by Haydn James
THE REVOLING DOOR & THE DOUBLE WHAMMY
I know from my days in London Org in the 70s the truth of LRH’s observation that 25 book sales to non-Scientology public results in a Scientologist being made. But I also observed that this was no longer true in the 90s onwards. In Birmingham we were making one Scientologist for every 100 books sold, at best — one Scientologist a week in fact because we got up to selling 100 books in a week. And we were one of the better orgs. Many orgs in the world made absolutely no Scientologists week in week out, for years.
In Birmingham, we tried with all our might to make more than one Scientologist a week but we just couldn’t do it. Sure we’d get a ton of new people on course but they would leave within a week or so, never to return, only to be replaced by a host of new people the following week that would also leave. Only one a week would stick, on average. It’s what I came to call the “Class V org revolving door effect”, a strange phenomenon.
There were two main reasons for this “revolving door”, a double whammy, and both were created internally.
Firstly, the public courses were not biting. It wasn’t like the 70s where with just hard TRs on the old Communication Course public were blown out of their heads, or they found they could communicate for the first time in their lives or their drug masses moved off or a host of other earth shattering wins. I mean, do you know how many people came into Scientology during that time period despite a continuous barrage of government instigated anti-Scientology media? It was phenomenal. But it certainly wasn’t like that from the 90s onwards; the Div 6 courses were positively ho hum. Of course we blamed ourselves; it was “poor performance” or some such. And it didn’t click with me until years later when my wife and I returned to international management that this problem of making new Scientologists was a planet-wide problem, one that had existed in all orgs, unhandled for more than two decades.
Now I’ve catalogued in other articles Miscavige’s destruction of Scientology management starting in the early 80s, with his main work done between the late 80s and the summer of 1990 (international stat crash) and that such suppression has continued to the present so I’m not going to repeat all that here. But what you have to realize is that LRH developed a highly technical, OT system of managing over a long distance communication line. Quite in addition to individual org evaluations, one of the vital things this system made possible was the detection and handling by management of international situations – problems common to all orgs, things that needed to be fixed in all or most of our orgs (such as a glaring and widespread inability to make new Scientologists). In point of fact, per LRH, this was the real hat of management.
When I was in London in the 70s evaluations of international situations and the resultant handlings happened regularly. But with Scientology management made dysfunctional and then totally neutered or destroyed by Miscavige these international handlings ceased. In the 14 years I was in Birmingham I can’t recall one and I know of none since. So whatever was wrong with the public lines in all our orgs is still wrong today along with any other unhandled situations because a management capable of spotting and handling worldwide situations was put out of commission by Miscavige. The lack of this vital management ingredient has halted Scientology in its tracks and sent it hurtling backwards.
But that’s only one side of the story, there’s another part to this double whammy even more destructive. Something blew the new Scientologists right off the lines, the public courses just didn’t bite hard enough to prevent it, and it came from the ever more popular Internet.
Now Scientology has always had a small number of critics and government attacks and it never really affected our stats and certainly not our expansion, probably because people don’t really listen to governments or newspapers. But this was something new. This was now an ever increasing series of our own people speaking out saying nasty things about how they had been treated. Ex big mission holders, ex top executives like Executive Director International or Inspector General in the case of Vicky Aznaran, ex top tech terminals like David Mayo, major insiders like Vaughn Young and a host of others that Miscavige’s heavy handed tactics and power games had alienated to the point of making them an enemy. This Miscavige-created army of enemies was speaking out, loudly, and fanning the flames when it came to things like the Miscavige instigated McPherson tragedy. And the growing popularity of the Internet in the 90s finally gave them the channel they needed — an ever widening circulation. And this wasn’t a government to whom no one listens; these were OUR people speaking out. And maybe only a portion of our existing public listened and left, but the new public listened or their friends or relatives told them about it, and the majority promptly went into doubt and stayed away. We experienced it week in and week out for years; it’s still happening today; in fact it’s worse now than ever before.
