Earlier this year, I visited the Get Well show, where I watched Lynne McTaggart and a dozen of her hand-picked speakers expound on the various ways they erroneously felt the human body worked. It was, as such trips always are, an eye-opening experience, but among the packed schedule of EFT-ers and tappers and anti-vaxxers, one particular speaker stood out: Mas Sajady.
Mas Sajady posed something of a fascinating figure. Not one to be shy about his talents, Sajady was described in the event brochure as an “Expert in Spacetime & How It Affects the Human Potential”. For those unsure what that might mean, apparently:
Mas has changed everything we know about human transformation. Using unprecedented knowledge and abilities gained from two near-death experiences, Mas has helped hundreds of thousands throughout the world transform in record time.
Make a list of everything you thought you knew about human transformation, and then burn that list and throw away the ashes, because Sajady has proved all that obsolete, thanks to his… having almost died. Twice. And get Mr Guinness on the phone, because under Sajady’s watch, humans are being transformed in record time. Unclear what that could possibly mean, I pencilled into my diary to attend one of Sajady’s two talks over the course of the weekend: he had a 2pm Saturday slot on the Centre Stage (the smallest stage in the venue, with around 100 seats) where he’d talk about “The Future of Natural Medicine: Understanding Frequencies for Humans and Pets”, before his 2pm Sunday Headline stage session, where he’d tell an audience of hundreds about “The Myth of Aging and How to Become Ageless”.
I’d long-since marked that second appearance in my calendar – after all, who doesn’t want to be taught how to become ageless? And what could it possibly mean to be rendered ageless? Was he going to take us out of the space-time continuum, rendering us immeasurable in the length of our existence? Or was he going to tell us how we can stay 21 forever? I couldn’t wait to find out. As it turned out, Sajady told us he is able to “de-age people”, and that while he is 61 years old, his blood tests come out saying that he’s in his mid-20s. He also claimed that physicists have studied his abilities and found that he can change DNA by up to 300%, and that they all agree that his powers have debunked the idea that traits are hereditary… all of which only raises more questions, like “Why do you want to change DNA by such a large amount?” and “Once you’ve changed DNA by 100%, why would you keep going, you’ve already made DNA that is nothing at all like the original” and “Why were physicists getting involved with DNA anyway?”.
By comparison, hearing Sajady talking about frequencies and pets seemed a far less exciting prospect, and it was only when the parallel sessions proved underwhelming (a talk on CBD, and a fairly vanilla yoga demonstration which failed to make any claims that might live up to its “boost your immunity” title) that I decided to wander along and hear about how much I ought to be vibrating Mildred, my cat.
In the end, I’m glad I attended both sessions. I arrived at the first talk a few minutes in, to find a crowd of 60 or 70 people filling the foldable chairs in front of makeshift stage, just as Sajady was explaining that he normally only works with vibrations and frequencies for humans, but because the Get Well conference had an animal theme he felt he should cover pets, too, so he added ‘pets’ to the title.
Sajady explained that he works with frequencies, and that he is able to simply look at an audience and immediately tune into their frequencies. What he meant by this would soon become apparent. But, according to Sajady, once someone is as tuned into those frequencies as he is, and as experienced with them as he is – they can use that tuning to understand the trauma that has happened in people’s lives, and to help them let go of that trauma, rather than accumulating negative frequencies.
This applies to medical issues (Sajady made it clear that he wasn’t knocking Western medicine, or even natural medicine, but merely explaining that neither will help clear those layers of traumatic frequencies – on which he was technically correct), but also to trauma from past lives, too. “Does that make sense?”, he asked the audience.
“Does that make sense?”
Actually, he asked that a lot. Every few sentences, especially when he was talking directly to someone in the audience, he’d ask them if every line he said made sense. This was an important red flag, especially as Sajady started to demonstrate his ability to read patterns of frequencies from members of the audience. For example, he looked at one lady sat a few rows deep and told her that he could tell that she is really needy, and that she picks up and repeats people’s patterns, and she needs to please people. She needs to please her mum, does that make sense? You never feel good enough, and so you don’t feel good enough for your mum, and that’s why you’re looking for certain things, does that make sense?
