May 30, 2023 • 66 mins
One person's cult is another person's inarguable truth, and over millenia many spiritual or cultural belief systems have been called cults. Typically organizations called cults have a few commonal traits, one of the chief of which is isolation. So can cults continue to exist in the digital age, where the average smartphone user is only a few clicks away from learning almost anything they desire? What do these movements look like in the era of instantaneous communication? Join the guys as they delve into the strange concept of digital cults.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A fellow conspiracy realist. We're doing an episode on cults today.
This is a classic episode where Matt, as you recall
off air, I probably said this with great regret. I
had to admit there was a bad Ben Ben Tino, Yes, yes,
been Tino Masorrow is to some a thought leader, to some,
(00:27):
a prophet to supporters. It's a person who has changed
their lives. To critics, this is a bad Ben has
been accused of cultic practices, has been accused of some
untoward behavior, and we really dig into this in our episode.
(00:50):
Just heads up, everyone, A lot of stuff has happened
in the intervening years with Massara's movement, and we wanted
to learn more about it. So when you hear this,
you're hearing the information we have at the time. You're
also hearing a hopefully helpful conversation about what defines a cult.
(01:12):
And I don't know, Matt, what do you remember from
this one? What really stuck out to you?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well? I remember signing up for Benino's newsletter and never
turning back.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Ah, he got you, all right.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well, here's the show. From UFOs to psychic powers and
government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can
turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want
you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hello, welcome back to the show. I'm an expression of
the infinite one creator in sixth density.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Do you have a name?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
That's it?
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Oh? I felt like you left off with an ellipse?
Is like you're gonna give me more, like some sort
of celestial title.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Do you introducing myself?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Do you want to be the movement formerly known as
Matt or the vibration formally known as Matt.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I am an expression of the infinite one creator in
sixth density.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Okay, I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I'm still Noel, I'm Noam Shabbai. Folks they call me Ben.
You or you were joined with our super producer Paul
Deckint that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Welcome to the show. As you can tell, since we
last all got together, there have been a few changes,
spiritual changes, vibrational changes.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah, Matt is basically just this kind of like neutron
cloud that's just slowly filling up the studio. And he
does still have a mouth, yes, thankfully.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So I'm an expression of infinity.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So you know right now what he's reminding me of
Noel is the gaseous creature in that Rick and Morty
episode called Fart, voiced by Flight of the Concords actor
similar similar, well, thank you for coalescing into a physicali
ish form.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Somebody open a window.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I don't want to lose him.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I'll be here for as long as the podcast is.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
What is time. Hopefully we have enough time before you
ascend to higher planes, Matt to journey into a very
interesting rabbit hole, which Noel, you were the one who
showed us, introduced us to this guy off air when
we first learned about this fairly recently, right a few
(03:34):
weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, there was a medium article that was making the
rounds online and a friend of mine actually sent it
to me as a potential topic for the show. And
more so than talking specifically about this one individual who
we will get to, it kind of opened the door
to talk a little bit more about cults in the
digital age, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
We have talked about cults before, both in these broad
structural terms and through more specific examples such as the
ants in the Czech Republic, the Jonestown massacre with Jim Jones,
and many more. And although it's a little by the book.
Let's start with the biggest, most obvious question, how do
(04:16):
we define cult?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And for that we head on over to Merriam Webster,
which defines cult as a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.
It's also it's referring to the body of adherence to
said movement, and it also defines it as great devotion
to a person, idea object, movement, or work such as
a film or a book.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah, like a cult film, a cult classic being something
that has a small but incredibly loyal following, often for
being trash, yes, or cult of personality, you know, which
can also refer to a cult leader.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
My problem with these definitions you guys, though, is that
to me, this is what religion is, right like it's
it's to some one person's unorthodox belief is another person's faith,
so right the station right right.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
So, for instance, to the Pope. While many other religions
would have value, they all are unorthodox or at the
very least erroneous if they are not Catholicism as practiced
by the Catholic Church.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And if you're an Orthodox Jew, everyone else is completely unorthodox, right.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Right, right, and maybe just has a short attention span, right,
That's how one I explained it to me. We see
two different approaches here in the definitions, with some overlap
between them, and I appreciate you raising the point that
we wanted to make here about cult. The idea of
what makes a cult is the idea of what makes
(05:48):
something beautiful or it's very similar. It's in the eye
of the beholder, and it's a subjective thing. At the
very most basic, first density level, a cult is just
a group of people worshiping something, and they almost never
outside of pop culture described themselves as a cult. It's
a tricky term. It's usually regarded as an insult. If
(06:11):
our super producer Paul Decatt started what he felt was
a religious movement and we started referring to it as
Paul's cult, Paul and his followers would be properly offended. Well,
Paul's nodding in a way that makes me think I
may have already crossed the line.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Well, yeah, because Paul's journey is the way, the light
and the truth for me as a follower of Paul's
journe How many cults.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Are you in, bro?
Speaker 2 (06:35):
All of them? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Funny story. We Matt and I in an earlier video
audio series, we delineated the commonalities between cults and the
ways in which these things function if you think of
them as an engine, and.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
We taught people how to start one.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
We taught people how to start one. It was a
little controversial that was in the same era when we
had a video just describing how people get away with murder,
which is still up if.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
You want to see it. We should probably we should
probably take a look at that again.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But despite the slippery slopiness of that word cult, we
are making a conscious choice, an editorial choice, to use
that word today, right Ben.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, exactly. For the purposes of today's episode, we are
going to use the word cult, and we're going to
use it to describe organizations that share some of these
commonalities from our earlier videos and some will explore today.
And we're also using it more as shorthand rather than
an insult, because it goes back to that point whe're
(07:38):
underlining here. We're emphasizing one person's cult is another person's
real religion. And the point of this show has never
been to tell people what to believe. But the reason
we're choosing to use the word cult is because today's
overall question is how do cults exist in the digital world.
Are these organizations, these movements adapting? Are the lines between
(08:02):
a fandom and a legit actual cult blurring? And if so, how,
First we have to look at the facts. The world
is chock full of self described movements, intentional communities, spiritual institutions,
and on and on and on, and often mainstream culture,
(08:24):
culture interesting etymology. There only hears of these fringe movements
when something goes horrifically catastrophically wrong, such as the destruction
of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, the Aum
Shinriko terrorism in Japan, or of course, the Jonestown massacre.
But as we know, the bloody headlines sell the best, right,
(08:48):
and there's a motivation in most media to only show
you the bad news. This does not jibe with the
reality of the situation, which is this around the planet,
probably in your home country, maybe even in your own neighborhood.
As we record this, These sorts of movements are much
less uncommon than you might think, maybe not cartoonishly common
(09:10):
or ubiquitous, but they're definitely out there, and often they're harmless.
They are a group of people who have all decided
to get severely on the same page about something, whether
it's a diet. Right, we see a lot of we
see a lot of people organized by their diet or
by their environmental beliefs. Right.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
You'll even see the C word applied to certain workout
regimens and groups getting together having you know, working out
at a gym mm hmm. You'll see it applied to
a lot of different things.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Somebody said, how can we be both fit and cross? Yes, So,
in the days before the digital era, as we have
examined before, these groups would typically be isolated. They would
tend to self isolate. They would be isolated by a
leader who sought, unfortunately and often inevitably, to gain complete
(10:09):
control of the group or community by eliminating any other
source of information. It's one of the most common things
about cults. And we can talk a little bit about
some of these commonalities.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, yeah, you can imagine it, especially if you go
back just before the advent of the internet, if you
didn't have a machine that you could access in your
home that had all of the information out there, and
you only had the books, the physical books that are available,
the telephone that you can make a call, and only
one person can really use a phone at a time.
In that way, you realize how much information control existed.
(10:46):
And we do know that the cognitive and emotional isolation
of followers is very important to starting and maintaining a cult.
Like if you're in one, you can't read unapproved books,
you can't watch unapproved shows, you can't really communicate much
with your family because maybe your family is encouraging you
to not be in this cult anymore. You can't speak
(11:08):
with those relatives, and you know, it just moves on
and on and on. And that's one of the primary
goals of a cult leaders.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
It's to isolate, not only isolate, but break people down
psychologically by instilling in them this notion that nothing they
do is good enough or they can't actually, you know,
better themselves without the direct input and influence of the
person that is kind of setting themselves up as being
(11:35):
the cult leader. And then you have sexual control as well.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, typically this and this is common. The cult leader
will eventually have some sort of divine revelation, whether they
see themselves that divinity or see themselves as a messenger
of that divinity, and the realization will be that either
no one can have sex, that he or she the
cult leader can be the only person who has sex
(12:02):
with anyone, or that the followers must obey the sexual
dictates of the leader. That's where you hear about someone
saying it has come to me through whatever my brand
name of God is that person A is the spiritual
spouse of person B, and that's the only people that
(12:24):
these are the only people that can fool around now
to elect with.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
David Koresh, for example, he received visions, one of which
told him that the sister of one of his wives
was to be his new wife, and everyone else, the
males in that cult were celibate.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, and it never really starts that way.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
No, No, I mean that's it's salesmanship. One oh one.
You get your foot in the door, and what happens
with this, I know it's lurid and it seems it's
incredibly gross. I really appreciate Noling you mentioning the David
Koresh example, because I believe that sister may have been
underage at the time. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I do believe so. Yes. So.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
In Koresh's Bible studies, which were these ten hour, ten
to sixteen hour performances of him just yelling at people
in those things. He would he would constantly and increasingly
make them of a sexual nature and find Bible versus
(13:29):
where he would interpret this as you know, this passage
of the Bible says this, what's he really saying. He's
saying that the women want dix and pardon the crudeness here,
this is a quote. He would say, what does this
Bible verse mean? It means they want big dicks. Everybody
say it, and he would make people say it. And
to us on the outside that sounds insane, But this
(13:52):
is after, this is after how many days of how
many solid hours have been yelled at having your personal
life controlled, having and this is one of the most
important parts, having your ego erase, the obliteration of the eye.
And this occurs in a lot of organizations. Militaries attempt
to erase the ego. And you'll hear people say sometimes
(14:15):
that they had a friend who entered into a very
intense branch of the military or something, and that they
came out changed, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.
Maybe just different cults actively, like in our earlier stuff
with the Charles Manson family, colts actively obliterate the agency
(14:36):
of the followers, which is why it is so important
to us. A cult is A podcast is not and
should not be a cult. But that's why it's so
important to us that you listening. Specifically, you still get
to be yourself and make your own decisions. We're not
gonna yell at you.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, you be. You don't listen to what we're saying,
don't follow every word.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Says the cloud.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yes, seriously, I'm starting to doubt your credibility on these issues.
But let's just rattle off a few other destructive patterns
that cults operate under so we can get into the
juice of today's episode.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yeah, let's do a worst case scenario.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, so that we've got leaders who emotionally exploit the vulnerable,
and oftentimes the folks that flock to these types of
leaders are very vulnerable. They're seeking answers, and often they
are attracted to strong personalities who cult leaders typically are. Eventually,
as Ben said, things change and can take a dark
(15:39):
turn as that exploitation goes from emotional to physical, and
then we have leaders who start to obliterate the ego,
like Ben said, through social pressure, physical abuse, shaming people
putting their business out in public, having people judge them completely,
wearing them down to the point where they can be
(16:00):
molded in the image or in at the discretion of
the leader.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And then the next one is important for today's discussion.
The leader's rambling word salad becomes the primary narrative of
the group, and then the group's narrative. After all, this
rambling starts to turn dark, sometimes violent, and often self destructive,
as this leader is seeking to increasingly say things that
(16:26):
are shocking or something that will be new and incredible
for their followers to grasp onto things to do, even
and they need to maintain this unpredictability or be viewed
as unpredictable, and maintain control of all these people listening.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yes, that's important, because you have to be providing revelations
right and no one can ever be good enough. Your
authority cannot be challenged. So this unpredictability, this increasing escalation
of shocking behavior is an important to a crucial tool
for maintaining control. And that's when again, in the worst
(17:04):
case scenarios, we see situations involving suicides or murders or
other horrendous crimes. Now we enter the digital age, if
isolation is a key to the formation, growth, and ultimate
decay of cults. Surely the glut of information available via
phone or text or tablet or social media would reduce cults.
