Leaving Scientology

A thought experiment.

2010-05-27T15:43:00.003+01:00

Imagine you were in International Management. Sometime you are in the hole- sometimes not, but your life is pretty miserable either way. You have little sleep or rest.

Every day you are accused of hating Scientology and wishing to destroy it. One day you simply say to yourself 'OK- I will do what they accuse me of'.

This is a natural reaction to being accused of something you did not do. You simply become what you are accused of.

How would you go about destroying Scientology once this decision had been made?

Here are some suggestions.

1) You would slam in ethics in the orgs so that nobody could do their jobs. If you identified someone who was doing well you would call a committee of evidence upon them.

2) You would drive your best customers away (the OT's) and stop them moving up the bridge.

3) You would act the part of a mad cultist in all your dealings with the outside world. This may involve storming out of interviews or creating bizarre publicity materials such as the recent freedom magazines.

4) You would obstruct all marketing efforts.

It is interesting that we see all of these things happening today.

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

Negative affirmations

2010-05-26T21:42:00.003+01:00

There are many people who believe that repeating good things about themselves makes them better people. They will read statements such as 'I am an honest, hardworking individual' and other such things.

What does Scientology management do? They require constant confessions of incompetence and evil. The most senior managers have accused themselves of wishing to destroy Scientology a hundred or more times.

What effect do you think this has over time? I negative affirmations have the opposite effect as positive ones- they make the Scientologist sick and evil.

Is this the intention? I am not sure.

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

How to create a cult in three stages

2010-05-20T11:05:00.002+01:00

1. Find a common idea or activity- such as looking up words in a dictionary if one does not know the meaning.

2. Invent a series of new and confusing words for things that already exist (MU, spinny, word clearing). This makes it appear that you have invented something new when you have not.

3. Place a copyright upon the whole process. This means you can charge people to look words up in a dictionary you did not even write!!

Watch the money roll in.

Repeat until rich, drug addled and dead.

Secret definitions

2010-05-20T07:52:00.006+01:00

The Church of Scientology always talks as if they had invented the dictionary- or at least were the first people to work out what it was for.

It is therefore surprising to find that they fail to define many of their own words- or to put it another way- they have a public definition and a secret definition in addition to this.

Take the word 'ethics' for example. Ethics is used to justify deceptive recruitment, fair gaming and forced abortions- actions most people would regard as unethical. This is justified because these activities benefit the Church of Scientology and therefore they must be ethical because the Church is the 'most ethical group on the planet'.

This is entirely circular reasoning.

It has been pointed out to me that LRH does in fact define ethics in a thousand words of verbose nothingness. The general theme seems to be to harmonise the dynamics so that everyone wins. This is entirely valid except that this definition is never followed! The only dynamic that matters to a scientologist is the third dynamic- and this always amounts to pandering to the CoB. The true definition which is never openly stated is 'ethics = obendience'.

The basic problem with scientology ethics is that management gets to decide what is and what is not in the best interests of the third dynamic. The whole ethics tech therefore amounts to a verbal sauce on top of the real definition that is never openly stated.

FIRST Ethics is defined as being for the benefit of the maximum number of dynamics.

THEN Management assume the right to tell us what these are.

THEREFORE Anyone opposing Church priorities must be unethical.

The true (unspoken) definition of ethics is therefore 'do what you are told'.

The term 'spiritual freedom' is also undefined and usually means the opposite of what it means in the outside world. If this were clearly stated then the whole sham would collapse- so the meanings of these words are kept vague and contradictory.

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

Creeping psycosis at the top

2010-05-18T12:45:00.003+01:00

Many nations forbid their leader to serve more than two terms. Britain is the exception but on the two occasions this has been attempted the PM was removed via internal party challengers because they were basically going slightly mad.

Power has a bad effect upon the most well balanced of people. This is because the leader tends to surround himself with yes men and so they become detached from reality. If this is true of the UK where the PM is criticised quite openly how much more true must it be in a cult?

Both LRH and DM actually started out as highly functional people. LRH was a prolific writer of tosh and even DM showed some leadership qualities at first. Unfortunately LRH died as a madman shot through with psychiatric drugs and DM seems to have developed a drink problem. DM's problems will only grow worse as time goes on but this is actually an organizational problem more than a personal one.

Unanswered questions for independent Scientologists

2010-05-16T22:36:00.002+01:00

1. How is it that L Ron Hubbard- the world authority on suppressive persons- failed to spot slappy who was under his own nose?

2. Why did LRH not introduce checks and balances within the Church hierarchy? Why is there no impeachment procedure?

3. Why did LRH instigate over boarding and the imprisonment of children in chain lockers if he was such a nice guy?

4. Why did LRH take no less than 7.5% of Church income for his personal use if he was opposed to CoB doing the same?

5. Why do we see so much emphasis on real estate in the 1960's under LRH? Why did the Church need to build a castle at East Grinstead for instance?

6. Why is it wrong for CoB to drink heavily and OK for LRH to take drugs?

7. What is the difference between imprisoning staff on the Apollo and imprisoning them at SP Hall?

The Observing Ego

2010-05-16T20:09:00.003+01:00

The Observing Ego is that part of you that can stand outside of a situation and look at your own actions as other people see them. Many psychologists see this as the real difference between children and adults. A mature adult can look at their actions and wonder if they are helpful to his cause. An immature or unstable adult will become sucked into situations rather like a child having a tantrum.

The most noticeable thing about Scientologists is that they lack this ability entirely. Tommy Davis behaves essentially like a bullying and sulky child. He lacks the ability to see himself as others see him and as a result repeats his mistakes.

Even 'Slappy' who is a highly manipulative psychopath lacks this ability. He continually repeats his mistakes even when he is found out. You may remember the recent Panorama documentary 'Scientology and me' in which Scinetologists were shown to be paranoid and manipulative nutcases. His response was to turn up at John Sweeny's wedding and film the guests. He also sent a large number of Scientologists to harass Marty in the middle of a telephone interview with the BBC- the whole thing was recorded the other end!

These are the actions of a spiteful child and not an adult human being. Unfortunately every Scientologist seems to share this to some degree.

There is no doubt that the lack of an observing ego makes a person easier to manipulate. This may be why Scientologists become so lost within their own delusional worlds of unlimited OT powers. A person with a healthy observing ego would probably see themselves as others see him and snap out of it right there.

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

Watching the Church of Scientology die.

2010-05-16T11:29:00.002+01:00

One of the most satisfying things one can do in life is sit back and watch something truly evil die before ones eyes.

Fortunately we can do this quite easily with Scientology.

There is an excellent site http://www.scientology-cult.com/ which mainly consists of loyal Scientologists who disagree with the way the Co$ is run.

There are two really great things about the site. Firstly it contains a great deal of reliable information about the internal decay of the group. Secondly, it expresses these truths in ways that are acceptable to most current Scientologists.

Richard Woods (a vocal UK critic and former Sea Org member) once told me that Sceintologists leave the cult in three phases.

1. First they disagree with management.

2. They question aspects of the tech.

3. Finally they question the motives of LRH.

Critics generally start off by criticizing the person of LRH which outrages the Sceintologist and causes them to break communication. This often drives them back into the arms of management.

The Scientology Cult website eases current Scientologists into the first position quite painlessly as it mainly consists of personal stories. The Scientologist can nod their heads and recognise that everything they say is true.

Once the cult member has taken this first step he will generally find the others come quite naturally.

I would like to do some back of the envelope calculations to see just how much damage this site is doing to the cult.

ASSUMPTIONS

1) A Co$ member will spend approximately 100 hours on the site reading stories before deciding to become an independent.

2) Almost all readers are current or former members of the cult (the website would make little sense to those who were not).

3) The Co$ makes about £100 from each member each year. This may seem a small sum but most are off lines.

4) This site has between 100 and 200 readers at any one time.

ROLL OF DRUMS..

In the first hour of operation the website costs the cult £100 in lost revenue. In the second hour it costs them £200. In the third it cost £300 and so on. The cost to the cult is cumulative.

The site has been running for a couple of years and the cumulative cost is now about £50,000 an hour!

Sometimes I log on to this site just to watch the cult die- hour by hour.

Very satisfying.http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

Where do all the extra people come from?

2010-05-08T23:35:00.002+01:00

If we are all reincarnated Thetans- and they are not making any more of them..

How can the population of the world be increasing? Where do the 'extra' Thetans come from?

From the BT clusters maybe?

From other planets? Intergalactic Doll bodies? Marcabs?

Who knows?

Nipping

2010-05-08T23:08:00.001+01:00

One of the oddest passages of very odd book (History of man) concerns 'nipping'.

This is a game that Thetans play with one another- chasing one another about and giving them small shocks as a sort of prank.

Every now and then (according to LRH) a Thetan will 'nip' a human being and kill them instantly.

He did not explain how he knew this. Maybe LRH nipped someone on one of his epic journeys to Venus or some other place.

The real issue is why this does not happen more often.

Imagine you are a soldier in Iraq who is ambushed along with your friends and then killed. What could be more natural than to remain at the battlefield for a while to see what happens to your friends who are still alive. You will want to help them and so you will find the enemy and nip them. The insurgents would do exactly the same thing to every Westerner they find. Thetans can travel in the blink of an eye so they may even turn up in London or New York, nipping mad!

Nipping is not supposed to be some far out OT ability but something we can all do once we exteriorize. Many Scientologists claim to be able to do this almost at will but all of us do it upon death.

The fact that this does not happen all the time indicates that it does not happen at all.

The society of mindful cripples.

2010-05-04T17:19:00.001+01:00

I often visit the newsgroup Alt Religion Scientology as it is one of the few places one can go to watch Scientologists in their natural environment (it would be highly dangerous to visit an Org).

There are two main cult apologists on ARS at the moment. Both of them tell us a great deal more about Scientology than they intend.

First we have Homer although google shortens his name to Ho...

The life mission of Homer seems to be to create confusion in his own mind so that nothing needs to be examined too closely (especially his own non existent OT powers). He does this by casting doubt upon everything equally. By confusing simple matters he can believe falsehoods with greater ease.

One method of doing this is to declare that he may be the only person in the universe- a sort of lonely God who has dreamt us all into being and is therefore entitled to ignore reality. Why should he 'prove' his OT powers to someone he has created out of pure OT'ness?

One could also ask why he bothers to tell us these things if we do not exist.

The great thing about this illusion from Homer's point of view is that the confusion may be infinitely extended.

Maybe we are all the dream of a fruit-bat in Paraguay? Who knows? Who cares? The point is to keep himself distracted with unanswerable questions so that he cannot see what is under his nose.

Many Scientologists have crippled themselves mentally so that they are now incapable of seeing what is obvious to other people. This is not criticism of Homer who is the only Scientologist I know who is not personally abusive and threatening.

My second example is roadrunner- who believes himself to be an effective Internet bully but who fails on every level. He is similar to Homer in that he seeks to spread confusion and to obscure the truth but has never succeeded in doing this.

Roadrunner passes through the following cycles over and over again.

1) Roadrunner enters a thread that threatens to uncover some truth about Scientology. Roadrunner says he disagrees and then says that only he has 'researched' the subject. He will not debate the issue himself apart from making infantile threats and insults. His knowledge of the cult appears to be zero.

2) He becomes angry and self pitying when ignored.