She told him that she’d tried past life regression, to deal with some of the issues she found traumatic. “Yeah, that’s really good,” he told her, “but there are limitations, so it’s better to do something else, because in psychology they realised that when you found someone with PTSD and you checked out their family five generations later, the PTSD had just passed down from generation to generation, so it’s no good to do past life regression to clear it.” Suffice to say, there is no evidence for this Lamarckian-esque theory of inheritable psychological trauma.
Sajady then turned to another audience member, explaining that he could read that he “always repeats the same pattern in his life, does that make sense? Because, he’s had two girlfriends in the past, hasn’t he? Well, at least the two main ones in the past. You know the ones I mean, does that make sense? You’re just repeating the same pattern with women. Or career. Your pattern isn’t about you, by the way, your recipe for life is from I want to say it was an uncle of yours. Not your father… necessarily. It was a male that took care of you. Was it your father? OK, it was your father, does that make sense? You patterned your life on your father, but now you need to delete that, does that make sense?“
By now, it was beginning to feel an awful lot like a psychic show, with Sajady giving what seemed very much like cold readings to audience members, while claiming he was reading their frequencies. It was genuinely fascinating to see what seemed so similar to cold reading techniques deployed in this situation, without any of the trappings of the supernatural or mystic, packaged as “the future of natural medicine”.
Cold reading
Cold reading, for readers unfamiliar with the term, refers to a set of techniques and statements that can be used in order to appear to have special insight, when in reality you’re giving relatively general statements, and then spinning them to appear accurate.
Take a look, for example, at that second reading Sajady gave: the chap who was told he always repeats the same pattern in his life. It is a statement that’s vague, and true of every one of us to some degree. In that context, Sajady’s constant refrain of “does that make sense” could be seen as placing on the subject quite a lot of social pressure to say yes – nobody wants to displease the reader, or to look foolish in front of an audience, or to make things awkward. Tagged onto what was a vague and generic statement, of course it makes sense – it could fit anyone, so it elicits a yes, and in doing so builds a rapport and pattern, where the audience member affirms Sajady’s insight. Next:
Because, he’s had two girlfriends in the past, hasn’t he? Well, at least the two main ones in the past, you know the ones I mean, does that make sense?
Here, we could argue that Sajady is making a specific statement: two girlfriends. But he also has an easy out if he is wrong: if the audience member really did have exactly two past relationships, it looks incredibly insightful; if it’s anything more than two, and it’s easy to claim special insight by making it clear that it referred to specifically those two that were most important and closest to you, you know the ones I mean, right, does-that-make-sense-say-yes-to-me-again.
Your pattern isn’t about you, by the way, your recipe for life is from.. I want to say it was an uncle of yours.
We’re back onto what looks like more fishing, because “uncle” could mean literally the brother of a parent, or someone who is directly related, or just a close friend of the family, or someone they looked up to… but the door isn’t even closed on it being the audience member’s dad:
Not your father… necessarily. It was a male that took care of you. Was it your father? OK, it was your father, does that make sense?
That ‘necessarily’ is doing a lot of work. If there’s no hit on ‘father, Sajady has explicitly said it wasn’t the dad, so he’s right. However, if it actually was the ‘father, Sajady only said it wasn’t necessarily the dad, which also (especially in retrospect, and with some reframing from the reader) sounds a lot like he probably meant the dad all along. That negative disappears depending on the response, and either way it feels insightful to the audience.
This was the pattern for many of his readings. He picked out a woman who he said seems really outgoing, but deep down inside there’s a scared 8 year old girl. Something happened to her sister. Or mother. Or her mum might sometimes feel like a sister. Yes? Well, your mum needed more stability than her as a child, and you had to provide that. Does that make sense to you? OK, well, think about it.
