Another provocative article from Brian Lambert
What If? Questions that reasonable and open-minded evil SPs ask
WHAT IF Ron’s label of Scientology criticism as evil was a conscious and deliberate strategy to dead agent ANY investigation into the truth of his life or his claims?
WHAT IF Ron created the doctrine that it’s our ‘overts and evil intentions’ behind any criticism of Ron or Scientology in order to suppress our own thinking and looking so that his false claims would not be scrutinized?
If this is the case then Ron would prefer us, the Scientologist, lost in a soul destroying search for evil in ourselves, rather than see Ron as he is. If this is true then I’d call THAT intention and doctrine evil. Mind destroying evil.
WHAT IF Ron redefined the word ‘reasonable’, a word that represents our ability to think independently and rely on our own ability to analyze, as a psychological, redefining manipulation of meaning, for the purpose of demonizing and suppressing free thinking that WOULD threaten to reveal his false claims? “You are a grand master of words and you can do with them as you will. You know what they mean to others. You know how their meanings and melodies affect others.” LRH affirmations
WHAT IF Ron redefined the term ‘open minded’ to keep our minds closed from attempting to think for ourselves about Ron or Scientology, to automatically dead agent any personal impartial investigation of him or Scientology? Thus keeping his false claims from being directly perceived.
WHAT IF Ron third partied all other spiritual paths and teachers ON PURPOSE, so that we would never leave Scientology and find spiritual refuge elsewhere, securing paying customers?
WHAT IF Ron created the doctrine don’t self audit so that we would not think for ourselves, look for ourselves and always rely on Ron to resolve problems?
WHAT IF Ron created the narrative that some knowledge is so dangerous that it can kill you, (OT3 and Excalibur) but not Ron, in order to create such an Altitude that we would believe there is something extra special about Ron that NOBODY ELSE CAN COME CLOSE TO? Making him the most courageous and wisest man in history; Altitude Instruction.
WHAT IF Ron created the doctrine don’t talk to critics, instead find their crimes so that Scientologists would always interpret critics as evil and never be able to receive their ideas, thus demonizing all points of view except Ron’s. Keeping his lies secure from scrutiny.
WHAT IF Ron wrote Bolivar, Fair Game and all of the doctrines on critics so that the common Scientologist would be the firewall between Ron’s lies and public scrutiny.
WHAT IF this essay sees the truth of the dark side of L Ron Hubbard?
All critics are criminals = any person who looks at me, Ron, directly, is a bad untrustworthy person with evil intentions. The outcome ? They are now dead-agented. Any views will NEVER be duplicated. No one looks at Ron.
Our own personal criticism = we are evil people for looking, seeing and questioning. Outcome? No one looks at Ron
Once these two doctrines on critics are agreed upon as truth, our ability to think independently has been destroyed; absolutely destroyed.
The ability to listen to and communicate freely with people that have reasonable criticism of Ron and Scientology gets destroyed; absolutely destroyed.
Ron created a doctrine to destroy external critical thinkers and to destroy our own internal sovereign power of critical thinking. He covered his psychologically manipulating bases.
The demonization of the external criticism; criticism from an outside source and the demonization of our own inner critical voice, is an attack on our ability to think independently and sanely.
Tell me, do Scientologists think clearly? There are reasons why they don’t.
Their independent thought processes have been demonized. And once the inner voice is labeled as evil or a BT; that mind has become suggestible to any thought Ron implants. That mind submits. Because independent thought is now a thing of evil on par with the Mafia and Hitler.
If I become the same as a mass murderer for being critical; thinking for myself, I will never be critical as I want to secure my place in the group, don’t want to lose family, and don’t want to be judged as having evil intentions. My God! this shit is demonic. No wonder The Church of Scientology is so lost and delusional. They have literally lost their minds. Or should I say their minds have been taken from them by an expert.
Last What If
WHAT IF L RON HUBBARD KNEW THAT THESE DOCTRINES ARE PSYCHOLOGICALLY DAMAGING BUT PREFERRED HIS LIES BEING HIDDEN TO YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL BEING AND SANITY?
Warm Regards,
Brian Thomas Lambert
Dear Mike,
Your call to post this.
This thread is a great study in what my post was about. On this thread are some passionate defenders of Ron and his techniques.
I have no problem with Scientologists defending their faith. I had great wins in Scientology also.
But one thing pops out in listening to the Scientology defenders:
Not one of them even mentions any of the “What Ifs.” Not one of them brought up any ideas to counter my ideas. They made the argument about me as a person, and how there is something bad about me for writting my post. Just like what my post theorized.
It’s my opinion that they have demonstrate the phenomenon of what happens when these ideas about critics become accepted dogma: ideas are denied and persons are attacked.
Brian, the reason I didn’t address your “What If” points was simply that we’ve heard them all before, from you and others, repeated for years. Many of them are completely true. Some are exagerrated. Some are “who knows?” But nearly all of them are currently irrelevant from my perspective.
I already know that the Church of Scientology is an evil, corrupt cult, that betrayed the loyalty it earlier earned by delivering “some great wins” as you put it. I already know I’m not going back to it. And I already know that there’s so much negative information on the internet about it, that anyone can find easily, that creating more such information as this blog and especially your posts do is just no longer necessary or even useful.
What’s needed now is discussion of what comes next for us. LRH and Scientology may or may not have been completely good and sincere originally, but the experiences we had with the subject 40, 50, and 60 years ago were certainly better than those we had later. So let’s identify the good and bad in the subject that led to those good and bad experiences, and create a new subject that utilizes the good and avoids the bad.
This would necessarily involve demoting LRH from his status as one-and-only Source, and giving deserved recognition and inclusion to the post-LRH work of former LRH research associates such as John Galusha, John McMaster, Alan Walter, Bill Robertson, and others. Our task would be to determine what actually works to free people and what doesn’t, and codify a new subject that would be what we always wanted, and for a time believed, Scientology to be.
Most of us had high purpose when we got into Scientology, and initially had “great wins” before we were betrayed. Why drop that high purpose just because our efforts to achieve it through Scientology eventually didn’t work out?
My pushing the idea of still utilzing the good in Scientology isn’t defending LRH or “still drinking the kool-aid.” I’ve moved on. The people still trapped in the kool-aid include those who consider it necessary to fight and destroy what’s left of Scientology as a subject.
I wouldn’t want Mike’s blog to cease being of service to those who still need it. I’d just like to see it widen its scope. To me, “Something Can Be Done About It” means “How Do We Get Back On Purpose and Succeed This Time?”
If this blog became all about Finding the Good in Scn and Hubbard, and coming up with our own little brand and pathway to spiritual goodies and universal answers using scn….
I’m outta here.
Perhaps you can start your own blog and gather ye like minded people.
I have no urge to sort through it all and find any good. Four decades of lies are enough for me. I don’t CARE if there are any gems.
I KNOW I CAN BE FOOLED.
I KNOW HOW SERIOUSLY DEEPLY AND FOREVERLY I CAN BE FOOLED.
I was a scientologist for the bulk of my life. ’nuff said.
……….
“we’ve heard them all before, from you and others, repeated for years”
No, not we. Some. And Some of us are still wiping the goo from our eyes.
I don’t come here to find the good in scn or hubbard. I come because this is the best place on the web for UTRs with everything to lose, no one to talk to, and who are trying to process the complete and utter devastation that accompanies realizing that everything in your life was lie and all was wasted and there is no reality left …. and sometimes…. no air to even breathe.
I ignore all the win-clingers – for me they’re in the same gravy boat as the fully INs. I don’t begrudge them anything, but I’m not here to listen to that. I weed.
Congratulations to all those who’ve moved on and are happy.
It’s just not everybody.
I never suggested making Mike’s blog “ALL about finding the good in Scn and Hubbard.” As you said, many people need open discussion of the bad. I hope Mike will continue to provide that opportunity. I only object to the other extreme — making the blog all about the bad. Neither “all good” nor “all bad” are the truth. And ultimately only the truth will set you completely free.
Great article, Brian. Inspiring. It’s fun to add more what-ifs:
WHAT IF L Ron Hubbard wasn’t such a control freak?
WHAT IF L Ron Hubbard respected parents’ raising of children and hadn’t personally, in the 60s, canceled by Flag Order the Parents’ Committee, which was the only advocate voice for parents and children that ever officially existed in the Sea Org?
WHAT IF L Ron Hubbard hadn’t taught and forced others to be control freaks just like him, violating others’ basic human rights?
WHAT IF L Ron Hubbard had had the virtues of patience, tolerance, sincerity or fairness?
WHAT IF L Ron Hubbard had had a gentle, loving, humane and tolerant nature instead of being a ruthless control freak?
Dearest Mike….I have ordered up the Mega Sized bottle of Excedrin as you sure must have one HELL of a headache from reading all this.
Everyone is entitled to their OWN opinions, just leave it at that as sometimes the ongoing bantering can be cumbersome as it is a NO WIN situation for BOTH or ALL parties involved. A simple “I understand how you feel, I feel differently post” is good enough.
As they say in the boxing ring….Everyone back to their corners”…..
THANK YOU Mike for your PATIENCE & for not “losing it”…..I would NOT have been so strong!
What is incredibly astounding is the fact that there are enough uneducated (as in having an education that taught critical thinking skills) persons that could ever fall for this totally false doctrine. As the young age of 16, I was introduced to Scn. by my mother. She had fallen fully into the trap. I took two courses, the Comm Course and the Study Tech., and one weekend of auditing. The two courses were glaringly ridiculous. Highlight of Comm course, to have my brother sit directly in front of me spewing foul words to try and draw me out, to get a “rise” out of me. My response to the “teacher” in the room, “If I ever have become so baseless that I am “flat” on being called names or having insults hurled at me, then I know something has gone very wrong with my own self esteem.” There is dignity, there is grace and this was simply foul and without merit. End of that course. Second course, the Study Tech. Highlight: don’t go past a word you don’t understand. Seriously? I learned how to use a dictionary and the supreme importance of it in first grade. End of that course. Auditing: part way into the first day, being nearly assaulted with questions on my “perceived” use of drugs, sex, possible cheating, lying, etc., I continued to answer honestly that none of those applied to me, and no “charge” was registering, thus the auditor was frustrated with me. Then I asked, “What are you doing with all of this very personal information?” Answer: We keep it on file, and no, you may not have the files. Are you kidding? Why on earth would I ever reveal anything of any personal significance to this person, who is not a professional? And why is this relevant? The session was halted, I demanded the money back, returned to it my mother, who was horrified. The entire experience showed me a great deal, and the costs were excessive, on every level, emotionally, financially, physically and spiritually.
At 17 my mother took my brother (15 yrs.) and sister (11 yrs.) and left for Flag in Florida. I remained behind and was nearly cut off for the next decade and more. I was never officially labeled an SP, yet, I knew the terminology. I cannot describe the decades of deep pain and suffering. I am grateful for the awareness I had then and the strength to not get involved, even though it meant loosing my family.
This article explains why there could never be any intelligent discussion around the doctrine and practices.
This article does help to explain how people could find relevance in this practice, because they were not allowed to think for themselves. At some point, one would think, that unless you were unfortunate enough to be born into this, that the natural human desire for freedom would arise and it would overcome and awaken the innate need for honesty. And yet, I do understand how once you have been in this system long enough, that several things happen.
One, you are vested, you have made the commitment and your ego attachment is such that to admit that the Emperor has no clothes is to admit you have been made the fool. So, you stay because it is too embarrassing and/or terrifying to admit otherwise.
Two, you are vested, realize that deep inside you are incongruent with the teachings, dogma, doctrine and want to leave but are afraid because your family, friends, entire life is inside the group and you have seen what happens to those who leave. So you stay and live in fear and dread or complete denial/avoidance of truth and somehow manage to survive fooling the auditing and yourself.
Three, you finally realize that regardless of the cost, your freedom, integrity and life is worth more than the imagined fear of what will happen to you if you leave. So, you find a way to gently slide away, creating as little attention as possible, telling as few as possible and hoping that at some point it will be done.
Of course there are many other options for remaining or leaving, these are just my reflections.
I am now 56 years old, my mother is old and sick and has nearly lost her mind, yet when she is “here” still feels a strong belief system and will never let go of her position. My brother is not in my life, as I have spoken my positions on the system, that it brings harm to families and individuals, period. My sister is living her life and we have found our way with each other.
Another family nearly destroyed by a set of beliefs that are no different in their ability to inflict damage than any of the radical religious beliefs we witness daily around this world, now and throughout history.
I have maintained since I was 16 that any belief system that seeks to divide rather than unite, is dangerous, harmful and not something I would ever be a part of. I have always questioned the need for a “belief system”, for dogma, for doctrine. It is interesting to me that we as humans seek out someone to tell us how to feel, think and be all the while fooling ourselves into “thinking” how independent we are.
The only free thinker is one who truly understands how to see all sides, to deeply question and to know within. The only relevant “what if ” here could have been, “what if people had truly stopped to question why their deep need to feel a part of a group was so strong that it would allow or push them into something that was completely contrary to all thought, feeling and needs.” What if right now everyone in the system of Scn. stopped and questioned, then there would be no organization.
Soon it will be seen, the Emperor has no clothes.
Thank you for sharing your story Zilpah. I am so impressed with your ability at such a young age to stand so strong and not be manipulated, if only more people could do that! You asked pertinent and sensible questions and made wise decisions. I think that the early procedures of Scientology designed to suppress emotions lay the foundation for later emotional manipulation. I think your conclusions are logical and your thought processes are good. Very good post.
Bravo! It’s so good to read a narrative of trying it on for size and not falling prey.
My condolences for the life and family lost.
Despite the ravages, reading your post was soothing in its strength.
Thank you!
I’ve come to believe that Ron Hubbard held himself in such high regard that he actually believed his own narrative.
He overhyped the state of Clear from the outset in Dianetics and was forever “refining the tech” to try to make good on the promises.
All of those “what if” things Brian pointed out above I believe we’re largely stop-gap handlings to quiet down the dissent long enough so that he could work it out.
In the mid 70s, it was starting to become evident to him that he wasn’t going to be able to do it and he became a frustrated, crotchety screaming bastard.
It’s too bad we were dragged along with this narcissistic individual as he struggled with his own shit. But boy, I have to say there were some good times back then and I’ve met and remained friends with a good number of amazing people.
Thank you LRH for that.
My take is very similar to yours.
I conduct seminars on self-esteem, self responsibility, and respect of free will as a path leading to self completeness.
I find that most Scientologist have what I call “them esteem”. Everything they do is based on fear of what other people will think of them or is motivated by the extreme need for appreciation and acknowledgement.
In fact if you compare the code of honor to each Scientologist, I think you would find that the majority of them are completely opposite.
When you take away a person’s self-esteem and make them depend on what others think of them, they are no longer themselves, and no longer love themselves.
When you take away the person’s self responsibility to the point where they have to ask permission before they do anything, read anything, or think certain thoughts, you are now dealing with zombies.
When you take away respect of free will and encourage people to be very judgemental of others, you create an environment of fear and encourage multiple violations of boundaries.
This is obviously not the definition of total freedom.
Dr. Dee, excellent comment.
