Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1994, Page 29
Pretty soon, you‟ll be offered a new brain. And it won‟t be as conflicted as your old one. It will
come to you prepackaged with all the answers to all the world‟s problems. “How convenient,”
you‟ll say, and you‟ll buy it, seeing as your old brain isn‟t working anymore. In fact, that
snoozing old thing won‟t even register the transaction.
At that moment, you will have been officially sucked in. Make no mistake about it: People get
sucked into the darndest things. You think you‟re too smart or too clever to get pulled in by
the hose of one of life‟s hungry little vacuums. YOU ARE WRONG. A sucker is born every
minute, and so is a suckee.
The microphone got passed around, and everyone was invited to give “expressions.” The
people would face CBJ up there onstage and say things like “I have such a praise for you.”
And “I feel your penetration.” And “Your cells have impregnated me.”
And “I‟m yours! Every cell is yours! I‟m yours 100 percent. You need it, you deserve it, you
cannot go on without it, it‟s flesh, 100 percent. It‟s all I want. I want to give it to you, my
flesh, 100 percent. You need it so much. You must be covered physically! Let me in! Let me in
all the way! Please! I love you! I love you so much! I‟m covering your flesh! I‟m covering your
flesh now!”
And “I want to make a lot of money and I want to give you a lot of money.”
And “I got paid and I took a number of hundred-dollar bills and I put them in my pocket. And
that was the money that was burning. It made me feel that I never knew what it was to burn
with physical passion before. That was my gift to CBJ.”
And “I‟m giving to CBJ every month now more than my salary. We don‟t need to keep a
savings. “Savings” is another code word we use to mean something bad will happen to us.
Nothing bad will ever happen to us if we will be together and be with CBJ!”
And “Here‟s a check for a thousand dollars.”
And, finally, “If you don‟t pay to CBJ, you are committing suicide.”
***
You may find this all a wee bit preposterous. How could any sane human being stand up and
swear his life and bank account away to three show people in leopard-print outfits who sing
bad songs and yell at you and demand your commitment and demand your money and
promise to never leave you for all eternity and--perhaps most remarkably--convince you that
you actually want them in your life forever? Easily. It‟s the process that sucks you in, not the
content.
I did not arrive at this conclusion without a certain amount of my own personal psychic
discomfort.
It is easy, I tell you, if you sit long enough in the landscape of some very odd picture, to
being thinking “What is wrong with me?” instead of “What is wrong with this picture?” You
see that everybody else thinks this odd place is normal, and because you don‟t see it as
normal, well, then you must be abnormal. You start questioning yourself, your judgment gets
wacky, you don‟t want to be odd, you want to fit in, so you become normal as defined by the
abnormal picture. You become odd.
I became odd. Beserk? I became furious. Uncharacteristic and unformed rage came out of me
as I sat in those meetings. The rage bounced all over the place. I put the rage onto my
family. I put the rage onto the Catholic Church. I put the rage onto every church. I put the
rage onto Jim and Tammy Bakker, Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, Satan, Jesus and a lot of
other people I had never met.
I put the rage, finally, onto my shrink.
Pretty soon, you‟ll be offered a new brain. And it won‟t be as conflicted as your old one. It will
come to you prepackaged with all the answers to all the world‟s problems. “How convenient,”
you‟ll say, and you‟ll buy it, seeing as your old brain isn‟t working anymore. In fact, that
snoozing old thing won‟t even register the transaction.
At that moment, you will have been officially sucked in. Make no mistake about it: People get
sucked into the darndest things. You think you‟re too smart or too clever to get pulled in by
the hose of one of life‟s hungry little vacuums. YOU ARE WRONG. A sucker is born every
minute, and so is a suckee.
The microphone got passed around, and everyone was invited to give “expressions.” The
people would face CBJ up there onstage and say things like “I have such a praise for you.”
And “I feel your penetration.” And “Your cells have impregnated me.”
And “I‟m yours! Every cell is yours! I‟m yours 100 percent. You need it, you deserve it, you
cannot go on without it, it‟s flesh, 100 percent. It‟s all I want. I want to give it to you, my
flesh, 100 percent. You need it so much. You must be covered physically! Let me in! Let me in
all the way! Please! I love you! I love you so much! I‟m covering your flesh! I‟m covering your
flesh now!”
And “I want to make a lot of money and I want to give you a lot of money.”
And “I got paid and I took a number of hundred-dollar bills and I put them in my pocket. And
that was the money that was burning. It made me feel that I never knew what it was to burn
with physical passion before. That was my gift to CBJ.”
And “I‟m giving to CBJ every month now more than my salary. We don‟t need to keep a
savings. “Savings” is another code word we use to mean something bad will happen to us.
Nothing bad will ever happen to us if we will be together and be with CBJ!”
And “Here‟s a check for a thousand dollars.”
And, finally, “If you don‟t pay to CBJ, you are committing suicide.”
***
You may find this all a wee bit preposterous. How could any sane human being stand up and
swear his life and bank account away to three show people in leopard-print outfits who sing
bad songs and yell at you and demand your commitment and demand your money and
promise to never leave you for all eternity and--perhaps most remarkably--convince you that
you actually want them in your life forever? Easily. It‟s the process that sucks you in, not the
content.
I did not arrive at this conclusion without a certain amount of my own personal psychic
discomfort.
It is easy, I tell you, if you sit long enough in the landscape of some very odd picture, to
being thinking “What is wrong with me?” instead of “What is wrong with this picture?” You
see that everybody else thinks this odd place is normal, and because you don‟t see it as
normal, well, then you must be abnormal. You start questioning yourself, your judgment gets
wacky, you don‟t want to be odd, you want to fit in, so you become normal as defined by the
abnormal picture. You become odd.
I became odd. Beserk? I became furious. Uncharacteristic and unformed rage came out of me
as I sat in those meetings. The rage bounced all over the place. I put the rage onto my
family. I put the rage onto the Catholic Church. I put the rage onto every church. I put the
rage onto Jim and Tammy Bakker, Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, Satan, Jesus and a lot of
other people I had never met.
I put the rage, finally, onto my shrink.