(17:29):
You're always in contact with someone, right.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
You'd think, but it might not be. Let's hear a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Here's where it gets crazy. There are digitally powered movements
for meing today and growing successfully that fit, according to
their critics, a lot of the definitions of a cult.
And this is where we arrive at the story that No,
(18:03):
your friend introduced us to a character named Beninho Massorrow.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
You may have also heard him called Benino.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, so I was turned onto an article on medium
that came out in December of last year by a
writer by the name of B. B. E. Schofield, who
alleges that Massorrow is a cult leader empowered by the
ever evolving nature of digital communications. In fact, the headline
(18:36):
of the article is the very salacious tech bro guru
inside the Sedona cult of Bentino Masorrow, and the top
of it is emblazoned with some pictures from this man's
Instagram account, one where he's dressed up as Hugh Hefner
with like a captain's hat on surrounded by scantily clad
(18:56):
playboy bunny esque women. And there's one where he's like
the real bad joker from the latest Batman.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Movie with what's his face?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Suicide squad were doing a mirror selfie. And then there's
one where he's got a cigar in his mouth. In
the background you see some real, real fancy scotches. Who
is this guy? And what's see after? And what does
it mean to be a tech bro cult leader?
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Well he started well, at least from what we can tell.
He started posting on a YouTube channel in twenty ten.
And this is just what we know from the surface,
and we'll get into what we know after some research
on the surface. First video understanding life is impossible, and
(19:40):
here here are just some ideas from that video. We
as human beings, every situation we encounter, we constantly try
to analyze. We constantly try to understand everything in reality.
The life that's just here, it cannot be understood. We
have to stop trying to understand everything. Life wasn't meant
to be understood. It's the embrace of the mystery that
(20:02):
instantaneously reveals the beauty of what's right here. The funny
thing is when we stop trying to understand what we perceive,
we naturally understand in here.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
At that point, he points at his.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Chest, thinking, is just another aspect of reality and it
cannot understand itself. Life doesn't care why it's here. It's
simply here.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I mean overall, that sounds like, first off, a restatement
of things that have been said pretty often. And do
people understand life? I mean it's a it's a fair question.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And just to say in the video he appears to
be a young man. I mean, you know it seven
eight years ago you said, yeah, twenty ten, you know,
just a young man giving his beliefs into a laptop computer.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Sort of a manifesto, right, And these, these selfie manifestos
are super common on YouTube. Literally anyone with an Internet
connection and a camera can make a YouTube account or
make a Google account and post them. Personal spirituality is
nothing new to YouTube. And you might not be familiar
with this guy, although he is a YouTube sensation. He's
(21:16):
built a massive following since that video in two thousand
and ten. We have stats for you. His Facebook page
has over three hundred thousand people on it. His Instagram
is over twenty thousand they've got Facebook groups that follow him.
His YouTube videos have over two million views. I think
(21:38):
that's total, not per video.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean his videos of individual
and he's got a ton of them. They're in the
thirty to forty thousand views apiece. And I would argue
these numbers are not earth shattering by any means. But
where it gets interesting is when you start to see
the kind of money he's able to bring in with
this semi modest following right, he has an organization called
the Infinity Academy. It's a website sort of a self
(22:03):
help kind of guru type website, and on it you
can read these courses that he has laid out and
it's got kind of like a radiohead pay what you
will model. But apparently, according to the media article, he
brings in around sixty thousand dollars a month, which is
more than enough to cover the fourteen thousand dollars a
month rent for his lavish offices in Sedona, Arizona, which
(22:28):
is his home base. And Ben, you said earlier you
felt like that sixty thousand wasn't all donations that could
account for people that are paying to come to his seminars.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Well, you know, no, they do. They suggest at the
very bottom, on the left hand side of the page,
they suggest that if you're going to take one of
their one of their courses on their website, they suggest
one hundred to a three hundred dollars donation per one
that you're gonna read right on?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Sure, I mean, you know that would that's sort of
like what's the honor system kind of situation. It's like
when you go to the Met Museum in New York
and they say recommended donation of thirty dollars.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
You know, I usually give ten? But is it I'm
a cheap skate.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Is it thirty? I thought it was twenty?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Is it twenty?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I think they may?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Okay, well, I know they're actually not to get too
off topic, but the Met is actually going to start
imposing an actual ticket price.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Very soon, so probably a good idea get in there
while you can. Yeah. Well, and but this isn't their
only source of income, these online courses.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right yeah. Masaro also has in person retreats that gather
crowds of up to hundreds, and when we were talking
off air, that was that was one of the things
that perked our collective ears up because it seems like
if you're going on an honor system of suggested donation,
(23:49):
sixty thousand a month seems like a really tall milkshake
for that. But if people are booking the seminars through that,
does that count the income as well? And we also
have to ask We will ask later, just to be fair,
the motivations of best skillfold the writer who did a
fantastic job with this article. By the way, so back
(24:12):
to the digital age, Masorrow has effectively used things like
WhatsApp or Facebook Live to reach new followers. And although,
you know, although as Noel pointed out, these are not
especially earth shattering numbers, it's not like the you know,
a musician with billions of views or something doing this.
(24:34):
Reaching this level of success independently is pretty impressive. It's
still small time in comparison to some other spiritual movements.
And again, let's keep in mind spiritual movement describes everything
from a closely held personal belief you've never told anyone
to things like Buddhism or the Catholic Church. There's a
wide range of things here, but still it is there
(24:58):
and it's present. So now we have to ask ourselves
what exactly is he teaching from the article. Schofield describes
it thusly a mashup of Adveta, Vedanta and the law
of attraction. Other influences include Osho Bashar, the Law of
(25:20):
One channeled by Raw. This is Gadata Maharaj and some
yogaic text as well, So there's a lot of stuff
in the mix.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, yeah, And the Advaita Vedanta school is a particular
type of Hindu philosophy and a path to spiritual realization
that focuses on the teachings of the Upanashads and finding
basically the highest levels of metaphysical reality. This is brahmin
(25:50):
or sort of something like achieving nirvana. And more interestingly
to me is this idea of the law of one
is something I'd never heard before. And I found a
page lawvone dot info that goes through the different levels
of enlightenment than one can achieve by following this path.
(26:12):
I'm gonna read a little bit from that. The law
of one states that there is only one and that
one is the infinite creator. It also invokes the name
of Raw, the Egyptian god. Raw also calls infinite intelligence
and intelligent infinity. It's impossible to describe the one, undifferentiated,
intelligent infinity, unpolarized, full and whole, but it can be
(26:35):
activated or potentiated. Each portion of the creation contains paradoxically
the whole.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Ah, it is like an ocean.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Well, it's hologrammatic thinking as well.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
And there is a book called The Raw Material. An
ancient astronaut speaks the Law of One by a man
by the name of Don Elkins, and the synopsis that
on Amazon is pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Poses a few questions.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
What are the ancients? Why did they first come to Earth?
Why are they returning now? What part did they play
in building the great monuments of antiquity? What part did
they play in the formation of present and earlier civilizations?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
With? What other beings do we share our universe? And
where does the Earth fit into the cosmic scheme of things?
Almost twenty years of experimental work with telepathy led to
the breakthrough contact recorded in this book The Raw Material,
as an account not only for the events leading up
to this contact, but of over two hundred pages of
verbatim transcripts of each and every conversation.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Two things real quick, Yeah, noel, I swear you have
heard this concept before, but it was packaged very differently.
You're a Bill Hicks fan, right, sure, Bill Hicks talks
about this sort of thing. He probably got it from
a very similar He probably got it from his very
(27:56):
similar source, maybe even the opponishods. He was a concert reader.
It's interesting. The second thing is really interesting about this
is what we're seeing is syncretism, combining of aspects from
different religions, and the Danta itself is kind of syncretic.
So we're seeing an I don't want to say a
(28:16):
mixtape of a mixtape because I don't want to be dismissive,
but we're seeing like combinations of combinations coming through, which
honestly I applaud if we're talking about spirituality, I really
feel like you should find what works for you.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
A little later, we're going to get into a direct
message from Benino Massorrow, and it says that very thing
that you're talking about. Ben where his teachings over time,
he says, have been a collection of different teachings and
different movements and all these paradoxical even at times things.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
It seems less about worshiping a god too as much
as it is kind of treating yourself as a god
or an extension of the universe. And it's interesting because
the law of Wine has these layers, almost scientology esque layers.
They're called densities, and its first through eighth density.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
And it's something that Masorro touches a lot in the teachings.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Absolutely, he definitely talks about it, and it's a little
hard to wrap your head around. And I think, for
good reason, just to read a couple of these, I'll
go do the first and the last. The first density
is the density of awareness in which the planet moves
out of the timeless state into physical manifestation. Its elements
are earth, air, water, and fire. On Earth, after matter
had coalesced and space time had begun to quote unroll
its scroll of livingness, first density took about two billion years.
(29:34):
Then eighth density is also the beginning of the first
density of the next creation. It is both omega and alpha,
the spiritual mass of the infinite universes becoming one central
Sun or Creator once again. Then is born a new universe,
a new infinity, a new logos, which incorporates all that
the Creator has experienced of itself.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
So what this sounds like to me is essentially the
Big Bang. They're describing in the first density right after
after the big Bang has occurred, and now we actually
have an Earth, we have a place where consciousness can exist.
Then going through all these other densities through here to
getting to the eighth density is when it's snapped back together. Essentially,
if you look at some of the there are infinite
(30:16):
universe models that believe big bangs occur as expansion, and
then there's a collapsing back down into essentially one singularity,
and then another expansion, and then it just continues on.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
This cycle of contraction and expansion.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
And that's one model.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
That's one model. And then also this has a lot
in common with the views of alchemical experts, right with
alchemical scholars and the great work. This is not the
I think the point we're making is this is not,
by any means a new idea. But also a Masara's defense,
he's not really saying it's a new idea either, correct, right,
(30:53):
And it would be it would be unfair of us
to say that he thinks he discovery. He does believe
that he put it all together in the right way,
but he doesn't claim that he did everything. Another interesting
part about this in the digital age is that a
lot of his teachings or courses or videos or lessons
or talks have a quantifiable aspect to them. It's not
(31:20):
just reach level, you know, reach this density, density x
or whatever. It's how to reach it an x amount
of steps, how to understand concept a in why amount
of time? And this clicks with a lot of people
in today's age where we want to we have so
many things to pay attention to or spend time on
(31:41):
that we want to know about how long it's going
to take, or how to measure our steps to success.
As appealing as sitting under a tree for an indeterminate
length of time to reach enlightenment may sound in theory,
very few people are doing it in practice or fewer now.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
And even see it in the furniture a lot of
us choose to purchase if you imagine like getting just
some wood and making a table, or you could get
the Ikia one that has a list of steps to
follow and then you got yourself a table man.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
And this kind of results based, quick, results based attitude
really plays into that kind of you know, lightning fast communication.
Everyone's attention span is shorter than it's ever been. We
want everything in blurbs and nuggets and like give it
to us quick. Even his videos. He's got longer videos,
but a lot of them are distilled down into like
ten or twelve minutes little soundbites that are easier to
(32:36):
digest for folks. So he's very much aware of his audience.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I would say they are not easy to understand, at
least as a layperson who has not taken all the
courses yet. I've attempted to watch six videos today again,
like rewatching videos to just understand some of the density
stuff to understand, taking two to five seconds out of
every like x seconds, and the I don't understand a
(33:01):
lot of the messages.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Will let me rephrase I don't either. I guess all
I'm saying is that I'm at least able to watch
ten minutes of this stuff rather than two hours. And
it's interesting because Masarrow's followers themselves, a lot of them.
