Saturday is Terra Cognita day…
Twisted Policy
Why have so many of LRH’s Scientology policies been twisted to the point where they do more harm than good? Did the man consciously intend that these policies be used for evil purposes? Did he write them expressly to harm mankind? To exploit others? Was this all some elaborate scheme to make himself rich?
Did he intentionally include material in these policies that would inflict hurt and damage? Did he really plan it all out this way?
Examples abound of polices that were horribly twisted and misapplied over the years: conditions; disconnection from “suppressive persons;” Keeping Scientology Working; ethics presence; etc. I could spend this whole article simply compiling a list.
Or were these policies perverted by the likes of others, such as Norman Starkey—whom Clearlypissedoff mentioned recently—or David Miscavige, or a handful of other screamers and shouters?
Or were these policies asinine from the get-go, with little opportunity of making positive changes in individuals or organizations? Did “flourishing and prospering” have no chance under his rules and regulations? Or did LRH knowingly leave out crucial puzzle pieces that would have truly improved conditions?
Or was he simply reckless and irresponsible, not fully thinking through the implications of what he was doing? We know he never conducted scientific research. At best, he was flying from the seat of his pants.
Many of his polices made sense, especially when applied in a sane manner. Others were illogical and not well thought-out. Some were flawed from the beginning.
Or did LRH purposely booby trap his Policy Letters, knowing full well they would serve to trap people in his cult? Did he deliberately include some kind of malevolent mechanism in his policies? Was he fully aware of how the “less-than-bright” would interpret and apply his words in a “less-than-bright” manner?
Ethics Presence, or Not
Recently a reader—I think it was Chuck—mentioned LRH’s policy on “ethics presence.” Directing and leading men supportively while maintaining discipline is necessary in large groups. Encouragement and help, praise and reinforcement are positive components to real ethics presence.
My eighth grade English teacher exuded all of these qualities. He never chastised, shamed, or degraded his students. He never had to raise his voice. His demeanor alone earned the attention and respect of the class.
Within Scientology, however, this policy of “ethics presence” has been grossly perverted by executives who believe yelling and screaming is a positive trait and the best way to expedite production.
Why did Norman Starkey treat people so horribly—which not only was an insult to common sense but clearly a violation of Scientology policy? Was he under the spell of wicked policy or was this behavior innate?
Or…was he simply emulating his master?
Application and Stuff
Why is one man able to apply a piece of policy intelligently, whereas another fails spectacularly and runs around like a madman—all the while, squashing and belittling all those around him?
Most people use hammers as they were intended: to help build furniture and houses. A small percentage, use them to clobber people over the head.
The assignment of Scientology conditions is another example of policy gone wrong. A sensible, well-balanced senior sees his junior’s stats dip slightly, shrugs, assigns him the condition of normal, and goes back to work. All too often in Scientology organizations, though—especially in the Sea Org—when a junior’s stats dip, his senior flips-out, screams, and assigns the poor sap the condition of liability or treason—or worse, routes him to the RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force). Some seniors make it next to impossible for their juniors to climb out of his condition of Hell.
Few would argue that disconnecting from a truly evil person—a real, bone fide Suppressive Person—is beneficial to happy living. A good life rests, in part, on ridding oneself of destructive influences. Somewhere along LRH’s road to spiritual freedom, though, this policy was corrupted from disconnecting from real SPs, to forcing Scientologists to disconnect from friends and family members not in absolute lock-step with LRH and David Miscavige.
How could a rational person—one not thoroughly deluded—follow and enforce such grotesque and depraved policy?
Psychology and Stories
I never met LRH. I never saw the man in action. I’ve heard stories, though.
One day he could be funny and generous; the next he could be mean and nasty. From what I’ve gathered, he led not only by what he wrote, but by his actions, perverting many of his own policies to the point where they became “counter survival.” No doubt some of you can recall these behavioral dichotomies.
Since he was manic-depressive or bi-polar, I suspect he wrote many of his more worthwhile policies while in his manic or “good” phases. Apparently he ignored his words when depressed and in his “Mr. Hyde” periods. Despite his jolly, good-hearted, public persona, he would fly off the handle; hurt and humiliate people; and assign unreal conditions and brutal punishments to loyal staff. To a large extent, he even disconnected from his own family.
He wasn’t strong enough to restrain himself from his own evil impulses.
The Hammer, Again
Some people can’t seem to distinguish between “policy well-applied,” and “policy perverted.” They can’t tell the difference between using a hammer for pounding in nails versus caving in skulls.
Some people would never think of hurting another—whether ordered to or not; others will commit the most heinous of crimes with little provocation.
What is it about the human psyche that allows some people to do things that most of us wouldn’t dream of doing?
Last Words
I routinely saw policy mangled while I was in Scientology. To my shame, I routinely looked the other way.
I made excuses for the misapplication, rationalized the abuses, justified the cruelty, and dutifully cleared my words in Qual. I wrote up my transgressions in Ethics. If I wasn’t unduly affected by the organizational insanity, I buried my head in my course pack and forgot about it.
Except I never really forgot. I couldn’t. As the abuses mounted and the injustices spread like wildfire through drought-stricken brush, I could no longer ignore the flames licking at my own tender ass.
It was time to boogie.
Still not Declared,
Terra Cognita
Organizational policy that takes hundreds of thousands of pages to describe can’t be good.
Very astute observation.
I Yawnalot – “much ado about nothing”
If the Affirmations are anything to go by, Hubbard was a man who was desperate to cure himself of his flaws. Money was of lesser import. He was depressed, neurotic, hung up about sex, didn’t like the way he looked, had a penchant for telling fibs, hated criticism (and getting upset by it) and was ashamed about his time in the Navy. He craved sanity and strength. He wanted to be liked, to be well-regarded. I think, ultimately, he wanted to be special. By his own admission, he failed.
Terra writes yet another illuminating and interesting article that poses some great questions. LRH was a manic, as mentioned, no question. His bad days resulted in policies that current scientologists are still suffering through.
Was it intentional as Terra asks?
My opinion is, it doesn’t matter, and dwelling on L.Ron Hubbard is a waste of time. It is best to wash your hands clean of the asshole and only look back at him as a creepy footnote in history. He had no great insights into the human condition, and he certainly had no spiritual knowledge. His only motivation was self enrichment, self indulgence, and self absorption.
Grammar correction: “motivation(s) was (were) self enrichment, self indulgence, and self absorption.”
Jesus Mike, give us an edit option already. Many of my rants might have been retracted.
Thanks.
“I made excuses for the misapplication, rationalized the abuses, justified the cruelty, and dutifully cleared my words in Qual…”
There were times in my history when I thought there was something in my past that made it so I didn’t understand the words as written in the books and policy (that would eventually get handled, hah!)… there were times when I blamed the weird things I observed on the staff members’ zealous behavior, group agreement or group aberration… there were times when my intuition said this is majorly wrong and I don’t agree with this… sometimes I tried to right the wrong… sometimes I did nothing to rock the boat not wanting to lose out on my future in eternity.
But what I didn’t understand then was that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t the staff’s group agreement… it was that staff members were FOLLOWING POLICY… f*d up policy that didn’t jive with what I instinctively knew to be true for me.
Thankful to be connected to some sanity in MikeRindersBlog.org to help unravel my twisted past life of deceit and lies.
This apparent “conflict” as to whether or not LRH was evil or if he knew was he was doing, etc, etc, etc; can be easily solved and understood with one simple sentence: “The man was DELUSIONAL”; that’s ALL there is to it. Any other analysis is just the result of our own basic goodness trying to confront insanity. Humans – most of them at least – are noble creatures who have a VERY difficult time understanding the very simple truth that some people are just crazy. Sometimes it takes someone with a dark side, or who can at least tune-in to the “dark side” (like me, for example), to understand insanity. Here is all we need to understand about LRH :
http://www.minddisorders.com/Br-Del/Delusions.html
Pretty simple, isn’t it?
Now, delusional people can be stupid (like DM), or they can be quite smart, like LRH was. What makes it a delusion is not their stupidity or intelligence, but their FIXATION on a concept or idea that they believe to be true with an absolute “certainty” with an unwillingness to inspect any other possibilities. If the person is stupid, then not too many people believe him. If the person is quite smart, then he can come up with very “convincing” ways to sell his ideas to others that are on a weakened state of mind or spirit due to losses, painful experiences, low self-esteem, etc, etc.
