They hawk a lot of really dubious stuff in the scientology world — from $5,000 Easy Bake Mark VIII Sooper Dooper meters to “state-of-the-art” “Clearsound”CD players (?) to worthless “limited edition” prints of Hubbard sci-fi art.
But there is perhaps nothing quite as useless as the “Hubbard Administrative Tech.”
For the “cheap”, special holiday price of only $1300 you can get 12 volumes of secularized Hubbard drivel all for yourself. And for the very reasonable starting price of only $195 per year, you as an individual can buy the right to actually USE the “technology.”
And if you shell out $1300 for this mini version of the OEC (for example, the first “volume” of this reference set is “How to Study” — something that is a free course in the VM Handbook) you earn the right to buy Hubbard’s wisdom on “selling” at 35% off the list price of $150. What a bargain!
Why in the constellation of scientology rip-offs is this noteworthy?
Because it’s not just a VERY mini version of the OEC — it contains information that provably DOES NOT WORK. At least with an e-meter you get a physical object that looks interesting, and a CD player WILL play CD’s if you have them and the tacky sci-fi prints CAN be hung on a wall.
What proof exists that these words are useless? Scientology has been dedicatedly using the “only workable management technology on earth” for 70 years. It has SHRUNK over the last 3 decades. Meanwhile, organizations that didn’t exist at all when Hubbard was around have grown into multi-national behemoths and they know NOTHING of this “only workable technology.”
LOVE that garage sale sign. SO appropriate today. “Our crap can be YOUR crap”.
“…Hubbard Admin tech is used by 10 of thousands of businesses?”
That can’t be true as there aren’t that many scns who have studied the drivel.
And, as demonstrated by scn’s failure to survive, any businesses who TRIED to apply the garbage are not long for this earth; they’ll soon be out of business as the basis of scn is selling something which demonstratively fails to work to unsuspecting marks, THEN getting them to believe it was all their fault.
As this cult edges closer to its inevitable destruction, the people who work under DM will grow increasingly desperate to survive. Ultimately, we should expect them to try the most crazy stuff imaginable.
The so-called Pope would not really care. He would be busy figuring out how to transfer the bulk of the money to off shore banks and to buy an island somewhere where he can hire armed security to protect himself from any invaders. The game seems like it is coming to a close and this is mostly the result of Mike and Leah. So thank you to Mike and Leah.
By the way, these are just my opinions and my feelings and may very well be wrong. It’s just the “smell” that leads me to believe the end is near for these crazies.
I just realized while rereading: the OECs are now 12 volumes and cost $1,300+? Heck, I never would have been able to afford them 40+ years ago on sea org pay. I’m astounded that I was able to afford the original 8 volumes. I Forget HOW I did that. Likely a tax refund I got from the previous year’s employment. Danged, the regges and bookstore guys know how to guilt a guy into parting with every last penny.
Mike, still thinking about your interview with Jon Atack yesterday on the Bunker. I’ll take another whack at explaining the e-meter.
First off, while it is true that the MK V used cheap parts, the VI and later got away from that. There can be meter indications that originate in the mechanical parts, true, but that doesn’t completely explain the allure of the meter.
Another silly explanation that we hear a lot is the idea that muscle contractions explain it all. Sorry, it is super easy to see the difference between real reactions and these jerky muscle contractions. Make a floating needle by thinking of a flower, sure. Not by trying to smoothly squeeze the cans.
No, there really is something happening in the mind that affects the needle. It just isn’t what Hubbard thought it was. Jon touched on it when he talked about the sweat glands in the palms (also on the soles of the feet). It seems that some of our great ape antecedents needed to be able to voluntarily increase the gripping power of their palms as they bounced around in trees, or something.
The way I’ve heard it described in the literature is that emotional arousal can affect these sweat glands. Not really by making them release sweat, as the early polygraph researchers thought. By opening and closing them.
For those who can remember the Technical Training Films, scripted by Hubbard, there is a scene where the meter is being explained. A “CIA agent” jumps up and says “The e-meter works on sweat! The needle goes down when the palms sweat! And the needle goes up when they un-sweat!” Hubbard’s darkly “humorous” way of saying it can’t be sweat because the needle goes up and down, not only down as it would if the entire explanation was sweaty palms.
