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Scientology Beliefs (revised)

In plain English, here are scientology’s core religious beliefs.

  1. Scientology’s sophisticated mix of pop psychology and hypnotism are firmly believed to be the only workable ‘technology’ for curing mental issues, neurosis, psychosis, physical disease, increasing awareness and intelligence, and for creating OT’s (operating thetans, L. Ron Hubbard’s version of Nietzsche’s superman or Aleister Crowley’s magician).Note:  Scientology is at first presented in secular, scientific terms promising and then false reporting 100% workability.  In fact scientology never achieved even the scientifically recognized 20 to 30 percent placebo effect in terms of long-term satisfaction.  In order to explain away that discrepancy the less-than-placebo percentage who stick with it are led to adopt the remaining listed beliefs.  The ‘technology’ evolved being carefully designed and administered so as to lead scientologists to wholeheartedly accept and live according to these beliefs.

2.  Planet Earth is a prison. The vast majority of human beings – and billions of             invisible other beings – are its inmates.

3.  Xenu is the name of scientology’s Satan who established Earth as                                  a prison and transported billions of beings to serve as its inmates.

4.  Our continued imprisonment is assured by ‘psychs.’ ‘Psychs’ are                                    defined as psychiatrists, psychologists, psycho-therapists, priests,                                ministers, and anyone else practicing in the field of the mind and                                  spirit.  Psychs were sent here from a planet called ‘Farsec.’  They are a                        special breed of being created and invested with the sole purpose of                            keeping humankind mentally imprisoned.

5.  Ron Hubbard is the first to discover the above ‘truths’, and the only                             one to have devised a means of escaping the prison planet.

6.  Navigation through the only hole in the wall consists of closely                                        emulating Hubbard and behaving as he did when he lived.

7.  Enemies, including psychs as well as anyone expressing any doubt or                           reservation about these beliefs, must be destroyed by any means                                  necessary by scientologists. Such means include lying, suing, cheating,                        harassing, intimidating, blackmailing, smearing and by physical                                      violence.

8. When a scientologist has expended all of his best efforts in the vain                             pursuit of these beliefs he is expected to ‘discard’ his body so that he                           may continue to pursue them without such a physical ‘impediment’.

Whether the ultimate belief, number 8 above, constitutes suicide is a wholly subjective question of religious belief.

Scientology Top Management

Media coverage on this post:

International Business Times

Tony Ortega’s Underground Bunker

Stern

Twenty-Two Words.com

Vox

Heavy.com

Over the past few days I have told a several people that the then current post on this blog, The Scientology Sandbox, would very likely be my last post on the subject.  However, this morning as I was leaving Los Angeles after taking care of some business there the ambush partially captured on the video below occurred.

The cast is as follows:

1. Bald guy – Marc Yager.  Highest ecclesiastical officer of scientology’s ‘mother church’ (church of scientology international).  Watchdog Committee Chairman.

2. Fellow with video camera.  Dave Bloomberg.  Long-time Scientology Executive Strata member – the alleged highest management body in church of scientology international.

3. The woman is Jenny Linson Devocht.  She is a close personal aide to David Miscavige – the self-proclaimed pope of scientology.  She is also an intimate friend of Miscavige.

Because of scientology’s bunker down response to public exposure of Miscavige’s creation of a culture of violence at the highest levels of scientology, including maintenance of concentration and torture prisons, people have been in mystery as to what scientology management has been up to for the past several years.

This video gives a partial answer.   It is remarkable in that Miscavige has spent millions of dollars to create a wall of perjury before Texas courts claiming that he, and the highest levels of scientology management, have no knowledge – and have not authorized – these same type of ambush, in-your-face tactics against me and my family that have been carried out for years now.

The Scientology Sandbox

There are those who dismiss L. Ron Hubbard as the consummate con man.  They insist that with conscious aforethought he created and operated dianetics and scientology as a fraudulent bait and switch operation fooling and fleecing tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of relatively intelligent adults.  So cunning was Hubbard according to some anti-scientologists that if you were to take their words for granted you would have to rank Hubbard as one of the more able and intelligent minds of the twentieth century.  The complexity, the breadth, and the duration of Hubbard’s alleged fraudulent scheme would be a virtual impossibility for any mere mortal to accomplish.

At the opposite extreme pole hard core scientologists truly believe that L. Ron Hubbard was ‘Source’, a sort of God from which nothing but ultimate truth was issued.   They have trained their own minds to reject any information even tangentially relating to mind or spirit that does not come from Hubbard’s mouth or pen.

The anti-scientologist with his name-calling, absolutist statements and lampooning serves to reinforce the scientologist believer’s conviction that Hubbard and scientology deserve undaunting and vigilant defense.  Likewise, the Ron-quoting scientologist’s aggressive certitude serves to reinforce the anti-scientologists’ views that Hubbard’s work is good for nothing more than creating unthinking, conformist zealots.

Members of either side of the scientology extremes demonstrate as severe a case of denialism as the other.  As with any hotly contested, complex issue denialists cling hard to simple answers that make them comfortable with putting difficult questions out of sight and out of mind.  It seems that in the scientology world L. Ron Hubbard is either God or Satan.  One won’t find much truth on either side of a passionate debate between denialists, whether the subject is politics, science, philosophy or scientology.  But, if one listens without embracing one side or the other the minute it seems to agree with one’s prejudices and intelligently looks for oneself, one will generally find that the truth lies somewhere between the polar extremes.

