WFMU recently interviewed Timothy Wyllie, who was a member of The Process Church of The Final Judgement and is the author of Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment:
During the Process salon at the Anthology Film Archives right around when Love Sex Fear Death came out you mentioned that cults could be a good thing, that there were many benefits to you spending time in one. Could you describe examples of what a good cult experience would be?
The biggest benefit is that one gets to experience a kind of life that isn’t available under normal circumstances. This especially applies to reincarnates, who require an accelerated learning curve. Most western societies these days are both risk and pain averse. Cults allow those who need to go through their own pain and anger to do it in a safe situation. Cults can become a microcosm of society, so people in cults can experience a far wider array of possibilities like service, obedience, leadership, as well as what it’s like to live without personal possessions, money, and personal freedom. Celibacy for a period is also a necessary psychic/emotional antidote in an over-sexed society. Possibly the greatest gift a cult bestows is when one leaves it. One emerges back into life with the opportunity to follow one’s own drummer–free of parental etc influences, and understanding the dire consequences of ever giving away one’s power again.
If you were involved in the start of a new cult now in 2011 what would change compared to the Process? What would you focus on?
I wouldn’t. I feel cults have had their day. At this point in time and in a spiritual sense, it’s every person for themselves. Cults in the sixties and seventies were a kind of clean-up contingency. The were so many reincarnates who needed to work on themselves (and be worked on). The kids these days are different–they don’t really need cults the way we did.
And here’s him talking about drugs:
In this way one makes some unlikely allies. I found, for example, PCP/Angel Dust, contrary to its bad rap, to be the Queen of the concocted Entheogens and an invaluable ally to bust open my head. I like DMT–and have probably done it at least 100 times–but I find I can’t work with it. It just moves too fast. I suspect, for me anyway, Salvia is probably somewhat the same. Thing about entheogens is just because they get you there, doesn’t mean they keep you there. They are one way of opening the door, but the most important aspect of them is in the assimilation of the information into one’s life so as to transform it.
WMFU: My Chat with Timothy Wyllie About Angels, Cults, the Multiverse, & the Entheogenic Impulse
There’s so much good stuff in this interview. Please read the whole thing.
(Thanks Trevor)
Here’s another interview with Wyllie, from Dangerous Minds:
Love Sex Fear Death: Inside The Process Church of the Final Judgment with Timothy Wyllie from DANGEROUS MINDS on Vimeo.