Treating the Mentally Ill: Scientology vs Psychiatry
I always had a hard time wrapping my mind around Scientology’s policy on dealing with the mentally ill.
L. Ron Hubbard wrote that Scientology was for the able and that those not up to standards need not apply. He and his church didn’t have the time or energy to deal with the depressed, the neurotic, or the insane. Saving the planet before it exploded was hard, grueling work. Dealing with crazy people was a distraction.
Not until sufficient numbers had gone “Clear” would Scientology handle these people.
Psychiatry and Drugs
Two things about LRH: He hated anything to do with psychiatry. And he hated drugs—purportedly. He believed the two were integrally connected, the former responsible for the spread of the latter. All good Scientologists believe the same.
Per LRH, psychiatry deliberately kills people and is responsible for every unhealthy condition from Xenu to Hitler; from the mass extradition of trillions of beings to Teegeack, to World War II and why little Johnny can’t read.
From Excedrin to LSD, from pot to crack, Scientologists want as little to do with drugs as possible. Drugs are evil. Drugs kill. When psychiatric doctors prescribe medication for someone with mental issues, Scientologists go berserk.
Every time some crazy shoots up a school or crashes their car into a crowded farmers market, Scientologists inevitably claim he was under the care of a psychiatrist and on anti-depressants—psych drugs. Had this deranged individual simply avoided anything to do with psychiatry, he would have been just fine. And countless lives would have been saved.
The problem is, the church refuses to accept those with mental problems, while at the same time, is quick to tell others how to handle such people.
And thus, we come to that thing I always had trouble wrapping my mind around.
Open Doors/Closed Doors
At least psychiatry treats people with anxiety disorders, who are bipolar, or are depressed. Their methods may not always be the best, but at least they try. Scientology on the other hand, does absolutely nothing.
In fact, the church does less than nothing. They rail against psychiatry while belittling and denigrating all people with mental illnesses—especially those living on the streets. Within the ranks of Scientology, everyone is responsible for their own condition.
Few are smugger than a Scientologist looking down his nose at someone with a mental disease.
Ron’s Answer
LRH’s solution was to isolate the mentally ill from a “restimulative” and depraved society. Keyed-in people—those under the strong influence of their reactive minds—needed lots of quiet, rest, and vitamins. Later, LRH added the Purification Rundown to the regimen to cleanse their bodies of toxins and drug residues.
I’m not saying this isn’t good therapy. Nobody more than me loves unwinding by blowing the city and going for hikes in the woods. Nature is my church and what helps to settle and realign the ol’ neurons.
You’d think that Scientology with its millions and millions of dollars would have opened a quiet facility such as LRH described. Nope. Instead of helping the unwell, Scientology would rather spend their money on events and big, glitzy buildings.
Exhibiting charity, sympathy, and compassion is considered harmful in Scientology. By helping the indigent and mentally ill, one is “rewarding downstats,” and contributing to their downward spiral. Giving to the homeless is “out-exchange.” Counseling the mentally ill is a waste of time and resources.
The Mental Health Industry
Are there abuses in the mental health industry? Absolutely. Do psychiatrists exist with darker, ulterior motives? Yep. Does textbook psychology work? Sometimes. Is it perfect? Nope. Is the industry connected to “Big Pharma?” By the hip.
But at least they’re trying to do something. Universities and laboratories are researching and experimenting constantly. Even if psychiatry’s success rate is dismal, they accept mentally ill people for treatment. Scientology turns a blind eye.
I’m reminded of the old jest about the Pope and birth control: Those that don’t play the game, shouldn’t make the rules.
Actions Speak Louder than Words
Scientology likes to think they’re doing more to cure mental illness than any other group in the world. They believe they’re the only ones with the “tech” and “policy” to handle people; the only ones truly “putting in ethics” on the planet; the only organization bringing sanity to an Earth spinning out of control.
I don’t know the statistics, but I would guess that the incidence of mental illness hasn’t decreased since LRH introduced Dianetics back in the 50’s. Despite church leader, David Miscavige’s lofty claims, Scientology has done little to quell this “epidemic.”
Last Words
For better or for worse, the majority of the world looks favorably upon the subject of psychotherapy. People see psychiatrists and psychologists out in the field helping people every day. Governments, big and small, turn to psychiatry to handle people who aren’t able to mentally handle themselves.
In the eyes of the public, Scientologists make fools of themselves by attacking psychiatry, inadvertently exposing themselves as the crazy ones.
By refusing to help the mentally ill, Scientology has no right to attack psychiatry.
Still not Declared,
Terra Cognita
Many thanks to those of who posted last night in support of our granddaughter and her mom and dad. Riley Carr was born this am by emergency c-section. Mom’s doing well. Baby is in NICU with some respiratory difficulties. I’ll keep those of you who are interested abreast of the situation, but we expect only good news. Again, many thanks.
Yeeeay!!! Life!! Glad all is good❤️
Brian, THANK YOU! You uplifted me when I saw your post. Pkease read the progress report below. The very best to you.
Yay! Glad to hear the news Barbara
Mike, you’re so sweet to give me comfirt. I’d like especially you and Brian to know our little girl us holding her own. Touched her today for the first time and she heard her MiMi’s voice tell her how beautiful she is.
That is wonderful. I am sorry I have not offered my support til now. Due to my schedule I have difficulty moderating a lot of time other than on my phone and it’s a pain to type anything with fat thumbs. So happy to hear she is doing better. A child is a blessing unlike anything else in the world.
Same here, can’t type well on mobile device, have been too busy to read comments in detail. Very glad to hear things turned out well for baby and family, what a relief and such happy news! Sending best wishes, good thoughts and love your way. – T.J.
Re the discussion of past lives, it’s always amazed me how some people can be so insistant that they don’t actually exist.
M2C that is probably because after several decades of research scientific testing is drawing a negative, so far. That isn’t to say it is impossible. It is just at this point, implausible…
Clarification: Subjective awareness of one’s own existence as an awareness of awareness unit, IS existence.
If Joe insists that past lives, exteriorization, etc. don’t exist, then Joe is saying that Joe doesn’t exist. Why would anyone want to not exist? If this makes no sense to you, just stop thinking totally. If you can’t do that, practice.
This is another example of you doing what you project onto others. You have no problem insulting another yet take great exception at perceived attacks by someone else. I must now say something I’ve been avoiding as being petty. You are a very arrogant individual who doesn’t want to engage in intelligent debate. You’re a troll who thinks he/she can somehow defend an untenable position by degrading, bullying and minimizing others. We’re not going away. lrh had no place in the world of decent human beings. Had he been born in Germany instead of the U.S. he would have given herr hitler a run for his money. If you can’t conduct yourself as most people who visit here do most of us would probably like you to, if not leave, just be quiet and let the adults handle things.
Barbara, you apparently didn’t understand My 2 Cents’ post that you are replying to, and are criticizing him based on your own lack of understanding of what he wrote. Not that I am going to attempt to explain it to you. Just saying.
So Barbara has an M/U and you’re not going to explain what’s wrong. How very Scientologist of you. And you wonder why your Tech circle-jerk here is confined to two people (you notice that Proof of Fool and the other Hubbard-lickers like FG have abandoned you, right?).
I guess you haven’t seen all the posters who have been saying positive things about their experience with the tech. You must still be looking through your filters.
marilidi, I think we’ve all noticed the small number of commenters reporting positive experiences – it’s even increased to bit a bit of a cluster of comments lately, though I’m willing to chalk that up to coincidence, and perhaps the interest generated by the Aftermath announcement.
I also recently spent some time on YouTube watching all the folks who post videos about how certain they are that the earth is flat, and that they’ve observed for themselves things like that water is flat (it can’t be seen to curve) and that they don’t experience the pull of gravity (it’s the effect of atmospheric pressure). Your point about the validity of a handful of anecdotal experiences, is what?
As I pointed out to you recently, the sum total of scientific research published on Dianetics and Scientology in the last 60 some years, including that participated in by the Hubbard Dianetics Foundation of the fabulously wealthy and resourceful CofS (who spend tens of millions of dollars every year, on all manner of outside experts), is that the positive experiences are nothing more than placebo effect. And to follow up, have you found out any information about new research about the subject that might be in progress or that could be encouraged, in order to better settle the scientific aspects
M2C presents compelling testimony suggest that some individuals may experience tangible benefits that might stand up to scrutiny (you generalize to an extent that loses any meaning). But it’s expectable that even with largely ineffective and possibly dangerous treatments, that there will be a few or even quite a few exceptions; for instance, drugs (including herbs ) and medical treatments not only fail advanced clinical tests, but sometimes have to be withdrawn from use after approval, because of this problem, often to the dismay – and even protest – of people for whom they did work.
You seem to have a filter to disregard the principles of science and examples of longstanding science research, underestimate the well-established placebo and other psychological effects, and over-weight limited personal anecdotes (unscientific, and a logical fallacy, particularly in the face of contrary scientific evidence). Anecdotes always have to be looked at through a very critical lens.
“Whereas anecdotal evidence is sometimes the starting point of a proper scientific investigation, it is all too often the ending point and every point of a pseudoscientific investigation.” http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
You’ve managed to twist the truth once again. I didn’t misunderstand the post to which I was replying. In fact it was very clear. Read the original post. The fact that M2C corrected him/herself in a follow up doesn’t negate the wording of the first post. That’s the post I was addressing. The second post was too much, too little, too late.
I’ve been very wordy tonight gentle people, fellow Binderites. So pardon me for anything I said that may have insulted the wrong person. Now I have a major family emergency, so please keep my daughter-in-law and our yet to be born granddaughter in your thoughts and prayers (for those of you who pray.) Goodnight everyone. May you be protected from evil of every type.
Prayers to your family. ❤️
Thank you Brian. I posted above.
In my thoughts & prayers Barb.
Thanks Mike. I always appreciate any kind thoughts coming my/our way. Please read my post above.
Trolls, feed them or starve them?
You guys are working in tandem. You may not be who you say you are. Your mo is to start arguments and never resolve them. You guys blame and are covert and nasty.
You avoid questions and turn the attention onto others.
Your goal is not understanding. Your goal is to “enturbulate those who criticize the tech.” Straight up.
And only a true blue Ron devotee who is fighting SPs to save the universe would act like you guys.
You guys are not Indys. You guys are Scientologists in good standing. This is your job.
Is one of your stats how much space you can waste on a blog site by challenging and never resolving?
I believe you think we are all SPs and that you are applying the SP “tech”.
I am limiting my responses to you guys in the future as I will not participate in your deception.
What the hell is it with Scientologist’s and deception?
Lies and manipulation of reality. Scientology and its practices are a societal pariah.
The more light on it the better.
Brian, that theory explains why Mc2 & Marildi try to discourage auditing outside of the CoS and why they refuse to start an Indie blog to encourage delivery outside the church. It is the ONLY theory that covers their entire line of behavior. They are OSA controlled trolls.
Brian: “You guys are working in tandem. You may not be who you say you are… I believe you think we are all SPs and that you are applying the SP ‘tech’.”
Wynski: “They are OSA controlled trolls.”
Brian and Wynski are the ones who seem to be “working in tandem,” applying their own “SP” tech: label them as OSA and destroy them utterly.
It’s possible that we are seeing a desperate attempt and a coordinated effort.
There is also much speculation going on at the Bunker. Some of yesterdays posts are looking at this changing Marty moment.
What I find interesting is that Marty is now sounding like Miraldi and MTC.
They are all moving forward the same narrative which makes me think that this is a coordinated effort to salvage the broken pieces of a failing church.
They are all claiming that we all are unbalanced in our judgements. They say we are only acknowledging the bad.
This narrative may be coordinated. This is the tactic. imo.
There may be a positioning for power. There may even be people close to Miscavige who know he is losing it and going the way of Ron; looney tunes.
Marty may be being groomed for that role.
Why do I think that?
Because in his videos he is applying one piece of tech that stands out above the rest. Something Ron trained him to do:
DEAD AGENT
He implies that all of us are sheep and, like Ron’s “wog”, creating the term ASC, to dead agent other human beings. Mike included. He is prepping himself to do battle publicly. Marty is prepping for war. The quality of his video says that there is money behind him.
But on the positive side:
Now Scientology is on the defensive. They know the ship is going down and there are true believers who want to pick up the broken pieces.
They are setting themselves up for a colossal failure. IMO.
Marty only cancelled two of my posts in the entire years I posted on his site:
1) when I was rude to Miraldi (what a surprise) and Marty said he would not publish it. I acknowledged and apologized for my losing control.
2) When Marty started defending the church and MIscavige I sent him this: (paraphrase)
“Marty, I sense that you got some auditing and someone is trying to salvage you. You now think that you may be able to salvage Scientology.”
He did not publish this. Why?
What is being attempted will only be the cause of their downfall. Humpty will not be put back together.
Mike is the only one of those guys working out his karma and doing good in this world.
Marty’s road will not be what he thinks. He doesn’t fair well when questioned about his past.
It’s possible that there is a coop occurring very close to Miscavige by some who are high up tech people in coordination with disaffected members out here in wogland.
Leah, Viking Shield Maiden and Mike are causing convulsions in the bubble.
If what I am saying is true will will be hearing more of this argument:
It’s old news that Ron was looney
It’s old news that some Scientology can be dangerous
Critics are whiners, SPs, stuck, have overts and witholds and don’t give the positive of Scientology due consideration.
