-- WHAT IS AND ISN'T TRUE ABOUT SCIENTOLOGY ------------------------------------
This document attempts to confront various things which are wrong with
Scientology. It is not idle natter or an unjustified viscous attack. I believe
in the stated goals of the subject and wish to see them achieved. To some
degree, the subject has become its own worst enemy and this needs to be handled
so that forward progress can be made. It would be wrong of me to simply shoot
without offering something positive as well. For this reason, I ask that anyone
making this document available to others should also include the remaining, more
positively oriented, documents in this series.
WHAT IS: That Hubbard was a self educated intuitive genius capable of great
leaps of inductive logic.
WHAT ISN'T: The supposedly thorough research. It did not happen that way. LRH
assumed that if something worked once, it would work again. He wanted to learn
what he could from it and then go on to something else. Once the early Dianetic
boom petered out, he was generally only teaching small classes of 10 to 20
advanced students and they jumped from one process to the next like jackrabbits.
The techniques of one month were old in the next. The collection and
codification of this material was left to others. Later, when there were
thousands of practitioners, there was no room left for criticism of his words.
He accepted little feedback from the field. In later days, backwards rundowns
would be in use for years before any hint of failure filtered back up to the
top.
WHAT IS: Scientology is a study of the mind and spirit.
WHAT ISN't: Scientology has not really earned its claims of being a science. It
might best be described as an "alchemy" sitting on the border between
superstition and real understanding. Scientology works often but not always.
The discrepancies are forced to fit by "Making it go right" and the failures are
blamed on "out-Ethics" and hidden under the carpet least they blacken the
reputation of the subject and thereby deny freedom to all mankind. This is a
fanatical rather than a scientific approach.
WHAT IS: A science is the work of many individuals, each working independently.
Hopefully there would be a free interchange of ideas but progress can occur even
when this is absent. For example, Edison and Tesla were notorious enemies and
yet the electricity in our homes depends heavily on both of their discoveries
(Edison for the lights and motors and Tesla for the generators and transmission
system).
Progress does not come from committees. Ideas, inventions, techniques, and
discoveries do indeed originate from singular and individual sources. I have
been on software design committees that achieved less than any of the individual
members could have done alone. But this does not mean that everything comes
from one single source.
WHAT ISN't: A complete science has never been originated exclusively by a single
individual. In attempting to deny any possibility of other researchers, Hubbard
has barred the road more thoroughly than any of the closed minds who reject the
very existence of a spirit.
WHAT IS: The original foundations of Dianetics was in regression therapy. Ron
made improvements, but the majority of the valuable enhancements came out in
later years and are the valid product of years of running engrams on people.
WHAT ISN'T: The research line of regression therapy was never followed up
properly by the professionals in psychotherapy. The problem was that regression
therapy will quickly open up past lives. This made it obviously false to anyone
who had the average scientist's anti-religious bias. In modern times, this
prejudice has faded and you will find some psychotherapists practicing
regression therapy, and it is almost always referred to as past life regression
because that is what it inevitably leads to.
I doubt that Ron knew about this "bug" in regression therapy when he was writing
DMSMH (Dianetics the Modern Science of Mental Health). He certainly doesn't
mention it in the book and in his early lectures and taped demonstrations
(1950), he forces the PCs (Preclears) into prenatal incidents as a solution to
the inability to find basic incidents in the current lifetime. These prenatal
incidents almost never show up in modern Dianetics and can safely be discounted
as trivial and unimportant in most cases. This puts the entire Dianetics book
in a bad light as far as any claims to producing real results or having been
researched thoroughly.
Actually it was probably a lucky break for us (except for those who hate the
subject) that he didn't do extensive research before he wrote the popular book
and found himself committed to a supposedly invalidated technique. He opened
his eyes, accepted the past lives, and ran with it.
WHAT IS: Many of the ideas and techniques in Scientology stem from earlier
sources. Ron would say this quite freely in the early days. The Dianetic
breakthrough into past lives (which strips away all the usual BS about everybody
having been Cleopatra that comes up in many mystical circles) provided an
organizing point (a stable datum) around which all the existing data in
metaphysics and philosophy could be aligned. Scientology was originally a
system for separating the wheat from the chaff (see the 1952 lecture
"Scientology: Milestone One").
Ron pulled together stuff out of everything from General Semantics and Magic to
Krishnamurti and the Tibetan materials. He distilled out the essence of what he
saw as true, discarded the old superstitions that were mingled in, and pulled it
together into what he considered to be a cohesive whole. Even as late as 1955
he talked about himself as being the great organizer rather than an originator.
From magic and Crowley he deduces that the one thing they were doing that worked
was to practice clearly visualizing the effect of a spell before trying to cast
it so as to avoid the spell going wrong and backfiring. Ron realized that when
these spells work, it was this visualization and "The Will" which created the
success rather than the mumbo-jumbo rituals. He distills this down to the
mockup processing which is the mainstay of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course and
he refines Crowly's idea of "Will" into a much more clearly defined concept of
"Intention".
Early in this century, self hypnosis and auto-suggestion were in vogue and
according to the unauthorized biographies, Ron jumped on the bandwagon with his
"affirmations". This makes total sense because if you drop out the hypnosis
(which Ron turned his back on fairly early) and evolve the concept into its
highest imaginable form, you find yourself with the Scientology concept of
making postulates. And that's quite a step above positive thinking (which also
evolved out of auto-suggestion).
You'll find the "Yoga of the psychic heat" (see Evan's "Tibetan Yoga and Secret
Doctrines") in a vastly improved form among the Route 1 drills in Creation of
Human Ability and you'll find that the "Meditation on a Breathing Object" is the
forerunner of TR0. But the improvements made are vast and show real brilliance.
He got very good at this over the years.
WHAT ISN'T: The subject of Scientology did not spring out of thin air. Hubbard
didn't come from some advanced Galactic Civilization to teach us poor yokels.
This is a weird idea that has gained popularity on the dumb rumor line within
the subject. Of course he jokingly says that he's not from this planet, but
neither is anybody else according to Scientology theory. He certainly never
says that the subject came from off planet. In fact he says the exact opposite.
The subject evolved. It must continue to evolve.
* * *
WHAT IS: The Mind's Protection. If you read or talk about something, or even if
you engage in consciousness raising techniques or processes, it is nearly
impossible to do any lasting harm. If an idea is too dangerous to the person's
current mental state, he will tune it out, misunderstand it, or simply consider
it to be ridiculous. "They have ears that hear not" is basically a protective
mechanism, and it works. LRH was a strong proponent of this idea.
WHAT ISN'T: The mind's protection does not work in the presence of duress or
high pressure techniques. Brainwashing, hypnotism, and even the implants
(electronic implantation of hypnotic commands as done in advanced space
traveling cultures found in past life incidents) described in the Scientology
literature illustrate this quite clearly.
Sea Org training techniques intentionally bypassed the mind's protection and
made robots. Consider, for example, the early FEBC (Flag Executive Briefing
Course) students studying with poor food and sleep in a dangerous environment
(Ethics etc.) under heavy time and peer pressure with literal minded instructors
and occasional bouts of physical duress ("run around the deck 10 times").
Listening to the course tapes in a reasonable environment, you might actually
learn something from them. But most of the original students came back crazy as
loons and acted like dramatizing psychotics.
Most auditing is light enough in its methods that the mind's protection concept
is effective and keeps you from doing any long term damage. The rule against
evaluating for the PreClear and telling him what to think rules out many of the
potentially dangerous pressures that could be brought to bear. But there are
exceptions. The most notable is listing techniques where the PC gives answers
to a listing question (such as "What do you use to make others wrong") in an
effort to find "The Real Answer". When the PC finds the correct answer, the
auditor gives it back to him indicating that it is the correct answer. The
technique is very powerful and can produce fantastic results. But the auditor
can make a mistake and jam a wrong answer down the PCs throat. The questions
are generally so hot and the answers of such importance that this puts
significant pressure on the PC and the mind's protection idea ceases to work.
Goofing this up can make the PC worse. There was an HCOB (Hubbard Communication
Office Bulletin) to this effect at one time but it dived out of sight and is not
in the Tech Volumes.
WHAT IS: The lower level grades of release can produce marvelous results. The
grades 0 to 4 address communication, problems, overts, upsets, and fixed ideas.
This was probably the cleanest and most thorough research done in the subject.
WHAT ISN'T: These grades were not well planned out and designed. Instead, they
evolved on a hit or miss basis. They began as a hodge-podge of processes that
handled things that Hubbard kept running into while trying to research the areas
that he was really interested in. Eventually he packaged these up into the
grades in 1965. But there were errors and mistaken assumptions and it wasn't
until the 1970s that these were knocked around into a really workable form.
Much of the compilation and even the process commands were put together by
others and apparently not even reviewed by Ron because years later he was
shocked at one of the processes being used (a particular grade 4 technique) and
issued a bulletin saying that it was a dumb idea.
WHAT IS: These grades do work (unless grossly misapplied) to produce a state of
release on the topic addressed so that the person not only feels better about
the specific thing handled but also becomes free of the accumulated weight of
the entire topic. For example, problems are handled until the mass of past
problems that he is still carrying around suddenly falls away and leaves him
much relieved.
WHAT ISN'T: The grade releases are known to be unstable. What was handled
generally remains handled, but the extra effect of being free on the entire
subject (e.g. can make problems vanish at will etc.) is a temporary condition.
The area is not actually erased, it is only "keyed-out". If it later "keys-in"
again, more processing is needed to rehabilitate the release.
WHAT IS: Ron believed that the "reactive mind" underlied the grades of release
and that when it was erased by going clear, the underlying source of these
grades would be gone and they would be automatically erased as a consequence.
WHAT ISN'T: This is obviously incorrect. All auditing sessions begin with
handling any problems, upsets, etc. that have newly arisen. This is done even
on Clears and OTs. You can see the effect of a grade release in that the PC
doesn't come up with new problems for awhile after a problems release etc., but
they certainly come up with them eventually even if the person is Clear or on
the upper OT levels.
WHAT IS: The latest effort to explain why a clear has problems is to blame it on
OT III or NOTs.
WHAT ISN'T: Again this is a mistake, and a bad one. The person is the source of
their own problems. There is nothing on the upper levels which shows them to be
a primary source and there is plenty of material on the grades themselves which
logically speaking could be viewed as a primary source for aberration. The
person does become free of problems by running Grade I and he does not do so by
running OT III.
WHAT IS: The theory of the grades is stand alone and does not include anything
which requires the prior existence of engrams, implants, entities, or anything
else. The grades contain factors which could be operative on a god-like thetan
who was incapable of being hurt whereas things such as implants and engrams
require that the being has already sunk low enough to be kicked around. The
idea of an upset god wildly committing overts is quite common and probably rests
on real buried memories.
WHAT ISN'T: We've got it backwards. The grades are the ultimate OT levels.
They are what was really wrong in the first place. Nobody in Scientology has
ever erased the basic material on these grades. Total cause over communications
would include the ability to acknowledge a speeding bullet and have it vanish.
WHAT IS: All that other stuff on the upper levels is there to be audited out.
But it's minor stuff. A mere distraction which is in the way of getting to the
basics on the grades.
WHAT ISN'T: It is not practical to try and erase the grades at lower levels.
