Dr David Millikan

Rev Dr David Millikan is the former head of Religious Broadcasting for ABC Radio.

He has studied and compared various personal development programmes including The Next Evolutionary Step and produced a book ``Escaping the Cave`` detailing his findings.

Click here to read Dr Millikan`s comments specific to The Next Evolutionary Step.

Escaping the Cave

David Millikan

In the 7th Book of The Republic, Plato draws a haunting picture. It is set in the recesses of a cave. Far from the light, prisoners are chained to benches. Behind them is a fire; between the fire and prisoners, men walk back and forth, carrying ``statues, and figures of animals made of wood, stone and other materials``. Some of the carriers talk in strange voices, like puppeteers, others walk silently. The prisoners have been there since infancy, this is what they believe is the world. They are shadows and think it is real.

Plato wrote the Republic around the middle of the fifth century BC. The image of the cave became one of the most enduring of his ideas and the questions it raised became the central preoccupations of his subsequent writings:. ``How can we know what is real?`` ``If what we see is a shadow of something which itself is not real... what is reality?``

These questions are being raised again by some of the successful alternative teachers of today. For the last twenty years these teachers, some of whom might be called New Age, have been vying for mainstream acceptance. The Church of Scientology, A Course in Miracles, Landmark Forum and Australia's Natasha Lakaev of ``The Next Evolutionary Step`` have been around long enough to be taken as representative of this new teaching. Some are little known or surrounded by rumor and suspicion that few in the mainstream have been inclined to treat them as genuine participants in the current philosophical debate within Australia. It is also the case that what they are saying sounds impossible or even bizarre to many on the outside. But Australia is on the edge of a change in which the views of groups and individuals such as this will soon be part of the current debate.

I have chosen to treat these groups as religious. Although I am aware that this is uncongenial to both Landmark Forum and Natasha Lakaev, but I believe there is no other way of adequately describing the comprehensive and fundamental nature of what they are teaching. What they are proposing is a revolutionary way of viewing the world and our relationship to it. In fact one of the problems with those who are on the outside is to understand how dramatic is the change in outlook that they are offering. When Lakaev says: ``There is not a single thing that is not available to you in this Universe - it is really about whether or not you wish to go out and gain access to it and make it work for you.``, she means exactly what this is saying. It is a statement of great audaciousness. But this is a sentiment which is shared in common with each of the groups described here.

Using the word religion is ambiguous and often creates more confusion that light. It was not until 1982 that the definition of religion was first introduced into Australian law. It was a High Court decision arising from the Victorian government refusing taxation concessions to the Scientologists. The Victorian Government argued that the Scientologists were not a religion and should not therefore enjoy the same advantages as the mainline churches and other established religions. With great tenacity the Scientologists pursued the case the High Court and won a judgement in their favour. For the Court to make this ruling it was necessary for them to define what a religion is. The judges had great difficulty in doing this, and Justice Murphy issued a minority opinion. The Court attempted to define a religion on the basis of what people believe; at first suggesting that one must believe in God. Murphy pointed out that this would have excluded many Buddhists.

The problem was that the court chose to use an intellectual rather than a functional definition. For the purposes of the present study, I say that an organization or group can be called a religion when it performs three functions in the life its members. One, a religion has a philosophical application. By this I mean that a religion addresses the big questions of life. It opens the door to ways of thinking which transforms the understanding of a person's view of the world and where they stand within it. This is certainly true of the groups described here. Each takes an unequivocal stand on such fundamentals as the meaning of who we are, and our destiny. Do we have a life beyond the limitations of this world? All except Landmark Forum are certain that we are not alone in the cosmos. The Scientologists consistently teach that human beings are in essence disembodied entities known as Thetans who exist in the cosmos along side other entities of eternal spiritual reality. Landmark is silent on this matter, and although Lakaev has teachings on this matter she is the most reserved. The chapter of her major publication titled ``Light Beings and Extraterrestrials`` has been left vacant except for the following explanation ``To understand this chapter you have to experience The Next Evolutionary Step for yourself first hand.`` But my point is that the first characteristic of a religion is the breadth and philosophical seriousness of its teachings. It deals with large and fundamental questions about the nature of what is.

