Currently I'm reading the book When prophecy fails by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter. It is a classic qualitative study written in the 1950s about some persons like Marian Keech and Dr. Armstrong (pseudonyms) who believed that the world would end on 21st December 1954 by a flood. And Festinger and some students (observers) did a undercover observation within the group to conduct their study. Festinger is also the one who developed the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and tried to investigate his theory within the context of this group.
I find this book interesting and how the group of Keech and the other believers acted and got messages from "Sananda" via automatic writing or from the creator itself via kind of trance channeling through another member of the group. Gave up their jobs to untie all the earthly things that bind for example and did anticipate that they will get picked by spacemen (with a flying saucer) before the flood occurs. Well, nothing like that happened, speaking of anticipation and the future is open. I'm not sure if the study is sad or funny, because they believed in so much nonsense that their prophecy gets fulfilled. For example they got a phone call from a caller who named himself "Video player"and he told them that they get picked up at a certain time and a flying saucer lands in the backyard... so nothing happened after they spend several hours in the cold and said then it was a drill to test their faith and so it goes on, "these are signs of the 'Guardians'".
What is kind of interesting that also the 2012 movement believes that the world would end on the 21st of December and the source "Sananda" (I always think of Santa-clause when I read the name) forbid the Keech group or didn't recommend to eat meat and that smoking is bad, speaking of the eventually source of these 'channelings', also a Ouija board was mentioned, cause it is an evil tool.
As I said, imo it is an interesting book, also when the methods of this study could get criticized, but for that time it is great.
I find this book interesting and how the group of Keech and the other believers acted and got messages from "Sananda" via automatic writing or from the creator itself via kind of trance channeling through another member of the group. Gave up their jobs to untie all the earthly things that bind for example and did anticipate that they will get picked by spacemen (with a flying saucer) before the flood occurs. Well, nothing like that happened, speaking of anticipation and the future is open. I'm not sure if the study is sad or funny, because they believed in so much nonsense that their prophecy gets fulfilled. For example they got a phone call from a caller who named himself "Video player"and he told them that they get picked up at a certain time and a flying saucer lands in the backyard... so nothing happened after they spend several hours in the cold and said then it was a drill to test their faith and so it goes on, "these are signs of the 'Guardians'".
What is kind of interesting that also the 2012 movement believes that the world would end on the 21st of December and the source "Sananda" (I always think of Santa-clause when I read the name) forbid the Keech group or didn't recommend to eat meat and that smoking is bad, speaking of the eventually source of these 'channelings', also a Ouija board was mentioned, cause it is an evil tool.
As I said, imo it is an interesting book, also when the methods of this study could get criticized, but for that time it is great.