3) When roadrunner is asked to give an example of his alleged research he retreats and changes the subject.

Roadrunner has never actually said anything about Scientology in all his years of posting on ARS! He claims to be an expert but probably knows very little. It is unlikely he was ever a member. He seems to be motivated by a terror of clear communication and repeats this futile cycle twenty or more times a week. He is always defeated and has made himself an object of derision and contempt. Nevertheless he never seems to learn or to develop as a person.

It seems that these two have become trapped on ARS and cannot escape this self defeating behaviour. They follow a robotic mental programme that requires them to remain ignorant.

Tell me what to think!

2010-05-01T20:07:00.001+01:00

It is sad to admit this but there is a certain sort of person who needs to be told what to think.

You can recognise such a person by the way they react to anything that is ambiguous. They will shift from side to side and will begin blinking nervously because they are confused. They want a good guy and a bad guy- and they want to be told everything will be OK.

Generally this sort of person will cease upon word similarities to resolve their confusions. Similar sounding things are lumped together even if they have no logical connection. Generalities become a soothing substitute for thought. Complex issues are reduced to simply blaming men/Jews/capitalists/liberals/'psychs'. This sort of thinking can easily morph into authoritarianism when such a person gets some power. They cannot handle complexity so they are always looking for somebody to demonise and punish. They like simple policies and become confused when something unexpected happens. Very often this sort of person becomes so wedded to his dogmas that he would rather become angry than admit anything unexpected.

The great majority of people who enter Scientology leave it relatively undamaged. This is because their ability to deal with ambiguous situations is still functioning. A small minority find themselves unable to deal with the complexity of the outside world and therefore cannot leave even when they are abused and beaten. This is because the cult keeps things simple even when it is punching them in the face. The abused sea org member does not need to think through the rights and wrongs of being punched- it is always explained to him. Life remains simple and therefore relatively stress free.

The prospect of freedom is more frightening than any abuse they may heap upon him. The ultimate horror of Scientology is that the victim becomes allergic to freedom and must remain a slave for life.

Flourish and Prosper

2010-05-01T15:53:00.001+01:00

One of the better LRH doctrines is that of 'flourish and prosper'. This is the idea that the best revenge upon an SP is to live well because this will upset them more than anything else.

Scientology would not be the public menace that it is if it followed this doctrine itself. This would mean that the cult world answer bad publicity by giving staff a weeks free holiday on the grounds that this would wind up everyone who wished them ill.

Instead we see bizarre sites such as this one http://www.markrathbunisasquirrel.com/. Notice that scientologists are behaving exactly as you would expect an SP to do. They wish every form of failure upon 'Rat and Rin' (the rather childish names they have for Marty Rathburn and Mike Rinder). They wish everything from mental illness to destitution upon this pair.

I then visited Martys own site http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/ and find the exact opposite. There is no personal hate here and the guys seem a great deal more fun. Right now they are on a fishing trip/ barbecue while 'international management' remain behind razor wire taking turns to beat one another.

What effect do you suppose this has upon the scientologists still in the cult? It drives them quite literally mad!

Clear delusion

2010-05-01T14:48:00.001+01:00

LRH makes an extraordinary claim in his masterpiece of pseudoscience 'Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health'.

In this book he claims that all errors and faulty decisions are based upon the reactive mind and that Clears are free of such things. They simply never make a bad call.

It is difficult to know how LRH could possibly know such a thing as no Clear existed at that time. His only concern was to fill his book with such hyperbole that it becomes a bestseller on the basis of promises alone.

This makes me wonder why the world is not run by Clears. Surely such supermen would solve every problem known to man and be colonising the remainder of the galaxy by now?

In fact we find that they have amassed a pile of real estate and are now running a failing cult into the ground- a big disappointment for the fat fraud I am sure.

LRH realised that he had made a big mistake by claiming Clears were infallible soon after publication of the book. What would happen if they started calling him a fraud? Many, many Clears have left the cult and most of these have declared LRH a fraud- but clears are always right!

LRH backtracked upon his previous promises by saying that Clears actually COULD be wrong if they have wrong information. In other words Clears are exactly like you and I.

They are only told this AFTER the cult has drained their bank accounts. The state of clear is an illusion.

The no case gain case.

2010-05-01T01:26:00.001+01:00

Scientology just loves to reverse responsibility. They have the concept of the 'no case gain case'. This basically states that if Scientology is not helping an individual it is because the individual is evil.

This is a very effective way to stop people complaining but it is also very ironic because both LRH and DM are no case gain cases!

LRH ended his life a drug addled recluse who was probably also insane. He was undoubtedly wealthy but he was also a fugitive from the law- and a virtual prisoner in his own home.

This was a strange fate for someone who spent his life promoting mental health, high ethics and a drug free life.

In fact he was the classic no case gain case.

DM is very similar. He is not yet insane although he is rumored to have a drink problem and has strong paranoid tendencies. He is not progressing up the bridge because he will not allow himself to be audited.

Another no case gain case.

The strange death of the I.A.S

2010-04-30T23:37:00.002+01:00

I.A.S stands for International Association of Scientologists and is the home of the real crazies in Scientology. These guys follow their own particular gospel which consists of 'late' LRH documents dating from the days he lived in hiding and his only conduit with the world was DM.

These are loopy documents indeed- possibly all the more so because they may have been written by DM and not LRH at all. They consist of fairly standard borderline anti Semitic conspiracy stuff.

According to the I.A.S the world is not run by psychiatrists but bankers. As usual within Scientology, a number of distinct things are run together so that no distinction is made between central and commercial bankers. The bankers themselves always seem to be Jewish- in any case we are given this impression because the only names given are Jewish sounding ones.

These bankers (Jews) are alleged to have stolen most of the worlds gold and they are also working on a fiendish plan to reduce the global population too.

The I.A.S was promoting this world view fairly vigorously during my time in the cult- but they were being hampered by others in the cult who knew this would play very badly.

I remember reading an issue of Impact magazine which showed a long distance cyclist with rather intense and cultic eyes who was cycling around Germany to raise money for the I.A.S. This was billed as a cycle ride for peace or something similar. They had managed to trick some minor local politician to be photographed with the cyclist but it was clear the politician was looking for a way out and wanted to escape. The cyclist was bending over the politician and fixing him with a hypnotic stare while he told him the 'true' cause of the war in the former Yugoslavia.

So.. what was the 'true' cause of the war?

Impact Magazine was not saying! The whole thing was totally ludicrous. The I.A.S was trying to publicise an alleged conspiracy and keep it secret at the same time!

In fact the I.A.S believed the Jews/bankers or (possibly) psychiatrists were behind the war in order to depopulate the world. I believe that forces within the cult prevented the I.A.S from running this campaign effectively because they knew it would backfire.

Shortly after this the I.A.S was effectively destroyed as an organization by the following means.

1) The I.A.S was used as a personal holiday fund by DM and therefore denied the funds to continue with their embarrassing campaigns (see the Truth Rundown).

2) The I.A.S was transformed into a sort of mortgage bank to fund the 'idle org' programme. The London org was purchased with I.A.S money on the proviso that the org repay the original sum by signing people up for I.A.S memberships.

3) The I.A.S website is not being updated although it continues to collect funds.

It seems that DM no longer needs the I.A.S and may have dispersed the management.

Ignorance - the cardinal virtue of Scientology

2010-04-30T20:17:00.001+01:00

Every movement has its cardinal virtue. Christianity hold love to be the greatest of virtues while politically correct folk hold equality (as defined by themselves) to be where it is at.

Scientology values ignorance as the greatest of all virtues. In fact you could see Scientology as nothing more than a means for LRH to remain ignorant about things he wished to ignore.

We see this quest for ignorance in Ron's own life- his fake learning and his ignorance of the scientific method. We see it in his willingness to fake an education and to pretend to have attended courses he was not bothered to attend. LRH would even boast of his ignorance on occasions. He was proud of the fact that he used the children's version of the Encyclopedia Britannica rather than the adult one, for instance.

Throughout all of Ron's writings we see that superficial knowledge is held to be more authentic than deep knowledge. True experts are always disparaged- especially literary reviewers and 'serious' writers. LRH saw himself as a true philosopher king who could view all of human knowledge and see the big picture that eluded everybody else. LRH thought he was only person who could see the wood for the trees.

In fact, for all of his preening LRH was a remarkably ignorant individual. He was not widely read (preferring trashy and sensationalist fiction rather like his own) and he never bothered to check his facts. This resulted in a whole series of howlers such as his belief that the sun was powered by nuclear fission, that Darwin believed that environmental characteristics could be inherited or that nicotine turned into nicotinic acid in the lungs. These are not difficult things to check and I am pretty sure that I knew all three were false by the age of 13 or so.

Why did LRH never bother to cure his ignorance? One reason may be that he could admit no greater authority than himself. Another may be that he incorporated ignorance into the fabric if Scientology itself.

Mere mortals such as myself learn things the hard way. This involves observing the real world and thinking about it. There is no short cut to understanding for the wog! We must study the works of other wogs because we lack the gift of 'knowingness'. Furthermore we believe the world is objective and not some sort of magical projection from our own minds. This means we must take facts seriously even if we do not like them.

Clears and OT's have a special licence to remain ignorant. This is because they have 'knowingness' which means they can make up things to suit them. Addicted to cigarettes? No problem! Simply decide they are good for you!

Furthermore Scientology does not even believe the world is real- it is simply an agreement between thetans. Why bother with actual reality if it does not really exist? Simply make stuff up!!

Comm lag

2010-04-30T16:24:00.001+01:00

In Scientology there is a concept known as Comm Lag. This is any pause before speech- particularly when answering a question. Comm Lag is supposed to be a bad thing because the Thetan does not think as such (it simply knows by a process of instant intuition) so Comm Lag indicates that it is not the Thetan who is answering but the reactive mind.

The longer an individual pauses in speech the more they are judged to be lost within 'thinkingness' and the more 'reactive' he is.

Many of you will be smiling inwardly because LRH has the most appalling comm lag. He waffles on and on for hours on his tapes and often creates sentences that are literally meaningless. During his wilder speculations he will pause, draw out his sentences and often abandon them half way through. All of these are manifestations of comm lag and it grows markedly worse when he is talking his OT nonsense.

Much of Scientology can be seen as Ron's efforts to resist his own creeping insanity. He was a sociopathic drug addict who invented programmes to cure sociopathic behaviour and drug addiction. All of these programmes were ultimately failures because they were the product of a sick mind. It is tempting to believe that the doctrine of comm lag was an effort to cure himself of his own OT delusions.

The real effect of the comm lag doctrine is to prevent any form of thought. If somebody barks a question at you in the Sea Org you had better come back with an instant response- or else.

Unfortunately thought requires time- so it is possible to stop a person thinking by denying them time to do so.

How does a person find out about Scientology?

2010-04-20T19:12:00.001+01:00

What IS Scientology?

How does one find out about it?

If you wished to know about Christianity or Socialism (or even Freemasonry to some extent) you would simply approach a believer and ask them. You could be sure that any believer would actually know what the whole thing was about. Freemasonry is a little more difficult but it is possible to get some idea about it from public literature- and the remainder is fairly well known from other sources.

