Leah recently reminded me of this wonderful website, and in particular, this article by my old friend Jeff Hawkins.
Jeff is one of the kindest, smartest and most decent people I know. When Miscavige blew him off, he lost one of the only real marketing geniuses in scientology. Jeff was responsible for the single successful marketing campaign in scientology — returning Dianetics to the top of the NY Times bestseller list in the 80’s.
He is a wonderful writer — I highly recommend his book Counterfeit Dreams — and a thoughtful analyst of the world of scientology. I am taking the liberty of reprinting this particular article here as I think it deserves everyone’s time to read it. It is a concise summary of all that is wrong with the institution of scientology (rather than the “technology” itself). This is a good analysis of the psychosis of the entity known as scientology.
I don’t think it is possible to “reform” scientology — Jeff talks of the DNA of the organization. The DNA of scientology would have to be changed so much in order for it to be reformed that the entity that resulted would not resemble scientology. It would be a different species.
But regardless of whether it is in fact possible to reform scientology, this list serves as a very useful summary of why the world of scientology is so unpleasant and corrosive.
Reforming Scientology
Are there things in the culture of Scientology, in its DNA, so to speak, that cause Scientology organizations to fail?
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to actually isolate and examine those systemic imperfections? And maybe correct them so that there is never a recurrence?
Well, here is my stab at it. Here are the things that I experienced in Scientology that contributed to making Scientology Organizations what they have become. These are all things that are part of the Scientology culture, the organizational zeitgeist.
1. Dehumaniziation
If one makes less of people – prisoners, minorities, outsiders – then that justifies abusing them, lying to them or deceiving them. In Scientology, this begins with the term “wog” to refer to anyone who is not a Scientologist. The law becomes “wog law,” the justice system becomes “wog justice,” the media becomes “wog press.” These things are considered inferior. A Scientologist can therefore consider himself or herself to be above these things – including “above the law.”
If you consider yourself superior to others, that justifies looking down on others as “low-toned,” “low on the Bridge,” or even “in a lower Org.” A sort of arrogance or condescension can crop up.
At the Int Base, this sort of arrogance was amplified – as all of the factors on this list were. RTC looked down on CMO Int. CMO Int looked down on Exec Strata. And everyone looked down on Gold. And you would be shocked to hear how Int Base executives talked about “lower org” staff or public. And of course that sort of arrogance led to actual abuse.
To grow up, Scientology has to rid itself of this sort of elitism, condescension and arrogance and learn to respect others.
2. Enemies and War
It’s axiomatic that if you want to control someone, give them an enemy.
One of the first things I heard about in Scientology were its “enemies.” The government was out to get Scientology. The press was out to get Scientology. The Psychs and Medicos were out to get Scientology. We were at war against the “forces of evil.” You can always ask people to sacrifice, give money, give up holidays, weekends or sleep, accept low or no pay, if you are “at war.”
If you are dealing with an “enemy,” it also justifies using any tactic to defeat them. Take a look at how OSA treats anyone who disagrees with the human rights abuses in Scientology Organizations. These are “enemies.” They are “trying to destroy Scientology.” If you label someone an “enemy” or an “SP,” anything goes.
If Scientology is to mature, I believe it has to stop its obsession with “enemies” and “wars” and start realizing that they are responsible for their own failures, negative press and bad public image, not some vast evil conspiracy that’s out to get them.
3. Collapsed Time, The Constant Emergency
It was my experience on staff and in the Sea Org that things were on a constant emergency footing. Everything had to be done now-now-now. For one thing, management was by weekly (or even daily or hourly) stats. Things had to be done immediately in order to “count.” Everything, it seemed, was a constant flap, a constant “Hill Ten” requiring late hours or all-nighters, skipped liberty days, minimal meal breaks.
This kind of think was destructive of any real long term planning or strategy. When faced with a choice between a short-term action that would get immediate stats (particularly income), and a long-term action that would result in steady expansion, which do you think got chosen 99.9% of the time?
Sure, it’s a good idea to watch statistics—but not obsessively so that your time frame is constantly collapsed down to nothing.
All of this stat obsession resulted in the cannibalizing of existing public rather than developing future public. Gimmicks like monthly price raises and special deals rather than sane pricing and marketing. Now-now stat pushes and daily phone calls rather than sane management planning and strategy.
