This is the twenty-first installment of the account of a journey into and out of scientology — written by one of our long-term readers. I hope you enjoy her insights, humor and style.
Lili also provided a glossary of terms.
Through the Bubble – Lili’s Adventures in Scientologyland
This is my quirky recollection of events. Others may remember things differently. Lingo is italicized on the first mention, capitalized after that. I’ve compressed complexities in the cult to simplify your reading pleasure.
Part 21
Fear and Kindness, the One – Two Punch
Josh and I shared the dedication to go debt-free. We worked with zeal and joy as we whittled the years of future servitude to the credit card companies down to size. Not having to do multiple Solo-Auditing Sessions per day (since I’d quit Solo Auditing OT VII) also boosted our income. After a couple of years of perseverance and self-discipline, our mountain of credit card debt was nearly vanquished.
The deep-voiced scary phone messages about what an Out-Ethics, loathsome Scientologist I was for Blowing off the OT Level had been replaced by a single voice. This change occurred after I was Recovered. The new single voice was a sweet-sounding, slower-talking, older woman who broke through my reserve and got me to return her calls. After many pleasant phone conversations where she listened to me ramble on to answer her interested questions, she moved in for the kill.
Evidently, there was a “never before” (probably a yearly occurrence) Ethics Amnesty burning its way through the Flag Land Base. At least the buildings weren’t painted blue. They were actually quite posh. The Flag Land Base consists of a couple of hotels, a few restaurants, various commercial rectangular boxy buildings with Course Rooms, Auditors, and a battalion’s worth of Sea Org staff. Not that I have a clue how many people are in a battalion. Or at least this bustling scene was how it was in the late 1980s before Sea Org members started defecting in large numbers. Ex-Sea Org rebels started talking to the media and writing books about the conditions on the inside. All I can say is, keep up the good work, people.
Sweet-Seeming-Lady assured me she thought I was special on our next friendly phone chat. With the conspiratorial whisper of a World War Two spy, she imparted the happy news that she’d taken the time to petition to have me “allowed” back onto my OT VII Level with zero Ethics consequences after my two-year Blow. But… This Amnesty could vaporize at any moment, like ice cubes on Mount Vesuvius. It sounded like this Fairy Godmother level of favor (that I hadn’t asked for), but it hit the someone-was-kind-to-me Button, and I was grateful. Sigh.
I agreed on a date to re-start my OT VII. After being off the Level for two-ish years, I assumed the Flag Sea Org staffers would require me to return for an expensive brush up of my skills. I’d say no, then I’d push back the date to get back on the Level. And hopefully, keep Ethics off my back.
Instead, they mailed me my confidential materials. Shocker. I climbed back in the chair, picked up the E-Meter cans, and the Solo-Auditing adventure recommenced. A year later, I finally finished my freaking OT VII. The E-meter said so. I was on a plane so fast the ink would smear on my Scientology Leaving-Base-Routing Form.
Not a minute too soon, cuz Scientology wasn’t fond of Other Practices. Like yoga, meditation and doctors. I’d felt the creaking in my beleaguered body, ramping up from years of overwork and strip-mining my resources of today for a deficient tomorrow. To even see a chiropractor was something I’d have to report to my Scientology Case Supervisor. The unseen Case Supervisor controlled what I Solo-Audited and could route my ass to Ethics pronto to see why I might feel the need to see a Chiropractor.
My life was further complicated because, as a pre-OT, I could be ordered back to Flag to get dressed down by a teenage Ethics Officer. Before I was due for my Six-Month-Check. Ouch. Cuz when you’re past Clear, you might say something that’d send some Pre-Clear-level Ethics staffer in a lower Org into pneumonia or restimulate them horribly by accidentally saying some OT thing. So, I avoided doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and all Other Practices that the Case Supervisor might look askance at. Well, I’d have avoided dentists anyways, so that doesn’t count.
When I got back from completing my OT VII, the Santa Barbara Org had scheduled an Event so I could share my Big Wins. I fake-smiled my way through it with an aching back, nauseous stomach, and pervasive exhaustion. Within a month, I got sick. I rested for a few days and went back to work. I collapsed again. Up, down, up, down. To the doctor. Don’t know, but here are some anti-biotics. Side effects from the anti-biotics worsened my state. I got scared when after two months, I couldn’t stay upright long enough to get in a full day’s work. The lash I’d applied to my backside for years, just left red welts but didn’t get that dray-horse back into the traces.
I went to a nutritionist and started eating right, cleansing, fasting, and other unmentionable activities in the health-woo department. It worked. And bonus, I kicked my five-cavity-causing sugar addiction. Well mostly. The bad news was I couldn’t work seventy-hour weeks anymore. Turns out stress, which Scientology insists is Reactive Mind bullshit, can cause your body ill health.
