Category Archives: propaganda

Miscavige’s Obsession with the Rathbuns

Many have speculated why the Miscavige obsession with our family is so intense and seemingly inexorable.  Miscavige has spent millions in a variety of forums attempting to explain or justify it.  The writings on that score in his publications, legal threats to media, and legal pleadings and utterances from his PR hacks and agents – including the deep ranks of expensive attorneys – are so far-ranging, self-contradictory and red herring in nature, that they are unhelpful in discerning the answer to the question: why such an obsession?  Yet, the answer is apparent, by the repeated expression of our objectives right here on this blog as well as in  a number of media interviews. Below are several excerpts and links to support the ideat that the motivation for Miscavige’s mania lies in his need to resurrect the effectiveness of Scientology’s domestic terror apparatus.

The record:

September 25 2009, Winds of Change:

To stand and communicate one’s convictions and defend the rights of other friends to do the same is the remedy for Miscavige’s brand of terrorism.  It can make one feel healthier and more whole. If enough people follow your lead, it will lead to the end of the Scientology reign of terror.

September 26 2009, Independent Scientologists Community:

People who have simply exercised their abilities to be there and comfortably confront when faced with Church intimidation tactics – and not allowed themselves to be drawn into flash fights and the resultant creation of ridges – have as-is’d the invaders. That has happened most frequently when the person being targeted by the Church has the comfort of knowing he has people who are behind him or her with unconditional love. It is quite remarkable.

I am fairly certain that if a decent percentage of independent Scientologists stand up, identify themselves, and freely associate with like-minded friends in the light of day at least three things will happen:

a. Many individual lives will regain meaning. Many more lives still will reap the gains from each of us who independently and freely use Scientology with no other motivation than to help others reach higher states of beingness.

b. Scientology (the subject and community) will experience a renaissance within society at large.

c. Miscavige’s church will be forced to either radically reform by reversing its suppressive operating basis or face its inevitable demise (note the intransitive is used; it is not because of anything that you or I will do to it that will cause it other than being their comfortably – it will be a self-inflicted fate).

February 1 2010, The Underground Railroad Goes Overland:

One primary purpose behind encouraging people to overtly declare their independence was to break the back of the mafia-like protection racket run by the C of M. That is, to help people get out from under the black cloud of intimidation and threatened execution of forced disconnection for purposes of breaking Scientologists’ wills and independent thought processes.  The idea has proven workable. Each person who overtly straightens his back demonstrates to many more how incapable the  C of M is to ride straight backs. For each who does so overtly, dozens more begin to straighten their own by witnessing it can be done without serious repercussion and seeing tall walking people blossoming.

January 21 2011, Confront of Evil:

The pathetic and empty nature of their threats serves as confirmation of my oft-repeated analysis: AS INDEPENDENTS BECOME MORE NUMEROUS AND COURAGEOUS, RADICAL SCIENTOLOGY’S RESOURCES TO HARASS WILL BECOME MORE DISSIPATED AND THEIR “ATTACKS” WILL BECOME LESS AND LESS EFFECTIVE. And so it has played itself out in that fashion.

August 18 2011, Why The Obsession?:

People who have been following this blog for some time understand that this is a message I have often repeated: when enough real Scientologists stand up and be heard as Independents, Miscavige’s resources will be spread so thin trying to intimidate them that his actions will be so ineffectual that the world will see there is nothing to fear from Radical Corporate Scientology. 

It apparently has come to pass that from Miscavige’s perspective too many people have stood up and been counted so that Scientology has lost its terror-control factor.  There are not enough resources to re-corral or make examples of all those who have stood and are continuing to do so, nor even a significant portion of them.  Apparently, in the mind of Miscavige the only way to discredit the notion that Scientology can no longer hunt you to the grave if you dissent is to very visibly and thoroughly destroy the guy who widely and repeatedly asserted that there was nothing to fear – and the current state of affairs to gain – by standing up.

Trained To Lie

The following issue was seized from church of Scientology files by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1977.  Since the eighties corporate Scientology has argued that it was unfair to talk about this issue because it was only ever held in practice in the Guardians Office (GO), which David Miscavige allegedly disbanded.

The Guardians Office Issue:

INTELLIGENCE SPECIALIST TRAINING ROUTINE – TR L

Purpose: To train the student to give a false statement with good TR-1. To train the student to outflow false data effectively.

Position: Same as TR-1.

Commands: Part 1 “Tell me a lie”. Command given by coach. Part 2 interview type 2 WC by coach.