People are nowhere near being able to reach the original problems, overts,
etc. which they had when they were early god-like beings and which caused them
to postulate their own downfall. They can't even visualize the
multi-dimensional realities that had to be present early on. They are fixated
on an Earth-like three dimensional existence and you can only expect so much of
them. So the right approach would be to get a release on the grades (the basic
aberrations), then fool around with all the other stuff to get it out of the way
and raise the guy's awareness, and then get back to the grade materials and
really erase them in the basic area of his past existence.
WHAT IS: There is a state of Clear. It might be described as regaining control
over painful mental pictures. Even the psychiatrists recognize that a person
can get flashbacks of a violent incident. It is attained either by gradually
accustoming the PC to recalling painful incidents (as in Dianetics) or by
repetitive spotting of commands implanted with heavy force eons ago (as is done
on the Clearing Course) until the person can confront the force in mental
pictures without being bothered by it.
WHAT ISN'T: The wild ideas and sales talk about the state of clear in
Scientology is mainly advertising and wishful thinking. The description of a
Clear in the Dianetics book is an impossible condition since it assumes perfect
recall etc. in one lifetime without any spiritual awareness or knowledge of
earlier lives. It was never possible. If you extend the definition out into
the realm of Scientology and expect full recall across the whole course of a
being's existence, then we are talking about an ultimate super OT condition that
Scientology is nowhere near achieving at this time, but which might be the
ultimate target that we are working towards.
WHAT IS: There is a CofS policy to the effect that invalidating the state of
clear is a suppressive act.
WHAT ISN't: The shortcomings of the definition of clear are not generally talked
about among Scientologists and nobody dares say anything to mitigate
unrestrained sales hype on the subject because that might well get them kicked
out. People who have gone clear know what they did and didn't get from it but
keep their mouths shut because it really is a wonderful state despite its
limitations. The unfortunate side effect is that many who do achieve the state
then look at the definition and invalidate themselves because they don't match
up to what the book says. And so they have an entire auditing rundown (the CCRD
- Clear Certainty Rundown) to cure the harm done by this wrong information.
WHAT IS: The clear cognition is the awareness that the individual is mocking up
his own bank (reactive mind) and pictures.
WHAT ISN'T: Knowing this in the abstract is not the same as being aware of and
in control of it. The cognition is not confidential and is mentioned often on
Ron's Tapes. It is generally helpful for someone who is not clear to know it
because it encourages them to take control over their reactive mind. It was
common knowledge among most Scientologists in the 1960s. When they started
letting people attest to Dianetic Clear, there was a technical bulletin saying
not to push people into falsely attesting to the state by feeding them the Clear
cog. This is commonly (but not always) misinterpreted to mean that the cog is
confidential and so the cog has ceased to be common knowledge among lower level
Scientology public.
WHAT IS: The Church's polices on confidentiality of upper level materials are
quite drastic. Lose a piece of confidential paper and you may be disbarred from
upper levels for life. Breath a word of it in casual conversation, even with
others who have done the level, or forget to lock a briefcase, and you may be
doing a substantial amends project.
WHAT ISN'T: The policy isn't successful except to harass their loyal members and
generate a big mystery. Back in the 1950s, Ron used to talk jokingly about the
cults which kept big hidden secrets in their inner sanctums so as to keep the
bucks flowing. Just check out the introduction to Dianetics 55 ("Secrets,
Secrets, Secrets) for a sample of this. As far as keeping anything out of the
hands of their enemies, the confidentiality seems to have caused a publishing
boom in unauthorized copies.
WHAT IS: In the early days, when Ron was digging up material on implants,
issuing OT drills, and even coming up with early versions of the NOTs techniques
(1952-1953), some of the students asked if this stuff should be confidential and
he said that it must not be made confidential and hidden because then it will
fall into the wrong hands and be used against people who are unaware of it. He
said that the only safety was to shout this stuff from the rooftops and publish
it broadly. The only real danger is in keeping it secret.
WHAT ISN'T: The horrible danger of seeing the confidential materials without
proper preparation. It just doesn't happen that way. The mind's protection is
at maximum when somebody is safely reading something on their own. You can
sometimes get somebody sick by jamming this stuff down their throats, but that's
true of force feeding any Scientology process or, for that matter, the
techniques of other practices as well.
WHAT IS: The idea that entities are the source of bank, aberrations, and
somatics is currently believed in the upper levels of the Church. Ron certainly
ranted and raved enough about it in the Class VIII Course lectures and he
theorized it as the source of somatics.
WHAT ISN'T: This is totally contrary to all basic Scientology theory. The whole
reason that auditing works is that the person himself is generating all of his
own ills.
WHAT IS: There is a benefit to running NOTs. The BTs (body thetans - entities)
get in the way. They are a bit like a boat anchor that makes it difficult to
build up any horsepower. They will amplify your pains and aberrations. But
they are never the source. They are not worth bothering about while you have
things to handle which are closer to home (such as problems, upsets, etc.) but
eventually they need to be knocked out of the way. Blaming stuff on these guys
is the exact reason that the org has trouble if a PC finds out about them at
lower levels. It's a license to blame somebody else for your overts and
problems and that has always been known (at least in Scientology) to be a sure
way to get worse.
WHAT ISN'T: Most of the BTs are not independent beings. That is simply a
mistaken idea. We all put pieces of ourselves on each other. Joe puts a bit of
himself on Bill to keep Bill in line. Parents will instinctively shove a bit of
themselves into their kids to keep tabs on them. The child would find these as
"BT"s. The big mass implants were to make us do this compulsively and
unconsciously so as to keep each other obedient and human. The implants didn't
reduce the population at all.
WHAT IS: The solo nots technique is simple and useful. Everybody should know
that you ask "What are you"/"Who are you" if an entity of some sort does pop up,
and to encourage them to answer "Me" until they do so and stop fooling around
with mocking themselves up as demons or whatever. This stuff does show up on
rare occasions at lower levels, and the org leaves you stumbling around in the
dark when an easy trick would handle it.
WHAT ISN'T: The idea of handling court cases by fooling around with the
opponent's BTs at a distance was ridiculous. Maybe it would have worked if
entities really were the source of all aberration, but they're only a minor
factor. The auditors would have been better off visiting enemies in their sleep
and trying to give them nightmares. But Ron used to joke about his students
doing that to him, he just though it was funny and not very effective.
As a little aside, there is also an old Tibetan technique for handling demons.
This is from the Book of the Dead. If a demon shows up to scare you, you mock
yourself up as an even bigger and more horrible demon and scare him right back.
If you really get in trouble with an entity of some sort haunting you, this does
work as a last resort. Its not very nice so don't use it without just cause.
WHAT IS: The idea that if the specific details of implants were not kept
confidential, they would be used in advertising etc. This was being spread
about as one of the reasons for confidentiality.
WHAT ISN'T: It's just not an important point. Madison avenue has already found
all the hottest buttons on people. They would laugh at using Scientology's
stuff for this. If you find some really early implants, you will often find
Gorillas, Tigers, Bears, Planes, Trains, Automobiles, etc. These are the
hottest buttons. That's why this universe is so solid. Its all around us.
Madison Ave. might not know about implants, but they sure do know about the key
buttons and they push them with great vigor. By this time, we have become so
thick skinned that we just shrug this stuff off with hardly a quiver.
By the way, the hotter TV commercials are good ways to spot implanted buttons.
The advertisers do all the surveys for you and then you just notice what item
had to have been implanted for the commercials to work. For example, "To be
everybody" is not very hot as a sales button but "To be just like everyone else"
is pretty good and is a popular underlying button in advertisements. Guess
which one has the bigger kick on an E-meter. Of course the opposite was also
implanted (implants often use positive/negative pairs) so that "To be different"
is also a hot sales button and implant item.
WHAT IS: XENU (or XEMU) is a bad guy mentioned in the confidential literature.
He's a villain comparable to Hitler except that he had a higher level of
technology to kick people around with.
WHAT ISN'T: Scientologists who have done OT III don't have any particular flinch
at this guy. Its not like you're talking about Satan or some evil god who can
reach out and get you. He was just a bad guy. The flinch that you see when the
"dreaded" name comes up is not fear of Xemu. It is fear of Ethics. I would not
be surprised if you saw an OT turn green at the mention of him. But it's
visions of being put on thousands of hours of amends projects or being
permanently barred from upper levels that is scaring him.
WHAT IS: Ron was all excited about writing and filming a popular movie about
Xemu. It showed him (Xemu) shipping all the malcontents and minorities to Earth
and then bombing the volcanoes and ended with the brave fight of the loyal
officers to bring Xemu to justice. It centered around a particular loyal
officer and (for a sexy heroine) a movie starlet who find out about the plot but
are too late to stop it. But they lead the revolution that overthrows Xemu. Of
course there is no mention of BTs or past lives. The story is presented as a
record left for future civilizations on Earth so they can know what happened
when the dinosaurs died out. It is found by archeologists or something like
that and shown to the president of the US who promptly has it destroyed.
WHAT ISN't: This movie, which was called "Revolt in the Stars", apparently isn't
going to be made. There was an unsuccessful attempt to film it in the late 70s
and a second try (which I think never got past the financing stage) in the early
80s. The screenplay circulated quite widely, being given out to anyone who they
were trying to talk into taking a share in the financing. In the late 80s the
SO got scared about this film (I can hardly imagine why) and started trying to
gather up all the copies and jumping on anyone who had ever had their hands on
the screenplay.
Maybe their attitude will change eventually. It wasn't a bad screenplay.
Nowhere near as good as "Total Recall" but better than "The Black Hole". Maybe
with all the ARS publicity (the alt.relegion.scientology newsgroup on the
internet) it would do better if it was retitled "XENU, The Movie". I think LRH
would have liked that.
WHAT IS: There are all sorts of parody's of Xemu and various OT levels floating
around on the net.
WHAT ISN'T: I can't see the harm in this. Not only is it funny, but it helps
you get exterior to the whole mess. By placing such fantastic importance on a
few incidents and making them confidential, and furthermore loading them all
with tons of sales hype, we have actually created a great deal of mental charge
on this stuff and given it more power than it has. A few jokes can blow off
this artificially built up charge and get the whole thing in perspective.
I particularly liked the parody of Incident One where a Ford Mustang comes out
and turns right, then left, followed by the sounds of Snap, Crackle, and Pop,
and then the being is overwhelmed by waves of soggy Rice Crispies.
WHAT IS: There is a Scientology policy against jokers and degraders issued
around 1969 or 70. It basically makes it a suppressive act to make fun of the
subject.
WHAT ISN'T: This is not a good policy. Humor is more than just entertainment.
The ability to laugh at ourselves is a mechanism for social change. It is one
of the few ways to relieve charge outside of auditing. It even works on groups,
and relieving group charge has always been one of our biggest problems in
Scientology.
WHAT IS: There used to be many jokes within the organization. We enjoyed
laughing at ourselves. How many OTs does it take to change a light bulb?
Seven. One to hold the light bulb and six to turn the universe around it. One
of our layout artists once made up an ad about how the R6 course enlarged
breasts, complete with before and after pictures. She pasted this into a ladies
magazine in a vary professional manner and we used to hand it to unsuspecting
students and staff members and tell them to look at the exciting new ad from
St. Hill (the advanced training center in England).
One time we drew up an org board (Scientology organization chart) for a
Scientology whorehouse. The examiner would check that the "session" went OK.
There would be success stories, etc. We figured that it would be light years
beyond the competition. There were slogans like "The Golden Age of Standard
Screwing".
WHAT ISN'T: This kind of stuff is now forbidden. That, all by itself, I
consider to be a key characteristic of a suppressive group.