My Reactive Mind was supposed to have been taken out with the trash a few OT Levels ago, but the evidence was woefully meager. I chose to take better care of my meat body, so my Thetan could get taken around town to jewelry appointments. I was still a Scientologist, but a secretly cynical one.
Motherhood
After fearing for years that I’d end up a single mom if I had a kid, like my own mom, I found debt-free-ness, and new-condo ownership cured me of my dumb reasons to remain childless. Josh had wanted to have kids for years. While in my eighth month of pregnancy, at thirty-four, my youngest bro-in-law visited and saw that I hadn’t even started nesting yet. He wondered out loud what kind of a mom I’d be. He was concerned. I was concerned. My life was work, enjoy-time-with-Josh, and work some more. I’d look down at my belly bump and try to feel all mother-y. Hmm, kinda didn’t go well.
I asked myself if I was capable of nurturing. I still believed with all my Thetan-being the Scientology party line that a person was only as valuable as their continuing Contribution and productivity. My spirits rose and fell with my Sales Statistic. The bummer about vacations was that they torpedoed my Stats. Giving birth would really screw that up.
The delivery of my unknown sex baby started out as a home birth. That decision made sense between my hippie upbringing and Scientology’s distrust of medicos. That is, until I needed a doctor. Then I yelled my head off in the back of our station wagon, Mom pushed pressure points to keep me sane, and Josh drove too fast on the freeway to the hospital. I wanted that alien thing out of my body. Yesterday. I noted for a fleeting moment how not maternal I felt.
Doctors were helpful, and hours later, the nurse moved a rolling mirror forward and adjusted it when the baby crowned.
“See the baby’s head?”
I looked at the mirror and saw the reflection of dark hair on a bit of baby head, peeking out from you know where. A sudden flood of love overwhelmed my senses. Any doubt that I’d mother this wonderful person Josh and I had created floated away. A tsunami of love rolled outward and filled my bucket with joy. My arms hungered to hold my baby. A few pushes later, the doctor lifted our baby up for all to see. I felt cold and bereft.
“Give me my baby,” I said.
“We just have to clean him up and —” the nurse said.
“Give me my baby,” I used my full Communication-Course-Drilled intention.
My baby, blood and all, was laid upon my chest. We were covered with a moist, warm blanket from some magic drawer. They cut the cord and tried to remove him. Nope. I stared into his beautiful eyes.
My intention was a force field that kept the doctor and nurse at bay. My smiles were all for this magic being, and Josh. And Mom. I felt alive, full of warmth and the conviction that I would lay down my life for this new joy in our lives.
My IV got an extra dose of sleepy-time stuff. My baby was cleaner the next time he was handed to me. The love haze that surrounded me that day would have been well-understood by Georgie, Mom’s friend, who knew what it felt like to have too much love cooped up on the inside. The love spigot was on full that day, with never a dip in pressure.
Parent-Shaming in Scientology, The IAS and Buying Shit Your Kids Don’t Need
If you’re a parent in the Scientology bubble and need some love-bombing to assuage your debt bruises, just buy something in your kid’s name. A lifetime membership in their meaningless, do-nothing IAS, fer instance. You’ll get some shiny, full-teeth smiles fer that.
In case you’re curious, IAS stands for International Association of Scientologists. This secretive tax-exempt Association does briefings Surveyed to push the desire-to-help Button in all Scientologists. Their pursed-lipped purpose was to protect Scientology from the Suppressive Persons that lurked in various parts of the planet, trying to thwart the crucial Planetary-Clearing work of the cherch. Cough.
With a news reader’s stern-faced, serious demeanor, the IAS Sea Org Registrars revealed to the American Scientologists that their help was desperately needed by those poor German Scientologists who were being attacked by their religious-freedom-hating Government. Meanwhile, they’d tell the German Scientologists that they needed to donate to help the poor Colombian parishioners survive the drug gangs’ assault on Scientology’s betterment activities in Bogota. Pure BS. But any Scientologist who looked for factual proof of those broad-stroked generalities would get a nasty clap of cognitive dissonance upside the head. And a trip to Ethics for the temerity to do research and not take the IAS Registrar’s word. You did not question the IAS.
When the IAS circus came to town, it wasn’t just a general, upset, freak-out disruption for the local Org staff. Non-staff Scientologists got the prey-animal agita too. Your puny concerns like child care, jobs, and caring for your old granny, (and seriously, why were you letting that old fossil cut across your income-production Lines anyway), were dismissed as irrelevant. It was always an emergency and time to tackle an International Flap of (in their minds) epic proportion.