We will explore the reasons why those affected by scientology in the long-term continue to act out scientology’s patented us vs. them drama behavior and why that holds true even for those who become virulent critics of the subject.

It is quite easy to understand why someone gets involved in scientology in the first place.  Scientology includes features that play well to those going through the adolescent stage of human development.   That stage was well summed up by James W. Fowler in his book Stages of Faith:

New expectations, qualitatively different disciplines and a host of difficult decisions are the requirements with which societies greet the now more womanly or manly adolescent. In trying to meet and fulfill these requisites youth will call on the available and personally resonant ideological resources of their environments, particularly those that are embodied in charismatic and convincing leaders.  They will seek sponsoring groups and figures and will appoint otherwise well-meaning persons as temporary enemies over against whom their identities may be clarified.  They may band together in tight cliques, overemphasizing some relatively trivial commonality as a symbol of shared identity.  In this cliquishness they can be quite cruel as they exclude those who do not share this common element.

What is so unique about scientology is not that it at first capitalizes on this adolescent growth stage and its needs.   Instead, it is that scientology manages to implant within the scientologist’s sub conscious that this stage is as far as development goes.   By continually communicating constructs as reality with a convincing combination of charisma and certainty, Hubbard manages to make scientologists buy into a universe view that is completely encompassed within Fowler’s adolescent development perspective.

That scientologists receive what they consider adequate solutions to their immediate needs from those constructs and related practices reinforces the indoctrinated universe view.  The closed culture of scientology makes stage growth stunting inevitable.  That culture convinces the individual to assign any and every personal development along the Fowler schema  — or by any other standard — to the brilliance of Hubbard and scientology.  Likewise, it includes sophisticated and complex analyses for blaming any regression or depression on perceived enemies of scientology, directly or indirectly. All of these dichotomy creating mis-assignment of causation devices serve to reinforce the adolescent, denialist universe view taught in scientology.

The adolescent stage of faith universe view is so thoroughly ingrained in the sub conscious of the scientologist that even when an individual manages to disconnect from the scientology organization he or she often continues to act with the adopted us vs. them, misassignment of cause, and blame mentality. The former cult member can gravitate toward groups of independent, former, and even anti-scientologists who act in the same cliquish and cruel manner that they did while actively participating in scientology.

In the scientology milieu – organizational, independent, former, and anti – reason holds little currency.  It is replaced by the adolescent, denialist language of absolutism and condemnation.  It is a culture of facile appointment of enemies and easy bandwagon riding with those perceived to share trivial commonalities.

Getting out of the scientology sandbox begins with one simple, liberating step.  But, for the reasons outlined thus far, it is a step those involved in scientology culture find difficult to navigate.

Scientology Knows Drama

That phrase keeps coming to mind when I see the TNT ad “we know drama”.   TNT, you have nothing on scientology.  Seems sort of oxymoronic, doesn’t it?  Scientology’s entire mission purports to be to remove dramatization from the psyches of adherents, and ultimately from all of humankind’s psyches.  Yet, by observation there are no more drama obsessed people than scientologists.

I was not going to post this essay for the foreseeable future.  However, I came across this item from FOX 411 recently, Lewis on Cruise.   Most of this essay was drafted prior to me seeing this latest scientology, well, drama. When you get to the end of the post you will understand why this news prompted me to push the ‘post’ button.

One of the favorite sayings of scientologists to express disdain towards someone is ‘he is just dramatizing.’  It is used to label any behavior that is not upbeat, Stepford or Truman Show like, positivity.  It has its source in the mind ‘technology’ presented by  L. Ron Hubbard.  Hubbard teaches that we are all the unknowing effect of previous moments of pain and unconsciousness, called ‘engrams.’  To a scientologist,  the poor, unknowing non-scientologist doesn’t even realize that a great percentage of his behavior, his choices, and his actions are really to greater or lesser degree ‘dramatizations’ of the emotions and post-hypnotic commands buried in engrams.

After a scientologist spends hundreds of thousands of dollars and several years conquering his engrams, he is said to be ‘Clear.’  He no longer has the supposed repository of engrams called the ‘reactive mind.’  Thus, theoretically he no longer dramatizes.  Right?  Wrong.

The Clear is indoctrinated into a dramatic universe view that is so surreal millions of dollars are spent annually to keep the scripts under lock and key and out of the hands of the public at large.  The drama is so intense that Hubbard claims that if the unprepared are exposed to it, they will drop dead on the spot. The secrets teach that there is no original thought on planet earth, but that of Hubbard.  All technology advances are simply dramatizations of the 75 million year-old incident that converted Earth into a prison.  All social sciences are mere dramatizations of ideas that were implanted into beings’ heads 75 million years ago. Now, realize the drama so far revealed in this paragraph is cold, hard reality to the clear scientologist.  In their minds, clear scientologists are sub rosa agents on an enemy controlled prison planet giving it their all to clear humanity from the effects of their universe view indoctrination.  And like any good drama, the scientology one includes its nemeses.

