We have a special treat. A second Terra Cognita essay in 3 days. This follows on so closely from the last: Condition of Doubtfulness. See earlier Terra Cognita: The Mind, The Way To Happiness: Really? A Story, 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.
Condition of Liabilitiness
LRH wrote, “Below Non-Existence there is the Condition of Liability. The being has ceased to be simply non-existent as a team member and has taken on the color of an enemy.”
Is there anyone in the history of man who didn’t hate doing every single step of the accompanying formula? Or who felt lighter and more at cause after they were done?
LIABILITY FORMULA
The formula of Liability is:
Step 1: Decide who are one’s friends.
If you’ve arrived at Liability from having worked your way up from Doubt, this step should be a cinch. You’ve already determined who your friends are, right? If not, be aware that looking too carefully at church policy or tech, or doing any kind of real research, is prohibited. But this really isn’t a problem because the answer is as obvious as it is undeniable: All Scientologists in good standing are your friends.
Anyone not a member of the church can’t really be your friend. Not really. They might be pretending to be an ally, but they’re not. Undoubtedly, they’re PTS and under the influence of an SP and should be avoided. A true friend would be a Scientologist.
Step 2: Deliver an effective blow to the enemies of the group one has been pretending to be a part of despite personal danger.
The “enemies of the group” part is easy. Take your pick: psychiatry, medical doctors, the IRS, the government (England, Australia, the US, Marcab—doesn’t matter), society, world bankers, Type A relatives, WOGS, or last but not least, dilettantes not contributing enough to clear the planet. The bottom line is if they’re not Scientologists, they’re enemies of Scientology. What could be simpler?
As Regraded Being recently pointed out, delivering an effective blow can be as easy as making a phone call. It’s the “despite personal danger” where one must exercise caution. Passing out “Way to Happiness” booklets on the corner of Sunset and L. Ron Hubbard Way is relatively safe. Handing out pamphlets in a Columbian barrio after dark can be risky. Be aware of security cameras before splattering the front doors of psychiatric hospitals with buckets of warm pig blood or torching an IRS office.
By far, though, the most effective blow to the enemies of the group is to donate large sums of money to the IAS—The International Association of Scientologists. Nothing drives members of the aforementioned suppressive groups more crazy than seeing money funneled to the one sane group on the planet, the IAS.
Note: Always keep in mind, that in Step 4, you’re going to have to convince your group members that the blow you delivered was effective.
Step 3: Make up the damage one has done by personal contribution far beyond the ordinary demands of a group member.
Within the church, this step is known as the “amends project.” Atonement for one’s sins isn’t a new concept but LRH formalized the idea into rigid policy. I never felt particularly restored after doing one of these projects—but that’s just me.
“Making up the damage” typically involves humiliating oneself by working at one’s local org doing some sort of mind-numbing, physical project. Folders always need filing in Central Files. Painting rooms in an org is a favorite. Cleaning bathrooms that haven’t seen a bottle of Clorox or a sponge in three years is another (bonus points for using a toothbrush).
I’ve read accounts of Sea Org members suffering especially rough times completing this step to the satisfaction of their peers. Which makes me wonder: do RPF members have to do conditions? Are they perpetually stuck in Treason? Or do they become mired in some other brutal condition that’s never been made public?
Once again, though, donating large sums of money to the IAS is usually enough to get people to sign your petition in the next step of the formula.
Step 4: Apply for reentry to the group by asking the permission of each member of it to rejoin and rejoining only by majority permission. And if refused, repeating (2) and (3) and (4) until one is allowed to be a group member again.
Many Scientologists know this step as “the petition.” Rarely, does one not sign one, but occasionally some holier-than-thou ostrich will contend you haven’t done enough and ask that you do a little more to “make up the damage”—as doing less would be “out-integrity” for both of you.
If the previous step wasn’t shameful enough, groveling before your peers as they read about your “transgressions” and what you did to “make up the damage,” is guaranteed to complete the humiliation process.
I hereby promise to slash my wrists before I ever again degrade myself so dishonorably.
Still not Declared,
Terra Cognita
Miscavige may be trying to see how far he can go at this point.
first step is decide who are one’s friends. Here Ron never defines a friend. And then we jump to step two of delivering an effective blow to the enemies of the group….what happened to friends?
That always caused confusion for me, how do we go from friend to group when I did a liability.
When I looked up Aristotle ethics I found friends where of 3 choices namely one for utility, the second for pleasure, and the third for goodness. And I realized Hubbard’s ethics were for number one.
You have to make the distinction between organizational ethics and personal ethics. Every organization or group establishes its organizational ethics. The decisions to join / not join and all variations are solely up to the individual.
The question of good and evil is intuitively obvious, that a being knows the difference between right and wrong, but the philosophical ruminations about it have a solution Aristotle provided in Nicomachean Ethics***, and an admin scale is something Aristotle would have l-o-v-e-d to have had in his hands, as it is the “how”, the means. The individual must define his own admin scales on his own, define his own ends in the entire aligned scale, and only he can do that. All admin scales interact and integrate, so you can take things from “Housekeeping” such as “clean, orderly, conveniently accessible, aesthetic” and translate them onto bigger scales such as “Good”. We do;t have much of Socrates, lamentably, but it is said he was asked once, “What is good?” an he replied, “I don’t know what good is, but I dearly hope I am!”
I showed a non-Scn an admin scale and explained how it works. Finally, after I asked, they got back to me and said, “Well, yes … but that’s what I do already, everyday!” So I just said, “That’s my point.” (People make a big deal out of Maslow’s Hierarchy and it’s taught in universities as part of sociology courses – I’m not going to say it sucks, I’m just saying an admin scale is much more useful and precise, as it gives the individual himself the opportunity to define, refine, and actually achieve the extraordinarily imprecise “self-actualization” Maslow mentions. The “trick” to philosophy these days isn’t stating the truth, rather it’s about stating something that’s impressive for its imprecision [insanity, conundrums], like arguing at length about whether language is learned or innate, while ignoring its principal function to communicate. So you are correct in choosing Aristotle to read, but I’d rather go with Hubbard’s notion that production is the basis of moral, or “esteem”, but one must have a decent admin scale to begin with.)
***Good, then, would be used in two senses: good as an end in itself, and good as a means.” From the book “The Philosophy of Aristotle” translated by J.L. Creed and A.E. Wardman, Book One, chapter 6. That translation makes much more sense to me than the Oxford translation (also found in the two other translations I have): “Clearly, then, goods must be spoken of in two ways, and some must be good in themselves, the others by reason of these.”
Aristotle’s distinction is critical, since one can argue almost endlessly about whether some end is good or bad, but when it comes to the means employed, clearly some are better than others. Pouring water from a pitcher into a glass is better than pouring it on the floor and lapping it up with one’s tongue; a bicycle is easier on a dry road than ice-skates; and so on. If the means are definable as good, then there is a definition of good possible, and ends can also be defined. Scientology does provide that a smooth functioning of means, towards self-defined ends, is a coordination or confluence of both together, and integrity and self-determinism can then be set forth as good. In Nicomachean Ethics and in Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle discusses happiness as a result, it seems to me, in my reading, of balanced and moderated behavior, which implies production, and echoes Buddha. That’s good enough for me to slap together with my own experience that I feel better when I’ve put in a good day’s work to good ends (and have been compensated for it all, even if extraordinarily so). Maybe this is too philosophical for most, but it has to make sense to someone!