OMG Brian, I could have written that myself. I’d add the bank as an excuse for those ‘evil’ thoughts. Another reused word is cognition. Had the hardest time understanding cognitive dissonance till I sorted that out. Ron is a mid age from. Now we have hackers – wait Ron hacked. Hacked minds away from each and every believer even his own it seems. Lol – I feel better knowing that. Thx Brian 🙂
Mid age from shd be mid age crim.
Hi Cece!! You are welcome. I hope all is well for you❤️
Oh YES… it couldn’t’;t have gotten much worse LOL 🙂
He was a satanist before being a scientologist and he developed such a good trap that he fell into it himself and ended up auditing BTs till his death. I feel sorry for him, he failed utterly and he knew it.
5/23/2017
TRUTH PREVAILS AND FREEDOM RINGS!!
#BA439544 CASE DISMISSED IN THE INTEREST OF JUSTICE!
NO MORE SILENCE!
NO MORE INJUSTICE!
” The secret of happiness of FREEDOM. The secret of FREEDOM is COURAGE!”
http://www.michelleseward.org/
Nice to see so many new people on here, particularly those who are recent departures from scientology.
I really should write some articles, Mike. This is pretty basic, and doesn’t address the issue very well. Leading with “what if” on an obvious statement about doctrine doesn’t dissuade the “on the fence” Scientologist from looking. You could say “What if the sky were blue?”, and ironically, that would lead to a more interesting discussion about how Ron (as a “renowned Physicist”) knew next to nothing about Einstein’s theory of relativity. And that this is still being taught to this day in the Study Tapes as an “a-ha! I’m smarter than everyone!”.
That might get some to look at the ridiculous information in the doctrine.
It’s not “what if”, but blind obedience which is causing a lot of harm with Scientology. Today or in the 90’s. Hubbard overlooked some intrinsic facts, demonized valid practices (which, to be fair, had some merit in the 50’s with practice) and has caused the deaths by cancer of five people that I was very fond of.
Many of the practices of Scientology are nearly dark ages in approach to the medical field. One fellow I knew had epilepsy, Grand Mal seizures weekly, and it was treated as if he was inhabited by evil spirits most of the time. Oh, and this was someone that LRH himself gave Lt JG (liketime) rank to, was OT VII, and Class IX OEC/FEBC. I believe he was also Kha-Khan, and parked in the FESing unit in the back of the folder storage room at the HGB. You know him. 🙂
I’d definitely need an editor before I had two cups of coffee, though. Holy cow.
Is it a J and a B? Hope he gets on meds!
correction PREY NOT PRAY
Nice Article Brian.
This is not a WHAT IF but a result of all these What If’s.
LRH knowingly or unknowingly did succeed in giving (some of us) total freedom for this life time at least..
I and I am sure 99.9% of all of you who follow this blog and from time to time contribute your 2 cents worth, know without a shadow of doubt that, by allowing yourselves to be declared, you will never fall prey again to all the nonsense you had to put up with while being a regular member of Scientology, and as a result you will definitely not easily fall pray to other systems, or cults also.
And you know that, within reason you are able to be do and have what you want when you want and how you want.
Is not that the beginning of total freedom?
It is the beginning of freedom, but sadly, it follows a captivity of mind and body. LRH, the lil devil, did not provide it intentionally. He would have attacked and fair gamed it.
great write-up Brian.
If we compare scientology to investing in a stock or business venture or getting a job, we do something called due diligence. Hubbard from the get go did not allow this with scientology, he called open minded as being able not to decide, LOL, and a very diabolical trick. Same with reasonableness. And of course all the PTS types conjured up by Ron.
“What is ‘Due Diligence’
Due diligence is an investigation or audit of a potential investment to confirm all facts, such as reviewing all financial records, plus anything else deemed material. Due diligence refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a financial transaction with another party. When sellers perform a due diligence analysis on buyers, items that may be considered are the buyer’s ability to purchase, as well as other elements that would affect the acquired entity or the seller after the sale has been completed.”
Read more: Due Diligence (DD) http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/duediligence.asp#ixzz4i3YQ8a8T
Follow us: Investopedia on Facebook
Somewhere Ron said,” needing proof is an aberration.
So here he is, selling us that Scientology is a science that does not need proof.
It is because we have granted Ron high altitude that these unquestionably absurd statements are allowed in our minds.
This is another mind control statement that protects his false claims from scrutiny!
He ifentifies the scientific process of verification with having a mental and emotional problem. Verification of truth now becomes part of the reactive mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MY GOD!!!!! WHAT DID WE LET INTO OUR MINDS!!!!
O/T sort of, but: Hi Brian, Sounds like you have the makings of a song here. What if I’d never met.. What if I’d never thought.. What if I’d never done.. What if I’d never gone.. What if I’d never let myself believe.. Where would I be now? You’ll have to supply the rhyming bits.
Understanding comes at a great price, I think, and time does’t necessarily work it’s magic on us all (e.g., we don’t all ultimately become wise.. unfortunately). FWIW, I think it’d either have to be a sad country song, or metal with a lot of rage. In which case ‘what if’ should probably be replaced with ‘I’d’, except maybe in the spoken portions (think Linkin Park). Best regards, dungeon
“Somewhere Ron said, “needing proof is an aberration.”
The above is just one example of how many of your “Ron says” statements are not only vague but generally just enough off the mark to fool people. Where did he say that? And exactly what did he say? Was it the statement he made that one can know directly? Or that logic (or proof) is not as high a level as knowing by “being”? In ancient teachings this is called direct knowing or direct experience, whereas anything known through the mind/intellect is indirect.
You claim to be a follower of Eastern wisdom, in which case you have no excuse not to be able to recognize what Ron was talking about on the subjects of proof or logic. But that isn’t possible as long as you are obsessed with the intention to put anything and everything to do with Ron in the worst possible light.
Even if your intention isn’t to destroy the whole subject of Scientology – not just the church but the subject itself – that is the outcome you are contributing to, even though you probably know deep down that it can be very beneficial to people.
When you go too far, it defeats your purposes, IMO – including the purposes of truth, freedom and enlightenment.
And those who are buying all your statements of “fact” are making the same mistake they made in the church – accepting someone else’s words and half-truths that seem so convincing.
I’ll try to locate that quote. It’s been so long. Maybe someone can help me with reference.
And Miraldi, you could have saved yourself some time by just asking,” can you refer me to that quote?” It would have saved you some time.
Just a point of interest:
Notice how Marildi mentions nothing about the essential ideas conveyed on this post.
Notice how she makes it a personal attack. Not a challenge of what is written on the various topics.
Marildi, why did you not make any post on How Scientology Deals With Critics: The L Ron Hubbard Playbook?
I think it’s because the deviant doctrines of insanity and thuggery that Ron concocted to protect his territory is a danger to the image of Ron that you have enshrined in the temple of your belief.
Good luck with that ??.
Best to you Marildi
Brian, first you say, “Notice how she makes it a personal attack.” Then you make a personal remark regarding what I “have enshrined in the temple of [my] belief.”
But never mind that. Go ahead and locate the quote you said you were going to “try” to do. That would be, to quote your words, “a challenge of what was written” on the topic that YOU started and I addressed with my reply.
Oh the irony, oh the irony!
Marildi challenges me with finding this quote with a scathing and belittling attitude.
Well………….
I FOUND IT. AND IT WAS MARILDI HERSELF THAT QUOTED RON FROM THE PHEONIX LECTURES
Below is the link to Marty’s site where Marildi uses the quote to justify Ron. I will edit myself and not say what I am thinking about her at the moment.
The first time I read this quote was from you Marildi. Attack the attacker. It’s what Ron taught his disciples.
You my dear are indeed a Scientologist.
Here is the link of Marildi’s post where I first learned about “needing proof is an aberration”
https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/a-course-in-graduating-from-scientology/#comment-285295
And here is the quote
“Anybody would know anything that was going on if he didn’t have to prove it. Proof, conviction, is itself a very early level of aberration. As soon as you have to start proving things and convincing people of things, why then you have to get into agreement with them and in order to do this – you have to Alter-is. You have to have something persist long enough for them to see it, so that they can then understand what it is. So in order for them to really understand what it is you can’t possibly put up something that they understand what is, because if they saw completely what it was it would disappear, so you would not have been able to have proven it.” (The Phoenix Lectures, Chapter Five “Consideration and Is-Ness”)
I am looking so forward to your responses. I myself will refrain from saying what I am thinking.
Brian, the LRH quote you re-quoted is precisely what I was getting at when I asked you what exactly was said – as opposed to you “quoting” it just enough off the mark to change the meaning significantly.
The quote states that proof is “a very EARLY level of aberration,” in the context of “you can’t possibly put up something that they understand what is, because if they saw completely what it was it would disappear, so you would not have been able to have proven it.” As you know (or should, if you claim to understand Scientology well enough to criticize it), this is based on the Axioms, which state that an isness (reality) only persists if it is not duplicated exactly, in which case it is as-ised.
In that context, proof is an aberration to the degree that when participating in the isness of this universe a being has to have come down from “Know.” That’s an “early” level of aberration, in comparison with later levers, and as contrasted with total knowingness.
Here are a couple of other relevant quotes:
———————————————-
“The mission of the analytical mind when it thinks, is to observe and predict by the observation of results. Easily the best way to do this is to be the objects one is observing: thus, one can know their condition completely. However, if one is not sufficiently up the scale to be these objects it is necessary to assume what they are. This assumption of what they are, the postulating of a symbol to represent the objects and the combination of these symbols when evaluated against past experience or ‘known law,’ bring about logic….” (Scn 8-8008)
“This knowingness is in terms of data and should not be confused with knowingness in terms of actual beingness.”(Scn 8-80)
————————————————-
So as I said to start with, a student of Eastern teachings should be acquainted with the idea that direct knowledge is senior to any other kind of knowledge – and that’s all Ron was saying.
Now that I’ve confronted your question and given you an answser tell me this: When are you going to answer My 2 Cents’ questions? Or are you backing off from confronting him, with some excuse, as you’ve done in the past?
Please end this
But my questions are this:
1) Did you simply forget that you researched this for your post? And forgot the information?
OR
2) You are applying “do not talk with critics, find their crimes?” (Invalidate, attack the person)
If it’s number #1 than this is proof that your memory is going and Scientology seems to not be helping you.
If it’s number 2 than you are here for the sole reason of attacking those who look at Hubbard.
If it’s number #2 than maybe you are not who you say you are.
I’m not sure which one is true.
marildi, the ball is in Brian’s court about the quote – and I’m looking forward to seeing it myself (p.s. Brian, I did try to help out by looking, but couldn’t find anything right off).
But Brian did ask a question, that I think also merits an answer.
One of there reasons that these exchanges go on endlessly – which we do need to cut down on – is that you never seem to want to let a point go unless it’s satisfactorily answered and evidenced*. It would only be equitable, to hold yourself to the same standard.
* I think there’s a fundamental problem in a forum like this, that there’s not time or space to be as thorough as we might all like – we all end up playing a bit fast and loose at times. My suggestion is that we need to find some happy medium between not glossing over things, but not trying to have a full-blown scholarly correspondence.
“My suggestion is that we need to find some happy medium between not glossing over things, but not trying to have a full-blown scholarly correspondence.”
How about we limit the number of topics that are discussed at a time? You and a few others post long comments that take up way too many things to do justice to. It can be a logical fallacy, besides:
“Argument By Fast Talking: If you go from one idea to the next quickly enough, the audience won’t have time to think. This is connected to Changing The Subject and (to some audiences) Argument By Personal Charm. However, some psychologists say that to understand what you hear, you must for a brief moment believe it. If this is true, then rapid delivery does not leave people time to reject what they hear.” http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#fast
Marildi, I knew you would show up here to berate Brian on his article. I never get in between disagreements here, I stay clear away but I’m glad you’re here today so that I can comment to you.
Correct me if I’m wrong but from your past posts I got the impression that you’re a trained auditor, as am I. One of the great things I learned as an auditor, and still try to apply to everyday life is:
Don’t invalidate (the pc)
Don’t evaluate for the pc
And we were also taught to grant being-ness
Not an easy task all this, it takes patience and understanding. And it’s good to practice in every day living. Why do I bring this up? Because Marildi from one auditor to another I’m delighted that I’m not your PC or ever will be. Your many comments to Brian (and others) on this blog have been full of inval, eval, insults, etc. Yes, he and others here are not your “PC” but if you apply the tech as you profess (and love so much), shouldn’t you apply it in everyday life? How about accepting other people’s point of view? How about granting some being-ness? And not insulting.
Example: “You claim to be a follower of Eastern wisdom, in which case you have no excuse not to be able to recognize what Ron was talking about on the subjects of proof or logic. But that isn’t possible as long as you are obsessed with the intention to put anything and everything to do with Ron in the worst possible light.”
Claim??? Obsessed????
“And those who are buying all your statements of “fact” are making the same mistake they made in the church – accepting someone else’s words and half-truths that seem so convincing.”
Buying???? Mistake????
No one here is buying anything as “fact”. This is a written article from one person’s point of view. Either we agree or don’t, either we comment or don’t. Obviously not all of us are going to agree on everything. All of us exe’s are here for different reasons but we seem to agree on many issues and are thankful to Mike for letting us vent on this blog.
And finally – “When you go too far, it defeats your purposes…..” I will say the same to you Marildi. When you go to lengths of defending the tech you tend to go too far at insulting the person you are trying to convince.
Now I’ve had my say. I’m not here to defend Brian and I’m also not here to argue with you. I just wanted to say this to you for a long time now.
Then be honest and fair, and say the same thing to Brian, Wynski, and others on this blog who so richly deserve it for their treatment of anyone who dares to say that LRH ever did anything good, or that there’s anything good in Scientology worthy of being preserved.
My2cents – don’t want to argue with you. I will be honest and fair in what I have read and observed on this blog and maybe you don’t agree with me but that’s ok.
Brian has been blunt about his view points concerning LRH and the tech, many times against. But at the same time, I have read Brian’s comments stating that there has been some workable tech and that he had wins.
Wynski on the other hand has been completely dismissive of EVERYTHING LRH and scientology in any capacity whatsoever. Do I agree with him always, no, but that’s ok he has his reasons. I don’t know them all and I’m not going to try to convince him otherwise.
All I know is that like a few here I will not throw out the baby with water. I’ve had my wins, especially on lower bridge, clear, R6EW – I did the old route. On the other hand when I got to OT3, had wins but then – let’s just say like Likke (sorry for spelling), I had my horrendous moments so therefore I completely understand EVERYTHING Brian has stated about that and frankly am happy I didn’t lose my mind.
My2cents – there are so many points of view here, pro, con, etc. Many of us healing and trying to come to terms. It ain’t easy losing your “religion” after 40 years of believing and then realizing you’ve been conned. Let us grant each other beingness, obviously this is what Mike is doing by letting us have our say.
Mrs. P., what’s the difference between the kind of thing you call “invalidation,” in my reply to Brian, and the remarks you made about me?
Marildi – my remarks to you was simply from the point of view of one auditor commenting to another. If you don’t think that you invalidate and evaluate Brian or anyone else in your comments then so be it.
I just had to speak out to you finally. I’m not here to argue with you or M2C.
Ms.P, I was stating my observations of Brian’s posts – just as you were stating your observations of mine. And that was the point, even though you seem to think mine were inval and yours weren’t.
Anyway, let’s move forward.
