David Miscavige’s personal counsel has promised Vanity Fair:
The sting of the jury verdict will last longer still; far longer than any pleasure from racing to publish a poorly researched and sourced story.
Dave Miscavige, if you follow through on your threat, I will grant you power of forgiveness. Don’t bother retaining a process server to deliver my deposition subpoena. Save the parishioner donations, and send it FED EX cash-on-delivery. My treat.
All joking aside, the final meltdown has become divine comedy.
The ‘church’ of Scientology has proudly posted their serial threat letters to Vanity Fair on their own website. Miscavige is so out of touch he thinks people will think better of him for it…apparently.
A cursory read of the letters – a thorough read is impossible for someone with important work to do – demonstrates to me one thing and one thing alone. That is, the words of one-time popular guru gone bad da Free John, describing why he left Scientology after completing its highest level of spiritual attainment, were prophesy. He said he had to leave because the church of scientology’s:
MENTALITY OF POWER AND PARANOID, COSMIC POLITICS.
Check them out yourselves. No other seven words can possibly describe the mentality behind them:
The Tony Ortega Village Voice summary, including Claire Headley and Tom Devocht on Miscavige joking about the confessionals of Lisa Marie Presley, Kirstie Alley, and Tom Cruise. Also includes Mike Rinder’s potential quote of the year: Village Voice.
Mat Lauer of the NBC Today show went full frontal on behalf of Tom Cruise trying to put a crack in Maureen Orth’s Vanity Fair story on Nazanin Boniadi. As you can see, Maureen just decimated Cruise and Miscavige’s best shot at covering up the truth Orth reported.
NBC Today ran a story about the coming Vanity Fair story on Tom Cruise and David Miscavige’s unnatural and twisted relationship. They focused on the one aspect of the in-depth piece, the Nazanin Boniadi story, that VF has thus far teased about. As noted Saturday, I will be correcting inaccuracies as they are published and aired by the media.
Tom Cruise and David Miscavige had Tommy Davis and Jessica Feschback Rodriguez Davis ship Nazanin to the ‘church’ of Scientology for behavior modification because Nazanin began to put Tom Cruise into an extreme state of anxiety. Scientologists understand this state as the ‘missed withhold phenomena’. It is intense mental agitation caused when another person nearly finds out about a crime one has committed and carefully kept a secret. In Cruise’s case, Naz began to question whether her relationship with Cruise was an elaborate set-up operation personally directed by the supreme leader of corporate Scientology, David Miscavige.
Of course, we now know that Naz was right on the money. And apparently it was Naz’ nearly finding that out that sent Top Gun into orbit. Miscavige came to the rescue to have Naz hauled into Scientology Inc premises for behavior modification in the form of weeks of intense, overwhelming, and introverting forced confessions interspersed with hard, demeaning labor.
See the latest email promotion from the IAS (International Association of Scientologists):
From: IAS Administrations <desiree@iasmembership.org> Date: August 14, 2012 12:33:22 AM EDT To:############Subject:RECORD NUMBERS OF PEOPLE VISIT SCIENTOLOGY.ORG WEEKLY
The biggest dissemination campaign in Scientology history is funded by IAS grants. Internet ads run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No matter where a person lives, or what time zone he is in, he can click on an ad and go directly to scientology.org and learn about our religion. He can also meet Scientologists in any of hundreds of video interviews, tour a Church of Scientology, and be introduced to LRH in the online chronology of his life. Even more, visitors can learn to apply Scientology themselves through the Tools for Life courses available free online.
Up to a million people a week visit scientology.org which is translated into 16 languages, from Chinese to Norwegian and from Portuguese to Russian.
People come to the site from nearly every country of Earth and stay to find out about Scientology. Visitors to the Scientology site far exceed the industry average both in terms of the amount of time they spend there and the number of pages of material they view…
Of course it goes on to say that the above is what one’s donations to IAS buy and demands…you guessed it, more money.
But wait a second. Review the graph below from Alexa blog web monitoring service for ‘reach’ of the Scientology.org site.
The one week spike at the beginning of July does represent somewhere in the neighborhood of a million hits. Once, ever, they had about a million hits in a week. Remember what week that was? TomKat divorce viral madness week. I know because we got over 750,000 hits on this site that same week. As you can see from their graph, the rest of the weeks their hits are in a comparatively miniscule range – as it has been for years.
Now, let’s take up their next claim: the Scientology site far exceeds the industry average … in terms of the number of pages of material they view… Please see Alexablog’s comparison of this site (brown: markrathbun.wordpress.com) compared to theirs (blue: scientology.org) for recent page views per visitor.
Granted, they have exceeded me. But, it is far from ‘far exceed[ing]’, even this humble site, let alone the millions of sites that far exceed their own number of page views per visitor.