Hey you Scientologists, instead of attacking critics, why don’t you change the bad PR by helping people with the “tech” you claim can raise the dead.
The dead agenting tech is what toasted Scientology’s PR in the first place.
Just help people and stop applying Ron’s pscho mind fuckery against imaginary evil.
JUST FRIGGN GET ON WITH IT AND HELP PEOPLE
GEEZE LOUISE!!
Brian, it’s certainly at least oddly coincidental that we heard more of a push on the “good in Scientology” theme from several commenters here, right before Rathbun’s videos started to come out apparently headed in a similar direction.
I think we might just be seeing a bit of mimesis, though I’ve also wondered if some of the indie wannabes generate these ideas in a forum that’s not immediately evident. Alanzo’s blog might be a catalyst for that, or an outlet for it.
I agree, the less attention paid the better at this juncture, other than perhaps to quickly cite some of the best points of evidence in refutation, or ask some of the most telling unanswered questions, if only for the benefit of onlookers.
We may just be seeing some former Scientologists who really came to believe in the “wins,” and are still stuck on the idea that some source will mark out a path to enlightenment for them, and can’t let go.
It’s very strange that my mind actually considers these possibilities.
Ask Paulette Cooper if my musings are not in accord with what is possible.
Black ops and dead agenting is what Ron taught his students.
Hate, deception and infiltrate the enemy is a Scientology trait.
Hate, deception and infiltrate.
Brian, this is the same tactic used by some Neo-Nazi groups. Or was years ago. They would attack victims of the Nazi’s & its leader claiming that they were some type of deranged cult and only emphasized the bad things that happened under the Nazi’s but wouldn’t promote all the good parts.
This is almost word for word in a Nazi pamphlet I once saw being handed out.
Their attempt to make it seem dangerous to apply LRH tech outside the church for pay also nails down pretty much 100% that they work for the church. There is no other motivation for that action that I can think of.
Brian, the infamous Barbara Schwarz is an example of former CofS member with endless energy to promote an incoherent agenda – with no help or encouragement. Hubbard set up a system to manipulate scientologists’ minds, which can leave them unstable, as it did his – exactly why Scientology may be dangerous, even if it might produce results for some.
I agree that cases like that of Paulette Cooper show how devious Scientology’s operations can be, though.
p.s. marildi didn’t deny that they and M2C are colluding, but just turned the accusation around – typical, and a tactic that could have come out of the GO/OSA playbook. I also notice that, curiously, the more we see of Rathbun’s new videos, the more they sound like what we have been hearing here from certain commenters – that the problem with people with complaints and lack of results is that they “never really understood the subject” (in spite of decades of experience and certified OT levels in many cases) and so on.
RE: the discussion of past lives. It’s always amazed me how some people can be so insistent that they do actually exist.
I wrote that sentence poorly. It doesn’t amaze me that many people insist that past lives don’t exist. It’s people insisting that they themselves — living beings — don’t exist.
Part of what exists is physical and part is not. What is seen is physical. But what ultimately does the seeing is not physical. Knowing this is a matter of awareness level. Insistence on past lives and exteriorization not existing is saying that nothing exists but the physical. And that in turn means that you, me, and everyone else don’t actually exist.
The Buddha, who Ron falsely, for selfish financial reasons, claimed to be the prophet of, said metaphysical arguments are fruitless.
Arguing metaphysics like a game of ideological ping pong can be fun though.
Judging others for believing or not believing, or knowing experientially, the reality of reincarnation is a waste of time.
My teacher says the same thing.
I’ve solved this issue for myself in meditation.
Arguing beliefs goes nowhere.
Direct perception needs no belief.
And direct perception does not crave to be understood or agreed with.
As long as the spiritual life is speculative, knowing is non existent.
“Only don’t know” — Seung Sahn
I’m of Christian belief. I don’t think I lived more than one life. I was created by God through my parents and my sole will go to heaven once I pass away. I’m good with that belief.
And I still haven’t seen a reply (except one) about are there special needs people in Scientology. Are they aborted instead. Discarded? Shipped off somewhere.
Not mentally ill. But things like Down’s syndrome etc.
Bobbi Dennis Shipman, there is no church directive on this. Therefore, there is no answer to your question anymore than if you asked it of any random person.
” Insistence on past lives and exteriorization not existing is saying that nothing exists but the physical. And that in turn means that you, me, and everyone else don’t actually exist.”
Says you, that’s your woo.
Whenever your “whatever” can leave your body at will and fly around the world while still maintaining your “whatever” please know: there are government and corporate spy agencies that would pay you dearly if you could ever do any such thing. Just letting you know, you could really make a bundle. Good luck.
You woo is not my woo. Heck, I don’t even like Yoo-hoo.
I have a long-time burning question which I have been walking around with for some time. While I was still in the SO at CLO EU, about 10 years ago, I started to wonder what happened to all those mental health patients when their ‘Psych-hospital’ was closed down. I mean, there were some IAS events where they announced dozens of hospitals closing down. That must have been a couple of thousand mentally ill people released somewhere!?
I have asked around while I was still an SO member but nobody even thought about it and certainly nobody knew what really happened. Not a nice idea them all roaming the streets…
I figure that many simply didn’t close down and they were just usual ‘PR’ lies but some must have closed down. What happens to the patients? Anybody here has some idea about that?
Hi Derek, I don’t know much about mental health facilities, so I’m not the best person to answer your question, and hopefully soon someone else with more knowledge will come along and reply, but I do know that if it’s anything like Elderly Care facilities, they don’t just put people out on the streets.
If a Care Center for the aged closes down, they find places that will accept the patients, and then transfer them to another facility before closing. I’m guessing that the same things would be done for mental health patients. I can’t see the institution simply kicking them out on the street. Again, I have no first-hand knowledge about this, and I’m guessing again, but I think that there are rules and laws that pertain to caring for patients of every type. To be licensed, a facility most likely has to abide by the regulations. I also believe that there are not enough mental care facilities, just as there are not enough good, affordable, rehab centers. It seems like people have difficulty finding places for treatment.
Hi T.J., the sad reality is that it’s not like living centers for elderly persons. Many institutions were closed and were not replaced. Many of those patients did in fact wind up homeless and without resources; in fact in modern times mental illness is one of the leading causes of homelessness (and some estimates are that one-third of the homeless are mentally ill).
Jail has replaced the hospital for patients who are too ill to function in society. If someone is having trouble functioning and the authorities are called, most of the time the police will arrive and instead of seeing a mentally ill person they categorize them as a disturber of the peace or a violent criminal. American jails are now overflowing with mentally ill people who are not criminally inclined and who simply need treatment. For the most part they are not getting it. It is a national scandal.
It was called “Deinstitutionalization,” and it was more than a few hospitals that were closed, and more than a couple of thousand patients who were released. It was an enormous generational tragedy in the United States. Google “mental hospital closures” and check out the first few results. The outcome was immense and far-reaching. This happened under the Reagan administration.
The general gist, in theory, was that too many people were institutionalized and the institutions were often not good places. it was thought to be better to release many of the patients and replace their hospital care with “community services,” i.e. halfway houses, outpatient mental services and new psychotropic drugs that were able to control some of the worst symptoms of mental illness. There is some legitimacy to this approach — a lot, actually, from a clinical perspective. Unfortunately the reality was that from the top down, the changes were not clinically based but budget based, and the inpatient services that were shut down were not adequately replaced by outpatient services. Some people simply found themselves out in the world with nothing and no support system. Deaths, increased illness, substance abuse and homelessness were the result on a huge scale.
The mentally ill population was essentially betrayed, and the level of support they receive from society has never recovered. Mental illness is now a leading risk factor for other illness, joblessness, drug abuse, and early death. Additionally, mentally ill persons are more vulnerable than ever to becoming victims of crimes by those who see them as easy prey.
There really was a true need to move past the institutional model, and there really was an opportunity to make that happen and empower mentally ill persons. It didn’t happen, at least not the way it needed to. No one wants to go back to the old way, and indeed it’s not necessary to. What IS necessary is a genuine commitment to provide the mentally ill with the support they need (which is obviously minimal for some and more comprehensive for others, depending on their diagnosis). And that is what has failed in the United States. Instead those people continue to fall through the cracks, to our society’s shame.
Hi TJ and MarcabExpat, thanks for the data.
I would say ‘way to go psych-busters for closing down those facilities! And maybe you should be named ‘Psych and Mentally-ill busters’. Closing down institutions and not taking care about the patients, it´s so typical double-standard BS to be expected from them scn´s.
Yes MarcabExpat, many were closed as State gov’s did not want to fund them because the voters (majority) did not want to pay. That’s how it works. In a democracy representation is required to take and spend a citizens money.
Short of that, the people who want to fund them can open non-profit, donation funded facilities.
Also, the vast MAJORITY of those in mental institutions are there because of self inflicted “wounds” in the form of substance abuse.
“Also, the vast MAJORITY of those in mental institutions are there because of self inflicted “wounds” in the form of substance abuse.”
Site your source please.
And then, if you would, please explain why that matters.
NIH and people tend to NOT want to shell out for self inflicted problems. That should be self evident though to most thinking people.
Excellent non answer.
And nice insult at the end.
No source, so just your ramblings.
Looks to me you’ve never located empathy on your tone scale.
Empathy is not on the tone scale. But sympathy is below hate.
The type of philosopher who would redefine the word sympathy and put it below hate:
A VERY MENTALLY TROUBLED AND DANGEROUS PERSON.
Perhaps that’s because Brian has feelings and emotions rather than the false application of nonsense created by a man trying to pull a tax didge.
In the event a Scientologist exhibits delusional behavior for a length that person should be allowed to leave the “church “…Scientology has no right to try and “treat ” that person. .period
Yes! Great article. It lists out one outpoint after another in Scientology quite succintly in rapid succession.
I’d really like to see a blog specific to what happens with special needs, handicapped, Down’s syndrome, autism type issues. I have only seen a reply / mention of one instance here and wonder if it’s just still an unspoken thing.
Fascinating article and even more comments.
Discussion of mental illness and medical treatments, good, bad, changing. Then talk of Past lives are proven by science and science is dice.
Fascinating. Thanks for an interesting article Terra, and for hosting an interesting blog Mike.
(and my belated congratulations to a fan for your Chelsea EPL victory. (imma be over here throwing up for typing that)
In my opinion, scientology creates mental illness. Just sayin’…
OutAndAbout. I can honestly say that as a %, FAR more scamologists I’ve known acted nutty than the “wogs” I’ve known. Without ANY doubt. But 100% of the scamologists I’ve known were from the “old” days. Maybe DM has improved things since then?
I have to agree with you. I personally know of 3 scientologists who went “type 3” usually after some sort of “justice” action was shockingly handled. Two of those within the last 4 years.
About 10 years ago my s/o had a couple of anxiety attacks. Didn’t know why. She went to a psychiatrist who gave her a couple of one hours sessions of psychotherapy. She was cured. It never came back and she never had to do more sessions. The total cost was a $10 co-pay to her and $400 to the ins company.
We each try to walk the path which gives us the most satisfaction. For some, it’s scientology. Until it’s not.
Mike, I find it very disconcerting that the post I made above was at the END of the comments and connected to other specific comments. Yet it appears at the top of the list where it makes no particular sense. It seems to happen often.
Having just completed my bachelor of science in psychology, it’s very clear to me that LRH railed against the subject because he was too damned lazy to play by the rules. He took pieces/parts of the prominent psychology of his day (1940s and 1950s) and threw together a “regression therapy” that when done by two good souls who really wanted to help each other, worked out pretty well. It’s not rocket science. But it is something that is regulated to keep some semblance of control on just who gets to mess with your head!
The majority of the population has some kind of mental stress going on at some point in their lives and could use somebody to just sit and talk it out with. Scientology lacks the capability of dealing with anyone less than perfect. So what’s that, like 0.0001 of the population it can help?
In the slurch, everything can be fixed with mind over matter – your brain/body connections mean absolutely nothing. Never mind that the brain, as part of the central nervous system, is the superior entity. You can wish and will it to be some other way, but the “normal” aging process, for instance, just isn’t going to change. And guess what? That is absolutely okay!
Where the slurch really messes with you is in making you think you can rise above what’s normal; making you think you will have super-human powers above and beyond the average human being. Doesn’t that sound fabulous?! But it’s too good to be true, because it’s a lie. And we all witness OTs being absolutely NORMAL (except for their Scientology-induced psychoses) every day..They’ve been scammed into thinking they could achieve something more than normal.
The OT’est OT I’ve ever known is just “normal”. And the poor things spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours to get that way.
I should have said “it purports to help”
The last sentence sums it up correctly. .TC. Your brilliant
Great topic Terra. I love reading your essays.
I think Ron hated Psychiatry and Psychiatrists because they probably diagnosed him earlier on.
Here’s some circumstantial evidence:
Remember on that album My Philoshophy that Yvonne spoke. Remember when Ron said, referring to his discharge papers, “this officer sufferes from no NEUROTIC or PSYCHOTIC tendencies WHATSOEVER (paraphrase)?
Well think about it. Have you ever heard of a person having discharge papers with the line;you are not psycho? No way. Ron was covering his bases. They knew he was looney tunes. He was just covering his bases with us. More lies. Look up Malignant Narcissist.
I think that the psychiatric community knew that Ron had a severe personality disorder. The psyches were right.
Maybe that’s why he hated them. They knew who he was and knew what he was doing. And Ron hates being seen. Therefore we must destroy the enemy of mankind’s best friend.
