Fellowship of Friends

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The Fellowship of Friends is an organization headquartered in California, USA, registered since 1971 as non-profit religious corporation (church) with state and federal authorities. [1] As of 2007, it has approximately 2000 members, about a third of which live around the organization's property in Oregon House, California. The rest of the members live in Europe, Asia, and South America. [2] The stated purpose of the organization is to help members awaken, and to fulfill the aims of higher conscious beings[3] To this end, it originally employed an ideology described under the general term the Fourth Way, and while it still refers to itself as a Fourth Way school [4], it currently incorporates other sources (e.g. [5]). Major influences associated with the Fellowship of Friends from the Fourth Way line of thought include George Gurdjieff, Peter Ouspensky, Rodney Collin-Smith, and Alex Horn, who was the teacher of the organization's leader, Robert Earl Burton [6].

Contents 1 History 2 Beliefs and Practices 2.1 C Influence 2.2 Shocks and Signs 2.3 Self-Remembering 2.4 Consciousness and Functions 2.5 The Many 'I's 2.6 Essence and Personality 2.7 Obstacles to Awakening 2.8 The Need for Efforts 2.9 Schools on Earth 2.10 Higher Centers and States 2.11 Transformation of Suffering 2.12 Exercises and Tasks 2.13 Special Language and Terminology 2.14 Fees 3 Controversies 4 Recruitment and influence techniques 5 References 6 External links 6.1 Material produced by the Fellowship of Friends 6.2 Newspaper reports on the Fellowship of Friends 6.3 Material referencing experiences in the Fellowship of Friends 6.4 Criticism

[edit] History

In 1971, the Fellowship organization purchased 1,200 acres of mostly uncleared land in the Sierra foothills and its members spent the next five years developing the property to serve as a central retreat. From 1971 to 1976, the organization established a network of satellite groups or “centers” in California. In the early 1980s the founder directed individual members to move to Europe to found centers in major European cities. Today (2007) the Fellowship has 2,200 members, approximately a third of whom live near the retreat, which changed its name several times over the years and is currently called Isis but was formerly called The Farm, Mount Carmel, the Mount Carmel Monastery, Renaissance Monastery, Renaissance, and Apollo.^{[citation needed]}

Former members who left and started their own Fourth Way-type groups include W. Yorgos Savides, James V. Randazzo, James Westly, R. Miles Barth, Larry Cramer, Charles Duncan, and Theodore Nottingham.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Beliefs and Practices

[edit] C Influence

The Fellowship of Friends refers to itself as a conscious school, meaning a school for spiritual evolution. The word "conscious" is used because its leader, Robert Burton, is said to be conscious - to have attained immortality within the boundaries of the solar system, according to the Fourth Way teaching, and so represents a connection with conscious or "C" influence for members of the organization. Humanity is said to be asleep and not know it, and only few individuals can awaken and escape with the direct help of C influence. "Sleeping" people, in the Fourth Way's teaching, are expected to become "food for the moon" upon dying, eaten by a lower world with a minimal chance of escaping in the eons that ensue. In contrast, it is said that C influence (conscious beings without physical bodies who are working directly to assist people who are trying to awaken [7]) will place the souls of members in limbo until their next rebirth. Burton has stated that an evolving soul moves through nine lifetimes before it finally escapes.^[1]

[edit] Shocks and Signs

In addition to Burton himself as C influence, 44 other people from the past, including Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Jesus, Buddha, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Socrates, Plato, Goethe, Rilke, J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, Meher Baba, Lewis Carroll, William Blake, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, often referred to as "Gods" or "angels", are said to have attained full consciousness within their lifetimes and are understood to be working directly with the organization to help wake up its members. Members are to watch out for meaningful coincidences in their lives as an indication of their connection with these higher forces. Such meaningful coincidences, as well as unexpected or unwanted turns of events, are referred to as "shocks" delivered by C Influence, and are to be used as reminders to become more conscious and self-aware, rather than resentful or negative. Members are encouraged to view everything that happens as designed to promote their evolution.^[2][3] Some unusual events ("shocks"), either happening by themselves or artificially introduced, are believed to induce a higher state of consciousness ("third state") in those who observe them and to "create memory". Examples given are doing jumping jacks in the middle of a busy intersection, or pushing a lawnmower along a living room carpet.^[4] Robert Burton is also reported to live his life by interpreting simple events, such as biting into a slice of lemon, as shocks from Influence C communicating to him that he should take a certain course of action. He is reported to have said that interpreting shocks as guidelines for action is something only a conscious man can do.^[5]