Training Stress: In Part 1 coach gives command, student originates a falsehood. Coach flunks for out TR 1 or TR 0. In Part 2 coach asks questions of the student on his background or a subject. Student gives untrue data of a plausible sort that the student backs up with further explanatory data upon the coach asking further questions. The coach flunks for out TR 0 and TR 1, and for student fumbling on question answers. The student should be coached on a gradient until he/she can lie facilely.

Short example:

Coach: Where do you come from?

Student: I come from the Housewives Committee on Drug Abuse.

Coach: But you said earlier that you were single.

Student: Well, actually I was married but am divorced. I have 2 kids in the suburbs where I am a housewife, in fact I’m a member of the P.T.A.

Coach: What town is it that you live in?

Student: West Brighton.

Coach: But there is no public school in West Brighton.

Student: I know, I send my children to school in Brighton, and that’s where I’m a P.T.A. member.

Coach: Oh, and who is the Chairman there?

etc.

Clearly, the drill is intended to produce convincing, professional liars.

Flash forward to 2013.   David Miscavige has stacked the very highest levels of Scientology Inc. with former Guardians Office personnel.

He disappeared his own wife and assistant Shelly, replacing her with Laurisse Henley-Smith Stuckenbrock, trained intelligence case office from Guardian’s Office Australia.

He appointed to President of RTC (Religious Technology Center) Warren McShane, intelligence trained Guardians Office case officer.  He told Warren to his face in my presence on more than one occasion that the only reason he continued to retain Warren was his lying ability; he needed an accomplished liar to front for him when it came to depositions seeking to break the wall of secrecy surrounding Miscavige’s hands on involvement with unlawful operations.

He appointed as head of the Office of Special Affairs (the body purportedly created to replace the GO with something more law-abiding) Linda Hamel, former high-level US Guardians Office intelligence case officer.

He appointed as head of the OSA Intelligence covert operations Neil O’Riley, former Guardians Office intelligence case officer.

He appointed as head of OSA Legal bureau Allan Cartwright, former Guardians Office operative.

There is ample recent indication that Scientology’s third generation – those second and third Scientology generation young people being raised to worship David Miscavige – are being groomed to be liars the likes of which put the old Guardians Office folks to shame.

Given RTC’s and CSI’s record of mendacity and given that virtually everyone on the chain of command between David Miscavige and the outside world are trained Guardians Office operatives, perhaps Training Routine – TR L ought to receive renewed circulation and discussion.

Ministry of Hate

Many years ago a story about Scientology in a major publication was titled ‘Ministry of Hate.’  At the time I responded with righteous indignation.  Having had many encounters with high level Scientologists over the past couple years, including very recently, I am coming around to seeing how spot on that ‘Ministry of Hate’ sobriquet in fact was, and is.  Scientologists are trained and conditioned to hate.  They are trained and conditioned to lie, defame, and spread hate against anyone who does not toe their white line; all with an air of overblown righteous indignation.  I witnessed one in person earlier this week.  Another one performed a perfect example of that recently on the Howard Stern show.  Listen to Kirstie Alley’s treatment of Leah Remini, beginning about 33:50:

First, Alley outright lies that Scientology does not ‘shun’ people.  Then she lies again stating that she has personally shunned Leah not because of what she has said, but because what she has ‘done’ and because of her ‘deeds.’  Then she falsely accuses Leah Remini of calling Scientology ‘hideous and evil.’  She calls Leah a ‘bigot’ and likens her words to someone saying ‘Jews are evil’ and ‘Jews are a cult.’ All of these accusations are defamatory and, quite frankly, hysterical.

This performance of bigotry, defamation and hate by Kirstie is not her natural personality.  She was trained and conditioned in Scientology to act in this immature, hateful fashion.

This is shameful.  Leah is due an apology, not only by Kirstie, but by the ministry that taught her to hate.

Abolition of Scientology Slavery

Contemplating the toxic waste that has come from the tortured mind of David Miscavige and relayed to the world by Scientology Inc and their ethics-challenged attorneys of late, I thought it might be a good time for some clarification.