Well, what do you expect when you put people on weekly, daily, or hourly stats and threaten them with heavy penalties if they don’t get them up now-now-now?
Scientology will get sane when it calms down, gets off the constant emergency footing and gets in honest long range planning.
4. Secrecy, Transparency and Accountability
Scientology has an obsession with “confidentiality.” No one may know what higher echelons are doing, thinking, or planning. One reason given is that “enemies” may find out the plans – see “enemies” above.
The result is that the right hand usually does not know what the left hand is doing. One insane result is events. Orgs don’t know before the event what is being released. It’s “confidential.” So no one can prepare for it, generate word of mouth or ramp up excitement. It’s silly.
But the most destructive effect of all of this secrecy is that management can pretty much do what it wants with no accountability, oversight or transparency. And they can do anything they want with the money collected. They don’t have to report back to the field what they did with the money. No one knows, no one can know. So management can do what they want.
This even extends to management personnel. When WDC was first formed, their identities were secret. As a joke, they sent an album of photos to “middle management” with bags over their heads. No one was supposed to know who they are. And it’s still that way, only more so. No one knows who is on which executive post (in fact, every executive at Int has been removed from post without the knowledge of Scientologists). Scientologists are not informed when key executives are appointed or removed. They are not told the reason for any removal. They are not able to review the qualifications of any appointee. It’s all “confidential.”
And now even the international statistics are “confidential.”
Any reform of Scientology must include complete transparency and accountability of management plans, actions, statistics, finances and personnel.
5. Information Control and Thought-Stopping
Key to any cult-like operation is strict information control. Members must get their information from approved sources only, and must never read material that is critical of the group, its doctrine, or its founder. Such thought-stopping mechanisms are deeply ingrained in Scientology.
Scientologists know that if their friends or family members express any criticism of Scientology, they will have to “handle” them (silence their criticism) or disconnect. They cannot be connected to anyone who is critical of the Church or L. Ron Hubbard. If anyone challenges Scientology, they have to stop listening as it’s “entheta.” They know they cannot look into Scientology on the internet – they have to stick with the Church-approved websites (that is, the Church websites). They cannot read negative stories in the press or watch negative stories on TV. These things might cause them to doubt – and Doubt, in Scientology, is a Lower Condition.
Scientology is full of thought-stopping phrases: “That’s entheta.” “That’s a hate site.” “They are SPs.” “He’s a religious bigot.” “She’s an LRH-hater.”
This isn’t a search for truth, it’s running away from it.
Information control isn’t a sign of strength, it’s a confession of weakness. It’s a confession that one’s beliefs are fragile, tenuous, and can be blown away by any real search for information.
If Scientology wants to be taken seriously as a subject, it has to give its members freedom to study and access any information they want, associate with anyone they want to, and make up their own minds.
6. The End Justifies the Means:
The subject of utilitarian ethics is encapsulated by Jeremy Bentham’s phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” Bentham was a proponent of utilitarianism, which holds that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. That is, “the end justifies the means.”
The fact is that the culture of Scientology is steeped in this kind of utilitarian ethics. That’s why Scientologists defend Miscavige no matter what he does. It’s why OSA carries out disgusting dirty tricks on their “enemies.” It’s how Scientologists justify what’s going on within their Church.
It’s how Miscavige justifies his constant abuse of staff.
Scientology will gain respect when it abandons its utilitarian ethics and realize, as Gandhi said, “means are, after all, everything. As the means, so the end.”
7. Authoritarianism, Intention and Counterintention:
It is my opinion that David Miscavige could never have come to power and get away with his abuses if Scientology was not already organized as a strict, top-down authoritarian system. He could bully his way into the top position and use the structure of Scientology to enforce his orders.
Sure, there have always been councils – Aides Council, Exec Strata, WDC. But the fact is, no one ever questioned the top guy – LRH. There is even a phrase for “doing what Ron says.” It’s called Command Intention. LRH was always Command. On the Apollo, his entries in the Orders of the Day were always printed under the heading “Command.”
Scientology was structured to carry out and enforce his orders. Every Sea Org Member swears to “uphold, forward and carry out Command Intention.” And the purpose of Ethics in an organization, we learned, was “to remove counter-intention from the environment.” Anyone not carrying out Command Intention was Counter Intention (“CI”).
To ensure orders were carried out, there was an “LRH Comm Correction Form” which escalated Ethics gradients automatically for any non-compliance to LRH Orders. It was soon copied by every Programs Ops as “the way to get compliance.”