[edit] Self-Remembering

Self-remembering is a central idea in Robert Burton's teaching.^[6] It is spoken of as a practice similar to Buddhist mindfulness.^[7]

Members are taught that no one is automatically aware of himself, no one is conscious of himself, no one ‘remembers’ himself. People are said to exist in a state of dim awareness and uncontrolled attention, while more consciousness could be attained through purposeful effort. One of the techniques to achieve this higher state, or "divided attention" is described as: to try to be aware of yourself and notice what is around you, to shift your gaze every few seconds so you don't have thoughts about what you see. This is attempted in order to reach "a quiet place within", from where one can experience presence and higher states of consciousness. [8] Members of the Fellowship of Friends promote self-remembering by using ordinary movements as a catalyst for divided attention. This means moving intentionally and directing their attention to what they are doing. For example, instead of grabbing the phone, to pick it up gently; instead of slamming the door, to close it quietly; instead of washing the dishes in a hurry, to clean them carefully. All of these are seen as ways of using movement to control and then divide attention — to move with presence. [9] Moreover, it is believed that only periodic efforts to divide attention are not enough to reach the quiet place within: that one should sustain divided attention, do it repeatedly, and remember why one is doing it; one should know which are the steps that will bring one back to presence, and connect them in a chain of conscious effort. [10]

This presence is understood to be very fleeting at first, but members are instructed to allow it and sustain it, with the hope that it will become permanent. To do that, one is supposed to be prepared ahead of time and be ready to respond when the stream of one's imagination wants to take one away from presence. This state of presence is understood to be the hidden meaning and purpose of life on Earth. [11]

[edit] Consciousness and Functions

According to Robert Burton, consciousness is a wordless state of presence that is simultaneously aware of itself and what it observes and which remains hidden to the usual sense of self created by sensory input, emotion, and thought. Burton teaches that prompting consciousness to be aware of itself is what self-remembering has always been about for conscious schools (defined as “a school headed by a conscious being”)^[8] and those possessing knowledge taught by such schools.
The stated theory is that consciousness resides above the realm of imagination and has a clarity of perception that is independent of normal human functions, called “lower centers”, in contrast to consciousness, referred to as “higher centers”.
Burton believes that, through intensive work on self-remembering, conscious control of “higher centers” is possible. The Fellowship stresses self-remembering as a way to prevent the usual functions – thoughts, movements, emotions - from obscuring the experience of consciousness itself. [12]

[edit] The Many 'I's

Many I's is a term from the Fourth Way and it means each feeling of ‘I’: I think, I want, I know best, I prefer, I am happy, hungry, tired. These feelings of ‘I’, however, are understood as small, independent functions of the human machine. It is believed that these I's stem from four independent minds or functions in man, which are called lower centers (instinctive, moving, intellectual and emotional function). The four centers and all the I's they produce are said to be a mechanical reaction to the moment and not conscious of themselves. But something that stands apart from these many I's and simply watches them is called the unified ‘real I’ of consciousness. The work in the Fellowship of Friends revolves around methods to gradually separate consciousness from functions through various efforts of intentional behavior and controlling attention. [13]

[edit] Essence and Personality

It is believed that all real development happens in essence, which is a part of one that can be present, all the characteristics, natural interests and tendencies with which one is born - as opposed to personality, which is everything one learns, is taught, and imitates. This artificial personality is said to gradually displace essence and so one loses touch with one's simple nature. The state of young children is thus explained as being very close to third state of consciousness, except that divided attention is absent. Essence in its purest form is said to be a simple state unaware of itself, but it can become present by dividing attention to achieve higher states of consciousness. Some functions of personality need to support essence in the effort to be present by giving essence a push in the desired direction. But if personality indulges mechanical I's, it is called false personality and corrupts essence. When personality promotes presence, it is called true personality. [14]

[edit] Obstacles to Awakening

In the Fellowship of Friends teaching, self-remembering - the effort to divide attention - is difficult to sustain because the following psychological obstacles preventing it: [15]

Imagination: Imagination is seen as the most pervasive obstacle to divided attention. This includes daydreaming, random associations, dwelling on the past or future, or imagining things about yourself or about other people — all of which happens at the expense of divided attention in each moment. [16], [17]

Identification: Another major obstacle to divided attention is called identification. Identification is explained as what happens when one becomes fixated on something to the point that one's attention is drawn out of one by a subject that becomes so compelling that it consumes one's attention. It is said that identification readily happens when one talks, eats, watches TV, works at the computer, and performs daily tasks. [18]

