Next in the ongoing series of essays by Terra Cognita. See earlier posts here: Auditing: a PC’s Quest for the Holy Grail, The Knowledge Report, Integrity, The Almighty Stat, The Reg, The Horrors of Wordclearing, Why Scientologists Don’t FSM, Respect, The Survival Rundown – The Latest Scam, Communication in Scientology… Or Not, Am I Still A Thetan?, To Be Or Not To Be, An Evaluation of Scientology, Fear: That Which Drives Scientology and Justification and Rationalization.
Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time there was a Treasury Secretary in a Class 5 Org located somewhere in the United States. She’d taken a couple of accounting classes in college and had always been good with math and figures. All the bills got paid on time and the audits were always up-to-date. She liked working with numbers and he was good at her job.
Which wasn’t necessarily what was always needed and wanted.
Off to Flag
She hadn’t started out in Treasury. Just after joining staff she’d been flown to Flag for training as an Ethics Officer but while there, had ended up doing a Hard TR’s course followed by the full HAS hat.
A fellow staff member from her org had been mired there for two years when she arrived. She was supposed to have been gone a month or two. She was determined not to become one of the forgotten outer-org souls who’d been stuck forever doing pilot course after pilot course. She lowered her head and powered through her materials in two months. It didn’t hurt that she had a boyfriend waiting for her back home.
Home
She liked being the EO when she got back. She liked helping people—mostly just people having difficulties on the Second Dynamic or with some family member who didn’t fully understand the greatness of Scientology. She’d studied about justice actions while at Flag, but they didn’t seem to apply at her org. She worked hard and people liked her. Soon she got promoted and took to heart, LRH’s words “The HAS makes the Org.”
Recruiting wasn’t hard in those days. The course rooms were full of good people and signing up two to four new staff every month was the norm. Today, those kinds of stats are unheard of. Meanwhile, her facility for hiring didn’t go unnoticed by her seniors at St Hill.
Another Brick Removed
Every few days, seniors from up-lines would grill her on how she was going to get her stats up. According to them, she was in Danger, if not Liability. She pointed out that by graphing her stats by the month, she was actually in affluence, if not power. Didn’t matter. They didn’t care. She was sacked. There was no investigation. No Bof I. No hearing. Just sacked.
Was the HAS replaced—the person entrusted with “making the org?” Nope.
Zen and the Art of Numbers Riding
Treasury was a respite from the demands of Division 1. She could sit in her office for hours, handling receipts and invoices and adding up long columns of numbers all by herself. Accounting made sense. Two plus two always equaled four. There was something almost Zen-like about arriving at answers which were perfect and indisputable.
Not having to deal with the public and the crazy mad Sea Org members from St Hill was a relief. While it lasted.
The Dreaded Mission
She’d grown to loathe Sea Org Missions during her time in HCO. Typically, two or three uniformed officers would swoop into town, pretend to get “tech in,” and leave in the dead of night—with the org more unstable than before they’d arrived. More often than not, these were recruiting missions.
They’d been trained well in convincing trusting teens and twenty-something’s that joining the Sea Org was the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics and that there was no greater purpose in the universe. Commonly, they’d recruit some poor Div 6 neophyte, instant-hat him, and throw him onto post as a replacement for the fully-hatted, veteran staff member they were stealing. Confusion and disorder would ensue. The org was one step closer to oblivion.
KR’s and protests on the off-policy and injustice of these missions fell on deaf ears.
Fading Zen
Just when everything was running smoothly in Treasury, some “important person” up lines decided that this small org needed an FBO—a Flag Banking Officer. Right now. An FBO is supposed to make sure an org is following standard financial policy and that Management receives their cut of the weekly income. Shortly, a mission was fired off to remedy the “problem.”
As usual, they grabbed some unsuspecting Div 6 soul whose entire experience with Scientology consisted of three or four trips to the Reg and two weeks on the Comm Course. Let’s call him Larry.
Two days later, Larry was posted as the FBO. And suddenly, our Treasury Secretary had a new “senior.”
Larry knew next to nothing about how a Scientology organization worked, much less the workings of Division 3, Treasury. He knew little about finance and the words Staff Status 0 weren’t part of his vocabulary.
This didn’t stop his seniors at Management, though, from demanding more and more from him. And in turn, Larry demanding more and more from the Treas Sec. Inane, completely impossible orders began to flow into Treasury.
Peace and tranquility had been good while it lasted.
The Purloined Org
One afternoon, a few weeks after his posting, Larry sauntered into the Treas Sec’s office, dug his hands into his pockets, and rocked side to side on his feet. Something about the rug seemed to interest him.
“Hey, Larry, what’s up?” the secretary asked.
“I ah…I need to see the check books,” Larry replied.
“What for?”
“I need to write some checks.”
All seven or eight check books were locked up in a filing cabinet next to the Treas Sec’s desk. There was a Main account; a Book account; a Reserve account; an FSM account, a Building account, to name five.
“Why do you need to write these checks, Larry?” the Treas Sec asked.
“We’ve been ordered to send some money to the Guardian’s Office.”
“How much?”
“Well…like all of it.”
“You’re kidding. All of it?”
“Yeah, like all the money from all the accounts. My senior ordered me to get it done. So like I need access to the check books.” Before they’d left, the Mission that had posted Larry made sure he was a signatory on all the accounts.
