When author, Christine Chandler, signed up for a simple meditation retreat, she had no idea she was joining an authoritarian medieval cult, where the Tibetan lamas were exploiting their students, keeping harems of women, and changing a westerner's values and ethics through systematic thought control disguised as a compassionate Buddhist path.
After nearly thirty years as a Tibetan Buddhist, Chandler snapped out, and realized she was part of a thousand-year-old Lamaist cult that uses mindfulness, and other contemplative practices, along with ancient and sophisticated techniques, to recruit, commit and entrap westerners into the Tibetan Lamaist medieval world.
Chandler had a front row seat to the Tibetan Lama hierarchy and how it operates, having taken care of the son of Chogyam Trungpa, the notorious 'crazy wisdom guru.' This gave Chandler exposure to not only Chogyam Trungpa's Vajradhatu Shambhala inner workings, but also to dozens of other, interconnected Tibetan lamas, whose ideas and amoral values have been infiltrating our western institutions, by stealth, for the last forty-plus years.
Deep inside the Lamaist Tantric net, Chandler found that all Tibetan lamas teach from the same Vajra-master, coercive plan; whether they call it Shambhala, Mahamudra, Vajrayana, Dzogchen or Mahayana Buddhism. It is all the same: a Tantric cult of mass manipulation and thought-control, designed to undermine the reasoning abilities of educated westerners, change their values, perceptions and behaviors, and turn them into obedient devotees and change agents for the lamas; no longer able to think and act for themselves.
If someone leaves Tibetan Buddhism and dares to be publicly critical, that person is labeled as 'crazy' or a 'liar'; their articles or books discredited; until their message is drowned out. Inside the Lamaist groups, they are vilified and called out as a "heretic." This seals any negative information from getting in or out.
Chandler takes the reader through her own experiences, from her first mindfulness meditation weekend at a Boston Shambhala meditation center through her next decades; studying with many celebrity Tibetan Lamas and their western inner circles; drawn deeper and deeper into their Tantric net. When she finally breaks free, she realizes educated westerners have been purposely targeted to give the lamas currency and cover, as they are slowly turned into irrational members of a regressive, medieval and dangerous cult, while simultaneously believing they are at the cutting edge of enlightened consciousness.
Enthralled: The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism exposes the many levels of deception, used by Tibetan Lamas, and their western inner circles. They collect billions of tax-exempt dollars in donations, recruit wealthy sponsors to their mission, and ensnare new student-recruits into a web of free labor, unquestioning devotion, and for some, sexual exploitation by these Tibetan lamas.
Chandler deconstructs Tibetan Tantric Lamaism according to the criteria of anti-cult experts Robert Lifton and Margaret Singer, demonstrating how these lamas radically alter a person's perceptions to create a 'change agent' to further the lamas' delusional globalist ambitions.
Chandler's experiences finally lead her to Crestone, Colorado, a town where Tibetan lamas have become part of a 'Spiritual Alliance' of new-age, world citizens, all mindfully meditating, chanting, humming, and drumming their way backward, to create a 'spiritual secularism' and faux-Gaia feminism that is fundamentalist, misogynistic, and dangerous to our democratic freedoms.
A bold, brave exposition about one of the most misunderstood and misleading 'new religious movements' in spirituality today, Enthralled: The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism should not be missed by anyone who cares about truth.