It is MUCH easier and more accurate to simply look at the end result after the fact, in balance.
Therefore, scientology is unarguable (by sane people) BAD!
Great column, Terra! The last time I was put in Liability was the last time I let those idiots control me. Walked out the door and never looked back! That was 30 yrs ago!
Ah yes, Liability…
I think Liability is full of manipulative mindfuck.
First: daring to have “doubts about one’s group” in the previous formula means you have to “suffer on up through the conditions” and in Liability, one has “taken on the color of an enemy.” Thus, having doubts is a punishable offense, and Liability is designed to make the realization of doubt into such an onerous experience, one would rather close down his mind than go through it again.
Second: This formula, particularly, juvenilizes the scientologist. By that I mean, one is punished as if one were a misbehaving child, and oh what pageantry and drama that protracted punishment brings!
This juvenilization leads to the scientologist looking to the church as an authority over one’s ability to exist as a sovereign adult.
This theme is reinforced throughout scientology: you have to “CSW” to get time off for course to go to a family event or for anything, but you have to make up the time! (“Do your chores before you can go play!”)
If you are not “upstat”, all manner of things happen, none good. (“Do you deserve your allowance this week, Billy?”)
Third: for the dedicated, “do it exactly like Ron says” scientologist, he can never fully get out of Liability, as the fourth step requires that you “ask each member of the group to rejoin…”
Who has EVER asked every scientologist if he can rejoin the group? No one, it’s impossible, so one is left with the pragmatic solution of asking ENOUGH for the ethics officer to approve your formula, but you know, that’s not what it says, but…
Terra Cognita, I couldn’t have said it better, although I would certainly have said it meaner. (Which is why you are writing these great essays for Mike’s Blog. I must commend you on finding the right balance of criticism and humor.) The Doubt Formula may have convinced me the wog world was better than Scientology, but it was the groveling before douchebags to be “re-admitted” to the group that convinced me, finally, to actually cease participating in Scientology. (And that was much harder than you can imagine. At first I blamed it all on David Miscavige’s misrule.)
The straw that broke my camel’s back was being required to do the laundry of an especially despicable man who delighted in inflicting misery on others. How could L. Ron Hubbard have failed to predict the potential for abuse engendered by the mile-wide gaps in his “formulas”?
Step #4 of the Liability Formula contains the words, “if refused.” That’s it. There is absolutely no criteria provided for the basis of refusal. Why should somebody refuse another to be re-admitted? For personal reasons? For imagined reasons? Hubbard gives no reasons at all. His lack of guidance left a mile-wide hole for the ill-intentioned to inflict wholesale misery.
In my opinion, every Condition’s formula is more a study in things left unsaid than in positive guidance.
I don’t think the question here is whether or not a state or condition of Liability exists. I believe it can exist, I’ve been there. The real question is how to identify this condition and how to resolve it.
During the years I was on staff I probably did a Liability formula twice a year (for whatever reason). I worked for this organization from 9am to 11pm, six, sometimes seven days a week, for years. I rarely, if ever, failed to show for post. In six years I took two weeks vacation. I got thousands of people on the Bridge. And for my efforts I received on average $40 per week.
Was I a liability? Of course not. But I was convinced to think that I was.
And THAT is the problem with Hubbard’s Liability Condition/Formula.
About a year after I left I realized I was NEVER a liability to the church – EVER.
Failure is NEVER Scn’s fault. The church is NEVER in a condition of Liability. It is ALWAYS the individual who is responsible, who is the failure, the liability.
And THAT is soul-destroying.
Step 1: “Decide who are one’s friends.”
This step should be in the “doubt formula”. I bypassed the “Decide on the basis of “the greatest good for the greatest number of Dynamics”, as it is a hoax anyway as actually it means “for the greatest good for the 3.Dynamic (CoS/SO/Command Intention) – only”.
At the end … the decision was clear: MY friends … don’t treat me like that!! Period.
And so it was “So Long!” – in the way Lisa Marie Presley was expressing it in her song “So Long” so well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp9dAU3ITOQ
In reality you are owned (with the blackmail, that you would forfeit “your eternity”), and you can only end the oppressive relationship when you take the appropriated steps to end this condition and free yourself.
Demeaning process for often petty offenses. Public humiliation that serves to keep people in line. I never hesitated to sign off on someone’s Liability Formula. Who knew when I would need their signature later?
“..be aware that looking at church policy or tech too carefully, or doing any kind of real research, is prohibited..”
“Anyone not a member of the church can’t really be your friend”
Can someone please explain to me how these absurd claims didn’t raise immediate, HUGE red flags?? It’s just incredible to me that someone can swallow this craziness and not think “wait a minute – why doesn’t LRH want us researching $cientology or taking a good look at policy or tech?” Obviously, we know now that it’s because you’d see his true motives of control and have to confront the reality of it all.
I realize the powerful effect of indoctrination. But it’s just difficult to understand how such ludicrous claims can be agreed with.
I know it’s hard to believe but you are actually underestimating the power of incremental indoctrination. Hubbard called it “learning on a gradient” and it’s actually a sacrament in Scientology: Everything is done one step at a time until the desired effect is achieved. Additionally, Hubbard was an expert at redefining things. One of the first steps is “being able to communicate better.” However, during this step the actual meaning of “communication” is subtly redefined (in this case such that the inductee becomes convinced that a formula must be followed for communication to occur).
This series of steps, each involving a redefining of the inductee’s understanding of himself and interactions with others finally results in the indoctrinated Scientologist who would never jeopardize his eternity by exposing himself to negative information.
Finally, it cannot be stressed enough the effect of Scientology’s Training Routines which are performed at the beginning of one’s involvement in Scientology. Just search for “Scientology TRs” to get an idea. As an example, when I was seventeen I did TR 0 through 8 literally every day for ten hours a day for twenty-six days straight. The mental reconfiguration that occurs is, to put it mildly, remarkable. And long lasting. And, just as Hubbard intended.
Put bluntly, your experience was the personification of OVERRUN! Badly done, as well. The Course Sup should have been pulled off and reprimanded. And s/he ould have been back in the 60s and early 70s.
I found the definition of communication to be very valuable. I was in the business of communication and had never defined BOTH sides of it. Still comes in handy. But I did find the “teaching” of the course to be way off. Later, in a Mission, I was able to turn out really fine communicators, many of whom were blown away by the course. My concept was not so much to produce good students, but good coaches. If the coach got the idea that s/he was there to HELP the student, rather than score points by how many times the world “flunk” was said, both sides of the equation benefited. Either VGIs or something was out of kilter. I/We never turned out “automatons”, which was what I could see the SO was aiming at.
And, as an aside, can anyone here define what is meant by “losing one’s eternity”??? It seems to be the latest scare tactic and both illogical and irrational!
Thanks for your reply. Much appreciated. The vile and abusive nature of the CO$ makes me sick and I can’t wait to see it fade into the abyss (or better yet, be taken down by the government — even if that’s a long shot).