WHAT IS: There are "group engrams" discussed in the early tech. Ron saw that
groups did have many of the characteristics of individuals and could be bent out
of shape by external impacts (or for that matter by committing overts etc.).
WHAT ISN'T: All attempts at group engram running failed. Ron finally concluded
that it couldn't be done with the existing technology. He never got back to
this topic and its still an area that is in desperate need of research. As a
stopgap measure, he offered the idea of writing honest histories as the best way
of blowing group charge. At one time he considered this to be of tremendous
importance in keeping a group sane and true to its original goals. Now,
unfortunately, the real stories of what happened are hidden and buried under a
tidal wave of PR.
WHAT IS: To publish or even say anything publicly about Scientology, a
Scientologist must first get "Issue Authority". This doesn't apply to talking
to friends, which is dissemination, but it does apply to anything which reaches
the public at large. This was the way it was in the sixties and seventies.
They might call it something else now. One guy I know was all excited about
Scientology and planned to give a little speech about it as part of a
presentation he was doing at a computer conference and was stopped by the GO
(this was late 1970s). Someone like Travolta would have to rehearse and clear
exactly what he was going to say about the subject before making any statement
on TV. But sometimes if they trust the guy's judgment (and maybe put him
through some training) they will give someone a blanket OK to say things
publicly, but even then the ethics officer will be looking over his shoulder to
be sure that no out-ethics occurs, and anything that puts the subject in a bad
light is considered to be out-ethics.
WHAT ISN'T: There isn't a lot of real communication from Scientologists on the
internet. Of course they will let an innocent beginner blabber about how
wonderful it all is and there are real professionals hatted up to handle the
internet, but anyone else better be careful what they say or they'll end up in
Ethics. You might still have a gutsy OT who takes his chances, but it would be
rare. Also, since there is NOTS material on the internet, anyone who has not
already started NOTS would be risking terrible amends projects or disbarment by
reading ARS.
WHAT IS: The book "What is Scientology" and the other stuff that has been put up
at the church's website obviously has issue authority. Therefore any member
will be allowed to freely copy and spread this stuff around. I'm talking now
about internal Church policies rather than copyright laws.
WHAT ISN'T: They can't normally say anything else. Even quoting an innocuous
line from a technical bulletin might get one in deep trouble. Getting issue
authority used to take many months and endless hassles and arguments. It puts a
big stop on the communications. Their horrible spam (flooding the newsgroup
with messages to drown out the opposition and break the communication line)
might actually have been interesting and of use to some people if they had
dumped megabytes of real material (maybe tape transcripts) onto the internet.
There are about 3000 hours of taped lectures and most of them have been
transcribed. They could have gone on for weeks without ever repeating
themselves. Instead, they couldn't say anything worthwhile and had to keep
repeating quotes from that shallow book which isn't even by Ron and is hardly
more than a collection of sales hype.
WHAT IS: Some of LRH's most famous lines were "When In Doubt, Communicate" and
"Communication is the Universal Solvent".
WHAT ISN'T: Current policy apparently frowns on applying this. But as is often
the case, Ron's early statement was correct and the later policy is
self-destructive. They have been trying to stop communications on the internet
and it has been rebounding against them badly.
But they are not all stupid, and some of them know the early tech. I believe
that there has been an internal push for many months now to give at least a few
trustworthy OTs a blanket OK to really talk on the internet. The terrible
failure of the existing effort to handle the net by spamming (which lead to all
sorts of "horrible" consequences such as the Xenu message headers etc.) has
probably caused enough of an upheaval internally that this OK may have been
issued.
I believe that this is the status of "Clear Baby" who has shown up on the
internet lately. I don't know for sure, but she does seem to be communicating
rather freely without looking out for the Ethics officer. People like this will
probably communicate honestly as long as you don't push them too hard on
delicate issues or try to pull the Church's withholds. They might not even know
anything about Flag Orders or the Church's internal operations. If OSA was
smart, they gave this OK to devoted public rather than SO staff and are trusting
to the person's love of the subject rather than trying to control the
communication.
(Update: Clear Baby's identity was exposed and she now seems to be headed for
the freezone).
Needless to say, I don't have any such OK. If you said the kind of stuff within
the Church that I've been saying here, you'd be in Ethics the next day. That
would happen even if you only said it in a confessional, nothing to say of
blabbing it all over the internet.
WHAT IS: In the old days, Ron was basically honest with his course students.
Occasionally he exaggerated or got carried away with himself or downplayed
something, but he was not busily concocting lies or making up stories.
WHAT ISN'T: The various little biographical sketches placed in the books were
highly inaccurate and were not written by Ron. His overt was in ignoring all
the stuff that his staff was putting out. He really didn't care what they told
the public. He was annoyed at society for ignoring his big discoveries and saw
himself in competition with the heavy outpouring of false advertisement from big
business.
The "Story of Dianetics and Scientology" tape that is available at the
Scientology website is just one example of what he would really say to his
students. Of course he shows himself in a good light, but he doesn't make false
claims about having a degree in Nuclear Physics either. Quite the opposite.
Concerning that silly Nuclear Physics degree, someone in the org's PR department
got the Academy of Scientology to issue an honorary degree in Nuclear Physics to
Ron when they put out the Radiation book. He thought it was very funny and
makes jokes about it with the students in his next lecture.
Concerning "Snake" Thompson (the unauthorized biographies claim that he was made
up by Ron), the guy really did exist and he wrote a book called "The Navy
Operations Manual on Psychoanalysis". It was used in the Navy in WW2 and is
probably the underlying source for the popular picture of pleasant and sensible
Freudian analysts in the military which we get from shows like "MASH". It was a
very good and practical book and was reprinted as a popular paperback in the
late 1950s. I think it even uses phrases like "This is an operation manual for
the human mind" and includes techniques on regression therapy etc. I had a copy
back around 1963 and it was the best book on psychoanalysis that I have ever
read. Unfortunately, it was tossed along with loads of other psych books when I
became fanatically inspired by LRH tech a few years later. If I'd known, I'd
have hung on to it.
In the book, the commander discusses studying with Freud in Vienna and then
going to various military bases in Asia to experiment with the techniques. I
think that the timing was right for Ron to bump into him while sailing back to
the US.
The org doesn't seem to be digging out this book and holding it up to prove
Ron's story. Perhaps it has a bit too much of early Dianetics in it. Or more
likely, he got the guy's name wrong. It has been over 30 years since I read the
book and I'm not sure but it could have been by Commander Thomas something or
other ("Snake" is obviously a nickname). The org wouldn't dare bring it up if
Ron misremembered the man's name since a Clear should have perfect recall and
since Ron was supposed to have studied with him instead of simply talking with
him a bit (and maybe getting a copy of his book) during a long sea voyage.
WHAT IS: The unauthorized biographies of LRH are generally accurate as to
verifiable facts but are badly slanted in terms of the stories they contain.
Much of the material came from people who were very upset and pissed off at Ron
and Scientology. They often had been abused and mistreated, but this makes them
a very biased source and there is a tendency to exaggerate, make up things, and
only tell one side of the story.
WHAT ISN'T: The SO can't really correct any of the inaccuracies or tell the
other side of any of the stories because then they would have to admit all the
bad things that really did happen.
Let's take, for example, Otto Roos' story about Ron demanding to see his own PC
folders. Its not quite right. Ron ordered that his PC folders be taken away
from Otto and carried to the Qual Sec (the Scientology name for the chief of
quality control in a Scientology organization) for her to examine rather than
looking at them himself. You might not think this is a big point but it is of
significance to church members because the inaccurate story makes Ron seem
hypocritical (PCs aren't supposed to look at their own folders).
However, Ron did indeed punch Otto and he did indeed have Rock Slam type
discreditable meter reads (he freely talks about this on earlier Briefing Course
tapes) and the org doesn't want to confirm any of that.
WHAT IS: In later times (1970s), Ron was notorious for his screaming rages.
WHAT ISN'T: This was not purely reactive. He had it firmly under control.
There are many stories where somebody else would walk by and Ron would break off
in mid-yell to give them a soft and pleasant "Hello, how are you" before jacking
the decibels back up and resuming the attack.
I don't think this was a good way to handle people. It was based on a mistaken
idea that you handle other people's bank (meaning the reactive bank or reactive
mind) by exerting more force at them than the bank does. He would never have
said that in the early days. Force begets force and causes the target to key-in
more heavily. If force helped people, police states would be therapeutic. This
wrong idea was simply his way of justifying to himself that he was correct in
launching these tirades.
Here we see the real difference between a cleared and an uncleared individual.
Before clear, the rage would have been a stimulus response blind rage that was
out of control. After clear, it is all quite conscious and supposedly well
thought out and is actually under the individual's control. None the less, the
desire to throw that shrieking fit is not at all handled by going clear, and the
impulse is quite abberated. In this case, I see the aberrations as coming from
the mental charge that was bypassed by making errors in researching what, after
all, is one of the most difficult subjects to figure out correctly.
WHAT IS: The first Clear to graduate the clearing course in the mid-1960s was
John MacMasters (affectionately refereed to as "John Mac"). He had had cancer
and had his stomach removed and was told that he only had a year to live back
around 1960. He responded by getting into Scientology and auditing and training
as hard as he could and was in much better shape and even capable of eating real
food instead of gruel by the late 60s. He used to go around on world tours
promoting Scientology and the clearing course.
WHAT ISN'T: He didn't like the Sea Org. They mistreated him. He had other
interests. They called this "other intention-ness" and tried to put him in
lower ethics conditions. He walked out. They declared him suppressive. He had
been a known homosexual, but they could not use this directly at that time
because there were many homosexuals in Scientology. So instead, they declared
him for putting himself in a position where he could be blackmailed (supposedly
for being a secret homosexual even though that was an "everybody knows"
situation) because they didn't want to talk about his real reasons for leaving.
This was sometime in the early 70s.
Later he became very bitter and said nasty things about his earlier experiences
with Hubbard, but in the 1965-68 period he really loved the subject and would do
anything for Ron. The love turned to hate after too much contact with later Sea
Org craziness and that's what we hear in his later statements. He did well for
quite awhile after leaving, but eventually he passed away. He used to talk
about how he really wanted to drop his surgically mutilated body and go find a
teenager in a coma in a hospital (because the thetan would have left) and pick
right up again without all the troubles of having to reincarnate as a baby.
WHAT IS: The CofS is currently anti-homosexual. Practicing homosexuals are
currently blocked from upper levels.
WHAT ISN'T: This was not the case until sometime in the 1980s. The only early
reference by Ron was that thetans basically don't have a sex (there aren't male
and female thetans). It was believed that people became homosexual due to
mental charge of some sort (such as a bad incident that might need to be run
out), but when this charge was removed, they tended to become bi-sexual (no
longer blocked from heterosexual relations) rather than abandoning
homosexuality.
There was even an idea circulating among staff in the 1960s that everyone should
try a homosexual experience once just to get your TRs in on it (in other words,
get your confront up on it). I know a few who tried it on this basis, and even
one girl who decided that she liked being gay better. However, most of us
(including myself) felt that just because you hadn't screwed a gorilla, it
didn't mean that you had to go and do it just to get your TRs in. Even so, the
place was liberal and safe for alternative lifestyles. The idea of removing
mental charge was that nobody would be prejudiced or much bothered by anything
as long as no one was getting hurt.
