Santa Claus Rage

I'm going to relate an experience I had at SRF. It involves a certain individual who I will not name. The intent here is not to expose that person's behavior or cause embarrassment, but to illustrate and give some background to SRF's response and one of the ways that they discourage good medical care.

Some years ago, the Academy for Psychic Studies operated a Santa Claus booth at a local Christmas Fair. I attended as often as I could. We would let any kid sit with Santa and charged a few bucks if the parents wanted a picture. I got to take pictures of dozens of the cutest kids in the world sitting on Santa's lap. It was a great time for me.

We had guys rotating as Santa, as the fair lasted some 10 hours and that's a long time to sit in a Santa suit. Usually we would have them sit for no more than an hour as that suit gets pretty hot. Steve Sanchez was one of the booth's more popular Santas. He just had a way of engaging the kids and making them feel like they were with Santa Claus himself. He would do a deep ho-ho-ho and a hearty Merry Christmas while ringing his sleigh bells. The kids would run to him and wouldn't leave until they had given him their whole Christmas wish list for the next ten years. Taking pictures of the kids sitting with him was a lot of fun.

One of the guys playing Santa was truly a maniacal member of SRF. This fellow was a hard-core and fairly new student in the basic level of the Clairvoyant Training Program (which I attended) and frankly, he scared the crap out of me. This guy not only took every single class that was offered, he listened to the SRF-published recordings and watched all the videos while not in class. His "dedication to the teaching" made him a very popular guy there. The church leadership held him up as an enthusiastic learner and that he was succeeding practicing meditation and induced trance states. Every unattached female (and a few attached ones) were eyeballing him for a mate and a few were making moves on him. He not only scared the crap out of me, he had a certain way of making me feel like crap when in his presence.

At the Christmas Fair, he pulled nearly a double shift in a hot Santa suit. Instead of doing the ho-ho-ho and Merry Christmas thing letting the kids come to him, he'd try to persuade kids to come sit on his lap. He would shake a basket of candy canes, tell the kids "Hey, it's Santa! Come sit on my lap". He'd even work on the parents, speaking to them directly to drop their kids on his lap. There weren't a lot of takers, as I recall. Hell, if I were one of those parents, I'd pull my kid out of there as quick as I could.

Why he was so aggressive?

After the fair closed for the day, I had dinner at a local steak house with "Santa" and an SRF minister. While tearing through his Porterhouse, old Santa there went on and on about how it was his calling to be the real Santa and he was to bring to message of the spirit of Christmas to the parents of the kids he was pulling in. He went on to talk about how he saw that people were getting a "healing" from his presence as Santa and punctuated his speech with a hearty "THAT'S BECAUSE I'M SANTA CLAUS".

Whoa.

The minister present (perhaps wisely) said nothing.

I finally had enough. I had to do something to get his feet back on the ground. So I said to him, "Maybe you can let those people find their own Spirit of Christmas. It will be a lot easier on you." He said something that I couldn't understand then went back to ripping up his steak, miffed at the affront to his ego.

I thought it would be a great time to head for the Men's room. While I was gone, (as the minister present related to me) "Santa" leaped from his chair, reached across, grabbed the minister by the shirt with both hands and while pulling him over the table and his half-eaten steak bellowed:

"YOU'VE GOT TO OWN YOUR MINSTER SPACE AND SHUT THAT GUY UP!"

The minister then went to the Men's room himself. Not to find me, but to check his underwear.

Two days later, "Santa" went berserk at the SRF headquarters saying that he was sent to save the church from evil influences (probably me) and while running through the building, worked himself into a frenzy shouting about the tidal wave of evil spirits and other threats to SRF and society and that he would be the one to save SRF and the world. He was then quickly heaved out the door. He was left on the street, pounding on the gate shouting about his mandate to save us from evil.

I was not there at the time, so this is a second-hand account of the event. I did hear from several people, including my wife, talking about that event and how scary it was. So, I guess I wasn't the only one who was scared by "Santa".

Now, anyone with a brain would have looked at this event would think: "psychotic episode" - a serious medical event, and would immediately dial 911 for the psychiatric emergency team. He could get the help he needed and you would truly have saved a soul.