Unnecessary Talk: Unnecessary talk is recognized as another obstacle to self-remembering. This means talk that happens by itself without conscious purpose. For instance, talking for its own sake, as a reaction to curiosity, as a way to ease tension, or as a means of justifying or drawing attention to oneself. Talking is seen as unnecessary to the extent that it displaces divided attention. [19]

Expression of Negative Emotions: Negative emotions are defined as things like irritation, impatience, boredom, worry, suspicion, jealousy, self-pity, anger, resentment, and fear. The attitude of this teaching is that they are not caused by circumstances or other people, and expressing them is not considered normal and necessary. All negative emotions are understood to be internal, not external, and are seen as caused by the false view that one has about oneself and the world, and particularly about one's suffering which seems unjust, undeserved, and wrong. A key principle in the Fellowship of Friends is that not expressing negative emotions is the first step of an inner transformation of consciousness — of reaching a new perception of things as they are, objectively. [20]

[edit] The Need for Efforts

A main idea of the Fourth Way is that awakening results from consistent, prolonged efforts. When something urgent comes up from the many I's, something that is considered important, one is taught to make a conscious effort to choose the present moment instead and put the I's to one side. This kind of effort is understood to result in an immediate heightened sense of awareness. As members understand that it is necessary to make this type of effort, they begin to value it more deeply. Such efforts are expected to produce an inner strength, and one becomes better at resisting a mind that wanders. It is said that when one separates for a moment of eternity from the 4 dimensions of time and space, it is a heroic effort, and this is expected to eventually evoke a response from something higher, a more permanent experience of a higher self. [21]

[edit] Schools on Earth

Becoming a member of the Fellowship of Friends is seen as instrumental in one's quest to create consciousness for oneself and escape sleep, the state of not being aware of oneself. A prominent member, Girard Haven, says that by joining the school, one indicates a willingness to participate in the process of having one's life altered and interfered with, to give one's life over to be manipulated by the school and the teacher "so that one's Self can be freed from the prison of that life".^[9]

One of the central tenets of Robert Burton's teaching is that esoteric schools have existed since the dawn of humanity and that they all used the same system for awakening man from sleep, although the language they used to convey it may have been slightly different. The purpose of all these schools (ancient Egyptians, Jews, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, authors of the Tarot deck, Gothic architects and Sufi tradition) is said to have been to teach people how to be present and prolong presence with the ultimate aim of achieving a permanent state in one's higher centers. They are believed to have all used the same methods and to have been connected to the same objective source. The system presented by Gurdjieff in the 20th century is said to be the first exoteric manifestation of such ancient knowledge that had previously been concealed in symbols, stories and poetic metaphors. For example, according to Robert Burton, the Tarot deck is in fact an objective way of telling how to reach presence, to promote and prolong presence. Burton is quoted as saying "all schools are the same school".[22]

In Robert Burton's teaching, one of the aims of the Fellowship of Friends as a school is also to serve as an ark that will preserve culture and consciousness through a nuclear holocaust in the history of humanity. Some of his predictions were that there would be an economic depression in 1984, that California would fall into the ocean and that later there would be an Armageddon.^[10]

[edit] Higher Centers and States

All efforts to divide attention and be present in the Fellowship of Friends revolve around one aim: to reach higher centers and experience higher states of consciousness. It is believed that when one divides attention and becomes aware of oneself and one's surroundings at the same time, the veil of imagination is lifted and replaced with presence. Things are seen more vividly, which is interpreted as "higher emotional center" beginning to emerge in the third state of consciousness. Experiences like this are said to never be forgotten because they are a higher state of consciousness that exists outside of time. An even higher state is called the fourth state, which is said to occur in moments of danger and creates an unusual clarity and ability to perceive what is happening in the moment. These perceptions are interpreted as coming from "higher intellectual center". The idea promoted by Robert Burton is that attaining these higher centers, which do not produce I's and are conscious, is the hidden meaning of life on earth. This same division between higher and lower centers is recognized in other ancient texts as the division between the "earth" or "world" and the "Lord" or "God". The highest part of one's personality is called "steward" and it can initiate divided attention to support presence and the arrival of higher centers. [23]

