Greg who?

EnglishProphetJune 11, 2020 at 7:25 AM inquired: "Is there someone named Greg affiliated with this cult?"

Uh, yeah. Greg Koch. A longtime Gans toady, he's been a leader in the cult for many years. A former spouse of Minerva Taylor and lover of many women in the cult, he has a terrible temper. I have two memories of him. Late at night towards the end of "classes," he almost always rambled on incoherently about the 4th Way with the confidence of an expert. When Alex Horn was dying, he was one of his caretakers and explained to me and one other member that how washing Horn's ass was "quite lovely," giving new meaning to brown-nosing. 

Social Distancing

I cant tell you how often I caught colds and the flu from being in class -- not less than three times annually. That's because of the policy that everyone attend no matter how ill they are -- indeed especially when ill. Even if the policy is relaxed during the next 3 years of this pandemic, do you really think School is a safe place what with being cramped in with this gathering bi-weekly indefinitely?

School Is (Not) An Essential Service

I have it on good information that classes are continuing albeit in slightly different format. (Not in person.) Disasters and the like are perfect times for cults. Here’s an example of the mindset. Enjoy this video.

I have a suspicion that some people will not return when classes resume. They will find that having those two nights to do other things -- like read, relax, sleep, not be brow-beaten, not bored, not gas-lighted -- is great and freeing. 

Interview

We asked Sharon, "How would you describe your School?" Here was her response:

FBI

The arrest of the Sarah Lawrence Students Cult was in the papers this week. 

Former and current members, do the bolded instances from the indictment sound familiar to you and your experience? 

"From in or about 2010 through the present, LAWRENCE RAY, a/k/a “Lawrence Grecco,” the defendant, subjected a group of college students and other victims to sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse.  RAY’s tactics included sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, threats of physical violence, physical violence, threats of criminal legal action, alienating the victims from their families, and exploiting the victims’ mental health vulnerabilities. 

Through this manipulation and abuse, RAY extracted false confessions from the victims to causing purported damages to RAY and his family and associates, and then extorted payment for those purported damages through several means.  The victims made payments to RAY by draining their parents’ savings, opening credit lines, soliciting contributions from acquaintances, selling real estate ownership, and at RAY’s direction, performing unpaid labor for RAY and earning money through prostitution. 

In addition, as alleged, RAY forced three female victims to perform unpaid labor on a family member’s property in North Carolina.  Through a course of psychological and physical abuse, RAY forced these three victims to do extensive physical labor, sometimes in the middle of the night, for no pay."

Rom-Con

Sharon Gans had a problem. She was a washed up actress at age 40. Married to a NY dentist and with two kids, she was in a rut. So when she met a charismatic Californian named Alex Horn who lived on a Sonoma ranch and was a spiritual teacher and playwright she was swept off her feet.  Alex was 55. So they got quickie divorces and ran away together, moving into a house in San Francisco.

Although they were soulmates, love wasnt gonna pay the bills. They needed a plan. And they needed something to satisfy the mental illness they both shared - i.e., narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). They each had exaggerated feelings of self-importance, outsized needs for admiration, and a complete lack of empathy toward other people. So instead of spending their time just thinking about achieving power and success, they did something about it - they opened a cult. They made a small fortune. And they were the center of attention. But when the San Francisco papers did an expose alleging they were an abusive cult they quickly skipped town. 

They resurfaced in New York, reinvented as teachers of an “esoteric school” of the “Fourth Way.” On the QT, they recruited upper middle class New Yorkers to attend secret classes where ancient hidden knowledge would be revealed. Within a couple of years they had hundreds of members and piles of cash. Rom-Con recounts all the crazy hijinks of Gans and Horn: how they gaslighted everyone into thinking that they had some hidden wisdom; how they persuaded intelligent people to do crazy things (arranged marriages, forced adoptions, gay conversion, forced labor) and think they were doing good things. 

A Few Things In No Particular Order

"Where are your older posts?," asked someone who is thinking about producing a documentary about Sharon Gans. I started this blog on January 1, 2016. I've had tens of thousands of hits and hundreds of regular readers: current and former members of School, the curious, lawyers, publishers, winners, losers, movie people, and even several folks who left School after finding this blog. I decided to "revert to draft" the older posts because I wanted to. But I will be re-posting some of them shortly and will try to write more often. I've been busy with my book. Its coming out pretty darn good and Im doing the best I can.

"Are they coming after you?" asked a friend about the "fall-out" from the NY Post article. I have not heard a peep from Sharon or Robert and anyone. "She is a monster," posted a friend on Facebook. Nothing but support and love from friends and strangers. Tell me about what your friends say to you when you tell them about School.

I had dinner with 3 survivors. How wonderful to see these people living their lives happy, free and self-determined. The best part is spending time not working on each other. Its a kinship and bond that only survivors can understand.

Molly Dektar is the author of The Ash Family, about a young woman who joins and "an off-the-grid community headed by an enigmatic leader, [who] discovers that belonging comes with a deadly cost, in this lush and searing debut novel." Here's an  article called "A Cult Can Be You and Your Weird Charismatic Friend: How Cult Logic Appears in Businesses, Families, Political Movements, Friendships."



Finally, what do you think of this swim suit for me? Would it make my ass look big?