Finally, let’s take up this claim: the Scientology site far exceeds the industry average in terms of the amount of time they spend there…
Really? Check out the Alexablog comparison between this site and theirs in terms of amount of time the average visitor stays:
David Miscavige’s IAS continues to make outright and knowing false and misleading representations in pursuit of the almighty buck. If anyone has other, black and white evidence as I have presented here of similar fraudulent fundraising representations made by the IAS, please provide it to me by email. I know some folks who intend to do something effective about this.
You might be interested in getting yourself declared (excommunicated) by Scientology Inc. in a rapid, efficient and relatively painless fashion. All you need to do is associate with me. A number of people have achieved the instant-declared status by simply being seen communicating with me or by being found to be posting on this blog.
The advantages of the instant, causative declare stem from the fact that when you ride with me nobody in the church messes with you. You won’t have family members recruited to act as covert spies for Scientology Inc. You won’t have confidential confessional information used by family and friends to push your buttons so as to convince you to change your mind. You won’t have the ‘this is your life’ missions sent using family and friends (starting with the highest of ‘affinity’ of course) to subject you to lengthy invalidation and evaluation sessions accentuated with heavy doses of doomsday scenario scare tactics.
If you choose this route, of course your friends, family and associates affiliated with corporate Scientology will disconnect from you. They will be plied with all manner of exaggerated and manufactured stories about you to get them to comply. That comes with the territory; whether you go the instant declare route or not. All I am offering is a means to expedite the process so that it is a clean, quick break. If you are sufficiently briefed about and exterior to Scientology Inc. culture you will understand that all that is going to happen no matter which way you choose to cut the umbical cord. The relatively painless declare speeds the process so that you don’t go through months of drama. I am garlic as far as the vampire in chief (David Miscavige) is concerned. Once some of it rubs off on you – Miscavige and his minions must stay far, far away for fear of being enervated by contact.
The instant decalare route saves you the sorrow and indignity of watching who you once thought were your friends acting as deployable agents, prostituting themselves to a cult by using all shifts imaginable to break your self-determinism and will. By many accounts this pathetic drama is the worst and most painful part of the process of breaking free.
You can bypass it entirely.
All ya gotta do is post your declaration of independence here.
You can do so by declaring your independence from corporate Scientology on this blog. Or you can visit me for services.
For those unfamiliar with how the IAS was hijacked by Miscavige and converted into a crush regging machine that overshadowed all previous corporate Scientology regging abuses in a matter of a few short years, please see this discussion between Mike Rinder and me:
Since that very accurate report on the depowering and imprisoning of Janet (Light) and Colm Mclaughlin, I have learned that they are alive and well and outside of Miscavige’s physical prison system. They are living relatively free in Southern California. Proof of life:
Janet Light Mclaughlin
Colm Mclaughlin
It remains to be seen whether the Mclaughlins step up and do something to cleanse their consciences and somehow serve the process of freeing others similarly situated.
But, I reported on their imprisonment and so now report on their subsequent freedom from captivity. I wish them healing, health and happiness.
For having protested David Miscavige’s systematic distmantling of the church 0f Scientology, Mark Shreffler is now being subjected to a systematic black PR campaign by Scientology Inc. Mark is actively challenging accusations about him to his friends emanating from Flag (Scientology Inc’s “mecca”). A letter he recently sent to a Flag MAA (Master at Arms – the Ethics Officer) evidences just how deep the rabbit hole of falsehoods goes in corporate Scientology. It also sums up very accurately how Miscavige has decimated Scientology Inc.
AO FSO MAA (Slavka) August 2, 2012
Mark Shreffler
Dear Slavka,
The latest rumor is that the “dead agent” handling used at the FSO for my friends regarding me is that “Mark’s questions were answered but he did not like the answers he got.” This puts everyone on the wrong scent, and many will not recognize the smell because they are trusting and honorable people who would never think that their most trusted terminals in the church would lie to their faces. Yet, they remain hung up at Doubt. How can an OT with 38 years of highly commended service suddenly go postal and walk away from his friends and colleagues, refusing viable answers to his questions?
Of course the implication here is that I am the one who needs the correction and not the squirrel activities I have been reporting and trying to address.
I’ve realized, with these “r-factors” you have given to my friends, the degree to which third party has been used as a “management tool.” OSA personnel are quite expert with this device. Their normal operating basis seems to be, from what I can determine, deception. This is to such a degree that I’m actually concerned about them personally. It’s like continually postulating trouble!
It causes the actual problems to persist as these lies entered in to the scene make impossible an as-isness of the dilemma.
It is made easier for you, I suppose, by the fact that my friends know that if they call me on the phone to get my side of the story, they’ll be punished for doing so and be driven to huge amounts of expense and dev-t. You threaten their lifestyles and family harmony, and they forget what Ron went through to make the tech available to all of us.
DOUBT formulas are clearly no longer allowed in our church. People with questions must accept what they are told by their MAAs, and anyone with the temerity to communicate outside of those parameters is quickly throttled back in to line with sec checks or goldenrods. “Not being happy with an answer” means the doubt was not resolved, and the notion that one must settle for whatever he is told is fundamentally repugnant to any being applying a standard Doubt Formula, and would only be accepted by a robot.