Makes sense to me. Where do I sign.
Scientology is what happens when a Malignant Narcissist is the founder.
Hi Brian: Remember too that LRH said that all ARC breaks stem from missed withholds. And nobody was more “ARC broken” than he was.
That one statement that ARCxs come from missed witholds is a doctrine that is severely mentally distructive.
So whenever someone feels bad about something it’s because of our evil.
This is a sick, twisted, evil, mind destroying doctrine.
I remember thinking with this data. I remember blaming myself when other people were causing craziness. I remember blaming myself when others were acting nuts. I would not allow myself to fully know what was going on because I would default to self blaming.
Scientology: is what happens when a Malignant Narcissist starts a cult.
I believe we need to promote this diagnosis at all times. When the emperor finally disrobes and naked for all to see, the most fundamental truth about Hubbard is that he…………
suffered from a combination of Narcissism and Antisocial Personality Disorder.
The biggest existential threat to Scientology is the truth about Scientology.
THE MOST DAMAGING TRUTH IS THAT L RON HUBBARD WAS THE ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY HE WARNED US ABOUT.
L RON HUBBARD WAS THE SP HE WAS OBSESSED ABOUT.
THE PTS SP TECH WAS A PROJECTION OF RON’S MALIGNANT NARCISSSISM.
Oh and……. Hi Terra!!:-)
I had that same thought. That the clincher of the religion was that LRH was the very thing he warned others to stay away from. Lord that man was brilliant. You have to admire the nefarious brilliance, ya know?
He was a dangerous genius no doubt.
So true.
Combined with his paranoid behaviour, this mix is like an atomic bomb.
Like Trump, Elron was able to lie and never think about what he said. If true or not – he only knew his purposes. All the people have been his instrumental slaves.
Every child knows, if it lies. These guys do not know it! This is why we could not understand the personality of Hubbard and his devlish gang as it is far away from normal.
I’m sorry that I’ve forgotten the reference date for this, but after LRH said all ARC breaks are based on missed withholds he said that they are based on bypassed charge, one type of which is missed withholds. He also talked about inadvertent missed withholds, in which a person is trying to get a communication through and the other person is just not getting it. And in Recovering Students and Preclears he gave 9 reasons people blow, 8 of which are overts by the org not the person blowing.
Where do you have your practice My Two Cents? You are no doubt a very informed tech guy. Like someone very high up in the organization.
What class auditor are you?
A very highly trained auditor has as an injunction given by Ron to free others with auditing.
Maybe we can help you by sending you people to audit. I’ve sent an OT 7 to Trey Lotz a few years ago.
And what are you actually doing, besides arguing with people here, to further your purposes?
If I had a purpose to deliver true Scientology and a person offered to send pcs to me to help deliver benevolent Scientology I would jump at the offer.
There is deception afoot.
Careful, Brian. You seem to be agreeing that the good in Scientology can be delivered without the bad.
Brian, I asked my uncle (91 years old) what his discharge papers said from WW2 (he was injured in France as a foot soldier under Patton’s Army). It simply stated in Good health, complains of occasion pain from gun shot injury to right thigh.
ZERO mention of mental health. He said only people complaining of mental problems or recommended by a superior officer got sent to a shrink and would have any mention on discharge papers.
Thanks Wynski for that. That lying madman was afraid that we would know he was a crazed loon. Probably something those close to him eventually found out.
Promoting on his intro level propaganda record album of lies called ‘My Philosophy that he wasn’t neurotic or psychotic is so suspect.
Why would someone promote that he wasn’t psychotic in a promo piece?
That in itself is psycho.
Ron’s lies about his discharge papers imply very strongly that he KNEW something was not right about himself.
Ron was the antisocial personality he warned us about. Maybe his insanity was what he was trying to resolve with the emeter. But being a Narcissist he probably gave credibility to his delusional creative thoughts when the meter went blip.
The emeter was Ron’s one way ticket to collapsing his mental health. In the end standard tech led him to his deplorable state of madness searching searching searching for make believe demons in his own mind.
Thanks Wynski for asking your uncle.
Ron was a dangerous loon.
I don’t know if anybody got the memo, but back in 1952 Hubbard said he decided to be mad at the psych’s for no other reason than there was no randomity. And he “knew” how to help the “psych’s make more money. Oh, you gotta luv Hubbard’s rhetoric, lol.
Please, somebody inform the Dennis Clarke’s of the present world that the dead man LRH is dead and everybody in CCHR can go home and continue up the illusion known as the “Bridge to Total Freedom”.
Here’s the quote from the lectures series tape/CD dated 10 Nov 1952 from the lectures series know as Source of Life Energy and is part of The Basics that all staff members and public were ordered to buy and do the courses on them:
“My own philosophy , my own method of existing is far, far different, perhaps in many cases, than the data itself, because I’ve selected out, after all, certain randomities.
There are certain things which I have decided to be mad at in this universe. I’ve decided to be mad at psychiatrists. There is no reason why I should be mad at psychiatrists. Really, the sensible thing for me to do about psychiatrists is simply go over and talk to them, make a couple of patients well, show them how they can make bigger fees, pat them all on the head, and you’ve got Dianetics and psychiatry. But there is no randomity there. No randomity at all. They’re never going to hurt a preclear really. I can rave and rant about electric shock and prefrontal lobotomy- you can pick them up in the next life and they’ll be as good as new”
Well there we have it in b & w.
Wow. Great quote.
singanddanceall, thanks for the quotes.
sounds about right if they don’t have the tools to really help ? it might ruin there record of thinking they are Superior ppl & to turn ones backs on the homeless is shameful some are there Not for mental issues but hard times w lil to No money for this Money Machine & some need help so guess Scientology gets a big old F regarding helping ppl who need help, I’ve been to enough shirks & put on enough different meds that didn’t seem to work & after so many sudden losses in my life + the religion I was in = not easy times but I can see why Scientology wouldn’t want there ppl to seek help a good shrink would scratch there heads w the things ? went to them & say Get Out Don’t stay in abuse so that said they need to turn in there “Church Card,so called religion” if U wanna say that’s what U are if your only wanting X ppl while turning away others that’s No Church, we all have ? to give & the ppl who are down & out tend to be selfless giving ppl w a <3 Big old Heart & as for Crazy D.M takes the cake there talk about someone who could use help + the strong ppl who got out of that place, it would be nice to wish away a mental issues or Med issues but really there's a very good chance that's not going to wok nor help these ppl are being brainwashed period & I don't like to judge much but it's pretty Clear there's lots amiss w these ppl & I'm not blaming the reg ppl they just got sucked into this Nightmare & that's sad……
Terra, as always, a most informative essay! Thank you for your efforts against Scientology’s misinformation campaign.
I was adopted by a wonderful couple when I was 3 years old, having been rescued from my biological parents. The abuse I suffered before I was adopted was addressed by a loving, caring child psychologist who did NOT put me on medications and worked with me for many years to help me become a well adjusted young woman.
I didn’t just learn how to survive, but to thrive in this life 🙂
***M2C there is no conclusive proof on past lives. Please check out James Randi’s book about Uri Gellar and how he debunked the research that supposedly validated Gellar. All of the studies I’ve read allow for mentalist tricks to be used, therefore are inadequate.
JP, regarding past lives, as I commented a while back when TC addressed past lives, there was some very good research done in the 1970s and 1980s showing how the sort of past life regression that Dianetics and Scientology use, just creates false memory syndrome; in a suggestible state (such as auditing) the subject just recalls a mix of below-conscious material (such as from early childhood) and imaginings (similar to the material generated in dreams). This mechanism has been proven when cases such as that of the infamous Bridey Murphy have been thoroughly investigated, including doing such things as talking to childhood neighbors.
I don’t entirely rule out the possibility of some sort of reincarnation, though I think that if it exists that Hubbard, typically, latched on mistakenly ego-centered idea of it; but the vast majority of supposed experiences can be proven to be false. Hubbard even dropped some clues that he knew of the problems with supposed past life memories, such as that when carefully examined, chronologies for two lives can sometimes be found to overlap.
I don’t think I’m going to bother to post this separately in direct refutation to the comments of a few seeming true believers.
Junk Phrases, you want me to check out your source — a pop illusionist — while you won’t check out mine — real scientists at a major university medical school.
In 1996 I was interrogated intensively by OSA Int. it went on for 10 days, at least 6-8 hours/day. I mentally broke down. I was blessed that I did not end up in one of the “baby watches” that I was so aware of. I didn’t know it at the time, but Lisa McPherson had died 6 weeks prior.
I was pretty much left alone with nothing but the Love of my family and friends. I slowly recovered. It was love and patience that got me through. I don’t dare to think of my ending if I had been locked in a room with strangers who refused to speak to me – as had happened to Lisa.
I did end up taken to the hospital in restraints at one point – did not even recognize my husband. OSA sent someone there, and then the Intel Director came herself. OSA did not want me to get admitted or get any help from “non-Scientology people”.
What did OSA do to help me? A week or so later they showed up at my door with legal papers for me to sign stating that “this was not their fault”
At that time I had been a dedicated member for over 25 years.
I spoke with Greg Bashaw several times prior to his suicide. We agreed that it was horrific enough to not be in charge of our mental faculties – but it was even worse to be abandoned by the group we had devoted our lives to, and the “Only Group” that we felt could help us out.
I later discovered so many more Gregg’s, and Lisa’s, and people like myself…
It felt like an EP of Scientology – to lose your mind…
Nancy
Yes Nancy. I’ve / I’m thinking that too. How blessed we are that you chip in! Hugs Nancy, there are so many that love you.
Thank you Nancy for sharing your story. It’s not an isolated event.
When my x wife was having a hard time AOLA had her sign a waiver exonerating Scientology if she commits suicide.
This was actually stated in the document they had her sign.
So here she was, a women having an extremely hard time mentally and emotionally dealing with BTs on OT3x and the only response to her was a heartless disregard of her life.
“If you kill you self…….. too bad. We are not responsible”.
Behold the twisted philosophy of a true anti social madman.
Wow Nancy. So glad you made it. Hugs.
Of course you can still call yourself a Scientologist. Just go the independent route.
This is actually a response to Bob90805.
Do go to Tony Ortega’s to read of a great defection of whale and doctor Brad and Natelie Hagemo of Twin Cities. I tried to copy and paste the entire letter he wrote here but it didn’t work. So go there and read it. His story needs to be seen.
Allow me to summarize: They got tired of all the regging and empty buildings and became Independents.
There is more. The church tried to break up their family, tried to prevent the kids from seeing the parents etc. Just because it has happened so often and to so many people that you may have become bored hearing about it, Costermonger, their pain is real and their abuse was real and we should not make less of it. Don’t let yourself become conditioned to violence, manipulation, and underhanded tricks that were pulled on people and are still being pulled on people in the church. Every person who comes out publicly is very brave. Those people didn’t use a “pen name” or an alias and took a risk by making their story known. So please don’t make nothing of their story when they had the guts to publish their story using their real names and thus risk Fair Game.
Science is, by definition, ALWAYS imperfect. It is based on an ever-growing body of evidence. It is therefore, ALWAYS open to questioning and disclaiming, if not advertising, its own imperfections. It MUST produce verifiable results. Scientific claims without proper process are rightfully decried as “quackery.”
Dogma is ALWAYS perfect. It is based on a priori claims that require, by definition, ZERO evidence. In fact, demanding evidence, or suggesting counter-evidence, is considered heresy. Heretics are removed from the discussion. Their voices, now that they are outside of the circle of believers, are no longer relevant as they are no longer part of the discussion. Even for-hire academics will testify to the dissenters’ irrelevance.
Verifiable results are not even part of the enterprise of dogma.
Insidiously, scientology wants it both ways. Hubbard, a man who PROVED that he was incapable of even assimilating the freshman basics of science let alone practicing science, claimed himself to be a scientist. Dogmatically, he claimed he practiced science; yet he did so without practicing science. When the scientific community (science NEVER works without a community) ignored him or correctly labeled him a quack, he became his own scientific “community of one” and bestowed on himself whatever unearned academic or professional title he saw fit. All of that notwithstanding, scientology advertises itself as a science (an “exact” science, no less) to this day. All the while deriding science itself and its imperfect practitioners.
However, when it comes to the pesky subjects of verifiable results, or even some–any–form of supporting evidence, dogma is invoked. The focus is directed NOT toward the apparent quackery but toward the heretic who, by definition, is always wrong! While those “inside the circle” produce cookie-cutter anecdotal “evidence” on cue. Or else!
But at least the real estate portfolio is growing, empty “hospitals” are being built that fail to attract “patients,” and statistics of all the global healing taking place there are conveniently produced in the same manner LRH produced “science:” Made up on the spot.
Thanks, TC. Great topic!
Well said!
“In fact, demanding evidence, or suggesting counter-evidence, is considered heresy. ”
But $cn takes it to a whole new level there. Just the other day on Tony’s blog, Michael Tilse posted an account of an incident that occurred while he was on staff and had done some research that supported some claim that Elron had made and was promptly sent to ethics when he announced it. It seems that NO kind of research is ever acceptable cult behavior.
After I was kicked out, i later saw 3 different therapists. it’s been since 1990. didn’t see them all at once.i mostly had to talk about my loss thru disconnection of my family. also spent a lot of time talking about the wrongs of scn and how i’d been treated and the auditing i had. at no point did i worry about my ethics or aliens or any of that shit. my 21 years in and the tens of thousands of $ i spent was mostly wasted. happy to be out.
