Tag Archives: l. ron hubbard

Pursuit of Understanding

Posted on October 9, 2013 by | 111 comments

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

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

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

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

1)      Tao Te Ching – Stephen Mitchell translation

2)      Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

3)      The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran

4)      The Four Agreements – Don Migel Ruiz

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

6)      Buddha’s Brain – Rick Hanson

7)      A Brief History of Everything – Ken Wilber

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

9)      A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

10)   The Biology of Belief – Bruce Lipton

11)   The  Unobservable Universe – Scott Tyson

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

13)   The Intention Experiment – Lynne McTaggart

14)   The Field – Lynne McTaggart

15)   Entangled Minds – Dean Radin

16)   The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra

17)   Quantum Enigma – Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner

18)   Biocentrism – Robert Lanza

19)   A Gradual Awakening.- Stephen Levine

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

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

111 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, Buddha, healing, Integral Theory, Ken Wilber, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, propaganda, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, tech, the future, the world, Uncategorized

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Scientology In A Nutshell

Posted on October 7, 2013 by | 223 comments

L. Ron Hubbard devised methods using Aristotelian and Newtonian two-value logic constructs that can and do sometimes create peak experiences of a non-dual, infinity-logic consciousness nature.   However, Hubbard also constructed a philosophy that is simultaneously inculcated into adherents that anchors them into two-valued logic thinking and living.  The philosophy includes as a senior element, an utilitarian ethics system.   The ethics system is made senior and precedent to the peak experience therapy techniques that otherwise could give glimpses of intuitive non-duality.  The utilitarianism of the ethics system is only apparent.  Its representation that it is based upon infinity-logic is false in practice.  It is corrupted by creating a central ‘utilitarian’ equation that always has what is good for the group (the Scientologists) weighing senior to all other considerations and thus is always considered what is best for all.  That fact makes the system, in fact and in practice, a two-value logic system.  What redounds to the benefit of the group is good; what does not benefit the group is evil.

The net result of Hubbard’s system was that he could create adherents who were given a taste of infinity-logic, non-dual reality, but were prohibited by his group ‘philosophy’ and ‘ethics’ from exercising or sustaining such reality.  The former serves as the glue that holds adherents to the latter.  The adherents could appreciate the possibility of intuition.  However, in practice only Ron Hubbard could exercise it consistently.  Against those constrictions of the Scientologists’ adopted philosophy and ethics, an inescapable result manifested.  To adherents Ron Hubbard was considered a special being from a higher universe as only he could naturally and consistently demonstrate intuitive powers. Scientologist were reduced to aspiring to be like Ron.  Ultimately that was an unattainable goal, when adherents were anchored to an ethics and philosophical system of thought predicated upon two-valued logic.

In effect, Scientologists who rise to the highest levels or otherwise adopt Scientology’s dictate that it is the only path to salvation, not only for the adherent but for all others, are trapped in a rather debilitating cognitive dissonance (the persistent attempt to hold two conflicting ideas in harmony).  On the one hand, they are thoroughly convinced that they are following a scientifically proven, utilitarian path that leads to transcendent consciousness.  On the other hand, in practice, they are prohibited from exercising transcendent, intuitive consciousness by their philosophy and ethics which are firmly grounded in two-valued logic.

223 Comments

Posted in ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, policy, Scientology, tech, What Is Wrong With Scientology?

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The ‘Truth’ Rundown

Posted on October 3, 2013 by | 314 comments

The ‘Truth Rundown’ has made the news recently.  It seems it was utilized by David Miscavige in an attempt to control the mind and communication of Leah Remini.  

Some may recall that the St Petersburg Times (now, Tampa Times) groundbreaking series in June 2009 was entitled “The Truth Rundown.”   I believe that David Miscavige was the unwitting author of that title.

After the church of Scientology was informed about the facts that I disclosed to the Times, the Times was assaulted with ‘wheelbarrows’ of material extracted from my preclear and ethics files from the church.   One item piqued the curiosity of the reporters.  It was an ‘apology’ I had written to David Miscavige in 1994.  Someone might be able to find it on the Tampa Times website – it was once posted there, and was published in the original series, but I could not find it.

