The Miami Roller Coaster
Mandamus 6 The Temptation
According to AMORC, humans possess a capacity for sensing an in
visible realm. Human beings can, in a supersensible realm, hear, see, and smell things they cannot smell now. AMORC will train you to develop these faculties. These hopes for supersensible, profound ex
perience hooked me into AMORC like a fish flailing on a line.
Rejection of Physical Senses
In the beginning of these introductory lessons, AMORC makes com
pelling arguments about the limitation of the physical senses. After a time, a neophyte begins to taste the promise of this supersensible ex
perience, known only to the very few. This is part of AMORC's unique draw.
Remember, AMORC's general constituency, upon commencing their membership, is usually not familiar with the history of occult
ism, parapsychology, or mystical practices. Many times, AMORC is a member's first pass at this type of teaching or organization. When this is the case, AMORC's claims tend to go unquestioned, especially when information coming from ordinary scientific and religious cir
cles is subtly questioned. Since AMORC has its unique calling in the
world, other Rosicrucian orders are considered to be pale imitations at best, if not outright frauds.
So by the time a neophyte begins to question AMORC, the or
der has created many stumbling blocks inside his mind. To ques
tion AMORC's authority becomes dangerous and even treasonous.
The initiate looks at AMORC as the only source of this supersensible knowledge. AMORC tells their initiates that these great developments can be obtained only with the genuine Rosicrucian teaching.
In Mandamus 6, we learn that even mental interpretations based on reasonable deduction or induction are unreliable. The monograph tries to instill doubt in you about the very fabric of the universe, your concept of space and time, and your normal sensory experience, as well as your ability to interpret it.
In the beginning, AMORC only proposes that you do certain ex
periments. Later on, after you have been thoroughly indoctrinated, this so-called invitation to try certain exercises will become a subtly imposed mandate. If you buy into AMORC's philosophy, you will have to do these exercises whether you want or not. Why? Because, after you are indoctrinated, the practice of these exercises becomes a critical matter of survival.
To gain the protection of the egregore of AMORC, you must prac
tice the exercises and pay your dues. In fact, at a certain point, you learn that AMORC is the only authentic positive spiritual egregore that exists. This means that, indeed, AMORC is the only true link to God.
Two Experiments to Practice Experiment 1
The postulant sits in silence, away from others, and concentrates on internal functions that usually do not command his attention, like breathing, heartbeat, perhaps the skin's sensitivity to temperature or the movement of air in the room. The postulant should try to feel the duality between the physical and the nonphysical body.
Experiment 2
The postulant should then Interact among a lot of people, observing how you can be conscious of yourself while sensing the crowd of peo
ple. A sense of the inner, of oneself, coexists with the outer, "external"
world.
On January 12,1983, less than two weeks after arriving in Florida, I walked from downtown Miami on Flagler Street and First Avenue to the Social Security office in Little Havana, a journey of about four miles.
It was hot day. Still, I had a long-sleeve shirt on, and I was sweat
ing. As I walked, I was talking to myself about how I hated AMORC's empty philosophical writing.
I was deeply convinced that I needed my green card so that I could go to college and get my mother, my sisters, and brother out of poverty in Haiti and move them to the United States.
When I finally got to the Social Security office, I got a number and sat waiting for my turn to go to the counter. Looking straight ahead at someone standing in the office, I believed that, for the first time in my life, I was observing a human aura. I hated that observation and mentally blocked out that picture.
Here I was, in the middle of a crowded government office, try
ing to get my Social Security card so I could work, bothering about worthless psychic phenomena like seeing auras.
At the moment, I was thinking, "I do not care to see auras. What I need is my financial freedom." When I got home that night, here's what I wrote in my diary:
My Rosicrucian Diary January 1 2 ,1 9 8 3
In the middle of my torments today, the Cosmic gave me per
mission to experience something new, a spontaneous viewing of a colored field of energy around the human body, which I believe may be the human aura. This could be signaling the beginning of the formation of the third eye, a coveted faculty of advanced initiates. Perhaps, as I move forward in the Rosicrucian teaching, I will discover the way to achieve my principal goal—to obtain my green card, go to college, and get my family out of poverty.
This experience had made me more conscious of my spiritual development. In my diary entry, I concluded that I wished that "the Cosmic"—AMORC loaded language for God—would grant me an
other experience similar to the one I had in the Social Security office.
After my initial distaste for the bothersome phenomenon, my cult personality kicked into full gear when I wrote that I credited AMORC for my spiritual development and I determined to continue the Rosi
crucian study at any cost. Fatal words, "any cost"!
While writing these lines, I didn't mention the sense of exploita
tion that I had felt during the day, especially after the "auric experi
ence." I didn't mention how I had tried to block the experience out of my mind due to its irrelevance to my current situation. During my twenty-plus years of affiliation to AMORC, there were many occa
sions like this one, where I felt one way during an event, but once I picked up my monographs at night for study, my feelings changed.