Hey, let’s get some FDSing done right here and now on the Liability formula: Where the fuck does it say you have to write up anything you did in Liability? Where? Let’s get fundamentalist here: you ASK each member permission to rejoin and once you are one more than 50 percent you are finished. Screw asking anybody else. Not needed. In fact, where does it say that you need to write up ANY condition formula? Huh? Your needle is floating. End of FDSing.
If only such had occurred when I was being forced to do those Lower Conditions lo those many years ago. Why did Hubbard leave behind an organization so ripe for abuse? I’m glad to see some folks in the Independent movement see what’s true for them is true for them and evaluate Hubbard’s writings accordingly. But so many of those very writings admonish the exact opposite. Where do you draw the line?
“Where do you draw the line?” You draw it where it doesn’t make sense to YOU. That’s when I left, in the early 80s, when NOTHING was any longer making sense. Doing everything according to orders leaves no room for creativity. And I early on learned that Hubbard didn’t know it all. Otherwise, why were so many things being rewritten, relearned, rereleased in a new format? And how, more recently, could someone who had flunked his training be issuing new tech? Boggles the mind.
Dan,
So. when are you going to compile some checklists and/or indexes of some blogs of ‘what to study’ for those recovering from Dave’s suppression?
I did a bunch already with John Aaron Williams. I think Mike has links to them on his homepage.
An old buddy of mine knew Yvonne Jentzsch from the old CC in L.A. and told me how she had been reduced to scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees for her staff to witness. It was part of an amends project for the liability condition assigned to her, interestingly after she had been awarded Ka Kahn status (where you may commit murder with impunity).
What her infraction was I don’t recall but I doubt it was anything very bad. The point is, she was immensely popular and had to be taken down a notch or two. People were so shocked and horrified by this injustice some blew from their posts and even left the church. A few years after her death, staff and former staff were gathered together for a group processing to repair the damage. People were invited to talk and get off charge. Some wept openly even after all that time! Of course the blame was assigned to an SP in the ranks who had since been dealt with.
The purpose of the Conditions is to exert domination to establish habitual submission to authority. Methodical brutality works, for a while anyway, more on some than on others. My friend was a staff auditor and when his contract was up he left CC and never did another service in scientology.
I used to hang out at the old CCLA, back in the late 70s and knew Yvonne very well. She was a class act! And, I remember when she had cancer.
But, prior to her getting cancer, CCLA was the place to be. It was fun back then. But, that seems like a lifetime ago…..
Hey Old Surfer Dude, remember Jim Calgar, staff member and sax player at CC on La Brea.
I use to perform there. Maybe we know each other.
Also, I was the first artist to perform at CC on La Brea when Yvonne got permission to reinstate performances.
I set up my amp on the steps, on La Brea and played and sang.
After that performances occurred in the building before they built the stage.
Played there many times. Good times believing in the dream.
In retrospect, we were all young kids believing in a dream. A dream of a sane world. We had hope and purpose. Friends and companionship.
All things must pass as George Harrison said.
My wife at the time was Likki. We all loved that women, Yvonne.
She was/is an angel. I have no doubt that being is in a good place.
I loved her as we all did.
I am so glad the truth of Ron and his “cherch” are being seen clearly.
Thanks for the memories Ron. I hope you are happy and working out those things essential to that happiness.
Thanks for all your kind words about Yvonne. She was one of the best beings I ever met while in. Wherever she may be now, I wish her fair winds and only distant horizons.
How sad and degrading.
As with his recent article on the Doubt Formula, T.C. has looked at a situation consisting of 2 main factors, and selected the wrong one as the real problem. Those 2 factors are (a) the formula itself, and (b) the tone level with which it is applied. All the abuses T.C. and commenters complain about do exist and are awful. But their source is not the formulas themselves. It is low-toned application.
Please, everybody, just read the Chart of Human Evaluation in Self Analysis or Science of Survival, and the Chart of Attitudes in Handbook for Preclears. Any good procedure can be twisted to be abusive by persons who are low-toned and looking for an excuse to abuse others. In a group of high-toned people, in which the conditions formulas are applied with understanding, compassion, and lightness, they work just fine.
The Church of Scientology unfortunately got co-opted by low-toned children who had an aberrated need for the false security of membership in a totalitarian cult. Extracted from that environment, and corrected to prevent the regrowth of that environment, Scientology tech applied by high-toned people would be a good thing. That’s not to say perfect, but definitely helpful.
By all reports Ron’s tone level gradually fell over the years, so that’s a factor, too. I’m not trying to protect his image here. I’d just like to see more positive discussion of what we can do with the baby after we’ve thrown out the bathwater.
You are a good person. My Two Sense.
Here is my evaluation of your take.
1) because you are a good person you have used the tech for benevolent purpose only.
2) you see the tech through the view of your goodness.
3) you’ve seen people get better by applying the tech and you make a living doing it.
But, I think you also project your goodness onto LRH and in that regard you have some blind spots regarding his actual lack of morality, his practice of conscious deception, his phoney messiaship.
I feel for folks who have trained their asses off to become highly trained. Especially those who made it their livelihood.
It must be a traumatic shock, or total denial, or feeling of shame, to know that:
1) you placed your whole spiritual and material life in the hands of a man who locked up kids in chain locker.
2) Snickered as an old man pushed a peanut around on a woods deck while his nose was bleeding raw, leaving blood trail on deck, while his wife and kids were crying. LRH was taking pictures.
3) And his real, actual, reported last OT level was wishing to commit suicide by electro shock while hunting BTs
You never responded to Mike’s talking to Sarge. I can understand why.
So there are two accounts of this tale. One from Marty and one from Mike. These two men have no reason to lie. In actual fact, when I read the account in Marty’s book and commented on it on his blog, Marty was a little annoyed with me that out of all the book I chose that to bring light to. So Marty was not fond of that account either.
If you look down the decades of being a field auditor with a good heart, you see many smiling faces telling your rational mind that all of this anti LRH stuff is wrong, bogus and ill informed.
No doubt you helped people. But the mechanism that you dedicated your whole life to is riddled with inconstancy, hypocrisy and out and out lying.
Maybe you will be the one to bring the good parts of auditing into the sane world.
But in my opinion there is still some faith and blind belief regarding the tech.
Running BTs drove your prophet to attemp suicide.
If you deny this, you deny something very deep.
If you deny this you are not interested in the truth.
If you deny this you are a true believer.
A good person, but a true believer.
Brian, I’m no fool. I know that the abuses within the Church of Scientology could not have occurred without 2 contributing factors: (a) the tech being inadequate to bring staff up tone enough fast enough to prevent their succumbing to nazi cultism, and (b) LRH having his own case not fully handled. So LRH did have something to do with it, even if it wasn’t a nefarious, bait-and-switch, con-job plan from the beginning.
I think LRH went PTS. But he and the Church are the past, while our lives continue into the future. The question for us is, what are we going to do in that future? I had spiritual liberation as my purpose before I’d ever heard of Scientology, which I saw as a bag of useful tools, not a cult to sacrifice my self-determinism to. And in those early days it wasn’t a cult.
But somewhere along the line it became a cult. I don’t think the Church can be saved at this point. Nor can the Scientology brand in any organizational form. But the true and good parts of the subject can be saved, if the false and bad parts are identified and removed, and the good parts continue to be used in the independent field, and the tech is completed through further research and development by independent practitioners.
