For persons who want to investigate possible borrowings from Werner Erhard's
methods and then applied to Tibetan/Vajrayana Buddhism, here are some
places to start.
Think this is unlikely? Maybe it the Tibetans did not borrow anything from Werner Erhard.
But...Swami Muktananda did borrow from Werner Erhard. Remember, Werner visited Muktananda in India and then helped the guru get to the United States.
Readers, take a look at the descriptions given by many former Landmark subjects
describing the uncomfortable room arrangement.
What an ugly way to treat customers. Werner Erhard's customers trusted
him and his trainers. These customers had not been convicted and sentenced
for any crime.
Now, someone may say, 'They were free to leave".
Not quite. In that kind of social set up, you forget you can leave. Look up
Stanford Prison Experiment.
Two, Werner Erhard's customers paid hundreds of dollars to attend one of these events, and in many cases did it because they trusted endorsements from their trusted friends and partners.
Some participants on the CEI message board back in 2004 found
an article online by Drew Kopp for a class in rhetoric. Kopp's
article was entitled Invisible Bodies, the Disinherited, and the Production of Space in the Landmark Forum
One CEI participant wrote:
Corboy note: Drew Kopp's essay is no longer available online.
Here is an article from the discussion ConcernedOZ participated in.
It gives a few quotations from this now vanished document.
Manipulating the room's environment
Posted by: corboy
Date: May 13, 2004 10:38AM
Thanks again to Concerned OZ for finding this!
[www.u.arizona.edu]
[www.u.arizona.edu]
Invisible Bodies, the Disinherited, and the Production of Space in the Landmark Forum by Drew Kopp
Kopp's 40 page paper is the mental equivalent of a triathlon--gruelling, but well worth it. At the end, he comments:
'I would contend that this is a fundamental inauthenticity of Landmark Education, to use its own term to describe this dynamic and Landmark lack of transparency of its operation.
'Landmark Education, in the form of any and all of its representatives, pretends to their customers, that participants can acquire this technology, its consequent powers, and then drop the tools that granted these powers at any given time in the future. For instance, the Course Leader, at the very end of the LF, will say,I take it all back, claiming that everything said in the course possesses absolutely nothing to believe in.
Yet, this is said against a background of materially enforced re-conceptualizations (the special room set up, the scripted social interactions-Corboy) that have inscribed participants into a social space the existence of which is completely tied up with continuing to participate with Landmark Education.
Thus, Landmark technology compels participants to inscribe themselves further into more extensive and elaborate social spaces the organization offers participants to inhabit. This is the Faustian relationship with Mephistopheles, wherein desires are granted, but only if the means used are promoted endlessly, ultimately gaining importance over the participants original aims. ]' (end of quote)
[forum.culteducation.com]
Werner Erhard training groups (Landmark Education, aka The Forum, est)
Room Arrangement - a vital ingredient
Someone wrote:
[forum.culteducation.com]
[forum.culteducation.com]
Manipulating the room's environment
Posted by: corboy
Date: May 11, 2004 06:35AM
The Room Arrangement Deserves Our Close Attention
All of these are guesses, but are educated guesses based on material from persons who participated in Landmark.
Concerned OZ and kittypaw have found the URL for a paper written by Drew Kopp a former LEC volunteer who had set up rooms for many such events and who wrote a scholarly analysis of the special features of the LEC seminar room set up, and how social intereactions are scripted in very specific ways during the seminar.
Kopp's 40 page analysis, entitled 'Invisible Bodies, the Disinherited, and the Production of Space in the Landmark Forum maybe accessed here.
www.u.arizona.edu/~kopp/Finalmat3.doc
Many enthusiasts/publicists for LEC emphasize LEC's verbal content and philosophy and are convinced that these transformed them.
But Kopps data and line of reasoning invite us to speculate that focusing exclusively on LEC's verbal content may keep us from examining from something very important: what Kopp describes as the room set up.
With Drew Kopps material in mind, Look at what Hope has told us in one of the posts above in this thread:
''What I found uncomfortable were the chairs and the lack of space between them. I'm small, and the people on either side of me were big. When we all sat back, I had their elbows in front of me. In order for this not to happen, they would have had to lean forward or turn in their chairs. So it was pretty uncomfortable.'
Hope wrote:
'Some people timidly asked if the AC could be turned down and their requests were met with some nonsense about how the people who run the forum know what works for most people, how they cannot adjust the thermostat to meet everyone's needs, blah, blah, blah. Within 15 minutes, however, the AC was turned down and many sighed a big sigh of relief. The interruption of the sighing, however, brought on another lecture from the leader.'
