The media is on a campaign against alternative spiritual groups and has created an ideology of hate that has spread throughout society.

I really became aware of this issue when a small number of anonymous people went on a hate campaign of lies against me. I suddenly found there were people who took the word of these cyberbullies on face value. It seemed beyond belief that anyone should think what they said was true, after all, I know how I’ve lived my life and so do those who have actually been part of my life in some way.

And yet people were willing to believe completely made up accusations by anonymous people on dedicated hate forums.

Most of the harassing material was written by people I don’t know, who never met me, who lived in different countries and weren’t even part of the organization they claim to dislike so much. I believe they simply enjoyed hurting and found a safe venue where they could indulge their pleasure.

Cult, the new Witch Hunt and Heresy

I wondered how such a shadowy anonymous group of people could have such an impact on my public life, the answer lies in their use of the word ‘cult’.

So much hatred has been stirred up by the use of the word cult, that when it’s directed at someone, they become demonized in people’s minds. And so in people’s minds they lose their humanity and thus their rights to human dignity.

This is not new, it happened many times throughout history, the Spanish Inquisition, the persecution of the early Christians, the persecution of the early Gnostics, the persecution of the Templars, the witch hunts and so on.

The cult word today has been so associated with negativity that the word is used as an instrument of suppression, persecution and abuse and thus it has become an instrument to restrict people’s right to spiritual and religious freedom.

Groups of people, with their own personal and religious agendas, have formed an instrument of persecution, known today as the anti-cult movement. This sinister movement has unfortunately been supported by the media.

The role of the media in the modern day witch hunt

You hardly ever hear a positive word about alternative spiritual groups or religions in the media today, it wasn’t always that way, even back in the 2000’s I was interviewed by the mainstream media on many occasions and every time the interviewers were just interested in what I had to say about the spiritual subject being discussed.

I’m sure that wouldn’t be the case today, unless you’re in some commercial so-called ‘spiritual’ venture and don’t have group of people who practice your work, if you have groups associated with what you teach you’ll get labelled as someone who is part of a cult, and the only thing the media seems interested in is hurting such people.

The media played a huge part in creating the image of a cult, it more or less started with the Jonestown massacre, you know, where they say “don’t drink the Kool aid”, well it turns out it was a massacre rather than a mass suicide and there was no Kool Aid. By making it appear to have been a suicide event the media and those allied with them had the propaganda they needed to launch attacks against alternative spiritual groups and to incite fear in the general public towards their friends or loved ones, who became part of alternative spiritual groups or new religious movements.

Heretic, blasphemer, witch, pagan, cult, are all bigoted words meant to shut people out of society and destroy them. There are always lawbreakers in every aspect of society including spiritual groups, but they are the minority and there are laws to deal with them. Yet the actions of a few have become the brush to tar the many with.

The idea that alternative spiritual groups ‘cults’ are harmful has now spread into popular culture and is widely expressed in television and movies, this creates an almost universal climate of fear and hostility towards anyone in such a group. The hostility generated by this is terrible to live under.

There are some good articles on how the media has fueled the hatred and persecution against alternative spiritual groups on The Conscious Reporter website:

Exposing Manipulative Media Techniques that Restrict Spiritual Freedom

The use of the word ‘cult’ to evoke hatred

The cult word today is being used as an instrument of suppression and it restricts your freedom. If you take an interest in something spiritual, say astral projection, and you get together with a group of interested people, and they elect you to be the head in some way, you’ll immediately be classified by many as a cult leader and your group as a cult.

If someone attends who doesn’t like you, they can easily lie about you and give a totally distorted view of you and what you do in public and be supported by a huge number of institutions, religions, groups of abusive anti-cult witch hunters, atheists, the media and society in general, and if you look for justice you’ll find it’s priced beyond the reach of ordinary people. How are you going to withstand that?

A mindset of hatred has been created in society that has become an established ideology, that new religious movements ‘cults’ are evil. It has used people’s ideas of goodness to create an ‘other’ set of people who it sees as being out to harm society for their own evil agendas. Ideologies of hatred and exclusion lead to persecution and these kinds of ideologies are very dangerous.

A new witch hunt has been set in motion in society, fueled by the media, followed by the masses, and providing a venue for bullies and psychopaths to attack others with virtual impunity. Journalists use this mindset that now exists in society to create sensationalist stories about what they call ‘cults’ and jump at the opportunity to create a popular story about what they consider to be something wrong in an alternative group, even if that is based on just the account of disgruntled and usually biased former members.

People who leave an alternative spiritual group with a grudge against it now have a media that’s keen to hear their side of the story. People who would never normally be in a newspaper or on television, suddenly find themselves in the spotlight, supported by a hate ridden public. Some even create new lifestyles for themselves, by attacking groups or individuals obsessively they find new friends amongst others who also enjoy hurting the vulnerable.

