Tag Archives: church of scientology

Scientology Standard Operating Procedure

Posted on October 19, 2013 by | 274 comments

The following unalterable, senior policy of Scientology has been in continuous effect since March 1955 to the present.  It might help explain a few things you have observed.

The DEFENSE of anything is UNTENABLE.  The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that then you will lose every battle you are ever engaged in, whether it is in terms of personal conversation, public debate, or a court of law. NEVER BE INTERESTED IN CHARGES. DO, yourself much MORE CHARGING and you will WIN.  And the public, seeing that you won, will then have a communication line to the effect that Scientologists WIN.  Don’t ever let them have any other thought than that Scientology takes all of its objectives. 

The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.

L. Ron Hubbard, Manual on Dissemination of Material

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Posted in black dianetics, David Miscavige, ethics, harassment, healing, justice, l. ron hubbard, legal threats, miscavige crimes, miscavige lawyers, monique rathbun, office of special affairs, philosophy, policy, quotations, Scientology, squirreling, tech, the future, the Reformation

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Monique Rathbun

Posted on August 21, 2013 by | 220 comments

News about Monique

My comment:

220 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, Casablanca, cover up, David Miscavige, harassment, healing, miscavige crimes, miscavige lawyers, Monique Banks Rathbun, office of special affairs, texas, Uncategorized

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What We Do, Part One

Posted on July 28, 2013 by | 133 comments

For some orientation to what I would like to over in this essay I begin with a passage from Chapter 25 Epilogue from Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (Amazon Books, 2013):

     As has been ably reported by Janet Reitman in her book Inside Scientology (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) and by Lawrence Wright in his book Going Clear (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), L. Ron Hubbard was a very capable marketing man. What they did not acknowledge as much, but did not totally discount, was Ron’s ability to solve problems – including those of the mind and spirit. Ron had a knack for finding out what was bothering people, putting together methods to address those things, and then selling those methods as services – the end-all that people just had to get their hands on.

     The Reitman and Wright books detailed how Ron was continually creating new rundowns, new levels and new packaging to keep the Scientology public enthused over the latest in the mind and spirit.  It was the formula that created continuing expansion of the Scientology empire during L. Ron Hubbard’s life.  A strong customer base was established and continually kept interested and buying as new, essential route-to-total-freedom items were rolled out.

     Because Ron so unequivocally mandated that only Ron could discover, create and memorialize mental and spiritual technology (the only stock-in-trade of the church of Scientology) upon Ron’s death the church’s expansion pattern also died.

     Consequently, David Miscavige took on an unenviable task when he was handed the reins of Scientology Inc.  And those reins were handed to him, whether begrudgingly or not, by Annie Tidman Broeker (Loyal Officer 2) when she sided with Miscavige against her then-husband (Loyal Officer 1) Pat Broeker. Miscavige had no choice but to radically change Scientology’s forty-year expansion pattern.

     The movement had been built and held together primarily through the promise and continual roll-out of new technology. Now Miscavige had to keep that movement going, but with no possibility of introducing new technology. For a while he seemed to have somewhat of a grasp of marketing, but all the marketing in the world could not keep an organization thriving when it had nothing new to sell. At least not an organization whose viability depended on continual emanation of new technology to sell. And by firm religious belief and church doctrine, he was powerless to create any new technology.

These facts – recognized by credible, outside observers and by insiders like myself – are at the heart of why Scientology (the whole package) is as dead as a door nail.  The promises are infinite while the delivery of them is impossible.

The first thing that probably distinguishes us from all others we are aware of who utilize some of the discoveries of Ron Hubbard is that we do not play – in any way, shape, fashion, or form – the baiting evaluation game that comes part and parcel with Scientology.  That is the incessant, overt and covert, game of continuous evaluations along the line of ‘the next roll out will really get you there’, ‘the next level will handle your problem’, ‘you need to act in this fashion so that you see the wisdom of taking your next step’, ‘you’ll understand that when you get to ______’, or any other of the pitches that were memorialized in unalterable, firm Scientology policy and mental technology throughout the years.

That most decidedly includes the insidious safety valve, bait-and-switch line ‘the reason it didn’t work for you was that it was corrupted by someone else, and now we’re going to give you the real thing’ as is so regularly chanted by the church and the shadow it casts, Scientology practitioners outside of the church.  The real thing is precisely what is described in the book passage above: the never-ending promises to the stairway to Heaven that demonstrably does not lead to Heaven.  It more often leads instead to the perfect cognitive storm: holding these two conflicting ideas counterpoised,  a) I have done everything Ron prescribed, so I know everything there is to know, and can never improve because I am already perfect – b) all the while colliding with the deep-down, suppressed self-recognition that the individual has become intolerant, arrogant, callous and miserable.

This find-the-ruin, bait-and-switch mentality is woven into the woof and warp of Scientology.  It gets played from initial marketing to the highest reaches of the bridge. It has always been, both inside the church and without, that those who play it best are sainted with being the most ‘On Source’ (with L. Ron Hubbard) Scientologists.

It also happens to be Ron’s first,  greatest  – and ultimately most fatal – departure from the technology he primarily borrowed from in creating Dianetics and Scientology: Rogerian client-centered psychotherapy.  The second the client is played – in any way, shape, fashion or form – by definition the process is no longer client centered.  Instead, it by definition becomes practitioner – or organization – centered. The road to restoration of self-determinism becomes paved with enforcement of obedient following.

Do I mean to say that Ron was a con?   Do I mean to say that everything he discovered or purported to discover was fraudulent?   No; as you shall see in further installments.  But, I am defining what it is we do and the first thing we do is stay true to the client-centered philosophy that is at the heart of – in fact, is the sine qua non of – all that is workable in Scientology.

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Posted in regging, tech, the future, acknowledgments, l. ron hubbard, healing, Orgs, independents, Scientology, Lawrence Wright, Integral Theory, Casablanca, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, philosophy

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Elephant In The Room

Posted on April 6, 2013 by | 309 comments

If folks want to know why there was so much noise in the independent field about my scary, heretical views all the sudden recently, it would behoove you to do as Ron advises in auditing technology and look a little bit earlier.

‘Elephant in the room:  An English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.’- Wikipedia

The book What Is Wrong With Scientology? Healing Through Understanding  marched a veritable herd of elephants into the independent Scientology house.  I am going to identify one of those elephants today.

That is Chapter Thirteen Reversal.  A copy of the entire chapter is appended below for easy reference, refreshing of recollections, or for the convenience of those who have not read the book.  In that chapter I spelled out where and how a critical reversal is entered into the Scientology line up that enables it to be converted from a technology to free the mind and spirit to one that incarcerates beings into a cult mindset.

In the near year since the publication of the book, not a single independent Scientologist practitioner has originated a single word to me about the rather far-reaching implications of what is covered in this chapter.  Some have disconnected from me, some have assigned me lower ethics conditions – including ‘Treason’ for having stated facts that allegedly conflict with L. Ron Hubbard opinions.  To me, such actions speak to the truth of what is contained in the chapter below.  The reversal is apparently effective inside and outside the corporate church.  I am more convinced than ever that the way out is not through compliance, conformity, zealotry, and self-induced blindness.  Such self-imposed ignorance will relegate ‘Independent Scientology’ to the role it has played for thirty years, a mere parasite appended to the church of Scientology.  It will continue to walk lock step (with a shallow, self-serving protested distinction between it and the corporation) toward the demise of the subject when the corporate disaffecteds it sustains itself on run dry.  No integration, so no appeal to new students.  No evolution, so continued inevitable conflicts over who is ‘more standard’ in a subject that lends itself to infinite arguments on that score.  No transcendence, and so no ultimate moving on up a little higher.  Dianetics and Scientology would never have been developed at all had L. Ron Hubbard been such a conformist.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

REVERSAL

Miscavige’s elevation of L. Ron Hubbard to God-like status, and himself to demigod status, has provided Miscavige with carte-blanche to reverse the entire vector of Scientology’s aims and activities.

He began by perpetrating a fraud upon the highest-level Scientologists, Clears and OTs, with his promise of upper OT Levels allegedly in his possession.  While the seed was planted at the January 1986 funeral event, it has been a cleverly-played mind game on Scientologists ever since.  Miscavige has devoted most of his attention to keeping these highest-level Scientologists on the farm for a reason.  He knows that they are the opinion leaders among the general membership.  With the opinion leaders doing his bidding, he is able to keep the majority of his followers in the dark.  At this he has done a masterful job.  But to ascribe any great virtue or power to him for having done so would be a mistake.  Without L. Ron Hubbard, David Miscavige would be little more than a clever, overly-aggressive con man.  To pretend that Miscavige perfected his consolidation of power without the help of Hubbard’s own decisions and policy would be naïve and untrue.  In fact, to so pretend would require quite an invalidation of Hubbard’s abilities, and the power of the technology he discovered.

Without the backing of Hubbard-authored Scientology policy, David Miscavige could never have created the Black Dianetics monopoly Hubbard had warned against many years before.  How could such a contradiction be possible?  That is a complicated story. For purposes of our discussion here, I will provide a brief summation of what will be more fully treated in a later volume.