In a mind control environment, freedom of choice is the first thing that one loses. The reason for that loss is essentially simple:
the cult member is no longer operating as himself. He has a new artificial identify structure which includes new beliefs and a new
language. The cult leaders' doctrine becomes the master "map"
for reality of the new cult member.
A member of a mind control cult is at war with himself. There
fore, when dealing with a cult member, it is extremely important to keep in mind that he has two identities.4
Yes, in working in my home sanctum at night, I became a totally different person. In a sense, this memoir is the description of the de
velopment of a cult personality in a person whom one might think, naively, to be an unlikely candidate for cult recruitment. It is also the story of how a person like myself, with some awareness, can under
take to assist in the disintegration of that cult personality and advance toward freedom.
In order to create a compliant and highly suggestible member
ship, certain elements of indoctrination need to be set into place. One of them is "loaded language," in which cult members use special words like Cosmic (instead of God) to give a certain flavor to the cult language.
Loading the language. As members continue formulate their ideas in the group's jargon, this language serves the purpose of constricting members' thinking and shutting down critical thinking abilities. At first, translating from their native tongue into "groupspeak" forces members to censor, edit, and slow down spontaneous bursts of criticism or oppositional ideas. That helps them to cut off and contain negative or resistive feelings.
Eventually, speaking in cult jargon is second nature, and talking with outsiders becomes energy-consuming and awkward. Soon enough, members find it most comfortable to talk only among themselves in the new vocabulary. To reinforce this, all kinds of derogatory names are given to outsiders: wogs, systemites, reac- tionairies, unclean, or Satan.5
The essays in the Mandamus collection make a variety of key claims about the order. These claims comprise themes critical to the potential transformation of the member and are embedded in the en
tire AMORC monograph collection. Each of these claims has impor
tant consequences for a member's lifestyle.
1. They claim you are a special person, somehow selected for this important AMORC affiliation. You are not like a common person. These monographs can only be given to special people like yourself. To this end, they overload you with reading as
signments (read Liber 777 plus the Rosicrucian manual of in
formation, a book of about 200 pages, in a week.) To do this efficiently, you would need to be a speed-reading demon. This is a relatively gigantic reading assignment for someone who has a full-time job and perhaps a family.
2. They claim that the exercises have practical consequences and are not purely theoretical. To this end, they overload you with experiments to do (four experiments per reading, an extremely time-consuming activity).
3. In a subtle way, they claim you will be tested. Therefore, if the exercises and teachings do not change your life, perhaps you are ultimately to blame.
4. Since you are so specially chosen, you are assigned special work that splits you off from family and friends. You are given special tasks, like sacred sounds to chant, special breathing and visualization exercises, special conditions to set up for deep meditation, etc.
5. Since you are part of a very elevated, special spiritual organi
zation, you are taught to look askance at ordinary institutions of religion, science, and education. AMORC claims not to be a religious organization but clearly states the shortcomings of all formal religions. The monographs imply but never directly state that AMORC is the proper replacement for the church in the member's life. In fact, AMORC continually maintains its respect for members' church affiliations. No matter what your affiliation, many members can attend a special lodge where
Rosicrucian rituals are carried out and given a special sacred and fundamental meaning.
While I continued my Rosicrucian attempts to jumpstart my fi
nancial life through metaphysics, friends tried very hard to help me get a Social Security number or a work permit so that I could look for a regular job. At the time, farm labor was the only type of work that did not require these documents. Eventually, I was able to obtain a Social Security number and applied for my first job with the help of a friend from Haiti.
I moved in with another friend for two days and then rented a room. I paid my first month's rent of one hundred dollars with a gift I received from the Episcopal Church of Miami.
At the new place, I did not have my own room. I slept in the dining room when everyone else went to bed. I had no privacy to study the AMORC monographs, so I studied in front of everyone, which was not a problem since no one else in that house could read French(French is the primary language of Haiti). But I looked forward to the day when I had my own room so that I could study the mono
graphs in peace.
The monographs, utilized properly, basically guide readers to a certain state of consciousness. This involves getting into a medita
tive state, in front of a mirror, while burning candles and incense.
The techniques of the monographs were promoted as being highly secretive and for the use of AMORC members only. Therefore, study
ing them in public was both limiting and, in a sense, a violation of AMORC regulations.
Now I know that the entire ritual of the home sanctum and its exercises were guiding members into a state of auto-suggestion, re
inforced and directed by the teaching in the monographs, but this thought never occurred to me during most of my experience in AMORC. Who could imagine that putting members into a state of hypnotic trance could somehow serve the purposes of AMORC and its leaders?
I had been in Miami, Florida, for three months. I didn't have a job yet.
I was living in a rented room on Sixty-Eighth Street and NE Second Avenue. At that time, m ost o f the farm w orkers from Haiti lived in this community.
When my friend in Miami, Nadine, dropped me off at my rooming house one day, she said she felt that I should be living in a better social environment. She knew that in Haiti, I had been a university student and a government employee. She advised me to visit the AMORC lodge that was located on Sixty-Second Street. I guess that Nadine thought that I would receive some help from my fellow Rosicrucians.
