Another piece of insight into the scientology world of bait and switch from our old friend Clearly Not Clear. Not as snarky as the last one, but just as revelatory. This IS what scientology is about, getting your money, no matter how they try to paint it.
Years ago our local org decided to harness the New Year’s Resolution urge, and get the wayward Scientologists to come in for an LRH tech-inspired boost. I’d found Admin Scales to be problematic in the past. I liked the step-by-step aspect, but somehow, I found making lists more satisfying than the multi-page overwritten piles of duties that a fully written up Admin Scale could easily turn into.
This LA Scientology businessman presenting this seminar was supposedly the man where understanding the Admin Scale was concerned. He did taxes or some three-piece-suit profession. And supposedly, he made the non-Scientology competitors look like idiots compared to his Admin Scale know-how and mastery, blah, blah, blah.
The full-court press was on, to get the Scientologists into the Org for this six-hour hands-on event.
I was mildly interested in giving it another try. I wanted to do an Admin Scale on trying a new promotional idea for my business. I told the Scientologist who called me repeatedly to get my commitment to attend, that I had a project I wanted to do an Admin Scale on. The promo piece pushed that this seminar would help you get up the bridge faster. And since all you had to do to get up the bridge faster, was get yet another credit card and go more into debt, that didn’t interest me. I had plenty of credit card debt thanks to the excellent manipulation of our local reg.
I told her I’d only go if I could work on my project and not focus on an Admin Scale for my bridge. She said no problem.
Yeah, it was a problem.
I rearranged my schedule, missing a day with my son and some sports thing that his dad would take him to without me. That made me kind of sad.
I brought notes and ideas and listened to this guy talk about how if you started at this one place on the admin scale and jumped to this other part that it went easier. Then he pressed the bridge as the focus of this admin scale. I did my own thing because that’s what I was there for.
At some point the leader dude discovered that I was, gasp, working on my business and not my bridge to total freedom as my admin scale focus. I guess there actually was a price for this ‘free’ event. I see now, when I look back, that his purpose was to make some 10% commissions on Scientologists who would bump up their purpose to do the bridge and plunk down some real dough or melt some credit card plastic in the reg’s slide-y credit card thingie on her desk. Come to think of it, the reg didn’t usually attend these things, but there she was, ‘helping out.’ It was actually the reg who discovered that I was spending my precious time inside the cherch on my selfish, capitalistic, off-purpose, admin scale. I told her I had to okay to do this. She gave me a tight little smile and moved off to help someone who might actually buy something.
It was the out of town, three-piece-suit dude who called me out and publicly shamed me for deviating from the on purpose plan.
I caved, and made a new admin scale for my future bridge to total freedom. It went straight into the trash when I got home. But in the good news department, I didn’t have a knowledge report written up on me, sending me straight to hell. Oops, I mean Ethics.
Today, when I saw this promo piece in my in-basket, with the predictable old white guy in a suit, I had this physical reaction. This remembrance of the manipulative way these events usually went. They were supposedly created to help you improve your life through a better understanding of LRH’s dense and conflicting tech. And that Admin Scale was a whopper of a conflicting and confusing tool, if you asked me. Even though I knew these events were manipulative, I’d somehow thought I could do me. Ha ha. This event’s push was to funnel you into an activity where you spent lots of time thinking about your Scientology purpose. Then you were supposed to spend more time writing up how you could get more bridge faster. The end phenomenon to be hoped for by the commission-getting presenter, and the local reg, was that every single attendee would shell out for their next step, or two or three, on their bridge to total disaster. Oh yeah, freedom.
Boy am I glad I’m out. I’m feeling quite smiley now.
Clearly Not Clear
Thank you for the reminder of that jailed situation.
I have to flush my Ford 450 radiator today and believe it or not, that’s fun when compared to having to write up an admin scale or ponder over conditions. Over the years it all got same old same old. No real new wisdom which one normally gets when running their own life on their own goals.
Happy woggy dilettante theety-wheety Holidays to all escapees 😀
I should also add to my earlier comment the following to show Hubbard’s intent. His affirmations were of course self hypnosis commands intended only for himself.
Here are a few poignant excerpts:
A Psychiatric View With Comments On The Admissions By Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1947)
I will put a few excerpts here to highlight Hubbard’s intention regarding hypnosis and in general. To understand Scientology I absolutely recommend reading the post in full. These excerpts are just for this post on his intentions.
LRH is obviously L Ron Hubbard
LRH:Your psychology is good. You worked to darken your own children. This failure, with them, was only apparent. The evident lack of effectiveness was “ordered.” The same psychology works perfectly on everyone else. You use it with great confidence.
LRH: Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light in the darkness, beauty in all.
LRH : Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people. It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler.
LRH: No matter what lies you may tell others they have no physical effect on you of any kind.
