Gilles Farcet on "Cults", Mental Manipulation and Spiritual Freedom: The CICNS Interview

In this interview for the CICNS, Gilles Farcet examines how movements labelled “cults” are portrayed in France: the media’s cultivation of suspicion, the ambiguity of the notion of “mental manipulation”, and spiritual freedom as a civil liberty to be defended.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 5 November 2012. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: A writer and man of letters, a close collaborator of Arnaud Desjardins, Gilles Farcet is also a public figure, with a career rich in encounters, travels, and literary and artistic collaborations. He has published some fifteen books on spirituality, including several interviews with spiritual teachers. He defines himself as a man of good will. Throughout his career, he has tried to find a way of living and embodying the spiritual search in society and the contemporary world, as a citizen and a father. His approach lies at the very heart of the question of how new spiritualities are treated in France.

[Farcet]: As soon as we speak of movements with a spiritual vocation, we are stating an approximation, since movements with a spiritual vocation exist, and have always existed — this is not a new phenomenon — in great multiplicity. Today people speak of cults, to use that famous word, presenting them as if they were something entirely new, and a manifest danger to democracy.

Now, my experience is that most movements with a more or less spiritual vocation — here again, precision is needed to analyse what is meant by that — are in fact not dangerous. They are movements that are at best very serious, at worst ones about which one may hold, let us say, a mixed opinion. People gather together, adopt a certain number of beliefs, engage in certain practices or a certain way of life: that is a matter of their individual freedom.

To my mind, the fear kept alive by the media, and by certain groups, around the phenomenon of so-called spiritual groups is very, very exaggerated, and stems in my view from another, much deeper fear, which is in fact the fear of the unknown, the fear of the spiritual dimension — I believe it is a very real fear, which exists in each of us — and, in a certain way, from an avoidance of the real questions.

Presenting a priori every movement with a spiritual vocation as potentially dangerous, and passing this belief — for it is indeed a belief — into public opinion, seems to me something not only questionable and regrettable, but in itself dangerous. Because if one foments suspicion and fear in public opinion, one does not foment with impunity. It can also give rise to excesses, and to very regrettable things.

We often act as though information were innocent. It really is something extraordinary to think that in the twenty-first century, with all the experience we now have of the media, of television, of cinema, one could believe that the camera is innocent, that editing does not exist, and that one can make an objective documentary about this or that seminar, this or that association — when it is quite obvious that everything will depend on the way things are shown, and on the assumptions one intends to convey.

As far as I am concerned, I consider myself a citizen, so I do not have a — how to put it — dark and gloomy view of the public authorities, of the government. Above all, I do not want to develop, in reverse, a kind of paranoia, of systematic suspicion towards the authorities of the country in which I live and where my action takes place. On the other hand, I believe it is indeed a matter of being vigilant, and that spiritual freedom, and quite simply individual freedom — spiritual freedom being, as everyone knows, inscribed as an inalienable right in the Constitution, and also in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen — this freedom can be threatened in very insidious ways.

The phenomenon of persecution has always existed towards currents that could not be placed in the categories acceptable at the time. What are we to think when this or that association finds itself, for example, fiscally persecuted? The word has to be used. Is it right to foment, once again, suspicion in a village, in a community, to spread rumours and hearsay, simply because some people have a somewhat different lifestyle?

I believe it is a matter of being vigilant, of taking care that what one might call anti-cult cults do not develop, do not take on too much importance. There are certain things that must not be allowed to pass. When certain spokespeople of certain anti-cult cults make statements that are thoroughly approximate, dishonest and factually false, and that insidiously convey a certain image, vigilance is called for.

What one can sometimes observe is systematic suspicion — that is, the fact that the gaze brought to bear at the outset is not a more or less neutral gaze, but from the start a suspicious one — as if, from the moment people gathered for an activity with a philosophical and spiritual vocation, one were from then on necessarily on suspect ground.

The question of mental manipulation is extremely complex and delicate. I believe that, on the subject that concerns us, we cannot afford caricatures, approximation, hasty and schematic judgements. Yet, unfortunately, that is precisely what always happens. What is mental manipulation?

