Category Archives: Uncategorized

Scientology: Hypnotism or Persuasion

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.

Breaking Free

Breaking free from sophisticated mind control is not easy.  I don’t think I have seen anyone do so in as bold and spectacular a fashion as Leah Remini has.  Tony Ortega breaks it down at the Scientology Underground Bunker.  I hope folks who have been (or are) similarly situated appreciate what Leah is doing for them at considerable personal risk to herself.

Comal County, Texas

From some recent visitors:

Thank you both so much for having and sharing your beautiful space with me.  The environment here is really perfect for working on spiritual advancement.

This visit has been exactly what I need to sort out ‘confusions’ that lingered – some I didn’t even know were there.

I am looking forward to living with my new awareness.  Thank you.

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Guadalupe River

Marty and Mosey,

Today is 5 of 7 and I woke up this morning asking myself ‘if this is what auditing was meant to be by Hubbard,  then what-da-f___  was I doing while in the church?  I do not recall having the kind of experience I’m having here at Casablanca.  I came here with the intention of wanting peace and quiet – and time to reflect on all that has happened in my life.  Since I left the cult I have been trying to sort out all the confusion in my head, and it is being sorted out in the sessions you have been doing on me, Marty.

There is something serene about having deer roam about your property and as I watch them from my bedroom window the song ‘long time sun’ by Snatam Kaur comes to mind.  You can find it on Youtube, it’s four minutes long.

Namaste,

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Sweet Pea

Came here with ‘stuff.’

Now – so quiet, so at peace.

This has been a most amazing experience.

I leave with clean water at all levels.  The mud has settled.

Mark, Monique and all the animal friends became part of my life.  I will forever feel this is a second home, a safe refuge, a place of memories and experiences.

The ‘life coaching’ – more than just auditing – was spot on and very validating of native beingness.

Thanks to all.

Loving kindness,

A visiting soul on the awareness journey we call life

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Pedernales River

Organized Crime and Standing One’s Ground

I have not commented much on Monique Rathbun v. David Miscavige.  I believe the case stands on its own merit.

But since David Miscavige has dictated and issued a public statement in response to Monique Rathbun v. David Miscavige that centers wholly upon me, I will briefly respond.  The statement calls me a coward for supporting my wife’s effort to be free from Miscavige’s organized domestic terrorism operations.

I have investigated organized crime at all levels.  My life has been threatened while investigating traditional La Cosa Nostra figures on the east coast, and while investigating local branches of national street gangs in South Texas.  In both cases I stood my ground and lived to tell the stories.  I have studied gang and organized crime activity and had extensive liaison with experts in the subject, from local law enforcement, to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, to the United States Department of Justice.  I have learned a little something about the tactics and behaviors of organized crime members.

One thing I have learned is that the heavier and organized the threat manufactured by an organized crime member the deeper the cowardice of the manufacturer of the threat.  Another thing I have learned is that if anyone stands his ground against organized crime, the automatic default strategy of organized crime cowards is to attack the loved ones of the person who stands his ground.

That in a nutshell, that is what Monique Rathbun vs. David Miscavige is all about.  It is about bringing to halt the to-date unrestrained practice of a policy that Scientology Inc. applies relentlessly in the face of any criticism or defiance.  That policy is the memorialization of the organized crime principles I have summarized above.  It is the bible of David Miscavige.  It states the following:

EVOLVED OPERATING PRINCIPLES:

        A.  COUNTER ATTACK TO OBTAIN THE REMOVAL OF THE PERSON with a product of DISMISSED ATTACKER.

        B.  If on test, A is not feasible, SURVEY TO FIND WHAT THE PERSON CONSIDERS VALUABLE AND USE IT FOR RESTRAINT. 

        C.  AVOID WHERE POSSIBLE THE COMMOTION AND WASTED ENERGY OF PARALLELING AN ATTACKER’S OWN EVIL PURPOSE OF DESTROYING HIS OWN GOVT, AGENCY OR INSTITUTION AND INSTEAD DISCOVER THE ATTACKER AND OPERATE TO COST HIM HIS JOB.