In short, human beings are full of contradictions, and L. Ron Hubbard was not immune from that imperfection.  For better or for worse, during the ’60s, when Hubbard and Scientology were continually facing attacks intended to bring about their demise, Hubbard issued quite a bit of policy in response which changed the character of the movement.  This “wartime” left an indelible imprint on Scientology.  It was a dark ages of sorts for the movement.  It was a time when the group, as a matter of survival, needed to circle the wagons and know who was with it and who was against it.  This was the era when security checks became routine.  This was the period when ‘disconnection’ from suppressive persons was dictated and enforced by the organizations.  This was when policy called for the overt and covert destruction of alleged forces of evil.  This was the period when Hubbard created a monster to achieve that end – an ogre that would later play an important role in his own demise.  That was the Guardian’s Office – a legal and public relations organization with its own intelligence network.

The Guardian’s Office’s intelligence system was once described by a government official in the know as rivaling that of Israel’s state intelligence service (the storied Mossad).  Hubbard wrote volumes of material for the Guardian’s Office on how to smash and obliterate the “enemy.”  David Miscavige seized on this material during the early ’80s, when the collective crimes of a decade and a half of unfettered Guardian’s Office operations had come back to haunt Hubbard. Miscavige would rise, live and die by that wartime policy.

Miscavige became sort of a reactive mind of the Scientology machine.  Just as the reactive mind drives all of the past into the present to haunt and torture the individual, Miscavige drove all of Hubbard’s “war” era policy to the present, to haunt and torture Scientologists – and Scientology’s detractors – from the ’80s forward.

The way in which Miscavige corralled Clears and OTs, however, begins with a seemingly benign policy.  That is a Hubbard policy letter of 1967, entitled An Open Letter to All Clears. It is the first thing a newly-arrived Clear is required to read.

Hubbard represented consistently and repeatedly, from 1950 to the mid-’60s, that the quest for Clear is the pursuit of personal freedom and personal confidence, to the point of self-trust and being worthy of trust by one’s peers.  In the face of that continual statement of purpose and goal, the Open Letter begins hedging on those representations.  It begins indoctrinating the Clear into the idea that whatever sacrifices the individual might have made to achieve the state of Clear, the ledger of responsibility is not balanced.  The Clear has obligations to Hubbard and Scientology, and is expected to comply with group directives in order to pay off the debt, particularly if one should wish to rise to greater heights than Clear.  The Clear is told, in Open Letter:

An ethical code already exists for OTs so at the state of Clear one should not assume that one has a license to do just whatever one will…

…So, the policies of Scientology which have enabled you to reach the state of Clear still apply to all Clears. In fact, they apply more because you have the reality of their value and the necessity of seeing that they are followed…

…As a result, bigger responsibilities will be given and expected of you so you must be prepared to responsibly educate yourself where necessary so that you can do whatever is assigned to you in a proper manner, in keeping with the main goals and aims of Scientology.…

…It is a crime to invalidate the state of Clear – see to it that you don’t do this in your conduct as a Clear, particularly as regards yourself.…

…You have now become more than ever a part of a team. Obsessive individualism and a failure to organize were responsible for our getting into the state we got into.…

…As soon as you have gone the rest of the way this will become abundantly plain.…

…I expect and need your help to carry out the broad mission of decontaminating this area of the universe.…

And so, the promise of a Golden Age of reason among free-thinking, un-policed Clears was replaced with the news that the organizations would be enforcing your duty to follow an “ethical code” and the “policies of Scientology.”  It announces that you will comply with “whatever is assigned to you” by the organization.  Should any Clear bristle at this news, it is quickly pointed out that he is simply dramatizing the “obsessive individualism” that was “responsible for our getting into the state we got into.”  For my part, the most empowering cognition I came to in my own travels along the Bridge was that I no longer had to agree with anyone.  I no longer felt compelled to go along with group-think.  This was the key to breaking the controlling, conforming conditioning that society tends to coerce us into accepting, including all the group thought patterns that justify greed, cheating, conflict and war.  Upon indoctrination to An Open Letter to All Clears, I had to begin rationalizing, and thus invalidating, that new-found ability to chart my own course in life.

Thus, with Open Letter, and the volumes of policy it mandates now must be followed even more vigilantly, the vector became reversed.  The door was opened to the evolution of an obsessive group devotion that graduated into the Big Brother corporation which went on to ruin the lives of thousands, and to lose whatever magic Dianetics and Scientology were capable of producing in the first place.  It was bolstered by encyclopedic volumes of Scientology organizational policy.  Most of that policy is very heady and workable material.  It cannot be denied, however, that it is liberally spiked with a number of policies grooving in the idea that the group, the Scientology organization, is all important, and that its hierarchical structure must be respected and complied to, irrespective of who runs it.

Here is where the perversion we covered in Chapter 8, Ethics, receives its most potent authority.  The over-weighted third dynamic (group) would forever after skew the contemplation of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics’ formula.

To gainsay this reality would be an exercise in denialism.  For example, any Scientologist reading this book is automatically guilty of a variety of Scientology crimes and high crimes, by the mere act of reading.  Per long-standing and currently-extant Hubbard Scientology policy, anyone who has read this far ought to be declared a suppressive person (a sociopath that both Hubbard and mental health authorities agree should be quarantined from society, without civil or constitutional rights).  This is how Scientology organizational policy protects and perpetuates the vicious cult Miscavige has created.

Exacerbating matters is the fact that the first thing a Scientology Inc. Clear will encounter upon reaching that state is unrelenting pressure to get onto the Operating Thetan, or OT, levels.  If a Clear wants to get on with life, exercise his new-found abilities and awareness so as to “practice to increase general reality” (as it was earlier noted that Hubbard had recommended) and resists compliance, Scientology Inc. resorts to scare tactics.  An Open Letter to All Clears is the first weapon in the organization’s arsenal on that score.  That is then compounded with the ultimate weapon, Hubbard’s pronouncement that a Clear is at grave risk as a being if he or she does not get through the OT Levels as soon as possible.  Ironically, that warning perhaps serves as the greatest invalidation of the state of Clear, which the Open Letter policy announces shall be considered a crime in itself.

As shall be made clear in the next chapter on the OT Levels, I am a huge proponent of the idea that the OT Levels are indeed capable of taking people to spiritual heights they never imagined possible.  However, to ignore the shift of focus and the reversal-of-motivation tactic employed – even by Hubbard himself – would be to check my logic and personal integrity at the door.  Just why Hubbard deviated from a 15-year devotion to creating a path that would only work where the practitioner’s motivations were solely the pursuit of truth toward the empowerment of each individual addressed, into scare tactics aimed at having each individual surrender his or her self-determinism to the will of the group, is a complex matter.  Warranted or not, much of what Hubbard and Scientology were facing in terms of opposition by vested interests by the mid-’60s wove its way into Hubbard’s outlook, his thinking, and his overriding, strong intention that Scientology survive and be made available to humanity.

At bottom, it was Hubbard’s reaction to what I consider ill-motivated, unethical, and vicious efforts by certain vested interests to keep him from achieving what he aimed for.  Whether the response was an over-reaction or was necessary at that time is a question requiring a more in-depth history.  For our purposes here – outlining what is wrong with Scientology – it is only necessary to highlight the contradictions that are obvious.  Recognition of those contradictions makes patent the simple fact that to take every word Hubbard wrote literally, and treat it as commandment, puts one on a slippery, untenable slope.  To do so would be just as irrational as criticizing and rejecting all of Hubbard’s work and discoveries just because it is recognized he was not infallible.  Exercising either extreme would be to employ the type of associative-reactive thought patterns his discoveries help people to overcome.

The problem with Hubbard’s reaction to the attacks, and the ultimate product of that reaction, is that it puts an individual or group right back into that which they had sought to transcend through Scientology in the first place.  Technically, it is a violation of one of his own fundamental maxims, “that which you resist, you become.”  It is perhaps best explained in Hubbard’s own words, in the very lecture series, the 1958 Clearing Congress, where he finally settled on the parameters and qualities of Clear:

We get this sort of a situation where everybody’s idea of everybody else becomes himself. Well, let’s look at that. Here’s Mr. A. Mr. A is certain that everybody around him is very evil and that they are “gonna get him” one way or the other. Now, Mr. A. has no choice – if he is also saddled with super-agreements, obsessive agreement, making equality a necessity – but to be this way himself.

Now, we ask this question: Does this evil character actually exist? And that’s one of the first things we have to ask in clearing. Does this evil character exist?

It seems like we have a synthetic personality in existence which isn’t really anybody, but is simply everybody’s idea of how bad the other fellow is. This is pretty complicated, see. See, he’s got the idea that this other fellow is so bad that he cannot help but criticize him violently. But because he is equal to this fellow over here, then, of course, he himself has to assume these characteristics of superlative evil. You see that? We get generals, admirals, politicians, all sorts of people, who have an idea that the enemy is so bad, or that the fellow man is so bad, or something else is so bad, they can’t possibly live with it, and have therefore got to cut it to pieces. It’s a very tricky thing. This has a vast bearing on clearing.