Second, a religion has an ethical component. That is, a religion provides guidance in matters which have to do with the way in which we conduct ourselves in the world. Christianity claims to be a revealed religion which has within the 10 Commandments and the interpretations of Jesus a set of principles which govern the life of all Christians. The same is true of Scientology, Forum and the others.

Third, all religions have a soteriological dimension. That is they provide a grasp on salvation. In the broadest sense this means that a religion offers hope to its adherents that this world does not exhaust reality. It teaches that the limitations of this world are not the end of the story. It is about a way out of the sufferings and compromises of this life. This takes us to the heart of the groups here described. Each of them is offering hope that individuals can move beyond the things which prove frustrating in this life.

Like all religions, these groups are in the process of change. It is one of the inevitabilities of history that religion is a child of its times, as the culture changes so do the workings of religion. It may occur slowly as the new generations emerge and the groups engagement with the world becomes more complex. Change can be dramatic as was the case in the 16th Century Christianity. Many New Religious Movements (NRMs) begin in a tense, even violent relationship to contemporary religion and culture, and then begin the long journey back to respectability. The Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and to a lesser extent the Jehovah's Witnesses are in the later stages of this process.

Forum, ACIM, and COS and Lakaev are younger and more aggressive. They are known to us mainly in controversy with little opportunity to enter the intellectual world they have created. This is where Plato's questions are being answered, and in ways which would have left him bemused.

A Course in Miracles

ACIM was first published in the US in 1975. Since then hundreds of thousands of people have read it believing, it contained the words of Jesus given to a Jewish academic working in the psychology department at Columbia University. Over nearly 10 years, Helem Schucman took shorthand notes of aural communications with Jesus, which only she was able to hear. She and some close friends were convinced the text which finally emerged, called A Course in Miracles were the words of the risen Jesus Christ.

Despite early indifference, ACIM has become a publisher's dream. It requires no promotion, thousands of people are out there doing it. It is dirt cheap to print, and each year it sells tens of thousands of copies. The reach and popularity of ACIM has been helped by Hollywood stars and ardent endorsements from the richest woman in the USA and Queen of New Age banter, Oprah Winfrey. Over 2 million copies have been sold, thousands of study groups and communities look to ACIM as sacred text in the way Muslims revere the Koran, Christians the Bible and Scientologists the works of L Ron Hubbard. The copyright of the ACIM text and other authorized teaching manuals, is said to be worth more than $30 million (and rising).

The ACIM argument goes like this: God is perfect and our creator. Being perfect, God is all loving and all powerful. It is 'absurd', and 'insane' and 'blasphemous' to think that god created this world. It is temporary, full of pain, hostile and uncontrollable. How could God be responsible for a world where innocent children suffer and good people live in confusion and darkness? The answer is beguilingly simple: God didn't create this world. This world does not exist. It is a construct of our own fetid egos.

Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already... Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.

None of us comes naturally to the idea that the world we touch, taste, see and hear, does not exist. It seems so far fetched that most people have difficulty believing that this is a seriously held view. For ACIM turns the common understanding of perception on its head. We know about imaginary worlds in dreams, art and ecstatic states, but they contrast with the life of flesh and blood. According to ACIM this is where our problem lies. Our egos have invested their identity in a world of their own creation.

The problem has its origins in the idea that we can be something other than the perfection in which we were made. The original temptation is only dimly shown in the Genesis accounts, for the issue was not between Adam and Eve and the Devil, it was within themselves. They allowed an idea prompted by dark recesses of the ego to be entertained. As they allowed themselves to be captured by the seductions of this idea. It took form. This world is the result. As A Course in Miracles says: ``Into the mind of the Holy Son of God crept a tiny mad idea at which he remembered not to laugh``.