Agreed, agreed, agreed!
Agreed with Marildi, not Ms P.
Quoting Elron as Source is pretty much a fool’s errand because he said lots of stuff, then turned around and did the exact opposite, e.,g., promoting stable family life, then tearing them apart, including his own. So, the more valid approach to the subject is to evaluate it by the actions of its leaders and adherents over time, which is exactly what we exes can now do with ease and with no fear of punishment at all, praise Xenu! I
Whether or not Elron said those exact words is beside the point because at every critical juncture in the development of Dn and $cn, when he could have sought objective validation and conducted real research he chose not to. But what he did do there was to take regular pot shots at much more learned and lettered men than he ever was on a wide range of technical subjects that he knew little or nothing about. The only research that was ever done by others on Dn didn’t show it to be effective and, after his disastrous Clear demo, that was the end of that…real science became demonized, while his bastardized version was shoved down the throats of the docile and unquestioning. Elron wanted to convince us that empirical proof was just so over-rated, primarily because he couldn’t provide any and didn’t want you looking at the little man behind the curtain.
What’s workable about $cn was misappropriated from others without properly crediting those sources. The lasting gains that I and others made on lower bridge auditing levels just served as bait to suck us further into the cult, as our gradual indoctrination progressively anesthetized our critical reasoning capacities – like the proverbial frog in a slowly heated sauce pan, we didn’t realize we were becoming a Ronbots.
I continue to value the lasting gains that I made in my early bridge auditing and would never seek to invalidate them for myself or with others. However, after years of higher education and decades of study and research, I can see quite clearly how Elron used the stolen work of others to bait the con and get folks to sit still and not kick up a fuss while he fleeced them with promises of Oatee super human powers and immortality which were completely made up.
I suspect that one of the reasons that you’re having such a hard time confronting the true evil that Elron folded into the batter to make the shit-frosted cake that is $cn has to do with your success as auditor in helping others. I wouldn’t take those wins away from anyone either, I’d just be a lot more careful who I chose to thank as the true source of whatever that actually does work in $cn, that’s all.
HF: “I continue to value the lasting gains that I made in my early bridge auditing and would never seek to invalidate them for myself or with others. However, after years of higher education and decades of study and research, I can see quite clearly how Elron used the stolen work of others…”
I’ve asked before and never got an answer: Where did “Elron” get the precise processes, procedures and rundowns that exist in the tech? Some of them may have been based on abreaction therapy, for example, but that therapy was refined with specific principles and applications. I don’t think you can name even one process, let alone a rundown or whole grade level, that LRH “plagiarized.”
And when someone says that anything in the tech that actually works must have been stolen, it’s a version of the logical fallacy “No True Scotsman.”
“The No True Scotsman fallacy occurs when one side of an argument makes a universal claim, is presented with an exception to refute that claim, then dismisses that counterexample as not being ‘pure’ enough.” https://curiosity.com/topics/the-no-true-scotsman-fallacy-is-an-appeal-to-purity-curiosity/
It’s a completely valid question. In the past, I’ve mentioned Freud, Jung, Rogers, Skinner, Korzybski, Crowley, Blavatsky and others as seminal sources from which Elron stole in order to create his “atomic age” mash up of other folks’ work. To comprehensively deconstruct exactly how and when he used the misappropriated work of others would take much more space and effort than we have here, so I won’t try to lay out the full argument at this time. Instead, I’ll just cite a few examples and note the consistency of the fraudulent theme which ran throughout every other aspect of his life as well to make my larger argument that Elron was a fraud who lied, stole and cheated throughout his entire adult life and, as such, none of what he said or claimed should be trusted.
You’ve challenged me to cite the specific sources from which Elron obtained “…the precise processes, procedures and rundowns that exist in the tech” in order to support my claim that what is workable about $cn is comprised almost entirely of what he stole from others. You’re right, he didn’t plagiarize the exact words of others, but please note that I never made that claim.
Instead, I’ve only argued that he misappropriated the central concepts, guiding principles and underlying philosophical bases of those that I’ve mentioned above, then just came up with his own made up technical jargon to give it the superficial patina of originality. The intent to mislead and disguise the theft of others work was evident from the very start, despite the fact that he did not blatantly plagiarize the exact words of others.
For example, you can readily use the much more familiar term, “spirit,” in place of his coined term, “thetan,” with no loss of meaning. Similarly, “theta,” is just a re-working of “life force” or “elan vital,” whose use adds nothing more to the much more familiar construct, but does serve to dissociate $cn from its foundation in philosophical tradition and unmoor it from the history of Western thought on the subject of the human mind and its ultimate origins and principles of operation.
Further, instead of beginning with the terms used in abreactive therapy as a point of departure for the development of his own model of the mind and counseling methods, he did his best to disguise and neglect to credit those seminal sources, thus giving the appearance of originality and deep insight into the human mind – a tactic of “stolen scholarly authority” whose theme he’d go on to recycle in many other forms, such as his “stolen valor” faked war metal awards and his fictitious doctoral degree. When taken as a whole, this consistent pattern of duplicitous behavior and revisionist personal biography clearly points to the fact that Elron was a fraudulent huckster who’d stoop to whatever low means that were required to amass a fortune and control the gullible and scientifically uninformed who fell victim to the con.
Yesterday’s discussion on Tony O’s blog concerning the earliest words he invented before he settled on “engram” reveal how purposefully he avoided giving credit to those who’d come before him and actually had the insights which he stole and presented as if they were of his own creation by inventing new words that merely served to disguise their original source. Before coming up with “engram,” the terms “norns” and (my personal favorite) “comanomes” were used briefly, while at no time during this early period of Dianetics development did he directly cite the specific works of Freud, Jung or any of the other folks who pioneered the earliest “talk therapy” approaches to the treatment of neuroses and various mental afflictions.
Instead of taking Freud’s seminal constructs of the unconscious and subconscious mind and using them as the acknowledged basis for his own bipartite parsing of the “reactive” and “analytic” mind, he presented them to us as if they appeared de nova to him, taking credit for the work of others in a way that he never ceased to employ. Indeed, other than a very few general comments about his sources of inspiration, I’m not familiar with a single source citation of others work that Elron ever made!
Similarly, when you compare and contrast the various tents of the “auditor’s code” with the fundamental basis of Roger’s person-centered counseling model, the principles of non-invalidation and non-evaluation are at the core of each of them, but Roger’s work pre-dates his own (see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person-centered_therapy ), yet receives no credit or mention in any of Elron’s writing of the time.
Elron was canny enough to avoid directly plagiarizing the exact words of those he stole from in creating the mash up of Dn and $cn, but his complete failure to cite any of the seminal sources from which he misappropriated others work and dishonestly used as if it were of his own creation form a very consistent pattern of intentional deception and dishonesty which can be seen to run through every other aspect of his life as well, which was typified by his attempt to erase his second marriage from his personal history, as if it never occurred.
Trying to find the birthday pony of workable $cn methods that must be at the bottom of all that horse shit is a fool’s errand, imo. But don’t take my word for it here; just look at the hundreds of thousands of journal articles which have been published on the subject of psychotherapy and the relationship between mind and brain and you’ll fail to find a single citation to any of Elron’s vast work in any of them that I’ve run across. From that perspective, empirical science is just returning the slight, but for much better reasons.
Elron hoped to create a “science of the human mind,” which would eventually supplant every other previously developed model of the human mind, but instead, empirical science passed him by many decades ago and now his entire vast body of work doesn’t even get a footnote.
Now, at this very late date, Marildi, I just don’t see any possible way that $cn in its present form could ever be reconciled with mainstream science, do you? I’m afraid that $cn is destined to be consigned to the rubbish heap of history, in large part, because Elron decided to come up with his own alt science cosmology and theory of mind which can now be validly judged to be complete pseudo-science, some six plus decades after his arrival on the scene.
The truth is the truth, and can be observed by anyone who can observe. So many researchers down through the ages have observed the same truths. That doesn’t make later researchers plagiarists of earlier researchers.
Also, all researchers with any common sense study the work of previous researchers in their field. This is actually required in every Ph.D program there is.
Finally, in science and even more so in philosophy it is quite common for researchers to invent their own terminology to supplant that of their contributing predecessors. This is especially the case when the work of several major predecessors is brought together in a new comprehensive system by someone intending to go beyond all of them.
Enough please
HF: “To comprehensively deconstruct exactly how and when he used the misappropriated work of others would take much more space and effort than we have here, so I won’t try to lay out the full argument at this time.”
For the same reason, I’m not going to spend the time and effort it would take to find all the places where he did give credit to his sources (just as most sources themselves have done). However, here’s an example from Science of Survival – 1951 – which disputes your claim that ‘while at no time during this early period of Dianetics development did he directly cite the specific works of Freud, Jung or any of the other folks who pioneered the earliest ‘talk therapy’ approaches to the treatment of neuroses and various mental afflictions.”
———————————————–
“Sigmund Freud discovered the lightest type of entheta, and although he placed his probes no deeper, an entrance was made into the field of human behavior. The secondary was discovered, but not identified in any way. By sheer observation of numberless cases it was found that once in a while, when a patient could be made to cry, the patient got better. The therapist did not know what the patient was crying about and neither did the patient, but the title of ‘release of affect’ was assigned to this crying and much extraneous technology was developed around it.
“Psychodrama and other techniques were developed in order to make the individual ‘release affect.’ This was the second slight incursion into the field of human thought. It produced little beneficial result because secondaries were restimulated more often than they were relieved. Secondaries have to be run as engrams, with the preclear returning on the time track.
“The leap which was made between psychotherapy and Dianetics did not gather force in psychotherapy but in an independent study of epistemology and thought as an energy. However, the basic teachings of Sigmund Freud, as relayed to me in the twenties by Commander Thompson, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, who had studied with Sigmund Freud, considerably enhanced my desire for re-examination of thought in human behavior.”
——————————–
You also wrote: “Further, instead of beginning with the terms used in abreactive therapy as a point of departure for the development of his own model of the mind and counseling methods, he did his best to disguise and neglect to credit those seminal sources, thus giving the appearance of originality and deep insight into the human mind – a tactic of ‘stolen scholarly authority…'”
Not true about terms. One example that comes to mind is that he stated outright why he did not use Freud’s word “unconscious.” As for the term “theta” instead of “spirit”, that was based on the fact that “spirit” has many different definitions. Christianity, for example, uses the term with a different meaning – and their use of the word “soul” is also different from their definition of “spirit.”
Here’s one other thing you wrote: “You’re right, he didn’t plagiarize the
exact words of others, but please note that I never made that claim.”
No, that wasn’t what I said. It isn’t a matter of using the exact words in processes procedures, rundowns – or whole grade levels. It’s that these actual applications of the principles have not been “stolen” – which hasn’t been demonstrated, even before we would get into principles being“stolen.”
Last but not least, let me remind you that my basic interest is in the tech itself, regardless of how you and others try to discredit it with your theories about Hubbard or his methods. No offense to you personally, but I’m not willing to go round and round any further on broad assertions.
Please just end this
Before I got into Scientology I received psychotherapy from someone who’d gotten her Ph.D. directly under Carl Rogers, and who participated in the failed test of Dianetics you cited. I asked her how the test was run, and she described gross violations of the Auditor’s Code that would prevent any process from working. Not surprisingly, her Rogerian therapy of me weekly for 6 months produced no case gain either. By contrast, my first 10 hours of Scientology auditing worked like gangbusters.
I’m glad you benefited from it! Your anecdotal example is, I’m sure, a sincere account of your own personal experience, but when you try to generalize it to other folks – or even to the “advanced” levels of processing on the bridge – that’s where the difficulties ensue, simply because others are NOT YOU!
My argument is not that no one made lasting gains from their auditing (indeed, I continue to value those that I made myself), but instead, that $cn is both unsupported by objective, empirical research and that what IS workable in $cn is largely attributable to the work of others which Elron misappropriated and claimed as his own.
Please see my lengthy response to Marildi concerning this same crucial argument.
My interest is the tech, not where it came from. I am not here to either defend or condemn LRH. Some of his tech worked well, and some of it didn’t. Some of his research assistants who split off from him did good work, and some of them didn’t. I’m in favor of throwing out the bad and using the good, no matter the source. The resulting subject wouldn’t be called Scientology.
I would add another What If:
What if Ron viewed Scientologists as guinea pigs in order to find the techniques that would turn HIM into a supernatural super man. There was no intention to bring the rest up to his level. They would be used to find the path for him and then he would decide if, and how far, the lowly could rise.
nomnon, I think you’re on to something there.
Hubbard seemed keenly interested in the auditing process, and one of the things I had difficulty reconciling until recently, was how that could not have been out of humanitarian intents. But people interested in an experiment, will indeed spend lots of time testing out things on their guinea pigs – and, also, psychopaths will puts lots of effort into grooming their victims. The other possibility I see, which isn’t mutually exclusive of yours, is that Hubbard thought that in the effort to raise up his followers as “homo novis,” they would be able to overwhelm the wogs and carry him to power – in that vein, I can see him like Suruman presiding over the creation of his army of Awks, the improved breed of Orcs that he hoped to take over middle earth with, in Lord of the Rings.
I think that that Hubbard might have considered the possibility that others might arise to be “big beings” like him, or at least attain a level approaching that, but that no one ever came along to fit the bill – or at least no one who wasn’t ultimately rejected and cast out, as were so many.
I often look at LRH and compare him to a livestock pig. When comparing, what is the net benefit to humanity of LRH and his fucked-up musings that only inflicted pain on families and humanity , or an innocent butchered pig that provided food for humans?
The pig wins, every time, on every level.
F*** you, LRH.
A fantastic article. I’m so glad it’s been written so thanks to the author. Very, very many thanks.
I simply do not believe Hubbard didn’t know what he was doing. There’s is just too much doctrine forbidding this, enforcing that, to think otherwise.
However, if I’d any doubts about it, they were blown to smithereens when I read, and heard, from the horse’s mouth on a PDC lecture, that it’s ARC breaks that cause people to blow – not overts and withholds. He admitted this very late at night or in the early hours of the morning to two of his staff saying he could never tell anyone because then he would be able to keep his starf! He forbade the two he’d just told not to tell anyone either!
I know someone who’s been “out” longer than I have who still thinks in terms of what overts she’s committed because she’s just criticised someone. Or when her life has a few bumps in a row wonders what she’s done wrong to “pull it in?”
Once I found out the truth about Hubbard, early on in my decompression, reading Madman or Messiah, I’ve never doubted that the man was evil in the extreme.
This book was one of the shocks of my life, leaving me shaken.
I don’t care about Miscavige. He’s not the one who betrayed me. He’s just taken it all to a higher level. In fact, I’m pleased he’s done what he’s done and keeps on doing it because if he hadn’t we wouldn’t have had the flood of people leaving the cult; and we wouldn’t be witnessing the sinking of the ship that is $cientology.
Keep up the good work, Dave!
Correction: “… would be able to keep his starf.” Should be…wouldn’t be able to keep his staff.
I came into Scientology in the early 90s and there were a spate of films on overts and withholds and Sec Checks.
There were very many policy letters and HCOBs written on the subject, too. We were made to read every one of them.
When I wanted to leave once, I was shown the PL, Blow Offs. Although I relented somewhat, on one level I didn’t buy it, on the deep down level. However, it did impinge.
