Category Archives: squirreling

Scientology and Intuition

Posted on April 7, 2014 by | 477 comments

the-intuitive-mind-blue

 

reference: Scientology and Presentiment

Several commenters speculated as to my purposes for posting Scientology and Presentiment.   My purpose was simple: I wanted to hear what other people thought about it.  As far as implications are concerned – that is the question I asked folks to weigh in on – my view before I posted was largely reinforced by considering the hundreds of comments.

From my perspective, the most important implication is that it is more evidence that Scientologists are trained into constructs – to the point of confusing the map for the territory.  Their attention is focused with a great deal of intention and discipline on mental trauma.  Conscious, two-valued logic based, and three-dimensional time-space construct based perception is finely disciplined. This results in increased focus and force of intention.  The unthinking, yes/no binary device called the e-meter facilitates this training. In exercising such scientologists are led toward attainment to pre-defined abilities and states of consciousness – known as end phenomena in Scientology auditing.  They are promoted and preached as static, permanent states (again using two-valued logic, materialistic terms).   I have seen evidence of people becoming better at communication, problem solving, personal responsibility, handling of upsets, and moving out of fixed conditions through application of these constructs.  Sometimes they even achieve alleviation of psychosomatic disabilities along the road.

Then, rather consistently, I see them forfeiting their intellectual honesty and curiosity in vain defense of what got them a boost in the aforementioned abilities.  In the course of that defense I have witnessed those people become decreasingly effective at communication, problem solving, personal responsibility, handling of upsets and dealing with fixed conditions.

One faculty that is critical to spiritual growth is neglected, and then disabled, along the scientology route.  In my view it is at the heart of the decline and reversal noted above.  That is intuition.  When I use the term intuition I use it in its broadest possible sense.  That includes what the world at large considers extra sensory perception (including presentiment) and cognition and what Scientologists have referred to as ‘OT abilities.’

It has been said that the sixth sense could be considered conscience and the seventh sense intuition.  I think that paradigm makes a lot of sense and have found it workable in practice.  If one abides and nurtures a healthy conscience, attention and awareness is cumulatively freed to perceive and explore greater horizons.  That includes those horizons that are not accessible to the traditional five senses; but are visible through intuition. In Scientology, once the aforementioned, dictated abilities are attained (and even during the quest), one is required to forfeit his conscience.  I covered how that occurs in the books What Is Wrong With Scientology? and Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.  I cover it in greater detail in A Course on Graduating From Scientology, and suggest means for not only recovering conscience but also rising to the level of intuition.

Initially, intuitive powers are largely ignored in Scientology.  As much as Hubbard at times preached the value of pursuing positive gain rather than negative gain (e.g. mid-fifties Ability Congress, Freedom Congress, etc) the scientology bridge ultimately focused on virtually nothing but attempting to remove the negative.  Hubbard went so far to definitively announcing a ‘law’ back then that if one focused on disability he would ultimately get more disability and if he focused on ability he would get more ability, and then constructed the entire bridge in defiance of that law. In scientology one’s attention  is focused on removing disabilities. One begins his auditing with lengthy sessions defining Dianetics and Scientology constructs.  He learns early on that nothing proceeds unless the simple ohm meter (the emeter) with its mechanical yes/no answers green lights it.   Attention is focused so as to detect the negative, that which is said to be foreign to the being’s natural state. So focused, the meter ultimately proves there is no end to the negative gain quest (reacting as it does to thought’s or intention’s interaction with the physical body).   A number of provisions are enforced to make the constructs real.  For example, along the way,  if one does not think in pictures, he is treated as a special aberrant case in need of remedies that will get him to think by creating pictures.  Then hundreds of hours can be spent auditing out the now-considered malady of thinking in mental image pictures.  Or, if a person does not originate incidents from past lives, again he is treated as a special case and subjected to special remedies.  Those include running incidents from movies the person may have seen.  It even encourages the running of imagination as reality until such time that the person believes that imagination is in fact reality.

Exacerbating matters is scientology’s considerable thought policing that trains a person to rein in intuition.  For example, the scientologist is trained to understand that any negative or ‘unkind’ thought he or she might entertain about L. Ron Hubbard or his appointed scientology ecclesiastics is the result of undisclosed crimes the thinker has committed or deeply seated evil intentions he or she harbors.   That results in lengthy, traumatic, and very expensive interrogations on the e-meter to remedy the ‘cause’ of such intuition.