Scientology is quite different in that it is possible to be engaged in Scientology full time for many years and still have no real idea of what it is all about. In fact a Scientologist is always in a 'mystery sandwich' they have always discovered some big secret and they are always about to discover another one. Every time they go up a level their idea of Scientology completely reverses. First it is a therapy, then a religion. Finally it becomes some sort of secret magical brotherhood cum political conspiracy. Nobody really knows what it may become on the higher levels that have not yet been released.

This means that it is impossible to find out about Scientology from the organization itself or from believers. You could spend five years studying it and still have no idea what the beast really is.

There is also the fact that Scientology distorts perceptions. An active Scientologist becomes lost in a maze of mirrors. He cannot be honest either with you or with himself. In fact Scientologists know less about the subject that anyone.

Former Scientologists are also bad at explaining what really goes on. They talk a lot about the OT levels, exploding volcanoes and so on but the average clam never learns of these things. Scientology is not really about Xenu. Many former Scientologists are also driven half mad by the experience and invent their own private religion of 'chlorine eating remote control germs' that change peoples hair to various bizarre colors on the orders of the German Secret service.

We can learn far more by looking at the way the organization behaves.

1) The cult is highly deceptive in all its dealings. It may try to lure you in with promises of employment or of personality tests. These 'Oxford Capacity Analysis' tests have no connection with Oxford University and are not actual tests (nobody gets a pass). They are simply ploys to obtain your personal details.

2) It is impossible to get any indication of what the organization believes from the promotional material.

3) Church spokespeople combine paranoia, aggression and defensiveness in equal measure and storm out of media interviews when questioned.

We may study real life Scientologists in greater depth on Alt Religion Scientology.

Scientologists on ARS fall into the following groups.

1) CCHR (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) shrills. CCHR is a front group that claims to be concerned with the reform of Psychiatry. In reality they attempt to prevent discussion of Scientology by posting off topic and slanderous posts about psychiatry on ARS. This is an abuse of charitable status.

2) OSA volunteers. OSA has a history of deceptive and underhand activity on ARS. Currently they seem to employ a creep who makes obscene and slanderous sexual allegations about female posters. He also trys to insult male posters by claiming they are female and insults female posters by saying they are male, fat, and living on welfare. The self hating tone of these posts suggests he may be dangerous to women.

3) Child pornography and spam possibly initiated by the church. I am not suggesting that the church is involved in the production of child pornography but it is possible they have some way to add ARS on to span lists. It is also possible that individual Scientologists have done this without the knowledge of management.

4) Independent Scientologists, many of which have mental problems.

In short- the only way to find out about Scientology is is to look at the activities of individual Scientologists and of the cult itself.

It is not pretty.

Freedom Press

2010-04-02T12:11:00.002+01:00

Here is a photograph of the Freedom Press - a London anarchist organization that has published a magazine called freedom for over a hundred years.

In fact they could probably sue the cult for the misuse of their trademark if they were so inclined. This would be fun.

The Bicycle Cult

2010-02-11T17:59:00.002Z

The Economist magazine refers to the China as the Bicycle Economy. This is not because of the large numbers of bicycles on the streets but because it can only remain stable as long as it continues to grow at a great rate. China has many economic, social and political problems that are only soluble as long as the economy continues to grow.

Scientolgy is very similar. Their entire ideology collapses if they recognise their true organizational chaos. How could it be otherwise? The cult teaches that scientologists are a sort of master race- supermen with the power to bend time and space to their will.

Not only this- but they believe they have the best management in the world- and the finest leader.

How could they ever fail?

The cult is now in a trap of its own making. They should have cleared a hundred planets by now and yet they have not even completed one. How come?

There are only a limited number of possibilities.

a) The tech simply does not work.

b) Management is poor.

c) Scientology is confronted by enemies that are more powerful than the cult itself.

d) Elements within the cult are suppressive.

As far as I can tell there simply are no other possibilities.

DM is quite aware of this problem and it is driving him (quite literally) insane. He is hunting for SP's high and low and has torn management apart to find them.

He has sought out and manufactured exterior enemies. This accounts for his bizarre obsession with psychiatry. Exterior enemies provide an excuse for his own failings.

This also helps us to understand the Ideal Org mirage. DM seeks to create the illusion of growth in order to prevent his followers asking the same questions that torment him daily.

One day they will... and that will be the end of him.

A policy of encirclement.

2010-02-09T23:52:00.004Z

The cult fears encirclement more than anything else. This is the state of being confined to a narrow area of society and unable to expand or infiltrate beyond it.

Most scientology actions can be understood as an effort to avoid this. They constantly seek to undermine elected bodies and gain power over them in underhand ways- and they are constantly being rebuffed because their game is well known by now.

Nevertheless it would be a disaster for democracy- and for critics personally if the circle were ever to be breached. Scientology would use any state power it obtains to attack critics personally. There is no ideological reason why they should not even kill us if they had the power. They regard everyone who opposes them as so low on the tone scale that they can be safely disposed of 'quietly and without pity'.

It is vital that this encirclement continues.

Government is the chief target of scientology subversion and it is vital that government is informed of the threat. Information on the Internet is useful, of course, but ministers generally request an expert when they are investigation an issue. It is therefore vital that we have a real world presence that government agencies can call.

These groups exist but have generally been ignored by the critics. They have been a point of contact for members leaving the cult and know more about the mental landscape of scientology than anyone else.

Here are some UK groups with varying levels of activity. I have not had dealings with them all.

http://www.escapeint.org/index.html

http://www.familysurvivaltrust.org/index.html

http://www.cultinformation.org.uk/

http://www.familysurvivaltrust.org/index.html

http://www.fair-news.org/

These groups are 'respectable' in ways that many of us are not. They have not set out to keep scientology out of government but they have this efect by liasing with government themselves.

The future of scientology.

2010-02-08T23:01:00.001Z

When we look at 'Slappy's' rule of the Co$ we see some remarkably constant themes.

1. Perceptions are more important than realities.

Pretty much everything 'Slappy' does is for PR purposes. Scientology has become an endless cycle of parades and announcements. He would rather open an empty Ideal Org to great fanfare than have a more modest org with students. This is because the Ideal Org provides a better backdrop for his own role as heroic leader. Image is everything for him- chiefly his own image.

PREDICTION. The cult will engineer a series of bogus crises so that they can declare a victory over this or that group.

2. Closure of alternative power centers.

The first thing CoB (Slappy) did when he got some power was to bring the Missions under control of the Sea Org and thus destroy them. This tendency was continued with the closure of every PR and marketing effort that was not directly overseen by the Sea Org. Advertising agencies were sacked and public members were prevented from speaking to the media. These actions lead directly to the stat crash in the late 1990's but they have not been reversed. If we wish to understand why we need only return to my first point. CoB is chiefly interested in projecting his own image- and this is more easily achieved if other people are silenced.

CoB has also destroyed much of the scientology management structure and thus prevents rival empires from being created. I also suspect he is marginalizing John Travolta by not publicising his (quite newsworthy) efforts in Haiti to any great degree.

The Sea Org is also bearing down on local orgs far more than in the past. This takes many forms such as purging of independent minded staff, micromanaging activities and making Ideal Org staff wear strange vampire outfits. Most of this has negative effects upon production but establishes CoB as the ultimate authority on every matter.

PREDICTION. Purges and paranoia.The extension of the Sea Org into other areas. Suspicious deaths.

3. The erasure of the past.

Scietology folk law holds that Old St Hill under LRH was the most successful org in history. Staff were mentored by LRH and were often personal friends. It is not therefore surprising to find that CoB has declared 49 out of 50 staff who served there. This is because any one of these people would have a greater claim to power than 'Slappy' himself. This again indicates that CoB is only interested in securing his own position.

PREDICTION. Further policy letter revisions.

4. A lack of interest in Scientology.

The most interesting thing about 'Slappy' is that he is not interested in scientology! He does not receive auditing himself and likes to withhold it from staff members to keep them in line. He also diverts public and staff from the bridge to carry out endless sec checking and ethics actions. Local orgs are prevented from moving people up the bridge because they have become fundraising groups for his various vanity projects. As a result of all these factors almost nobody is progressing up the bridge.

PREDICTION. The mythologising of states such as Clear. Fewer new clears are being produced with each comming year.

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

The Pub Test.

2010-02-08T21:48:00.000Z

Once upon a time scientology was cool. There were some very strange people running it- but they were cool strange people. Whenever the cool strange people got caught out they would be explained away by some sensible corporate types who would make it all appear a rare aberration.

This period was documented in a 1968 BBC programme- 'The shrinking world of L Ron Hubbard.' The film sounds like a hatchet job and it is. The BBC interviewed LRH in his Popeye hat and basically allowed him to hang himself in his own words. This was the interview in which he said 'there was no second wife' despite being married to his third.

It was clear to everyone that LRH was as mad as a sack of ferrets and yet he came across as charismatic and interesting. One feels that he was capable of being good company provided one was not in his power in any way. Many perceptive people would feel a shiver down their spine at the prospect of being at his mercy in any way. One instinctively knew that he were a fantasist and something of an overgrown child. Children can be charming but they can also be terribly cruel.

The BBC also interviewed a remarkably sensible and level headed young woman at Saint Hill who somehow made the wacky world of scientology sound almost mundane. It seems that the cult can no longer locate anyone of her caliber now that she is really needed.

Where have all these people gone? She was not unique. It was quite normal for well adjusted and sociable people to join scientology in the 1960's. Think of Tory or any of the people who are now leaving the cult. I like to apply the 'pub test' to each of them.

Marty Rathbun now comes across as an affable guy that is interested in the world and who would be willing to have an agenda-free conversation with most people. It is true that much of what he puts out on his blog is rather self serving but one instinctively feels that he has now become a human being once again. It is not necessary to agree with a person before one can recognise their humanity. I could see myself drinking a pint of beer with the man and enjoying the experience.

If I were in a bar with Tommy Davis I would either be walking on eggshells or winding him up mercilessly. It is impossible to imagine oneself relaxing in his presence.

Worst of all would be 'Slappy' himself. If I entered a pub and saw someone like him seated there I would instinctively know I was in the wrong place. My father was an alcoholic and I have always been able to recognise a problem drinker as a result. Worst of all are the eyes. Whatever DM may be saying or doing his eyes never change. They transmit pure hate for everything he sees. When he looks in your direction it is only to locate a target even if his mouth is smiling.

The Pub Test basically explains how a small group of sociopaths can take over an area and drive out decent people. The people who run scientology now are the ultimate party spoilers. They ruin good times and create such a toxic atmosphere that decent people are forced to leave or become just like them. Scientology is like a dangerous pub. The moment any normal person walks through the door they notice the atmosphere and walk right out again.

Things will only get worse. The atmosphere becomes more hostile and violent with every decent person who leaves- and DM becomes more secure in his position as they do so.

I predict that this process will accelerate and feed upon itself. There will probably be many deaths before the police finally move in.

LRH admits Dianetics is a fraud.

2010-01-23T21:28:00.000Z

It is interesting to read Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health with the blinkers off.

Roughly speaking it consists of one third advertising copy (for the various wonderful powers of the Clear).

One third preening and pseudo scientific gobbledygook.

One third filibustering and filling space with words for its own sake. LRH was generally paid by the word.

The actual content of the book (the procedure) take up no more than two pages in total.

Unfortunately the entire book can be read as a gigantic admission of fraud. Why?