At one point when Sajady even said that he can “scan anyone in the room. Or not in the room”, which leaves the scope for his readings maximally broad. The lack of specificity was almost comic at times – such as when he indicated vaguely at the whole audience and said:
I can see that some people were burdened with having to look after parents as they died. Who has been like that? I can see who in the audience. In that last row there.
There was the lady who he said was taking on the frequencies and therefore the symptoms of the therapists she was seeing, and that’s why she had symptoms. There was the lady who had an older man around her, possibly a father. Maybe a grandfather. Someone died when she was younger, anyway, and it broke the family apart, but she’s going to be really successful, and she might have lower back issues. There was the lady who he sensed had too much fear in her, because when she is scared she runs masculine patterns, and she’s always been this way, always protecting herself, even as a child does that make sense.
Not all of the readings were of as vague and bland a nature, however. During his second talk, there was a lady in the audience who asked if she can de-age her body, specifically because she was struggling with infertility. Sajady claimed to tune into her vibrations, explaining that he could see adoption in her future (she then clarified that she had already adopted two children), before correctly surmising that she had suffered several miscarriages. For a lady who appeared to be in her 40s, who had specifically raised her issues with fertility, this was far from an astonishing hit.
However, rather than offering platitudes about how much love she had to give, Sajady explained to her that the reason she has had so many miscarriages was that her body kept rejecting babies, because she is a very protective person and would have been an over- protective mother, so her body chose to reject her babies before they’re born, rather than lose a child once it is alive. But, and Sajady said this in exactly as explicit and offhand a way as it sounds, “One session with me would fix that”.
Supermodels and CEOs
Alongside what looked like cold reading, and the constant refrained plea as to whether things made sense, Sajady would casually impress upon the audience the success level of his customer base. It seemed important to him that his audience believed that the people who come to him for help are very, very successful – even to a comical degree.
He explained that he is constantly consulting with extremely attractive supermodels, who come to see him for treatment to tell him that they don’t feel like women, and they need his help clearing their masculine patterns. He told us about a girl who was almost sectioned because she attacked her mum with a knife, but luckily Sajady was able to do one 10 minute session with her. Now, that girl is top of the class and she runs her own business. Oh, and she is only eleven years old. Is this eleven year old girl – who sounds rather too good to be true – real, and a real client of Sajady’s? We only have his word to go on.
Later he’d explain to us about his client who is the CEO from a Forbes top 40 company who was on the verge of death, but luckily Sajady was able to fly out to see him as an emergency, and he saved the CEO’s life with just one session. Specifically, from the client details Sajady shared with the audience, this person was a man in his 50s, with diabetes, who ran one of the 40 biggest companies in the world. Additionally, the CEO had a young daughter who was dying from a heart condition, which Sajady was fortunately also able to heal. If the story was real, Sajady gave all but the man’s name, address and inside leg measurement; if the story isn’t genuine, it’s the kind of tale you only tell if you have complete faith that your audience won’t factcheck it. For what it’s worth, I couldn’t find anyone on the Forbes top 40 list who fits Sajady’s patient profile, primarily because I couldn’t find a Forbes top 40 list.
A session with Sajady
In many of his patient stories, Sajady explained how it took just one session to achieve something miraculous… which was particularly exciting, given that he went on to lead the crowd in a demonstration of what a group session looked like. It began by having us all close our eyes. He told us we could stand if we wanted to. But only if we wanted to. Nobody did. He reminded us that it was fine to stand. Still, nobody did. He explained that it’s totally OK if anyone wanted to just be their own person, and stand up. Eventually, some people took the numerous hints and did as they were told.
Sajady explained that what he was about to do was not hypnosis, and that there was “lots of science behind it”, before guiding us on a meditation journey of visualising our past, and the issues we’ve had, and how many generations of our family had had the same issues before us. And from there we can see that we’ve built our identities around those issues, and that we worry about who we might be if we let those issues go, but that we just need to let them go and find another identity. He said it was:
Quantum neuroscience, lots of technology behind that. Neuroscientists, and frequencies, that sort of thing.