All who would state the patently obvious as I have done here are labeled as suppressive persons.   A suppressive person is an agent, knowing or unknowing, of the intergalactic forces who converted earth into a prison planet 75 million years ago.  They are programmed to destroy, wittingly or not, humankind’s only hope for furlough, scientology.  Some classes of people do not even have to demonstrate that they have even heard the word ‘scientology’ to be considered suppressive people by scientologists.  ‘Psychs’ is such a class.  Psychs is a scientology term describing anyone involved in the mental health, mind science, or psychotherapy fields.  That includes all psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists.   And, by extension the manufacturers of psychotropic medications: pharmaceutical companies. Psychs are overtly targeted for ‘annihilation’, ‘obliteration’ and ‘extinction’ by scientology.

This drama becomes so dramatic for the scientologist that he or she can ‘freewheel’.  That is, go into a paranoid-schizophrenic like spin where they act out the drama that the enemy is everywhere.  In such a state they can become wild-eyed and, well, dramatic about matters that would seem to have little significance to anyone but them.

That is rather apparent from the very public dramatization that is the subject of Lewis’ lament:

A couple years later Tom Cruise invited Brooke Shields and her husband to his scientology wedding to Katie Holmes in Italy so that she could see first-hand those who really know about the mind.  Brooke graciously accepted and flew to Europe with her husband to attend.  Tom’s hand-picked high-level scientology officiating minister was Commander Norman F. Starkey.  Starkey was given a furlough from a scientology concentration and torture camp at which he was serving time in order to conduct the wedding.  Starkey promptly got drunk, and overtly hit on Brooke Shields.  She and her husband were so offended, they complained to Cruise’s best man, scientology supreme leader David Miscavige.

Cruise was later exposed for having attempted to use his resources to cover up his bff David Miscavige’s operation of cult prison camps where torture was regularly meted out:

Tom Cruise’s Life Controlled by Sinister Cult

Cruise was then exposed for using his bff David Miscavige’s cult as a pimping and pandering operation:

Maureen Orth Smokes Tom Cruise and David Miscavige

“Then There Is Me” – Tom Cruise

Rather than take any iota of responsibility like a man, Cruise went mute and as we can divine from Juliette Lewis’ rants took solace in the fact his conduct really did not happen because in fact the forces of evil want him silenced.  Perhaps he shut up in order to dutifully comply with those terrifying forces?

Poor Juliette Lewis – with apparent conviction and sincerity lamenting that Tom’s public relations problem is that big pharma wants him silenced.  If Big pharma really cares about hurting scientology, I am pretty sure they want Tom out there front and center continuing these antics.   Does all this seem just too thick to believe?  It would not if you had had much experience with scientologists. Scientologists know and teach drama like nobody else.

 

Scientology: Past and Present

Continued, from last post Scientology’s Worship of the Past:

The highest level of the bridge (the one-path-covers-all series of specific steps one must follow in order to arrive to native state) Hubbard left behind, OT (Operating Thetan) VIII, is a foray into the deep past for the purpose of identifying and validating one’s fundamental whole track identity.  Thus, along with the deep past, identity – or ego –  is made an obsession with scientology.  The original client-centered therapy that scientology copied and scientology itself – up to the level of Clear – aim for stripping those ‘false’ identities one tends to collect and adopt so as to reach a state of self-actualization where a person finds his own self.  However,  in scientology one is not permitted to take that self-actualization so as to transcend self and explore new horizons.  Instead, scientology teaches that knowing oneself is not good enough; one must become someone else: the superhuman, ubermensch, operating thetan.  And to get there the scientologists starts anew on an endless journey stripping what he is indoctrinated to believe are thousands upon thousands of foreign personalities he is continuing to play out unconsciously.  In fact, unwilling to admit the failure of scientology to erase the subconscious, Hubbard came up with a new explanation for the continuing subconscious dramas Clears continue to play out.  That is a science fiction mythology that anthropomorphizes every sub-conscious thought the Clear has.

More fundamentally,  scientology’s tenet of the everlasting individuality makes Clear self-actualizing a minor way station.  The further an individual progresses along the bridge the more he is convinced that he possesses a continuing core identity which one can never fully realize absent thousands of hours of more auditing.  That is a self that has been a separate, identifiable individual basic personality for what varies between adherents from quadrillions to an infinity of years.  The longer one participates the more firmly one believes in his individuated separateness from all other beings and the entire universe.   And so after spending perhaps years to attain the state of Clear the false identity stripping starts anew and this time continues until the scientologist dies.

To believe that scientology has secrets in store that will release the self from this obsession with time and identity would be irrational.  For the past twenty-eight years scientology’s leaders have been attempting to read Hubbard’s solo (self-administered meditations) sessions after his own passage through his highest published level.  Because of the non-sequitur nature of the scrawl he left behind, they have unsuccessfully attempted to divine what levels Ron may have ventured into beyond OT VIII.  The only thing they do purport to know for certain is this: those ventures were even further into the deeper past than even quadrillions of years.

