Roy Masters (commentator)

Roy Masters

Roy Masters is a British-born American talk radio personality and author of the books How Your Mind Can Keep You Well, The Hypnosis of Life, The Secret Power of Words, The Adam and Eve Sindrome, How to Survive Your Parents, Eat No Evil, Finding God in Physics: Einstein's Missing Relative, and most recently Be Still and Know (an updated version of How Your Mind Can Keep You Well). In addition to hosting his own show Advice Line he, along with his sons, also own Talk Radio Network, which syndicates controversial personalities such as Michael Savage, Tammy Bruce, Laura Ingraham, Jerry Doyle, Rusty Humphries, and most recently Erich "Mancow" Muller.

Background

Born to a Jewish family in London, his father died at an early age, and he moved to South Africa to practice diamond cutting, during which time he supported his family and sent his brother to architecture school. He emigrated to the United States of America, moving to Houston, Los Angeles, and most recently to Grants Pass, Oregon. While in Houston, he began the Institute for Hypnosis, and was briefly arrested and jailed for practicing medicine without a license. He has been arrested three other times: In Florida for beating up his uncle on the beach (which he claimed was self-defense); for another undisclosed domestic incident in Houston which was sealed; and in Grants Pass, Oregon for claiming on a gun permit that he had never been arrested before. As an adult he embraced Christianity, but still self-identifies as Jewish (often referring to Christ as 'one of our boys who made it'). He hosts a national radio program offering advice to distraught callers called Advice Line, sponsored through his Foundation of Human Understanding and distributed on the family's satellite radio network. This show began in the 1960s under different names including "How Your Mind Can Keep You Well" and was one of the nation's first call-in advice talk shows--making him a radio pioneer. Roy Masters' son, David, often sits in for his father on Advice Line, and has committed himself to the same teaching mission.

Teaching

The essence of Roy Masters' ministry is a meditation exercise he has called 'Be Still and Know'. The name is a slightly shortened verse from Psalms 46:10, which reads “Be still, and know that I am God”, and appears to be based on Early Orthodox Hesychasm (which he has made reference to). He claims that during his hypnosis sessions he reached an epiphany, noticing his clients were already hypnotized by their environment and upbringing. Realizing the destructive effects of hypnosis, he claims the exercise allows people to become dehypnotized from life's outside stimuli and get in touch with their “true” conscience, which will put them in a state of awareness, eventually becoming a willing servant of God's will. This was originally published in his 1981 pamphlet How Your Mind Can Keep You Well and has been currently revamped in Be Still and Know.

Central to all of Masters’ theories is that all humanity's problems are the ultimate result of idolatry and hedonism, turning away from the transcendent source of all things and towards more imminent, limited, unfulfilling, and impermanent resources. Letting go of worldly desire and subsequent resentment, as allowed by the meditation exercise, should eventually liberate humanity, ideally binding him or her to God and His transcendent perspective and curing various psychosomatic and related diseases along the way.

Hypnotism

Roy Masters holds that most people are hypnotized by worldly stimulants, including sex, sports, eating, politics, religion, most of our day to day relationships, and above all our own traumas, prejudices and biological impulses. The most potent worldly stimulants tend to move us emotionally and to appeal to our self interest. Yet, since the things we desire are limited, if not unattainable, distress results. This leads to resentment which in turn manifests in various forms of strife and recklessness. These unwanted feelings promote attempts to escape through greater indulgence, forming a self-perpetuating process that recurs indefinitely.

Social Views

Roy Masters has social theories based on his knowledge of hypnotism, and the observations of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Ayn Rand, in which there are three types of people: Submissive parasites, dominant predators, and enlightened human beings.

According to this classification, there is the enlightened man, free of desire and fear, content with his life, gracious, disciplined, virtuous, patient and tolerant, accepting of adversity, much of which resembles Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, and particularly the Shambhala warrior tradition as taught by Vajrayana scholars such as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Roy Masters claims this to be the original state of mankind before the fall in the Garden of Eden.

Outside of this, however, are people who are described as bestial and subhuman, striving out of trauma induced dependancy or sloaffishness, either towards obvious, tangible resources (money, shelter, or food) or for more subtle reasons (company, attention, distraction). There are two types of people in this group: Submissive personalities who parasitize off others, and dominant personalities who terrorize and prey on others.