I still don’t get how the IAS is tax-exempt if membership is compulsory. A paid IAS membership was required if you planned to take the Courses Scientology soaked you for beyond the mini–Intro Courses. But let’s not bog down into all the ways the IAS was a rip-off. Just know they don’t help anyone.
As a Scientology parent, you’d fer sure be encouraged to buy adult-priced services for your little kids. You could spend thousands of dollars for your four-year-old to get some child abuse, oop, I mean Auditing. Josh and I dodged the whole, spend vast sums of money to make sure your child isn’t possessed-by-unfriendly-disembodied-beings program. I kid you not. That was one of the over-hyped scare tactics lobbed my way when trying to use my love for Van to extract absurd amounts of money from my wallet.
We learned early on never to admit to a Scientologist there was any problem with Van or express any doubt about our parenting choices. Well, except for Lorna and Deave. We were God-parents to their two daughters. I figured we could bitch about the kids with our best friends. But come to think of it, that time we paid too much for the Children’s Ethics Specialist to help us out when Van lied about not doing his homework? And those overpriced summer camps, run by Scientologists? We found out about them from Lorna and Deave. Thanks, guys. Kidding.
We were lucky we didn’t live in Los Angeles. There were a significant amount of outposts for Scientology’s study-method-schools for baby Scientologists down there. Yup, from in-diapers to pre-K and elementary to High School, Scientology had you infested, er covered. No, wait, that was me when I was on OT VII. I was harassed by more than one mom about not Making it Go Right to find Van a Scientology school. The advice ranged from, we could move to LA, no thanks. Or, I could home-school him. That’d pay the bills. Oh wait, I could send Van to a Scientology boarding school. We liked our kid. Why would we send him away? Oh, because it’d be better for him to learn the Scientology curriculum and live with strangers than with his loving mom and dad? Not buyin’ it.
I got more than one mommy-mind-whacking about the importance of indoctrinating our child early on in the Scientology way. According to the mom assigned to make me feel like a total failure as a parent, Van could get massively messed up by the Suppressive public-school-idiot-factory. Overheated tales of drug-addled, homeless, promiscuous, or burger-flipping failures that heedless Scientology parents spawned curled my hair. But Josh and I held firm and let Van be educated with the neighbor kids at the local school.
From a Scientology-parent perspective, I was an incompetent deadbeat. I watched as Scientology parents were lauded while bending backward to turn their kids into little Ron Bots. Years later, those same parents watched as their teenagers got recruited into the Sea Org at thirteen. Yay, we don’t have to pay for college, which L Ron Hubbard said is a waste of a good brain anyway. Not so yay, those same kids Disconnected from their parents after the parentals failed to toe the line, donate enough, or Participate in the right way in Scientology.
Van and the Non-Existent Flaky Babysitters
Van toddled noisily and unhappily around the sparse babysitting room at our local Scientology Org. When we walked back out the door, he wailed. The babysitter volunteer rolled her eyes. She had six kids to watch. We’d been guilted into attending this Event at the Org.
Van’s wails expressed my sentiments. This event had gotten the full PR push. All the buzzy words were trotted out, new release, mandatory, never before seen, etc. What made us attend was the disruptive presence of a three-man Sea Org Team at our local Org. The Org’s Course Room was its usual tomb-like quiet, near-empty self, except for a couple of die-hard ancient Scientologists who creaked in like ghosts.
The visiting Sea Org Missionaires found the morgue-like gloom of our local Org unacceptable. Where was the Participation? Where were the purposeful volunteers crewing the envelope-stuffing station? (A rickety card table, rotting drunkenly in the back stairwell.) Why was there dust on the telephones? Who was in charge of Call-In? They were running out of heads for pikes. The all-seeing eye was squinting around beyond the beleaguered staff members and glinting at the local parishioners.
A stern-voiced Sea Org-er left a message on our answering machine that chilled me. It hinted that to miss this Epic Event could invoke a Mandatory Interview with a visiting Sea Org Auditor about Participation. On an E-meter. Just no. I successfully dodged the local Course Room because I’d done all the courses. But a close look at my current degree of Contribution, or Level of Participation could ruin life as I knew it. My lack of involvement since Van’s birth could land me in Ethics which could, in turn, mess up our comfortable if limited social life.
After my many years in the cherch, most of my non-Scientology friends had drifted to the acquaintance zone when they discovered I was a Scientologist. Or I’d Disconnected from them because they mentioned the death of Lisa McPherson at the hands of Sea Org staffers. Or Operation Snow White, (look it up on the internet) or some other very well-known, heinous Scientology scandal. Well known, unless you were a Scientologist. I didn’t learn about any of these horrid acts of the cherch until I departed. It was just easier to hang out with my boring cherchie friends than risk hearing something I didn’t want to know about Scientology. And bonus, I wouldn’t get raked over the coals in Ethics for befriending “enemies of the church.”