The Treas Sec stared at Larry with wide eyes. “Let me get this straight. You want to take all the money from all the accounts and send it to the GO?”
“That’s right. We’re behind on our payments and stuff like that, so like we owe em the money.”
“No, Larry. We don’t. This is our money and nobody else’s.”
“Well, whose ever it is, we gotta send the money. Like it’s an order. And that’s just the way it is.”
“Sorry, not happening. No way in hell.”
Larry took a big breath and let it out. “Listen, I’m ordering you, man. And I’m your senior. So unlock the fuckin’ filing cabinet. Or give me the key and I’ll do it myself. Like now.”
The Treas Sec locked eyes with Larry and shook his head. “No,” she said. (Per policy, a good Treas Sec was good at saying “no.”) “Never in a million years.”
“Well…” Larry said, “then I’m gonna report you.”
“Do what you gotta do but I’m not unlocking the filing cabinet and giving you the check books.”
Larry stormed out of the office.
She Should Have Known
The Treas Sec walked into the org the next afternoon to find her office had been broken into, the filing cabinet had been pried open with a crow bar, and all the check books were missing. A quick call to the bank confirmed that the Org was dead broke—one hundred percent penniless.
Life in Treasury was about to get fun.
Never Enough Beans
Even on the best of weeks, setting aside sufficient money for rent, bills, Sea Org reserves, and staff pay was a task better suited to a magician. More often than not, staff got nothing (at least everyone moonlighted and had a roof over their heads).
Prior to Thursday at two each week, the Treas Sec would formulate an FP—financial plan—to submit to the Executive Council (made up of the three highest ranking officers in the org). The Exec council was in charge of the FP and responsible for approving all allocation of funds. Since they knew little about finances—or rather chose not to involve themselves—they would rubber stamp the recommendation from Treasury.
Every week the Treas Sec would struggle with what to pay, for there was never enough money to cover all the expenses. If she paid the rent and the utilities, then Sea Org reserves and org staff got stiffed. If she paid Sea Org reserves, she risked having the power and phones shut off and breaking the lease on their building. Since all the org’s money had been stolen recently, the task had become especially challenging.
The Treas Sec believed that dead phones and studying by candlelight was scary enough, but breaking the lease and being evicted would have been the ultimate church nightmare. The subsequent PR would have been horrific, and so she always made sure she first covered the rent and utilities. The Exec Council always approved her FP but apparently there were those up lines who didn’t see the logic.
Summoned
After ten weeks of not paying Sea Org Reserves, a Committee of Evidence was called on the Treas Sec and she was summoned to St Hill. There were no other interested parties and the Exec Council avoided her like she had the plague. She arrived at St Hill a few days later armed with what she naively thought were reasonable arguments. Not only had she studied every HCOPL on finance, she was a Flag-trained HAS and knew her policy.
Including the famous one where Ron talked about “heads on pikes.”
Courts and Kangaroos
The Treas Sec explained to the three young members of the committee that there were only so many beans to play with, and after paying the rent and the bills there was literally nothing left. There was no money for building upkeep and the staff weren’t getting paid, either. She posed the question to the committee: Which was worse, a Scientology church getting evicted or putting off paying Sea Org reserves?
Their answer: “YOU should have just made more money.” Period. End of discussion. End of Comm Ev.
The Treas Sec was stripped of all her certs, put in a lower condition, and ordered not to work on any finance lines ever again. They told her to be thankful she hadn’t been declared.
Finale
Since nobody else in the org had the faintest idea of how to handle bills, mock up an FP, or audit the accounts, the defrocked Treas Sec continued her Div 3 duties while indoctrinating new people at her new post in Div 6. Nobody seemed too concerned.
Some months later, just short of her contract expiring, the Deputy Director told her that from now on, if her stats weren’t up for the week, she had to work what amounted to a combined Day and Foundation schedule. She said that if she refused—“had other fish to fry”—she could just leave right then and there. Making a decision didn’t take long. Her aura had been darkening for months and it was only a matter of time before she snapped and was declared once and for all. She gathered up her things and left. Freeloader debt be damned.
Still not Declared,
Terra Cognita
Sounds a lot like how stuff goes in my hometown, which, all things said, probably is echoed in every org. And that was THEN – GO era! It’s worse now. OSA is the GO. And David Miscavige is more of a tyrant than LRH ever was. I pity the people behind the iron curtain, investing their time, money and energy toward appeasing a capricious Management (the tell-tale sign of being run by an incompetent sociopath).
That story just about sums up the total insanity that a Scientology org or mission can be.
I am new to learning about Scientology and the psychology behind it. This blog is fantastic but I am keen to get some more recommendations on other good blogs to subscribe to that discuss life in Scientologist churches. Thanks!
Great story, axactly as most scn ones. People forced NOT to ever apply the most insane or most correct policxies, “missionaires” with not the least competence coming from above or from Flag or continental directions, stupidified HCOs trying to get stats up after the end of hollidays, and many many staffs -even in very cool orgs – forced to keep false stats of their weekly production, or differ good stats of one week to the bext so as to appear in “Normal”..
