Becoming Supernatural - Method, Message, and Market
Turbocharged Bafflegab
I mentor a 17-year-old young man, whom I’ve known since he was born. Yesterday, he asked me about a book he was reading by someone I had never heard of. The book is "Becoming Supernatural" by Joe Dispenza. I took a look and quickly recognized all the Theosophical fingerprints and New Age bafflegab.
Joe Dispenza is a hilarious cartoon character version of Werner Erhard.
What follows is the assessment I provided to my young protégé.
Introduction
Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza presents a comprehensive plan for personal transformation, promising enhanced health, mental clarity, and heightened abilities through meditation, intention, and structured routines. Dispenza invites readers into a belief system supported by scientific-sounding language, testimonials, and daily practices.
The Metaphysical Framework
The book describes reality as a world of hidden forces and programmed limits. According to Dispenza, daily habits and inherited stresses prevent people from reaching their full potential. Each person possesses creative intelligence, which can be blocked by boundaries that can be overcome through specialized techniques and secret knowledge. Dispenza’s system draws on Gnostic and Theosophical ideas, framing material existence as a kind of prison or matrix that restricts consciousness. His teachings promise self-realization and liberation through intention, ritual, and mental discipline.
Rapport Through Mere-Agreement
Dispenza builds rapport by reflecting the reader’s struggles and hopes through personal stories and testimonials. These examples create a sense of shared experience and a sense of belonging. Readers see their own lives in these narratives, which opens them to the program’s methods and beliefs.
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Induction Through Bafflegab and Nominalization
The text relies on complex, scientific-sounding jargon — “quantum field,” “energy centers,” “coherent brain states” — and uses abstract nouns like “transformation” and “activation.” This pattern, known as "bafflegab," makes claims sound authoritative while concealing their clear meaning. Nominalizations turn actions into things, making the teachings feel fixed and unquestionable. Together, these language patterns encourage readers to accept the program’s ideas without skepticism, drawing them into a focused and receptive state.
Suggestion and NLP Framing
The book prescribes daily exercises, guided meditations, and affirmations rooted in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). These techniques turn personal routines into group rituals. Dispenza describes large events, such as Project Coherence, where thousands meditate together, and workshops that feature symbolic objects, like a key representing the unlocking of personal potential. Repeated stories of transformation serve as both inspiration and proof, reinforcing commitment to the method and drawing participants deeper into the system.
Readers join a community marked by shared language, rituals, and experiences. Group identity grows through ongoing involvement in events, meditations, and advanced trainings. The structure links individual progress and self-worth to regular participation, new offerings, and continued investment in the program.
Operational Outcomes
Becoming Supernatural shapes readers’ lives around its teachings. Practices like daily meditation and community events become central habits. Transformation stories and ritual participation reinforce loyalty and validate the program’s promises. Each new workshop, advanced training, or group ritual strengthens the group’s boundaries and the leader’s authority. The book prescribes continuous involvement, making success and belonging dependent on deeper engagement.
Conclusion
Becoming Supernatural operates as a system that ties personal growth, identity, and daily life to its rituals and beliefs. Dispenza positions himself as the essential source of further training, advanced teachings, and group experience. The program uses cycles of testimony, ritual, and exclusive events to secure loyalty and drive ongoing participation.
This structure follows the pattern of Werner Erhard’s Human Potential Movement, Scientology, and other theosophy-inspired cult businesses. Each operates as a commercial enterprise, selling meaning, belonging, and purpose through seminars, materials, and charismatic leadership. In a society with declining religion and weakened metaphysical frameworks, such systems offer substitute faiths. Members organize their lives around group practices, while those in control gain both wealth and influence over committed followers.
Becoming Supernatural functions as a cult-building business and a replacement belief system, shaping identity, loyalty, and daily habits through its teachings and community structure.
Peter - Warn your young friend Run Do Not Walk away from that cult. I have personal experience with a similar version and it is nothing but destructive. In the late 1980’s, I was working for a Fortune 150 corporation. The management fad de jure was that big companies were losing the edge to fast moving, unbureaucratic entrepreneurs. So my Fortune 150 company decide to make independent business Pods.