Often, submissive personalities lure in their desires by willingly submitting to relatively dominant personalities in return for the safety, power, and prestige that the predator has gained for him or herself, in turn, the dominant personality needs the submissive to aid, comfort, or otherwise react to him or (occasionally) her achievements and presence. Both are thus often locked into a co-dependency which results in frustration, resentment, and ultimately mutual and/or self destruction due to the natural limitations of one to support the other's inherantly unrealistic standards and mutually selfish indignation, compelling one towards transgression and counter transgression, conflict compounding, sometimes to dangerous heights.

Roy Masters states that both types become frightened or jealous, and resentful when in the presence of a Human being, and will either try to destroy him openly through hostile aggression, or subtlely corrupt from within through sympathetic manipulation (Roy Masters often warns his followers of ever engaging in social activity outside of business or professional relationships, a rigid lifestyle which may be one reason why some suspect him of being a cult leader).

Roy Masters teaches that both predators and parasites will use a number of means of living off of others, often through subterfuge and opportunistic exploitation of other's needs, using false pretenses of aid, assistance, relief, or, most common of all "love".

Ever since the trauma of the fall, the latter type has been the prevailing order for humanity and foundation for all human society ever since, each generation being traumatized and then repeating their parent's coping methods, causing further trauma to their own descendants.

Effects on Health

One important result of this widespread and compounding distress and resentment is psychosomatic illness. To Roy Masters, almost all health problems ultimately originate in excess the stress caused by desire and resentment (which are usually consequences of one another).

He has made claims that his meditation exercise can eventually cure many diseases, or prevent further damage. He has made claims that his meditation exercise has cured people with AIDS living in South Africa.

Religious Beliefs

Roy Masters holds a form of Messianic Judaism with heavy mystical and intellectual influence from Jewish and Catholic sources such as C. S. Lewis, Albert Einstein (a particular favorite), as well as the philosophies or observations from numerous atheistic sources such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Sigmund Freud (all of whom show a great influence on his thinking).

He holds a psycho-social interpretation of the tenant of original sin, in which negative behavioral patterns originating from the fall of Adam and Eve have traveled through the generations, expressing themselves in various forms in one generation, traumatizing the next who then express it themselves (he has interpreted Christ's synoptic statement on “the worm that dieth not” as the remnants of these negative behavioral patterns). What also distinguishes Roy Masters view of original sin from that of most Christians is in the method of salvation, which in Christian doctrine is the recognition of sin and acceptance of God’s forgiveness through the Crucifixion of His physical embodiment in J'hushua, with deed at least a support, if not wholly irrelevant. To Roy Masters, however, original sin is defeated through repentance and then a slow emulation of Christ’s character which is accomplished in part through the meditation exercise (this is partially similar to Catholic doctrine regarding Saints, particularly in Eastern Orthodoxy, which is termed theosis). However, he has made statements (particularly in his How Your Mind Can Keep You Well meditation exercise tape) that one may only follow the narrow road only when they feel internally compelled to do so (this can be interpreted as the intervention of the Holy Spirit, which is what some interpret the controversial and problematic Epistle of James as being referred to).

Given his views on the senses and the inherent dangers they present, there can be found an obvious Platonic influence, with God existing in the realm of Ideas, and the physical world an outgrowth of that basic, fundamental truth which is God (this may border, alternately, either on Panentheism, in which the universe, at least in the past and possibly future tenses, is an extremity of the Godhead's substance, or Gnosticism, in which the universe is a freak accident that occurred outside of the idealistic Pleroma, or a product of an evil being, usually H'Shem).

He is also perturbed by the superficiality of Christian fundamentalism, which he claims as not seeing the basic rational concepts behind the words and doctrines, comparing them to H'Pharisim, who play the role of dominant leader to parasitic sycophants. He encourages Christians and Jews to study the Bible for Forms.

He is staunchly against the "separation of church and state" and has made statements which clearly support a Christian theocracy in America. On Wednesday, August 27, 2003 he said on his national radio show: “I am so grateful to belong to a country that is based on freedom under law. Fought hard and won by Christian men. Absolutely Christian men, very few others. Christian founders, Christian freedom fighters and they’ve granted me the privilege to live in this country. I must adapt. I must respect the laws and the history of the country. We have allowed immigrants to come in with all their belief systems and not required them to adapt to our laws and our history and to accept out of respect their given freedom. This is a Christian country. Like it or not. It is. If you’re going to be a citizen, you need to adapt. Not to try and change the laws, but to adapt to it. And respect it. You want to practice your little religious rituals on the side? That’s fine. But not to try and change the Constitution, interpret it and tear it down.”