Hubbard takes another jab at the real science elsewhere in the film, where he recreates a scene of a supposed Freud, complete with shooting up drugs. It is severely anti-Semitic, exaggerated accent and all. He has Freud say the meter “Only reacts when the subject is sexually aroused”. Then he shows an early version of the meter being “thrown on the dust-heap” because supposedly Freud and Jung failed to appreciate it.
So it seems that Hubbard actually knew the language of the real science, just rejected it. Or maybe he thought some of his students might look it up in the Encyclopedia or something and wanted to pre-emptively discredit the real information.
The way I have heard it described in the technical literature is that the sweat glands open and close in reaction to nerve commands that originate in the brain. Mostly the commands are involuntary, arising when you are aroused (not in the sexual sense, in the sense of an emotional reaction like fear, pain, etc.) They use the word “aroused” because it covers a huge variety of phenomena that can happen, both from external stimuli like a pinch on your arm and from your thoughts.
I’m no expert on these neurological phenomena but I have spent hundreds of hours observing how they work on the meter. The glands don’t open and close instantly. Real physiological phenomena take time to start and stop. That is why the meter can be as slow as it is and still show the physiological phenomena accurately.
I also had access to the tapes that were used to create the E-Meter Drills Film. Luigi figured out a way to record them during the filming when Hubbard was the director. So I was able to see the actual recordings of the reads that Hubbard approved to be shown in the film as examples of real needle reactions. This is part of what we did to create the Drills Simulator.
From all this the conclusion that real physiologically created needle reactions are slow, considerably below 1 Hz. The needle is like a 1 Hz pendulum, it can’t really show anything above that frequency accurately. You have seen it swinging around when you turn on the meter etc. Those swings are around 1 Hz, the specification we got from Barry Penberthy going all the way back to the old American Blue meter.
So, there is a real reaction that you can see on the meter. It just has nothing to do with the mystical magickal Hubbard ideas about discharging engrammic charges, mental mass, bouncing internal demons or whatever it is you see on the meter on the OT levels. It doesn’t prove or disprove anything about past lives or the date of that time you were crushed by a spaceship or the real reason you were insulted by an auditor twenty years ago.
It just means you reacted to something.
The draw of the meter in Scientology is the same draw that pulls people into Dr. Oz and Oprah Winfrey. Somebody always ends up in tears. You instinctively feel that some cathartic release has happened when someone cries or laughs about something that was bothering them.
The film “The Three Faces of Eve” uses that trick, also “Searching for Mr. Goodbar” and a host of other movies books and plays. Something was very wrong, someone said just the right thing or got the person to “face up to their fears” or talked about it at length and then they feel better. It probably works sometimes.
But Hubbard was in the unenviable position of having promised a brilliant emotional catharsis to his followers not for one shining special moment. Not even for two. But for hundreds. In Scientology you are supposed to laugh and cry and laugh about it all again many times in a few hours. These are the vaunted “wins” they brag about.
Let’s face it, there aren’t enough painful moments in anyone’s present life to sustain this kind of serial inspirational apotheosis for more than a few days at the most. But Hubbard needed the shills to keep shilling out for years to support his lifestyle.
Jon points out sardonically at around 13:50 in the interview that only hard drugs can really sustain that type of mind-blowing on a regular basis. Most don’t survive that road.
So what’s a modern-day Rasputin to do?
Hubbard stole an idea from Mathison that derived from some work around the turn of the last century by Jung, which as Jon pointed out was considered a failure even then.
Use a meter to find items that cause arousal in someone, and keep hitting on that one way or another until some epiphany comes out of it. Doesn’t matter if the realizations are true, doesn’t matter if they really improve someone’s life,
It is easy to convince someone that their tears of joy will really result in changes in their lives, that they are advancing ever higher on some Stairway to Heaven, that they will never be the same again. Especially if they have paid the big bucks for it.
A mind control trap of the most insidious kind. With pseudo-scientific trappings, even a meter. So sorry to all those who were fooled by meters I designed and repaired. I was fooled too.