LRH describes the wonderful world of the clear in great depth AND THEN ADMITS THAT THE FIRST CLEAR IS YET TO BE CREATED.

So how does LRH know that the state of Clear even exists?

There is no way he could possibly do so.

There are only two possibilities.

1) LRH had a secret supply of Clears that he based his research upon. For some reason he chose to lie about this.

or...

2) There was no research- and no state of Clear.

Either way there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that the book could be true.

The benefits of delusional thinking.

2010-01-23T15:47:00.002Z

It is common to believe there are only two kinds of people in the world- the sane and the insane. The most common yardstick used to determine which we are dealing with is to ask if the person is delusional or not.

In fact delusional thinking is far more common than mental illness. There are many thousands of scientologists who claim to believe that they have supernatural powers of one sort or another- and yet not one of them has ever demonstrated them. OT powers are often claimed by people at every level of the bridge. Indeed, scientologists believe that you do not even have to be a scientologist to do this. They claim that the misfortunes of non scinetologists are actually a form of OT manifestation.

You or I may see a plane crash on TV and believe it to be bad luck on the part of the victims. A scientologist believes the victims 'pulled in' the crash via their latent OT powers and that they both intended to die and deserved to do so.

On one level we could simply describe this as 'nuts' and assume that the people who claim to believe these things are mentally ill. In fact many mentally ill people develop the exact same belief system as a product of their illness. The fact remains however that scientologists are often highly capable and well paid people. This is inevitable as scientology is the most expensive of religions.

We must ask ourselves why a sane person would assume the viewpoint of insanity. What benefit does delusional thinking confer?

First of all- the scientlogist becomes the god of his own private universe. Nothing happens (good or bad) unless the scientlogist wills it. The scientologist literealy displaces God in this respect. This makes the scientologist immortal and all powerful which presumably is a comforting thought.

Secondly- everything that happens is about the scientologist. The world revolves around the scientologist as psychiatrists and space aliens plot over his immortal soul. He is the ultimate VIP!

Thirdly- it simplifies life. There are no difficult choices for the scientlogist. Every question may be reduced to a condition formula or a policy letter. All of history boils down to an epic battle between psychiatrists and scientologists- and only the scientlogist knows what is truly going on!

Therefore we can say that the delusional scientologist is quite rational in his irrationality. He is not generaly insane (although much genuine mental illness is hidden by scientology). The scientologist is actually playing a game of make believe- which he then hides from himself.

The unfunny truth about humor.

2010-01-23T13:24:00.000Z

It is interesting that fanatics and obsessives rarely have a sense of humor. LRH dimly understood that there was a link between lighthearted fun and mental health. Unfortunately he also realise that humor had the effect of reducing his own power. If LRH had been able to fully embrace humor he may never have gone mad and scientology may never have become a cult.

There is even a bizarre introductory process by which a PC is ordered to laugh by the auditor. When the PC finishes his laughing like a jackass he is given the command 'laugh' and must start all over again. This continues until the auditor no longer gives the command.

The reason this 'process' is so bizarre is that it misses the point of humor completely. This is laughter without humor. Laughter as drudgery. Laughter on command.

Let us look at the purpose of humor in the wider world.

1. Humor is an indicator of social dominance.

Everyone laughs when the boss tells a joke. This occurs even when he is not particularly funny. The humor is simply a means of establishing a social hierarchy.

This is one reason that the only person allowed to tell a joke in scientology is L Ron Hubbard. It cements him as the 'boss man' .

2. Humor allows people to express uncomfortable truths.

There is much truth in humor if you listen carefully. Unfortunately the truth can never be spoken in a cult environment and so the humor dies.

3. Humor deflates ego.

People have a tendency to make themselves important. Every now and again we see ourselves for what we are and it is funny. The bigger the delusions of grandeur the more dangerous humor becomes (and the more vital to mental health it becomes).

The Evil Purpose

2010-01-10T15:55:00.000Z

It is interesting to go the the newsgroup Alt Religion Scientology in order to study the scientologists themselves.

They are universally poor specimens- and do not reflect well upon the cult.

There are four main players. Jonathan Barbara, Barbra S, LazerClam and Roadrunner. Each of these people is drawn to the newsgroups for reasons they cannot explain or resist. You might even call this an evil purpose as there is an underlying malevolence behind each of their compulsions.

I think we can go further and say that most scientologists are bound to the cult by some hidden factor. Usually it is an inability to face the mundane nature of life. The scientologist lives a dream life as an intergalactic warrior battling Xenu on one side and the psychiatrists on the other.

Each of the ARS player is trapped in the cult by an inability to face some truth about themselves.

Jonathan Barbara is trapped as a follower of Marty Rathburn because he cannot admit that he has wasted much of his life on an illusion. This is a common trap among scientologists. They cannot walk away from the wasted years and so they waste the remainder of their life trying to extract value from what is gone.

Barbera S is a famous Internet kook who believes her hair is changed outlandish colors by the German Secret Service and their 'chlorine eating remote control germs'. She has the power to command psychic sharks who eat her enemies and then regurgitate them unharmed exactly three days later.

Scientology allows her to believe the impossible and therefore helps her to manage her illness. It also gives her an illusion of importance.

LazerClam tries to use reverse auditing techniques to injure and kill everyone who reads his posts. He is never discouraged by his lack of success because the real benefit is the illusion of power and control over the people he believes he is killing.

Roadrunner suffers some form of mental illness that revolves around the inability to tell what is and is not evidence. In effect he makes up some nonsense and then challenges others to disprove it. This gives him the illusion of significance and the illusion of power because he imagines other people are obliged to deal with his nonsense.

ARC The Triangle of Deceit

2010-01-10T10:01:00.000Z

ARC - the triangle of deceit.

The ARC triangle seemed a largely irrelevant sideshow while I was in scientology- although LRH regarded it is fundamental

The doctrine basically states that the three factors of affinity, reality and communication are linked together in such a way that an increase in one will lead to an increase to the other two.

This is actually quite an effective technique if your aim is to manipulate someone but of no use for authentic communication.

I will give you an example.

Suppose a scientologist is approaching you because they want something (they always want something).

First they will fake some affinity by smiling their robotic smiles.

Then they will fake some common reality. This is done in a completely transparent way often by claiming to have an item of clothing you are wearing in their own closet.

Finally they will move in for the kill with some fake communication. Real communication does not have a set outcome but scientology (fake) communication always does. Scientology communication is always a handling of one sort or another. The object is to manipulate you into doing or saying something favorable to their purposes. They will fake an interest in your own viewpoint but are only interested in attaining a desired result.

The horrible thing about the ARC triangle is that it turns one into a manipulator even if ones intentions are good.

The true communication formula is simply to be genuinely interested in what the other person has to say- which is the one thing scientology will not alow.

If the Church of Scientology were a person.

2010-01-09T14:49:00.000Z

They would be a very strange person indeed.

Somebody who lived alone in a house with the windows bricked up...

Someone who swears at strangers who wish them a good morning. Someone who thinks everyone but him has an evil purpose.

Someone who cannot answer questions- who claims to know the secret of life but storms off when someone asks what it may be.

If the church were a person it would be someone who hates their neighbours- and thinks they are all covertly hostile. It would be someone starving slowly to death and claiming to be a millionaire. It would be someone violent, deceitful, paranoid and slipping into insanity.

And all the while claiming to hold the secret to mental health.

The meaning of a word is not dependent upon the definition.

2010-01-09T13:52:00.001Z

The meaning of a word is not dependent upon the definition?

At first sight this statement appears meaningless- until I give examples.

There is a tendency in business circles to use the word 'challenge' as a replacement to the word 'problem'.

This may seem odd as the words have almost the same meaning. A challenge is an obstacle or task that needs to be completed before an objective may be reached- and a problem is exactly the same thing.

The difference between the two words is not the definition- it is the emotions that come packaged with it.

When we come across a problem we tend to feel depressed and half defeated before we even start.

When we face a challenge we feel fully energised and alive and can hardly wait to get to grips with it.

This is why some companies insist we use one word and not another. The meanings are the same but the human response is exactly opposite!

This makes a nonsense of the Scientology doctrine of word clearing. Dictionary definitions can only scratch the surface of meaning because they cannot explain the complex emotional baggage that each word carries.

Word clearing may be of some use in understanding a technical document that contains unfamiliar words- but it is worse than useless when trying to understand life. This is because life is all about perceptions and emotions. Nothing is good or bad except that thinking make it so.

Word clearing actually leads the student away from the real issue- which is the student themselves.

Scientology is a philosophy of life. The great paradox of Scientology is that it seeks to remove the student from this study by reducing words and concepts to their literal meanings. This means that fantastic untruths can be spun without the student ever becoming outraged at them. The emotional response has been dulled by the act of removing the student and their emotions from the picture.

This is rather a hard concept to grasp so I will give a practical example.

a) Suppose I were to tell you that garden gnomes came to life at night- you would laugh at me because this does not fit your reality or experience.

b) Suppose I were to say the same thing- but make this a hypothetical question, or suggest it in a story I was telling you?

Your initial reaction would not be the same. The story was not about YOUR life so you would not reality test it to the same degree. It is simply a funny little story for you to listen to without judgement.

Word clearing has essentially the same effect. It removes the student from the subject of Scientology so that he or she no longer has an immediate emotional reaction to a falsehood. Scientology is no longer a story about the student- it becomes a story about nobody in particular and for this reason it does not need to be reality tested.

The truth about hypnotism.

2010-01-02T07:22:00.002Z

There is a great deal of hysteria about hypnotism and way you react to the subject will depend upon how you define it.

There are a number of definitions around- some of which are more useful than others.

First we have the pulp fiction version. A pretty girl is made into a sleepwalking slave by a sinister manipulator and has no memory of anything she did when she is awoken.

This is the version promoted by LRH is Dianetics as he was himself a writer of pulp fiction. It is not helpful as it is almost certainly a dramatic myth and has nothing to do with the hypnotism that occurs in Scientology.

A far more useful framework is Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). This believes that hypnotism is actually quite normal and we all slip in and out of a light trance in daily life. We we experience trance whenever we a re persuaded to FEEL rather than THINK about a thing. It is not even particularly sinister (they maintain).

NLP holds that all personal change occurs during trance. This may be true if we are thinking of global transformations such as joining or leaving a cult or the alcoholic who suddenly finds he has no desire to drink following a night of prayer. My own experience of leaving scientology was rather like this. I found myself 'out' without really knowing what had happened. Suddenly it had no hold upon me and I could look at it critically as if I had never been in. The long process of working out what had been done to me took many years but the process of snapping out of it took only seconds.

There is also a second route to change. It is slower but ultimately more rational. This is the process of looking at ones beliefs and deciding if they make sense. An NLP practitioner would probably discount such a process by means of a circular definition. He or she would say that the real change had occurred earlier on a non rational level and the mental reexamination is simply a process of backward rationalisation.

Advertising usually works upon the emotions and not the intellect. They show the product, tell a joke, create a dreamlike atmosphere with soothing music throw in some sex appeal. What do they tell you about the product? Usually nothing! The advertiser simply links his product with good feelings so that you will feel good when you buy it.

This is hypnotism as defined by NLP and it MUST be effective or their would not be so much of it about. If people were not influenced in this way then the advertisers would change tactics.