I had told the Org staffer stuck with Call-In before this stupid Event that we had to leave at nine pm to put our infant son to bed. I said I couldn’t attend otherwise. She’d said, no problem, it was a short Event anyway. Anyone who believed that it would be a short Event needed an appointment with their Neurologist to reassess their short-term memory.
At nine pm, I left my chair mid-Event, Josh by my side. A nervous local staff member tried to steer us back to our seats. Josh got in front of me and parted the growing wall of staff bodies determined to stop us without disrupting the Event. We hustled to the babysitting room with our long tail of staff streaming out behind us. Multiple staffers assured us Van was sleeping.
Van was not sleeping. His face was mid-meltdown red. His swollen cheeks were wet with protest at what I guessed was a fruitless attempt to force him to sleep before we showed up. I picked him up, and Josh parted the wedged masses in the doorway. We shed the final forlorn staffer at our car in the parking lot behind the Org building.
My relief at being locked in our car with my wiggling, wailing son seemed disloyal. You didn’t tell Van what to do. You negotiated, you consulted, and hoped to convince him that he wanted to do that thing you wanted him to.
Josh and I dodged many dreadful Scientology Events after Van’s birth with made-up excuses, like last-minute kid illnesses and irresponsible, flaky babysitters. Much to my guilty amusement, we used the flaked-out babysitter excuses long past Van’s need for supervision.
I look forward to each new part of Through the Bubble – Lili’s Adventures in Scientologyland. If you ever consider getting it into book form put me down for a copy.
GL,
Dude, way to make my day.
Lili
I had SO been expecting Lili & Josh to bag the scientology garbage and not be tricked back into it.
Darn!
And poor VAN, caught up in that mess innocently. Hopefully, his exposure was brief and light, so he recovers quickly.
Waiting for the next episode.
Reading Lili’s riveting stories I can’t help but fear each time she wanders toward re-integration with her harmful cult. HOw, how, how can they not just walk away, expecially after years of dwindling participation? The love-bombing, the implied threats, all the tools of the high-control cult are at the disposal of the Scientology warders, always looking for someone to put into a painful position, or a bankruptcy, or a Disconnection, or an abortion. It is a sadistic group, a painful story. I see sadists flailing away at masochists, who revel in their punishments. Then role reversals – the masochists bcome the sadists, and their lashes hit back at the former sadists who now are the masochists. Please, hit me again, I’ve been bad.
I understand now how Jehovah’s Witnesses watch the TV news with fear, wondering at every natural catastrophe if this is the true Armageddon come upon us, or just another of the several hurricanes that come around every hurricane season, or the mudslides, earthquakes, volcanoes, and forest fires of our natural earth. Living in fear, forcing people to be afraid, is a powerful tool that the hubbard/miscavige cabal and the JW elders cabal all use to keep their flock in line, too fearful to see the plain road ahead.
I read a slew of Theosophy books pre Scientology myself.
Scientology was written more simply, but Hubbard just never has practices that really got me up to ever witnessed some disembodied soul/spirit.
It just never happened for me, so when I was on the RPF, in the end, I concluded I was below the bottom of the syllabus (Bridge to Total Freedom, “awareness characteristics” down the middle fo the syllabus, where it mentions some people are “below” the Bridge, LOL, I was happy to think that, as why I failed to ever have any spiritual disembodied souls experiences all my time in Scientology, LOL). I was a relief, I was ready to quit, but that’s not in the cards, if you “cognite” that you are below “need of change” or below the bottom “awareness characteristic” ,that doesn’t get you a free pass to quit, LOL.
Yes, all considered, Scientology ought just be niche spiritual past lives pseudo-therapy, and Scientology Hubbard style exorcism. Xenu story just explains supposedly the “bad” surplus bodiless souls that cause humans harm, which are the targets fruitfully for exorcism, and skip all other bodiless souls who aren’t doing much damage.
Hubbard kind of left angels off the table for even discussing.
Thanks for the thoughts.
Chuck – As an afterthought while I think billions of people *believe* in non embodied entities, probably only a very small percentage would say they actually *experienced* one. An exception might be people saying they experienced a Divine Presence or God under various names or descriptions but they might say that’s a different category.