These were small units dedicated to new business ideas located away from the main offices without normal protective corporate management features. I was put in charge of a new business operating unit, under an overall manager with a complimentary marketing manager. Even though, through my efforts, I was able to grow the business 2000%, my life was made a living hell because my weak kneed boss and the marketing manager who dominated him got into a similar “personal improvement” movement. It was called Transformational Technologies (TT) but it was really just another name for an EST cult. There spiel was that your mind was holding your body back so you needed to free your mind to dramatically enhance your performance.
Their business model was to rip off huge amounts of money from the individuals in the cult. They eventually did the same to my business unit when they brought in a ridiculously expensive 19 year old TT “transformation consultant” to enhance my part of the business. I am sure it was big part of the cult. Because virtually all the employees worked in operations for me, they viewed that area as red meat. I had to fight their nonsense on a daily basis. Their big scam was to get couples to go away to their Transformational Retreats.
Although I never went to one, I was told how TT worked. They would get the Retreat group isolated and after a series of lectures (hypnotic suggestion?), they would gather the entire group in a room. This may be the group meditation you mentioned. They would make one person at a time stand up and confess all their personal failings and how they were holding them back. They were encouraged to confess everything by the TT "guide”.
The group would then condemn the standing individual with increasing intensity, cheered on by a TT facilitator, as a way theoretically of “self cleansing” . Under increasing group pressure, the singled out individuals would often breakdown and confess all kinds of things, like infidelities and homosexualities. Some people even broke down and confessed crimes. Besides providing great blackmail opportunities for the TT people, the group would become implicit in their crimes by not reporting them. When the person was completely destroyed, they then had a mass group hug, reinforcing the programing. The technique was devastating to the individual and provided a dangerous lesson to all the other participants that their time was coming. The same techniques were used by ChiComs to breakdown captured American Korean War troops to get them to love Communist China and publicly denounce America. I am sure you can find references to this online.
The core precept that your mind was holding you back included some ridiculous Bafflegab. They would say ridiculous things like you could run a three minute mile if you let your mind get ahead of your feet. My favorite absurd statement was “you aren’t listening to the listening you are”. Because this was crap my boss would push on me and we still had the trappings of a corporation, including written annual performance targets and mission statements, they were trying to use it to get me out of their way. Since their goal was to get TT into the operations and I wouldn’t let them, they used the TT to distort the corporate procedures.
As an example I was called into my bosses office with the 19 year old TT expert to get me to commit in writing to absolutely impossible performance targets. The meeting started out friendly with coffee and donuts and sweet talk about the great job I was doing. Then it turned ugly. In addition to using the absurd “you aren’t listening to the listening you are“ crap, the tried to get me to sign off on the equivalent of three minutes mile performance targets which when unmet would justify firing me. They also tried to stop me from going to the bathroom, claiming my going to urinate after hours of badgering was a sign of my lack of commitment. When I told them I was going to pee either in the bathroom or in the garbage can in his office, calling their bluff, they folded. The technique of giving people lots to drink and not letting them pee, making them very uncomfortable, was part of their breakdown techniques. There is a movie called North Dallas Forty that has a similar scene in it I have been told.
In any case back to your young friend, and as you may remember a comment of mine that young people have to be extremely careful to avoid creating blackmail potential, tell him to stay far, far away from those people. Besides a great deal of psychological pain he will endure, he could ruin his life with a psychologically tortured confession. Feel free to share my story widely. It was an interesting learning experience for me because I was fighting it. But it wasn’t fun and I saw the techniques break people, which was tragic. Glad you brought it up.
Peter, I’m liking the word ‘bafflegab’ (reference my comment yesterday when you introduced it to us). Having just read this article (and the article ‘The Meta Method of Manipulation), it has dawned on me how restrictive language actually is in trying to explain what our thoughts are processing or actually are! I clearly see how manipulation and psy-op’s can influence and manipulate. Also, I realise that human artistic expression, be it music, art or theatre strive to express thoughts or elements of our consciousness that words just fail. The vast perception deception manipulation is becoming so clear. Thank you