NLP holds that it is possible to flick these switches within oneself and become the person you desire to be. If you wanted to lose weight you would associate the act of not eating to feeling good rather than self sacrifice.

NLP is also interested in redefining words so that they act as triggers for desired feelings (does this sound familiar?). Tony Robbins calls emotional pain 'action signals' because this is more useful than worrying about the pain.

Emotional pain (depression ext) = something to be avoided = illness = defeat and panic.

Action signal = time to go to work on ones life!!!

This may seem simple but it actually works. It is also (in NLP terms) akin to hypnotism.

Scientology uses a sort of reverse NLP to entrap people even though it predates it. This is because NLP is not a body of theory but simply a collection of useful techniques. Every person who has ever influenced another human being has used some form of NLP to do so. This occurs even when the influencer has never even heard of NLP!

Scientology uses this exact same method to prevent people from reading information such as this in the Internet.

They do this by linking the act of becoming informed (and therefore free) with emotional pain.

FIRST they introduce the concept of the Suppressive Person. This is actually the Sociopath and definitely not a person you should wish to meet or be.

THEN they attach the same word to people who write critically of the cult. This creates an adverse emotional reaction when the scientologist thinks of reading critical information.

This is NLP used to enslave rather than liberate the individual. NLP seeks to give people more options so that they can choose the best for themselves. Scientology uses these same methods to limit options.

Enturbuation X 3

2009-12-25T16:15:00.000Z

Social and economic change tends to continue in the same direction unless there is some compelling reason for change, and the trend for the Church of Scientology is DOWN.

The cults problems have multiplied approximately threefold every year since the mid 1990's. In other words the collapse of sceintology has become exponential. The interesting thing about exponential change is that it appears to most people that nothing much is happening until everything simply implodes. The collapse of socialism in central Europe is a good example- years of quiet decay followed by an almighty bang.

Let us go back just three years.

2007

2007 was a bad year for Sceintology. The worst year since 2006 in fact...

2007 was the year in which they began to lose their ability to control the media. On the one hand they succeeded in suppressing the South Park episode (which is nevertheless available as a Pirate Bay torrent.) On the other hand their frantic control freakery became the subject of a BBC Panorama programme- a spectacular own goal.

On the plus side the cult could boast that OSA were truly feared by a great many people. They had succeeded in destroying the few people who had ever formed a organisation to oppose them (such as the Cult Awareness Network and the Lisa McPherson Trust.) Nevertheless they had failed to stop entheta on the Internet. The cult made great efforts to appear mainstream by channeling money into the British Labour Party via one of its front groups.

2007 was the year in which critics moved over to the offensive. Up until this point the emphasis had always been on defending individual critics and publicising cult efforts to suppress free speech. The 'old guard' from the ARSCC continued to picket orgs from time to time.

2008 was the year of Anonymous. A worldwide movement appeared to come from nowhere to 'raid' orgs worldwide dressed in black suits and Guy Fawkes masks. In reality Anonymous was not new but simply the result of everything that had gone before- in particular their hamfisted attempts to censor the Tom Cruse maniac laughing video.

This was also the year in which the Sea Org began to disintegrate. Marty Rathburn, Mike Rinder and a number of other top sceintologists all defect while the remainder live under a reign of terror threat effectively destroys them. David Miscavige's own niece also goes public on the abuses going on in the Sea Org.

2008 was also a census year in the USA and from this we learn that the number of people living in the USA who describe themselves as sceintologists has fallen from 55,000 in 2001 to a mere 25,000 in 2008. Clear completions and Dianetics book sales are also in steep decline.

Partly as a result of these factors the CoS fail to oppose Anonymous until too late. The (now leaderless) OSA send themselves death threats and make post violent films upon the Internet. These are rapidly discovered to be fakes and the Co$ is discredited as a result.

2009 was the year in which all of David Miscaviges nightmares come true. This is the year is which we see the first alternative power centers emerge. Two main factions are visible. One is centered around Marty Rathburn and the other around Aaron Saxton. Both of these guys are former Sea Org members who have their own agenda. These people have reached out to literaly thousands of former members and Martys own blog eventually overtakes the Church of Scientology in terms of hits.

Official investigations, class actions and police raids multiply. Each of them absorb more of the cults resources so that the cult now appears to have reached a state of paralysis.

Broadly speaking the problems of the cult appear to have expanded by about 300% each year.

In 2007 they were manageable and largely self inflicted.

In 2008 they were deeply serious, indicating an organization in steep decline.

By 2009 the very legality of the cult in France was put in question.

I predict 2010 will make 2009 look rather good for the cult.

The ultimate irony.

2009-12-21T06:22:00.000Z

The ultimate irony of scientology is that it contains the seeds of its own destruction. It wraps itself in a mystery sandwich so that anyone who takes one bite might become hooked and want to know everything.

This is why critics are so persistent in investigating it. This is why it makes such good TV when Tommy Davis spins and evades.

Scientology and anti semitism.

2009-12-20T19:00:00.002Z

I have long suspected the Church of Scientology (or more particularly David Miscavidge) of being anti Semitic. This was not due to any hard evidence but was more a matter of generalised bad smell eminating from his direction.

Scientology is terrified of international networks (such as Interpol) and has a generalised dislike of bankers and of 'psychs'. Both of these professions are heavily populated by Jews and yet this was not proof of anti Semitism.

LRH seems a genial and all purpose bigot. He was probably happy to take money from any race- but he was also happy to play to prejudice when it suited him. This is why he talked of black people having more overts than white people while he was in southern Africa. It was also why he denigrated Mexicans while in the USA.

This would indicate opportunism rather than racism- and yet the bad smells continued.

We have the peculiar revisionist claims that make religion out to be the chief victim of the Nazis- and their chief supporters to be the psychiatric and psychological professions which were disproportionately Jewish. In effect Scientology has reversed the moral responsibility for the holocaust so that it is largely a crime committed by secular Jews against religious people of all persuasions.

Yet still I waited for more evidence.

Another pointer that I was on the right track came when I was invited to an IAS event. I was read a policy letter that was supposedly written by LRH that described an international banking conspiracy that aimed to enslave national governments. The strangest thing about this meeting was that this issue should be raised at all. The IAS was set up to promote scientology and yet here it was hinting at an economic conspiracy that seemed to have nothing to do with scientology.

Clearly the IAS has an agenda of its own- but shares this only with a selct few.

The banking conspiracy is an age old anti Semitic classic believed in by Stalin, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. True- there are present day advocates of the banking conspiracy who go out of their way to distance themselves from the anti Semites. Nevertheless, this is yet one more red flag.

The psycological atmosphere within the church was certainly conducive to anti semitism and paranoia. There was constant talk of conspiracy and spies- double agents and defectors. Everything that was not scientology was suspect.

Now Aaron Saxton has come out and confirmed my every fear (and a few more).

The logic is hard to follow... but they have the ring of truth. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6bjCtWMsOg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46c6cdVjw2c

Marty Rathburn - discovering his humanity.

2009-12-20T13:47:00.000Z

Many people find fault with Marty Rathburn because of his past- he was once a senior scientologist and the author of many crimes.

I see a man discovering his own humanity. This is heart warming and better than any amount of empty talk. It would be possible to ignore everything the critics say about Scientology- and still understand everything simply by looking at the photographs on his blog and comparing them with his previous self.

Marty is now capable of smiling warmly and has become the relaxed alpha male he was probably born to be. He is able to tolerate divergent views (to a degree) and has even developed a sense of humor. He posts a Peter Sellers clip from a Pink Panther film on his blog to lampoon the PI's who now follow him.

This indicates a degree of self knowledge that is rare among scientologists. Both he and Mike Rinder played the Peter Sellers role in the past. When they laugh at the goons they are also recognising something in themselves. This takes courage and I wish them well.

http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/

Scientology and Rhetoric

2009-12-20T11:21:00.000Z

There are three major reality avoiding tactics within Scientology.

TR's are the first. This is the art of controlling the direction of a conversation and thus controlling the mind of the target. A person with good TR's may lead the conversation where they will simply by repeating their own questions and ignoring threads put out by the other person. This may seem a useful skill for a salesperson or professional manipulator but it comes at a terrible price. THE PERSON WHO CONTROLS THE CONVERSATION CAN NEVER LEARN ANYTHING.

In other words we only start to learn and grow as individuals when our thoughts and conversations are led to places we have not been before. If we remain fully in control of the conversation this will never happen, and thus the Scientologist remains stuck within his old pattens of thinking.

This is sometimes called 'moronology' because it can take the form of a complete refusal to see the obvious even when it is under the nose of the Scientologist. It is a form of willful ignorance and is mainly dangerous to the person using it- although it can also result in a form of mental exhaustion for the person pointing out the obvious.

A second defense mechanism is pretended ARC. This involves pretending to be engaged in a conversation while secretly being detached from it and remaining in a separate 'mental room' while planning what to say next.

This has three main effects. Firstly, it means that the Scientologist never truly listens to another person because they remain within a secret chamber working out their responses based upon tone scales and artificial tricks. This insulates the scientologist from the danger of ever learning something new. Secondly, pretended ARC alienates the scientologist from himself and other people. He 'mocks up' friendship but does not feel it. This eventually results in an entirely fake personality based upon nothing but self manipulation. This fake persona has no life of its own and is easy for others to control.

The third effect of pretended ARC is mental exhaustion in the target. The target (usually a non scientologist) knows that they have been cheated on some level and have exchanged real friendship for a fake product. This manifests itself as mental exhaustion and depression in the target. Eventually this will result in the social isolation of the scientologist and thus drive him deeper into the cult.

The third (and most dangerous) weapon is Rhetoric.

Rhetoric is essentially a question that is not a question. Not all rhetoric is evil. I may ask a scientologist why the Church does not simply employ their OT's to make the critics disappear. This is rhetoric because I already know the answer (there are no OT's) but my intentions are good.

Scientology rhetoric pulls together all of their self deceiving manipulations into a deliberately misleading style of communication. It can become very sophisticated and multi layered so I cannot explain how to fully decode it here. It usually starts with an attempt to create a false premise for the entire conversation so that it never even strays close to the zone of truth.

For example.

You. "I believe Scientology is wrong for reasons A, B and C."

Them. "I am not sure which side you are batting on. How do I know you are not an OSA plant?"

We should note here that the only way to deal with rhetoric is NOT TO ANSWER IT. If you do answer rhetoric you will end up discussing absolute nonsense and never get close to the truth.

A common example of this is to place you in the role of a word clearer. The sceintologist will claim not to understand a word- if you define it for him he will claim not to understand a word within your explanation and so on. David Miscavige used to do this on TV and became an international joke as a result.

The best answer to this form of dishonesty is simply to say "I do not answer rhetoric"

Let us be fair to Scientology

2009-12-19T21:58:00.013Z

Let us be fair to Scientology. For the sake of argument I would like to make every possible allowance for Scientology before condemning it.

First of all, let us eliminate everything LRH wrote on the subject. Why not? If we want to understand modern Christianity we will not find the answers in the Bible. I have never met a Christian who believed that he had been swallowed by a fish for instance and yet there is a story in the old testament of a man who lived in the belly of a fish (not a whale) for three days.