I explained that it was the ‘end phenomena’ of the Truth Rundown.   The Truth Rundown is not over until such a written apology is extracted from the person being subjected to the rundown.  And that is by order, and policy, of L. Ron Hubbard.   That that is the end phenomena is evident from my ‘apology’ to Miscavige.  If you find it, you can see that that is the end phenomena by my words in  the very first paragraph.  After dozens of hours of being interrogated I report that the interrogator found no ‘black PR’ (negative propaganda) had been harbored or spread by me about Miscavige.  Nonetheless, I was required to write the ‘apology’ in order to terminate the seemingly unending interrogations.  As you can see in the ‘apology’ itself, I used a little creativity in order to achieve the ‘end phenomena.’

ORIGIN OF THE RUNDOWN

When Hubbard was on the lam from lawsuits and grand juries in the early 80’s, he was flooding the Int Base (Scientology’s 500 acre compound near Hemet, California) with floods of orders to prepare for his return.  For a complete account of that era, read Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.

Part of the orders to the Int Base included ensuring the several hundred personnel there were completely loyal to Hubbard, for security purposes.   All manner of security checking broke out in response.  That is, forced interrogations on the e-meter (a single component of a lie detector) testing the single-minded trustworthiness of adherents to Hubbard.

In the course of the mass security checking it was discovered that a long-term Sea Org member at the base had made a comment that he felt the technical training films directed by Hubbard were amateur in quality.  Of course, any intelligent person who has seen those original films would probably agree that this comment pretty well aligned with the truth.   David Miscavige certainly fit that category.  After all, he wound up spending on the order of one hundred million dollars to upgrade those films to ‘professional standards’ once Hubbard died.

But, Miscavige – and the rest of the Int Base staff – was more accomplished at keeping his true thoughts in order, and at the Int Base that means suppressed.    Miscavige, led the chorus of Int Base executives who were outraged that such black propaganda – that the films were amateur – was being spread about the Int Base.  When Hubbard received the reports, he responded with the terminated handling.  That would be the exact procedure for what would become packaged, marketed and delivered as ‘The Truth Rundown.’

BRAINWASHING

Here is the truth rundown in my own words:

  1.   Security check a subject until you find a thought that is negative – by Miscavige’s definition – that is harbored by the individual toward someone of importance in Scientology.
  2.   Ask, ‘just prior to having that thought, did you commit an overt (a harmful act)’?
  3.  Then do the full security checking procedure – which includes forced, complete confession.
  4.   Then interrogate for an ‘evil purpose’ that prompted the overt in the first place.
  5.   When you’ve done this procedure for some time the individual finally comes to some level of realization and is happy for having completed that auditing procedure and that his ‘negative’ thoughts are prompted by deep, inherent evil intentions that have been implanted into him millions of years ago.
  6. Continue this process for as long as it takes for the recipient to originate something kind about the person he is being interrogated about.  That is, after being forced to introvert on one’s own shortcomings for up to hundreds of hours, somewhere along the line the person recognizes the objective is to make him feel remorseful for having harbored less than kind thoughts about the person in question.
  7. The subject originates – or more than likely is prompted to – to ‘apologize’ to the person he harbored a less than kind thought about.

In my two decades of experience in administering and being subjected to the Truth Rundown, more often than not I observed it being used not to establish truth at all.  Instead, it was used to enforce trusthworthiness and loyalty to the liking of the higher-up the subject had an unkind thought toward.   Generally, what occurs is the subject becomes contrite and forgets what he thought of or objected to in the first place and rejoins the group as an enthusiastic member of the Stepford (or Truman Show) culture.

Is ‘brainwashing’ too harsh of a label for this?

314 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, cover up, David Miscavige, ethics, int base, l. ron hubbard, Leah Remini, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, policy, propaganda, Scientology, tech

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Forgiveness

Posted on October 1, 2013 by | 290 comments

What follows may shed light on why Jesus Christ is nullified in Scientology.

In The Gospel According To Jesus, Stephen Mitchell performs a rather competent analysis that shows Christ’s reported teachings for the most part were Middle Eastern iterations of what Lao Tzu and Siddhartha Gautama and other philosophers had communicated for four or five hundred years.   If there were distinctions to be made, they were based more upon emphasis than anything else.  His conclusion was that in essence what Jesus Christ most uniquely brought to the philosophical mix was the all-healing, all-powerful teaching of forgiveness.

Mitchell quoted from William Blake for support:

There is not one moral virtue that Jesus inculcated but Plato and Cicero did inculcate before him. What then did Christ inculcate?  Forgiveness of sins.  This alone is the gospel and this is the life and immortality brought to light by Jesus, even the covenant of Jehovah, which is this: if you forgive one another your trespasses, so shall Jehovah forgive you, that he himself may dwell among you.