Gaslighting -- setting you up for failure so the leader can yell at you
Two former Landmark subjects wrote:
Late Nights -- sleep deprivation
[forum.culteducation.com]
A description of Landmark Education by a subject
Breakthroughs and Blarney
My Experiences With The Landmark Forum
[forum.culteducation.com]
methods and then applied to Tibetan/Vajrayana Buddhism, here are some
places to start.
Think this is unlikely? Maybe it the Tibetans did not borrow anything from Werner Erhard.
But...Swami Muktananda did borrow from Werner Erhard. Remember, Werner visited Muktananda in India and then helped the guru get to the United States.
Readers, take a look at the descriptions given by many former Landmark subjects
describing the uncomfortable room arrangement.
What an ugly way to treat customers. Werner Erhard's customers trusted
him and his trainers. These customers had not been convicted and sentenced
for any crime.
Now, someone may say, 'They were free to leave".
Not quite. In that kind of social set up, you forget you can leave. Look up
Stanford Prison Experiment.
Two, Werner Erhard's customers paid hundreds of dollars to attend one of these events, and in many cases did it because they trusted endorsements from their trusted friends and partners.
Some participants on the CEI message board back in 2004 found
an article online by Drew Kopp for a class in rhetoric. Kopp's
article was entitled Invisible Bodies, the Disinherited, and the Production of Space in the Landmark Forum
One CEI participant wrote:
Quote
Manipulating the room's environment
Posted by: Concerned Oz
Date: May 06, 2004 03:44AM
HI GC,
The attached file, (hope it worked this time (cited Drew Kopp's essay -Corboy), is an indepth writeup of the Landmark room setup. Of interest to me was the extent Centre Management went to to make a door open and close silently to aviod distraction by the leader, supervisor and attendees. All door hinges were machine olied and striker plates and lock tongues were fastened with masking tape to deaden noise. - wow we..
Oz
Corboy note: Drew Kopp's essay is no longer available online.
Here is an article from the discussion ConcernedOZ participated in.
It gives a few quotations from this now vanished document.
Manipulating the room's environment
Posted by: corboy
Date: May 13, 2004 10:38AM
Thanks again to Concerned OZ for finding this!
[www.u.arizona.edu]
[www.u.arizona.edu]
Invisible Bodies, the Disinherited, and the Production of Space in the Landmark Forum by Drew Kopp
Kopp's 40 page paper is the mental equivalent of a triathlon--gruelling, but well worth it. At the end, he comments:
'I would contend that this is a fundamental inauthenticity of Landmark Education, to use its own term to describe this dynamic and Landmark lack of transparency of its operation.
'Landmark Education, in the form of any and all of its representatives, pretends to their customers, that participants can acquire this technology, its consequent powers, and then drop the tools that granted these powers at any given time in the future. For instance, the Course Leader, at the very end of the LF, will say,I take it all back, claiming that everything said in the course possesses absolutely nothing to believe in.
Yet, this is said against a background of materially enforced re-conceptualizations (the special room set up, the scripted social interactions-Corboy) that have inscribed participants into a social space the existence of which is completely tied up with continuing to participate with Landmark Education.
Thus, Landmark technology compels participants to inscribe themselves further into more extensive and elaborate social spaces the organization offers participants to inhabit. This is the Faustian relationship with Mephistopheles, wherein desires are granted, but only if the means used are promoted endlessly, ultimately gaining importance over the participants original aims. ]' (end of quote)
[forum.culteducation.com]
Werner Erhard training groups (Landmark Education, aka The Forum, est)
Room Arrangement - a vital ingredient
Quote
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,4952,46346#msg-46346
Manipulating the room's environment
Posted by: Zorro
Date: September 18, 2007 04:57AM
When I helped to set the rooms for an ILP weekend they were totally anal about the chairs being aligned correctly and having the right number of chairs. We worked late into the night moving and arranging chairs. It bordered on the ridiculus. Especially because the people incharge couldn't even make up their mind on how it should be set up. They couldn't think for themselves. I kept asking....don't we have any notes on how this place is supposed to be set up?.....how did you do it the last time?....Their reply was no we don't have any. It's supposed to be this way. I was shocked :shock: because such a large so called professional organization didn't even know how a room was supposed to be set up.
Maybe it was a mind control tactic the people in charge we using on us drones?
Landmark is totally anal about having a room set up correctly. At each break the rooms are set up again for the students. They are anal right down to how paragraphs are written on a chalk board. I saw a guy spend hours writing a paragraph on a chalk board. Paying excruciating detail to how each letter was formed and the spacing between them. If something was wrong with how it was written, it was a big deal.