Move to Grants Pass Oregon

In the late 1970s, he moved his base of operations to Grants Pass, Oregon, though until at least the late 1980's he continued to broadcast his daily radio program from Los Angeles. Just prior to this time, he became sick from what he claims was a misdiagnosed amoebic infection from swimming in raw sewage that was dumped in the Pacific Ocean. He has had continuing heart and diabetic related medical problems which resulted in a multiple bypass. (Some have taken this as a flaw in his overall philosophy that every health problem is strictly the result of internal stress caused by and emotions, but he is the one exception who became diabetic because of an amoeba, with this premise, many see hypocrisy in Masters' claims).

Masters' program had been essentially apolitical prior to his move to Oregon. However, upon moving, he began to advocate the political and social positions of the Religious Right and embraced the developing survivalist movement, observing that the present relationship between the American people and its government to be yet another example of the dominant-submissive codependency dialect, void of the true liberty as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, (which he holds is only possible through individual self reliance and disciplined moral fortitude). He has also made numerous predictions of doom involving social meltdowns and Martial Law, stating that the general population is so socially and morally “corrupt” as to implode into a sea of violent anarchy as soon as disaster, natural or otherwise, hits. He claimed that this would allow Communist elements within the Government to lord over the people.

Additionally, for 15 years, he cajoled his listeners and their families to exodus to Grants Pass with him to form an isolated community protected from these various impending natural and social disasters. He claimed that Grants Pass, Oregon would be "safe from nuclear radiation after the bombs dropped" because of its unique geographic location. According to an article in the 1999 Oregonian, "Estimates of the number of supporters of his Foundation of Human Understanding in Josephine County range from 1,500 to several thousand. Many moved there after Masters told listeners to move to Southern Oregon to escape what he said was the inevitable collapse of a sick society." Thousands of people followed him throughout the 1980's and early 1990's, creating political problems and incidents with the small town locals, covered thoroughly and ongoing by the Grants Pass Daily Courier, the local newspaper which won numerous prestigious journalism awards for a 5-part intricate series which exposed and harshly criticized the Masters' operations. The addition of Tall Timber Ranch, owned by the Masters family in Selma, Oregon, and maintained by families (living there for room and board) who were totally involved in his church teachings, created a cult-like atmosphere investigated (some, particularly by media outlets such as the NBC tabloid Extra.The TV program investigated claims made by his former daughter-in-law, that she and her children were struck by Masters. Various media have used the social implications of his teaching, as a sign of him being a cult leader, while others claim that he owns property and businesses there, and accuse this of being a crafty, profit motivated business strategy).

1990’s-2000’s

Masters' popularity declined in the 1990s, but he and his show Advice Line remain on the air, albeit with a much smaller listenership than in the 1970s. In the early 1990's, the CBS investigative program "48 Hours" focused an entire episode on two mothers from Las Vegas whose children were kidnapped by their husbands--men who believed their wives were "evil" after they heard Masters' constant degradation and criticism of all women. The women searched the country and finally found their children in hiding with their respective fathers. Masters told the CBS show that he "never told the husbands to do that." Oddly enough, a subsequent network telefilm based on the kidnapping didn't mention the reason why the husbands took their children, and the film was turned into a comedy-adventure.

During 1999 Roy Masters predicted all sorts of doom in relation to Y2K, even stating on his program "the government will use Y2K as an excuse to declare martial law on all Americans." and “I don’t think I will survive the next year". He even made two appearances on Matt Drudge’s short lived FOX News show warning about this. When nothing happened on January 1, 2000, he quickly mentioned on his first show of the year, "looks like they took care of that" and never talked about it again.

In addition to the television appearances, Masters has also appeared twice on Matt Drudge’s radio talk show, (in this last appearance in 2001, Roy was speaking about the Andrea Yates murder and how it was caused by her trying too hard to be a “perfect” mother which he considers a form of hypocrisy, the stress resulting in insanity).

He has also been on CNN's Crossfire (where the panel spent the entire show decimating his beliefs and flashing "Cult Leader" under his name) and Larry King Live, and was even interviewed on a 1998 program on the Discovery Channel dealing with the belief in the Apocalypse and it's relation to the militia movement. A short segment of one of his tapes was used in a PBS television special Death in America, which dealt with the social attitudes over death and capital punnishment throughout American history.