[edit] Transformation of Suffering

On the Fourth Way, the idea behind transformation is that suffering creates a pressure which, when used correctly, can dispel imagination and perpetuate self-remembering. Members are told, when suffering comes their way, to make a conscious effort not to identify with it—not resist or resent or blame suffering. Robert Earl Burton calls this "the hidden meaning of suffering." He also says that this effort begins by letting go of imaginary suffering—not displaying irritation and impatience, not complaining or criticizing, not worrying, not blaming, and, above all, not feeling sorry for ourselves–and by replacing it with the effort to divide attention. [24]

[edit] Exercises and Tasks

There are requests by the leader that the members are required to adhere to. For example: - Not to smoke, or to quit smoking after one year as a member. - Not to use or deal in drugs. - To refrain from expressing negative emotions. - Not to use physical violence with other members. - To pay membership fees ("teaching payments") on the first of the month. - Not to gossip. - Not to interrupt. - To wear seatbelts. - To dress well for meetings and gatherings inside the organization. - To have teeth cleaned and checked at least once a year. - To have regular mammograms for women over 40. - Not to have interactions with former members (except those that cannot be reasonably avoided). Failure to comply with certain of the exercises or tasks may have material (e.g. fines, termination of membership) or even mortal consequences (higher forces may cause the death of persons who do not comply with exercises).^[11] It is believed that by following these exercises, members increase their chance to awaken, and they serve as reminders for self-observation.^[12] Exercises are requests that constitute the "form of the school" and many are periodically changed.^[13] At some point all couples who were living together were instructed by Burton to marry within three months or end the relationship. This led to the exercise of refraining from extramarital sex, which was rescinded in 1998.^[14] For a time, there was a task to choose a relationship so as to avoid "ethnic pairings".^[15] For two years, members were requested to be vegetarians.^[16] Another request was to eat with a knife and fork, with the prongs of the fork turned down.^[17] Sometimes word exercises are introduced, and members are instructed not to use words such as "I", "okay", "in" or "oh", in order to bring more attention to their speech.^[18]

[edit] Special Language and Terminology

Angle = point of view that is expressed. Center Director = member who is put in charge of organizing and guiding the activities of one of the Fellowship outposts for a certain time period. Influence B = influences indicating some higher level of existence but not carrying conscious energy. Inner Circle = members who have understood themselves and their situation sufficiently that they do not introduce their own ideas and opinions, but follow the teacher's guidance directly. Life people = non-members of the Fellowship of Friends; people who are not trying to remember themselves. Photograph = to indicate to another person something about their behavior that they may not be aware of. School = the Fellowship of Friends. Students = members of the Fellowship of Friends. Teaching House = a group of members who live together in order to promote their work on themselves. Events and activities in centers are held at teaching houses. Teaching Payments = required fees in order to maintain membership. Teaching Events = events where members gather with the purpose of transmission of teaching from an older member or the leader. Intentional Insincerity = refers to the deliberate deception of nonmembers by members of Fellowship organization. The term is not value neutral but refers to a process whereby a recruit obtains spiritual benefit by lying to outsiders to advance the organization's aims, chiefly the amassment of money.^{[19][this source's reliability may need verification][neutrality disputed]}

[edit] Fees

Monthly membership fees are called "teaching payments". Teaching payments are said to be designed to test how serious a person is about participating in the Fellowship, to test their desire to put work on oneself first, and also to test their financial ability to participate in other activities that they will be exposed to once they join (attending dinners, concerts etc.) Members are required to pay them by the 1st of each month. If a member falls 6 weeks behind with their payments, they are asked not to attend meetings, if more than 14 weeks behind, their membership is terminated. Robert Burton is reported to have always instructed members to make teaching payments first and then worry about things like rent and food.^[20] According to prominent member G. Haven, before asking for a teaching payment relief, one should be absolutely certain that all possibilities of getting money from life (taking another job, making more money, taking a job one doesn't like, borrowing etc.) had been exhausted. Sometimes fees can be scheduled to be paid over time or postponed, only exceptionally they are waived. If members are unable to make the minimum donations, they are to be encouraged to leave, improve their financial situation, at which point they are welcome to rejoin. If a member leaves and later wants to rejoin, a re-entry fee applies. Sometimes fees are required when a member fails to adhere to a particular exercise. There are also additional "center fund donations", money collected for the needs of each of the Fellowship outposts. These are not obligatory in the sense that one's membership in the Fellowship depends on them. But Robert Burton is reported to have said that they are also donations which Influence C wished, so for members, these contributions are considered an expression of their valuation for the school and for the wishes of higher forces.^[21]

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Recruitment and influence techniques

-

This article or section may contain original research or unattributed claims. Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.