Hubbard was insane, he did not understand anything but his own check, so every highest execs WWide were more or less forced to do the same as the lowest staffs in tghe smallest orgs: that how sometimes, even them were declared, their orgs or FOLO put in Confusion cdn, and so forth. My own brother was FBO France for some time, and was putting KRs almost evey day for months, with no results, he had a full cabinet of such reports having gotten no action.
All this foolishness directly made – MADE – by the main motivation of LTH: money, for power. He has bere cared of anyone, onclusion his own wives, kids, staffs, friends, as long as their activities helped him.
I am sorry Roger, the story told by TC tell about gross misapplications of policy by stupids robotics and evils sea org mermbers. Hubbard wrote the policies, the finance policies which are making sense and works as this treasury sec applied. So why would Hubbard be on the side of crazy assholes who are not applying his recommandation? Being off policy makes more money? So why the hell Hubbard wrote all of that?
It’s pretty much illogical. I don’t understand the total hatred for Hubbard and the subject of scientology when the responsibility lies on complete morons and sociopaths like Miscavige.
Nope, FG. Correct WHO = LRH.
I was Class V Org staff for 18 years.
You need to get into the FEBC tapes and then you will understand why they were labeled “confidential” and remained carefully guarded. (Flag Orders and FEBC were part of the “Hidden Data Line” that Ron assured us did not exist.) Those missionaires were operating to the letter for the most part, on their LRH policy. The Class V Treas Secs were operating on their OEC Vol 3.
In any event, the LRH EDs (Blue-on-White) contain examples of LRH sacking entire teams of Execs WW for not having income stats up.
The Hidden Data Line was part and parcel of the org that Ron built. It takes some time and effort once being out, to connect these dots, and then the betrayal of it all finally begins to sink in.
Quite correct Watchful Navigator. Hubbard set up the insane management system. He sanctioned the pillaging of missions and the shooting of the Mission Holders. He tried to kill the man who saved his life (Mayo) because he was too influential in scientology for El Con’s ego to tolerate. He ordered insane monthly price increases. He oversaw all of it.
Ron Bots will NEVER hold the criminally insane El Con responsible for his acts. To do that would shatter their delusory world they live in and cling to.
I just found your post.Thank you for a very excellent comment on Hidden Data.I agree that Ron =Source especially before dm,having been in Sea Org in the 70s,yes Ron started the ball crashing down and his Tech was all.Mix in crazy Ethics etc and what a stew ensues!❤️
Why do I hate Hubbard and everything he stands for?
1) He said that LGBTs have to adhere to the heteronormative and “raise their tone” or they should be eliminated, quietly and without sorrow. Pisses me off as a gay man.
2) He demonized psychiatry and psych drugs. Pisses me off as someone who’s benefitted from psych drugs and takes them daily.
3) Said that he earned 27 medals in WWII when his service record states that he earned four, most of those given as general service awards rather than as individual honors. Pisses me off as a US Army veteran (who, by the way, won five medals while in service).
4) Faked his credentials to state he was a nuclear physicist, then used those credentials to create the harmful Putrif and push it, first as an anti-radiation scam, then as something to clear drugs out of your system (anyone who’s ever taken a biochemistry or physiology course, like me, knows the Putrif doesn’t work). Pisses me off as someone who busted his ass to earn a degree in physics.
So I have good, solid reasons to loathe Hubbard. And if you defend him, then I have a problem with you too.
IMHO Terra deserves a link in the top menu like Regraded Being already has. Can that be done?
I would like to sit down with this Treas Sec..and offer affirmations and commiseration and congratulations.
I track with every single bit of this. Every single bit rings 100% true and reminds me of 20 odd years of BS. I’m so glad she’s GONE.
EVERY SO mission into our org wreaked havoc and destruction. Declaring people, ripping them off post, musical chairs, stealing right off post, and recruiting to the “Higher Purpose”. All with some mysterious impunity due to secret “mission orders and FOs” which ‘made it OK’. SO missions meant wholesale slaughter. I once saw all of tech, qual, and the exec branch declared SP.
As a very well trained person in Admin, this was unfathomable and often it was my head that flew as I protested the illegal actions. I was demoted, ripped off post, given courts, hearings, B of I, Non-Enturb Order, Comm Eved, and physically escorted out of the org – each time with high trending stats. My crime? Disagreeing with blatant criminality by SO members.
Illegal orders trumped and ruled.
I used to be glad for my training, as even though shit ruled the day, at least “I knew how things were supposed to be”. Now, I see that every single bit of Ron L. Hubbard just brainwashed me and trapped me.
No more.
We’re free.
We’re done.
Fuck ’em.
Loved your post.I did and got the same treatment or very similar to you,except I did my protesting to Ethics and The Guardian’s Office.As you know so well wether in SO or on Staff the mighty SO ruled from a very unstable reckless perch.I did not really see this until years and years after I blew.Thank you for posting here.❤️
I thank you for your comment.I too feel sad that what I thought might have changed for the better,from what I went through years ago,has only gotten worse.I so hope all staff & SO still in walk out en mass one day or night.Then we will see where dm scurries away to.If only to both images!Good to meet you.❤️
Hi, Ann B. Wouldn’t that be a lovely exodus, with staff after staff simply standing up, saying nothing and walking out? (I’m sure DM already has his destination set up, taking all the funds with him. And, in doing so, he will become targeted by folks more than willing to do dreadful things to him in order to get those funds. All the hired body guard thugs in the world will not save his sorry ass.