During my hiatus from the subject of Scientology – 05-08 – I spent a great deal of time studying the abolition movement of the 19th Century.   That included a lot of reading of the works and about the lives of the leading lights of America’s second revolution; including Paine, Emerson, Garrison, Thoreau, Harriett Tubman and Frederick Douglass.  I worked during ’06 with an educational entertainment teacher I met at the Buffalo Soldiers Museum in Houston.  She recruited me to play Old John Brown to her Harriett Tubman.  We were invited to perform at the 2006 NAACP convention in Washington D.C.  We traveled with all NAACP delegates by chartered train to Harper’s Ferry for the NAACP’s special commemoration to Brown and W.E.B. Dubois.  Here is “Harriett” and me at the reconstructed old fire house at Harper’s Ferry where Brown made his last stand:

140706 037

During this period, probably the most influential work that directed my attention back to Scientology and contemplating the effects it had had on me and others was Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave.  Particularly compelling to me was Douglass’ description of his childhood realization of the first – and most viciously enforced – mechanic of slavery.  That rule was that slaves were prohibited to learn.  It is understandable.  The slave holders correctly reckoned that if a slave learned to read it might lead to independent thinking.  It might also lead to reading books and learning about the world outside the plantation.  And of course that could lead to notions about expanding one’s horizons and leaving slavery in order to do so.

This 05-08 period really informs everything I have attempted to accomplish since.   Abolition of slavery.

My first public utterance about Scientology was posted in February, 2009.  It has been continuously posted since, as the Welcome Page on this blog.  Since that time it encompasses everything I have said and done in relation to David Miscavige, Scientology Inc., the subject of Scientology and Scientologists.

This ride has entailed operating an underground railroad to assist with the physical escape from slavery.  Remember the chronicles of John (JB) Brousseau and Daniel Montalvo.  When those bright or desperate enough to make that move called, we were there for them (and still are should the need arise again).

Having counseled somewhere upward of 150 people directly, and hundreds more through correspondence, and having continued our own education and evolution through the journey, I find we are still holding true to the original representation on the Welcome Page.   However, having evolved and having studied the origins and mechanisms of Scientology and its particular effects on Scientologists from all walks of life, we have learned about its sophisticated mechanisms that create mental slavery.

It was puzzling to us that David Miscavige would continue to be obsessed with us after we did everything in our power to move away from confrontation, give him the benefit of the doubt in published essays and books, and simply assist individually with those former slaves who needed a hand straightening up their spines and freeing their minds.

It was only a review of this broader history and its context that answered the conundrum for me.   It serves to confirm for me that in fact we are accurately discovering and communicating the slave master’s ‘tech’ for manning his dwindling plantations.  His response is the same as the nineteenth-century slave holders’s response to the abolitionists.  That is, attempt to re-enslave them or to ruin them utterly of course if possible, short of re-enslavement.

This review also informs my future.   My work is only just beginning.

Scientology’s slavery will be abolished.

Scientology: Hypnotism or Persuasion

Jefferson Hawkins began an insightful deconstruction of Scientology ethics in an interview with Tony Ortega at his Scientology Underground Bunker page.   I believe the techniques Jeff exposed had (have) broader application in the process that Scientology employs in implanting its constructs as hard-bound reality.  It is not limited to the indoctrination on ethics. I had noted this myself while spending several months of each day listening to a Hubbard lecture from the fifties and sixties.

In an early chapter of The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra gives an accurate and concise history of the evolution of logic and thought in the West and the East.  In doing so, he necessarily mentions virtually every significant philosopher who lived and wrote over the past couple millennia. I read that after the stint of listening to dozens of Hubbard lectures given over a two decade period.   Here is my contemporaneous margin note at the end of the chapter on evolution of thought in The Tao of Physics:

‘By this point (20th Century) in history, Hubbard has invalidated and laid to waste every great thinker who made possible and contributed to his way of thinking.’

One might recognize that Hubbard’s techniques of persuasion are used far and wide in today’s society.  In politics, in business, in advertising, in self-help, in religion, you name it.  Whether one wants to label it ‘hypnotism’ or ‘how to influence people’ or ‘persuasion’, it cannot be gainsaid that the  technique of indoctrination Jeff breaks down for us was employed throughout the history of Dianetics and Scientology.  And L. Ron Hubbard was a master of it application.

Organized Crime and Standing One’s Ground

I have not commented much on Monique Rathbun v. David Miscavige.  I believe the case stands on its own merit.

But since David Miscavige has dictated and issued a public statement in response to Monique Rathbun v. David Miscavige that centers wholly upon me, I will briefly respond.  The statement calls me a coward for supporting my wife’s effort to be free from Miscavige’s organized domestic terrorism operations.

