The book that the Scientology critic cult is attempting to censor more vigorously than the church of Scientology is now available in Kindle format, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior on Kindle.
Ten reasons why you should not read Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior:
If you read it, you might get the idea that Scientology is something that one ought to graduate from. This could be particularly troubling for folk who can’t seem to get over the reunion-of-the-folks-from-the-good-old-days mentality.
If you read it, you might get the idea that for Scientology to assert the idea some of its ideas are sacred and ought to remain hidden is the height of hypocrisy. This could be particularly difficult for those who cling to a sense of mystical superiority over mere mortals.
If you read it, you might get the idea that Scientology is nothing more than, as Ron once noted, ‘a workable technology’. This could be particularly trying for those who assert ‘total certainty’ on the ‘only road to total freedom.’
If you read it, you might become curious as to the evolution of psychotherapeutic and spiritual practices during the time Scientology has existed. This could be particularly upsetting to those who find comfort in knowing without doubt that anything developed or discussed outside the halls of Scientology is destructive, dangerous business.
If you read it, you might get the idea that having to have someone to blame or fight is a severe limitation to one’s spiritual growth. This could be particularly disconcerting to the ‘onward Scientology soldier’ set.
If you read it, you will more than likely doubt every utterance emanating from the church of Scientology from David Miscavige on down. This could be particularly perplexing for those who find solace in relying upon those they have decided are ‘on Source’ or ‘with Ron’ or ‘with Scientology.’
If you read it, you might find out that L. Ron Hubbard did not live an immaculate resurrection as popularly accepted. This could be particularly enturbulating to those whose gains in Scientology are based upon the foundation of the stable datum of ‘doing what Ron would do.’
If you read it, you will more than likely forever lose the ‘ends justify the means’ think that Scientology implants upon its members. This will be particularly jarring to those weaklings who take some measure of pride in judging, denigrating, and black pr’ing those who don’t see eye to eye with them on Scientology.
If you read it, you might find out that much of Scientology takes away the positive that it is also capable of producing. This will be particularly unsettling to those who have a weak understanding on the observable mechanics that make Scientology produce results .
If you read it, you might not continue to think Ron is Buddha reincarnated or, on the other hand, a grand con man. This will be particularly troubling to those whose gains were founded upon, or bolstered by, belief. It will also cause consternation to those who have found a safe solution in targeting Ron as inherently evil.
L. Ron Hubbard once designated the entry level of Scientology as Scientology Zero. Scientology Zero consisted initially of demonstrating to a person that the environment was not as dangerous as he had been led to believe. It educated a person on the existence of merchants of chaos who traffic in painting a picture of danger so that they can profit by protecting one from that danger. It is the old organized crime protection racket.
As we have seen over the years Scientology has become that which Scientology Zero warned of. The church continually plies its public with end-of-world scenarios that can only be handled by contributing more greenbacks to the church. Some folks on the outside engage in a similar game of designating the church as the enemy that will consume humanity if not combatted continually.
One purpose of this blog from the outset was to demonstrate that the church of Scientology was not something to be feared; that it in fact had simply perfected the protection racket game, giving folk the illusion that it was something to continually fear.
I came across a little something by Bruce Lipton from The Biology of Belief (Hay House, Inc. 2005) that explains why obsessing with fear inhibits growth:
In a response similar to that displayed by cells, humans unavoidably restrict their growth behaviors when they shift into a protective mode. If you’re running from a mountain lion, it’s not a good idea to expend energy on growth. In order to survive – that is, escape the lion – you summon all your energy for your fight or flight response. Redistributing energy reserves to fuel the protection response inevitably results in curtailment of growth…
…Inhibiting growth processes is also debilitating in that growth is a process that not only expends energy but is also required to produce energy. Consequently, a sustained protection response inhibitsthe creation of life-sustaining energy. The longer you stay in protection, the more you consume your energy reserves, which in turn, compromises your growth. In fact, you can shut down growth processes so completely that it becomes a truism that you can be ‘scared to death.’
Maybe that is a scientific explanation for Lao Tzu’s having wrote the following in the Tao Te Ching:
There is no greater illusion than fear, no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy. Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.
In imparting advice on how to find one’s meaning in life in Man’s Search For Meaning Viktor Frankl shares a lot of other gems of wisdom. I came across the following passage when reviewing the book this weekend. Having recently discussed the cathartic nature of witnessing one might want to consider the need for balance in that regard.
Frankl:
By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself — be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transendence.
Zen: A total state of focus that incorporates a total togetherness of body and mind. Zen is a way of being. It also is a state of mind. Zen involves dropping illusion and seeing things without distortion created by your own thoughts. – The Urban Dictionary
Caveat emptor (buyer, beware). I may be crazy – and this book of my recollections therefore may just be laced with delusion.
It all depends on whether you buy into the genetic theory of mental health. That is the school of thought that maintains we are simply organisms, unthinkingly carrying on the genetic, cellular commands we are born with. That is the very theory that L. Ron Hubbard eschewed in developing Scientology. Scientology is predicated upon the idea that the spirit (called thetan in Scientology) and its considerations are senior to the mind and the body, and that ultimately every one of us is capable of sanity and of becoming the captain of his own destiny – irrespective of genetic or biological make-up.
The church of Scientology has apparently done away with such core Hubbard principles. Corporate Scientology leader David Miscavige sent my former wife to Clearwater Florida to visit reporters Tom Tobin and Joe Childs of the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) in mid 2009. She came with a script to read to the reporters, one no doubt carefully crafted by Miscavige himself. It would be Corporate Scientology’s answer to an interview I had given, exposing a culture of violence created by Miscavige at the highest levels of his church.