By elevating the emeter above judgment and understanding, the two-value logic construct is cemented in place.  The all-knowing meter, being a two-valued, binary (charged or uncharged?) device guarantees that.

L. Ron Hubbard once preached against developing meter dependency.  I think he understood when he did so that the last thing one wanted to do in search of greater spiritual ability was to synchronize one’s psyche against a crude electronic instrument.  But, like with so much in Scientology, he also preached the precise opposite.  For example, in 1978 – his self-proclaimed year of greatest technical breakthroughs – he ordered hundreds of long-time, dedicated Sea Org staff to hard labor concentration camps when the meter determined, in most cases against obvious available evidence, they were anti-social personalities unknowingly out to sabotage Ron Hubbard.  In the early eighties he instituted a rundown – and demanded its application to all senior scientology ecclesiastics – to conform not only intuitive perception, but perception seen with the naked eye or heard with the ear (see, The ‘Truth’ Rundown).  Again, we run into that super-charged word as the only one that can accurately describe the result of yet another scientology dichotomy, cognitive dissonance.

Some of the faculty of intuition can be brought out in the solo auditing process.  But, for the most part it is lost by losing reality for the construct while engaging in continuous, active thought stopping to conform with scientology’s thought policing.   Should the practitioner even consider the construct as construct, intense thought patrolling (as summarized above) is employed to correct him.  What is never permitted to be recognized (which an unmolested or nurtured intuition would easily perceive) is that it is the process of exercising intention across distance – and communicating telepathically – that hones intuitive powers.  It is not that which one focuses on, extends intention toward, and communicates with that does the trick.  When the construct is implanted as reality – and  it is with more force than any Christian or Muslim sect – the scientologist becomes to greater or lesser degree forever the effect of that construct.  Again, the meter  consistently proves the construct as reality.  As a result the upper OT levels can become the route to slavish compliance to the perceptions and the guiding laws of the physical universe.  More on this in a Course on Graduating from scientology, and possibly later posts.

There are a lot of benefits to be had from increasing focus and power of intention as I have acknowledged in this essay.  The question I pose is, at the end of the day is the effort worth the cost in scientology?   For many, they consider that it is.  Provided those who fit into that category respect the rights of others not similarly inclined they have nothing to fear from me.  I have spent my entire adult life working to guarantee their right to continue along that path.  But, now my attention and intention is directed toward working with those who intuit that there are in fact broader horizons than Scientology permits exploration of.

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Posted in Casablanca, Deconstructing Scientology, ethics, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, philosophy, Scientology, squirreling, Uncategorized, What Is Wrong With Scientology?

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Awakening from scientology

Posted on March 24, 2014 by | 140 comments

I have been administering a course in graduating from scientology for the past couple months.  While doing so, I have been writing and sharing with students the chapters of an in progress book on the subject.  I recently added an introduction to the course/book as I recognized it required a further undercut.  I am publishing that introduction in three parts here as it might serve to spark productive thought and discussion.

A course in graduating from scientology

Introduction – Part I

One of the most difficult traps that scientology creates for minds is that of creating an arrogant sense of certainty in the member.  It is ultimately the ceiling that keeps people beholden to scientology, afraid to explore outside of it, and thus serves to entrap them within its own limitations.  What makes it so binding for scientologists is that they are taught that such an attitude has that effect at the outset of their studies. That is, the first barrier to learning is the student thinking he already knows it.  Scientologists apparently never think that the datum might apply once they had learned all there was to know about the subject that taught them that very datum.  That type of tricky dichotomy is peppered throughout the subject.  It is one thing that makes reasoning, discussion or debate on scientology so confounding.  A scientologist is only permitted to view the subject within the parameters of its own nomenclature, constructs and logic. He must never permit the thought to enter his own mind, ‘is there more to life than I have been instructed?’

As we shall see as we progress, scientology is finite.  It consists of the words of one man who wrote and lectured on the subject between the years 1950 and 1986.  By firm policy scientology enforces the notion that those thirty-six years of observations by one man are all that need be known on the mind and spirit and a host of other subjects.  It even instills the idea that to think or explore outside of the box of Hubbard words is dangerous.  In the book Power vs. Force David R. Hawkins succinctly described how such mental mechanics generally obtain:

The truth of each level of consciousness is self-verifying in that each level has its native range of perception, which confirms what’s already believed to be true.  Thus, everyone feels justified in the viewpoints that underlie his actions and beliefs. 