WHAT IS: The Sea Org is currently pushing a very conservative sexual morality.
SO members can be put into liability (a lower ethics condition with amends
projects etc.) for sleeping with someone outside of marriage.
WHAT ISN'T: This is again the reverse of the early attitude which was
exceedingly liberal. Basically, there were no rules until the 1965 policy
"Student's guide to acceptable behavior" and the sexual rules in this were
canceled in 1967 by the policy "New Second Dynamic Rules" (the first dynamic is
self, the second dynamic is sex/family/children, the third dynamic is groups,
etc.) which says there are no rules except that ethics can hold you responsible
if you mess up somebody's case.
Sometime in the 1970s, a Flag Order came out forbidding extra-marital sex by SO
members. This was probably issued originally for reasons of PR, but since they
are under these restrictions, they try and use this flag order on non-SO
Scientologists. The result is a confusing mixture of the Flag Order, the 1965
policy, and the 1967 policy (which was never canceled but tends to be hidden
from the membership).
Interestingly enough, when they started pushing strict sexual mores, an LRH
technical bulletin came out called "Pain and Sex". This is actually from the
1952 tapes (see the technique 88 lectures) and is out of context. Pain and sex
were indeed bundled up together by implants and thetans have committed many
overts in the area, but Ron's advise at that time was not to abandon sex but
simply to run out the incidents.
WHAT IS: The E-meter (a sort of lie detector) is used to do security checks on
Scientologists. These "sec checks" are lists of possible overts (crimes etc.)
which are called off while watching the meter for reactions so as to discover
anything the person is withholding.
WHAT ISN'T: This wasn't designed to gain blackmailing material or to find out
what a bad guy the PC was so as to bar him from further services. It was
actually indented as a means of finding out the guy's overts and processing them
to relieve the mental charge and free him from the overt/motivate sequence (the
Scientology equivalent of Karma). Even in modern times they try to clean up the
charge rather than simply finding out what he's done. On this basis, this could
be considered to be a positive auditing action meant to better the person.
I personally had an extremely big gain while being run on a sec check once. The
topic that produced the big result was implanting others. All of the current OT
levels are highly motivatorish (a motivate is what happens to you as a result of
the overts you have committed - a sort of karma). They address what has been
done to the person instead of what he has done and this was known to be a
mistake as early as 1952. A thetan could never have been implanted in the first
place unless he had intentions to implant others sometime in the past (perhaps
to make others good or keep them under control). The smart thing to do would be
to have the PC run something like "Recall implanting another" somewhere on the
OT levels. Since this is not done, the deficiency is to some slight degree
remedied by means of sec checking. But its going the long way around. There
are much better processes on grade 2 for handling guilt and overts. Instead,
they hound people endlessly with these sec checks.
WHAT IS: In the 1960s, the sanctity of the confessional and the confidentiality
of PC folders and the idea that whatever had been run out was therefore gone and
should not be held against the person or even considered were all pushed as
being of absolute importance. In ancient times, priests have let themselves be
shot and their churches burned down rather than ever reveal or use anything told
in a confessional. In the old days, we saw this as being more important than
the survival of any Scientology organization because it was a key point in the
survival of the entire subject. You would let an org collapse rather than using
anything revealed in PC folders because if you did violate this, it would become
unsafe for the PCs to run out their overts and it would permanently block the
entire subject.
WHAT ISN'T: This has been grossly violated in modern Scientology. The first
mistake was the idea of looking over the PC folders of someone who was being
declared suppressive to see if he had made any gains (because no case gain was a
suppressive trait). This evolved into checking the folder's of declared SPs for
overts and withholds (this was considered acceptable because of the Fair Game
law). It kept getting worse. Eventually, even the registrars (the org's
salesmen) began looking through folders, supposedly with the excuse that they
were double checking that the person had gotten all the hours of auditing they
had paid for but really to get buttons to push on the person to get them to buy
their next service. If there was ever a justifiable reason for declaring
someone a suppressive, this would be it (just kidding, I really think you should
straighten people out instead of throwing them out).
WHAT IS: Sec checks are often mis-audited, mis-used, and overrun endlessly when
they are not the correct case action for the PC. There are times when they can
do somebody some good, but not when they are run unnecessarily (especially at
high prices) or audited in an accusative manner (which seems to be popular these
days), and most especially not if you then send the person to ethics and
"handle" the overts that have already been erased (that almost guarantees that
the person will start committing overts). Because of this, the technology
itself is unpopular and keeps being renamed, being called, at various times,
Hubbard Confessionals, Integrity Processing, and the False Purpose Rundown.
WHAT ISN'T: Nowadays, they tell the PC "I'm not auditing you" in a ridiculous
attempt to keep the PC from feeling that the safety of auditing has been
violated. Maybe I'll put on a sign that says "I'm not really driving" the next
time a cop tries to pull me over for a speeding ticket.
Sometimes something would come up that really would have to be handled in
Ethics. For example, the PC has a kilo of pot in his closet and now that we
have gotten him to swear off drugs, he's going to start selling it on the street
to pay for his auditing. In such cases, I would hand carry the PC folder over
to the Ethics officer myself and give him a lecture about maintaining the safety
of auditing. The PC must not be made wrong or told to make amends. He should
just be talked to in a reasonable way and coaxed into doing the right thing.
You would expect a good ethics officer to know this, but often they did not have
enough auditor training.
WHAT IS: Scientology administrative staff are not trained in the technology of
Scientology. They are trained in organizational policy instead. An early 70s
Policy letter started this. Sometimes you do get someone who has trained on
both sides of the fence, but its contrary to the normal way things are done.
WHAT ISN'T: Most Scientology staff (only a small percentage work as auditors)
have no real idea what Scientology IS except for some shallow beginner's level
stuff and promotional BS. They are working on some sort of a vague purpose to
save the world without having much of a clue as to what it is all about.
In the old days, an organization would often boom when they made all their staff
train as auditors. Of course you can't just take an auditor who knows nothing
else and put him on a management post without any training in his job. But
knowing the technology of the mind is what Scientology is all about. As far as
I'm concerned, a Scientology executive who has not also trained as an auditor
isn't really a Scientologist (in the fullest sense), doesn't have any idea what
he is doing, and tends to screw things up. On a new staff member, the lack of
training in the subject is understandable, it takes time to learn things. But
if he isn't studying the technology like mad, then what is doing there? The
only answers are religious fanaticism (big Ron in the sky will solve all the
guys problems for him?) or he's hoping to gain money or power or something.
WHAT IS: The org's registrars are really big league salesmen with worse behavior
than the most extreme of the used car salespeople. They push buttons endlessly,
hound people and threaten them with ethics, make false promises and try to get
people to mortgage their lives away to raise the money to pay the orgs high
prices. There are exceptions, especially when you get far away from the Flag
organization (the closer they are to "Source", the worse they get), but they
live on big commissions so that ethical behavior is invalidated and out-ethics
is praised.
WHAT ISN't: It doesn't have to be this way. At one time there was a policy that
"Only Accounts Talks Money" and the regs were forbidden to discuss it. Also,
they did not receive any sales commissions. This kept them a bit more honest.
The better ones stuck to their real job which was to explain what services where
available and encourage people to do them.
By the way, standard org finance policy is to never borrow money but always pay
cash (except that you may have to borrow money to promote with to get a business
out of emergency, but you don't borrow for anything else). This is a good
policy. Its an overt to talk people into doing the opposite.
WHAT IS: To complete a service at the org, you must write a success story. If
you refuse or write one that is negative, the standard action is to handle you,
either in review or ethics, to fix what is wrong. There are cases where this
fix up does indeed correct something that was done wrong and which was contrary
to standard tech. However, there are cases where the thing done wrong was
correct per standard tech and is therefore unremediable, and cases where the
course or auditing action was either unnecessary or not of great interest to the
person. In these situations, a bad success story launches one into endless
unnecessary or upsetting repair or ethics actions. So you always find something
nice to say and write a PR success story unless you know that you're on firm
ground in complaining that the auditor or supervisor has violated standard tech.
WHAT ISN'T: There is no way to evaluate the quality of service being delivered
or even to determine if an action is positive or detrimental based on these
enforced success stories. You'll get glowing success stories even on backwards
or unnecessary actions unless the person is so upset that he doesn't give a damn
anymore. There are real success stories, both unsolicited ones and ones that
are written on completing something which really did have a magical effect on
the person. But there is no way to separate out the wheat from the chaff.
It would not be a bad idea to have people rate the quality and effectiveness of
the services delivered, like they do at some restaurants. Perhaps this should
be done by checking boxes on a slip handed to you by the success officer and
then placed into an anonymous voting box. Maybe the success officer should ask
the person if he was happy with the service or wants something handled without
pushing at him or insisting on anything. And then maybe he should ask the
person if he feels like writing a success story, and should also have a big sign
posted behind him saying that people are never required to write success
stories.
With this, the success stories you got might really mean something. And if the
voting slips were compiled on a weekly basis and the averages were computed, you
would have a real gauge of what the public thought of your services.
* * *
WHAT IS: Per Scientology Policy, managers must manage exclusively by statistics.
If the courseroom ceiling has caved in and the students are bleeding on the
floor, the solution is to have them stay late so that the Scientology Academy
will meet its quota of student points and course completions. Well, perhaps I
am exaggerating. Most instructors would indeed put aside their fixed ideas and
work like mad to care for their students in an emergency. But the stats would
indeed go down and somewhere in upper management, there would be an executive
who would refuse to be reasonable about any justification for downstats (as per
policy) and some heads would roll.
WHAT ISN'T: Management by statistics alone is basically insane. It is a fixed
idea that interferes with looking at what you are really doing. Its not that
you shouldn't watch the stats, every successful corporation knows that you must
keep graphs of production, encourage the uptrends, and remedy the downtrends.
You can really make an organization fly by finding out what changed just before
a radical shift in a graph. But it is only one of many indicators that monitor
the performance of an organization and predict its long range expectations.
Things such as employee moral, customer satisfaction, the potential depletion of
non-renewable resources, and improving the product are all highly important.
As a staff member, every problem you can't solve or situation that you can't
confront is handled by getting the stats (statistics) up with the idea that this
will lead to the expansion of Scientology which in turn will result in the
eventual solution of all problems and social ills. This is then used to justify
committing overts on public and other staff members and that leads to the idea
becoming fixed because they would have to face the overts if they let go of it.
The biggest mistake is to force the stats up when they start to collapse because
this hides the real reason the stats are collapsing and eventually makes it
impossible to spot what was messed up. For example, when the insane idea of
harassing the student for MUs (Misunderstood words) every time he moved an inch
while studying in the course room was put in, the academy stats collapsed. If
they had been able to confront a down stat and tried to find out what had
changed, they could have spotted this error right away and fixed it. Instead,
supervisors got the stats back up by making the remaining students stay late
etc. Of course the stat went into a slow downward collapse anyway so it didn't
even work in the long term. A cute side note is that Ron used to tap his foot
while studying, so in the Flag courserooms, this was known as the one body
motion you could do without the supervisor hounding you to death.
WHAT IS: The supervisor isn't supposed to evaluate, interpret, or explain the
course materials to the student. This is a reasonable idea. The student should
find out for himself.
WHAT ISN'T: Per current policy, the supervisor does not need to be trained on
the materials he's supervising. He often has no idea what the students are
learning. If the student needs help, all the supervisor can do is robotically
ask for MUs, often on words he himself does not know the meaning of. This is
pure idiocy.
