Kristina has been a Scientologist during six decades. Thus, she provides a broad view that few can share. Read and learn.
These are my reasons for no longer wanting to participate with the Church of Scientology and why I have disconnected from it. To begin with, here is a quote by LRH on the aims of Scientology, which I fully support.
The Aims of Scientology, by L. Ron Hubbard
A civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology.
It has been my understanding and belief that the purpose of Scientology was to Clear the population of this planet in order to achieve the Aims of Scientology as quoted above. Therefore, I believe that whatever else the Church is doing, its primary goal is getting people through to Clear and above. Scientology is the only subject that I am aware of that expresses the above goal and has a technology that the group applies for the purpose of obtaining that result. It is my belief that the CofS should be concentrating on this goal above all else and that any other activities that the church sponsors and/or carries out should be done only if they do not interfere in any way with the senior goal of clearing the planet and, indeed, contribute to it. As long as the church stayed true to the above, I would continue to support it in this endeavor. However, over the years, I have seen more and more evidence to the contrary. I believe the current Church of Scientology is no longer on the straight path to fulfill these goals and has become out-ethics and has gone into Treason to LRH. This is why I no longer support or want to be associated with that organization. Following are specifics that have led me to this conclusion:
Through the years since I first go involved in Scientology in 1964, I have experienced various disappointments with organizations I was personally involved with. Such things as mishandlings of a public person by a reg or out-ARC between senior execs and their juniors or misapplication of ethics. I won’t try to give specifics here as this is merely to give some background to what follows. Whenever I saw these things, back in the early days, I would consider it an isolated incident. However, over the years, I heard similar complaints from other people involved in Scientology and witnessed enough myself to come to see there were definite outpoints in organizations, at least the ones I witnessed myself. Additionally, I also witnessed the struggle those organizations had in trying to arrive at viability within the organization. I believe every organization I was personally involved with during those years was always struggling to some degree to stay afloat. There would be ups and downs, but I never personally witnessed a Scientology organization arriving at a viable Normal level of operation. During those years, this puzzled me as LRH had written specific policies, which, if followed, should have resulted in viable orgs.
Years later, while on staff at FSSO, I believed that I got the answer regarding the problems orgs were having. That was when we were handed a briefing sheet about Key To Life, LOC and Superpower with a number of quotes by LRH explaining why these things were needed. In that briefing sheet there were quotes by LRH stating that Orgs were not going to make it and were doomed to failure if staff did not get through Key To Life, LOC and finally Superpower. The “Why” that he had found on why orgs were failing was that staff were not able to duplicate policy and that the handling for this was getting staff through those actions. If this were not done, he said, orgs would eventually fail altogether.
When I read this, I was very happy to see that LRH had found THE reason for the outpoints I had noticed over the years and was excited to see that Management was now taking the steps necessary to get these actions in on all staff. Staff at FSSO, including me, were immediately put onto the Key To Life course. This was such good news to me as I felt things were finally moving in the right direction and, once staff were gotten through all the actions, clearing the planet would take off like never before.
In 1990 I left staff at FSSO and no longer had my finger on the pulse of what was going on within the church. I was active at the Boston Org, both on course and as part of the OT Committee and through this was able to witness at least the struggle that particular org was having, even with newly trained Execs of that org freshly back from California. (I don’t know where exactly they received their training, but the ED did tell me that part of her training involved training at Int Mgmt level.) Being public again, I wasn’t paying attention to the progress of the local staff in regards to Superpower, but I finished up my KTL and LOC while I was there along with a number of other public.
In 1998 we moved to Clearwater to be near FSO as we intended to get onto New OT VII and also to be near Conan and Devin, who were in the SO there at the time. I was already through New OT V. Richard was a previous New OT VII completion and planned to get back on the level as he had been advised to do. Both Richard and I had done the original OT V, VI and VII. I wondered why these new levels were called “New” OT V, VI, and VII as this seemed to me to be a “Technical Degrade” of the previous levels. I hoped this would be explained somewhere in the material, but I never saw an explanation. What I had come to believe (and I’m not sure where I got this data or perhaps just came to this as my own conclusion) was that these “New” levels were needed for people to truly make it on the original levels, but have really no idea if this is the case. Anyway, prior to getting onto OT VII, the promotion of this level was that if enough people (I think the number was 10,000) got on this level, that this would be one way we could affect the clearing of the planet. Knowing what the level consisted of, I thought there could be validity to that statement. I saw contrary data to this statement later on, once I was in the SO again, this time at FSO. (I’ll write more on that point below.)