LRH: Lord help women when you begin to fondle them. You are master of their bodies, master of their souls as you may consciously wish. You have no karma to pay for these acts.
LRH: You can tell all the romantic tales you wish. You will remember them, you do remember them. But you know which ones were lies. You are so logical you will tell nothing which cannot be believed.
LRH: You use the minds of men. They do not use your mind or affect it in any way.
So, Hubbard in his private affirmations clearly described his “psychology” as such that it “hypnotizes” people and that men are his slaves and regarding women that he was master of their bodies and souls. He described himself as being able to lie and be both believed and he was immune to physical effects from his lies. He described himself as the ruler of people who uses the minds of men but they do not use or affect his mind.
Imagine having these goals and using self-hypnosis commands repeatedly for years to bring these things into your mind.
Something that I want to say about the Scientology admin scale is that a lot of non Scientology groups use similar things. These hierarchy rankings serve the same purpose of getting a certain percentage of people enthusiastic about whatever they are discussing, whether it’s their personal lives, their business plan, their school progress, or whatever is the subject under consideration.
A key to understanding these things is that they function as stable data and give order to confusion and like stable data in Scientology they are usually not true, certainly not providing eternal and infallible knowledge.
Hubbard in his study of hypnosis realized that for some people (not all) hypnosis is influential and the technique of confusing people thoroughly then giving them a stable datum to resolve the confusion can sometimes effectively implant the stable datum below their conscious awareness without their knowledge or consent.
We could look into the methods of hypnosis and I have at Mockingbird’s Nest blog on Scientology but for brevity I will let Hubbard himself tell you.
(Here’s a post on that if you are interested)
http://mbnest.blogspot.com/2015/01/basic-introduction-to-hypnosis-in.html?m=0
From a tape on The Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures
RON THE HYPNOTIST
Structure/Function: 11 December 1952 page 1
“All processes are based upon the original observation
that an individual could have implanted in him by hypnosis
and removed at will any obsession or aberration,
compulsion, desire, inhibition which you could think of – by hypnosis.“
Hypnosis, then, was the wild variable;
sometimes it worked,
sometimes it didn’t work.
It worked on some people; it didn’t work on other people.
Any time you have a variable that is as wild as this, study it.
Well, I had a high certainty already –
I had survival. Got that in 1938 or before that. And uh…” Ronald Hubbard
Regarding wanting to control people with his lies and psychology that hypnotizes people:
Quotes from Ron Hubbard on the Confusion Technique:
[Quote]
Now, if it comes to a pass where it’s very important whether or not this person acts or inacts as you wish, in interpersonal relations one of the dirtier tricks is to hang the person up on a maybe and create a confusion. And then create the confusion to the degree that your decision actually is implanted hypnotically.
The way you do this is very simple. When the person advances an argument against your decision, you never confront his argument but confront the premise on which his argument is based. That is the rule. He says, “But my professor always said that water boiled at 212 degrees.”
You say, “Your professor of what?”
“My professor of physics.”
“What school? How did he know?” Completely off track! You’re no longer arguing about whether or not water boils at 212 degrees, but you’re arguing about professors. And he will become very annoyed, but he won’t know quite what he is annoyed about. You can do this so adroitly and so artfully that you can actually produce a confusion of the depth of hypnosis. The person simply goes down tone scale to a point where they’re not sure of their own name.
And at that point you say, “Now, you do agree to go out and draw the water out of the well, don’t you?”
“Yes-anything!” And he’ll go out and draw the water out of the well.
[End Quote]
Ron Hubbard Lecture, 20 May 1952 “Decision.”
source Lermanet.com
“If you can produce enough chaos — it says in a textbook on this subject — if you can produce enough chaos you can assume the total management of a psyche — if you can produce enough chaos.
The way you hypnotize people is to misalign them in their own control and realign them under your control, which necessitates a certain amount of chaos, don’t you see?
Now, the way to win through all of this is simply to let the guy have his stable data, if they are stable data and if they aren’t, let him have some more that are stable data and he’ll win and you’ll win.
In other words, you can take any sphere — any sphere which is relatively chaotic and throw almost any stable datum into it with enough of a statement and you will get an alignment of data on that stable datum. You see this clearly?
The whole society is liable to seize upon some stupid stable datum and thereafter this becomes a custom of some sort and you have the whole field of morals and mores and so forth stretching out before your view.”
Hubbard, L. R. (1955, 23 August). Axiom 53: The Axiom Of The Stable Datum. Academy Lecture Series/Conquest of Chaos, (CofC-2). Lecture conducted from Washington, DC.