I have investigated organized crime at all levels.  My life has been threatened while investigating traditional La Cosa Nostra figures on the east coast, and while investigating local branches of national street gangs in South Texas.  In both cases I stood my ground and lived to tell the stories.  I have studied gang and organized crime activity and had extensive liaison with experts in the subject, from local law enforcement, to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, to the United States Department of Justice.  I have learned a little something about the tactics and behaviors of organized crime members.

One thing I have learned is that the heavier and organized the threat manufactured by an organized crime member the deeper the cowardice of the manufacturer of the threat.  Another thing I have learned is that if anyone stands his ground against organized crime, the automatic default strategy of organized crime cowards is to attack the loved ones of the person who stands his ground.

That in a nutshell, that is what Monique Rathbun vs. David Miscavige is all about.  It is about bringing to halt the to-date unrestrained practice of a policy that Scientology Inc. applies relentlessly in the face of any criticism or defiance.  That policy is the memorialization of the organized crime principles I have summarized above.  It is the bible of David Miscavige.  It states the following:

EVOLVED OPERATING PRINCIPLES:

        A.  COUNTER ATTACK TO OBTAIN THE REMOVAL OF THE PERSON with a product of DISMISSED ATTACKER.

        B.  If on test, A is not feasible, SURVEY TO FIND WHAT THE PERSON CONSIDERS VALUABLE AND USE IT FOR RESTRAINT. 

        C.  AVOID WHERE POSSIBLE THE COMMOTION AND WASTED ENERGY OF PARALLELING AN ATTACKER’S OWN EVIL PURPOSE OF DESTROYING HIS OWN GOVT, AGENCY OR INSTITUTION AND INSTEAD DISCOVER THE ATTACKER AND OPERATE TO COST HIM HIS JOB.

        D.  Where A and C fail, use B.

        PLAN:

        (a) Wherever an attack is in progress (and even when being held off by counter-propaganda from PR or actions from Legal) at once swiftly draw up a precise program using Intelligence principles and cross filing to isolate the attacker.

        (b) Identify the instigator.

        (c) When identified or even suspected as the instigator, draw up a project which includes at least three channels to cost him his job.

        (d) Draw up a second project at once to survey and discover what the person really is defending and threaten it effectively.

        (e) Execute the projects rapidly.

        (f) On achieving success inform PR so that PR can call off the PR counterattack and capitalize on any information gained if it does not expose Intelligence.

        (g) Inform legal so Legal can replan and utilize the information also gained to mop up.

        NOTE: Intelligence in these regards is not feeding PR and Legal as the only fruit of its endeavors.  It is OPERATING INDEPENDENTLY of these two functions with ITS OWN PRODUCT: I.E.  A DISMISSED ATTACKER or its secondary product: a totally restrained and muzzled attacker.

– L. Ron Hubbard 28 March 1972, COUNTER ATTACK TACTICS

This policy is the institutionalization of organized crime cowardice. It is intended to and directs the ruin, and has resulted in the ruination, of the lives of innocent, well-meaning people.  It was implemented against Monique Rathbun because I stood my ground against organized crime.  Now, the target of the domestic terrorism it calls for is standing her ground.

You are damn right she has my full support.

I have nothing else to say, at this point.

Pursuit of Understanding

I am introducing my recommended reading list to anyone who has attained the Scientology state of Clear.  By doing so, I am not promoting or trying to win over anybody to a particular line of thought.  Nor am I attempting to dissuade people from continuing to worship their firmly held religious constructs. I respect their First Amendment rights to continue to do so.  Instead, I am responding to the relative few who have expressed genuine curiosity about from whence I have come and to where I am going.  Folks can take it or leave it, or pick and choose to satisfy their own curiosities. And, as is their wont, Scientologists can of course nitpick and snipe so as to kill the agent who brings news they will likely find is anathema to their Scientology religious beliefs.

I recommend that these materials, minimally, be studied before embarking on Scientology OT Levels 2 through 8.   Actually, I think anyone would gain a tremendous amount of insight by reading these books. But, I believe this (or a comparable) recommended study is essential to understanding from a scientific and spiritual view what it most likely is that makes a meter read on a Clear.  It also gives a much deeper understanding of what it is that Ron Hubbard was grappling with on the upper levels.  To pursue a subject calling itself a ‘science of the mind’, while subjecting oneself to religious mythological belief constructs (as one inevitably does by running headlong into the OT Levels of Scientology) sets up a vicious form of cognitive dissonance: religious belief masquerading as scientific certainty.   The result is the inability to perceive as-is; defeating the entire stated purpose of Scientology.  More debilitating, Scientology at the upper levels continues a process of self-affirmation and self-fixation that firmly shackles an individual from rising to greater heights; locked into a solidified ego as he or she becomes. I think this recommended study can alleviate that dissonance, freeing an individual to continue to move on up a little higher.

