Mike Rinder wrote the following to clarify some comments he made about Lisa McPherson in his Village Voice interview. I then wrote my own post below that which expands upon Mike’s and connects some dots and which lead to the carefully chosen words that constitute the title of this article.
Mike’s Post:
I left some in mystery concerning Lisa McPherson. I told Tony Ortega that I had not known Miscavige had C/Sed her to attest to Clear (just a couple of months before she became psychotic) until after I had left the Sea Org, in spite of working on the criminal and civil case for 4 years. This has led to a number of questions and speculation about the significance of this.
I did not explain my view that it was not that his squirrel C/Sing killed her (and it WAS squirrel – Lisa McPherson was certainly nowhere approaching the state of Clear), it was the fact that Miscavige himself had been personally involved in supervising her case. That set in motion a chain of catastrophic decisions based on the concern that “to not handle her would be regarded as an effort to make COB wrong.”
So, when Lisa was brought to the Fort Harrison and in violation of VERY specific directives never to have a Type III at Flag, and in violation of the C/S Series, the Snr CS FSO, Alain Kartuzinski went and personally visited Lisa to try to calm her down and reassure her that he would ensure everything was OK. I could never understand his blatant violation of the CS Series and the Introspection Rundown references, nor the Base Flag Orders from LRH. From there, the unusual solutions and handlings snowballed as the unusual solutions kept adding to the craziness – she should not have been there, but then they tried to deliver a non-standard “Introspection Rundown” (squirreled in MANY ways) and as it was not producing any result, they kept on hoping. Lisa should have been in some location where she could have gotten non-invasive help with medical practitioners available (she DID die of a pulmonary embolism – it happens all the time in hospitals with doctors on call – so it is not certain that medical attention would have saved her life, but there is a better chance of it than in a hotel room at the Fort Harrison with people terrified of calling in a doctor for fear of consequences).
But the craziness started with Alain – who had been being berated by Miscavige for being “incompetent” for not having “correctly CSed Lisa” and so Miscavige had “stepped in to put things right” and ordered that she attest to Clear. A month or so later she underwent her FIRST Introspection Rundown at Flag with some apparent success. That too was a factor in Alain’s decisionmaking.
I do not believe any of the people who were involved with Lisa McPherson were doing anything other than trying to help her. I do think the stupid decisions that were made stemmed primarily from Miscavige’s involvement in her case earlier, setting the stage for unusual, out tech “solutions” that were implemented. Things I never understood, until I realized afterwards what had happened.
Marty’s post:
The following did not become clear to me until I had spent another twelve years handling “Clear” case sort outs both in and outside the church. In the early 2000’s I handled a number of cases who had some level of uncertainty as to their own achievement of the state of Clear. If one understands the St Hill Special Briefing Course (SHSBC) and one understands further L Ron Hubbard clarifications and developments with respect to the state of Clear after the SHSBC (Dianetic Clear Special Intensive – DCSI – and Clear Certainty Rundown – CCRD), there is no more simple cycle of action in the universe than sorting out whether an individual is Clear or not. Because I was working on little else than the recovery and Bridge progress of Tom Cruise and the Lisa McPherson civil cases between 2001 and 2004 when I left the church of Scientology, I had zero exposure to what Miscavige was busily implanting across the Scientology world: the utter complication of Clear certainty procedure for the purposes of caving people in and controlling the resulting wreckage to extract money. That became, for a lack of a better word, crystal clear only after I left and dealt with a number of people who had been subjected to Miscavige’s Black Dianetics Clear Invalidation rundown – BDCI.
Scientology is predicated upon infinity logic, which holds that absolutes are unobtainable. The closest thing to an absolute in Scientology in my view is the state of Clear. L Ron Hubbard notes in the CCRD material that the meter phenomena that accompanies the statement of the state by a Clear is UNMISTAKABLE. And anyone who has audited it honestly can attest that is about the most absolutely accurate thing L Ron Hubbard ever wrote.
About the second most absolute datum that Hubbard ever laid down was that ONE DOES NOT AUDIT A CLEAR ON DIANETICS OF ANY KIND. If one truly understands the technology, the mind, and theta (spiritual elan vital) one knows that to violate that injunction could have devastatingly destructive implications for the spiritual and mental well-being of the recipient.