They’ve got to cut this evil being to pieces. Yes, but at the same time, they have an equality complex. By communicating with him, they therefore go into agreement with his evil characteristics, and the only thing they have left is an evil, synthetic personality which they themselves have to wear to be like everybody else and to be normal. This is one of the simplest and easiest tricks that is played in a culture.

So, what are you trying to do when you’re clearing people? You’ve got to find the fellow himself and you also, as you go up the line – not an attribute of Clear, but an attribute of OT – have to give him a certainty on the other fellow.

Therein Hubbard echoed the ancient book of wisdom he once noted that much of Scientology had grown out of, Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu:

There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your three treasures (simplicity, patience, compassion) and become an enemy yourself.

In the same 1958 lecture, Hubbard continued by warning against the temptation to create policing agencies:

…Well, all you’d have to do is have a police force and a society would start caving in. Why? The police force constitutes a constant reminder that men are evil, which is a constant reminder that we must agree with these evil men. Do you see how this would work? Neat little trick.

Now, that doesn’t say that we are so starry-eyed as to believe that at this time we could dispense with all police. Or could we?

Now, you have to make up your mind which way you’re going to go with a society, if you’re thinking about a new society of one kind or another. And if you say, “Well, this society would be totally unregulated,” then we would be proposing an anarchy. And all the anarchists tell us that the only way a society would work as a total freedom without government would be if everyone in it were perfect.

Well, I don’t know whether we propose – when we talk about a cleared society – whether we propose or not to have an anarchy. That’s beside the point. That’s up to the people who get cleared. But I don’t think you’d wind up with an anarchy. I think you’d wind up with a much finer level of agreement and cooperation, because I think you’d then be able to realize the rest of the dynamics.

Again, Hubbard was in perfect alignment with the Tao:

Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing… The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous the people will be… I let go of the law, and people become honest.

However, with the advent of tomes of policy, creating layers of hierarchical restriction upon the group and aggressive policing of its individuals’ morals, the promise of the sanity and happiness of a cleared group and society was replaced.  The new doctrinal paradigm held, in essence, that the only way to achieve a ‘cleared society’ was through a tightly-controlled, disciplined group whose survival trumped all other possible considerations.  While volumes were written on how to run a Scientology organization in keeping with the goals of Clearing and the promise of OT, no matter how one dressed it up, Scientology policy created and required a force that one would have to be in utter denial to characterize as anything other than the police enforcing prohibitions, so as to protect good people from other people presumably dedicated to evil.

I am quite aware that these views will be condemned by many Scientologists, corporate and independent alike.  But I believe that if one dispassionately examines the facts of how Clears and OTs have come to be treated, how they have docilely accepted such treatment, and how they have come to behave within Scientology Inc., to ignore or deny Hubbard’s empowerment of such treatment and behavior is tantamount to condemning Scientologists to repeating a history they are systemically required to remain ignorant of and yet perpetuate.

I am not contending that Hubbard was wrong to react to opposition in the way he did.  Nor am I contending that he should not have memorialized his reaction under the heading of ‘policy.’  I do contend that to take Hubbard’s policy literally, out of the time and the context in which it was born, is to become an extremist.  With extremism comes the loss of the potential benefits that would otherwise accrue from application of the discoveries Hubbard made.  In my opinion, nowhere is literalism and extremism more destructive than at the highest reaches of the Bridge, the OT levels.

309 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, David Miscavige, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, policy, politics, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, the future, the Reformation

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Fear No Evil

Posted on December 13, 2012 by | 199 comments

One of the primary dangers of Scientology is the potential for, and its proclivity toward, the abuse of the confidences its members entrust the organization with.  It is a most insidious operation.

Scientology counselors are drilled for months – and sometimes years – on communication skills that are designed to make a seeker completely comfortable with sharing her innermost feelings and every detail about all of her frailties and shortcomings.   Scientology counselors are trained to overcome their own possible misgivings about invading the privacy of another in order to ensure they probe every dark corner of another’s mind.   The seeker is carefully indoctrinated that in order to achieve any gain in Scientology it is first and foremost necessary that she willingly discloses every secret, dark or light, she may possess.  Scientology counselors are trained to naturally and thoroughly note for posterity every detail of the confessions that their counselees so disclose.

Scientologists are indoctrinated to fully believe that the ends of the Scientology organization justify whatever betrayal of an individual’s rights might be considered necessary for the organization’s survival.

Knowledge derived from the confessions of a seeker are continually utilized to keep that person serving and contributing at ever increasing levels of commitment.  Sometimes it is done through encouragement, and sometimes it is done through inducing fear of the future.  In either event, when the seeker is left bereft of money and energy to continue fulfilling the constantly imposed increasing commitment,  knowledge of the seeker’s confessions are used in a darker fashion.  That knowledge is used to convince the disaffected seeker that her own confessed weaknesses are the cause of her dissatisfaction and that failure to continue to comply to the organization’s agenda will result in the person succumbing thoroughly to those weaknesses.

Ultimately, in order to break this vicious circle the disaffected seeker must pronounce she is no longer willing to comply with the dictates and policies of the organization.

But, with Scientology that is not the end of it.

Well-established Scientology policy assumes that one cannot partially disagree or reject part of Scientology, “If a group member rejects the group, he rejects everything about the group and no further question about that.”   Until and unless the disaffected individual ‘comes to her senses’ and capitulates to the authority of the group – accepting every policy and everything about the group – she is treated as an enemy of the group.

An enemy is considered fair game for group members to weaken and destroy by any means necessary.   Group members are indoctrinated to believe it is a solemn duty to cooperate with such efforts to nullify designated enemies.  Group members are required to cut all communication with the disaffected individual, even if the targeted person is a family member, long-time friend or business associate.

 

If a disaffected individual continues to vocalize or write about disagreements with such treatment or anything else about Scientology,  the group will publish mean-spirited propaganda about that individual.  That propaganda inevitably contains the fruits of the confessions of the targeted individual.  Seldom is it done with chapter-and-verse, literal detail which could make the organization legally accountable for violation of trust.  Instead, it is done through a sophisticated, even sociopathic, and complex propaganda methodology.  It requires the development of a dark, complicated and evil mindset to create this variety of propaganda.

It is no coincidence that the Scientology organization has become less powerful, influential  and popular with the advent of the age of information.   With the expansion of sharing of information of a personal nature during the proliferation of social media use – and the glut of ‘reality-based’ entertainment focusing on the eccentricities of common and famous folk – people seem to be less apt to judge and condemn others for their personal shortcomings.   People seem to have become more disgusted with the types of people who vindictively smear others than with targets of the condemnation attempts.  Without an avid, judgmental audience Scientology’s stockpiled secrets have lost their value.  To the degree its stock in trade has become unmarketable, the group has dwindled in numbers and its ability to silence disagreement and criticism has waned.

This is yet another reason to fear no evil.

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Posted in Uncategorized

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Headley Family Legal Fund

Posted on September 18, 2012 by | 139 comments

The Indies Defense Fund just put the Headley’s over the top to reach and exceed their $45,000 target.   See, Headley Family Legal Fund.   The $7,500 donation from our fund brought the Headley’s total to $50,535.00.    While it took the Headleys above the $45,000 target, I went ahead and transfered our entire fund as I originally said I would, because a) I thought that appropriate to satisfy the overwhelming show of support on this blog for the Headleys, b) I know that quite in addition to the costs bill of Scientology Inc. the Headleys had to satisfy, they were out of pocket tens of thousands of dollars in their own litigation costs.

Final Accounting Indies Defense Fund:

Balance 9/16/12 :    8,520.76

Less one refund:     1,000.00

Transfer to Headley Fund:   7,500.00

Final balance:                      $20.76

Thanks to all of you who contributed to the Indie Defense Fund; and for all of you who additionally contributed to the Headley Family Legal Fund directly.  I know a lot of regulars here made substantial contributions to both.

139 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, black dianetics, disconnection, ethics, harassment, healing, independents, int base, justice, legal threats, miscavige crimes, miscavige lawyers, office of special affairs, PI reports, the future, the Reformation, Uncategorized

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What Is Wrong With Corporate Scientology?

Posted on May 9, 2012 by | 110 comments

For starters, from L Ron Hubbard 6 July 1958:

We have found that staff requires this prerequisite: a good Scientologist.

A long time ago they used to tell us what we needed was a good businessman. We’ve had good businessmen, and we fired them.  What they used to tell us was, what we needed was a good publicity man that was really trained in publicity.  And we’ve had them and they laid an egg, and we fired them.

And every once in a while we have had to fill a post with somebody who was not quite up to handling that post, and we missed.  And we finally found what the common denominator was of an individual who could handle the post in an organization or any post in the organization.  And that person was – the common denominator is – a good auditor.  If a person is not a good auditor, there will be something wrong with his organizational activities.  

