Category Archives: training

Myth, Mysticism and Insight

Posted on May 15, 2014 by | 395 comments

 

In The Tao Of Physics, Fritjof Capra makes some interesting observations on the subject of myth in mysticism and what those of insight come to understand about such.   I had as much in mind when I wrote of constructs in the book ‘What Is Wrong With Scientology?’,  but clearly did not articulate it nearly as well.

“Indian mysticism, and Hinduism in particular, clothes its statements in the form of myths, using metaphors and symbols, poetic images, similes and allegories.  Mythical language is much less restricted by logic and common sense. It is full of magic and paradoxical situations, rich in suggestive images and never precise, and can thus convey the way in which mystics experience reality much better than factual language.  According to Ananda Coomaraswamy, ‘myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words.’

“The rich Indian imagination has created a vast number of gods and goddesses whose incarnations and exploits are the subject of fantastic tales, collected in epics of huge dimensions.  The Hindu with deep insight knows that all these gods are creations of the mind, mythical images representing the many faces of reality. On the other hand, he or she also knows that they were not merely created to make the stories more attractive, but are essential vehicles to convey the doctrines of a philosophy rooted in mystical experience.”

If there is truth to this, what does one make of the understandings or motivations of those who insist upon literal conceptualizations of imaginative religious mythology?   Are they of deep insight themselves?  Are they actively preventing others from developing or attaining deep insight?   You might have experienced some of the cognitive dissonance (or analytical and/or intuitive enturbulance) that is concomitant with inculcation of fantastic mythologies, not as part of an acknowledged ‘mystical experience’ but instead as cold, hard, unquestionable fact.  Or perhaps you are comfortable with the security that comes with faith and belief in mythology.

395 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, black dianetics, Deconstructing Scientology, Fritjof Capra, Graduating from Scientology, healing, Hinduism, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, Scientology, tech, The Tao Of Physics, training, Uncategorized, What Is Wrong With Scientology?

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Trained To Lie

Posted on December 18, 2013 by | 236 comments

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

The Guardians Office Issue:

INTELLIGENCE SPECIALIST TRAINING ROUTINE – TR L

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

Position: Same as TR-1.

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

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

Short example:

Coach: Where do you come from?

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

Coach: But you said earlier that you were single.

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

Coach: What town is it that you live in?

Student: West Brighton.

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

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

Coach: Oh, and who is the Chairman there?

etc.

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in cover up, David Miscavige, ethics, harassment, miscavige lawyers, policy, propaganda, Scientology, training

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The Scientology ‘Why’ Trap

Posted on December 15, 2013 by | 65 comments

“We’re in a society that is so psychology-ridden that it’s almost hobbled with ‘why did I do that and this and that?’  Although psychology has a powerful cleansing function, like any method it can become a trap, and it’s trapped many of us in the West. But the more we act from the heart, from that deep intuitional space, the less the spinning of the mind will interfere.  The more awareness with which we do something, the more heart we act on, the more that self-acceptance will allow us to trust those acts.”

–          from A Gradual Awakening by Stephen Levine

That is a very apt and insightful statement that, while not attempting to, precisely describes what might most be wrong with Scientology.  I have in the past noted the ingrained proclivity in Scientologists to practice excessive judgmentalism on others.  For example, see Sitting In Judgment.                           .

Perhaps the ‘why’ trap of the Scientology pop psychology scheme will be more apparent by viewing it on flow 0 – that is, what one does to oneself.  Please take a moment to review this.   Have you been saddled with the habit of asking yourself, or possibly seeking the answer from your auditor or the organization or even Ron,  ‘why did I do that and this and that?’  A valid target of psychology or psychotherapy, but as noted by Levine, up to a point.

If so, I believe it would behoove you to learn a bit about the crippling nature of aristotelian two-valued logic thought.   A great place to start is the first several chapters of a book called The End of Suffering by Russell Targ and J.J. Hurtak.  You will learn the uncredited provenance of Scientology’s purported ‘infinity logic’; which has been with us for millennia prior to Scientology.  For a deeper appreciation of, and thus potentially greater freedom from, the two-valued logic trap, the first few chapters of The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra will give you the history of how we in the West came to take two-valued logic for granted as a way of life.  A review of both books just might help you break that vicious cycle, should you find it present.