We found some there's a SoundCloud page from Batgirl that
interviews some folks from some of these conferences. They say
(33:25):
that it's totally fine to not understand what the hell
he's talking about. The message, they say, is between the words.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
And that's another thing you see with gurus or light
masters throughout human history. There's this idea that the leader
functions as sort of an antagonistic rarshack ink blot. You
see what you want to see and hear what you
want to hear, and you're always bad, You're always wrong,
(33:55):
unless you're no longer you. We'll be back after a
word from our sponsor. So Masorrow speaks often about interpreting vibrations,
what he would term his vibrations. His followers claim to
be able to interpret and internalize the vibrations he puts out,
(34:18):
and they feel that a lot of the content or
the message or the enlightenment that he is conveying comes
from these vibrations, more so than maybe the actual words.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
And this quote should be on the jacket of his
first book.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
It is you are a vibrator, and you are a vibrator,
and you.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Are a vibrator. Okay, that is a verbatim quote there.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
But he said that to me, I'd slug him.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Well, in a way, He's kind of right, guys. All
of our energy is just vibrating.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
It's true. Physical matter is relatively illusory.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Can we talk a little about Sedona and just the
scene in Sedona, like not with too much detail, but
just in case anyone's not familiar. And I really wish
I'd had a chance to talk to our coworker Julie Douglas,
who just did kind of a tour of that part
of the country. But Sedona, Arizona is kind of ground
zero for a lot of this New Age teachings and
self betterment through self actualization and yoga, and there are
(35:18):
all of these different retreats and it is a really
rife with these kinds of gurus. And what makes it
interesting to us is that it feels like a new
approach to this kind of thinking or this kind of recruitment.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
And I'm not sure it's an amalgamation of startup culture
which leads to that other thing, right, is what's the
difference between startup culture and what's the difference between, you know,
an old school cult, Because we do have in startup
cultures we see this sent up in so many satirical
pieces like Silicon Valley or something. We see these commonalities.
(35:59):
There is a cult of personality, right, and there is
a there is a drive to dedicate oneself entirely to
a cause, whether it's making the newest app to hand
deliver bags of artisanal badgers to people or you know,
or whether it's to figure out a way to have
(36:19):
a drone that will I don't know, bring you shoes
and pizza and pizza, you know, shoes and pizza.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And like the best startups, they begin with a product
that's kind of tangible you can get like Ben Bentino's
teachings in the videos. But then there's this much larger goal,
Like you said, Ben, it's down the road.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Oh, I'm so glad you mentioned this. Yes, because Masorrow's trifinity,
which which Noel introduced earlier, is a step in a
larger plan, and his seminars and his speeches are part
of a much larger goal, a four phase plan to
create an enlightened society by twenty thirty five. So not
(37:02):
that far down, one.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
Hundred percent enlightened, right, Let's hear from the man himself with.
Speaker 5 (37:08):
The work that I'm doing, what I'm trying to achieve,
quite frankly, as to have a one hundred percent enlightened
civilization by twenty thirty five, to make it specific, so
that gives us twenty years to share this message in
many different kinds of ways, not just educational ways, but
also in terms of products, inventions, technology, and education, obviously,
(37:33):
so that everyone can start to act on their inspiration
and be guided by that higher intelligence which thicks in
our heart in the sense of passion and excitement and inspiration.
When the whole world starts to listen to that impulse
and be aware of the fact that they are already
free beings, that they're already awake, powerful beings, then the
(37:54):
world would be amazing place to be.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
So steps along the way in this planning the creation
of apps, film, TV and record studios, VR technology and
astral projection inducer. What yeah, a couple of labs and
you know, you could ask yourself, is that astral projection
inducer encouraging lucid dreams? Or is it real remote viewing?
(38:20):
The US government did work on remote viewing for a
long time. That is true. Publish we have an episode
on it. I think that we want to interview one
of those guys one day, So if you're listening, hit
us up or you might be in the room now.
But they also have, interestingly, a system to foster open
(38:43):
contact with aliens. This all culminates in the construction of
something called Trinfinity City, a metropolis built in hopes of
being prepared for open interstellar contact in contrast to the
clandestine contact that Masorrow believes has occurred in the past.
That might sound controversial, but he has plenty of beliefs
that might seem controversial to the mainstream.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
I wonder if he and Stephen Greer have ever gotten together,
because you know, Stephen Greer's The Encounter of the Fifth
Kind is all about contacting aliens through meditation.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, and it's also about you know, getting gullible rich
people to drop mad cash to go on these excursions.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Burn. You have to wonder though, you know, from from
what we could hear, Masorrow has been controversial with other teachers,
like other spiritual teachers. We have examples of that, so
I could see him also being controversial with other secular
leaders of movements as well.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
And we have to give serious credit to b. Schofield
again for this media article. It is very, very in
depth and I recommend you guys seeking it out, their clips,
their videos, their audio samples, all kinds stuff. Because she
actually embedded herself in one of his groups under an
assumed name. And you know, we'll get to this a
little later, but the Trinfinity folks and Benino did publish
(40:07):
a response to this article, but in the article, she
talks about the fact that in his early days, he
was invited to be part of a collection of speakers
by a group called Sounds True, which I think is
a really funny name for an organization like this, Like, wow,
(40:29):
it sounds true. I guess it must be.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
True Spiritual Symposium, Spiritual Symposium, But I just feel like
it's a it's a little.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
The name is almost sounds sounds a little joky to me.
But some of the other speakers you might have heard
of Eckhart Toley, who is much beloved, and I know
people who I find completely rational, intelligent people that are
really into his stuff. But he kind of wanted to
distance himself from these types of folks and just sort
of talked a lot of trash and really did not
(40:58):
want to be associated with the anymore after this first
symposium that he was a part of, and wanted to
kind of go out on his own and make it
all about him and his specific teachings and not have
to answer to anyone else's worldview and as attle cult leaders.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
To me, yeah, well maybe it's just the question is
always do these people genuinely believe this stuff, or is
it sort of a flam flam show. Are they objecting
to the views of another spiritual leader because they feel
that those views are business competition, or are they objecting
(41:35):
because they honestly believe it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, and that's a question that's tough to answer. But
we do know that we do know that he has
several beliefs that would be considered controversial, not just not
just controversial amongst spiritual peers, which of course he and
his followers believe he has none, but not just in
the sphere of the spiritual, but in the secular as well.
(42:01):
One of the big ones is suppress technology, which, for
the record, I'm not going out of my way to
unfairly defend someone that I've never met. We do know
suppress technology exists, So now we're just as a species
arguing about the degree of suppression.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, in Bentino's mind, we're decades, if not centuries behind
with the known technology to the average consumer. Let's read
a quote here. We have bases on the Moon, a
bunch of slave colonies on Mars that have been mining
the asteroid belt. We have been colonizing galaxies, of our
(42:39):
solar system. We haven't needed fossil fuels for the last
eighty years because we have anti gravihic mechanisms. The Nazis
won the war, the US government gave up their control,
their governance, so we would not be exposed to free
energy devices. If free energy gets released and we're working
on it, he's referring to Trinfinity Corp. It changed everything.
(43:01):
We've had free energy for eighty years.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
That is a direct quote. Also, Masarro absolutely believes in aliens,
by which we mean extraterrestrials. Another quote would be, don't
be surprised that the aliens will meet and we will
meet them look like the things you see in movies.
Don't be like, oh, this story of this guy's nonsense,
because I've seen that in the movies. He just got
it from the movies. Well, did he get it from
(43:26):
the movies or did the movies get it from them?
And this ties into a belief that we've touched on
in the past, where you'll see people arguing that there
is a large and largely hidden movement in pop culture
to acclimatize the general public with the idea of extraterrestrials
(43:48):
by making them a familiar trope in fiction.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
But the issue for me here is there's no evidence.
This isn't evidence based claims at all. It's just stuff
that he says, taking it face value, and you know,
it goes so far as to say things we talked
about those density levels. Apparently he and his followers and
he also has a very close team that he keeps
(44:12):
around him talk about folks like Buddha and Jesus being
sixth maybe seventh density. And again this is from the
medium article.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
And that's the density of unity.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Density of unity exactly. But that Bentino is at eight.
He just blows all of those other spiritual leaders out
of the water.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
That's not even on the thing. No, it is, it
is eighth is the new coming.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
It's it's him, and that that's one of the one
of the errors that Masorro points out about Jesus Christ
is that Jesus, he says, is pretty much well and good,
did some good stuff. I think he called him a
fabulous person, but he claimed he was the son of
God and not a God. So it's a differentiation there.
(44:58):
And the density that Trifinity ascribes to as an organization
does have the one to seven depities, with the eighth
density being, as Matt said, forthcoming, You're probably wondering how
far this goes, folks. There are claims of extraordinary powers
as well, and several of his videos, Massorrow claims have
(45:20):
supernatural powers that have come easily to him, but there
are reasons why he doesn't use them all the time.
He says, it's not more important that I'm able to
teleport and bylocate and levitate and move mountains at will.
That's not what's most important to me, because my soul
knows that's easy. It's not hard at all, It's absolutely easy.
(45:41):
So one of these powers would be weather control. Several
of his followers claim he has the ability to control
weather to a degree, specifically stories about dispersing clouds before
they cause inclement weather or storms, similar to William Wrake
attempting to bust clouds with Oregon energy, but without the
(46:04):
mechanisms or the artifacts that Reich builds.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
There's a quote from one of his followers that we
found that says, I've watched him control the weather a
lot of times. We'll be at a party and I'll
be like Bendino, these clouds are not good. It looks
like rain. Within ten minutes, they're gone. He does it
all the time. I've watched him move objects on tables.
I've seen him multiple times change weather or move clouds.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Of course it's telekinesis. Also in there, you have the
ability to move objects, specifically at a table, without physically
touching them. Magicians and skeptics in the crowd, I am
sure that you know the numerous ways in which people
can create things that appear to be that effect. I'm
(46:49):
not saying that Masorrow is purpose Again, I'm not seeing
Masorrow is purposely misleading people, But I'm saying between between
physical manipulation and between credulous observers, it's very possible for
somebody to mistake something kind of mundane for something like telekinesis.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
I think the next two are really interesting because they
are attributes often ascribed in Catholic doctrine to saints and
religious figures. So we've got something called by location, and
what that is is the supposed phenomenon of an individual
being able to be in two physical locations at the
same time. It's kind of this isn't exactly the same thing,
(47:33):
but it's kind of like in the Catholic Eucharist the
concept of transubstantiation, where supposedly the bread and the wine
that you partake of actually transforms physically into the flesh
and blood of Jesus Christ. But more specifically, a really
interesting example of this is from a man by the
name of Padre Pio, who lived from eighteen eighty seven
(47:53):
to nineteen sixty eight. Was an Italian friar. A Caputian priest,
he suffered from digmata wounds, and he was ultimately made
a saint and was said to possess the power of bilocation.
So tell us a quick story. As a seminary student,
he claims to have teleported during prayer to the home
of a wealthy couple, where he witnessed a woman giving
(48:16):
birth to a child, a daughter, all the while her
husband lay dying. He claims the virgin Mary appeared to him,
told him she was entrusting this newborn child to him
and that he should take care of her. Po asked
how he would know her, and was told that she'd
find him first and they'd meet in Rome. Then, it
said the mother saw him leaving the room. So supposedly
(48:39):
the daughter gave confession to Po seventeen years later in
Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, and that he took her
in and took care of her physically and spiritually a.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Year later, Mmmm, seventeen year old girl.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Often conflated with, or closely related with, the concept of claravoyance,
which is not telling the future. It's realizing events that
have transpired in a way that would not normally be observable.
So it's sort of sending your mind or your awareness
to something. By location is different by a location is
(49:12):
appearing right, either appearing in some sort of intangible but
visible form or appearing in illegitimate physical substance. So Masara
says he can do this, but says it's not really
the point of his mission or his existence here on
this plane.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
He also says it's easy. It's so easy, I could bilocate.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Well, he doesn't. From his perspective, he doesn't want it
to distract from his actual calling, sort of the same
way that Anthony Hopkins doesn't want you know, like Anthony
Hopkins is acting. He's an amazing actor, but his first
love is piano, and that's why he feels like he's
here on earth.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
Massaro actually claims to be purposely blocking these abilities because
they are not what he wants to be known for.