Boy, that is something to remember…

…There are people around that believe that a Scientologist – a Scientologist is somebody exclusively who audits people professionally.  There are a lot of Scientologists who do this.  But that is not everything one does.  Let me tell you that on staff, as sharp as we are about this sort of thing, we find that a person who is not a good auditor (that’s not a good Scientologist) — a good auditor, who can sit down there and turn out an excellent session, who can get good results on a preclear, is the only person we really like to have on staff because they always do a good job.  They always have the ability to understand the problems of those around them, and they have the ability of handling a situation.

110 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, FLAG, freewinds, ias, int base, l. ron hubbard, miscavige crimes, missions, Orgs, policy, the Reformation

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My trip in and out of the Church of Scientology

Posted on April 20, 2012 by | 321 comments

by Andy Porter

For 20 years I was an active member of the Church of Scientology, first as a public person taking courses, then as a staff member and finally as an international missionary. My trajectory through the church traces a dual path of increasing awareness and improvement while at the same time trying not to notice the things that were wrong. The problem was that the more aware I became the harder it was to ignore what wasn’t right.

My story is not heroic. I made and accepted excuses for the “bad” parts of the Church. In many cases I perpetrated wrongnesses on others, led witch hunts and used force and threats to get compliance. In the end it was only when I, personally, had been repeatedly betrayed that I was prompted to take action.

Last week I received a call from the local Org ethics officer, informing me that I had been declared a suppressive person. No reason was given, I was not sent, or shown, or even read my SP declare. Such was my ignoble ending of church membership!

The trip started in 1980 in Bellevue, Washington. I had just moved to Washington and was looking for a job when I was stopped by an attractive gal in the street and asked to do a survey. This led to taking the personality test and signing up for the Communications Course.

Back then the course consisted of reading the definitions of basic scientology terms and then doing the Training Routines (TRs). I completed the course in a few weeks and was then signed up for an auditor training package at the mission.

In a few more months I completed the training and became a New Era Dianetics Auditor. I then went over to the local Scientology Org and did my internship and started the next training levels.

Things seemed pretty cool in Scientology, there were lots of young people, like me, and the idealism was up my alley. “To hell with the “authorities” let’s create a better world.” The concept of the reactive mind was very real and as I audited more people I could really see that there was a hope.

Andy at Clear Lake

In June 1981 I joined staff at Bellevue Mission. I was posted in Division 6 and was a body router, basic course supervisor and Div 6 registrar. I was good at doing test evaluations and started giving introductory lectures.

In 1982 the Bellevue Mission went completely off the rails and got into the de-dinging (a whack-o squirrel process), flowing power to those above us (meaning that staff were forced to do favors for those above us) and other Nazi-scientology stuff. We went whole-hog: the mission sold intensives of de-dinging, engaged in group crush-close regging and generally went crazy. I recall graduation events at the local org during this time period. A normal Friday night graduation would take an hour or so. But during the “de-dinging” era they took three hours! This was because you couldn’t stop clapping! No one wanted to be the first person to stop clapping because it would mean that you had some out-ethics…so when a speaker made a mention of how great LRH was we all started clapping, and clapping, and clapping…then we’d start to nervously look sideways at each other, each person secretly wanting to stop clapping, but no one wanting to be the first one to stop. Ah, the good old days…

Anyway, we (Bellevue Mission) languished for three (1982 to 1985) long years after this, and what pulled us out was the beginning of the consulting companies starting up and sending in public. Our old Mission Holder, Mike Chatelain, started to work for David Singer in 1985 (they opened a west coast office near by) and we started to get Chiropractors on lines. I became very active with the other WISE groups, Hollander, Latch and Sterling. I traveled all over the US and signed up their clients for mission services like Life Repair Auditing, some of my favorite time on staff in the US. The mission went from 1 and 2 First Service Starts a week to 10 and 12.

From my view the mid to late 1980’s were the time of greatest expansion of the Church. The Dianetics TV ads were going, there were new covers for the books and generally there was more acceptance of the Church. The future looked bright.

I became the Executive Director of the Mission (1987), did the complete Organization Executive Course, had two missions (Bellevue and Honolulu) and in 1990 found myself as the Executive Director of the Seattle Day Organization (during the Good Will Games).

Being an Org ED was a complete nightmare. The incessant stupid orders and three times daily phone calls, the endless computer generated non-compliance reports, the idiotic emphasis on getting people to the “events” and the complete lack of any effective Div 6 was awful. I found the Org environment much more robotic and stultified than the Mission network. In the missions we were more allowed to think and do what we thought was best to service people. In retrospect it wasn’t that we were actually “allowed” to do more, it was simply that no one could see what we were doing. We would often and with great happiness break the rules to provide unselfish service. I used to make a joke while working at the Org that they were “so standard that they were empty.” (Empty of public, that is)

Seattle Org had moved into a 28,000 sq. ft. building before the GW games ($18,000 a month rent) and since the entire Good Will Games were a complete dud, dissemination wise, the Org was broke.

I tried to route off Org staff (I was in debt up to my eyeballs), I asked for a Committee of Evidence, was denied, blew from LA, then I was told that I was going to get some justice action. While awaiting my beheading I got in comm with Greg Hughes (he was in International Management at the time), who I knew fromSterling, and he helped me escape and come back toSeattle. I routed off Org staff, worked for a few months to pay my debt to the Org and some other debts and went back on staff at Bellevue Mission in 1992.

I was in no hurry to get back on any management line and so became the Course Supervisor for a while. Being the Supervisor was by far the best staff position I ever held. By that time I was OT 5, OEC, KTL,LOC, and had done almost every course at the Org. I completed the Elementary Data Evaluators course, (actually I liked it so much I did it twice) and felt I had a good grasp of the basics by then.

Creating an expanding course room was easy; I discovered that the most vital tool was using ARC. If the students felt that you cared about them, their lives, their problems and were really there to HELP them then they came back. It was always a mystery to me that when I would send new staff for Course Supervisor training, either to Flag or LA that they would come back with some fascist attitude towards their students. They would return with some sort of “standard” fanaticism and order the students to use their demo kit or clear words, not really helping them, or personally caring, just acting like some sort of prison guards. In my view the idea being pushed was that being “standard” meant being tough, rough, rude, almost mean and it shocked me that people thought they could service the public (or other staff!) without loads of ARC. Especially new public.

In 1993 I was asked by SMI to go to Russia for a mission project, I was always interested to see for myself what Russia was really like, so I raised some money and went. I was there two weeks with 4 or 5 other mission holders. When I got on the plane to go back I just wanted to stay. The people there in Moscow and Saint Petersburg (both missions had about 8 staff at that time) were so intent on doing Dianetics and going clear and helping others it was very theta. I got back to my post at Bellevue Mission and decided to move to Russia. It took a while to get replaced and overcome the counter intention to my leaving staff, but in 1995 I moved there.

I was well known at Scientology Missions International (SMI), due to being a mission holder, and headed to LA to visitSMIINTand set up my duties with them before heading to Russia.

By the time I arrived back in Russia (October ’95) to live and work Moscow and St Pete had grown to large booming missions and I was reluctant to go inspect or advise them as I was worried that I would mess them up (and get in trouble). My reasoning was that they had built much larger missions than I ever had, so I didn’t feel that I should be ‘advising” them. I felt like I should be learning from them!

For the first year or so, I went out to outlying cities, Perm, Nizhny Tagil, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladivostock, Novosibirsk and many more places in Russia. I also visited new Dianetics Centers in Belorussia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine. I had a great time riding the train, staying with families, lecturing and helping to expand missions. Many of these missions had never had a Clear or OT or trained Scientologist come for a visit. My duties were to inspect the mission and help them in any way needed, train staff, observe and help them get in standard tech for servicing public. I went to more than 30 missions while I was there, (1995 to 1999) inspecting, correcting and lecturing.

With out a doubt it was the most fun I ever had in Scientology, nothing before or since compares. I was not around in the 1950’s when DMSMH was released, but have heard the stories, and Russia in the late 90’s seemed just like those stories. The overall excitement was awesome. Moscow and St Pete expanded to over 100 staff each, with huge successful Div 6/s. There were co-audits going on all the time and hundreds of auditors in the missions. The course rooms were filled and the place was buzzing with excited, optimistic people. The missions had very Spartan quarters, sometimes there were 10 auditing “rooms” squeezed into what would be 2 rooms here in the US. But MEST didn’t matter, they had big booming missions, there were tons of students, FSM’s, booksellers, it was all fun and exciting. My purpose in Scientology was revitalized. Somewhat ironically my time there also formed the basis for my waking up and (slowly!) seeing how psychotic things were and eventually leaving the church.

Later, in 1997 I was asked to do projects at Moscow. I recall doing an inspection there and on a Thursday morning was inspecting and noticed that no one was on post. I was like, “Well, where are all the staff?” I was told that they were on study, as they were every morning.

I was about to go pull all the staff off course and lecture them about on Thursday we DON’T study in the morning because that’s when we get the stats up, but caught myself and realized (not for the first time) the insanity of the stat push mentality. I had dozens of other epiphanies while at Moscow and later while at St Pete missions. It started to dawn on me that one major reason for all the expansion in Russia was that they didn’t have the whacko western Sea Org nut jobs there every minute looking over their shoulders, giving them stupid orders.