Presumably, the reader has to some degree shaken the scientology tenet that if it isn’t written or spoken by L. Ron Hubbard it is not true nor worth knowing. Otherwise, why would you even pick up a book entitled Graduating from scientology?  Nonetheless, in my experience the notion of fully self-contained infallibility is so heavily implanted with scientologists that it tends to come off in stages or layers.  It is common for scientologists, and even former scientologists, to continue to weigh any new data they encounter on the mind and spirit against a hidden standard, ‘how does it measure up against what scientology holds?’  Measuring up is not the problem.  Our course of exploration is all about comparing and contextualizing scientology indoctrinations.  It is a virtual exercise in Hubbard’s Logic 8: a datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.  The problem arises when your mind is trained to work on an automatic default (read thought stopping) where any data, no matter how vital and workable, is discredited and discarded to the degree it does not agree with one’s scientology indoctrination.  Scientologists come to know about scientology and in the process are convinced that they know all there is to know.

That is a perfectly normal state of affairs for a monotheistic religious belief system.  For those seeking the comfort and security that type of system lends to adherents, you would be well advised to drop this book right about now.  This course of exploration is for those who never signed up for such when they embarked on scientology study.  This exploration is for those who got involved in scientology from the beginning as part of a search for truth, wisdom, and enlightenment.

140 Comments

Posted in Casablanca, Deconstructing Scientology, Graduating from Scientology, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, policy, propaganda, Scientology, squirreling, tech

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The Scientology Inquisition

Posted on February 16, 2014 by | 194 comments

David Miscavige and his Scientology Inc. have of late  taken to waving the flags of the American Nazi Party and the  Westboro Baptist Church.   They are spending huge sums in order to convince some that their own activity belongs in the same category as those august institutions.  They don’t even try to argue that their conduct is not outrageous or unconscionable in a civilized society. Instead, they claim it is their Constitutional right to practice retribution, terrorism and ruination upon those who refuse to relinquish their own First Amendment rights to speak and worship as they choose.

Regardless of their individual failures or successes in this expensive positioning endeavor, there is legal precedent that protects you should you ever be targeted by the Scientology Inquisition.  It is the decision of the California Court of Appeals in the original Wollersheim vs. Church of Scientology of California case.

The following is a reprint of the particular section of that decision that deals with Scientology heretics and their treatment at the hands of the Scientology Inquisition:

B. Even Assuming the Retributive Conduct Sometimes Called “Fair Game” Is a Core Practice of Scientology It Does Not Qualify for Constitutional Protection

As we have seen, not every religious expression is worthy of constitutional protection. To illustrate, centuries ago the inquisition was one of the core religious practices of the Christian religion in Europe. This religious practice involved torture and execution of heretics and miscreants. (See generally Peters, Inquisition (1988); Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages (1961).) Yet should any church seek to resurrect the inquisition in this country under a claim of free religious expression, can anyone doubt the constitutional authority of an American government to halt the torture and executions? And can anyone seriously question the right of the victims of our hypothetical modern day inquisition to sue their tormentors for any injuries – physical or psychological – they sustained?

We do not mean to suggest Scientology’s retributive program as described in the evidence of this case represented a full-scale modern day “inquisition.” Nevertheless, there are some parallels in purpose and effect. “Fair game” like the “inquisition” targeted “heretics” who threatened the dogma and institutional integrity of the mother church. Once “proven” to be a “heretic,” an individual was to be neutralized. In medieval times neutralization often meant incarceration, torture, and death. (Peters, Inquisition, supra, pp. 57, 65-67, 87, 92-94, 98, 117-118, 133-134; Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, supra, pp. 181, 193-202, 232-236, 250-264, 828-829.) As described in the evidence at this trial the “fair game” policy neutralized the “heretic” by stripping this person of his or her economic, political and psychological power. (See, e.g., *889 Allard v. Church of Scientology (1976) 58 Cal.App.3d 439, 444 [129 Cal.Rptr. 797] [former church member falsely accused by Church of grand theft as part of “fair game” policy, subjecting member to arrest and imprisonment].)

