Category Archives: tech

Viva Los Tres Hombres

Posted on September 16, 2013 by | 214 comments

As many folks know by now David Miscavige paid a tremendous amount of money in order to attempt to deprive Monique Rathbun of her constitutional right to the counsel of her choice against Scientology’s scorched earth assault upon her rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.   The courts in America have consistently found that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to civil litigation, e.g. see this essay.   Sixteen lawyers were dispatched by Scientology to Comal County Texas last week fighting like wounded steers to attack Monique’s only possibility of legal assistance.  They came from Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, and Dallas to join perhaps three of the priciest, most prestigious law firms in San Antonio to attack the integrity of the only three lawyers in Texas with the courage and determination to take on Scientology’s war machine.

This is a fact.  In the eight years we have lived in South Texas, I have come to learn a little something about the chances of retaining counsel.  Some of the toughest litigators in this state have approached Monique and I about the outrage visited upon Monique on David Miscavige’s orders.  To a one, when they did a little homework on Scientology’s scorched earth policies and history of attacking lawyers personally, they politely bowed out with comments such as, ‘life is too short.’

We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of moral support for Monique that we have heard from folk from around the globe.   We firmly believe in the power of wishes, intentions and prayers (see Lynne McTaggart’s The Intention Experiment for scientific evidence that such can be effective).  So, our deepest appreciation to you all for those.

It just occurred to me though that perhaps lost in the fog of war that Scientology is so adept at manufacturing are the men who put their careers at risk to do the right thing on Monique’s behalf.  Miscavige is not only attempting to deprive Monique of representation, in his inimitable style he is attempting to destroy her lawyers by having a court of law brand them as ‘unethical and immoral.’   It is done pursuant to the firm Scientology policy to cause perceived enemies’ ‘professional demise’ or even to ‘ruin them utterly.’

If Scientology were successful in disqualifying her counsel, Monique assures me she is going to manage one way or the other, even if it means self-representation between her 50 hour work weeks, plus 10 hour per week of commuting.

But, Monique is just as concerned about the potential future problems disqualification creates for the members of her legal team.  So, we hope we can direct a measure of your good wishes, intentions and prayers toward the only three lawyers in the state of Texas who are willing to put their careers on the line to right wrongs they just won’t cotton to happening in their great state.

Hot, Blue, and Righteous:

Elliott Cappuccio

Elliott Cappuccio

Elliott Cappuccio, http://www.pulmanlaw.com/attorneys/elliott-cappuccio.php

Marc Wiegand

Marc Wiegand

Marc Wiegand, http://wiegandlawfirm.com/Attorney_Profile.html

Ray Jeffrey

Ray Jeffrey

Ray Jeffrey, http://www.sjmlawyers.com/attorneys/ray-b-Jeffrey

214 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, black dianetics, harassment, healing, miscavige crimes, miscavige lawyers, Monique Banks Rathbun, monique rathbun, office of special affairs, Scientology, texas, Uncategorized

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Emotions IV: The Top Of The Tone Scale

Posted on September 6, 2013 by | 384 comments

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].

384 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, cover up, David Miscavige, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, ot 8, philosophy, propaganda, Scientology, tech, the Reformation, Uncategorized

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Scientology and Psychiatry

Posted on August 17, 2013 by | 210 comments

We concluded the last post here, Scientology and Misogyny, with the following words:

Regardless, there is little question that the church of Scientology and its 30-year-tenured supreme leader David Miscavige are so misogynist as to qualify as anachronistic, if not outside of the law and boundaries of common societal mores on the subject of the sexes.  We will shed more light on this subject over the next several days.

Now, let’s address some facts.

Lori Hodgson visited with us in April 2011.  She was there on 18 April when the Squirrelbusters (SQBs) first arrived.   I had already just learned quite a bit about the leaders of the original SQB crew prior to their arrival. That is because one of the reasons for Lori’s visit was to heal from the terror they had already individually and collectively visited upon Lori.  I was going to publish this article while Lori was with us, but we held off because Lori considered it might not help at that time in her ongoing efforts to reunite with her two children that had recently been estranged from her.  We both agree that publication is now appropriate.

Hearing Lori’s story in full reminded me quite a bit of the Clint Eastwood directed movie Changeling. Eastwood accurately and brutally depicts early/mid 20th Century psychiatry used as a corrupt, political tool by the powerful and greedy. The movie is based on a true story.  Watching it a second time, and comparing it against what Lori and others have been subjected to by the church of Scientology made me recognize that Scientology has come full circle. In some ways it has become worse than that which it so blindly and aggressively resisted for so long: 1950’s institutional psychiatry.

Lori Hodgson did not have her family knocked apart by random, unfortunate circumstances.  She was subjected to Black Dianetics in the worst sense of the word, including Pain, Drug and Hypnosis techniques.   It was carefully planned, artfully and then overtly and quite intentionally executed.