There, by the use of force and the intelligence of an SP, goes the Church of Scientology.
I did not take the questions I presented you in 2011 lightly, and I really would have noticed if they were answered. It was not in my mind that it would take more than a week or two to handle, and I certainly did not anticipate that I would be walking away from a 38 year career as a gung-ho and highly commended member of this group until I discovered there were no answers for these management aberrations to be found in policy, and no willingness on the part of my terminals in the church to even inquire as to why these outpoints remained unhandled.
So, please, repeat for me if you would the answers I was supposedly given to the following questions:
LRH said that the “make-break point” of org expansion is 5.4X. This figure was the foundation of the Birthday Game which was giving LRH the only thing he wanted for his birthday: church expansion. He did not want new buildings or people to increase their level of membership in some unaffiliated gung-ho group. My question to you was: “What org in the world that was here 30 years ago is 5.4 times larger today than it was then? How many orgs have achieved this expansion rate? If your answer is “ZERO”, how can we explain these proclamations of “unprecedented expansion?” WHAT is expanding, exactly? And to what does “47 times the expansion of any earlier time” refer? What happened to LRH stats? I don’t recall your answers to these questions.
What are the STATS of the church from 1985 to 2011 on an annual basis on First Service Starts, WDAH, Pd Comps and GI? How many CL 8 auditors have been created over those years, and what is the trend? I did not get ANY stats from you or any of the terminals at OSA after hours of conversation and many requests – yet this is an essential part of the doubt formula.
How is it that COB does “International Events” every few months and, in so doing, bypasses the entire command structure to relay information to the rank-and-file that SHOULD be coming to them from their local executives (and thus maintaining the command lines and empowering them)? This is obviously in violation of the policy DANGER CONDITIONS, RESPONSIBILITY FOR DECLARING and drives the lower echelons in to continuing Non Existence conditions. These events also disperse the attention of our congregation to the four winds and AWAY from their local scenes. They alter the importance of the one-by-one nature of Scientology, and the vital need to put most of our attention on bringing NEW people in to the church for services, per PROPORTIONATE MARKETING. How are these “INT EVENTS” justified when there is not ONE policy that supports them or explains their value – quite to the contrary. This is a continuing and Titanic management faux pas.
Why have my reports since 1992 on the squirreled nature of the FSM program been ignored? If “the whole purpose of the field staff member program is to help increase the number of new people contacted, disseminated to and gotten on to the bridge,” (FSM SERIES #1) how is it that the entire program has been hijacked to the TOP of the bridge, gutting the lower echelons of their public? Why have I gotten many sec checks and a comm ev [which fully vindicated and commended me but ignored utterly the squirreled FSM program] for just writing these reports when millions in fraud have been reported and the flow of new people on and up the bridge brought to a standstill, and the pay of staff members from FSMCR eliminated? How can such obvious crimes that unmock our front-end groups be committed and prolifically reported with no interest or action from management? I don’t recall your response to these queries.
I mentioned to you the fact that the OCA that LRH used at Saint Hill is not the squirreled version used in the Church today, and that the results of these different versions vary dramatically. This is a game changer because this test is a fundamental tool used in div 6 and div 4. It allows us to MAKE CONTACT with the public with reality. It gives us prediction and allows honest evaluation and correct programming so the public is winning at every turn. Because people are not trained in the use of this tool but are ordered to simply read off computer printouts, trait-by-trait, they have no familiarity with the test or with the fact that it is not the same profile LRH used at Saint Hill and to which he refers in Policy. The results rendered today set up our Div 6ers for wrong indications on their new public, and wrong case programming for C/Ses. This guarantees un-standard results which are puzzling because people do not question their measuring tools! This opens the door for squirreling the tech. How can such a huge alteration occur and it not be corrected – after innumerable reports on the matter?
Why are there no Basic Books in most of the libraries in the United States even after our management promoted that this job was “DONE!” Anyone can check this because all public libraries are listed on the internet, including what books they have and which ones are being checked out and in what volume. This was my FIRST question to you when you asked “did you write this up?” Remember? I don’t recall your answer to this question. You clearly did not have one – and assume like many others that “everything is OK and that this, too, shall pass!” 10’s of millions of dollars worth of books… vanished. How did this occur, and what is being done about it?
Why is the hallway at the Sandcastle lined with photos of people who have given money to the IAS, but no photos of people who have achieved the two purposes of orgs and given blood and years to the task of clearing people or opening missions or auditing people? (I understand that these photos have recently been taken down, but I wonder if the off-Source purpose they represent has been removed as well?) I don’t recall your answer to this question.
