The foundations for Mind Control rest on belief. This belief is initially under the control of a person who is consciously joining an organization- unless the Mind Control is the result of capture or imprisonment. In a religious cult, there is no such scenario. Someone wanders into a building or is invited to a meeting. In my case, I read an ad.

Although I had some background in religion and philosophy, I was not a student of the esoteric sciences. This was all new to me.

The first time I hit a roadblock was when I tried to practice the early exercises. I describe these in both my books. You try and pick up vibes from a book or magazine, you try to get people’s attention by thinking of them and you try to change the color of a candle. The point of these exercises- is to, respectively, practice psychometry- soak up information through vibrations of an object; make some kind of brief telepathic contact and psychically influence an object; namely a candle.

In my view, I kept failing in these exercises- and, thinking it was my fault, I poured all my attention to them, rereading the monographs and redoing the exercises.

Why not? So far in life, I had made the grade, both financially and educationally, by working hard and applying myself to what I studied. In this case, my ardor made me neglect my engineering studies and I had to leave school.