Two key characters in this story were participants on the bizarre raid on my home conducted on April 18th 2011 (which raids continued unabated daily for 199 days), see Squirrelbusters: Day One.  Mark Warlick, the silent one, with the camera at the bottom of the stairs, was the Director of Special Affairs Los Gatos Scientology Organization that day. John Allender was the gang leader – a go-to OSA (Office of Special Affairs –the dirty tricks and propaganda arm of corporate Scientology) field operative.  Allender’s ‘security rating’ as an OSA operative was certified by Warlick with these words, ‘I trust him with my life.’

Lori’s former husband is a man by the name of Jim Leake.  He is pals with Allender and Warlick, mainly by virtue of being a good, reliable, ‘OSA-volunteering’ Scientologist in the San Jose area. John Allender’s wife Lynda – as “Senior Case Supervisor” was overseeing Lori’s Case Supervisor (the Scientology authority who closely supervises auditing sessions, including the intimate states of her client’s minds) through much of her “auditing” in the church.

These characters – and others – conspired over three years to steal Lori’s daughter and son, protect a dead beat dad (whom many states prosecute and jail for extended periods of time), and intimidate so as to obstruct Lori from exercising her legal rights to remedy the injustices.  All the while they used Scientology ‘philosophy’ and ‘technology’ to cave her in in an effort to make her think it was she that was lacking spiritually and mentally in demanding that truth and justice prevail. Just as institutional psychiatry was used in dealing with the woman portrayed by Angelina Jolie in Changeling.

In late 2008 – while in the middle of her Dianetics auditing program with the Church of Scientology (as supervised by Lynda Allender), Lori required invasive knee surgery.   The first surgery was a gross case of medical malpractice.   The problem that was supposed to be cured was exacerbated, leaving Lori crippled and in chronic pain.  But Lori was discouraged from seeking redress, since the  doctor was a renowned surgeon whose former wife and two kids were on staff at Los Gatos org.   He was known not to be too happy with that state of affairs and apparently the church didn’t want that sleeping dog disturbed.  Lori had the first surgery corrected in 2009 – which involved extremely intense work to remove the previous surgical product and replace it properly.   Both surgeries necessitated Lori taking pain killers over extended periods.

While Lori was being hooked up to IVs with pain killing drugs in preparation for the  (first) extensive knee surgery, her former husband Jim Leake was frantically attempting to solve his several year old potential criminal prosecution for violation of dead beat dad statutes.  Jim had been in continual arrears on child support for the daughter and son Lori had born and raised, since shortly after 2006 (Lori divorced Jim in 2002.) Jim was creating that debt while continually pitching in at every insistence by the likes of the Allenders and Warlick and their Scientology brethren.  Jim’s solution fit hand in glove with the intentions of the Scientology organization.  And pursuant to the Scientology ethics system, since Jim’s aims paralleled the Scientology organization interests, he would be backed by the full power of the organization and Lori would be treated as fair game for personal destruction.

Through brainwashing, coercion and fear tactics Jim was seeking to get Lori’s children into the Sea Org, before they developed the maturity to evaluate right and wrong for themselves. In this scenario Scientology would win netting two new second generation Scientologists for a lifetime of unpaid labor, and Jim would win, ‘because how is Lori going to demand child support when he’s deposited both of their children (without a proper education) into Scientology’s ‘religious’ order?’

Before Lori’s surgery ordeal Jim and the Scientology org had already accomplished this with Lori’s then-15 year old daughter Jessica.  One day she announced to her mother that she would never go to school again. That was when Jessica was an honor student and was clearly enjoying her traditional education.  It was also after high pressure recruitment sessions Jim arranged with Los Gatos org staff.   After 6 months of fighting this Lori finally agreed that her daughter could go to a Scientology school to finish High School.  Little did she know that recruiters had arranged for, and executed, her daughter to ‘graduate’ in 3 months at the age of 16 and signed a five-year Scientology staff contract.  That same year her daughter got home sick while on full-time study at Flag and came home to San Jose; she was straddled with a 12-13,000 dollar debt at age 16.

While Lori was flat on her back recovering from (her 1st) surgery, Jim took Lori’s 15 year old son Jeremy to a three hour high-pressure session with Sea Org recruiters.  Following the event, Jim and Scientology recruiters sent Jeremy to Lori’s house demanding that she sign away her parental rights so that he could join the Sea Org.  While Lori was recovering, in intense pain and while on heavy pain killers, Jim and the recruiters kept sending Jeremy after Lori pestering her to sign the papers.  Finally, a group of Sea Org recruiters arrived unannounced at Lori’s home, and while she was in excruciating pain in the bathroom, they pounded on her front door shouting and demanding entry (much like the Allender crew did at my home on April 18th 2011).  Lori attempted to protest this activity, but her own auditor – the one working under the Snr C/S Lynda Allender – persuaded her to shut up. Lori continued to protest, but Lynda Allender (Senior C/S) ignored her pleas and ordered her to focus on her ‘Scientology assists.’