So you have a system where every Sea Org Member, executive and Programs Ops is dead-set on carrying out Command Intention, and where every Ethics Officer is working full-time to “remove counter-intention.” All Miscavige had to do was establish himself as “Command,” and he had the whole system working for him.
Scientology will only truly embrace freedom when it ceases to be an authoritarian dictatorship.
8. A Culture of Confession:
Sure, confession can be beneficial. But only if it is kept in the strictest confidentiality and is not kept in files and folders for the purposes of future blackmail.
Confession, misused, is the tool of the mind controller, the cult leader. Many cults use confession as a means of controlling their members.
Scientologists “know” that if anyone leaves Scientology, it’s because they “have overts.” If anyone wants to leave, it’s because of their “crimes.” If anyone complains or “natters,” it’s because they have overts. They “know” this so thoroughly that they don’t dare complain or think about leaving.
Anyone who defies David Miscavige is immediately pulled in for Sec Checking. Anyone who complains about anything in the Church of Scientology is sent to Ethics.
Scientology will mature when it ceases using confession as a method of control.
9. “Toughness” and the Para-Military Paradigm:
Another part of the Scientology ethos is a sort of macho toughness. “We are not a ‘turn the other cheek’ religion,” they brag. No, Scientologists are tough guys.
Being “reasonable” is a bad thing in Scientology. Having sympathy for others is “low-toned. “Human emotion and reaction” is simply a “barrier to production.”
No, you have to be tough. “It’s a tough universe,” we are told. “…only the tigers survive.”
At the apex of all of this “toughness” we have the quasi-military Sea Org, with its uniforms, ranks, marching, musters, all-nighters, screaming and even physical abuse. And don’t get in their way.
What about empathy, compassion, love, caring for others? “Shut up – don’t be a pantywaist dilettante.”
Scientology only has a chance of becoming a real religion if they jettison all this quasi-military, fake-macho “toughness.”
10. Money and Greed:
As long as I was in Scientology, 35 years – executives, orgs and managers were always obsessed with money. And not money as in long-term investments or long-range financial planning. Money as in “how much can we rake in now, now, now before Thursday at 2:00?”
Anyone who has worked in Orgs, or worked in Registration, or in Management, knows how true this is. One is judged by stats, and the most attention, rightly or wrongly, went on GI.
I could point to many organizational factors, starting at the top. The stat of WDC is Int Reserves. The FBO system took any limits off how much of the org income could be grabbed and sent “uplines.” “Proportionate pay” justified not paying staff. The dateline payment system justified not paying bills. Orgs were always under terrific financial stress, all in the name of padding central reserves.
And now, of course it’s over the top, with every staff member commandeered as reges and salespeople, constant pressure for Donations, failing orgs, and central reserves being squandered.
Scientology will get a lot saner when it stops fixating on money and starts caring about people.
11. Penalizing Downstats
You get upstats of you reward upstats and penalize downstats. Sure, makes perfect sense.
But what do you mean by “penalize?” How do you “penalize” someone in an org?
Over my many years on staff, I saw executives get very inventive on this point. Having downstats scrub floors or toilets with toothbrushes was one method. Locking people in basements or chain lockers was another. Throwing people into a harbor or a lake was yet another.
At the Int Base, this reached draconian proportions with something called the “Team Share System.” One had five cards, for Social Events (which allowed one days off, or parties), Bonuses, Pay, Food, and Berthing. One could have one or more cards removed for downstats or infractions. One could lose one’s pay, food (only rice and beans), or berthing (sleep under one’s desk or out on the lawn).
And of course, downstats could be screamed at, or even hit or punched or shoved.
And if they don’t come around, RPF.
All of these things have one common name: abuse.
In any other organization, production is achieved through incentives and rewards – better pay, promotions, bonuses. The only penalty is, you might get fired.
Scientology may start to get real production when it stops abusing its staff.
12. Appearance vs. Substance, Hypocrisy:
In Scientology, unfortunately, what is important is how things look. How they appear. How they sound. Appearances over substance.
A flossy video promoting Volunteer Minister activity is more important than the actual activity.
The external appearance of an org is more important than the fact that it’s empty and failing.
Claiming that “there is no Disconnection” on national TV is more important than actually cancelling Disconnection.