What policies create and drive the IAS? It takes many millions from the congregation of the Church of Scientology (to say nothing of the distraction it creates to the attention of our group) and yet has no oversights. This is the elephant in the room. It is, by what I can determine, a renegade operation that has ZERO representation in policy but is apparently simply a money pit to be used in whatever arbitrary fashion is required by management. Where does all the money go that is paid to the IAS? What policy governs it? Who is in charge of it’s disbursement? It is not controlled by the Church of Scientology and does not go through the FP Committee of the Church. If the church public is only dwindling since the “founding” of the IAS by Yeager and Miscavige, how is its existence justified? Where is it in writing that LRH had any knowledge of this group’s formation or purpose? I don’t recall your answer to these questions.
How many members are there in the IAS? This is an important number because one cannot do service in Div 4 without being a member. We hear numbers of Scientologists “in the millions,” but all I can document is less than 40,000 worldwide – and shrinking.
Why does management promote that there are so many “new orgs” when in fact they are just new, subsidized buildings, and the “old orgs” they replace are not used any further? The field has not expanded: only their org’s expenses have expanded. How is this beneficial to the actual exchange of Scientology with the world? Who is going to pay the bills for these buildings when the delivery of the org cannot support it? As this is falsely represented as being supported by LRH, does it not invalidate the workability of his actual policies and thus demean the image of Source? I presented a stack of policies that invalidate the conduct of the so-called “Ideal Org” project and was shown ZERO references that justified it. Did I miss something here?
You will recall the Rollback you gave me regarding my answer to the query of a friend in Australia concerning the Ideal Org project. You asked me where I got these ‘enemy lines’ and I showed them to you in OEC Vol 7. That ended the rollback, of course, but I wonder if you pulled the string further to get to the real heart of that matter – that the Ideal Org program was in contravention of that policy I cited to my friend? The one who started the Ideal Org program, in fact, is the enemy you seek with your rollbacks!
Who actually OWNS the Ideal Org real estate that is purchased? The Church? CST? What is the policy that governs this?
The promotion for these Ideal Orgs and the IAS is taken off the page of VERBAL TECH PENALTIES when LRH cautions against the use of brief paragraphs out of context without saying from which policy the quote was taken in order to make it appear that LRH is in support of the program when, in fact, he is clearly opposed to it. I provided evidence of this but there was no reply to this question that I recall.
Where is it written that LRH put David Miscavige in charge? Where is the structure of church institutions (CST, RTC, CofS and so on) published so we can all see the command structure and org board of our management bodies and understand their relationships?
Where are the people who run these activities? I know that Guillaume was made “ED INT for LIFE” by LRH, but we never see him anymore. The WDC? Where is Heber? Mithoff? Eastman? Wilhere? And where is Diana Hubbard? Did you answer these questions?
How is it that “Command Intention” and LRH Intention are taken to mean the same thing when they clearly are NOT? How is it that I have friends who have been declared for being concerned about issues raised in Debbie Cook’s letter – before she was declared? When was it decided that concern for our survival as a group became a suppressive act? When did communication become a crime in our body? Did you answer these questions, and I just missed it?
How is it that one whole issue of our FREEDOM magazine was mailed out to the readership of the St. Pete Times proclaiming that one of our senior executives was documented as having beat up, on 40 separate occasions, other members of the crew? This issue of FREEDOM was devoted to throwing the entire church management strata, the Church of Scientology, the religion of Scientology and LRH under the bus in order to protect one person: David Miscavige. The rest of our “International Management” were apparently standing around bearing witness to these beatings. They even allowed themselves to be videoed by the press professing the innocence of Miscavige and the guilt of his lieutenant. Did anyone have the idea that the IMPORTANT thing is to show Scientology, Source materials and LRH were not involved in this psychotic demonstration of PTSness, and then use the incident to educate the world on the effects of suppression and the need to be constanty alert and constantly willing to fight back? After all, this “handling” by FREEDOM was a MISTAKE of Tsunamic proportions. These only occur in the presence of suppression. Was there an investigation done? The protection of Miscavige was the ONLY important factor in this entire third dynamic engram. Did you address this question with me, Slavka – because I certainly recall the look on your face when I brought this article to your attention – and the fact that the entire magazine was used not to promote Scientology and the Church and LRH but to white-wash the results of PTSness at our highest levels. Lastly, if the lieutenant was guilty of these beatings as was admitted in the FREEDOM mag, was COB not aware of this behavior? To believe this we would have to think that COB is either incompetent, stupid, or deaf, dumb and blind. If he was aware of it and did nothing to stop it, he needs some time to think for a couple of hundred years before he does A to E. In either case, NOTHING WAS DONE, and this engram continues. What a mess. I don’t recall your address of these issues with me except to ask “Who is in your ear?” as though I have an evil Leprechaun on my shoulder. ANYONE can see this stuff, and what manner of person would NOT want something done about it?