I did what she suggested. Not quite understanding why, I followed her advice and went to the lodge.
Prior to that moment, I had intended to wait until I was more settled before approaching anyone from the order. It had just made sense to wait. I was convinced that I needed to look more American
ized before going to a lodge. I knew that I was not ready for the social aspect of the lodge.
Still, back in Haiti, when I resigned from the lodge Martinez de Pasqually, I remember the secretary's suggestion to join a lodge im
mediately when I got to Miami. She told me they could even help me in the new country. Perhaps it was partly her influence that drove me to go there earlier than I expected. In fact, this was the same secretary who had gotten me into my original AMORC lodge when it also had not been not part of my plan. She was an excellent cheerleader for AMORC.
First Visit to the Miami AMORC Lodge
I dressed as well as I could and went first to attend the Catholic Mass at the Haitian church across from the lodge. After Mass, I headed across the street. Skinny and "poorly dressed," I instantly got the un
desirable attention of everyone.
Almost at once, I overheard Stephanie, one of the sorors—female
members of the order—who I eventually met, whispering to someone that I could sure use some multivitamins. Since not eating enough food forces a person into a semi-starvation mode, vitamin supple
ments would certainly have been useful. Three square meals might have been more helpful, though.
But despite my incessant hunger, I did not look at myself as
"starving," and I dismissed Stephanie's statement as "one of those American ways of thinking." I was, after all, a high initiate suffering a needed level of spiritual testing. It took a long time for me to wonder why the Cosmic wanted to afflict with me quite so much hunger and poverty.
Convocations at the lodge are something like formal church ser
vices but even more like the ritualistic meetings of Freemasons. Offi
cials wear certain specific uniforms. Incense and candles are burned.
Processions follow a prescribed structure. Although I felt awkward at the lodge, it was nice to be part of something again, and I felt the warmth of belonging to something.
Following the convocation, I sat at a table with Yves and Roger, two fraters. At one point, I was drinking coffee and started to laugh.
I was laughing at the fact that I didn't know which mix to use in my coffee. America was constantly bringing me little surprise tastes and sounds. I was very self-conscious and thought that everyone in the room must be wondering, "Who is that foolish-looking thing in front of us?"
I was recovering from my negative thought about my appearance when my table companion, Roger, asked whether I had a car. For a split second, I started thinking that the secretary in Haiti was right.
Wow! Here it comes!
I told Roger that, unfortunately, I didn't have a car. He offered me one immediately, failing to mention that it was not running and had no tires. In fact, it would take me a year of dishwashing jobs to get that car running.
When the post-Convocation social period ended, as I was on my
way home, I stopped outside the lodge with one American frater and another member, a frater from Quebec. The frater from Quebec was definitely sympathetic to me. The American frater, on the other hand, looked at me in a very condescending way and asked what I was looking for in Miami.
I told him I wanted a job. Looking down his nose, he said, "Like a dishwashing job?"
Now, in my circumstances, I did not have any pride about what I did. My entire focus was not on myself but on how to help my mother and sisters in Haiti. I would take dishwashing jobs, farm jobs—any
thing, really. Still, I felt the sting of the disrespect in the American frater's voice.
In my mind, and despite my financial circumstances, I was still the very gifted Pierre Freeman who was studying civil engineering in Haiti. What the American frater saw before him was a skinny little thing who looked like nothing. He probably thought that I didn't even know how to sign my name.
I was not ashamed about what I had to do as an immigrant in the United States. And I wasn't about to let my good friend, the frater, change my willingness to do whatever I had to do without tarnishing my self-esteem. Still, it hurt a bit.
On the other hand, the frater from Montreal was more sympathet
ic to my situation and gave me some useful hints on job searching.
At the time, I lived only three blocks away from the lodge. Still, I was happy to get a ride from Yves(the table companion I mentioned earlier), particularly when I told him that I wanted to move and he replied that he had a room for rent.
In fact, I ended up renting that room with one of my first checks from my dishwashing job, a job I had gotten in a Mexican restaurant in Coconut Grove with the help of a friend from Haiti. This was a job I had actually applied for two weeks after I had come to Miami.
But things didn't work out for me in that room. In fact, it turned out to be a very deceptive experience. The neighborhood was very
bad near Third Avenue and Eightieth Street NW. I was very concerned about being mugged at night when returning from work. Even dur
ing the day when I got off the bus, a group of guys drinking alcohol always tried to stop me and asked for money. I stayed there for only one month.
AMORC wasted no time in entrapping me in the Miami lodge.
The following incident, which occurred during my second visit to the Miami lodge, illustrates the entrapping experience.
The "Madame Lamar" Experience
During the period of guided meditation by the lodge master, I felt energy leaving my body and heading in the direction of another per
son, Madame Lamar. Please understand, I wasn't intentionally trying to hurt or disrupt Madame Lamar in any way. It was as if an invisible force had possessed me and was directing my energy in this strange
son, Madame Lamar. Please understand, I wasn't intentionally trying to hurt or disrupt Madame Lamar in any way. It was as if an invisible force had possessed me and was directing my energy in this strange