So many people don’t understand that Mental Illness is a chemical imbalance in the brain, just like many physical illnesses are a physiological imbalance. Medications for mental illness require a lot of trial and error. Also, people who started off on one kind of medication, may need to change it because it no longer works (much like how a person can suddenly acquire an allergy to something they weren’t allergic to before). So does birth control, as different kinds of hormones and their levels have different effects on different people. Medicine for high blood pressure is another one where different meds need to be tried out to find out the one that is best for you.
The difference is that the manifestation of symptoms in mental illnesses are more obvious to others and impact others as well as the sufferer because of the social ramifications. Also, some of the meds that have been used in psychiatry have been around for a long time, with the advantage of knowing the long term effects. Many of them are less harmful than Motrin.
The brain is part of your body, hence mental illness is an illness just like any other in your body.
I’m sure DM has a nebulizer and inhaler for his asthma….
So true, and it takes years of re-education to replace the misinformation Hubbard instills into the members, who must go along with Hubbard’s views, or receive correction, “false data stripping”, cramming, ethics, sec checking, justice actions, all to get “more on source” (more in agreement with Hubbard’s superior ideas about life). It takes years for that accumulated misinformation to get replaced with real life re-education.
I found a person figures it all out by themselves, and for me, I recently enjoyed catching up on what is kind of what I missed by not completing college, the “School of Life” (corney name, but smart series of short 10 minute-ish in length talks on all the major things one ought to have learned has been world ideas history):
https://www.youtube.com/user/schooloflifechannel
I was a philosophy college dropout who foolishly jumped into the Sea Org in 1975, getting out finally in 2003, and adult education, using the internet, is so helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox8XlcUppbo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Unq3R–M0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKnSMCjzmco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge071m9bGeY
I particularly like the sociology series in the whole massive 400 plus, short lectures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzr3AOtFA8o&list=PLwxNMb28XmpcoeCDO0VnGUavcLUFiNcAI
Call the Midwife. U say it well..i have found out thru trial and error and time. Pretty much the same thing
“The brain is part of your body, hence mental illness is an illness just like any other in your body.”
Exactly. A mental illness is an illness of the brain, as a cardiac illness is an illness of the heart. Thanks Midwife for stating that so clearly.
‘Callthemidwife, the brain affects behavior and behavior affects the brain – it goes both ways. Which is fantastic, really. Charlie Rose did an in-depth series on the brain, which I highly recommend. Not only was it educationally informative, but it featured some of the top scientists in the field of neurology and psychology and really opened my eyes to who these people are (since I was so brain-washed into believing they were evil) in real life. When I saw these people and what they’re doing to help mankind (all backed by scientific evidence, by the way), it blew my fixed ideas away.
https://charlierose.com/collections/3
So glad you wrote on this topic. Hope to see more like this… I’m still reading all the responses… Wanted to comment here on trauma. I’ve seen a few earlier posts on PTSD as a direct consequence of the “slerch” (love that word) and their hatred of victims… That is one thing–but there is also the failure of auditing really addressing and handling it.
Once the PC originates being the recipient of a physical and/or mental blow, (AKA, “motivator” he is then directed to run “similar overts of his own..”
IMO and experience, this running of overts never made me a “causative” person on that particular chain. I learned to keep silent and looked inward trying to find what I did to pull it in… This only made the trauma worse and left me ill prepared to handle similar things in the future.
When physically attacked thereafter, I was conditioned to “keep my TR’s in,” meaning, “be there comfortably” while being assaulted. If the perpetrator made a threatening comment to me (like a warning) that physical pain was imminent, I dismissed such things thinking that was a comment and I must keep my TR’s in; write more Ow’s or keep spending $$$ to “handle my case.”
How convenient. The “slerch” actually has a vested interest in PC’s not doing well!
That said, I really despise the label of “mental illness.” If a person was the recipient of physical harm as with rape, assault or a terror attack–that person has been INJURED. So it’s a known cause. PTSI, “i” is for injury, it’s not a mental disorder…
[PTSD] is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. https://www.ptsd.va.gov/apps/aboutface/questions–what-ptsd-is.html
If a person breaks their leg while skiing,(an injury) the treatment for that is very different from a person who has a disease such as a bone infection or cancer….
To Nancy Many and others who have been injured… I hope this helps. You are not ill. You’ve been harmed by a money machine with a vested interest in seeing you hurt.
For animal lovers out there.. Below is valid therapy… The second link is a video which I found particularly moving.
http://www.historynet.com/horse-whisperer-helps-veterans-with-ptsd-on-military-channel.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyh_ZrgLRqY
Another thing to consider if your insurance covers it — might be worth looking into —Neuro-feedback. It’s non invasive… Definitely an alternative to drugs.
All the best….
Thank you again for this topic.
Thank you very much TitleWaves for your response. You are correct in than an Injury was inflicted, which resulted in Trauma. I am lucky to have found support on my road to healing and been able to offer that to others in similar places. What upsets me so much is that the “type 3’s” or “suicides” that I know of were the result of Scientology – not psychiatry. Lisa was on upper levels and on service at Flag, that means any prior contact with Psychiatry had been vetted. Her injury was a result of the Scientology Tech.
“Modern Science of Mental Health” my ass!
Nancy, thank you for your attention to my post… It meant a lot to me that you replied.
I have a lot of respect for you and love your honesty… I am pleased that you have support. You deserve it.
You’ve spoken up about bonafide trauma. There are evil people out there but the PTS/SP tech (no matter how many times we re-did the course) did not “shatter the suppression.”
It came from within. And we were betrayed by it.
Simple common sense/horse sense (which is free) indicates the warning signals. We don’t need to pay $thousands of dollars and recite the antisocial characteristics to a wall for 50 hours to get the certainty on that…. Do we?
When the $mirch is attacked, the solution is regging more money… When it happens to you personally, your overts and “misapplication” of the “perfect tech” are to blame…
NOT!!
“You need to talk to a wall for another 50 hours to get it…” And “stupid you,” needs to re tread the course over and over again..on your dime.
DM is exempt though… Even though he clearly needs to (at least) re-do his Grade Zero as he has not EP’d on “being able to communicate freely with anyone on any subject…”
Hats off to all of you here for your intelligence and courage and getting out.
I’d like to end off by saying that this $merch of Silentology has no traffic with reason or common sense. And when I look at the dynamics as laid out by “the perfect tech,” the Fifth dynamic is noted but not given the credit it deserves… More on that in a moment…
I can’t speak for all of you here but I think most of us got in because we were fighting for freedom– a war against insanity, war…etc… We were saving Mankind! Or so we thought,..
We did a very unselfish thing by dedicating our livelihoods and sacrificing so much…
But we were duped and scammed…
We have similar battle wounds as do our brave military soldiers fighting for our freedom but we dare not speak of that comparison…
We’ve seen the blood and guts in a different way. (As Nancy mentioned).
I’ll leave you with this incredible video I found today, shot at Yellowstone—GORGEOUS scenery–produced by National Geographic–two veteran soldiers on a horseback journey after losing one of their brethren to suicide.. Note around five minutes in where the veteran says something about leadership…
It’s just beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_5kQgErF5A
All the best to you, my friends…
Thanks TitleWaves… I have seen Scientology “use people up” “Suck everything they have out of them” and then not just abandon them, but blame them for their failings.
I would love to watch the National Geo show, the link did not go through, can you tell us the title and we can look it up.
Bless, Nancy
Hi Nancy, try to search via Youtube With Horses’ Help, Army Veteran Finds Healing in Yellowstone | National Geographic
I wish we could all embark upon such an adventure!!!
Please let me know if you can/can’t get it…
Here is the link again… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_5kQgErF5A
So sweet,,,,, Enjoy!!!!
Loved it!!! Thank you for sharing..
Really good explanations Mike. You mention Scientology does less than nothing. And later state “You’d think that Scientology with its millions and millions of dollars would have opened a quiet facility such as LRH described. Nope.”
Those two odd facts got me thinking [way back when], especially the latter, about what we as Scientologists actually are set up and able to do? Answer was then, and still is 30 years later, nothing. But not less than nothing, we have OSA and its Deputies making sure there is a 24 hour watch and that that nut cracker (Scientologist), now “Type 3”, psychotic, Jesus, Lucifer or LRH reincarnate hallucinations, etc. must be kept tightly under wraps so not to harm, not themselves or others, but the repute of Scientology.
OSA controls every one of these situations it knows about, directing by phone many times a day and ordering the whole local show from long distance, with little concept of the local issues or staffing or volunteer situations what is really going on.
I’ve been involved in two different “Type 3” watches. Don’t care to go into details just now, but they were both under OSA and neither ended well. Both dead, one within several weeks and one within the year. Suffice to say that OSA would not approve any drug stronger than benadryl to calm them down or help them relax and sleep. A fucking joke.
So so true… That’s what they care about – Covering their own asses…
I believed LRH didn’t want the mentally unbalanced to be hanging around the orgs, as it would make other parishioners doubt the efficacy of his auditing and training methods. Rightfully so.
I think it also bothered HIM that his “tech” didn’t really do much for people with mental problems.
Solution: just prohibit the mentally unwell from getting services or hanging around the orgs. There, problem gone!
But many people became mental AFTER Scientology, that would definitely look bad for business. Whenever it did happen, the person who became unbalanced was always at fault – in some way or another…
Thanks Mike. I wrote a little something to M2C yesterday about therapy helping people in lieu of scientology. There’s no comparison between lrh’s pseudo science and the practice of licensed therapists. It’s true that there are damaging people in that field, just as there are damaging people in every field. From the president of something to the janitor of the same somehing. The job doesn’t make the person, the person makes the job. And you’re also spot on about the attempt to help those truly in need. scientology helps no one as an organization unless it benefits them.
Barbara, as I’ve said before on this blog, before I got into Scientology I studied and received 4 different types of psychotherapy — Freudian, Jungian, Rogerian, and Reichian. None of them did anything for me other than the fact that it was nice to have someone to talk to. Then I got some Scientology auditing and experienced explosive case gain. This was in the late 60’s before Scientology became a cult, though.
M2C, you’re taking a personal experience and expanding it as the answer to everyone’s ills. Just because these other therapies did not relieve your problems doesn’t mean they’re a massive failure. Indeed, as I’ve said in the past there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who’ve been helped with talk therapy. You can’t make the same claim in the name if scientology. If the “tech” works for you I’m genuinely pleased you’ve found a way to relieve your stress, and your angst, and improved your life. There is a limit however to what really works that is sponsored by scientology. May I inquire, and this is a serious question, what is your opinion about where lrh is today?
I’m not against psychology as a subject. Nor do I believe that it never helps anyone. My experience was just that standard Scientology worked better for me. I’m in favor of cross-pollination between the two subjects, and let the practioners observe what works the best regardless of its origin.
So My Two Cents, you have been promoting the Scientology up grade ever since you’ve come here.
I’d say it’s probably 95% percent of your communication. The feeling I get from your passion is that it is very very important to upgrade Scientology.
Mike asked you a very in context question: what are you doing? Do you have a practice? Where can someone get in touch with you?
How are you approaching manifesting what you consider a planet saving activity?
This article reminded me of the Tom Cruise interview where he’s lecturing Matt Lauer that he needs to be more educated and do more research like HE HAS (Cruise) and in the same sentence saying that “chemical imbalance does not exist.” WHERE is he getting his research? They say psychiatry doesn’t work but they don’t present a solution that DOES work.
In my 7-8 years in scn I saw at least 4 stuff members with obvious mental problems and a half of dozen pc with different serious psychological and psychiatric issues (including a teenage boy and 11 years old girl). I don’t know was Moscow org trying to chew everything it can or was it sever out-tech but in every my visit to the org I saw at least one of them, sometimes in their really bad mental periods.
You are right, Victor. The policy doesn’t state that auditing is forbidden to “the depressed, the neurotic, or the insane,” as claimed in the blog post. Actual “illegal pcs” are those who have had “extensive institutional or psychiatric history which includes heavy drugs, shocks of various kinds and/or so-called psychiatric brain operations.” (6 Dec 76RB ILLEGAL PCs, ACCEPTANCE OF)
Especially if they have money….
Victor, something I found to be common practice was wealthy Scios “dumping” their kids on the mission or org. Buying them auditing and courses so that we could do what they should have been doing as parents instead.
Add to that, making their kids totally right for quitting school at 16 and then conning them into joining staff at the orgs so that they, the parents, wouldn’t have the responsibility and expense of educating and training them to actually be able to do something in life. Really criminal if you ask me.
I am childless but if I had kids I would consider doing that to them a true crime.
I speak from experience because when I was young I neglected my education and boy did I pay a price for that later, in all kinds of ways.
What I did, or rather didn’t do, was neither approved nor encouraged by the adults in my life at the time.No, they did their best to reason with me but I wouldn’t listen.
I made my own foolish and stubborn choices. I was willful, headstrong and I was upset about something, lets put it that way. If I told you what it was you’d probably say I had a good excuse but good excuse or no, I was still thoughtless, clueless, stubborn and foolish and I paid the price for being so later decades. I did wake up and get myself back on track and paid my dues but that was way later than it should have been.
Well, better late than never, but that’s why when I saw Scientology parents blithely approving or just shrugging when their kids quit high school, when I heard them brag about not letting their kids be trained for anything other than their grounding in Scientology, when I witnessed these parents smug and proud of themselves for having effectively set up their kids to join America’s poorest, most vulnerable and at risk demographic with their blessing, it would sadden and annoy me. It still does. And always, it seemed, these same parents were themselves educated and trained in professions. They were doing well! And yet they greased their kids’ slide into possible poverty.
