11 October 2012

Letter from Lhasa, number 286. Occulto Italia


Letter from Lhasa, number 286. Occulto Italia
by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Del Vecchio, G., and S. Pitrelli, Occulto Italia, Rizzoli, 2011.
(Del Vecchio 2011).
Gianni Del Vecchio
Stefano Pitrelli


Many people need totalitarian organizations submitting them in exchange of taking care of them, even if the costs of that are slavery conditions of life. Basically, the sect leader is a paranoid cheater well connected with State/government institutions protecting him/her. 

A sect is a structure one cannot freely leave, without any form of blackmail, and with the possibility to keep normal relationships with people of the left organization. Other aspects of a sect are siege syndromes and total obedience to the chief and his/her hierarchy.

Actually, many political parties, movements, associations etc are sects according to this definition. 

The main sects quoted and analysed from this work are Damanhur and Scientology. Scientology, as Damanhur, is a machine for producing money. Pay and you are welcome. If you are not an asset guarantying growing quantities of funds for the sect, you become a burden to be marginalized and fired. 

Other sects, or supposed such, are reviewed in this work.

Antonio Meneghetti is the founder of so-called ontopsychology. He is an ex-Franciscan friar turned independent ‘preacher’ and intellectual. ...The best choice... ...Instead of manipulating people for a Church or a congregation, creating one’s own enterprise! The authors accuse him of mental manipulation because he would have about 500 followers in Italy and about 500 abroad.

Are people under medical and psychological treatment critical and without any form of attachment or dependence relatively to their therapists? Are other people independent individuals without any form of psychological subordination? Or only some form of dependency from Meneghetti is a crime?

Antonio Meneghetti is also ‘guilty’ of teaching, apparently with some success, to university students and of creating leadership courses for managers. Also some connected businesses are stigmatized from the authors. Differently from Damanhur and Scientology, they cannot accuse him of disposing of private ‘secret services’ for persecuting ‘defectors’.  
      
Soka Gakkai, as represented in this book, actually exhibits ‘sectarian’ attitudes not different from, for instance, many political parties, while it provides its member with stimulus and frames for happy lives although possibly inside its organization. 

The Humanist Movement teaches that by forms of self denial the disciple can reach one’s deepest resources and powers. It is another movement offering standardized techniques for happiness to its members.

Sathya Sai Baba was a classic Indian guru impressing people with rituals and some fraud. 

Danilo Speranza is a not uncommon manipulator offering some service and asking for money and absolute submission. If there are abuses of underage people, clearly there are also crimes. If there are not, in the world there is abundance of people wanting to be submitted and generously paying for that. If he has the skill for profiting from that...

For people in need of help, easy solutions are more efficient and effective, also cheaper sometimes, than complicate philosophies, never-ending psychoanalyses or other State/government certified treatments.  

Arkeon is one of the thousands of individual development and self-knowledge methods existing in the world. If one is not well subordinated to Secret Police [dis-]Services, it is easy to be prosecuted as a cult. First, they destroy one. If one is later acquitted, one is anyway ruined and can be again prosecuted if one persist acting in the same or also in other fields. The book does not provide any evidence that there were abusive practices, apart from relatively normal commercial techniques and pressures from salesmen of the structure.

Arkeon sold and provided motivational courses, without any organisation of communities et similia. It declared to be inspired from a method called Reiki. When there will a be a definite sentence, people will know the judiciary point of view about it that is not anyway historical or moral evidence of anything. A Wikipedia Italian page about Arkeon has been removed, very likely since some external [government/police] pressure, while a short page in English has been maintained. The whole case seems a persecution about a method (with censorship, shut down, of the websites), not a prosecution about crimes, although the Bari judiciary inquiring into Arkeon expressed a different opinion.

Nithael, alias Antonio Bruno, was a healer asking for money. If people gave it to him... Evidently, some repentant donor denounced him... Sometimes people feel cheated, although they previously donated money without any constriction. That can be easily used for persecuting and prosecuting whoever...   

Is the Raelian Movement (http://www.rael.org/) a sect? They propose original visions (common to other people and movements) and do not harm anybody... Perhaps no Italian Secret Police targeted it, ...until now! Differently, Italian judiciary could exhibit the standard package of charges and media slandering...

The crime of mental manipulation or psychological kidnapping (plagio, in Italian) was suppressed after the Braibanti case, the first and last person sentenced, in Italy, since this crime. A jealous and envious family denounced him for a story of homosexuality with its son who was put in a psychiatric hospital.  

This book (which carefully avoids the numerous Catholic and similar sects) campaigns for the reintroduction of such a crime. Actually, mental manipulation, or psychological kidnapping, is a very disputed and disputable field. People are currently manipulated from whatever and whoever, from TV to GPs (‘family doctors’)...  

Whatever religion can be qualified as a sect. In addition, there are specific congregations nobody touches only because they are under the umbrella of powerful Churches. See I Ricostruttori, a Catholic sect ‘selling’ oriental traditions just for enslaving its members and extorting funds from them. Not casually, it is a very rich small congregation, founded from a Jesuit. It was created since the cover of a bishop of a small city. One can easily find testimonies not different from whatever other of the main sects quoted in this book. ...Although it be a protected sect. It belongs to the Catholic Church!

States/governments already have thousands of ways for persecuting people, also absolutely illegally by Secret Police corps and officers. They do not need a further formal crime permitting them to do whatever they want for abusing people, and movements and organizations. Big sects as Churches, powerful congregations etc would remain widely protected, since their lobbying power, while whatever independent person or movement would be exposed to a too easy criminalization, if not adequately connected with State/government powers. 

The authors seem aimed from a Jacobean vision wishing that only State/government have an absolute power over its subjects. It is already in this way. Making that stronger and more totalitarian, by introducing the crime of mental manipulation or psychological kidnapping, seems a maniacal anxiety, in the Carabinieri’s Italy.      


Del Vecchio, G., and S. Pitrelli, Occulto Italia, Rizzoli, 2011.