Then I read this in this PDC lecture that leaving is not about overts and withholds at all but upsets, I was astounded. I was also relieved and it made more sense. However, I didn’t leave until a while later. Ahem!
Dawn, I only wish I could have intercepted you in the early 90’s and had a coffee and a talk with you. You did not deserve scientology and how bad you were mistreated by scientology. I would like to send you a hug out over the internet!
Hubbard saw enemies everywhere. He was doomed to create an appallingly destructive excuse for a religion, since he declared himself Source and everything else falsehood. Hubbard’s ego, greed, and rampant paranoia always overruled any desire to “clear the planet” I’m not sure he was a full blown sociopath, but he was the reason scientology became a cult rather than just another odd religious movement.
He apparently never saw that the US Navy had a culture of initiative and respectfully correcting your superiors when they are mistaken. You would think that he served in the Imperial Japanese Navy from how he ran the Sea Org.
Brian: Tell us what you really think!
But really, wonderful essay. You raised so many good points.
What do you suppose makes people susceptible to his “demonizing” their minds? Some people get sucked right in. Others seem to enjoy some kind of fortitude–or bullshit detector–that allows then to stay away.
Good question Terra. Who knows? Each has his or her own reason and story. Some had an immediate sense to avoid Scientology. And some of us simply trusted that Ron was what he said he was.
He certainly appealed to the Star Trek generation. Ron’s angle of science certainly worked for some.
He really sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He did conjure up interesting processes. He was an amazing person. And a dangerous person.
Maybe it was the real help that happened to us that gave us a belief and sense that Ron would continue helping us to evolve spiritually. People who were insecure could now “be there comfortably and communicate.” Confidence increased and we assigned that new found confidence to Ron.
I remember this girl friend I got in. When she found out that Hubbard hated psychologists she brought a Psychology Today magazine to course. I found out later that she brought it on purpose to observe reactions. Because of the weird looks and judgement she got from people she was repulsed by Scientology and Ron. She dumped going to course and told me that “no one can control what I read.” She was right and it just went over my head. I stayed.
Hymn of Asia certainly locked me into the dream of Ron’s well marketed persona.
Maybe some people had a better bs detector than others?
I have no regrets. I am glad to have gone through the experience. My bs detector is back in order.
We can now know what we know, be true to our integrity and see life as we wish; outside of Hubbard’s implant station.
From a reincarnation point of view many of us came into this life hard wired for spiritual knowledge. We were attracted to him. He played the game of god and we the disciples.
“My bs detector is back in order.” Lol! Yes, mine too. I’m quite a cynic but maybe that’s too harsh. My critical thinking capacity has been sharpened by the experience to a large degree!
Usually skeptical, I’m a scientist at heart, read many books on the subject before $cientology and do again, now. At school, I was an A student in the subject; and yet, there I was buying into the bs.
It’s not a simple answer, why some walked away and others didn’t. I assumed that those who did were too conservative to do anything different. Also, they had read the media and had heard people’s opinions about it. I still think that. I believe it was an inherent fear that protected them. Barring your girl friend, that is Brian.
There were very many times I saw the contradictions, the kindness and the cruelty. I think Leah and Mike and Lawrence Wright and others have covered the reason well – we thought we had a more scientific approach to spirituality and that we would be helping others.
Dawn, I’m also fascinated by why some people walk away and some just dig in their heels and stay.
Before getting into Scientology I tried all KINDS of stuff, read all kinds of books, self help, etc. I was in a lot of mental and emotional pain.Scientology helped me, to my surprise and delight, so I stayed.
But, being a reader and a questioner (about everything; I was such a pain in the ass back in Sunday School) I read the Green Vols, I knew policy, I queried, I was out there and interactive with the tech and with my studies.
Now, that stood me in good stead for a lot in Scientology but NOT when it came to Ideal Morgue Fundraising.
I also asked (very casually) a few questions about LRH’s family and by way of answer got…crickets.
Long story, but these unanswered questions, about Ideal Orgs and about LRH’s family, paved the way for me to find Marty’s original blog.
Once I started lurking there (I lurked for a year before having the courage to post under my current name) It was the beginning of the end.
So, for me, asking questions which I thought were justified, not to mention innocent, asking questions concerning things about which I was curious and not because I was having any specific problem with them, asking questions that were met with discomfort, awkward answers and/or blank stares, were little red flags to me.
I pursued them, when I had the time, only because I was curious! I wasn’t particularly troubled by anything, I was just – curious! So, when I had the time, I started to pull some threads.
And eventually I got the “Sherman Tank”.
Actually, I was APPLYING Scientology, as I had studied and learned well how to do!
In brief, curiosity, unsatisfied, and applying Scientology to satisfy it, got me out of the cult!
And, yes, I’d like to write a Success Story 🙂
Brian, thank you for this essay, which rings true for me.
From essay: “My bs detector is back in order.” My Scientology experience certainly awakened my BS detector!
My BS detector now signals an alarm for any person, group or material that:
– Squashes discussion by referencing authority;
– Won’t be accountable for its finances (where $ came from, where it goes);
– Won’t attribute its source materials (DOX PLS);
– Claims radical, drastic, colossal action(s) must be taken now, now, now in order to save the planet/mankind;
– Uses consensus to stifle discussion;
– Elevates my sense of self at the expense of others;
– Personally attacks a person (ad hominem) rather than their actions or principles;
– Attacks whistleblowers and tries to silence them.
Those are some of my major BS trip wires. Anyone care to add to the list?
Brian, we must have come from the planet! Live long and prosper.
:-))
One proof of Hubbard’s real intentions is the “Scientology Truth Rundown”: Who would create such a mind-fu@k?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjbt9gVFIX8
The Truth Rundown is absolutely a no win situation. They just pull you in deeper Into the abyss. Scary…
I’ve had it – thought it was a great rundown at the time, still do. However, it wasn’t done to punish me, gain compliance, gather leverage or was even CS ordered from above. I requested it with some hours I had left over. It’s the intention and manipulation with which something is done that defines it, not so much the action itself.
Perhaps I should never has posted this… but not all things I’ve experienced in Scientology I consider evil.
Please, before you ridicule me online – you’d never do it to my face and walk away easily. I prefer to call it as I experienced it, not as I’m expected to comply.
Clearly we’re both brainwashed.
I agree with you iYawn.
Thanks for posting that link pluvo.
WHAT IF Brian and the people commenting on this blog realized that their attention is stuck on ad hominem about LRH, as opposed to doing something constructive with the basic workable, albeit not perfect, tech from before KSW, the Sea Org, draconian ethics, etc.?
WHAT IF they ceased resisting, and thereby accepted, the obvious truth that LRH was a real person, neither angel nor devil, and that he did both good and bad?
WHAT IF they then got back to work using the good while avoiding the bad, in service of whatever original purposes they had for becoming LRH followers in the first place?
WHAT IF they stopped being victims, and instead actually took responsibility for personally correcting, perfecting, and advancing the tech so it would someday become what they once hoped and believed it to be?
That’s right. I was in for many years, and now I’ve been out for many years. I’m out because the bullshit is so thick it obfuscates the workability that does exist. I use many things I learned in Scientology every day. Many will argue that it’s stolen from others, maybe so. Although many things I’ve never seen elsewhere. But I don’t really give a fuck where it came from, some of it works really well. So for that reason, I use it. Lots of dirty water…yes. Some valuable babies….Yes.
Have you not lost your childhood because your parent donated you to the church to forward its goals?
Did you choose this belief on your own?
Have you not lost any family because of this “religious” movement?
Victim or not I think it’s idiotic that Scientology gets to hide as a religion. I was at the bottom as a kid forced to apply LRH tech and I was at the top and saw a corrupt money making machine at CMO Int. You can’t remove the facts and experiences I have. They actually happened.
Do your own thing. Stop trying to make it ok that this group and the “tech” they apply has sincerely hurt people.
Who are you anyway?
My name appears openly. I’m not cool with Scientology or any group connected to them.
Who the fuck am I? Good question. I’m just a nobody. I was held prisoner in the RPF’s RPF’s RPF for many weeks..That was a lot of fun. Many other fun things I participated in. I also was a class 5 auditor, big fuck huh? I think Scientology’s fucked up, and there are many reasons why. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. But there is some stuff I learned that works pretty well, so I continue to use it. That’s all. I got in in 74 and out in 95. And to disregard that which is useful and works well would be foolish.
Take the best, and leave the rest! It’s what pbilosophies and religions have done through the ages.
GREAT but why on earth would you give any credit to scientology? As though this group actually created the information that worked. I don’t believe it did. Now that I’m out I can read/see/experience the truth and it wasn’t discovered by L. Ron Hubbard.
Oh, and no need to use swear words.
I’m glad you are out and maybe we’re on the same team. I am pissed that my entire life was removed starting in 1976. I was 9. That’s just not right.
Yes, the bad did happen, including to me. My point is just that I and many others also experienced good in Scientology. That good doesn’t excuse the bad. But the bad doesn’t excuse throwing out the good, either.
I agree with you, MY 2 Cents. I try to do what you’ve described. Cherry pick out of Scientology what works and ignore the rest. It makes sense to me, it works for me and my life, and this IS what I do.
But then, I was never staff. I was never SO.
I did not experience the abuse that has scarred good people who once truly believed in helping mankind, believed that it was possible, believed that they could help, people who, in their utter innocence and trust and desire to do this, dedicated themselves to an organization that employed lofty cover purposes for its own selfish ends, an organization that betrayed their trust, used them, abused them and then spit them out and denounced them as worthless, evil people for leaving that organization. I did not experience this. I have also never lost a loved one – a spouse, sweetheart or a child, to Scientology’s disconnection policies. These are the experiences of many people posting here, and their experiences cannot be denied, nor would it be fair and just for any of us to coldly judge or criticize the opinions they hold. It just wouldn’t be right.
I can’t say for sure that if I had experienced any of this betrayal of trust, anguish and loss, any significant degree of this, that I, too, would not reject out of hand anything even remotely associated with Scientology. I really couldn’t say for sure.
WHAT IF after reading the article above, My 2 Cents failed to do any of the thinking suggested by Brian and simply allowed cognitive dissonance to take over and still (in the face of mountains of evidence showing L. Ron Hubbard to be a willfully evil man) defended LRH
And
WHAT IF My 2 Cents was once again, tricked into doing EXACTLY what LRH fooled everyone into doing – blaming themselves for the failure of his ‘100% perfect tech’
I’m not defending LRH, or blaming anyone for tech failures. I DON’T believe that KSW Standard Tech works 100% of the time. I think LRH made errors in the development of the tech, and that some of those errors were large. But I think he got a lot right, too. I’m in favor of preserving and using what he got right, while correcting what he got wrong. I’m for using his life and work as an experiment from which we as independent seekers can learn something and do better in the future.
1) Because the Tech is a lie, a trap, and unworkable, from your first engram to your last OTVIII Cognition.
2) Because, to me, he forfeited the right to acceptance as a person the moment that he said that I’d have to be a nice heteronormative and hump women, otherwise I’d have to be eliminated, quietly and without sorrow. And never retracted or modified that statement.
3) Because Exes have been harmed, physically and psychologically, from Hubbard’s doings. Until they can work out the damage, they get a pass. There was a good article on the BBC website today regarding the areas of Mosul that have been liberated from ISIS. From the comments of the people living there, it will take decades to bring Mosul back to the way it was only three years ago, a vibrant urban community where people of different faiths mixed peacefully.
4) Because they want nothing to do with the Tech. They’ve figured out that it’s not only useless, it’s designed to cause harm.
Care to have a look at the people who actually tried to do what you suggest? David Mayo had his spirit crushed by the cult and has ducked out of the subject that he was probably the world’s greatest expert at, and has done so for over thirty years. Bill Robertson thought that the Tech brought him perfect health and communicated that to his followers; he died of untreated cancer. And poor Ken Ogger drove himself insane to the point where he drowned himself in his swimming pool.
WHAT IF you took a good look at what you’re trying to defend without your pair of rose-colored glasses and can see for yourself what Ron hath wrought?
M2C, it has already been done. Not in the way that you expected. The answer to the E-meter is advanced biofeedback technology. The answer to how to read others minds, intentions, truthfulness is neurolinguistic programming. The questions about why we are here and the meaning of life are all examined brilliantly in quantum physics. All of that and way more goes far beyond what the old man could have ever imagined back in the day. Life has surpassed his ‘tech’, irregardless of whether he was saint or sinner. The problem is, his doctrine forbade his followers from finding answers other than what he claimed was true. Evolve, adapt or die. That’s pretty much a universal law. You are an intelligent and inquisitive person. Don’t stay chained to an outdated and faulty way of searching for enlightenment. You deserve better.
Good point exemplarangel. I see Scientology as old school. Knowledge of the mind has really advanced since Ron’s days.
And Ron’s Scientology is really Flinstones when it comes to spiritual knowledge.
My take is some people still believe that Scientology is the fastest, bestest, most scientific technique ever.
The only way a person can know this is true is if they have investigated every spiritual path for years and years. It’s impossible.
The only reason, imo, that people are still into the “Scientology is the most advance science of the mind” is because they still believe in Ron’s “only way” mindset.
There is so much knowledge out there. If you want to find it. But if yours is the best, then enjoy it. It’s just not the best for every one. We do not need saving My Two Cents.
That’s another Ron thing. We do not need to be saved from ourselves My Two Cents.
But, Brian, aren’t YOU trying to save us from ourselves, by way of your endless focus on the bad in LRH?
Well, yes, partially. And partially saving myself. And partially enjoying trouble shooting Ron’s lies.
I love trouble shooting mysteries with analysis. That’s probably my biggest motive.
But that is what this forum is about My Two Cents. This forum, this free criticism is about people finally getting to express themselves without the fear of Ron’s doctrines calling out the ‘willing hounds’ to destroy their lives.
This widespread expression is somewhat of a new phenomenon. Just a few decades ago even the press and media were afraid.
Thanks to all of those brave people like Paulette Cooper, my hero, who started the process.
We are all saving ourselves from demented ideologies.
But our form of saving does not seek destruction of those who disagree with us. Our form of saving is benevolent, healing and the resurrection of free thinking.
Brian, you said, “Our form of saving does not seek destruction of those who disagree with us. Our form of saving is benevolent, healing and the resurrection of free thinking.”
Bullshit. Your hundreds of extra long comments are exactly “the destruction of those who disagree with us,” and the opposite of “free thinking.”
Thank you for sharing your thoughts My Two Cents
Brian, you said, “Knowledge of the mind has really advanced since Ron’s days.
And Ron’s Scientology is really Flinstones when it comes to spiritual knowledge.”
Please tell us exactly what advanced knowledge you’re referring to.
I’ve sent you reading material before. I do not think you are interested because you feel you have the best.
I have no need to convince you.
The knowledge is there if you want it. If you don’t that’s fine too:-)???♀️???
No, Brian, you have never sent me any reading material as you claim. You did once recommend “Autobiography of a Yogi,” but that’s it. Meanwhile you frequently comment that LRH knew nothing, but you never state what he didn’t know.
You say you have no need to convince me, but every day you demonstrate that you do have a need to convince others that LRH was ignorant and evil. So stating what knowledge he was ignorant of would seem to serve that need.