And his followers often say that, like with that quote,
that they have seen him do some of these I'm
going to call him miracles, but never does he offer
to demonstrate them in any of his dozens and dozens
of YouTube videos.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Well, you know, if they're really on that plan to
buy twenty thirty five have a one hundred percent enlightened society,
what's going to have to happen is Bentino is going
to have to teleport, which is the next thing we're
going to talk about in one of his YouTube videos
somehow or in public somewhere where people have cameras on him.
And then that's when he starts getting three hundred million followers,
(50:33):
four hundred million followers, then he can really start changing society.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
So at this point, what we have described are the
aims of the organization a brief description of Massar himself,
and we didn't we didn't talk about his childhood, we
didn't talk about some of the criticisms of his personality
that you could you could read at length, and please,
you know, read them with a grain of salt, because
we have to winner with the motivations. The people might
(50:58):
be sure that's that's been but we do know that
former core staff members have talked about darker sides of this.
One said, I feel he is setting people up for
mass suicide. He talked about the harvest. I always had
a weird feeling about this. And on Thesimber ninth, I
(51:20):
want to say twenty seventeen, one of Masorrow's longtime devoted students,
a fellow named Brent Wilkins, committed suicide by jumping off
a cliff near the Midley Bridge in Sedona, Arizona, and
you can see news stories about it. You can see
some I don't know, some different media mentions. But the
(51:45):
thing is that for people who are opponents of this
guy or this movement, this budding movement, this is taken
to be a sign that something is woefully rotten in
the town of Sedona. However, be fair it is. You know,
it's difficult to ascribe the exact cause for that suicide
(52:07):
without more information. Every suicide is a tragedy, and it
may be that mister Wilkins was troubled for other reasons
unrelated to his involvement in the movement, but the reason
this thing becomes disturbing to people, whether they consider themselves
neutral observers or whether they consider themselves already prejudiced observers.
(52:31):
The troubling thing with this is that is that we
have seen precedents before in the United States. The United
States is a hotbed of movements that, for one reason
or another goes sour. I personally do not think it
(52:51):
is fair, nor do I think it is productive to
call a leader of a YouTube movement a new him
Jones or new David Koresh or new Charles Manson, because
at this point, thank god, no one has been murdered. Right,
But we would be remiss if we did not mention
(53:12):
that that suicide occurred. And we would also be remiss
if we didn't mention this harvest concept. And what is it?
Is it a Is it supposed to be a massive
spiritual awakening and ascension of the group?
Speaker 2 (53:28):
Yeah, it's weird when you when you put whatever concept
the harvest is and then you line it up with
that enlightened society by twenty thirty five goal, Like what
is that? Is that what the harvest is like? By
harvesting all of the egos, maybe so that we're all enlightened.
Maybe that's what he's talking about, but that's just me
thinking on the top of my head.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
He did post on his Instagram page an excerpt from
a book about a yogi by the name of Sara Dama,
and in it it says, whatever the Guru does is correct.
The Guru is the self. He cannot do wrong, even
though his actions may well appear to be wrong in
the side of the world. If a devotee sees the
guru's actions as bad and thinks badly of the Guru,
bad power will come to the devotee. If you think
(54:11):
that whatever the Guru does is correct, then good power
will come.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
So this is almost Nietzschean and it's beyond good and
evil idea. There's also there's also a quote from an
ex member named Gabby Petris, who is able to go
on record or with their name. According to Petris, Masaru
predicts planet Earth is at the crossroads of splitting into
two planes of existence. High vibration fourth dimensional beings who
(54:36):
embody love, as to his students, will ascend to a
less physical realm featuring telepathic group consciousness, low vibration third
dimensional beings that's you, me, and Paul Nol that MAT's
a cloud load vibration. Third dimensional beings who embody negativity
are on a quote ship going down. So there's nothing
(54:58):
specific or physical, right. I think that's very important. There's
no prediction of an imminent physical apocalyptic event. However, for
people who again are reading into this, there seems to
be a dark disturbance. And this is so new that
(55:18):
we you know, we're we're reporting on something that is
happening now. It's quite possible that it changes in the
future and we have to update it.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
For me though, the thing that's that's striking about this
this guy is, you know, when you think of a
true guru or a true leader, often they eschew material things.
But if you check out this guy's instagram, he is
a big time all about material things fall or he
has you know, rented million dollar mansions, and is you know,
(55:53):
constantly taking selfies, smoking fine cigars and posing shirtless in
the mirror. I mean, he is clearly quite into himself,
and not to say there's anything wrong with that, and
in fact, part of his rhetoric is that that is
okay and that that's a part of it. You are
a god, you know, you are the best version of yourself.
You should be this kind of hedonism, the idea of
(56:15):
sort of pursuing your bliss, I guess, but it doesn't
quite jive with his, you know, sort of self actualization
kind of.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
But it actually, it actually it jives perfect. Really, I'll
tell you why. There's a video on there on the
co Infinity page called Meet Bentino Masorro, a spiritual teacher
for the Next Generation. Here is a quote from that video,
and it's Bentino talking after after it has him like
a setup to the video. Then it has a long
(56:47):
montage of like a dance party, rave kind of thing
in the middle of wherever it is that they're having
this talk, a long like slow motion dance party. Then
it cuts back to Bentino and he says this, technically,
feeling good is your only job because when you feel good,
literally everything else takes care of itself. Now, this doesn't
(57:07):
mean that we don't take action, we don't act in
our visions. It simply means that without feeling good first,
you're not even in the same wavelength as inspiration. You
cannot get access to thoughts that offer solutions instead of problems,
joy instead of depression. So in order to be in
the proper state, all you have to do is be
in the moment, tune into yourself, and ask yourself intuitively,
(57:32):
what is the most exciting thing I could be thinking
of or doing right now. So I think for me,
that's that perfectly embodies smoking a fine cigar, hanging out
at a mansion using the money that I got from
these donations. I'm doing what's making me happy right now.
Speaker 3 (57:48):
And yet he pushes fasting on his followers, where he
says they can only drink grape juice and shouldn't eat
any food or water. It just kind of feels like
the rules don't apply to him. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
It's really important that put this in here, because gosh,
those folks, as you're listening, you're wondering why one of
us doesn't say this. This is spot on with l
Ron Hubbard, aka the commodore in scientology. This is spot
on with the pigs in animal farm. There is a
very it's very there is a convenience of equality, a
(58:23):
quality for me because I get it, because I'm in
on it. That's why I'm in charge, right And the
people who are in the fasting programs are not experiencing
this kind of joy. What they're experiencing are chronic health problems.
Their teeth are falling out, their hair is falling out.
And this is similar to things you'll hear like the
(58:45):
scientology's infamous niasin treatments. Yeah, or the whole or the whole. Right,
So we we want to be want to be as
fair as possible with this, but that is that is paradoxical,
and it does stick out. And paradoxical is a word
that Masorro uses in his own defense. Because, as we
(59:06):
mentioned earlier at the top of the show, we felt
it necessary to give you a couple excerpts from Trinfinity's
reply to this article.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
The blog post was called our first official response to
the cult accusations. Quote. At some point something like this
was going to rise. It always does for people in
my community. I encourage you to exhibit no anger or
judgment towards the author. That's nice.
Speaker 1 (59:34):
You could pick the most saintly figures in history, and
if you really wanted to, you could pick them apart
and reassemble them to meet any agenda you may have
in how you wish to think of them. There's an
important part there too, where they say the author of
this article was out to create a false sensationalist piece,
and my transparency and paradoxical but innocent expressions over the
(59:55):
years made this an easy picture for her to paint.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
It says, I am not an abuser, and I am
not out to gain power over others. But decide for yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
If I have any upset over this, it is for
the people who have put in tremendous effort and commitment
to applying the work and elevating their lives and are
now left represented as people who have no ability to
discern and are lost in their following of me. And
then he goes on to say that calling it a
cult is quite an assertion to make and honors no one.
There is ever so much more to an entity than
(01:00:24):
meets the eye. This is part of the message I
wish to embody through my occasionally paradoxical appearances. Never judge
the surface of any situation, person or motivation. In fact,
never judge at all. See beyond the surface and be free,
be love. And I do want to say too that
with the SoundCloud page from Batgirl that you can find
(01:00:47):
there's an interview with one of the followers, and the
person very casually asks how they feel about being referred
to as a cult, and the person says, well, if
it's a cult, it's a cult I want to be in.
You know, there's that.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
There is a lot of positivity that you will see,
at least again, I'm trying not to judge them on
the surface, but on the surface there seems to be
a ton of positivity, sure, and things that you would
want to take away that feel good, Like that when
we were talking about, you know, find joy and pursue
joy and everything else is going to fall into place.
Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
That sounds great, Yeah, but what how do we define joy?
A great deal of human tragedy is people selfishly pursuing
something that brings joy to them at the expense and
the physical emotional danger of others. People are selfish dicks,
It's true. And this leads us to some questions. Is
it's a shame. There's a lot of stuff we didn't
(01:01:42):
get to today, folks, but we're running a little long,
so we may have to come back for an update.
As we said, this is developing. We hope that we
have fairly represented both the concerns and the claims in here,
so as Matt said, not to judge at the surface,
but these things sound inspiring, hopeful, and even attainable. And Matt,
(01:02:06):
you you dropped a quote here in the notes that
I want to give you the honor of.
Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Oh yeah. Well, basically, what he's saying is let your
passion guide you follow your dreams. Right. Uh. For some
people it means I'll finally make that podcast about Badger
Bags that I've been talking about for the last two years.
For others, it means I will become the next top chef.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
I feel like you took an indirect shot at me there, buddy.
Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Oh the Badger Bags podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
It's coming, man, And I think you can follow your
passion one day, and you're gonna be able to do it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
I believe in both of you, even you and your
current gash of state.
Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Oh thank you so much. But the question I wanted
to leave here is with these kinds of teachings, they
are very positive for somebody who has an aspiration that
is positive for other people or even for themselves, but
it's not going to harm anybody else. What if somebody's
joy that they're really following kind of the point that
Ben made earlier, what if their joy is harming other people.
(01:02:59):
What if they're the most exciting thing they could be
doing right now is a brutal crime.
Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Have you guys heard of mccamee manner.
Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
No M A N O R. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
It's like an extreme haunted house that was in San
Diego for a long time where they like kidnap you
and you and shave your head and force feeds you
horrible things. This is a really extreme example. But the
guy that runs it, last name is McCamey. He videos everything.
Everyone that comes in there. They all come in there willingly,
right waiver that totally signs away all their rights to sue.
(01:03:36):
There's no safe word. You're in there until he's done
with you, and he's up in your face the whole time,
you know, getting footage of you being brutalized and tortured.
And some people sign up and come back and do
it again. I'm not saying that is directly with this
his life, but it's sort of an extreme example that
I think warrants comparison because, like you're saying, if people
(01:03:57):
will willingly submit to something that is not ultimately good
for them, right sure, and especially given the promise of
something new you know, something different.
Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Something beyond, something not understandable, like.
Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
The same reason people open the Lemo Kond configuration in
hell Raiser.
Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
Exactly, pushing yourself as far as possible, whether spiritually or physically.
Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Yeah, quite possibly. I mean we know that for many
people many For many people, joy emotions in general are complex,
often difficult to discern things. We have questions for you
as well. We'd like to hear from you. Do you
(01:04:42):
think what's your take on these sorts of movements and
how they exist in the digital age? Are the harmless
new iteration of some tale as old as time to
steal the line from Beauty and the Beast? Is there
something new that's fun na mentally changing them? And if so,
how is it for the better? Is it for the worse?
(01:05:03):
Is it dangerous? Do you consider this movement and things
like it a cult, as our author b. Schofield clearly does,
and this one I really want to know. Do you
have any other examples for us?
Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
And also have you been to a Masorrow retreat or
maybe been to a talk or you know, and you
feel like you've come out with something positive and you're
okay with everything?
Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Is the author being unfair?
Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
Are we being unfair?
Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Let us know, right, and that's the end of this
classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about
this episode, you can get into contact with us in
a number of different ways. One of the best is
to give us a call. Our number is one eight
three three st d WYTK. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
A fellow conspiracy realist. We're doing an episode on cults today.
This is a classic episode where Matt, as you recall
off air, I probably said this with great regret. I
had to admit there was a bad Ben Ben Tino, Yes, yes,
been Tino Masorrow is to some a thought leader, to some,
(00:27):
a prophet to supporters. It's a person who has changed
their lives. To critics, this is a bad Ben has
been accused of cultic practices, has been accused of some
untoward behavior, and we really dig into this in our episode.
(00:50):
Just heads up, everyone, A lot of stuff has happened
in the intervening years with Massara's movement, and we wanted
to learn more about it. So when you hear this,
you're hearing the information we have at the time. You're
also hearing a hopefully helpful conversation about what defines a cult.
(01:12):
And I don't know, Matt, what do you remember from
this one? What really stuck out to you?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well? I remember signing up for Benino's newsletter and never
turning back.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Ah, he got you, all right.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well, here's the show. From UFOs to psychic powers and
government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can
turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want
you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hello, welcome back to the show. I'm an expression of
the infinite one creator in sixth density.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Do you have a name?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
That's it?
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Oh? I felt like you left off with an ellipse?
Is like you're gonna give me more, like some sort
of celestial title.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Do you introducing myself?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Do you want to be the movement formerly known as
Matt or the vibration formally known as Matt.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I am an expression of the infinite one creator in
sixth density.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Okay, I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I'm still Noel, I'm Noam Shabbai. Folks they call me Ben.
You or you were joined with our super producer Paul
Deckint that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Welcome to the show. As you can tell, since we
last all got together, there have been a few changes,
spiritual changes, vibrational changes.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah, Matt is basically just this kind of like neutron
cloud that's just slowly filling up the studio. And he
does still have a mouth, yes, thankfully.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So I'm an expression of infinity.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So you know right now what he's reminding me of
Noel is the gaseous creature in that Rick and Morty
episode called Fart, voiced by Flight of the Concords actor
similar similar, well, thank you for coalescing into a physicali
ish form.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Somebody open a window.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I don't want to lose him.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I'll be here for as long as the podcast is.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
What is time. Hopefully we have enough time before you
ascend to higher planes, Matt to journey into a very
interesting rabbit hole, which Noel, you were the one who
showed us, introduced us to this guy off air when
we first learned about this fairly recently, right a few
(03:34):
weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, there was a medium article that was making the
rounds online and a friend of mine actually sent it
to me as a potential topic for the show. And
more so than talking specifically about this one individual who
we will get to, it kind of opened the door
to talk a little bit more about cults in the
digital age, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
We have talked about cults before, both in these broad
structural terms and through more specific examples such as the
ants in the Czech Republic, the Jonestown massacre with Jim Jones,
and many more. And although it's a little by the book.
Let's start with the biggest, most obvious question, how do
(04:16):
we define cult?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And for that we head on over to Merriam Webster,
which defines cult as a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.
It's also it's referring to the body of adherence to
said movement, and it also defines it as great devotion
to a person, idea object, movement, or work such as
a film or a book.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah, like a cult film, a cult classic being something
that has a small but incredibly loyal following, often for
being trash, yes, or cult of personality, you know, which
can also refer to a cult leader.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
My problem with these definitions you guys, though, is that
to me, this is what religion is, right like it's
it's to some one person's unorthodox belief is another person's faith,
so right the station right right.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
So, for instance, to the Pope. While many other religions
would have value, they all are unorthodox or at the
very least erroneous if they are not Catholicism as practiced
by the Catholic Church.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And if you're an Orthodox Jew, everyone else is completely unorthodox, right.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Right, right, and maybe just has a short attention span, right,
That's how one I explained it to me. We see
two different approaches here in the definitions, with some overlap
between them, and I appreciate you raising the point that
we wanted to make here about cult. The idea of
what makes a cult is the idea of what makes
(05:48):
something beautiful or it's very similar. It's in the eye
of the beholder, and it's a subjective thing. At the
very most basic, first density level, a cult is just
a group of people worshiping something, and they almost never
outside of pop culture described themselves as a cult. It's
a tricky term. It's usually regarded as an insult. If
(06:11):
our super producer Paul Decatt started what he felt was
a religious movement and we started referring to it as
Paul's cult, Paul and his followers would be properly offended. Well,
Paul's nodding in a way that makes me think I
may have already crossed the line.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Well, yeah, because Paul's journey is the way, the light
and the truth for me as a follower of Paul's
journe How many cults.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Are you in, bro?
Speaker 2 (06:35):
All of them? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Funny story. We Matt and I in an earlier video
audio series, we delineated the commonalities between cults and the
ways in which these things function if you think of
them as an engine, and.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
We taught people how to start one.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
We taught people how to start one. It was a
little controversial that was in the same era when we
had a video just describing how people get away with murder,
which is still up if.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
You want to see it. We should probably we should
probably take a look at that again.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But despite the slippery slopiness of that word cult, we
are making a conscious choice, an editorial choice, to use
that word today, right Ben.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, exactly. For the purposes of today's episode, we are
going to use the word cult, and we're going to
use it to describe organizations that share some of these
commonalities from our earlier videos and some will explore today.
And we're also using it more as shorthand rather than
an insult, because it goes back to that point whe're
(07:38):
underlining here. We're emphasizing one person's cult is another person's
real religion. And the point of this show has never
been to tell people what to believe. But the reason
we're choosing to use the word cult is because today's
overall question is how do cults exist in the digital world.
Are these organizations, these movements adapting? Are the lines between
(08:02):
a fandom and a legit actual cult blurring? And if so, how,
First we have to look at the facts. The world
is chock full of self described movements, intentional communities, spiritual institutions,
and on and on and on, and often mainstream culture,
(08:24):
culture interesting etymology. There only hears of these fringe movements
when something goes horrifically catastrophically wrong, such as the destruction
of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, the Aum
Shinriko terrorism in Japan, or of course, the Jonestown massacre.
But as we know, the bloody headlines sell the best, right,
(08:48):
and there's a motivation in most media to only show
you the bad news. This does not jibe with the
reality of the situation, which is this around the planet,
probably in your home country, maybe even in your own neighborhood.
As we record this, These sorts of movements are much
less uncommon than you might think, maybe not cartoonishly common
(09:10):
or ubiquitous, but they're definitely out there, and often they're harmless.
They are a group of people who have all decided
to get severely on the same page about something, whether
it's a diet. Right, we see a lot of we
see a lot of people organized by their diet or
by their environmental beliefs. Right.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
You'll even see the C word applied to certain workout
regimens and groups getting together having you know, working out
at a gym mm hmm. You'll see it applied to
a lot of different things.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Somebody said, how can we be both fit and cross? Yes, So,
in the days before the digital era, as we have
examined before, these groups would typically be isolated. They would
tend to self isolate. They would be isolated by a
leader who sought, unfortunately and often inevitably, to gain complete
(10:09):
control of the group or community by eliminating any other
source of information. It's one of the most common things
about cults. And we can talk a little bit about
some of these commonalities.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, yeah, you can imagine it, especially if you go
back just before the advent of the internet, if you
didn't have a machine that you could access in your
home that had all of the information out there, and
you only had the books, the physical books that are available,
the telephone that you can make a call, and only
one person can really use a phone at a time.
In that way, you realize how much information control existed.
(10:46):
And we do know that the cognitive and emotional isolation
of followers is very important to starting and maintaining a cult.
Like if you're in one, you can't read unapproved books,
you can't watch unapproved shows, you can't really communicate much
with your family because maybe your family is encouraging you
to not be in this cult anymore. You can't speak
(11:08):
with those relatives, and you know, it just moves on
and on and on. And that's one of the primary
goals of a cult leaders.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
It's to isolate, not only isolate, but break people down
psychologically by instilling in them this notion that nothing they
do is good enough or they can't actually, you know,
better themselves without the direct input and influence of the
person that is kind of setting themselves up as being
(11:35):
the cult leader. And then you have sexual control as well.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, typically this and this is common. The cult leader
will eventually have some sort of divine revelation, whether they
see themselves that divinity or see themselves as a messenger
of that divinity, and the realization will be that either
no one can have sex, that he or she the
cult leader can be the only person who has sex
(12:02):
with anyone, or that the followers must obey the sexual
dictates of the leader. That's where you hear about someone
saying it has come to me through whatever my brand
name of God is that person A is the spiritual
spouse of person B, and that's the only people that
(12:24):
these are the only people that can fool around now
to elect with.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
David Koresh, for example, he received visions, one of which
told him that the sister of one of his wives
was to be his new wife, and everyone else, the
males in that cult were celibate.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, and it never really starts that way.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
No, No, I mean that's it's salesmanship. One oh one.
You get your foot in the door, and what happens
with this, I know it's lurid and it seems it's
incredibly gross. I really appreciate Noling you mentioning the David
Koresh example, because I believe that sister may have been
underage at the time. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I do believe so. Yes. So.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
In Koresh's Bible studies, which were these ten hour, ten
to sixteen hour performances of him just yelling at people
in those things. He would he would constantly and increasingly
make them of a sexual nature and find Bible versus
(13:29):
where he would interpret this as you know, this passage
of the Bible says this, what's he really saying. He's
saying that the women want dix and pardon the crudeness here,
this is a quote. He would say, what does this
Bible verse mean? It means they want big dicks. Everybody
say it, and he would make people say it. And
to us on the outside that sounds insane, But this
(13:52):
is after, this is after how many days of how
many solid hours have been yelled at having your personal
life controlled, having and this is one of the most
important parts, having your ego erase, the obliteration of the eye.
And this occurs in a lot of organizations. Militaries attempt
to erase the ego. And you'll hear people say sometimes
(14:15):
that they had a friend who entered into a very
intense branch of the military or something, and that they
came out changed, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.
Maybe just different cults actively, like in our earlier stuff
with the Charles Manson family, colts actively obliterate the agency
(14:36):
of the followers, which is why it is so important
to us. A cult is A podcast is not and
should not be a cult. But that's why it's so
important to us that you listening. Specifically, you still get
to be yourself and make your own decisions. We're not
gonna yell at you.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, you be. You don't listen to what we're saying,
don't follow every word.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Says the cloud.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yes, seriously, I'm starting to doubt your credibility on these issues.
But let's just rattle off a few other destructive patterns
that cults operate under so we can get into the
juice of today's episode.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yeah, let's do a worst case scenario.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, so that we've got leaders who emotionally exploit the vulnerable,
and oftentimes the folks that flock to these types of
leaders are very vulnerable. They're seeking answers, and often they
are attracted to strong personalities who cult leaders typically are. Eventually,
as Ben said, things change and can take a dark
(15:39):
turn as that exploitation goes from emotional to physical, and
then we have leaders who start to obliterate the ego,
like Ben said, through social pressure, physical abuse, shaming people
putting their business out in public, having people judge them completely,
wearing them down to the point where they can be
(16:00):
molded in the image or in at the discretion of
the leader.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And then the next one is important for today's discussion.
The leader's rambling word salad becomes the primary narrative of
the group, and then the group's narrative. After all, this
rambling starts to turn dark, sometimes violent, and often self destructive,
as this leader is seeking to increasingly say things that
(16:26):
are shocking or something that will be new and incredible
for their followers to grasp onto things to do, even
and they need to maintain this unpredictability or be viewed
as unpredictable, and maintain control of all these people listening.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yes, that's important, because you have to be providing revelations
right and no one can ever be good enough. Your
authority cannot be challenged. So this unpredictability, this increasing escalation
of shocking behavior is an important to a crucial tool
for maintaining control. And that's when again, in the worst
(17:04):
case scenarios, we see situations involving suicides or murders or
other horrendous crimes. Now we enter the digital age, if
isolation is a key to the formation, growth, and ultimate
decay of cults. Surely the glut of information available via
phone or text or tablet or social media would reduce cults.