All of this is all the more acute for a public who is being handled by the very top, cream of the crop “A” team at the Mecca of Technical Perfection (Flag). Put that statement on steroids when the Pope himself is directly controlling every aspect of it. The point being, in the mind of the public there is no question that this is the very last resort. That mindset is, “if I am fucked up after this, then I am fucked up for good, forever.”
Lisa Mcpherson was fed the Clear cognition (that realization that – given it is accompanied by the UNMISTAKABLE meter phenomena mentioned above – signifies a person has honestly made it to Clear) many years before David Miscavige bypassed the entire international tech hierarchy to personally write a lengthy C/S directly to Lisa. Anybody knows that when a clear cog feeding occurs (and the pc is extremely obsessed with obtaining the culturual status that comes with being declared Clear), C/Ses and and auditors have got to be extremely competent and wise in navigating the individual to the actual accomplishment of the state of Clear. The Miscavige C/S informed Lisa McPherson in essence that every other C/S and every other auditor she’d dealt with for the past ten years was criminal and out tech and only he, David Miscavige the Pope himself, understood that she in fact was Clear.
Not surprisingly, within weeks Lisa had a psychotic break and was at the Fort Harrison receiving an Introspection Rundown in the summer of 1995. I say not surprisingly, since Lisa had to know something was very not right – the apex of the spiritual freedom she sought for years turned out to be the same old same whatever had been going with her mind all along. With an Introspection Rundown administered by Flag technical staff – without Miscavige micro-managed intervention – Lisa came out of it and began to live life and produce fairly well for a while.
Until, David Miscavige imposed a months long onslaught of desperate, out-tech auditing programs. Those programs were enforced by his unquestioning, and all-powerful, RTC representative at the Flag Land base. Lisa’s auditor was the Snr C/S Flag (Alain Kartusinski), and so again, there was no question in her mind that her mind was in the hands of those who were her last resort. Lisa received months of aggressive Miscavige C/S’s most dealing with evil purposes and heavy listing – violating the C/S Series injunction against swinging for the fences (going for home runs rather than working on a gradient, the latter being most important particularly with an over-restimulated case). Miscavige enforced False Purpose Rundown and even Expanded Dianetics, and to top it off listing on top of listing. And all the while Lisa was left to struggle through it thinking, “this is what I spent my entire adult life pursuing, Clear.”
That Lisa McPherson went insane during this ordeal should be no surprise to tech trained people. Her auditor, Alain, with zero control over this programming and C/Sing, had been reduced to propitiating to Lisa to keep her in affinity with him as auditor. He spent more time out of session commiserating with her than in session auditing her.
And there is the context in which to evaluate Mike’s mention above that there was no introspection rundown ever delivered to Lisa McPherson during her second, and final, tragic psychotic break. It was the desperate leading the desperate. To complicate matters, the RTC Representative ordered that Lisa be held on the Flag Land Base, based on precedent set by Miscavige having ordered earlier Flag publics who had had psychotic breaks to be similarly held, and to be directly supervised by the RTC Represenative. To complicate matters further, the RTC Representative was in a complete prison cell of Miscavige’s own construction. To report to Miscavige that his C/Sing and programming had resulted in a psychotic break would have been suicide for her and worse. So, now everyone involved in the handling of Lisa’s psychotic break were simply hoping she’d come out of it with doting care and love – and all the while trying to keep the episode quiet. To complicate matters even further, when it was apparent that Lisa was deteriorating physically the RTC representative and Alain in their horrific fear of Miscavige vengeance, began rationalizing and justifying that Lisa was “calming down.” And Lisa wound up calming down all right, she calmed down to death.
L Ron Hubbard was not joking around in the fifties when he warned about the specter of the potential use of Black Dianetics.
With 20/20 hindsight it is becoming more clear to me now.
Lisa McPherson was killed at the Flag Land Base.
David Miscavige killed Lisa McPherson.
David Miscavige has been doing little else since than attempting to prove himself right by imposing on all Scientologists that which he already imposed on Lisa McPherson.
– Marty Rathbun
Moving On Up a Little Higher 