If our management is as unethical as all of these things suggest, is it rational to assume that the tech and the admin in our church are IN? Do you have an answer for this? Has it not occurred to anyone that people actually like Scientology – Ron’s Brand – and stay away in droves from squirreled activities? How many in the church would leave it if they did not have children or businesses that would be affected? I, myself, have concerns about bringing people in to this atmosphere – and this has been my purpose for the past 38 years! And how many NEW people are turned off by what they THINK is Scientology when it is only the unchecked dramatizations of a few PTS executives – and the PTS congregation that permits it to continue?
We have an opportunity here to educate the world, but instead we turn on each other and play the “who can we bankrupt first?” Game. Why?
I had many other questions, but I think any Scientologist would have these and would agree that they need to be fully confronted and resolved.
Please stop telling people that “We answered Mark’s questions but he did not like the answers.” You KNOW this is a lie and it is beneath you. I implore you to find out for yourself the answers to these questions and let me know what you discover.
You showed me the reference about how an SP becomes one – where a period of stress at the hands of the SP is followed by the person taking on the SP’s valence. You were showing me this reference as regards Debbie Cook to explain “how she became suppressive.”
I asked you – and I mention this as the last unanswered sample question in my collection – which person it was who’s valence this long-time, highly trained and decorated Sea Org veteran was first suppressed by and who’s valence she later assumed.
WHO were YOU talking about? Did it not occur to you that perhaps the SP who suppressed her and who’s valence she allegedly assumed is still in the church?
Is it a truthful thing to say that by pointing these destructive but actual things out that Debbie Cook was displaying suppressive characteristics?
My own contention, of course, is that after the wars with the IRS in the 80’s and the battle with that band of suppressives, the “war” was actually not over as COB proclaimed. Our own management strata was completely stressed out and actually took on the valence of the SP IRS personnel. It’s just a theory, but there is substantial evidence to support it.
A review of the policy PTS PERSONNEL AND FINANCE would describe what is happening in our church today, and the need for the gargantuan PR machine that was put in place to cover it all up.
It’s all very fixable, but won’t be as long as the insane are running the asylum. Hence, the growth of the Independent movement – most of whom have shed their PTSness and ironically are more Scientologist than many of the uniformed reps running around.
In any case, this would seem to me to be an important investigation, and might open up the door for a handling or two.
The following is from a special guest who is sitting in limbo within the corporate Scientology community. Scientologist X provides a bird’s eye, real time view of what is like to begin questioning the contradictions within.
WHAT I KNOW
I’m a third generation Scientologist. I am not ready to “come out”.
I don’t want to abandon my religion. I want to heal it. Because of
that I’ve asked Marty to leave out my identifying details.
At the age of fifteen I was a Golden Age of Tech trained Class V
Auditor. I completed my entire Basics B+L series in record time
immediately following their release. My parents have been in
Scientology from its most formative stages. My sister is OT _____,
_____ C/S. My brother has been a staff member since he was fourteen.
He personally helped establish the __________ and has manned it ever
since, working in various capacities as a ____, ____, ____, etc. As
my personal EO, he is probably at his wit’s end right now, reading
this. This letter is going to rip his heart in half. Before I rush
headlong any further down this terrifying path, I want to take a
minute to say to everyone in my family: I love you. Please don’t stop
loving me. :’ (
I’m writing because I have noticed some changes in the church’s
methods of operation, and these changes make me very uncertain and
uncomfortable. I don’t know and can’t say who or what is responsible
for these changes. I’m not going to say it’s David Miscavage because
I’ve never even met the guy. I’ve only seen him once: on the
Freewinds in 2001 when he walked around a corner and almost ran into
me. He was surrounded by a team of juniors so it’s actually more
accurate to say that seven or eight people almost walked into me. It
wasn’t their fault, it was mine. I was reading while walking through
the A deck hallways and didn’t hear or see them approaching. At the
time I remember being impressed with COB, both with his enormous
presence and energy, and his short stature. I never worked at Int,
and I never had friends who were uplines that high. So I don’t have
any concrete evidence either for or against the charges of him being a
raving lunatic who beats his subordinates. Since I don’t have any
evidence about that stuff, let’s just set it aside. Here’s what I
want to talk about: what I do know. What I do know is that I
personally have witnessed changes, and I’m talking about things I’ve
seen with my own eyes, and I am not being allowed to inquire about
these changes.
I’m an auditor. I don’t like being told not to communicate.
So I guess this is an exploratory letter to “the other side” to
attempt to gain some clarity, since the “good side” refuses to answer
any of my burning questions. I’m just going to try to tackle these
“things that shouldn’t be” one at a time.
WHO IS CREATING INSTABILITY WITH BLANKET ISSUES OF “NOT CLEAR”?
It started as a trickle and swelled to a waterfall. I watched as over
the course of a year, then two, then three, nearly every adult role
model in my life went pale with dread and said they were being called
to Flag to get a “review”–which always, inevitably, ended in them
being told they were not actually Clear the first time (or in MANY
CASES, second, or third times). They then had to stay for financially
devastating, emotionally harrowing weeks of high, gleeful ups and
excruciating downs. These reviews and re-auditing actions were very
expensive (plane tickets, accomos, multiple meals a day, not working
and earning money while being away) such that upon returning, rather
than looking glowing and shiny, they looked (to me) rather anxious.
