SES schools worldwide

Discussion of the SES, particularly in the UK.
daska
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Postby daska » Mon May 30, 2005 8:24 pm

I know from experience, and other ex-pupils have confirmed that they have the same problem, that trying to explain the totality of the experience of being brought up in SES is nigh on impossible. What you have to factor into every aspect of what you question or speculate about and every response you receive to those speculations is that we had no choice. We were not allowed choice. We were not allowed to leave SES. We were punished until we admitted we agreed with the approved way of thinking.

When you are fed a consistent message about the purpose of your existance for your entire life, and when emotional maturity isn't high on the educational agenda, these messages have a strong and lasting effect. We're not talking about teenage girls taking things more literally as if having grown up in a normal state school they're suddenly presented with a radical new idea and go 'oh wow, let's give it a go', we're talking about this being the only message fed to girls from the moment they are born to the point that it's so engrained it's a fundamental knowlege. And the result is that, like my sister, this is what you expect to happen and you see nothing wrong with it, and you have no reason to question whether your purpose in life might actually be different from what you've been led to believe is the 'truth'. And conversely, you have every reason to believe that you'll be miserable if you don't fulfil your true purpose. Because you have been taught that this is the truth. And then, how wonderful, the school introduces you to a selection of suitable men of the correct age...

But when you are given the opportunity and you escape and you finally, many years later, realise exactly what you have escaped, only then do you begin to understand the mental shackles that are imposed by the SES teachings.

Question for you Bella - how would you feel if it were teenage boys being brought up to think their sole and true purpose in life and their only chance of true happiness lay in marrying and serving a 30+ woman? After all, if mother nature has seen fit to balance our natural sex drives this way how could it be wrong?

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bella
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Postby bella » Tue May 31, 2005 5:53 am

I spent an hour and a half writing an epic in response to ADG's list last night, hit submit, and got taken back to the login page - post gone. One good thing about my years in the SOP is that it allowed me to content myself with an "oh, shit" and go to bed. Looking at it again today, I don't really want to go through point by point, giving my own experiences of the things ADG states as fact. It would be more useful in the thread about what's changed, since my experience of McLaren is limited to reading the volumes of transcripts of his lectures, and second-hand info from people who knew him. I joined the school at about the time he died.

Daska, thank you for your thoughtful, clear post. This is why I'm interested in this area - it's talking about girls being presented with a life-altering, lifelong (ideally) choice at a point where they're barely into young adulthood, and it doesn't sit comfortably with me. I sympathise with thinking you're helping young women avoid the "pitfalls of modern life", but motivations aside, this practice seems unnecessarily controlling. After reading angry descriptions of being denied potential partners because of raunchy sex weekends organised by school heads, I probably wasn't expecting many rational, sincere responses to this issue.

Question for you Bella - how would you feel if it were teenage boys being brought up to think their sole and true purpose in life and their only chance of true happiness lay in marrying and serving a 30+ woman? After all, if mother nature has seen fit to balance our natural sex drives this way how could it be wrong?


My feelings stand. You do raise an interesting point about sexual peaks for younger men and older women, though. This is something that has been distributed as fact for a number of years, but the biological basis is muddy at best. If you're talking hormone production and fertility, males and females peak at the same time - teens/early 20s. If you're talking sexual satisfaction, it takes women longer to get it together, and it's possibly less likely they'll be able to do this with a teenage male partner. :)

daska
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Postby daska » Tue May 31, 2005 6:27 am

Oh, I fully admit to being consious of the arguments about sexual peaks, I just thought it might be a useful one to throw into the pot. But, assuming that it was factual how would you respond if the SES did another volte face and started teaching this? They are not unknown for changing their minds...!

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a different guest
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Postby a different guest » Tue May 31, 2005 6:33 am

If you're talking sexual satisfaction, it takes women longer to get it together, and it's possibly less likely they'll be able to do this with a teenage male partner. :)


ahh, but if they have ALREADY "got it together" and THEN get the teenage male partner... ;)

Or is everyone saving "it" for marriage?

