re: #21 Absalom, Absalom, Obdicut

“Do you still hold to the idea that an adult can’t be prevented from doing something?”

Adults can be “prevented from doing something” and forced to do other things. 2.3 million people are currently locked up in prisons in the US, prevented from leaving, I heard people were forced, at gunpoint, to drink poison at Johnstown. But this just does not apply to the est training. People can and did go to the bathroom during the est training, this is a fact. And yes participants were spoken with at every opportunity about the promises THEY had made and agreed to at the beginning of the est training- THAT was what the course was about. It was not a course on planting awesome rooftop herb gardens. Like many things, there is a certain, ‘you had to be there’ness’ about the est training to understand and have a real sense of the context of it, it was very theatrical. It might seem bizarre in 2013 to hear about a course in 1971 where a person asked a participant “did you make a promise to only use the bathroom at the scheduled breaks.”? etc. But that interaction made sense to people who were there. Anyone who thought it too much for them left at the breaks and never returned and just got up and left - and many did.

“Do you think all things are equal— that, for example, the Heaven’s Gate Cult and Presbyterianism are essentially the same?”

No, I do not view all things as the same. Some things may be the same and others not.