In the instant case, at least, the prime focus of the “fair game” campaign was against the “heretic” Wollersheim’s economic interests. Substantial evidence supports the inference Scientology set out to ruin Wollersheim’s photography enterprise. Scientologists who worked in the business were instructed to resign immediately. Scientologists who were customers were told to stop placing orders with the business. Most significantly, those who owed money for previous orders were instructed to renege on their payments. Although these payments actually were going to a factor not Wollersheim, the effect was to deprive Wollersheim of the line of credit he needed to continue in business.

Appellant argues these “fair game” practices are protected religious expression. They cite to a recent Ninth Circuit case upholding the constitutional right of the Jehovah’s Witness Church and its members to “shun” heretics from that religion even though the heretics suffer emotional injury as a result. ( Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc. of New York, supra, 819 F.2d 875.) In this case a former Jehovah’s Witness sued the church and certain church leaders for injuries she claimed to have suffered when the church ordered all other church members to “shun” her. In the Jehovah Witness religion, “shunning” means church members are prohibited from having any contact whatsoever with the former member. They are not to greet them or conduct any business with them or socialize with them in any manner. Thus, there was a clear connection between the religious practice of “shunning” and Ms. Paul’s emotional injuries. Nonetheless, the trial court dismissed her case. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in an opinion which expressly held “shunning” is a constitutionally protected religious practice. “[T]he defendants, … possess an affirmative defense of privilege – a defense that permits them to engage in the practice of shunning pursuant to their religious beliefs without incurring tort liability.” ( Id. at p. 879.)

We first note another appellate court has taken the opposite view on the constitutionality of “shunning.” ( Bear v. Reformed Mennonite Church (1975) 462 Pa. 330 [341 A.2d 105].) In this case the Pennsylvania Supreme Court confronted a situation similar to Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc. of New York. The plaintiff was a former member of the Mennonite Church. He was excommunicated for criticizing the church. Church leaders ordered that all members must “shun” the plaintiff. As a result, both his business and family collapsed. The appellate court reversed the trial court’s dismissal of the action, holding: “In our opinion, the complaint, … raises issues that the ‘shunning’ practice of appellee church and the conduct of the *890 individuals may be an excessive interference within areas of ‘paramount state concern,’ i.e., the maintenance of marriage and family relationship, alienation of affection, and the tortious interference with a business relationship, which the courts of this Commonwealth may have authority to regulate, even in light of the ‘Establishment’ and ‘Free Exercise’ clauses of the First Amendment.” ( Bear v. Reformed Mennonite Church, supra, 341 A.2d at p. 107, italics in original.)

We observe the California Supreme Court has cited with apparent approval the viewpoint on “shunning” expressed in Bear v. Mennonite Church, supra, rather than the one adopted in Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc. of New York, supra. (See Molko v. Holy Spirit Assn., supra, 46 Cal.3d 1092, 1114.) But even were Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc. of New York the law of this jurisdiction it would not support a constitutional shield for Scientology’s retribution program. In the instant case Scientology went far beyond the social “shunning” of its heretic, Wollersheim. Substantial evidence supports the conclusion Scientology leaders made the deliberate decision to ruin Wollersheim economically and possibly psychologically. Unlike the plaintiff in Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc. of New York, Wollersheim did not suffer his economic harm as an unintended byproduct of his former religionists’ practice of refusing to socialize with him any more. Instead he was bankrupted by a campaign his former religionists carefully designed with the specific intent it bankrupt him. Nor was this campaign limited to means which are arguably legal such as refusing to continue working at Wollersheim’s business or to purchase his services or products. Instead the campaign featured a concerted practice of refusing to honor legal obligations Scientologists owed Wollersheim for services and products they already had purchased.

If the Biblical commandment to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to render unto God what is God’s has any meaning in the modern day it is here. Nothing in Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc. of New York or any other case we have been able to locate even implies a religion is entitled to constitutional protection for a campaign deliberately designed to financially ruin anyone – whether a member or nonmember of that religion. Nor have we found any cases suggesting the free exercise clause can justify a refusal to honor financial obligations the state considers binding and legally enforceable. One can only imagine the utter chaos that could overtake our economy if people who owed money to others were entitled to assert a freedom of religion defense to repayment of those debts. It is not unlikely the courts would soon be flooded with debtors who claimed their religion prohibited them from paying money they owed to others.

