INNER PEACE MOVEMENT

(Investigator 78, 2001 May)

The Inner Peace Movement, founded by Francisco Coll, is a world-wide organization that professes to teach psychic awareness – clairvoyance, clairaudience, prescience and psychic healing. Its promoted philosophy is to strengthen personal, family and community relations and to realize where we fit with ourselves and others. To enable a person to do this, a series of lectures and workshops are conducted by a referee who allegedly possesses one of the four "gifts" above.

In addition to the general study groups, Personal Counselling Profiles are available to determine the order and percentage of your four gifts, and instruction is given on how to develop two-way communication with your guidance (spirit).

The Inner Peace Movement accepts as fact, reincarnation, the existence of guardian angels and disembodied spirits, that our souls astral travel and that communication with other souls is possible through the development of our spiritual gifts.

While researching material for this chapter, I attended a lecture run by the Inner Peace Movement, introducing a 12 week course for $60, which professes to teach psychic awareness – clairvoyance, clairaudience and prescience, etc:

In addition to the initial cost, workshops at $20 each and a series of thirty counselling services at $50 each are also recommended. This, together with the fact that the organization is listed in the Sydney telephone directory as a Limited Company would appear to contradict their claim that the Inner Peace Movement is a non-profit organization.

Putting it mildly, I was appalled at the scientific illiteracy of the lecturer who pre-supposed that those in attendance, like herself, believed in the existence of guardian angels, reincarnation, auras, disembodied spirits, and human souls that were nightly capable of transcending the cosmos to converse with souls on other planets. The only "evidence" offered in support of the human soul’s intergalactic travels was a quote from Shirley MacLaine's TV mini-series, "Out On a Limb" in which her soul (movie animation) appears to float skywards tethered by a slender silver cord. The lecturer explained that the soul is attached by this invisible (sic) cord to thee pineal gland in the back of one's bead and after its midnight tryst with souls on other planets, automatically rewinds like a retractable vacuum cleaner power lead!

Psychic Fairs promoted by the Inner Peace Movement have also become popular in the last year or so. One, I attended, featured all the usual run of the mill psychics, palm readers, tarot readers, crystal ball scryers, past lives readers, aura readers and cleansers and chakra re-alignment 'healers'.

Although advertised as a non-profit, non-sectarian, nonpolitical, educational organization, the various courses on offer and the fees charged would seem to indicate that it is a business. Further, in view of the fact that they are encouraging people to believe in pseudoscience and the irrational negates any pretension of being an educational organization.

According to the Inner Peace Movement figures, 50,000 Australians have attended these lectures and 500,000 others world wide.

Bibliography:

Croll, F. 1977. New Spiritual Horizons. Study Group Manual. Americana Leadership College. P 0 Box 870. Potts Point, NSW 2011.
Edwards, Harry. 1992. "Heigh Ho, Come to the Fair." the Skeptic.12(l):41-42.
________________. 1992. " All About Auras." the Skeptic. 12(2):41-41.
MacDougall. C.D 1983. Superstition and the Press. Prometheus Books.

[From: A Skeptic's Guide to the New Age, H Edwards]

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