Statements like this abound in A Course in Miracles. They are like Buddhist koans; their elliptical and crypic character hide a demanding thought process. Ted Poppe's comment on this quote is this:

This is actually the birthplace of the ego and time/ space as construct which is being used as a sort of demarcation of limitation that allows us (you and I) to learn within a limited frame of reference, rather than an unlimited frame of reference, so we don't take forever to learn the single lesson, although sometimes it can seem that way to many.

So the doctrine of sin as Christians conceive it is now recast. The problem is not the moral implications of the acts which make up our life in this world. It is the insane commitment to the limitations of this world in the first place.

You suffer from a single all-compassing disease. You have a bad case of ``worldliness``. You must admit to the disease because it actually is your total state of mind...``

ACIM poses a task for the mind almost impossible to comprehend. It is saying that the infinite reaches of the cosmos, and all that happens to us in this world are an illusion of our own making. You may have heard New Age believers respond to the problems of life by asking the question: ``Why have I brought this on myself?`` ACIM is the radical base on which this idea is built. Depending on the perspective you take, this is either the final act of human degeneration into rebellion or humanity's apotheosis.

Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts.

The promise of ACIM is magnificent. It makes us the savior and healer of the world. It works like this: If this world is our creation, then the people we love who are suffering are also the products of our diseased egos. To heal the sick is to remove the reason we put in place to have them sick in the first place. The task of healing them is something that happens within us. ``Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in pain...sickness is a decision.``

Over the last 13 years there has been a simmering controversy concerning the ownership of ACIM. From its early days it has been an unusually democratic gathering of believers. There was the book , certain teaching manuals and aids and thousands of groups who went about their business. The book was the thing which bound these groups together. But as is the way with all religious movements, the question of orthodoxy raised its head. One can see the same process occurring in the early years of Christianity. When matters of dispute arose, where did the Church go for clarification. This was particularly true when disputes developed concerning Jesus Christ. One of the most wrenching questions had to do with Jesus divinity and humanity. In what sense could it be said that Jesus was truly man and truly God at the same time. Was it true that Jesus was equal with God. The Bible referred to God as ``begotten`` did this not imply a hierarching in the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit? It is inevitable that all religious organisations go through these movements with clarification. There were two results of these controversies in the Church. The Church finally drew together in ``Ecumenical councils`` which examined the issues and produced summary statements in the forms of creeds which sort to state the orthodox view of what was the correct position. On the other hand, it split the Church and the great divisions which are present in the Church today began.

ACIM is going through the same process and it in the last years, that has changed. Ken Wapnick and the Foundation for Inner Peace have claimed ownership of the text and ACIM has an authorized interpreter. People running their own ACIM courses have been receiving this warning from the Foundation for Inner Peace.

The Foundation will act swiftly to protect its financial and legal interests in ``A Course In Miracles`` (r). Homepages on the internet that quote portions of the book without written permission, or that claim that Jesus Christ is the author of ``A Course of Miracles`` (r), will be disabled and the owners, if found, may be subject to litigation proceedings. It is hoped that you will continue to enjoy the use of ``A Course in Miracles`` (r) in a legal and proper manner.

To the astonishment of many Wapnick has been suggesting that the Jesus who wrote the ACIM may not be the Jesus of the Bible. It may be that this is a devise to. Striding into this debate on the other side is Ted Poppe of the Miracle Centre Byron Bay. He is leading the charge of thousands of ACIM believers who remain convinced that Jesus is the author. Which is where Penguin Books comes in. They were for a while supporting Ken Wapnick. Wapnick claims Helen Schucman didn't believe in the Jesus of the Bible, after all she was Jewish:

I have made my position perfectly clear in regard to this matter. Jesus of Nazareth cannot be the Author of A Course in Miracles as is claimed... I do not believe in his resurrection and subsequent appearance on earth...I was raised Jewish and have no spiritual connection with the Christian Church or its theology... If indeed the historic man, Jesus, did live on earth for a short time 2000 years ago, he is long since dead and buried.... Furthermore, I have proven legally that the author of the A Course in Miracles is Helen Schucman, regardless of what followers of Jesus may claim.