In the old days, we had instructors who knew their materials backwards and
forwards and who cared about the students. The rules kept them from spouting
off and overwhelming the student with too much evaluation but they weren't taken
absolutely and the supervisor could help a lot, finding other references, giving
examples from his experience, explaining lightly about things that weren't on
the students course etc. If the student is studying, for example, level I
(problems processing), the instructor should not be telling him the theory of
the level or how to run the processes. It's in the students materials and he
really should study it for himself. But the problems material also mentions
GPMs (Goals Problem Masses) and that's not on the students level and he's not
going to be auditing it without much more study, but he may need a few words of
explanation and a pat on the back to get him going again on the materials that
do pertain to his level.
WHAT IS: Current Scientology study technology tends to specialize in handling
MUs and doing demonstrations of things in clay. These are useful techniques.
Sometimes its enough, especially for adults who already have a great deal of
knowledge and are doing a course with a great deal of enthusiasm.
WHAT ISN'T: This is totally inadequate for use in schools. The 1950s view was
much broader and actually highlights how bad the current approach is. The basic
Scientology idea on the whole topic is that understanding comes from affinity,
reality, and communication (ARC). They still know this, but they have forgotten
how to apply it. First and foremost, you need to get the students to like a
subject. An interested student will learn the subject despite a bad teacher.
You need to promote free and open communication about the subject, especially
between the students (currently discouraged in the CofS). You need to see and
examine things and try things out to build reality. You need to look through
the materials multiple times rather than just working forward through a
checksheet robotically. As a substitute for experience, you need to sit and
imagine what you're going to do and how you're going to handle anything that
could go wrong. And you need to decide that you invented the subject to make it
your own and get it fully into your own universe (yes Ron actually tells
students to do this on a 1954 tape).
WHAT IS: Training people with force makes robots who can't think with the data
they have learned. This was well known in the 1950s. Pounding the data into
the students head is totally contrary to all Scientology basics. But the
original Class VIII auditor's course was taught by tossing the students off the
side of the ship whenever they flubbed. "The auditor is trying to kill the PC,
OVERBOARD 3 TIMES" was a common CS (Case Supervisor Instructions after reviewing
a session done by the auditor).
WHAT ISN'T: The impact of these overwhelmed and unthinking CLASS VIIIs pretty
much destroyed the subject within a few months. The entire backbone of trained
auditors and old timers in the subject was destroyed. One org had about 50
trained auditors on staff (both shifts, including trained auditors who were
doing other posts) just before they arrived (fall 1968) and only had a handful
by mid-1969.
These original Class VIIIs, by the way, were not evil people. They all had
intentions to help and to save the world. They had simply been turned,
temporarily, into dramatizing psychotics. Most of them regretted it later.
Some of them are busily sacrificing themselves for the sake of Scientology in a
misguided effort to make amends (Artie Maren for example). Others started
running freezone splinter groups. Many of them don't audit anymore.
WHAT IS: Standard Tech (everybody doing the same thing the same way without
variation) was introduced by the Class VIII course. It is continually promoted
as the ultimate in technical perfection.
WHAT ISN'T: Standard Technology does not mean the same thing as either correct
technology or high quality technology. What standard tech really meant was that
the same error was repeated consistently on everybody. This does have benefits
for research since it makes it easier to see what is wrong with the tech.
Unfortunately, this research gain is mostly wasted if you have a fixed idea
about the tech already being perfect.
The introduction of standard tech caused a total collapse of Scientology in
1969. Luckily, it did make many of the basic errors visible so that eventually,
when the screw-ups could no longer be ignored (late 1970), the worst faults were
corrected and the subject rebounded.
They should have put standard tech in carefully and watched it with an eagle
eye. If we hadn't had the fanaticism and the insistence on being right and the
training by force, we could have spotted the errors in the tech within a few
months and retained our backbone of sane and experienced auditors and
executives. Instead, the subject fell into the hands (by and large) of fanatics
and incompetents.
Even as the theory of auditing was getting straightened out and improving in the
early 70s, the skill level of auditors was crashing because of the disappearance
of the old timers, the gross mistakes on how to run a course, and the heavy
threats and invalidation which were being brought to bear on students and
auditors. The TRs and metering skills of an old Class IV cannot be found short
of Class XII (if at all) in modern Scientology.
I remember doing the "dating drill" one time in the late 70s. This drill has
nothing to do with picking up girls. It consists of the coach writing a complex
date on a slip of paper and hiding it and then you try and find the precise date
through e-meter reactions alone. I tossed the coach in the chair and pretty
much read the date straight off of her with total accuracy in less than a
minute. The sea org instructor didn't like this. I looked at the PC instead of
the meter. I pleasantly asked questions instead of barking at the PC. I looked
at her with a friendly and confident manner instead of drilling her with a death
stare. These were all grievous faults. It took weeks for my skills to recover
after having one of those incompetents on my back for five minutes.
* * *
WHAT IS: The Sea Org is set up like a military organization. This is not
surprising since Hubbard's only management experience in this lifetime was his
brief stint in the Navy. Remember, he was a writer, an entertainer, and pretty
much of a lone wolf. As far as I know, he never worked a salaried job. His
only experience with groups outside of the Navy was with social clubs like the
Explorers and gatherings of science fiction writers.
WHAT ISN'T: Despite his lack of experience, the great wealth of his research
into the human mind lead Ron to formulate many useful ideas about groups and
organizations. Like most of us, he considered the military approach to be one
of the dumbest ones. In the 1950s he encouraged the idea of having groups
composed of true individuals, and considered that a few free and independent
beings working together were comparable to a large army which only had a few
non-robotic individuals doing all the thinking at the top of the command
structure.
WHAT IS: Before the founding of the Sea Org, there used to be a rumor going
around the organization about how the book "Mr. Roberts" was written about Ron
by one of the people who served with him in the Navy. Of course we all thought
that Ron was supposed to have been the wonderful junior officer who helps
everyone in the story.
WHAT ISN'T: As we now know, Ron was the captain of that sub chaser, and the book
pictures him as a psychotic. I can't say whether the book is an accurate
picture or just sour grapes, or even if it was really written about Ron, but it
certainly shows what's wrong with military organizations. Check out the movie
sometime, its a lot of fun.
WHAT IS: The SO (Sea Org) is 180 degrees in reverse to Ron's theories from the
1950s.
WHAT ISN'T: There is no great heritage of early Scientology organizations. It
was not Ron's area of interest or expertise and the early material has only the
barest beginning of a true management science. The early organizations mearly
got by rather than being dramatic demonstrations of some kind of an OT
organization system. But they generally did so without crushing people and many
good results were produced.
There are some later bits of brilliance in Scientology organizational theory,
but they are overwhelmed and swept away by the grossly screwed up basic concepts
which make robots and fanatics. Its very sad, especially as he knew the right
basics in the 1950s and turned his back on them. For example, he considered
that it was a suppressive trait to sacrifice the individual for the sake of the
many and even in later times would point out that SPs (suppressive persons)
would justify their overts on individuals by saying that they are working for
the common good. And yet this business of working for the sake of mankind is
the standard justification for the commission of overts in the church.
WHAT IS: The lower ethics conditions with their liability projects and abuse are
in use in Scientology. The conditions formulas (for what to do when you're in
the condition) are probably even correct or at least workable if you really are
in such a condition and want to do something about it.
WHAT ISN'T: The idea that someone who has done $20,000 worth of work in the last
year and has been paid only $200 could be a liability if he accidentally breaks
an e-meter worth only a few thousand dollars is nothing more than gross
exploitation. This is not a real example. The damage is usually something much
sillier and inconsequential.
The lower conditions do not cure people of being liabilities and becoming
enemies to Scientology. Instead, they take people who had dedicated their lives
to the organization and turn them into enemies. There is no better
demonstration of the Scientology idea that you create your own opposition than
to examine the great vigor with which the CofS creates its own enemies.
WHAT IS: The RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force) exists in the Sea Org. It is a
method for degrading people and beating them into agreement. I speak now from
hearsay and observation rather than actual experience. When I was first working
for a Scientology org, this kind of activity was called Not-ISness rather than
rehabilitation and we knew that it was a sure route to failure because trying to
make nothing of something never works in the long run.
WHAT ISN'T: The RPF was never intended to rehabilitate anyone. It seemed to me
that it was always the most able and individualistic SO members who I saw being
put into it (although I'm sure there were some exceptions). The actual
intention was obviously to create compulsive agreement (this is my idea, I have
never seen it in writing in a Policy Letter or Flag Order). As such, it is a
dramatization of the basic intention behind every attempt to implant people.
WHAT IS: In one of his last writings, Hubbard labeled the suppressive influence
up and down the whole track as being psychiatrists and priests. If we translate
the Scientology terms "Auditor" and "Minister of the Church of Scientology" into
ordinary English, we discover that they ARE the latest generation of
psychiatrists and priests. How Sad!
WHAT ISN'T: That late bulletin, like many things in the later days, is not
really correct. The psychs (or auditors) and priests (or ministers) are the
only groups that might conceivably help mankind. These are the ranks that
people join when they really feel an urge to aid their fellows. The truth of
the matter is that these groups are so dangerous to the oppressive control and
manipulation of the masses that they are constantly infiltrated and twisted
against their own purposes. Sure there have been some bad psychs and priests
but there have been many good ones too, ones who cared and tried to help. But
it does seem like their information and techniques have been twisted and
distorted by some subtle hidden influence so as to ensure their failure. The
same could be said of Scientology.
People who live in glass cities shouldn't throw H-Bombs.
As an aside, I would say that the suppressive influence up and down the whole
track of our existence consists of those who want to implant people to make them
slaves and those who want to implant people to make them good. These two groups
are diametrically opposed to each other, but both want to make the rest of us
into obedient robots. The slave makers include some psychs such as Pavlov, but
certainly don't include well intentioned men such as Freud and Jung. This group
also includes a certain percentage of industrialists, rulers, fascists, etc.,
but don't make the mistake of generalizing. Not everybody wants slaves. And on
the opposite side, there are those "priests" who would brainwipe you to make you
"good" according to some arbitrary code (this especially includes the hell
preaching demagogues), but they are only a small (but highly visible)
percentage. Don't confuse them with the well intentioned majority. And please
notice that these "do goodie" mind controllers also include a certain percentage
of communists and even some teachers, lawyers, and politicians, etc.
It should be obvious that there are at least a certain percentage of robot
makers (whether to get slaves or make others good) within the current Sea Org
management hierarchy.
WHAT IS: The continual infiltration of CofS by covert operatives of various
organizations. In the early days (1966-68) at one large organization, we
discovered a newspaper reporter, an FDA agent, and an IRS agent. We completely
missed another reporter who subsequently wrote an expose, and we were slow in
catching a Mafia infiltrator who rose to an executive position before being
found out. Notoriously absent were agents of the FBI, CIA, and KGB. But the
E-meter only reads on overts and a loyal agent might well consider that he was
doing a service for his country rather than committing overts and therefore
might not react. Also, these guys are often trained and conditioned to fool lie
detectors. So I would assume that there were a few of these agents in the
organization as well and we never spotted them. In later days at least a few
FBI agents were uncovered. Agents on being spotted usually confessed that they
had been sent in to investigate but had been "converted" by the wonderful tech.