By comparison, Scientology inculcates the following.

People attack Scientology; I never forget it, always even the score.

–          HCO Manual of Justice (1959)

On further living I found that only those who sought only peace were ever butchered.  The thousands of years of Jewish passivity earned them nothing but slaughter. 

–          Ethics, The Design Of (1969)

There was no Christ.*

–           Class VIII, lecture 10 (1968)

When I walked down the street and away from the church of Scientology for the last time, I had settled in my mind that I was going to forsake twenty-seven years of dedicated service in favor of experiencing the two most important human virtues.  Both of those virtues I found wanting – even prohibited –  in Scientology.  Forgiveness was one of them.

* the context of the quotation:

In R6 (a matrix implanted into every earth being’s mind 75 million years ago which dictates future behavior until ‘handled’ with Scientology) everybody is shown crucified. So is the psychiatrist shown crucified, although the psychiatrist is a dominant character and that’s how he gets away with what he gets away with. He electric shocks people. The medical doctor is not really represented in R6. It is only the surgeon. The surgeon is shown cutting bodies to pieces. That’s the right thing to do. Actually he shreds a body down to just raw meat down to a skeleton and the skeleton is in agony and then it too is chopped up. Anyway, every man is then shown to have been crucified, so don’t think that it’s an accident that this crucifixtion…they found out that this applied. Somebody, somewhere on this planet, back about six hundred BC, found some piece of R6. And I don’t know how they found it either by watching mad men or something but since that time they have used it and it became what is known as Christianity. The man on the cross – there was no Christ – but the man on the cross is shown as every man so of course each person seeing a crucified man has an immediate feeling of sympathy for this man.

290 Comments

Posted in Buddha, Jesus, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, Tao Te Ching

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Scientology Culture

Posted on September 28, 2013 by | 168 comments

Henry David Thoreau’s description of mid-nineteenth century American culture could serve as a fairly accurate description of Scientology culture today, in my opinion.

Thoreau:

It is remarkable that the highest intellectual mood which the world tolerates is the perception of the truth of the most ancient revelations, now in some respects out of date; but any direct revelation, any original thoughts, it hates like virtue.  The fathers and mothers of the town would rather hear the young man or young woman at their tables express reverence for some old statement of the truth than utter a direct revelation themselves.  They don’t want to have any prophets born into their families, – damn them!  So far as thinking is concerned, surely original thinking is the divinest thing. Rather we should reverently watch for the least motions, the least scintillations, of thought in this sluggish world, and men should run to and fro on the occasion more than at an earthquake.  We check and repress the divinity that stirs within us, to fall down and worship the divinity that is dead without us.  I go to see many a good man or good woman, so called, and utter freely that thought which alone it was given me to utter; but there was a man who lived a long, long time ago, and his name was Moses, and another whose name was Christ, and if your thought does not, or does not appear to, coincide with what they said, the good man or the good woman has no ears to hear you.  They think they love God!  It is only his old clothes, of which they make scarecrows for their children.  Where will they come nearer to God that in those very children?

168 Comments

Posted in healing, Integral Theory, Jesus, policy, quotations, Scientology, squirreling

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That’s As Real As It Gets

Posted on September 24, 2013 by | 55 comments

It don’t get no realer than that.

The world is seeing the actual aftermath of Scientology real time, thanks to Leah Remini.

As Jason Beghe noted on Tony Ortega’s blog, overcoming intense, directed negativity is not an exception for stars, it is the rule for those who dare to leave Scientology.

Jason also talks plain truth as to the provenance of the vengeful nature of the Scientology cult.

In my view, the moral of the ongoing story is:

Regain your positivity and contribute to the resurrection of others who are similarly situated.  Help one another to gain your own definition.

55 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, black dianetics, celebrities, David Miscavige, ethics, harassment, healing, jason beghe, justice, l. ron hubbard, legal threats, office of special affairs, policy, Scientology, Tao Te Ching

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Emotions IV: The Top Of The Tone Scale

Posted on September 6, 2013 by | 384 comments

references:

Real Emotions

Emotions II: Play Acting Scientologists

Emotions III: The Tone Scale

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

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

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

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

From Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior:

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

Mark (“Marty” Rathbun): Wow.