Masters is a staunch supporter of George W. Bush and supported him in 2000 and 2004, especially more since the 9-11 terrorist attacks, (an event which he partially blamed on the West's wider social decadence, expressing itself in military impotence and resentment from more conservative countries).

His views on militant Islam are about the same as those towards Fascism, Communism, in which weak, impotent men look towards domineering religious leaders to give them power and justification. Like his views of Evangelical Christianity, Roy Masters states that many Muslims refuse to look at the actual ideas contained within their Koran, but rather interpret it superficially, merely twisting it to suit their own egos.

Charges: Heresy, Misogyny and Homophobia

There has been accusations of Roy Masters being a cult leader (something which he denies, and has even discouraged his followers from doing from time to time), he is also known for his derogatory comments against women, Democrats, socialists and homosexuals, all of which he either sees as manipulative or accomplices to said manipulators. He claims that feminism and homosexuality are unnatural, and stem from trauma-based resentment towards abusive, absent or otherwise distant and uninvolved parents (in the case of women, this also includes husbands).

Heresy

Many Christian counter-cult groups (such as the Christian Research Institute and Let Us Reason Ministries) accuse Roy Masters of preaching a form of Pantheism due to language emphasizing The Lord’s imminence (it is possible he could be a panentheist, in the traditions of Rabbinical and Eastern Christian Orthodoxy). They also are disturbed by his lack of Biblical language and terminology (which Masters considers to be superficial and emotionally loaded, potentially driving some non-believers away from the truth). Admittedly, Roy Masters is uncertain about the Trinity (which he confuses with Modalism) though he has not said anything definite about this. He has also shown criticism towards the salvation through faith doctrine (though this could merely be a matter of emphasis, since he encourages listesners to only walk Christ's narrow road when they feel internally compelled to do so, and not out of fear or any forced coercion).

There have been accusations of Roy Masters being a Gnostic based on his ideas about reality and the senses. Roy superficially sounds Gnostic, but it would probably be more fitting to call him a Platonist, which holds the same basic concept about the illusory nature of reality but without duelism (which Masters only accepts as an ideological abstraction, as is generally held by Persian Mazdaists).

Political Views

Masters believes the Democratic Party to be a Communist front, and most media to be a medium for psychological warfare and social engineering, from which much of America’s said social problems were exploited or further instigated to corrupt society to the point of unsustainability, to ultimately collapse into anarchy, acting as an excuse for martial law or revolution.

His views on Communists, Democrats, and socialism in general are in the traditional description of the welfare dictatorship set up by a weak, incompetent, and selfish (parasitic) people who elect corrupt, ultimately brutal (predetory) dictators to fight and fix everything for them, sacrificing their own rights and infringing upon those of competent, self suficiant human beings, eventually leading to Fascism (see: Stalinism, Welfare State and Welfare trap). Likewise, he generally views capitalism as a means of individual development and growth, both mentally and spiritually, where responsibility and discipline are exercised.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Foundation of Human Understanding published a magazine called New Dimensions, which served as a forum for Masters' conservative political views.

Feminism

His particular feelings regarding feminism are that it has merely created a system for unscrupulous women and administrative bureaucrats to abuse for their own selfish agendas. He also feels that women are too emotional and that they need more time to develop into a full human being (according to Roy Masters, a part of the fall was a result of Adam not being firmly convicted enough when Eve offered him the fruit). He has stated many times that women in America shouldn't have the right to vote--that only men should be allowed to vote in any political elections.

He sometimes describes the relationship between feminism and women’s rights under the context of grace, with feminism's rebelliousness described as counter productive to the cause it aims for, creating unnecessary destruction in the process while amounting to little in the way of results. In these instences, Masters insists that grace is needed to combat abuses in a system.