If Helen Schucman is the author, then Wapnick has a claim on the copyright. If Jesus is the author no one owns the copyright and Penguin Books loses exclusive rights to publish it.

Landmark / Forum

Forum begins with the assumption that there is something badly wrong with this world. This is the starting point; everyone grows to adulthood stunted by the way things are. We have influences baring on us which have the potential to limit our freedom in the future. This has to do with our ethnicity, social standing, parents beliefs, educational opportunities, health, appearance etc. These things shape us for good and evil. According to Forum it is not these factors which shape us at all. Events and things have no meaning, it is the way we perceive the experiences which defines our future. This vision of the world is one of the first things that is taught in Forum. At an introductory night in Sydney the presenter drew a large circle on a blackboard which he called ``Your life``. This represented the person in potential. He then described the endless things which limit our potential. He talked about his youth when he was desperately in love with the girl who dumped him and called him a ``looser``. It had the effect of making him timid with other girls out of fear that the same thing would happen again. This sat in his life as one of the major blocks to his progress forward. This was a limitation on the potential self so he shaded in a section of the circle. He described other experiences which had a similar effect on him. He had been frustrated and hurt by certain career aspirations to the point that he had formed the view that he was not likely to achieve the heights which he had dreamt about when he was a lad. Other pieces of the circle were shaded, until ``Your life`` peeped out of a mass of negativity and constraint. This is what the past does to us all. It all has to do with the way we have constructed the experiences of the past. The actual events are neutral, it is the way we react to them which is important. But how far do you take this? Is being born in a refugee camp on the border of Namibia as neutral event?

It is at this point that the influence of Scientology can be seen in the thinking of Forum. The author of the Forum vision, Werner Erhard spent his formative years progressing through the ranks of Scientology to the level of Operating Thetan 5. (OT5) This involves a serious and dedicated commitment to the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard. The Scientologists believe that the problem of this life is the damage that has accumulated in our minds as a result of experiences of the past that have never been resolved. The evil of the past is present in what the Church of Scientology call ``engrams``. L. Ron Hubbard built an elaborate structure on this concept but the similarity between Forum's and Scientology at this point is clear. In fact it has led to serious problems between the two organizations. The Scientologists call Erhard and Forum, ``Squirrels``. By this they mean any person who steals the ideas of Scientology and uses them for their own ends. There was a time when the Scientologists listed Erhard as a ``Suppressive person``. The Forum people blame the Scientologists for spreading rumors about Erhards, and hounding him out of the US. In a magazine interview Erhard granted in 1993, when he was in Ireland offering a seminar for priests and nuns, he said he would not return to the U.S. because he feared Scientology zealots might be out to get him.

Forum believers say such things as ``The only meaning that life has is what you give it``, ``You are a blank canvas``, ``Life is nothing except what you make it``. So they see us as shapers and creators of our own destiny. Forum is built on the belief that a person in the present is able to break the influences and pains of the past. Each moment we hold in our hands the possibility of renewing our lives in ways which liberate us from all limitation. This is a radical vision of human beings. As far as I can see Forum is not shy of the radical implications of this idea for they are prepared to say that Forum breaks the bond of genetics.

Forum is putting human beings at the centre of their own universe. ``What if your future was a function of your creation, rather than an extension of your past?`` They are saying that we alone are responsible of the things which happen to us. This requires a person to be utterly in control of their past, and their own processes of thinking and ``Once a person is able to realize everything about himself, he can create new possibilities with that in mind. That has how The Forum worked``.

Unlike ACIM, Forum does not enjoy discussing the philosophical implications of their beliefs. Erhard said: ``I don't think that anyone ought to believe the ideas that we use in est. The est philosophy is not a belief system and most certainly ought not to be believed. In any case, even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it``. The most characteristic response I got to requests to talk about Forum beliefs was one of two answers: ``We are not a belief system or a religion. It doesn't matter what you believe`` and ``We are a technology, we are suggesting you discover if it works``. But Werner Erhard has been less withdrawn: ``In actuality, each of us, as the sole creator of our universe, is a God, and because we have created it all, everything is as important as everything else. When we're fully in touch with what already is and accept what is as more important that what isn't, then all games are over. There's nothing to do, nowhere to go, everything is perfect``.