I think it’s good that you continually mention the OT quackery to warn people but if you’re trying to come up with some sort of “one shot process” to deprogram scientologists that would be difficult, kind of like using “Be three feet in back of your head!” to prove scn works. The whole thing gets kind of spinny IMO. lol
Like yourself I didn’t do the OT levels so I can only guess how much I would have bought into Hubbard’s visions, also kind of spinny to think about. That’s It! End of Process! lol
I knew I had an MU (mis-understood) on syllabus but I disregarded it when I wrote the above comment.
syllabus – an outline or other brief statement of the main points of a discourse, the subjects of a course of lectures, the contents of a curriculum, etc.
below you wrote:
“never did the OT levels, but I have been absoutely consumed with the deeper flaws of all things Sea Org history and the theory of spiritual ideas out of Hubbard, and what the syllabus (the Bridge to Total Freedom is the syllabus simply of the whole shebang) all really means.
I have been consumed summarizing Scientology into an elevator pitch neutral definition of it. The OT levels 3 thru 7 elevator pitch especially.”
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So I guess you’re looking for a “neutral” way to describe the OT levels which would not immediately be rejected by a scientologist and bring them to understanding they are on a false path. If you or anyone else tells a scientologist the OT levels are quackery and spirit exorcism they would probably just reject it as entheta and think you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Yikes – another MU, elevator pitch. I never heard of it before and thought it was a typo or something.
An elevator pitch, elevator speech, or elevator statement is a short description of an idea, product, or company that explains the concept in a way such that any listener can understand it in a short period of time. Wikipedia
I’m more thinking of the encyclopedias of the world which define Scientology and get them to include just adequate and proportional mention of the exorcism extensive part that makes up Scienotology.
No need to get too detailed, but just mention, at least, the significant amount of exorcism procedures Scientology undertakes in Scientology’s upper levels.
Since five of the eight upper levels of Scientology are exorcism, that might be adequate to at least state in the summary definition of Scientology by outside encyclopedias.
If an encyclopedia feels it needs to mention Xenu, just maybe neutral state Scientology believes an ancient space leader named Xenu is per Scientology the individual who caused on earth what the Scientologists call the 4th Dynamic Engram and the Wall of Fire, which resulted in surplus bodiless souls roaming earth and infesting humans for the last 75 million years. Scientology’s practices include extensive exorcism to remove these surplus souls which they believe infest all humans today.
Something like that.
Not for Scientologists to read, but for the public just so the public worldwide know what they will be getting into, in general, when they join official Scientology and try to do the full Hubbard syllabus, Bridge to Total Freedom.
I’ve read continuously all the encyclopedia definitions of Scientology from when I was a training course supervisor in the Scientology training course rooms, and I’ve always felt like the outside encyclopedias have not gotten Scientology proportionally accurately defined, and omitting the exorcism significant upper levels mainly.
Sounds like the long slow road to the realization of how being connected to an over controlling delusional group may not be the best long term plan to have a happy life.
Well done
Thank you for the excellent autobiographical insight into the mindset of intelligent people continuing to deal with the crazy of the current C of S. As a participant in scn in much earlier days when things were far less oppressive to rank and file scientologists, I still look with some amazement at how current scientologists can continue at all costs and this episode gives me insight. :-))
What a horrible “religion” group to be part of.
I can’t believe I ate the whole thing, I did Sea Org duty Dec 75 til Mar 03.
What a sad sick crock Scientology dumps on people.
I wish I had the power to pay back all public Scientologist every dime they wasted and lost to Scientology, and just fold the cult up.
And pay for the education of all the persons deprived of educations by their association with Scientology.
Another question for Lilly:
Do you feel that the Hubbard Xenu/”body-thetans” theory is sort of a useful Achilles Heel/backfiring secret info / spoiler alert info, which can ALWAYS for the future be used for helping dismantle the Scientology scam? (I do, of course.).
To me, Xenu/body-thetans are the most L. Ron Hubbard self caused problems/solutions to foiling Scientology, forever. Xenu > L. Ron Hubbard. And it’s Hubbard’s fault. Hubbard set up Scientology to trip over Xenu and body-thetans for the long haul, and deserving of his Scientology to have Xenu and body-thetans backfire on them!
Reading about the horrors of Scientology isn’t nice.
“,,,, Cuz when you’re past Clear, you might say something that’d send some Pre-Clear-level Ethics staffer in a lower Org into pneumonia or restimulate them horribly by accidentally saying some OT thing…..”
Lilly,
Do you still today feel stifled describing “OT” things?
How do you today translate “body-thetans”? into normal language?
How do you today translate the exorcism procedures of OT 3, 4,5, 6 and 7 into normal language, and is there a huge weight on you from just blurting out it was all different forms of exorcism, in that OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 eliminated, supposedly, “body-thetans” from orbiting around you and from your human body? (And once the BTs were gone, they took their “case” with them, alleviating their “case” from leaking into your mind?)
How do you talk about the OT levels today?