Just two weeks before the second surgery Lori finally succumbed to the collective pressure and complied with demands that she sign parental consent for Jeremy to join the Sea Org.

After the messy, complicated second knee surgery, on day two in recovery at the hospital, Lori’s daughter was sent in to tell her mother ‘good bye’, informing she was leaving for the Sea Organization (to fulfill a billion year contract she had signed).

Jeremy  lasted only 7 months in the Sea Org.  He cried many nights to come home, but never was allowed to tell his mom.  He finally did come home.  But when she tried to remedy whatever he had experienced in the Sea Org that caused him so much terror and grief, she was rebuffed because Jeremy was forced to sign a non-disclosure bond that threatened him with a $3 million fine if he told his mother anything about his Sea Org experience.

Jessica lasted even less time in the Sea Org.

After recovering, Lori attempted to pursue Jim Leake for his nearly two years of delinquent child support payments.  The Director of Special Affairs Mark Warlick stalled her from going to court using Scientology policy against ‘suing’ fellow Scientologists as authority. Finally, in 2010 Lori began to educate herself on the Black Dianetics nature of the Scientologist church.  She traveled to Corpus Christi for a few day visit with Carol Kramer, Mosey and myself.   She resolved to return to utilize Dianetics and Scientology techniques to remedy her engrammic Scientology church experiences.

Three Camp Fire Girls Dishin'

Lori with Monique and Carol at Casablanca

Within a day of her return to San Jose Lori was stalked, assaulted, and threatened by John Allender.   Allender hid in the (parking lot) by her office and spied on her for hours. When he saw her leave for the day and that she was alone, he assaulted her and threatened her in the parking lot, asking ‘how do you like beatings?’

Lori’s daughter Jessica and son Jeremy were then put into long, mind control sessions with Rick Melrose at the San Jose Mission.  Rick with the help of Jim Leake, convinced Jessica and Jeremy to disconnect from their mother.  They also convinced them that Lori was “imagining” that John Allender had assaulted her, that there was something wrong mentally with Lori. Jeremy was so viciously brainwashed that he coolly looked Lori in the eye and told her that it was her reactive mind telling her that Allender had assaulted her. Taking the pre-1950s psychiatric abuse of Changeling to a whole new level, not only the ‘practitioners’, but the child of the target was recruited  to convince his truth-telling mother that she was crazy.

On the morning of 18 April 2011, Lori and I had a long counseling session where we addressed all of the above – attempting to mitigate and repair the pain and suffering she had been subjected to.   When we broke for lunch, the Scientology team of Allender, Warlick and two other thugs with cameras – dressed out of some ugly, nightmarish implant – stormed my home.   The very day of the raid Lori received papers from Jim Leake’s attorney – clearly paid for by the church or at its direction – since Leake cannot even see fit to pay for his children’s upbringing.  The papers announced Jim was going to vigorously oppose Lori’s attempt to have her rights vindicated in court.   The four creeps being sent to Corpus Christi was clearly timed to prevent Lori’s personal recovery and also to intimidate her into dropping charges that were pending – an attempt to cut her  trip short so that she would have to return home to continue her legal battle against dead beat Leake.

Many people have speculated why I momentarily appeared to lose my temper during this incident and rip the microphone out of Allender’s hand when I learned his identity.   Perhaps this sheds more light on the context.  Less than ten minutes earlier Lori had run through Allender’s previous stalking and threats leveled against her in San Jose. Lori was frighteningly watching and listening to this entire incident as it was happening right outside her window in the downstairs apartment just behind me in the video.

Lori pursued the court action to remedy the law mandated 60% child custody Lori was deprived of by Scientology and Leake’s causing Jeremy and Jessica to disconnect from their mother.  Lori also sought to raise the issue of her son being made to sign a $3 million gag order upon leaving the Sea Org. Scientology and Leake ultimately dragged out the war against Lori until after her son Jeremy turned 18.  While Lori was awarded financial restitution, by the time Jeremy turned eighteen the court was powerless to do anything about the forced disconnection of her children.

To appreciate how Scientology has come to the complete dramatization of becoming that which it so vigorously resisted, please watch the movie Changeling.  Please review the facts here.  Please confront what has happened to your erstwhile “church.” It has apparently become an institution resembling the mid 20th century state institutional psychiatry it spends millions railing against. Wake up.