Recently, I summed up in one sentence what I have evolved toward doing with former Scientologists, ‘connecting some dots so that they can see that the only thing that is wrong with them is the ingrained belief that there always has to be something wrong with them.’

65 Comments

Posted in Casablanca, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, policy, psychs, Scientology, tech, training

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Scientology: Hypnotism or Persuasion

Posted on October 17, 2013 by | 156 comments

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

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

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

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

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Posted in acknowledgments, black dianetics, ethics, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, policy, propaganda, tech, the Reformation, training, Uncategorized

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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.

121 Comments

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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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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Posted in black dianetics, healing, l. ron hubbard, squirreling, tech, tech alterations, training

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On Becoming A Person

Posted on June 6, 2013 by | 161 comments

To the degree that Scientology – or any other mental/spiritual practice – affords a person the opportunity and ability to safely view his life and mind and communicate his observations and conclusions with no hint or possibility of evaluation, invalidation or repercussion, it is a positive methodology for assisting a person to increase awareness and ability.

To the degree that Scientology – or any other mental/spiritual practice – departs from that formula it is a practice potentially destructive of awareness and ability.

Means by which Scientology adheres to and departs from this workable formula are covered in the books What Is Wrong With Scientology? Healing Through Understanding (Amazon Books, 2012) and Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (Amazon Books, 2013).

Other means by which Scientology routinely, and as a matter of policy, departs from its own workable formula:

  1. Requiring membership in Scientology accompanied by the label and assumption of the personality traits of Scientologist.
  2. Issuance and enforcement of codes of conduct for Scientologists to guide and control their behavior.
  3. The invalidation of gains that people assert they have attained through practices other than Scientology.
  4. Indoctrinating people in detail what incidents they should address and what events lie on their own experiential tracks.
  5. Appealing to fear in order to persuade or coerce people to engage in or continue Scientology practices.

To the extent any purported Scientology practitioner engages in any of these departures, I recommend people steer clear of them.  To the degree they do participate in them is the degree to which they will ultimately contribute to a decrease in your awareness and ability.   These departures may indicate either of the following in the practitioner: a) a lack of understanding of the mechanics of what makes witnessing (including Scientology auditing) a therapeutic activity, and/or b) their own unhandled subjugation to any or all of 1-5.

The fundamental two-way communication process that all Scientology processing derives its workability from existed before L. Ron Hubbard ever wrote a word on the subject of the mind.  It would behoove Scientology auditors to study of it.  A great place to start would be On Becoming a Person by Carl R. Rogers (Houghton Mifflin, 1961).  One of Ron Hubbard’s greatest contributions to the improvement of  mind and spirit was simplifying the codification of such principles thus opening the process of self-actualization to far more people.  Unfortunately, as his group evolved much of that contribution was lost as Scientology became more mass-production oriented, expensive, exclusive, and cult-like.  The training of practitioners became progressively more assembly-line like.  On the one hand that helped to thoroughly drive home some workable skills while on the other hand it omitted a more contemplative, intellectual appreciation for the mechanics at work and the responsibilities incident to such practice.

Many veteran auditors reacted with some surprise when I noted the vital importance of the First Act (the one paragraph contemplation exercise an auditor is advised to engage in so as to have his own head right in order to audit, from Advance Procedures and Axioms) in What Is Wrong With Scientology?  Some noted that there was next to no emphasis placed on that in their auditor training.  That may well be.  But, the book (AP & A) is part of the auditor training line up.  I would suggest that the fact that a single paragraph is devoted to the issue is a flaw in the Scientology line up.  On Becoming A Person is a four-hundred page treatise on the First Act – relating it to every aspect of the actual auditing (or generic, counseling) process.  I believe that an auditor ought to study the book so that he fully appreciates why and how auditing works; and why and how an auditor must become the being (not simply ‘assume the beingness’) that naturally (not mechanically) duplicates, understands, accepts, and fully acknowledges (not with a mere ‘good’, ‘thank you’, ‘I got that’), all while genuinely – and unreservedly – intending the client to regain his or her genuine self and his or her determinism.

It cannot be gainsaid that Scientology is rife with datums, dictates, rules, and policies that detract from this pure, undiluted intention and being.  It therefore would behoove anyone trained in that discipline to read and contemplate On Becoming a Person so as to orient himself to what actually creates gains for an individual, and how the slightest departure from it spoils the process, any process.