I was in St Petersburg for the Dianetics (May 9th) Event in 1998. The event was held at a huge auditorium, it held more than 1,000 people. The event started at 2pm, and lasted until 8 at night. There was food, music, performances, cakes, games, balloons, prizes, speeches, and lots of fun. And this was all before the “official” event, where the DVD of the actual May 9th event was played for the public. The place was packed. No one wanted to leave early, or escape. It was night and day different from events back in the US. Can you even imagine an event in the USA where 1,000 people attended? Anyway, I was there in St Pete doing a project for SMI and it so happened that there were several Sea Org Execs there, from LA. They came to the event and were shocked. I was sitting right behind them and could hear them speaking to each other, they were aghast that the event was so long, that there were children singing, that a rock band played, they thought that this was disrespectful to LRH. They didn’t like the games or the prizes or poetry reading…(the Russian people LOVED all of this) The Sea Org Execs all thought this “fun” stuff was off purpose and not okay. The event ended with the showing of a brand new LRH film, “The Evolution of a Science”. I still recall the playing of the movie, to this day…the movie sucked! It was supposed to be for new people, but was all about psychiatry and shock therapy, it was a stupid film for new people. The Russian people were shocked and dismayed by it. Here they were having a fun party and now here is this horrid film, a real turd in the punch bowl! The Sea Org people all tried to look proud of the film, while the Russians made their displeasure known… the general consensus of the brainwashed execs was that the translation of the movie must have been poor…

By this time, after 17 years of being on staff, I had seen and experienced many countless examples of stupidity, injustice and misapplication of any rational management technology, but always wrote it off as some middle management virus. I had this idea that the guys at the top (DM and Int. Mgt.) were super cool, smart, and that they just didn’t know how whacko the middle management nut jobs were. I couldSEEthe out-points but I could not confront what they meant, wasn’t willing to follow the thought to its only logical end.

Another interesting thing was that as I stayed more and more in Moscow and St Pete in 1998 and 1999 advising the missions and lecturing I was always under pressure to study more LRH for lecture material. I read and re read all of the LRH books many times including “History of Man”. And I recall a section in that book where LRH describes a space opera society where the citizens were so indoctrinated that if one of them even had a bad thought that they would immediately turn them selves into the nearest police station.

This really hit me. I had had so many sec checks by then, for OT levels, for this and for that, so many “ethics cycles” (which of course were NOT Ethics cycles, but justice cycles in disguise) that I was stunned. I could plainly see that I was indoctrinated just like LRH described in HOM. This was a horrible idea to me because I “knew” we were freeing people, not enslaving them. Yet I could see that I was behaving like one of these implanted “citizens”. I wondered if it wasn’t just something wrong with me. I couldn’t really come to grips with it, so I just shelved it, and went on.

While I was in Russia I was sent to other countries for projects, I went to India twice to help establish missions, once to Bombay (SMIsent me there, to work with Helmut Flasch), twice to Patiala, I was also sent bySMIto Japan (to work on the Shinto project).

I was in Moscow Mission from the summer of 1997 until the end of the birthday game in 1998. Moscow Mission won the game that year (for the first time). I still have all their b-day stat graphs from then. They were doing 150 to 200 first service starts a week, 1200 to 1700 NBSTI Raw (Number of Books Sold to New People) a week and the rest of the stats there were commensurate with those Division 6 statistics. As a side note I spoke to the Moscow Org ED in September, 2010. He was in LA for some cycle and called me. His name is Anton and he was the Tech Sec when I was there in 1998. He said that they were getting around 7 first service starts a week at that time.

In March 1998SMIsent my wife and I to Fiji on a mission with Manu Tupou and Jean Harness. We opened a new mission there, recruited staff and sent them to ANZO for training. In the fall of 1998 I was also sent by the IAS to open up a Mission in the country of Burkina Faso, in West Africa.

While I was working as a pioneer, or missionary, I was awarded as a PowerFSMtwice, and as an EliteFSMtwo times, I was in fact never anFSMand never put inFSMslips on anyone while doing this work over seas.

My first award for my activities as a pioneer came in December of 1995. I was at theOTL(Sea Org Base) inMoscowand got a call fromSMIINT. Apparently there were quite a few, 10 to 20 Russian people who were FSMs and had gotten in 100 or more new people to start their first services, and they were all hoping to go to LA for the NY event. But none of them could get visas. Of course, the reason they didn’t get visas was that no one had the foresight to start the visa application process until mid-way through December, and by then it was a “hill 10” to get bodies on stage for the New Years Event.

So,SMItold my wife and me that we should come to LA and get awarded! Of course the people I spoke to atSMI, Beate Gordon and Claire Gaiman knew exactly what we had been doing, they knew we were not FSMs and had not selected anyone in, but no matter, we could come and go on stage, and we didn’t need visas! So, they bought us tickets and had us come, we were provided a place to stay. To us it was like a free (warm weather!) vacation! My wife was awarded as a powerFSMand I was awarded as an eliteFSM.

My system of pay (as worked out by Chief Officer SMIInt) was that I would go to the missions primarily to train and correct staff, and that the project financing would come from lectures. I would give lectures to the public, the mission would charge a small fee for each lecture and I would get half of the money, the mission keeping the other half. So even though I was never an FSMI was on stage. Usually I would arrive to LA a few days before the event and be given a hat of helping push other people living in LA to become power FSMs so there would be more bodies on stage. I have lots of insane stories about all of that. The last event where I was given some award was the 2000 May 9th Dianetics event where I was awarded as a top international pioneer.

As a side note about awards and the sheer insanity of them, one of the Russians I was close to was Vladimir Kiropatnik. He was the original ED of Moscow Mission. I met him when I was first there in 1993. He was a very theta and dedicated guy and worked hard to expand the Mission. In 1997 Vladimir was awarded the IAS Freedom Medal, at the event they portrayed him as the single person who opened up all of Russia to Scientology and saved the country. The PR was so over the top! I know that Vladimir was upset over how they grossly overstated what he had done. Actually this set him up for criticism from others, as many thought that he was the one who made up the lies. I was close to him and I know it was quite a PTP for him. Later when the Executive Director of Saint Petersburg Mission won the same award (Galina Petrovna) they did the same thing. It was the same with anyone and everyone I personally knew, they would over sell, exaggerate and even outright lie about the accomplishments to make them sound incredible. From my direct experience, both Vladimir and Galina definitely deserved the Freedom Medal awards. They are both incredibly hardworking and dedicated people. But the point is, why lie and exaggerate their accomplishments? Just telling the truth would have been perfectly fine. The fact of lying about the accomplishments of these people is illustrative of the entire current church management. Of course nothing beats the absurd lies they made for Tom Cruise when he won his IAS award…I recall it was an award for introducing more than a billion people to Scientology.

As I discovered at a much later time receiving these awards may have been one of the main reasons that I wound up leaving the church.

I returned toRussiain Jan 1999 and I went back to work forSMIdoing the usual. I began to get antsy about going up the bridge and wanted to get on OT 7 so I decided to start working as a WISE consultant. I worked about 7 months as a consultant inSt Petersburg, paid for OT 6, OT 7 and 10 intensives and arrived at Flag in Dec. 1999.

My plan was that I would use one or two intensives on eligibility and set ups and then have lots of intensives left over for future 6-month checks, I would be back out pioneering and be on OT 7!

But what came next was a completely horrible nightmare.

I wound up using 13 intensives of auditing, almost all of it on security checking. I cannot describe in email format how utterly awful it all was. It was unjust, demeaning, stupid, introverting and actually made me feel like I was psychotic. As I look back, I felt a sort of desperate feeling, slightly propitiative, wanting to throw my self at the feet of someone and beg forgiveness. A down tone “need to show that I’m valuable to the group” attitude and underlying this was the basic concept of “I am bad”.

I hated the auditing, but couldn’t complain because you can’t complain while you’re on a sec check unless you want it to take longer. I tried to act happy and get it done. Somehow by some miracle I was able to get my needle to float and get done. Then I pleaded that I was broke and owed money and I was allowed to leave.

This was the first time I was at an Advanced Org as a public person. I spent a lot of time in the MAA office (as a result of all the Knowledge Reports from 9 intensives of security checking). I was appalled at what went on. A day down there included lots of nervous waiting to even get in to see the MAA. Then they would review the KR’s from your sessions and assign you conditions. It was NOT a self-determined action. I tried several times to say that I didn’t think I needed to do ANY conditions for my overts, but was ordered to do so. I pointed out many times that this entire process was NOT an ethics action, but a justice action. But the deal was: Do it our way, or you’ll never get on the OT levels and go free. I saw person after person there in the MAA’s office doing lowers and amends for such stupid things as reading a site on the internet, or looking at “pornography” or masturbating. The idea that was being enforced by the MAA’s was that these actions were severely out-ethics and could bring disrepute to Scientology. I argued that labeling these actions as wrong or in any way out-ethics was itself very wrong and out ethics, as doing so would only drive in a persons anchor points. But all that I accomplished with my arguing these points was the certainty on the part of the MAA that I needed MORE security checking.