This does not mean that Christianity is 'secretly' all about being swallowed by fish. If we wish to understand Christianity we must talk to Christians. We must let the sanest of them explain their case in their own words.

I recognise that this is unreasonably generous to Scientology. Christians do not deny that the old testament exists in the same way that Scientologists lie about Xenu.

Nevertheless I want to give Scientology every possible advantage so that we can be absolutely sure it is rubbish when it fails. Their chief liability is L Ron Hubbard himself. Here is a prophet who locked children in chain lockers and made himself a millionaire out of a religion he openly joked was a money making fraud.

Where do we find these articulate intelligent Scientologists to explain what modern Scientology is?

We will not find them in the Orgs. All we find here are secretive aggressive people who ask us over and over again what our crimes are when we ask a simple reasonable question.

In fact nearly everyone in Scientology behaves as if Scientology were a dirty secret. They act as if they had something to hide.

There is only one place where it is possible to communicate with Scientologists and ask them these questions and this is the newsgroup Alt Religion Scientology.

I have listed the main Scientology advocates in approximate order of sanity starting with the most sane. I would advise you to read what they have to say before making up your mind about the cult.

BARBARA SCHWARZ. High intelligence. Delusional.

Barbara worked as a senior position within the Church of Scientology in Germany until she became convinced she was the secret child of L Ron Hubbard and that she was married to Marty Rathburn. Barbara claims to have grown up with LRH on a secret submarine base from which she and LRH would watch passing fish and octopus. She became something of a stalker until Marty publicly denied having been married to her. Barbaras solution was that he must be a German secret agent from an imaginary outfit called SENGIMPUS (or something similar). SENGIMPUS has also been very busy on the following projects.

1) Controlling all world governments.
2) Kidnapping the 'real' Marty and LRH to replace them with secret agents.
3) Controlling the colour of her hair by means of 'remote control germs'.
4) Causing her to be arrested for the theft of a bag of nectarines.
5) Having her committed for mental treatment on three occasions.
6) Placing an electronic probe in her ear to give her sinister messages and a buzzing noise.

The really interesting thing about SENGIMPUS is its lack of ambition. They are supposed be be a bunch of Nazis who control the US government. Rather than launch a nuclear attack on Israel they choose to covertly change the colour of Barbara Schwarz hair by means of 'remote controlled chlorine eating germs'.

Nearly everyone in the world is actually a SENGIMPUS agent but Barbara continues to believe there is hope because she is convinced that whichever prison cell SENGIMPUS is holding her (imaginary) husband in is equipped with an Internet connection. She posts loving messages to him and sometimes receives replies from trolls trying to mess with her head.

On the plus side she is intelligent and capable of responding to others in an open and thoughtful way. She is more sane than any other Scientologist currently posting on A.R.S

JOHNATHON BARBRA Intelligent. Bi Polar (Manic Depressive)

Jonathan's behaviour is determined by his mental state that follows a repeating patten.

Phase I. Johnathan may appear lucid and polite by scientology standards. His word output is truly awesome and he can sit at a computer screen for up to sixteen hours a day, often writing three multi paragraph posts within a minute. In addition to this he self publishes a number of science fiction books. Naturally this obsessive life precludes a job or a girlfriend or any normal human contact.

Phase II. The posts become more and more erratic and often no longer make sense. He becomes personally abusive and confuses one poster with another.

Phase III. Johnathan accuses every poster who disagrees with him of being suicidal. This seems to be a defense mechanism to deny his own depression and to transfer it to his supposed enemies.

Johnathan actually only has one subject- he seeks to frame every issue in such a way that no objective proof is required to sustain his faith in scientology. He is unable to confront anything and dances around it without looking too closely.

Johnathan is a former Sea Org member who was thrown out under mysterious circumstances. My own guess is that these were linked to his present mental difficulties or that they discovered he had taken psychiatric drugs in the past.

LAZERCLAM Unknown intelligence. Evil.

Lazerclam believes in reverse auditing. This is a form of auditing (threpy) designed to make the target sick. This involves asking ambiguous questions to introvert the target and restimulate engrams. His posts appear meaningless or wacky but they betray an evil purpose. It is easy to dismiss him as a harmless nut until one realises that he has devoted years of his life to making complete strangers sick.

ROADRUNNER. Low IQ.

Roadrunner believes that his stupidity is some sort of victory for scientology. As far as I am aware he has never made a serious point in any discussion on any subject. He continually reverses the burden of proof and refuses to understand anything said to him.

If I were to say that LRH did not visit Venus and nearly get run down by a freight train, Roadrunner would ask me to prove this.

If I were to say that photographs of Venus show no train tracks, he would then ask me to prove the photographs were not fake...

and so on...

and on...

and on...

In fact it is impossible to prove a negative. This is why the proposer must produce the evidence- which Roadrunner never does.

In efect Roadrunner has turned his stupidity into a weapon. The fact that he cannot see the obvious is some sort of victory in his thick-as-shit brain. He accuses others of running away from discussion when this is what he does himself. He lacks honesty and integrity as well as intelligence.

So there we have it! The four best brains that scientology can offer us. Each of them have serious mental problems.

One is a delusional bag lady and illegal resident of the USA with a history of severe mental illness.

One is a suicidal depressive.

One is a sociopath who believes he can destroy the lives of people he has never met.

One is a moron (and proud of it).

Read what they have to say. Give them every chance- then make up your mind. Remember. This is the best that Scientology can do.

A sense of humor.

2009-12-04T05:49:00.000Z

Scientologists tend to lose their sense of humor and then regain it as they leave the cult. In fact a sense of humor and closed thinking are rarely found together.

Humor, of course comes in various forms and serves different purposes. Hitler, and Stalin were capable of their own brands of humorless humor that were expressions of pathological hostility. Even LRH had his own cruel humor but outlawed it in other people. (Mussolini, on the other hand could be wonderfully sarcastic.)

True humor requires a degree of self knowledge and a willingness to deflate the ego and see through our own heroic self image. This is quite hard to combine with cultishness or mental ill health.

Mentally ill individuals and cult members also rarely read novels. This may be because most mental illness impairs the ability of the patient to empathise or understand other people. Scientology does much the same by limiting human nature to a series of mechanical rules and scales- and thus limiting the humanity of the other person.

I recognise that there are exceptions to these rules- but I see humor and empathy as being essential to recovery.

The Squid of Scientology

2009-12-04T05:25:00.000Z

When a squid feels threatened it will release ink to confuse the predator as it flies backward with a jet propelled water-fart.

This is very similar to the behaviour of the average scientologist when confronted with their own natural enemies- logic and the demand for evidence.

The only difference is that the 'water-fart' is verbal and the ink is linguistic smog.

The scientologist will seek to confuse every issue by confusing the meaning of words. The scientologist will often claim not to know the meaning of a particular word or they will play games with grammar. This is nothing but a smokescreen designed to divert attention from the fact that they have no arguments of their own.

There is also a more sinister game that they play with their own minds while doing this. Scientology overcomes the logical objections of the new recruit by breaking sentences into individual words and thus breaking down the critical thinking abilities of the target.

I will give you an example.

Target: 'I am not so sure about concept X'

Recruiter: 'Well, do you understand word A? Word B? Word C?'

This has the effect of deflecting the attention of the target from the real issue (does the concept make sense) on to the secondary distraction of word clearing. The target is therefore not given the opportunity to examine anything critically.

The scientologist runs this procedure on himself when 'acting the squid'. The scientologist is distracted from any doubts he or she may have by the process of focusing upon words. This is a deadly and self destructive form of mind control- more dangerious to the scientologist than the intended victim.

The Gay Nuremberg Aesthetic

2009-12-02T05:16:00.000Z

Scientology (like all totalitarian systems) has developed its own aesthetic. I call the Gay Nuremberg (after the location of the famous Nazi rallies).

It fits, does it not?

The declining mental health of Scientology

2009-12-02T03:23:00.000Z

The most striking thing about the testimony of long time former Scientologists such as Tory Magoo is that Scientology was once fun. It was also rather cool. Can anyone think of a single cool Scientologist right now?

One way of testing this is to google two documentaries, both from the UK.

'The shrinking world of L Ron Hubbard'

and

'Scientology and me'.

The most noticeable difference between the two films is that in the 1960's the cult could produce intelligent and plausible spokespeople and now they have to rely upon Tommy Davis.

We might argue that that Tommy is an individual idiot- but why is it not possible to replace him?

One reason may be that the Tommys of the world simply drive talent away. Can you imagine a truly talented individual working under him for any length of time? I cannot. The only people willing to work under such conditions would be broken men and women who cannot maintain the mask of sanity for as long as it takes to film an interview.

Tommy may talk about making people more able but he shows himself to be a mental cripple and a bully. This is the true product of Scientology.

Dear Tommy Davis

2009-11-29T09:06:00.000Z

You have given so much to the Church.

Your life should have been a golden one. You had money, looks and health on your side. You could have traveled the world and done things that most people only dream of.

Yet you chose to give this up. Has this worked you you?

I have no doubt that you have a certain authority within the organization- but respect? Probably not. How does CoB talk to you really, Tommy?

He thinks you are weak, Tommy. He has contempt for everyone below him.

You see, respect is something people only find once they have left. True. It has to be earned- but telling the truth about the Church would earn you a bucketful.

If there is any other OSA member reading this the same applies. You deserve some respect, and you deserve some money. You have worked so long for so little.

Leave the Church. Write your book while there is still a market for it. Unburden yourself. But... do it quickly.

Recovery

2009-11-29T08:12:00.000Z

I am neither a shrink not a great expert in Scientology (I was not a member for very long). Nevertheless I have been able to watch the behaviour of recovering Scientologists much longer. Some people recover quite quickly while others take many years or never manage to do so at all.

Scientology works on many levels and generally takes between eight and eleven years to recover from completely, depending upon how deeply a person was programmed in the first place.

This is a list of critical success factors for recovering Scientologists.

1) CUT YOUR LOSSES.

The number one reason people become financially ruined in finance or business is that they run their losses hoping that things will improve. This is also the reason people remain in unhappy relationships. They have invested and suffered so much already that they can no longer rn away from their investment. We sometimes hear the absurd statement 'winners never quit' but this is not true. Look around you and you will see that successful people always cut their losses.

Humans do not like to admit they were wrong or to say goodbye to a cherished illusion. This is why so many people settle for second best in their lives- they cannot walk away.

Scientology is a little like gambling in that the next level always has all the answers. The compulsive gambler thinks he can get his money back by doubling his bet each time.

In order to recover from Scientology you need to walk away from it completely. No Freezone, No dabbling on the side.

2) TREAT IT AS AN ADDICTION.

Alcoholics and drug addicts need to be aware of the triggers for their addiction. This may be a particular environment or almost anything. These things will catapult the addict into a particular way of thinking and feeling and trigger the addictive behaviour.

Scientology is much the same except that many of the triggers were deliberately installed while in a hypnotic state. The two most powerful sets of triggers within Scientology are probably-

a) Scientology symbolism and graphics.

Scientology (like most totalitarian systems) has developed its own aesthetic. It is possible to look at a building, a painting or a poster and realise instantly that it comes from Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union. This is because these regimes realised that architecture, paintings and posters all create an emotional response in the viewer. They are all 'triggers' for a particular way of thinking just as going to Church is a trigger for faith.