Take the example of a Christian monastery. Take the example of a political party. A young man frequents this monastery, has conversations, meetings with the novice master, the abbot, goes on retreats, and little by little discovers a vocation. This vocation leads him at a given moment to commit himself to the monastery, to decide that he is going to become a monk. Why would one not speak of mental manipulation? He has been subjected to what one might call — without this necessarily being negative — an ideology, a belief, a set of ways of apprehending existence, up to the point where he has decided to live an existence among men, without the right to go out, with the right to receive his parents a few times a year, within the monastery walls, getting up at 5 in the morning, going to services 7 times a day, working perhaps as a farmer or a labourer when he may hold a degree from HEC. Perhaps for his parents, his family, who do not agree, who are sorry to see him commit himself to this path, it is mental manipulation. For other people who are strong believers, who approve of this step and who consider it important that monks should exist and pray, it is a vocation.

Take a political party — a less radical example. A young man, a young woman or someone older discovers a political party, becomes a militant, subscribes to a set of positions which in this case we are not going to call beliefs. But then, where is the line, when one watches a debate between Mr Hollande and Mr Raffarin? One does get the impression that each of them is defending beliefs, a certain number of assumptions, of preconceptions, of ways of seeing existence which for them reflect the truth, a stance, but which one could perfectly well describe as belief. A person commits to their party as a militant, changes certain things in their life as a function of this militancy, spends nights putting up posters, preparing meetings: mental manipulation? Commitment? What for some will be a commitment, and as such something eminently respectable and important, will for others amount to a form of mental manipulation. “You swear by nothing but politics now; you see everything according to the party line.”

Some people invest themselves so much in a company with a very hard line, with almost inhuman demands, that they end up divorcing, cutting themselves off from everyone around them, living only for the company, for the office, for their meetings, their seminars, sacrificing their whole existence, their family, to their idea of the company. So the question of mental manipulation seems to me, to say the least, extremely delicate.

So if I now apply this to the various groups with a spiritual vocation: a person commits, invests themselves in a path that may involve practising meditation, orienting themselves in one direction or another, having a certain way of life. From my point of view, as long as these people respect the freedom of others, cause [inaudible ?] their way of life to no one and do not cause disturbances to public order, and do not manifestly endanger their children, their families, their circle — from my point of view, that is part of individual freedom, of respect for everyone’s rights, of allowing each person to live as they see fit.

I believe one of the positive contributions of this approach is to propose the notion of a path, and of a witness to that path — what is sometimes called the master, but that is a word that lends itself to many misreadings. A path is not necessarily inscribed within a religion, and a path does not necessarily belong to a religion. This notion of a path, for example, is something very vague and unknown from the point of view of the perception [inaudible ?], which has not yet managed to grasp this notion.

There is also a contribution to society, which is that, in the end, a certain number of people committing to a path come to take a road of reconciliation with themselves that they could not find in their original upbringing, which is a positive factor for society as a whole. Society, in the end, whether we like it or not, is becoming more and more permeated by the effect of these searches.

Many people who are committed, personally invested in a path, have managed to bring into the company — without any manipulation and without any excess — notions and practices that improve the company, and I believe we are witnessing — without indulging in unbridled optimism — we are witnessing a diffusion, indeed, of a new way of apprehending the human being, not only from the individual point of view but from the social point of view.

I believe that the resistance to these new spiritualities — what are called these new spiritualities, which in fact are not new — stems, once again, from a fear and a resistance to change. We must not position ourselves as victims, and not position ourselves as persecuted, but position ourselves as citizens who can be vigilant with regard to the defence and respect of their rights.

To people who worry at seeing a relative or someone close to them turn to unconventional practices, I would suggest quite simply trying to understand rather than to think, to inform themselves — but to inform themselves from sources as objective as possible, rather than going to the anti-cult cults for their information.

Too often, what poisons relations between people within a family is, once again, fear, sweeping snap judgements. Where there is understanding, fear diminishes. Where there is no understanding, fear grows. Where fear grows, positions harden. Where positions harden, fundamentalisms on one side or the other develop.

All of us tend to live in fear and to feed these fears. And very often this fear goes unexamined; it forbids dialogue, encounter, understanding, and it develops aggressiveness, threats, quarrels. I believe this is true at every level, and it is particularly true as soon as spiritual questions come up, since I do believe that the spiritual dimension is fundamentally frightening. It frightens everyone, including people like me. This dimension is a dimension of the unknown, of openness par excellence, a radical openness.

What seems to me really very important is this will, this intention not to stop at fear, and to move towards an openness that is not merely superficial — which therefore implies a will and a necessity to understand, it being understood that understanding is work. It requires informing oneself, really informing oneself, taking the time to look, to examine, to reflect, rather than deciding, judging, contenting oneself with a few slogans, a few unverified pieces of information, as we so often do. So understanding is work; fear is laziness.