I am not creating some new study by this recommendation.  I am sure there is an infinity of gradients and steps one could, and some certainly have, take to navigate the mire that is implanted at the Scientology upper levels.  I did not follow this recommendation.  I went through numerous other valleys and peaks along my own way. For example, as part of my own study, I studied and evaluated what Hubbard studied and drew from in developing Scientology; and I haven’t included that byway on this list.  I reviewed my path and noted those studies I feel were integral in understanding Scientology in the only way Hubbard himself recommended anything could be fully understood. That is, studied against data of comparable magnitude.  When one does, I believe one cannot help but recognize that Ron was definitely onto something in his upper level research, but that developments in science and consciousness far more rationally and accurately revealed what it was.  One may or may not also see in the light of this understanding, that continued, blind adherence to mythological constructs supplied in Scientology might be crippling of spiritual evolution.

If sufficient interest is communicated, I may follow up with a series of posts on each of these references, explaining why I consider them important, connecting dots demonstrating relevance to the Scientology experience, and making sense of the sequence, etc.  In either event, I hope some people find this of some assistance in their graduation and transcendence process.

1)      Tao Te Ching – Stephen Mitchell translation

2)      Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

3)      The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran

4)      The Four Agreements – Don Migel Ruiz

5)      The End of Suffering – Russell Targ and J.J. Hurtak

6)      Buddha’s Brain – Rick Hanson

7)      A Brief History of Everything – Ken Wilber

8)     Kosmic Consciousness – ten part interview with Ken Wilber, Sounds True Productions.

9)      A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

10)   The Biology of Belief – Bruce Lipton

11)   The  Unobservable Universe – Scott Tyson

12)   The Secret – Rhonda Byrne (book and video)

13)   The Intention Experiment – Lynne McTaggart

14)   The Field – Lynne McTaggart

15)   Entangled Minds – Dean Radin

16)   The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra

17)   Quantum Enigma – Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner

18)   Biocentrism – Robert Lanza

19)   A Gradual Awakening.- Stephen Levine

Some folks have already expressed dismay at such a recommendation in that it is a hefty amount of reading.  One person implied that I am asserting that one must become proficient in Quantum Mechanics in order to achieve enlightenment.  I am not suggesting that.

I am suggesting that if one devotes the better part of one’s life to following someone who implants in one’s mind a certainty that what he is following is proven scientifically to be the only road to spiritual freedom, one is demonstrating a large degree of gullibility in accepting and dramatizing that implant with no context explored against which to evaluate the truth of that implant.  Understanding is an universal solvent, in my opinion.

The ‘Truth’ Rundown

The ‘Truth Rundown’ has made the news recently.  It seems it was utilized by David Miscavige in an attempt to control the mind and communication of Leah Remini.  

Some may recall that the St Petersburg Times (now, Tampa Times) groundbreaking series in June 2009 was entitled “The Truth Rundown.”   I believe that David Miscavige was the unwitting author of that title.

After the church of Scientology was informed about the facts that I disclosed to the Times, the Times was assaulted with ‘wheelbarrows’ of material extracted from my preclear and ethics files from the church.   One item piqued the curiosity of the reporters.  It was an ‘apology’ I had written to David Miscavige in 1994.  Someone might be able to find it on the Tampa Times website – it was once posted there, and was published in the original series, but I could not find it.

I explained that it was the ‘end phenomena’ of the Truth Rundown.   The Truth Rundown is not over until such a written apology is extracted from the person being subjected to the rundown.  And that is by order, and policy, of L. Ron Hubbard.   That that is the end phenomena is evident from my ‘apology’ to Miscavige.  If you find it, you can see that that is the end phenomena by my words in  the very first paragraph.  After dozens of hours of being interrogated I report that the interrogator found no ‘black PR’ (negative propaganda) had been harbored or spread by me about Miscavige.  Nonetheless, I was required to write the ‘apology’ in order to terminate the seemingly unending interrogations.  As you can see in the ‘apology’ itself, I used a little creativity in order to achieve the ‘end phenomena.’