Totalitarian leaderships recognise this instinctively which is why they devote huge energies to architectural white elephants. This partially explains the Scientology obsession with 'ideal orgs'.

This patten has existed since the dawn of civilization. Dictatorships are always the greatest monument builders. Think of ancient Egypt and the pyramids. These buildings were of no public value and would never have been built except to honor a dictator.

b) The use of language.

Scientology words are actually Scientology concepts in disguise. It seeks to destroy independent thought by destroying words. This process was described perfectly in George Orwell's masterpiece 1984 where the Party reduced the number of permissible words each year through the 'Newspeak Dictionary'.

Scientology also reduces the number of words that may be used.

In English we have three words.

'Understand'

'Agree'

'Obey'

This is the language of free will. I can understand something (but disagree) or I an understand something and agree with it (and even then not wish to obey you).

Scientology (just like New Speak) seeks to remove this choice by replacing it with a single work 'duplicate'.

The Party also introduced the word 'Orthodox' as an all purpose compliment that was used in exactly the same way as 'Standard' in Scientology.

3) CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT.

Get interested in life. Make new friends.

Recovering Scientologists are prone to obsessive behaviours- often spending an entire day having the same arguments with the same people over the Internet. They can do this for years and often have no time for a job or any sort of social life. They need to get out and see the sun.

4) BEWARE THE PARANOID UNIVERSE.

Recovering Scientologists are inclined to create a paranoid universe for themselves. This occurs for the following reasons.

a) The Recovering Scientologist needs to justify having been sucked in to the con. It is easier to justify being sucked into a vast evil conspiracy than the puerile little con Scientology really is. This causes the Recovering Scientologist to believe OSA is on his tail and that prominent critics are actually double agents.

b) The Recovering Scientologist may carry forward elements of Scientology paranoia into outside life.

c) The Recovering Scientologist may miss the drama that paranoia provides. The paranoid individual is always important because the conspiracies are always about him. Leaving Scientology therefore involves a loss of importance because one is no longer the centre of a paranoid world.

Tommy Davis.... serial fall guy.

2009-11-25T05:22:00.000Z

I have a conspiracy theory about Tommy Davis (aka Footbullet guy) who alternates between being Scientology spokes clam and RPF resident.

He rose to fame on the BBC Panorama programme where he presented himself as a bullying jerk- but who was the senior officer on that op? None other than Mike Rinder who then blew. Mike was even standing next to him in one scene but did nothing to calm him down.

He was sent to the RPF for this and emerged a physical and mental wreck. Fortunately his skills as a fall guy were recognized by 'Slappy' who placed him on TV to humiliate himself and Scientology again and again.

'Slappy' was isolated from the fallout. This is what fall guys are for.

The tension relieving objection.

2009-11-25T04:21:00.000Z

A common manifestation of cult think is the tension relieving objection- other wise known as the content free objection.

This occurs when a critic has made some point that comes close to bring down the cult supporters world view. He absolutely cannot pass the point by without disagreeing with it (or it may gain some purchase with him) but on the other hand he cannot engage with it mentally to produce a proper reply. This would also be dangerous to the true believer. He therefore gives an essentially meaningless reply along the lines of 'you are wrong' or 'where is the evidence' (ignoring any evidence already offered).

This content free objecting allows the true believer to have the last word without truly having to read the original post. The behaviour is everything to do with preserving the fragile faith of the believer and nothing to do with the issue at hand.

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

What if we are wrong?

2009-11-25T03:54:00.000Z

What if we are wrong about Scientology? What if it were true?

Well. We will simply return the next life and realise the error of our ways. No problem.

BUT

What if the Scientologists are wrong?

They will have wasted their entire lives being slapped around- and they only have one! They will lose everything!!

Watch out for the cult- think tripple whammy!

2009-11-25T03:24:00.000Z

Every cult I have ever come across has hit me with the following triple whammy. Most cult members will do this within hours of meeting you. See if you can spot it!

1) "The world is going to hell on a handcart- what with all the war, pollution and corruption and everything."

This is absolutely not true. Each decade sees the world wealthier and healthier than the one before. Life expectancy improves almost everywhere.

The cult member says this because he has the need to believe in Messiah figures. There tend to disappoint the cult member because Messiah figures are actually the cause of many world problems.

2) "People are horrible. They will stab you in the back as soon as look at you."

Again, untrue. The cult member typically seeks a state of ego-less submission and this is no usually available in the real world. This makes the outside world seem cold and inhuman to the cult member.

3) "Science/money/sex/reason have failed you. Why not try us?"

This is a council of despair and not even logical. It is true that science, money and personal relationships sometimes blow up in your face BUT belief in illusions ALWAYS do.

Escape to Certanty

2009-11-25T02:22:00.000Z

I would like to discuss Evolutionary Psychology.

This is the idea that our behaviours evolved in exactly the same way that our bodies did.

Our brains grew because large brains are 'pro survival'. In other words our stupider ancestors died out without reproducing.

The same applies to our behaviors- especially those behaviors that make least sense. This is even true of cult behaviours.

There is a particular type of person who is likely to undergo a religious conversion experience. The most noticeable characteristic of such a person is that they cannot deal with uncertainty.

Let us look at this type a little closer.

1) This person seeks consistency above all else. They worry that the media say that Tony Blair is bad when they previously said he was good. This undermines their sense of reality and makes them seem unsafe. This leads to a sense of helplessness and then depression. Such a person will often say 'what is the point to it all?'

2) This person will often look back at an imaginary age of certainty. They will talk fondly of their great grandmother who worked sixty hours a week all their lives and never traveled further than twenty miles from their birthplace. It is difficult to understand this but they actually envy such people and their limited options. Freedom is a curse to them because it brings choice.

3) Such people also usually believe society is on a downward spiral and look forward to the future with dread. Paradoxically they seem cheered by the prospect of global disaster in 2012 because it ends the uncertainty and freedom they most dread.

4) They are prone to superstition and magical thinking- which is also a way of dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty.

5) Such people also believe in conspiracies. They prefer the world to be governed by Illuminati than to be governed by no one.

6) They demand certainty and a fixed conclusion whatever is being discussed. If you are discussing a scientific advance they will demand some sort of final resolution to a question. When you explain that an area is in a state of flux they are unhappy and slightly depressed by the whole thing.

7) They are prey to a nameless dread that arises from the uncertainty and freedom of life. There are many things that can never be truly known. Did they take the right job? Make the right investment? Live in the right town? This results in a sense of futility, emptiness and hopelessness.

8) They cling to sex roles and are frequently tyrants in their own homes. They also tend to worship political tyrants who offer the certainty they lack.

9) They are frightened by their own death and anything else they cannot control.

This person is constantly prey to feelings of futility, dread, terror, depression and emptiness. Very often they will undergo a 'conversion process' where this falls from them and is replaced with a simple set of certainties. It is not possible to remove these certainties without returning them to their state of terror.

This mental state is quite rational when we consider society 20,000 years ago.

A person would know no more than 500 people in his life and his biggest fear would be uncertainty. He prefers strong leaders for the tribe. When the tribal leader dies there will be a great deal of violence and so he will always support the existing leader- no matter how tyrannical.

Unfortunately the 20,000 year old brain cannot deal with modern life and is terrified of it. This terror ends only when someone offers a simple truth that resolves all questions at once. This results in the sensation of being 'saved', and a great release of energy and love for the new leader. They are ready to do anything to show this love and submission.

This is the 'true believer'. They are resistant to logic but may change their belief to something equally non logic based.

Not all Scientologist are of this kind- but they do exist. DM may be one of them.

How Scientology Works 192: Triggers.

2009-11-24T05:16:00.000Z

All cults employ the smae basic mechanism.

They place the member in a state of hightened sugestability and then install a hypnotic trigger. This may be an activity, a particular smell, a form of music, or (in the case of scientology) a series of symbols.

This trigger will return him to the state of hightened suggestability whenever it is employed. Language, too can be a hypnotic trigger.

Any person wishing to escape the cult must remove all hypnotic triggers from his environment. Removal of symbols is quite easy- simply destroy the old books. It is also nessasary to stop talking like a Scientologist as this language can limit thought.

There is nothing more sad than the ghosts of former members who haunt the Internet. These people continue to use the language of the cult and never quite escape its orbit. Many are totally opposed to the cult and yet they never strike out and create anything new for themselves. The language they employ ensures that this is literaly unthnkable.

False Data Stripping.

2009-11-24T05:14:00.001Z

False Data Stripping- what a strange beast this is!

FDS is the process by which a student sits down with an auditor. The auditor asks the student what 'false data' the student has and then identifies the first time this was believed. This is said to cause the 'false data' to blow and no longer trouble the student.

The real oddity here is that it is the student who identifies the false data. In other words it only strips him of data he already knows is false!

So what is the point of that?

In the real (non Scientology) world there is no point whatever. In the real world people evaluate data of its merits. They use their critical thinking skills to decide what is true and what is false and then they simply remove the false data from their minds.

This is an entirely natural and effortless way of thinking that also happens to work a great deal better than cult- think.

Unfortunately it is not compatible with becoming a Hubbard drone and so Hubbard had to find a new way.

This is the Hubbard way of doing things.

1. Install a new idea (without critical evaluation) via the Learning Drill.

This simply involves splitting the mind in two. The student will adopt a viewpoint and then 'think with it'. This is done without considering the truth or falsehood of the position. The viewpoint is simply installed like a piece of new software.

If the student can 'think with' the concept the world is flat then the job is done.

2. Uninstall the old way of thinking.

The student may become aware that a split has developed in his thinking. He believes (or can 'think with') Scientology concepts and yet the old concepts also work for him. In my own case I found myself developing fanatical attitudes even though on one level I did not believe in them at all. This is a very uncomfortable and unhealthy way of thinking.

The 'solution' to this is False Data Stripping.

The student uninstalls his previous thoughts by returning to the point in his past where he first learned them and then running them almost like an engram. At no point does the student wonder if the 'false' data really is false or not. He simply uninstalls it because it is unhelpful to his new way of thinking.

In this way an entire education may be stripped away to create a blank slate for Scientology.

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

Uppers and Downers.

2009-11-23T05:48:00.000Z

Hypnotism comes in many forms. It is rather like a drug in that it can be an Upper or a Downer.

We are all familiar with hypnotism as a downer. This is where the hypnotist places the subject into a trance by narrowing his attention until he is only aware of what the hypnotist wishes him to focus upon.

The subject becomes relaxed and is counted down into a trance rather like a light sleep.

This is why we find it easy to identify the hypnotism in Dianetics.

So what is hypnotism? Hypnotism is simply the act of narrowing attention. It is quite possible to be hypnotised while running around like a mad thing. The point is not the level of physical activity but the narrow focus of the hypnotised individual.

We see this clearly in stage hypnotism (LRH was a talented stage hypnotist). The hypnotised individual can be made to jump up and down, shout or do any number of things without leaving their state.

We can therefore say that hypnotism is an 'upper' as well as a 'downer'. This is where a person is engaged in furious action but his thoughts are just as narrowly focused as a person in the deepest trance. This is the hypnotism of the Tone 40 individual. It is actually more dangerous than Dianetics because such an individual believes his narrow focus helps him get the job done. The Tone 40 individual will therefore maintain the hypnotic focus for months or even years.