Even if you are not an auditor or training to become one, I recommend On Becoming A Person.  It is all about becoming a better person, more of who one really is.

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Posted in healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, psychs, tech, training, What Is Wrong With Scientology?

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Dichotomies

Posted on June 2, 2013 by | 195 comments

Some have registered protests in the comments section to my sometimes being cryptic.  In particular, recently some folks thought this origination by me was too mystical to grok:

The solidity of the universe is created by energy of opposite opposing forces. We don’t have to be governed by them. Let’s not. The dichotomies are a bitch – and as long as we fixate on identification (particlarly our own) it becomes a progressively worse bitch.

I was invited to elaborate, or explain myself.

I’ll give it my best shot.

Answer one:

If you listen to Hubbard’s lectures and read the books on the Academy Levels auditor training there is no need for further explanation.

If you read the Scientology OT II materials there is no need for further explanation, except perhaps to help clarify technical mechanics from mythology.

If you read the Tao of Physics there is no need for further explanation.

If you read, and contemplate the Tao Te Ching, there is no need for further explanation.

To those who are not inclined to take me up on the reading recommendations I periodically offer on this blog, here is

Answer two:

The reactivity of humans is largely brought about by their mistaking the physical universe for themselves.   The more one clings to, relies upon, and validates the laws of the physical universe as controlling spirit, the greater the confusion.

The physical universe is made up of ever-changing, exchanging and converting energies.   Those energies consist of attracting and repelling (or positive and negative) forces; sometimes referred to in Scientology as ‘dichotomies’.  Those forces can be affected by spirit.   They can also affect spirit, but only if spirit considers they can.

Perhaps the greatest factor in convincing spirit that it is effect of the physical is its proclivity toward assuming an identity, a physical being.  The more one mocks up the reality of the identity, the deeper he becomes enmeshed into and acts at the effect of the physical universe.

If one really wants to lose sight of his or her own spiritual nature and become thoroughly entrenched into the physical, the most sure-fire method is to act as if one is part of the physical universe.  In other words,  start playing the positive/negative charge game for keeps.  The way to make it more and more solid and irreversible is to get real enamored with one’s identity and start to oppose other identities one considers a threat to that identity.  Mocking up of energy flows between such terminals creates more and more solidity and fixidity.  Before long opposing forces close in on one another so firmly that they become a bigger one, i.e. that which you resist, you become.  More solidity, more fixidity, more mass, more confusion, more force, more violence.  And, though one would not think, less identity, less individuality, less free thought, and more ‘gee, we’re all one homogenous flock of sheep after all.’

If one reads Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, one might see how these factors even prevailed upon a subject that was originally intended to free folk from them.

195 Comments

Posted in ethics, harassment, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, tech, training

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How To Study Scientology

Posted on January 29, 2013 by | 460 comments

The circumstances I was afforded in my training in Scientology technology were auspicious.

I summarized them in an earlier post,   Training Outside the Walls.                     .

There is more context to the story that I believe sheds light on the thoughts behind recent posts here that have apparently created consternation, strife, chaos, and even declared enemies.

First, before engaging in my Scientology training, I had had the opportunity to work directly for L. Ron Hubbard during the last six years of his life.  I witnessed the ultimate result of unvarying adherence to much of the policy and technology he had issued.  It was not pretty.  Really a tragedy on the order of the example LRH used in the Policy Letter The Responsibilities of Leaders, the story of Simon Bolivar. Incidentally,  it looks as though I’ll be able to share that in the detail and context it deserves sometime late this Spring.

By the time I arrived on the ship for tech training – after fifteen years of Sea Org service –  I had not had much technical training.   I had blown the Sea Org and in my mind had forsaken Scientology forever more.  The only reason I returned was the promise of doing tech training.  Obviously I had zero faith in anybody in the hierarchy of Scientology since I had overtly committed the most treasonable act imaginable in that culture against its supreme leader by blowing.  I had nothing to lose.  I blew once and if the deal was reneged on I would blow again (that is ultimately what happened in 2004 in some respects).   But, I was particularly focused to fully understand and apply what it was that I had already sacrificed the best years of my adult life to protecting and defending.

