#627: Joseph "Joe" Dispenza

Joseph Dispenza is an author of several fluffy New-Age snowflake bullshit self-help books, and is particularly notable for his appearance in the deranged piece of pseudo-science delusion “What the Bleep do we know”. Dispenza, who presents himself as "Dr. Dispenza", is the proud possessor of a “Doctor of Chiropractic degree” from Life University, and currently seems to be in the “miraculous healing” business. He is also a follower of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, and has produced several Youtube videos in which he talks about quantum physics the way he sees it, which has nothing to do with quantum physics (Dispenza really doesn’t even have the faintest idea what quantum physics is), but a lot to do with gibberish centered around various ridiculous forms of woo and crackpot spirituality crap.

If you enjoy torturing yourself with fluffy fogbanks of pink-tinged drivel, you may check out his DVD series “Your Immortal Brain,” which allegedly “looks at the ways in which the human brain can be used to create reality through the mastery of thought” – which does not mean anything (alludes to the Secret), but that doesn’t seem to matter much to Dispenza; like quantum physics linguistic meaning appears to be just whatever Dispenza fancies it to be at any given moment.

Diagnosis: Pretentious, delusional puddinghead who is apparently convinced that what he thinks becomes reality in virtue of him thinking it. Otherwise Dispenza doesn’t care too much about reality.

#625: Maxine Dietrich

A.k.a. Andrea Herrington (real name)

Maxine Dietrich is the founder of Joy of Satan, which is a noe-nazi satanic UFO cult, and yes, you read that right (the website is here), and off we go. According to Dietrich, her brand of spiritual Satanism differs from other religions in that everything can apparently be explained scientifically, including the astral plane, our souls, telepathy, magic experiences, and the very real, anthropomorphic deity she worships (Satan is not “evil”; “good” and “evil” are “nothing more than cultural concepts; Satan transcends this,” which, though it is a feeble attempt at postmodern relativism, makes no real sense). How does science explain her religion? “Our limited understanding of Quantum Physics has revealed a bit about the human soul.”

Ah, I see.

“How”, you may ask – though you probably won’t, since you probably suspect that you won’t get a particularly informative answer. Anyways, here goes Dietrich”s scientific, quantum explanation of it all: According to Dietrich “Kirlian Photography” reveals “the fact that we have an aura. Kirlian photography is a specialized form of photography, along the same lines as x-ray imaging.” I don’t suppose it really surprised you that Dietrich would be unable to distinguish science from incoherent woo, or distinguish scientific evidence from idle speculation (there is also this)?

Furthermore, according to Dietrich, “the U.S. Government and other world powers are well aware of this ability within humans and the reality of psychic warfare, though they keep much of this from the public.” The Catholic Church, for instance, is a Jewish conspiracy – according to Dietrich, all of their leaders are really Jews, and aliens are behind Christianity – in particular, Christianitly was instigated by a group she refers to as “the Intergalactic Federation (IGF)” (these guys – they don’t seem very nice). Christianity itself was their program “for the destruction of Aryan peoples”. Furthermore “Satan and the Original Gods are from Orion. The IGF is at war with Orion.” I guess that explains a lot. Poor Orion.

I think I’ll let readers rummage through that webpage for themselves (this quote is telling). Its crazy is fascinating in a Gene Ray-sense. It is admittedly hard to find any reliable information about the size of Dietrich’s church or the extent of her brand of theistic satanism, but it doesn’t seem to be too influential.

Dietrich’s husband, Clifford Herrington, used to be the leader of the National Socialist Movement. The connection between Herrington and satanism has at least made Hal Turner uncomfortable, but then Turner was an uncomfortable man to begin with.

Diagnosis: Fascinating, though her webpage design really gives her away from the start.

#588: Gabriel Cousens

Gabriel Cousens is a health writer who describes himself in the following manner:

“Dr. Sir Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Diplomate of American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, Diplomate Ayurveda, a physician of the soul, teaches and lives the sevenfold peace. To the process of awakening and healing, Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), weaves a background as a holistic physician, medical researcher, world-recognized live-food nutritionist, psychiatrist, family therapist, homeopath, Rabbi, acupuncturist, Ayurvedic practitioner, expert on green juice spiritual fasting and detoxification fasting, ecological leader, Reiki master, internationally celebrated spiritual teacher, author, lecturer, culture-bridger, world peaceworker, to give a unique holistic approach to nurturing the hungry soul.”

That ought to tell you quite a bit about what kind of cretin we are dealing with here. Cousens’s work, in all its glory, centers around New Age woo and bullshittery (a mixture, it seems, of sycophancy and criticism of those whose unsupported claims differ from his own – e.g. Johnny Lovewisdom (criticism) and Adi Da (endorsement)). A mainstay of his particular kind of woo is Raw foodism, and he employs a wide arsenal of crackpottery (particularly the Gerson protocol) and New Age religious fluffery to prop up his advice, as well as primitive medieval vitalism: the uncooked baby carrot is “alive”, while the cooked carrot is “dead”; Hence, cooking and pasteurization “kill” food, and raw food is “living”. Why it would be an advantage that the carrot is alive is not entirely obvious, but Cousens does at least have pictures of the auras of energy surrounding the food to prove it. His rainbow diet is aptly featured here.

