Many of her predictions really can’t be verified either way. These predictions include statements such as “There is good news on the spiritual levels. People on the spiritual path will have much more inner peace and will have less war within themselves. Their health will be much better too.”

Or “Always following a leap year there is an incredible year. This will be a fast-moving year; one of great chaos. A wild, mad, reversal year in everything, including politics. There will be great confusion — deep unrest.” How can you verify that with websites that describe history? One really can’t.

Still, as I looked through Sri’s annual predictions for 1977 a few items stuck out as actually being something that we could research and come up with some historic facts to shed some light on to the accuracy of her predictions.

What this forum includes are these predictions. As you read through them, you might consider doing some research on-line to see if any of these items can be verified. If you find something that supports her predictions or something that doesn’t, consider posting the URL (web address) beneath the prediction so we can see for ourselves.

All predictions (at the time of this edit, February, 2005) come from one of two editions of … as it is magazine Copyright 1977 and 1978, Morningland Publications. Specifically, what was used was volume 2 – number 11 “Special New Year’s Issue” published January 1978, and volume 3 – number 3 “Special Taurus Issue” May 1978.

Most who have made their presence known to ex-morninglanders.com hold Donato in very high esteem, specifically those who knew him. When the Morningland leadership is attacked, 99% of the time these attacks are leveled at Sri Patricia.

I myself question this a bit. Donato was married to Sri and while there are stories of how he could control her rants, there are others where he did nothing to question her visions, even those that are now considered textbook cult mentality fear manipulations such as the gopis’ threat of walking 10,000 years on the astral planes should they fail in their mission of bringing the Holy Father to planet earth. While this threat is nothing compared to the Quark Threat of 2029 (LONG story), memories of Donato continue to remain somewhat untarnished by Sri’s paranoid rants.

Donato was a nice guy. I got that. However there are lots of nice guys but precious few who are actually wise. What I want to do in this forum is examine Donato’s wisdom. I do not look up to him as the Avatar for the Aquarian age, but I’m willing to look at his teachings and when they hold water with their wisdom, I’m going to support them by pulling them out of the hippy-dippy 70′s jargon in which they were originally spoken.

Those who still hold fast to his teachings, especially those who came on-board after his passing may see this as what Sri called “perversion of the teachings”. I don’t even know how to address this issue it is so ridiculous. Donato’s teachings are already caught in time due to his reliance on culturally specific references that have fallen out of favor in common usage. Still, some of his quotes are reasonably workable from a self-development point of view and I want to celebrate that fact in this forum.

I also want to question those teachings that really don’t work for me of which there are quite a few. Of course, this is an open document, with comments allowed.

My own perspective is heavily influenced by Taoism (AKA Daoism) and Zen Buddhism and so much of my interpretations of his words will be using the yard sticks of these two spiritual paths as well as others to which I feel an affinity. Feel free to disagree all you want, but should your post become an insane rant, it will be removed. Try and think calmly and rationally, and we’ll all benefit from the footprints that Donato left behind.

-Sunfleur

This is a Dear Abbey column that appeared in newspapers in Late July, 2001.

Dear Abby:

Last year, our family went through the most traumatic
experience of our lives: We left the church we’d been attending for
more than a decade. I always suspected our church was a little
“unusual,” but because I saw what appeared to be positive changes in
people’s lives, I kept telling myself we couldn’t possibly be involved
in a cult.

My family and I were led to believe we were members of a “special” group
- that we had a “different” calling than other churches, which was why
we had to work harder and sacrifice more than the average Christian. We
were ordered to terminate any activity or relationship that pulled us
away from our our church obligations or planted seeds of doubt in our
minds.

Finally, things got so weird my husband and could ignore it no longer.

We informed the pastor we would not be coming back. He said if we did,
we would become “shipwrecked” – doomed to divorce, and our kids would
not serve God when they grew up. Then two church leaders called to beg
us not to “leave the fold”

By the grace of God, we escaped. I suffered nightmares, depression
and total mistrust of any other church for a long time after that. We,
who were once part of the trusted few, the “elite inner circle,” were
now the enemy.