As noted in the previous post cited above, I had free rein to study with no intervening arbitraries, opinion leaders, ruthless supervisors, Class VIII and XII priests’ attempts to make it otherwise be damned.   It was between LRH’s written and recorded words and me.  If it added up and worked so be it, if it didn’t so be it.

Early on in my training I read again a bulletin from LRH that helped draw me into Scientology in the first place.  It was called How To Study A Science.   It was later retitled How To Study Scientology and can found by that title in the technical bulletin volumes.   Some stable datums had struck me when I first read it and I wanted to reorient myself to them for my own intensive training:

The first thing that a student has to find out for himself, and then recognize, is that he is dealing with precision tools here in the courses.  It isn’t up to someone else to force this piece of information on him.  The whole subject of Scientology as far as the student is concerned is as good or bad in direct ratio to his knowledge of it.  It is up to a student to find out how precise these tools are.  He should, before he starts to discuss, criticize or attempt to improve the data presented to him, find out for himself whether or not the mechanics of Scientology are as stated, and whether or not it does what has been proposed for it.  He should make up his own mind about each thing that is taught in the school – the procedure, techniques, mechanics and theory.  He should ask himself these questions: Does this piece of data exist?  Is it true?  Does it work?  And will it produce the best possible result in the shortest time?  There are two ways to answer these questions to his own satisfaction: Find them in a preclear or find them in himself.  These are fundamentals, and every auditor should undertake to discover them himself, thus raising Scientology above an authoritarian category…

…A man by the name of Galen at one time dominated the field of medicine.  Another man by the name of Harvey upset Galen’s cozy position with a new theory of blood circulation.  Galen had been agreeing with the people of his day concerning the ‘tides’ of the blood. They knew nothing of heart action. They accepted everything they had been taught and did little observing of their own.  Harvey worked at the Royal Medical Academy and found by animal vivisection the actual function of the heart.

He had the good sense to keep his findings absolutely quiet for a while.  Leonardo da Vinci had somehow discovered or postulated the same thing, but he was a ‘crazy artist’ and no one would believe an artist.  Harvey was a member of the audience of a play by Shakespeare in which the playwright made the same observation, but again the feeling that artists never contribute anything to society blocked anyone but Harvey from considering the statement as anything more than fiction.

Finally, Harvey made his announcement.  Immediately dead cats, rotten fruit and pieces of wine jugs were hurled his direction.  He raised quite a commotion in medical and social circles until finally, in desperation, one doctor made the historical statement that ‘I would rather err with Galen than be right with Harvey!’…

…Any quarrel you may have with theory is something that only you can resolve.  Is the theory correct or isn’t it correct?  Only you can answer that; it cannot be answered for you…

…You are asked to examine the subject of Scientology on a critical basis – a very critical basis.

It was with that spirit that I studied and practiced everything from TR’s, to Metering, to every aspect of delivery of Scientology technology.    I noted contradictions while I studied.    But, that did not deter me.  I took LRH at his word – from the Axioms, to the Student Hat Course to the bulletin above to the repeated injunction that what matters are those fundamentals that create results.   Though clearly through the history of Scientology sacred cows were being constructed of an overwhelming and contradictory nature, when it came to tech study I stuck with retaining in my own mind and in practice what works to result.

I did not study under threat of eternal damnation, being given nightmares if I strayed from what priests – no matter how decorated or anointed they might be – told me was ‘standard tech’, or any other duress.   I learned to play the Scientology piano.  I cannot imagine – nor could have LRH during the heart of his Scientology discovery track – learning to play any other way.

I noticed something along the way.  The most vehement, zealous, pedantic,  holier-than-thou Keeping Scientology Working preachers (inside and outside the church) had the least natural, effortless ability to play the piano themselves.   The more strained and haughty, the less ability to competently attain results.  The more accusative, and dramatic at the righteous indignation play, the less able to deliver results.  The more ‘unreasonable’ and high-and-mighty about points One through Ten of Keeping Scientology Working the less able to move someone up the Grade Chart.

As a result I firmly believe that people ought to be trained by having their reason appealed to and their wisdom shining.  That is simple to do, given you are working with someone of a reasonably high intelligence quotient and an above average world-centric motivation.   I believe that  the necessity to appeal to fear, to frighten them into compliance with rules and regulations only arises if they don’t come in with the above two qualities.  If they don’t come into it with those qualities they are usually found to not be there on their own full self-determinism.   By that reason alone they don’t qualify to audit, case supervise and train others in the first place.