Claiming “Fair Game was cancelled” is more important than ceasing to Fair Game people.
Scientology might gain some respect if it actually becomes honest.
Summary
My point is this: the abusive environment that exists in organized Scientology is not merely the errant behavior of a few bad apples. There are factors like the above that are part and parcel of the culture of Scientology. Where they came from, why they exist, who put them in place, are all matters of speculation and personal experience. But these factors do exist throughout Scientology. And most of them, while they have been taken to psychotic extremes by Miscavige, have always existed in the organization culture.
If anyone is serious about reforming Scientology, these are the sorts of things that will have to be examined, evaluated, and corrected.
By Jeff Hawkins
As a never-in, this succinct but thorough dissection of Co$ policy is particularly meaningful after having been given a taste of OSA’s Fair Game Cat O’ Nine Tails, thanks to a blog comment deemed a “terrorist threat” by the Evil Empire. Thus, Co$ legal thugs had San Bernardino County law enforcement dispatched to “handle” this 76-year old greybeard “menace to society.”
This gives a deeper resonance to the many exe’s whistleblowing books I’ve read, the Aftermath Series, and the ongoing Co$ revelations uncovered daily by this superlative blog, as well as its online compatriots, all courageously hastening the return of this bastion of evil back to the nothingness from which it sprang.
Excellent, I was public, Mission Staff, SO, and GO and this hits EVERY nail on the head. I hate to be political , but that entire description of the this totalitarianism in this “church,” smacks of what is running our country right now. Marxism …the way the structure of the “elite” in Scientology is set up with it’s pecking order of higher and lower staffs, and intolerance for disagreement,…and then you have the “voters”…, in this case, the paying public whom are treated well in order to extract payments to put on their account for the next service…
Good read and spot on.
Hi Mike, thank you for everything you’re doing to help others get informed about this cult. I just finished binging the entire Aftermath serie and am now listening to the podcast. One thing I’d like to know more about is the mood of Scientologists sent to RPF to do manual labour. Are they walking around like zombies or is there a camaderie going on to make it bearable? Also is the labour like digging trenches “pretend work” or does it have a purpose. Thanks!
The idea that COS can change reminds me of when David Duke ran for President several years ago and told everyone he is part of the “new KKK” and the new Klan isn’t like the old Klan.
Yeah- suuurrree….
Did any of you see that Duke was in Charlottesville during what was basically a NeoNazi rally a few summers ago? He was there spewing the same hate he and the Klan have always spewed.
Sorry – I seriously doubt that COS could ever change its stripes.
I agree that “Jeff was responsible for the single successful marketing campaign in scientology — returning Dianetics to the top of the NY Times bestseller list in the 80’s”. I will probably get myself into trouble here, but I would posit that it wasn’t the marketing campaign directed to non-scientologists that put DMSMH on the best seller list. It ended up there as a result of a stat push within scientology that coincided with the marketing campaign. I well remember being regged hard to buy dozens of copies of the book as were all my fellow culties at the time. When I objected saying that I already had a leather bound copy, I was told that the reason we were supposed to buy multiple copies of the book was to get it on the best seller charts as a way of generating attention for scientology and I should just donate the books where ever I saw fit in the hopes someone would read it and walk into an org or mission wanting services.
That said, I believe that Jeff has done some of the best work out there in shedding light on scientology and its cancerous DNA. I certainly benefited from it even though I had already extracted myself from the cult. Jeff is a real inspiration and anyone wanting more information about this dangerous cult should read his work and listen to the interviews he has given over the years.
Ms B. Haven. They did the same for Mission Earth, also rehearsed in part with What is scn, and generally do it internally with every new release until the drama achieved with the Basics.
However that campaign worked like nothing ever before (and after).
Most of the books were still bought by new people but the point of success was the number of people who went to the orgs and started a first service.
This took the number of active members worldwide far beyond 100,000. A historic figure if you think that the number before the pandemic was 20 / 25,000.
A successful marketing campaign that contributed to the boom of Dianetics even here in Italy.
Funny how one could be nostalgic for a kinder gentler time of stat pushing book sales.
During the time of that campaign, my class IV org and the others in our cont. got into running Book One seminars, people twinned up in rented hotel halls, knees to knees running book one sessions.
Staff, and public were book one auditing, it was being sold as a Div 6 intro, and we figured we were on our way.
Grassroots, just like the first time round.
it went to shit of course. silk and sows ears.