(17:29):
You're always in contact with someone, right.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
You'd think, but it might not be. Let's hear a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Here's where it gets crazy. There are digitally powered movements
for meing today and growing successfully that fit, according to
their critics, a lot of the definitions of a cult.
And this is where we arrive at the story that No,
(18:03):
your friend introduced us to a character named Beninho Massorrow.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
You may have also heard him called Benino.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, so I was turned onto an article on medium
that came out in December of last year by a
writer by the name of B. B. E. Schofield, who
alleges that Massorrow is a cult leader empowered by the
ever evolving nature of digital communications. In fact, the headline
(18:36):
of the article is the very salacious tech bro guru
inside the Sedona cult of Bentino Masorrow, and the top
of it is emblazoned with some pictures from this man's
Instagram account, one where he's dressed up as Hugh Hefner
with like a captain's hat on surrounded by scantily clad
(18:56):
playboy bunny esque women. And there's one where he's like
the real bad joker from the latest Batman.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Movie with what's his face?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Suicide squad were doing a mirror selfie. And then there's
one where he's got a cigar in his mouth. In
the background you see some real, real fancy scotches. Who
is this guy? And what's see after? And what does
it mean to be a tech bro cult leader?
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Well he started well, at least from what we can tell.
He started posting on a YouTube channel in twenty ten.
And this is just what we know from the surface,
and we'll get into what we know after some research
on the surface. First video understanding life is impossible, and
(19:40):
here here are just some ideas from that video. We
as human beings, every situation we encounter, we constantly try
to analyze. We constantly try to understand everything in reality.
The life that's just here, it cannot be understood. We
have to stop trying to understand everything. Life wasn't meant
to be understood. It's the embrace of the mystery that
(20:02):
instantaneously reveals the beauty of what's right here. The funny
thing is when we stop trying to understand what we perceive,
we naturally understand in here.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
At that point, he points at his.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Chest, thinking, is just another aspect of reality and it
cannot understand itself. Life doesn't care why it's here. It's
simply here.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I mean overall, that sounds like, first off, a restatement
of things that have been said pretty often. And do
people understand life? I mean it's a it's a fair question.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And just to say in the video he appears to
be a young man. I mean, you know it seven
eight years ago you said, yeah, twenty ten, you know,
just a young man giving his beliefs into a laptop computer.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Sort of a manifesto, right, And these, these selfie manifestos
are super common on YouTube. Literally anyone with an Internet
connection and a camera can make a YouTube account or
make a Google account and post them. Personal spirituality is
nothing new to YouTube. And you might not be familiar
with this guy, although he is a YouTube sensation. He's
(21:16):
built a massive following since that video in two thousand
and ten. We have stats for you. His Facebook page
has over three hundred thousand people on it. His Instagram
is over twenty thousand they've got Facebook groups that follow him.
His YouTube videos have over two million views. I think
(21:38):
that's total, not per video.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean his videos of individual
and he's got a ton of them. They're in the
thirty to forty thousand views apiece. And I would argue
these numbers are not earth shattering by any means. But
where it gets interesting is when you start to see
the kind of money he's able to bring in with
this semi modest following right, he has an organization called
the Infinity Academy. It's a website sort of a self
(22:03):
help kind of guru type website, and on it you
can read these courses that he has laid out and
it's got kind of like a radiohead pay what you
will model. But apparently, according to the media article, he
brings in around sixty thousand dollars a month, which is
more than enough to cover the fourteen thousand dollars a
month rent for his lavish offices in Sedona, Arizona, which
(22:28):
is his home base. And Ben, you said earlier you
felt like that sixty thousand wasn't all donations that could
account for people that are paying to come to his seminars.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Well, you know, no, they do. They suggest at the
very bottom, on the left hand side of the page,
they suggest that if you're going to take one of
their one of their courses on their website, they suggest
one hundred to a three hundred dollars donation per one
that you're gonna read right on?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Sure, I mean, you know that would that's sort of
like what's the honor system kind of situation. It's like
when you go to the Met Museum in New York
and they say recommended donation of thirty dollars.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
You know, I usually give ten? But is it I'm
a cheap skate.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Is it thirty? I thought it was twenty?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Is it twenty?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I think they may?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Okay, well, I know they're actually not to get too
off topic, but the Met is actually going to start
imposing an actual ticket price.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Very soon, so probably a good idea get in there
while you can. Yeah. Well, and but this isn't their
only source of income, these online courses.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right yeah. Masaro also has in person retreats that gather
crowds of up to hundreds, and when we were talking
off air, that was that was one of the things
that perked our collective ears up because it seems like
if you're going on an honor system of suggested donation,
(23:49):
sixty thousand a month seems like a really tall milkshake
for that. But if people are booking the seminars through that,
does that count the income as well? And we also
have to ask We will ask later, just to be fair,
the motivations of best skillfold the writer who did a
fantastic job with this article. By the way, so back
(24:12):
to the digital age, Masorrow has effectively used things like
WhatsApp or Facebook Live to reach new followers. And although,
you know, although as Noel pointed out, these are not
especially earth shattering numbers, it's not like the you know,
a musician with billions of views or something doing this.
(24:34):
Reaching this level of success independently is pretty impressive. It's
still small time in comparison to some other spiritual movements.
And again, let's keep in mind spiritual movement describes everything
from a closely held personal belief you've never told anyone
to things like Buddhism or the Catholic Church. There's a
wide range of things here, but still it is there
(24:58):
and it's present. So now we have to ask ourselves
what exactly is he teaching from the article. Schofield describes
it thusly a mashup of Adveta, Vedanta and the law
of attraction. Other influences include Osho Bashar, the Law of
(25:20):
One channeled by Raw. This is Gadata Maharaj and some
yogaic text as well, So there's a lot of stuff
in the mix.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, yeah, And the Advaita Vedanta school is a particular
type of Hindu philosophy and a path to spiritual realization
that focuses on the teachings of the Upanashads and finding
basically the highest levels of metaphysical reality. This is brahmin
(25:50):
or sort of something like achieving nirvana. And more interestingly
to me is this idea of the law of one
is something I'd never heard before. And I found a
page lawvone dot info that goes through the different levels
of enlightenment than one can achieve by following this path.
(26:12):
I'm gonna read a little bit from that. The law
of one states that there is only one and that
one is the infinite creator. It also invokes the name
of Raw, the Egyptian god. Raw also calls infinite intelligence
and intelligent infinity. It's impossible to describe the one, undifferentiated,
intelligent infinity, unpolarized, full and whole, but it can be
(26:35):
activated or potentiated. Each portion of the creation contains paradoxically
the whole.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Ah, it is like an ocean.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Well, it's hologrammatic thinking as well.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
And there is a book called The Raw Material. An
ancient astronaut speaks the Law of One by a man
by the name of Don Elkins, and the synopsis that
on Amazon is pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Poses a few questions.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
What are the ancients? Why did they first come to Earth?
Why are they returning now? What part did they play
in building the great monuments of antiquity? What part did
they play in the formation of present and earlier civilizations?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
With? What other beings do we share our universe? And
where does the Earth fit into the cosmic scheme of things?
Almost twenty years of experimental work with telepathy led to
the breakthrough contact recorded in this book The Raw Material,
as an account not only for the events leading up
to this contact, but of over two hundred pages of
verbatim transcripts of each and every conversation.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Two things real quick, Yeah, noel, I swear you have
heard this concept before, but it was packaged very differently.
You're a Bill Hicks fan, right, sure, Bill Hicks talks
about this sort of thing. He probably got it from
a very similar He probably got it from his very
(27:56):
similar source, maybe even the opponishods. He was a concert reader.
It's interesting. The second thing is really interesting about this
is what we're seeing is syncretism, combining of aspects from
different religions, and the Danta itself is kind of syncretic.
So we're seeing an I don't want to say a
(28:16):
mixtape of a mixtape because I don't want to be dismissive,
but we're seeing like combinations of combinations coming through, which
honestly I applaud if we're talking about spirituality, I really
feel like you should find what works for you.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
A little later, we're going to get into a direct
message from Benino Massorrow, and it says that very thing
that you're talking about. Ben where his teachings over time,
he says, have been a collection of different teachings and
different movements and all these paradoxical even at times things.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
It seems less about worshiping a god too as much
as it is kind of treating yourself as a god
or an extension of the universe. And it's interesting because
the law of Wine has these layers, almost scientology esque layers.
They're called densities, and its first through eighth density.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
And it's something that Masorro touches a lot in the teachings.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Absolutely, he definitely talks about it, and it's a little
hard to wrap your head around. And I think, for
good reason, just to read a couple of these, I'll
go do the first and the last. The first density
is the density of awareness in which the planet moves
out of the timeless state into physical manifestation. Its elements
are earth, air, water, and fire. On Earth, after matter
had coalesced and space time had begun to quote unroll
its scroll of livingness, first density took about two billion years.
(29:34):
Then eighth density is also the beginning of the first
density of the next creation. It is both omega and alpha,
the spiritual mass of the infinite universes becoming one central
Sun or Creator once again. Then is born a new universe,
a new infinity, a new logos, which incorporates all that
the Creator has experienced of itself.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
So what this sounds like to me is essentially the
Big Bang. They're describing in the first density right after
after the big Bang has occurred, and now we actually
have an Earth, we have a place where consciousness can exist.
Then going through all these other densities through here to
getting to the eighth density is when it's snapped back together. Essentially,
if you look at some of the there are infinite
(30:16):
universe models that believe big bangs occur as expansion, and
then there's a collapsing back down into essentially one singularity,
and then another expansion, and then it just continues on.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
This cycle of contraction and expansion.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
And that's one model.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
That's one model. And then also this has a lot
in common with the views of alchemical experts, right with
alchemical scholars and the great work. This is not the
I think the point we're making is this is not,
by any means a new idea. But also a Masara's defense,
he's not really saying it's a new idea either, correct, right,
(30:53):
And it would be it would be unfair of us
to say that he thinks he discovery. He does believe
that he put it all together in the right way,
but he doesn't claim that he did everything. Another interesting
part about this in the digital age is that a
lot of his teachings or courses or videos or lessons
or talks have a quantifiable aspect to them. It's not
(31:20):
just reach level, you know, reach this density, density x
or whatever. It's how to reach it an x amount
of steps, how to understand concept a in why amount
of time? And this clicks with a lot of people
in today's age where we want to we have so
many things to pay attention to or spend time on
(31:41):
that we want to know about how long it's going
to take, or how to measure our steps to success.
As appealing as sitting under a tree for an indeterminate
length of time to reach enlightenment may sound in theory,
very few people are doing it in practice or fewer now.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
And even see it in the furniture a lot of
us choose to purchase if you imagine like getting just
some wood and making a table, or you could get
the Ikia one that has a list of steps to
follow and then you got yourself a table man.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
And this kind of results based, quick, results based attitude
really plays into that kind of you know, lightning fast communication.
Everyone's attention span is shorter than it's ever been. We
want everything in blurbs and nuggets and like give it
to us quick. Even his videos. He's got longer videos,
but a lot of them are distilled down into like
ten or twelve minutes little soundbites that are easier to
(32:36):
digest for folks. So he's very much aware of his audience.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I would say they are not easy to understand, at
least as a layperson who has not taken all the
courses yet. I've attempted to watch six videos today again,
like rewatching videos to just understand some of the density
stuff to understand, taking two to five seconds out of
every like x seconds, and the I don't understand a
(33:01):
lot of the messages.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Will let me rephrase I don't either. I guess all
I'm saying is that I'm at least able to watch
ten minutes of this stuff rather than two hours. And
it's interesting because Masarrow's followers themselves, a lot of them.