Most of us came to Scn not in search of “enlightenment”, but to handle something that had been troubling us for a long time. And we were met with someone who could possess a great charisma (at least PUBLICLY so, like on his writings and speeces ) when he wanted to, who was quite smart, had the talent for communication, and thus could sound quite convincing.
I am afraid that it is as simple as that. The most basic trait of any cult leader is DELUSION. So, there you have it, dear Terra Cognita. Anything that opposes that absolute belief is attacked and considered “evil” to others, and thus, it is completely justified (the “Greatest good”) to so attack it. LRH believed in what he was doing, make no mistake about it. All delusional ones believe so.
So it is not really a question of “Did he know?”, or “Was he being intentionally malicious?” when he wrote those policies. He had a delusion called “Scientology”. He had a delusion that he was meant to be the “savior of humanity”. The delusion that ONLY he had all the answers, and that he was smarter than anybody else. He had the delusion that Scientology was man’s ONLY route to salvation, and thus anyone attacking Scientology was attacking humanity itself, so the means (“Fair-gaming”, “Disconnection”, “Attack the critics”, etc) justifed the end (the “salvation of humanity”).
I don’t think that he was in for the money, though he DID wanted to make LOTS of it. But I think it was more directed at having the resources to “defend” himself and Scn against the “evil” government, and to make Scn expand. It wasn’t for personal profit at such, IMHO. At the end he realized that he had failed, and just gave up and died.
When we see it from that perspective – that he was just a sick man – I feel more pity for him than I feel any anger. Who were the ones that let themselves to be fooled, dear friends? We were. Humans fall prey of their OWN naiveness, and then they seek to misplace the blame, instead of taking responsibility for their OWN errors in judgment.
When I was FINALLY able to say to myself : “Listen you dickhead, you were a naive fool who abandoned your own power of choice over data, and who blindly put your whole faith in ONE man; don’t come now and blame a delusional man of your OWN foolishness”, I was THEN able to let go of Scn and any adverse effects that it had had in myself as if it were a piece of hot coal in my hand.
Excellent analysis!
Thanks Terra Cognita! 🙂
I agree that delusional is the best one word description. Hubbard had trained his mind to come up with fictional good guy, bad guy scenarios in his science fiction writings. Positioning himself as the savior of humanity and later as the Galactic Savior and then believing it explains a lot. There WERE real enemies attacking scn as well as fictional ones.
It is, isn’t it, Richard? 🙂 “Delusional” perfectly describes everything, 🙂
Yes, I agree that LRH had real enemies. But I also believe that he MADE them their enemies first, 😉 LRH had this INCREDIBLE ability to make enemies. I had never seen before a spiritual “leader” with so many people against him like LRH had!!!
Great comment Theta Clear. I’d only add one caveat: many of us got in as kids without the experience and maturity to see clearly. We trusted. We were deeply influenced. And did not have the knowledge or experience to process what happened to us. We are doing that now. I would guess you would not be here Theta Clear if you did not have something to gain from this.
For a lot of us who were only teenagers or worse, folks in from birth, these Scientological experiences occurred during our formative years. Our brains and minds were an open vessel to receive ideas from this mythical self promoting con man. Some of the information we let in was damaging. Looking, embracing and communicating about these things is healing.
In that regard, anger our any other emotion that pops up can be empowering and healing. Telling adults that were children when they joined to just “get over it” may be something that works for people who started as adults. But maybe not for children. It’s ok to uncover and look with mind AND emotions to resolve our Scientology experience.
I’ve used this time on these blogs to analyze and unravel early formative influences that on inspection are still hanging on somewhere within me. I have pealed back many layers. I am a transformational junkie and love learning and healing. No questioning or road is off limits.
There is no shame in looking and processing lies and falsehoods within us that came with being a Scientologist. Especially when we got in as young children.
There is still a lot of trauma from people I hear on these sites. I honor every communication from them. If someone is stuck on an issue, well maybe being here and vomiting up the dysfunction of having a madman as an influence is a good thing.
I know it is.
+1 agree
“Great comment Theta Clear.”
Thanks Brian!
“I’d only add one caveat: many of us got in as kids without the experience and maturity to see clearly. We trusted. We were deeply influenced. And did not have the knowledge or experience to process what happened to us. We are doing that now.”
I totally understand and agree with that, Brian. I was more or less in the same boat when I started in Scn myself. I wasn’t exactly a kid, but I was very young.
“I would guess you would not be here Theta Clear if you did not have something to gain from this.”
I no longer have anything to gain in terms of any healing process for myself. My healing process became complete to my satisfaction quite some time ago. What I post here is only directed towards helping others; it doesn’t have anything to do with myself, believe me. And because I already healed besides having a considerable background in all kinds of spiritual healing techniques with actual and factual results on myself and others, then I am in a position to talk about it from a viewpoint of certainty, and even from a position of accumulated wisdom. It is your decision to avail yourself of it or not.
“For a lot of us who were only teenagers or worse, folks in from birth, these Scientological experiences occurred during our formative years. Our brains and minds were an open vessel to receive ideas from this mythical self promoting con man. Some of the information we let in was damaging. Looking, embracing and communicating about these things is healing.”
Of course it is healing, my friend. I even said so on my earlier post when I commented on your article. Any healing process occurs in stages, one of which is communicating about the bad things that happened to us, and getting out the anger, frustration, and even te hate that Scn turned on on all of us. But what you might be missing here, Brian – and I am ONLY assuming that you might be missing it. Perhaps I am wrong – is that in order to really heal we must move stage by stage in the healing process without getting stuck for too long in any one step. Otherwise the name change from “In a process of healing” to “being an eternal victim”. It is VERY easy to confuse a healing process which is DYNAMIC and changing, with just a desire to remain being a victim, which is a STATIC, and thus, an UNCHANGING process. See what I mean here?
“In that regard, anger our any other emotion that pops up can be empowering and healing.”
Only to a certain extend, Brian. But overdone, it just get you stuck.
“Telling adults that were children when they joined to just ‘get over it’ may be something that works for people who started as adults. But maybe not for children.”
I don’t think that I never expressed it as a “get over it” statement, but rather as a “DON’T get stuck on it” kind of statement. Two very different things, my friend.
“It’s ok to uncover and look with mind AND emotions to resolve our Scientology experience.”
But of course that it is OK to do so. I even stated it in so many words in my earlier post when I commented on your article. The thing is Brian, that Scn can become and actually IS, a quite sticky subject very difficult to let go of. It is quite all right to express anger, frustration, sadness, and even hate in the healing process. Waking up after a few decades of being in a sort of hypnotic trance, and to realize that we had been living a TOTALLY fase dream, is not only not an easy thing, it is VERY DEGRADATING for the soul.
Just to give you an example, in my case I abandoned a VERY promising career in engineering where even the NASA had gone to my university to pick up the best students (I was among them), to join staff to “save the planet”. 20 plus years later, I was already in my 40s; with no formal education finished; totally broke not even having enough to eat and to pay the rent and utilities; in an incredible deep apathetic state of mind after having realized that my long sought “OT” state was NOT possible to achieve with Scn. LRH had fooled us all. I didn’t even have any purpose for living as all my goals and purposes had gone with Scn. I was SO confuse that I didn’t know what to do. All I knew of was basically Scn, as I never took the responsibility to learn any other subjects after I had joined Scn.
My participation on this blog, at Geir Issene’s, and at “Scientologists Back in Comm”, became my vehicle for self-healing. The more I participated, the more I was able to dismantle my mental confusion that was still insiduously affecting my freedom of thought. But while I was seeing others just getting stuck in the SAME emotional and mental manifestations, I was steadily changing, getting unstuck from Scn’s undue influence more and more. I went from being totally stuck to being totally healed and completely unstuck in less than two years, but even after only a year had passed, I no longer felt the need to blame LRH nor anybody else of the consequences of my participation in Scn. But as I was constantly changing, I was seeing a LOT of individuals complaining about the SAME EXACT things over and over again, and not getting unstuck from Scn to any effective degree.
What helped me was that at the SAME time that I was participating in the Scn-related blogs, I was educating myself in all kinds of spiritual healing techniques, oriental philosophies and religions (Buddhism, Non-dualism, etc), and EVERYTHING about cults. I did what I should have done back then when I had started in Scn : to study EVERYTHING objectively and with an open-minded approach. And as I studied more and more those subjects, Scn started to look smaller and smaller, and less and less influential.