Scientology

Just as the Genesis accounts contain theological principles which relate to the nature of evil, human responsibility and the character of this world, the teaching of Scientology contains similar insights. The secret OT level teachings of L Ron Hubbard contain an account of a series of traumatic events which explain why our lives today are troubled. What Hubbard describes occurred more than 70 million years ago. The details of the story are part of the secret scriptures of the Church which they do not want revealed, but the broad outlines are this. It relates to the fate of billions of Thetan. Thetans are what constitutes the human soul. They are spiritual entities which since the OT incident have come and gone in human evolution millions of times. They are the survivors of a terrible galactic battle. During this time they were tortured in extreme ways and subjected to a form of brain washing which scrambled their minds and left them passive, traumatized and uncertain of what was real. So we are Thetans living for a season in a ``vehicle`` or body Scientology refers to as ``meat``.

Thetans enter humans within 7 days of birth, at death or perhaps just before, they leave the body. There is then a frightening moment when they are vulnerable, once again, to the forces of evil. Unprepared Thetans find themselves captured in Implant Stations maintained by the enemy responsible for the original damage. These creatures use the moment to ensure the Thetan is not regaining strength. If a Thetan has progressed far enough along the Bridge of Scientology enlightenment, this moment holds no terror. But for the rest, they are defenceless. Implant Stations are like space ships, nearby in the universe.

The struggle for a body is a preoccupation of Thetans.

``Thetans need a game and they are dull enough to think they can't have a game unless they have a body and can be seen, ``Any game is better than no game``. There's a sort of hang-up that invisible thetans can have, they want to be ``duplicated`` by others, but they are essentially nothing (no space, mass etc,) so they get a sort of desperation to have a body. Other beings who want to control free thetans will program them to stay in bodies, need bodies, whatever.

It was not until 1950 with the publication of Dianetics by L Ron Hubbard that the technologies were revealed which promised release from their life of aimless and confused suffering.

``They'll hang around people, they'll see somebody who's pregnant and they'll follow her down the street. Or they'll hang around the entrance to an accident ward and find some body that is all banged up and the being that had that body has taken off or is about to or is in a frame of mind to, and does so. He will pick up this body and pretend to be somebody's husband or something of the sort.``

What is real?

Whereas ACIM holds the existence of the world within the individual mind Hubbard saw it more as an act of community. For Hubbard it was beyond the capacity of a single mind to conceive of and hold this universe in existence. It happened when a group of Thetans agreed together to create a place in which they could live. Time, space and matter are what Hubbard called ``postulates`` or ``considerations``. He said: ``(Mater Space and Time, MEST) ... all things are a consideration of the consideration so that if you consider something which is considerable, why - you have considered it.`` I understand that he is saying that all things are the product of our own capacity to envisage that they exist. ``One has reality because he considers he has reality.``

The process of creating reality begins when the Thetan conceives of something - this is what Hubbard calls a ``mockup``. If the Thetan has the personal authority to engage another in this same vision then it begins to take on more and more substance. But for others to participate in this process they must be able to affirm that the mockup is there.

``The physical universe as we look at it right around us here is an Is-ness for one reason only. We all agree that somebody else created it, whether that is God or Mujub or Bill. We agree that somebody else brought these conditions into existence, and so as we are totally agreed on this, boy have we got everything solid.``

Hubbard opens up the possibility of many universes. It depends on the minds that conceive them. The more powerful one becomes as a Thetan the more one takes charge of the process which creates the reality of our world. Eventually the liberated Thetan becomes like God.

Scientology like Forum talks about being, ``at cause`` not ``effect``. ``A Clear is being who can be at cause over matter, energy, space and time...`` A person who is truly ``at cause`` has all things under control, there are no accidents no surprises and no possibility of failure.