At least the adults in my life argued with me, tried to cajole me into listening, tried to talk some sense into me about my future! I’m grateful for that, today! That I refused to heed them was not their fault.
Aquamarine, excellent points and I observed the same. The highly educated OTs (public) pushed their kids into the S.O. That bratty Flag MAA, Cara, is a perfect example of this and someone I knew personally before the S.O. The other MDs I was associated with did the same with their kids. They were being pressured, of course, from Flag and their own “OTness” was at stake.
I don’t know many now adult children of Scios, but the ones I do know of are absolutely floundering in life, with nothing stable. They will never be able to afford the auditing that they think everybody must have to survive. They’re uneducated and I’m sorry to say, ignorant because of it and can be taken advantage of very easily, yet they actually believe they’re smarter than everyone else around them.
T Marie and Aquamarine, I couldn’t have said it better myself. These kids who join SO so young and give up their upper education to do so smugly think they are smarter than everyone else around them. Wait until they leave the bubble and then they find out they can’t compete or succeed in the real world. When my son wanted to join the SO, my ex, his dad, said, “The SO is the safest place for him to be.” Safest? The recruiters paint the world as a dangerous place and that the SO is safer than the world at large. And the new recruit and his dad bought into that. How can one be safe in the SO where beatings take place on a regular basis and the threat of the RPF hangs over their heads every day and face rippings take place on a regular basis?
Cindy, I was so naive and removed from the S.O., being far away and only seeing it from a public viewpoint, that I actually thought I’d retire as an auditor into the S.O. when my kids grew up. Duh!
It was probably a good 10 years before I started to realize the reality of the S.O.
I remember a Sr. Case Supervisor from one of the orgs (who I happened to admire immensely) commenting that she wanted her kids to join the S.O. because it was a safe environment.
So much smoke and mirrors!
The planet-clearing strategy that Elron put forward so many years ago focused in on “making the able more able”. It was designed with idea in mind that the rest of the planet – including the not-so able and those suffering from serious mental illness – could be cleared at some future point in time, once $cn had been successful in becoming a dominant force throughout the world.
However, it was adopted on the basis of expediency, NOT because Elron was in any way, shape or form admitting that his “tech” wasn’t effective in treating, and even curing, serious mental illness. But now that Elron’s strategy has proven to be a complete failure in accomplishing that goal, you’d logically assume that some other strategy would be given a try – one that might, for example, actually cure a few sufferers of manic depression and schizophrenia as a demonstration of just how effective its counseling procedures actually are, relative to other talk-based treatment methods.
But no, the Co$ seems dead set on ignoring those that it claims it could be cured through its methods, in favor of continuing on with the pursuit of a completely failed strategy which leaves the worse off to fend for themselves, while demonizing the use of psychiatric medications which have proven to be very effective in helping those with serious mental illness to live much more normal and productive lives, thus not only failing to help them, but barring anyone who’s a $cientologists from using what has been proven to work. In $cn, it truly is back to the bad old days of quack remedies and the warehousing of the severely disabled mentally ill.
Just as its claims of being able to turn normal humans into god-like homo novii with incredible super powers have remain completely unsubstantiated for more than a half century, its claims of being able to cure serious mental illness have never been supported by a single shred of objective evidence either.
How many more strikes will it take before this killer cult is called out for good!!?
I had a question – do scientologists really believe “psychs” are evil aliens? How does that even work? When does the psych in training become an alien? Why are they very clearly biologically human?
Scientology keeps on asking people to believe things that are demonstrably false. You can dispute whether Mohammed was a prophet or if Buddha existed, but almost all religions do not make a claim I can go up there and disprove. Those that do tend to have a lot of theology around it to explain it.
The easy answer to TC’s discussion is that LRH was mentally ill himself.
I know — evil psychs on the ‘whole track’, never made sense to me. Who were they when there were no psychs?
Not sure this is correct LRH but I asked the same question once and someone told me the psychs on the back track were priests. But I’m NOT saying this is correct. Its just what somebody in Scn TOLD me. I have NOTHING against priests or nuns as a rule and think they’re wonderful, kind people, mostly.
I don’t know that LRH ever explained it himself. But that sounds like a reasonable solution to a Scientologists cognitive dissonance on the matter. As good an answer as any. LOL
What I have come to realize is that The Church of Scientology does not practice Scientology. In fact the Church has destroyed those things in Scientology that are true. Although I still believe in Past Lives and use those aspects of the tech that work for me, I cannot in general call myself a Scientologist because of the out ethics and enturbulation that The Church of Scientology has come to represent.
Well said. Unfortunately, not everyone can distinguish between the church and its practices and the basic subject of Scientology itself.
I agree that it is unfortunate. Distinctions between the philosophy and the organization responsible for delivering it can be made.
Amen !
Years of full-blown scientific research validiting past lives as real was done at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Division of Perceptual Studies. Google it.
Oops! My comment above was supposed to be in response to a Chuck Beatty comment quite a ways below.
I’ve googled it. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/
Unbelievably weak and completely unconvincing, and NOT at all “validating”! LOL.
It’s horribly an embarrassment of academia until they STOP using the word “hope” which Dr. Jim Tucker uses constantly, in the sense that “we hope” to get better more conclusive evidence.
It’s pitifully hopeful, same only hopeful delusional stuff that Scientology likewise unconvincingly “proves”.
Can anyone really soul-fly out of their bodies, like LRH says that the thetan can exist without need of a body, as in definitions 1 and 3 in the Tech Dicitionary? I’ve never seen any Scientologist who can exteriorize at will, for real, with visio, and can accomplish what LRH claims in Fundamentals of Thought, chapter on the Parts of Man, the passages describing the position of the thetan in relation to the body, and that the optimum state is the thetan outside and controlling the body. There is NO proof of this, other than the lame weak subjective and lack of evidence pronouncements of Scientologists who claim they are outside their bodies, but who can give NO proof that they are in fact exterior.
http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/why-people-see-ghosts.pdf
Needless to say, I’m a skeptic and the Univ of Virginia’s Perceptual Studies department, have these “hopeful” conclusions that even dumb-less brainy me see as hopeful wishful thinking, for instance in the Near Dear Experience article that concluded:
“Modeled on the success of physics in the past century as it expanded beyond the classical materialist
paradigm, neuroscientists in the 21st century are poised to reconsider their conceptions of the nature of
consciousness, particularly in regard to anomalous phenomena like near-death experiences [1]. ”
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/01/NDE82-Western-science-Human.pdf
Same old mumbo fricking snipe hunting “poised to reconsider” jumbo. Now from some University people, sad.
I’m with the Michael Schermer skeptic side today.
But thanks forthe link to these people’s weak unconvincing hopeful, poised to reconsider, papers.
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/publications/academic-publications/
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/who-we-are/services-we-do-not-provide/
The list of things this Perceptual Studies group will NOT do, is listed in this link, which reveals the don’t offer courses.
This is a research only department, funded by two main donors.
“Poised” to someday provide something of earthshaking paradigm changing “new” something or other.
These guys just need some LRH/DM style marketing to jazz up more hopeful interest.
Shy on earth shaking proof/evidence, but not shy on being hopefully poised…..
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/resources/2429-2/
This!
Chuck, have a look at this video. I don’t think you can say it’s “weak and unconvincing.” And this is just one of many cases providing convincing evidence of past lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYE0WEFz_OA
marildi, that’s been debunked, and suffers from the same problem as all, or virtually all, past life memories – mixes of recalling below-consciousness information, suggestion, and wishful thinking. See, for instance:
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/07/reincarnation_a.html
See also the similar, infamous Bridey Murphy case that was debunked by careful investigation.
I’ve previously published information about research demonstrating exactly how this mechanism work, inducing subjects to mix below-consciousness recollections (often from early childhood) with imaginative material.
And, even the possible ability to accurately recall specific information about the past, perhaps focusing on one particular life, still would not prove individual reincarnation, rather than say some sort of collective memory mechanism. Old esoteric schools considered these cases rigorously and pondered the problems they posed, long before Hubbard, and you would do well to finally get into reading some of Hubbard’s sources like Crowley, and then Crowley’s antecedents like the Order of the Golden Dawn, if you really want to understand the subject.
PM, I don’t think it has been debunked. You need to read the data that Skeptiko conveniently left out. Here’s part of it:
“When they left [the flight museum] after three hours, James had some toy planes, as well as a video called ‘It’s a Kind of Magic’ about the Blue Angels, the Navy’s flight exhibition team. James loved the video, and he watched it repeatedly for weeks. The trip and the video started (or uncovered) his love for planes. This passion may have led to some of the knowledge of planes and flying that James often surprised his parents by voicing. The video, however, was clearly not the source of James’s information about World War II, since the Blue Angels group was founded in 1946 after the war ended.”
Here’s the link to the complete paper: https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/04/REI42-Tucker-James-LeiningerPIIS1550830716000331.pdf
marildi, that’s not “data,” just claims.
The Skeptico article outlines enough demonstrable problems in that case with the parents and others missing instances in which the child was actually exposed to information that he supposedly later recalled, and seemingly shaping their reporting around their growing interest in proving his case, that it’s all called into question. We don’t know how accurate the parents’ reports are, nor the extent to which the parents, and the counselor who authors books on past lives, may have, intentionally or not, exposed the child to information and influenced or even coached him.
I took the opportunity to look over Leininger’s work, and some if it is indeed intriguing. But we’d need to see a clear case where the various possibilities for a child having been exposed to information or otherwise influence, being carefully controlled for, preferably starting with actual recorded research when the child first begins voicing apparent recollections. The Bridey Murphy case proved just how these seemingly convincing cases can disintegrate under scrutiny, and the infamous satanic ritual abuse cases of a few decades ago showed just how even well-intentioned adults including counselors, can end up subtly influencing impressionable young children to produce impressive-seeming false memories.
The other huge issue that remains unaddressed, and that is a real problem for Dianetics and Scientology that I suspect Hubbard knew about and willfully ignored, is that if something like psychic phenomenon did exist, then how would one control for the possibility of the reporter or interviewer, counselor or auditor, projecting their thoughts and intentions into the mind of another, particularly a suggestible subject like a young child or someone in suggestible circumstances (like a “Dianetic reverie”)? I’ve mentioned this before; have you ever thought through that, and all the implications?
If you want to be rigorous about things, you have to concede that this case doesn’t come anywhere close to proper standards for scientific proof. It seems to me like you might want to study suggestibility, and come to a better understanding of how the phenomenon can impact the subjects in which you are interested.
And if you checked out the right-hand sidebar, Skeptico has a couple of other articles, including one about Leininger’s work noting how much of it seems based on wishful interpretation, though noting quote fairly that a handful of cases are not so obviously flawed:
http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=482
And, again, even if there really were something to some of the cases, it wouldn’t prove reincarnation, just some mechanism for accessing information from the human past – see Occam’s Razor. (One will find longstanding discussion of possible such mechanisms, studying the history of the subject)
PM: “And, again, even if there really were something to some of the cases, it wouldn’t prove reincarnation, just some mechanism for accessing information from the human past – see Occam’s Razor.”
You are basically saying that it “wouldn’t prove reincarnation” but it would prove “some mechanism for accessing information from the human past.” I personally don’t reject that possibility at all, but I bet Skeptical would have something to say about such “woo woo.” 😉
Anyway, I’m glad you seem to be conceding that there may be something to some of the cases –
notwithstanding Skeptiko’s faulty attempts to debunk any and all of them. However, I don’t wish to go round and round about this. Way too time consuming.
I find TV shows way way insufficiently give the full story, much more point by point material I’d need to dispel my skepticism.
I’ve now spent several hours watching Prof Jim Tucker’s videos. I would honestly have to go read his files. His summaries of what he’s done, and his descriptions of what his forebear mentor Prof Ian Stevenson’s work before Tucker. In one interview, the “strong” evidence cases, came down to “30” strong cases, out of the 2,500 roughtly total cases that have been put through the checklist they’ve developed to grade the cases.
That struck me as the 30 files I’d like to strongly investigate and read in FULL.
Take the strongest cases, and read the full details, because in the strong cases, what makes them “strong” are there are seemingly implausable “coincidences” for the child’s specificity of memory details. BUT, the misses, the number of misses, in those “strong” 30 cases, case by case, aren’t mention in any of the TV interviews relating to the strong cases. Prof Tucker does mention the misses in the cases that he didn’t find “interesting”, because they had too many or NOT ENOUGH strong evidence and strong specificity.
My point, I’d need to see the FULL study of the “strong” cases, and see the existence of the misses in memories that the child had in each of the “strong” cases and see the percentages of misses.
This percentage of misses, in even the “strong” cases, is what totally put me off to the Ingo Swan book. Ingo’s percentage of misses was still horrible, despite the remarkable “hits” that Ingo had in SOME of the remote viewing experiments he did.
The misses is troubling, I predict, in the “strong” cases, enough to sour me.
And, it’s mainly children, and the memories somewhat pretty much fade away by the time a person gets of a certain age, their current life memories and interests just have way more relevance and the remarkable cases lose the steam they had when younger children to go into these memories.
The “test” to me, would be MORE like LRH was proposing. Do some MORE “Mission Into Time” type of “missions”, with ANY adult today who claims “strong” percentage accuracy of their past life memories.
