on the common sense of zen, not so different from climbing Wittgenstein's Ladder. But she, having been born into the sect, and having met charismatic-king Daisaku Ikeda, would not even entertain alternative ways of looking at the world.
As she was a leading member of what was then called "SGA" ... Sokka Gakkai of America ... she cajoled me into attending a meeting where about a dozen other Americans kneeled in front of the gohonzon (inscribed altar), closed our eyes, placed our hands in a pose of prayer, and chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo until the cows came home. Then we would break, circle up, and a few individuals would testify to the power of the gohonzon and chanting. One guy said that thanks to sincere belief, he had found a $10.00 bill on the sidewalk, and another was astonished at how prolonged sincerity had resulted in finally being able to buy the 2nd hand car he had been cherishing.
On hearing these tales of wonder and power, I bit my tongue and glanced at my beloved, whose face betrayed nothing of what she thought. I was gobsmacked and flabbergasted at this exotic, cos-play, kabuki show — the same old prosperity theology I had spotted at the one Amway meeting I had attended.
When we got home, I teased her a bit by asking what she thought of those testimonials. She shrugged it off with a twist of the no-true-Scotsman fallacy ... "the real truth takes time to sink in."
Sometime later that year, we went to a small art theatre screening of Akira Kurosawa's "Dodes'ka-den" (Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of a steam locomotive) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065649/. One scene popped up where the main character, a mentally deficient man, kneeled by his worried mother, and copied her chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in front of the gohonzon ... and in an intentionally uncomprehending and hilarious manner. I howled with laughter. She fumed.
Ironically, long after we had parted ways and I had been living in Japan for decades, Soka University https://www.soka.ac.jp/ was the first in a line of schools (including Waseda, Keio, Tokyo Univ., Sophia U.) to be a judge at their All Japan English Speech Contests. Busy with my own students and not wanting to facilitate zero-sum games, resume building, or making the "right" connections ... I agreed, provided they double the honorarium and then donate it to a charity of their choice. But the Sokka kids were an odd bunch. I agreed to help them three different years, and I noticed they always dedicated the contest to "great man" Daisaku Ikeda ... portraits of him showing his status by shaking hands with other "great men", plastered all over the auditorium. Elvis Presley in crushed velvet.
The last time I saw reps from the school was at Tokyo University's contest (the last one I judged). They recognized me and asked for advice because no one was coming to their contests. I modestly suggested they set themes addressing real world problems, particularly at the local level, and ask for advice and collaboration from local NPOs dealing with those problems. But they decided not to risk reaching out beyond the gates of their prophylactic bubble.
All the above being said ... I have friends who follow a number of religious traditions, and friends who are somewhat less traditional 'spiritual naturalists' (for lack of a better word) ... that "god as a metaphor for nature-in-its-entirety thingy. I've. found no correlation between specific beliefs and virtues I value such as courage and Platonic ideals. But I DO feel betrayed by those too-clever-by-far who have perverted the heuristics of science or art into cult-based (thanks, One Existence) institutions led by charismatic sociopaths for less than noble reasons.
Meh, the more I read, the more I believe it has always been so. Maybe I am just waking up to it. Authentic adults in the room may have always been few and far between. And they pay a heavy price for it.
Cheers from Japan
Maybe it is just that I had too little sleep last night, but I am really having trouble reading this post. It is very confusing as to who is quoting whom, and what is your (Mathew) own writing. I don't know how formatting works in Substack, but is there a way you could format articles like this to make that aspect more clear? I'd appreciate it.
As to the substance of the article, you do have deep interests in the obscure! I had not heard of NVIXM, so had to go off and read up. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that so many of these groups **do** recruit at high levels. And that some fraction of the movers and shakers are vulnerable to recruitment, since they are looking for any competitive edge they can find, as well as networking opportunities. Corruption breeds corruption?
That said, we need to be careful to remember that association does not mean causation in science, nor does association mean (knowing) collaboration in social networks. I have several social affiliations. No doubt I'm only 2 or 3 degrees of separation from some seriously flawed individuals and organizations. Most of us are. So these kinds of relationship network diagrams are interesting but potentially quite misleading if they lead us to infer anything beyond association, without further evidence. It is like the celebrity photos of various people with presidents--they get a selfie taken in a reception line, and then they post it, and then when they later run afoul of the law, opponents of the president trot out the photo and say the president was associated with so-and-so. This happens all the time to presidents (and others) of both parties. It means little except that they were invited to the event. Now, that might lead an investigator to find reasons **why** they were invited, which might in turn implicate the president, but until then, it is not a red flag (maybe just a tiny, pale, pink one).
