Sect or not sect ?

Before reading this page, take a look at a report from the CICNS (Center d’Information et de Conseil des Nouvelles Spiritualités) on cult hunting specific to France.

Instinctotherapy is of course not a spirituality, it is based on a question and not on a dogma. It gives rise to an experience and not to a ritual practice. But you will discover in this report the real functioning of the media, associations like UNADFI or Preventsectes, parliamentary committees, politicians, and even the judiciary when it comes to attacking movements duly or unduly qualified as sects. We are unfortunately very far from a democratic functioning and very close to current procedures in totalitarian states. You can find the documentary “120 minutes pour la liberté spirituelle” (renamed “La France antisectes : état des lieux, un playdoyer pour les libertés fondamentales”) on Youtube¹ and a full version [here](La-France- antisectes-:-état-des-lieux.mp4) in case it disappears from the internet.

You are now better prepared to form an objective opinion of the “official” texts which incriminate instinctotherapy:

1°) REPORT DONE ON BEHALF OF THE COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY on SECTS

Chairman Mr. Jean-Pierre BRARD, Rapporteur Mr. Jacques GUYARD

Registered at the Presidency of the National Assembly on December 22, 1995.

Exhaustive extract:

International Federation for the Development of Instinctive Eating (FIDALI)

• The dominant “healer” invades like the “New Age” most sectarian currents.

With the “New Age” component, pseudo-therapies of divine or “natural” origin are now largely shaping the sectarian landscape. Confined until recent years in the oriental religious sphere (Mahikari, HUE …) or Christian (IVI, evangelical groups …), the dominant “healer” is also grafted today on most other major trends sectarians (occultist, syncretic, psychoanalytic) … when it is not sufficient in itself as the only object of the sect (International Federation for the Development of Instinctive Food)

This first registration therefore concerns neither instinctotherapy nor all the followers of the method nor those in charge of the Montramé Center, but a “dissident” association, founded in 1989 (while the Center dates from 1983).

We also note that the Parliamentary Commission confuses the real object of the approach, that is to say the fundamental research carried out around the hypothesis of genetic maladjustment to traditional food, with a simple therapeutic activity. She deliberately classifies instinctotherapy in “pseudo-therapies”, without any verification of the results actually obtained on health. In doing so, it presupposes that a therapeutic method not recognized by medicine would necessarily be ineffective, while conventional food is recognized to be the source of all kinds of pathologies. A similarly contradictory and ill-founded wording can only be explained by the exacerbated media context of the time, knowing the fragility of policies vis-à-vis the media and their impact on the electorate. More visceral anguish in the face of any form of dissent, which is reminiscent of certain totalitarian states.

REPORT DONE ON BEHALF OF THE COMMISSION OF INQUIRY on the FINANCIAL, PATRIMONIAL and FISCAL SITUATION of SECTS, as well as on their ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES and their RELATIONS WITH ECONOMIC and FINANCIAL AREAS,

Chairman Mr. Jacques GUYARD, Rapporteur Mr. Jean-Pierre BRARD,

Registered at the Presidency of the National Assembly on June 10, 1999.

Exhaustive extract:

Instinctotherapy.

Created by Mr. Guy Claude Burger, this healing movement spread by different structures advocates a specific food method: eat raw, vegan and only what you want. This sect has welcomed in its center in Montramé several people suffering from serious illnesses and in particular from multiple sclerosis.

Mr. Burger was sentenced, by a judgment of the Paris Court of Appeal dated January 21, 1997, to 3 months suspended prison sentence for fraud and illegal practice of medicine. His cassation appeal was dismissed on April 30, 1998.

The rapporteurs are not only basing themselves on a false premise by citing a conviction for swindling that never existed, but confuse instinctotherapy with veganism. They start from the previous report which reduces the approach to “pseudo-therapy”.

• It is clear that swindling would be an essential criterion of sectarianism. It is even a determining criterion, because it contains several others: manipulation, deception, exploitation of fragile people, enrichment …
• Veganism is an ideology with a sectarian tendency: a diet based on a belief contrary to scientific data, exposing its followers to deficiencies (especially in vitamins B12 and certain amino acids). One becomes vegan not to experiment and verify a hypothesis, but in the name of a belief and a personal conviction most often resulting from manipulation.
• Categorization in healing movements, based on “pseudo-therapies”
• It also presupposes the image that we have of a “healing sect”. However, the parliamentary report does not need to demonstrate that the announced results would not have been obtained and is content to stick the label of pseudo-therapy, perhaps on the basis of the pseudo-conviction for fraud.

If these three criteria are mentioned in a parliamentary committee report, it is because they served as a basis, or largely contributed to the decision to include instinctotherapy in the list of sects. If there had been other reasons, the rapporteurs would not have failed to quote them.

In other words, the listing of instinctotherapy in the list of sects is based on wind.

We can then ask ourselves where did this wind blow? The answer was quickly found: in previous years, the media waged a violent campaign against instinct and against its founder, nationally qualifying the first as a sect and the second as a guru (see the pseudo-scoop of Anne-Marie Casteret in The Thursday Event of 1989).

However, as soon as the media launch this kind of false news, the politicians are obliged to follow: to stand in the way of the rumor, not to denounce what could be a sect, would cost them votes. The imperatives of democracy are forcing them to follow suit. What would the public and the press say about a politician who sided with a movement that everyone “knows”, thanks to the media, is a sect? He would pay him with a crushing defeat in the next election, so that every politician who sees a press campaign like this is forced to howl with the wolves.