Homosexuality

In the case of homosexuality Roy Masters believes it to be yet another arena for enacting the dominant/submissive dialect, which he states stems from an upbringing under a domineering, abusive, subsequently de-masculating parental figure (usually the father). He particularly believes that most gays are submissive by consequence of the father's selfish demasculating acts of physical and emotional violence, which destroyed any confidence (a necessary element for developing self reliance and moral fortitude) or will that child may have had, thus left dependant (Alfred Adler had a similar theory in which he stated homosexual males as stunted and immature, needing a strong figure to empower them). Masters thinks lesbianism is similar to that of a predatory juvenile delinquent, an expression of resentment towards a weak, powerless parent, often faced by a violant, oppressive one, each relationship a form of dominant revenge against one or both parents. On his national radio show on Monday, February 16, 2004 he made the following statement about homosexuality: “Now there’s a huge organization called homosexuals. These are the most dangerous people on this planet. Because they are articulate, intelligent, they compensate with intellect what they are lacking in decency and common sense.” “It’s the same thing with the homosexual movement. Roy Masters will take on the whole of the psychiatric association. Give me your best person. Give me your best spokesmen for homosexuality on gay marriage. This is the ultimate madness. Anyone who thinks--A.--that homosexuality is natural and you were born that way…and B--that it’s OK, that they’re right…I don’t know where they get these rights from…maybe from God…I don’t know…they’ve got a God that kind of likes this behavior…the Al Queda…they also have a God, that sort of blesses them for killing people… so you have no idea the depths that human beings will sink. And homosexuality is that depth to which people are sinking.”

As Roy Masters admits, these traits are not limited to homosexual relationships, being manifest most heavily in the majority of hetorosexual relations as well. On his national radio show on Thursday, March 18, 2004, he said: “And then it gets perverse. You have two homosexuals. They do the same thing. They play husband and wife. And pretty soon they’re fighting and making up you know what I mean. And so it duplicates itself in perverse ways. They probably have the same relationship with a sheep.”

Ultimately, Roy Masters is in general agreement with Judaeo-Christian views that consider sex to primarily serve as a means of reproduction, being a hedonistic addiction and subsequent control device outside of said function. He believes, thus, that sexual relationships should not exist outside of marriage and that even married couples should engage in sex only for procreation and not physical pleasure. 

(In 2003 Masters made these comments regarding his own sexual behavior on his radio show, claiming he has been celebate since 1968: "I take care of my wife’s needs, not sexual. Because that would be dangerous for her and for me. Because anytime you give her affection like that…..see, to her in her mind, she doesn’t understand it, a lot of women don’t understand it, I do, sex is weakness. Something she could exploit and have her way. And sit in judgement, so that when she services my weakness, which she hasn’t for 35 years.").

Ownership of Talk Radio Network

Masters and his sons own the Talk Radio Network, a radio syndication network which broadcasts, besides their own programming, some of the most controversial conservative personalities on the air, such as Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, and Tammy Bruce, as well as Masters' show. Talk Radio Network recently added Erich "Mancow" Muller, a Chicago shock jock who has faced numerous FCC fines for obscene material, to its portfolio. Through their Talk Radio Network, the Masters family sued a number of web sites that were criticizing Michael Savage and calling for a boycott of his sponsors. The lawsuits were later dropped.

Bibliography

• How Your Mind Can Keep You Well 1981
• The Hypnosis of Life
• The Secret Power of Words
• How to Survive Your Parents
• The Adam and Eve Sindrome
• Eat No Evil
• Finding God in Physics: Einstein's Missing Relative
• Be Still and Know (an updated version of How Your Mind Can Keep You Well).

References

Teaching:

How Your Mind Can Keep You Well. 1981. Foundation of Human Understanding.

• Social Views

New Insights. Vol. 2, No. 1, February 1996. Foundation of Human Understanding. Article: Uncause a Disease, Pt 2.

New Insights. Vol. 2, No. 1, February 1996. Foundation of Human Understanding. Excerpt: Secrets of a Parallel Universe.

http://www.fhu.com/popups/ptss_popup.html

http://www.fhu.com/popups/being_upset.html

Criticism:

• Heresy

http://www.rickross.com/reference/fhu/fhu1.html

http://www.fhu.com/Statement_of_belief.html Paragraphs 3-4.

http://www.watchman.org/cults/roymstrs.htm

• Feminism

http://www.fhu.com/Statement_of_belief_2.html Paragraph 13

• Homosexuality

http://www.fhu.com/popups/article_gayinsociety.html

External links

• Foundation of Human Understanding - Official site.
• Roy Masters - Criticism and social satire of Roy Masters.
• [1] - story from the Oregonian newspaper about the allegations made by Masters' former daughter-in-law on the "Extra" investigative news program.
• [2] - Objective response from a research group that studies cults based in the University of Virginia.