They would be defeatist and defeatED over finances for months
afterward, just trying to recover. The very worst part of all of this
is that on separate occasions, two of these adult mentors confided to
me that after everything, they had been told after a long period of
re-auditing that **actually** their Clear cancellations had been a
mistake–that they WERE Clear the whole time. This created enormous
ridges. Who is creating ridges?
WHO IS STRIPPING ORGS OF THE RIGHT TO DELIVER?
CCRD: who has the rights to deliver it? The Bridge says one thing,
and obviously we aren’t doing what it says. Look at the Grade Chart.
I have asked supes multiple times, pointing my finger and banging on
the Grade Chart that is posted in every single Academy: why don’t we
do THAT? “We don’t have the resources to deliver CCRD”?? WHY don’t
we? When I was five or six our org had a CCRD delivery team. It was
a glorious time. I remember we used to have huge parties and
celebrations when the Org made a Clear. We would all come out and
hear a speech and it was an extremely loving event. Why wouldn’t it
be? A member of our congregation has achieved a major milestone in
their path to enlightenment! Tears, cake, hugs all around: THETA.
Even today, these memories are joyous and bright. (Remember in AP&A?
Theta can’t be taken away 🙂 Pain can be erased. Pleasure can’t!)
Why haven’t we had one of those awesome parties in years? Why can’t
our org make Clears? Are we not allowed to verify Clear because we’ll
just “mess it up”? Why is that? Is there something about the
training of our tech team that is so shoddy that we’ll never be able
to know who or what is actually Clear??
If we are so horrible at recognizing Clears, wouldn’t it be best to
correct us in Qual rather than changing LRH policy about who delivers
CCRDs? Saying that nobody on Earth can make a Clear except Flag is a
*huge* enemy line. It suggests that they have a room full of hidden
data lines about the state of Clear that no other org will ever be
able to access. Ron would never strip a Class V org of their power to
destimulate their fields by producing beautiful, bright, shiny Clears.
So why is Flag doing it?
WHO IS MAKING SPIRITUAL FREEDOM UNAVAILABLE TO THE MASSES?
Our family always donated to the org. We did this via donations for
services and also donations for “causes” (things like helping ABLE,
WISE, WTH expansion programs). All of this we did happily, and we
were not under extreme financial stress due to these donations,
because we gave as we were able. Looking at the timeline of this, you
might say that I didn’t know the exact state of our finances and
everyone’s finances at the org because I was a child at that time.
But children are extremely perceptive. They place importance on
feelings and emotions in ways that adults don’t, and I know what I
felt–the org was a happy place. We were happy to go there. With
family, with friends, with non-Scientologists even! The scene today
is a billion miles away from that. Non-Scientologists won’t come near
Scientology with a ten-foot pole, newer Scientolgists are approaching
our religion with caution because everything they want to do in intro
services is outlandishly expensive, and the longest term
Scientologists, the ones who have been there for decades, are PAINED
at the thought of having to go into the org or to an event. They are
nervous about getting regged!
The IAS event was always a donation-centric event. But Auditor’s Day?
Never. We used to glorify our auditors on that day. May 9th?
Celebration of our most basic book. Our founder’s BIRTHDAY??? Giving
him his greatest wish. So when did these beautiful spiritual
occasions get lumped into one engramic series of reg cycles? Who
altered the purpose of international events?
I am embarrassed to say how many families I have watched go under due
to financial strain from regging. Basics, library donation campaigns,
all of the other IAS campaigns, then the Ideal Org campaigns, one
thing after the next. I am far too ashamed to relate experiences I’ve
observed first and second hand where successful, self-employed,
self-made business owners were being forced to take out second
mortgages on their houses just to try to get by, while their names
were on plaques and bricks that will someday go in the Ideal Org.
What gratitude do they have for their sacrifices? They receive
construction paper commendations from the IAS and watch as their
401Ks, then rainy day funds, then families, become emaciated. This
weirdo greed thing is totally new. Absolutely things were not always
this way. WHO implemented a pattern and a policy of coercion in
regging?
Another specific I want to tell is my experience with status-based
treatment at Flag. While routing in and around the base I was given
the “new” routing forms. These have large empty circles on the top of
them, underneath your name. In these circles the originator of the
routing form stamps your donation status–whether you have given the
church $100, $10,000, or $100,000,000. This stamp determines the
speed at which your cycle is handled. I was disgusted that people
would admit to this so openly at Flag. It was really a blase,
nonchalant thing, told to me offhand by several Flag staff members in
an of-course-that’s-how-it-is way. Totally bizzare! I have listened
to a lot more LRH than the average Joe and I never heard a single word
about this kind of status thing. Special rooms in orgs for donors,
special “capers” for them? And now plebians can’t take services at CC
Int? Yes, if you haven’t heard recently: you have to be a celebrity
to take services at the Celebrity Center now. It’s just President’s
Office, and people who are wondering how many butts they have to lick
to elbow their way into the President’s Office. It used to be you
could bring in any old regular friend and show them around, have them
meet with some Div 6 personnel, invite them to taste the beauty of our
religion…but someone doesn’t want these degenerates contaminating
the arena for wealthy potential donors. WHO is doing this?