All the healing process had a final realization in order for the process of “letting go” to finally occur : That we are the Cause of our own difficulties in ANY and EVERY conflict in life”. Buddhism phrase it in another way, but it is essentially the same, and other great philosophies and/or religions had also phrased it in a similar way. Each and every healing method that I know of has as its “End Phenomena” the willingness and ability to “Let go” of something. And it more or less occurs in this order : understanding, then forgiveness, and finally the action of “letting go”. Analyze any workable therapy in the history of human kind, and you will see that each of them share that common denominator.
But what I see with most people in Scn, dear Brian, is that they seldom leave the state of “understanding” because they never even finish it. They get stuck in the blame, anger, hate or regret of it all.
So to not make this already long post any longer, I TOTALLY agree with you that communicating, discussing and analyzing this subject of Scn, and being able to express our anger, frustration, regret, blame, hate, etc, related to it, IS a necessary stage in the healing process, BUT we MUST CONTINUE to follow the step of forgiveness, and finally the step of “letting go”. We can’t just get stuck in the state of “understanding” forever. And that takes what it takes for each individual personally. But it SHOULDN’T be years, Brian, it shouldn’t be years or something is TERRIBLY wrong with the healing process. I KNOW that you can understand this.
Yes I understand fully. My intention for coming here was the same. To help and share my experience.
My original intention was to share my views of how Hubbard third parties other paths. That was a big one for me. Also ok to criticize.
But something happened to me writing these essays. I uncovered a lot of things never looked at. So glad I did. Things that were nested secretly.
My point is it takes as long as it takes and we don’t know what that time is for each person.
I was quite surprised I still had things to look at. I’m always glad to look.
Thanks for your take Theta Clear.
It like reading and rereading a book Brian….the deeper you dig….the more you find. You have really given a great deal of information to many of us “never ins”……along with several other posters.
Of course, as expected….depending on one’s own personal experience or point of view…posters many not agree on may points.
Knowledge is power………thank you and Terra C as well….Mike Rinder and Leah….so much needs to continue to be exposed.
WILL the COS survive is anyone’s guess….the diehards will never give in or see the light at the end of the bridge (tunnel)……no matter how much they keep giving in $$$$$ the ends of the Bridge will continue to be moved……a never ending journey..
Indeed Ballet Lady. The same truth goes deeper and deeper and deeper. Reveals evermore exquisite subtleties and perceptions. No end. No beginning. Eternal and Self effulgent.
Awareness is expands infinitely. There is no end to learning. What a great life!!
And the freedom is truly free. No need to go anywhere to find the truth. No wallet needs opening and no bank account depleted.
Everything we are looking for is right within our own self: power, love, joy, intuitional direct perceptions, awareness of our immortal nature.
There is no death, only changing worlds.
My favorite prayer is from the Upanishads is:
“Lead us from the unreal to the real
Lead us from ignorance to wisdom
Lead us from darkness to light
And lead us from death to immortality.”
Om shanti shanti shanti
Om peace peace peace
“Yes I understand fully. My intention for coming here was the same. To help and share my experience.”
Thank you, Brian; I know it was. That much can be inferred from your posts.
“My original intention was to share my views of how Hubbard third parties other paths. That was a big one for me. Also ok to criticize.”
Coincidentally, that was my original intention too, though I also wanted to “save” the “good” parts from Scn that I thought was worth saving. But time and experience taught me that anything “good” in Scn could be found on dozens of spiritual practices and ancient philosophies, but without the added bonus of the booby-traps and misinterpretations that LRH corrupted them with. In fact, he basically copy-pasted those “good” parts, but attributing them to himself, especially after the mid or end of the 1950s and more so in the mid 60s.
This “third party of other paths” that you mention, is IMHO, Scn’s most destructive trait and the one that stick others to Scn for sooooooo long. I always loved the way that you so beautifully dismantled that in your posts.
“But something happened to me writing these essays. I uncovered a lot of things never looked at. So glad I did. Things that were nested secretly.”
I know exactly what you mean, as it was the same with me. The more I wrote about it, the more it went deep into my psyche getting me into the darkest places of the mind, 😉
“My point is it takes as long as it takes and we don’t know what that time is for each person.”
I fully agree with you on that, Brian. But I think that it would be a LOT wiser for ALL of us to make it as short as possible, otherwise, we could end up spending the same time that we were in Scn, dismantling ourselves out of it. How much time would it be left for fun then, ah? 🙂
IMOH, we must :
A) Arrive to understanding as soon as possible by our participation on these kind of blogs, our own readings of the works of others in this subject, and by our interactions with the ex-members.
B) Learn the INCREDIBLE healing potential of FORGIVENESS which not only includes forgiving those who harmed us in any way, but ALSO learning to cut a little slack to ourselves and be able to forgive ourselves for our OWN errors in judgment.
C. Be willing to do what I am SURE that you have stumbled across in your studies of Eastern philosophy like Buddhism, which is a principle shared by them : The principle of “surrendering”, of “letting go”, of learning the power of “unattachment” to any one thing, which includes attachments to the emotion of anger, frustration, hate, regret, etc, etc.
Then we can at last be free of ALL of it. We can’t just learn those things intellectually, Brian. At some point an ACTUAL conceptual and EXPERIENTIAL understanding of those ancient principles must occur. And that takes a little bit of “surrendering”; that takes a little bit of introspection on the reasons WHY we fell for the trap in the first place, but without taking into account the “Flow 1” (excuse my use of “Scientologese”, haha) aspect of it – “what others did to you” – but instead considering ONLY the “Flow 4” aspect of it – “what you did to yourself”.
“I was quite surprised I still had things to look at. I’m always glad to look.”
There will always be things to look at; that’s part of growing up spiritually speaking. That can only means that you are evolving as a being.Just make sure that you look at them from a detached point of view.
“Thanks for your take Theta Clear.”
Thank YOU for your interesting posts and for your intensity of feeling. 🙂
Theta clear, thanks for your insights as well. I’d much rather talk about meditation and the wonders that are now mine through sadhana (spiritual practice).
I’m am so fortunate, through spiritual practice and discipline, to have found love, joy understanding and wisdom in the temple of my own Self.
Such joy no tongue can tell❤️?
“Theta clear, thanks for your insights as well.”
You are most welcome, Brian!
” I’d much rather talk about meditation and the wonders that are now mine through sadhana (spiritual practice).”
That’s great, Brian! I am glad that you found a path to walk on. I am not very familiar with “Sadhana”, but now you got me curious enough, so I’ll do a little bit of digging, thank you.
“I’m am so fortunate, through spiritual practice and discipline, to have found love, joy understanding and wisdom in the temple of my own Self. Such joy no tongue can tell”
That’s excellent, Brian. I always very happy to find out that other ex-Scientologists are doing well in life. Much success in your journey!
Peter
Great repartee. I totally understand and resonate with the concepts of which you, Theta Clear, and Brian speak.
I have seen the “stuck” phenomena and “being a victim” before when dealing with others. It’s frustrating to wonder why they cannot move on. Yes, we are victims but we don’t have to “be” victims forever. At our own pace, we come around to understanding that we don’t have to be a victim and let it go. Some never do and the additional pain, anguish and anger can be devastating.
I also see from my own experience that knowing about other methods of handling the mind has been helpful. I have always had an interest and curiosity in investigating such and saw how scn had some of the same things – just said differently.
Being here on the blog, watching YT vids, and reading others’ books has been what has supported me in moving along. I will remain an activist but one day I will graduate from my education. I’m very grateful that there are forums like this one to participate in and write a bit. So, thank you for being here 🙂
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I too loved this repartee, it’s educational and freeing. I’m so glad I came back to check on these comments.
🙂
Thanks for the compliment, Jaye R; I am glad that you found the communication exchange helpful. 🙂
I am very happy that you moved on, and found some enlightenment in other methods. Much success in you journey! 🙂
Thetaclear: Love your viewpoint.
Thanks Terra Cognita! I love yours as well!!
Sorry for the bad manners of not having acknowledged your earlier communication to me.
I love all your essays and your “freedom of thought” and relaxed approach to this headache called Scientology, haha.
Keep up the excellent work!
Peter
Agreed 100% ThetaClear
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Terra Cognita,
Thank you from this “never-in” for all your posts, so insightful and engaging, and as with any great story, allow us to learn and experience (vicariously and to a far lesser degree), the heartbreak, pain, and mental/spiritual desolation I see day after day posted on Mike & Tony’s blogs, as well as in all the documentaries, books, and broadcast video presentations, such as Mike and Leah’s Aftermath series.
