Tag Archives: David Miscavige

Scientology: Past and Present

Posted on October 3, 2014 by | 336 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Scientology’s Worship Of The Past

Posted on October 1, 2014 by | 314 comments

Another excerpt from Deconstructing Scientology:

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

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

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

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

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Scientology Thought Control

Posted on September 26, 2014 by | 271 comments

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

Part II:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Scientology Indoctrination Abomination

Posted on September 19, 2014 by | 413 comments

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

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

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

——————

“THEORY

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

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

A thesis is a statement or assertion.

Antithesis:  opposing statement or assertion.

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

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

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

So you wind up with the person either:

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

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

————-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Scientology Golden Ages

Posted on September 9, 2014 by | 470 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Standard Scientology

Posted on August 17, 2014 by | 1,102 comments

Those who obsess on the motivator (object of victimhood attachment) about how David Miscavige is scientology’s problem because he keeps revising scientology are like dogs barking up the wrong tree.  There is a plain fact they are not coming to grips with.  Scientology will forever be altered, revised, re-revised, repackaged, re-organized, and re-compiled.  People on the outside have been at it as hard as scientology organization folk are on the inside.  It is inevitable.  That is not because misunderstood words, the reactive mind or body thetans will forever keep people confused and incapable of applying one-hundred percent scientology standard technology.   Nor will it be because of the unstated (except in confidential upper level secrets), but actually held, scientology belief that humankind can’t get it because humankind is inherently incapable of understanding.  Instead, scientology will continuously be revised because there is no such thing as standard scientology technology.  Like the substance of scientology itself, what constitutes the standard is wholly a subjective matter.

That fact is obvious if one can unlock himself from identifying with L. Ron Hubbard and his work and read the latter dispassionately.  That of course is impossible for those who vow from the outset of their studies – and stick with it all the way through – to the notion that Hubbard is infallible and examination of any comparative data is potentially lethal.  When one who can objectively study scientology does so – particularly when he has tested its methods through extensive practice – something becomes patently clear. That is by conservative estimate more than ninety (90) percent of everything Hubbard wrote and uttered on scientology and dianetics was about how wrong all those who attempted to apply it were.  It is mostly a running stream of consciousness  (albeit held together by a hard core, two-valued logic and persuasively conveyed by a convincing speaker and writer) record of assigning reasons why the promises in the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health were never realized and how they might yet be.   Highlighting that statement is Dianetics’ promise of full memory restoration in 1950 and Hubbard’s last ‘breakthrough’ (OT VIII) – as his 1986 dying declaration – promising to address the reason folk are apparently inherently amnesiacs.

Exacerbating the confusion is that many of the methods Ron educates his followers on as the mechanics intentionally used to control and damage the mind are simultaneously employed by him to do precisely that to his followers.  It is diabolical in that the follower having been educated by Ron on those mental entrapment techniques would then never guess they would be used on the follower.  You wind up with the curious phenomenon of apparently sincere people devoting their lives to vehemently defending their own entrapment.

There is another reason why the obvious is nearly impossible for a scientologist to see.  If there is one skill Hubbard had that perhaps outstripped all others it was his ability to always convincingly sound right while making others wrong.  That skill was exercised as consistently and as uncannily as a falling cat’s ability to land on its feet.  From before the publication of Dianetics, Ron Hubbard proved as immovable as a mountain on being criticized, corrected, or accepting even the most rational of input and advice. Just as consistently, he rained hell on anyone with the temerity to suggest holding his theories up to objective standards.   When he said or wrote something it was communicated convincingly and in an authoritative fashion.  For the next thirty-six years he evolved his subjects by trial and error.  But, the running track of that development was memorialized in a unique voice.  While the track altered and changed everything over and over because of unworkability found with that which was at first communicated as unalterable, absolute fact, the voice of those continuous alterations could admit of no error.  The matter is exacerbated by the fact that it is a ‘research and development’ record based exclusively on subjective standards.   With no objective scrutiny allowed and no accurate, honest assignation of error possible, all manner of erroneous yet authoritative data are driven home just as forcefully as correct ones.