I don’t think Scientology tech in its current incomplete state can go all the way to completely spiritually liberate anyone. But I think the condition of the planet is proof that no other tech has been successful either, at least not in any complete sense. That includes Eastern esoteric practices, even though there is a lot of truth and workability there.
So please don’t continue trying to convince me of the bad in Scientology. I see it clearly. But in my own understanding I’ve left the bad behind, packed up the good to take with me, and moved on to what comes next.
Well said. I understand.
If Scientology, as a process, of internalizing the attention to find root causes of mind can be culled of its delusional doctrines, it may be able to create a future different brand.
These processes can help people have basic realizations about the nature of the soul and mind.
Ron was not simply PTS, Ron was immoral, out integrity. Immorality and out true integrity causes suffering. Ron was PTS to himself would be a more causative accolade.
We are responsible for our experience. When we blame others for our condition, we surrender our power to change.
There is a Victocracy build into the fabric of Scientology cosmology.
I agree, Scientology cannot free a soul. Because the creator was not enlighten. That’s like taking piano lessons from someone who can’t play.
I want my teachers proficient in those fields I come for learning. I take being a student very seriously.
I thank Ron for a few things, here is one:
He showed me that what I saw in Ron, is what was in me. I gave him that elevation.
All experience is self generated. We are the dreamers. No one is to blame.
And nothing is to blame for Ron’s end of life issues but Ron.
And in every wisdom school, but Scientology, we call that karma. The law of cause and effect.
But to a Scientologist, Ron was PTS.
That is a Victocracy. And he taught us how to be cause???????
Ron went mad because Ron caused his madness through his deceptive and selfish actions.
Blame no one. Blame is the essence of denial and lack of self awareness. Scientology is expert at blaming external conditions for internal issues.
You just did that with Ron.
Brian, you make a lot of sense and really great points in your posts.
Brian, I’m not misassigning blame. Any PTS person is responsible for his own condition. Whatever suppression he is receiving from SPs, he has to agree to be the effect of, and that agreement is a causative action. Also, he may be antagonizing others and thereby causing them to suppress him. The Suppressed Person Rundown is all about the problems the PTS person has caused others, especially the SPs to whom he is connected.
As for enlightenment, while there seem to be no Scientology processes aimed directly at it, all processes address the charge that is in the way. I got a lot out of my Scientology auditing, but had higher spiritual enlightenment experiences doing Zen and Advaita meditation. I think processes aimed directly at enlightenment, after a lot of charge has been removed by existng Scientology processes, could and should be developed.
It’s was his karma. He created it. It does not matter who did what to Ron.
Ron completely was in denial on the law of karma.
He equated it with implanted philosophies.
On a hidden street, in his hidden mobile home, L Ron Hubbard came face to face with the karma he so arrogantly denied.
What causes Ron’s downfall is not what others did to him. Ron did it to himself by not knowing the laws of life:Dharma
End of story.
And you still have avoided any mention of Ron wishing suicide when he was running OT3 BTs.
So there it is, the man who created OT8 was still looking for BTs. He was so mad at the end that he wanted to be electro shocked.
My Two Cents, can you please respond to this revelation of Ron wishing to commit suicide to rid himself of BTs.
There are only a few possibilities:
1) L Ron Hubbard was a genius mental case who suffered from mystical delusions.
2) I am an SP for bringing it up
3) Marty and Mike are lying
4) the man who loved Ron deeply was lying. He was pained to tell people.
This revelation by Sarge will completely mess with your mind. All those years of elevating Ron.
My Two Cents, I ask you to really think about it. Don’t push it out of your mind.
Be there comfortably with the data. Contemplate it.
L Ron Hubbard was expert in Blame and Hiding.
Ron’s top list of who is to blame for Scientology not getting accepted in society and who is the cause of earth’s woes.
1) journalists
2) psyches (from the planet Farsec)
3) governments
4) SPs
5) Communists
6) CIA
7) alien invaders
8) sparkle ponies
9) AMA
10) Russians
11) implanters on Venus
12) implanters on Mars
13) R6
14) the MEST universe
I can go on and on
And……………. L Ron Hubbard was in hiding most of his life.
L Ron Hubbard suffered from paranoia, persecution complex with manic tendencies.
He made it worse by believing that the reads on his meter were more real than his common sense and reason.
He followed his paranoid imagination into the subconscious regions of his mind. And there, in that darkness, self created, he wished to end his life.
And how in God’s name, can you have the arrogance to judge the effectiveness of other practices?
The only words to describe your view is blind faith.
And blind faith does not have a good relation with reason.
I would prefer this discussion over a beer. It’s fun!
Thank you My Two Cents. I know I’m cooking up sacred cow here. Thank you for at least tolerating it.
Hugs
Brian
Brian, you continue to wrong indicate that I am a true believer operating on blind faith, that I won’t look at the truth about what a horrible person Ron was, etc. And you’re doing this despite all I’ve said about my viewpoint that no true believer could possibly say.
What are you holding onto?
“I think processes aimed directly at enlightenment, after a lot of charge has been removed by existng Scientology processes, could and should be developed.”
They have been. You just need to want to find them. It’s a life long dedication. It’s the process of life itself to discover itself.
Because Ron was not free, he could not describe the goal.
Because Ron was not free, he did not map out the road
Only someone who knows the way and has been there can teach the true nature of the road, it’s goal and end result.
To learn guitar study from a guitar master
To learn of the spirit study from a spiritual master.
Without resorting to blind faith, how do you know that someone is a fully liberated spiritual master when you’re not?
When you find techniques that claim to lead to full enlightenment, how do you know they really do, before you’ve used them?
All I can say is investigate. Those are good questions. You’ll have to find out for yourself.
Read Autobiography of a Yogi. That’s a start. Read Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, commentary by Swami Pranavananda. (I think that’s the spelling)
Hunger and thirst for knowledge is the only prerequisite to finding knowledge.
Find knowledge and education outside of Ron’s world.
You’ll find answers there. If you want.
Thank you. I wish you all good on your journey
Regarding Eastern Practices; the road is complete. The bridge was always there. There is always a bridge.
You just have to find the right builders/teachers.
And when you find the right teacher and road to travel, that when the work really begins.
I always tell people to read Autobiography of a Yogi to jump start that search.
When the student is ready, the teacher arrives. That’s how it works.
Not my teacher, YOUR teacher.
If the way to enlightenment has always been there in Eastern religion, why has it worked for such a tiny percentage of those entering that path?
Because you see things through the wrong knowledge of Scientology/Ron.
Ron third parties other practices of which he new nothing.
Tell me, how long have you been practicing Scientology?
Decades I presume. 40 years? 50 years?
Are you totally free? Are you totally liberated? Can you tell me what I am thinking?
That sentiment about eastern practice is Ron’s view. He sold you that Scientology is workable and other practices are for unlettered implanted rubes.
He told you that he was going to make you free in a few years. All you have to do is get your feet on the bridge.
I know of no Scientologists that is a liberated soul. I have met more that a few in other practices.
So there you have it. You do not know what you are talking about. That is because you still have Ron in your cognitive faculties informing your thoughts.
I am not being mean here. I am observing the obvious.
Show me one liberated Scientologist. They do not exist. Yet you are judging other practices. You have a held down 7. And Ron finger is on that 7.