WHO IS DECLARING AS SUPPRESSIVE SOME OF THE MOST STABLE TERMINALS IN INT?
It used to be easy to write to anyone in Int. They would write back
to you immediately and you felt their presence twinkling out of the
envelope, you knew it was them. These days, I just don’t know. I’ve
written to Int with many of my questions. Most of my letters have
gone unanswered. Who ISN’T writing back? Some of my letters are
answered in a weird way, a strange tone of comm way. Who IS writing
back? I feel like a robot is writing me back. I honestly, and this
is not exaggeration, wondered one time if an intake scanner at INT HCO
had scanned my letter for keyword content, used an algorithm to make
an assumption about what my question was, and composed a letter using
auto-formatting it had been taught. It was *that* weirdly worded. It
didn’t feel human.
I am begging for a human response. I don’t want to abandon my
religion. I LOVE my religion! Please, is there any human out there
who can answer my questions? Such as, where is President CSI Heber
Jentzsch? Where is the smiling, familiar face of Ed Int Guillame
Lesevre? I love that guy! And I definitely remember Mark Yager, I
even met him a few times and felt a strong bond with him immediately,
where is he? What really happened with Debbie Cook, and why were
things so bad that she felt like she had to email 10,000 of us? WHO
is creating conditions in Int that are so unstable that anyone could
just be declared at the drop of a hat in direct violation of HCO PLs
regarding ethics gradients?
WHO IS SLITTING THE VOCAL CHORDS OF THOSE WHO QUESTION?
I have never known a life outside of the spheres of Scientology. I
was raised both in the church and by the church, attending Scientology
schools, undertaking training and processing from a very young age,
and contributing as a staff member. I AM a member of this church.
Stop treating me like a piece of shit apostate just because I have
questions! I am NOT “quitting” Scientology! I am NOT “spreading
enemy lines”!! I am NOT “dangerously Googling”!
WHO IS ENCOURAGING STAFF TO SELL INDULGENCES?
In 1997, when I borrowed my brother’s key to an org door without
asking and lost it, I did conditions under the guidance of an EO. In
2003, when I lied to a family member in order to get money from her, I
did conditions under the guidance of an EO. My most recent ethics
cycles? 0% conditions, 100% indulgences. Paying money to get out of
ethics trouble. “Contributing” to the Ideal Org fund to “make up the
damage”, even when the damage I did is completely unrelated. Why is
my EO asking me to buy a set of Basics for a stranger, in order to
make up the damage for something bad I did to a friend of mine?
Why is my auditor regging me for donations? I don’t even want to
comment on how disgustingly inappropriate that is. More than anything
I want to try to convey how AWKWARD that is. For everyone involved.
Who is asking technical staff to produce on administrative lines and
thus giving a giant cross order?
WHO IS DEVALUING THE FAMILY UNIT?
I was really young when the SO 2D policies changed to SO members not
being able to have kids. I don’t remember how it was before, so I
can’t comment on that. I do know I’ve met the kids who grew up inside
that the policy change. They are some of the most fucked up kids I
have ever met. Illiterate, unloved, and VERY degraded. Completely
lacking basic social skills and unable to complete even the simplest
math problems.
Seems like the kids who came just before that policy change are fine,
most of them are uplines and highly trained. And there are no kids
who came after that policy change. I only have the evidence of the
20-30 children I have met in my lifetime who were at various stages of
their human development when all at once they were labeled as the
diseased pariahs of the Scientology world. How can you tell a kid
that they are unworthy of parental love? The lasting impact of this
disregard, this total lack of responsibility over their welfare, is
immeasurable. I can only measure it by counting the lines on their
anxiety-ridden faces. You know who I am talking about. Half of these
kids work in the underground kitchen at ASHO. Who is responsible for
this waste of human life?
I knew three women at CLO WUS and one at AOLA who were coerced into
having abortions. I can’t give more details than this because they
weren’t allowed to talk about it. Seems weird that we base our entire
system of beliefs on free and open communication but there are iron
curtains over entire subject matters. I know who DOESN’T have the
balls to talk about this. Who DOES? Who dares to lay down a set of
laws over the reproductive rights of the most able-bodied men and
women on Earth, the “upper tenth of the upper twentieth”?
WHO IS IMPLEMENTING MASS DISCONNECTIONS?
For years I had heard people whining about disconnection, but when I
read in ISE about it, Ron told me it’s something we should be very
careful not to overuse. Therefore I assumed it was something that
didn’t happen much anymore.