Thanks Bruce. That is really helpful. When it is all said and done the meter is a stroke of evil genius that sets Scientology apart from every other cult.
I just finished listening to this talk with Jon and Mike. And I agree with Mike — the e-meter was a brilliant touch of marketing even though it’s bogus. Like how mood rings became so popular and many people actually believed they gauged one’s moods. However, a mood ring cost a few bucks. The price tag of e-meter and constant auditing is through the roof.
I understand that LRH rode the New Age wave along with many other hucksters and fake gurus. What I still can’t wrap my mind around is how his particular brand of BS hooked so many people, for so long, and continues to hook some in, with an utterly insane philosophy that abuses and terrorizes people.
It’s mind boggling to me.
It doesn’t matter that the “incidents” ‘uncovered’ were real events or some story they read or movie they watched. OR, more regularly, they were made-up stories thrown out just to give an answer the auditor would accept. I loved how the e-meter seemed to work in session, but there’s no way physical movements, even unconscious ones, would have gotten past my attention. Unluckily, I have to report that even though I can’t explain how; nor can anyone else to my satisfaction, it DID seem to indicate areas of emotional charge just below the PC’s conscious level. ‘Course, that was 40+ years ago and I can’t say my memory is flawless. I do remember requesting that a PC not move around since that could obscure real reads.
Jere, you wrote: “…it DID seem to indicate areas of emotional charge just below the PC’s conscious level.”
Confirmation Bias on the part of both the auditor and the subject explains this.
The subject and auditor know the purpose of the audit and work to confirm its validity because they’re both invested in scientology.
Heck, if the subject is paying money for the audit, they’re invested in it “working.” So they provide information to confirm it’s “working.”
It just proves the power of suggestion when working with someone motivated or invested in the process.
Let’s face it. Who among us doesn’t harbor some past trauma real or imagined.*
I’ve seen it happen with cold reader psychics suggesting they “see” an “energy” around the subject and the subject is quick to confirm it with details about this or that.
But the psychic never came up with those details yet gets credit for accuracy.
The e-meter indicates “something” is there. And the scientologist confirms it with details because he/she wants to “go clear.”
*On imagined traumas: My younger brother was convinced that when he was around 3 years old my mom took him to work with her and made him sit on a bench as she typed all day in her secretary job. He was very angry about it and well into his 30s when he confronted mom.
Problem is: she was a stay at home mom till we were in high school. Add to this she didn’t know how to type and never had a secretary job.
It took me, mom and a couple of aunts to convince him it wasn’t true. Yet he was angry at her all of those years for an imagined trauma. Possibly a bad dream he’d had? We don’t know. But false memories are a proven phenomenon.
How many people holding the e-meter cans were recalling false memories, I wonder.
Good article. I remember Frank Zurn got me
to join the Sea Org back in early 80’s by saying
something about my “certainty”. That made my
brain creak. The whole concept of Scientology
came crashing down on me, so I joined and
thereby made my investing 12 years, a whole
lot of time, tons of money and working myself
to the bones, RIGHT. Such a convoluted spin I
was in.
This article has given me a great idea.My garage is filled with a cornucopia of crap…uh,I mean wonderful antique collectibles since my late father-in-law bought the house in 1953.He never got rid of anything and when my husband’s parents moved to Florida in 1978,we bought the house and my husband just kept adding to everything.If anyobody needs any dog crates,bird cages,Christmas trees,antique vacuum cleaners,etc,just let me know.However,I am keeping the electric chainsaw,just in case.
Right, Nancy. You never know when you’re gonna need a chainsaw, and electric ones are a real blessing. Keep that thing in a safe place away from water. I have one in the tool locker in our basement. The only better idea is a good battery-operated saw, eliminating the long cord.
Throwing money away on useless horseshit is a major feature of scientology.
David Miscavige’s monogrammed silk pajamas don’t pay for themselves, ya know. Scientologists are dupes and fools, and have been propping up the lifestyle of that little shit COB for far too long.
Throwing money away on useless “stuff” is ALL of Scientology. NOTHING in that scam is useful in the long or short term.
“But wait, there’s more!”