We lost all our friends. We had known some of them more than 10 years.
Although they claimed to love us, they were forced to cut us off – the
same thing we had done to those who had left before us.

Please print my letter as a wake-up call to let people know that scare
tactics, manipulation and mind control techniques are very much alive.
They are not just reserved for cults, but are used by some churches.
It’s called “spiritual abuse,” and it’s as real as any other form of
abuse. Books on the subject can be found at local libraries.

Thankfully, we now belong to a church that does not control our lives,
does not shame us when we ask questions, does not resort to belittling
and name-calling, and does not blame us for its failures. Instead,
our church serves as a positive symbol and source of strength.

If people have doubts about an organization or church to which they
belong, they should check it out. It it’s a legitimate organization,
it will stand up to scrutiny. Please, Abby, urge your readers not to
ignore their conscience or bury their feelings. If someone feels
something is wrong, there’s a good chance it is.

-Free At Last

Dear Free:

You are 100 percent right in saying if something feels
uncomfortable, it’s time to examine it more closely and do something
about it. It’s not a sin; it’s healthy, mature behavior. Anything that
requires all your time and money is depriving you of a balanced life.

Personal information that could effect the innocent has been removed, such as last names.

The following is from a report by a private detective that I hired in 1996 to look into the background of the founders of Morningland. People have asked me why I did this. Frankly I don’t know why someone didn’t think of this before. We were all devoted to these persons and their “cause” for a very long time knowing very little about their background. It just made sense to me in the process of sorting all of this out to find out who these people really were. I have left out identifying information on the persons discussed in this interview to protect them. I hope that this will help others who are trying to make sense of what happened in Morningland.

On December 16, 1996 Clara ——(Maiden name spelling declined although it sounds like ——-), New York ——was reached at her home telephone ——-, conversation with her was quite disjointed and skipped around a lot but the following is the general sense of the conversation. It should be remembered that CLARA and this investigator are strangers to each other and the conversation was conducted on long-distance telephone.

1. She is the legitimate widow of DANIEL MARIO SPERATO, a subject of this investigation. She cannot recall the date of their marriage but it was in a city or town in Pennsylvania.

    

2. She and DANIEL had one child together (DANIEL, JR.)

 

3. She now lives on the Social Security survivorship from her husband’s death. She knows he died in 1976, but is not sure where.

 

4. Both her father-in-law LORENZO and mother-in-law LUCY (LOUISE) are deceased.

 

5. DANIEL abandoned her and their child on Christmas Eve (she does not recall the year) and left ———-with PATRICIA (last name unrecalled if she ever knew it) and disappeared. PATRICIA had been married before and possibly had one child. She does not know PATRICIA’S married name (allegedly WOOD) and does not know if she divorced or abandoned her husband, as DANIEL abandoned her, CLARA.

 

6. DANIEL had also been married and had two children, a boy and a girl, before he married her. He reportedly had to go to Florida (Possibly a town called Aranda (Phonetic) to get his divorce inasmuch as for some unknown reason he could not get a divorce in ——–(She believes it may have had something to do with the Catholic Church). His divorce wife is Genevieve ———–, ————————————-, New York. She reared their two children alone and never re-married.

 

7. Daniel’s brother LAWRENCE (LARRY) SPERATO, would probably be willing to furnish information about DANIEL and PATRICIA. She believes PATRICIA was also from ————-but she is not sure and did not know PATRICIA or her family.

    

8. She believes DANIEL’S Sister ANGELA ————-, who lives on ————-in ———— (husband TIMOTHY) would be willing to furnish information regarding DANIEL and possibly PATRICIA.

    

9. CLARA advised that she would be willing to furnish additional information but the events discussed happened so long ago (and she is getting older) that she cannot remember names, dates and details as well as she once could.