So good to read your comment.I know exactly what you wrote,I just sent a post saying each person approaches the idea of leaving cos differently.For me that is true.But if everyone quietly left all at once ,oh that would be so so amazing.Sure dm would flee but as you so rightly point out.his ass will be less than grass!I still love reading your posts.❤️❤️
Hi guys….In my experience, I noticed that execs try to degrade you if they get a chance to have contact with you while you are leaving. I was not SO but was in LA training to staff for the first time. I got sick of the pricks real quick and I left. I decided that I would not give them a chance to say another word to me and have held that position. I was sickened by what I experienced in LA and what I saw other people going through. The humiliation they seemed to enjoy bestowing on people that had given up so much just to be there. Putting names up on a bulletin board to shame people that were being “human”. Yes, definitely INSANE.
I’ll say it again. The Sea Org may be modeled on the U.S. Navy but functions more like the Hitler Youth. While I knew some real sweet people in the SO, I also encountered some real assholes. Some of these people treated LRH as if he were God! Talk about ‘Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil’ !
The majority of the people I knew in the SO were very good people but then so were the people I knew in the HITLER YOUTH! One of my juniors on the Freewinds was actually in the Hitler Youth toward the end of the war. He was a nice person but his wife acted (And probably was) in the Gestapo. ) I dont know if he is still alive today.
So, bill. Are you defending the SO and the Hitler Youth?
Not at all. My point is that they are similar. I was agreeing with the person who made the comment. They are both criminal operations.
I don’t recall CCNashville being that crazy but I still would not go back on staff.
Typical staff nightmare.
It absolutely sucks being on staff. I know it did for me when I was on staff in Hawai’i. Imagine being in paradise and it still sucked!
Terra Cognita, I don’t know which should get the biggest acknowledgement: your telling of a story that epitomizes the mentality of the CoS – or how well you told it. Very professional piece of writing.
Scientologists all suffer from mental illnesses that were self induced…
wow. Gracias, marildi!
My pleasure. 🙂
A more or less typical story, I’d say. Which makes it all the more incredible. The top-down management system implemented by the COS had much to do with DM’s political and organizational manipulations that eventually elevated him to COB. It infected and ultimately destroyed the missions and permanently crippled the orgs. Though it’s still a story in progress, it has all the epic elements of Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” or “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William Shirer. Much smaller in scale, to be sure, but for those that survived and remember, just as dramatic.
LMAO Murry. The top down management system was 100% El Cons. You are either 1) NOT experienced with the history of the CoS. 2) Completely delusional or 3) a Ron bot apologist.
Wasn’t one of L. Fraud’s greatest indictments of the Marcabs the fact that they were neurotically bureaucratic? Seems like someone took on someone’s valence.
Of course, Scientology had no chance when it came to management. L. Fraud’s only experience of management was in the Navy. Anyone who’s ever been in any branch of the US military can tell you that it’s a complete nightmare in terms of bureaucracy. This is the same military, in the same era, that Joseph Heller wrote about in Catch-22. Thus, it’s no surprise that Scientology is like this. The problem with Scientology is that, in bureaucracy, size matters. The US military branches are huge, which helps disguise some of the insanity. Concentrate the bureaucracy to its essence and then put it into something the size of Scientology, and the whole organization becomes psychotic.
Per my reading and memory of Scientology stuff, Hubbard admitted quite openly in 1951, around the time of SOS that he had no idea how to manage a “3rd Dynamic.” It was a wild card type scenario or stated something similar to that. He wasn’t wrong as it so pans out but still went ahead and wrote and lectured heaps about out it for the next 30 years. Military management doesn’t work out in the business world. Scientology eventually fell into a type of financial dictatorship with the spin of having a pseudo military facade on top of religious fervor – a rather unique but mind numbing situation for real people to grasp, let alone survive in (you can’t!). Just ripe for the picking by someone like Miscavige or an unscrupulous lawyer/administrative/business type thug imo. If it wasn’t him it would have been someone of equal blockheadingness.
Excuse me Espi, But Being a Navy vet and having been on four air bases and two aircraft carriers I can say that the SO is nothing like the Navy. Navy aviation is a no bullshit operation. No arbitrary knee-jerk rules or decisions. The tech has been refined to a very high degree preventing unnecessary death.But some up line asshole decided to launch and recover aircraft at night in the middle of a typhoon and a pilot friend of mine hit the after brow causing the F11-F to break in half on impact. The engine broke as well and flames shot out the side of it as it slid down the deck and went overboard.
Escort destroyers with searchlights combed the area in pitch black but didn’t find him. They found his helmet in the morning light but his head was not in it.If someone goes overboard the Navy goes to great efforts to recover them. Unlike the SO the navy would slam you in the brig for throwing someone over board.
I liked the Navy because the rules were known, understood and applied. Any thing else, we could end up swimming.
We didn’t have pretend officers stomping around like juvenile storm troopers, yelling and dramatizing.
We put in eighteen hour days for weeks on end but we got to sleep and the food was great.
Enlisted and officers are treated with mutual respect. In contrast the SO was just fuckin crazy an I quietly left after four months of that nonsense.
You are so right Ron D. They couldn’t organize a kite flying event without screwing it up.