Please read Autobiography of a Yogi. You may learn something.
Regarding the tiny amount of people entering eastern path, why don’t you ask these 18 million Americans?
Wake up My Tw Cents. There is a world out there that does not match what you have learned from Ron. Don’t be left behind.
https://nccih.nih.gov/research/statistics/NHIS/2012/mind-body/meditation
You have an image in your mind of a true believer Scientologist, that you’ve been continuously and erroneously projecting onto me.
I’m not a field auditor with decades of earning a living in that way. I’ve personally known big name yogi’s. I’ve practiced Eastern meditation techniques seriously both before and after Scientology. And I’ve had enlightenment experiences using them.
Feel free to continue your debate with your imaginary opponent. But please leave me out of it from here on.
Sorry Two Cents, you don’t get a free pass. You don’t have the right to post your opinions, views, and thoughts here, but then say, anyone with differing views cannot comment on what you’ve said. Public blog = free speech. Unless the forum moderator decides to censor and delete replies… which thankfully does not happen often here (at least not to my knowledge).
Yeah, it’s pretty rare… I generally like to hear what everyone has to say. Unless they become abusive. Only one person ever banned — for his misogyny.
I enjoyed my conversation with you My Two Cents. I know you are sharing your knowledge according to your experience.
And I am sharing mine. And no one is writing a KR.
How cool is that! 🙂
And sorry if I offended you. That was not my intention. Sorry if I did not duplicate something you tried to get across.
I can always learn to be a better listener.
But to bring it back full circle, my argument was against the doctrine of BTs. That’s where this all started.
Mike, regarding what you said about banning the one person for his misogyny: there was an instance where I had read one of his comments and wanted to call him out on it but I didn’t. It always bothered me that I let it slide. Then I saw your reply to him that he was banned for it and it gave me pleasure. I don’t believe in shutting people down or telling them they can’t post this or that, which was my rationale for giving his comments a pass. I’m glad that you are the moderator of your blog.
You’re assuming that the Chart Of Human Evaluation and the Chart of Attitudes is correct and valid data. I believe that, like everything L. Fraud did, it’s a complete and utter pile of bullshit.
Throw out the bathwater and then eliminate the baby, quietly and without sorrow. You know, just like L. Fraud wanted to do with me.
There are two flavors of kool-aid — “it’s all good and true,” and “it’s all bad and false.” Both are based on charge driving an opp-term attitude. Freedom is above opp-terming altogether.
I agree My Two Cents
But you mas also take into consideration that Espianado is gay. Put yourself in his shoes.
Your benevolent save the world OT3 discovering teacher thought Espy worse than having a snake in your bed.
Or his lot should be disposed of quietly and without sorrow.
I cut Espy a lot of slack for being pissed off. I have many gay friends. To the gay community Ron taught a hateful fascism.
You can put that on Ron, not Espianado.
I can oppose something and still be free. I can even be pissed and still be free.
Just a question since you referenced the chart of human evaluation along with “high toned application” of the conditions formulas: is the scripture about gays being 1.1 a high toned assessment of one’s fellow man, or a low toned one?
I’m not negating what you say about high toned application of anything in the Scientology religion but could it be possible that certain scripture itself, or its intended purpose may not be? And, is this what TC may be eluding to?
Yes, of course.
Hennessy, I think LRH got a lot right while also making some mistakes. In 1951 American and British culture was pretty anti-gay. I have known gay people who definitely aren’t 1.1, as well as some who are. A person’s sexual preference makes no difference to me. By the same token, the fact that LRH made some mistakes doesn’t motivate me to throw out all of his philosophy and tech.
So many of the comments on this blog are make-wrongs. How about a discussion of what we could agree on as being right, workable, and beneficial?
Doubtful that you will get everyone to *agree* on what is right, workable, and beneficial.
There is no agreement among the very diverse assortment of ex-members. There are so many hundreds of stories posted relating people’s personal experiences in Scientology and the things that harmed them. Many believe there is nothing right, workable or beneficial about it.
We don’t need everyone agreeing on what’s true and good in Scientology, vs what’s false and bad. We need only a few to get the ball rolling in a constructive direction.
The “nothing is right in Scientology” crowd has been driven to that A=A=A extreme by bypassed charge. Most will never get it cleaned up, but hopefully some will.
There may be “a crowd” of people who have the opinion that “nothing is right” in Scientology because so many have come to that conclusion based on their own experiences. If there were only a few people affected, there would only be a small group of disaffected folks, and there would be no “crowd”.
Maybe, there is no “bypassed charge” and maybe, there is no real “tech”, and it’s all just a mish-mosh of borrowed philosophies and practices, some of which were helpful on a limited level (communication techniques) but most of which is just furthering the purposes of the founder, LRH, which was to make money and control people. I believe this is why so many people are rejecting Scientology and speaking out about it.
Yes, maybe someone applying Standard Tech did not handle my bleeding ulcer in which case I am dead and I am in Heaven or Hell. Perhaps someone can tell me which it is because it seems like neither to me.
Sorry Bill S.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc (another logical fallacy)
Or, correlation does not imply causation.
Hi My 2 Cents, and thank you. I do understand how and why you would want to have a discussion on what is beneficial, good etc., and I appreciate what you said in your first paragraph as well. I agree that during Ron’s ‘time’, there was generally an anti-gay sentiment in American and UK society, and it was even labeled a mental illness. Well into the 1980’s, AIDS was met with terrible social stigma, fear and blame, and then there were high profile murders of young gay adults; Matthew Shepard comes to mind in the late 1990’s. There still is a lot of bigotry today but society is changing and becoming more evolved, so attitudes are improving. Not so much in other areas of the world though, ie: the Middle East.
It just troubles me that Ron, being “Source”, researching and discovering all the mysteries of the mind and the universe, was so unenlightened on this subject, as well as a few others that I won’t get into here for simplicity sake. There were many other people in society during his time that were not bigoted toward gays then; the Arts, film, music, writers, and even regular folks. Ron admired and mixed with the Hollywood/writers group, and you would think that he would have had enough exposure to people to not have such a close minded, negative, generalized opinion of the gay community. Including what should be done with them, which is chilling when you think about it. Ron was supposed to be a great Humanitarian, (even referring to himself as Maitreya) and this is not the stuff of a Humanitarian in my mind.
Consider this: someone reads what Ron wrote about gays and what should be done with low toned people in society, and let’s say they live in a Muslim country. This would justify the murder and abuse of LGBT’s in those countries to that person. It would ‘make them right’. While some things Ron wrote might help people in Muslim countries, what about the labeling and ‘disposal of low toned people without sorrow’, which could actually be dangerous in that situation? How could this possibly be applied ‘high toned’? I see no way in which it can be.
I didn’t think I would get into all this when I posed the question, or to be a contrarian. It’s things I think about.
Regarding applying Scientology with “high toned application” as you said, I agree with that but perhaps for another reason. I think that whatever you do with Scientology, it should be approached in a friendly, easy manner. Heavy handedness or making it gruesome is never good or helpful and only serves to make a submissive, cowed individual. It can be used in an oppressive manner (as you said low toned) and this can happen rather easily. I believe that there is a fine line between good/bad application, and that is because I see Scientology as authoritative and totalitarian in nature. Which perhaps, you may or may not.