The continuous backfilling that constitutes the bulk of scientology writing and lecturing is apparent in scientology training packs.  The student is not instructed simply on what he should do and why.  Instead, he reads bulletin after bulletin and listens to lecture after lecture of Hubbard talking about how people have misapplied or might misapply what he discovered.   The materials are a patchwork of Hubbard writings and lectures cherry-picked from different periods of time.  They make for a mix chock-full of contradictions.  Without having one’s intellectual honesty compromised by agreeing from the outset that Hubbard is infallible and all of his words are literal Gospel (that which is required in scientology training – along with the requirement to attribute every success to Ron and every failure to pesky humans and their inherent fallibility), all of this would be as obvious as the nose on your face.

Since all scientology courses begin with a warning that if anyone states that anything Hubbard wrote is ‘historical’, ‘background’, or ‘no longer used’ he will be promptly convicted of the crime TREASON, how does one cope with the miasma of contradictions?   Scientology instructors employ a ‘technology’ that has the student convince himself there are no contradictions.  It is so effective that scientology students do not graduate a course until they attest with certitude that everything makes consistent, perfect sense.  The firmness of that idea of certainty is verified by one component of a modern lie detector (the stress testing electropsychometer).  Highlighting this culture of hypocrisy, the cognitive dissonance creating course rooms – which eliminate any questioning, thinking or doubts – are called ‘Academies’ taken from the ancient Greek sites where liberal, critical philosophical thinking was once nurtured.

The net result of all this is that scientology is destined to always incite debate and internecine strife – no matter how enlightened and wise its leadership may be.  There can never be universal consensus on what constitutes ‘standard technology’ given the voice (noted above) scientology is written in and given its inalterable injunctions that that voice may not ever be questioned, interpreted, or clarified.   In a strict organizational setting, the debate goes on inside each individual’s head (until settled by an instilled, arrogant brand of cognitive dissonance) while attempting to keep up, lock-step of course, with management’s latest pronunciamentos on what constitutes ‘standard.’   In an independent setting it is a self-righteous war of words in which nobody can establish a clearly reasoned high ground.  To gain any traction in the debate requires one to progressively retreat further toward adopting Ron’s certain, swaggering and authoritative personality.

That is why bands of scientologists, whether in or out of the official organizations, will always rally around certain, swaggering, authoritative types of personalities – and promptly disperse when that catalyst is removed.   Sadly, but just as certainly, about the closest thing scientologists are going to find to that original L. Ron Hubbard package is David Miscavige.

About the only common denominator all brands of scientology share as something resembling a standard in practice is this: does the guy stay on board and continue paying?  If you have been led to believe that any viable brand of scientology is applying some more enlightened standard you have simply been led to believe yet another lie.  Why do you think that the only allegedly ‘expanding’ independent scientology outfits feature the addition of 47 advanced levels of auditing?  It is like Miscavige inventing the existence of OT Levels IX through XV and beyond, only seven times over.   What you get is power of choice in picking the duration of your addiction.

Those who make a living by trying to convince folks otherwise are profiting by playing on misplaced hopes.  It is a different harmonic of the same game that was played on people within.

There is a silver lining in all this.  In addition to whatever any individual may feel he might have picked up of use along the way in scientology,  there are a couple of assets that probably all scientologists can recognize they possess.  First, they can realize that they were well meaning and trusting to begin with; scientology doesn’t take very well on people without those virtues. Second, they can recognize that they have had the opportunity to hone the latter virtue (trust) by surviving the most intense graduate school of psychological hard knocks.

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Posted in David Miscavige, Deconstructing Scientology, Graduating from Scientology, healing, independents, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, tech, Uncategorized

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Back To The Middle

Posted on August 8, 2014 by | 194 comments

I take to heart the comments to my last post accusing me of casting too wide a net on the issue of whether one should trust a person wearing the scientology banner.  To the extent I offended some folks, I apologize.  So as to avoid such offense in the future I also provide here fair warning.  If the last post offended you, the next several probably will too.  If you want positive reinforcement for your faith, you will not find it here; but for possibly in the comments section where scientologists are free to provide their views with everyone else.  There is an evolution afoot that perhaps ought be shared with readers here.

Of late I have been asked by a number of journalists, documentarians and religious experts to explain any legitimate aspects of scientology.  Since the church responded to the revelations of the Truth Rundown series – and its progeny – by bunkering down and going incommunicado with such folks, I have sort of inherited some of their public affairs function by default. In the course of that odd twist of fate one repeated question became increasingly difficult for me to answer: whether I recommend scientology to the public at large.