Shortly after we moved to Clearwater, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Superpower building was held. This was very exciting for me as, once again, I saw hope for the orgs as outlined by LRH in the briefing sheet I had read. In May of 2003, a few months after I started on New OT VII, I joined the SO at FSO to be part of the New World Corps, which meant I would be trained up through to deliver Superpower. Once on the TTC (Tech Training Corps), I of course met other NWC TTCers. Through several conversations, I learned that at least these people I talked to had not done KTL or LOC and I asked them why they had not taken those courses first, as it was my understanding that they must be done first before training to be a Superpower auditor. Those two or three people told me I asked that KTL and LOC were no longer on the line up as requirements for Superpower training. I never checked into this with anyone else, but if this is true, then someone is not following LRH’s advice, as I understood it. Perhaps these courses were going to be done by those people later, but that is an outpoint (wrong sequence) as these people were now training without having done KTL, which would inhibit their ability to understand what the Technical Bulletins they were being trained on. I had done not only KTL and LOC, but also had done the Primary Rundown on the Apollo, indirectly under LRH supervision. This put my ability to duplicate way ahead of other TTCers who had not done any of these courses. This did not make sense to me.
While I was on the TTC, I was also still auditing on New OT VII. During my time at FSO, I learned directly from some and indirectly from others that there were quite a few staff members who had started New OT VII who were no longer able to continue on the level. One or two told me they didn’t get enough sleep to be able to audit. Another told me she needed a review to continue on OT VII, but had not been able to get the review for over two years. This is an additional outpoint, as she should not be left sitting in situation where she needed a review. Another staff member told me that she understood there were about 150 staff members who had started New OT VII, but were off the level for one reason or another. In any case, it became a major outpoint to me that staff that had gotten onto New OT VII were not now auditing. The way I see it, if New OT VII really does help in clearing the planet and if the church really were being true to the original goal of Clearing the Planet, then anything and everything would be done to get people (staff included, of course!) on and through this level. In fact, it would make perfect sense to have a whole unit set up for those staff who were auditing on New OT VII whereby the first priority would be for them to be in session, per LRH specific data on this level, everyday and when not in session (which due to the nature of the level, would be quite a bit of time) could be training up for the post that they would hold once off the level. It would make perfect sense that this would be set up and staff would be systematically gotten up the bridge and onto New OT VII and then, once completed, put on the post that they had been training for. What a powerhouse FSO would be if they were to do this. But, NO! Not only was nothing like this even remotely being done, there was nothing particularly set up for those of us who were on the level. I had to share a room, the only space left, as I understood it, where I could audit on this level. This was in the Class VIII course room where one room was not being used at that time, so the supervisor made it available to us. I shared it with three other people who were auditing on the level. I was told by the Director of Personnel Enhancement (senior over the TTC) that there was nothing set up or being set up for staff who audited on New OT VII. There were neither rooms nor a Solo NOTS D of P assigned to staff auditing on New OT VII. We were on our own to “make things go right”! How is that for intention to Clear the Planet!! The whole scene for staff on New OT VII was, in my opinion, major out-ethics and major off-purpose to the original goal of Scientology. I wrote up reports about this every week, but saw no changes occur while I was there.
Additionally, regarding New OT VII, there is another major outpoint going on. That is the six-month checks. As a public, I was under the impression that the six-month checks were to insure the pre-OT’s auditing was going along standardly and to correct any outnesses that might have come up. When I joined the SO at FSO in 2003, I had been auditing on New OT VII for less than six months. When I was due for a six-month check, I was already in the SO. So one day, I went over to the Sandcastle and up to the Solo NOTs area and asked to see my (as a public) D of P. While waiting for her to come out, the TTC I/C showed up. He asked me what I was doing there and I told him I was getting ready to get started on my six-month check. He laughed and said that there is no six-month check if you’re in the SO. I asked why that would be, thinking whether you’re in the SO or not, you would want to be sure to handle any area that needed correction. He said that was not what the six-month check was all about and that it was merely done for the purpose of making sure the person on Solo NOTs had not gone out-ethics in any way. I couldn’t believe this and thought he was mistaken and told him I wanted to check this out with my D of P. Just then, the D of P saw me and came over to find out what I needed. I told her what the TTC I/C had just said and she confirmed that this was the case, so there was no six-month check for me. Well, this is an outpoint on a number of levels. First off, you have a person who has gotten all the way up the Bridge and is now on Solo NOTs, and he has to be checked every six months for out-ethics?! A person can’t get on the level without going through all kinds of checks to make sure his/her ethics are in. So, why this “inspection before the fact” (off-policy) check to see if he/she has gone out ethics within the last six months? Further, this is an interruption of a major action (out-tech) enforced on the Solo NOTs auditor every six months. This cannot be good per LRH technical data on interrupting a major action. So, WHY is this being done? This seems very squirrelly to me. Something is very wrong with this picture.