You are the Terra Firma among the Warriors of Justice for those unfortunates still in, and I’m humbled at the courage and heart woven as a Golden Thread coursing through this shining Revetment of Retribution as it rises ever higher. Each heart a stone lovingly placed by every one of you, growing Guardians of Grace who build a Bridge of Love across which the enslaved, as each finds freedom, can journey to the welcoming haven you’ve prepared. There they stand warmed by Compassion’s Clear Light, there they rest in your Understanding’s Utter Peace, never again to be abandoned, disparaged, desecrated, devastated, but now to heal, to recommence their Soul’s Becoming, feel again the yearning of their Quest’s beginning. Never again will it be stolen by the diabolus of darkness who would feast on their souls unto satiation, but soon that he and his empire would return to the dust of nothingness from whence they festered.
Omnes sancti sunt!
Way off topic, but, whatever happened to the, “Good News From Flag” pages? Is there no good news coming out of Flag?
** snort **
Oh you!
Darn good article, Terra. Thank you for turning over all those rocks. Triggered a lot to say, but let me mention just one thing–the Team Share system at the Base. It had potential but it was soooooo messed up by an overwhelmed and dysfunctional Qual and some seniors who resented their juniors being able to take libs when they couldn’t, that the whole thing became suppressive. The routing forms had false attests from the interviewers and very few staff ever truly got corrected so they were sure to screw up again.
If you really did qualify for a day off, in Gold your libs CSW had to go through a bunch of people, and if any one of them had it out for you forget it. They’d “lose it” or “forgot” and be so sorry to our face the next day when you were denied your one highly valuable day off in who knows how long, simply because you did not have a piece of paper that approved you to have the day off. Even when, per policy, you DID qualify for libs. Or they’d make you wait until all the busses left at night to look at libs CSWs and then approve it, but you’d have to come back in the next day to find out that you really didn’t have to come in, and then there’s no way to get back off the base until around dinner time. What BS and those seniors were intentionally denying that one tiny piece of care they could demonstrate to their juniors.
And then Mi$cavige says that it needed to be rewritten and sorted out and until that no one gets any rewards (days off or bonuses). All that had to be done was to put in place the things that were needed on the darn routing forms so the system worked. It became a hated thing by many staff.
Oh well, been done and gone for a long time now. And actually these things didn’t happen to me, or if they did I schmoozed it somehow and got my libs for a few years until no one was ever allowed any time off anymore. These were things I saw of very upset staff who worked their butts off and would get screwed over like I described. Just another example of that dark side bleeding all over everyone. Got a dark side? Great–just turn up the volume and run it on someone who’s doing better than you and take ’em down. The base became FULL of that and it blew away hundreds of good staff. Some of whom realized they started doing this crap too, left and relieved themselves of having to run that evil personality on others and could be themselves again.
And most of that actually sounds like most jobs I’ve had and most groups I’ve been involved with AKA Human Nature! A truly useful system has ways of constructively addressing that very topic with multiple approaches.
Denial of time was one of the mechanisms used to trap us 🙁
On the Freewinds it got so that even a “reward” would become a penalty.
One week it was time for liberty. I had worked all Wednesday night to get the Engine Rooms stats up by 2 pm Thursday etc. Then Friday night at stsff meeting we were told all liberties were cancelled because the Hotel VSD was down, a thing which had nothing.to do with the Engine Room. If that was not bad enough, I was not allowed to do my post. Since I would have been on libs I was now forced to do QM duty.
So there I am at the gangway and here comes numerous staff from the hotel division (whose down stats got everyone’s libs cancelled.) THEY HAD APPROVED LIBS CSWs and I had to let them off the ship! To be continued
WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!! The Captain was ashore so I had to sit there at the gangway until he got back. I told him what had happened and he said that it was not OK. Later he told my senior to make sure I got a couple of hours off. I could not be upset with the Captain as he had “handled” the matter. But he was the one who had cancelled liberty but seemed OK with the fact that the downstats had gotten off.
I am convinced that Hubbard got bored with merely creating worlds and characters on the printed page and decided to attempt to create a distinct and separate world within the real world. In other words, he was the game master of the world’s most exploitative and profitable LARPG.
My observation is entirely from the outside looking in. My only exposure to Hubbard’s work was my mom bringing home a copy of Dianetics, which had been gifted to her by a colleague. Mom was a medical professional with a background in hard sciences. She was utterly unimpressed by Hubbard’s claims.
Yeah your approach is as good as anyone’s opinion, but organised Scientology is a scam, simple as that really. But from someone who’s done a lot of Scientology to someone looking in from the outside I’ve got to say it’s got its moments, some good, some bad if you fool around with the wrong stuff in it but organizationally it’s all swimming in a nightmare. For all of Hubbard’s words I’m beginning to suspect he never really knew what he was doing except monitoring and steering an effect. His theories he erroneously called scientific research which to be honest most of them were hit and miss guesses. He presented some really interesting ways of viewing things and of asking questions. I feel he had an extreme misunderstanding on just what research actually is and I’ve tried many times over the years to give him the benefit of the doubt but in essence he lied a lot about what turned out to be simply theories and wanton aspirations from his very imaginative mind. However, I don’t think there would be many “never ins” out there who wouldn’t mind trying a session or two to see for themselves, without the organisation involved of course. I know my curiosity would be aroused. I’ve tried a lot of things, still do to some degree. Not everything with auditing is bad or misplaced in the general scheme of therapy. To produce the state of OT – well… pigs fly too, (if they can afford the tickets and get through security).
There would be a lot of cognitive dissonance going on with lumping OT abilities into the category of awakened or enlightened.
A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out their characters’ actions.
“Within Scientology, however, this policy of “ethics presence” has been grossly perverted by executives who believe yelling and screaming is a positive trait and the best way to expedite production.”
Executives are leaders in Scientology. The go to Instruction on leadership is Bolivar. Bolivar advises ruthlessness. Bolivar advises violence. So we can say that when leaders in Scientology are ruthless they have not gone astray, they are applying written LRH policy. Ruthlessness is not an aberration in Scientology. It IS policy to be applied.
“Did he intentionally include material in these policies that would inflict hurt and damage?”
When LRH knowingly allowed staff who wanted to blow to be sec checked for evil intentions and overts, knowing full well that it was actually ARCxs; how could he not know that he was intentionally harming people. He allowed people to introvert into finding evil in themselves for the sole purpose of maintaining control; his words. That’s a deviant anti social characteristic. He knew what he was doing. Control meant more to him than pc sanity. That’s the malignant part of Ron. He did not mind causing pain and heart ache for selfish reasons.
In my view, when Ron is seen as a Malignant Narcissist, the Gordian Knot of Scientology with all of its enigmas start to unravel.
Anti social personalities do not feel remorse for harming others. The suffering they cause does not register in their cognitive faculties. Getting what they want when they want it means more to an anti social personality then the suffering of others.
What really got to me was reading about the way he put “ethics in” while on the Apollo in Corfu, Greece.
I found it totally psychotic that the man who wrote the ” 2 rules for happy living ” would have crew members thrown overboard because of “down statistics”. Especially sickening was sometimes having their hands or feet bound first.
In addition,he had children locked in the ships chain locker (where the anchor was housed) for days; being fed from a bucket of leftovers and having no place to go to the bathroom.
As I recall, the “2 rules for happy living” that he wrote were:
1. Be able to experience anything
2. Only cause those things that others can experience easily.
I guess since he was source, rule number 2 didn’t apply to his actions.
And as the Sea Org lived like slaves Ron was sending millions to Luxembourg.
This all while he was saying the orgs owed him money; more lies.
The man who LIED as a lifestyle sold us he found the road to TRUTH; this is the essence of cognitive dissonance
Another excellent comment Brian.
Mike, please post that beautiful picture of you and Aaron and Leah – I saw it on Tony Ortega’s blog. Many of us readers enjoy both sites, but I hate to think anyone would miss out on the happiness and joy that your smiling faces bring to us. Thank you for all you do. I cannot wait to see season 2 of Aftermath. Blessings to you wonderful souls!
Mike, Lynne is right. I’ve been thinking recently that the photo you use on this blog no longer represents who you are. Too “dark”. Your smiling pictures, here and there, show an entirely different personage, more the one you actually are. Something to think about.
TC, I never worked directly with Hubbard either. But I remember a passage from Nancy Many’s book, “My Billion Year Contract”. In it she describes getting a call from Hubbard. Apparently he was so loud that she simply put the hand set down on the desk and went on working through his rant without missing a syllable. That is pretty loud. And pretty one-sided.