- An article by "A Collective of Women" published in the Cultic Studies Journal refers to the "studied indifference" practiced by members of the organization in respect of the recruitment of new members.^[22] This "studied indifference" is a formal policy of the organization repeatedly documented in its internal literature. The "prospective student meetings" are tightly scripted and have been registered as a dramatic work with the United States Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress.^[23] Attendees are not informed that they are attending the performance of a dramatic work and may not understand in retrospect that the meeting they attended was not in fact "spontaneous."^{[neutrality disputed]}

The founder at one time directed that persons conducting such meetings "administer a shock to false personality" of potential recruits by declining to accept the recruit's hand offered in greeting.^{[citation needed]}. The "studied indifference" of the member toward the recruit intensifies the recruit's desire for acceptance and offers organizational membership as that acceptance.^{[neutrality disputed]} This phenomenon has been widely discussed in the psychological literature.^[24][25]

Prospective members and members alike are urged to refrain from the expression of negative emotions as a tenet of the Fourth Way generally and as a rule of the Fellowship organization particularly. The attempt to refrain from the expression of negative emotions creates a competition within the individual between the desire to express the “negative emotion” and the desire to refrain from its expression.^{[neutrality disputed]} Within the Fellowship organization, this competition is described as “the friction which produces consciousness,” and is lauded^{[neutrality disputed]} generally as evidence of a “deputy steward” and “the condition of Man #4.”

The influential theorist of human emotion, Silvan Tompkins, has written that “the learned inner restraint on any affect in competition with the wish to express the original affect. . . constitutes [a] stimulus to shame.”^[26] As a matter of Fellowship culture, the competition between these two desires in individuals is deliberately incited and intensified by a variety of specific and identifiable techniques.

These techniques include the injunction to restrict one’s friendships to other Fellowship members; the social stigma attached to “losing the school” which the founder equates with “spiritual suicide”^{[citation needed]}; the hierarchical directives on what constitutes proper dress, or the type of music to which one should listen, or the particular practices one should observe while consuming food; the so-called “gentle art” of “photography” and how one is properly to “receive” a “photograph”^{[citation needed]}; the admonitions to “avoid opposite ‘I’s,” i.e., to avoid refusing or disagreeing when a politically powerful individual requests a recruitee to take or refrain from some action.^{[neutrality disputed]} Many more examples exist, and they combine to create a culture of behavioral control through shame induction.^{[neutrality disputed]}


Shame induction is generally discussed within the literature of “coercive” or “exploitative” persuasion and “thought reform,” esp. in reference to the thought-reform criterion known as the "demand for purity."^{[27][28][29][30]}

The product of the Fellowship organization’s culture of shame induction is at first to influence recruitees’ behavior, and later their belief systems, without their concurrent knowledge and informed prior consent.^{[neutrality disputed]} Such influence principally occurs when a recruitee’s distrust in his or her own ability to think critically impairs his or her ability to evaluate information objectively. Within the Fellowship organization, this is achieved by the use of "thought-terminating cliches," another criterion used in describing thought-reform environments. The injunction that "certain 'I's are to be disregarded, especially those that wish to leave the school," and the social taboo against verifying that the "teaching" is wrong create in the recruit a distrust in his or her ability to think critically.^{[neutrality disputed]} While “verification” purports to be a tenet of the Ouspenskian system generally, and the Fellowship organization claims this tenet as its own, Fellowship recruitees as a rule suffer deficits in their perceptions of reality that impede their ability to leave the organization.^{[neutrality disputed]}

Such perceptual deficits accompany the escalating demands made upon new recruits to make a series of financial and behavioral commitments to the Fellowship organization.^{[neutrality disputed]} One induced by others to act in a way dissonant with the way he sees himself will change the way he sees himself to reduce the dissonance.^[31] Having complied with each request to escalate his financial and life commitment to the group, the Fellowship recruitee at last sees himself as a committed student who has survived financial and spiritual trials.^{[neutrality disputed]} However, he lacks information crucial to evaluate the wisdom of his decision and the ability to evaluate his decision critically. He is now deeply invested in the Fellowship organization. He has too much invested, both financially, emotionally, socially, and in respect of the way he sees himself, to quit.^[32]

