Ramasurvivor (66.194.52.249)
04-10-2004, 07:47 PM
I am starting this thread on this thoroughly toxic cult. It is centered in Shawano Wisconsin where its leader landed in the early 1970's. It is active in Mankato Minnesota, Rochester Minnesota and Iron Mountain MIchigan.
I watched this group coalesce as people who came out of the Assemblies of God lifted him into the status of apostle and inheritor of the tradition of Paul. I had a front row seat as I lived in his house.
I was at a week point in my life, bewildered by an emerging sexual identity (the sexual revolution had not yet reached the heartland) and ready to grasp at any straw and wanting to unload responsibility for my life onto some one elses' shoulders.
Then came the nightmare.
willing acceptance of a starvation diet (from 225 down to 150 over 18 months).
Sleep deprivation
Mind numbing rituals - chanting calculated to bring brain function down from the cerebral cortex into the lower brain.
Deliberate choice of counterintuitive requests to break any personal will.
One winter, late in the season Rama asked us to remove the snow (3 feet thick by this time) from his front yard (1/4 acre) and cart it away by wheelbarrow and shovel.
The diet was awful.
When we were not fasting (most often 3 days a week and till late at night) our meals were rice and a thin broth so hot that it burned your mouth. In it could be found a few chunks of flesh, very often fish. To this day I can't stomach most fish.
I can personally tell you that when the brethren tell you that Rama does not control their lives it is a feat of mental gymnastics. If you press them they will tell you Jesus does. If you pursue them into a corner they will tell you it is Rama that lets them know what Jesus wants of them.
From a distance of time I can see that Rama never abandoned his native hinduism, he just shoe horned christian scriptures to fit therein.
I was broken emotionally, psychologically and financially when I left. I now suffer PTSD, I raised the children that came from a "marriage by prophecy".
I had endured hours of rebukes for many weeks before I left.
It is still active. It is still abusing children. It is still
I watched this group coalesce as people who came out of the Assemblies of God lifted him into the status of apostle and inheritor of the tradition of Paul. I had a front row seat as I lived in his house.
I was at a week point in my life, bewildered by an emerging sexual identity (the sexual revolution had not yet reached the heartland) and ready to grasp at any straw and wanting to unload responsibility for my life onto some one elses' shoulders.
Then came the nightmare.
willing acceptance of a starvation diet (from 225 down to 150 over 18 months).
Sleep deprivation
Mind numbing rituals - chanting calculated to bring brain function down from the cerebral cortex into the lower brain.
Deliberate choice of counterintuitive requests to break any personal will.
One winter, late in the season Rama asked us to remove the snow (3 feet thick by this time) from his front yard (1/4 acre) and cart it away by wheelbarrow and shovel.
The diet was awful.
When we were not fasting (most often 3 days a week and till late at night) our meals were rice and a thin broth so hot that it burned your mouth. In it could be found a few chunks of flesh, very often fish. To this day I can't stomach most fish.
I can personally tell you that when the brethren tell you that Rama does not control their lives it is a feat of mental gymnastics. If you press them they will tell you Jesus does. If you pursue them into a corner they will tell you it is Rama that lets them know what Jesus wants of them.
From a distance of time I can see that Rama never abandoned his native hinduism, he just shoe horned christian scriptures to fit therein.
I was broken emotionally, psychologically and financially when I left. I now suffer PTSD, I raised the children that came from a "marriage by prophecy".
I had endured hours of rebukes for many weeks before I left.
It is still active. It is still abusing children. It is still