ORIGIN OF THE RUNDOWN

When Hubbard was on the lam from lawsuits and grand juries in the early 80’s, he was flooding the Int Base (Scientology’s 500 acre compound near Hemet, California) with floods of orders to prepare for his return.  For a complete account of that era, read Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.

Part of the orders to the Int Base included ensuring the several hundred personnel there were completely loyal to Hubbard, for security purposes.   All manner of security checking broke out in response.  That is, forced interrogations on the e-meter (a single component of a lie detector) testing the single-minded trustworthiness of adherents to Hubbard.

In the course of the mass security checking it was discovered that a long-term Sea Org member at the base had made a comment that he felt the technical training films directed by Hubbard were amateur in quality.  Of course, any intelligent person who has seen those original films would probably agree that this comment pretty well aligned with the truth.   David Miscavige certainly fit that category.  After all, he wound up spending on the order of one hundred million dollars to upgrade those films to ‘professional standards’ once Hubbard died.

But, Miscavige – and the rest of the Int Base staff – was more accomplished at keeping his true thoughts in order, and at the Int Base that means suppressed.    Miscavige, led the chorus of Int Base executives who were outraged that such black propaganda – that the films were amateur – was being spread about the Int Base.  When Hubbard received the reports, he responded with the terminated handling.  That would be the exact procedure for what would become packaged, marketed and delivered as ‘The Truth Rundown.’

BRAINWASHING

Here is the truth rundown in my own words:

  1.   Security check a subject until you find a thought that is negative – by Miscavige’s definition – that is harbored by the individual toward someone of importance in Scientology.
  2.   Ask, ‘just prior to having that thought, did you commit an overt (a harmful act)’?
  3.  Then do the full security checking procedure – which includes forced, complete confession.
  4.   Then interrogate for an ‘evil purpose’ that prompted the overt in the first place.
  5.   When you’ve done this procedure for some time the individual finally comes to some level of realization and is happy for having completed that auditing procedure and that his ‘negative’ thoughts are prompted by deep, inherent evil intentions that have been implanted into him millions of years ago.
  6. Continue this process for as long as it takes for the recipient to originate something kind about the person he is being interrogated about.  That is, after being forced to introvert on one’s own shortcomings for up to hundreds of hours, somewhere along the line the person recognizes the objective is to make him feel remorseful for having harbored less than kind thoughts about the person in question.
  7. The subject originates – or more than likely is prompted to – to ‘apologize’ to the person he harbored a less than kind thought about.

In my two decades of experience in administering and being subjected to the Truth Rundown, more often than not I observed it being used not to establish truth at all.  Instead, it was used to enforce trusthworthiness and loyalty to the liking of the higher-up the subject had an unkind thought toward.   Generally, what occurs is the subject becomes contrite and forgets what he thought of or objected to in the first place and rejoins the group as an enthusiastic member of the Stepford (or Truman Show) culture.

Is ‘brainwashing’ too harsh of a label for this?

Emotions IV: The Top Of The Tone Scale

references:

Real Emotions

Emotions II: Play Acting Scientologists

Emotions III: The Tone Scale

Some Scientologists unaffiliated with the church clearly believe Ron Hubbard had everything completely taped with no need and no room for additional thought or discussion.  They certainly have a First Amendment right to assert their firmly held religious beliefs concerning the only way to proceed along the only road to total freedom; provided they do not commit civil or criminal wrongs while doing so.   By the same guaranteed freedom, I can continue to attempt to free captive minds caught in suspended cognitive dissonance.

Some have posited that the Tone Scale in Full referred to in the posts here about emotions refers to ‘tones’ which don’t qualify as emotions because they occur only with spirits who have transcended bodies, or are experienced by spirits independent of any other physiological phenomena connected with emotions as understood by the rest of the civilized world.  By the way, that assertion is made notwithstanding the fact Hubbard’s last words on the subject were those written in his Tone Scale film script.  In that work he had actors, in bodies, depict (with their bodies) all of those vaunted alleged out-of-body tones.  In either event,  these states are normally associated with the highest levels of consciousness attainment in Scientology.

As religion is religion because it deals with, among other perhaps less important matters, life and death and ultimate concerns, should not the life and death of the author of whose words may not be discussed or questioned be of some relevance?  Scientology demands as much by clothing itself with scientifically guaranteed claims, while adhering to institutional policy that requires the personal destruction of anyone who might attempt to objectively discuss or weigh those claims. By his own firm policy, which has resulted in the destruction of scores of relationships and careers of the curious over decades, Ron demands that the only proofs of Scientology be purely subjective.  That leaves the only available objective measure of workability to be the examination of the lives and conduct of those making subjective claims about the product of the subject.

