The Impossible Mediation: How the UNADFI Argues That Dialogue Cannot Happen

The Impossible Mediation

The tendentious psychology of the UNADFI and the ideology underlying it

by André Tarassi

Extracts from the publication of the ADFI no. 80, fourth quarter 2003 - Editorial

”(…) Experience proves that dialogue, consultation with the follower (of a cult) is impossible. Deprived of liberty, the follower will affirm loud and clear that he is entirely free, that he entered the group freely and that he can leave it freely, that it is his family or those close to him who are infringing his freedom to belong to his group. And in the event that the cult were summoned before the courts, he will be ready to come and defend the leader and the members of the cult against all comers.”

The arguments of the anti-cult activists leave one dumbfounded: if someone “affirms loud and clear that he is entirely free” and is ready “to defend the leader and the members of the cult against all comers”, there is, according to them, a problem all the same. It is with this kind of tendentious psychology that the spiritual minorities have been confronted for years. The ADFIs think they hold a truth that could not be undermined by the affirmations of those they would like to save from the clutches of the cults… against their will! Other explanations follow:

”(…) the follower loses his capacities for reflection, for discernment and for decision, his critical spirit and his free will, solely as regards the theories and practices of his cult. For the rest of his life, professional, family, he may be absolutely normal. That is what explains the follower’s behaviour when he is brought before the courts or the psychiatrist, with whom he will give proof of his intellectual and human qualities, etc…”

The follower has therefore undergone a sort of selective brainwashing. A lobe, perhaps, or a few of the follower’s neuronal connections have been dexterously manipulated by “the master of the cult” so that he becomes entirely stupid where the affairs of the cult are concerned while remaining (and this in order to deceive the courts and the psychiatrists) “absolutely normal” in all other domains! The message can be summed up thus: “Do not let yourselves be deceived by the apparent normality of our victims, it is a trap”! After having described to us for years the behaviour of the “abnormal”, we are now advised to be wary of “normal people”. Even accepting this hallucinatory argumentation, one may wonder whether someone “absolutely normal” in “the rest of his life” causes any harm whatever to others and whether he moreover deserves the title of “victim”… seeing that he is not even ready to acknowledge it.

Who has lost part of their brain in this story?

”(…) As for mediation with the cult, it is perfectly impossible. The associations improperly called anti-cult are often reproached with not seeking to establish a dialogue with the groupings they designate under the name of ‘cults’ (…) It is obvious that parents whose child takes drugs will obtain no result by discussing with their dealer. Just as parents whose child is caught in a prostitution network will not arrive at a solution by discussing with the pimps. It is the same for the cults, which are a psychic drug and a psychic rape. No mediation is possible. Only Justice will be able to free the innocent victims and condemn the guilty.”

This condemnation “a priori” of the spiritual minorities is a central aspect of the anti-cult fight. There is in it no intention of understanding the nature of the spiritual quest and its place in society (any more than of understanding the malaises of our society that can lead to the consumption of drugs. Would their ideology advocate a “final solution” for the spiritual minorities?). It is indeed a matter, in any case, of destroying under cover of “protecting”. If the activists of the anti-cult camp had a genuine concern to protect human beings, we would find that again in their approach and their words, as much on the subject of the presumed guilty as of their presumed victims. By brandishing expressions with a strong emotional power such as “children”, “rape” and “drugs”, they deliberately stigmatise a current of “thought” in order to reduce it to nothing. There is a great violence in this attitude, which does not escape them but which may escape those of their readers who are blinded by the intensity of their argumentation. The ADFI is today so deeply mired in this vindictive attitude that it sometimes even attacks certain bodies of the government when the latter shows any inclination to dialogue with the spiritual minorities.

Where does this feeling of impunity, usually found among dictators, come to them from? They must feel well protected to diffuse their doctrine so freely without fear of a backlash.

”(…) It is precisely because they know this impossibility of communication and of mediation with the followers and with the cults that the gurus, in their media campaign of intoxication, propose that the ‘two parties in conflict be brought together to find the solution to their problem together’.”

Always this fallacious argumentation which uses untruths as a smokescreen. Here, the intention of dialogue is said to come from the certainty that there can be no dialogue!

This distressing literature is served to the population as a veritable enterprise of disinformation which will end up making us believe in the reality of “brainwashing”.

And the authors of this text conclude with this quotation which, in their confusion and their lack of culture, seems to them to go in the direction of their sickening diatribe:

”(…) Fifty-five years ago, in 1948, Albert Camus declared:

‘I shall not try to modify anything of what I think or anything of what you think (as far as I can judge) in order to obtain a conciliation that would be agreeable to us all. On the contrary, what I want to tell you today is that the world needs true dialogue, that the contrary of dialogue is falsehood just as much as silence, and that there is therefore no possible dialogue except between people who remain what they are and who speak truly’. (Essais, La Pléiade, 1965, p. 372)”

It is the eternal masquerade of the militiamen of a single-track and brutal thinking who, from China to France, by way of less publicised lands, daily trample the spiritual impulse in the hope of ruling a world that nevertheless gives every sign of decline.

Read also “Séva”

André Tarassi was born in 1961. He is the founder of the CICNS. An independent researcher, he has been studying the New Spiritualities for 25 years. He studied journalism and television in the United States. He has published, under another name, several works on the spiritual approach.