210 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, David Miscavige, disconnection, ethics, harassment, office of special affairs, psychs, Scientology, texas

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Emotions III: The Tone Scale

Posted on August 6, 2013 by | 190 comments

Someone posted here once a lecture reference where L. Ron Hubbard pronounced that ‘action’ and ‘games’, were the places to aim for in terms of chronic emotion or state of consciousness (see Real Emotions for how Scientology tends to collapse the two ideas).  The idea was that the top of the scale ‘serenity of beingness’ was far too boring for a being to stay with for very long. For those who made those ‘emotions’ their chronic targets, or their aspired to states of consciousness, here is something to think about.  Games and Action are not emotions.  They are activities.  One could and does engage in ‘games’ and ‘action’ at every level of emotion. The next higher ‘emotion’ on the Scientology emotional tone scale, Postulates, too is not an emotion – and like ‘games’ and ‘action’ is engaged in during all manner of actual emotion.  While ‘Serenity’ may well be an emotion, ‘serenity of beingness’ is probably something else entirely (more on that at another time).  Perhaps the placement of activities on the emotional tone scale contributed to some of the confusion that occurs in Scientology with respect to the role and purpose and worth of emotion.

This begs the question, are there emotions higher than exhilaration (perhaps the highest Scientology tone scale position that is fairly sure to be an emotion)?  I think it is a worthwhile exercise for people to work out for themselves how the emotional tone scale should or could or can be logically and intuitively seen to be.  That is particularly so for those who have set their life goals around the achievement of the non-emotions placed at the top of the Scientology tone scale. It can be a liberating exercise.  I have done a lot of work on it myself – by self-observation and observation of others.  I share some of my notes on it below.  This sharing is not for the purposes of indoctrinating or selling an idea.  Instead it is provided in order to stimulate thought and conversation and input.  The plain type items accompanied by numbers are from the original Hubbard Tone Scale In Full.  The italicized typed items are tones on the existing scale that I question as being emotions in the first place (as noted above).  The bold-faced, italicized entries are emotions I added by observation in their relative positions to the existing Tone Scale In Full.

 

Bliss, Pan-equilibrium (Non-Duality)

Serenity, equilibrium (Justice)

40.0  Serenity of  Beingness                                          Know

Compassion (Responsibility)

Care  (Nurturing)

Empathy (Transcendence of ego/pan-emotion)

Appreciation (Acknowledgment)

Release (Letting go)

30.0  Postulates                                                                Not Know

22.0  Games                                                                       Know About

20.0  Action                                                                         Look

8      Exhilaration                                                              Plus Emotion

6      Aesthetics

4      Enthusiasm

3.5  Cheerfulness

3.3  Strong Interest

3.0  Conservatism

2.9  Mild Interest

2.8  Contented

2.6  Disinterested

2.5  Boredom

2.4  Monotony

190 Comments

Posted in Casablanca, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, Scientology, tech, the future, the world

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Emotions II: Play Acting Scientologists

Posted on August 5, 2013 by | 107 comments

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.

107 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, propaganda, psychs, Scientology, tech, Uncategorized, Viktor Frankl

What We Do, Part One

Posted on July 28, 2013 by | 133 comments

For some orientation to what I would like to over in this essay I begin with a passage from Chapter 25 Epilogue from Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (Amazon Books, 2013):

     As has been ably reported by Janet Reitman in her book Inside Scientology (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) and by Lawrence Wright in his book Going Clear (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), L. Ron Hubbard was a very capable marketing man. What they did not acknowledge as much, but did not totally discount, was Ron’s ability to solve problems – including those of the mind and spirit. Ron had a knack for finding out what was bothering people, putting together methods to address those things, and then selling those methods as services – the end-all that people just had to get their hands on.

     The Reitman and Wright books detailed how Ron was continually creating new rundowns, new levels and new packaging to keep the Scientology public enthused over the latest in the mind and spirit.  It was the formula that created continuing expansion of the Scientology empire during L. Ron Hubbard’s life.  A strong customer base was established and continually kept interested and buying as new, essential route-to-total-freedom items were rolled out.

     Because Ron so unequivocally mandated that only Ron could discover, create and memorialize mental and spiritual technology (the only stock-in-trade of the church of Scientology) upon Ron’s death the church’s expansion pattern also died.

     Consequently, David Miscavige took on an unenviable task when he was handed the reins of Scientology Inc.  And those reins were handed to him, whether begrudgingly or not, by Annie Tidman Broeker (Loyal Officer 2) when she sided with Miscavige against her then-husband (Loyal Officer 1) Pat Broeker. Miscavige had no choice but to radically change Scientology’s forty-year expansion pattern.

     The movement had been built and held together primarily through the promise and continual roll-out of new technology. Now Miscavige had to keep that movement going, but with no possibility of introducing new technology. For a while he seemed to have somewhat of a grasp of marketing, but all the marketing in the world could not keep an organization thriving when it had nothing new to sell. At least not an organization whose viability depended on continual emanation of new technology to sell. And by firm religious belief and church doctrine, he was powerless to create any new technology.