My motivation in asking you for this is not to defend LRH. As you well know, I am NOT a 100% KSW guy.
So what do you actually disagree with regarding this post that I wrote?
Note to onlookers:
Here is the second person who wants to protect Ron from critics who attack the critics and not the argument.
Thank you for demonstrating and justifying the essence of my post for us to see.
You guys are better than a clay demo!
Brian, once again you reveal yourself to be a PR operative, who doesn’t really care about the truth, but just wants to win the debate by controlling the direction of the discussion. I asked a simple question, and slippery you responded not with an actual answer, but instead with an effort to change the subject. So I’ll repeat the question.
You said, “Knowledge of the mind has really advanced since Ron’s days, and Ron’s Scientology is Flintstones when it comes to spiritual knowledge.”
Please tell us exactly what advanced knowledge you’re referring to.
1) L Ron Hubbard on disciplining children:
Put them in chain lockers as a viable option
Today’s practitioner of mental health would probably have called the authorities to put Hubbard in jail.
That is certainly an upgrade in the knowledge of the mind of a child and how to care.
2) old school understanding of homosexuality was that it was a mental disorder. Ron took it a step further and said they should be “disposed of without sorrow.”
Today’s mental health practitioner would consider Hubbardva psycho.
I can go on and on about Ron’s because ignorance reagarding mental health.
Maybe folks on the RPFs RPF would have a thing to say about Hubbard’s expertise in mental health.
I could go on for ever. But I won’t.
Have a nice weekend My Two Cents. 🙂
And maybe just one more for good luck.
Ron was working out issues at the end of life and wished to commit suicide by electro shock to free BTs.
This one is off the charts. This is the man you defend as having superior knowledge of mental health.
I only have one word that comes to mind:
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
In the neuroscience literature you can easily find the results of well over 100,000 scientist’s work, amounting to hundreds of thousands of articles, describing empirical research which, when taken together, all point to the beyond-any-possibility-of-reasonable-doubt conclusion that mind is what brain does. This is true in any and every topical area of neuroscientific research – such as memory, attention, emotion, etc. – that you’d care to name.
Remove all of your visual cortex and you’ll be utterly blind, despite your eyes being in perfect condition. Bilaterally excise the hippocampus and para-hippocampal regions and you will never again be able to create any new autobiographical memory. Fall into a coma and your brain wave EEG profile will clearly demonstrate the lack of integrated neural firing patterns that typically accompany normal waking consciousness…I could go on here with example after example of exactly how the brain enables the mind for days, weeks, perhaps even months…the peer-reviewed, multiply verified empirical research results are truly that vast!
That isn’t to say that every last question concerning our phenomenal experience at the level of mind has already been answered; it’s just to note that the huge amount of what was not known about the relationship between mind and brain during the era that Elron was promoting his completely unsupported pseudo-science nonsense is now very well understood….and absolutely none of it supports Elron’s pulled-from-out-his-ass conjectures.
For a literate adult of normal or better intelligence to be so completely ignorant of this vast body of scientific work is completely shocking and, it would seem, direct evidence that Elron’s evil attempt to misappropriate for himself the credibility and authoritative status of real science continues to work its evil magic on you.
It’s way past time for you to wake up and COME TO PT!
No, Harpoona, it’s time for YOU to come to PT, by checking out the University of Virginia School of Medicine Division of Perceptual Studies. Google it and get educated by the real science you find.
M2C, would you please tell us more precisely what to look for, and preferably also at least a brief summary of your point, rather than just directing us to something that google says produces “About 3,030,000 results”?
A particular web page, study or paper would be even better.
TIA
They have a website you can find through Google. They also have You Tube videos. Search for “Division of Perceptual Studies.”
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/
Ok, thanks for that link. However, you’re going to have to connect the dots for me here, instead of trying to hand off your counter-argument to a source that’s not making it.
There are many mysteries remaining to be solved by empirical science regarding exactly how dynamic processes of the brain enable our subjective experience at the phenomenal level of the human mind.
However, as I’ve mentioned before, everything that has been discovered so far is completely consistent with the foundational understanding that brain DOES enable mind in all of the major categories of research that have thus far been investigated.
For example, in direct contrast to Elron’s wild and completely unsupported conjectures:
1. The little “gold discs” behind the eyes which supposedly enable a thetan to perceive have never been discovered. Instead, the primary visual cortex has been consistently demonstrated to be necessary for sight.
2. Instead of “whole-track” memories of past life experiences being encoded in some immaterial form that can be accessed across lifetimes, every single process and form of memory has been demonstrated to have its material instantiation in the brain which, when damaged in certain specific ways, uniformly results in the loss of very specific aspects of both memory recall and the initial processes of encoding memory in the first place.
3. The phenomenal experience of disembodiment or “exteriorisation” can be experimentally induced in subjects by altering the activational profile and inter-connectivity of specific brain regions, but no “thetan exterior with full perceptics” has ever been documented.
Elron’s model of the human mind completely leaves out any mention of the brain, but now, some six plus decades later, every possible major function, ability and capacity that we can describe as comprising the human mind – memory, language. attention, emotion, etc. – has been discovered by neuroscience to have the brain as its necessary enabling basis.
Please no more
Thank you, Mike.
Please permit me to offer a suggestion.
To the participants of this current ‘What If thread: there is no doubt you have all engaged in a worthwhile and lively discussion. Why not continue it on Facebook by forming a ‘closed’group? The group could be titled “What If”… Brian or M2C could be the Administrator and a person would need to request and receive permission from the Administrator to join the group. You could continue your debate for as long as you cared to, with those persons who have a genuine interest to carry on with the discussion.
Just an idea.
OhioBuckeye, that’s a very nice gesture on your part. Your idea would be very good if it weren’t for the fact that it doesn’t actually fit the purposes of most, if not all, of us who get into the debates: Some want to make sure readers are convinced of the negative aspects of Scientology – both the church and the subject itself – and to convince them that there is little or no positive. Others believe there is a lot of positive and don’t want readers to be turned against it, and in general contribute to the destruction of the good in Scientology. Of the two sides in the debate, I don’t think anyone’s purpose is to convince those on the opposite side. I for one don’t believe it is even possible, based on what I’ve observed of the mindsets, and others would say the same about me.
But thank you anyway!
Harpoona, the research done at the University of Virginia Medical School Division of Perceptual Studies has been done utilizing full-blown scientific method, and contradicts what you say about conciousness arising from the material brain. If you have any scientific integrity you will click on the link I provided, explore, and educate yourself.
Exemplary angel. Very well said!
Dear 2 Cents,
There are individuals, groups, and established independent practitioners of Hubbard’s tech. Worldwide I think (IMO) there are nearly as many independents as there are cherch public, perhaps more.
It takes a particular mind set to assimilate Hubbard’s tech and to then use it in a constructive way. It also takes a preclear with an accommidative mind set to open up to the mechanics of the tech. The tech is NOT a mainstream tool, and cannot ever be one if practiced in a way that resembles Hubbard’s wishes/dictates.
If you can accept that Hubbard’s tech is just one of 20 or so ‘techs’ a practitioner can use then you can rest easy knowing that the tech is useful. If you are clinging onto the idea that the tech is all that is needed to make a sane society I would urge you to reconsider that stable datum.
As to the posters to this blog who are venting and letting their upsets run out, the cherch is not a safe place to vent so some come here to finally let it out. Some of us poke fun at the charade that the cherch has become, because we sure as heck could not do it in ‘confession’ in the cherch. And, for some of us it is just for fun and to be insouciant..
If I see Mike Rinder’s intent with this blog correctly, this is why he put it up.
+100
Yes, Mike’s blog serves the very important purpose of giving people a place to vent. But after the venting, then what?
As for LRH’s tech being the “only way,” I never thought that even when I was in the Church and of necessity practicing no other tech. One of LRH’s biggest mistakes was expelling one by one nearly all of his most productive research assistants and associates. Some of them went on to develop very workable tech outside of Scientology. I’m in favor of correcting LRH’s mistake, by bringing the best of this “other tech” back into the main subject.
It’s not just ‘vent’ My Two Cents. That is a crude description.
People are also now safe to LOOK FOR THEMSELVES AND COME TO THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS MINUS THE FEAR OF RON’S REVENGFUL BRUTALITY.
Courage, that’s what is happening here.
My 2 Cents,
Thanks for the reply. I think the independents are already making use of the ‘best of the other tech’ in the field. It has to be useful and of benefit to customers or they would be as empty as the ideal morgues.
Yes, some of the Independents I know are making good use of other tech integrated with the good in LRH’s system.
But it needs to be stated here, too. As people leave the Church, or consider doing so, they need to know that they can continue their quest without some “internal MAA” demanding irrational adherence to LRH as a guru, rather than as one of a number of persons who did valuable R&D work.
Hey my Two Cents
My Two Cents I have 3 questions for you.
Why would Hubbard teach us that all critics have criminal pasts?
And tell us that he researched it?
What is the effect of agreeing to this?
Here’s one more:
Why do you not say your real name? You do not say your real name because you are afraid of something. And what you are afraid of is the writings of L Ron Hubbard that have created this situation where by you are afraid of saying your name.
You can thank Ron for your situation where you need to hide.
And my Two sense your Scientology is showing.
You say we are stuck. That’s your experience of us. That is not ours. Your definition of stuck is my definition of persistent pealing back of the onion.
You seem to think that others should see Scientology the way you see Scientology. And that if they are not seeing it the way you do it’s is because of some Scientological and emotional problems. That’s a bit elitist and maybe arrogant. I used to think that way also.
People think differently. I respect that.
Brian, you are a skilled PR operative. I acknowledge the bad, and merely say there’s good there, too, which we ought to not waste. Your answer is to repeat that there’s bad there, lot and lots of bad. You are avoiding the issue. You should have gone into politics.
I am repetive because of new people just arriving here on these sites. But I’ve told you that before.
But you lie to those new people by presenting only the bad, and never the good.
When a women is raped, seeing the good side of the raper is not the proper step to healing.
Also, I give others more intelligence to sort out what they agree with and disagree with. People are smart enough to figure out if I’m full of it or not.
You still have not actually responded to any of the What Ifs.
Why is that?
Don’t worry Mike. I won’t go any further. I’ll let them have the last say.
Your analogy is off the mark. It should be, “If a woman got raped, would that mean that sex is bad? No, because in the context of a mutual loving and committed relationship sex is a good thing for both parties.”
And My Two Cents, I take offense that you label people here victims. These folks are working it out on these blogs. Have some respect for others. Don’t be so arrogant. I say that with no malice. You do not know each persons story. If correct Scientology has taught you to behave like this, that is why we want non of it.
You blame others for ad hominem and then you ad hominem. Do you see that? You are blaming others for things you are doing?
What does Scientology say about that?
Brian, the victims I was referring to are not the newbies who come here to share in the communal venting. To them I say, “Vent away!”
The professional victims are you and others who have been “venting” for literally YEARS. At this point you’re not really venting.
Got it:-)
My 2 Cents, we can stop with your second what if: “the obvious truth that LRH was a real person, neither angel nor devil, and that he did both good and bad?” He was a real person, all right, thoroughly evil through and through. I see it in his reptilian eyes and smirking mouth every time I look at a photo of him.
What he did was all bad, all of it. He had zero compassion for any other human being and proved it again and again in his words and above all, his deeds.
If LRH was 100% evil, then how and why did I and many others get case gain from auditing?
Simply put: Elron stole others work – such as Freud, Jung, Rogers and many more- then re-labled it as his own. So, what many (including myself) experienced as lasting gains from their auditing on lower level material can be directly attributable to the work others that he misappropriated.
Those “wins” then served as bait to sucker the unsuspecting (guilty again here) further into the con, where they could fleeced and fucked with for as long as they had cash and could keep the cognitive dissonance at bay.
$cn doesn’t work, but some of the counseling techniques that he stole from others do. Thus, you and I can continue to value the gains we made in auditing; we just can’t validly attribute them to $cn.
Before I got into Scientology I studied Freud, Jung, Rogers, and Wilhelm Reich, and received therapy based on each one. The case gain I got from all of them combined was about 1% of what I later got from Scientology lower grades.
Of course LRH stood on the shoulders of earlier researchers. All scientists do that. Freud stood on the shoulders of Breuer, who stood on the shoulders of Charcot. As a fan of science you should know this.
LRH added a lot of his own genius to the work of his predecessors. That’s why most of his tech worked better than theirs when properly applied.
I concur with 2 cents usually. I use the tech and apply it the way I like to. I quietly left the cherch cause the management was a bunch of fuckin idiots and caused my wife to die early. I was afraid to try to help her myself because the management and some of my koolaid friends would KR me and I would get declared while I still had $ on OT5. I had great auditors and major wins because I would dive in and handle whatever came up. “If you ain’t on the floor in the fetal position, you ain’t gittin to the good stuff yet. I still mix tech and self audit as well when necessary.I grant beingness, help others, 81 yrs. old, build formula cars and rat rods, invent, experiment with free energy devices and wind mills. I saved a life or two with the tech because it actually works most of the time. I may say more in the future if the atmosphere is friendly here.
“I saved a life or two with the tech because it actually works most of the time. I may say more in the future if the atmosphere is friendly here.”
A lot of people here aren’t at all friendly towards comments that the tech “actually works most of the time.” But some of us will be more than happy to read your your posts. 🙂
M2C, that’s a pretty extraordinary claim.
If Dianetics and Scientology were really so head and shoulders above everything that came before, then there should be both anecdotal and empirical proof of that. We should see that Scientologists just stand out above others, like the alumni of Ivy League universities, Stanford and Caltech (about 2/3 of the Presidents of the last 100 years, and high-tech notables such as Gates and Zuckerberg); and there should be scientific research backing that up, plus related work like Sarge Gerbode’s TIR should still yield significantly increased results (TIR has been studied, and is an effectively therapy, though hardly exceptionally so – and has evolved away from Hubbard’s work).
If you had an experience that seemed impressive to you, that’s another thing. Maybe you just happened to do Scientology at a point when you were ready to get “case gain” in your life through the intention you had, whatever you would have done. Or maybe you did it at a point when your brain was undergoing some growth or healing, sort of a reverse of the phenomenon where some organic brain diseases like schizophrenia typically have their onset in early adulthood. I had a personally transformative experience that I know that was generated because of a combination of self-reflection and life stressors, though at least one psychologist has told me it could have been a manic episode (I have some sort inconclusive indications of possibly being bipolar, though as I’ve gotten older it seems more obvious that it may be mild seasonal affective disorder, which fits with the time period of the experience); had I been doing some practice at the time, I quite likely would have attributed the experience to that, though it would actually have been coincidental. One of the reasons that Dianetics and Scientology never enthralled me too much, was because of that experience and because I knew that I could reach into myself and find those most meaningful of experiences and insights.
And maybe you are one of a minority of people for how Dianetics and Scientology really do work; but that doesn’t seem to generalize, and there’s a lot of evidence that it does a lot of harm as well. Like the Abreaction Therapy that it borrows a lot from (which had to be abandoned), perhaps there are sometimes dramatic results, but it’s too unstable and inconsistent and too prone to bad outcomes. Thalidomide, for instance, was hailed as a “wonder drug” at first because of a variety of things it does well in quite a few cases – but it turns out to have so many downsides in widespread use, including stillbirths and birth defects (all the infamous children with stunted limbs), that it can only be used in the most limited and tightly controlled circumstances – and some still think there is too much risk to even use it at all.