Prior to 1965, at Saint Hill there was a community of researchers headed by Ron but not fully dominated by him. Others were sharing Source with him in the research. It was similar to a team of graduate students working towards their Ph.D’s under a famous professor.
The Sea Org did not exist. Conditions formulas did not exist. Local orgs were very lightly managed by Worldwide. Missions weren’t really managed at all. The tech was aimed at handling GPMs (case structures having to do with opposed identities) rather than BTs. The graduates of this era went on to become the major mission holders who boomed Scientology in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
This to me was the organizational high point or golden age of Scientology. It wasn’t totalitarian. The “building on the good in Scientology” I’ve spoken of would be a return to that culture, with tech aimed at improving lives at the human level, and policies in place to forbid and prevent every element of classic cult formation, and keep low-toned people out of positions of power.
Um right. And it still didn’t produce anything that has been proven to be useful.
Insanity with a light touch. LMAO
Wynski, once again you make a wise-ass comment that invalidates the case and gains of not only me but thousands of others.
I don’t need a double-blind controlled and replicated study financed by the National Institute of Mental Health and published in the APA Journal to know what I got from my auditing.
By the way, I’ve yet to see any well-reasoned discussion from you on anything, just potshots and more potshots. What you are doing is trolling and classic mind control. If you don’t have a day job, I’m sure you could find one as a political operative.
Here’s the issue I have with your post: you’re operating by Scientology rules. No one has the right to invalidate case gain. Mike obviously doesn’t believe that. Neither do I. Dani Lemberger, on this blog, attempted to invalidate the wins I’ve achieved with psych drugs. So tell me why I should give you considerations that I’m not given.
As for the double-blind study, yes, I demand that one should be done. If Dianetics is the modern science of mental health, then it should be able to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Your experiences are no more than anecdotal evidence, and have no bearing on scientific validity. Of course, scientists did try to test Dianetics and Scientology in the late 1950s, and found it didn’t work. But you conveniently ignore this.
LMAO! How can I invalidate that which doesn’t exist?
I would be wrong to validate that which doesn’t exist however. So, it’s all good.
Espiando,
Before I did any Scientology services other than just reading books, I received psychotherapy from a lady who had done her Ph.D under Carl Rogers at the University of Chicago in the early 50’s, and who participated in his “scientific” study that “proved” that auditing doesn’t work.
She described to me how they did the experiment. They used Dianetics to get patients into incidents, but then evaluated for the patients while running the incidents, as they were used to doing.
LRH said that the auditor’s code is more important than the specific process. These “scientists” violated the auditor’s code. Therefore their experiment was invalid.
My therapist also evaluated for me in my sessions with her, and I got no gain from seeing her weekly for 6 months. By contrast, I got explosive, life changing case gain from my first 10 hours of Scientology auditing.
And by the way, I also took a hypnosis class my girlfriend was fascinated with, and I turned out to be one of the few who couldn’t be hypnotized.
I see what you’re saying My 2 Cents. You have an optimistic viewpoint. Maybe things will change in the future. It would have to be pretty radical changes though. Who knows what will happen? I have a feeling that planet Earth and the religious philosophy of Scientology will still be around for a time to come.
I’m never seen as much humiliation in my life as seeing people struggling to get through a liability formula. And to be honest, even when I was guzzling the Kool-aide it made me feel the worst I have ever felt in both doing this formula and seeing others do it. The so called ‘flows’ as they are called in Scientology does have validity in explaining the kangaroo court effect the Liability Formula creates individually and within the group.
This action is wrong on so many levels, and I’ve never seen it do what it is allegedly supposed to do. In fact when you really think about it and look at the experience of being involved in Scientology, all the ethics formulas are a waste of time. They are designed to control and punish. As I recently stated, the majority of Scientology procedures reduce capable people into formulas and fancy words. At best they give Church morons who have a problem rubbing 2 brains together a set of tools to take out their frustrations on others, and all with the blessing of the Cof$. The threats in finance policy is another example of blanket make wrong. It is like Hubbard tried really hard to reduced everyone into a state of “automaton.” The Orgs simply became just a dirty big machine with staff as well as public actively reduced to cogs within it. Set thinking and set behavior only, all the while being policed by the threat of ethic’s formulas.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Scientology did what it stated it could do, but we all know how that worked out.
Of all the stuff we personally suppress about Scientology, the liability formula would have to sit up there with worst of it!
I just remembered reading some tech stuff once concerning expanded Dianetics, auditing, reviewing & CSing of cases where Hubbard actually stated where he wasn’t fast enough auditing/CSing a PC because Ethics had caught up with them and took them off auditing lines. Punishment detail – all aboard!! And with the blessing of the top dog himself.
I think in Hubbard’s mind, blanketedly applied ethics was a poor person’s replacement for auditing and kept them under constant control & scrutiny. But he sure looked the other way with the results those formulas created.
Good post, IYAL. And this entire conversation is one of the very best I’ve seen yet on ANY blog. Disagreements without vilification. Respect for other points of view.
For me, the one thing truly missing from LRH and so many of the current “leadership”(???) is COMPASSION. There isn’t any. That will kill of just about any organization, as it should.
Thanks TC.
Keep on enjoying your articles. They are helping me to confront the mechanism where i saw something that looked crooked and then concinced myself it was straight.This very useful even after being out for over 15 years.It is like the stupidity rehabilitation rundown.
Hope to read many more of your articles.Never disappointed.Am sure that many UTR’s are also finding your articles very helpful.
Hey Mike, don’t you have a place for Terra Cognita in the menu on top of the blog, like RB already has? 😛
Was thinking the same thing only yesterday.
If you’ve spent any time at Flag as a public pc, you see tons of people going around getting signatures on their Liability formula to ask for re-entry into the group. I signed a lot of them and got a few of my own signed too. Most was for income tax nonpayment, but there were various other things too. Here’s one that caught my eye: A guy went to a strip bar and got a lap dance. No sex transpired and I don’t think he even touched her. But still, a big deal was being made of it, hence he had to do Liability. For his make up the damage part he bought his wife two intensives of auditing despite how broke it would make him. I signed it and went home and told my husband, “Can you go get a lap dance so that I can get two intensives of auditing? I need it.” lol
That was back in the days where people bought auditing and did their Bridges. Nowadays the person would be required to donate to the IAS and forget any auditing. My how times have changed.
C’mon now, Cindy!!! Don’t you know handing over wads of cash is the new case gain?
In that case, Old Surfer Dude, I’ll keep my reactive mind and laugh all the way to the bank instead.
(Bur seriously, I actually agree with My Two Cents, who advocates not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He made several good points and I admire him for standing up for his opinions in spite of the onslaught against him.)
Yeah, I am sure it started at the launch of the “ideal org” insanity which was 2003.
Just for the record, I made no donations to the IAS since the mid 1980’s. I didn’t buy the Basics or contribute to Ideal Orgs. And I was declared for demanding actual standard tech.
Regarding onslaughts against me on this blog, I think free speech is great, but it can also squeeze out minority opinions, and that is a problem on all of the blogs.
Non-payment of income taxes gets one in Liability. Yes, the church of Scientology is on the org board of the IRS, in the tax compliance department. The IRS. What would Hubbard say.