To make another point regarding outnesses I witnessed, I need to go back to my time on staff at AOLA. Most of the time I was there, I was the Tech Sec. I had been DTS and then D of P for a short time prior to being put on the post of Tech Sec. Later, I was put on the post of HAS. During my time there, I got very familiar with the Org Board and how a Scientology organization works. As an Exec, I was also part of Exec Counsel, Ad Counsel and Financial Planning, which helped me to understand the needs and wants of the various departments and divisions of the organization. For the most part, my time there was good. I did witness some outpoints, most of which I chalked up to be isolated situations. The biggest outpoint to me was the lack of ARC in use amongst the staff. In fact, I even mentioned this to the then CO (Fred Hare) who told me that ARC is not used in the SO, because you would never get anything done. Well, I didn’t agree with that then and I never did go into agreement with that, but I saw other staff who did. I chalked this up to their being low on the Grade Chart and out of valence. I had already done all the way through the original OT levels prior to joining staff and thought it was just a matter of case regarding those low or nowhere on the Bridge. But that didn’t account for others who were farther along on the bridge. Anyway, I decided one day I would try being forceful with my juniors instead of using ARC, just as an experiment. What happened is they became less efficient and, of course, lower toned. I quickly got together with them and apologized for my behavior and, to my recollection, that is the last time I went (albeit causatively) out of valence while on staff. But this little experiment proved to me that out-ARC was not the way to go.
Now, jump ahead to 1989 when I was on staff at the Freewinds Relay Office prior to going to the FSSO. While there, I was almost immediately posted as Super Cargo (with no hatting, by the way) as I had been HAS on my last post. In fact, I was on the post of Super Cargo at the same time as being an “expeditor” under the HAS, which meant I was her senior and her junior at the same time! An interesting juxtaposition. In any case, I soon learned that there now were new seniors over areas that did not exist in this new capacity when I was on staff at AOLA. That was, CMO Messengers. I just couldn’t wrap my wits around that one. When I was on the Apollo, LRH had a number of messengers and that was precisely what they were, his personal messengers. LRH used his messengers to give and receive information (not orders) from staff. I never heard of or witnessed any LRH Messenger by-passing the entire Org Board structure to give an order to a staff member on the ship. Now, I was told, whenever a CMO Messenger comes to you with an order, you must obey it as if LRH personally was giving you this order. So there I was, being the Super Cargo at FRO when this little 12 year old CMO Messenger came with an order that I needed to obtain a certain number of filing cabinets in a certain color for the FSSO and that this needed to be done immediately. This order did not go through my senior. He came directly to me. Yet, when I asked my senior about it, she said, yes, we all must obey any order we get from a CMO Messenger as if it were straight from LRH. When I asked to see Policy on this, she had none, but pointed to a letter from Int Management that was tacked on her wall. I read it, but didn’t get how this altered policy. She told me to think of it this way: that Int Management has to shoulder the responsibility of the whole Church, so anything that they ask us to do we need to do so willingly and at once. In fact, the person that had been Super Cargo before me had been whisked away to Int with no replacement. Sometime prior to my being posted as Super Cargo, I had seen him protesting this order and trying to find a replacement. I heard him trying to defend his post and saying this was being handled off-policy, but he was sent off without a replacement anyway. Later, I became the replacement, but he had already been shipped off.
