Newsletter: Honoring the Past and Safeguarding the Future
The Work of Ensuring Freedom of Mind for All is Timeless
This week’s livestream will be today, Wednesday, June 11th, at 1-2 p.m. EDT. I welcome everyone to tune in with questions and comments! Last week’s livestream was a great success; you can see the recording here if you missed it.
Trump has called in the National Guard and the Marines into Los Angeles without the Governor asking for assistance. In fact, Governor Newsom has said the troops are making things worse, not safer. Trump responded with a threat to arrest him. This just days before his multi-million dollar birthday present to his ego- having a military parade in DC, which will cost millions and millions of dollars. This Saturday, June 14th is a nationwide protest- NO KINGS Day - it is important for more people to raise their voices, including veterans who understand that Trump is a wannabe dictator.
In this week’s episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, “In the Shadow of Enlightenment: A Girl’s Journey Through the Osho Rajneesh Cult,” I spoke with Sarito Carroll, whose book of the same title describes her childhood in the Rajneesh cult and her eventual path to freedom away from the group. We discussed her journey, how disappointed we both were about the Netflix documentary Wild, Wild Country, and how Sarito and others raised in the Osho cult participated in a documentary, Children of the Cult; we are both frustrated that this documentary has not yet been picked up on any streaming platform. You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In next week’s episode, “Rapid Advancements in VR and AI: Understanding Opportunities and Necessary Boundaries,” my friend and colleague Dr. David Lane returns to the show. We will discuss the rapid advancements in AI technology and the need for caution, regulation, and vigilance to protect us from the inevitable bad actors who flock to any new technology to take advantage of others.
Last week’s “paid subscriber only” blog post, “The Cult of Sisterhood: How MLMs Exploit Women’s Search for Community and Financial Freedom,” explores how multi-level marketing organizations (MLMs) specifically target women for exploitation. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, now is an excellent time to become one.
This past Sunday, I was a guest on “Wake Up with Bill Finch.” Bill Finch, the former mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was instrumental in standing up against my former cult, the Moonies, when they attempted to buy the University of Bridgeport. Every live interview offers new nuggets. I shared a story about an incident with a Moonie when I was with Bill in Bridgeport.
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On this episode of Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum, I spoke with Sarito Carroll, about her 2024 memoir In the Shadow of Enlightenment: A Girl’s Journey Through the Osho Rajneesh Cult, to hear and share more of the real story of what it was like growing up within the cult. Sarito is a passionate writer who was initiated into the cult by Rajneesh himself at nine years old in the late 1970s. She described her latest books as exploring “the complexities of belonging, trauma, the struggle to break free of cultic ties, and the long journey towards self-acceptance.”
Read the blog post or listen to the podcast, below:
As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!
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Children of the Cult was an ITV documentary, released last October on UK national TV. It is on ITV X, and also in British cinemas. It was produced by filmmaker Maroesja Perizonius, a Dutch former victim of the Osho. Starts with a shot of a beach in a place called Weston super Mare, which is very near where I live here in the UK. One of the survivors lived in Weston, until there parents joined OSHO. She was sen to Medina, the groups boarding school and experienced horrendous abuse at the hands of one of the teachers.. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/02/children-of-the-cult-review-osho-commune-bhagwan-shree-rajneesh-wild-wild-country