I could be completely wrong about this, but what I remember is there was a push to revive ‘Book 1’ in the early 80s. I believe that Diana Hubbard was behind this with a guy named Mike Goldman. An early 50s dianetics auditor named John Galusha was touring around promoting this style of auditing. To the best of my knowledge, the dianetics promotion referenced in this posting came along somewhere in the late 80s after Miscavige was firmly entrenched as Hubbard’s successor. Someone please correct me if I’ve got this wrong.
When Galusha came to the mission I was at to promote dianetics, I knew right away it was going to be a failure. He mentioned something about cigarette smoking as being a form of drug use. That’s a big NO NO in scientology. Hubbard was still alive and chain smoking Kools. Saying that tobacco is a drug to be avoided was a huge slap in the face to the “Founder”. That dianetics campaign was over about as soon as it started. Next came the Kingsley Wimbush de-dinging tech (that’s a whole ‘nother story on its own) followed swiftly by the international finance police descending on the missions and pretty much destroying the mission network. The mission I was at was actually doing quite well at the time. It later became a full class IV org and that current org (now ideal) is just a shadow of its former self. Let the downward spiral continue!
“Let the downward spiral continue!”
That implies it’s possible to allow or not allow the spiral to continue. About all anyone can do is assist the enterprise in its implosion. Actually, Dave’s doing a perfectly wonderful job of it on his own, aided and abetted by his cronies at and around the top of the pile. I was gonna say “Pyramid”, but it’s not that well organized, thanks to LRH admin “tech” which makes a mountain out of every molehill.
Ms. B., I think it also just came along at a time ripe for sort of an echo boom of Scientology’s 1960s explostion, when hippies turned yuppies as well as post-boomer young adults and professionals were looking for personal and business tools. It was also for instance the era when NLP and Tony Robbins took off, and on the more religious side, fundamentalist and prosperity gospel Christian ministries flourished.
One thing that I think is telling, is that a lot of Scientology’s success then was through WISE, promoting use of the “tech” in companies and capitalizing on a general trend towards being more performance-oriented and profit-focused. They particularly made inroads in to healthcare and pseudo-medical practices that had been backwaters of old-fashioned management – capturing a demographic of dentists, chiropractors, etc., that make up an important membership component to this day.
‘Counterfeit Dreams’ is my BOOK ONE too (thank you for coining that phrase Mary Kahn). That was the first book I read and it was so well written, it blew me away. I never went back into Scientology. Just faded into the distance and stayed UTR telling the Scientologists that still call me and show up at my house that I am busy trying to pay off debt. Yes, I got into MASSIVE debt doing Scientology and donating to all of the front groups that are there only for show. They actually don’t do anything of lasting value.
It is smoke and mirrors.
Thank you Mike Rinder. Your podcasts coupled with watching the Aftermath show on Netflix is so healing for me. I cry every episode. Leah brings her heart and soul into it and mentions things that no one else has mentioned. It’s like she really is duplicating exactly how I feel.
I was a walk in during my late 30’s. I was looking for self-improvement. What trapped me is my family was against Scientology and they put me on the very expensive PTS/SP course, which tricked me into believing anyone against Scientology were SP’s. That’s right – I disconnected from all of my family and friends. Furthermore, I wasted a decade of my life and way too much money on doing the Bridge to Total Bankruptcy in Scientology. The training, I realized after I left, is nothing but drilling to bankrupt and scam others and manipulate and deceive them into signing one sided contracts where Scientology ALWAYS wins and you will always lose.
I had dreams for my life. I wanted to be successful. Scientology $old me the Bridge but it was only a carrot on a stick. They dangle each level out saying “the next level will be all that and a bag of chips”.
It wasn’t. Actually, Scientology does not want you to fulfill your dreams. Scientology wiill manipuluate you out of all of your money, put you into deep debt and get you all alone surrounded only by other kool aid drinking clams.
Scientology hijacked my dreams and did a bait and switch.
I would like to add, the mind control tricks work on anyone whether you are a walk in or a born in. The difference between a walk in, is that we have not had time to figure out how to protect ourselves from the slippery, sleazy sales tactics that will not only bankrupt one, but put one in a trap by giving Scientology money up front. The born-in’s have different situations that suck. Family trapped, brainwashing from the start of their lives.
It sucks either way and both need deprogramming when they get out.