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

Mark: And you say that was in late ʼ85?

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

Mark: Like three months before he died.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Wow.  That would have been a…

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

Mark: Okay.

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

Mark: These are like 12-volt batteries?

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

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

Sarge: I’m not frying him!

Mark: Exactly.  I gotcha.

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

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

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

Mark:  He used it?

Sarge:  Yeah.

Mark:  LRH actually used it?

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

Mark:  You mean he actually tried…

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

Mark:  He didn’t get burnt?

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

Mark:  He probably got a good, hard jolt.

Sarge:  I think it scared him, or something.

Mark:  And it burned the plastic?

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

384 Comments

Posted in black dianetics, cover up, David Miscavige, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, ot 8, philosophy, propaganda, Scientology, tech, the Reformation, Uncategorized

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Scientology and Misogyny

Posted on August 14, 2013 by | 188 comments

Misogyny is described in Wikipedia as follows:

Misogyny /mɪ’sɒdʒɪni/ is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Misogyny can be manifested in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, denigration of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification of women. Misogyny has been characterised as a prominent feature of the mythologies of the ancient world as well as various religions. In addition, many influential Western philosophers have been described as misogynistic.

Misogyny within Scientology has been so prelavent that Wikipedia’s entry on the former includes a section on the latter:

Scientology

See also: Scientology and marriage

L. Ron Hubbard wrote the following passages in his 1965 book Scientology: A New Slant on Life:

“A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out.”

“The historian can peg the point where a society begins its sharpest decline at the instant when women begin to take part, on an equal footing with men, in political and business affairs, since this means that the men are decadent and the women are no longer women. This is not a sermon on the role or position of women; it is a statement of bald and basic fact.”

These have been criticised by Alan Scherstuhl of The Village Voice as expressions of hatred towards women. However, Baylor University professor Dr. J. Gordon Melton has written that Hubbard disregarded and abrogated much of his earlier views about women, which Melton views as merely echos of common prejudices at the time. Melton has also stated that the Church of Scientology welcomes both genders equally at all levels from leadership positions to auditing and so on since Scientologists view people as spiritual beings.

Whether misogynist views are implanted along with Scientology indoctrination is an interesting question.  It would seem they are – at least on some level – for those who take the fundamentalist position that Ron is ‘Source’, and it is illegal and punishable to state or infer or consider that anything he uttered or wrote is ‘background’, ‘no longer in use’, or ‘historical’.

Regardless, there is little question that the church of Scientology and its 30-year-tenured supreme leader David Miscavige are so misogynist in practice as to qualify as anachronistic, if not outside of the law and boundaries of common societal mores on the subject of the sexes.  We will shed more light on that subject in the near future.

188 Comments

Posted in David Miscavige, healing, l. ron hubbard, Orgs, philosophy, Scientology

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Ability

Posted on August 11, 2013 by | 80 comments

Related posts:

What We Do: Part 1

Graduating Scientology (What We Do: Part Two)

What We Do: Part Three

Ability

In my estimation one of L. Ron Hubbard’s most important contributions to spiritual psychotherapy was his guided approach to witnessing.  The Scientology Grades were for the most part developed in Ron’s attempt to build a smoother, more sure-fire route to ‘Clear’, which he defined as the ‘unrepressed, self-determined’ state of being that is not continuing to unwittingly create his or her own mental barriers.  Engram running of the early fifties was a grinding, messy affair.  Notwithstanding ample claims otherwise in Scientology publications and lectures, the results were inconsistent and many times catastrophic.  Fifteen years of experimentation and research led to the introduction of the Grade Chart.  It was the culmination of years of research on how to achieve ‘Clear’ more rapidly and certainly than with the uncertain, hit-and-miss Dianetics engram running method.

As Ron developed each Scientology grade, along the line he claimed that each, individually, was the answer to attaining Clear, quite independent of one another.  For example, Grade 0 is the Communication grade.   The book that serves as the backbone of Grade 0 technology – and the auditing (communication) process itself – is called Dianetics 55!   The book explains the entire universe within the sole construct of communication.   It posits that if one were perfectly ‘cleared’ on the subject of communication one would have no ‘case’ (the cumulative aberration of an individual) and thus would not only be Clear, but also OT (Operating Thetan, later ‘higher’ postulated state of being).