“Another way to hypnotize somebody would be to put him in the middle of chaos, everything going in all directions, everybody shooting at him and suddenly throw him a stable datum, and make it a successful stable datum so that it’s all called off once — the moment he grabs this. And this gives you the entire formula of brainwashing: interrogate, question, lights, pain, upset, accusation, duress, fear, privation and we throw him the stable datum. We say, “If you’ll just adopt ‘Ughism’ which is the most wonderful thing in the world, all this will cease,” and finally the fellow says, “All right, I’m an ‘Ugh.’ ” Immediately you stop torturing him and pat him on the head and he’s all set.Ever after he would believe that the moment he deserted “Ughism,” he would be drowned in chaos and that “Ughism” alone was the thing which kept the world stable; and he would sell his life or his grandmother to keep “Ughism” going. And there we have to do with the whole subject of loyalty, except — except that we haven’t dealt with loyalty at all on an analytical level but the whole subject of loyalty is a reactive subject we have dealt with. ”
Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1955, 21 September, 1955, 21 September
Document title: Postulates 1,2,3,4 In Processing – New Understanding of Axiom 36, Postulates 1,2,3,4 In Processing – New Understanding of Axiom 36
“A confusion can be defined as any set of factors or circumstances which do not seem to have any immediate solution. More broadly, a confusion is random motion.”
“Until one selects one datum, one factor, one particular in a confusion of particles, the confusion continues. The one thing selected and used becomes the stable datum for the remainder.”
“Any body of knowledge, more particularly and exactly, is built from one datum. That is its stable datum. Invalidate it and the entire body of knowledge falls apart. A stable datum does not have to be the correct one. It is simply the one that keeps things from being in a confusion and on which others are aligned.” – Ron Hubbard [ref] Scientology Handbook
“Any time anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude…if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject…he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as a hypnotic suggestion….With parity, such as occurs between acquaintances, friends, fellow students and so on, there is no hypnotic suggestion” (Education and Dianetics, 11 November 1950, Research and Discovery, volume 4). Source Jon Atack
Also, even earlier, in 1950:
[Quote]
One error, however, must be remarked upon. The examination system employed is not much different from a certain hypnotic technique. One induces a state of confusion in the subject by raising his anxieties of what may happen if he does not pass. One then “teaches” at a mind which is anxious and confused. That mind does not then rationalize, it merely records and makes a pattern. If the pattern is sufficiently strong to be regurgitated verbatim on an examination paper, the student is then given a good grade and passed.
[End Quote]
Ron Hubbard lecture 29 August 1950, “Educational Dianetics.”
source Lermanet.com
Clearly Not Clear…..you couldn’t be Clearly More Clear!
Love the post.
Clearly not clear: Nice post and congrats on getting clear of the train wreck.
This piece reminds me of a memoir I once read by someone recovering from alcoholism. They described their experience as “Alcohol provided me with the solution to the problems that alcohol created.”
Needless to say, there’s no hope for improvement whatsoever from inside of a vicious cycle such as this.
There was a band back in the day called the J. Geils Band and their song “First I Look At The Purse” reminds me of the scienbollockal fixation on/dedication to hoovering money:
First I Look at the Purse by the J. Geils Band
Some fellas look at the eyes
Some fellas look at the nose
Some fellas look at the size
Some fellas look at the clothes
I don’t care if her eyes are red
I don’t care if her nose is long
I don’t care if she’s underfed
I don’t care if her clothes are worn
First I look at the purse!
Some fellas like the smiles they wear
Some fellas like the legs that’s all
Some fellas like the style of their hair
Want their waist to be small.
I don’t care if their legs are thin
I don’t care if their teeth are big
I don’t care if their hair’s a wig
Why waste time lookin’ at the waistline?
First I look at the purse!
A woman can be fat as can be,
kisses sweet as honey
But that don’t mean a thing to me
If you ain’t got no money
If the purse is fat….that’s where it’s at.
Some fellas like the way they walk
The way they swing and sway
Some fellas like the way they talk
Dig the things they say.
I don’t care if they wobble like a…
or talk with a lisp
I still think I’m a good lover
if the dollar bills are crisp
First I look at the purse!
First I look at the purse!
First I look at the purse!
First I look at the purse!
I don’t care if you got yourself a wrap
all I want is your pretty green cash
Bought me a suit, bought me a car
Want me to look like a hollywood star
Money, (Money!) I want money (Money!)
Baby, ain’t no “why”, baby (Money!)
I need money!
First I look at the purse!
First I look at the purse!
First I look at the purse!
First I look at the purse!
Kevin Wilson: destroying businesses for 3 decades as “Sterling Management”. The only thing that’s sterling is the cash he collects and sends “Up-lines”.
Remember Freeze Frame, Centerfold, Where Did Our Love Go?, Looking For A love? I know Love Stinks has been used in movies like The Wedding Singer, but I think those other songs are far better personally!
Which of their songs and albums are your favorites?
