Mind Control in Mahikari

Criteria to evaluate the ideological totalism

This summary is based on the Bulles 1st quarter 1994, 4th quarter 1993 and 1st quarter 1996 of ADFI in French, as well as on the book by Robert J. Lifton, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism".

The goal is :

• on a general point of view to define some criteria allowing to know if the religious movement you are in is a sect. This general part is mainly base on the "Bulles" by the ADFI;
• more specifically, to compare these totalitarian criteria with Sukyo Mahikari's practices in order to know if this movement is a totalitarian sect using one or several mind control methods. This comparison will be based on my experience and that of former members who were kind enough to help me. 

For more information, you can browse the site by M. Tussier (in French) or that of Steve Hassan (in English).

In January 1954, an American psychiatrist, Dr Robert Jay Lifton, begins a study on the mental manipulations whose victims were American prisoners of war in Korea. He gathered then information about the confession and "re-education" techniques used by the Chinese communists who had intervened beside North Korea during the Korean war which ended in 1953. These methods allow to better understand the process of mind control and define valid criteria, non only for totalitarian regimes such as communist China, but also for harmful sectarian movements (as defined by the report of the Belgian Parliamentary Commission on Sects). The two fundamental elements of this "Thought Reform" as Lifton called it are confession (express all the "evil" committed in the past and the present) and the re-education which allowed to "remodel" the subject in the desired moulding, here communism.

From these interviews with former prisoners of war in China, Lifton defined 8 criteria, which, of course, remain general, because things are not so clear in reality and we often need some distance. More over, the harmful sectarian movements, as it is our main subject, such as totalitarian movements, don't use all these methods. Sometimes, they use only some of them, but they use them in depth.

Anyway, if a sectarian movement use only one of these methods, beware!

If it uses several of them, then it would be harmful...