Before adding, direct quote:
With each step we are getting closer to letting go of that identity. Notice that it’s not a hypnosis and it’s not a meditation.
What he was doing felt very much like meditation to me.
At the end, he brought us all back to the surface, and said he could actively see in our frequencies all the changes that had happened. He did so in a way that was so offhand it was hard not to giggle:
You can’t run that poor me attitude any more. Whoever that is, on the left side of me… And you can’t run those guilt trips any more, whoever that is on the right centre, I don’t want to point at you and embarrass you.
He even had a special message for anyone in the audience who might have felt this whole thing was a mix of parlour games and meditation dressed up as special insight:
Some of you might not believe it. That’s ok, you don’t need to, just sit back and observe your life changing. It’s not a mind trick… If you don’t understand this don’t worry, you’ll change and then it will make sense to you.
At the end of this 20 minute session of guided meditation and peaceful quiet role play, he asked how many people feel different? A dozen or so hands went up in the 70-strong audience. “A lot of you”, he confidently said.
“Do you mind if I tell your story?”
So far, I’ve primarily focused on the readings given by Sajady that felt deeply generic, the ones that felt, in my opinion, rather like examples of cold reading. As far as I could tell, that included all of the readings I saw… except one, which felt somewhat different.
The final reading of the first session was with a man in whom Sajady appeared to spot something special. In fact, unlike every other reading I saw him give over the two days, Sajady brought this man to the front of the stage, where everyone could see him, as he gave an energy frequency reading:
It’s almost like you have a twin brother or someone … people connect because they’re depressed and you’re solid. There was someone who committed suicide who is still around you now.
The man nodded, and Sajady said he has released that person from him, before adding that he’s picked up a few other people like that over the years. “Someone around you committed suicide when you were really young?” Yes, the man explained, when he was just 40 years old. “But you almost committed suicide, too, didn’t you?” Yes, the man confirmed, when he was 22. The audience reacted with stunned gasps. At this point, Sajady asked the man, “Do you mind if I tell your story?”
This, to my ear, was an incredibly interesting question, not least because it is not a question Sajady asked of anyone else over the weekend – not the lady who was needy, nor the man with two girlfriends, nor the lady with the multiple miscarriages.
Sajady went on to talk about how the man’s grandfather drank himself to death, and how his father drinks too much now. But it’s OK, Sajady reassured him, because Sajady had released those patterns from his father, and in fact shortly after this weekend your father will probably call you, and he will want to connect.
“Do you mind if I tell your story?” is an interesting question, because to the audience, it can sound rather like “do you mind if I tell them what I can read from your frequencies”, but to the person receiving the reading, it could just as easily be interpreted as “Do you mind if I recount the things you told me in a prior conversation?”.
It was perhaps, in my opinion, not the first reading this man had received from Sajady. Sajady had been selling group sessions across the weekend, and he regularly sells sessions both in person and online. At his talk the next day, lots of people in the room had previously paid for individual sessions with Sajady. He charges $500 for a 10 minute session, and he claims to have done hundreds of thousands of these, with the boast that ten minutes with him is akin to decades in therapy.
Could that final reading have been the product of a prior session, that Sajady was recounting in front of an unsuspecting audience? Sadly, I was unable to speak to the audience member once the talk was finished, to confirm or dispel my suspicions. It is certainly not impossible, given that so many audience members said they’d had sessions with Sajady, that the most shocking and impressive reading was a product from Sajady’s memory rather than his purported frequency-reading.
Visiting Sajady’s exhibition stand, I noted he was selling tickets to his next in-person event: a £1900-per-head workshop taking place at the London Science Museum. Or, at least, according to Sajady and his many devotees, it was taking place in the Science Museum. When I called the Science Museum to verify, not only had they never heard of Mas Sajady, but they were also closed for the whole week, and they told me they had no private bookings in their calendar. Perplexed, I emailed Sajady’s events team to ask for the venue information, but was told they’d only confirm the event location after I had paid for my £1900 ticket. I politely declined.