    

A short time after this interview was conducted, probably about a month, I spoke to Clara on the phone myself. My recollection of the conversation is not precise because I did not think to write down what we had discussed at the time. I remember her telling me that she had just come from work so apparently she did something to supplement her Social Security. She was a very pleasant lady who had had to struggle to support her son by herself. I thought she was very kind to be willing to talk to me, I told her that I was writing about the church that her husband had founded. She told me that Daniel had worked in his family’s Pizza restaurant when they were living together and that that is where he met Patricia. She said that Patricia used to come in and sit at the counter. She did not know anything about Morningland or her husband being involved in any kind of church. She did not know what had happened to her husband after he abandoned her, which would have been in the early 1960′s. She felt certain, however, that his family in New York stayed in touch with him throughout all those years. She never remarried. I told her that I respected what she had been through and empathized with her situation because, ironically, I had a very similar circumstance in my own life with my natural father. She reiterated that I might be able to find out more from Daniel’s siblings. I did try but was unable to contact them.

Additional Information not from private investigator

Patricia had two daughters before Lynnie (Rada Ami). She abandoned them. So, between them, Daniel and Patricia abandoned a total of 5 children before her later abandoning of Lynne and Marcus (Seroth) who came later – making a total of seven children abandoned.

Neither of them ever made any attempt to contact their children. Most disciples don’t even know they HAD children.

Whenever I’ve been asked to recommend reading to former members, families, or mental health professionals, Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships was invariably at the top of my list. I can now feel comfortable replacing it with this revised and re-titled edition. Twelve years have passed since Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias first published Captive Hearts. Destined to become a classic, it was at that time one of only a handful of reputable works available on the subject as the cult field itself struggled towards professionalism and academic legitimacy. Now, twelve years later, Take Back Your Life reflects the progress toward those goals. Designed for both the lay public (particularly former cult members) as well as for mental health professionals and academics alike, this edition expands and deepens our understanding of the complex nature of the cult phenomenon.

The book is divided into four parts: The Cult Experience, The Healing Process, Families and Children in Cults, and Therapeutic Concerns. It includes new information on important themes – dissociation, PTSD, child abuse, etc. – reflecting the maturity of the field of trauma and its potentially devastating aftermath. Updated to include events that have transpired since the first edition, the book includes a description of, among other events, the Heaven’s Gate suicides, the Aum Shinrikyo Sarin gas attack, and the murder-suicide of Children of God ex-member Ricky Rodriguez. There is an entire chapter devoted to children born or raised in a cult, expanding the earlier version. Dr. Lalich’s own theoretical model, known as bounded choice, is a nice addition as well. Other topics which had also been peripherally mentioned in the first edition are discussed at length in this new one, e.g. one-on-one cults, child abuse in cults, with new personal accounts that meaningfully illustrate the theoretical material. Alexandra Stein’s story of recovery – what helped in each stage and what didn’t help – should be of particular interest to therapists.

However, although some neurobiological findings have been included from the work of Bruce Perry, the more extensive information currently available regarding neglect and abuse is somewhat limited. Thus, if any critique can be made about the book, perhaps it is this omission. The authors flirt with addressing insights from the burgeoning field of neurobiology but do not actually discuss them. For example, on page 37 they mention Kathleen Taylor’s (2004) tome on Brainwashing but shy away from discussing any pertinent insights. Perhaps the reason for this deficit lies in the purpose for which the book was intended, i.e. as a healing tool for the former cult members rather than as an academic delight. Nevertheless, in my own work as a clinician I have discovered that presenting selective neurobiological findings to clients is often an extremely powerful way of helping them understand a dimension of their cultic experience as it highlights the changes and effects at a cellular level.

Shelly Rosen’s chapter on Therapeutic Concerns is informative and insightful. It carries the take-home message of empowerment and collaboration between client (former member) and therapist in contrast to the hierarchy of the cult structure. Ms. Rosen exhorts the therapist to be a new model of authority, someone who is competent yet shows his/her human limitations, in contrast to the cult leader’s grandiosity. Her therapeutic intervention of helping the client distinguish between his/her personal responsibility versus the influence of the social context is an important one. Limited space obviously constrained Ms. Rosen from discussing all the interventions that have been found to be helpful. For instance, the psychoeducational aspect might have been mentioned. Psychoeducation often includes helping the client develop a timeline showing how she or he was recruited into the group and came to take on its beliefs and practices, including a new, cult-induced self-definition. Additionally, Ms. Rosen’s interpretation of the phrase “being in therapy” as signifying passivity, a lack of agency, is somewhat arguable. Nevertheless, there are excellent suggestions for clinicians, a nice addition to the book.