[edit] References

1. ^ Burton, Robert: "Self-Remembering". Weiser Books, 1995. ISBN 0877288445
2. ^ Haven, Girard: "Letters to Students", page 14. Ulysses Books, 2001.
3. ^ Burton, Robert: "Self-Remembering". Weiser Books, 1995. ISBN 0877288445
4. ^ Mueller, Guinevere: "Bread upon the water" pages 118, 127-128, 131-132. G&G Mueller, 1999.
5. ^ Mueller, Guinevere: "Bread upon the water" pages 70-71. G&G Mueller, 1999.
6. ^ Mueller, Guinevere: "Bread Upon the Water", pages 155-156. G&G Mueller, 1999
7. ^ Burton, Robert: "Self-Remembering". Weiser Books, 1995. ISBN 0877288445
8. ^ Haven, Girard: "Creating a Soul", page 585. Ulysses Books, 1999.
9. ^ Haven, Girard: "Letters to Students", pages 4, 7. Ulysses Books, 2001.
10. ^ Haven, Girard: "Letters to Students", pages 1, 64, 109. Ulysses Books, 2001.
11. ^ Renaissance Vine, July 1980
12. ^ Haven, Girard: "Letters to Students", pages 4, 6, 54, 55, 116. Ulysses Books, 2001.
13. ^ Mueller, Guinevere: "Bread upon the water" page 73. G&G Mueller, 1999.
14. ^ Mueller, Guinevere: "Bread upon the water" pages 31-32. G&G Mueller, 1999.
15. ^ Haven, Girard: "Letters to Students", page 7. Ulysses Books, 2001.
16. ^ Mueller, Guinevere: "Bread upon the water" page 73. G&G Mueller, 1999.
17. ^ Mueller, Guinevere: "Bread upon the water" page 101. G&G Mueller, 1999.
18. ^ Mueller, Guinevere: "Bread upon the water" page 149. G&G Mueller, 1999.
19. ^ "Intentional Insincerity," Renaissance Journal, 1981
20. ^ Haven, Girard: "Letters to Students", page 27. Ulysses Books, 2001.
21. ^ Haven, Girard: "Letters to Students", pages 27, 57, 58, 94, 99-101, 106-110. Ulysses Books, 2001.
22. ^ A Collective of Women, "Sex, Lies, and Grand Schemes of Thought in Closed Groups," Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1997), pp. 58-84.
23. ^ The Prospective Student Meetings, Library of Congress Registration No. TX-4-472-455.
24. ^ Cushman, P., "The Self Besieged: Recruitment/Indoctrination Practices in Restrictive Groups," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, March, 1986
25. ^ Aronson, E. & Mills, J., "The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177-181 (1959).
26. ^ E.K. Sedgwick, A. Frank, and I.E. Alexander, Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tompkins Reader (Duke Univ. Press, 1995) at p. 162.
27. ^ R. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China (W.W. Norton & Co., 1961)
28. ^ L. Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford University Press, 1957)
29. ^ L. Festinger, H.W. Riecken, and S. Schachter, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (Harper Collins, 1957)
30. ^ P. Cushman, “The Self Besieged: Recruitment/Indoctrination Techniques in Restrictive Groups,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (March 1986).
31. ^ P. Cushman, op. cit.
32. ^ Cf. A. Teger, Too Much Invested To Quit, (Pergamon Press, 1980).

[edit] External links

[edit] Material produced by the Fellowship of Friends

• Official site
• Mirror site
• Newsletter
• Book by founder (find excerpts on FOF site or on Google Books)
• Books by prominent member

[edit] Newspaper reports on the Fellowship of Friends

• LA Times 1996 Article on the Fellowship of Friends
• Various Sacramento Bee newspaper articles on the Fellowship

[edit] Material referencing experiences in the Fellowship of Friends

• Third-party hosted open discussion about the organization
• Former member Stella Wirk
• Sex, Lies and Grand Schemes of Thought in Closed Groups
• Strange Truth: A Horror Story (1983), by Marlane Dasmann, Library of Congress Registration No. TXu-149-031 (88-page account of author's ten years in Fellowship and what she observed while acting as the founder's housemaid)
• Case Studies of Voluntary Defectors from Intensive Religious Groups, by Ursula Hilde Sack, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1985 (includes accounts of defectors from Fellowship of Friends)
• Cults and consequences: The definitive handbook (1988) by R. Andres & J.R. Lane, Commission on Cults and Missionaries, Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles (includes account by former Fellowship member Barbara Bruno Lancaster)
  
  

[edit] Criticism

• Cult buster Rick Ross
• Book: Taking with the Left Hand
• Freedom of Mind