``We can't conceive that an individual could actually become aberrated without his own consent, and sure enough he can't. He can't become aberrated or upset, or thin or fat or thick or stupid or anything else without his own consent because he is part of the agreement pattern....``

Here is an example of the Scientology world view working out in practice. A Scientology friend was staying at my home. On the day of he was due to return to Taiwan, he discovered he had lost his passport. Much depended on him arriving in Taiwan as planned. This is his account of what happened:

Yes, you know, in hindsight we can look back at my success in getting a new passport and not see any particular significance but at the time it was a real test of my ability to ``postulate``. I went home after seeing you and spent maybe two hours calling every lost property place possible and no success anywhere. However, I still backed my postulate and proceeded as if it would go right and by accident I found myself talking to someone at the passport office. It was my very last port of call reporting the passport loss and, bearing in mind that I had already been told there was no way I could get the passport in one day, especially since my original birth certificate was in West Australia, I did not even ask about getting a new one. But ... I told my story to a woman there and she said, ``Wait a minute... `` and things changed. It was 3.45. The office was to close at 4pm and there I was at Ultimo. But we figured out how to get the birth certificate faxed from Perth and a letter faxed from Taiwan and she would get some people to stay back and ... just about impossible really.

So there. It doesn't have to have special significance but I know different. And I've been able to do it on other occasions, equally unlikely and it's quite a thing. I heard of a wise man in Indonesia once, he said that you could get anything done, all you had to do was ``order`` it. If we allow for this sort of thing, it's pretty significant, actually. Do we all have such an ability? What special quality do you need to pull it off? Anyway, it's standard news to Scientologists and I've heard some pretty spectacular stories from friends, particularly those who have done OT5...

I love this. I'm giving you a conundrum. The larger philosophical issue is just how much we can be at cause over our own destinies...

The Next Evolutionary Step

It may come as a surprise that I have included Natasha Lakaev in company with the groups mentioned above. She may not appear to have the same weight or profile as the others, but I have done this for three reasons. First she is an Australian which in itself is significant if we are going to understand the new dimensions which are emerging within the national discussion. Second she has stood the test of controversy and time. It is characteristic of groups such as this that they all find themselves the subject of concerted scrutiny and opposition. I know of no new religious movement which has come to prominence without surviving the skepticism and opposition of the world. This has been the case with Natasha Lakaev.

The third reason I have included her in this collection is because I met with her following participating in an introductory lecture she gave in Sydney. I understand that my encounter with her was brief and even superficial, but it was sufficient for me to recognize that she is a person of passionate commitment who has given her life to the propagation of her teachings. She has the resolution and clarity of purpose of a person who has personal experience of what she speaks.

She does not have the silky voice of a new Age guru. Nor does she have the blinding hype and high-pressure which carries you along against your will. But the claims she makes are none the less remarkable and if true, offer a means to changing the character of this world in ways no less radical than the other groups described. Natasha Lakaev claims to have taught more than 10,000 people in the various courses which are built on the introductory five days, The Next Evolutionary Step.

She has a centre North of Byron Bay but conducts courses in Brisbane, Sydney and in the past in South Africa. She claims that the response to her teachings in South Africa were overwhelming. She told me that her first visit to South Africa came about following a meeting in a hotel lobby in Australia with a South African who said he recognized her from a prophecy which he had heard of a white woman who would come and bring a revelation in the country. He paid for her to travel to South Africa and claims that her first meeting resulted in a near riot.

Lakaev is not nibbling at the edges of wisdom or philosophical thought. She is addressing questions which have perplexed the philosophers, visionaries and saints from the beginning of time. And yet she is at first an ordinary looking person. She is not a great beauty, she does not come with a set of esoteric understandings, which only the brilliant can understand. She is a small neat woman with intense dark eyes. Her voice has a reassuring Aussie sound and she presents herself directly and without apology.

What does Natasha Lakaev believe?