I'm sorry the long post disappeared Bella. I've had it happen to me on boards before. Funnily enough, even without SES training MY response tends to be "oh shit" and then I go off to do something else.

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bella
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Postby bella » Tue May 31, 2005 8:34 am

I'm sorry the long post disappeared Bella. I've had it happen to me on boards before. Funnily enough, even without SES training MY response tends to be "oh shit" and then I go off to do something else.


I'm sure you're a much more inherently patient person than I am, ADG. :)

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a different guest
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Postby a different guest » Tue May 31, 2005 9:57 am

bella wrote:I'm sure you're a much more inherently patient person than I am, ADG. :)


Well really it all depends on what time of the month it is ;)

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Postby mgormez » Tue May 31, 2005 11:18 am

Bella, I know someting changed with the software update. I have to register myself every time when I have a peak here. I'll have a look on the support board to see if this is common.

On composing posts; longer ones I do in Notepad or another editor and regularly save that will busy on it. When it is ready I do a copy and paste to the message board window. It is also a bit easier to have an overview then, instead of the small window this software offers.
Mike Gormez

NYC
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Postby NYC » Thu Jun 02, 2005 7:54 pm

Mike & Bella,
I too have had posts vanish into the ether when I hit "Submit," and it seems to happen when I have too many cookies...if I erase my internet history the problem is solved.

ADG, I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about an introductory evening?Heh, that's not a dare or proselytism, just a comment.


ADG, I too am totally tickled by the idea of you showing up for an introductory evening or, even better, registering for Part 1. I hope you can trust me as a fellow feminist, ADG?so I dare you! Double dog dare you! Give em hell, redhead. Part 1 was a lot of fun.

In general re the Aussie School... the following is from http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/vi ... af47aa4ca4
"westie"Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 10:01 am Post subject: Re: Sydney SOP 1970 - 2004
Mavro had for some years an ongoing extramarital affair with one of the senior female students . One would have had to have known Mavro at the time and been under his influence ( any of the 'Top three groups' ) to appreciate the enormous power that he wielded -- he simply intimidated everybody. Although some had begun to suspect his relationship with Ms P. none dared to mention anything to his wife -- the second most powerful person there. This whilst giving searing 'sexual morality' lectures to his senior men's and women's groups -- all seperate and segregated . A case of do as I say but not as I do ... not surprising really is it ? When Mrs. M found out, the woman concerned was hustled , within the week, off back to her former home in England.

One has to remember that all the senior people including the Mavro's were, in ordinary life --- well, simply ordinary. What they had created was a small but intense 'kingdom' in which they were 'people of consequence'.

To gain the coveted position of tutor meant doing exactly as you were ordered to by the Mavro's -- if not you were first 'streamed' into a 'waffle group' and largley ostricised by your peers ... and then , usually after one had paid the next terms fees, one simply 'vanished' ie left.

The rule was that no school person could meet with or speak to anyone who had left . Imagine the pain that caused family members some of who stayed in. Imagine what that did to people who had been in for ten years or so, made friends and then found that no one would talk to them.

The whole thing really was a mangled attempt at running a School of the Fourth Way. Although, in my opinion, it helped some to find new and substantial meaning in their lives, to many many others it simply caused a lot of pain.

I'm fairly certain that none of this sort of stuff goes on in there any more


This sort of history seems relevant to me when evaluating whether the match-ups between young girls leaving SES-sponsored schools and decades-older SES men are a harmless result of shared spiritual beliefs, or sexually exploitative.

Or somewhere in the murky middle...

NYC

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Postby NYC » Thu Jun 02, 2005 8:25 pm

erikdr wrote
And two of my friends in their most devoted SES period decided to become part of his [Paul Van Oyen's] short-lived pilot program in matchmaking, and got matched by him. Though both ex-SES members now they're still happily together and just planned a 3rd child...


Erik, am I to understand that Paul Van Oyen -- while head of the Dutch School, before the schism -- arranged marriages between members? Did he charge money for it? Did the couples meet before they were married? Did anyone (that you know of) feel free to turn down the match? Or was it more that if you wanted to get married, you went to Mr. Van Oyen and asked him to pick someone for you?