So they often remained on staff acting as double agents. But this is a fairly
standard intelligence technique when dealing with "culties" who will swallow
anything if you start praising the glories of the cult. In all likelihood, most
of these were probably triple agents who continued to do their work in a more
exposed manner. I wonder if it might be considered entrapment (enticing someone
to break the law) to have given CofS these double agents with their knowledge of
Bureau internals.
WHAT ISN'T: There was a tremendous error in judgment in launching operation Snow
White. The Church might well have felt that it was a justified tit for tat and
in their mistaken egotism thought that Flag training and OT abilities would
carry them through unscathed. But they were playing with the big boys, real
professionals. Even so, Guardian Intelligence (the spy branch of the GO) put on
quite a show and penetrated longer and more deeply than any amateur organization
had a right to, but they were burnt in the end and the results were quite
harmful. With Ron driven into hiding and Mary Sue in jail, it created a power
vacuum about which much has already been written by others.
Around this time period, we also have the death of Quentin Hubbard who was the
most likely heir to Ron's position. He was not only the oldest of Mary Sue's
sons, but he was supposed to have a flair for the tech. He went around giving
talks and he liked to tell stories about whole track (past life) civilizations.
I had very little personal contact with him and I really don't know what the
whole story is, but he seemed on the whole to be enthusiastic rather than
depressed. The "suicide" looks like a gangster style fake. Probably someone
was getting him out of the way, maybe to ensure that there was a really big
power vacuum.
To her credit, Diane Hubbard tried to curb the SO craziness of the early 1980s
but she failed and was slapped down for her troubles. As far as I know she has
kept a low profile since and has little involvement with management. None of
the other children ever swung much weight in the organization.
This is the same time period that David Mayo and other highly placed people were
driven out of the subject. The power vacuum was so complete as to raise the
suspicion that it was engineered. As to who did it and for what purpose, I
haven't a clue. Maybe the attempt was defeated and loyal (but misguided)
fanatics now guard the subject. Maybe the bad guys won and are in power now.
It could be Mafia (lots of bucks flowing through there) or CIA (wonderful place
for mind control experiments) or just a bunch of little messengers who wanted to
be fanatically worshipped. For all I know, it could even be space aliens (just
joking - I hope).
WHAT IS: The CofS declares its enemies to be "Suppressive Persons". It has
family and friends disconnect from them. It has Fair Game laws (supposedly
canceled but still followed in spirit) to harass them. And their members are
pushed to believe that these people are real bad guys, rotten to the core.
WHAT ISN'T: There is Scientology processing technology on the subject of one
person being suppressive to another. There is even an analysis of the
characteristics of a suppressive person. All of this is ignored when the CofS
declares someone suppressive. For them there is only one suppressive
characteristic, and that is that someone is not in compulsive agreement with or
obedient to the Sea Org.
As a side note, the entire suppressive person (SP) and potential trouble source
(PTS) technology is slightly questionable since the person himself (rather than
an SP) is supposed to be responsible for the condition he is in. Sometimes you
do have to pry someone away from a suppressive influence so that they can cool
down enough to get audited. This should always be looked on as a temporary
measure. There are already Scientology processes for auditing out the situation
(the Suppressed Person rundown) and the person who was being suppressed ceases
to have problems with the "SP" and can communicate with them comfortably.
Somehow or other, this useful technology (to handle the guy who's continually
caving in because someone in his environment is always cutting him to pieces),
has become mixed up with witch hunts and inquisitions. And they do indeed have
witch hunts, despite Ron's warnings about not doing that. Mass declares of SPs
within the organization happen periodically. Its almost like the periodic
purges that you see in the more viscous governments.
WHAT IS: Ron said that the greatest overt was making others guilty of committing
overts.
WHAT ISN'T: This isn't the worst one. The real worst one is convincing others
to commit overts that they wouldn't otherwise have done for the sake of a higher
purpose. This is routine within Scientology. One of the many kinds of examples
are the cases where someone turns against an old friend who has been declared
(often without just cause) as an enemy of the church.
WHAT IS: A basic Scientology idea is that you are responsible for the condition
that you are in. I might twist this slightly and say that you need to become
responsible for the condition that you're in if you are to have any hope of
changing that condition.
WHAT ISN'T: This doesn't mean that other people can't help or hinder you. It
just means that in the final analysis, you need to be master of your own life
and you will not make a lot of progress by sitting around and blaming others,
even if they did work very hard to do you in.
But the CofS has continually twisted this datum to always place blame on the
individual and never on the organization. If its an outsider screwing up the
person's life, then the outsider is an SP and its the outsider's fault but if
its the org that's screwing the guy up, then the guy is responsible for the
condition he is in and the org is not to blame. There have been rare exceptions
to this hypocrisy, because there are well meaning individuals mixed in among the
robots, but you will almost never find the organization taking responsibility
for any overts that it has committed.
* * *
WHAT IS: LRH never cared for the existing religions. He figured that they
usually were based on some keyed out OT showing up and overawing the natives and
making them worship. In one lecture he talks about Moses having been a high
powered OT. The assumption is that Moses pretended that "God" did it so that
the Children of Israel wouldn't blame things on him. If that is the case, then
Genesis might be a vague sketch of the implants and past lives that Moses ran
out (e.g. confronted and erased) while he was up in the mountains which resulted
in his becoming a keyed out OT.
WHAT ISN'T: The dumb quote about Jesus being a pederast etc. is obviously not
written by Ron. It was almost certainly written by Captain Bill. Captain Bill
announced that Ron's thetan had left his old body (turning it over to BTs?) and
had moved into Captain Bill's body and he would issue new bulletins etc. on this
basis. The CofS, of course, declared Captain Bill suppressive.
Sometimes there's a processing rundown attached to this bogus bulletin when it
appears on the internet. It might be the real CofS OT8 (attached to the wrong
introduction), or an invention of Bill's, but more likely it is some older
rundown (possibly from the 1st Melbourne Advanced Clinical Course) that Captain
Bill was putting out as OT8.
WHAT IS: Ron preached tolerance for the poor Christians etc. who were busily
worshipping some long gone OT. He did say that you might have to work hard to
keep from laughing out loud when you were in church, but you should respect
their beliefs and just keep auditing them. He expected them to cognite
eventually.
Many of us in the early days had a fondness for Jesus, considering him to be an
old OT who tried to do something about the sorry state of mankind. John
MacMasters (while he was still a loyal CofS member) used to quote sayings of
Jesus such as "Ye shall do greater things than I" in his talks.
WHAT ISN'T: When he messed around in OT III incident 2 and got all keyed in,
Hubbard found that it included pictures of "Christ on the Cross" etc. He got
pretty upset and over restimulated and decided that all of Christianity was an
R6 dramatization (in this usage, R6 refers to the implant material found on
Routine level 6 auditing which was considered to form the core of the reactive
mind). Some of his comments on this are floating around on the internet.
This is obviously just the mental "charge" stirred up by getting an old incident
half run out and messed up. He sees an implant picture of someone on a cross
and gets upset and starts damning Christianity. The truth of the matter is that
there are very early implants (much earlier than inc 2) which lay in the idea
that the best of us must always sacrifice ourselves for others. They show you
that it is your duty to get up on that cross and how wonderful it is to do so,
but the real intention was to get rid of anyone who keyed out OT in a big way.
Many great OTs have been done in by this implant during the course of our
existence in this and earlier universes. There were others, such as Krishna, on
this planet who had this happen to them. When Jesus got up on the cross, we
lost a great teacher and eventually most of his wonderful teachings were lost or
twisted out of shape as the Romans altered Christianity into a politically
acceptable religion.
WHAT IS: Scientology has a rule against mixing practices. This is used in the
CofS to make it an ethics offense to have anything to do with or even read
anything from any other metaphysical subject, whether it be Zen or Astrology or
Science of Mind. They have declared various other groups such as the
Objectivists and the Edgar Cayce group (I forget what its called) to be
suppressive groups. They don't dare do this with the big religions, but I'm
sure that they wish they could.
WHAT ISN'T: This is NOT in Scientology auditing technology. There is a
different point, which is that you mustn't mix up two things because they can
get in each others way and you have no way of evaluating what changes came from
which source if he's doing two things at once. On this basis, mixing Dianetics
and Scientology processes together were at one time officially considered to be
mixing practices and even now it is considered that the Scientology TR drills
must not be done at the same time that a person is getting audited.
Of course Ron did consider that a number of subtle traps and backwards ideas had
been planted in the various earlier metaphysical studies. For example, he
considered meditations on "I am nothing" to be a mistake (he actually tried some
processes based on this and they did not go well). He does recommend that you
learn his stuff first before you go and study metaphysics. But he never tells
you not to look. After all, he was reading tons of the stuff himself, at least
in the early days. Some of the old timers used to send him books and things any
time that they thought that another practice had come across something that
might be useful.
The current rules block any comprehension of Scientology's backgrounds. They
interfere with well rounded spiritual growth. They promote rigid thinking. And
they are a direct attack on those other groups who might actually be considered
closest to Scientology in their goals and ideas. This would only be sane if the
org has the intention of becoming a monopoly in the field of metaphysical
thought. Which is probably why they do it.
* * *
WHAT IS: OT (Operating Thetan) abilities. Mind over matter. Telekinesis and
telepathy. Even teleportation (and Hubbard does not say this is impossible, he
mearly says that it is done by disintegrating the object in one spot and
recreating it in another rather than by shifting it). I have seen these things
and I have done them. Almost any old time (pre 1968) auditor will swear that
they are real even if he has left the church.
WHAT ISN'T: Stable OT abilities. Stable achievements of OT states. Repeatable
demonstrations of OT powers at will. The current OT levels have been renamed
PreOT levels because they don't produce these things. If the CofS had anyone
who could repeatedly lift an ashtray at will, they would have him on TV the next
day. These things are never demonstrated, not even in confidential briefings
for OTs. Ashtrays have been lifted, but Scientology never produced anyone who
could do it on demand.
WHAT IS: The keyed-out OT state. By keyed-out, we mean that some part of the
person's mental blockage has temporarily moved out of the way. This has been
the source of most of OT manifestations observed in the subject. The key-out is
much less stable than that produced by lower level Scientology processes. It
often only lasts hours or days. Mine lasted for three months. A rare few
(possibly including Ron) may have kept the state considerably longer, but it is
known to be an extremely unstable condition. Trying to study it, experiment
with it, exercise it to build up strength, or demonstrate it are the fastest
ways to bump into something that will turn it off and drop you back to human
with a horrible thundering crash. I probably kept the state longer than most
because I was young and innocent and wasn't pushing it. I could not do things
at will. The abilities did not respond to mental effort and pushing. Just
occasionally I would think something like deciding to grab a cup of coffee and
it would slide to me across the table. The intention to do something, projected
lightly and without effort, occasionally caused it to happen in a bypass of
physical laws. The only thing that worked was to think to do something, with
the thought and the deed becoming the same. It never worked to try hard to do
something.
WHAT ISN'T: The processes that occasionally produced a keyed-out OT are almost
never used in modern Scientology. These are a) the processes of 1952-54 (a few
of them are in the book "Creation of Human Ability"), b) the power processes
(never run on Dianetic Clears), and c) the old (before NOTS) OT levels 4 to 7.
It seems like everything that did turn on OT abilities has been carefully pushed
out of use. Those processes are being publicized now on the Internet and CofS
seems to be upset about it. Maybe we'll start seeing some more OT
manifestations as people try this suff.