I was on the OT 6 meter drills when I left and knew I would never return. I felt that there was something definitely wrong with the auditing, but also had some idea that it was me that was nuts. I knew I liked helping people and so just wanted to go back and get busy.

From there things were a bit unsettled. I had planned to go back to Russia but was denied a visa. I discovered later that I had been blacklisted by the Russian FSB (state security agency) along with several other foreigners who had been invited to Russia by Scientology, like Malcolm McClintock, Lynn Irons and others. So, I was not allowed to return. I wound up moving to Nice, France for 6 months in late 2000, then on to Pavlodar, Kazakhstan where I worked as a WISE consultant for 9 months, then on to Copenhagen for 8 months. All the time trying to get back toRussia.

The more I was on WISE lines I noticed that things went worse for me. It seemed that as long as I was basically volunteering my time (as a Mission or Org staff member or full time pioneer) to help expand missions I was alright. I was still looked down on as I wasn’t Sea Org, but sort of barely accepted. Having been staff many years I was familiar with the pecking order, and understood how it all worked.

But now that I was mostly working in the WISE sector I was considered more of a public and less of a staff member. I could sense a change. I started to feel like a farm animal, people were eye-balling me for what they could get from me, could I be an income cycle, could I be student points, could I donate money to IAS? I was ordered to events, to ethics interviews, ordered to be on course. As a WISE consultant here were quotas for the number of our clients that were sent into a local Org orMissionfor services. There was a tacit threat over my head; if I didn’t comply with the above requirements then I would be in danger of losing my license and ability to deliver WISE courses and consulting.

I wanted to get out of consulting and I wound up going to the NYC area in 2001 (where I am from originally) to work. I had two jobs; one wasCOOof a company in NJ with several interesting patents we were trying to get going. As that company was getting just started I needed more pay and started to work as a consultant again in the WISE sector.

In 2002 I got an 11 page KR written on me by Walter Kotric (CO CLO EU). He accused me of every crime under the sun and said that I was never allowed back on his continent. I sent back a more or less fuck you response and asked for a Committee of Evidence. Nothing happened. Every product I had achieved was attacked.

One might think it strange that a person who was routinely honored by Int. Management each year would be attacked. But in truth the awardees on stage at the Int Events had routinely had their production stats puffed up (NOT by the person, but by the management terminals!) to look stellar. There was no real recognition from Int Management of having DONE anything really good, we were all just statistics, bodies gotten on stage, part of the PR for the church.

Interestingly I had heard from 2 people, Barb Wiseman (a pioneer in Russia in the early 1990’s) and Malcolm McClintock (he ran the Sea Org Base in Moscow in early 2000) that Walter Kotric HATED any Scientologists who went Pioneering “on his Continent”. Barbara told me that Walter went out of his way to attack her when she was awarded as a Power FSM for her work there in 1993, an award that she NEVER asked for.

In April of 2003 I received a phone call and ordered by WISE International to report to LA. No reason, just come,NOW. I arrived and met two other Russian Pioneers there, Bud Reichle and Lynn Irons. We went to the Scientology Headquarters on Hollywood Boulevard and met with some high up woman in OSA (Judith?) and a guy by the name of Dan Brown. They explained that we were all called there because of our involvement in Russia. They told us that currently there was trouble in Russia and that the plan was to do ethics cycles on us three, sort of to destimulate the area from afar. I was shown some reference from the Suppressed Person Rundown. The idea was that if we three did an ethics cycle, related to tour work inRussia, the result would be a bettering of the overall conditions of Scientology inRussia. It was sort of like: Currently Scientology in Russia is under attack, and if you three write up your overts and come clean then the conditions over there will improve.

As I began to get in comm., the report written on me by Walter Kotric came up, and then a cycle fromKazakhstan.

I had visited Kazakhstan several times in the late 1990’s and at that time met a local scientologist named Bolat Agzamovich. Bolat was working in the oil industry, but had later gotten into politics and had become the deputy governor of his region.

In late 2000 while I was still in Nice, France, I was personally invited to move to Pavlodar, Kazakhstan by the CO WISE CIS, Vladmir Kiropatnik. Bolat had been the deputy governor of his region for sometime; he had communication lines with the leaders of industry all over the country. The idea was that I would move there, work with Bolat, establish a WISE presence, consulting these businesses and maybe start aHubbardCollege.

Bolat had been donating HUGE sums of money to the church to aid expansion. He had donated hundreds of thousand of dollars to start a whole pile of Missions, Narconons, Applied Scholastics groups all acrossKazakhstan. He was quite famous for this.

I saw the annual IAS Event in October of 2000. There was direct mention of expansion of Scientology inKazakhstan, specifically mentioning the opening of the many new groups and also a report that the President of Kazakhstan had officially welcomed Scientology to the country!

This sounded like what I was waiting for and I packed up and moved there in December, 2000. When I actually arrived inPavlodar, Bolat was inCopenhagenfor auditing, he arrived home a week later and announced that he had decided to quit his government post! This was a surprise!

He took over a transportation (tram) company owned by the state and I went to work for him. I worked with him in the Tram company and we had a blast, it was a huge success.

As a side note after my arrival in Kazakhstan I excitedly asked the staff and public about the report that President Nazarbayev had proclaimed an official welcome to Scientology. Well, none of the people there had heard such a thing. I had several people directly contact the government to query this, and we discovered that this reported acknowledgement of Scientology had never taken place.

While I was there I heard some allegations that Bolat had accepted bribes while he had been deputy governor. I was close to him and asked him a few times about this and he said no, he didn’t, so I left it alone. I left Pavlodar in the summer of 2000 and moved to Copenhagen.

What had precipitated being ordered to Los Angeles was that Bolat had been to Copenhagen some time in 2001/2002 and confessed in some sec check that he had in factALLof the money he had donated to the church, forALLthe mission starter packages and Narconons, applied scholastics, etc, all of it, was money he had received as payments for his services while deputy governor. From what I could understand, Bolat finally relented and confessed that all the money he donated to the church came from the bribes he received while Deputy Governor.

This came out right around the Reed Slatkin Ponzi scheme scandal, and so there was a real hornet’s nest over this. I thought it was all a hoot, and I asked if the church was going to refund all the money so Bolat could give it back. My two interrogators failed to see the humor in any of this. .

I was surprised by all this and I pointed out that if anyone cared to look at any facts like dates of when he took the “bribes”, the dates in my passport, etc, it was easy to see that I was never physically IN Kazakhstan when Bolat “took the bribes” but no matter. Logic had no merit. I asked how I could have stopped him from taking bribes if I wasn’t in the country. I was told that I “should have known” and done something. I felt trapped. If I wanted to keep consulting and making money, I had to do it. My choices were to walk out of Scientology right then, or just bend over and do it.

So I did. I fudged my way through it and told everyone what they wanted to hear. I prayed my needle would float at the right time and that no one would suspect that I fucking hated them and that I was on my way out.

I went back to New Jersey in a state of shock. All my stable datum’s busted. From my experiences as a Mission Holder and Org ED with the admin tech I could see that its “use” was making things worse world wide, not better. From my last trip to Flag I could see that the tech was not working. And that it was in fact being used to control people. From my travels I knew that all the hype and PR reported by management was utter bullshit. And now it was crystal clear that the application of ethics and justice tech was beyond gone.

When I got back home I talked my wife into moving with me to Washington State. Just leaving and moving was in itself a form of escape. I felt like I was escaping from a prison, I didn’t let anyone know where I was going. After 24 years of having to report where I was to someone in the church, I was free (sort of).

For many years, from 2000 to 2004 I spoke to no one about my doubts and disagreements. During those years I knew things were bad and I wanted out, but dared not communicate about it. From 2004 until 2008 I had one friend who was ahead of me on the path out who listened as I itsa-ed and to whom I could speak freely. I communicated my feelings, doubts, self invalidations and slowly the fog lifted. I was so indoctrinated with the idea that I must have my own overts and that to have pulled in this bad shit I must have somehow caused it. But as I destimulated I could reason better and evaluate what I had seen. The overall stats of Scientology are down, and have been for a long time. As stats are the measure, then the management must be bad. I personally saw many lies from management about how great things were when they weren’t. I realized that things were bad. I realized that my stable datum that the guys at the top were smart and cool must be way off.

When I lived inRussiaI once heard an Old Russian proverb: “The fish rots from the head.” Of course that datum lined up with all my observations. The bad shit wasn’t a mistake, it was planned. The middle management guys weren’t just nut cases; they were just pushing down the line the shit that came from the top. That datum really aligned so well with what I had personally seen that I knew it must be the truth.

In 2009 I saw the blog “Counterfeit Dreams” by Jeff Hawkins. I read the whole thing. It blew so much charge for me, reading the details of what happened behind the scenes, getting a real view of what things were like. Jeff is such a great writer and what he describes has real impact. It never made any sense to me, why were the DMSMH question ads ended, why was there no new effective ad campaign, how could leadership be so stupid and not see that without a great marketing plan the church would start cannibalizing the public?