I am interested in hearing from adherents their take, particularly as it relates to the application of the Tone Scale and emotion as they interpret it, to the ultimate emotional state or tone or consciousness state of Ron.  I have included a passage of a discussion I had with Steve ‘Sarge’ Pfauth – a very dear and loyal friend to L. Ron Hubbard to this day – about Ron’s ultimate states of emotion or tone or consciousness.   I have fully discussed – in an in-depth context – my views about it in my book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.  Let’s hear yours.

From Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior:

Sarge (Steve Pfauth):  So, anyway, he (L. Ron Hubbard) wanted to see me.  So I went into the Bluebird and sat down.  And he sat across from me and he said, “Sarge,”…boy I wish I had written it all down because I don’t want to goof it up, because this is kind of important.  Basically he said, “Sarge, I need you to do something.”  He wanted me to build him a machine that would get rid of the bts [body thetans] and kill the body.

Mark (“Marty” Rathbun): Wow.

Sarge: Yeah.  It’s kind of heavy.  It struck me real hard.  He told me a few things.  He said, “Yeah, I’ve done all I can do here and I’m just… I’m not coming back. I’m leaving and I am not coming back.”  He wanted to die, basically.  You know, his body was going to hell and all that stuff.  He was having trouble with bts.

Mark: And you say that was in late ʼ85?

Sarge: Yeah.  Fall of ʼ85.  Yeah, it was right around October.

Mark: Like three months before he died.

Sarge: Yeah, like three or four months.  So, I didn’t want to do it. But I didn’t tell him that.  And I was hoping I could talk to Pat because Annie insisted that I build the machine.  And I said, “Annie, I don’t know that much about building machines that fry people, you know what I mean?”

Mark: Well, did he describe how it should be done?

Sarge: Basically, he wanted to hook it up to the e-meter.  And he wanted enough voltage in there that it would get rid of the bts.  And I asked him about voltages and I asked him some questions…it was so long ago. And, uh, well, I gotta tell ya, it upset me a lot.

Mark: I bet.  So, the idea was that you’d be holding the cans…

Sarge:  Turn the thing on and then, in other words, he was gonna audit the bts away and the body was gonna die.

Mark:  Right. So there would be enough voltage to kill the body?

Sarge:  To do it all.  How he figured I was going to figure that out, I have no idea…

… Sarge:  Yeah.  Earlier on I cooked for LRH.  He thought I was a good cook.  And then he got sick.  Anyway, what happened was I was very upset.  So I got pissy-ass drunk and Annie found me about four o’clock in the morning with beer cans all over the green truck, out at the racetrack.  I had passed out on the seat.  And she was screaming at me, “Oh, you son of a bitch!” Oh man, she laid into me.  And I said, “All right, Annie,” and my head was hurting.  But I was upset, I was very upset.  I was crying and everything.  That was a rough time. Very rough.  Uh, so anyway, then days went by, okay?  And Annie kept saying, “He wants to know about the machine, he wants to know about the machine. What are you doing on the machine?”  Annie says, “If you don’t do anything on this Sarge, he’s going to get the local electrician to build one for him.”  Can you picture that?

Mark: Wow.  That would have been a…

Sarge: I said “No way, man.”  So I had to show some progress. So I went to an electronics place in San Luis Obispo and I bought some Tesla coils and some up-transformer things and I got all sorts of things. I basically built him a battery-operated automotive coil type thing.  This is my reasoning now, Marty.  If he gets zapped by that sucker, it’s gonna shock him but it ain’t gonna kill him.  Okay?

Mark: Okay.

Sarge: It’ll shock him but it ain’t gonna kill him.  It’ll scare him and he won’t want to do it again.

Mark: These are like 12-volt batteries?

Sarge: Yeah.  But the voltage is going to go way up on a transformer.  It’s like an automotive coil sort of thing.

Mark:  So your thought, what you understand is that he is not going to get…

Sarge: I’m not frying him!

Mark: Exactly.  I gotcha.

Sarge:  I didn’t want anything that is going to plug into the wall.  I didn’t want to fry him, but I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t want to fry him.  You know what I mean?