That is indisputable fact if Ron’s last two most trusted aides can be trusted as they were by Ron. Both of them made public presentations of a handwritten sheet of paper purported to be a worksheet from one of Hubbard’s late-life sessions.  Pat Broeker did so at the L. Ron Hubbard funeral event in Hollywood in January 1986.  Years later David Miscavige – who later deposed Broeker -pulled the same stunt in a special “OT Summit” briefing aboard scientology’s ship the Freewinds.  They presented the same full 14 ½” sheet of paper covered in numbers in L. Ron Hubbard’s handwriting.  Scientology’s elite of the elite claimed that was a date Hubbard was addressing in his post-OT VIII self auditing. They promised to divine what OT IX, X, ‘and so on’ were from study of those worksheets.  To date they have apparently failed to create those revelations. So, the only thing the world knows about scientology’s as yet uncodified levels is that they direct attention to dates in the past that are so ancient the numbers alone can fill a foolscap sheet of paper.

Lest people mistake that worship of the past is something David Miscavige and Pat Broeker misinterpreted from Hubbard’s final days, realize it is much the same in scientology circles outside of the official organization.  While Miscavige and Broeker promised OT levels IX, X, and ‘so on’, the leading independent scientology organization offers fifty-five (55) such levels beyond Clear – or four and one half times the invitations to regress yet further into the past.

And so, behind the face of the scientologist trying his darnedest to project the image of the upbeat maverick fully in the present lies a hidden obsession to ultimately return to native state, quadrillions of years or more into the past.  That this cognitive dissonant state (present vs. past) would appear to be the pressure-packed counterposing of the perfect, polar dichotomy is not so by accident.  A dispassionate and informed study of Hubbard’s research and discovery path reveals it to be an inevitability.

Scientology’s Worship Of The Past

Another excerpt from Deconstructing Scientology:

Once sold on the reactive mind construct as fact, the next most fundamental belief instilled through the scientology catechism is that we have all fallen from grace and must strive to re-attain it.  We came from a state of perfection that was infinite in terms of potential and capability.  Each of us once was divine ‘cause’.    A scientologist’s mission is to return to that ‘native state.’   In order to do so one must confront that which created his descent into the human condition. Thus, the central practice of scientology is a form of abreaction therapy that returns one to and addresses each step one took down the ladder from his native condition.

Unlike more conventional psychotherapies, scientology’s abreaction practice is intended to be, and is in practice, interminable. That is due to scientology also teaching that each of us is a positive, separate identity that has been intact for quadrillions of years and beyond.  It preaches that the unraveling of all the quadrillions of years of falling from perfection is the only road to spiritual freedom, even the only means to fully wake up from insanity.

The cathartic byproduct of witnessing events in the past serves as the glue that fixes the scientologist’s attention there forever.  The belief in the holy grail lying in the deep past is firmly and cumulatively reinforced by every session one participates in that results in relief or release – or some other form of heightened emotion or consciousness –  by witnessing an incident from one’s past.

Consequently, the second important prong of the scientology indoctrination is the belief that the answers to the mysteries of the universe all lay deep in the past.  As much as scientology promises to create freedom from the past – and irrespective of how personally liberating one finds certain  instances of regressing back to face it might be – scientology never releases the adherent from it.  To the contrary, scientology continues to offer indoctrination at its highest levels that enforces a fixation yet deeper into the past.  Scientologists will vehemently argue with a great deal of righteous indignation that this notion is blasphemous and defamatory.  Yet, the words of scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard – which scientologists swear to understand and abide – demonstrate this to be the case.  Hubbard’s thousands of recorded lectures are strewn with references to the good old space opera days.  He liberally dropped dates like millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, and quadrillions to the infinite power years ago when reminiscing about his exploits and by positive suggestion those of his adherents.  In virtually all of Hubbard’s sci fi narratives beings possessed capabilities far exceeding anything known to humankind.

Scientology Thought Control

The following is a chapter passage that immediately follows another one that was posted earlier, Deconstructing Scientology.  A quick reminder perusal of the first passage will make reading the following easier.

Part II:

Such a psychotherapy has been shown to have the power to convert conscientious, caring, emotionally disturbed, and relatively intelligent people into cheery, focused followers who yet accept implicitly, and act according to, subconscious commands on the order of:

A. One should never fear to hurt another person in a just cause (most particularly when that cause is the cause of the creator of the mental therapy he engages in).

B. One should never withdraw his allegiance to any group to which he has pledged it, irrespective of how criminal and destructive he discovers that group might be (most particularly when that group is the one endowed with a monopoly on the mental therapy he is engaged in).

C. One should never show compassion to the weak for to do so will worsen the weak and the strong attempting to lend a hand. Only the ‘able’ ought be supported and assisted. Like in social Darwinist thought it is justified by the arbitrary datum that only further empowerment of the elite will raise anyone else’s boat.

D. That now considering oneself one of the elite, every time you engage in self-absorbed, introspective processes to make yourself feel better you are improving humankind’s lot. A sort of imbued megalomaniac narcissism is effectuated re-enforcing a-c above.

E. Personalities inclined to not go along with the mental therapy program and instead find fault with it ought to be disposed of permanently and with no slightest dent in one’s conscience for having done so.

The thinking becomes so inverted that the mental health therapy acolyte becomes fiercely contentious and combative about arguing the rationality of the a-e thought pattern and behaviors above.  In fact, this is the ingrained mindset and behavior pattern of a scientologist; and he or she will defend it as ferociously and instinctively as a she-gator protects her young.  Being utterly oblivious to any sub conscious (associative) mind system in himself the scientologist may even purport not to hold these views and yet continue to argue vehemently for their rationale.  Even when scientologists leave and disavow the organizations and the subject itself, they can be observed continuing to act out these patterns.  Little compassion and much arrogant, vicious fault-finding and attempts to undermine espousers of opposing views often marks the interchange between them.