It reminds me of cheap ads in magazines. There’s no satisfaction guarantee or warranty listed.
Collect the whole set!
“But wait, there’s more!”
Isn’t that the tagline of a late-night infomercial selling cheap, useless junk? Popiel, perchance? I have one of their compact fishing outfit thingies. Tried to use it once and used the rest of the weekend to try to untangle the resulting rat’s nest, unsuccessfully.
back in 1974 I prepaid $350.00 for the Tech and Admin vols. I should have just bought the Tech vols. I think in30 years i referred to the Admin vols 3 times. Long ago they went to recycling. Even in the 70’s I kept saying — if it’s so good why aren’t the orgs working?
“if it’s so good why aren’t the orgs working?”
A key realization, Jim. Hubbard couldn’t properly organize his footlocker.
This reminded me of the early 80s when I was dating a guy who was an antique bookseller. I went with him on a mini road trip to a book fair where he set up a booth to sell and also shop others’ books.
I watched the booth when he went to look around and noticed several people kept picking up a vintage botany book, flipping through it, checking the price sticker, then setting it back down. He had it marked at $50 because it wasn’t exactly an antique but it had beautiful plates by a known artist.
I mentioned this to him so he said, “Let’s try something.” He doubled the price to $100 and the next person who looked at it, bought it.
It drove home the point that people think something has a lot of value if it’s expensive.
Maybe the high cost of “studying” scientology is a big part of the con.
Of course. If I really thought I could have control over Matter, Energy, Space, and Time I would find any way I could to gather a million dollars to pay for it. And one could reasonably expect such exclusive secrets to cost that much.
Veblen goods, and Geffin goods, named after Thorstein Veblen and Robert Giffen. Normal goods decline in demand as price goes up, while these two do the opposite (for different reasons).
Mary surmised:
“Maybe the high cost of “studying” scientology is a big part of the con.”
Bingo! He even admitted as much in some policy which I refused to memorize. I suspect it was in Vol II of the OECs before Davey scrambled things up so thoroughly.
It’s the complete story of “Mr. Hubbard’s system of management “…ON SALE!
Now I can afford to find out how and why the cult thinks it’s a great idea to publicly humiliate employees! It has to be full of fascinating information unknown to the rest of the business world.
Mr. Bubble’s system of management?
He just stole that from Mr. P.T. Blarneyum, “There’s a sucker is born every minute.”
Another note on your talk with Jon Atack, Mike. If anyone hasn’t seen this, it is over at the Bunker and also on Youtube on Jon’s channel. Called “Truth and Certainty”. I would call it a required assignment for any recovering Scientologist.
On what you mentioned about certainty being the glue that sticks the cult world together – this is a profoundly important piece of the puzzle. Not just about Scientology, though it is perhaps easier to see how it works in something as profoundly goofy and yet as insidiously persistent as the Bridge to Total (Serfdom) Freedom.
Uncertainty is painful, There is an actual physiological element to the term “cognitive dissonance”. Like the phrase “makes your brain creak”.
I’d guess most people spend at least some time working out their world view, what they believe in. Or maybe they just go with whatever they heard when they were young. Or follow some charismatic speaker they heard in their teens.
Factually the brain is not fully developed until the late 20s! Gives the average person lots of time to blindly accept various isms before the cortex, home of rational thought, is fully developed. Comes the cry “it just feels right!”
In the days when most people would never travel to the next town, let alone all over the world, this mostly worked out fairly well. Everybody you know thinks like, looks like and acts like you do. No uncertainty.
In our modern times that’s all gone. A few moments spent on the Internet can expose one to beliefs so foreign to your own that you question the humanity of humanity.
How do we recover our core beliefs in the face of such an onslaught? Or do we? Maybe we just believe whoever has made the most compelling TED talk? But what about the one next day that completely contradicts it?
One answer is to embrace Science. At least scientific theories are supposed to be tested and validated, right? Gives one some certainty, no? That’s the main reason Hubbard pretended that his work was scientific, to assume the mantle of Newton and Galileo. You see where that lead the Scientologists…
For most, Science isn’t really too helpful as a religion replacement. There are now thousands of specialties in science, each with its own vocabulary, warring factions following various theories, and mountains of extremely technical papers written in what may as well be Sanskrit to those outside the field. If you have any issues understanding math and statistics, don’t even bother trying to read papers.
