"'In my view, remote indoctrination is not all that rare.' That quiet observation explains why Pierre S. Freeman's The Prisoner of San Jose is one of the few books that has appeared at the outset of the millennium that might help the human race live through the daunting challenges ahead.
A 24-year member of the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosae Crucis, Mr. Freeman has experienced remote indoctrination — total subjugation of the victim's independent judgment at a distance, as distinguished from the intensive brainwashing techniques used on prisoners and mind control of the kind exercised by communal cults like Heaven's Gate and Jonestown — at the hands of a modern cult whose roots are purportedly very old, widespread and profound. This is a survivor's report on the Cult of Cults, one endowed with vast unearned prestige ("Newton was a Rosicrucian": certainly trumps "Tom Cruise is a Scientologist"!) as well as seasoned cunning in the art of separating members from their souls and their pocketbooks — and ultimately from what Freeman calls, in another eloquently simple phrase, the cherished gift of liberty.
This courageous personal account of one man's enslavement and escape from cult programming can be a valuable tool for scrutinizing the baffling state of humanity in a hundred cultures, in developed and developing societies alike. How can young Muslims be programmed to be suicide bombers, operated at a distance by their controllers with a high degree of reliability that puts to shame manufacturers of "smart bombs" and other advanced weaponry? How can citizens of one of the world's oldest democracies allow themselves to be bused like cattle to the ballot box to vote against a specter called "gay marriage"? — to name only one example American history offers of how venal politicians have embraced Article 16 of Freeman's "Declaration of Remote Indoctrination": ("Create a good, solid phobia") to deprive voters of their inalienable right to democratic representation. What is the technology of human programming, and how has it worked through history to create otherwise baffling phenomena like The Third Reich and American Idol?
By the time you put down this book, Freeman's experiences with the Rosy Cross (illuminated by many excerpts from the diary he kept during his 24-year mental captivity) will have become a powerful lens for seeing how the aims and strategies of remote indoctrination, which date back to the beginnings of recorded time, are everywhere woven into the fabric of the modern world. His modest account dizzies the imagination by the way it extends our understanding of the term "cult," but it is also a practical and highly readable guide to offer to anyone you know who is actually in a cult and needs to get out. Read it at your own risk — the world we live in will never look the same to you afterward."
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