That people can have their characters and long term behavior patterns so apparently permanently molded and that they can continue to argue the virtues of their programming ought not come as a surprise.  Many scientifically grounded studies over the past several decades in fact have demonstrated that that is precisely how sub conscious (associative) and analytical thought works hand in glove.  The subconscious (associative) mind system automatically rationalizes the content of its adopted narratives perpetuating the human proclivity toward creating, adopting and bolstering stories to make sense of the world.  Those rationalizations become somewhat permanent associative mind narratives.  The narratives’ matrices of associated ‘facts’ become the filter through which new information and perceptions are sensed and organized. The auto-associating mind system prompts the individual to use his analytical faculties to further explain and justify its conclusions.  The comfortable, if lazy, analytical function usually complies or simply abides and articulates the sub-conscious-associative faculty’s conclusions.  It most certainly does so when the individual is not on guard against misinformation, mis-association and irrationality common to associative mind processes.  And when the person is convinced that there are no such processes present – as the ‘cleared’ scientologist is – his analytical system can become mighty reactionary itself.

Many of these facts about how the mind works are understood and plied by those who mold educational, political and social thought.  This knowledge is used and affects us daily in advertising, business, law, politics, media, you name it.  Arts and sciences driven by it are increasing exponentially with the advent of the Age of Information.  Fantastic sums of money are invested into utilizing this knowledge to maintain the status quo and make populations more materialist-consumerist oriented to increase the dollars flowing toward the top of the wealth pyramid. Like it or not, we live in a culture driven, fueled, and maintained by consultation to and application of the advices of the greatest minds in human psychology.

The knowledge utilized to keep the masses slaves to the current economic system demonstrates how an understanding of these mechanisms could make a hypnotic ‘therapy’ as discussed herein possible.  They are the very mechanisms used to make scientologists slaves to their leadership.  The scientologist is kept oblivious to this.  Scientology keeps its followers ignorant by clever application of a-e above.  It teaches them that those who know anything about psychology are the enemy and that understanding what the enemy knows could poison the follower.  The enemy and his knowledge must be attacked and destroyed by any means necessary in order for a-e culture to function.  And so scientology ultimately becomes an insulated cult playing out an exaggerated form of that which it is taught to condemn.

In practice this is how scientology culture operates.  Its form of governance is closed-system, thought-controlling totalitarianism.  It closely resembles George Orwell’s 1984.  That holds parallel right down to omnipresent electronic recording, thought police, thought crimes, and Newspeak.   If a scientologist begins to cultivate thought patterns that question authority (or even explore the very mechanisms we discuss here) they are soon ferreted out by liberal use of one component of a lie detector (the electropsychometer or e-meter).  The discovered offending mind is put through rigorous reformation techniques.  That reform can include years-long confinement in re-educating concentration camps. It more often entails the loss – or threatened loss – of communication and communion with one’s family and closest friends and even business associates.

It should be noted that the psychological mechanisms at work in commerce, marketing, media and politics are not held secret.  The only reason for their continued negative effectiveness is people’s lack of energy or curiosity in learning of them.  And therein lies the most troubling aspect of scientology’s enforced information bubble.

It would seem that the road to recovery for a scientologist should include education in the very psychological mechanisms that were employed on him so effectively that they often continue to affect him long after he has left the cult.

Scientology Indoctrination Abomination

There is a specific sector of scientology ‘technology’ that clearly betrays the subject’s hypnotic, mind controlling nature.

That is L. Ron Hubbard’s ‘False Data Stripping’ technology. In short, Hubbard dictates that one identify the source of any data that is getting in the road of a person adopting, with 100% certainty and exclusivity, any datum from scientology’s indoctrination.  Hubbard has the practitioner search for the data that conflicts with a datum Hubbard is attempting to get across.  The objective is to eradicate the earlier datum utterly so that only Hubbard’s datum remains unopposed.

First the practitioner and the recipient are indoctrinated to accept that holding conflicting data of any sort is a sort of aberration or mental dysfunction.  There is no concept of plurality or synthesis when it comes to understanding in scientology.  Please read this from the Hubbard indoctrination very carefully and try to think with the consequences of accepting it as Gospel.

——————

“THEORY

There is a philosophic background as to why getting off false data on a subject works and why trying to teach a correct datum over a false datum on the subject does not work.  It is based on the Socratic thesis-antithesis-synthesis philosophical equation.

Socrates:     470 B.C. – 399 B.C.  A great Greek philosopher.

A thesis is a statement or assertion.

Antithesis:  opposing statement or assertion.

The Socratic equation is mainly used in debate where one debater asserts one thing and the other debater asserts the opposite.  It was the contention of Socrates and others that when two forces came into collision a new idea was born.  This was the use of the equation in logic and debate.  However, had they looked further, they would have seen that other effects were brought into play. It has very disastrous effects when it appears in the field of training.

Where the person has acquired a false thesis (or datum), the true datum you are trying to teach him becomes an antithesis.  The true datum comes back to smack up against the false datum he is hanging on to, as it is counter to it.

