Interview with Bernard Montaud on the Theme of "Cults"

Bernard Montaud speaks in this 2006 interview with the CICNS from the standpoint of a minority spiritual movement working openly in France, Switzerland and Belgium: the post-Solar-Temple trauma around “cults”, the anti-cult associations, and his group’s everyday dealings with mayors and public authorities.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 11 November 2006. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: Bernard Montaud was born in 1951. In the 1970s began the journey of a man passionate about human nature. In 1983 he founded psychanalyse corporelle (body psychoanalysis), which led him to re-understand human interiority and to create nuclear psychology. His meeting in 1985 with Gitta Mallasz prompted him to write about his experience. He is notably the author of César l’éclaireur (1990) and La Vie et la mort de Gitta Mallasz (2001), with Patricia Montaud and Lydia Muller, published by éditions Dervy.

[Montaud]: We are living at a time when faith is in full mutation, and when I think the ego today has moved up a notch, and I think it needs to pass from a collective god to a more personal god. That is perhaps the collective reason for all these spiritual movements flowering throughout the West. So I think we are witnessing a faith in full mutation, in which today there is a deep desire among people of faith to have a more personal dialogue with God than in that kind of rigid monotheism which has us all addressing the same God.

This mutation is not yet very well understood by modern society, that is certain. This mutation, above all in France (I who speak a little everywhere in Europe and a great deal in the United States) above all in France, arouses an incredible intolerance. Now, I believe that this belongs to the evolution of history, and that I know of no moment in history when faith was adulated.

On the subject of the French atmosphere toward spirituality, I would say that just as Belgium has been traumatized by paedophilia since the Dutroux affair, rightly so, France has been traumatized by spirituality since the Solar Temple. I think the problem is utterly false in France, that there exist so many respectable movements in France that do not deserve this witch-hunt. That said, it is also true that in the spiritual world a certain housecleaning needed to be done. I only regret that the bodies, the anti-cult associations that the public authorities defend, are not more effective and not more honest, because I think they would have their role to play.

In our association, we have been bothered rather little. It sometimes happens that we are bothered by the mayor of a town or a small village, since we have groups throughout France, in Switzerland and in Belgium. But it would not be fair for us to present ourselves to a mayor and cast ourselves as victims. Often, what the town halls need is information. And often we lack dialogue with the public authorities, the town halls, and so on, to explain what we do. And when the aides understand, things get unblocked. So no, I cannot say that we have been persecuted over these last thirty years.

On the other hand, I have witnessed certain attacks on magnificent beings which would indeed warrant legal remedies, because that is a matter for real justice: it is real defamation. I think we should move beyond an emotional level of reflection. I think we should, as I believe your movement does, bring in sociologists, historians, competent people to observe this phenomenon.

The main obstacles are ignorance. That is to say, the people who fight spirituality are most of the time people who are affected through relatives who have suffered accidents, or so-called accidents, in certain worlds. That is what is important for the spiritual movements. And I mean that those who judge are already wounded. So the problem is false from the start. What is more, they judge only for the prosecution: they register absolutely nothing positive, they register only the negative. So the debate is completely skewed from the outset, in its emotional intention and in the very intention of the research. So, I would say, the problem is so deep that it seems to me to be a problem of the maturity of the human species, with regard to the intention of the research, with regard to a mutation of faith.

The problem of children concerns me rather little. We have no children: the beings we welcome are all adults. But I believe this comes under collective delirium. It comes under intellectual sickness and manipulation, which try to dirty something before the problem has even been studied. We play their game by accepting this type of debate. This type of debate does not interest me at all. The problem does not exist. We are facing something that is supported by no data. When they bring data, we will be able to respond. Me, I refuse to take part in the game of rumour against rumour, because we have many other things to do in the order of the positive, and not in that kind of emotional mire where it is vengeance and counter-vengeance, violence and counter-violence. And so, as long as these remain rumours produced by them, they measure themselves by the stupidity of their rumours.

I think one must not fight against the anti-cult associations. The problem is emotional. The emotional confusion is too great for us to be able to fight against these associations. I think we can perhaps oppose the false with the just. And that if we are numerous enough facing them, calm, serene and determined, it is that justness that will prevail without having to fight against the false.

[Interviewer]: What is the share of the road that society has to travel? What is the share of the road that the spiritual movements have to travel?

[Montaud]: I believe we are never challenged gratuitously, and that even the excesses of the spiritual family, even the follies, even the pathologies, confront us with something over which we must be serious about monitoring certain data, certain limits we must not overstep. So, what is the share we have to do? I believe we have to be clear and transparent as regards the financial world. We have to be clear and transparent as regards everything in the order of dietary directives and medical directives, and so on. As for the domain, the so-called domain of psychic manipulation, I mean that we are far less powerful than French television and the football World Cup, and that everyone would be liable to prosecution.

I believe that to demystify these new spiritualities, the only way we have is to be the result of our spiritualities. That is to say, I think there is a contagion of good health that is just as effective as the contagion of sickness. And I think the best way we have, without fighting against the rest, is to accomplish what all our teachings propose to us. And that if we are peaceful, calm, smiling, alive, tolerant, no one will ever fight us.

On the subject of the inauguration of the Gitta Mallasz Centre, we did indeed hold a large event, which had three aims. First, the aim of establishing ourselves locally: that is why there were twenty or thirty mayors at the inauguration. The second aim was to present ourselves to the politicians in a serene, calm and strong and determined way. That is to say, we have no reason to be ashamed of our faith. We have done no harm for thirty years. We are not the object of any legal offence. There is no reason for us to place ourselves in the position of the guilty. And so it was necessary, before the deputies present, and that unfortunate minister who was unable to come, that we should be able to say that we exist, calm, serene, determined. And then, the third act that was important in this inauguration was also, as you noticed, that we had invited the main French spiritual movements (well, many of the most important) and that we wanted to say that there exists in France a family of healthy spiritual movements, which are capable of respecting one another, of having a great deal of sympathy for one another.

These last six months show me — whether with Jacques Castermane, with the Dürckheim groups, with all those who answered us and who could not come and who are sorry — Christiane Singer —, whether with Arnaud, whether with plenty of others — that there is something that is true, that is strong. Look at how, on that day, those beings were true and strong and authentic, whether Cheikh Bentounes, whether… I believe that is the way we are going to go, we ourselves. We are not going to lose time fighting the ADFI. We are going to gain time by affirming ourselves with more force.