I think the quote from the “Welcome to the Sea Org” lectures is something like “Wrath is effective when used in moderation”. Why is the use of wrath indicated at all? Usually a wrathful ranting management style marks a loser who does not really lead, just forces his crew to hide things from him and try to get on without any real leadership.
Later in the same tape he says something like “You see the crew member getting dressed down but you don’t see him getting corrected afterwards. I always pick up the pieces”. Well, if the angry rant didn’t do any good why do it? Unless you are such a supreme narcissist that it invokes towering outrage every time someone steps outside the lines. Or you think that men are ruled by fear and want to make the workplace as terrifying as possible.
Having washed the spittle off my face after many a “severe reality adjustment” I can’t remember one time that it helped anything. (“Severe reality adjustment” or SRA is something invented by Dave Miscavige, I believe, simply a loud and forceful scolding full of expletives and derision. Usually delivered inches away from your face). Maybe it helped the ranting executive feel like he was doing something. Or just blow off some steam.
But a blithering rant is a poor substitute for leadership or training. Certainly if the ship is heading for the rocks it requires a forceful command. But not an hour or two of raving hyperbole reminiscent of a three year old who dropped his lollypop.
Sorry, in advance. It just had to come out and this is the only place I can put it besides in a little waste can of unsettled filth I carry on my hip. I’ve merely skimmed today’s post, I’ll come back later. This may be apropos anyway.
No cry for pity, just an outlet needed. Thanks.
Remember …. When you were under another “justice” action, under fire, constantly “enturbulated”, reviled and avoided by your erstwhile friends?
Ripped off post unceremoniously by the newest group of SO Missionaires, come to town on “an OBS mission” or to “find the SPs”?
Head down, spending the days doing the most menial of MEST work, spending the nights tossing and turning while angry conversations roiled through your head, over and over, the unsaid, the un-say-able, the injustice, the twisting of truth, the horror, the gut wrenches? The soul searching, the unending loop and Hamster of from Hell on the un-ending wheel of total embroiled emotion, loss, and worry?
How many pounds did YOU lose, not able to eat, knotted and nauseated, bewildered, betrayed, wrestling with mountainous imponderables? How much to fight? When to back down? They’re WRONG. This is injustice! How can this happen? My stats are UP! They’re HIGH. Policy is on MY side!
Remember the degradation swallowed? Scrubbing and painting and staying late, the public, passing by with their eyes avoided. They don’t understand, “it’s a staff thing”. Your senior, where WAS he? Why didn’t he go to bat? I had the back of MY juniors. I held the line and took the fire and fought back for THEM. They’re valuable, without them all the work is mine AND – I’m held accountable as at fault for not “manning up my area”. I protected those guys. Why didn’t my senior protect ME?
I know. It’s so much safer to hide and hope it doesn’t land on YOU. But still… you’re letting me get eaten by wolves here – I won’t be here to hold my post and it’ll all be on you!
Remember… finding the steel inside to withstand? Remember deciding to quieten down and Get Through. SURVIVE THIS.
So that later, you live to fight another day? Because this has got to blow over. This will be over one day and they’ll be gone. Besides.
Without this..you’ll be dead. You fight back too hard, and they’ll just grab you by the elbow and hustle you out. You’ll get your goldenrod and just TRY to fight the injustice from the outside.
Yah. Good luck with that.
Where’s your eternity THEN? You’ll have a freeloader debt of TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. You make no money and live hand to mouth, giving all to Clearing the Planet and hoping for the Universe Corps one day to come and bring you to OT. None of that happens if you let them win. You’ll be out on your ass, with NO one who’d even talk to you. You’ll lose E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
Yah. Good luck with that.
You gotta fight from the inside, and that means eating shit. Large piles of steaming shit from snot-nosed tyrants wearing lanyards and braid.
Eat shit, and feel like a shit. You’re a chicken-shit weak scum.
What did I do to pull this in? Oh…yeah, …. remember the nights… examining every un-perfect thought or deed? Remember realizing you were so deeply flawed, no wonder bad things happened to you. Probably all the Whole Track Overts. You don’t deserve the bridge or justice. LRH wouldn’t have let this happen. You’re just not CLEAN enough. You haven’t done enough, given enough, given up enough.
Remember when you were a pariah and they all avoided you, and posted awful things on goldenrod on the bulletin board, for all to see? All the lies and inflated accusations? The things you DID do, but thought were confided to safe ears?
……….
Happy Saturday.
Remember that this is no longer happening.
I know it’s hard some days. It was a long time ago. It just seems like it’s today.
Secretfornow: Darkly poetic.
Let it rip secretfornow. Thanks for sharing that. It sounds like prose written in a North Korean punishment gulag.
And SFN, you’re out. I’m out. All of the posters here, who were in are out. Is a brand new day for all of us! Celebrate everyday! And, you got your old life back! Woo Hoo!
SFN: An accurate and well written assessment of life on staff. I’ve done all of the things you mentioned.
I have seen a lot of good policy and some bad. But by the time I left the SO in 02, it did not really matter if it was good or bad because no-one was following it anyway. They just did what they were told (or not) because doing what you are told is usually what determines whether or not you are shot. If you followed LRH Policy to the letter and some senior wants you shot you will be shot. If you get.a Comm-Ev and prove your innocence, now you really will be shot because you are claiming that the system is crooked (Which it is.) Making a senior wrong is the Highest Crime there is. Shortly before I left the Captain Freewinds was screaming at me at the top of his lungs while pointing at his rank insignia saying that he was the only right arm Captain in the Sea Org and that noone could tell him what to do.
I was working in the kitchen and played some music that was rather transportive. … I recalled an absolute horror of a thing that happened to another staff member – so awful that when I stood before the BB and read the goldenrod, I furiously ripped the issue off the board and tore it up. It was such filth. It blamed the staff member for a death long passed which they mourned and felt guilty of. (*think, something like, say… being blamed for your mother’s death after giving birth to you)
And then all the rest sort of washed over me, my comm evs, courts, hearings, conditions, amends, conditions, conditions, conditions.
And I stood there…. freshly appalled, debased, laid waste…. and then really took a look at it.
……um….mmmm…”My non-scio family members…. have they ever? oh, have other people, um, is this a normal thing? ….”
Do other people in regular life routinely go through the debasement of group revulsion, rejection, having your entire concept of future survival as a spiritual being imperiled and suddenly really quite tenuous due to whether or not you pass this next sec check and ethics handling?
To stand at Flag, watching a door to a confidential room … to see who doesn’t follow procedure, so that you can correct them and add that to your liability formula, (because you’re guilty of not properly locking your case one time)
So that you can go around to every person and let them read your failings and your attempts to right it and petition them to allow you back in the group?
As I stood there, flashing through decades of time, all the various times where my entire life tilted sideways and hung on a brink… where I witnessed times of this very same happening to a dear close friend and staff member… reading the goldenrods – (they’re so InFlatEd… why must they put in not only the current nonsense, but reach back into the person’s earliest times and hang them in general terms for long ago ‘down stats’.)
… it hit me HARD – the question.
IS THIS NORMAL??????
In NORMAL life, … have ‘wogs’ gone through this? Is there some OTHER sector of life, wherein regularly you’re ripped off your job, debased and brought into line with a Standard Ethics Handling?
I really don’t think so. If I ask a couple siblings, I bet they’d look at me like I’m crazy if I asked them if they’ve ever crouched on a floor, scrubbing a tiny spot in utter fear as the EO and cronies goose-stepped past.
………
some days…..I just shake my head, tell myself, “no wonder you’re so f*cked up”…and give myself another pass. I get what I want now. All the cakes life has to offer.
TC, the questions you raise go to the heart of a fundamentally important issue that’s been raised here in many different forms and over a long period of time. It concerns the question of whether or not Elron was a truly evil individual from the very beginning of the cult’s creation and that evil permeated everything he wrote and created in $cn. Or, was he a well-intended person who did his best to create and preserve a truly effective system of spiritual transformation which was perverted and altered by others after his demise?
If you believe the latter, as many of the Indies who post here do, then it’s possible to see $cn as a body of knowledge and applied counseling techniques which stands on its own merit, with any and all of its destructive and harmful acts being attributable to lil davey the wicked and not to the founder himself.
Over the years, and with the help of some very diligent researchers, I’ve come to believe that $cn was infused with evil from its inception and that, whatever good that it may have in it was the result of good folks’ investment in it. While whatever was practically effective about the tech was stolen from others and re-branded as Elron’s own creation.