In 2005, following the scruples of the Rafarin government, a circular from the Prime Minister replaced the MILS (Mission Interminsitérielle de Vigilance et de Lutte contre les Sects) by MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Drifts), marking the will of the government to restore associative freedom and condemning any discrimination made in the name of any qualification of sect. It thus replaced the alleged offense of sect by taking into account sectarian excesses, offenses falling in any case under the law. This decision was also the result of the inability of scholars to clearly define the concept of a cult.

The criteria used by associations and organizations involved in the fight against sects are listed in a circular from MIVILUDES:

Respectful of all beliefs and faithful to the principle of secularism, the legislator has always refused to define religions. For the same reasons, there is no definition of the concepts of" sect “or” sectarian drift. "

Faced with the impossibility of defining these concepts, the 1995 parliamentary commission of inquiry adopted the following criteria to understand and characterize them:

• mental destabilization;
• the exorbitant nature of the financial requirements;
• breaking away from the original environment;
• the existence of violations of physical integrity;
• enrollment of children;
• anti-social discourse;
• public disturbances;
• the importance of legal disputes;
• the possible diversion of traditional economic circuits;
• attempts to infiltrate public authorities.
• adopting a language specific to the group;
• changes in eating habits;
• refusal of care;
• a situation of rupture with the family or the social environment;
• an exclusive commitment for the group;
• absolute submission, total dedication to leaders;
• the loss of critical thinking and the answer to all existential questions.

We can see straight away that all people practicing instinctotherapy do not meet these criteria:

• their center of interest is an experience
• this experiment is conducted around a hypothesis, itself subject to questioning or even invalidation in the event of contradiction by the facts or possible scientific discoveries
• everyone can freely stop the practice without any pressure being exerted by those in charge of the movement
• there is teaching and not manipulation, the courses and seminars aim to transmit the results of numerous observations so that everyone can conduct their personal experience in the best conditions.
• the principles taught, both theoretical and practical, have always been presented as subjects of revision in the event of contradiction by the facts or by new scientific discoveries
• the courses were regularly interspersed with question sessions where participants were invited to present their critiques on the concepts taught
• course prices have always been lower than equivalent courses and seminars.

For a detailed refutation of the parliamentary criteria, see the page “Parliamentary criteria for sectarian deviation”.

I have personally always fought so that people practicing this diet conceive it and present it in turn as an experience, that everyone feels free to try and interrupt it at will and not try to impose their point of view. personal to others. Show results when others ask questions, why not, but always be open to critical discussion. For politicians to equate such action with sectarian activity without proof is a matter of confusion, disinformation or deliberate denigration.

The question is then to know why such relentlessness of the media, justice, and governmental organizations?

First of all, there is a poor understanding of the process, a priori assimilated to a dangerous regime, to an ideology, to a pseudoscience. Even when this epidermal reaction is overcome, the initial hypothesis still raises the question of the adequacy of the daily diet to the genetic data of the organism. As a result, all the diseases of civilization, doubt as to the benefits of grandma’s good cooking, the fear of having to change her own dining habits, and the questioning of the scientific, medical, economic system … Seeing or knowing someone to eat without cooking or preparing seems not only bizarre, but scary, because the very foundation of dietetic reasoning and a whole set of habits and beliefs collapses, taking with it the system of security in which our society has sought refuge. The confinement of the process in a sectarian image is a radical means of obscuring the crucial questions of which it could raise awareness.

The first attacks started with the medical corpus, always very jealous of its prerogatives. A certain doctor Gouffier from the hospital in Provins noted that patients arrived from the Center of Montramé and ate raw in his department. They were in fact people who had arrived in catastrophic conditions for which the Centre’s official doctor considered hospital care necessary. For Doctor Gouffier, these states of emergency came on the contrary from ill-treatment undergone in Montramé, so that he alerted the Ddass, without even having inquired about what instinctotherapy could be.

This at a time when natural medicines were in full development. At the end of the 80s, the New Age was gaining ground more than ever in the minds of crowds. It was urgent to curb the entire movement and restore institutional science to its secular supremacy. All dissident movements, for the most part pseudo-scientific, were then swept away by a media-governmental campaign of which France has the secret. Many gurus and gurus ended up in the jails of the Republic. Those in charge of a first interministerial mission, although unable to give a clear definition of the notion of sect, and without even seriously informing themselves, then followed in the footsteps of the media and anathematized instinctotherapy.

It must be said that at the time, the movement took on such a scale that the representatives of the order were worried: it was practiced in more and more countries, in particular France with several thousand followers. , Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Spain and even overseas in Thailand, Indonesia, Martinique, Hawaii, Belize, California. Something had to be done to avoid the tsunami of too drastic a return to nature and to avert the risks that this regime could represent for many interests. Wielding the scarecrow of the sect and the guru was the lethal weapon.

With the development of ecology in the last decade, we can hope that the situation will change. Instinctonutrition, practiced in autarky, is indeed the ecological food par excellence, the least polluting, the most energy efficient, the most favorable to respect for the environment, starting with the awareness of the wonders of nature that ‘she induces at every meal. The richest in pleasure too. The rehabilitation of the dietary instinct intrinsically awakens the love of nature that lies dormant in everyone, because it illuminates with daily pleasures and satisfactions the complex links that link the individual to the natural environment, and human genetics to it. history of life on earth.