The SO is more like the Keystone cops running a brothel where sex is not allowed and they steal all the John’s money, make them write success stories before they let them go and then disconnect their spouse and children when they get home. That’s the Sea Org.
Yep, the army was similar. If you knew the rules and weren’t stupid about them the system looks after you. Stupid orders do come down the line occasionally and can cost but overall the experience in the chain of command is a very good filtering system of stupidity. You always feel part of a team and the guy next to you really means something.
On Scientology staff… geezers! Frankly I felt embarrassed to be a member of that group and still kick myself for being in it so long. But we’ve all got skeletons rattling around somewhere.
Nothing good comes from being a staff member, except maybe the relief to be free of it.
Just read a piece regarding the US military’s financial condition. They recently “misplaced” $2 billion and have no idea where it went. Their financial reporting is so obtuse that every year they beg off having to make their financial report to Congress (REQUIRED BY LAW) saying they can’t figure it out.
Two horror story’s
was where the FBO was sent on a mission and when he came back
the ORG was sold and the ED bought a car.
Then Stevens Creek org De Dinging which increased income by 80 X and harbinger of the Financial Police
.
David Miscavige keeps the money flowing which will be a book someday, sooner the better
and make the old days look like kindergarten play time
I remember org staff being sent away for training and being promised weekly stipends (probably in the tiny $20 range) — stipends that never came after promises each week.
The staff had to resort to sleeping in packs on floors of sympathetic church members who had housing but who eventually had to kick them out, or the staff took to sneaking into buildings at night to sleep on tables, or even considering the best bushes in a park. They took to begging for money for food or just food. Some were essentially rendered homeless and weren’t able to bath unless they snuck into a house and luxuriated in hot water even while fearing the rightful tenants would find them.
This all made the course rooms increasingly smelly as starving and insane as unwashed, stressed, sleep-deprived “students” struggled to make it through their 12 hour study days and make sense of Hubbard’s occasionally insightful, too often nonsensical words.
Oh, but it was not all bad. These staff in training got a few hours off on one weekend day to do laundry (often having to borrow change for the laundromat) and to relax. It was ridiculous and degrading. It was also unconscionable in light of how much money Hubbard was piling up (he was still alive in the period I describe) and how flush with cash Scientology really was.
L RH died in a luxury Bluebird motor home amid stacks of money in the bedroom.
( which on second thought beats a teddy bear)
I rather have a teddy bear.
Quite the tale of desperation and “seed corn eating”. Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to tell it.
Since the GO passed out of existence after the Snow White debacle and the “crims” (as DM and his rising cadre of Hitler Youth co-conspirators derogatorily referred to them) were shuttled off to prison, I wonder who was actually behind the off-policy looting of your, er, her org and if it’s timing coincided with Elron going into permanent hiding? And I also wonder if this same smash-and-grab operation was also instituted at other outer orgs during this same time period?
It would make perfect sense (in the mind of a paranoid, criminal sociopath, that is) to squeeze as much cash out of your con as humanly possible if you believed that you might have to flee the country or go so deeply off the grid that no more ill-gotten gains could be funneled to you for the indeterminate future.
Since lil davey the savage + evil minions usurped power, almost every key stat in $cn (except “whales milked for millions” and “square feet of empty Idle Morgue space”) have been trending pretty much straight down and vertical. The fact that this Super SP has been able to so effectively hollow out the heart of $cn and leave a flimsy Hollywood set facade in its place for whale-milking PR purposes is both astonishing and disgusting.
Astonishing, because you’d think that, by now, someone would have had the courage to stand up and point out how completely naked this little Napolean-like emperor truly is, with respect to the world-wide crash in the only stats that truly matter in marking progress toward clearing the planet (i.e., number of well done auditing hours and auditor training course completions). And disgusting because so many people like TC, er, the Treasury Secretary whose story was recounted here were dedicated and able individuals with high personal integrity who were chewed up and spit out of the criminal fraud that $cn became during that era.
In retrospect, I bet that this poor Treas. Sec. wished that she would have just turned around and walked away from $cn for good on the morning that she arrived to work to find that “the most ethical group on the planet” had devolved to a cowardly smash-and-grab band of petty criminals and their cowed minions…pitiful!
I so agree it is pitiful,but your comment grabbed me and would not let go! Thank you! Great observations.?
The biggest indictment of Scientology as a failure is the actions of Scientology management itself, and the trickle down effect thereof. Scientology is it’s own biggest squirrel group and always has been. BTW Scientology management orgs do to themselves and their own staff the same destructive crap that they do to the orgs. There are policies in Scientology that are inherently destructive, and there are policies in Scientology that make sense, but in any situation you can take it to the bank that the destructive policies will be zealously wielded like a weapon, while the sensible policies will be squirrelled into the Stone Age.
Misky couldn’t have done it without help from a cadre of delusional, power seeking mismanagement people pulling the levers.Was the so called letter giving “him” the kingdom ever verified?Nooo.The tech people could have handled this clown.
So right you are!
The sensible policies are brought out in courts or as PR statements to show how the destructive policies don’t really exist. Yet the destructive policies are happily and forcefully used every day in every single org. If not from within the little dying org itself, from those charming “uplines” guys who think they are God, acting for the greater good for everyone. Go figger.