In making that case here, I’ve been challenged by Marildi and others to provide support for my premise that Elron stole from many to create $cn. Jon Atack has done a much better job of providing that support than I ever could and his recent Surviving Scn interview with Jeffrey Augustine (see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV72HkqtTxQ ) goes right to the heart of addressing that completely valid question.
If you haven’t already heard it, then I can highly recommend it to all!
I agree that is a must listen to radio interview 🙂
Here ya go to cut this short and to the point.
Application of the policies was MODELED by LRH. HE yelled, screamed and physically punished people. HE created kangaroo court justice and used it against his perceived enemies (or those getting too popular) within his organization. HE used the ethics conditions as a punishment rather than as a tool to help. HE created “KSW” to punish those who would ask questions. HE (starting in the 50’s with the HCO Manual of Justice) laid out how to run the future G.O. & OSA, Etc., etc.
DONE
I don’t think I can take another thought exercise in determining the nature and extent of Hubbard’s psychosis. The evidence points in so many directions at once that it’s mind-boggling to try to straighten out all of the twisted threads. I’m going for a simpler solution:
L. Ron Hubbard was the host for the malevolent spirit BOB from Twin Peaks.
Think about it. BOB is the ultimate psychotic, who needs a human body to express his psychosis. He possesses people as a separate entity (can you say thetan?). Nothing evil is beyond BOB when he gets his hooks in.
Even the timeline works. When did Hubbard start morphing from a mere incompetent with minor talents to a person seemingly interested in ultimate control and dominance? Roughly the same time that he and Jack Parsons were fooling around with Thelema. Could it be that one of their spells tapped into the Black Lodge and summoned BOB to possess a body? And at the end, maybe Hubbard figured out that the way to send BOB away was to electrocute himself, hence the request to Sarge. And Hubbard died in 1986, just in time for BOB to possess Leland Palmer and drive him to murder his daughter.
BOB apparently no longer has an interest in Scientology, otherwise he wouldn’t have stuck himself inside of Dale Cooper for the past twenty-five years. Maybe Miscavige is too evil, even for BOB.
The new series is marketed here in the Netherlands with the catch phrase
“It is happening again.”
OMG!
interesting theory. I never watched Twin Peaks, so I can’t speak to that. It does make me wonder even more if there is a connection to the TV show and SCN. While searching for COS secret bases, I noticed that the one in the mountains (possible location of Shelly M) a few miles north of Gold base is right by the town of Twin Peaks. Now knowing that there was a Spirit/ghost/thetan as part of the plot really makes me wonder if it is coincidental or if it was intentional.
Espi, the BOB theory is explanatory and self-consistent. But it requires belief in the reality of disembodied spirits, a stretch too far for most.
Perhaps BOB just moved on because his work was done. Hubbard, dying in obscurity, wracked with failure, passing the baton to Dave Miscavige.
Miscavige, the tragic-comic hero who is chosen to destroy Scientology by the gods. Rising up in sublime hubris to be cast down in ignominious defeat, by his own flailing foot-bullets. The stuff of many an ancient Greek play or poem.
Works for me.
Espiando – Your first sentence made me laugh – I was thinking the same thing as I read the topic, do I really feel like digging into Ron’s head. Depending on the circumstance “What would Ron do?” and “What was Ron thinking?” might make some sense or be equally bat shit crazy.
I’ll give him credit for being diversified. I’m guessing he had a lot or even most of scn figured out from his occult background and put it to “good use” when early dianetics flopped.
Regarding electrocuting himself I highly doubt that “Death By E-Meter Electrocution” is possible – lol. Elron could have, however, given BOB one helluva jolt! If it had worked Elron would have released it as a “process.” High voltage e-meter exorcisms.
Hubbard wanting to electrocute (kill) himself using an e-meter is a laughable folk tale coming from “Going Clear.”
Not laughable and no folk tale. I met with Sarge who recounted this incident and believe me he was not laughing. He was devastated by it. Sarge was more loyal to LRH than anyone I have ever known. He considered LRH not just his best friend but his hero.
What do you know that makes u so certain?
Mike, probably a person who was NOT with Hubbard at the time told Richard it was bunk.
Am I correct Richard?
I’m not disputing Sarge’s honest opinion or how he viewed or recalled things. Maybe Hubbard did want to commit suicide during some kind of mental disturbance. I just don’t believe it’s physically possible to commit suicide with an e-meter, no matter how it’s rigged.
Richard, just 100ma of current can be fatal – the voltage just has to be high enough, at least 50v. Voltages below lethal will shock and burn.
I looked it up, and a current model e-meter battery is 1100mah capacity with a discharge rate of 10amps. That’s enough power/amperage, it would just have to be modified with a transformer so that a high voltage was transmitted through the cans – rather as Sarge described.
That’s real science for you.
You can read up on the risks of inducing heart failure with hand-held TENS units, which operate off batteries as small as 9v (transistor radio size) – but convert that to a high voltage output, strong enough to produce involuntary muscle activity. Or see something like:
Electric Current Needed to Kill a Human
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/JackHsu.shtml
Shocking Batteries
http://www.mpoweruk.com/shock.htm
How about 380 volts at 3000 amps? Do you think that that would be enough?
What if you already have heart failure?
(No I am not going to kill myself.);
You are incorrect Richard. I could rig an emeter (the lead can carry enough amps) that would kill you almost instantly. At 110 volts it only takes 0.1–0.2 Amps to kill.
NO Richard you said, “Hubbard wanting to electrocute (kill) himself using an e-meter is a laughable folk tale coming from “Going Clear.””
“wanting to kill himself” . is a laughable folk tale from Going Clear.
So, you did NOT state you thought it wasn’t possible. You stated it was a TALE that Hubbard wanted to kill himself.
So answer the question: WHO TOLD YOU THAT? Where they with Hubbard at that time period?
Hooking it up 240volts, 120 volts per can and holding on tight would cause massive current through the arms and through the heart.
That’ll do it by goeorge.
And if death is really the goal just stick your feet in a bucket of water.
Not a pretty sight.
Yes indeed, behold the man who claims superior knowledge of mental health!
Though this is an old comment it reminded me of a few things. I was at the Fort Harisson about 1985 and I went to get a drink of water from the chilled water fountain. I operated the valve lever with one hand and as I bent down I braced myself with my other hand placing it on the Coke machine next to the water fountain. Instantly, a strong current of electricity ran up one arm, across my chest and down the other arm. I landed on my back on the concrete sidewalk thinking ” Surely I must be dead after that”
No such luck. I had to get up and go back to work.
The other one was at the office of James Keppler of Sacramento, the chiropractor the Freewinds sent me to for treatment of AIDS. I was in his office when I saw one of his patients sitting with his feet in a bucket of water with wires coming out of the water. I thought ” I wonder what RTC would say about that. Now I know, they own the copyrights to it.
I also was lucky enough to share some quality time with sarge,at the second Indy party, and can confirm that this was very real to sarge. He was a very honest and trustworthy man imho. I had no problem taking him at his word.
And it’s in Marty’s last book on Scientology. Marty records Sage, I believe? The conversation about Ron wanting to kill himself by electro shock to kill BTs is recorded in his book: Warrior something or other. That’s basic on that story.
The whole story is recounted in Marty’s book, yes. What amount of electricity could kill him was not the point. That LRH wanted Sarge to create a meter that would kill him is the point. It was also quite revelatory that LRH still had “body thetans” bothering the hell out of him.
Exactly
Richard: Yeah, I almost laughed too.
Except instead of electrocuting himself with an E-Meter I came within minutes or hours of frying myself on the Main Elecrical Buss Bars that connect the ships generators with the main circuit breakers. And, since this is before the breakers in the circuit, the breakers would not have tripped if I had grabbed the bars. It would have made little difference. 3000 amps @380 volts would be enough to blow arms and legs clean off. So you could consider that I was somewhat enturbulated by all of the suppressive shit going on.
Now, I must profess that I am one of the lucky ones. Although 6 doctors and 1. Captain told my wife that I was going.to die 15 years ago, I am still alive. In case you did not notice, I just pleaded Guilty to the Crime of Non-Compliance.
Hi Bill! – ” . . . pleaded Guilty to the Crime of Non-Compliance.” laughter! I know someone who is too stubborn to die. Now I know of someone who is too non-compliant to die – lol.
In response to you and others above, okay, a small electrical device might be rigged to become fatal.
I may be wrong but the impression I got from the Going Clear movie is that Hubbard ordered Sarge to turn an e-meter into a suicide machine. So with all the other things that might be said about the man, saying his failure to achieve his goals caused him to become suicidal would be a final indictment.