These facts – recognized by credible, outside observers and by insiders like myself – are at the heart of why Scientology (the whole package) is as dead as a door nail.  The promises are infinite while the delivery of them is impossible.

The first thing that probably distinguishes us from all others we are aware of who utilize some of the discoveries of Ron Hubbard is that we do not play – in any way, shape, fashion, or form – the baiting evaluation game that comes part and parcel with Scientology.  That is the incessant, overt and covert, game of continuous evaluations along the line of ‘the next roll out will really get you there’, ‘the next level will handle your problem’, ‘you need to act in this fashion so that you see the wisdom of taking your next step’, ‘you’ll understand that when you get to ______’, or any other of the pitches that were memorialized in unalterable, firm Scientology policy and mental technology throughout the years.

That most decidedly includes the insidious safety valve, bait-and-switch line ‘the reason it didn’t work for you was that it was corrupted by someone else, and now we’re going to give you the real thing’ as is so regularly chanted by the church and the shadow it casts, Scientology practitioners outside of the church.  The real thing is precisely what is described in the book passage above: the never-ending promises to the stairway to Heaven that demonstrably does not lead to Heaven.  It more often leads instead to the perfect cognitive storm: holding these two conflicting ideas counterpoised,  a) I have done everything Ron prescribed, so I know everything there is to know, and can never improve because I am already perfect – b) all the while colliding with the deep-down, suppressed self-recognition that the individual has become intolerant, arrogant, callous and miserable.

This find-the-ruin, bait-and-switch mentality is woven into the woof and warp of Scientology.  It gets played from initial marketing to the highest reaches of the bridge. It has always been, both inside the church and without, that those who play it best are sainted with being the most ‘On Source’ (with L. Ron Hubbard) Scientologists.

It also happens to be Ron’s first,  greatest  – and ultimately most fatal – departure from the technology he primarily borrowed from in creating Dianetics and Scientology: Rogerian client-centered psychotherapy.  The second the client is played – in any way, shape, fashion or form – by definition the process is no longer client centered.  Instead, it by definition becomes practitioner – or organization – centered. The road to restoration of self-determinism becomes paved with enforcement of obedient following.

Do I mean to say that Ron was a con?   Do I mean to say that everything he discovered or purported to discover was fraudulent?   No; as you shall see in further installments.  But, I am defining what it is we do and the first thing we do is stay true to the client-centered philosophy that is at the heart of – in fact, is the sine qua non of – all that is workable in Scientology.

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Posted in acknowledgments, Casablanca, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Lawrence Wright, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, Orgs, philosophy, regging, Scientology, tech, the future

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My Practice

Posted on July 23, 2013 by | 121 comments

My practice is grounded in client-centered education techniques.  That is not because I sought to duplicate them.  Instead, I recently came to learn that the way I coach and counsel toward recovery and graduation from Scientology was discovered and written about long before I was born.  Reading of it helped me to improve what I was already doing.  Carl Rogers covered this approach in his book, On Becoming a Person, explaining how educational techniques logically evolve out of client-centered therapy.

That I gravitated in this direction during my own recovery and graduation should be no surprise, given the authoritarian, religious discipline all Scientologists studied under for so many years.  The client-centered approach is tailored to consulting the understanding of the client or student.  In that regard, it radically differs from Hubbard’s training approach that was memorialized as follows:

If you can’t graduate them with their good sense appealed to and their wisdom shining, graduate them in such a state of shock they’ll have nightmares if they contemplate squirreling (defined as departing one iota from the letter of what is taught).  – L. Ron Hubbard, Keeping Scientology Working

That learning philosophy was explained further in Hubbard’s highest level instructions (Class VIII course) wherein he told the most advanced Scientologists that humanity was incapable of being appealed to through understanding; and so, instead, it was their duty to command people and make them ‘obey.’   (See Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, Amazon Books 2012)

Irrespective of the fact that much of the technology such methods sought to impart was geared towards bringing a person to self-determined understandings, that system of indoctrination ultimately implants fixed, subjective ideas about living, God and ultimate spiritual concerns.  At the end of the day, the methods place a glass ceiling on growth (in fact create regression) by means of enforced belief that curiosity and thirst for continuing education inherently stem from aberration.

It may well be that I was also influenced in the client-centered approach through my own earlier education, some of which was influenced by, or was even attempting to experiment in, Roger’s educational recommendations.  The middle school I attended was a fail-pass (no grade), choice of curriculum, self-scheduling format with emphasis on consulting students’ interests.  I also attended a semester of similar organization at University of California Santa Cruz.  I never knew until I read Rogers where these ideas came from.  Perhaps my Scientology study contributed to this leaning too, since I have noted in the post On Becoming A Person, Scientology’s central practice (auditing) is a modified, structuralized form of Rogerian client-centered therapy.  No matter what led to which along this road, it is interesting to note how what gets around comes around.