Note that there has never been a process in Scientology which consistently
produced a keyed-out OT state. It has always been a wild random variable. It
has never been thoroughly investigated or pinned down. Ron himself admitted on
one of the Briefing Course tapes (I think it was the one on the Classification
and Gradation chart) that he had no idea why they occasionally produced one on
Power Processing.
The real approach to making a keyed-out OT is to try a carton full of techniques
and hope that you get lucky. Often you will if the collection is big enough.
WHAT IS: Although the big OT powers have never been produced stabily, minor
abilities would sometimes be achieved, at least in the old days. A good example
is Ingo Swann. See your local occult bookstore for data on what has been
confirmed on him under laboratory conditions. He's about as good as any of the
stable OTs. He doesn't lift ashtrays but he can raise the temperature of an
object under laboratory conditions.
WHAT ISN'T: Ingo doesn't talk about having been in Scientology or doing the OT
levels in the late 1960s. The Church doesn't mention Ingo or claim that he ever
was a member. I think they must have a mutual agreement to leave each other
alone and keep quite.
I think they declared him a suppressive. It was a long time ago. How many ways
can you shoot yourself in the foot?
WHAT IS: Ron probably went keyed out OT in 1952. There was an incredible
outpouring of bright ideas from 1952 to 1954. He was positively inspired.
Later he often made mistakes or misses the obvious that he'd already found. For
example in 1952 he says to get the postulate that the person made during an
engram. This was forgotten and it took a decade of running standard Dianetics
before they created New Era Dianetics (NED) by asking for the postulate (which
makes Clears fairly quickly). I wonder if he actually remembered it or whether
somebody simply heard the old tape and suggested doing it.
WHAT ISN'T: Ron didn't remain in the OT state. The keyout is notoriously
unstable. My guess is that the state crashed when the police broke into the
course room in 1954 and hauled him down to the station. He talks about the
arrest in his next lecture to the class and about how he managed to talk his way
out of there without getting locked up, but he's obviously a bit shaken and he
gets out of the country real fast and heads for England. He even cut the 10th
ACC (Advanced Clinical Course) short and they filled it out by playing tapes
from the 9th ACC.
If you compare the tapes of 1950-51 to those of 1952-54, you will see a
fantastic jump in speed and intelligence. His exuberance knows no bounds and
he's really something to listen to. If you then compare them with the tapes of
1955 onwards, you can see that he slows down and is nowhere near what he was,
but he's still better than in the 1950-51 timeframe.
Note that my slightly strange word usage ("went keyed out OT" etc.) is proper
Scientology speak and one would hope that any ARS readers would have picked up
this lingo by now.
WHAT IS: Ron kept on researching in the later 50s and 60s, often trying to get
back what he'd had his hands on in those early days and often missing the right
answer that he'd found previously. OT III is a complex arduous mess researched
in the late 60s and the simple NOTs handling is from 1952! (see the HCL
lectures, especially the two different lectures that are both titled "Theta
Bodies"). And they have still completely missed the 1953-4 processes on
handling mockups of Thetans and blowing them etc. (see the 3rd ACC etc.).
WHAT ISN'T: He never really got beyond the high point of the 3rd ACC and modern
Scientology is perhaps 10-20% of what he had at that time. And even that peak
was not high enough to allow mass clearing or produce stable OT supermen.
WHAT IS: In 1967 Ron went to North Africa and tried to research OT III. He went
into it backwards and ended up half dead. Its one thing to read about the OT
III incident casually, its another to go in and bang around for months and make
a mess of it besides. It is quite possible that he got panicky and, fearing
death, began to take all sorts of medical drugs even though this is quite
contrary to normal Scientology practice and almost guarantees that you will
screw up the auditing. Tony Dunlevy used to tell a story at Scientology events
about how Ron came back to St. Hill with a roomful of materials and told him
that if he (Ron) should die while trying to finish getting though it, then Tony
was to take the materials and his best people and a staff of medical doctors and
try and get someone through it using medical assistance to make it possible for
someone to survive running it. Ron flew off and eventually came back and told
Tony to forget the room of materials and that he had found an easier way through
the level which could be done with a small pack of materials.
WHAT ISN'T: The things that were then mocked up, the Sea Org, crush ethics,
crush sell, and a backwards quickie standard tech which lost us most of our
experienced auditors and turned the rest into robots were not the work of a
monster. They were the last ditch efforts of a dedicated researcher who came
close to death and feared that the discoveries which he had already put together
would be lost with his passing. And so he cast it all in concrete and set up a
cadre of fearless storm troupers and Gestapo agents to guard it with their lives
and never let it vary least some fool turn it all to dust. Needless to say,
this was not a very high toned attitude.
The astounding side effect was that all this organizational insanity eventually
brought people into Scientology in droves and filled the Church's coffers. It
really makes one wonder about the average public mentality. You can't attract
the suckers by giving them an even break. The sucker will only go to where he
knows he will be sucked.
WHAT IS: The subtle OT abilities. The manipulation of chance and probability.
The pulling in of serendipitous coincidences, and also the pulling in of
motivators for one's overts.
The future is in flux, predetermined in the ordered motions of physics but
indeterminate in the subtler interactions of particles and random variables.
The flux responds to thought, and especially to strong visualizations, whether
intentional or reactive, because these mimic the observation which breaks down
the probability waves into actuality. All participate in this working out of
the future into the present, whether consciously or unconsciously.
The subtle influence of chance events can never be proven because by its vary
nature it is always in accordance with physical laws and can be shown to be a
random occurrence. Even long runs of luck are provided for and even required in
the mathematical analysis of statistical probability. And yet there are born
losers and people upon whom luck always shines.
This is all in accordance with (although not stated or proved by) the modern
theories of Quantum Mechanics which sees all existence as consisting of
probability waves which are broken down into reality by the action of
observation.
WHAT ISN'T: Gaining a larger say in the workings of probability is not the
exclusive prerogative of the Scientology OT. Many methods, from Positive
Thinking to Trusting That God Will Provide are all capable of raising the level
of your input into this flux.
Deep Faith is one of the strong amplifiers. It matters not what the faith is
in, it is the raw power of the faith itself which can alter the flow of events.
This is a good reason for giving respect to holy men of all persuasions. Even
the businessman's faith in himself or the craftsman's faith in his ability have
their impact. Self confidence is often seen as a key to power.
But there are negative aspects to raising your input into this flux. Your
subconscious reactive thoughts may bring on your fate instead of your desire.
The selfish businessman is always risking the backlash of his own overts when he
begins to push his horsepower up with various tricks and gimmicks. The holy
people are much safer as long as they don't turn hypocritical or discover the
flaws in their belief systems and moral codes. In theory, the Scientologists
should be in the best position to handle this flux safely because of the
concentration on responsibility and the handling of overts, but in practice,
they are at risk when they let fanaticism override good sense and judgment.
WHAT IS: If a coin has been tossed but the results not yet looked at, it is
still subject to probabilistic manipulations. You may still alter the results
by intense visualizations, deep prayer, strong postulates, stubborn
determination that the results must come out randomly, or reactive dread at the
consequences of loosing (which of course causes you to loose).
WHAT ISN'T: Once the results have been viewed, they are fixed in physical
universe mechanics. All the regretful wishing in the world will not change an
observed result. Altering anything at this stage requires a total bypass of
physical laws and is a major OT ability rather than a subtle one.
WHAT IS: The main "OT Ability" that has often been achieved in Scientology is
simply an increase in the person's input into this flux. Fascinating
improbabilities sometimes occur.
WHAT ISN'T: This is not a new ability. Everyone has some input into the
shuffling of probabilities. Amazing coincidences occur to everybody. The gain
is simply in terms of the scale and frequency of coincidences.
But as I mentioned earlier, nothing about this can be proved easily and as a
consequence, this area is highly subject to wishful thinking and unsubstantiated
claims. Perhaps some of Rhine's work would help here. We might even use large
control and test groups running different processes and then give each person
ten bucks, turn them lose against a bank of Las Vegas slot machines, and run
statistical distributions on the winners.
The above discussion of subtle OT abilities is my own codification of vague
ideas and concepts that are in the early materials. Ron never did give a clear
and concise description of the mechanisms of pulling in motivators for your
overts or of how to make postulates stick, but I think the above is in keeping
with what he did say on the subject.
* * *
WHAT IS: The CofS and the Sea Org have an expressed goal to Clear the Planet.
This goal has been pushed for almost 30 years now.
WHAT ISN'T: There are many reasons why this cannot happen in any reasonable
timeframe given their current methods of operating.
If the planet were to be cleared (which I consider to be a good thing), there
are only three ways its going to happen. These are:
a) Mass Clearing. This would be the opposite of the mass implanting. It would
require developing clearing procedures that could be done on a group processing
basis via TV shows. This would require radical breakthroughs which they are not
researching and which they currently believe themselves forbidden to research.
It would also require a willingness to give the tech away which is contrary to
current policy.
b) They would have to do enough individual clearing to get ahead of the
birthrate. This would again mean giving the tech away. It would have to be
done in schools and self-help groups. There is no way it could happen given
current org prices and the average income level of the public.
c) There is an idea in Scientology that you can have a clear group without all
the members being clear and that in a similar manner you could have a clear
planet. This would hopefully let you boom the economy so that individual
clearing could also take place. Again I think this would be a good thing but a
great deal of honest research would be needed. We are miles away from figuring
out how to make a clear group. The Sea Org certainly does not act like one. In
fact, it dramatizes quite badly and has a tendency to make clears act like they
are abberated which is the exact opposite of what a Clear group would do. Only
when they can figure out how to clear their own group will it be appropriate for
them to consider clearing the planet.
WHAT IS: There are a great deal of court cases being fought on both sides.
WHAT ISN'T: This isn't very bright. There are legal precedents being establish
that will hurt everyone except for those who want to see all mental practices
banned. Even psychiatrists may see their victories now used as precedents
against them in their own field later.
Of course anyone being sued needs to fight a strong defense. But the sheer
stupidity of the CofS in fighting to prove that it is a business with trade
secrets rather than a religion is hard to believe.
And in the matter of liability suits, CofS, Freezone, and even psychologists
should be banding together before all of them end up paying out their entire
income for malpractice insurance.
The basic purpose of the legal profession is to get rich off of people's desire
for vengeance and safety.
To misquote Samuel Clemmens, "It would not clear the planet to declare all the
lawyers suppressive, but it would sure be a lot of fun". And maybe there is a
real use for the RPF after all (just kidding).
WHAT IS: It is proper for the holders of the copyrights to Ron's works to
receive a reasonable fee for those materials.
WHAT ISN'T: Since these are religious materials, it is a violation of the
Constitution for them to refuse to make those materials (of course at a
reasonable fee) available to anyone who professes to have a religious purpose in
studying them, even if those people have been declared enemies of the Church.
What if the Catholics had copyrighted the Bible and refused to sell copies to
the Baptists and hauled them off to court if they tried to reproduce the
materials themselves? That is the reason people fled here from Europe and it is
the basis for our tradition of religious freedom.
I also have a personal prejudice against corporations who buy up patents for the
purpose of suppressing inventions instead of putting them to use. The whole
reason for the patent system was to encourage invention rather than suppress it.
This doesn't usually come up with a body of writing, but in this case we do have
a situation where knowledge is being hidden and suppressed instead of
encouraged.
In general I do support the rules on copyrights and trade secrets, but not in
the case where knowledge is suppressed or religious freedom is trampled on. For
this reason, I would give Scam-iz-dat a pat on the back for broadly publishing
confidential materials on the internet (it's not a bad idea to break the word up
various ways to defeat keyword triggered software).