So when they say “follow the Science” they really mean “follow my oversimplified understanding of a complex concept that wouldn’t actually make sense to me if it bit me on the butt, but which confirms what I always knew all along!” Not that helpful.
I can’t offer you certainty in the modern world, I don’t think anyone can without removing free will and basic rights.
What Jon said at about 48:48 in the video is really the only answer, paraphrased here – you just have to accept some uncertainty. Like the famous Donald Rumsfeld quote,
If someone else has to be wrong for you to be right, chances are there could be unknown unknowns floating around out there. Maybe some Titanic-sized ones. Rather than fighting, denying, crying or dying, perhaps a little thinking is in order instead. You may still decide that the challenging idea is horse-pucky, but at least you looked.
Good point about the human desire for certainty. I think it links back to the human fear of death and the inability of the ego to accept it will cease to exist at some point.
Hubbard clearly had an overblown, dysfunctional ego himself that led him to create this fiction that he could become superhuman on earth and then a god upon his death with the ability to return to earth at will.
What better way to assuage the ego’s fear of death than to believe it will live for a billion years.
That’s what amazes me about the people who get conned by CoS and sign the billion year contract. It’s an insane proposition yet reasonable people accept it at face value.
The fear of death is a powerful motivator.
Bruce,
The Rumsfeld quote best part is the not knowing what you don’t know.
I always pre Scientology thought the top intellectual mags in the US were the ones to at least return to, which I did when I left Scn.
New York Review of Books, just incredible resource to launch into the world’s top unknown to average persons, human history of thought.
New York Review of Books, a year’s subscription, only as a source of leads into top world intellectual thought, highly recommended to put one’s tiny Scientology Hubbard thought world in context.
Chuck Beatty
ex course sup, my favorite job in the cult of Scn
Thank you Bruce, your comments today have been helpful.
I’ve been taking free coursera courses for 4 years now.
This last year I’ve been studying every YouTube, NPR, PBS, podcast interviews about neurology. I absolutly love it.
Anyone with a 45$ prepaid phone can get 25G data a month along with the unlimited everything else.
It took a while to switch from PC and laptop to just my cheap phone but I truly wake up everyday grateful to be following my dreams and have everything I need. Education is key and after 40 years of LRHs BS if anything is being sold or it cost for anything more then the 40$ certificate – I’m off to someone else 😊
Have any actual colleges that award MBAs actually used Hubbard’s materials?? No. Why am I not surprised?
Thanks Aaron, that bit was seriously unfunny.
This seems to me as if the head poobah has just given up and is no longer on top of everything. For some reason, I get the feeling this ad was produced when someone asked him what they should try to sell and he answered, “I can’t find the energy to care. Just do whatever you want.”
If he ever sees this ad, I bet he will be very sorry. But I wonder if he may be thinking this COVID crisis actually portends the end of humanity in this world and slowly but surely it will extinguish all human life on earth. I certainly hope not. But I’m guessing many people are beginning to wonder.
I doubt he really believes that. When the vaccines work and cases start to diminish, they will say it’s because of the OTs.
“When the vaccines work and cases start to diminish, they will say it’s because of the OTs.”
So TRUE! No OT has ever demonstrated an ounce of their vaunted “powers” to anyone’s satisfaction. At “best”, they’ll observe something happened and say, “*I* did that!
Yeah, like *I* made it snow a couple of days ago and I’m keeping it chilly so the snow sticks around. Maybe we’ll have a white(-ish) Christmas on Friday.
Off Topic….however, seems like Tom Cruise is “dating” 38 year old co star Hayley Atwell. What boggles the mind is that there is/was a PHOTO of them sitting SIDE BY SIDE in a car wearing NO MASKS!!! Heavens to Betsy…..NO MASKS.
Verbally abused other people on the film set…..yet photographed holding hands with Atwell…….you damned well KNOW “more than that” has to be going on .