Now, having been at International management and having known some of these attackers, my wife and I had some success in reducing the damage in Birmingham but it was limited success and very few orgs in the world had international management executives running the show so they were decimated by it.
Yes you can handle black PR with the steps of PR Series 18 (HCO PL How to Handle Black Propaganda) but how do you handle the truth with it? Sure you can try but it doesn’t really wash and the public see through it.
It has been said that the emergence of the Internet in the 90s would be Scientology’s “Waterloo” or “Vietnam” or some such. I beg to differ. The real why was the fact that Miscavige created an army of enemies out of our own staff, people who knew how best to hurt us, people with stories of grave oppression to tell — the Internet only provided the means. If they had been dealt with decently, if real Scientology had actually been applied to them, the disaster would and could not have occurred.
THIRD PARTY ACTION
It was Miscavige that savaged these people and totally alienated them to a point where they hit back and then he said to us: “look they are attacking you; they are attacking your church!” And so we fought them. But later, unseen to you and me, he quietly paid them off. Vicky Aznaran was paid $625,000.00 with Miscavige directly running the pay off operation.
And the stories of abuse and torture of Scientology staff by Miscavige displayed on the Internet just get worse and worse. Do you seriously think that someone toying with the idea of becoming a Scientologist is going to read International Base Musical Chairs Parts One and Two and say “yes, that’s the group for me”? Only a masochist would join.
And if they didn’t look at the Internet but told their friends or family they were going to join it would be instant objections and a whopping “PTS situation”. Who can honestly blame them? Why do you think there are so many “PTS situations” these days? The world at large now thinks Scientology is made up of nut jobs and with some justification, although there is only one nut job if you ask me, he just happens to be running the whole show so we are all tarred with the same brush.
Between org situations going unevaluated and unhandled for decades, and a self inflicted stream of heavy criticism of Scientology from our own people flowing right into people’s homes via the Internet, Miscavige caused a serious exodus of potential new as well as existing public. Consequently, Scientology staff members have been swimming hard against the surging tide of public opinion for decades, fighting bravely to try and reach the shore but they are further away now than they’ve ever been. And of course they were painfully aware of their failure to expand Scientology so when Miscavige came along to cover his ass and sold them a bill of goods about how their “why” was the fact that they didn’t have big shiny new buildings and lots of expensive equipment and LCD panels of course they breathed a huge sigh of relief, embraced his wrong why with open arms, dropped their important posts like a hot rock and went off to demand the public donate the financial equivalent of their first born son to handle the “real why”.
And such may have temporarily assuaged our staffs’ feelings of guilt but Miscavige’s wrong why, held firmly in place by the staff themselves, depressed org stats even harder and problems with our plummeting membership only deepen.
So what about all those missing members? Well, based on my 14 years on the front lines witnessing the carnage, the wastage, I have to say that the majority were never made into Scientologists, they were blown off the lines by entheta before their full interest could take root, which process has accelerated these days as you can add injustices, gross out tech and heavy crush regging to the pile of things that bar the doors to Scientology organizations. They were turned off by what they read, saw or experienced. And maybe we could turn them back on again, perhaps they are “latent Scientologists”, but things would really have to change for that to happen.
And don’t think that the loss of existing Scientologists isn’t now colossal too because these same problems are causing huge damage on that front.
Instead of having a popular, expanding religion with at least 2 million members, doing lots of good work in the world, we have an incredibly unpopular, small elitist group paying apparent homage to Miscavige whose numbers now dip well below 30,000 and continue in their free fall (even die-hards are starting to get fed up with Miscavige’s antics).
And it’s not going to change until Scientology changes and for that Miscavige has to go.
Only those who are utterly cause blind (unable to see cause) would think otherwise.
The real numbers don’t lie.
In the words of L Ron Hubbard: TIMES MUST CHANGE.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 