In embarrassed, halting phrases my former wife told the reporters that I had a family history of insanity and the “church” was concerned that I had picked up the insanity gene. When the reporters attempted to make some sense of the relevance of those claims, my former wife, on cue, stood, turned and walked from the room, noting with finality, “This is not a deposition; I’m not here to answer questions.” When official Scientology spokesperson Tommy Davis was confronted with the claims I’d made about violence in the church, he shouted, with veins popping from his neck, “Marty Rathbun is a fucking lunatic. He’s psychotic!”
Miscavige came up with this brilliant public relations move based on an analysis of my church counseling folders. Those folders note, in meticulous detail, every significant event of my life, and of many prior lives as well. It is a policy of the corporate Scientologists to find bits of embarrassing confession from a former member’s past, and then allude to one of these bits publicly. The hope is that the target will quail, for fear of any more particulars being revealed.
In order to erase any influence such attempted blackmail might otherwise have, let’s get right to the heart of Miscavige’s allusion to the matter he seems to believe is my Achilles’ heel.
Insanity runs deep in my family. My mother received multiple electro-convulsive shock therapy treatments while pregnant with me. I found that out through Scientology counseling which probes into pre-natal, and even previous lifetime, incidents of the being. I told my Scientology counselor that I recalled my mother being taken off to a private psychiatric facility while I resided in her womb. When she was hit with electro-convulsive shock I, the spirit, was hurtled out of the body and witnessed the rest of the ‘treatment’ from above looking down at the psychiatrist and his assistants and my mother’s body strapped to the table. When the violence was over, I contemplated leaving and finding another mother and another fetus to occupy. But, my conscience struck me and I decided I would weather the storm, stick around and help the mother I had initially chosen. When I was in my early thirties I told my aunt about these recollections and her jaw dropped. My descriptions of the facility and the surrounds and the event were accurate in all details. And that, in essence, is Scientology Inc.’s blackmail on me: I am a lunatic by virtue of carrying my mother’s genes, complicated and compounded by my fetal electro-shock experience…
At its core Scientology revolves around the auditing process. The word auditing comes from the Latin root audire which means to listen, or to listen and compute. The entire purpose of a Scientology auditor is to provide a construct through which an individual may look at his or her life in such an honest fashion that that which is viewed no longer has a hold on that person. Scientology postulates that ‘charge’ (mental energy) ‘erases’ through that process. One could just as easily postulate that one’s witnessed experience objectifies. That is, one’s experience moves from the subjective (part of, and thus affecting, oneself) to the objective. In that construct, matters of the mind that tend to drive one on an automatic basis are no longer hidden and automatic. Objectivized matter of the mind is no more capable of driving you than any other person or idea that you can clearly see as apart from yourself. Your own choice in the matter of what to do, what to choose, what to pursue and what to react to is restored to you. Each time one witnesses in this wise one recognizes that much more the true nature of self, apart from, and thus less subject to, matter, energy, space and time. Witnessing led the Buddha toward recognizing the impermanent nature of matter, energy, space and time.
It is my view that any time devoted to honestly viewing the content of your mind, your experience, is progress in moving the external world back out of one’s head where it no longer drives you. There used to be a saying in Scientology, ‘any auditing is better than no auditing.’ No matter what processes, what grades, what levels attained or not, every hour spent objectivizing the subjective is net gain. There is so much emphasis included in Scientology about the attainment of grades and levels, and purported permanent states of consciousness that the failure to attain very high on the Scientology Bridge (the chart of progressive grades and levels of spiritual attainment) tends to serve to invalidate the work a person did execute in witnessing his or her own mind.
Scientology contains so much dogma asserting superiority to and difference from all other forms of witnessing that people tend to lose site that they spent a tremendous amount of time and effort doing just that, witnessing. I use the term ‘witnessing’ because it is a generic term that captures what is at the heart of all effective psychotherapeutic and spiritual practices. Most forms of meditation (Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, et al), most forms of psychotherapy, and Scientology too, create a desirable effect to the extent the individual applying it fully, honestly views the mind.
Any meditator who discounts effective psychotherapy that accomplishes the same result as meditation, or any psychotherapist who discounts effective meditation that accomplishes the same result as psychotherapy, is as narrow minded and prejudiced as any Scientologist who discounts meditation and psychotherapy wholesale. Corollary, any former Scientologist who discounts his own blood, sweat and tears exerted in confronting his own demons with Scientology is selling himself short. Witnessing is witnessing. Meditation, effective psychotherapy, and Scientology are all different methods of helping – and are workable to the degree they allow – an individual to witness his own mind and its experiences.
Do yourself a favor. Try to consider that someone who has spent time in other similar practices has spent time witnessing just as you did in Scientology. See if that doesn’t open up an interesting world of increased affinity, reality and communication. Just as importantly, validate the time and effort you put in likewise. You might find you are in better shape than you have previously permitted yourself to believe.
On April 27 our opening party was an overwhelming success. 36 guests filled our new courseroom with a tremendous amount of theta, much more than I have ever witnessed during a comparable event. Scientologists – some had not met in 15 years – were in a real extasy of communication.
We had guests from one half of Germany. A few friends from Ron’s Org attended, too. Although we are completely separate groups we were not at all competition minded. Our center delivers auditing up to Clear and auditor training including the solo course. We use course materials produced before the alleged “golden age of tech”.
Our staff – Rita, Maria, Georg and I (Klaus) – would like to say a big thank you to all friends who had been present, whether physically or spiritually. Your huge amount of positive postulates and theta will be with our new group! We hope we will be able to go on with further renovations quickly. The rooms areavailable and as soon as they are needed we will start !
ARC
Klaus Weigel
PS.: The people on the photos have all agreed to be shown here. But there were some more guests on our party.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 