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.