Manipulating the room's environment
Posted by: The Shadow
Date: September 18, 2007 08:41AM
I read Dr. Roxanne Mountford's essay on Landmark; "Invisible Bodies, the Disinherited, and the Production of Space in the Landmark Forum, which is quite long, but deals how managing the space of the room is actually very integral to part of the "indoctrination"... it is very purposeful, and in fact the "volunteers" have to use tape measures and masking tape to make sure that each chair is EXACTLY the same number of inches apart.
You are right, it is 'anal'. Have you ever lived with someone, or had a friend who needs EVERYTHING in EXACTLY the same place day in and day out., (we lovingly/laughingly call them 'control freaks') but I guess a clinician would call them an obsessive compulsive.
People who have to control other people, and who have to have their environment are usually people who have a lot of chaos in their heads, and the only way they can achieve the 'Illusion" of control is to control what is outside of them. Someone made a good point about the Leaders. I wonder when we will see them "meltdown", hopefully soon and all at once.
But having said all that, go to the link about Dr. Mountford and read her paper, it is very enlightening. (long, and kind of academic, but if you plow through it you will understand the impact of the way the room is set up).
I am trying to say a lot with not too many words, so this comment sounds a bit muddled.
'shad'
Quote
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,41895,41967#msg-41967
Covert Persuasion [Unconscious Influence]
Posted by: SaneAgain
Date: July 22, 2007 12:47PM
An article I found very helpful when I first came to the board was this one:
[www.u.arizona.edu]
It describes the effect of the room setup in Landmark (same as in most lgats - to a T) and it really astounded me because I was totally unconscious of the effect of the physical room structure. I noticed it was a bit anal but I thought ah well, it takes all types. This article really illustrates how physical environments have an unconscious effect on the mind and emotions.
It has already been discussed on this board in several places, and is a bit of a heavy read, but I think its worth reviving in light of this topic.
The very fact that est, Landmark, Quest and no doubt most of the others copy the layout of chairs (measured to centimeters), position of pens on a table, etc shows how important it is to the manipulation.
Someone wrote:
Quote
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,12279,12279#msg-12279Quote
4. VERY IMPORTANT: Bring your own chair. Landmark has notoriously hard chairs. Bring along one of those fold up canvas chairs. On the breaks, take the chair with you, and move to another area when you return. There is no acceptable reason for you to be uncomfortable. If you bring your own chair, you can consistently choose to be on the end of one of the last rows. Also, an added bonus is that you are likely to inspire others to show up on subsequent days with their own chairs. Landmark wants a very controlled environment (Especially chairs.), they don’t like this control being disrupted, but they will accommodate you.
5. Bring a cooler full of food, and keep it in your car. The half hour breaks aren’t long enough to run out to a restaurant. Make your own sandwiches and bring your favorite fruits and vegetables. Eat things that will keep your energy up. You’ll need healthy foods to keep your critical thinking in gear.
6. At the beginning of The Forum, the leader may mention that “Everything I say up here, isn’t the truth.” Remember this, and take them at their word. Pay attention to these sorts of disclaimers. Essentially, they tell you outright that what they are telling you for the next few days…is crap. You can, at the very least, agree on that.
7. They give you homework at the breaks. Don’t do the homework. If by chance someone asks you why you didn’t do your homework, just say “Because I chose not to.” That is all you need.
Quote
s it possible to recognize your own "brainwashing"
Posted by: midonov123
Date: May 16, 2005 06:17AM
I asked my Introduction Leader and Seminar Leader wannabe ex-girlfriend (yes she is now officially my ex- for those who read my other posts) why Landmark is concentrated over 3 days fro, 9 am to midnight sitting on uncomfortable chairs in an uncomfortable room etc... that results in physical discomfort and sleep deprivation.
She answered very simply “because their defenses collapse” !!!
This confirms the Forum leader does it deliberately and knowingly, but she thinks it’s for their own good, so that the participant can get the message that will transform their life for the better. I insisted that if she cares for people, she should also look at the detrimental effects Landmark has on many people before enrolling more and more, but she objected aggressively and refused to listen to anything (this is not the first time). I told her firmly that I consider Landmark as a cult, and that I will not get trapped by their close system of logic and techniques. She kicked me out of her apartment after trying some more enrolling tricks on me that didn’t work.
The more I learn about all of this, the more I am outraged.
[forum.culteducation.com]
[forum.culteducation.com]
Manipulating the room's environment
Posted by: corboy
Date: May 11, 2004 06:35AM
The Room Arrangement Deserves Our Close Attention
All of these are guesses, but are educated guesses based on material from persons who participated in Landmark.