Now, move ahead to 2003 when I’m on the TTC at FSO. There I witnessed not only CMO Messengers running around (at least in the course room where I personally saw this happen) making demands and giving orders, but now RTC Reps have been added to the mix. Wow, talk about too many chiefs and not enough Indians. This was, in my opinion, completely off-policy, out-Org Board, and inefficient. Put those people on the posts they are demanding things get done and maybe more things would be getting done. What I witnessed was a complete by-pass of the organization structure of FSO. This means FSO was (is?) in Danger. However, per LRH, if a condition goes on too long, it will fall to the next lower condition. So by the time I was there, I would imagine that FSO was way down the conditions, perhaps in Confusion. But at the same time, correct Danger formulas were not being applied. I didn’t see any CMO or RTC staff come in to handle the area while at the same time getting it up the conditions, nor any senior over the area. No, just daily visits to the courseroom telling the supervisors or sometimes directly to the students what they were doing wrong. How does anything get corrected this way?
By the end of 2003, I had come to the conclusion that there was no way to correct the outnesses I had witnessed as the outnesses I saw were either being done directly by or with the complicity of the very people who were supposed to see these outnesses get corrected. So who can one report to in this case? I did send one report up to RTC at Int, but got a letter back stating that my report had been turned over to the local RTC to handle. I never heard any more on that report. By this time, my body had become the effect of the stress I was under, which I believe was mainly due to my recognition that things weren’t quite right, but seeing no solution within the church structure to handle it. I decided I needed to get out of this organization, get some space away from it and get my body back into good health. So I left the FSO.
During the time of routing out of the SO, I often sat in the confidential Qual study area in the Sandcastle while waiting for the routing-out Sec Check. One evening while there, I was asked by a NOTs auditor to check him out on a bulletin for a cram cycle he was on. The reference was, I believe, Auditor’s Rights. While checking him out, he originated to me that in the future he would always remember this particular bulletin regarding his rights as an auditor and went on to say that he had been auditing a person on Solo NOTs on her six month Sec Check and she completed it rather quickly. He ended the session and sent her happily to the examiner. Shortly after this, he was told by an Exec (I believe it was the Chief Officer) that he had to take this person back in and give her more Sec Checking. He refused at first, saying she was done. Then the exec demanded that she be taken back in and that he needed to do this to get the hours (stats) up before Thursday at 2:PM, stat time. I don’t know what occurred to make him go along with this, but he did and now regretted it, saying the next time this happens, he will use this bulletin as his reference and refuse the order. I don’t know how often this happened or happens or if this was one of those isolated incidents, but I believe the pressure to get the stats up or get more money in could result in out-tech such as this. My own brother has told me of out-tech actions being applied to him during his six-month check visits. In fact, this has happened to the point where he now refuses to return to FSO for any action whatsoever and feels that FSO is in Treason to him.
After I left the SO for the last time, I slowly began to reflect on all the things I had seen and experienced while there and earlier while in the FSSO. I began to wonder if the good outweighs the bad and thought perhaps there are New OT VIII’s out in the world now doing all kinds of wonderful things. I decided to start searching on the internet to see if anyone was promoting the gains they had achieved having finished OT VIII. Unfortunately, the only place I could find any good reports were from the Church of Scientology itself. This didn’t feel right. I don’t know why the church would not allow someone to speak up about their gains outside of church-controlled communication. In any case, while looking, I did find a website announcing the passing of Mary Sue Hubbard. It annoyed me that the church had made no mention of this in any of their publications. After all, LRH many times had acknowledged Mary Sue’s contributions to Scientology. Anyway, that was just one more outpoint.