Take Back Your Life is impressive in its comprehensiveness and there is something in it for everyone – personal accounts by former members, concrete guidelines and tools for recovery, a useful review of various models of cult dynamics (Part 1). It should take its place among other important works on the bookshelves of all who are interested in understanding the cult phenomenon, be it former cult members struggling to make sense of their experiences, the people who love them, and/or the professionals who treat them. Understanding how people can be lured into an abusive social system and kept there ostensibly not only with their consent but with their collusion is a complex, multi-layered task that Lalich and Tobias have helped to simplify. Take Back Your Life will go a long way in assisting people to recover, recoup, and reconstruct their lives to make them their own.

The information found on this page was discovered at another website. After reading it once, I thought that some of it applied to Morningland and so I chose to include it here at ex-morninglanders.com. There were also a lot of assumptions regarding Chinese culture and psychological research of the 60′s and 70′s. It kind of smelled like conspiracy theories, and so I removed about 25% of this article leaving behind what you see on this page. For the entire text, please see:

http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/cultdyn.htm.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Leon Festinger is a psychologist who studied groups that predicted the end of the world. He found that most members became stronger than ever when the prophecy failed. His investigation revealed that members had to find a way to cope psychologically with the failure. They needed to maintain order and meaning in their life. They needed to think they were acting according to their self-image and values. Festinger described this contradiction which they had to overcome as what has become known as the “COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY.” The three components he described are:

“CONTROL OF BEHAVIOUR” – “CONTROL OF THOUGHTS” – “CONTROL OF EMOTIONS”

Each component has a powerful effect on the other two: CHANGE ONE AND THE OTHERS WILL TEND TO FOLLOW. When all three change the individual undergoes a complete change. Festinger summarised the basic principle:

“If you change a person’s behaviour, his thoughts and feelings will change to minimise the dissonance.”

When there is a conflict between thoughts, feelings or behaviour, then those in conflict will change to minimise the contradiction. This is because a person can only tolerate a certain amount of discrepancy between these components which make up his identity. In cults this dissonance is created to exploit and control them.

Steven Hassan, author of Combating Cult Mind Control, added a fourth component to Festinger’s:

“CONTROL OF INFORMATION”

By controlling the information one receives you can control and restrict the individual’s ability to think for himself. You limit what he is able to think about.

BEHAVIOUR CONTROL – The control of an individual’s physical reality.

This can include control of where he lives, what he eats, his clothing, sleep, job, rituals etc. This is why most cults have a stringent schedule for members. There is always something to do in destructive cults. Each cult has its own distinctive set of behaviours that bind it together. This control is so powerful that the cult member will actually participate in their own punishment and come to believe he actually deserves it! No one can command a person’s thoughts but IF YOU CAN CONTROL BEHAVIOUR THEN HEARTS AND MINDS WILL FOLLOW.

THOUGHT CONTROL – The control of an individual’s thought processes

The indoctrination of members so thoroughly that they will manipulate their own thought processes. The ideology is internalised as “the truth”. Incoming information is filtered through the beliefs which also regulates how this information is thought about.

The cult has it’s own language which further regulates how a person thinks. This puts a great barrier between cult members and outsiders.

Another form of control is “thought stopping” techniques. This can take many forms: chanting, meditating, singing, humming, tongues (some even pay money to learn it), concentrated praying, etc. The use of these techniques short-circuits the persons’ ability to test reality. The person can only think positive thoughts about the group. If there is a problem the member assumes responsibility and works harder.