The fundamental problem, which joins all the religions of this world is the question of evil. Why as we look back on the Twentieth Century do we see such a paradoxical and contradictory picture of human beings? On the one hand we can say that the Twentieth Century shows an astonishing capacity of human beings to harness the resources of physics, architecture, psychology and other developments of human understanding to put men on the moon, build bridges and buildings never before imagined as possible. But we must also say that the Twentieth Century has been one of the most barbaric in the history of humanity. The Jewish Holocaust, the savagery of the massacres in Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, East Timor, and others, the wanton destruction of the world's environment, point to a different and frightening side of us all.

On the personal level people experience this paradox as a struggle between the sense of our own potential and the frustrations of broken relationships, financial chaos and the deep personal cry of unresolved ambitions. Each religion strives to address this problem. The Buddhists talk about the impersonal force of Karma, the Christians believe that we are born flawed and bare moral responsibility for the evil, which besets the world, and the Muslims speak of the will of Allah. But Natasha Lakaev has discovered a new way.

Lakaev believes that all people are born innocent. ``We are born with intact psyches...``

She is part of that line of thinkers going back to Socrates which affirms the innate goodness and capacities for greatness as resident in all children born into this world. So the problems and limitations we suffer later, do not emerge from the fundamental stuff of our personalities. The problem lies in the aberrations which are imposed on us. The damage is done in the first four to eight years of life. The innocent child is born into a cycle of limitations imposed by parents, society and culture. It causes the child to shrink its vision of its self in order to fit in. It is a form of theft of the child's genetic rights and this is where the Next Evolutionary Step makes its dramatic claims. The Next Evolutionary Step offers the promise of undoing the damage, overcoming the imposed limitations and allowing the infinite capacities of the inner person to emerge and take charge of ones destiny.

Lakaev is holding out the possibility of escaping the limitations of this world and realising our true potential. And that potential is limitless. Her evaluation of human beings is... ``we are extremely powerful entities, probably the most powerful in the Universe.`` If this is the case why do most people experience frustration and limitation? What is happening to restrain our infinite capacities? Lakaev sees this as a function of the current world especially in the last 2000 years. She does not go into detail concerning the mechanisms which bring this about. But it has to do with a series of destructive and ingrained processes in the nature of parenting, the educational system and the way in which the current social order has developed. It has resulted in a progressive, devastating and universal thievery of the spirit's capacities. We have become subject to alien gods, governments and religions, and institutions. I understand Lakaev is assigning the blame not only to malign forces which operate outside human beings, but in some sense they have been complicit in this process themselves and thus each generation has contributed to their own progressive subjugation. This is what I understand Lakaev means by the loss of ``integrity``.

It is as if the progress of human beings has been truncated and we have reversed the evolutionary process itself, to the point that we are going backwards or what Lakaev calls ``de-evolutionising``.

This is what Lakaev regards as the human tragedy. She sees human beings like strangled angels, limping around the world, possessed of infinite powers, but unable to use them. The goal is to become subject to none, and yet open to all:

``You become integrity, you become the Universe - not subservient to a god, man/woman, government, religion or institution. You become your own creator, you become everything that this society has hidden itself from for 2000 years. You become a creature of the Universe - worshipping nothing and everything at once. You become neutral. You become entwined in the web of existence.``

The key to the release of the true and infinite self has to do with the opening of the source of that power within. In this sense Lakaev is Socratic in her understanding of people. She does not hold to the <i>tablarasa</i> theory of the human mind. This idea is most identified with the eighteenth century British philosopher John Locke, who believed that we were born with blank minds. There are no innate ideas of memory, no information beyond that which is provided in this world through the senses. Lakaev does not accept this but believes that we are repository of all our genetic history. This is an infinite store of experiences, understanding and wisdom if we can draw from will manifest in the development of diverse talents in remarkable ways.