We found some there's a SoundCloud page from Batgirl that
interviews some folks from some of these conferences. They say
(33:25):
that it's totally fine to not understand what the hell
he's talking about. The message, they say, is between the words.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
And that's another thing you see with gurus or light
masters throughout human history. There's this idea that the leader
functions as sort of an antagonistic rarshack ink blot. You
see what you want to see and hear what you
want to hear, and you're always bad, You're always wrong,
(33:55):
unless you're no longer you. We'll be back after a
word from our sponsor. So Masorrow speaks often about interpreting vibrations,
what he would term his vibrations. His followers claim to
be able to interpret and internalize the vibrations he puts out,
(34:18):
and they feel that a lot of the content or
the message or the enlightenment that he is conveying comes
from these vibrations, more so than maybe the actual words.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
And this quote should be on the jacket of his
first book.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
It is you are a vibrator, and you are a vibrator,
and you.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Are a vibrator. Okay, that is a verbatim quote there.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
But he said that to me, I'd slug him.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Well, in a way, He's kind of right, guys. All
of our energy is just vibrating.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
It's true. Physical matter is relatively illusory.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Can we talk a little about Sedona and just the
scene in Sedona, like not with too much detail, but
just in case anyone's not familiar. And I really wish
I'd had a chance to talk to our coworker Julie Douglas,
who just did kind of a tour of that part
of the country. But Sedona, Arizona is kind of ground
zero for a lot of this New Age teachings and
self betterment through self actualization and yoga, and there are
(35:18):
all of these different retreats and it is a really
rife with these kinds of gurus. And what makes it
interesting to us is that it feels like a new
approach to this kind of thinking or this kind of recruitment.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
And I'm not sure it's an amalgamation of startup culture
which leads to that other thing, right, is what's the
difference between startup culture and what's the difference between, you know,
an old school cult, Because we do have in startup
cultures we see this sent up in so many satirical
pieces like Silicon Valley or something. We see these commonalities.
(35:59):
There is a cult of personality, right, and there is
a there is a drive to dedicate oneself entirely to
a cause, whether it's making the newest app to hand
deliver bags of artisanal badgers to people or you know,
or whether it's to figure out a way to have
(36:19):
a drone that will I don't know, bring you shoes
and pizza and pizza, you know, shoes and pizza.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And like the best startups, they begin with a product
that's kind of tangible you can get like Ben Bentino's
teachings in the videos. But then there's this much larger goal,
Like you said, Ben, it's down the road.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Oh, I'm so glad you mentioned this. Yes, because Masorrow's trifinity,
which which Noel introduced earlier, is a step in a
larger plan, and his seminars and his speeches are part
of a much larger goal, a four phase plan to
create an enlightened society by twenty thirty five. So not
(37:02):
that far down, one.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
Hundred percent enlightened, right, Let's hear from the man himself with.
Speaker 5 (37:08):
The work that I'm doing, what I'm trying to achieve,
quite frankly, as to have a one hundred percent enlightened
civilization by twenty thirty five, to make it specific, so
that gives us twenty years to share this message in
many different kinds of ways, not just educational ways, but
also in terms of products, inventions, technology, and education, obviously,
(37:33):
so that everyone can start to act on their inspiration
and be guided by that higher intelligence which thicks in
our heart in the sense of passion and excitement and inspiration.
When the whole world starts to listen to that impulse
and be aware of the fact that they are already
free beings, that they're already awake, powerful beings, then the
(37:54):
world would be amazing place to be.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
So steps along the way in this planning the creation
of apps, film, TV and record studios, VR technology and
astral projection inducer. What yeah, a couple of labs and
you know, you could ask yourself, is that astral projection
inducer encouraging lucid dreams? Or is it real remote viewing?
(38:20):
The US government did work on remote viewing for a
long time. That is true. Publish we have an episode
on it. I think that we want to interview one
of those guys one day, So if you're listening, hit
us up or you might be in the room now.
But they also have, interestingly, a system to foster open
(38:43):
contact with aliens. This all culminates in the construction of
something called Trinfinity City, a metropolis built in hopes of
being prepared for open interstellar contact in contrast to the
clandestine contact that Masorrow believes has occurred in the past.
That might sound controversial, but he has plenty of beliefs
that might seem controversial to the mainstream.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
I wonder if he and Stephen Greer have ever gotten together,
because you know, Stephen Greer's The Encounter of the Fifth
Kind is all about contacting aliens through meditation.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, and it's also about you know, getting gullible rich
people to drop mad cash to go on these excursions.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Burn. You have to wonder though, you know, from from
what we could hear, Masorrow has been controversial with other teachers,
like other spiritual teachers. We have examples of that, so
I could see him also being controversial with other secular
leaders of movements as well.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
And we have to give serious credit to b. Schofield
again for this media article. It is very, very in
depth and I recommend you guys seeking it out, their clips,
their videos, their audio samples, all kinds stuff. Because she
actually embedded herself in one of his groups under an
assumed name. And you know, we'll get to this a
little later, but the Trinfinity folks and Benino did publish
(40:07):
a response to this article, but in the article, she
talks about the fact that in his early days, he
was invited to be part of a collection of speakers
by a group called Sounds True, which I think is
a really funny name for an organization like this, Like, wow,
(40:29):
it sounds true. I guess it must be.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
True Spiritual Symposium, Spiritual Symposium, But I just feel like
it's a it's a little.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
The name is almost sounds sounds a little joky to me.
But some of the other speakers you might have heard
of Eckhart Toley, who is much beloved, and I know
people who I find completely rational, intelligent people that are
really into his stuff. But he kind of wanted to
distance himself from these types of folks and just sort
of talked a lot of trash and really did not
(40:58):
want to be associated with the anymore after this first
symposium that he was a part of, and wanted to
kind of go out on his own and make it
all about him and his specific teachings and not have
to answer to anyone else's worldview and as attle cult leaders.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
To me, yeah, well maybe it's just the question is
always do these people genuinely believe this stuff, or is
it sort of a flam flam show. Are they objecting
to the views of another spiritual leader because they feel
that those views are business competition, or are they objecting
(41:35):
because they honestly believe it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, and that's a question that's tough to answer. But
we do know that we do know that he has
several beliefs that would be considered controversial, not just not
just controversial amongst spiritual peers, which of course he and
his followers believe he has none, but not just in
the sphere of the spiritual, but in the secular as well.
(42:01):
One of the big ones is suppress technology, which, for
the record, I'm not going out of my way to
unfairly defend someone that I've never met. We do know
suppress technology exists, So now we're just as a species
arguing about the degree of suppression.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, in Bentino's mind, we're decades, if not centuries behind
with the known technology to the average consumer. Let's read
a quote here. We have bases on the Moon, a
bunch of slave colonies on Mars that have been mining
the asteroid belt. We have been colonizing galaxies, of our
(42:39):
solar system. We haven't needed fossil fuels for the last
eighty years because we have anti gravihic mechanisms. The Nazis
won the war, the US government gave up their control,
their governance, so we would not be exposed to free
energy devices. If free energy gets released and we're working
on it, he's referring to Trinfinity Corp. It changed everything.
(43:01):
We've had free energy for eighty years.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
That is a direct quote. Also, Masarro absolutely believes in aliens,
by which we mean extraterrestrials. Another quote would be, don't
be surprised that the aliens will meet and we will
meet them look like the things you see in movies.
Don't be like, oh, this story of this guy's nonsense,
because I've seen that in the movies. He just got
it from the movies. Well, did he get it from
(43:26):
the movies or did the movies get it from them?
And this ties into a belief that we've touched on
in the past, where you'll see people arguing that there
is a large and largely hidden movement in pop culture
to acclimatize the general public with the idea of extraterrestrials
(43:48):
by making them a familiar trope in fiction.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
But the issue for me here is there's no evidence.
This isn't evidence based claims at all. It's just stuff
that he says, taking it face value, and you know,
it goes so far as to say things we talked
about those density levels. Apparently he and his followers and
he also has a very close team that he keeps
(44:12):
around him talk about folks like Buddha and Jesus being
sixth maybe seventh density. And again this is from the
medium article.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
And that's the density of unity.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Density of unity exactly. But that Bentino is at eight.
He just blows all of those other spiritual leaders out
of the water.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
That's not even on the thing. No, it is, it
is eighth is the new coming.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
It's it's him, and that that's one of the one
of the errors that Masorro points out about Jesus Christ
is that Jesus, he says, is pretty much well and good,
did some good stuff. I think he called him a
fabulous person, but he claimed he was the son of
God and not a God. So it's a differentiation there.
(44:58):
And the density that Trifinity ascribes to as an organization
does have the one to seven depities, with the eighth
density being, as Matt said, forthcoming, You're probably wondering how
far this goes, folks. There are claims of extraordinary powers
as well, and several of his videos, Massorrow claims have
(45:20):
supernatural powers that have come easily to him, but there
are reasons why he doesn't use them all the time.
He says, it's not more important that I'm able to
teleport and bylocate and levitate and move mountains at will.
That's not what's most important to me, because my soul
knows that's easy. It's not hard at all, It's absolutely easy.
(45:41):
So one of these powers would be weather control. Several
of his followers claim he has the ability to control
weather to a degree, specifically stories about dispersing clouds before
they cause inclement weather or storms, similar to William Wrake
attempting to bust clouds with Oregon energy, but without the
(46:04):
mechanisms or the artifacts that Reich builds.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
There's a quote from one of his followers that we
found that says, I've watched him control the weather a
lot of times. We'll be at a party and I'll
be like Bendino, these clouds are not good. It looks
like rain. Within ten minutes, they're gone. He does it
all the time. I've watched him move objects on tables.
I've seen him multiple times change weather or move clouds.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Of course it's telekinesis. Also in there, you have the
ability to move objects, specifically at a table, without physically
touching them. Magicians and skeptics in the crowd, I am
sure that you know the numerous ways in which people
can create things that appear to be that effect. I'm
(46:49):
not saying that Masorrow is purpose Again, I'm not seeing
Masorrow is purposely misleading people, But I'm saying between between
physical manipulation and between credulous observers, it's very possible for
somebody to mistake something kind of mundane for something like telekinesis.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
I think the next two are really interesting because they
are attributes often ascribed in Catholic doctrine to saints and
religious figures. So we've got something called by location, and
what that is is the supposed phenomenon of an individual
being able to be in two physical locations at the
same time. It's kind of this isn't exactly the same thing,
(47:33):
but it's kind of like in the Catholic Eucharist the
concept of transubstantiation, where supposedly the bread and the wine
that you partake of actually transforms physically into the flesh
and blood of Jesus Christ. But more specifically, a really
interesting example of this is from a man by the
name of Padre Pio, who lived from eighteen eighty seven
(47:53):
to nineteen sixty eight. Was an Italian friar. A Caputian priest,
he suffered from digmata wounds, and he was ultimately made
a saint and was said to possess the power of bilocation.
So tell us a quick story. As a seminary student,
he claims to have teleported during prayer to the home
of a wealthy couple, where he witnessed a woman giving
(48:16):
birth to a child, a daughter, all the while her
husband lay dying. He claims the virgin Mary appeared to him,
told him she was entrusting this newborn child to him
and that he should take care of her. Po asked
how he would know her, and was told that she'd
find him first and they'd meet in Rome. Then, it
said the mother saw him leaving the room. So supposedly
(48:39):
the daughter gave confession to Po seventeen years later in
Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, and that he took her
in and took care of her physically and spiritually a.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Year later, Mmmm, seventeen year old girl.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Often conflated with, or closely related with, the concept of claravoyance,
which is not telling the future. It's realizing events that
have transpired in a way that would not normally be observable.
So it's sort of sending your mind or your awareness
to something. By location is different by a location is
(49:12):
appearing right, either appearing in some sort of intangible but
visible form or appearing in illegitimate physical substance. So Masara
says he can do this, but says it's not really
the point of his mission or his existence here on
this plane.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
He also says it's easy. It's so easy, I could bilocate.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Well, he doesn't. From his perspective, he doesn't want it
to distract from his actual calling, sort of the same
way that Anthony Hopkins doesn't want you know, like Anthony
Hopkins is acting. He's an amazing actor, but his first
love is piano, and that's why he feels like he's
here on earth.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
Massaro actually claims to be purposely blocking these abilities because
they are not what he wants to be known for.
