Originally posted by: justuser
I have to put in my 2 cents.
Courses like these are potentially very dangerous and I feel it is important to warn fellow members. Basically groups like these are really religions which try to convert you to their religion, but they won't admit they are a religion. They lure adherents to "retreats" to teach "meditation" but they use tactics similar to those used by nazis (isolate you, use group think, forced meditation, hypnosis, etc...) to brainwash you in the 10 days to try to break your mind. Imagine being stuck in isolation hundreds of miles in the wilderness, with NO EXIT, where you are forced to do rigid exercises, combined with chanting, groups of people surrounding you, and pressuring you about how great their leader is. Also they use sleep deprivation techniques, deprive you of protein rich foods to make your brain woozy, and keep emphasizing love, devotion to the "teacher". The purpose is to make you into slave labor.
I've heard stories of people who have went to retreats like this and have abandoned their families, donated all their money/ savings to the leaders of the religious group and disappeared for good.
http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/3/1480.html?1115473523
Quote from googling about this place:
I went to a vipassana meditation course in Canada a couple weeks ago. I left on the fifth day due to my blood sugar being totally out of whack, probaby from the insanely small amount of sleep they let you have and the fact that they deprive you of a balanced diet. I need way more protein than they were feeding us.
I have to say that it most definetly has some cultish aspects to it. I'm actually appalled that there is not more bad press out there about it. I figure that if you actually finish the whole course you'll be just as brainwashed as everyone else thats completed it... who would say bad things about it in that case? But then any good reporter wouldn't do a report on something like that without actually trying it out. (just a theory)
Here are my reasons for thinking its a cult:
People there are very impersonal, even after asking the "teachers" personal questions... the answers I received were cold and trite. This makes it hard to approach the teachers with questions and concerns adding to the tense atmosphere there.
I personally asked to leave on a couple occasions before I just got so fed up with it that I sort of argued with them a bit and told them I was going and there wasn't anything they could do about it.
They also tried to instill some amount of fear into me to try to get me to stay there, saying it might potentially be hazardous to my health if I left early... (I feel better than ever actually)
I also witness people crying in pain to the teachers, begging to let them go go but they would not let them. From my perspective, if someone is telling you they need to leave, there shouldn't be any amount of persuasion/manipulation to make them stay. They know themselves much better than the teachers would so why not just let them go?
The whole atmosphere there is very tense after the first few days, due to lack of sleep, food issues, the fact you can't really talk to the teachers and get a good compassionate response from them( only canned goenka responses). This is a very common tactic used in cults, making the teachers seem like they are above you and unapproachable.
They deprive you of sleep. The average human needs 8 hours of sleep at the very least. At the vipassana course you are getting 6 tops... There is potential there to get 7 but no one falls asleep right away so I assume most people are only getting 6 maybe less. I certainly didn't get enough sleep which is why I was falling asleep the whole time I was trying to meditate. When I went to ask if i could have more sleep they insisted that I just needed to concentrate and fight the sleep. I assume by the end of 10 days of less than 8 hours of sleep you are pretty darn illogical. Your brain needs to recharge or you actually become crazy from lack of sleep. Depriving people of sleep is also a tactic used in cults to make people more vulnerable.
After talking to the teachers and some of the mangers at the course I deducted that many of them had been doing these courses for years. I assume that they also cannot talk to the outside world while they are doing sessions... Isn't it a common tactic of a cult to separate you from your family and friends? I wondered if one of the managers had actually talked to her family for quite some time... she seemed really sad to me. Cutting your inductees off from the outside world and each other is a decent way to avoid them getting together and rationalizing the experience they are having.
Anyway the last straw for me was when the male teacher actually said that I could not know or understand pure unconditional love... Nor could I be a good friend to anyone unless I finished the course. He said that I needed to purify my mind before I could understand what love really is. He also insulted politely the path that I had chosen for myself and said it was the wrong path. He also insinuated that the only way to really help people in this world was through vipassana meditation courses. ARRG!
In anycase it took me a good three days to normalize my sleeping schedual and also to be able to eat real food again without almost gagging.
It worries me seeing some of the people that work at those things almost full time. They are somewhat void of emotion, they don't even smile. I almost think this is a symptom of excessive brainwashing... like they are so detached from their emotions that they don't even remember what its like to be human. I certainly don't want to end up like that.
I like that I can laugh and cry and relate to people on a human level. I was born a human and I think I'm meant to experience this life with my full spectrum of emotions intact.
People do get some kind of results using this method... I'd say its due more to the fact that they deprive you of sleep, your body is releasing mass endorphins to deal with the pain of sitting in one place for so long, and the fact that they don't really feed you a balanced diet. All of that is a recipe for one whopping natural body high. I'd be hard pressed to call that the road to enlightenment, but maybe some people think it is. ??
Anyway despite all of this, some people think the method has done really awesome things for them. I've heard the best results were happened with people that had recently been through something very traumatic... it gave them the power to just let go of that pain and view it somewhat objectively. I'm pretty good at doing this on my own without meditating... in fact I'm already pretty happy with the path I'm on and haven't been actively searching for myself for a long time.
I wouldn't recommend ANYONE ever go to one of these courses though... I think this kind of "meditation" can potentially be harmful to some people(myself included).
I wish there were more objective views of what was going on at these courses. Most of the stuff I read about it is a glowing review... or it reads like a canned goenka response.
I hope you all find some kind of peace in some way... Just be very careful who you trust to take you down a spiritual path. I've come to a point where I only trust my own instincts, seems to work great!
Peace
-shelley
P.S. Threads like these should be locked. Anything that promotes "free retreats" to fishy places is equivalent to those free time shares, or nigerian emails.