Sam Harris

I am wondering if anyone here is familiar with this organisation?  I came in contact with it as a child (my father being a prominent member).  Although it has affected my life quite profoundly and negatively, my memories don’t join up and make little sense.  Very little information about it is available on the net and I have not found any critical/objective info about it at all.

Double post!!!!!!!!

uli - 26 February 2008 10:42 PM

I am wondering if anyone here is familiar with this organisation?  I came in contact with it as a child (my father being a prominent member).  Although it has affected my life quite profoundly and negatively, my memories don’t join up and make little sense.  Very little information about it is available on the net and I have not found any critical/objective info about it at all.

I can’t say that I have, I would be interested to hear what you have to say about them.

I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for Arthurian lore.

Sadly this has nothing to do with Arthurian lore which is, at the very least, a rattling good yarn.

This is a very hashed version of what they believe in:

- God is a power of mystical rays rather than a man with a beard
- People have the task to become ‘fine matter’ to move into the god sphere
- People are mostly ‘coarse matter’ because they are to attached to the world, other people, sex etc. (i.e. because they are human)
- Through rigidly controlling our thoughts and feelings (which have as much power as actions)we can move towards the ‘fine matter’
- Their leader was the ‘Son of Man’, a kind of second Jesus
- If you don’t live in accordance with the Grail message (which, like so much of religion, has a very strong focus on, to quote Sam Harris ‘what people do when they are naked) you will get reborn
- All the sins in a previous life will come to haunt you in the next, making your path towards ‘fine matter’ even harder
- Women are naturally closer to ‘fine matter’, but, unfortunately, most of them prefer rubbing their bodies up against men or, even worse, against other women to being in touch with their ‘fine matter’ nature.  Those women are worse than the worst of men.

There’s loads more, but I get depressed and angry about it if I write for too long.  It IS funny, I know, but people believe it and it’s not much fun to grow up in that kind of environment.

Wow, that’s sounds even dumber than I imagined.

Why is it that so many of these religious nuts are so worried about our too, too solid flesh? Is reality really so bad that we must spend so much energy trying to thaw and resolve ourselves into a dew? Tomorrow and tomorrow may lead the way to dusty death, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the ride.

But thanks for relating it, never the less.

uli, tragic but fascinating cult you had to grow up in there. What are its roots? Where did it start? and that’s all I’ll ask if thinking about it still depresses you… from experience, I can tell you, it will get easier to laugh than to cry about it with time, extra curricular reading and talking.
It’ll be good to hear your perspectives on the forum.
(I’m pronouncing your moniker in my head as yoo-lie, is that correct or is it yoo-lee, or ewl-lie, or ewl-lee?)

Thank you for your empathy - it’s a long time ago that I had anything directly to do with these people, apart from certain members of my family.

It was founded in the 1920ies by a Oskar Bernhard, a salesman and travel writer after he was a POW on the Isle of Man in the UK and claims to (now) have many international followers.  He initially called himself Ab’drushin and later Ismael and his followers now write about him as ‘der HERR’ (the LORD)- and yep, they do that in capitals!

One thing that is quite fascinating to observe, given the endless interpretation of other ‘scriptures’, is the fact that, although he quite clearly states in his books that they are all that’s needed, his followers are busily modernising things by ‘interpreting’ or ‘reading’ them.

A religion which forbids mixed swimming pools and dancing (on account of that making you feel lustful) would probably have trouble finding many followers in Germany today, so those strictures have been ‘loosened’ by his followers.

Like I said before, I could go on and on.  Wikipedia has an entry on this but it really only scratches at the surface.  If you’re interested, you can read some of the writings of ‘der HERR’ in English on http://www.poznani.sk/in-the-light-of-truth.

Finally, my name is pronounced like woolly without the W

‘People are mostly ‘coarse matter’’

And, here I thought they were atoms, baryons, dna, elements, molecules, etc…  No, coarse matter it is!  How could I have been so stupid!!!  Bloody cult those chemist-types, always trying to fool you into believing their confirmable and reproducible clap-trap!...