The lure of “proper application” seems to me like a trap, that hides the fact that whatever mechanism is at work, Hubbard’s practices either aren’t actually producing the effects that individuals are experiencing in their lives, or that they are producing them in a way that is inherently inconsistent and haphazard. “Proper application” is probably just something akin to luck, virtually as much as it is in gambling money – there will be people who swear that rubbing a rabbit’s foot or some other ritual that they believe in works, but it’s all just coincidence and susceptibility to cognitive biases.
I do thing that Scientology criticism has been too dismissive of the positive experiences of some, like you. But that doesn’t mean that it actually produces much that is positive, or that the positive outweighs the negative enough for it to be viable to continue.
He stole from psych, then sought to destroy it, to prevent cult members from discovering his fraud.
For the same reason why, sometimes, talk therapy and abreactive therapy, which is all auditing is if you ignore the 19th Century lie detector, can get results. That approach worked with you.
What is MTC realized that he is using the term ad hominem incorrectly and thus has NO valid point?
Such a great discussion in this thread! A great time to pose a ‘what if’ that I have been considering for some time.
What If – The ultimate failure of the LRH Technology and the church is pecisely because it was presented as tech/science and did not require taking anything on FAITH?
My limited understanding of scientology thus far, is that all questions (where questioning is even allowed), requires a standard response: “What do your materials state?” This forces the ‘seeker’ to return time and again to a series of writings, tapes and training routines over and over. Ultimately spending the rest of their life on the hamster wheel of scientology, still seeking, still paying, still working toward an end goal that will never be.
Personally, I believe in God .. and Jesus.. the Trinity, Body, Blood, Ten Commandments, Creation …and all the rest. And although I look to the Bible for inspiration and comfort, I have questioned, searched and explored many of the ‘religions’ associated with being a believer. I have come to the realization that some things just have to be taken on Faith. I don’t need ‘proof’ that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, Mary was the Virgin Mother of God and that Jesus was resurrected. This belief…faith…works. FOR ME.
I think it very sad, from what I have read of this “religion” so far, that scientologists are never allowed to question and thus, don’t get the opportunity to exercise “faith”. This is only my observation so far and as a “never-in” I only have limited knowledge of scientology. I welcome your input and observations .
Oh,….btw, my name is Kate.
Now for something completely different: Have any of you learned souls heard of “The Book of Urantia” and the Urantia Foundation? I fell into this rabbit hole purely by chance and can’t believe what I am reading!
Those of you who subscribe to A&E might already be seeing promos for our favorite show of shows. Here in the Northeast next Monday the 29th from 9-11 is the first installment of Aftermath. I think this is a stand-alone, but still the first blessed piece of truth we’ve seen since the first season ended.
Thanks for the reminder!
That about sums up Hubbard and Scientology. Nicely done, thank you.
Can we get rid of the rhetorical “What if” and just make the statement? Example “Ron redefined the word ‘reasonable’…” I feel that leaving the “what ifs” leaves the door open to misinterpreting Ron’s intentions and words as benign or helpful.
Great article , Brian! One illustration of the point of someone being on par with a murdering SP if they only read a blog of a “known SP.” A Scn contractor I know had a problem with porn. It was on his computer and caused his wife to divorce him. After the divorce she gets a call from him from jail saying come down and bail him out and never tell his parents. Turns out he was picked up in a kiddie porn sting. He made a date to meet a 14 year old who turned out to be a cop. So that guy goes unpunished by Scn. They never declared him over that. Yet you and I and all the posters here, keep our noses clean, and yet we are declared an SP and excommunicated from the church. The reason? We read Mike’s blog and went looking into the church. So child molester is fine with the church and self determined thinker is an SP. This is how bad it is.
Ron completely manipulated our human value system. There are so many stories of sexual abuse and Scientology looks the other way.
That manipulation of human values is what causes this moral distortion.
Like Ron said:
“I am not interested in wog morality” and “we are not moralists”
So there it is. He actually told us. The Altitude we gave him, which he implanted by design overrides “wog morality”.
Brian, another brilliant essay on your part. I think that this attitude goes back to the beginning, to Dianetics. He started off pretty tame, but as time went on, he grew more bolder. However, with this question, you could say that he knew his weak spots and knew how to defend them…
WHAT IF the declarations about sexual aberration and the weirder statements regarding women attempting abortions on themselves contained in Dianetics and Science Of Survival were ways to deflect criticism from L. Fraud in case stuff about his past leaked out?
Think about it from this perspective: Dianetics came out three years after the first Kinsey Report. Kinsey, Pomeroy, etc., statistically showed that certain sexual behaviors in the human male that most “good-thinking” people regarded as rare and truly abhorrent “crimes against nature” and “crimes whose names cannot be mentioned” were a lot more common than you think (and maybe more common than that; nearly half of men who grew up in a rural environment ADMITTED to Kinsey that they had sex with animals; how many were too embarrassed to admit it?). Sexual deviance was a hot topic at the time. Then along comes Hubbard and says that, yes, that behavior is very deviant indeed, and that behavior can be damaging in terms of creating engrams. Good old Ron, defender of the heteronormative, monogamous man-on-top status quo.
What would have happened in 1950 or 1951 if some enterprising reporter had found out that Ron’s second marriage (you know, the one that never happened) was bigamous? What would have happened if they found out that he’d effectively abandoned Polly? What would have happened if they’d found out about what was going on with Jack Parsons and the whole sex-magick thing? What would have happened if they’d tweaked on to the fact that he almost certainly had sex with Jack Parsons? I won’t even get into someone finding out about the Affirmations.
We have a bit of an indication of what might have happened. The press made hash of him when the divorce from Sara went public. But by that time, he’d already made a fool of himself with the public “display” of a Clear’s ability and the Dianetics fad had pretty much died. Impact was therefore minimal. He weathered that and still had his core believers, his friends and the people who attended the Sillydelphia Dictator Course. And the divorce and Sara were forgotten when Scientology started to become popular and hip again in the mid-60s.
But all of those statements in the early works regarding sexual deviancy provided him with a shield. You can see it when Exes are exposed to Russell Miller or to the Affirmations for the first time. You get one of two reactions: total anger, or complete cognitive dissonance followed by ways to discredit the message or messenger.
The bastard followed a master plan from the beginning: whitewash himself so that he becomes unassailable, then make himself beyond criticism or analysis, made easier by the whitewash job. In other words, Brian, he was more evil than you think.
Brian- great article. The two words that he re-defined, reasonable and open-minded, drove me crazy and I could never wrap my head around it, glad you brought this up and explained eloquently. This essay is truly food for thought. And after being “in” for so long I still have a lot to confront and digest. I’m here every day to “blow charge”, there are layers of onion peel coming off daily. It takes awhile to admit that the man was diabolical.
For those UTR’s that are newly here please don’t ridge on this article or others. Read, take it in, mull it over, digest. Take your time swallowing that hard pill that the rest of us eventually did.
Thank you for this article.
To Ms. P–so glad you brought up how hard it is after being in so long. Yes, there is much to confront and digest. I’m glad you are getting some relief coming here as have I.
What really popped for me was NO SELF AUDITING! Excellent point on how it made us so dependent on Scientology.
That really hit me at my core.
After all the years, time and money, I now find myself completely isolated. This is the harsh truth…just realized in the last few weeks/months since my final exit.
Scientology is like an evil version of the kid’s game, “Mother May I?”
Everything I did was controlled; what I did for work; whom I talked to; friends, family– marital problems and of course, money.
I wasn’t even “allowed” unless I went through costly cycles and ethics — to break up with my 2D (we weren’t married then) despite the considerable turmoil and abuse I endured. Endless confessionals were demanded of me to handle MY overts… As per L Con, “The only reason a person leaves is because of their own overts..”
Exception to self auditing is introverting while writing OW’s… One can never do this enough!!! WTF???
My chosen career was unacceptable because the profession did not pay as well as other lines of work–and that came at great cost. I worked a higher paying job that I hated, I wore the same cheap shoes to work each day for years so that my spouse and me could give C O $ more money. Now, I am paying for that with orthopedic problems directly related to this and may need surgery.
The sad part is that none of my Scientology “friends” will speak to me after I spoke out against some criminal activity.
I do not mourn the loss of the “fair weather friends.” I’d rather die broke and alone than be part of a cult that worships money and status, and others who feel that way… When things aren’t going so well–or when one dares to think for oneself, it’s amazing how quickly such people vanish.
What a vicious cult. But weren’t we all brainwashed right from the start not to have compassion and to treat with disdain anyone having difficulty (unless it’s a PR opportunity or potential raw meat)?
I think back to all the lies I told my family and never-ins and the cover-ups I acquiesced in order to “Protect The almighty Cherch” and spare it the BLACK PR!!!!)
That was the worst feeling of all.
However, I do take a considerable amount of pleasure from making my final exit.
May all the black PR — AKA TRUTH — rain down on this life destroying cult and may it pull in all the “motivators” it so richly deserves.
End of rant.
I’m re-posting something I read elsewhere that went something like this: Two freedoms in the United States are: Freedom of Religion and Freedom of speech. $cientology represents neither.
Thank you TitleWaves for your post. I don’t see it as a rant. I see it as freedom of speech and courage to express. Welcome! Please feel free to post anytime.
The great thing about friends: there are always new ones to be had. I wish you the best and hope your healing is swift and total.
TitleWaves – your comment hit me to the core and brought tears to my eyes. “I do not mourn the loss of the “fair weather friends.” I’d rather die broke and alone than be part of a cult that worships money and status, and others who feel that way… “, this says it all, you have integrity and are true to yourself. How great that you (and I and others here) have found your way out. Take solace that you have family and friends that were ‘never-in’.
Thanks for the hard-hitting and thought-provoking essay, Brian.
If all that is so, then $cientology is very clearly a bogus and destructive set of beliefs and practices, from start to finish, that no amount of well-intended, altruistically-oriented individuals could ever hope to change or reform because it’s rotten to its very core.
Indeed, getting honest, sincere and well-meaning folks to unwittingly front for its evil just served to camouflage the cult’s essential nature and sucker new marks into the con. This was exactly how I got seduced into the cult, by listening to the sincere and well-intended folks who just wanted to spread the Good News of $cn as they’d experienced it, so others could benefit as they had from the lower level materials which Elron mostly stole from others.
Thankfully, the massive amount of felony crime and human/civil rights abuses that the cherch has been perpetrating for over a half century are now being disclosed in every imaginable venue, forum and medium. I just can’t imagine how that trend of easy access and free flow of information concerning the cult is going to do anything but continue on in that same direction, until the cult collapses under the weight of its own lies and evil behavior.
Is reform possible? It sure doesn’t seem so, at least in terms of the possibility of change being catalyzed by those who are current members in good standing. But if change were to be brought about through external means, then reform of the cherch and the preservation of any of its methods and practices is not going to be the goal of that approach.
That leaves the cause of $cn reform to be led by Indie $cilons, who still believe – to whatever varying degrees – in the efficacy of Elron’s tech. However, that tiny group, comprised almost entirely of aging ex-cherch members, doesn’t seem large enough or energetic enough to spark a true reform movement within the corporate cherch or to create an alternative sect.
I’ve been inviting the few Indie folks who contribute to this blog to weigh-in on how $cn could be reformed in a way that would preserve what they deem is workable and of value, but no one seems to have any sort of comprehensive plan or systematically organized thoughts on the subject. Perhaps these hunted heretics are just keeping it all on the down low, in order to avoid the wrath of lil davey, but I sure don’t see any other prospect for the future of $cn than complete collapse and dissolution, based on the karma that this killer cult has so completely earned for itself….and that end just can’t come soon enough for me!
Harpoona, some folks have really tried to make a reformed Scientology work.
The old Ron’s Orgs, the Millennium 2 folks, Dave Mayo’s group, even the rogue org in Israel have tried to make something of it.
But I think it is too splintered and fractured by the many rewrites that Hubbard had to do when stuff was falling apart. Without the Hubs as a Hub, making up new stuff whenever the old stuff starts to smell, it gets rancid pretty fast.
You can say, for example, that the reformer group is only going to use the pure, real, tested stuff. But which version? The Clearing Course from the 60s and skip all the higher levels? Or something from the 50s? If you stick with “The Creation of Human Ability” you don’t need the meter, quite an advantage, but I don’t know anyone who has actually struggled through that mess successfully. Just straight Book One, like the Nation of Islam? But they are starting to do other methods too. Book One by itself all the way to Clear is a really rough grind. Doesn’t work! That is why it was abandoned in the 50s!
Without someone at least as totalitarian and ruthless as Hubbard, and with far more imagination than Dave, there is no hope of reforming Scientology. If there were someone like that they would not be fooling around with a discredited out-dated old “New Age” relic. They’d be making up their own stuff!
So be it. Full Darwin, survival of the fittest. At least there are a lot of caring folks around to help pick up the pieces when it goes fully bust.
Why try to salvage anything that Hubbard dreamed up in his twisted little piggish brain.
If anything, his legacy is only one thing: the history of scientology is a warning of how good, but gullible, people can be consumed and destroyed by the mind behind an organized fictional religion.
Scientology, as history will undoubtedly record, is a cautionary tale.
Salvaging Scientology would require an extensive and time consuming analysis to identify the workable parts & their sources, to identify the control mechanisms and to identify the useless stuff made up by Hubbard. I’d rather direct my efforts at finding another path not born of deception and not so full of land mines.
Hubbard needed some workable stuff to bait the trap so he found some and appropriated it. He collected the work of others, put his on brand on it, added his control mechanisms and then sold it.
I benefited from some Scientology tech, especially the Grades and NED, but only now that I am free from it have I truly benefited.
For me it’s almost impossible to understand someone like Hubbard who would expend so much effort to construct such an elaborate ruse to serve his own twisted purposes. However, it is possible to understand the value of Scientology as a whole from the outcomes Hubbard achieved for himself: power & control over others; the devotion & adulation of his followers; wealth; lastly, isolation and a lonely death.
Brian, this post made me think. With each “what if,” I thought about when I learned that “truth” while I was studying.
I got in when I just turned 18 before College. The college I never ended up going to.
It’s true and I’m glad you mentioned the word reasonableness, losing the real definition of being reasonable, and taking on the new definition which didn’t allow for taking a look really worked for me.
I dismissed logical thought that was not pro Scientology, I dismissed people who tried to get me to take a look at at an alternative view to my fixed ideas about the church at various times during my Scientology career.
In that, what if, alone I see a huge swath of my thoughtfulness chopped down by the ax of redefining words.
Your what-ifs, define so many of the Crux points of my scientology learning, that shut off my ability to think rationally.
This is a wowser of a post Brian. I thank you for it. I will be reading this one more than once.
Agreed! My universe did some shifting with every what-if!
Spot on Brian. And what if he warned us right from the start? “What is true is what you have observed for yourself… and when you lose that you have lost everything.”
Bravo Brian. If only they were allowed to think for themselves…..or was the word “freedom”, as in the Bridge to Total Freedom, also redefined by Ron to mean something entirely different than the “wog definition”? Has a devout Scientologist ever explained what their definition of the word “freedom” is?
