TM, Erhard Seminars Training (est), and the Rajneesh Foundation are currently the most visible NRMs offering a release service to clients in Western Europe, but a large number of smaller groups are also in operation.

Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? / We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown

Many contemporary industrial societies are characterized by the condition some writers call affluenza. In the affluenzic society, the continuous growth in material wealth and consumption of material goods sits at the centre of human life and aspirations, rapidly reducing and replacing other goals and values of human fulfilment[…]. Constituted by a set of robust positive feedback mechanisms, affluenza is the larger system under which many local and global economies now operate, and which shapes the personal values of many individuals and the social priorities of many nations and governments.

So this was my future home, I thought! […] Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.