        D.  Where A and C fail, use B.

        PLAN:

        (a) Wherever an attack is in progress (and even when being held off by counter-propaganda from PR or actions from Legal) at once swiftly draw up a precise program using Intelligence principles and cross filing to isolate the attacker.

        (b) Identify the instigator.

        (c) When identified or even suspected as the instigator, draw up a project which includes at least three channels to cost him his job.

        (d) Draw up a second project at once to survey and discover what the person really is defending and threaten it effectively.

        (e) Execute the projects rapidly.

        (f) On achieving success inform PR so that PR can call off the PR counterattack and capitalize on any information gained if it does not expose Intelligence.

        (g) Inform legal so Legal can replan and utilize the information also gained to mop up.

        NOTE: Intelligence in these regards is not feeding PR and Legal as the only fruit of its endeavors.  It is OPERATING INDEPENDENTLY of these two functions with ITS OWN PRODUCT: I.E.  A DISMISSED ATTACKER or its secondary product: a totally restrained and muzzled attacker.

– L. Ron Hubbard 28 March 1972, COUNTER ATTACK TACTICS

This policy is the institutionalization of organized crime cowardice. It is intended to and directs the ruin, and has resulted in the ruination, of the lives of innocent, well-meaning people.  It was implemented against Monique Rathbun because I stood my ground against organized crime.  Now, the target of the domestic terrorism it calls for is standing her ground.

You are damn right she has my full support.

I have nothing else to say, at this point.

Pursuit of Understanding

I am introducing my recommended reading list to anyone who has attained the Scientology state of Clear.  By doing so, I am not promoting or trying to win over anybody to a particular line of thought.  Nor am I attempting to dissuade people from continuing to worship their firmly held religious constructs. I respect their First Amendment rights to continue to do so.  Instead, I am responding to the relative few who have expressed genuine curiosity about from whence I have come and to where I am going.  Folks can take it or leave it, or pick and choose to satisfy their own curiosities. And, as is their wont, Scientologists can of course nitpick and snipe so as to kill the agent who brings news they will likely find is anathema to their Scientology religious beliefs.

I recommend that these materials, minimally, be studied before embarking on Scientology OT Levels 2 through 8.   Actually, I think anyone would gain a tremendous amount of insight by reading these books. But, I believe this (or a comparable) recommended study is essential to understanding from a scientific and spiritual view what it most likely is that makes a meter read on a Clear.  It also gives a much deeper understanding of what it is that Ron Hubbard was grappling with on the upper levels.  To pursue a subject calling itself a ‘science of the mind’, while subjecting oneself to religious mythological belief constructs (as one inevitably does by running headlong into the OT Levels of Scientology) sets up a vicious form of cognitive dissonance: religious belief masquerading as scientific certainty.   The result is the inability to perceive as-is; defeating the entire stated purpose of Scientology.  More debilitating, Scientology at the upper levels continues a process of self-affirmation and self-fixation that firmly shackles an individual from rising to greater heights; locked into a solidified ego as he or she becomes. I think this recommended study can alleviate that dissonance, freeing an individual to continue to move on up a little higher.

I am not creating some new study by this recommendation.  I am sure there is an infinity of gradients and steps one could, and some certainly have, take to navigate the mire that is implanted at the Scientology upper levels.  I did not follow this recommendation.  I went through numerous other valleys and peaks along my own way. For example, as part of my own study, I studied and evaluated what Hubbard studied and drew from in developing Scientology; and I haven’t included that byway on this list.  I reviewed my path and noted those studies I feel were integral in understanding Scientology in the only way Hubbard himself recommended anything could be fully understood. That is, studied against data of comparable magnitude.  When one does, I believe one cannot help but recognize that Ron was definitely onto something in his upper level research, but that developments in science and consciousness far more rationally and accurately revealed what it was.  One may or may not also see in the light of this understanding, that continued, blind adherence to mythological constructs supplied in Scientology might be crippling of spiritual evolution.