We are not certain a deliberate campaign to financially ruin a former member or the dishonoring of debts owed that member qualify as “religious *891 practices” of Scientology. But if they do, we have no problem concluding the state has a compelling secular interest in discouraging these practices. (See pp. 884-886, supra.) Accordingly, we hold the freedom of religion guaranties of the United States and California Constitutions do not immunize these practices from civil liability for any injuries they cause to “targets” such as Wollersheim.

For further parallels between Miscavige’s Scientology Inc. and the perpetrators of the original Grand Inquisition, see The Scientology Reformation. 

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Posted in David Miscavige, disconnection, ethics, harassment, healing, independents, l. ron hubbard, miscavige crimes, miscavige lawyers, monique rathbun, office of special affairs, PI reports, policy, quotations, Scientology, squirreling, the Reformation

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Scientology Intelligence Manual

Posted on December 9, 2013 by | 188 comments

The following is from Office of Special Affairs (OSA, dirty tricks and propaganda arm of Scientology) training manuals.  It is from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Thus, OSA folks follow it without alteration or deviation for fear of being branded a ‘squirrel’ (someone who alters Scientology ‘technology’) by the guarantor of Scientology ‘orthodoxy’ David Miscavige.  It is published here to give folks a heads up on how the Scientology organized crime syndicate operates against dissenters.

INTELLIGENCE ACTIONS, COVERT INTELLIGENCE, DATA COLLECTION 

by L. Ron Hubbard, 2 December 1969

A Case Officer runs agents who essentially are not known to the executive who is running the Case Officer.  The executive makes known to the Case Officer what he wants or can use.  This is sometimes developed from data already collected, given to the executive by the Case Officer.

        The Case Officer is also known as an “Operator” or an Intelligence Officer.  It is up to him to find agents and come to agreement with them.  He himself knows and pays them. The agent is told what is wanted, gets it or finds how it can be gotten or doesn’t exist.  He is paid for what he gets or documents or data.

        The Case Officer may “run” several agents.

        There is always a chance that not all the money gets to the agents and always a chance the data may be planted by the agent or the document forged.  These are the chances one takes and prevents them as he can.

          A covert operation can be arranged by a Case Officer, using agents but is normally on another set of lines so as to expose nothing of covert data collection by engaging on a covert operation.

        Essentially a covert operation is intended to embarrass, discredit or overthrow or remove an actual or possible opponent.

        It is a small war carried on without its true source being disclosed.

        Generally the operation is preceded by data collection to establish the target validity and to plan the operation. It follows all the rules of war but uses propaganda, psychological effect, surprise, shock, etc., to achieve its ends.

 

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Posted in cover up, David Miscavige, harassment, l. ron hubbard, miscavige crimes, miscavige lawyers, office of special affairs, PI reports, policy, squirreling, tech alterations

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Scientology Standard Operating Procedure

Posted on October 19, 2013 by | 274 comments

The following unalterable, senior policy of Scientology has been in continuous effect since March 1955 to the present.  It might help explain a few things you have observed.

The DEFENSE of anything is UNTENABLE.  The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that then you will lose every battle you are ever engaged in, whether it is in terms of personal conversation, public debate, or a court of law. NEVER BE INTERESTED IN CHARGES. DO, yourself much MORE CHARGING and you will WIN.  And the public, seeing that you won, will then have a communication line to the effect that Scientologists WIN.  Don’t ever let them have any other thought than that Scientology takes all of its objectives. 

The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.

L. Ron Hubbard, Manual on Dissemination of Material

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Posted in black dianetics, David Miscavige, ethics, harassment, healing, justice, l. ron hubbard, legal threats, miscavige crimes, miscavige lawyers, monique rathbun, office of special affairs, philosophy, policy, quotations, Scientology, squirreling, tech, the future, the Reformation

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Scientology Culture

Posted on September 28, 2013 by | 168 comments

Henry David Thoreau’s description of mid-nineteenth century American culture could serve as a fairly accurate description of Scientology culture today, in my opinion.

Thoreau:

It is remarkable that the highest intellectual mood which the world tolerates is the perception of the truth of the most ancient revelations, now in some respects out of date; but any direct revelation, any original thoughts, it hates like virtue.  The fathers and mothers of the town would rather hear the young man or young woman at their tables express reverence for some old statement of the truth than utter a direct revelation themselves.  They don’t want to have any prophets born into their families, – damn them!  So far as thinking is concerned, surely original thinking is the divinest thing. Rather we should reverently watch for the least motions, the least scintillations, of thought in this sluggish world, and men should run to and fro on the occasion more than at an earthquake.  We check and repress the divinity that stirs within us, to fall down and worship the divinity that is dead without us.  I go to see many a good man or good woman, so called, and utter freely that thought which alone it was given me to utter; but there was a man who lived a long, long time ago, and his name was Moses, and another whose name was Christ, and if your thought does not, or does not appear to, coincide with what they said, the good man or the good woman has no ears to hear you.  They think they love God!  It is only his old clothes, of which they make scarecrows for their children.  Where will they come nearer to God that in those very children?