Having studied all of Scientology and a great deal on the subjects that led to its development (including their continued evolution while Scientology has remained static), a simple, workable rule of thumb has materialized for me.  That is, the degree to which Scientology departs from its client-centered philosophical and technical roots is proportional to the degree it harms rather than helps.  This in large part has become evident to me in helping people who were disappointed with their Scientology experience over the past five years.  Almost to a one, somewhere along the line each individual’s intent and purpose for engaging in Scientology in the first place were tampered with, rejected and replaced entirely by imposed intents and purposes.

Somewhere along the line in the Scientology experience the magic of the technology – each of its efficacious results marked by its adherence to its client-centered philosophic roots – is replaced by inculcation of the client rather than consultation and service of his or her needs, wants, aspirations and purposes.  Those goals do, and ought to if a positive evolution of awareness and ability is being achieved, change along the road.   But evolution in Scientology is geared solely toward achievement of goals that do not involve the client’s participation in establishing, except to the extent means are employed to obtain the client’s agreement to pursue them.  The attainment of those implanted goals turns out to be purely subjective – no matter how clothed in science its claims and promises are presented.   An objective examination of the result of those who pursue the implanted goals to their ends – no matter how convincing its achievers may be in professing their alleged subjective feelings of happiness, power, ability and bliss of self-actualization – proves their actions often betray their vigorous assertions of equanimity.  For the most part they have turned their own self-determinism (the restoration of which is promised) over lock, stock and barrel to their teacher (See What Is Wrong With Scientology, Amazon Books 2012).  They will lie, steal, and cheat for their religion without a twinge of conscience – all while attempting to exude a vibrant, open, extroverted appearance. Thus, they cannot be trusted by ordinary mortals, not even by their mothers, fathers or even their children. In any values computation, their religion trumps conscience.  And thus the price of the ultimate ring in Scientology is the forfeiture of one’s conscience.

That result is patently evident from counseling a number of people who have completed much of, or all of, the Scientology route both inside and outside of Scientology.  To a one, of those who graduated and moved on, their departures from Scientology were occasioned by their consciences failing to succumb to Scientology demands that they be forfeited.  To a one, of the dozens I have counseled.  The top Scientology achievers who remain, who forfeit their consciences to achieve (or at least assert) the ultimate super human powers Scientology promises, are in the somewhat schizophrenic condition of apparently being as happy as hell but in fact having nowhere to go. The result is continued, slavish adherence to the goals and programs of an organization that – by the time it has ceased delivering client-centered techniques – offers no purpose beyond self-perpetuation and world dominance.  The resultant super-amped adherent’s course is described well by Abraham Maslow, as apparently a common result of many paths that lose sight of client-centered principles:

The better we know which ends we want, the easier it is for us to create truly efficient means to those ends.  If we are not clear about those ends, or deny there are any, then we are doomed to confusion of instruments.  We can’t speak about efficiency unless we know efficiency for what.  (I want to quote again the veritable symbol of our times, the test pilot who radioed back, ‘I’m lost, but I’m making record time.’)

Client-centered education begins with finding out where the interests and purposes of the student (client) lie.  One encourages open communication in that discovery process.  Viktor Frankl’s work Man’s Search For Meaning is helpful in that regard.  Knowing the individual before you proceed is essential in working to recover and strengthen that person’s determinism.  Omitting this step tends to usurp determinism.  One doesn’t rehabilitate and enhance the faculty of determinism by indoctrination that conflicts with the client’s interests and purposes.  For example, one does not force a student who is inspired by, inclined toward – and thus usually gifted in some way – the arts to become an arms manufacturing specialist.  Similarly, one would not attempt to enforce upon a person seeking spiritual awakening the behavior and habits of a para-military religious zealot.

A client-centered educator does not preach and teach as much as find out and only then guide. He puts more emphasis on assisting an individual in finding and following his own purposes and interests.  He then does what he can to help the person move along that chosen path with the best possible chances for success. He acts more as a facilitator than an instructor.  He operates more of a resources center than a rigid curriculum school.

I have been asked, and challenged, to publish the specific route I recommend several times.  I have tried to do that.  But, each time in the process I find myself thinking of particular individual whom I have assisted in the past and recognize that a given reference for that person would not be of interest or applicable to another individual I had worked with.  No two paths are exactly the same.   I have learned through life that to the extent one tries to convince you otherwise that person is trying to lead you to where he wants you to go – irrespective of how eloquently he might convincingly represent otherwise. To the extent one attempts to enforce one way for all, one deviates from the client-centered approach – and some other interest or evaluation is entered into the equation for someone to whom it may not apply or serve any salutary purpose.