I still have the question did he want to kill himself or just risk death in order to rid himself of a persistent BT which was his belief. There would be a difference.
There are variations in the stories I’ve heard or read such as Hubbard was overwhelmed by BTs (plural) or a persistent BT (singular). At any rate, some people such as presidents and others are concerned about their legacy. I don’t know if elron was concerned about his,
BUT (LOL)
“Mr. Hubbard passed away while confronting the Son Of Xenu in session.” would have been a dramatic ending to his “legacy.”
In Marty’s book it sounded like both. He wanted to kill himself to free BTs.
My take: he was delusional constantly running BTs. He was probably suffering greatly from a life of lies and deception.
His road to total freedom led Ron to wish for suicide.
The man who created standard tech that solved all man’s ills was a mentally deranged man.
The question: ” What is it about the human psyche that allows some people to do things that most of us wouldn’t dream of doing?”
When someone has been so deeply indoctrinated into “the organization”, it is the only thing that matters to them. Everything and everyone else is cast aside as it they or it doesn’t exist or matter in the least to them. The ONLY thing that matters to this person is to get to where THEY want to be…to please the powers that be that control their every thought 24/7. Emotions that would normally affect a person have been wiped away though countless auditing sessions which teaches a person not to FEEL or CARE about empathy, sympathy, care concern…these are all signs of weakness.
Self Preservation and the Preservation of the Powers that Be and the COB…that’s all that matters.
Nothing is more sickening than that.
When you give away your empathy, sympathy and concern for others, you will become a lost soul. Scientology is soulless. Blackness envelops them. They have given up their lives for a fraud. These people are truly sick. They’ve given away their right to think for themselves.
What you’ve expressed here takes place daily around the world. That’s what talk shows are all about, what the news shows are all about. There is always someone who wants you to believe what s/he believes. Some may be your best friend(s). Hubbard was no more nuts or arrogant or demanding than a lot of politicians, “leaders”, bosses, and people in high (or low) office. Can you say that Hubbard was more intentionally “evil” than Pol Pot? Or the guy currently running North Korea? Or that he somehow did more damage?
At best, Hubbard was a very small time con man. His replacement is a very low grade petty thief. He is cunning, but not intelligent, has poor communication skills and knows less about theology or leadership than an irascible two year old, stamping his feet and breaking his toys in anger.
+1! Outstanding post, thegman! I do agree with you. Well done.
Auditing doesn’t wipe away normal emotion, empathy, or caring for others. That’s accomplished by a person being in the Sea Org WITHOUT auditing (sec checks don’t count) for years.
When the normal, natural, appropriate and SANE emotion of grief for loosing a loved one is considered a secondary and then run; that’s when auditing seeks to erase normal human emotions.
EXACTLY Brian.
Those still brainwashed of course cannot see the trap of this as they are .. well, brainwashed still.
The invalidation of normal emotion isn’t part of Scientology tech, but rather is a dramatization on the part of admin type persons out to save the world without having a clue as to how to actually do that.
Grief over a big loss is sane, normal emotion, and should not be the target of auditing unless and until the person feels that he can’t complete his mourning process on his own. Forcing someone to run a secondary against his own determinism is a suppressive act per C/S Series 124.
There’s emotion and misemotion. The former is appropriate to present time circumstances, while the latter isn’t.
When my father died suddenly and unexpectedly when I was in my 20’s, I had to suppress my grief in order to take charge of the family, as my mother couldn’t. A week later, after the funeral was over and the relatives had gone home, I went into my room, locked the door, buried my face in a pillow, and let go completely. I sobbed hugely and uncontrollably for almost an hour. Then the charge was gone. I never needed any auditing on it.
When my mother died 10 years later, it was not unexpected, so I fully confronted everything as it happened, and experienced far less grief as a result. Three years later when AOLA was trying to use up the auditing hours I’d paid for, I was C/Sed to run out the secondary, and was forced to do so over my protest that there was no charge remaining. The session on this was a total waste.
I agree.
Correction, I agree with you, My 2 Cents.
“it was time to boogie” …..ha! that reminds me…Hubbard made it a crime to publicly depart Scientology and speak about it (leaving on a self determined basis) but you can get kicked out (leaving on “other determinism”) and it’s perfectly okay for Scientology to communicate about it (smear your name and reputation in the form of a SP Declare.) Seems rather one sided to me.
You are not allowed to defend yourself against injustice but Scientology Inc. can and will attack you while calling it “Standard Scientology” and claim the moral high ground. In truth they are an irrelevant immoral petty psychotic carnival show on some backwoods gravel road that no one travels anymore, all the while pretending that they own and command the interstate.
Bingo. Much as I said above, but with a better word picture. Bravo!
Your human side is really showing in this one Terra. Intelligence. Common sense and being well intentioned can be curse when trying to get or create similar ‘mind sets’ aligned in large groups, but at the same time is the only thing that keeps you relatively and directionaly sane. Money is a poor substitute but a substitute none the less. Not all large groups are “nuts” I suppose but when you take into account, such group institutional type pursuits like banking, politics, policing, education, the military, medical administrations etc they all seem to eventually rely on the use of a heavy discipline approach to maintain cohesion and compliance.Democracy apparently gets in the way for those who wish to maintain power once they have got it. Lot’s of new rules and laws seem to breed and multiply, fueled by the personalities in key positions. I have a great distrust of the administrative systems of nearly all bureaucracies.
To me it’s totally irrelevant if the therapeutic side of Scientology exists or not – everything in that organisation is either tainted or poisoned by it’s own Policy and methods of operation & control. This site and especially it’s ex-SO members have shone a light into the dark recesses of the Commodore and his Navy. They have done the Scientology influenced and the world at large a great favor by coming forward and speaking their piece, thank you.
Hubbard wrote something once that really pissed me off, “we’re selling pearls for pennies.” I was busting a gut having a tough time just trying to survive and get Scientology working while sacrificing everything I had to forward the aims of that group. But that little sentence was the first real, “well, fuck you!” I ever attributed directly to Hubbard, silently of course. Where’s my pearls? I’ve spent a fortune!
The Scientology system is a complete failure that allows and encourages morons to succeed at the expense of well intentioned and caring people such as yourself Terra and many of those that post here or are still blindly trying to make Scientology work.
Hubbard cashed in on human nature and did the silliest thing imaginable, stated there is a standard method for freeing all mankind of it’s problems. That’s one big heap of malarkey right there! Life doesn’t work that way! Hubbard’s interesting take on dichotomies as being a base for understanding human behavior was about as good as that subject ever got and if understood, totally lays waste to the vast amount of generalities he enforced upon his followers. For when you take a real close look at it and reflect on having worked in that organisation, it’s simply relying on you accepting huge generalities as an operational code. There’s no such thing as self-determinism attainable within organised Scientology, self determined people are the true enemy of organised Scientology.
As far as life goes, Steve Stills (from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame) sang a good song once, “Love the one you’re with,” but my age is showing.
Yawn: I saw the four sing that song live years ago. Great concert!
You’re one privileged Dude seeing those 4 play live. I once experinced Jimmy Barnes and the Little River Band do a pub gig in western Sydney in the early days, late 70s ish I think. Best night I’ve ever had in a pub!
All of the above have truth in them.
But the main reason ‘policy’ is misapplied is because of one of the Scientology Laws of Commotion:
“For every policy there is an opposite and equal policy”.
Which one gets applied depends on altitude on the org board, sanity of the person(s) applying it and the urgency of the situation.
It usually fails because sanity is poor when you’re under the KoolAid spell and in Miscavige/Hubbard’s valence and not your own.
Yes.
TC, you never gave answer to whether Hubbard knowingly created policies with the intention of manipulating members or whether he left things out knowingly.
As I moved on my journey to deprogram myself from my indoctrination I started to see that Hubbard did not leave out things so much as he emphasized specific parts of his policy that were lies which allowed him to control members more easily and he ignored the parts that had more universal truth and application.
IMO Hubbard knew exactly what he was doing. I can site specifics which I will do in the future. They cover, PTS tech, BT tech, conditions, tone scale and more. I don’t have the time to do it properly today. People like Jon Atack, Chris Shelton and Mike Rinder have done a great job of pointing out Hubbards clear cut lies already. I’ve seen a few other areas that still could use covering.
TC since you are still UTR what are your observations regarding how devoted members are viewing all of Miscaviges changes. Are they retreating farther into the bubble. Are they devorcing themselves further and further from the WOGS out there?