Mark: Yeah, I think about what you are saying right now, and I try to put myself into your position and I…

Sarge:  It was very difficult.  I didn’t want to kill the old man.  So anyway, he used the thing and he fried up my Mark VI [e-meter].  I had a Mark VI that got fried.

Mark:  He used it?

Sarge:  Yeah.

Mark:  LRH actually used it?

Sarge:  Yeah, it was my Mark VI, yeah.  And it fried the Mark VI.  I knew that was going to happen.  Fried it.

Mark:  You mean he actually tried…

Sarge:  Oh, yeah. It had burn marks on it and everything.

Mark:  He didn’t get burnt?

Sarge: He may have.  But after that there was no more mention of any machines.  And that was my intention.  That was my intention.

Mark:  He probably got a good, hard jolt.

Sarge:  I think it scared him, or something.

Mark:  And it burned the plastic?

Sarge:  It was burnt.  It was fried.  The insides were gone.  Because, you know, those things are like a computer.  You can’t put that much power into them without zapping them…I do think people need to know. I just wish at the time when I first blew that I would have written it all down.  But I carried it because I had no terminals [people to talk to].

Emotions II: Play Acting Scientologists

Scientology culture is recognizable by its collective, synthetic ‘cheerful’  or ‘enthusiastic’ emotional tone.  Scientologists learn to put on a happy face.  If they are seen without one, a fellow Scientologist considers it his duty to ‘handle’ it. And that primarily means making the person mentally deal with the life situation causing the lower emotion so that he can easily mentally cope with putting on a happy face in spite of it.  In a Scientology group one is expected to act happy.  To display any emotion less than that results in Scientologists almost instinctively interceding with a person’s psyche to remedy the perceived problem.  A Scientologist learns eventually to convincingly act happy all the time, even when he or she is feeling deep sorrow, a sense of devastating loss, or is suffering pangs of conscience.

Scientologists will bridle at the notion they are taught to play act through life.  But, the technology they are applying day in and day out is plain:

‘Force yourself to smile and you’ll soon stop frowning.  Force yourself to laugh and you’ll soon find something to laugh about.  Wax enthusiastic and you’ll very soon feel so.  A being causes his own feelings.’  – L. Ron Hubbard 25 August 1982

If you read Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (Amazon Books, 2013) you will get a fairly comprehensive picture of the mood of the Scientology community that Ron was addressing with this bulletin, and the reasons for that tone.   That includes the mood that Ron himself was in.

I think that if you look at it objectively you cannot help but see the effects of a culture en masse adopting the stable datum that emotion is something to create like play acting.  That objective look has prompted some to reckon Scientology culture as resembling those communities depicted in the movies The Stepford Wives and The Truman Show.  How else could otherwise upstanding-seeming citizens blissfully ignore wholesale human rights violations happening at their church’s headquarters, the regular disappearing of church public figures, the forsaking of long-time associates and even family on the arbitrary order of one’s church, the countenancing of extreme methods of harassment directed at anyone who expresses the slightest disagreement with the Scientology way, etc, ad infinitum.  If you believe this only applies to the corporate church community you have got a serious case of denial – maybe even the Stepford/Truman strain.

There is another, accurate, word to describe this phenomenon of manipulating one’s own emotions.  It is called ‘acting.’

As in, act, from New Oxford American dictionary: 2. Behave in the way specified, and  5. Peform a fictional role in a play, movie, or television production.

I have news.  One must for sure act in order to attain desirable emotion, such as those concomitant with ‘happiness.’   But, Scientologists  – notwithstanding all their literalness with exact, precise definitions of terms – are given  and tend to thus dramatize the wrong definition of act.

Try, definition 1, Take action; do something.

Viktor Frankl can ‘splain better than I can:

Normally, pleasure is never the goal of human strivings but rather is, and must remain, an effect, more specifically, the side effect of attaining a goal.  Attaining the goal constitutes a reason for being happy.  In other words, if there is a reason for happiness, happiness ensues, automatically and spontaneously, as it were.  And that is why one need not pursue happiness, one need not care for it once there is a reason for it.

–          Vitkor Frankl, The Will to Meaning

For those Scientologist still sufficiently brainwashed to refuse to consider the words of a psychiatrist – even one who survived three stints in Nazi concentrations camps and demonstrably walked the walk far more realistically than any Scientologist who ever breathed – maybe the following will resonate.   It is understood in the highest halls of academia as well as the streets of Brooklyn.  You gotta work hard to ‘be’ who you wanna ‘be.’   Wake up.  Perceive. Feel. Live.