Once the held-down 7’s were handled and I could really LOOK it was easy to see WHY Scientology had horrible PR and WHY it was contracting.

I am more than slightly embarrassed that it took me so long to wake the fuck up!!!

Scientology is supposed to be about LOOKING and evaluating for oneself, becoming more causative, it’s about COMMUNICATION, helping others and building a better world.

But the current “church” is all about NOT looking, NOT communicating; now it’s about not THINKING! A current church member is told what to think, what to say, who they can and cannot communicate with. Its NOT about self-determinism, it’s about being a robot.

The current “church” is really like an insane doctor cutting out the “cancerous” body parts to get rid of illness. Those Scientologists who dare to think for themselves are purged, expelled, declared suppressive.

But the church has taken this to a new level of insanity: now it’s the cancer running the church seeking to amputate, cut out, expel, the healthy tissue!  Soon there will be nothing and no one left in the corporate church of scientology besides cancer tissue!

Last weeks phone conversation and news of being declared a suppressive person came as no surprise.  It was more like the final process of a grade in auditing, you come to the end and someone asks you “Would you like others to have the gains that you now have?”

And my answer is, Yes! I am happy for what I got out of Scientology and I am very happy to be free from the madness of what Corporate Scientology has beccome.

One of the steps I took to rehabilitate the wins I had with the tech was going in session. I found a great auditor, out here in the Independent Field and (with trepidations) signed up to get a review. Part of the auditing program was to handle any by-passed charge I had related to past auditing I received in the corporate church. I recall the question: “Were you audited while you were under stress?” I laughed and cried and swore my head off answering that question! Was I audited while under stress????? HA!!!! When wasn’t I under stress? Let’s see: there’s the stress of paying the money (or rather borrowing it and worrying about being able to re-pay it) there’s the stress of worrying what will happen when you’re sent to see the Ethics Officer; the stress of losing your post, or not being allowed to take the next step on the Bridge, the worry of being expelled if you disagree. I was worried before I even went to Flag for auditing: scrutinizing my every action wondering if “it would come up” on my sec check and get me sent to the Ethics Officer!!! I realized that ALL of my auditing in recent years in the “church” was all done over heavy stress. I was PTS to the Church!!! Needless to say, handling this was a HUGE relief.

Now my life is full of fun and creation. I have taken back up my dual passions of backpacking and photography. I have a fantastic wife and we have a seven year old son. Life is good.

And some day I hope to head back out on the dissemination trail…

Signed,

Andy Porter
Independent Scientologist

Some of Andy's recent work

321 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, ethics, events, FLAG, golden age of tech, healing, ias, independents, justice, miscavige crimes, missions, Orgs, policy, propaganda, tech, the future, the Reformation, Uncategorized

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Welcome to “Church”

Posted on April 9, 2012 by | 241 comments

What has become of David Miscavige’s Scientology Inc.

241 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, events, miscavige crimes, Orgs, regging, Super Ponzi, the Reformation

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The Friedman’s Break Free

Posted on March 27, 2012 by | 297 comments

Some of you may know Marsha and Steve Friedman, but for those of you who don’t, here’s a little information about these two new independents. 

Marsha became a Scientologist in 1969 and introduced Steve to Scientology in 1973.  They are well-known as Scientologists in the Clearwater community, where they moved in 1989.  They are also well-known as successful business people who own and operate a national PR agency, founded by Marsha 22 years ago.  The firm, headquartered until recently in downtown Clearwater, represents professionals, high-profile individuals and corporations in a wide range of industries. Their staff is comprised mostly of media professionals, and each month they arrange an average of 160 radio interviews, 20 local and national TV appearances and millions of potential readers in offline and online print. As well they market online, with Marsha having 70,000 friends and followers on the various social networking sites.  She is also the author of the book, Celebritize Yourself, and is co-host of a recently launched national talk radio show airing weekly on Sirius/XM.

– Mike Rinder

Here’s Marsha’s story in her own words.

Dear Friends,

As I don’t know where this post will wind up in the wild world of the Internet, consider this an “Open Letter” to friends I know and those I don’t, people in the church or on the fence, public and/or staff.

While writing this letter might seem as evidence to those within the church that we have gone “to the dark side,” I’m actually writing this for the purpose of telling the truth and filling in the vacuum of data for the friends and family who have chosen to disconnect from me and Steve, and others who might become new friends.

To start, I’d like to share a little of my background. I became a Scientologist in 1969 and joined staff at the Miami Org as Marsha Ulan.  I have fond memories of being on staff during that era, and can vividly recall those exciting days when new HCOB’s and HCO PL’s were released.  Whenever this happened, we always stopped whatever we were doing to read LRH’s new breakthroughs.  The energy and excitement were beyond compare; we knew we were part of a great new movement.

While still on staff in 1973, I introduced Steve to Scientology and shortly thereafter we got married. (We were raised together in Queens, NY, and have known each other since we were 7 and 8 years old.)

I finished my contract and left staff in March of 1974 to have our first child together. We’ve now been happily married going on 39 years in May, and are the very proud parents of 2 sons, a daughter, 3 grandchildren and a new great-grandson (whew…even hard for us to believe!).

In 1989 we moved to Clearwater to be close to Flag, and while I never went back on staff, I always volunteered for OSA whenever called upon.  Over the years, we did a lot of services at Flag, including auditing on OT 7 until about a year ago when we routed off the level.

I had no idea when I routed out of the Flag AO last year that this journey would lead me here.  And, quite honestly, in a strange sort of way, I have my auditor and FSM to thank for finding my path to this portal.  You see, when Steve and I chose to route off of OT 7, it wasn’t conceivable to anyone in the Church that we could have made that decision without being influenced by people we were told are “the enemy.”  Our instantaneous response was, “What enemy? Are we in some kind of war?”

Then we were accused of being associated with “friends of LRH.”  We thought, “How strange, of course we’re friends of LRH and, yes, that is who we associate with.”  And this wasn’t said tongue-in-cheek at all, even though it may seem that way.  Truly, we were the best of soldiers.  We didn’t dare read anything on the Internet about Scientology.  We were told it was evil, enturbulating and could cause us great harm.  While neither Steve nor I believed anything or anyone had that kind of power over us, especially considering we were OT and armed with ethics and PTS tech, we chose to simply follow the rules and do as we were told.

But, after routing off services and being free to think, read and experience whatever we desired, I decided to look and see who those “enemies” were and what exactly was meant by “friends of LRH.”

Once I started to look, I anticipated finding a volume of success stories and well publicized good works of the church by independent media coverage.  However, the only pro-church coverage I found were press releases the church wrote and paid to have distributed by PR distribution services.  But most important was what I found from independent news coverage – the harrowing stories of people who had been on staff, and the violation of their human rights.

After doing a lot of research online, when Debbie Cook’s email hit my inbox at the beginning of this year, I found myself in complete agreement with the points she raised.  And, for the reasons listed below, on Tuesday, February 28th, I learned the church was planning to issue a declare on me and Steve.  This was told to me over lunch by one of my closest Scientology friends of twenty years.

My crimes?  Since I’ve received no communication from anyone at the church, or OSA, I can only speculate on their reasoning:

1.  On January 2, 2012, I forwarded Debbie Cook’s email to 3 people with whom I had a close relationship: my brother and two friends.  My brother did not respond to my email nor did he call or try to engage in any conversation.  Rather, he sent me a Knowledge Report in the mail and after a 60 plus year relationship, he just disconnected from me.  My sister-in-law disconnected shortly thereafter.

The initial response from my two friends was to say that while they didn’t agree, they still loved and treasured my friendship and would like to just agree to disagree.  However, they have both since disconnected.

2.  On February 8th, after receiving an email from two Scientology business associates asking to contract my company for services, I sent them a response letting them know of my agreement with the points Debbie Cook raised in her letter.  As lines in the sand were obviously being drawn at this point, I felt it was only appropriate they should know my feelings, in case they preferred not to engage my company for this reason.   (I never heard back from either person,      even though one of them was someone I’ve known over 30 years.)

3.  Around this same time, I got about 5 or 6 messages on Facebook, stating I was Facebook friends with Debbie Cook and requesting I un-friend her.  I didn’t un-friend Debbie Cook; I un-friended them instead.

The close friend, who over lunch told me of the declare coming down, said he was meeting with OSA’s Kathy True that following Saturday to “right this wrong.”  He said he would contact me after the meeting to let me know what occurred.

I never heard from him again.  After a very close 20-year friendship, he has disconnected from me, un-friended me on Facebook and had all of his family do the same.

At that point, I assumed a declare had been issued.  Then, a couple weeks ago, I learned about a Facebook posting below, by someone I don’t know, which resulted in a lot of FB disconnections from Scientologists.

“Russell Posyton

1:07am Mar 9

“Marsha Freidman and her husband Steve Friedman have been Declared Suppressive, I know this as a fact. This Declare can be seen and verified with any MAA or OSA terminal.

“As your Facebook Friend, I would most appreciate your removing them as your Facebook friend ASAP.