Good observation BK. Another take on it is at the time they weren’t “lies” to Hubbard, but a projected means to what turned out to be an impossible end. It’s similar to what a farmer thinks about his chickens or sheep’s future, so did Hubbard plot his burgeoning organisation to reap the best possible rewards working in an environment he suddenly realized he was controlling at a whim. Like Miscavige, he truly “knew and believed” he was above anything as mundane as ethics, justice and fair play, but that was something they insisted that their flocks needed to believe like their next breath. They are truly nuts! Idiots like Rathbun are now realizing their best and most fun days are well and truly behind them and will do anything to get them back. Freedom is not and will never be for the greedy or foolhardy.
Bk: Good questions.
Even after all these years, It’s hard to to accept that LRH knowingly created policies that would have such negative consequences. Possibly, he thought that by manipulating members, he was doing the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics. Maybe he was just frikkin nuts.
I think devoted members are conflicted. On one hand, they live by Keeping Scientology Working. On the other, they realize LRH died decades ago, church stats across the board have been scraping the bottom for years, and things have to change.
Then again, remember that Miscavige says all the changes he’s made were based on what LRH originally intended. So the devoted believe Miscavige is simply restoring the tech to its purest form.
I don’t think those still in are any more or less divorced from the real world than in the past. Some will hang on ’till the bitter end. Others will leave tomorrow.
One of my favorites was how the Product Officer policy clashed so horribly with the Esto and Org Off policy. It was set up so that the people who could train and organize staff would get trampled by the charming fire-breathing product officer, who in fact was yelling his way to failure by refusing to work with the other two parts of the team. And the product officer was continually hounded and yelled at from levels far above him. He could never stop and let someone leave so they could learn something and be more effective tomorrow. YET, there is so much great information in the Esto and Org Off series. If used you’d have a really productive, tight group of people getting stuff done and no one would even need to yell.
“Or were these policies perverted by the likes of others, such as Norman Starkey—whom Clearlypissedoff mentioned recently—or David Miscavige, or a handful of other screamers and shouters?”
There is a quote which, when applied to LRH, Miscavige and anyone else you encounter as you travel down the ‘chain of command’, automatically comes to mind:
“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it” —William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, 1770
I love Pitt Larissa. We used to have to read his speeches (from both actually) in Parliament as part of our elocution classes in grammar school.
Terra Cognita, thanks again for your insight. It is invaluable as it confirms many other ex-Scos stories and escapes from the ‘zoo’. $cn will continue with their policies as there is no other way to go; there is no flexibility or thinking outside the box. As they are predictable, they are doomed to fail eventually. Someone recently talked about the story of ‘if you are trapped in a hole, stop digging’. The funny retort for $cn is that instead of stop digging, they call for more shovels. With the info from all these sources flowing through the Internet, many others in $cn will see the light prior to the collapse.
And Mike, I look forward to your insight; your blog is the first I check in the morning. You are believable as a genuine good person through your consistency and concerns for others. Thanks.
Hubbard was not all there mentally. Even if he was trying to write policy, his clinical paranoia would activate, and he’d immediately switch to seeing enemies under the bed.
Were some of his policies reasonable? Of course! It’s rare for someone to consistently be wrong. It would be madness to mistreat dogs because Hitler liked dogs and favored animal rights. There are clearly useful bits of tech and policy scattered in SCN. Some are good from a business angle – LRH was certainly a salesman and wannabe CEO. Others are in the self-help guru side.
SCN needs to be able to be critical of LRH policy, but it cannot defy its god.
Thank you so very much TC. This is such a timely piece for me. I recently posted concerns here about a friend I’ve known for 50 plus years, yet only just found out she’s a scientologist. Your article clarifies an important answer to a question I’ve been asking myself. How could this person be a scientologist, but also a kind tolerant, patient and loving human being? I guess it’s all about how you interpret the “tech” , the policies and how you apply them. You’ve done me a huge favor and made my complicated life much easier to manage. Thank you from the bottom of my tiny little heart.
Hubbard’s pay as you go “OT” snipe-hunting operation, with OSA to police the disgruntled snipe-hunters.
Hubbard’s legacy wasn’t just the tech that doesn’t produce “OTs” .
OSA’s a part of Scientology, and needs some history in depth done of OSA, really.
Snipe-hunting “OT” attainment that never happens like the promises, and instead, Scientology’s these other institutionalized Hubbard created segments running on auto pilot protecting the fraud non delivery of “OT.”
Love you Mike. Keep up the good works. I’m going to pray for your reunification with your kids.
Well, some Policies may have been a good source of logical or useful information (not all though), but the difference is the purpose and intention that someone may give to it based on his own profit, benefit, interests irregardless of the abuse and damage his ‘application of Policy’ may cause to others.
On the other hand you have Policies that were written to ‘protect’ LRH from the IRS, etc. Sec Checking was one and was intended to detect a possible ‘plant’. Yet, LRH framed the Snow White and did what he was trying to prevent with some of his own Policies.
Again, the intention and purpose in writing it to begin with, isn’t it?
An excellent and provacative article, Terra. From my viewpoint one of the very best I have seen. If I were to write all of my comments about this subject, they would be as long as your article.
I cannot say with total certainty that LRH did not write all of his tech and policy with the intent to enslave mankind. He has also written a number of policies, i.e. KSW and others which say that people will alter good policy and change it into bad policy from their dramatizations of their bank and that SPs will apply policy as destructively as possible. The Knowledge Report PL was supposed to identify bad hats in the organization but now has been used by the bad hats to round up the good ones and send them to the concentration camps. (I am dropping my handle of Dead Men Tell no Tales at this time as I have been diagnosed with heart failure and am at risk currently for sudden cardiac death. I have many more tales to tell and my Purchase Order for a new body was disapproved by Financial Planning.
May your diagnosis..and those who gave it to you..be entirely incorrect and may you gently disagree and, ultimately, prove them, wrong. I had three doctors stand at the foot of my bed and solemnly tell me that if I didn’t have a specific heart operation, I would die. I smiled and said, “Gentlemen, we’re ALL going to die.” I left the hospital that day. Three days later, I was called by the head of the heart department of a major California hospital, urging me to have the operation or I would die. I didn’t even respond. That, btw, was in February 1995. I’ve had neither surgery nor drugs since that time. Earlier, I was told that tests showed that I had a 92% blockage in my heart and that I needed an operation. I ignored that, too. 1990.
I would suggest you might read Dr. Bruce Lipton’s “The Biology of Belief”, 2014 Edition.
The choice is yours. You do not have to believe what they believe.
Mr Gman: Thank you. Yes, belief that one is going to die is more damaging than the actual illness.That is why I dropped the name: Dead Men Tell No Tales. I watched the cardiogram and saw my heart in action. I believe what they told me. However, my symptoms are gone now and if they do not return then there is bo problem. I have realized that I need to take care.of the body I have just like any other MEST.
In the SO I operated on the basis that my body was secondary to getting.the job done.
Yep, taking care of the body – a concept totally ignored by LRH himself – can make all the difference in the world. As well, the body has its own intelligence, over 3 billion cells, all in touch with each other at every moment, all helping each other (if permitted and helped by the individual), it’s a totally magical and almost impossible to grasp fully.
Believing what you see is not the same as believing what you are told you are seeing and what the results have to be. That’s why I suggested the book. ‘Miracles” can and do take place. No reason not to expect and work towards one.
Go get ’em, Tiger! 🙂
Terra, I loved what you’ve written and the questions you’ve posed. I can only speak for myself. I always thought it was a good idea to simply read and ensure that I understood what any policy would say, and then apply it, as it was written. Whenever I did that, I was ok. Now, as a public always and never staff, this was easy for me. But even as a public there were some policies with which I completely did not agree and would not have applied them if I had been in the situations applicable to those policies. In the end, I left FOLLOWING POLICY with regard to Ideal Morges and it was THE REST OF THEM that refused to apply it. I wasn’t violating any policy, THEY WERE. Which is pretty funny when you think about it. In any event, most of what I read as a public Scientologist of LRH’s various policies were helpful to me. That said, it cannot be overstressed that I WAS NEVER STAFF OR SO and therefore my experience cannot be broad brush painted as the norm. I would also like to add the very necessary information that I never experienced LRH misapplying or perverting his own policies with regard to their actual application. If I had, THAT would have been a huge, huge turnoff for me. It was enough of a mind fuck to me that the staff of my own little org was misapplying policy, let alone LRH using it for suppressive purposes!