This is so common in scientogy, I was given the lrh comm post so that the person holding it could go off and do auditor training, I was completely new to staff – hadn’t done anything above staff status 0, so you can guess how well this posting went. Scientology’s staff ‘management’ policies are insane.
Oh yes, this is truly how Ron’s “whole-track, OT administrative policy” works in the orgs. I had done a dianetics seminar , TR’s and Objectives, and some division 6 courses when I was recruited for staff and made a DTS(Director of Technical Services), even though I wanted to be an auditor. I didn’t have a clue…but was expected to pull it off and was the regular recipient of covert and overt hostility when I didn’t
immediately master the job and “make it go right”. The good thing about being on staff was that I got to see how dysfunctional and deluded the actual experience is, consistently, week after week, month after month,
and how it is the dramatic antithesis of the bloviated pr bullshit spewed at events. The shitty attitudes, the back-stabbing, the fake enthusiasm, the horrible or non-existent pay, and the arrogance and rudeness of some of the “executives” really obliterated my naivete about the “crusade” and about the staff group being
a “theta family”. The whole experience amplified my cognitive dissonance to the breaking point, and for that, I am grateful.
Yes, that pretty much explains how it all works “from above” as I saw it in a CL4 Org in my time too within that miserable excuse of an organisation. I personally saw 2 treasury secs go through much the same sort of treatment as Terra explains. Even though I was a target of the same corrupt system at the time and had my troubles I remember feeling really sorry for those girls. They put their heart and soul into their work and to see them “cut off at the knees” and thrown off post… geezers! I can still see their tears and frustrations as I write this.
I guess that’s one of the more miserable aspects of being an auditor/techie in that ‘transition period’ during the 80s/90s. I use to audit staff as well as public as simply part of the job, didn’t think twice about it, but then that sort of stuff began to regularly materialize in auditing sessions. No wonder I left and no wonder everything turned into sec checks in the new regime. You can’t have auditing in an environment like that, it reverses and “takes out” both the PC & auditor. It truly was a suppressive environment just outside the door! (And you both knew it, yet could say & do nothing – except leave of course).
It cannot be stated strongly or loudly enough the destructiveness of an SO mission fired into an Org. It retrospect it truly was inviting the vampire into your home (not that we had any choice). We use watch them in stunned silence as they strutted around the Org spewing forth absolute crap.
So many good people got chewed up and spat out in Scientology it’s unbelievable. What a fuck up it all turned out to be.
You explained this rather unsavory aspect of the Cof$ rather well Terra, not easy.
“So many good people got chewed up and spat out in Scientology it’s unbelievable. What a fuck up it all turned out to be. ” That pretty much sums it up. If ever there was a cult that escapees needed a support group for Scientology would be that cult. Pound for pound the most diabolical life-waster cult ever.
I think clusterfuck is a better adjective. Plus, i have a fondness for that word.
Yep, that pretty much describes the Staff Experience. I don’t know if was intentional or not, but I noticed you did not specify a date or time period (other than reference to the GO). But, you know what – IT DOESN’T MATTER. This story could have occurred 10, 20, or 30 years ago, or last week.
This IS Scientology Management.
How anyone can call this “advanced” technology is beyond me. Hubbard’s “brilliant” management system is a bureaucratic behemoth designed to do one thing – MAKE MONEY FOR SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T WORK THERE.
What a story, Terra! I have to say that I think it is not uncommon to hear nightmare experiences like this from many of the people who were once on staff. I recently had dinner with some friends and heard a similar story. They seem to have a common theme of the staff member attempting to do the right thing, and then getting in trouble for not following insane, destructive orders. What struck me this time, while hearing my friend’s story, was that I was on staff at the same time, in the office either directly across from hers, or very nearby. I did not even know she was going thru this in the detail that she told me this time. I had no idea. Why? I was stuck in my own drama at that time, going through my own nightmare on a different post. ha!
That’s a lovley story.
She did her best to use what she was taught to do a good job trying to save the world. But when logic told her this wasn’t working, she walked away.
Money stories in Scientology are typical somebody ends up with a noose are the neck.
Herbie Parkhouse had a racket going and skimmed the Church in novel ways till caught.
Last I heard of him him he was a Taxi dispatcher.
Yes, Herbie was a dreadful piece of work. Nastiness poured out of him. When the mission holder of the mission for which I was on staff mentioned the order she’d gotten to put Herbie as sig on the bank accounts, she blew a cork and refused to do it. However, she was smart enough NOT to report she wasn’t doing it. Shortly thereafter came the mission grab, first draining all funds from mission accounts, then taking over the missions. Our mission holder quietly faded into the night having arranged for her students and pcs to go elsewhere and transferring their funds to the other groups.
I don’t see what the big deal is. The midget probably needed some gambling money for Vegas. I’m sure that was part of the deal he made with the IRS.
By god its a beautiful day.
Makes me wanna say some things…
like
nurture goodness… and beauty.
protect the delicate things in life.
be kind, and grateful for turning towards kindness
(thats more nutrition for goodness)
explore possibilities
new roads mean new adventures
search for the virtue in others
that’s such a good one, nuture the virtue, yes,
yet another form of goodness
be sensitive to the needs of others,
king of your own castle
we all must be
Royalty. By god’s decree
it must be true.