I gotta tell you though, that IF a person could develop their “theta” soul powers, there’s just gonna be more evidence actually being demonstrated by adults today, who can actually DO things like LRH was saying that a soul/thetan who is in the optimum “soul” condition, of being outside but controlling the body. Exteriorization by Scientologists just OUGHT to have been being way more visible and demonstrable and that is just NOT the case.
I agree with the skeptic Paul Kurtz who briefly spoke near the end of that show you linked to. I’m more confident today, that there is NO adult evidence that is any good and convincing, of reincarnation. After a few years listening to RPF Course room auditing past lives RPF members tell past lives, I really felt we were just making that stuff up, and I made up easily tens of thousands of my own past-lives incidents to fulfill the FPRD/TRD where I got over 3,000 hours of that stuff, and thus had likely 15-20 thousand past lives incidents on just the RPF, let along my 40-50 folders of Standard Dianetics where I ran wholetrack EVERY engram chain, so I ran at least 2,000 past lives in engrams on the old Standard Dianetics. It’s all bogus to me now.
Chuck, I commend you for being willing to look – thoroughly, I might add. That places you head and shoulders above most skeptics.
You wrote: “I’ve now spent several hours watching Prof Jim Tucker’s videos. I would honestly have to go read his files….My point, I’d need to see the FULL study of the ‘strong’ cases, and see the existence of the misses in memories that the child had in each of the “strong” cases and see the percentages of misses.”
You can do that at the same website My 2 Cents directed you to. Here’s the link to a page on the website that gives links to ten papers written by Jim Tucker: https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/publications/academic-publications/children-who-remember-previous-lives-academic-publications/
There are also many videos by UVa Div of Perceptual Studies on You Tube. I apologize for losing track of the one that contains this: Out of a group of hundreds of cases in India they were able to confirm the kids’ remembered past life identities 60% of the time. That’s statistically significant.
They have also studied cases of people born with major portions of their brains missing. One man had no brain at all above the stump of his brain stem. Eighty percent of the contents of his skull was just fluid. Yet he functioned normally.
Why don’t you Google “non-sequitur”?
😀
Haha. Nice. People who say “just google it” irritate me–you can find “proof” of literally ANYTHING on google. The people who believe that stuff are the ones who want to believe, not because there is proof, but out of intellectual laziness.
M2C, many of us here have recalled past life incidents during our auditing, but no one to my knowledge has ever been able to provide objectively verifiable support for the claim that these supposedly real memories were of actual past life experiences.
I began as a believer myself; indeed, I wanted it to be true, to provide me with the certainty that, even as I’d lived before this lifetime, I would go on to live again. Sadly, there’s absolutely no solid evidence anywhere that it is real, and that’s especially true of $cn where, despite trillions of years of recalled existence, Elron failed to bring us back any of the incredible technology, for example, of the kind of space travel engineering that supposedly brought us all here to this “prison planet” from star systems that are many light years from earth.
If the link you’ve provided to support your contention that proof of past life recall was accurate, then science would have immediately swooped in and we’d be reading all about in, for example, Scientific american and elsewhere.
While I don’t discount the possibility that some version of the Hindu/Buddhist belief in reincarnation may actually be true, there is no known physical mechanism through which memory could stored across lifetimes. Memory is completely dependent on the neurological substrate which encodes and stores it; without brain there is no memory, as far as we’ve been able to ascertain. Indeed, if past life memory recall could be empirically demonstrated, it would require a fundamental reformulation of the known laws of physics in order to account for this hitherto unknown mechanism of transmission and between-lives storage…which is a very, very high bar to meet.
You keep handing off your argument to other sources to make it for you by simply putting up a link and saying, “here’s your proof”. I challenge you to make your own argument here instead of handing it off to others to make it for you.
I’ll say it again: No one would be more delighted than me to learn that past lives are real. Unfortunately, my commitment to rigorous thought and the scientific method have forced me to abandon this belief, which we used to share. On a personal level, I’ve tried to validate some the supposed past life memories that I recalled during auditing, but had no success at all in doing so. I’d suggest that many folks who continue to maintain that they have recalled actual past life experiences have never actually tried to validate them.
The scientific proof is there for past lives. I’ve told you where to find it. Rather than looking, though, you persist in stating that it doesn’t exist, and you make me wrong for not neatly summarizing it for you. Just go look for yourself.
The existence of past lives is one thing. The accuracy of past life memories recovered in auditing is another. Much of what is recalled in auditing isn’t true, but is dub-in that gets removed through the action of the preclear viewing it. What’s important is the realizations achieved regarding self-limiting considerations in present time.
The Scio-speak term “dub-in” in this context is what memory researchers refer to as false memory syndrome (see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome ). The difference between the two is critically important to understanding how the larger context of the $cn belief system shapes belief about what constitutes a real memory of past experience that actually occurred…in short, it fucks it up beyond all recognition. That is, $cn determines what’s real and, after you buy into it, then you come to regard it as interpreted according commonly held beliefs within the cult.
You could also just say that what $cn requires you to believe about past live recall therapy is the actual dub-in, while you’re required to believe the exact opposite if you wish to remain in the group.
In all my auditing no one ever told me what memories to have. On the other hand, LRH lectures did contain a lot of information that may have added to the dub-ins I went through on the way to the truth. I do think LRH really overdid it in his revelations, and thereby broke the Auditors Code re evaluation. This undoubtedly contributed to the transformation of Scientology into a cult.
M2C, since so many supposed past-life recollections are, as you admit, spurious “dub in,” it’s also possible that they all are. There is no good scientific proof, just some suggestive studies of questionable quality and rigor. Researchers and their research have often been proven completely wrong, even after seeming entirely convincing to many, particularly when they are limited to one person and perhaps some followers looking to support a particular idea – and sometimes, it turns out that fundamental errors of research, and even fraud, have been at play. Your one source about reincarnation might be on to something, or also might well just be one of the dead ends of scientific history.
If you read my comments elsewhere on this topic to Marildi, even if there is a real phenomenon at work, there are several alternative explanations for accessing historical human experience and knowledge that are arguably simpler than individual reincarnation, and so would have to be considered seriously under the principle of Occam’s Razor. The supposed evidence, even if it true and provable, still wouldn’t by itself specifically prove past lives or reincarnation.
Not only is the supposed past life recollection process mostly or entirely illusory as practiced in Dianetics and Scientology – and produces potentially harmful false memory syndrome – but it’s further used as a dangerous ideological tool to convince individuals to disregard the value of their, and others’, present-day lives, including trying to get individuals to kill themselves (documented in Scientology) and perhaps in the worst of cases to harm or kill others. Given that it’s subject to such serious abuse, I think it is only responsible to very careful about promoting a theory that is dubious and quite possibly false, anyway.
I did check out the link that you provided, but I concur with Chuck there. This is not the kind of objectively verifiable evidence that proves anything.
Folks who lack an in depth background in the history/philosophy of science, but believe in past lives, psi phenomena, exteriorization, etc., very often do not have any idea how high a bar of proof that is required to validate these claims.
The very simple reason that bar must be set so high is not because science is antipathetic to certain claims; it’s because just one fully documented, objectively verifiable and replicable demonstration of these types of claims would require the fundamental reconfiguration of the known laws of physics. This is a huge deal, bigger than the discovery of the Higg’s boson, more fundamental than Einstein’s theory of special relativity.
So, to quote Carl Sagan here: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” What you’ve provided us a link to here doesn’t come anywhere near reaching that level.
Since you seem reluctant to make your own argument here, let’s go at this in another way. Have you made any attempt to objectively verify your supposed past life recall memories? If not, then why not? It’s absolutely the quickest and most direct means of determining if what you assume to be real is actually real.
I have, but was unable validate a single one.
Proving past lives to skeptics is a completely different matter than simply knowing who and what you are, which in my case at least does not depend on the accuracy of my past life memories.
I suggest that you work with what is real to you, and let others work with what is real to them. What comes up in sessioin is what comes up. Help the preclear to look at it. That’s all.
“Have you made any attempt to objectively verify your supposed past life recall memories?”
I have a friend who attested to having gone Clear in Wichita – with a young, red-headed Ron sitting across from him. He lives in Canada and has never been to Witchita this lifetime, but sometime after that session he made a trip there and found that it was exactly as he had remembered it. This won’t mean anything to you but it meant a lot to him. It left him with no doubt about the past-life recall.
HF , Google professor Ian stevenson, 40 years of fact checking into the recounting of past lives in children. Pretty interesting , if you are interested.
I myself have no certainty of any kind from the auditing I got. But then I was never really interested in LRH ‘s version of therapy.
Thanks, that turned up some interesting links. Interesting – but not convincing.
Scientific American has a pretty evenhanded piece about him
Ian Stevenson’s Case for the Afterlife: Are We ‘Skeptics’ Really Just Cynics?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/ian-stevensone28099s-case-for-the-afterlife-are-we-e28098skepticse28099-really-just-cynics/
(As I’ve posted evidence of elsewhere, there is good reason to be skeptical of his work, particularly given the evidence of wishful thinking at work in his evaluation of at least some cases)
Harp, I had a number of past life experiences via auditing. (And one major future life experience.) One I was able to pin down as I’d recalled the name of the German city in which it had taken place. I then went to a NYC map store and found the location. I’d never heard of the city prior to that time, but was able to confirm the history of that specific time. Worked for me. And frankly, I don’t care who questions it. I found my own proof and, to this day, the experience was real.
The whole subject of science is dicey. It’s constantly changing. It’s often wrong and often changing as new information is discovered. Quantum physics and mechanics has thrown a huge monkey wrench into what was thought to be fixed as TRUTH. And those subjects, quite difficult to comprehend, are in their infancy, yet already changing the way we think and believe. New “realities”, if you will, which will undergo still more change.
We speak casually and knowingly of “memory”. No one has ever discovered WHERE memory is held. And four people experiencing an incident can often have four separate stories to tell of the event. As I’ve quoted Einstein before, “We don’t know one millionth part of anything.” I keep it in mind when I find myself thinking that I *know* something in its entirety. I don’t.
We talk of past and future as if we know all about time. As many have experienced, waiting for the arrival of a loved one is definitely far longer than the time spent together. Time is not fixed. It’s experienced.
You are, of course, entitled to your beliefs, which is what they are. You “suggest” that my experiences are somehow not valid simply because YOU don’t believe them. As I said, you’re entitled. But your belief is just that, a belief. You have no valid way to “prove” me wrong.
“Science” is an ever changing area. What was “true” fifty years ago, believed in by everyone, stated as TRUTH by hundreds of other scientists, turns out to be different when viewed from new information and discovery. We then have to shift what was a fixed “reality”, proven by an older science, to encompass the new “scientific truth”.
My experience of scientology was different than yours. Many on this list admit being “never ins”, yet speak of Hubbard and auditing with fixed beliefs as though they’d actually gone through it. We all have our ever fluctuating opinions, beliefs, ideas and experiences. No one else can live my life or decide for me, just as I cannot do it for another.
Just sayin’. 🙂
How do you KNOW youd never heard of it before? I certainly couldnt rattle off all the German cities that have ever whizzed past my ears..but im sure the information is there. On certain days, memories seem to flow more easier than others..
thegman77, great comment re. your experiences with past lives. I had my own experiences with such BEFORE ever hearing of Dn and Scn. Those experiences were the glue that stuck me to the subject. If Dn and Scn were done as a scientific research project, it might have made some progress. But, its founder was too busy being a narcissist to allow this and he and most everybody else practicing it (myself included) never had the quals to be doing it in the first place. Today, there are licensed professional counselors who specialize in the “spiritual” and base their “techniques” on scientific research of the subject.
Great post, thegman 77. I don’t understand why we here on Mike’s blog have to cavil endlessly with one another regarding the efficacy or non efficacy of Scientology tech, whether past lives exist or don’t, etc. Can’t we just have a safe space to share our individual experiences, both objective and subjective, and give each other respect if not always agreement?
I don’t get it. What is the big fucking DEAL if some of us believe in past lives and others DON’T and think its a lot of bunk? If some of us have experienced being helped by the tech feel sometimes like sharing that, and others who have NOT been helped but and actually harmed by the tech and feel the need to sometimes share that, so fucking WHAT?
Back in the day one of my relatives swore that she had had an epiphany at the age of 53 that Jesus Christ was her savior and that he loved her and always would, and that this changed her life, saved her life, made her a happy person from then on, when in fact before this epiphany she had never been truly happy and that now, thanks to Jesus reaching out his arms to her and so forth she had a true purpose and was no longer afraid… Well, fine, you know? And she’d be annoying about it, forcing it on you, kind of, but only because she wanted EVERYONE to have this experience, HER experience, you know? Well, what can one do, you know, except just acknowledge and let the person have her say, you know?
Can’t we take care of each other a little bit here? Can’t we have our opinions and our experiences and not hurt one another?
We ALL want the abuses in the Cult of Scientology to stop. I’m sure of that. I’m sure there’s very solid agreement between all of us on that. Isn’t that ENOUGH to make us a GROUP?
End of rant.
Very good rant. I agree wholeheartedly, Aquamarine
Great post, Aqua.
You’re a lovely soul Aqua. I’d share my occasional catch with you, if you eat fish.
the g-man, you asserted that, “No one has ever discovered WHERE memory is held.”