Apparently Cousens is the founder of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, “the world's leading spiritual, vegan raw and live food retreat center,” and the author of Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days, in which he claims that enzymes are food-qi and that treating diabetes is easy. It is discussed here. He’s got … anecdotes to back it all up, endorsements by one Joel Fuhrman – who appears not to know the first thing about reality – and plenty of thoroughly false and rather random-sounding assertions. In the accompanying video he does tone down the woo a little to make it more mainstream (without making it anywhere near reality-based), but both the video and the “Raw for Life” Encyclopedia on his website feature “expert” commentaries from Morgan Spurlock, Mike Adams and Gary Null, which shouldn’t exactly confer much authority to his claims.

Cousens has been involved in a lot of nasty bullshit over the years, including raising some controversy over his fantastically crankycellular therapy, and he has been responsible for at least one death, though according to Arizona’s board of homeopathic medicine (yes they have one) Cousens wasn’t guilty of malpractice by their standards – “standards of homeopathy” aren’t much to write home about, though.

With one David Wagner Cousens has also written Tachyon Energy: A New Paradigm in Holistic Healing. No, it is not evidence-based; and yes, it is quantum woo taken just a few steps further.

Diagnosis: A staunch enemy of humanity, Cousens is a monstrous supercrank who unabatedly continues his campaign to fool people into ruining their own lines. Repugnant.

#572: Kiril Chukanov

Kiril Chukanov is a free energy proponent, and runs this website. Originally from Bulgaria, Chukanov seems to reside in the US (thus qualifying for inclusion), and claims to have worked on the “problem of cold fusion” at the University of Utah in the 90s. His status is admittedly a little unclear, but at least his website kindly informs us that “Dr Chukanov is not ’implemented’ in the USA and ’managed’ by some secret person (out of the USA) as some obviously mentally ill people are claiming. Dr Kiril Chukanov is not connected or supervised by any persons or organizations ’in’, and ’out’ of the USA,” which is good to know, I suppose. Apparently the Canadian government has launched an “official conspiracy” against him when they seem to have denied his company the right to become a Public Company, apparently because the bullshit he was meddling with (Chukanov’s systems seem to be based on ball lightning) had the potential of being rather dangerous.

He has written and published several volumes of “Quantum Mechanics”, including “Final Quantum Revelation”, though his work has unfortunately failed to make an impact on the scientific community. Sympathizers have compared Chukanov’s work to the work of Andrea Rossi, which is not quite the same thing. There is a link to an interview with Chukanov (on which the interviewer seems to be on his knees throughout to make Chukanov look more glorious in the manner of a Lenin statue) here. The guiding idea that Chukanov is pushing is that his systems create excess energy that appears from nowhere. Since the technologies produce more energy than they spend, they will be able to produce free energy (also here, and here).

At least Sterling D. Allan, the stalwart reporter at freeenergynews.com, could report that a “visual intuitive” in his extended family had seen the “skeletal structure” of Chukanov’s Ball lightning in a vision or dream. Credentials bestowed by peer reviewed publications pale in comparison with such intimate intuitions, I suppose.

Diagnosis: Hard to tell, but even remotely connected to anything resembling reality it certainly isn’t.

#515: Gregg Braden

There is out there, and there is out there, and Gregg Braden is definitely as far out there as you get. Braden is  an author and speaker promoted Hay House and endorsed by Deepak Chopra, Braden promotes himself as “a pioneer in bridging science and spirituality”, which predictably means that doesn’t have the faintest grasp of science. He claims to be able to heal cancer in three minutes through “the language of emotion”. His “discoveries [read imagination] have led to such paradigm-shattering books” as The Isaiah Effect, The God Code, The Divine Matrix, Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age, and Deep Truth – and they do seem to enjoy some popularity. An clue to what he is all about can be grasped from the fact that “[f]or more than 25 years Gregg has searched high mountain villages, remote monasteries, and forgotten texts to uncover their timeless secrets.” That’s how science is done, baby. And Braden really did promote the 2012 “end of the world since that’s when the Mayan Calendar stops” bullshit, though believed that it would usher in a New Age. Though I haven’t seen any official response I think it is probably safe to assume that met the failure of his prophecies with the same humble attitude with which Pat Robertson met the failure of his.

Braden is a ”sacred activist” (which seems to mean that he combines quantum woo, New Age bullshit and fundamentalist religion), and “Evolutionary Leader”, a title which reveals preciously patchy understanding of evolution, and he was involved in a concerted effort among prominent crackpots to pray away the BP oil spill in 2010.

Here’s Braden (with Bruce Lipton) on Quantum Holograms (for more on quantum holograms, see here), claiming that “[s]tatistics have shown that a specific number of people, joined in a focused, unified consciousness of non-denominational mass prayer, produce effects that extend well beyond the room or building where the prayer has occurred,” which is not even wrong (Braden doesn’t specify which “statistics” he is thinking about, but one suspects the Maharishi effect) According to the advertisment he “also sheds new light on ancient textual references to this field, and how our emotions and state of mind influence our DNA.” I am not sure “light” is the correct choice of words. Tom here seems to be a fan.

But this is just a sample. If there is a crazy belief to be had you can be sure Gregg Braden has it. His imagination is rich, his grasp on reality absent, and he has found ways to make money off of most elements of this combo.

Diagnosis: Demented fuckwit.