How else could I be experiencing all this…
beauty?
Wishing you well. Feeling lucky, heck I’ll say it outright:
I AM LUCKY
just because I’m not a scn-gist, open-mindedly adamant about THAT forsaken cult,
and the silent leader.
Lucky to be talking, for another. Don’t want to abuse the privilege.
And grateful, thanks. Thanks for keeping the mike on, Terra.
You are a good joe. Hey, how ’bout Winsky? you on board?
How’s the new tact?
When one realizes that different does not mean the same one cannot stay on staff one more second.
To be told one thing and then have it changed, one cannot stay on staff one more second.
To follow policy and tech to letter and be berated for it, one cannot stay on staff one more second.
When one sees that his future is going to end up full of empty promises, one cannot stay on staff one more second.
When the master cracks his whip, when your soul turns dark and you start to slip,
When you see the sham and lies come from the lips of hypocrites.
ONE CANNOT STAY ON STAFF ONE MORE SECOND!!!
Terra,
Thank you for that story. I know now I was not the only one who’s hard, on policy work was utterly trashed by “seniors” from above. After I had straightened out all the off policy activity that had been in practice in my org (which had been exposing it and staff to legal and government attack) I was meter checked, declared to be a problem and was whisked away in the dead of night to an upper org for handling. On my return months later I found everything I had previously accomplished had been wiped out and all illegal practices were “standard procedure” again. I chose to leave soon after, FLD be damned.
Glenn
Scientology’s hierarchical style of “management” is to push the problem down the chain of command in the form of an order – without knowledge or consideration of the state of affairs. The senior simply expects compliance from the junior. The junior is expected to “make it go right” regardless of training or experience. If the junior or senior were to acknowledge this fact, they would be accused of reasonableness.
If the problem does not get solved, heads will roll.
What a joyous place to work.
Reminds me of Dante’s Inferno…only Scientology would be worse.
Only the insanity of a government job matched that of my Scientology career!
YIKES! Now that was a scary story. I remember LA Org back in 1970 being absolutely packed, both HGC and course rooms, just humming with activity. Good activity. And the OT VIs and OT VIIs around, glowing in the dark, being examples of what you could be if you kept at it.
Then the FEBC and L-12 came out, and the poop hit the fan. And kept hitting the fan. More and more and worse and worse. Within 2 years, all the OTs were gone. And OT IV, V, VI, and VII gone, replaced by NED and NOTs.
So, what destroyed Scientology, and replaced it with $cientology? L-12, LRH’s greatest tech failure. Getting L-12 widely done on management killed the goose that was laying golden eggs. Scientology was created by LRH, so it was his to destroy. And destroy it he did. What a shame. WOOAARGH!
That rings true for me too Chewkacca. Never having done any Ls (dodged a bullet there) I did see some whacko results from those that did them. So L12 was the loose cannon broadly enforced into the heads of management at that time, wasn’t aware of that. But your reference to the intro of NED & NOTs stands out like a police siren coming up from behind. It was the all encompassing tool which was introduced and enforced to disable and introvert the (public & staff alike) able and at the same time softened them up so as to bleed them dry of all their money.
Shame indeed.
I guess the only other thing that grabs my attention on this is that the moment you take Scientology seriously – you’re fucked! That is one of the biggest contradictions written in the text of Scientology, KSW1 vs the Lightness of Organisation.
Sounds like a true story. Thanks.
Perfectly Scientology!
Excellent story, and I presume it is true.
What year was the crow bar applied to the filing cabinets to get the checkbooks?
I wish you “snapped” the moment you came into your office to those pried open filing cabinets, and instead you quietly left the org, walked or rode the bus to the police station, and elevated this event up into a public police and state prosecutor matter on the spot.
It ought to have become public police and state prosecutor knowledge and somehow entered our legal system’s imperfect domain.
It is horribly relevant that society cannot deal with organized religious groups like Scientology.
And that only chat sites like this, does the truth come out, in short essays like this one.
It is just the facts on the ground, all these years, society cannot deal with Scientology and the parallel rule system and mindsets of the Scientology staffers like this story’s story-teller’s story, it is just so difficult to get this history told, honestly, like this.
I believe this story, and I wish somehow the next time this happens, that the person who is Treas Sec who has this untrained and jack-booted “FBO” waltz into the offices where the checkbooks are, and empties the accounts, even with all the authorization in the world, that local police and prosecutors hear about it quicker.
Not that our legal system has any relevance in FBO and Treas Sec rules of L. Ron Hubbard’s, and the fights that go on within Scientology organizations and units when there are high up superiors who order illegal things per the Hubbard rules system, and they do things like rip open filing cabinets to get the checkbooks to empty the accounts per orders from on high.
What a huge horrible predicament, being in Scientology, being faithful to Hubbard’s rules, and watching the Hubbard’s rules even violated by Hubbard, and today the rules are violated by the highest leader of Scientology, Miscavige.
That is truly the biggest lesson why NOT also to join such a staff hierarchy of Scientology’s multi-hierarchical org system of higher and higher authorities and superiors who can order things due to their power positions, even violating, which occurs over and over, year in year out, within Scientology.
It’s a stew and mess no one deserves to waste their lives within.