Concerned OZ and kittypaw have found the URL for a paper written by Drew Kopp a former LEC volunteer who had set up rooms for many such events and who wrote a scholarly analysis of the special features of the LEC seminar room set up, and how social intereactions are scripted in very specific ways during the seminar.
Kopp's 40 page analysis, entitled 'Invisible Bodies, the Disinherited, and the Production of Space in the Landmark Forum maybe accessed here.
www.u.arizona.edu/~kopp/Finalmat3.doc
Many enthusiasts/publicists for LEC emphasize LEC's verbal content and philosophy and are convinced that these transformed them.
But Kopps data and line of reasoning invite us to speculate that focusing exclusively on LEC's verbal content may keep us from examining from something very important: what Kopp describes as the room set up.
With Drew Kopps material in mind, Look at what Hope has told us in one of the posts above in this thread:
''What I found uncomfortable were the chairs and the lack of space between them. I'm small, and the people on either side of me were big. When we all sat back, I had their elbows in front of me. In order for this not to happen, they would have had to lean forward or turn in their chairs. So it was pretty uncomfortable.'
Hope wrote:
'Some people timidly asked if the AC could be turned down and their requests were met with some nonsense about how the people who run the forum know what works for most people, how they cannot adjust the thermostat to meet everyone's needs, blah, blah, blah. Within 15 minutes, however, the AC was turned down and many sighed a big sigh of relief. The interruption of the sighing, however, brought on another lecture from the leader.'
Gaslighting -- setting you up for failure so the leader can yell at you
Two former Landmark subjects wrote:
Quote
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,4737,5102#msg-5102
Landmark, Wachowski Brothers and The Matrix
Posted by: hossgal
Date: May 07, 2004 07:51AM
Thanks, Corboy and Oz, for your insights.
It is puzzling, my reaction to my LE experience. Here is my theory about it:
Friday night, before we broke for dinner, one of the assistants announced that the final evening session would start at 7:35 PM. It was 6:05 PM when she made this announcement. OK, so we knew we had 90 minutes to grab a bite. I agreed to drive with another attendee to a local resaurant. But first, this gal had to visit a friend in the front office. Now food is very important to me, and the opportunity to get the heck outa there was, too. But I digress...
We arrived back at the LE meeting room at 7:33. I checked. A few people trickled in behind us, but none of them arrived later than 7:35. Scott, the FL, tore the group a collective new a**hole for being "late". I was infuriated, but recognized this was a manipulation to control us. My dinner partner stood up to challenge Scott.
I mumbled, "don't bother, it's a set-up." She replied, "I know".
The funny thing was, several people sitting around me also stated they heard 7:35 as our start time, not 7:25, as Scott now claimed.
By the next day I was still steamed about the manipulation, but the same people who the night before had sworn they heard 7:35, were now telling me, "No, they told us to be back by 7:25. Really. That's what they said." They had become Pod People!
I couldn't believe anything Scott said after that. I took the exercises for what they were worth, found some value in dropping persistent complaints (rackets), that sort of thing. But I took everything I heard the rest of the weekend with a grain of salt.
Quote
https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?4,12279,12279#msg-12279
So you've been cajoled into attending The Landmark Forum...
Posted by: Acid Reindeer
Date: October 18, 2005 03:50PM
This covers everything except a few other tips.
* They will keep the room dry and cold. Dress accordingly.
* Have a sense of humor, always.
* Prepare yourself for the trick where the Forum Leader will set up a food break and state that he expects the group back in twenty minutes. When the participants return to the room he or she will chide the last people into the room and say that he allowed a break of fifteen minutes and that they could not abide by their promise to show on time.[/list]
Late Nights -- sleep deprivation
Quote
[forum.culteducation.com]
Hope
I did the Forum in NJ and there were people who went up to the microphone who shared and were treated just as badly. I could not watch the entire set of videos, but I'msure they didn't portray how grueling the scheduling was. Though they said there were regular breaks, lunch and dinner, they didn't say the center was in a corporate park where there were no restaurants, stores or any place to get food. I brought my own only because I had taken a ride to find the place earlier. But they lied about the services in the area and the schedule. The lunch break was half an hour at 1 p.m. and then we didn't break until 9 p.m., and then the session did not end until 1 a.m. , with homework assignments and morning start-up at 9 a.m.
ajinajan
Ironically enough, MY Landmark Forum was also in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near any place to eat, we also had very little time to rush to get food, and were scolded in front of 200 people if we came back late from a meal. Our sessions also ended around midnight or 1am, I got about 5 hours or less sleep each night, and wasl always starving when I got back to go to sleep...
[forum.culteducation.com]
A description of Landmark Education by a subject
Breakthroughs and Blarney
My Experiences With The Landmark Forum
[forum.culteducation.com]