I wouldn’t let those trained under threat or fear audit the earthworms in my back yard.  Those trained by appeal to fear that they would wind up a charred ember floating in space with every man,  woman and child on the planet if they failed to understand and failed to walk around with a fixed, dedicated glare.  Those trained by fear of continuing education outside of Scientology even after demonstrating complete understanding and ability with the subject of Scientology.  Those trained only after they have demonstrated an unalterable conviction that what they were studying was the ‘only’ thing that had any worth (and therefore violated hundreds of references by the author of what it is they are studying – such as the wonderful LAW that the only way to truly understand the worth of anything is by comparison to data of comparable magnitude), and the firm, religious belief that they must rid themselves of even the possibility of entering a thought to the process that was not already written and provided to them from a single source.  Those that agree to organize their life so that their minds cannot be potentially polluted by the entrance of a datum contrary to what they have been given to study.  Those methods do not result in understanding (by Scientology definition or any other) and they certainly do not result in ability to apply competently.  They result in slaves attempting to remember so as to avoid punishment.

It is no different than Pavlovian training.   It is purely stimulus-response.

Or as L. Ron Hubbard noted in How To Study A Science:

Authoritarianism is little more than a form of hypnotism.  Learning is forced under some sort of threat of punishment.

Those who have learned – and enforce Scientology – by such means are not in the business of freeing people mentally and spiritually.  They have their own issues.

Or as L. Ron Hubbard noted in How To Study A Science:

Data is your data only so long as you have evaluated it.  It is your data by authority or it is your data.  If it is your data by authority, somebody forced it upon you, and at best it is little more than a light aberration.

I can already hear the outraged chorus, “this is heresy !  It is squirrel!   It is an attack upon L. Ron Hubbard because surely you are referring to the Policy Letter Keeping Scientology Working.”

I got news for you.  If you were industrious you could find dozens  of references by L. Ron Hubbard to support my view.  I have studied them myself.

“Then cite them!”, I am sure I will hear (and have), by the not-quite-bright who don’t dig L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology and never did, but who are the first to scream ‘bloody murder’ to anyone expressing views such that I have expressed here.   My response is, why?   So we can play the ‘divine who is really with Ron game’?   It is a game that has no end.  Because fact of the matter is, if you look you’ll find my references and you’ll find some supporting your view that Pavlovian training must be followed with unvarying adherence.  But, just as importantly, what does  quoting Ron have to do with obtaining a result on a preclear?

It is as if Scientology has degenerated into precisely what LRH criticized psychoanalysis  of becoming (again from How To Study a Science):

…All these years in which psychoanalysis has taught its tenets to each generation of doctors, the authoritarian method was used, as can be verified by reading a few of the books on the subject.  Within them is found, interminably, ‘Freud said…’  The truly important thing is not that ‘Freud said’ a thing, but ‘Is the data valuable?  If it is valuable, how valuable is it?’  You might say that a datum is as valuable as it has been evaluated…

Whoever wants to play the stone, paper and scissors game with L. Ron Hubbard references in the comments section, by my guest.  I can’t play myself.  I have to get back to auditing and training folks  – appealing to their reason with the result of their wisdom shining.

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The Webs We Weave

Posted on November 26, 2012 by | 137 comments

Every point you find impenetrable in the realm of work on the Way is just your own mind making obstacles.  If this mind would acquiesce completely, you would arrive at the state of Buddhas and Zen masters immediately, and there would be nothing supposedly obstructing you anymore.

-Ming-pen, Zen master

The freedom of an individual depends upon that individual’s freedom to alter his considerations of space, energy,time and forms of life, and his roles in it.  If he cannot change his mind about these, he is then fixed and enslaved amidst barriers such as those of the physical universe and barriers of his own creation.  Man thus is seen to be enslaved by barriers of his own creation. He creates these barriers himself or by agreeing with things which hold these barriers to be actual. 

– L. Ron Hubbard, The Creation of Human Ability

In my opinion, somewhere along the line, Scientologists are disabused of this truth.   It might do one some good to pinpoint when and where Scientology was used to teach one that some other agency, other than oneself, played (and thus plays) a significant role in one’s state of being.

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Posted in healing, independents, l. ron hubbard, quotations, Scientology, tech, the future, the Reformation, training

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