If sufficient interest is communicated, I may follow up with a series of posts on each of these references, explaining why I consider them important, connecting dots demonstrating relevance to the Scientology experience, and making sense of the sequence, etc.  In either event, I hope some people find this of some assistance in their graduation and transcendence process.

1)      Tao Te Ching – Stephen Mitchell translation

2)      Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

3)      The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran

4)      The Four Agreements – Don Migel Ruiz

5)      The End of Suffering – Russell Targ and J.J. Hurtak

6)      Buddha’s Brain – Rick Hanson

7)      A Brief History of Everything – Ken Wilber

8)     Kosmic Consciousness – ten part interview with Ken Wilber, Sounds True Productions.

9)      A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

10)   The Biology of Belief – Bruce Lipton

11)   The  Unobservable Universe – Scott Tyson

12)   The Secret – Rhonda Byrne (book and video)

13)   The Intention Experiment – Lynne McTaggart

14)   The Field – Lynne McTaggart

15)   Entangled Minds – Dean Radin

16)   The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra

17)   Quantum Enigma – Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner

18)   Biocentrism – Robert Lanza

19)   A Gradual Awakening.- Stephen Levine

Some folks have already expressed dismay at such a recommendation in that it is a hefty amount of reading.  One person implied that I am asserting that one must become proficient in Quantum Mechanics in order to achieve enlightenment.  I am not suggesting that.

I am suggesting that if one devotes the better part of one’s life to following someone who implants in one’s mind a certainty that what he is following is proven scientifically to be the only road to spiritual freedom, one is demonstrating a large degree of gullibility in accepting and dramatizing that implant with no context explored against which to evaluate the truth of that implant.  Understanding is an universal solvent, in my opinion.

There Are Some Things You Just Can’t Fight

From Lieh-Tzu, A Taoist Guide to Practical Living, by Eva Wong (Shambhala Publications, 1995):

An eye that is about to lose its sight tends to be extremely sharp in making out details.  An ear that is about to become deaf tends to be very acute in its hearing. A tongue that about to lose its sensitivity can make out the differences between water from two sources.  A nose that is about to lose its ability is most sensitive to fragrances.  It is as if the senses are fighting to maintain their usefulness.  However, no matter how hard they fight, they will eventually lose their effectiveness.

It is the same with people.  People who are beginning to weaken will push their bodies to the limit.  People who are about to lose their minds will become unusually argumentative.  This is because they are not willing to admit that all things must end, and they want to make a show of their strength to cover their weakness.

On the other hand, enlightened persons accept the natural course of things.  They do not force their bodies to display strength or their minds to show cleverness.  Knowing that there are some things that they can’t fight, they accept what comes.  That is why they can embrace life and accept death. 

Viva Los Tres Hombres

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot, Blue, and Righteous:

Elliott Cappuccio

Elliott Cappuccio

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

Marc Wiegand

Marc Wiegand

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

Ray Jeffrey

Ray Jeffrey

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

Emotions IV: The Top Of The Tone Scale

references:

Real Emotions

Emotions II: Play Acting Scientologists

Emotions III: The Tone Scale

Some Scientologists unaffiliated with the church clearly believe Ron Hubbard had everything completely taped with no need and no room for additional thought or discussion.  They certainly have a First Amendment right to assert their firmly held religious beliefs concerning the only way to proceed along the only road to total freedom; provided they do not commit civil or criminal wrongs while doing so.   By the same guaranteed freedom, I can continue to attempt to free captive minds caught in suspended cognitive dissonance.

