My high school was a social engineering experiment that ended badly, in scandal. I've posted about this before here and here. Summit School for the Arts was shut down by the state in 1999. The school and the scandal around it screwed up my life in a variety of ways. Recently, I had an opportunity to talk about my experiences there and the long process of healing from them on the Uncomfortable Conversations podcast, hosted by GuruNischan.
GuruNischan worked at the school during its final year and contributed to its failure by exercising poor judgment. She supplied me with cannabis to sell and didn't maintain professional boundaries with other students. The cannabis thing triggered a police investigation, but GuruNischan was ever really held accountable for any of it. Today, more than 20 years later, she held herself accountable for it on her podcast, with me as a guest.
Mere Piare, GuruNischan's father, was my mentor from 15-18. Though he was never paid by the school, he ran it, mostly from behind the scenes. As my mentor, Mere Piare taught me priceless things about ecosystems and psychology. He also fed me psychedelic drugs and indoctrinated me into a problematic belief system. We got deep into this in the podcast.
Although Mere Piare was a former member of the 3HO movement, he passed himself off in the rural community as a devout Sikh, claiming spiritual authority from the misrepresentation. I was steeped in his wayward teachings for years. At the school, I acted as an extension of him, furthering his agenda through myriad devious schemes.
Many of Mere Piare's teachings involved manipulation. Manipulation of the body's subtle energies to elicit specific responses from people I interacted with. Manipulation of people and social dynamics to serve his agenda. Underneath it all was Mere Piare's manipulation of me, which was so complete that it took me years to break his spell.
After studying mind control and human experimentation in-depth for my job, I came to see my former mentor's pattern of behavior with me as distinctly similar to some mind control programs. The use of drugs to make me more open was an obvious part of that. So was cutting me off from outside sources of information by instilling paranoia in me about them. These and other things added up to serious psychological abuse. It didn't feel like abuse at the time, but that's what it amounted to.
It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I began to notice moments in my life where I'd manipulated other people using one of Mere Piare's formulas. It wasn't at all pleasant to acknowledge these moments and the moral failings in me that brought them about. While the manipulation itself was unconscious, breaking the pattern required slow and deliberate work. Work that may never be completely finished.
I feel good about having been on the podcast to talk publicly about this stuff. Hopefully my story will be helpful to others in some way. To learn more about the Summit School for the Arts fiasco and Mere Piare's wayward teachings, check out Navigating Dystopia at the link below.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
Read my novels:
- The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
Check out the comic I wrote:
- Finney Vol 1 Immutable Journey is available as a free e-comic.
Read my autobiographical monograph:
- Navigating Dystopia can be read for free or purchased as an NFT.
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