Are they not just simply exorcism, the Hubbard orthodox exorcism to remove “body-thetans” from someone?
Also, how about Xenu? Isn’t Xenu simply the major most responsible figure in recent millions of years time who was responsible for this “body-thetans” sprinkling onto earth which Hubbard then discovered this and Hubbard’s OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 exorcism procedural steps are just the solution to strip all of a person’s “body-thetans” off of that person, and alleviate any “case” leaking from those “body-thetans” onto the person?
To me, I have yet to hear a former OT 7 Scientologist get simple about it all, and use simple neutral more type of language about all those years of exorcism of Xenu’s earth dump of “body-thetans” which clung to each of them/us.
There seems to still be this lingering massive inability to speak neutrally and simply about all the upper level Scientology exorcism.
Chuck Beatty
never did the OT levels, but I have been absoutely consumed with the deeper flaws of all things Sea Org history and the theory of spiritual ideas out of Hubbard, and what the syllabus (the Bridge to Total Freedom is the syllabus simply of the whole shebang) all really means.
I have been consumed summarizing Scientology into an elevator pitch neutral definition of it. The OT levels 3 thru 7 elevator pitch especially.
Billions of people worldwide believe in non embodied conscious entities like angels, ghosts, demons, sprit guides, ascended masters and the list goes on. If scn was inexpensive lots of Occultists and others might give it a try just for curiosity and to see what happens.
Absolutely, I have conversed with spiritualist people who have that exact reaction. There have been spiritualist/mystical mags that even refered to Hubbard’s past lives therapy, Standard Dianetics/NED, as being clever and effective in getting someone to go past lives in a therapeutic setting!
And when I explained the exorcism levels, and the theory of Xenu dumping the body-thetans, and implanting the body-thetans with “case” bad info, and that the “case” from the body-thetans still leaks onto a person even after the Scientologists is “Cleared” of their “own case” it does in fact make sense.
I think also in ex Scientologist/Indie history some ex’s have been more open to discuss this, and then give their two cents, for instance I’ve heard that most ex’s who still do or did the Hubbard processes, didn’t feel their own “cases” were so badly off, and they didn’t have as many body-thetans and Hubbard went overboard on the body-thetan addressing of OT 3 thru 7, for instance.
Yes, absolutely, people who believe that the soul can transmigrate, lifetifetime, and people who believe in angels (my gosh the Travolta movie about the Michael character is kind of an angel story, right up Travolta’s alley, sheesh!).
Yes, Scientology is hindered more deeply just by Hubbard’s prejudices and voluminous additional opinions about how to present Scientology, and to not talk about the nifty exorcism levels.
It seems that the outside world, if the soul past lives and future lives beliefs, if they ever catch on, then this will always weigh against Hubbard’s totalitarian packaging of the Scientology exorcism theory and practices.
Scientology’s Hubbard’s rules keep it from openly diving right into the soul stuff really.
The verbal tech rules of Hubbard’s are just stupid bad excuses.
The Scientologists cannot even freely defend their beliefs in full, they’d violate Hubbard’s penalties that jeopardize them continuing paying for the Hubbard procedures, what irony.
What a continuing mess for Scientologists.
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Yea, if an occultist asked me (I’m atheist but I still knee jerk tell them how I’d do it, were I still a believer), for sure I’d tell them exactly which references of Hubbard’s to use to do the past lives “case” address, and which references to do their “body-thetan” exorcism, if they want to do that crap.
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I’ve also concluded the smartest ex upper Scientologists who get their wits around mysticism, are the “best” at taking from Scientology’s exorcism practices, what supposedly “works”. Meaning upper level squirrels are the best at talking about all this.
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Running into bodiless souls who present gruesome images, is even mentioned in Buddhism, which in Hubbard speak would mean some meditating Buddhists will run into some bodiless souls in gruesome “case” shape, also!
Scientologists just are not allowed to delve deeply into the nuts and bolts of spiritualism and compare their Hubbard stuff to how other practices deal with the similar souls, “body-thetans” who don’t have bodies.
One or more squirrel groups in the past advocated that rather than exorcising BTs you join up with them and go forward as a unified group. I don’t know if any of them still have followers.
If Hubbard was alive at the time of Madame Blavatsky and developed a version of scn he probably would have gained a following.
from wiki:
By the early 1870s, Blavatsky was involved in the Spiritualist movement; although defending the genuine existence of Spiritualist phenomena, she argued against the mainstream Spiritualist idea that the entities contacted were the spirits of the dead. Relocating to the United States in 1873, she befriended Henry Steel Olcott and rose to public attention as a spirit medium, attention that included public accusations of fraudulence.
