This blog has been in existence for two years already. I can hardly believe it. It is as if only yesterday I was resigning from the IMT and breaking free of two and a half years of tyranny. I have already been out of the organisation longer than I was ever in it. And yet, those two years and five months were perhaps the most traumatic experience of my entire life.
I now look back, not in anger, but with a feeling of triumph, of obstacles surmounted, of wisdom and experienced gained. I have thrown off the yoke of tyranny and I can rebuild my life. This year was a momentous one for me. I spent the first half of this year delving into the works of Dostoevsky and read all five of his major novels – Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Demons, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, and most of his short stories. Then I discovered the genius of Mahler around the same time, and his music has been with me for this whole year. His music captures, like no other, the tumult and turmoil I have experienced these past few years. With him I have experienced and relived in my own life the transition from precarious youth to glorious triumph in his First Symphony, spiritual death and resurrection in his Second, the agonies of existence giving way to the victorious conclusion of his Third, the sorrow and ultimate triumph of his Fifth, the tragedy and the terror of his Sixth, the strange interaction between light and darkness of his Seventh, the grateful resignation of his Ninth and the sheer wild confusion and atonal experimentation of his Tenth. Whilst all this has been going on, I have widened my artistic and literary horizons through my discovery of James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Vladimir Nabokov. I have created for myself an artistic escape from the horrors of cultism.
All sorts of thoughts and feelings come to mind when I look at my experience. Sometimes it is easiest to simply reach for music and literature that expresses them better than I possibly could. Zarathustra’s roundelay in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a good example, which was set to beautiful music by Mahler in the fourth movement of his Third Symphony:
O man! Take heed!
What saith deep midnight’s voice indeed?
“I slept my sleep—
“From deepest dream I’ve woke and plead:—
“The world is deep,
“And deeper than the day could read.
“Deep is its woe—
“Joy—deeper still than grief can be:
“Woe saith: Hence! Go!
“But joys all want eternity—
“Want deep profound eternity!”
This is the best encapsulation I can think of to demonstrate my continuing lust for life in spite of all the misery I have experienced. Indeed, in a way I believe this misery has helped to deepen my appreciation for life and art, for they have been indispensable to me in my spiritual recovery from an evil sect.
This blog was designed to do many things. One of them was to provide me the catharsis of venting to the outside world about my experience. Another was to encourage other people who had suffered at the hands of this sect to see its true nature and abandon it. I think it has been successful in both of these things. I know that many doubting and former members have sought out this blog for info about the true nature of the sect. In the two years and nine months since I left, this sect has proven to be even more evil than I previously imagined. When I left, I still had some residual respect for the group. The more I have found out about it, the more and more contempt I have come to have for it. As far as I am concerned, anyone who is still a part of this hideous organisation is a willing accomplice with evil. They are collaborating with the monstrous project of child grooming, rape cover-ups and extortion that this satanic groupuscule sees fit to engage in. They are free to do what they want, but they should not have the gall to preach to us as if they were morally superior beings who alone can save humanity. Frankly, the destruction of the human race and all life on earth as a result of uncontrolled free-market capitalism would be preferable to living under the malevolent rule of Alan Woods and his cronies. I would sooner become a Catholic and take on holy orders than rejoin that despicable enterprise. At least the Catholic Church has in recent years admitted to wrongdoing in covering up its sex scandals. The IMT will never do this. It prefers to double down on its lies and slander the victims. There is more freedom of criticism within the Catholic Church than there is in the IMT. Now that is saying something. At least Catholic priests actually do something to help their fellow human beings. The IMT does nothing that is not ultimately aimed at its own aggrandisement.
Aside from its recent covering up of rape (to the point where it has actually let the rapist back into the organisation after a short suspension), its frankly fascistic position on Ukraine, which has seen it cheerleading for Russian imperialism and genocide, has confirmed me in my decision to leave this disreputable assembly. Frankly I should have seen all this coming, but I had too much undeserved respect for the cranks and bigots who run this infernal racketeering project to fully accept it. Frankly, talking about these people is increasingly less interesting to me. Their loathsome sect is never going to power and there is no need to worry too much about them. However, I am still concerned for those still trapped in that terrible environment when they could be living their best lives outside the organisation. I hope these people find their way out.
In March 2020, when I left the cult, I was utterly exhausted emotionally and spiritually. I felt bereft, even dead inside. But now, my lust for life has come roaring back. Ivan Karamazov, in a conversation with his brother Alyosha, echoes my sentiments very well:
Do you know I’ve been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn’t believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced, in fact, that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man’s disillusionment – still I should want to live and, having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty, though, I shall be sure to leave the cup, even if I’ve not emptied it, and turn away – where I don’t know. But till I am thirty, I know that my youth will triumph over everything – every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I’ve asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t, that is till I am thirty, and then I shall lose it of myself, I fancy. Some drivelling consumptive moralists – and poets especially – often call that thirst for life base. It’s a feature of the Karamazovs, it’s true, that thirst for life regardless of everything; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base? The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves, you know, sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first-rate soup, they know how to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it’s a most precious graveyard, that’s what it is! Precious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I’m convinced in my heart that it’s long been nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in my emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky – that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach. One loves the first strength of one’s youth. Do you understand anything of my tirade, Alyosha?
No longer do I feel dead and distraught, but full of energy, ready for the glorious battle that is life. I feel revived, rejuvenated, restored to where I should be after so long in the darkness, when I thought the IMT had ruined my life for good. It is just like the words sung in the finale Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony:
Rise again, yes, rise again,
Will you, my dust, after a brief rest!
Immortal life! Immortal life
Will he who called you, give you.
You are sown to bloom again!
The lord of the harvest goes
And gathers sheaves,
Us, who have died.
O believe, my heart, O believe:
Nothing is lost to you!
Yours, yes yours, is what you desired
Yours, what you have loved
What you have fought for!
O believe,
You were not born for nothing!
Have not lived for nothing,
Nor suffered!
What was created
Must perish;
What perished, rise again!
Cease from trembling!
Prepare yourself to live!
O Pain, you piercer of all things,
From you, I have been wrested!
O Death, you conqueror of all things,
Now, are you conquered!
With wings which I have won for myself,
In love’s fierce striving,
I shall soar upwards
To the light which no eye has penetrated!
I shall die in order to live.
Rise again, yes, rise again,
Will you, my heart, in an instant!
That for which you suffered,
To God shall it carry you!
Let the IMT have its empire of dirt. I have a life to live, as do all those of us who have escaped!