Thank you Mike and Leah for all you do. I am getting fired up with each and every episode to do something about it too. I am forever grateful for all of you who blazed the trail to take down Scientology and expose its daily crimes.
Walk-in, “deprogramming” has a bad connotation even to us who didn’t experience it. De- something-or-other seems right. “Decompress” is the best I can come up with at the moment. “disentangle” is a part of it. It’s like that damnable “study tech” which didn’t make me a better student — I’d been a good student all my life. It made me less certain that I understood the poorly-printed words on those pages, since any experienced (in scientology) examiner could trip me up by requiring me to give a dictionary-clear definition of words which had NOTHING to do with the subject of the word salad on that page. We weren’t *allowed* to dismiss what we were reading as drivel but had to somehow elevate it to the level of peer-reviewed science, which it by no means resembled.
scientology: making the able less able since 1950.
40 years later, it’s still screwing me up despite my mindful recognizing the poison for what it is, and throwing it on the trash heap of failed, never-workable ideas.
The political and organizational policies, all driven by Hubbard, give COS staff and public no other choice but to be forever at war with the entire world. I dream of the day when they discover they’re on what I call the “wrong side of the Liability formula.” If they were to honestly examine step one of that formula “Discover who are one’s friends” they’d be in for a grim revelation; they have none, other than each other. What a miserable and worthless way to live.
..the GAT III ethics book will probably update the Liability Formula to include the word “financial” before the word, “contribution”.
Rip, I doubt they would ever be honest enough to say “financial contribution” even though it’s what is generally understood to be the case. GAT or any other “GA” is an attempt to further obfuscate Dwarfenführer’s® true goals, not reveal anything truthful. He’s certainly not improved anything other than the hooch he guzzles.
And their “friends” are all transactional, only their friends while they can and do contribute to their cause-of-the-day.
Spot on.
I can think of a thirteenth heading Jeff might have added: “A Culture of Denunciation” — about the pernicious business of ‘Knowledge Reports’ and the ‘Keeping Scinetology Working’ doctrine.
What a great read! Powerful!
When I was first coming out of Scientology, “Counterfeit Dreams ” was one of the first books I read and was immensely helpful.
Jeff’s thoughts on management of stats was something I particularly liked. Every staff member hits up against this craziness right from Day 1.
I was very shocked by a lot of it. I was on staff at a Class V Org in the late 70s through the mid 80s and everything was very mild then and there compared to the shenanigans Jeff describes at Int. Base.
I used to think that most of the insanity was due to off-policy actions at the local Org level and that the further up the command chain you got, the better everything would be.
Not so!
This book shows us that the rot originates right at the top.
So true, Cavalier. “The rot originates right at the top.”
The whole “management by stats” was set to make everyone fail. No matter how fantastic you did this week, it’s not enough. NEXT week, you have to do better or you’re in ‘ethics’ trouble, working out of some grave condition instead of getting restful, restorative sleep, so you can comfortably do at least as well. AND add in a couple of off-purpose special projects to do that ALSO have to be ‘upstat’ every week or else. It’s possible at the start of any new post, but once you’ve learned the ropes and hit your stride, it soon becomes impossible to honestly increase that number. Hence the multitude of ways that staff find to falsify their stats lest they perish.
Jeff lays it all out and checks every box. The CO$ can’t function in any other way but by fascism and mind control. That alone consigns them to the wastebasket of cults waiting to be exposed. And now they are being exposed. Everyone keep up the good work.
As scientology was COMPLETELY a scam, “reforming” would mean its complete elimination. E.g. if one were to reform Stalinism it would necessarily mean that it is now no longer in existence as there is nothing non-harmful about it that didn’t exist before it..
I endorse the rational thinking and astute analysis by Jeff Hawkins. When I gathered the courage to get on the internet and search, “Leaving Corporate Scientology,” the first site that came up was a Jefferson Hawkins site. Inspired by his calm, rational style, the first book I read was “Counterfeit Dreams.” It is positively excellent. Thank you, Mike, and Leah for mentioning to Mike to replenish our “truth reserves” with this fine piece of Jeff Hawkins’ writing. You read it and you think, “Oh my gosh, he is so right. And I am not insane. This is all truly crazy and totally unworkable and massively unsustainable.”
