Mahikari sales techniques - new tea

One well known sales technique is to first get the customer to say "Yes" several times...it doesn't matter much what s/he is saying yes to...then to introduce the notion that you really want the customer to agree to, and s/he will be much more inclined to agree.

For example, the salesperson might ask if you hate cleaning the shower (Yes!), if soap scum and calcium deposits are hard to get off (Yes!!), and wouldn't it be nice to have bathroom tiles to which nothing can stick (Yes!!!). Then the salesperson says that smart, busy people like yourself would want to buy some sort of teflon-like spray to keep your tiles permanently clean. (Actually, I might buy that!)

Or, it might be getting you to agree that world peace would be nice, that terrorism is awful, and God is love...all things that most people would find easy to agree with... and that, therefore, you should vote for party X or come to a meeting at religion Y.

In the Mahikari primary kenshu, I remember the lecturer going on and on about the "new tea" analogy. The notion was quite simple, but still seemed to be explained at length. We were told that, if we want to taste the nice new tea, we need to tip out the old tea first, because if we added the nice fresh tea to a half-full cup of stale old tea, it would not taste so nice. Simple. Easy enough for everyone to agree with. In the case of tea, it is obviously a good idea to tip out the old tea first. Who wouldn't!

The lecturer then went on to say that, isn't it a good idea to tip out all our old beliefs before putting in the new teachings we were hearing at kenshu. If we don't tip out our previous beliefs, we cannot appreciate the taste of the lovely new Mahikari teachings, can we?

Well, I suppose not...if we continue to believe commonsense notions and everything we have learnt from our life experience so far, it would rather spoil our appreciation of Mahikari teachings...

But what has that got to do with enjoying a cup of tea? Absolutely nothing. This is a very misleading analogy. There is no logical connection what-so-ever between this analogy and the question of whether or not Mahikari teachings are true. Agreeing that the former makes sense, in no way should lead logically to agreeing that the conclusion is correct. Yet, somehow, I think we were more inclined to agree to listen to the kenshu teachings with an open mind than we would have been if we hadn't first agreed that the tea example made sense.

Most people would also agree that, if we don't learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. Isn't that a case for keeping the half-full cup of old tea and adding new experiences to it?

I wonder what a dedicated kumite would say to the idea that we must tip out the old tea consisting of Mahikari doctrines before we can appreciate the luscious taste of being free to think for ourselves?

Does anyone else have a "favourite" sales technique that is used in primary kenshu (or elsewhere in the teachings)?