Good post, Chuck! By the way, do you live in Pittsburgh? I saw you in a video of the former city office on Carson Street and you were sitting with some scruffy looking guy. Please let me know as I used to visit Pittsburgh a lot when I was a kid.
That was absolutely fascinating, the insanity in the cult is mind boggling. Thanks for sharing that.
Stories like this abound since the early days of Scientology. It’s never going to get better guys. Just leave. Call any of your family that are not in scientology or go to the local YMCA and get out now while you have life to live. Your goodness you came in with is needed out here and will be greatly appreciated 🙂
“It’s never going to get better guys. Just leave.” Seriously, truer words were never spoken. And it really won’t get any better. Get your old life back. You can do this…
Your posts have burst into a flame of truth and I think you with all my heart for what you write.Just spell binding and another link in the chain of us DB SPs on the fringes of the Internet!?❤️
Every single org on the planet, except, perhaps some of these in Russia and the far east where the SO influence is more easily ignored, has a hundred or so such stories. And then, many of the missions in the same time period, flourishing at the same time period without Flag management and SO missions, and able to look at their unique environments and choose which policies they would want to implement, and without such onerous payment to Flag requirements.
Of course she should have walked out as soon as she saw that the cabinets had been broken into and the checkbooks had been taken. Recognized the utter insanity and … and … well … disconnected!
good hearted (brainwashed) people stay and stay and stay, it’s courage, it’s fortitude, it’s being willing to die for the cause, it’s one’s eternity, it’s moral duty. It’s not knowing you’re totally deluded.
How true.
No bastard ever cleared a planet by dying for his org. And no dead man ever cleared a planet either. I have no beef with those who want ro work themselves to death. But since slavery is against the law as well as amoral one has no right to own people, neither their bodies, minds or souls. When one has no further right to disagree with madness then oneself is or soon will be mad.
Just the inevitable result of applying standard El Con senior Management tech powered by a standard El Con Admin scale for the highest Executive in the Church of Scamology.
In other words, Insanity = insanity
Create Survive DESTROY
Thanks TC.It should probably be renamed psychotology.
Nice!!! Psychology. I like it! ‘Give us your money & we’ll make you psycho.’
$cientology: it’s all about the money, and nothing else matters. $cientology is an evil, rotten to the core criminal cult.
But…but…they get to wear really cool naval threads!
Given my experience with the Sea Org, Hitler Youth uniforms would be far more appropriate.
Oh! No bout a doubt it! Actually, that’s a great idea!
And stand by a glass of water and salute it!
Let’s give three cheers for H2O!
Reality is real. Once you understand this you can understand anything.
About 340 words into chapter seven.
One of the classes that Stone had signed up for was modern philosophy. Given that most Philosophical thought since Immanuel Kant was essentially a load of noise he didn’t expect to pass the course. But he did expect to have some fun.
“If reality is not inherently real that why should we even discuss the question of whether blow up dolls dream of inflatable sheep?”
“What is reality? Even the greatest minds of my race have never found a satisfactory answer to that question.”
“Seriously, if sense data isn’t valid then how do you know when someone tells you that it isn’t valid?”
Hmm. I guess those minds were to stupid to figure out the reality of getting smacked up side the head with a 2×4.
Fascinating … how the SO ever managed to get so psychotic … so stupid … but at least that individual escaped relatively unharmed.
To get to their level of psychosis, you’re probably going to have to fork over around $400,000.
Hell, a psychiatrist is much cheaper!
He or she is a lot cheaper than the cult.
Wow, for half that, you can get pretty much the same result with a bottle of anti-freeze, couple of empty flour sacks and 20 liters of water. Only take a couple of hours. Going psychotic – many different ways to go about it apparently but the Cof$ gets the victim to pre-pay for it. Remarkable!
It is daunting to me at times to see how the SO morphed into the monster it is.There really was an undercurrent of meanness is the best word I can find right now,a meanness of superiors one upping their agendas on those who were deemed out-ethics for whatever whim.Thru 74-76 when in Asho F SO I was transfixed by Ron, his family,The Team and the mission.Then 76-78 The screws began to turn,Not those dreams of OTs with hearts of gold either,more like two faced control robots.Good to meet you Mr.B.❤️
Mr B. The SO was created by Hubbard to be that way. It didn’t “get to be that way”. That’s how it was designed.
That’s what I don’t get. How did a group of people who wanted to help mankind get transformed into an elite group of assholes?
Easy peasy Alcoboy. The first and core members El Con accepted into the group were already HIGHLY brain washed by him into believing every word he uttered without any questions. They were already his elite bots before they joined. Once they arrived, I mean the very first day, he threw then into extreme sleep deprivation and extreme physical exertion conditions. It went downhill from there…
When I read/hear stories from people who’ve left these types of situations, I can’t help but just be sad. Just sad. And pissed off that abuses like this are allowed to continue unabated and unchecked.
on the other hand…whatever it takes to wake us up…. and get the hell out.. is what it took.
Mama Wolf. Anyone can just walk away anytime they want to.
It is not so easy to just walk away from cos.Each person approaches their situation when considering leaving differently.❤️
Very true.
Ann B. I’m talking physically. People create whatever mental barriers that they do. I’m just dispelling the oft told lie that people cannot leave if they DECIDE to.
Got it, thank you Mike.❤️