John Doe, if it kept more $ in the church he’d be all for it. He was after all in it for the $.
TC, to answer your question about the RPF: On all the RPFs I have done one of the first steps when you arrive is to do conditions up to Liability. As an RPFer you are considered to be doing some kind of uber-Liability formula regardless of your condition inside the RPF. You could be in Power on dumpster cleaning or wallboard installation in your RPF unit, In Affluence on course, but you would still have to hang your head and not say hello if you met your non-RPF spouse around the organization.
When you graduate and go back to your organization you do a sort of Liability formula to get back in, I think. I never got that far, one RPF I did ended in an amnesty and the other in a cancellation of the assignment.
What you describe is typical of the non-Sea Org groups. In the Sea Org it is a bit rougher. But there is nothing in the world like the way they did Liability at the Int Base in the early 2000s. Most of the time most of the crew was in lower conditions one way or another. If you were doing OK your unit was in trouble, if your whole area was doing great there would be an announcement that “all of Gold” was in trouble. If Dave comes sneaking around your area in the middle of the night and you happen to be sleeping, you are in trouble regardless of your statistics. By “trouble” I mean Confusion or Treason.
So there were always people passing out formulas. With 200 to 300 people to survey you have to get well over 100 signatures to get anywhere. So most people printed up 50 or so copies and plastered them around. Imagine an official 15 minute meal break, you get there with 5 minutes to eat because you are trying to get something done, and 20 people are on you with formulas to read. You want to read them, knowing you will be next, but in 5 minutes???
But that is not the worst. The worst part is the “Conditions Nazis”. Like a Grammar Nazi on a chat board or the Soup Nazi from Seinfield, the Conditions Nazi is never satisfied with your petition. It is not long enough. It is too long. The “effective blow” is not consistent with the “damage done”. I swear these people want to hear that you walked 100 times around the perimeter on your knees chanting the Auditor’s Code or something. You say “I stayed up three nights to get xxx project done”. They say “I stayed up the last 40 days and nights, that is nothing!”
Sometimes I wished they would just mark the disapproved line and move on, but no. They want to see the corrected formula. They want to see the conditions below Liability. If you have not included L Ron Hubbard and Dave Miscavige as your “Friends” they want to know why. On and on. No soup for you!
It is like the little kid who gets assigned to be “Hall Monitor” and starts to lord it over the other kids. Like the Stanford Prison experiment http://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html Give the powerless a little power and they will abuse it.
What all this has to do with creating a civilization without criminals, insanity or war is not clear.
“Rarely, does one not sign one, but occasionally some holier-than-thou ostrich will contend you haven’t done enough”…Oh yeah, there is always some smug SOB that “can’t” sign.
Yes indeed Ms.P. There’s sometimes that one smug ao who has just to take advantage of the power over others the liability formula gives them. Oh, how the moronic minds of some people love to police others for the pleasure it gives them!
I remember the good old “back of the shed days” to sort out differences. The person you allude to would be well served with an urgent trip to the dentist!
When presented with such a document (this was in the 60s and early 70s), I would read it through, then ask the writer, “How do you feel about this?” GIs? I signed. No GIs? I didn’t sign simply because the writer didn’t believe the document. (Mostly, it was “sign”.)
After I was offloaded for testing positive for HIV that I got from a blood transfusion so that I would not bleed to death, when I told the Security Clearance I/C OSA WUS that most of my friends were still on the ship , she told me “EX SO MEMBERS DO NOT HAVE FRIENDS”.
Anywhere. Ever. And this is after spending my entire adult life working long hours, saving the FREEWINDS millions of dollars (the F AND Rs of a Comm Ev said that), working for many years in great pain of shingles as I was.slowly dying.of AIDS.
In 23 years in the SO, I only had to do Liability about 5 times. The last time I was told that I was a liability to the group was when the Captain Freewinds screamed at the top of his lungs ” I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT FAMILY” IN HIS office and threatened to send my wife to the RPF for starting this ‘Reunion shit” because I CSWed to go to my parents 50th wedding anniversary after having seen no member of my family in 7 years. The only friends he has left are DM and the undertakers.
That’s a chilling story, DEAD MEN. Glad you’re out! You got your old life back!
… (the techniques used in modern brainwashing) are not like the medieval torture of the rack and the thumb-screw. They are subtler, more prolonged, and intended to be more terrible in their effect. They are calculated to disintegrate the mind of an intelligent victim, to distort his sense of values, to a point where he will not simply cry out “I did it!” but will become a seemingly willing accomplice to the complete disintegration of his integrity and the production of an ELABORATE FICTION
— Dr. Charla W. Mayo, The Rape of the Mind
In part, the totalitarian state is sustained because individuals terrorize themselves — they become accomplices in their own tyrranization, censoring what they say and even what they allow themselves to think and feel.
— Willa Appel, Cults in America
The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude…. Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth…. It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective, a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in.
— Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
I was asked to sign several of these liability petitions over the years. I must have been a terrible scion as I just signed it without even bothering to look at what the supposed misdemeanors were, I generally thought the victim of this process was actually quite a nice person so the whole thing seemed a bit of a sham. Actually it didn’t seem to matter how hard I tried I could never fully commit to the scion ethos, I think this was part of why I was such a sucker for handing over bundles of cash – my constant guilty feeling that I was not fully on board.
Truthfully, that is exactly what the vast majority of Scientologists did and do when presented with a liability petition: they signed it without a fuss. It was only the select few, as always, who ruined it for everybody else with their cruelty. The question for me is: what is it about Scientology that allowed such ill-intentioned people to gain prominence?
Watch out when you join a group with lofty principles written into the Welcome Sign over the door, when once inside, the LOWER Conditions are lurking and can (and DO) jump out at any time to consume your free will, power of choice and deductive reasoning. Take the Ethics Course (along with KSW and PTS/SP Course) and jettison them into oblivion. Some of the most evil principles ever devised by anyone to control and manipulate people are written right into the Liability Formula all couched in the flowery bed of The Greatest Good. There is a form of shunning (which IS abuse) written right into the Liability Formula and in an attempt to avoid “doing Lowers” and feeling shunned and unaccepted by one’s fellow members, one is easily manipulated to do many things that he would NOT normally do.
I can barely read this article because of the harm I invited into my life and psyche once I unwittingly accepted THE CONDITIONS (and The Liability Formula) as a valid form of a way to “do better in life.”
Very well said Mary! 🙂
thank you for your comment. In reading it I realized that one of the reasons I did so few Liability formulas over the 23 years in the SO was that it was madness. Ethics tech is supposed to help the individual. However, it seems that it is mainly to degrade people so that they will be docile and not cause trouble.
ADDITION TO LAST COMMENT:
Similar to the welcome sign at the gates of the Auschwitz death camp. Above the gates it says Arbight machs frei. (And work will set you free). Of course it was too late to warn the Jews getting off the train.
It seems socially unacceptable these days to make comparisons between Hitler and LRH/david miscavige or the church of scientology and Nazi Germany, but they pop in my head all the time and you have just given another one.
…although I don’t think the Jewish people walked in freely.
I think you would be correct! And the socially unacceptable part I would say is only to be found in the Idle Morgues. Oh wait, I meant anti social! 🙂
“…although I don’t think the Jewish people walked in freely.” But, for the most part, resignedly. Centuries of such experiences made many of them extremely docile, sad to say. And the slightest refusal to instantly obey was met with instant violence.