My answer has evolved with my own experience and thoughts.  Ultimately, my answer is that I would not recommend to anyone that they get involved in scientology.  That is because having thoroughly deconstructed the subject I came to realize that its control and exploitation elements are so thoroughly embedded within the teachings of Hubbard as to make the journey more likely to be on-the-whole negative than positive.

Of course there are some stellar results that have been achieved by application of scientology.   But, those are contingent not only upon the person they are applied to but to a great extent by the instructors’ or counselors’ ability to inspire confidence.  In this context ‘confidence’ can be read almost synonymously with ‘faith.’   If – as in some spiritual and psychotherapeutic practices – that confidence or faith is acknowledged and imbued and nurtured for what it is within the client or supplicant, it more predictably leads toward salutary results.  But, scientology – adhered to as the ism it is – by design leads one in the opposite direction.

The raw statistics of scientology support my conclusion about whether it is worth the price one inevitably must pay for it (not just monetarily). David Miscavige (influenced, of course, by Hubbard advices on the subject) used to repeat ad nauseam to his public relations people whenever the media brought up a scientology abuse that they were to say words to the effect, ‘for every one who complains, I can bring you one thousand scientologists who swear by it.’  Having dispassionately ball-parked the numbers through thirty-five years of involvement with the subject,  I would say the truth is more on the order of for every one considering she was damaged from her experience  with scientology, scientology could probably match it with a die-hard true believer extolling its virtues.  Certainly, greater than 90% of people who have taken several courses or intensives (12 ½ hours each) of auditing in scientology have disconnected from scientology as an organization and membership body completely.   What percentage of them thought the good outweighed the bad or vice versa is anybody’s guess.  Given the extraordinary efforts scientology engages in to keep members aboard, and the draconian punishments it metes out upon any member or former member raising doubts or reservations, my guess is that the latter far outnumber the former.  Less than one thousand former members give much attention to on-line forums, blogs and other networks involving scientology at any given time.

By the numbers, it is apparent that scientologists are led to believe they and their subject are a lot more important than they in fact are to the world at large.

When I weigh that objective look against what scientology produces, both inside the official organizations and without, and with what I know about the depth of the embedded control and exploitation implantation within scientology, on balance I cannot with good conscious recommend it as a high percentage bet for anybody.

I have devoted the better part of six years to attempting to help the subject survive by elimination of its negative elements.  I concede that the experiment was a failure.  As much as independent scientologists accuse the organization (RTC , CSI, et al) of operating on judgmentalism, arrogance, utiltarianism over conscience, form over substance, and Hubbard-revisionism dressed up as Hubbard-literalism I have found all those shortcomings just as prevalent in the independent field as in the organizations. I hold no rancor for such folks – inside or out – to the extent they stay out of the grills of people who ask them to.  A dispassionate study traces those self-defeating qualities as stemming from Hubbard and his scientology works themselves.

I have found efforts over the past year and one half to help people graduate from the subject to not be very popular nor worth the effort that goes into doing so.  While some of what I have already worked on along that line may appear from time to time on this blog, the focus will veer more toward speaking to the general public – as opposed to the formers, the antis, and indies.  The blog continues to serve as a chronicle of my own journey guided by my conscience – for whatever that is worth – and you can expect it to tend toward speaking to the increasing percentage of audience who are unfamiliar with the subject.  It may well even tend toward unrelated subjects.  There are plenty other forums where positive reinforcement of existing anti, pro, indie, and ex scientology views can be had.  I hope for all of you that at some point in the not too distant future you will find your own comfortable, fulfilling middle path.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaqxX3agmp0

If you like that, you will probably love this:

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Posted in David Miscavige, Deconstructing Scientology, Graduating from Scientology, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Scientology, Uncategorized

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Why Scientologists Cannot Be Trusted

Posted on August 2, 2014 by | 436 comments

Max Hauri is the head of the only reportedly growing independent scientology operation in the world. It goes by the name of Ron’s Org.  That apparently stands for ‘L. Ron Hubbard’s organization.’

Max recently sent out via mass e-mail one of his secrets taken from Ron himself on how he manages to keep the faithful on board.  Here is the piece he e-mailed in full:

“No, a Scientologist—an auditor can pay the debt. A Clear can never pay the debt. A person who is just Clear and can t audit could never pay the debt.”