EMOTIONAL CONTROL – The control of the individuals emotional life

This manipulates a person’s range of feelings. Guilt and fear are used to keep control. Cult members cannot see the control by guilt and like other abuse victims are conditioned to blame themselves when things are wrong, even grateful when a leader points our their transgressions.

Fear is used to manipulate two ways. The first is to create an outside enemy (we vs them) who is persecuting you. The second is the fear of punishment by the leaders if you are not “good enough.” Being “good enough” is following the ideology perfectly. The most powerful emotional control is phobia indoctrination. This can give the person a panic reaction at the very thought of leaving the group. It is almost impossible to conceive that there is any life outside the group. There is no physical gun held to their heads but the psychological gun is just as if not more powerful.

INFORMATION CONTROL – The control of the individuals information sources

Deny a person the information needed to make a sound judgment and he will be incapable of doing so. People are trapped in cults because they are denied both the access to the critical information they need to assess their situation. The psychological chains on their minds are just as powerful as if they were locked away physically from society. So strong is this psychological process they also lack the properly functioning internal mechanism to process any critical information placed in front of them.

THE EIGHT MARKS OF MIND CONTROL TOTALISM – ALL OR NOTHING

Mind Control is a PROCESS of eradicating former beliefs and instituting new beliefs in their place through the use of COERCIVE persuasion. It is a PROCESS which is designed to break a person’s independence and individuality and replace it with the ideology clone. The Chinese called this process “thought reform” which was poorly translated into English as “brain-washing”.

BRAIN-WASHING

Brain-washing is now considered to be a different process to thought reform or mind control. In brain-washing the victim knows who is the enemy. An example is American Patty Hearst who was kidnapped by a terrorist group. Through physical abuse she finally became a member of the group and took part in terrorist activities and bank robberies.

THOUGHT CONTROL

Thought control is more subtle. The victim doesn’t know who is the enemy because the enemy seems like their best friend who only has their best interests at heart.

Cults practice a more refined form of thought control than that used by the Chinese. Leading psychologist, Dr Margaret Singer, said cults do it better than the Chinese because it is easier to get people to do what you want through manipulating them with guilt and anxiety. During this process the prospective recruit is re-educated and will abandon the precepts he has learnt from life for the “truth” or “enlightenment” offered by the group. In some cults this is done over a long period of time; Other cults can bring about this change within 48 hours. Whichever way the process takes place the results are the same. The individual has undergone a total change in personality and is often unrecognisable by their family.

The process of thought control has been documented by Robert J Lifton who researched what happened to the American prisoners of the Communist Chinese. He labelled the steps which have become the standard by which to judge whether a group is using “brain-washing” or “thought reform” on it’s recruits.

Robert J Lifton’s research showed that –

“These criteria consist of eight psychological themes which are predominant within the social field of the thought reform milieu. Each has a totalistic quality; each depends upon an equally absolute philosophical assumption; and each mobilises certain individual emotional tendencies, mostly of a polarising nature. Psychological theme, philosophical rationale, and polarised individual tendencies are interdependent; they require, rather than directly cause, each other. In combination they create an atmosphere which may temporarily energise or exhilarate, but which at the same time poses the gravest of human threats.” (Thought Reform & the Psychology of Totalism p 420)

The eight marks noted by Lifton are:

1. MILIEU CONTROL – Control of the Environment and Communication

The control of human communication is the most basic feature of the thought reform environment. This is the control of what the individual sees, hears, reads, writes, experiences and expresses. It goes even further than that, and controls the individuals communication with himself – his own thoughts.

Everything other than their beliefs is excluded. The organisation appears to be omniscient. They seem to know everything that is going on. Reality is their exclusive possession. In this environment the individual is deprived of the combination of external information and internal reflection required to test reality and to maintain a measure of identity separate from his environment. The individual can feel victimised by his controllers and feel the hostility of suffocation – the resentful awareness that his striving toward new information, independent judgment and self-expression are being thwarted.

EXAMPLE – Jehovah’s Witnesses are a classical example of a closed community living within and mixing with the wider community. Because they are so well known we have used them as an example.

e.g. – In Jehovah’s Witnesses