For a few months now a thought has been nagging me. That what we are experiencing today is actually all imagined and orchestrated by occult societies from late 19th and early 20th century. And how WW2 continued ON.. but in a silent mode.
You are spot on about scientologists. There is also a slew of alt-health-channels on yt. Like the one from Eric Berg - who is a scientologist.
Also, Robert Sepher - who lies about his ethnicity while divulging BIG esoteric "secrets".
I honestly don’t know what to make of this situation. I personally found the CIC presentations exceptionally informative and was grateful to discover them early on. To me, they were performing yeoman’s duty by interviewing scientists, doctors, and other legitimate experts exposing the propaganda and lies.
Like with anything, I assessed the speakers on their own merits, and there were some whose claims I found questionable. But overall, simply providing a venue for reasonable people challenging the narrative was a godsend at a time when voices of sanity were exceedingly rare.
That is why I was honored when I was invited to present my findings on the depopulation agenda in July 2022:
• https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-mostly-peaceful-depopulation
Both Reiner and Wolfgang were highly engaged and respectful. Viviane’s rudeness was so noticeable, it led one person to make a joke about my hat pissing her off 😆 I tried not to take it personally because it was evidently fairly typical behavior for her, but in retrospect, I realized it may have been indicative of narcissistic personality traits.
Based on my own interactions, Reiner was a gentleman who seemed passionately committed to truth-seeking. I feel he made some poor decisions regarding the funds, although they appear to have been done legally. It is possible he has been influenced by suspect individuals with dubious agendas, particularly if they came from the scientology camp. Often, people of goodwill can be suckered by faux spirituality and gurus. You would think they would know better because they spot the cons in other arenas, but their judgment is impaired when it comes to religion (Gell-Mann amnesia effect, I suppose). I’m not making excuses for anyone but just trying to understand the situation from the vantage point of having interacted with the key players.
The more you know the more you want to just not. I’ve met these clusters of uniformed people on the street and you never forget it. This is not a game.
I’ve wondered about Todd Callender… he is a likable guy but when he talks about how earlier in his career he had litigated for Pfizer and pharma companies it raises some flags.
Very interesting and, of course, Leigh piqued my curiosity from my research here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/russell-brand-and-leigh-dundas. And in the grand tradition of eating crow, I'm considering whether you might have been right all along about Russell. :-/
Omg I see it now! A big piece of the puzzle just fell into place for me. Excellent work - Thank you for sharing.
Great documentary. It challenges all the rigid forms of the documentary genre to present the audience the ultimate truth.
--
I think it's quite common the visits with gurus before and after financial chaos.
There's the case of Rodrigo Rato, who was Minister of Economy in Spain between '00 and '04 in a Neocon Government. Then, he went to the IMF. Then he retired. Then he was a major figure in the banking reform of Spain following the '07/'08 crisis. Then he was arrested in 2015 and convicted in 2017 for embezzlement.
I like the word piracy better.
But in 2015 or 2016, Rato went to meet with a Spanish yoga guru, Ramiro Calle, who went to India in the 1960s and went back to Spain to explain how everything was wrong. The next book by Calle was titled "Emotional Engineering" and had a foreword by Rato.
So. Yeah. I'm sure there are many stories in the World about public characters who go visit a "saint" or a "teacher" to get permission to do something financially or politically, or to repent for having done something financially or politically.
Speaking about piracy and mind control, Rato studied high school under the Jesuits during the 1960s, and then he went to College, and then he went to UoC Berkeley in the 1970s.
The Fuellmich case is going to be quite confusing for many people.
It tells us there are big time scammers everywhere including 'pandemic' pushing ones.
I wouldn't trust Viviane Fischer for 5 minutes.
Fuellmich is the German version of Malone. Just does lawyering instead of lab work. … . Lots of flapping of wings, feathers flying - with what results ?
The way I see it in today’s world paranoia is just a higher state of consciousness.
"Kundalini" is a real thing, but it isn't what a lot of people express it to be.