Some have posited that the Tone Scale in Full referred to in the posts here about emotions refers to ‘tones’ which don’t qualify as emotions because they occur only with spirits who have transcended bodies, or are experienced by spirits independent of any other physiological phenomena connected with emotions as understood by the rest of the civilized world.  By the way, that assertion is made notwithstanding the fact Hubbard’s last words on the subject were those written in his Tone Scale film script.  In that work he had actors, in bodies, depict (with their bodies) all of those vaunted alleged out-of-body tones.  In either event,  these states are normally associated with the highest levels of consciousness attainment in Scientology.

As religion is religion because it deals with, among other perhaps less important matters, life and death and ultimate concerns, should not the life and death of the author of whose words may not be discussed or questioned be of some relevance?  Scientology demands as much by clothing itself with scientifically guaranteed claims, while adhering to institutional policy that requires the personal destruction of anyone who might attempt to objectively discuss or weigh those claims. By his own firm policy, which has resulted in the destruction of scores of relationships and careers of the curious over decades, Ron demands that the only proofs of Scientology be purely subjective.  That leaves the only available objective measure of workability to be the examination of the lives and conduct of those making subjective claims about the product of the subject.

I am interested in hearing from adherents their take, particularly as it relates to the application of the Tone Scale and emotion as they interpret it, to the ultimate emotional state or tone or consciousness state of Ron.  I have included a passage of a discussion I had with Steve ‘Sarge’ Pfauth – a very dear and loyal friend to L. Ron Hubbard to this day – about Ron’s ultimate states of emotion or tone or consciousness.   I have fully discussed – in an in-depth context – my views about it in my book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.  Let’s hear yours.

From Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior:

Sarge (Steve Pfauth):  So, anyway, he (L. Ron Hubbard) wanted to see me.  So I went into the Bluebird and sat down.  And he sat across from me and he said, “Sarge,”…boy I wish I had written it all down because I don’t want to goof it up, because this is kind of important.  Basically he said, “Sarge, I need you to do something.”  He wanted me to build him a machine that would get rid of the bts [body thetans] and kill the body.

Mark (“Marty” Rathbun): Wow.

Sarge: Yeah.  It’s kind of heavy.  It struck me real hard.  He told me a few things.  He said, “Yeah, I’ve done all I can do here and I’m just… I’m not coming back. I’m leaving and I am not coming back.”  He wanted to die, basically.  You know, his body was going to hell and all that stuff.  He was having trouble with bts.

Mark: And you say that was in late ʼ85?

Sarge: Yeah.  Fall of ʼ85.  Yeah, it was right around October.

Mark: Like three months before he died.

Sarge: Yeah, like three or four months.  So, I didn’t want to do it. But I didn’t tell him that.  And I was hoping I could talk to Pat because Annie insisted that I build the machine.  And I said, “Annie, I don’t know that much about building machines that fry people, you know what I mean?”

Mark: Well, did he describe how it should be done?

Sarge: Basically, he wanted to hook it up to the e-meter.  And he wanted enough voltage in there that it would get rid of the bts.  And I asked him about voltages and I asked him some questions…it was so long ago. And, uh, well, I gotta tell ya, it upset me a lot.

Mark: I bet.  So, the idea was that you’d be holding the cans…

Sarge:  Turn the thing on and then, in other words, he was gonna audit the bts away and the body was gonna die.

Mark:  Right. So there would be enough voltage to kill the body?

Sarge:  To do it all.  How he figured I was going to figure that out, I have no idea…

… Sarge:  Yeah.  Earlier on I cooked for LRH.  He thought I was a good cook.  And then he got sick.  Anyway, what happened was I was very upset.  So I got pissy-ass drunk and Annie found me about four o’clock in the morning with beer cans all over the green truck, out at the racetrack.  I had passed out on the seat.  And she was screaming at me, “Oh, you son of a bitch!” Oh man, she laid into me.  And I said, “All right, Annie,” and my head was hurting.  But I was upset, I was very upset.  I was crying and everything.  That was a rough time. Very rough.  Uh, so anyway, then days went by, okay?  And Annie kept saying, “He wants to know about the machine, he wants to know about the machine. What are you doing on the machine?”  Annie says, “If you don’t do anything on this Sarge, he’s going to get the local electrician to build one for him.”  Can you picture that?