You know what’s more indicative? A Scientologist would define “freedom” as “freedom” FROM things. Freedom from insanity, freedom from amnesia on the Whole Track, freedom from the Reactive Mind, etc. It’s never “freedom OF” things. Those things, Scientologists are not allowed, like freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
How about freedom to surf the internet and expose oneself to writings critical of scientology?
If scientologists can not expose themselves to real critics, then they are simply cowards, or a collective group of absurd ostriches with their heads in the sand (like the zombified seaorg members running willy-nilly to waste-of-time classes and worthless sessions that accomplish absolutely nothing).
Oh boy! Settle down with this type of over thinking is my advice on this line of analyzing. It may be OK for some but not so for others to delve too deeply into claiming someone or something epitomizes evil to such an extent. We have enough radicals running around cleansing the world. Seeds are very easy to plant where imagination becomes ‘facts’, especially when revenge and the not so bright or uneducated mind gets mixed into the equation. The human mind does crave solutions for its woes. Attempting to find sanity where it can’t be found produces never ending solutions.
Scientology delves into many if not all just about all aspects of possible mind manipulation. The evidence of that is somewhat astounding. So many intelligent people hoodwinked for decades… WOW!
I think I will sit on the sidelines on this one, far too many “what ifs” for my taste. Good luck with it though, but it’s can of worms, meet opener!
Not exactly sure what your specific concerns are here, or who the “some” and “others” that you refer to actually are?
True evil is very difficult to confront for the simple reason that it is so different from who the vast majority of us are in our essential natures that it’s very very difficult to relate to. We mostly just bounce off of it; fail to identify it for what it truly is; confuse it with just being misguided, or in some other way, just fail to get it for what it truly is.
Brian is talking about true evil here and making the case that $cn epitomizes it, based on the intent that its creator instilled in it from its inception. That’s a very strong claim and, as such, comes with a high bar of proof. For me, that bar has been reached, but I’m always interested in hearing well-reasoned counter-arguments.
Harpoona: You’re right. Evil is a bitch to confront. It’s hard to imagine another human being acting so contrary to those societal values and morals on which we’ve all been raised.
You raise a good question: If LRH was evil, is Scientology evil? Certain elements of the church absolutely are. Including its present leader. Is everyone else connected to the church evil? A few, for sure. Most are simply deluded and drunk–which isn’t to say they should be excused for condoning and implementing evil policy.
If Scientology isn’t truly evil and intent on destroying the world, it’s at least unhealthy and corrupt. In either case, I would advise one seek other avenues for their spiritual growth.
Terra, you make such an excellent point. Someone once asked me how I ended up,with my ex husband. My unthought-out response was “my parents spent my entire childhood warning me about evil but protecting me from ever seeing it so I didn’t recognize it.” I actually clapped my hand over my mouth after I said that and started crying.
Evil doesn’t present itself the way movies show it. It’s the smiling gent on the corner shaking your hand while picking your pocket. When you discover your wallet missing, the smiling gent is the last person you expect. That’s what makes a person truly evil, they do not seem to be so at all.
Yep.
Well said Valerie.
I’d like to contribute my definition of evil that learned from others:
Evil is that which causes suffering. Simple.
In the Scientology experience there were wonderful times with friends, great auditing sessions, great realizations looking up words etc.
Those were times when Scientology was good because it produced good.
Then there is Ron’s madness. Ron’s moral depravity and greed which led him to create some evil doctrines that cause suffering and are, as the yogis and buddhists say: adarma. The a before dharma means not or against the dharma. The dharma being cosmic law. Laws of gravity, laws of subatomic particles and the laws that govern and inspire the actions of men to be aligned with laws of action: karma
Thus we have spiritual injunctions that all religions have in common. The dos and donts.
Because Ron was amoral and adharmic, his actions were governed by the lower animal nature. He was a liar, greedy, arrogant, untrustworthy etc etc. That lower nature created the doctrines that bring suffering.
A child away from its mother because of disconnect; that is evil
What happen to Karen and her son Alexander; that was evil
That boy in the chain locker, Paulette Cooper etc etc etc.
My view at this point is the bad over shadows the good. Some people may want to fix it. But remember, your guru will always be known as a loon. That’s just the way it is.
TC this is a case where the evil is in the result and intention. Scientology as it’s suppose to be practiced can help people survive better in the short term. Since it is a parasite fallacious organization it will ultimately lead people toward a path of entrapment and stupidity, narcissism and seclusion. Hubbard never intended to help anyone but himself. He did love the adulation that came from making people believe they were being helped. He created an organization where the help factor was way below 50%. By Hubbards own standards this was an evil technology.
Bk: Even now I wonder if LRH didn’t think he was helping people…at least some of the time. He was a complex, Jekel and Hyde individual. Of course this doesn’t excuse his bouts of craziness and the harm he inflicted on those connected to him.
I agree Terra, no one is absolutely evil or absolutely good. According to where we are in our evolution of intelligence, we are a combination. Ron’s lack of moral and spiritual intelligence; ignorance, is the root cause of his condition. Just like all of us.
Because he was amoral, adharmic; he played on the dark side for personal gain. He went further down the rabbit hole of darkness than most normal people.
In the east, the masters say that beneath all of this good and bad is the soul. The soul is stainless. But the characteristics which we darn through action and free will surround us with good and bad qualities.
On a balance scale we have up and down (good and evil) and the most important part of the scale: the fulcrum (the prime mover unmoved, the changeless spirit)
Good and evil are conditions. Always in flux. The conditions of the soul are love, joy, peace, humility, service to others with no thought of return, knowledge of our incorporeal nature, happiness, wisdom, intuitional insight etc etc.
In that regard Ron was very unaware spiritually. Ron’s understanding of spirituality was power. Ron was very ignorant regarding spirituality.
Harpoona said: “That’s a very strong claim and, as such, comes with a high bar of proof. For me, that bar has been reached…”
Took me a lot of years and back and forth communication about it, shedding of my “rightness” and “fixed ideas” and that bar has been reached for me too. It’s a hard pill to swallow.
Having someone trying to kill you in the street for no other reason than just being there is true evil too. I’ve experienced that but I don’t go into introverting “what if” rhetoric trying to explain it to myself. As a Scientology supervisor I was dumbfounded quite often by the interpretation some people had of what they read. I was also an instructor in the military too and quite often had to go to incredible lengths to make sure something is understood from a practical viewpoint, not just someone telling you, “yeah, I got that!” Let alone delving into someone’s philosophical opinions and beliefs (imo more often than not most people don’t know what they truly believe anyway).
What Brian says is more or less true but “what ifs,” in my experience have no end, it’s a dangerous way to start interpreting things that have already happened. Intelligence or lack of it is not a governing factor imo in interpreting “what ifs,” but Scientology DOES operates as a scam – fact! It cons people out of their money and livelihood. Hubbard had no control over himself anyway as it turns out. He just went with his own “flow of personality,” irrelevant of what he professed, wrote or spoke about. As far as I’m concerned he knew he was a flim flam man.
When you say, “what it is truly is…” does that also take into consideration corrupt politicians who are also evil and cost people their lives or cops on the “take” etc? Yes Scientology is pure evil to some, a scam to others and heaven on stick to robots. It doesn’t take much research into history to find evil masquerading as religion. How many civilizations went nutty because of the Christian missionary invasion or the Jesuits fascination of native people.
I’m just keeping my distance from getting too involved in this one. There’s plenty of evil around if one wants to really look for it. It can be found in most organisations that have been around for any length of time, especially money motivated ones like big pharmacy, arms supply and even merchant banking.
My use of “some and others…” well, I’ve learnt from life that to assume what someone else thinks or should think works out more often than not to be an error in judgement on my behalf. Thank God for the social niceties of life!
The rhetorical stance is a very well-established stylistic approach that is especially effective when you’re trying to pose things as possibilities to consider, rather than as direct assertions, for folks like the many fence sitters and half-way out folks who read the blog, but don’t post here. These folks are very much a target audience of mine and, I’d bet, of Brian’s as well.
” Intelligence or lack of it is not a governing factor imo in interpreting “what ifs,” but Scientology DOES operates as a scam – fact! It cons people out of their money and livelihood.”
Of course it does; you and I need no further convincing of that. But if your purpose in writing is not so much to preach to the choir in order to garner praise, but instead, is to get folks to think who may not have done so in awhile, then framing the doubts and concerns that coming-out-of the-trance folks very often have as explicit questions is an excellent rhetorical method of engagement, imo.
“When you say, “what it is truly is…” does that also take into consideration corrupt politicians who are also evil and cost people their lives or cops on the “take” etc?”
Sure, there’s certainly a broad continuum of evil, but I’m talking very specifically about the particular type of evil that $cn is. Many folks think believe that whatever evil that the cherch has become, it’s all of DM’s making, but that’s just not so; Brian and a whole host of others here have been arguing that the evil which is at the dark heart of this killer cult began with Elron.
” Yes Scientology is pure evil to some, a scam to others and heaven on stick to robots.”
Nope, it’s an evil scam, through and through…some folks just experience it to different depths of involvement. Mercifully, many don’t have the full measure of its evil visited upon them.
I don’t have any problems with you seeing Scientology as evil from the very birth of Hubbard if that’s what you want to say or get others to believe is the truth. I’ve been around the block a few times now and don’t buy “ultimatums of thought,” from any seller or source anymore.
I know I was ripped off and conned with Scientology, that’s all I need to know now and I have other things to do than garish praise by catering to a “hate all of Scientology” scenario because of…
The fact I still have family in that cult and see my wife suffer because of it pisses me off though. I can be a most unfriendly fellow if rubbed the wrong way. I’m a bit too old now but can still be dangerous if motivated.
I see corruption as sort of like a social disease with stages of severity. Scientology is a social disease that fits in with a lot other efforts of despots and the insane who happen to be in power over others and wish to do them harm. But, if I can help someone out who’s mystified with Scientology I will give my opinion per my perspective and experience with it. I guess there’s many things I’m not happy about with what I see occurring in the world today, there’s lots of evil things brewing. Scientology is mercifully on its way out, of that I am grateful. Categorizing and grading the intentions behind the creation of Scientology is developing along similar lines of investigating episodes of Fascism coming into & out of power wherever it occurs imo, except with the twist of religious camouflage Scientology hides behind.
Categorizing Scientology into sections or as a generality of evil based on this issue of “what if,” I will leave to others. I’m not saying it’s bad or wrong to do so, it’s just not the way I want to conduct or convey my thoughts or experiences within the cult. I won’t give Scientology the satisfaction of putting itself on a pedestal above other evils now that its imploding.
Good luck to you and those that do, I mean it!
I-Yawn, you’ve lost more to the cult than I have, so you’re more than entitled to your informed opinion here.
What some who contribute here on a regular basis don’t seem to understand is that a lot of what I and quite a few others post here is primarily targeted to reach those who read this blog, but never post here.
I’m not so much trying to convince Marildi or My2cents to put down the Kool-aid for good and “just say no,” as I am trying to expose the cult for what it truly is and has always been in an effort to educate and engage those who are still in the cult , but beginning to come out of their group hypnotic trance and reclaim their right to think for themselves and question the voice of bogus authority.
Doing so over and over, and through a variety of different ways is necessary because new folks are finding their way here every single day and breaking out of that Ronbot trance takes time and proceeds incrementally.
Deconstructing the difference between what Elron said and how things actually work in $cn is a big part of that effort…and it’s one that I’m not about to quit until $cn quits being evil. Join us if you like, or stay on the sidelines, it’s your free choice to make.
I’ve been deconstructing Scientology for over 20 years and in doing that I’ve done a fair amount of construction with it as well, it just sort of “fell out of bag,” in a practical sense. I don’t abide by it’s all evil. I find a number of my life experiences with it useful and try hard not to hate anything too much, it clouds judgement and ruins other emotions.
I find the print media a bitch to try to communicate with at times. A lot gets left out/behind or misinterpreted etc. If you are on such a mission as you state you’ll have your work cut out for you, but good luck to you. There’s a lot of call for your sort of input into the debacle know as Scientology.
Trying to apply or relate truth as a “static” within the realms of addressing a collective of human minds imo is impossible. (Auditing has some value in compassionate hands, but it doesn’t do anything to life outside of the immediate recipient’s life and generally the gains are brief, some are astounding though). Life was never designed to operate that way, nature won’t allow it either. It helps enormously to reassess your own personal, “rules of engagement,” when addressing Hubbard’s/Cof$s claims, take nothing for granted with what they say. I’m not saying those claims are impossible – just not the way it was/is presented by them, nor to the extent of such grandiose Sherman speak magnificence. But a lot of the tools of life are scattered about the place, some of them are well delineated in Scientology if you reverse or work out how to manipulate some of it – good hunting!
Thanks I Yawn for sharing your take. What I have implied here is certainly controversial and maybe even wrong by some people’s view.
This is what got me going on this line of thought:
I just could not get past Ron saying that it is a technical fact, that shows up in reaseach everytime, that all critics of Scientology have criminal pasts. That was one moment for me to ponder.
The other one, which compounded my interest in this line of thinking was when Ron told Mayo that people blew not because of overts but because of ARCxs. And if this got out he would lose control of Scientology.
I put these two together.
With the Mayo revelation Ron revealed that he was willing to use the tech to lie and control. With no sympathy for those poor souls trying to find evil in themselves.
This one fact is incredibly cruel. Ron would rather pcs ripping their souls apart than loosing control. This event reveals that Ron cared more for control than pc mental health.
Ron uses Scientology here for pay ops.
When he said that all critics have criminal pasts it hit me: here is another manipulating deviant doctrine that is unquestionably absurd. I believe that Ron did not believe that, just like he did not believe that people blew from overts but from ARCxs.
So now I believe that Ron is useing the tech to control.
Why would he say that ALL CRITICS HAVE CRIMINAL PASTS? To solve that for myself I asked myself,” what is the result of this doctrine?”.
The result is that Ron would never be scrutinized. Why would Ron hate being scrutinized? Needing all critics to be associated with criminality.
The logical answer for me is that he does not want to be found out. We know that he was a congenital liar.
My conclusion:
He created this doctrine to keep his lies hidden. Just like he created the doctrine that people blow from OWs. To control.
What do liars do? They hide. Ron controlled and suppressed the flow of information to Scientologists by declaring all critics criminals.
That is the outcome, so it must have been his intention. That’s my experience.
And when I felt confident that Ron was using a form of propaganda and mind control I came up with these other “what ifs”.
I know it sounds to fantastic to be true on some level. But I believe his deviance is what is hard to see because he was so good at manipulating values and meanings for his selfish desires.
The person we all knew as Ron, was not Ron at all.He was a manufactured and talented manipulation of media who would rather pcs ripping their hearts out to find evil in themselves than be found out as a fraud.
This is now my understanding of Ron.
Very good explanation of your train of thought Brain, tku. I too mentally stumbled and fell over with Hubbard’s contradictions. When I picked myself up I was stunned, still am to some degree that I could be so had, and it’s been years on now. On just using Hubbard’s stated simplicity of “absolutes are unobtainable” – it pulls Hubbard’s actions and behavior apart like a cheap clock. He developed his controlling use of the ‘tech’ as it advanced and it became his parameter of research as he developed it and the money rolled in. He then protected it all with his own personal Navy (that’s the one technology of authority he knew how to apply well). His research imo was based on it being biased toward maintaining power, not freeing people. Yes, he told many lies and personally acted in ways that violated what he insisted others do. He ended up ripping PCs apart and committing fraud, for that there is no forgiveness.