In 1875 New York City, Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society with Olcott and William Quan Judge. In 1877, she published Isis Unveiled, a book outlining her Theosophical world-view. Associating it closely with the esoteric doctrines of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, Blavatsky described Theosophy as “the synthesis of science, religion and philosophy”, proclaiming that it was reviving an “Ancient Wisdom” which underlay all the world’s religions.
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Sounds familiar to the scn pitch of applying Western science to Eastern philosophy and religion? haha
A future scn might simply admit to addressing entities along with other benefits and appeal to that niche market.
Even though I’d never do the advanced exorcism stuff of Scientology, and like you said Richard in another great answer thankyou, you said it is mind spinning to get into this too deeply; but I’ve thought that the quitter advaanced OT squirrels ex Scientologists are the better ones to discuss the Hubbard exorcism stuff theory.
What irony, that only ex advanced OT squirrels will have “normal” theory conversations about all the surplus souls /”body-thetans” that Xenu dumped onto earth!
Official Scientology is crippled with Hubbard’s official excommunication rules disallowing discussion, a total violation of human tradition to to discuss things.
Oh well, Scientology is a horrid subject for so many reasons worse than their spiritual beliefs they aren’t allowed to discuss.
So many of the administrative Hubbard strategies to outstep his self caused rules the members are shackled with, the “What Is Scientology” book is one of the greatest bold examples of Hubbard’s backfiring accumulation of rules and ideas. The net result is the official “What Is Scientology” book is horrible at defining Scientology.
I always appreciate people’s comments and dissection of the Scientology/Hubbard flaws, and Richard, yours are truly the tops. I so appreciate reading what you comment.
Dear Chuck,. You have asked great questions. I completed Oatey 1-5. The huge letdown of non results was shocking. Ot 1 just a short intro into the world of this new type of processing took 1 day. Then ot2 had some very unusual processes and no results, quite a mind game though. Ot3 reading about it was cool. I had always enjoyed a good Science fiction novel, so reading all about zenu and his evil escapades was really fun and to think, no believe, that this was the true source of all man’s inhumanity, following the procedure in ot3 was pretty easy but kinda ridiculous I couldn’t believe this was all there was to it. No big relief day by day. Good helpful coaching from the case supervisor and course supervisor that it was just like digging a ditch. Then after 6 weeks I supposedly didn’t have any more body thetans. So attested. I felt good, likely from all the extra rest, good food that I didn’t normally get. Ot 4, lots of auditing by another (kinda weird because u were taught in solo course room that these had to be audited by self, what a manipulative racket this all was. All about drugs that you took on the past lives. This was truly fantasy land. Took about 30 hours of auditing, turns out even though I never took drugs this lifetime I had been quite heavy user and abuser in many other lifetimes. Then. I got auditing on it 5 it was good to learn more about how you can be aberrated crazy, even if you are clear because there are these little spiritual parasites sticking onto you causing you to be crazy. And so we began. I got through the different sections and attested. Again I was generally feeling good at this time. attested. Then a few months later I had to redo the audited notes because of new breakthrough and a new generation of nots techniques. Well the changes were minor. Yet another way to get your time and money manipulated from you. Luckily this really didn’t take much time, probably 25 hours. The amount of cognitive dissonance in the different levels was far greater than on any of the lower levels. But, if this is what the secrets of scientology we’re all about I knew it was all a scam. I had the same body troubles as before, headaches, nausea, the temporary gains from doing a level fell down right away. Then to top it all off I then got told I wasn’t clear, needed to redo purif and objective and start over again. What are they crazy? Yes!
Thanks Lilly.
I do wish someone had the authority to refund carte blanche all who paid huge amounts into Scientology, pay it all back, no questions, but as a societal payback from Scientology to all their takers.
But again, how do you refer to the “body-thetans” and do you feel restraints still, from all the Hubbard indoctrination to not refer to “body-thetans” nor refer and connect Xenu to the dumping of all the “body-thetans” (the surplus souls that infest, orbit and nag all humans are “body-thetans”).
I just have to date not seen ex OT’s who did the exorcism really get new language to file the “body-thetans” and Xenu’s dumping story, into normal language, like simply say or write that Xenu supposedly dumped or released all these “implanted” body-thetans to roam earth, and then simply connect the dots, and say the words, Xenu and ‘body-thetans’ and just mention that the bulk, the majority, in fact, of the OT levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 and 7 are exorcism of these Xenu earth dumped “body-thetans.”
It’s to me remarkable that ex’s who did loads of the exorcism steps, have been so deeply left not options to refer to all that exorcism as exorcism, or maybe call it therapeutic exorcism, since the body-thetans are supposedly telepathically helped by being “run” through Incident I and Incident II as needed.