Arbeit macht frei. But yes.
Even better, the sign (in Italian) over the gates of Hell in Dante’s “Inferno”: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate — “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” But in Scientology and other cults, it is hope that pulls new people in! A paradox.
Work Makes You Free.
You nailed it! You sure said it better than I could and in less words too. Liability sux!
“Liability sucks” is pretty succinct.
McCarran
You said it. I feel the same way…thanks for telling it like it is…
The Liability formula is Punishment in order to obtain control of a group member.
The Liability Formula is meted out to get the ‘transgressor’ to reform or leave and to be an example to the rest of the group. North Korea has nothing on the clampire. Except for the ravenous guard dogs, armed sentrys with shoot to kill orders and an extensive gulag. But $cientology has better thought reform. But for the shear torture, go to North Korea.
The Irony is that El Con’s criminal life (and thus being hunted by the law) made HIM a liability to the CoS. The man was a liability to all that he was close to and of course all of his followers (whether or not they have the intellectual capacity to realize it).
In ’72 the entire deck force, of about 10 men, were assigned liability by LRH because the Apollo was moored to a dock that had no protection from massive swells that caused about 10 mooring lines to snap. Moving out to anchor because we were running out of lines, the aft anchor chain then broke off. The reason for liability? The deckies didn’t maintain the anchor chain nor the lines that broke. To this day I still do not know how one can maintain a piece of rope or chain to keep them from snapping in heavy seas while tied to an open dock. We were kept in liability for 6 months without a day off. Thanks LRH and Starkey! This was a way to cover for their stupid decision of docking there in the first place.
After the first few months of hard labor, the 1st Mate and my good friend Rudy Savage took out his anger on Captain Starkey. I used to lift weights with Rudy and he could bench over 300 lbs. He took a swing at Starkey and LRH offloaded him the next day in some backwards, Moroccan port, for mutiny. To this day, I don’t know how Rudy got back to the states or what happened to him.
I never had any confidence in the workability of the formulas and feel they are a complete sham. From Confusion on up to Power. But, it does help with CF projects and money in the tin.
Decades later let us raise a glass to Rudy, who attempted to get Ethics in on that pompous ass Norman Starkey and possibly escaped with his life.
Norman was around in the late 90s trying to whip the Gold Crew into shape with the application of Close Order Drill tech, later I saw him at Saint Hill. Still going down with the ship today.
Yep, Rudy had balls! He would have flattened him if my other close friend, Pat McCullough (RIP) hadn’t put all of his weight on the swinging arm in an attempt to stop him from harming Starkey. In the back of my mind I could never forgive Pat for doing that.
The deck force were no fans of Norman. I seem to remember he caught Rudy either napping (due to the months of liability) or just taking a break and did his usual Starkey-thing of yelling at him from his oh-so-superior position in life and rank. Norman treated everyone in a very condescending manner and with no respect whatsoever.
We were all interrogated about our attitudes about Norman by messengers. Of course no one would speak their mind about the prick. I was 18 at the time and did not want to leave my parents and try to survive in Morocco. Looking back at it though, I should have left right then with Rudy.
But agreed wholeheartedly…cheers to Rudy!
Googled for Rudy Savage. There’s a guy with that name, about the right age and ex-Navy in Michigan at http://www.cbgreatlakes.com. Dunno if he’s the right one though.
The age is right but Rudy was a black guy and at the time was in the upper 200 lbs region. I heard that years prior to going to the Apollo he worked with LRH at the DC org or whatever they called orgs back then. Being a youngster on a ship and from Iowa which is about as far away from a ship as possible, he looked after me and showed me the ropes (literally, he taught me about 10 knots that I still know how to tie today).
LRH showed no loyalty to his old employee from DC as he demonstrated in later years removing his dedicated messengers after years of service…oh and his wife who went to jail for him. I think someone needs to do the liability formula.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing that.
Wow! That’s quite the story. Been at sea myself and sailed a bit, and shit happens sometimes by fatigue alone. Especially on sheets, fittings, chains etc. The strain on equipment is extensive, especially with long duration sailing. Sometimes it’s luck to dodge breakage, sometimes not so lucky. I had to get a broken forward staysail boom secure once in a heavy sea. Scared the crap out of me but it was exciting at the same time. If the skipper would have assigned me liability for it I would have thrown him over the side.
Also ignorance or negligence by skippers plays a huge role in equipment failure or mistakes. As an example we should not have been pushing into such a big swell, it was the skipper’s call, we raced for port no long after that. LRH knows stuff like that or should do. The word scapegoat comes to mind.
I bet you have some interesting stories. Life is never easy on a ship.
That same day that the mooring lines snapped, they sent yours truly on the dock to secure new lines to the bollards. While I was securing them, a couple of times some 3/4″ wire ropes snapped. It was at night and I just heard this horrible snap sound, along with sparks flying in the air and then the whipping of the wire rope barely missing taking my head off…. I guess I wasn’t “PTS” or I wouldn’t be writing this today. PTS is a BS term – I call it LUCKY.
Oh I hear you. The sea is quite the thing hey? Savage, unpredictable at times, boring as hell and absolutely beautiful. Good sailing conditions in my experience are about 10 maybe 15 percent of the time. The rest you have to work it for passage. Plus you never seem to get a full shift of sleep. One ear is always open for strange noises. Funny how you can be dead tired, out to the world and the tiniest metal click or crunch can have you up like a shot. When the staysail boom snapped off at the mast it sounded like a cannon going off. Even though we pointed the boat directly into the wind and reefed the main, it flapped around like a rag doll. I remember the relief finally getting to the winch and releasing it. By the time I finally got it secured it had dug nice big chunks out of the deck. It’s amazing the stress that exists to snap 3/4″ swr (steel wire rope) like cotton sometimes hey? Had a halyard or two part ways a few times, yep swr cracking like whip could easily take your head off!
Yep, do it all again tomorrow if I had the body to do it. But with Scientology as a skipper – not on your life!
I always wondered on the effectiveness of liability.
Does it bring more benefit in blackmailed loot for the cult or does it cause blows?
When they told me as a public to do liability I just said go to hell.
Blew and never looked back.
I did not blow because of the internet but as a result of “Ethics”.
Then they send an auditor to my house who managed to get me on the cans and the first question was “have you looked at pornography on the Internet”
These nutcases do not deserve to live.And fortunately they are nearly gone.
LRH may have said that the conditions were ‘states of existence’ and, whether you apply it or not, the conditions existed and must be followed if you want to succeed.
Well, that is not rue. Like you noted Terra Cognita – how many Liabilities a person did pass around, just to find himself again being asked to do another one for whatever menial reason?
Since miscavige came up with the wrong why (Another? Yes) that a missed FN was immediate Liability some of us auditors did Liabilities about every other day. The only advantage is that we were needed back in production fast, fast to get RTC stat up, so our Liability conditions took about 10 – 15 minutes to complete.
I think they are another method to control parishioners and staff alike, but again, that did not work either as evidenced by the 1,000s that have left.
Scientology – the science of cruel and inhumane treatment and exploiting human being vulnerabilities and capitalizing on them (whilst calling themselves a non profit) since 1950