Peace to you wherever you find it.
And peace to you I Yawn.
Spot on Brian. Even while “in”, it amazed me that members could rationalize literally anything to be in alignment with they are supposed to think, that they could be brilliant in some areas but blind about anything related to the church. Excellent explanation.
Brian,
Terrific insights. I don’t think (IMO) Hubbard started out that evil, but he sure as heck did end up that way. Such similar paths that Crowley and Hubbard led, or followed.
Cognition Time: I had always hated that bust of Hubbard. It made me think he was covering up his pocked face. When I opened This page I finally realized what it is about that bust. ……That texture is lizard scales!
Truth in advertising.
Crowley and Hubbard…
The practitioners of “magick”, spelled with a “k” at the end to make them seem more ancient and mystical…. whooOOOoo.
What a pair of assholes.
Brian, some of the never-ins might need some more information to see how this works. Or maybe not, but just in case:
Hubbard talks about the “suppressive person”. His way of saying anti-social personality. He is simply parroting other authors here, and you can look up the characteristics of an anti-social personality in psychology texts. He got quite a few parts wrong, and his explanations of why there are suppressive persons and how to “handle” them are 100% bogus.
You can’t “correct” or cure or recover an anti-social person. They don’t think anything is wrong with them and thus don’t respond well to therapy.
But anyway, Hubbard did say to avoid such people and this is probably good advice in general.
But then he threw in a major league one hundred mile an hour curve ball. He said that anybody who doesn’t like Scientology, or him, were “suppressive persons”. He invented a complex procedure to detect enemies, concocted “justice” systems to root them out and get them out of the organizations.
Ironically he warned against “witch hunts” for suppressives, and then launched some of the most extensive witch hunts ever known.
So this is how Hubbard redefined “reasonableness” as “suppressive reasonableness”, a charge resulting in expulsion from Scientology and disconnection from your family. It is “suppressive to be reasonable” because anything less than an unreasoning over-the-ramparts full out attack is evidence of treason. To L Ron Hubbard.
Questions, requests for research records, requests for clarification, talking to your friends about it, minor doubts, requests for leaves of absence, friendships with folks outside of Scientology, these are all evidence of less than unswerving steely eyed dedication to the cause. Evidence of “suppressive tendencies”. To L Ron Hubbard.
I once wrote in a letter that I had “done research and found out that Ron was right” about a minor point. He ordered me to be “Plant Checked” (process to find out if I was hypnotized with pain and drugs to become a “Manchurian Candidate” and sent in to destroy Hubbard) and “Rolled Back” (process to find out who might have influenced me to do suppressive acts). No research allowed in Scientology.
It takes a special kind of malignant narcissism to label every sort of disagreement and doubt in your associates as treason, deserving of the most extreme punishments. It takes a true anti-social personality to condemn all your relatives (except maybe Diana) and estrange all but a fanatic few of your associates.
But it sure suppresses any dissent or critical thinking in your followers. Like Brian I think that is the basic purpose of all these frantic attempts to label critics as criminals. To deflect any criticism. The logical basis of Scientology is so flimsy and fabricated so badly that he literally could not tolerate any slightest deviation in his acolytes. It would all fall apart in a moment.
L Ron Hubbard, pot meet kettle. “The overt [sin] doth speak loudly in accusation” (the way Hubbard described the psychological phenomenon called “projection”, where you accuse others of your crimes). To Hubbard it was “my way or the highway”. Most who got involved have ended up taking the highway.
Just to be clear, everyone who reads this blog, or anything else critical of Scientology on the web, or who has a negative opinion of Scientology, or who has spoken out against abuses, is counted as a “suppressive person”. You may not have received an official notification as I have. but that is just a formality. It is this re-definition of the anti-social personality that tears up families and companies.
Bruce, wow. So you told them you did research and found out Ron was right…..and the crime was that you actually researched in the first place? Amazing. I suppose they only want you to obey without question. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what this “total freedom” is that they so desperately seek.
Total freedom from any need to think, speak or create.
Freedom to serve. To give all for the greater good! To be part of something so much greater than yourself that you are lost in it utterly and have no self!
Wasn’t there a story about that, “To Serve Man” or something?
Just as George Orwell explained so well, Freedom is Slavery, War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. and do not listen to the “Fake News”, we have always been at war with Eurasia!
Mick, I couldn’t even tell you what it meant. All I knew was that the “Bridge to Total Freedom” had these steps on it and somewhere down the line (at the end maybe?) you’re supposed to have total freedom, whatever that is. Of course, with my vivid imagination, I envisioned total freedom like some fantasy fairy tale lala land. But, you always had to have to next step to get there. And what a way to keep you sucked in, when there are steps that aren’t even released yet; the perfect excuse for why you need the next step and the next and the next, ad infinitum.
My fantasy of total freedom came tumbling down when I saw how staff members in Ventura lived a communal lifestyle, leaving their kids with illiterate (and probably illegal, since they were paid so little) nannies from morning til midnight, at least, how literally everything was about making money and how the “executives” would say the nastiest and meanest things about the very people who gave them money and even about each other. After 12 years, that was the straw that broke my fantasy camel’s back.
You nailed it, Bruce. Thank you!
“The logical basis of Scientology is so flimsy and fabricated so badly” … yep, you summed it up nicely Bruce.
It is a house of brittle old cards from a vegas porno deck printed in 1953… yellowed, vulgar, and ugly… and all coming down with one breath of truth.
Bruce, great post! Thanks to all for an insightful discussion.
Exactly, Bruce. 100%
WHAT IF:
The gates were opened & members given an actual CHOICE to STAY or LEAVE with NO THREAT of Disconnection…..or any other threat……
Now THAT is a huge WHAT IF….
the thing you must remember is this: most of the IN are IN by choice and wouldn’t walk through any door to leave even without threat of disconnection. Disconnection is NOT what is keeping them in.
When you believe, you BELIEVE. (except you think it’s “knowing”) LRH is 100% correct, this is the road out, and the rest is noise. Staff upheaval, an injustice, a bad result, out-PR in the media, another celeb blown, (overts and MUs) GAT I – (seems fishy) GAT II (more fishy, didn’t we already do this?) … where are the execs at the big events? Where’d everyone go? … all of this… doesn’t budge the IN.
They have decades of little wins in auditing, the ARC triangle and Problems of Work and all the other little bits of LRH Tek that really DO prove! and Show! that LRH was Mankind’s Greatest Friend. The description of OT and Eternity are embedded DEEPLY.
The desire to have it all be true is powerful.
If we have any doubt about the power of the wish for answers and everlasting eternity… just take another look at Christianity, Heaven and Hell. People have been buying hope for a long time.
………
to me… disconnection is what keeps the Newly Awakened (like me) under the radar.
That’s it.
I am sure there ARE SOME who would definitely TAKE the option of leaving if given the chance….YES, many FEAR the unknown outside world, with no money, no education, no job, no place to live AND leaving family behind who won’t leave with them, yet I DO think there would be those who WOULD leave.
Superb comment, secretfornow. Glad to hear you’re UTR! I wish you all the best.
And I see what you’re saying; its not only fear of disconnection. They really, really, don’t want to give up that dream.
Agreed, secretfornow. Even many who are out think this same way and blame everything bad on DM.
I always thought one the more humorous ones that Hubbard came up with was the one about ” The only reason someone leaves is because they have committed a crime against the group”.
A few years ago I received a call from someone at flag asking me if I did something to the church as my reason for leaving.
LOL Doug Sprinkle! I see that tactic worked very well for them…
An excellent and accurate analysis if you ask me.
Hi Brian,
Provocative article.
I now rarely give Hubbard any credit for basic mental ability. I think
he was average. But I do now think that he was a master thief. In fact,
this man was one of the least ethical men in history.
Point blank he needed to say at the beginning of Scientology that he based
his thoughts, feelings, conclusions and attitude on Occult sources. Hubbard
copied the basic frameworks of Crowley and Blavatsky and a few others. He was
able to attract a lot of Catholics such as myself who were totally shielded
from the Occult. I think his evil was justified by a deep conviction that he
had discovered some alternative to current life.
There is very little, if anything, that is truly original in Scientology. Even the
basis of the L’s and other auditing can be found in esoteric Hinduism.
Hubbard tried to steal the idea of eternity. He tried to control that factor in
the minds of his subjects. in that sense, I agree with your ideas about his evil
nature. IMO, Hubbard was egotheistic. He thought he was God. Hubbard
was a perfect example of how a mind can get messed up but still function in
the world. His insanity was restricted to his ego.
Nice post. It made me think
Is there something I can look up that would inform me about the Ls? I did L11. There was some interesting phenomena in the first process I have no explanation for.
Google is your friend. type in —Scientology “Ls”— and pick from numerous references.
Sure I can find dozens of links. What I’m particularly interested in was this claim. “Even the
basis of the L’s and other auditing can be found in esoteric Hinduism.”
I find it rather suspect that claims of all kinds are made without giving any source for them – and then they get passed on.
The great leader of this group, Sn, was a narcissist. If you read about a narcissist, all the things mentioned above will fall under the description.
The people following the narcissist or just pawns for him to use, lie to, cheat, and betray.
Elaborate schemes are developed to keep people following the narcissist by the narcissist.
Very intelligent people will fall prey to a narcissist.
What If Ron kidnapped the baby of a woman he had abused, took it to Cuba and threatened to cut it up into pieces and throw it in the ocean unless she agreed to not go public about his criminal activities?
That’s not a What If. There’s no speculation about that. He did it.
Espi, that was for the “benefit” of a Ronbot who, a couple days ago, said Ron was just short of being a Saint…
Great article Brian. I’d like to make a point here. People who tend to demonize David Miscavige while praising LRH do not get the fundamental difference:
LRH created the entirety of scientology out of whole cloth and beliefs stolen from others. Because he was the person who dreamed it up, whenever he needed more money, all he had to do was dream up a new level, a new course and claim he had “discovered something in his research”. Because people had already bought into the basic lie, it was easy to feed them the next one.
LRH saddled any successor with a fundamental problem when he died. He had mandated that his work was the only truth and nothing could be altered, and that was part of the lie that kept scientology going.
In order to keep people reaching for the carrot David Miscavige is stuck with the body of work that existed when he wrested the reins of scientology out of the hands of others. He now has to “discover transcription errors” or other silly things order to keep the people interested, which is why he had to create the IAS and the Ideal Org program.
At some point, the entire mind f*** created by LRH is doomed to fail because people will tend to look behind the curtain and see the flaws because there are no new levels being thrown out to keep them distracted, just the same old same old being continually rehashed.
This does not make Miscavige good, he is a narcissistic sociopath, the perfect person to have wrested the reins of the con that LRH created. It only points out that Miscavige failed to see that he stole a con that was doomed to fail, so his ego outweighed his prescience.
Yup, Scientology is riding on the backs of a few true believers with money, talent or time to give in exchange for a utopian dream that is doomed to failure.
But then, you can’t blame them, in a way, because this dream has been dreamed by good people for ages. It is an ancient dream, a good one, beautiful, born out of the finest instincts of people. That the cherch uses it as a hook to manipulate and bleed money is the crime, not the dream itself, I think.
Wow- I’ve been having the same thoughts. Thanks for sharing this You expressed it beautifully.
One of THE best posts I’ve ever read! Brian, thank you so very much for posting this. And it’s all true. I got a shiver reading it. Hubbard was truly evil.
🙂 thank you surfer dude!! And thank you for your comic relief. I truly appreciate it:-)?
Here’s a beer ??
Cheers, lad!
The amazing thing is how the tech requires the willing complicity of the victim to do two essential things: Close their mind and open their wallet. The rest is flotsam and detritus.
Ah, first to comment. This is absolutely brilliant, Brian. Especially if his intentions were truly aimed at the young. It takes several decades before most minds have developed a widespread view of the world and, during that time. young minds are wide open and seeking greater wisdom. Enter the man for whom ALL wisdom could only come from HIM. I actually never got fully caught as I was very well into my life before even hearing of scio or dn. Just as well. I was able to pick out the things which were true from my own experience in life, business, love, friendship, et al.
I specifically remember my OT 3 cognition: ” Jesus! I’m running RON’S CASE!!!! Dial wide F/N which lasted for WEEKS! LOL (That’s not what I told the Examiner, of course! And can’t recally how I slipped through on my “success” story. But since mos success stories are pretty vague anyway….
Well done on this particular subject. Excellent expanded thinking!
“Especially if his intentions were truly aimed at the young. It takes several decades before most minds have developed a widespread view of the world and, during that time. young minds are wide open and seeking greater wisdom. Enter the man for whom ALL wisdom could only come from HIM.”
Exactly what my therapist said… our thoughts and impressions are still forming even into one’s 20s.
Well, this is anecdotal, but i walked away from the religion in which I was brought up when I was 14. One Sunday morning I just refused to go anymore. I didn’t say why, just that I was done with it. And that was accepted by those in charge of me at the time. But then, I was brought up differently from many people.
Aquamarine, I did the same when I was about 14. Raised Catholic, my very Catholic mother tried to coerce me into going to Mass by threatening to take away any weekend evenings out with friends or boyfriends. This worked for a bit and then I just stopped going. After nine years of Catholic school and seeing racism, bias, deceit, pride, some severely mentally challenged in class with normies, and even a priest who sang Tom Jones tunes to an all-girl 14 year olds group class while the group’s audible groan could be heard… I was done. Mom finally accepted it and let me go my own way.
I became disenchanted with my then “Lutheran” religion when the synod began to change things around….it wasn’t the religion I had attended for several years. I would occasionally go to Catholic Church in Brooklyn with my Grandmother, but then the Catholic church also made changes, i.e. no more Latin Masses, which had my Grandmother & Great Aunt say “Well, this isn’t Catholic anymore”….
After decades of loyalty to the Catholic Church my Grandmother & Aunt “dropped out”…& once I was in my late 20’s I left the Lutheran religion as well. To this day haven’t found anything I can truly whole heartedly commit to. I am more “spiritual” then religious I would rather be THAT as I have seen the “traditional once a year Catholic” who attend church only on Easter & Christmas, OR those who attend Church Services EVERY Sunday but do NOT live up to being “good people”..
Life is what it is, “To Thine Own Self Be True”…..in case I am not going to be accepted in Heaven, I’ve packed my Marshmallows & Weenies & a long fork for toasting them in Hell’s fire”……Such is LIFE & Death…
Good point Jay R… That one hit home. Thanks.
You’re very welcome, TitleWaves. Glad it helped.
Dave,
WHAT IF you get found out?
Wow! I think I heard someone with a high pitched voice screaming. Wait….there it goes again! How odd….
and the world named Aleistar Crowley the most evil man in the World.???
..that was BEFORE the World had the workings of evil con criminal L Ron Hubbard start his cult.
L Ron Hubbard is one of the most evil man to ever walk the face of the earth – because HE KNEW he was using mind control to hurt people
Very true. And he used the datum people have the lowest confront on evil. He used that to the max to dupe his followers.