1970s Self Improvement Seminars

That's an awesome perspective, great. I was curious about it after watching this today. I thought the BEAT vs. Pyramid Power argument between Reynolds and Carl Weathers was hilarious. I was born in the 1980s so I've always wondered about these seminars.

I was really to young to remember a lot about this seminar my mother dragged my dad (and my brother and I) to. But I remember that that started praying for people that smoked and the guy doing most of the praying/yelling stated anyone who smokes after tonight will get sick and throw up. It wasn't 10 minutes later my dad told us boys to "come on". We went outside and he lit up. Far as I could tell he didn't get sick. From that day I've always thought those things were a joke.

I unfortunately (or, rather, quite fortunately) was a bit too young to fully partake in the est era, but I remember Tom Snyder talking about it on the "Tomorrow" show.

What exactly was the point of not letting people out to use the restroom (other than to break them down), and how did people interact with each other once they had soiled themselves?

There have always been these types of scams perpetrated in one form or another. You can go back to the turn of the century and see similar scams. Its the modern answer to cults of the ancient past. There are always niave fools who want to believe that somebody else can give them all the answers to life (what a joke!), and there is alaways some charlatan, con-artist, or lunatic willing to play that role. Their "guru" almost always uses these disciples for money and/or sex. Even todays self-help gurus (like Tony Robbins) will take hundreds or even thousands of dollars from you (selling you books, tapes, new "mastery" programs, seminars in Hawaii, etc). Virtually all of these suckers are NOT measurably better off afterwards, but they keep coming back like mindless drones year after year.

I hadn't seen this movie in years, and had never seen it all the way through. When they got to the part about the seminars, I was struck by the resemblance to the tactics of James Ray, who managed to sicken many during his seminars and ultimately succeeded in killing 4 during one of his infamous sweat lodges, which took place within a couple of hours of their return from a 36 hour fast in which they were not allowed to eat OR drink, and weren't supposed to sleep, either.

No one was supposed to talk, exit, or do anything he didn't give them permission to during his seminars. He babbled on about pyramids, and a conglomeration of other ancient traditions, including Indian traditions. He'd yell at them to drop as if dead during the Samurai game and wouldn't allow them to move for hours. The punishment for non-compliance was that the other group members would be punished if the individual didn't do as told. He called them names and generally abused them, and the ultimate stupidity was his echoing of Bert Convy's "If it happens to you, you caused it" nonsense. He calls it the "Law of Attraction" and says whatever good or evil happens in your life, you attracted it to yourself. Apparently, he's enamored of jail, because that's where he wound up. The "It" of James Ray was dubbed "The Secret."

His other toxic teaching was mind-over-matter, which was what wound up killing the sweat lodge participants, whom he had managed to convince that they would not succumb to the extreme heat in his over-the-top ceremony, which lasted twice as long and used more steam than the genuine article, because "you are better than that." Anyone who tells people that they can control every bodily response and life event while controlling them himself is nothing but an abusive egomaniac in the guise of a guru.

In this movie, of course, all this is played for laughs and is supposed to be an exaggeration, I suppose, but James Ray proved the movie is closer to reality than not.