If there is any truth to the Affinity, Reality, and Communication triangle, I see the Church of Scientology “R” aspect of their triangle with rest of the world shrinking to a pinpoint. Everything that Jeff lays out is so not the “R” of anyone walking around. For many years, myself included, I never saw any die-hard active Scientologist bringing any new person into the org. To me, this reflects how much, even when you are in Scientology, you know how Scientology operates is so “out there,” you cannot imagine enforcing or inflicting it on others. Not really. Not unless for whatever reason, they are already “in.” New person-to-person dissemination seems un-existent.
Peridot, hopefully, our work in exposing scientology for what it is and helping good folks escape the trap will make it unlikely that any will be fooled by the glitz that the enterprise wraps itself up in.
Jeff’s works helped me beyond words. From everything I’ve ever read or observed, Mike’s assessment of Hawkins is just spot on.
I am a huge fan and am forever grateful to him. He’s in the Hall of Heroes alongside these good folks.
This article is above is so valuable.
Thank you for posting it, Mike.
A beautiful writing this by Jeff. His blog is full of great articles.
Not only is it well written but much of what he describes I experienced – and relived reading it – so much so that in the end I was about to cry realizing what I had to live and do, including not helping friends unjustly in trouble or I would end up there too.
Too many bad choices and too many years lost for nothing.
I thought it was over but holy shit something is still there!
But when the hell am I really leaving this crap behind me?
However it was very helpful, I didn’t know there were still hidden remnants, but now I know.
By the way I think it would be great to have Jeff in the fair game podcast one of these days. Certainly he could give a good contribution to explain many aspects of scn as he does in his blog.
A great article.
I have seen examples in the S.O. of every single thing Jeff talks about.
Very well done indeed.
Every memory I have of those decades in, is a scientology memory.
every single thing I look back on, is steeped in it.
This is a recent realization and I’m not finished thinking about it.
But it immediately shifted my expectations and I’ve eased up on myself as a result.
Rip I perfectly agree. After 15 years in the SO – and same number of years that I left – I thought was ok.
Today I realized how deep that crap went inside me, but I could finally see and accept it as such. I know it will be OK. Thanks.
… I’ve got a fair ways to go yet, but your words are encouraging.
I feel like we’re a bunch of war vets.
Except we were in the jungles for years, decades, or since birth.
It’s been an amazing thing to wake up from.
Rip. Yes war vets somehow fits. Lol. Specially for those who were in the SO. Once a zen teacher said that what we experience is what we needed to get more conscious. Then is up to us be aware of it and used to be more free. And his community is awesome and really helps. I would be stlll lost in the jungles without it.
Okay, before I read this article written by Jefferson Hawkins, I just have to say that “Counterfeit Dreams” is my Book One. While reps from OSA were trying to “accuse” me of reading Marty’s blog (which was nonsense because I never did like Marty’s style), it was Jefferson Hawkins book and his blog I was reading.
His article on “Thought Stopping” threw cold water in my face. When I caught my breath: “That’s me.” “That’s scientology.” “That’s the PTS/Course.” ….
I might have been primed and ready but it was Jefferson Hawkins’ book and blog that started the process of waking me.
You know when robbers or spies shine the special gizmo to show the maze of red criss-crossing laser beams?
Jeff’s writings did that for me. It just lit up and explained what it was and what happened.
I’d put Counterfeit Dreams on any first reading list.
Excellent succinct jam-packed informative well-written article! Thanks to Jeff for writing it and for you for posting it!
Hubbard admitted he was a Fascist in his 1952 tape “Uinverses”. This article posted fills in the gaps. Reading now a book about the Gestapo during the 1930’s. The only difference is that the Gestapo murdered people every day. Scientology simply turns people into slaves. But Scientology follows the Gestapo in detail. In the end my Jesuit training saved me from Scientology. It is ironic since Hubbard mocked Torquemada during the Inquisition. I always get a laugh when Scientologists mock me as Jesuit trained. Hubbard copied his data from Blavatsky almost word for word. Jesuit training is in the end tougher than Scientology because it is based on the conflict of faith and reason which is far more in depth than mystical theta,
The Gestapo specialized in creating files on everyone important. Hubbard obviously copied the idea from mainly Goering. There is one famous situation where a top Army general was removed from his command. The Army General married a young girl who had connections to prostitution. Hitler was enraged when he saw the file. He and Goering fired the general. Hubbard knew about the tactics of the Gestapo and integrated them into Scientology.