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Posted in healing, Integral Theory, Jesus, policy, quotations, Scientology, squirreling

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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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Scientologists at War

Posted on June 17, 2013 by | 256 comments

A Roast Beef Productions presentation aired on channel 4 in the United Kingdom tonight.  Don’t know how long it will be up on You Tube (courtesy apparently of WWP) so you may want to watch it soon if you are interested.

Scientologists at War

 

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Posted in anonymous, black dianetics, Casablanca, harassment, healing, independents, l. ron hubbard, legal threats, Marty Rathbun, Monique Banks Rathbun, Mosey Rathbun, office of special affairs, PI reports, policy, squirreling, texas, Tom Cruise

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Dean of Technology

Posted on June 14, 2013 by | 211 comments

The following is an excerpt from the book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.  I am interested to know whether anyone else ever had an encounter with a nut job bestowed with Scientology high priest status.  If so, did you ever wonder how that could be given the representations made in policy letter Keeping Scientology Working?  You think John and his like were not handled ruthlessly enough in their training?  You think ruthlessness was given such a positive emphasis that thugs like him were encouraged?

From Chapter Nine:

I was also to be on training courses five hour a day, in the staff course room.  There I met the head of staff training and auditing, John Colleto.

Colleto was a Class VIII auditor – a very advanced level of auditor training and, presumably, skill. Attaining this level included the right for Colleto to use the title “Dean of Technology.” The fact that Pubs staff were under the care of such a highly trained Scientologist was a big part of Billy Kahn’s recruitment pitch. Despite the hype and his lofty title, John turned out to be a dull, serious, bored, overweight, bespectacled man in his late twenties. For someone who was supposed to have attained the higher levels of training and spirituality in Scientology, he struck me as a pretty troubled individual.

My assigned study period meant I’d be alone for five hours each day under Colleto’s supervision. He showed me no warmth – in fact, what I often got instead was disdain.

The texts for my courses consisted of organizational policy letters and directives, written over a span of many years. They were full of Scientology organizational jargon, which made study a grinding task. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that the jargon itself had evolved over time, so that writings from different periods had different terminology. Sometimes my only hope for making sense of what I read was to ask Colleto for clarifications. But it seemed whenever I asked his help, he would take the opportunity to leave me feeling stupid. I began to withdraw into myself and just try to grind it out alone.

During study time one day, I began dozing off. “Wake up,” snapped Colleto.

“I must have gone by a word I didn’t get,” I said, referring to the principle from Hubbard’s study technology that when someone passes a misunderstood word, they can become foggy or dope off.

Instead of helping me find what word I didn’t understand (as course supervisors are trained to do), Colleto pulled out the Scientology Technical Dictionary.  Opening the book, he showed me the definition of “implant” – a technical term from auditing technology, meaning “a painful and forceful means of overwhelming a being with artificial purposes or false concepts, in a malicious attempt to control and suppress him.”

I thought I understood Colleto’s point. In Scientology auditing, one recalls moments of pain and unconsciousness from his past, reviewing them until they are discharged of the mental energy they contain, and their destructive mental and spiritual effects. By reviewing and relieving enough such incidents, the state of Clear can eventually be reached.

“Yeah, I get it. I suppose these implants can come up during one’s auditing.”

“They do come up. Everybody has them. How many do you think you might have?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had any auditing. So I suppose I’ll find out I have a few.”

Leaning across the table and fixing me with an icy stare, just inches from my face, Colleto said, “Try a few million.”  At that he got up, went back to his desk, picked up some papers and started reading

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Keeping Scientology Working Revisited

Posted on June 12, 2013 by | 168 comments

The following is an excerpt from the book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.  It covers my introduction to the Policy Letter entitled Keeping Scientology Working.  In the past, we have attempted to discuss  how far this central religious tenet of Scientology ought to be adhered to given its thought-stopping potential.  That discussion degenerated into recriminations, character assasinations, and other indicia of thought stoppping.  Perhaps presented in a fuller context we can consider the effects of this indoctrination without instigating a riot.