In other words, these two things collide, and neither one will then make sense to him.  At this point he can try to make sense out of the collision and form what is called a synthesis, or his wits simply don’t function.  (Synthesis:  a unified whole in which opposites, thesis and antithesis, are reconciled.)

So you wind up with the person either:

  1. attempting to use a false, unworkable synthesis he has formed, or
  2. his thinkingness locks up on the subject.

In either case you get an impossible-to-train, impossible-to-hat [train for one’s scientology job] scene.”

————-

In other words, it is Ron’s way (to the exclusion of all other ways, including even your synthesis of his way with something related you may have learned earlier) or the highway.

Why could not ‘a’ above have been ‘attempting to use a remarkably new, fresh and workable synthesis he has formed?’

Because, in scientology there is only one way, and that is the way Ron Hubbard tells you it is.  Now, I can already hear the apologists claiming ‘well, damn that applies to critical stuff that could happen in an auditing (counseling) session.’   I have news.  This bulletin, and ‘technology’, was not developed because of any scientology counseling problems being encountered.  The bulletin begins by telling you that it applies to just about everything but scientology counseling:

“When a person is not functioning well on his post, on his job or in life, at the bottom of his difficulties…”

This bulletin in fact was issued one month before Hubbard’s wife Mary Sue and eight other top ranking scientologists went on trial for crimes committed in running the largest domestic espionage ring in the history of the United States of America. (Fittingly, scientology’s chief justification for the operation was to ‘correct false data in government files.’)  It was headline news across the world.  What ‘false data’ do you suppose all outposts of the scientology network were fixated on ‘stripping’ about that time?

Many outsiders have wondered how could such apparently intelligent, cheery – if sometimes overly focused – people as scientologists adopt such Hubbard sociopathy as forced labor re-education concentration camps and dictates to treat critics as ‘fair game’ for personal ruination.  I’ll tell you how I did.  I was heavily false data stripped.  I recall specifically some of those nasty ‘false datums’ that were stripped from my mind through ‘false data stripping technology’ to make me amenable to doing it Ron’s way:

Datum: ‘The best a man can do is to do the best he can do.’    Wrong.  The true scientology data is that if someone fails it is more likely that they are secretly engaged in criminal activity and have billions year old hidden evil intentions towards Ron and scientology, and that any failure should be interrogated intensively to uncover such.

Datum: ‘The most effective form of leadership is to lead by example.’  Wrong. The true scientology data is that it is far more effective, and necessary, to ‘muster bayonets’ as most people are ‘degraded beings’ and it is fruitful sometimes to ‘make Captain Bligh look like a Sunday school teacher.’

Datum: ‘When under attack it is best to take the high road.’  Wrong.  When under attack ‘ALWAYS ATTACK…The defense of ANYTHING is UNTENABLE…cause [the attacker’s] professional demise, or if possible, of course, ruin him utterly.’

These are actual examples.   They really shouldn’t be needed though to get the point across.  It is quite evident from the theory section above where all this might lead.

So thorough is Hubbard’s ‘tech’ for ferreting out and disappearing ‘false data’ that conflicts with his data, ironically, that those steps applied to one’s scientology experience could actually de-hypnotize someone from years of mind control programming.   That is provided that on the last step ‘Have the person study or restudy the true data on the subject you have been handling’ one did not impose on the person what it was he had to study.  In other words, free him from the implant and give him the freedom to start out at square zero to discover for himself the plurality of ideas (thesis, antithesis, synthesis, or otherwise) available in a free society.

Deconstructing Scientology

This is an excerpt from an upcoming book with the working title ‘Deconstructing Scientology.’  It is directed toward those who are considering the possibility of dipping a toe into dianetics or scientology study or participation.  My failures over the past three years in attempting to help former members graduate from the subject informed a whole new line of research into some of the darker arts that L. Ron Hubbard mastered to make people so apparently incapable/unwilling to learn.  

Hypnosis

The most diabolically effective form of hypnotism would probably thoroughly convince the subject that it was impossible to hypnotize him.  It seems that only in that case could the idea be implanted that no awakening and de-hypnotism would ever be desirable or even possible. It would inculcate the opposite of the old adage applicable to any reform, or even education, activity that the first step to recovery or learning is the recognition that there is something to recover from or to learn.  If you were thoroughly convinced that you were more awake than virtually all of humanity, there is no chance that anyone could convince you to possibly take a look at waking up.

Imagine this scenario for a moment.  You take up a course of therapy and study that convinces you that if you dedicatedly address a particular category of subconscious incidents (those anchored in unconsciousness and pain) you will have erased your subconscious mind and all of its automatic associative responses.  The practice promises to render you virtually immune to sub conscious suggestion because you are permanently erasing that mind system or mechanism – in this case related as a tangible, factual entity – that makes you susceptible to such.  The practice of concentrated attention toward past experiences produces some feeling of catharsis, just as countless forms of psychotherapy, meditative and contemplative practice inevitably do.  Thus heartened, you assiduously follow instructions and devote a substantial amount of time and treasure to the endeavor.  The required sacrifice alone conditions you to fight to justify the experience so as to account for the years and resources devoted to it.

