Hi rdonovan1,
Just out of interest, what experience do you have in Ninjutsu? From what I've seen here, you haven't actually trained in a dojo at this point, just some tapes from Bussey and RVD, is that right? The reason I ask is that your posts thus far have had a fair amount of ill-information in them, and wouldn't like that to continue when there is better knowledge around for you.
To begin with, which Bussey tapes do you have? If they are the first series he put out (Ninja Weapons Tactics Vol 1-8), then that is probably about 25-50% Bujinkan technology at best, the rest including Bobs' own interpretation of combat, drawn from his experience with Ninjutsu, as well as Tae Kwon Do (his original art, he owned a school and taught when he was 15 years old) and a number of other sources. If it is the later series (RBWI), then the Ninjutsu aspect was even further removed. I wouldn't look to them as Ninjutsu tapes, just as a reference point for Bob's approach to combat and training.
With RVD's course, that has been discussed many times here, and as far as home study courses go, they're okay. But they will never take the place of a real instructor. You listed a number of the advantages you feel are in a video, if I may, I would like to counter with some disadvantages:
The main problem with learning from tapes is that they cannot correct you, they cannot show you in a different way (if you are not "getting it"), they will not take into account your personal body size, or strengths and weaknesses. For this you need an instructor.
And in order to get the "spiritual/emotional" growth, that will not happen away from others in most situations (for the record, the way that does have a "spiritual" underpinning is if it is a conscious removal of self from the material world and it's distractions in order to achieve a "pure" view of the world. It is one method, and rarely one for most people. Often better is a "pushing" of personal boundaries, which cannot be achieved by being apart from the world... Okay, that was an odd little tangent). So the point would be get to a school, otherwise you aren't really studying Ninjutsu or the Bujinkan arts, nor are you getting anywhere near the aims youare stating.
As for RVDs comments about people who watch his tapes improve faster than those who don't... you do realise he is trying to sell these, yes? And note that it is that they improve "faster than those who relied solely on dojo training", implying that the tapes are a supplement. If you are not in a school, then you will not improve anywhere near as fast, or get anywhere near as good if all you use are the tapes. But the way it works is this: The unconscious mind cannot seperate fantasy from reality. This is bad in that if you fill it with bad information, it won't make a distinction, but it is also good because it means that if you "imagine" doing something (performing techniques exactly correctly, for example), the unconscious will take that as real as if you had performed the techniques in reality.
There have been studies of College Basketball players practising free throws. One group practiced for thirty minutes each day, another imagined free-throws for thirty minutes a day, another practiced and imagined for thrity minutes a day, and the last didn't practise or imagine at all. After the study was done, the one that didn't practise or imagine made practically no improvement, those that imagined only made a reaonable improvement, those that physically practised only made slightly more improvement, and those that practised and imagined made significantly more improvement. But it should be remembered here that even those who didn't practise or imagine, and those that imagined only, already had a degree of experience and skill in throwing free throws, so the results reflected that. If you don't have any real experience, then the tapes will help even less.