And his followers often say that, like with that quote,
that they have seen him do some of these I'm
going to call him miracles, but never does he offer
to demonstrate them in any of his dozens and dozens
of YouTube videos.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Well, you know, if they're really on that plan to
buy twenty thirty five have a one hundred percent enlightened society,
what's going to have to happen is Bentino is going
to have to teleport, which is the next thing we're
going to talk about in one of his YouTube videos
somehow or in public somewhere where people have cameras on him.
And then that's when he starts getting three hundred million followers,
(50:33):
four hundred million followers, then he can really start changing society.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
So at this point, what we have described are the
aims of the organization a brief description of Massar himself,
and we didn't we didn't talk about his childhood, we
didn't talk about some of the criticisms of his personality
that you could you could read at length, and please,
you know, read them with a grain of salt, because
we have to winner with the motivations. The people might
(50:58):
be sure that's that's been but we do know that
former core staff members have talked about darker sides of this.
One said, I feel he is setting people up for
mass suicide. He talked about the harvest. I always had
a weird feeling about this. And on Thesimber ninth, I
(51:20):
want to say twenty seventeen, one of Masorrow's longtime devoted students,
a fellow named Brent Wilkins, committed suicide by jumping off
a cliff near the Midley Bridge in Sedona, Arizona, and
you can see news stories about it. You can see
some I don't know, some different media mentions. But the
(51:45):
thing is that for people who are opponents of this
guy or this movement, this budding movement, this is taken
to be a sign that something is woefully rotten in
the town of Sedona. However, be fair it is. You know,
it's difficult to ascribe the exact cause for that suicide
(52:07):
without more information. Every suicide is a tragedy, and it
may be that mister Wilkins was troubled for other reasons
unrelated to his involvement in the movement, but the reason
this thing becomes disturbing to people, whether they consider themselves
neutral observers or whether they consider themselves already prejudiced observers.
(52:31):
The troubling thing with this is that is that we
have seen precedents before in the United States. The United
States is a hotbed of movements that, for one reason
or another goes sour. I personally do not think it
(52:51):
is fair, nor do I think it is productive to
call a leader of a YouTube movement a new him
Jones or new David Koresh or new Charles Manson, because
at this point, thank god, no one has been murdered. Right,
But we would be remiss if we did not mention
(53:12):
that that suicide occurred. And we would also be remiss
if we didn't mention this harvest concept. And what is it?
Is it a Is it supposed to be a massive
spiritual awakening and ascension of the group?
Speaker 2 (53:28):
Yeah, it's weird when you when you put whatever concept
the harvest is and then you line it up with
that enlightened society by twenty thirty five goal, Like what
is that? Is that what the harvest is like? By
harvesting all of the egos, maybe so that we're all enlightened.
Maybe that's what he's talking about, but that's just me
thinking on the top of my head.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
He did post on his Instagram page an excerpt from
a book about a yogi by the name of Sara Dama,
and in it it says, whatever the Guru does is correct.
The Guru is the self. He cannot do wrong, even
though his actions may well appear to be wrong in
the side of the world. If a devotee sees the
guru's actions as bad and thinks badly of the Guru,
bad power will come to the devotee. If you think
(54:11):
that whatever the Guru does is correct, then good power
will come.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
So this is almost Nietzschean and it's beyond good and
evil idea. There's also there's also a quote from an
ex member named Gabby Petris, who is able to go
on record or with their name. According to Petris, Masaru
predicts planet Earth is at the crossroads of splitting into
two planes of existence. High vibration fourth dimensional beings who
(54:36):
embody love, as to his students, will ascend to a
less physical realm featuring telepathic group consciousness, low vibration third
dimensional beings that's you, me, and Paul Nol that MAT's
a cloud load vibration. Third dimensional beings who embody negativity
are on a quote ship going down. So there's nothing
(54:58):
specific or physical, right. I think that's very important. There's
no prediction of an imminent physical apocalyptic event. However, for
people who again are reading into this, there seems to
be a dark disturbance. And this is so new that
(55:18):
we you know, we're we're reporting on something that is
happening now. It's quite possible that it changes in the
future and we have to update it.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
For me though, the thing that's that's striking about this
this guy is, you know, when you think of a
true guru or a true leader, often they eschew material things.
But if you check out this guy's instagram, he is
a big time all about material things fall or he
has you know, rented million dollar mansions, and is you know,
(55:53):
constantly taking selfies, smoking fine cigars and posing shirtless in
the mirror. I mean, he is clearly quite into himself,
and not to say there's anything wrong with that, and
in fact, part of his rhetoric is that that is
okay and that that's a part of it. You are
a god, you know, you are the best version of yourself.
You should be this kind of hedonism, the idea of
(56:15):
sort of pursuing your bliss, I guess, but it doesn't
quite jive with his, you know, sort of self actualization
kind of.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
But it actually, it actually it jives perfect. Really, I'll
tell you why. There's a video on there on the
co Infinity page called Meet Bentino Masorro, a spiritual teacher
for the Next Generation. Here is a quote from that video,
and it's Bentino talking after after it has him like
a setup to the video. Then it has a long
(56:47):
montage of like a dance party, rave kind of thing
in the middle of wherever it is that they're having
this talk, a long like slow motion dance party. Then
it cuts back to Bentino and he says this, technically,
feeling good is your only job because when you feel good,
literally everything else takes care of itself. Now, this doesn't
(57:07):
mean that we don't take action, we don't act in
our visions. It simply means that without feeling good first,
you're not even in the same wavelength as inspiration. You
cannot get access to thoughts that offer solutions instead of problems,
joy instead of depression. So in order to be in
the proper state, all you have to do is be
in the moment, tune into yourself, and ask yourself intuitively,
(57:32):
what is the most exciting thing I could be thinking
of or doing right now. So I think for me,
that's that perfectly embodies smoking a fine cigar, hanging out
at a mansion using the money that I got from
these donations. I'm doing what's making me happy right now.
Speaker 3 (57:48):
And yet he pushes fasting on his followers, where he
says they can only drink grape juice and shouldn't eat
any food or water. It just kind of feels like
the rules don't apply to him. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
It's really important that put this in here, because gosh,
those folks, as you're listening, you're wondering why one of
us doesn't say this. This is spot on with l
Ron Hubbard, aka the commodore in scientology. This is spot
on with the pigs in animal farm. There is a
very it's very there is a convenience of equality, a
(58:23):
quality for me because I get it, because I'm in
on it. That's why I'm in charge, right And the
people who are in the fasting programs are not experiencing
this kind of joy. What they're experiencing are chronic health problems.
Their teeth are falling out, their hair is falling out.
And this is similar to things you'll hear like the
(58:45):
scientology's infamous niasin treatments. Yeah, or the whole or the whole. Right,
So we we want to be want to be as
fair as possible with this, but that is that is paradoxical,
and it does stick out. And paradoxical is a word
that Masorro uses in his own defense. Because, as we
(59:06):
mentioned earlier at the top of the show, we felt
it necessary to give you a couple excerpts from Trinfinity's
reply to this article.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
The blog post was called our first official response to
the cult accusations. Quote. At some point something like this
was going to rise. It always does for people in
my community. I encourage you to exhibit no anger or
judgment towards the author. That's nice.
Speaker 1 (59:34):
You could pick the most saintly figures in history, and
if you really wanted to, you could pick them apart
and reassemble them to meet any agenda you may have
in how you wish to think of them. There's an
important part there too, where they say the author of
this article was out to create a false sensationalist piece,
and my transparency and paradoxical but innocent expressions over the
(59:55):
years made this an easy picture for her to paint.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
It says, I am not an abuser, and I am
not out to gain power over others. But decide for yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
If I have any upset over this, it is for
the people who have put in tremendous effort and commitment
to applying the work and elevating their lives and are
now left represented as people who have no ability to
discern and are lost in their following of me. And
then he goes on to say that calling it a
cult is quite an assertion to make and honors no one.
There is ever so much more to an entity than
(01:00:24):
meets the eye. This is part of the message I
wish to embody through my occasionally paradoxical appearances. Never judge
the surface of any situation, person or motivation. In fact,
never judge at all. See beyond the surface and be free,
be love. And I do want to say too that
with the SoundCloud page from Batgirl that you can find
(01:00:47):
there's an interview with one of the followers, and the
person very casually asks how they feel about being referred
to as a cult, and the person says, well, if
it's a cult, it's a cult I want to be in.
You know, there's that.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
There is a lot of positivity that you will see,
at least again, I'm trying not to judge them on
the surface, but on the surface there seems to be
a ton of positivity, sure, and things that you would
want to take away that feel good, Like that when
we were talking about, you know, find joy and pursue
joy and everything else is going to fall into place.
Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
That sounds great, Yeah, but what how do we define joy?
A great deal of human tragedy is people selfishly pursuing
something that brings joy to them at the expense and
the physical emotional danger of others. People are selfish dicks,
It's true. And this leads us to some questions. Is
it's a shame. There's a lot of stuff we didn't
(01:01:42):
get to today, folks, but we're running a little long,
so we may have to come back for an update.
As we said, this is developing. We hope that we
have fairly represented both the concerns and the claims in here,
so as Matt said, not to judge at the surface,
but these things sound inspiring, hopeful, and even attainable. And Matt,
(01:02:06):
you you dropped a quote here in the notes that
I want to give you the honor of.
Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Oh yeah. Well, basically, what he's saying is let your
passion guide you follow your dreams. Right. Uh. For some
people it means I'll finally make that podcast about Badger
Bags that I've been talking about for the last two years.
For others, it means I will become the next top chef.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
I feel like you took an indirect shot at me there, buddy.
Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Oh the Badger Bags podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
It's coming, man, And I think you can follow your
passion one day, and you're gonna be able to do it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
I believe in both of you, even you and your
current gash of state.
Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Oh thank you so much. But the question I wanted
to leave here is with these kinds of teachings, they
are very positive for somebody who has an aspiration that
is positive for other people or even for themselves, but
it's not going to harm anybody else. What if somebody's
joy that they're really following kind of the point that
Ben made earlier, what if their joy is harming other people.
(01:02:59):
What if they're the most exciting thing they could be
doing right now is a brutal crime.
Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Have you guys heard of mccamee manner.
Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
No M A N O R. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
It's like an extreme haunted house that was in San
Diego for a long time where they like kidnap you
and you and shave your head and force feeds you
horrible things. This is a really extreme example. But the
guy that runs it, last name is McCamey. He videos everything.
Everyone that comes in there. They all come in there willingly,
right waiver that totally signs away all their rights to sue.
(01:03:36):
There's no safe word. You're in there until he's done
with you, and he's up in your face the whole time,
you know, getting footage of you being brutalized and tortured.
And some people sign up and come back and do
it again. I'm not saying that is directly with this
his life, but it's sort of an extreme example that
I think warrants comparison because, like you're saying, if people
(01:03:57):
will willingly submit to something that is not ultimately good
for them, right sure, and especially given the promise of
something new you know, something different.
Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Something beyond, something not understandable, like.
Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
The same reason people open the Lemo Kond configuration in
hell Raiser.
Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
Exactly, pushing yourself as far as possible, whether spiritually or physically.
Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Yeah, quite possibly. I mean we know that for many
people many For many people, joy emotions in general are complex,
often difficult to discern things. We have questions for you
as well. We'd like to hear from you. Do you
(01:04:42):
think what's your take on these sorts of movements and
how they exist in the digital age? Are the harmless
new iteration of some tale as old as time to
steal the line from Beauty and the Beast? Is there
something new that's fun na mentally changing them? And if so,
how is it for the better? Is it for the worse?
(01:05:03):
Is it dangerous? Do you consider this movement and things
like it a cult, as our author b. Schofield clearly does,
and this one I really want to know. Do you
have any other examples for us?
Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
And also have you been to a Masorrow retreat or
maybe been to a talk or you know, and you
feel like you've come out with something positive and you're
okay with everything?
Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Is the author being unfair?
Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
Are we being unfair?
Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Let us know, right, and that's the end of this
classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about
this episode, you can get into contact with us in
a number of different ways. One of the best is
to give us a call. Our number is one eight
three three st d WYTK. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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