Is Hayley Atwell to be the NEXT Mrs. Cruise….Holy Crap I HOPE NOT. Is she ready to sign her life over to COS…..OR…..if she REFUSES to do so…just WHAT would Tom Cruise do??? David M. must be digging up all the dirt he can on this woman……I can hear him now screeching like a banshee “FIND ALL THE SHIT YOU CAN ON HER……her past lovers, arrests, drug & drinking issues….FIND OUT ALL THE SHITS OR YOUR ASSES WILL BE IN THE HOLE FOREVER.”.
“FIND OUT ALL THE SHITS OR YOUR ASSES WILL BE IN THE HOLE FOREVER.”.
And WHAT could possibly get any asses OUT of the hole?
Sheer luck, it seems, and that ass having momentary value to the Twerp™.
I pity poor Hayley Atwell. For a few days or maybe months, she’ll be courted by the smoothest sociopath going. Afterwards will be years and tears of terror and other unpleasantries as he/they ruin her UTTERLY
No one deserves experiencing such depravity
Hopefully she will have great family & friends who will talk some sense into her. Sadly Katie Holmes was an immature teen ager head over heels in love with T.C. since her young teen years & was besotted with him. I am sure her parents tried to talk her out of having any relationship with TC, but teens don’t listen to their parents because the “teen knows better”.
Often times people have to learn for themselves…..after all it’s been said “life IS a lesson”. Katie was lucky to have supportive parents who aided her in getting way from the clutches of COS & TC. Seems to me she still does not have good judgment based upon her last few love affairs in choosing the wrong man to become involved with.
Suri at least has been freed from any attachment to COS…however as is often the case, as she matures she MIGHT want to chance “getting to know her dad & COS”….as she might blame her mom for “keeping her away from her father TC”.
At least at 38 Atwell is an ADULT, still many years younger than TC, she’s not a lovesick teen ager & let’s face it….TC has lost some of his mega star sex appeal & in plain speaking language he just ain’t that steamy hot anymore as now he’s in middle age.
Ahhhh….getting your name out there dating one of the former mega super stars but now he’s only a…aaaaa…..aaaa……..what’s it called….a “big being…super being…supreme grand poobah”………….Ah what the HELL forget it.
Off topic funny story related to the interview you did with Jon Atack, shown on the Bunker this AM.
On NPR radio, in the late 60s, they interviewed someone who connected a lie detector to a plant. I don’t remember any reference to Hubbard, but that was about the same time that Hubbard was connecting old American Blue e-meters to tomato plants.
The part that struck me was that they tried various means to make the meter read, like telling the plant it was going to be pruned etc. No reaction. But if you actually apply some clippers – read!
The other thing they tried was to stir up some yoghurt near the plant. Reads like crazy! In those days the yoghurt containers often had “fruit at the bottom”. Lots of sugar in that fruit compote or whatever, that would kill the live culture in the yoghurt, making a read on the plant. Cross species empathy waves? Pure coincidence? Liars on the radio?
I have no idea if there is any validity to any of this, but it is funny to hear you talking about present-day experiments with meters and yoghurt. I guess what goes around comes around.
In the 1970’s I recall two or three people in course rooms taking the Organization Executive Course. Maybe scn gave the appearance of rapidly expanding and some business type people believed Elron had something to say. The course was very expensive even back then and scn students were instructed not to talk to the people taking the course about scn the “religious philosophy”. Gross income is gross income.
O/T. “My Scientology Movie” is free on Tubi.
You can watch the movie for free on the Tubi website or using a Tubi app.
https://tubitv.com/movies/521417
/
Thanks, ISNOINews. I didn’t realize I needed a light comedy tonight.🤤 I didn’t realize it was 1:39 long, though.
With so much “theta” available( *its value is truly unfathomable,* ) why bother with reality,eh?
After all, years of huffing the scienbollocky crack pipe will CONFIRM the “value” of Flubbards gifts(turds) to humankind!
Get yours today, supplies are…collecting dust…
😂😂😂
“Flubbards gifts(turds) to humankind!
Get yours today, supplies are…collecting dust…”
AND the DUST is INCREASING their value
UP to …
ZERO!