I have lost a couple of friends to this cult - yes, said cult, mean cult - and it is starting to really worry me. Because there is no fixed ideology re: Scientology they think they can claim they are just a seminar...

I don't agree.

Has anyone been? Does anyone go regularly? If so, how much money (be honest) have you spent on it?

My sister got talked into going to one of those seminars by one of her clients.

She dragged me along because she was scared of them.

It was a free introductory seminar. They spent the entire time talking about how the landmark system had improved their life but wouldn't actually tell us anything about the system. We got asked to leave when I asked what the Department of Consumer and Employment Protection thinks of their advertising a products "merits" but refusing to talk about the product itself.

Never been more glad I gave a false personal details before in my life. Everyone there scared me. Another "fake it until you make it" cult.

Agree, Scientology is a very worrying phenomena.

Agree, Scientology is a very worrying phenomena.

Don't mean Scientology Bill - Landmark is different

(or are you implying something? )

Neither I nor my friends have had any encounters with this organisation, and no media reports have really caught my attention...

After checking out the 'landmarkeduacation' website I'm still finding hard to ascertain what the purpose of these forums could possibly be?

Anyone here have any first hand information on what they are actually trying to achieve?

If Travolta is in it, then it must be good. :sarc;


Here is an intereting article on Scientology. Interesting.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/time-behar.html

*sigh*

people

I once got phoned up by the Scientologists in America - they wanted me to come to some silly seminar in California. I'd like to know why the hell they were so keen to talk me into it... where the fuck did they get my details???

Okay folks, Tim is not interested in SCIENTOLOGY. If you wanna talk about it, start your own goddamn thread...

Yeah timmy i have a mate who's sortof caught up in it. Fortunately a big group of our mates have done a lot of research into it and managed to keep him away as best as possible. He got dragged in by HIS BOSS which i think is fucked.
Anyway all my mates went to their introduction session to check out how dodgy it is (after reading lots about it) and yep... it's dodgy... They left halfway through...

Check out the web, there's dozens if not hundreds of Anti-Landmark sites out there...

Apart from *its dodgy* wtf is it ?

Stay away from this group. I know of two people (one of whom is a close family member, and another who had a breakdown and needed to be temporarily institutionalised) who have been head fucked and cash flow drained (to the tune of thousands) by these parasites who pray on peoples insecurites and fears

There is a connection to scientology, the (now very rich) guys who set up this crap in the mid eighties, based Landmark on Werner Erhards mind fuck "est" programs. In the sixties Werner was a devoted scientology disciple (before he was kicked out) of one R Hubbard, and even now the scientologists claim that many of the techniques used by Landmark were "stolen" from them.

this came up as a tangent to a scientology discussion a while ago
more vagueness here

Okay folks, Tim is not interested in SCIENTOLOGY. If you wanna talk about it, start your own goddamn thread...

What diff does it make? They're both dodgy, they both fuck people over, they both drain your cash ... they're the same as far as I'm concerned. Prune them! Prune them all!!!

I did it once, a few years ago.
I seem to be fine, it was quite good actually, I learnt alot about myself and I forced myself to look at all the shit in my life that was making me unhappy at the time and turn it around. Long term I don't know if it's made a huge difference but it definitely made me take responsibility for what was going on in my life at the time.

Personally I think it was quite beneficial and I don't feel like I've been in a cult or anything. Since I did the forum I never heard from them again

make up your own mind I guess.

read the thread plasmo pulled up its got a fair bit of info in it. i just re-read it and found that the ppl who had done landmark (including me) said it was ok and they got something out of it, the ppl who had only heard about it thru others basically trash it and think its a total cult. but then maybe i HAVE been brainwashed :shock:

if its not your cup of tea, ok. i did it, i got something out of it. i don't think its had any lasting impact in my life but i do often stop and think about some of the things that i got out of it (i'm hesitant to say 'learnt').

i don't think its evil. they do have a really shitty, hard-nosed marketing technique, obviously to make as much money as they can and thats pretty fucking crap. and it turns a lot of ppl off it. i totally disagree with it. maybe if their marketing was a lot less aggressive they would get more people into it? instead of having it trashed as a cult, which i assure you its not...

yeh i did the two day seminar thing too. went in with an open mind to check it out as you would do with anything else. im interested in what people have to say, it doesnt mean that i agree with them

as for the brainwashing part... i can see that if a person was in a fragile emotional period of their lives they might want to cling to the sense of group/support - and obviously pay for the privelidge of doing so.. i didnt continue after the two days, despite their pushing to do so - i had seen their ideas and that was enough for me

it was worth going for a point of view. It hasnt changed the way i look at things and it was never going to. I have also read the bible from cover to cover, yet i dont have religion... im still better off for having read it, because i have gained more knowledge in doing so. i didnt read the bible in a quest for some kind of higher prupose, i read because i wanted to know what all those people were talking about, and now i do. I remember meeting a girl who was a "witch"... which at first i thought was pretty weird, but i still read through all of the shit about witches to the point where i could understand her point of view

as usual, the people who know the most about things like this are the people who havnt actually done it by far the most interesting thing about going to the two day seminar was not the seminar itself, but the way people reacted to me having done it - some people i had always thought of as being adventurous became quite small minded about it, whilst others were intrigued by it - there was a clear difference in the way people looked at something that they didnt know about/had not experinced

Apart from *its dodgy* wtf is it ?

they basically strip your personality and give you a new one.

jf, sniffer - cool, sounds like you had a relatively benign experience with them. I am aware that I haven't done it so am not really in a position to comment, but I have friends/family who have done it, and it either scared them silly or made them crazy to the point we aren't friends with them any more

they basically strip your personality and give you a new one.

see, that scares me - your personality is how it is because of the experiences of your whole life.

You don't just 'take it away' and get a new one during a couple of seminars

they basically strip your personality and give you a new one.

only to the extent that any other system of beliefs would. there are far more overwhelming systems of beliefs and religions - in fact most of them when i think about it -

still, like i said.. i went to see what they were talking about to satisfy my curiosity - i wasnt in search of anything other than that. i wouldnt be recommending it to people in a fragile time in their lives emotionally because they might get caught up in it (which i dont think would be a good idea)