We do meditation and meditation is a bit like hypnosis -- but so are a lot of other practices. People don't understand why they feel so good after the course is over and hypnotism just seems like a simple explanation to them. They use post-hypnotic suggestion to explain why they proselytize. It's suggested to them by relatives to explain their high involvement in (the movement).

Other groups agree that they do indulge in various practices, such as chanting, dancing, and diet control as matters of religious ritual for the sake of achieving desired states or levels of spirituality. The practices are not performed to weaken wills and bend minds, and no one is coerced into participating.

Many find the brainwashing allegation unacceptable because of the lack of physical force used by groups. Lifton and others say such forms of coercion are not essential. They say that without that element, the analogy between movement practices and classical brainwashing is a crude and unwarranted metaphor. Sociologist Thomas Robbins of City University of New York and Anthony, the Berkeley researcher, have said it is unreasonable to equate the "milieu control" some groups exercise with imprisonment in the guarded, fenced-in compounds of prisoner-of-war camps. While isolation is a characteristic of many movements, it is not similar to that imposed in true brainwashing. "(Members of a group) witnessing on city streets," they said, "are susceptible to numerous influences which the Church cannot really control. Not infrequently the putatively robotized members of a controversial 'cult' are actually living and/or working outside of the movement."