There are a number of recommendations I have made in the recommended reading section of the blog that I find myself recommending over and over again to people.   For the most part those are applicable to the Scientology decompression and contextualization process, and lead toward freeing one from Scientology’s injunctions against exercise of conscience and awareness.  Most of them were chosen because of their effectiveness in expanding people’s intellectual and spiritual horizons after years or decades of having those horizons treated as forbidden terrain.

I am working on a book that will make many more recommendations for those seeking to move up the Scientology Bridge in an integral fashion (non-cult, integrated approach), and another for those seeking to move up from and beyond the Scientology Bridge.  In the meantime, I strongly recommend that those embarking on the Scientology path – whether in the church or out – read  What Is Wrong With Scientology?, before doing so.  It will help you avoid the pitfalls inherent in the system.

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Posted in black dianetics, Casablanca, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, philosophy, policy, Scientology, squirreling, tech, the world, training, Viktor Frankl, What Is Wrong With Scientology?

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Scientology and Sociopathy

Posted on July 9, 2013 by | 154 comments

Taking Scientology as the literal package that it insists that it be taken as in the Keeping Scientology Working (KSW) series, makes a died-in-the-wool KSW Scientology group an inevitable plum for the sociopath’s picking.  Witness Scientology Inc., and Scientology Inc. Ltd.

I made a recommendation originally two years ago, several times since, and will make it again now. If you want to fully understand where I am coming from with this sociopath analysis, and have not already done so, please read The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.

The following two facts have been repeatedly demonstrated and tested – not simply dreamed up and expressed by some authority:

1)      Sociopaths thrive in groups of well-meaning people; to them such an environment is like shooting fish in a barrel.  Well-meaning people – particularly those inclined to follow – are the first to justify or explain away sociopathic behaviors of someone else, particularly someone in a position of authority.

2)      Sociopaths thrive in highly structured, disciplined, military or para-military type groups.  Sociopaths – many being more clever than average – can easily learn to game such structured, policy-driven systems and thereby rise and game them toward the destruction of lives from a position of power.

Thus, a KSW worshiping Scientology group – which by policy is required to destroy anyone who might disagree with a continuous harmonious group chanting of Scientology mantras – makes for the perfect sociopathic storm.

I have mentioned in the past that in decompressing and moving on up a little higher from the Scientology experience it would serve one well to recognize the difference between walking the walk and talking the talk; both in oneself as well as recognizing it in others.  In a highly literal KSW environ, inevitably the guy or gal who talks the best talk rises to the top – and by its own firm policy, rules over the hearts and minds of his followers.  It is the ideal scene for a sociopath.  He or she can kill, maim, and disable to nothing but hosannas by those he intends to slaughter, provided he or she can stifle any original thought, and instead artfully spit out nothing but green on white (policy) and red on white (technology) of Scientology.

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Posted in healing, independents, int base, justice, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, policy, psychs, Scientology, the future

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The Future

Posted on July 7, 2013 by | 192 comments

I am in the process of writing two books related to Scientology.  It seems to me at this juncture of that process that they will probably be the last I write about Scientology.  In keeping with the philosophy I follow in helping people on a one-to-one basis, I am writing with the purpose of assisting people in a fashion that does me out of a job.  I think that modus operandi evolved out of recognition that somewhere along the road Scientology sowed its own seeds of destruction by inculcating a sort of unhealthy dependency.  I consider what I do to be of the nature of outfitting and guiding folk to begin charting their own paths.  Hopefully the books will relate all that I know to be workable in assisting people to move on up a little higher.  The first book is about moving up from the ultimate trap that is Scientology for those stuck in it to one degree or another. The second book is about applying Hubbard’s workable discoveries in an integrated fashion that proofs one up against getting entrapped in the first place while seeking higher levels of awareness and consciousness.

The former is a recommended guide for moving on up beyond what Scientology has to offer. The latter is a recommended guide for integrating safe and sane application of that in Scientology that can be effective for those who wish to apply it.   That is, an integral practice which by my own estimation is the only fashion by which Hubbard’s workable ideas will survive or serve salutary purposes for future generations.

All of my books to date, including the first future one introduced here, are directed at a very limited audience: Scientologists and potential users of Hubbard methods.  As much as Scientologists and even former Scientologists would like to convince themselves otherwise, I know this to be a tiny minority in today’s society.  The audience is so limited that writing books on the subject is not a means to make a living; in fact it is an impediment to doing so.  The books are written out of a sense of obligation for imparting what I have learned through my own experiences of moving into, through, and beyond Scientology.  It is my hope that somewhere down the line that the audience for the second book, the integral guide, might gain a wider audience;  or, at least, serve to get some of Hubbard’s ideas into the conversation and mix in future integral mental and spiritual practices.