Each session of therapy leaves you that much more certain that you are that much less prone to sub conscious persuasions.  While following this course, you also take in a tremendous volume of opinions, prejudices, life-directing philosophy and mythologies from the source of the methodology that is making ‘erasure’ of your sub-conscious a reality.  You are fed a comprehensive, romantic and imaginative new universe view.  It is reinforced every time you encounter evidence against its plausibility. That is because your new universe view characterizes any information conflicting with your new universe view as evidence of the validity of the new universe view under attack by ‘flat-earther’ holders of traditional universe views.

You implicitly trust virtually all of your indoctrination because you find the therapy cathartic on some level and you are so grateful for being given the opportunity to forever be free of hidden persuasions directing your life.  Your experience is being validated and reinforced by sophisticated, organized positive encouragement all along the way.  That – combined with ample mythology adoption – elevates your cathartic experiences to levels of exhilaration.  You are led to believe that these feelings of exhilaration are super human states making you sort of an elite, special being.  You are literally told you are among the upper tenth of the upper ten percent of humanity, simply because of your participation.

The indoctrination becomes part of you because, consistent with the principles of conversational (or covert) hypnosis, you are given to believe you are assimilating it of your own volition.  You are repeatedly told that nothing you are being told is true unless you yourself accept it, so that analytically you are certain data cannot be being imposed upon you, but instead you are self-determinatedly evaluating its truth or falsity and use.

All the while all the data input is being poured into a sub-conscious that could not be opened wider for unfiltered receipt of information and suggestion.  That is because you are convinced that you have no sub-conscious, auto-associative mind.  As noted already you are given to believe you have ‘erased’ that hidden persuader.  Of course in reality you have as strong a sub-conscious as anyone else.  It is probably even far more hair-trigger given all the counseling you engaged in to take the edge off your incidents anchored in pain and unconsciousness. That you have a sub-conscious, auto-associative faculty is patent.  Otherwise, you would not be able to draw a breath.  You would not be able to direct a spoonful of corn flakes into your mouth in the morning.  You would last about five minutes on a busy city street before you walked in front of a bus or speeding car.  You would not be able to perform any of the myriad intuitive tasks human beings routinely carry out daily.

Just as you have come to believe that you are making trillions of analytical, conscious calculations every day in order to function, you consider all that you have been taught during your mental therapy devotion is analytically evaluated and understood wisdom.  Yet, by objective observation of people not wed to the same therapy your behavior is in many ways far more reactive than before you engaged in the therapy.  If such observations are shared with you, you will reactively, automatically associate such with sociopathic characteristics of the type who oppose the magic of erasure of the sub conscious, associative mind system.  That is part of your indoctrination.  Just as certain as you become that you are a member of the top one percent of humankind, you truly believe that such negative people are part of the sociopathic bottom 2 ½ percent of humanity. You will move away from such people and replace those bonds with people who have received and abide by your therapy and its indoctrinations.   Again, indications of the possibility of your having entered an elaborate trap are converted into reinforcements for the walls of that trap.

By now, you might recognize that what is being described here could be characterized as an extreme, exaggerated case of the mechanisms of fanaticism.   You might have noted some more subtle forms of the mechanics outlined so far as being present in the far-out fringes of political or religious isms.  Such indications are not difficult to recognize when there is some distance between you and the object of your observation.  By entering those mechanics into such a super personal, ultra subjective activity as psychotherapy that works with the deep recesses of your psyche, those mechanics are far more difficult, if not impossible, to detect.

Scientology Golden Ages

This essay does not stand alone.  It will not make much sense absent first reading the essay ‘Standard Scientology.’

There is a rationale behind David Miscavige coming out with ‘Golden-Age’ campaigns.

Consistent with the essay ‘Standard Scientology’ (and chapter 25 of Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior) there is every necessity to continually revise, re-revise, compile, re-compile and re-issue the words of L. Ron Hubbard.  And thus there is some logic behind the Golden Age of Tech, the Golden Age of Knowledge and the Golden Age of Tech II – the three major Miscavige directed re-compilations of Hubbard.  Whether you agree with the way the church of scientology went about it is an entirely different matter.  But, moaning about the fact of the re-compilation is about as sensible and effective as complaining about the weather.

The original Golden Age of Tech was done in response to virtually all of the established technical hierarchy of scientology (Class XIIs, mainly trained under Ron’s regime) being about as capable of applying scientology fundamentals as the leading electro-convulsive shock therapy psychiatrists were.  I know, I was there, having been the only one in scientology who I am aware of to train uninfluenced by the scientology technical hierarchy.  Nearly all of the Class XIIs at Flag could not read an e-meter, could not deliver a crisp command, and did not apply a single tool effectively for salvaging a session gone south (which occurred frequently).  Quite a few of them could not make it through an entire session without dozing at some point.  When put on a correction program directed by me personally, by personal observation the majority of the Class XIIs were by modern societal standards nut cases.  About 90 percent of them were incapable of correction.   One reason for that was that they were convinced that the only valid correction was to ‘blow’ the body thetan who suggested that they screw up in the first place.  “It was misownership; not my overt” was the common refrain; and once the body thetan was addressed, they exclaimed gleefully “it’s all handled now!”  Not only had they bought Hubbard’s space opera constructs literally, that universe view was running their lives helter skelter.  I have written earlier that had the XII’s remained in boot camp with me to learn communication training routines the hard way and how to naturally and accurately handle a meter I believed that 90% of the problem would have been solved. But, alas Miscavige’s and the Class XII heirarchy’s killing of Lisa McPherson ended that program.