Mark: Wow.  That would have been a…

Sarge: I said “No way, man.”  So I had to show some progress. So I went to an electronics place in San Luis Obispo and I bought some Tesla coils and some up-transformer things and I got all sorts of things. I basically built him a battery-operated automotive coil type thing.  This is my reasoning now, Marty.  If he gets zapped by that sucker, it’s gonna shock him but it ain’t gonna kill him.  Okay?

Mark: Okay.

Sarge: It’ll shock him but it ain’t gonna kill him.  It’ll scare him and he won’t want to do it again.

Mark: These are like 12-volt batteries?

Sarge: Yeah.  But the voltage is going to go way up on a transformer.  It’s like an automotive coil sort of thing.

Mark:  So your thought, what you understand is that he is not going to get…

Sarge: I’m not frying him!

Mark: Exactly.  I gotcha.

Sarge:  I didn’t want anything that is going to plug into the wall.  I didn’t want to fry him, but I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t want to fry him.  You know what I mean?

Mark: Yeah, I think about what you are saying right now, and I try to put myself into your position and I…

Sarge:  It was very difficult.  I didn’t want to kill the old man.  So anyway, he used the thing and he fried up my Mark VI [e-meter].  I had a Mark VI that got fried.

Mark:  He used it?

Sarge:  Yeah.

Mark:  LRH actually used it?

Sarge:  Yeah, it was my Mark VI, yeah.  And it fried the Mark VI.  I knew that was going to happen.  Fried it.

Mark:  You mean he actually tried…

Sarge:  Oh, yeah. It had burn marks on it and everything.

Mark:  He didn’t get burnt?

Sarge: He may have.  But after that there was no more mention of any machines.  And that was my intention.  That was my intention.

Mark:  He probably got a good, hard jolt.

Sarge:  I think it scared him, or something.

Mark:  And it burned the plastic?

Sarge:  It was burnt.  It was fried.  The insides were gone.  Because, you know, those things are like a computer.  You can’t put that much power into them without zapping them…I do think people need to know. I just wish at the time when I first blew that I would have written it all down.  But I carried it because I had no terminals [people to talk to].

The Gospel According to Jesus

That is the title of another book by Stephen Mitchell, whose translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching I have many times recommended on this blog and in my books.  The subtitle is: A New Translation and Guide to his Essential Teachings for Believers and Unbelievers.

Mitchell undertakes an effort begun by such noted Americans as Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom assayed to differentiate the life and words of Jesus from the hype, falsehood, misdirection and fear they perceived had been added to the Scriptures by others.

I am going to share one passage from the introduction of Mitchell’s book that I believe might resonate on several levels with people who have invested in the Scientology experience.

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Jesus:

He enjoys eating and drinking, he likes to be around women and children; he laughs easily, and his wit can cut like a surgeon’s scalpel.  His trust in God is as natural as breathing, and in God’s presence he is himself fully present.  In his bearing, in his very language, he reflects God’s deep love for everything that is earthly: for the sick and the despised, the morally admirable and the morally repugnant, for weeds as well as flowers, lions as well as lambs.  He teaches that just as the sun gives light to both wicked and good, and the rain brings nourishment to both righteous and unrighteous, God’s compassion embraces all people.  There are no pre-conditions for it, nothing we need to do first, nothing we have to believe.  When we are ready to receive it, it is there.  And the more we live in its presence, the more effortlessly it flows through us, until we find that we no longer need external rules or Bibles or Messiahs.

“For this teaching which I give you today is not hidden from you, and is not far away.  It is not in heaven, for you to say, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down for us, so that we can hear it and do it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, for you to say, ‘Who will cross the sea and bring it back for us, so that we can hear it and do it?’  But the teaching is very near to you: it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”