The more I looked at outpoints I had witnessed, the more outpoints showed up. One major one is Superpower. Way back when I was on staff at FSSO and had read the briefing sheet where LRH was quoted regarding Superpower and the need to get it in on staff. (As I recall, LRH wrote that Superpower was to be done on all staff first, then government officials and then delivered to public.) KTL and LOC were released to staff then, in 1990. I was hopeful that Superpower would soon be delivered to all staff. Now, here we are in 2011 and still no Superpower. However, there was a public person who received at least some of the Superpower rundowns. His name is Matt Feshback. Matt gave a talk, which I attended, about the wins he had received from this auditing. This was back around 1999, I believe. In any case, it was many years ago, now. So, my question is, so what if the “Superpower Building” isn’t quite ready yet with all the bells and whistles. So what that there aren’t enough staff to fill the required posts in the new building. The fact is that at least some of the rundowns are in deliverable form and were delivered to at least one public that I am aware of. Therefore, at least some Superpower could be being delivered to staff, as it was to Matt Feshback. The fact that nothing has been set up or provided for staff to be rotated through these rundowns, speaks volumes to me. The sane thing to do, obviously, would be to send at least one staff member at a time to wherever Matt was sent to be audited by whoever Matt was audited by so that one staff member is that much more able to duplicate LRH. Once that one staff member is done, send another and another and so on. If there is more than one auditor who can deliver Superpower, than send that many staff to receive it and keep on rotating staff through. If this had been started back when Matt Feshback received his Superpower rundowns, how many staff could have been gotten through by now? How much more sanity would there be within the organizations if this had been done? Of course, this is assuming that what Matt Feshback said was true, that he really did receive a number of Superpower rundowns and that he really did have major wins as a result. But, if he did speak the truth and if what that briefing sheet quoted LRH having said is real, then there is clearly insanity at the top of the Church for not having gotten these actions going on as many staff as possible.
Here is my problem with “Ideal Orgs”. The following quote is what LRH has to say in HCO POLICY LETTER OF 12 MARCH 1975 Issue II Data Series 40 THE IDEAL ORG:
“Such an ideal org would be built by taking what one has and step by step
building and smoothing; grooving in and handling each of its functions, with
each of its divisions doing more and more of its full job better and better.
The business is always there-the skill with which it is handled and the results
on pcs and students is the single important line which makes it possible to
build the rest.
The ideal org is the image one builds toward. It is the product of the causative
actions of many. Anything which is short of an ideal org is an outpoint that
can be put right. The end product is not just an ideal org but a new civilization
already on its way.” L. RON HUBBARD Founder
What LRH says here makes total sense. This is not what I see Int Mgmt doing under the direction of COB. It is all cart before the horse.
And finally, The Basics Event, which was when I came to the conclusion that the current C of S is in Treason to LRH under the leadership of David Miscavige. Here are the main things said by DM during the event that I took issue with:
- “Let me be blunt: No, you are not stupid.” Here DM was pointing out WHY everyone had trouble understanding the basic books. This was not true for me and I’ve spoken to several others who attended the event who did not feel stupid about the basics. (Me, Richard, Martha, Cyndi, Steve, to name those I remember.)
- “How is it that by survey and experience Scientologists find reading an LRH bulletin or policy letter far easier than a book?” Then DM said that LRH hand wrote or typed all the policies and bulletins (and says this is the reason one can read the policy or bulletin easier than a book, which I find to be a ridiculous statement.) This I know to not be true as, while on the Apollo, I personally witnessed one of LRH’s transcribers taking the data from a tape LRH had dictated into and typing it out on a typewriter.
- Then Miscavige goes on to explain how the original books were incorrectly transcribed and/or edited prior to going to the press and that, because of this, no one in all these years ever got the full meaning of the data. I find it hard to believe that all those years while LRH was alive and delivering training himself, that no one really got it. Perhaps those mistakes did exist in the books, but I do not believe for a minute that this means no one got the data. I did several of the Basic Books extension courses and did not find anything new that I had not already understood from earlier versions of the basic books. To me, this was a major invalidation of LRH and technical degrade of the original basic books. This event took place in 2007, decades after the books had been written. If these outpoints really are so destructive to the point DM says in the event, that no one reading the books would be able to truly understand them, and therefore would miss the underlying foundation upon which all else was written, what a huge FLUNK on COB and RTC for not catching this years ago. That would be nothing less than Treason to LRH and to all Scientologists, in my opinion. We know that the books had been gone over earlier as there had been earlier new versions of the books published and pushed as the new, corrected versions which everyone should now own.
- The event has a video where there is this statement: “the book plus the lecture equals full conceptual understanding”… Who says? That is positioned as if it is an LRH datum, but it’s just a made up statement with no basis in reality.
- Then, to top it off, DM said: “I could walk off this stage in the next 30 seconds after simply telling you to read and listen in sequence and I would know that you would fly. In fact, I’d know if you did just that, read and listened in sequence, by the end of your study, you’d know the basics of Dianetics and Scientology better than any Dianeticist or Scientologist from 1950 right up to the present time.” This is an outright invalidation of LRH and all auditors since 1950. That right there did it for me.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 