Of course we have; it’s in the brain. Long term memory is physically instantiated in unimaginably complex webs of neural interconnections which, when recalled during any given moment of waking consciousness, involve the whole brain, with different configurations of our phenomenal experience of the constantly changing contents of consciousness corresponding to shifts in these neural activational patterns.
We can neurally image those recalled memories and interfere with those processes of both memory encoding and recall at many different levels of the brain’s organization with reliably predicted accuracy.
Your assertion stop being true shortly after Elron used it to sell his model of the mind, way back in the late fifties or early sixties.
TC, this is a great piece about a complex subject, that gets down to the heart of it: while psychiatry and psychology (inaccurately lumped together, in Scientology’s typical propagandistic approach) try and unfortunately have failed pretty awfully at times, at least they try to address more serious mental health problems, while Scientology offers nothing.
The historical context is that Hubbard came along with his ideas at what was actually the end of a brief period when there had been some sensational abuses including unsupported pseudo-science (sound familiar?) particularly by one self-promoter who was particularly effective at getting attention (sound familiar?) far out of proportion to the small number of people actually involved (sound familiar?); frontal lobotomies, in particular, had never even reached a total of 20,000 ever performed in the US when the profession cracked down on the most egregious practitioner (who had performed around half of the total) in 1948, and the procedure was virtually abandoned. Freudian analysis was also popular among intellectuals and the wealthy, and was much discussed; it eventually fell into disfavor as it was realized that the impressive-seeming insights generated about previous traumas and struggles, didn’t actually result in much if any real psychological improvement or behavioral change other than what individuals would have experienced regardless in the course of living and maturing (sound familiar) – Hubbard based Dianetics and Scientology on similar enough principals to have succumbed to the same pitfall.
It’s also interesting to see how Psychiatry was used as a bogeyman by Hubbard, and then by his followers. All manner of hate gets projected on it, while Hubbard then and Scientology now ignore just how they succumbed to similar pitfalls, and are rightfully subject to similar criticisms about abuses, shortcomings or failures of treatments, and organizational dysfunction – and Scientology has even ended up becoming more expensive, and less accessible. Didn’t Hubbard – cribbing a valid and “workable” principle from his predecessors in psychiatry and psychology say something to the effect, that you become what you hate? (not to mention, that the culpable accuse others of crimes, that they themselves are guilty of – classic Freudian “projection”)
Frontal lobotomies. 20,000. Sound familiar;)
“All manner of hate gets projected onto it”. Yes!!. This is typical of NPD. It is also a (despicable) management technique, designed to divert focus away from what is really happening (or not) in the corporation. Not Hubbard’s fault. Not CoS fault. Don’t blame the cans, blame yourself.
I tend to agree so much with Terra’s posts. Should I be worried? 😉
They loudly proclaim psychiatrists & psychologists as the face of evil. Yet they won’t lift a hand to help ANYONE with mental illnesses. In fact, they look down their collective noses at them.
Yep! That’s Scientology…
They not only look down their noses at them, they label them “degraded being (DB) so that they are less human.
You are correct. They HAVE to label them DBs. What a fucked up cult…
I agree with TC. Scientology lumps all people with mental illness into a category charmingly called “Degraded Beings”. So many DBs, and none of them sound any good.
But what about the crazy people who are already in Scientology? There are more than a few, you know. And the thing about them is that they tend to get worse the longer they stay in and receive Scientology auditing. When I was a teenager I knew a man who was just about to go Clear until the moment he shot himself in the head. That was a shocking event, to say the least, which was explained away with Scientology’s particularly cruel brand of whisper campaigning: “He was doing drugs anyway. He was beating his wife. That’s why she left him, you know. He had so many O/Ws. What a DB.”
That’s the way it always is in Scientology: whenever something goes wrong, they blame the victim. That’s seriously what they told us kids about a Grade IV Release who had just committed suicide: “He was a Degraded Being who had done so many terrible things he finally did the right thing by dropping his body on an expedited basis. Maybe he would get his shit together next lifetime.” (Yes, suicide was seriously explained to me as “dropping the body on an expedited basis”.) There were no words of comfort, no attempt at processing grief, just a bitter attack on a sick, dead man. It always amazed me that the people who propounded the Third Party Rule should violate it with such regularity and wanton cruelty.
There was once a student who frequently had panic attacks. For his two brief months at Delphi, we ran Location Assists on him to bring him to Present Time. I do have to admit that particular piece of LRH technology worked every time. But who wouldn’t feel better looking at the trees, fields, and hills of beautiful Oregon when they started feeling anxious? Eventually, his fits became a liability and the School quietly got rid of him, I’m sure with a full refund.
In 1983, my mother and I participated in the Portland Freedom Crusade during the Tichner lawsuit. As we passed the courthouse, my mother stopped and blanched at the sight of a strange man who, it turned out was my biological father whose hand my mother had rejected all those years ago. He had been bussed in from somewhere in California, sleeping on the floor at the Portland Org, marching every day in support of his religion. He looked disheveled and slightly crazy. He took us to McDonald’s (it was all he could afford) and I found out he was, indeed, slightly crazy.
Instead of “how do you do”, he started in about how McDonald’s was part of a government conspiracy to inject mind control chemicals into its food. After my mother rolled her eyes for the third time, I finally asked why, if it were injecting mind control chemicals into its food, were we eating at McDonald’s? He muttered about its convenient location and changed the subject to the monstrous evil of the psychiatrist Margaret Singer whose devastating testimony was making things look bad for Scientology in the lawsuit. He never asked my mother how she was. As I listened to him pontificate, I began to understand why she left him. He sounded completely bonkers. I wondered if that meant I was bonkers, too.
I never saw him again. He sent me the first two Mission Earth books by L. Ron Hubbard and then ceased his correspondence.
Scientology won’t address mental illness except to fulminate about it because it lacks any true ability to address any of the underlying aspects of the complicated and messy reasons why people become mentally ill in the first place. The only thing L. Ron Hubbard did was come up with some questions that prompted people to briefly feel better about themselves. His technology is wholly inadequate in the service of anything more complicated, especially the myriad complications of mental health.
Say it loud, I’m a DB and I’m proud!
“He was doing drugs anyway. He was beating his wife. That’s why she left him, you know. He had so many O/Ws. What a DB.”
The same they told us here when one guy six weeks after he was declared last life clear stabbed taxi driver over a 10$ argument.
The examples are many and the ‘stories’ to show Scientology had nothing to do with Scientologists becoming unhinged are endless..
I was told that a Scientologist was Clear killed himself. The reason? He waited too long in the “No Interference” zone. He didn’t go Clear and then get right onto his OT levels, so this put him “at risk”. Yah.
Typos, typos, lately. Too lazy to edit, sorry.
WOW,, I bet that scare the crap out of anyone in the “non interference zone”. When I went type three my friend was told it was “because she went on the internet”…. well that scared her away from the internet.. LOL. Unbelievable how they generate these “shore stories” or “reasons why” that not only turn attention away from their own culpability, but are used for their own interests – either more money or no one looking at internet…
Good easy Terra, spot on! The two faced Scientology beast exposes its yellow stained fangs on the subject of the mentally ill. Like a snarling dog Scientology savages psychiatry yet demonizes and then ignores the mentally ill. Hubbard organizationally fucked up badly in the area of applied mental health despite the contradictions he spoke of and wrote into his tech. Miscavige is only half a breath away from resorting to some sort of Nazi solution for the impure. Too much power in Miscavige’s hands would be a very scary, genocidal type of thing. If anyone on this planet is mentally ill, it’s Miscavige!
It was only yesterday Mike questioned earnestly if anyone was auditing others on this blog and if so, how’s it going and what works for you etc. I was almost going to comment but backed off as it’s tough scenario to contemplate. I tried it for awhile years ago after I left the the Cof$ and I just couldn’t do it. One or two people here and there who were already educated in the subject I got some good but brief results on but to take on an auditing practice I would consider impossible. I salute anyone that can and wish them well but for my efforts I got overwhelmed and backed off completely. I must admit I feel I’ve somewhat come to an understanding of R6 procedures, CC, and some other old Bridge type stuff but it is so esoteric I wouldn’t even attempt to explain it on a medium such as this. I’m happy enough with putting some of Scientology’s usefulness into my perspective. But this essay’s perspective for the mentally ill puts Scientology under the microscope. It’s an ugly organisation, with dark motives and secret agendas. Hubbard presented “his tech” with just enough truth in it to set one hell of a trap. He often spoke of mysticism being a set up trap using just enough truth as bait. Hubbard left mysticism in the dust on how to manipulate minds for profit and control. It’s not so much the material per se but how you use it that makes it devastating or helpful.
There are no easy solutions to handling life’s dilemmas for mankind’s plight with themselves and the environment but for heaven’s sake separate the chaff from the seeds and let’s not condemn those that are trying to help their fellow man. Wasn’t it Hubbard himself that stated generalities were dangerous things to use, but he lived by them in regard to the mental afflictions of his fellow man. To blindly follow Hubbard or his organisation is a recipe for disaster. Yet, in the end he stated, make the tech your own! Yeah right, another contradiction, and how does the Cof$ treat someone that does?
As a side note to this, if it wasn’t for drugs (some completely condemned by Scio) I wouldn’t be alive today. I guess that is what Scientology really means by, “we’d rather have you dead than incapable.” They’d rather you disappeared by any means possible than work out the scam the Church employs full time and the staff and SO can’t even see what they are doing is setting a trap. The blind leading the blind is so true for Scientology.
I Yawnalot, you nailed it! 100%
Good article Terra . I had questions along the same lines when I was in Scn.
My first service was Dianetic book one auditing which I sought out after reading the book at age 25. As I’ve mentioned in previous comments, I had some great wins. Though I wouldn’t have classified myself as clinically depressed, I had some depression and introvertedness that had started in high school. After about 8-9 intensives it was gone. ( I’ve since learned that this type of psychotherapy has it’s origins in Freud’s abreaction therapy, where it was discovered that earlier-similar incidents could be released to provide improved mental condition.)
Anyway I was so impressed with my results that I told the mission holder about an acquaintance of mine who had been diagnosed as a manic depressive and lived in a psychiatric group home. I wanted to tell his family about Dianetics and get him help. He told me that those cases didn’t run very well and it would take vast amount of auditing hours and the family probably couldn’t afford it and there would be little case gain. He said Dianetics and Scientology were for able people to make them more able.
I was confused by this because in the book it sounded like anyone could be helped. Also, since Scn wanted nothing to do with mentally ill people, then where were they to go if you abolished psychiatry?
Nevertheless as I continued for years in Scn I became “anti-psych” like everyone else. One time when I was out at a restaurant with my entire family, I mentioned something negative about psychiatry. My sister-in-law ,who was a nurse, laid into me about how wrong I was. She told me she had been in situations with patients where they needed to call a psychiatrist in to deal with them. She told me the psychiatrist showed compassion and helped calm the patient down. The only thing I could say was ” Well I guess that’s okay as long as they don’t use electro-shock therapy!” I realized for all my psych-hating, I really didn’t know that much about them.
I guess I wasn’t as educated on the subject as Tom Cruise (sarcasm implied).
This was always one of my ‘beefs’….. The ‘church’ does nothing to help the mentally ill, and bashes the crap out of those who ARE trying. I guess I never was fully indoctrinated even though I was in for 30 years, (and still pretending for 10) i would (and still do)
have wonderful conversations with people both in and not in from all walks of life including psychiatrists and psychotherapists – none of whom were bad people or Sp’s, just people wanting to help other people… like me.
couldn’t agree more. Condemning the few that are at least trying, while refusing to try and help themselves.
Spot on. As always.
Hmm. Good point actually. I didn’t realize that Scientologists reject the mentally ill and others who *actually need* help. I got the impression that they help because they talk about curing insanity all the time.
And refusing to help the homeless because it’s “out-exchange?” They’re supposed to be a -charity-. Giving away stuff for free is what charities DO.
Yes Jimmy, Scientology rejects anyone “they” consider mentally ill. If you want to confuse the hell out of a Scientologist just ask one of them to define ‘mental illness.’ After hearing the waffle try to get them to explain to you what an able person is. If you can do that and still remain somewhat calm yourself, you will set in motion a robotic response to ‘handle you,’ which, according to their own tech is aberration itself.
Understanding Scientology… clear as mud it is!
Scientology a charity? Oh my… anyone believing that is in dire need of immediate help!
Read LRH reference called “Boots In the Sky” where he says before you can walk out of this universe a winner, you have to take responsibility for everyone in it etc. Well how does shunning psychiatric cases and DB’s and refusing to help them equate to taking responsibility for everyone per that reference?
Simple. It doesn’t.
Hubbard’s vicious childish inability to restrain himself and let his irrational reactions invade unedited into his policy, for future ignorant vicious minded “leaders” to likewise use, is itself one of Scientology’s central problems.
The movement frankly has to keep vicious leaders from usurping and acting out Hubbard’s extreme figurative utterances.
This is all Hubbard’s fault, he couldn’t see his own personal problems, and thus it is wise to skip ALL of organized Scientology and skip all of the Hubbard pseudo-therapy and Hubbard high volume dead space alien exorcism, and never join this operation.
Read the critical books first if there is any doubt this whole operation is worth one’s time. (And if a person’s time is limited, to even give to this Scientology/Hubbard subject, then the final chapter of Lawrence Wright’s book, the final 3 pages, gives clearly Hubbard’s own admission he failed at all of his Scientology project, which is absolutely even more reason to never do a bit of Scientology.)