The word ‘cult’ didn’t used to have such negative connotations attached to it, it used to simply describe a small or forgotten religious group or movement such as many of the forms ancient religions took. But so intensive has the campaign been against alternative spiritual groups that the word ‘cult’ brings with it terribly negative associations, which stir up strong emotions in people. Such has been the change in the perceived meaning of the word ‘cult’ that it’s a useless word today to describe alternative religions and spiritual groups. You might as well just use the word ‘monster’ instead.

What does the labelling of a person or a group with the word ‘cult’ make you feel about them? It probably brings instant negative connotations, and yet that’s part of your programming; you should look beyond it if you want to be objective. Even Jesus would be called a cult leader if he were alive today.

Bear in mind there are people with agendas who are pulling the strings behind the scenes that don’t want you to study esoteric knowledge, nor do they want people to form groups around it. They don’t want challenges, and at a deeper level, the forces of darkness don’t want the forces of light to emerge to counter them.

There are already laws that exist to punish members of a religious group if they break the law – but they punish people for actions they commit which break laws, not for being in an alternative spiritual group. However alternative spiritual groups tend to be classified as “cults” using broad, catch-all classification criteria (which would equally categorize mainstream religions as cults too if it were applied to them) and arbitrarily linked to the dangerous behaviour of small minority of groups which have broken laws. This prejudicially associates the mere act of being in an alternative group with criminality, with “cults” generalized and presented together as an imagined collective social problem.

Once labelled “cultic”, a spiritual group or teacher can be viewed with prejudice, suspicion, fear and face ridicule, discrimination or open hostility. Yet objectively speaking, the literally thousands of groups falling under this label generally have no actual connection to one another and often believe and practice completely different things – their only real commonality and “crime” is that they are not mainstream religious institutions.  Categorizing groups under the cult label thus stigmatizes them just for being alternative groups – a classic guilt by association fallacy (even though there may be no tangible association between various groups whatsoever).

This prejudice and paranoia assigning guilt based on sweeping generalizations is a type of with-hunt reasoning. It is far and away different from using legal means to bring specific members of a specific group to justice in an objective non-prejudicial way for their specific actions if they break the law.

But because of the ingrained prejudice and hysteria that can comes with the cult stigma, when a group is labelled a virtual mob of people can adopt a guilty until proven innocent mindset and view them with suspicion and contempt – some will even feel justified in attacking them despite knowing nothing of the circumstances whatsoever. Those who seek to vilify an alternative spiritual group or teacher need only spread a few anonymous false accusations, innuendo and malicious gossip that frame the group according to classic “cult” fears and stereotypes, and the knee-jerk process of outrage and condemnation can be set in motion.

Matthew

The agenda to limit religion and spirituality to the mainstream and destroy everything else

There is a campaign today is to centralise religion, to create in effect a global set of religious values that encompass a small number of mainstream religions and then to exclude and destroy the rest. It’s an interesting statistic that the most persecuted religious minority in the western world today are not Jews or Muslims, they are practitioners of new religious movements, and teachers of these movements even more so. There are so many unseen ways that society is not free, particularly if you want to seek an alternative to mainstream religion and atheism.

Even alternative spirituality itself has been turned into a feel good multi-billion dollar business, which has the effect of pacifying people, rather than empowering us with knowledge and spiritual experience. It has become part of the mainstream, it shuts down difference and promotes the bland, creating a mindset of conformity.

Unfortunately the alternative media, while questioning many aspects of society has accepted the mainstream narrative against alternative spirituality. They almost always follow the abusive stance of the mainstream media, without even questioning the authenticity of their claims. Social media and public forums are also places where people can freely harass others.

Suppression goes on in many different ways, behind the scenes, people and interest groups, some who are atheists and many who belong to the mainstream religions, are manipulating the media to make it appear that to be associated with alternative spiritual groups and new religious movements is wrong.

The media itself already has a formula for a successful story; it has an enemy of its own creation, the ‘cult’, which it feels sure the public supports it against. The hatred it stirs up usually leads to the persecution of the innocent and the suppression of people’s basic rights and freedoms, particularly in searching for spiritual truths and gathering with others in pursuit of spiritual experience.

Don’t let hatred and ignorance win everywhere

As an individual you and I have a right to gather with others to further the understanding of our place in the universe, to seek to know the spiritual and to further our relationship with divinity. It’s what the universe itself was created for.

If you want these things today, you will have to fight for them as they are being taken away at an alarming rate. Everyone who is interested in the truth of existence should stand together and face ignorance, and strive to have a greater understanding of spiritual and esoteric knowledge.

People with their ideology of hate don’t want you to become empowered by consciousness and wisdom and be different, they prefer to eliminate all challenges to their status quo and have a monopoly; this has been the story of mainstream religions for a very long time. If you care, empower yourself with truth and become active for the good of society.

There is a more detailed article about the anti-cult movement here The Anti-Cult Movement and its Suppression of Spiritual Rights and Freedoms

And how spiritual knowledge online is beginning to be censored in War on Consciousness Takes to the Internet as Esoteric Websites to Be Censored in UK