Imagination is the enemy of human beings. To imagine is to concede that something is not real. Lakaev calls for the banning of the word altogether. We should rather see the process of thinking about something as the recognition that there is something that exists somewhere. To believe this is to believe in the infinite power of the truly evolved person to being everything. But this is what I understand Lakaev is saying. In this she shares many characteristics with Scientology, A Course in Miracles and Landmark. They also see the human being as a trapped being of infinite capacity. Lakaev has a more homely way of seeing it working out. She uses the example of her children often and sees the body shape of people as a manifestation of their orientation. For example a woman with large breasts or a man with highly developed chest is the outworking of a person who ``...is trying to hold their place in the world and they are willing to use brute force to make this happen. It does not necessarily have to be part of their personality, but they have learnt it is the quickest way to keep others at a distance, therefore they feel safe as do the people those choose to protect.``

One of the unique dimensions of Lakaev's promises is the role it plays in the life of families. As part of her recommendation for the courses she runs, Lakaev draws attention to the effect her insights have had on the lives and abilities of her own children. She has three sons. The oldest plays three musical instruments, he has an astonishing capacity to solve intractable mathematical problems with great speed and facility. Her second son, has the same capacity for rapid problem solving but differs from his brother in his remarkable ability to telepathically read the minds of those around him. The youngest began talking at 6 months, had the vocabulary of a 12-year-old and emulated his older brothers by constructing complex speeches on topics of his own choosing. The premise on which Lakaev's insights stands, is the centrality of intuition. This is the source of power and abundance which is hidden within us all. But it has been brutalized by the skeptical and aggressive denial of our present social and cultural order. The intuition or the psyche is the key to the cosmos. It connects us to a power beyond limitation and constraint. To unlock this dimension of ourselves is what the Next Evolutionary Step offers. And this is the prize - total bliss, prosperity, the discovery of almost limitless powers for love, and intellectual reasoning and understanding.

She talks about the physical effects which the course has on its participants. This is what she calls ``Shape Shifting``. After only four days experiencing and practicing the principles of her teaching, people's bodies under go remarkable transformations: the color of their eyes and their skin changes, women who have struggled with excessive weight find the weight simply disappears. One woman was reported to have lost 5 kg in 5 days. A man with a chronic skeletal disorder found the effects of his illness began to vanish and for the first time in many years he could stand tall.

Of the four groups mentioned here, Lakaev has the teaching which offers the most immediate and physical manifestations. She confidently spells out the way a person's body shape shows information which is hidden from the rest of the world. For example the appearance of children is determined, not by the inherited characteristics of the parents but by processes within the child itself. She says that children look the way they do, not because of the physical connection to the parents, but because of the psychic conditions which the parents have imposed on them. To take uncritically into ourselves, the visions and ideas of our parents is to respond to life in the way they do and thus end up looking like them. So when a child is liberated from the destructive baggage of its inheritance, it will cease to look like its parents. It will become truly itself. It means that liberated parents who have cleansed their own psychic processes will have children who are free to be themselves both in personality and appearance. She says her own children do not look like either her or their father. Although there are occasions when they revert and take on the appearance of their father when certain things inhibit their progress to liberation. She said: ``Because their father and I have cleansed so much of our Cellular Memory, the kids do not look like us.``

Conclusion

The members of COS, ACIM, Forum and Natasha Lakaev are highly focused and energized to achieve success in a world which is proving more and more traumatic for the Western middle classes. Although the details of their teaching vary there are great coincidences in their philosophical presuppositions.

In ways, Natasha provides the most accessible. But she is in a crowded field these days. But perhaps she is different - repeatedly she offers the world the opportunity to examine her claims. The claims of psychic renewal, physical healing, the arrival of financial security and the discovery of loving relationships are the public claims which can be tested.

So the decision is ours.

As for the others, they are large organizations whose founders are either dead or no longer have dealings with them. They are taking on the character of organizations with the disadvantage of impersonality which results.

There is much at stake in these teachings. They will not disappear. They can no longer be dismissed as the products of a passing stage in human culture. They are here to stay, and it is time that they were brought into the middle of the contemporary discussion in Australia.

David Millikan