________________

A Scientologist can pay a Scientologist: he can co-audit with him. Sometimes Scientologists get known for paying their debts. And they owe every tradesman everyplace and they owe bills all over the place, and every finance company is ringing them up on the phone, but they are known amongst Scientologists for paying their debts. When you audit them, they give you some auditing in return. You get the idea? That’s the idea of a Scientologist’s debt. And nobody gets in trouble faster than somebody who has received fifteen hours of auditing and now it’s your turn and he never turns up for the appointment or he never makes it possible. People aren’t quite aware of why they start curling a lip at this auditor, you know, and saying, “Well, he should have some more training, really, you know. He needs to be shoved back into it again.” No, a Scientologist—an auditor can pay the debt. A Clear can never pay the debt. A person who is just Clear and can’t audit could never pay the debt.

Now, because he is sensible of being somewhat overwhelmed by the auditor, in terms of having more done for him than he could ever do back, his mood could vary. And it’s only fair that a Clear would be permitted to pay it back, one way or the other, on the auditor’s terms. So whatever he paid you in cash—which didn’t pay for it—you can always ask him, “Well, now you owe me a favor.” You know, something on this order and just let it stand. Or he can pay you back. He can go out and make the society more decent to live in.

That’s a sensible way of that. But he’d have to become an auditor to do it. You get the idea?

Now, it’s true that individuals who engage in the marts of trade, in better condition, people who are handling political spheres of one kind of another have their uses. And in such a case where somebody is in such an area, you can ask to be paid back, not a favor in that area, which is a finite favor of, “Get this piece of paper stamped for me,” or something like that, but it’d have to be a fairly large favor, or this fellow ever afterwards is enslaved to some degree.

And if you ever audited somebody like a prime minister or president, or something like that, why, people over at the Treasury keep trying to write you out checks for astronomical sums that couldn’t be added up down at the Greenwich Observatory, so forth, say, “Well, what are you trying to do, pay for the auditing? Ho-ho. Boy, aren’t you ambitious! Oh, well, send it down to my bank manager. He’ll know what to do with it, I suppose. Now we’ll talk about paying for the auditing. You owe me a favor.” And it’d be a favor something like, well, govern the empire well, or something like that. See, it’d have to be in those terms of human relationships. And that’s about the only way a fellow could get paid.

L. RON HUBBARD, Founder

5th London ACC: The Skill of an Auditor, Part I, 11 November 1958

I noted in a post last year how L. Ron Hubbard corrupted the Rogerian client-centered therapy he borrowed from without credit.  The first corruption was the requirement that the client had to be a member in order to gain from the experience (see On Becoming A Person).  With membership comes a lot of control mechanisms that are antithetical to the self-actualization scientology sells the promise of attaining.  (see Identification and Membership).  Something that I never explained about these corruptions is explained very eloquently by Hubbard himself in the passage above.   That is with membership – even after paying exorbitant fees for scientology counseling – comes a continuing obligation.   Or as Hubbard more bluntly puts it ‘a debt’.

I have written before on how the church of scientology uses those created debts by application of dozens more Hubbard policies on how to dominate society and shudder into silence and weakness those who scientology has abused and who then complain.  Office of Special Affairs (OSA, Church of Scientology International’s – CSI’s – intelligence, dirty tricks and propaganda agency) has maintained, expanded and used a massive data base called the ‘power comm lines data base.’  It is continuously fed information culled from ethics files, auditing files, and various reports on communication lines scientology discovers its members maintain.   So when trouble brews in an area for scientology, the data base is consulted and the scientologist who the data base denotes as knowing people who might be influential in the matter are deployed to ‘repay the debt’ Ron refers to in the reference above.  And the scientologist invariably does whatever favor is asked, for not to would be to subject oneself to what Ron describes as “or this fellow ever afterwards is enslaved to some degree.”

With scientology’s dwindling membership, and growing reserves, a lot of this type of activity is more directly simply paid for.  See for example Corporate Scientology Mercenary,  Scientology Inc.’s Lobbying Machine, , Scientology Inc’s Secular Invasion of Washington D.C., David Miscavige The Cheater, Monique Rathbun vs David Miscavige By the Numbers.  But, the scientologists’ communication lines are still constantly being combed and utilized.  The smiley, laser-intentioned scientology celebrities are some of the most chronic and blatant – and destructive of justice and social order – offending operatives.