Could this technology help me with my goal of the destruction of Scientology? 🙂
Do an Admin Scale on it and find out. 😉
I second the motion Imaberatted. That is my #1 goal in life.
I am a black BT that hovers around DM….making him drink more scotch and smoke more camels without a filter. DM will take himself out and that lynch pin removed will crumble the house of cards called Scientology.
It’s been doing so even before Dwarfenführer ascended to his diminuative throne.
What that reg and speaker (Kevin from Sterling Mgmt Systems) didn’t realize is that by helping your business do better, it would mean more disposable income to give to Scn. So they should have let you do your thing.
“Better”, to Sterling primarily means more money being funneled up to McSavage, by every means possible. That some of the scammed employees then make their way into DM’s tiny fiefdom is gravy, as “sterling” gets the FSM commissions to do with what they will.
Most people understand hope as wishful thinking. I hope something will happen. This is not what the Bible means by hope. The biblical definition of hope is confident expectation. Hope is a firm assurance regarding things that are unclear and unknown (Romans 8:24-25; Hebrews 11:1, 7).
“dense and conflicting tech” is an excellent description of all of $cientology. Not Clear has laid the guest Reg program out clearly. But at least he got clear of the scam. Nicely done sir or madam.
Very nice post Clearly No Clear.
Real success in scn is achieved only when one leaves. And this is not a ‘key out’ that lasts for a while. No. It is a victory that remains stable forever.
I wish there were upvote things so I could upvote what Losing My Religion said: Real success in scn is achieved only when one leaves and the victory remains stable forever. Way to say it!
Thank you Cindy. Nice.
I’ve been out of the cult for a couple of decades now, but I bet things haven’t changed a bit since I was in. In my experience any “event, briefing, seminar, or must attend gathering” put on by the cult itself or some yahoo showing you how to apply the ‘tech’ is nothing more than a regging or recruiting operation. No exceptions ever. EVER! It’s all about the money. Always has been, always will be.
Ms. B,
You are absolutely correct. I belatedly figured it out when I lived in L.A.
I saw the cynical, evil back story of these activities when I was on staff in DC
a few years later. Totally Ruthless Fuckery.
Brilliant.
So many great lines but I’ve never heard “…bridge to total disaster” before but should have. Succinct and perfect description of “The Bridge to Total Freedom.”
If Hubbard”s administration tech actually worked major firms would using it.
Or Scientology would actually expand and grow rather than having a major shrinkage problem!
What does him being a “white guy” have to do with anything? Suggesting that someone’s race is a negative is offensive . Stop it.
Joe, as a young woman in Scientology, I was regularly corrected by old white men.
These admin scale events, at least the four or five I went to, were all presented by old white men.
I resented the elevation of this type of person as the only opinion leader touted.
I already had a lifetime of being dismissed and disrespected by old white men.
Yeah, I have some baggage on that topic. And Scientology regularly elevates, pumps up, and protects this sector of their parishioners.
I was in for decades. I’m old and white myself. I stand by my description of what I experienced.
If you are an old white guy, I do not include you in my flame throwing. Sorry my observation seemed racist to you.
CNC good story regarding the “admin tech” which was used effectively to lure people back to their services and was a big perk of WISE. And if I remember correctly was part of LOC. Where the heck did that major course disappear to? The admin scale was touted as missing from all wog company’s and with this tech we couldn’t fail.
In my experience of having done them for my business they are over complicated and cumbersome.
And the confusion of goal vs purpose was always a brain stumper.
I know what public shaming is like I had an experience with an event with a high ranking flag exec calling me out when I needed to leave the event and I had paid for service. He was on my “fuck you, asshole list” from then on. Wasn’t long after that I started the 3 year slide into depression which finally culminated in leaving the cult. Scientology nurtures assholes and that is one of its downfall. I know I was one of them.
Geoff I think admin scale – and I’ve done several in SO too – is another of hubbard’s bullshit for introverting people into a dead end loop, where if it doesn’t work it’s always the guy who’s wrong. But in reality he slips more and more into the trap to be more controlled.
You wrote: ‘And the confusion of goal vs purpose was always a brain stumper.’
While doing the NED internship some SO dork interrupted our study and demanded we all write up admin scales for joining the SO. I happily went to work at the dictionaries to try to sort out whether the scale should start out with GOAL, or start with PURPOSE?
The course sup (SO) saw me having fun and asked what was up. I told her that all goals have purposes and that all purposes had goals and that inside purposes were goals as steps; and that goals had multiple purposes as reasons for the goal; and that my confusion was as to which should go first; But should they be treated as simultaneous; but how important was it to limit onesself to just one order of the admin steps….. STOP! she ordered (tone40) , just go back to your course materials..
I loved rubbing their ‘verbatim tech’ in their faces. Soon after that I routed off as it was a waste of my time.