Sounds like EXCELLENT advise Mr. Beatty 🙂 How logical and rational of you
Trump reminds me of Hubbard. It is the same personality type, whatever you may call it.
OMG, I was just speaking with someone the other day about how “Trump” reminded me of Hubbard and the person asked me “in what way?” I had never even explored for myself “in what way”, and it all came back in a flood – what it was like to work directly under an unpredictable, volatile and angry man.
Trying to ‘word’ things in such a way that he would not think it was a personal attack….
I had to take a few days to calm it all back down…
There are many individuals who had no “therapy” other than Scientology and lost their minds, committed suicide, or as Scientology calls it “Went Type Three”. These very vulnerable people are deserted by Scientology itself, yet are left with a deep seated distrust and fear of the mental health people who would like to help them.
Rex Fowler comes to mind. Was that murder/attempted suicide caused by “psych drugs?” No. It was caused by scientology.
absolutely. He couldn’t have made it to the upper levels if he had a “Psych Background”. Same with Koos Nolte Trenite who was a GO Exec prior to going type three. He killed his daughter. No psych background there, just Scientology…
CCHR is an extremist group that has arguably hindered the anti/critical psychiatry & pharma movements, despite the apparent credibility of some of its claims.
The hokey sci-fi regression therapy group, the “Church of Scientology”, claims that mental ills are ultimately caused by parasitic alien ghosts that have followed you around, all day and every day, for the last 75 million years. Psychiatrists are actually a special race of beings from a distant planet called Farsec that came to Earth with the sole purpose of enslaving mankind.
It goes without saying that no valid evidence exists to support these claims.
This group is also well known for being a major abuser of some of the most basic human rights.
Since the early days of Prozac, psychiatric groups and drug companies have effectively delegitimised criticism and neutralised figures within the critical community, dismissing opposition as being the deluded rantings of a fanatical, money-grubbing UFO cult. This has proved so successful that American journalist and author Robert Whitaker once jokingly questioned whether psychiatrists were actually funding Scientology as part of some clever scheme.
There are legitimate criticisms to be made against the current mental health system, the biological model, “medication”, psychiatric labels, diagnostic criteria, clinical research, drug company funding, lobbying, ghost-writing, DTC advertising, drug pricing, the list goes on and on.
To support CCHR, however, no matter how vocal or valid its claims appear to be, is to support an abusive, predatory, extremist religious group that cares more about profit and world domination than protecting the health, safety and sanity of man.
Every once in a while my seratonin level drops , I cry every single day, I feel worthless,sad ,doomed , I don’t even realize that it’s going on,my family will give me a heads up I get on my antidepressants build up the seratonin six months later I’m good, I get off them until the next time which may be years down the road,they help me so much, it’s called depression if you put me in a quiet room refuse to talk to me not let me out my God I’d loose my mind,LRH was a true nutter!
so so true. Humans need human connection and love…. the exact opposite of the Scientology “baby Watch”
Wonderful article because it’s true. After I left Scientology, I overcame a Scientology-implanted phobia about psychological counseling, and visited a therapist. It was a healthy and helpful experience. She told me that I was not “paranoid” about Scientology–that my fears of them were rational because it is an extremist group who practices vengeance, and it was a sign of sanity to know that I needed to watch my back, there was nothing irrationally paranoid about that. I was diagnosed with PTSD. I cannot say enough about how her treatment (talking it out, no medication needed) helped me. The triggers were diffused. I stopped having repeating nightmares. My “cult self” became disassembled, allowing my authentic self to just be. It took several years after leaving Scientology to achieve this. Scientology is the true expert at fucking up people’s minds while claiming that the psychs are causing problems.
But what about children born with things like Down’s syndrome and other handicaps. Are they aborted. Disowned. How are these children handled in Scientology. I’ve asked before. Never got a reply.
I’ll give it my best shot. Generally speaking, if a scio found out she was pg with a Down’s Syndrome (or other maladies) baby, she would probably abort – the justification being or the idea being that it was a degraded being. If she gave birth to a baby with Down Syndrome (or other maladies) baby, then it depends on who she is as a mother. She might ‘”give it up” because she considers it a degraded being, or she might love and care for it to her best abilities as a mother. There are varying degrees of scientologist and the extent the kool aid affects their lives. (One thing my husband and I always knew was that no matter what, we would never disconnect from our children if asked to do so. Other scientologists feel differently about the matter.)
Back in the 80’s two LA FSM’s Ronit Soroco and her then husband, whose name escapes me now, they had a child born with Downe’s Syndrome. Ronit couldn’t deal with it and didn’t want to take responsibility for it, so she divorced the husband and abandoned the baby. He was left to handle the Downe’s Syndrome child alone. He put him in a home for retarded and disabled and continued his career as an FSM. Ronit remarried another Scn, I think it might have been Tom Soroco.
The name came to me. Bob Kaye was the husband of the Down’s Syndrome child and Ronit Kay was the wife. Both were FSM’s. She didn’t want to deal with a “DB” retarded child and so she divorced the husband and never had anything further to do with the child. Bob Kay put the kid in a home for “those kind” and went on with his FSM career as did Ronit Sorroco.
John Travolta & Kelly Preston’s son was autistic & from what I’ve read they didn’t even acknowledge it until after he died after having a seizure.
Our son first tried to commit suicide at 12. I don’t want to share more than that. Some horrible things have happened in our home because of mental illness. We took our son to a psychologist, a real expert in the field. She is thoughtful, understanding, and at times infuriatingly cautious. She has been the only one to truly help our son, and it involves drugs. The drugs work! We know when our son has missed a single dose. The difference is impossible to miss. He will likely need to take drugs for the rest of his life to avoid manic episodes.
And now the rub… Our son isn’t doing so great in school, in large part due to his mental illness. When he becomes an adult it is unlikely he will be able to afford the $1000.00/mo in drugs it takes to keep him on a somewhat level field. As a parent, I fear for him and members of the public when that day comes. My biggest fear isn’t that my son will some day successfully kill himself, but that he will involve others in the process.
Some might argue he simply needs rest, or vitamins. Others might think he belongs in a jail cell so he can’t harm anyone. I can tell you, after living it up close, that these positions are largely based in ignorance. Scientology’s policy makes me sick to my stomach. It isn’t just stupid, it hurts.
Are you are a former Scientologist, and perhaps still harbor misgivings about the mental health profession? Go volunteer. Get up close to people who suffer from these debilitating diseases. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean they are healthy. Our son is a warm and wonderful person to be around 95% of the time. But that 5% needs to be “handled” by someone… or something. And right now his doctor is the only one making a difference.
Thank you so very much for your post, Lehi! I hope everyone here reads it.
Hey, Scientology! We all know compassion is a dirty word for you…
Amen….I have a brother who has had mental health issues since he was a kid. He is nearly 70 now and has gone through the revolving door of psychiatric hospitals his entire life. because once he “takes his meds * feels better”….he thinks he is cured, and he stops taking them only to revert right back to his instability.
Decades ago the ?power that be” thought it a “good idea” to shutter psychiatric facilities & treat those deemed to be not harmful to themselves or others and send them to adult or nursing homes for care. Problem is in some adult homes patients can come and go as they please. They line up for their daily meds and are free thereafter to go out into public on their own. Sometimes they DO NOT return to the adult home which means they do not have their meds, which means a mental breakdown & back to a 10 day or so stint in a psychiatric facility.
Some patients NEED more care then others & as you’ve stated, it does always SHOW that they are mentally ill. They can appear perfectly normal… ..or a little ‘strange or out of it”…..sleeping in the park, the alleys or on the street without food, water, medications.
Meds that work well for one person, will do harm to another. My brother was on a host of different medications, some worked, some didn’t. He to this day can’t CONTROL his mental illness and he will not listen to his DRS….it is what it is.
For your brother I would speak with a Welfare Social Worker….they can get you and him the assistance he may need on a variety of issues. Think it over & my thoughts are with you and your brother.
I’d agree with the overall conclusion, and a slightly better overall conclusion that applies en masse to all of Hubbard’s ideas, is the fable that one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Hubbard was NOT the person to be expected to provide human society with answers in the mental health field.
Dianetics is trauma talk therapy at best (quackery due to focus on fetal trauma which has never caught on by itself through peer studies).
Mishmash crank talk therapy procedures that have slightly better results, the “lower grades” of today.
Past-life engrams crank pseudo-trauma-talk-therapy of “New ERA Dianetics” or modern Dianetics, that supposed based on souls having trauma past lives, the talking out of the past-lives trauma episodes, frankly at best placebo, and at worst it is false memory intilling, since past-lives are NOT Scientifically validated, never have been. Crank past lives thereapy is supposed to lead to “Clear.” Crank quackery.
Then the next big chunk will be Xenu’s engram fallout, the “body-thetans” who are the massive volume of surplus souls that Xenu mass murdered 75 million years ago, and had all those souls implanted with the R6 Implants.
To handle all this “case” (called one’s “OT case”) which is really the leakage of the “body-thetans” mental trauma into your own soul’s memories, is done on OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 exorcism procedures of Scientology’s.
The whole boatload of years of exorcism has never caught on in the media in a simplified story narrative, it’s too science fictionesque gaudy.
But our “OT case” needs OT levels 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, to supposedly eliminate all our “body-thetans” which each of us have accumulated in our human lives this lifetime (or possibly, as I speculate in Hubbard’s case, due to the final pages in Wright’s “Going Clear….” book, if you simply understand our lower level “case” and our “upper level case” as two divisions of our combined “case” overall, you then can see Hubbard was having trouble at the end of his life with his “OT case” own very troublesome “body-thetans” who I speculate were tougher nuts to crack than just Xenu’s body-thetans—based on that 1982 session LRH worksheet that Pat Broeker held up in the LRH Funeral event).
Anyways, our “case” is this lifetime mental stuff, supposedly dealt with by the “lower grades” of the Bridge.
Then our heavy past-lives engram trauma, handled on New Era Dianetics, or Grade 5 (then the alternative route, the old route to Clear method of picking off the charge off the R6 implants, R6EW platens stuff, and the old Power Processes done before R6EW stuff). Supposed to get one “Clear” of one’s own “case.”
Then OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, get rid of your “OT case” which is your “body-thetan” “case) leakage.
IF this all worked, you’d start having rejuvenation of your OT powers like soul-flying (exteriorization) and ESP and telekinetic powers–moving physcial universe with your thetan beams, etc.
Not happening.
IT’s snipe hunting and total waste of time, and the only gains are placebo, and your normal growing up gains that everyone has, as they age and mature and grow up and naturally become better at life, despite the quackery of Hubbard’s soul crackpot pseudo-therapy-exorcism.
That’s what ought be summarized and given as public warnings to add correctly to the
“What Is Scientology” important addition, pamphlet.
The Church of Scientology does not exclusively promote social welfare to maintain its tax exempt status. . Instead it promotes its own welfare, turns away the mentally ill and gives (inures) David Miscavige with a life of luxury. .So, they should lose their tax exempt status and the management around Miscavige should be held accountable.. See this quote from the IRS website:
“Social Welfare Organizations:
To be tax-exempt as a social welfare organization described in Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 501(c)(4), an organization must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare. The earnings of a section 501(c)(4) organization may not inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. If the organization engages in an excess benefit transaction with a person having substantial influence over the organization, an excise tax may be imposed on the person and any managers agreeing to the transaction.”
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/other-non-profits/social-welfare-organizations
Hubbard used his lover Barbara’s expertise to create many of his rules, justifications, orders, and procedures Barbara was a psychologist. He also copied Freud’s concepts. He begged for help from psychiatrists, and he was on psychoactive drugs as well as illegal recreational drugs.
I am living proof that therapy and anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds help. I have even been in the mental health ward of a hospital when I was in my 20s. I have had bad care and I have had good care. Although I would like to see more research and work done on the brain and the neurological aspects of these problems, I know that there is good help out there. I think the only reason LRH is against psychiatry is because he was mentally ills and probably got bad care in the 40s and 50s which was probably akin to a horror movie, for the poor.
“Nature is my church” I have lived by this for many years.
The scent of a forest to calm the nerves, the roar of waves crashing on the beach, beating out frustrations with their power, the stillness of a quiet lake, the flow of a river carrying my concerns and worries away. who needs a lofty cathedral when the church of mother nature is all around us.
“Who needs a lofty cathedral.”
Plenty of people do. Some prefer to worship the creator rather than the creation, after all. But you do you…
I agree. There is definitely a place for “lofty cathedrals.” Only if they host a community that does good and worships something other than either a blatant fraud, themselves or the building!
So, a “lofty cathedral” IS “God” and a beautiful forest is merely a creation of “God”?
One is the creation of humans. The other a creation of “God”.
LOGIC dictates which one is closer to “God”?
Yes, this IS an IQ test.
Good one, Wynski. I am SO glad to share that I agree with you on this 🙂
And, yes, I still agree even though you’ve got “God” in quotes. I get why and still agree.
Thanks Aqua. I knew you would get it.
As an aging surfer, I completely agree with you. I’ve surfed all the islands of Hawai’i, as well from Baja to Santa Cruse. Nature is what grounds me.
Nothing makes me believe in God, or the Supreme Being or whatever name you please, or makes me convinced of the existence of something outside the realm of the physical universe more than simply experiencing nature. A walk in my local park will do it.
Rogers and Hammerstein said it well, in one of their songs from “Flower Drum Song”…”A Hundred Million Miracles…are happening every day”.