I am not suggesting that Max and Ron’s Org are going to these lengths.  But, certainly Max and Ron’s Org are running a cult that impresses upon its members a firm belief that they are forever in Ron’s (via Ron’s Org’s) debt.  The moment a continuing debt is entered into the psychotherapy equation, it leaves the realm of therapy and enters the zone of mind control.  Nonetheless, I thank Max for passing along his secrets of success from Ron Hubbard.  It has opened my eyes to the fact that apparently scientology can only survive when it creates members who believe they are forever in debt – and thus become never-ending sources of income and deployable agents against societal interests as they might impact scientology.

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Posted in David Miscavige, Deconstructing Scientology, Graduating from Scientology, independents, l. ron hubbard, monique rathbun, office of special affairs, policy, politics, Scientology, tech, Uncategorized

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Scientology: A Monotheistic Religion

Posted on July 23, 2014 by | 664 comments

Apparently, only one of the four traditional biblical Gospels relates inarguably that Jesus Christ was God temporarily visiting earth.  The book of Luke could and has been interpreted to say that Jesus was an extraordinary man who ascended – or was ascended – from humble beginnings to develop the message that humankind has found so inspiring for 2000 years.  Only the Gospel popularly known as that related by John was definitive about Jesus’ other-worldly provenance.  As noted by religious scholar and bestselling author Elaine Pagels in her book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas:

“Unlike Luke, who depicts Jesus as a man raised to divine status, John, as does the hymn Paul quotes, pictures him instead as a divine being who descended to earth – temporarily – to take on human form.”

Of course it is understood that all of the Gospels were written up to a century after Jesus strode the earth, all reporting their own interpretations of words Jesus purportedly spoke and deeds he had carried out long before.  In the past one-hundred and twenty years, more significant purported Gospels have been discovered – including those of Thomas and Mary Magdalene.  Those discoveries have added to the rich diversity of opinions, interpretations, and faiths of Christianity.  That includes the idea that Jesus communicated that every human potentially had within themselves the same abilities and divinity as Jesus.

In scientology no such plurality of interpretation is open to the worshipper.   That is because scientology’s messiah made it clear himself on more than one occasion that he did not ascend from humble beginnings, or any earthly beginnings at all, to develop a message with which to lift humanity.  Instead, scientology’s author L. Ron Hubbard explicitly stated that he descended to earth in human form in order to deliver its people from evil. He was so dead serious about being taken literally – and not interpreted – that he instituted penalties for any interpretation of his words whatsoever that were tantamount to permanent spiritual death.  And if that did not shut up the purveyors of interpretations, such heretics were to be mercilessly harassed to the point of personal and familial ruin. He created a corporate structure which directed hundreds of millions of dollars toward etching his words on stainless steel plates, sealing them in titanium capsules and placing them in vaults in deep veins of granite so that those words could never be altered.

One example of those sacred words comes from Ron’s Journal 1968:

“And please for my sake, don’t forget one thing, I am your friend. I am not from this planet. I am trying to do my best to do a job to bring tolerance and humanity to this planet in a very materialistic and often cruel age.”

That was the same year that Hubbard delivered scientology’s most sacred, secret and advanced liturgy – the Class VIII Course. On the course ‘deans of scientology’ were created by learning from Hubbard that humankind could not be brought to ‘respond to reason.’   That is why he commanded the scientology deans that  “You are the people the planet obeys. You are the people who own the planet.”  Whether any dean of scientology – or the group collectively – ever lived up to those dictates, two things remain scripturally clear (and will remain so apparently forever) from Hubbard’s apex year of discovery.  Those are, a) there is only one God in scientology, and b) the adherent will believe it because that God has commanded that it will never be appreciated by appeal to reason.

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Posted in Deconstructing Scientology, Graduating from Scientology, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, Scientology

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Australia’s 60 Minutes

Posted on March 23, 2014 by | 75 comments

Welcome to all the folks from Australia who have apparently been visiting this blog (visit counter just went off the charts) in the minutes since the 60 Minutes piece ran there.  If you are interested in learning more about Scientology you may want to visit the right hand column of the home page of this blog.  There are links to a number of books, sites, and other informative media pieces that have run in the past couple years.  There is also a search feature where you can explore the more than 1,100 articles published on this site.  For those not in Australia, I am informed that the show will appear at this link momentarily, 60 Minutes Australia.  Contrary to scientology’s published response to this show, like virtually all other media that have interviewed us Sixty Minutes approached us to ask for the interviews.

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