“Thanks in advance for your action on this,

“Russell”

Lastly, I learned from my son who works for a Scientologist (and former friend) of some false things being said about me by the church:

1.  That the church has been trying to “handle” me for a year but I refused to take any calls, return any calls or speak to anyone. 

This is completely false.  No one from the church ever called, emailed or even stopped by my office (located until recently a few blocks away from Flag) to talk to me about any problems they had with me.

In fact, it’s quite to the contrary. This past Christmas I was very involved as usual in an event the church is associated with.  In 1989 I founded a group that I later established as a non-profit called Cherish the Children Foundation, which championed for abused, abandoned and neglected children.  For 22 years me and my organization sponsored a Christmas party for these foster children in which the church played a role as a co-sponsor.  This past year was no different and one of OSA’s staff even attended the event, without one word spoken to me throughout the planning or at the event itself.

If perhaps this statement was referring to “handling” my husband, the situation there is that when he turned in his confidential materials and said he would no longer be auditing, both his auditor and FSM (at different times) visited him at our office.  His auditor was furious about his decision, yelling at him in the driveway with accusations that he’s been “influenced” by enemies.  His communication was nasty enough that he called Steve back later that same day to apologize.  Then, two MAA’s called Steve (on the phone at the same time) yelling and threatening him about what would happen if he didn’t come into the Org to see them.  Well, if you knew Steve, you’d know he doesn’t take kindly to being threatened. Without raising his voice, but with tons of intention he told them their threats were meaningless and they wouldn’t be seeing him. They hung up the phone on him and he has never heard from anyone at the church since then.  So, if no longer wanting to audit on OT 7 is a suppressive act, he’s guilty.

2.  That I broadly spread Debbie Cook’s email.

Completely untrue. I sent Debbie Cook’s email to three people.

3.  That my FSM came to my house to talk to me but my husband slammed the door in her face.

Completely untrue.  My last home in Clearwater that we lived in for two years was very close to Flag and my FSM had never seen it.  It’s a high security condo building.  No one can even enter the building to get to our unit to have the door slammed in their face.

What did occur was our FSM stopped by one day at the office while we were working.  She arrived unannounced and went into Steve’s office.  He was not happy about a prior conversation where she called him an “a-hole.”  He told her that she didn’t have an appointment and asked her to leave.  He never left his desk to close the door or slam it in her face.  She got up and walked out and it was apparent she was upset.  Right or wrong, I asked him to call her afterwards to apologize.  He did and she accepted his apology.

To date, Steve and I have still have not heard from anyone from the church about a formal declare.  Nor do we know what other untruths have been said about us in a goldenrod, which we understand is apparently available at Flag.

So, after being an upstat, loyal and dedicated Scientologist for 43 years, my journey has led me here.

It’s been very difficult at times to confront the lies I believed for so many years and the aberrations that exist within the church at the most senior level.

During this journey, I was so careful not to speak to my friends in any great depth of what I found. I was concerned it would enturbulate them and I didn’t want to create that effect.  While I was being so careful to protect those I loved, they disconnected from me without any thought or reason when they were told the church had declared me a suppressive person.

If any one of those people were asked what they thought of me a few months ago, they would have declared me not suppressive, but rather their sister and friend, whom they loved and cherished.  Yet with nary a question, they have disconnected because they were told we have gone to the “dark side” and are now suppressive people.

As I didn’t take the opportunity to speak candidly with friends before our declare, and had I known they would have disconnected from me so easily without even a question, let me say, here and now, what I should have said to them when we were still speaking.

To them I would say, honestly and truly, the only “dark side” that exists is at the senior level of management of the C of S and OSA.  The entheta embroiled in the activities of disconnection and declares becomes very apparent when one is on the other side and subjected to disconnection and being declared.

But, like an auditing session – where you blow chunks of charge and see the world as bright and shining – that’s what it’s like to be on the other side, where suppression is non-existent.  I’m talking of the suppression of being told who you can and can’t talk to, what you can and can’t read, what you can and can’t think, what you can and can’t do, where and how you spend your time and your money.  Now that we’re on the other side, that suppression doesn’t exist anymore. It’s the most wonderful freedom Steve and I have experienced in a long time.  The sad part is that until the suppression came off, we didn’t even realize how other-determined we had agreed to be.

We have personally experienced the off-policy regime that currently exists within the church.  The following are just a few specifics that speak for themselves.

1.  Steve and I have been declared but we never received any communication from the church about this status.  Instead, we have heard only rumors that we have been declared – with NO prior ethics or justice actions, or Committee of Evidence held as clearly defined in policy.

2.  Parishioners have disconnected from us, some who are directly in comm with the MAAs office, even though the policy on disconnection was cancelled in Ron’s Journal ‘68, (an LRH lecture of 1968).  The existence of this LRH reference is completely ignored by the church.  At the same time they have reported to the media that disconnection is not practiced.  Is it really okay for any person or entity to force you to disconnect from those you love, be it family or friend?  What kind of a church does this?

3.  We have been “crush-regged” for the IAS and for fundraising for Ideal Orgs.  Yet there are numerous LRH policy  references against fundraising, many of which can be found on http://www.friendsoflrh.org/COBvsLRH/.  Can anyone truly deny that crush regging exists?  We’ve all experienced it.  On many occasions I have been regged by my auditor after finishing up at the examiner, by my D of P, Board I/C and examiner.  Finishing a checksheet cycle in qual was usually accompanied by a reg cycle with the Cram Officer, Qual Consultant or MLO.  And, the bigger reg cycles usually included the D/ED and MAA, and oftentimes an FSM (other than our own) or an OL in town.

By no stretch of the imagination could we be considered wealthy.  But we gave when we could – $100k to the IAS and thousands more to library donations in addition to the hundreds of thousands for bridge cycles over the years.

But the reg cycle that took place in the last quarter of 2010 turned the corner for us.  After being detained for over 3 hours with a host of people, some using verbal force to try and close us to take out a $100k second mortgage on our home (to no avail), we realized we were no longer giving because we wanted to; it was now being demanded of us.  I was told the donations were necessary because the church was building a “war chest.”  The irony is that while one of LRH’s stated aims for Scientology is “a civilization without war,” money is being accumulated for a war, which flies in the face of LRH’s intention.  When I finally got to look at this, I asked myself, “What war is the church fighting?”  I know what I was told by the Church powers that be, but I didn’t feel I had enough data to really understand what I was told.  When I started looking, I saw the evidence to support the fact that, yes, this church IS at war.  But unfortunately, I found that the war is against anyone who dares to expose the off-policy injustices and crimes being perpetrated.

Debbie Cook is just one example.  There are many, many other individuals who have come forth with similar or worse stories of their own.  And these very well documented stories all live online.

The question you have to ask yourself is, “What if? What if any of these reports of abuse at the highest level of the Church are true?”  When I asked myself that question, I realized I could never stand proudly and look myself in the eye, if I didn’t do something to expose the dirty secrets that are very well-known to the rest of the world, but unknown to those on the inside who choose not to look.

To those still in the church, think of LRH’s essay on Personal Integrity.

“Personal integrity is knowing what you know. What you know is what you know and to have the courage to know and say what you have observed. And that is integrity and there is no other integrity.”

And, think of the Code of Honor which says: “Your self-determinism and your honor are more important than your immediate life.  Your integrity to yourself is more important than your body.”

Another important reference is an LRH quote from 9 Dec. 1952 PDC tape called “What’s Wrong With This Universe:” LRH says, “Man’s degradation always stems from his first desertion or breakage of really the Code of Honor.  He breaks the Code of Honor and after that he starts downhill and he gets worse and worse and worse and worse because his trust in himself is worse and therefore he can’t trust what his own energy is or anything else.”

If anything I’ve said resonates even to the slightest degree, then you owe it to yourself to do as LRH says, “Look, don’t listen.”  Even if you decide the data you find is not true for you, at least you’ve taken responsibility to “know.”  The other side of the coin is to not know, and that’s when you mess with your integrity.

Personal integrity is the one thing no one can ever take from you.  Only you can give it away.

While our SP declare was intended to negatively impact us, it’s actually been a very freeing action for both of us.

Our lives are good.  Steve and I feel very fortunate that we’ve never been solely dependent on Scientologists for friends, employees and clients.  We have a successful business with a wonderful staff and a great stable of clients.  And, thankfully our business is doing well.

I know many people who have experienced disconnection from the church are not as fortunate as we are in this way.  But, just as we have created close friendships and business relationships with people outside the church, from all walks of life, we know others can do this too in time.

At the end of the day, Steve and I have chosen to maintain our Code of Honor and our personal integrity.  We’re able to freely enjoy our family and friends, to keep our business flourishing and prospering, our clients happy and to live our lives to the fullest, all while contributing to the happiness and survival of others.

In summary, due to all that has happened and the off-policy regime that exists, we’re happy to announce our formal resignation and disconnection from the current C of S.

Love,

Marsha

297 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, black dianetics, Debbie Cook, disconnection, ethics, FLAG, healing, ias, independents, justice, l. ron hubbard, miscavige crimes, policy, regging, squirreling, the future, the Reformation, the world, Uncategorized

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