But no one at SRF believes in psychiatry or in mental illnesses. So no call was made and no help was obtained. It was blamed on the usual cast of evil spirits and he was just dismissed from our world.

I learned that Santa had a reputation for somewhat disturbing behavior. At one time, the founder said that he could not handle Santa and that it was now the membership's task to keep him in control. He did have a history of drug abuse and some behaviors that ranged from unsavory to potentially dangerous. He was also in a extraordinarily contentious divorce with his wife. 
The court allowed Santa only short, supervised visits with their child due to some concerns about the child's safety. The stress of all that was huge.

I once came to SRF, entering from the rear and going into the basement (as we lower-vibration students who were constantly on the shit list were asked to do). As I approached to basement door, I heard a loud, animated and very angry voice booming from the room. It was Santa, on the phone, bellowing about his frustrations about his divorce and child custody battles.
Santa was working up to this momentous event. Psychosis happens more often that not when someone is under a lot of stress. I saw that happen three times by the time I was 26 years old. It never left my memory.

Later, after a cooling-off period, he was allowed back in to SRF and was given some conditions to observe. Apparently, they realized this fellow had been through a very bad divorce with severe problems with visiting his child. He lost his house in the divorce and was living in his car. There was nowhere else he could go where he could be accepted.

The stress on this guy was enormous. He was having a very hard time because of his divorce but still came up with enough money to buy everything SRF. Seeing an opportunity, they told him that if he would settle down and be humble, he could stay. He later returned the favor by signing over to SRF a plot of land he owned. Whether that was part of the deal, I don't know.
Santa's return was kept quiet. No one knew about it for a while. It later leaked that Santa would return. Back to the Clairvoyant Training Program, where I was still a student. One night in class, a fellow student (somewhat concerned about safety, I think) asked about him and his status. It was confirmed that Santa would return and that certain conditions would apply. It was also said that although he was not yet finished with his fundamental-level training, he would advance to the higher level of training immediately. There was a palpable sense of relief in the class upon hearing this news. He scared the crap out of us all.

He made it through fairly quickly, graduating as a minister. All graduates were given a final exam known as the Ordination Review Board. We were all present at this event as it was touted as a "validation of your knowledge". Basically, it was just theater. Bad theater.

"Santa" took that review. Despite some strange and incomprehensible answers to the questions posed and despite not knowing the basic tenets of the teaching, he passed. Bad theater indeed.

In the days following, several people commented on how bizarre the "Santa" ordination exam was. There was doubt that he was ready to be a minister. More telling was that each person said "that was the scariest graduation I have ever seen here".

Well, now I can feel I was right all along. He scared me from the beginning.

He's still there and he is teaching classes and doing whatever other work the church asks of him. They say they chased all the wolves out of his space and he is clean.

I wonder, though. Had that call to the psychiatric emergency team been made the day he had an episode, would he have still scared the living crap out of everyone through his behavior in the following years? Wouldn't some treatment for the enormous stress, delusions and uncontrolled behavior been in order? This guy wasn't just acting out, he was in pain. Mental pain. And he needed more help than a place like SRF can provide.

Well, to SRF medicine can't help. Prayer does. Meditation does. But "Santa" was praying and meditating and learning all the SRF techniques available. And he was practicing with all his might and consuming all his time with it. So, with all that learning, all that devotion, all that practice and all the validation that he is doing it right, how does it happen that techniques that are said to be beneficial aren't? Why is it that a man could be driven to a psychotic episode by faithfully using calming and soothing meditation?

Margaret Singer described a condition called "relaxation-induced anxiety" that is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. This happens when someone meditates and sees uncomfortable or disturbing mental imagery or may have physical pain or other discomfort. She cites cases where people can enter psychosis and delusions from practicing meditation. Some can meditate for a few minutes without problem, some cannot meditate at all without problem.  I'll bet "Santa" continued to meditate and enter trance states while experiencing psychosis because he didn't know any better. It probably made things worse for him and likely put him over the edge.

The same meditation and trance techniques are still in practice at SRF today. And all ministers, including "Santa" practice them faithfully.

The wolves may be in hiding.