It did all make sense, and in alignment with Hubbard’s “case” or pseudo-therapy focus of the Hubbard processes (lists of commands to speak and get the reaction and execution by the recipient of the Hubbard pseudo-therapy, including getting the bodiless “body-thetans” to likewise execute the pseudo-therapeutic commands that Hubbard outlined were the standard commands for the OT 3 thru 7 exorcism steps.
Oh well, it’s a long time to get to that point.
Summarizing clearly Hubbard’s practices that Scientology core does on their members.
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Is there penalty you feel in some people’s lives for them to suffer the backlash penalties of Hubbard’s for the orthodox Scientologists who we both know are disallowed from speaking openly about the OT 3 thru 7 exorcism steps?
Are you stepping on eggshells for others’ sakes?
Thanks for being so open and so entertaining about a normal “OT” Scientologist’s predicaments and life doing the grueling years of the upper OT levels.
I admit to a knee-jerk reticence to speak in a detailed way about the OT Levels ‘technically’. I’d say this is in part because so many awful things happened around me to other people, and to myself during the long years I walked the crooked path toward a spiritual plane I never achieved.
In this memoir, I have focused on the personal, not the scientific. As if anything about the OT steps is scientific. I like your encapsulation of the OT journey as the locating of disembodied beings and doing a silent exorcism with the help of the questionable E-Meter.
I’m more comfortable giving my opinions and tattling on myself for the foolishness I engaged in, rather than writing declarations about OT steps. Chris Shelton and other more critical-minded thought leaders have helped me greatly.
To do the OT levels and kid yourself that you’ve become a more able thetan is what I signed up for. I felt years of secret shame that I “did it wrong,” or “I was a dog PC,” or “I just am not a good Scientologist,” because I didn’t gain much from my multi-year push, up the OT self-awareness strip-mine.
The first time I heard someone on video using their own name and throwing out words like BT’s (body thetans), and Clusters, (groups of Body Thetans), I was kind of triggered. I thought, “aren’t they going to get sued by the cherch for uttering forbidden words?” And “Aren’t non-Scientologists and lower-level Scientologists going to read this and get sick? Will I get sick?”
I didn’t get sick. I sometimes laughed myself stomach sore. I looked up the forbidden words on Google and found out that they were all over the place. It was no big secret. People joked about Xenu, and comedians made hay of Scientology’s cryptic verbiage and super-secret writings. I loosened up more and more as I found example after example of people chatting about this stuff who’d never experienced it from the scare-tactic-laden method I experienced.
I liked that very much. I didn’t like the OT Levels. ‘Nuff said.
Happy Independence from Scientology Day.
Thanks so much, excellent response.
Do you think Hubbard laid the precaution a little bit so much that it prevents them fully defining simply Scientology? Meaning if Scientology can’t be open about their spiritual exorcism stuff, then how can they succeed in defining what they are?
And ex OT 7s and 8s ought to be the ones to lead some sort of hindsight simpler overall definition of their overall spiritual practices.
The exorcism levels have been left off the table from the Scientology definition, do you think?
The needling reactions are there.
But to me, still, in mainstream definitions of Scientology in all major encyclopedias worldwide, the OT 3 thru 7 steps which ought to be simpler summarized and added to Scientology’s definition, just isn’t there yet.
OT 7s and OT 8s have the credibility to make this change in world summary perception of what Scientology definition ought to fully include.
To me, it’s just add in that upper Scientology has extensive exorcism steps that go on for years for five exorcism levels.
Fascinating experience, you could make a good Netflix series, perhaps a murder mystery, about going through the levels at the Flag land Base.
Thankyou Constantine, great breakdown. I’m glad that it didn’t soak you financially too badly.
Have you ever heard of “snipe hunting” it’s nicely defined on Wikipedia.
While I think Hubbard and followers did believe they might be communicating with little pesky surplus souls infesting everyone, it still to me, in hindsight might be called “unwittingly engaged in snipe hunting.” What do you think? And for that reason, I’d gladly refund ALL persons who after paying and doing this snipe hunting, if they had a change of heart, and changed their beliefs on these pesky “body-thetans” and decided they really were just imaginary snipes, as in the snipe hunting gags that boy scouts and girl scouts play on newbie scouts.
To me, if a person feels they’ve been taken, they have a valid leg to stand on.
Scientology’s exorcism snipe hunting isn’t proven or should never get a pass, honestly, and minimally, ex’s who did the exorcism/snipe hunting I do feel have every right to share their hindsight views of it.
Thanks alot!
The best plain-English descriptor of BTs I’ve run across is “invisible space alien cooties”.
Jere Lull, I love that wording too. Good find!
Cooties were big in my elementary school days. You didn’t want those.