But as more and more people I knew and had grown up around got
declared, the evils of rampant disconnection orders REALLY hit home to
me. The biggest one was Luis Garcia. I knew him for years, worked
with him, knew his family. He was a big donor, got all types of
awards and special mentions. Yesterday this guy was the head of the
OT Committee. He spoke on stage at our events and gave us advice on
how to clear the planet faster. Today we’re not allowed to even
whisper his name? I received his email and of course I read it. Why
wouldn’t I? For all I knew he could have been emailing me about when
the next potluck was.
I got about 1/10 through it before I realized what was going on. Luis
was leaving the church? Why? I had never been so confused before.
When I came to my EO I was put in a locked room in Ethics and
interrogated as if I had done something terrible. “Did you read his
email?? Why did you read it?” Uh…because it came from someone I’ve
been taught to respect and listen to? “Why didn’t you delete it after
you started reading it and realized what it was about? How much of it
did you read? Can you show me the email in your inbox? Which
paragraph did you get to when you read it? Why did you decide to stop
there?” I mean, it was totally insane. I came in to get some
questions answered and was treated like a criminal. In the end, none
of my questions were answered. All I was told was that Luis had been
“bad all along” and that he had been “planning an evil attack of
Scientology the whole time”.
The worst was when I was told that Luis had “gotten into some bad
stuff” This guy is an OT VIII! Cause over life! What the HELL could
he have gotten into that could make him go completely insane and walk
out of the group he had dedicated his life to? Even if every single
thing I had been told about how Luis is evil had been true–I still
would have liked the chance to talk to him about his decision and
thank him for what he did for me while he was around. Instead I was
threatened within an inch of my life when I suggested talking to him
to say goodbye. How is that self-determined? What happened to
“what’s true for you is true”?
LRH says an SP is a PERSON–not a group. We are Scientologists. We
are not an SP group. SOMEONE is causing these changes. That’s why
I’m asking…WHO? I guess that sums up the majority of my questions.
I won’t be able to say I never saw it coming if I never hear from my
family again after this. My final question is if that’s what’s
deserved.
Growing up as a Scientologist was exhilarating and free! I was taught
“to have the courage to know and say what you have observed”. Reading
these words always thrilled me, made my heart race; I imagined myself
on a snowy steed, slicing through insanity with my long blade of
truth. I just never thought it would be like this.
For those new to the blog, I recommend an essay I posted almost three years ago titled The Great Middle Path redux. I discussed then the idea that the extreme sides of the Scientology spectrum in many ways reflect one another. The zealots on the Miscavige side and the ‘critics’ on the ‘book burner’ side nurture one another as convenient evils to make life combative enough to be interesting.
I once heard a pundit remark that probably the most straight, truthful news from the Middle East comes from the Al Jazeera news agency. He reckoned that based on an objective study of international news reportage on the region over a several year period. He cited as corroboration for that analysis the fact that Al Jazeera was the only news outfit in history to be bombed by both of the opposing sides of a military conflict.
If you check out the reader reviews on Amazon books for What Is Wrong With Scientology you will see that most who care to comment express strong feelings one way or the other about the book. A lot of people seem to either hate it or love it. Add to the mix both extremes of the Scientology spectrum. On the one side are the anti-Marty sites, authored and edited by David Miscavige. On the other side is the most prominent and persistent of Scientology ridiculers, Tony Ortega at the Village Voice.
The “church” of Scientology writes the following about What is Wrong With Scientology?:
He is now taking it upon himself to tell all who will listen “what is wrong with Scientology.” Real Scientologists recognize these interpretations as an effort to dilute, disperse, and render unworkable the truths and principles of Scientology Technology which is, after all is said and done, one of Rathbun’s primary destructive goals – to make Scientology unattainable by scattering it to the wind. And real Scientologists know that the bulk of Rathbun’s latest effort is comprised of what L. Ron Hubbard himself carefully specified as Suppressive Acts, intended to harm others.
On the other extreme Tony Ortega, who has spent seventeen years attempting to make nothing of Scientology, calls What Is Wrong With Scientology?: a ‘predictable mass of Hubbard apologetics’, a ‘bundle of contradictions’, [the apologies are for a religion that is] ‘permeated with sickness’, ‘expensive malarky’, [attempts to pass off] ‘Eastern woo woo as ‘scientific certainty’, and the defense is a bunch of ‘new age happy talk.’
It reads to me like a shade of the Al Jazeera effect.
On the one hand I am accused on attempting to destroy everything L. Ron Hubbard stood for.
On the other hand, I am accused of being Hubbard’s greatest defender.
Those who have read the book and have followed the blog for long might understand why this reaction from the extremes pleases me. It makes me feel like I must have hit the ball right in the sweet spot.
The biggest dissemination campaign in Scientology history is funded by IAS grants. Internet ads run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No matter where a person lives, or what time zone he is in, he can click on an ad and go directly to 
Moving On Up a Little Higher 