From Chapter Seven:

This particular policy (still in use today) was originally issued in 1965. It pronounces that Scientology had by that point achieved “uniformly workable technology.” It states that the only troubles the organization ever encountered were because of incorrect application of that uniformly workable technology.  Therefore, KSW called for zealous enforcement of the standard application of Scientology. By “standard” was meant precise, unquestioning adherence to all technical and administrative instructions from L. Ron Hubbard.  No interpretations or alterations allowed. Only L. Ron Hubbard’s words, followed to the letter. Quite a bit of attention was paid by the course supervisors to each student, on a one-to-one basis, seeking to elicit agreement that they would follow KSW to the letter.

My struggle was attempting to accept that level of certainty, and agreeing to that level of steadfast devotion to the idea that Scientology was it, to the utter exclusion of any other ideas or philosophies – all without the experience of finding out for myself whether Scientology was indeed it.  I could not progress in my studies without first agreeing that the following ideas of L. Ron Hubbard were incontrovertibly true, and that I vowed to adopt and adhere to them:

–          Any inability to agree to the tenets of KSW was due to the fact that “the not-too-bright have a bad point on the button ‘self-importance,” and that “the lower the IQ, the more the individual is shut off from the fruits of observation,”

–          That “the [defense mechanisms] of people make them defend themselves against anything they confront, good or bad, and seek to make it wrong,” and that “the bank [reactive mind] seeks to knock out the good and perpetuate the bad.”

–          The idea that “a group [of people] could evolve truth” is inherently false.

–          That Hubbard relied on absolutely no major or basic ideas or suggestions from any other source in developing the world’s only workable mental/spiritual technology, which he called Scientology.

–          “Popular measures” and “democracy” have done nothing for humankind except “push him further into the mud.”

–          Humankind never before “evolved workable mental technology,” but instead only “vicious technology.” Scientology, therefore, must be “ruthlessly followed.”

–          The only common denominator among humans is the reactive mind. Therefore all agreements between humans who have not achieved the state of Clear can only be classified as “bank [reactive mind] agreement.”

–          “Bank agreement” can also be called “collective thought agreement.” Collective thought agreement is responsible for “war, famine, disease” and the development of “the means of frying every man, woman, and child on the planet.”

–          “The decent, pleasant things on this planet come from individual actions and ideas that have somehow gotten by the Group Idea.”

–          “It’s the bank that says the group is all and the individual nothing.  It’s the bank that says we must fail.”

–          “When somebody enrolls, consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe – never permit an ‘open-minded’ approach…If they enrolled, they’re aboard; and if they’re aboard, they’re here on the same terms as the rest of us – win or die in the attempt. Never let them be half-minded about being Scientologists.”

–          “The proper instruction attitude is, ‘You’re here so you’re a Scientologist. Now we’re going to make you into an expert auditor no matter what happens. We’d rather have you dead than incapable.’”

–          “We’re not playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t cute or something to do for lack of something better.  The whole agonized future of this planet, every man, woman and child on it, and your own destiny for the next trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology. This is a deadly serious activity.  And if we miss getting out of the trap now, we may never again have another chance.”

The tract dramatically drove home some conflicting ideas.  On the one hand, Scientology is portrayed as the only technology for enhancing and preserving individuality.  On the other hand, by the end of the policy Hubbard is demanding that no one be allowed past the first bulletin in Scientology training courses without assuming the identity of hard-core Scientologist, and agreeing to abide by the rules on the same terms as everyone else. The conflicting concepts between the group and the individual were finally resolved by me with the mental computation that the only way to truly realize true individuality is to forfeit individuality in favor of the purposes and goals of the group.

In retrospect, had it not been for the fact that my life seemed so bleak and hopeless, given the circumstances of my brother, I never would have agreed to this indoctrination.  But the world and the state of mental health in my view were as bad as Hubbard described, and up to then I had not found anyone else who saw what I was seeing in such black-and-white terms.  And so I decided to agree and to abide, even though deep inside I did not fully agree.

Only 30 years later did I fully appreciate how significant that moment of intellectual surrender would become. The realization occurred when I read Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, which described precisely what I had done with my fresh, sharply-honed intentional abilities:

 It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

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