It is the same for Grade 1 (problems), Grade 2 (hostilities and sufferings), Grade 3 (change), and Grade 4 (fixed conditions and ability to do new things).   The statement of those goals, intentions, and results at each Grade were memorialized in his lectures along the way.  And at every level you can find Ron postulating – in fact, stating as factual certainty in his own inimitable style – that that grade is the answer to Clear and beyond.

During much of that research period Ron included a caveat about each of those levels being the answer in and of itself.  That is, that if an auditor were addressing the recipient-client from the perspective and with the intention of improving ability his postulated Clear and beyond could and would occur.  Addressing ability was starkly in contrast to the approach in Dianetics, which attacked disabilities.   This is well covered in the Ability Congress lectures.  There, Ron pronounces as ‘law’ that if an auditor approaches a client with the attitude of improving ability, he will get more ability. If he focuses on addressing disability, he will cause more disability.

As was most often the case in the history of Dianetics and Scientology research, the survival considerations of fighting enemies and having the wherewithal to do so and carry on affected the ability or willingness to test out the hypotheses and claims Ron made along the way.  It was a fast-moving train constantly receiving and firing volleys, while attempting to lay ever-more instant and consistent track.  Critics of Scientology and Hubbard will give more nefarious, ill-intentioned reasons for that omission of testing.  The reason why is of little import, because regardless of causation, the fact remains.

Along the way, the once stable foundation of the priority of addressing ability as opposed to disability was lost.  I have found through 35 years of practice that this loss was fatal.  Focusing on disability results in a never-ending ‘bridge’ requiring cult-like devotion and ultimately creating regression.  Focusing on ability brings greater ability and determinism.   There is one thing that perhaps best distinguishes how we practice from others we are aware of.  Our first stable foundation is that we audit and train toward ability.

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Posted in Casablanca, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Monique Banks Rathbun, Mosey Rathbun, philosophy, Scientology, texas, the future, Uncategorized

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Graduating Scientology

Posted on August 9, 2013 by | 131 comments

A lot of what I do has come to be characterized by my wife and me as assisting folks to graduate above Scientology.   It is somewhat of a unique notion.  In fact, the vast majority of people who devoted much time to Scientology ultimately go through the graduation process;  reconciling what they learned and gained, differentiating it from the entrapment mechanisms involved, and finding ways to integrate with society, and to evolve and transcend as a person.  As far as Scientology-understanding assistance along that route, resources have been slim.

To date there has really only been a couple of paths for Scientologists and ex-Scientologists; at least ones that are assisted by Scientologists or ex-Scientologists who understand something about the subject.  Both avenues are of the least resistance variety; the easy, least effective ways that ultimately don’t lead toward graduation.

First, one can cling to his firmly held Scientology religious beliefs and continue with the installed cognitive dissonance that entails.  He or she can be guided to pretend that it is all ‘over-there’ in the church and play the ‘I am the resurrection of the real Scientology’ game.   That ultimately leads to a sort of bitter, secluded ‘victorious Confederate soldier’ megalomania and melancholy.  Second, one can be guided to redirect the implanted Scientology need for an enemy and spend years in a state of suspended enturbulation, senselessly flailing at the church or Scientology itself.  The latter route leads to much the same state of mind and consciousness as the former.

I think both routes are infected by perhaps the most insidious virus one is inoculated with in participating in Scientology.   That is the need to have an enemy.  I have written about this before, e.g. Cults, Enemies and Shadows.  It is a decidedly ‘effect’ state of mind; a continual restimulation of a paranoia about the external ‘true’ cause of one’s travails.  It does not lead to growth, evolution and transcendence in any sense.  It is like remaining in High School year after year, failing to evolve past the angst of adolescence.

There has been a tremendous amount of research done on stages of human growth; cognitive, psychological, moral and more.   This is research done by way of learning more about biology, and observing and interviewing tens of thousands of people for over a century.   It is not ivory tower ‘psych’ chatter.   James Fowler thoroughly studied this huge body of work and spent many years observing an entirely new category of development consistent with those already done on moral, biological, and cognitive bases.  His work was on the stages of development of faith.  Please read this excerpt from his book on the subject,  Stages of Faith, concerning the observed stage of adolescence:

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

The Scientologist and ex-Scientologist adolescent pack mentality can be graduated from.  It opens up to view a wonderful horizon of possibilities and futures.  I think first and foremost it entails getting over the implanted need for enemies.

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Posted in healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, philosophy, psychs, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, the future, Uncategorized

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