WHAT IS: It is not unusual for a religion to splinter into an orthodox and a
liberal sect. The orthodox often feel that the liberals have perverted their
religion and have been known to attack and persecute them. The liberals often
splinter further and in some cases have been known to fight among themselves as
well as with the orthodox who are persecuting them.
WHAT ISN'T: It isn't right to fight a holy war. I know of no good that has ever
come of one. It doesn't matter who is right or wrong, the war itself is a great
evil. These wars were, at one time, Christianity's curse, and the active
persecution, which is a lesser version of the war, has weighted on the
conscience of many. When they have put aside fanaticism and attempted to teach
and to help and to heal, the Christians have done much good in the world.
If L. Ron Hubbard walked into a Scientology org today, they'd declare him a
squirrel (Scientology's name for a freezoner - squirrels gather nuts) in short
order.
WHAT IS: There has been some picketing of Scientology events.
WHAT ISN'T: The last thing you want to do with a bunch of religious fanatics is
harass them with nasty signs. That REALLY strengthens their resolve.
Since people will probably ignore this and keep picketing anyway, they should at
least use slogans which might actually bring about some change for the better.
The idea would be to use some mental ju-jitsu rather than toughening up your
opponent. You might try the following signs. The Scientologists will suppress
their reactions, but they might think about these things later and even end up
helping your carry the signs eventually.
a) Sacrificing people to get stats up is an overt.
b) You have become the priests and psychs that you opposed.
c) The overt speaks loudly in the accusation.
d) You have created your own opposition.
e) End PTSness, Disconnect from the Sea Org.
If you say the subject doesn't work or is a scam, you will hit absolute
resistance. It never works to use your own buttons on someone else. You have
to hit their buttons. They have them. Most believe the prices are too high.
They detest registrars, routing forms, and sec checks. They are afraid of
Ethics. They are often run on wrong or unnecessary processes. Some feel they
have betrayed their friends by disconnecting.
The membership does know that there are things wrong. They swallow it because
the subject does work well enough that most people will have had at least one
big gain.
* * *
WHAT IS: Don't let me give you the wrong impression. Things were not perfect in
the early days either. I was not there in the 1950s to see for myself what was
going on (I have simply heard most of the thousands of tapes from this
timeperiod), but I'm sure that they had their share of craziness. For the mid
to late 1960s (prior to the Class VIIIs and the Sea Org and the 1969 collapse),
I can point to many dumb ideas that were in vogue for brief periods of time.
At one point, many auditors would not let the PC run past lives because it was
too restimulative (!!!). At another time, a bulletin (1967) came out saying
that "All sickness equals PTS" (PTS means that the person is a Potential Trouble
Source because they are connected to a suppressive person) and so the org went
crazy on having everybody disconnecting from supposed SPs every time they had a
sniffle. I remember one course supervisor who decided that he was PTS to his
DESK (!) and we had to carry it out into the hallway for him. These are just
examples, there were plenty more.
WHAT ISN'T: The stupid ideas generally did not stay with us and the subject kept
evolving. You could always wait for next year or find another auditor or go to
a different organization that wasn't riding the same hobby horse. The subject
was not being held in a rigid mold and there was room to maneuver around the
barriers. And there was always hope for next year's technical breakthrough.
Now we supposedly have all the answers (what a joke), and the technology is
perfect (even when it fails), and the organization is in a case condition which
we know as "resisting change" which is a characteristic of a suppressive person.
WHAT IS: When the movie "2001 A Space Odessy" came out, there was a dumb ethics
officer at some org who issued an order forbidding people to see it because it
was "too restimulative".
WHAT ISN'T: Never confuse the actions of individual idiots with the group as a
whole. It was a local order, not a general one. At the org I was at, we shook
our heads and felt sorry for anyone who was affected by this order and continued
to encourage everyone to go see a nifty movie.
WHAT IS: Scientology was once known as the high IQ religion. Ron was extremely
bright and anti-authoritarian and so he appealed to every genius who had been
forced to swallow crap from teachers that were dumber than themselves. There
were many of us who were in MENSA. We even had a National Merit Scholar (that
wasn't me, I only made the 99.3 percentile). This is just in one small
organization in 1966.
Scientology processing would occasionally raise IQ. There was no steady
progression or specific thing that did this. Just occasionally, some big mental
block or stress that interfered with the person's ability to think would get
handled and there would be a dramatic IQ jump. In the old days, the org used
the California Capacity Questioner which is a well respected non-Scientology IQ
test (it is one of the ones that Mensa uses).
WHAT ISN'T: Although it still has more intellectual appeal than some of the more
mindless forms of ritual worship, organized Scientology has been slipping in
this area for quite some time now.
First of all, the anti-authoritarian air has been replaced by a belief in LRH as
a new and even more absolute authority.
They might still occasionally be creating a sudden surge in IQ with processing,
but they no longer can tell. They moved off of standard IQ tests and started
using one designed by Ron. Even assuming that it was structured and calibrated
accurately, it only runs to 150 which means that it is inaccurate above about
135 (the upper edge of any IQ test's range is considered to be random, being
affected more by mood, experience, and careless mistakes rather than an actual
difference in IQ). You can hardly tell if you were really raising or lowering
IQ with such a test, and there is a reason for this.
When the technology was screwed up in 1969 due to the Class VIII auditors and
the introduction of Standard Tech, there was a dramatic crash in actual,
properly tested, IQ scores among Scientologists. I heard from many other staff
members that their IQ scores had fallen, generally by 10 to 20 points, after
being audited on the quickie "Standard Tech" which was in vogue at that time.
An order came out to stop telling people what they had scored on the IQ tests
(until then, it was freely mentioned and even used as a sales point because it
occasionally jumped significantly and almost never slipped by more than the
normal day-to-day variation of a few points). The next thing that happened was
that the CCQ and other "wog" IQ tests were declared to be suppressive (because
they showed that we were lowering IQs) and they were replaced by this test of
Ron's.
I think that the technical corrections that came in during the early 1970s fixed
this lowering of IQ and that we are back to the occasional significant
improvement. But we have lost the ability to see what is going on.
The worst plight is that of the current staff members. They rarely get the
processing which might give them a significant IQ increase. They are constantly
pounded with authoritarian dictates that inhibit their ability to think freely
(and it was removing this stuff that used to raise IQ!). And they continually
use things referred to as "Learning Drills" on the staff members (doing what
they call "Chinese School" reciting things etc.). These learning drills were
developed and tried briefly in the early 1960s. Per Ron's actual statement (on
the Briefing Course tapes), they are known to lower IQ by actual test (while
improving the ability to recite formulas by rote) and they were dropped at that
time for that reason. So they have created a generation of staff members who
can't think, and especially, can't think for themselves about the subject of
Scientology.
WHAT IS: Most Scientology staff really are there to help people. They are
enduring terrible conditions for the sake of mankind. They don't get rich.
They generally don't even get a lot of Scientology processing. A few may be on
a power trip, but that is only possible to top management.
WHAt ISN'T: A lot of money flows into the Sea Org, but few ever see any of it.
Most of it disappears into reserve funds for fanatically defending the
organization, or it is wasted on various bits of foolishness. A tiny handful
might be living like kings and a few might be siphoning off funds into their own
private nest eggs, but 99.9% of the staff are in self sacrifice mode. This is
why you fail in any effort to attack them. Most are already martyrs to the
cause.
They have been so abused that anything they do to you does not seem to them to
be an overt because they have suffered far worse at the hands of the
organization, and they have swallowed it for the sake of mankind.
I have said many critical things about the organization, but they are still
trying to help people. And the processing does help people even if it doesn't
live up to the sales pitches. On this basis, they should be helped rather than
destroyed. I am not in opposition to the Sea Org or the CofS and I do not
consider them an enemy (although they will probably consider me to be one). I
simply consider that they need widesweeping and radical reforms. And what they
need most is truth, honesty, and free communication. You cannot clear a society
if you yourself are loaded with withholds.
Like handling a wayward child, you have to hold a firm line and refuse to
tolerate their overts while encouraging everything about them that is right and
sane.
* * *
WHAT IS: The CofS charges high prices, withholds data labeled confidential,
tries to restrict other data as being out-gradient, imposes endless barriers and
pre-requisites, and often attacks any use of its materials that are not under
their control. They act like a corporation which is trying to impose a strict
monopoly and dribble out a small amount of service in a tightly controlled
manner.
WHAT ISN'T: The actually is not the way to get rich. The big joke is that if
they made everything freely and easily available (at reasonable book prices of
course) and encouraged self-help groups and co-audit clubs and do-it-yourself
magazines and gave away free group processing on TV specials, they would have so
much business flooding them that they couldn't handle it.
* * *
WHAT IS: The clam is described in "History of Man". It is presented as being
part of our evolutionary history.
WHAT ISN'T: This isn't a real incident. The entire set of evolutionary pictures
presented in the portion of the book that deals with the genetic line was later
found to be an implant. Hubbard referred to this as the "Darwinian Implant"
(see the 1963 tape "Errors in Time" etc.).
The book was written in 1952 after only a few months of running past life
incidents. As was the case with most of the early research, Ron took a quick
stab at it, felt satisfied that a few people could find the stuff he was talking
about, and went on to something else. Dianetics and past life incident running
wasn't used again until 1957-58 (see "Have you lived before this life") and was
again dropped until 1963 when some research was done on implants and past lives.
What we actually have is only three brief but intensive research periods in this
area.
It was only in 1966 that they began regular training of Dianetic auditors. The
1966 technique was a beginners technique aimed at giving people who had no
auditor training some experience in engram running before doing the clearing
course. It would actually make a much better do it yourself type book than the
1950 Dianetics book, but I doubt that the SO would be willing to tolerate such
an endeavor.
Real use of professional Dianetics techniques did not begin until 1969. With
the vast amount of data that has been accumulating since the 1970s, it might
actually be possible to start putting together a real history of man, but the
will to seek out new answers seems to have deserted the subject.
Based on my own experiences, I have tried to produce a real roadmap of the
course of our existence (see my next document, "Cosmic History"). But again,
this is only based on the work of one person (myself). At best (if I'm not
wholly deluded), it will serve as a starting point and a framework for
organizing more data. It is not thorough research.
Ron used to say that we are still on a research line. That statement was never
canceled. It IS still true.
* * *
WHAT IS: Cults exist and will always exist as long as society and families are
imperfect and leave the teenager (or anyone) with a painful vacuum that needs to
be filled.
WHAT ISN'T: Scientology isn't very bad as far as cults go. You might think of
them as mind-bending, money-grubbing, and dangerous fanatics, but they will at
least keep your kid off drugs and away from gang violence and perhaps even make
him into a good worker who can get a job elsewhere if he leaves them. At worst,
it's probably better than joining the army. Some lives have been ruined and a
few have even been lost but they're nowhere near as bad as the competition where
the death toll is often beyond counting.
WHAT IS: There is a spiritual side to man.
WHAT ISN'T: We don't have all the answers. We are in the position of Columbus
who, having found America, believed that he was in India. But the untapped
resources of the new world were far greater than anything he could have
imagined. It was well worth the trip.
I can't claim to be a true scientist in the field of the human mind. I still
live in the darkness of alchemy, searching for the light of truth. But it is my
hope that perhaps I will be the last alchemist. If I inspire others to look
further and carry us forward into a true science, then I have done my job.