Having had six years of experience watching what passes for ‘independent scientology’ outside the walls of the church, having deconstructed the subject through intensive study and practice, I have come to the conclusion that there was something even more fundamental than Training Routines and metering that needed to be addressed.   It is covered in the post ‘Standard Scientology.’   Virtually every Class XII in the church at the time – those at Flag, those on the ship and those at the International base, including Senior C/S International Ray Mithof – were empowered to squirrel to their hearts’ content by none other than L. Ron Hubbard.  They, much like some of the die-hard scientologists who continue to frequent this blog or have disconnected from (while claiming Miscavige is a squirrel for allegedly reinstating the disconnect policy) and declared war against me, could and did regularly come up with an LRH reference to justify just about every technical crime imaginable.  And they routinely committed them.  You doubt that statement?  Then how could L. Ron Hubbard’s Class XII technical hierarchy from his ‘Mecca of Technical Perfection’ effectively kidnap a non compos mentis woman out of the hospital, imprison her for seventeen days, and ultimately kill her?  Lisa McPherson is only one of many products of the scientology ‘Mecca of Technical Perfection’ that went mad under scientology processing there.  And she was not the only one to die in the process.  That is impossible in an environment that has not committed every other crime and misdemeanor routinely for quite some time.  Certainly, I have made a strong case for pinning primary responsibility to Miscavige for McPherson’s fate. Just as certainly, by statistics the frequency of suicides and psychotic breaks among Flag public drastically declined after Golden Age of Tech implementation.  Some might argue that that is due in large part to heightening of restrictions against people prone to psychotic breaks being allowed on church premises.  Well, that is as it ought to be.  Scientology is eminently unqualified to practice in the field of mental health that its founder sought to take over.

In either event, Miscavige attempted to solve the problem by bypassing the Class XIIs lack of responsibility and understanding by making everything rote for them.  He was precluded by Hubbard policy from doing the type of radical, fundamental compilation the subject requires. That is, compilation of what ‘to do’, instead of what ‘not to do’, and communication of it in plain English.  He tried all manner of tweaking in order to overcome the inherent confusion of millions of words of dianetics and scientology trial and error, none of which could ever be accurately labeled as ‘background’, ‘historic’, or ‘no longer used’ because of firm policy prohibiting that.  And so he attempted to covertly do so through the via of hundreds of packs of drills – heralded as the Golden Age of Tech.  That effort provided endless fodder for organization-spurned scientologists.  A wave of disaffected scientologists arose, seizing on the fact of organizational revision to justify their continuing loyalty to their own interpretations of Hubbard’s incomprehensible – conflicting evolutions and devolutions must all be accepted as Gospel – body of work.  Certainly, I exacerbated that prairie fire with my continuing loyalty to Ron Hubbard.

Miscavige became increasingly frustrated as his new Age resulted in continuation of declining delivery and income statistics.  At some point he apparently threw up his hands in disgust and decided ‘to hell with it, you all listen to everything Ron said and sort it out for yourselves.’  Hence, ‘Golden Age of Knowledge.’ Given scientology’s unalterable policies forbidding any sort of rational compilation, it was not a wholly irrational measure.  It took something like that for me – done on my own – to fully appreciate what is effective and what is not and what is destructive in the legacy Hubbard left behind.  But, I am not bound – as all those considering themselves scientologists are – to submit to allegedly more informed, or more ‘with Ron’ or more ‘ethical’ or more ordained scientologists’ arrogant enforcement of Hubbard’s other writings outlawing such understanding and subsequent application.  It should be noted that that arbitrary, arrogant policing priesthood too was created by Hubbard and invested with paramilitary powers.

I have yet to review the second major phase of re-compilation heralded as Golden Age of Tech II.   It is possible some of the thorough re-compilation I have noted here that is required was assayed with that. Given the continuing absurd lust for lucre apparent in scientology promotions and the terroristic and counter-productive ways in which the organization continues to spend the take, it does not seem very likely to me that the job was approached with a motivation approximating that required to do an effective job.  Moreover, as my next book will explain in some detail, the better the job in enforcing ‘standard’ is ultimately a better job at enforcing mental imprisonment.  In that regard, habitually lamenting the alleged colossal balls up of Golden Age Of Tech II is a disservice, keeping potentially recovering scientologists caught in the paralyzing cognitive dissonance that something can be done to salvage something that if done more ‘standardly’ will only serve to entrap more people.

Even if Golden Age of Tech II were effective, however, it is likely doomed in the longer track of scientology.  That is because if it was effectively done, some bands of true believer scientologists in the future will no doubt ‘discover’ the grotesque violation of fundamental scientology tenets prohibiting such bold compilations.  In fact, some have already figured out how to make a living by condemning it sight unseen; a practice that capitalizes on keeping potentially recovering scientologists locked into a cognitively dissonant state of false hope.  All of this continuous, finger-pointing nonsense is one of the many inevitable pitfalls of converting a purported ‘modern science of mental health’ psychotherapy into a religion.   It is ordained by a system whose most advanced levels teach that ‘standard technology’ can only be realized by ‘commanding’ acolytes and not by appealing to ‘reason.’   It too is inevitable given the facts spelled out in Standard Scientology.

My sincere advice to any people still caught in this vicious circle is to move on.