By necessity, the books are second in priority at the moment to making a living.  When they might be completed will be determined by the time I can find for completing them.  Notions of integrating, evolving and transcending are apparently not the most popular among former members; and most certainly, thinkers and researchers in integral practice don’t want to even hear the words ‘L. Ron Hubbard’, ‘Scientology’, or ‘Dianetics’. Resources and interest in the former church member community seem to be increasingly directed toward efforts to expose Scientology as a scam, expose and denigrate church leadership as the why for Scientology’s unworkable or destructive aspects, or even – of late – attempting to resurrect a weak imitation of the original.

In the interim so that nobody feels like a mystery is being dangled, virtually everything I have to publish can easily be derived from everything I have already written (in three books and nearly 1,100 blog posts; including its recommended reading).   I don’t purport to have brilliant, original new ideas.  I think all of them that are useful to moving to greater heights have already been better articulated by others.   My ideas simply have to do with connecting dots that have long since been created by others.  I have decided to write the books to organize those thoughts for the benefit of a) those ingrained by Scientology with the need for structure, construct and maps,  b) the loud few, and those they confuse, who insist it is dangerous to read my words because ‘I don’t know where Marty is going’, and c) (and perhaps most importantly in the long term) future integral practitioners who could benefit others by incorporating workable ideas of L. Ron Hubbard into programs of human betterment.

The two future books I have mentioned will largely focus on integration, evolution and transcendence.  The previous three books and the blog have focused more on identification, association and differentiation so as to possibly awaken folk to the necessity or wisdom of integrating, evolving, and transcending.   I will continue to attempt to do that on the blog as time permits.

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Posted in Casablanca, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Scientology, tech, the future

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Why Bother?

Posted on July 1, 2013 by | 233 comments

Some hard-core ‘independent’ Scientologists have ruminated  among themselves lately the idea that I am somehow trying to bring down L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology.  Otherwise, they reason,  ‘why wouldn’t he just move on and let it be?’   I am going to try to address this concern as directly and succinctly as I can.

L. Ron Hubbard developed a number of unique, aggressive methods for tackling problems of the human psyche.   Used intelligently there is nothing that compares to their direct, predictable effectiveness in intensifying present awareness.

However, there is a potential trap in the fields of therapy and spiritual practices discussed by Ken Wilber in his Kosmic Consciousness interview series that applies in spades to Scientology.  In segment eight of the series, Wilber speaks of people attaining ecstatic, exalted altered states in their particular discipline that they consider to be so miraculous as to be without compare.  They are convinced that they have found the only way, which results in a sort of tunnel vision and puts a figurative ceiling on their own continued growth and development.  Such people become opinionated, exclusive and intolerant – ultimately repelling others from experiencing the transcendence they experienced and losing whatever they gained in the process.

This trap is particularly acute in Scientology, because along with the peak and plateau experiences it delivers, its scripture is saturated with reinforcement of this sense of only-one way and superiority to mere mortals.  As intensively and effectively as Scientology can focus an individual’s attention and concentration, it just as intensively and effectively conditions those new found abilities onto worshipping and defending to the death the construct that made them possible.

In an ironic way, the zealous, judgmental, super egoic, ‘I will save you if I have to kill you’ mentality of the advanced Scientologist serves as testament to the effectiveness of that which they are hell-bent on defending and promoting.

Just as assuredly, it is evidence that somewhere along the line the science of ‘knowing how to know’ is converted into the practice of ‘knowing so best that we had better not be exposed to learning anything else and not allow anyone else to either’.

The observation I am trying to share is that it is this vicious cycle that is at the root of the demise of the methodologies of Dianetics and Scientology.  It is the cause of every other ill – disconnection, fair game, Simon Bolivar, violence in management, money is everything,  image is everything, you name it – every other ‘situation’ that folk continually mistake for the ‘why.’

I have witnessed tremendous relief, rehabilitated ability to learn, and renewed capacity for transcendence by getting this ‘why’ understood by many who have devoted their lives to Scientology.   I have also effectively helped a number of people with Hubbard methods by using them – sans the only-one religious indoctrination;  people who knew little to nothing of Dianetics and Scientology when they came to me.

It is for this reason that I believe the ideas of L. Ron Hubbard are doomed to the extent they are not used in an integral (integrated) fashion.   The whole package – taken as the whole package requires it be taken – leads inevitably to all of the ills ex-scientologists, those effected by Scientologists, and Scientologists (including and especially independent ones) seem to make a pastime out of clamoring about.

Why do I bother?  Because I want to help free those who are stuck in this Scientology dichotomy, and because I don’t want to see the demise of ideas and discoveries that can be effective in helping people in the future.

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Posted in Casablanca, disconnection, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, justice, Ken Wilber, philosophy, policy, Scientology, tech, the future

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