I find it a bizarre thing to do in a Western culture, and frankly even more creepy in light of the reputation his sister Doreen Van Oyen has for seducing married men who were high up in the British hierarchy.

Bella, you agreed with me that frequently people within the SES/SoPP have a tendency to treat their juniors as inferiors. So wouldn't a marriage between a man in his 30s and an eighteen or nineteen-year old tend to put the woman in a subordinate position?

NYC

Goblinboy
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Postby Goblinboy » Thu Jun 02, 2005 10:48 pm

NYC wrote: -- arranged marriages between members? ... Did anyone (that you know of) feel free to turn down the match? Or was it more that if you wanted to get married, you went to Mr. Van Oyen and asked him to pick someone for you?


NYC,

Thanks for revisting the history of the Sydney School. And it?s remarkable that Mavro is still in business, albeit under a different shingle, with the ?School for Self Knowledge at http://www.schoolforselfknowledge.org/ Westie?s posts were fascinating ? I hope s/he posts again.

More on the marriage question ? I know that members of the School of Philosophy (SES?s antipodean franchise) had to seek permission to wed from the local head of the school, and possibly still do.

Regards,

G

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Free Thinker
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Postby Free Thinker » Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:19 am

As of when I left the NY school about 8 years ago, people were still asking permission from either the head or their tutors to marry. I know a wonderful, happily-married couple who didn't marry for a long time because the school said "No." Yeesh!

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erikdr
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Postby erikdr » Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:38 am

Erik, am I to understand that Paul Van Oyen -- while head of the Dutch School, before the schism -- arranged marriages between members?
1. Did he charge money for it?
2. Did the couples meet before they were married?
3. Did anyone (that you know of) feel free to turn down the match?
4. Or was it more that if you wanted to get married, you went to Mr. Van Oyen and asked him to pick someone for you?


Hi fellows,

1. No money charged as far as I know. Simply a part of his job as head tutor.
2. Yes, people _did_ meet.
3. and 4. In most cases that I know of, it was the people taking the initiative. Mostly the man, and then the lady got a 'suggestion from her tutor', although in the case I know best both persons turned to Van Oyen and asked for a match.
But if at least one side did not have the initiative (e.g. the lady and the suggestion), it was clearly not easy to turn the suggestion down.
Actually it was Piet who started the thread and I just added to it, so possibly Piet knows details of a few more cases.

Note that the Dutch practice started quite a few years later than the one in London, and seems to have been less wide-spread. London was active already from the seventies as far as The Secret Cult writes, and of course Sir M was the only suitable matchmaker...
With folded palms,

<Erik>

Goblinboy
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Reporting on participation

Postby Goblinboy » Mon Jun 13, 2005 11:48 pm

One feature of the Australian School of Philosphy classes was the undisclosed monitoring of students. Wonder if this happended elsewhere?

Each "tutor" had an assistant, who would take notes on what each student said, and (without the students' knowledge) would discuss the impact of each student on the class and their suitability for progressing through the School with the tutor on a regular basis. Reports on individuals would be prepared and forwarded up the hierarchy.

"Unsuitable members" were usually those who regularly challenged the continual assertion of "truths" devoid of context or consideration of alternative views.

Wondered in NYC or Bella (or others who are current participants) were aware of this monitoring.

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Free Thinker
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Postby Free Thinker » Tue Jun 14, 2005 1:38 am

When I was a student in the NY school, and I'm sure they still do this, they did take notes in the earlier parts. But it wasn't secret - someone had the "service" role to be notetaker and sat at the back on the aisle taking notes. Everyone could see the person taking them. I had to do it a few times though it was hard. You know, when I was in the school, I never thought about what they might use the notes for. Thanks for bringing it up!

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a different guest
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Postby a different guest » Tue Jun 14, 2005 5:07 am

"Unsuitable members" were usually those who regularly challenged the continual assertion of "truths" devoid of context or consideration of alternative views.


Well there goes the idea of me doing some sort of spy work and checking out their teachings by going on a course - they'd be booting me out quick smart! *g*


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