The result is a loose cannon. An individual full of passion and energy but incapable of true reason. A Tone 40 person will react with fury at every obstacle or contradiction and may well become violent. We see this in Tommy Davis and in the violent culture of the Sea Org. We probably also see this in the suicide bomber and any truly dangerous person.

A person in Dianetic 'revery' is quite harmless- as most people are when tranquilized- but a person in Tone 40 is infinitely dangerious.

Certificates

2009-11-23T05:16:00.001Z

There is something deeply weird and false about a religion that issues certificates.

Can you imagine the Buddha issuing a certificate saying that a person had achieved Enlightenment and that he was now free of attachment and suffering? Why should such a person even WANT a certificate if they had truly overcome the Ego?

Can you imagine St Peter doing the same? Why should a person desire a certificate if they truly thought they were going to heaven? What use would it be?

The same applies to Scientology. Why should anyone care about their certificates if they truly had the super powers promised to them? Why should anyone worry if these certificates were cancelled? If I wanted to impress someone with my super OT powers would I point to the certificate on my wall or would I walk through that wall and wave to my astonished friends?

I think I would do the latter. IF I had the OT powers.

If on the other hand I were the victim of a fraud, I might become attached to my certificates.

How Scientology Works 191: Uniforms.

2009-11-23T00:06:00.000Z

The real purpose of any uniform is to influence the person wearing it. A uniform provides a ready made identity to the wearer.

The Sea Org wear uniforms and now so do staff in the Class IV orgs (those weird vampire outfits).

Staff in small local orgs do not wear uniforms and yet they are not free to wear whatever they wish. The ideal would probably be business attire and yet most staff members can barely eat. Poverty does have one positive effect for the cult. It eliminates all personal flair.

How Scientology Works 192: Protean deficiency.

2009-11-22T20:53:00.000Z

Most cults encourage protean deficiency. This may be a side product of a vegetarian diet or of fasting or it may be a side effect of poor living conditions as in Scientology. The fact remains that wherever we see brainwashed people we generally also see protean deficiencies.

I googled 'protean deficiency' and 'suggestibility' to see if any scientific research had been done. I found that the two words came up in a great deal of medical research but I was unable to access the materials without a subscription.

One interesting experiment involving rats did come up. Some rats were offered a choice of two foods. One was palatable but protean deficient. The other was unpalatable but a good source of protean.

A small minority of rats chose the high protean food and prospered. These rats were then placed among other rats that were facing the same choices.

Under normal circumstances nearly all the rats chose the protean deficient food. However- the rats came to imitate the food choices of the 'wise' rats once they became protean deficient.

The rats only became suggestible once they had become sufficiently malnourished. Healthy rats continued to eat the protean deficient food until they became sick. At this point the chose to imitate the healthy 'wise' rats.

This seems an entirely logical instinctive response from the rats. Imitate the healthy rats when one is sick.

Could it be the explanation for behaviours we see within cults?

The rice and beans eating Sea Org member rapidly becomes protean deficient. If he were a rat he would be looking for someone to follow and thus becomes hyper suggestible.

This is streaching the research a little, but I think there may be truth there.

Pain first, pleasure after.

2009-11-22T20:14:00.001Z

One way we identify what is good for us and what is bad is to measure how we feel before and after the event.

Getting drunk is pleasant at the time- but we know it is bad for us because of the hangover.

Going to the gym is painful- but the pleasure comes after the pain so we think it good.

Auditing offers pain now with the prospect of wins later on. It therefore resembles something good despite all its harmful effects.

I think of it as an addictive drug that brings cold turkey before the high rather than after. This is what makes it dangerious.

How Scientology Works 194: A puff of wind.

2009-11-22T20:02:00.000Z

It is easy to forget how insubstantial the concepts of Scientology and Dianetics really are. Usually they amount to little more than common sense plus showmanship.

Take Dianetics- the thing that started it all. What does Dianetics really consist of after all?

The 'revolutionary' idea that recalling an unpleasant incident and relating it to another human being makes one feel better.

Something that people have been doing since prehistory!

Or take Study Tech. The idea that one should look a word up in a dictionary if one is unsure of the meaning! What does LRH imagine people were doing with their dictionaries before he came along! It beggars belief!!

Each of these commonplace ideas were dressed up with a bit of pseudoscience and introduced to the world with a roll of drums.

In reality they amount to nothing at all. It is possible to be a critic for many years without realising that Dianetics and Scientology are simply empty noise.

LRH may have been the greatest showman that ever lived. Two tribes continue to argue with one another. One tribe support him. The other oppose. Neither side has fully realise that Dianetics and Scientology are simple mirages. There is nothing in them worth discussing.

How Scientology Works 195: Sea Org girls blush.

2009-11-22T18:46:00.002Z

In the late 90's Scientology was placed in a condition of Danger by senior management. This involved Ron Norton flying in from the US with his wife (former LRH messenger cutie Jan) breathing fire.

One of his first actions was to form a Technical Training Corps- a full time training outfit designed to take staff members away from the orgs so that they can move on up the bridge. The hope was that this would somehow make them more effective at their jobs and thus get Scientology out of Danger.

I took an instant dislike to Ron. He struck me as an insincere bully- but he offered me something that few people ever get in Scientology. I was to study Scientology full time.

What did I have going on in my life? Very little. Scientology had already done quite a good job of isolating me from normal life. I signed my contract and met my fellow Staff members on the train to East Grinstead.

My mental state began to deteriorate almost immediately I arrived as everything in Scientology tends to introvert a person. I was billeted on a public scientologist in East Grinstead and (surprise surprise) she was not paid for my being there. She brought this up one evening (though not in an accusing way) and we all discussed it. I had the impression that she was not greatly surprised by the whole situation and took it rather as a joke. I told her that there was one person on the TTC who was doing a purif with no vitamins for the same reason. No payment had been received.

The following day I was given a Knowledge Report for 'nattering' (complaining). The KR did not explain who I had been 'nattering' to or what the subject of the natter was and for some reason I did not connect the dots. I continued to wonder about it for some time. I now believe that someone in the house was keeping notes and passing them on to Sea Org members who could then issue KR's on students by proxy without revealing the source of their information.

My first training consisted of word clearing. This introduced me to the sheer nastiness and insanity of internal Sea Org warfare for the first time. (I was not a member of the SO and so had not come across it before.)

The Sea Org is a mass of hidden resentment and rage. Nothing can be discussed openly so everything is pushed below the surface. The entire Sea Org is 1.1 (covert hostility) on the tone scale and engages in an unending vicious hidden war against itself using Ethics and word clearing. In order to survive it is necessary to understand that the hidden law of the Sea Org is actually rather like the honor codes of street gangs. If somebody KR's you it is necessary to do the same in return or make their lives miserable in some other way. If you do not do this then you will be seen as a soft touch and will be destroyed.

One method of waging war within the Sea Org is to bark a list of words at a person and demand they provide definitions for them. If they pause more than half a second before doing so they are accused of 'comm lag' and made to word clear whole passages as punishment. On occasion it will become clear that the superior officer has an MU of their own and this means that the junior officer is doomed to repeat the process endlessly until they come up with a suitably incorrect definition.

Meanwhile the rent issue continued to rumble on. Much of what follows is guesswork but is probably correct.

My landlady evicted one of the students from her home because he wrote a KR on her (I suspect this was the spy who reported me by proxy). This resulted in my being sent to Ethics and asked to write a series of KR's 'to clear this whole scene up.'

I refused to do so as I could not think of anyone who deserved one. My landlady had not been paid and the students were doing all they could. The only person I wished to KR was the Sea Org officer who had written an essentially meaningless and upsetting KR on myself. Nevertheless I did not bring this up.

Almost immediately I returned from this rather odd meeting an even stranger one took place.

One Sea Org member stood up in front of the class and told us all that there had been a great deal of 'nattering'. The handling for this would be for us all to sit in a circle and write KR's on one another! This would get to the bottom of the 'out ethics' and harmony would ensue. I wrote three carefully worded pseudo KR's that accused nobody of anything and hoped hat everybody else had done the same.

Meanwhile the rent situation remained unresolved. My landlady was contacted by the Sea Org member responsible for the TTC who assured her that everything was in hand.

Nothing happened.

My landlady then contacted St Hill to find out what was going on and all hell broke out.

Each student in the house was questioned about any conversations that may have been had on the subject of money. I was given a KR by the TTC ic that literally did not make sense- something along the lines of 'one particle communicating to another particle matters pertaining to the Org'.

The strangest thing about this KR was that it did not accuse me of anything. Nevertheless I was taken in front of Ethics along with the TTC ic to do an O/W writeup. An O/W writeup is a procedure by which a person is made to describe their own crimes.

I tried very hard to think of my crimes. The only thing I could think of was accepting some cream cakes from my landlady knowing that she was on state benefits and would almost certainly never see any of my rent money.

Ethics seemed momentarily pleased by this and let me go. I thought I had heard the last of it until I found the TTC ic hiding behind a rhododendron bush and weeping. It seems that she had been subjected to far harsher treatment than I and was probably destined for the RPF.

Scientology brings out the worst in human nature. My first reaction was triumph. I had won my first Ethics battle! My second reaction was one of horror- at myself. I knew that we were both slaves to an insane system and anything I said to her would be used against me, but I gave her a smile and a nod. She returned the smile through her tears. It was a rare moment and I think she understood that we were not enemies. It was the only time I saw her act as a human being.

Scientology has he effect of introverting a person and I begun to feel that I had literally been turned inside out. One part of my mind was always engaged in wondering who had said what to who. Another was always looking for my own imagined crimes.

The word clearing caused me to wonder if I truly understood anything and now I was being introverted by the TR's as well. Lack of sleep and RPF food was also taking its tole.

I would sit for an hour and a half and look another person in the eyes. Sometimes I would hallucinate or mentally crack in half. One part would remain looking in my twins eyes, the other half would thrash about and try to extinguish itself. This sensation of separation from self would continue even once the drill had been completed. Many students experience leaving their bodies completely and floating about as if they were dead. I merely suffered a sense of unreality which actually a symptom of approaching mental illness.

There came a point where I simply could take no more. I announced my intention to leave.

Ron Norton took me into his office and screamed at me telling me I was an SP and that I was 'in hell'. I think that this meant that he thought I had committed crimes against Scientology and that I was feeling bad about them. I remember looking at his purple face and the blood vessels that stood out from his face as he shouted and thinking that it looked as if it were he that were in hell and not myself.

I was taken under guard to an auditing room where I was asked to hold the cans. A sense of peace flooded over me at that moment and I think my needle must have floated. I was told that everything was OK and I could put the cans down.

I think that they must have been looking for 'rock slam' or some evidence that I was an SP. In order to understand why I felt the sense of peace you will have to understand what happens to people in high control groups.

Humans adapt to captivity frighteningly well. I had become used to my every movement and thought being controlled so that I associated any form of independence as stress. My mind was in turmoil and quite unable to make decisions. It was therefore reassuring to be placed under guard as it relieved me of responsibility.

I was then interviewed by Jan Norton (wife of Ron) who told me that I was greatly valued by Scientology and even tried to reg me for the Sea Org! I politely refused all such offers and she even became flirtatious with me. I cannot believe that she found me attractive in that state. It was probably that she used sex appeal to get her own way. You must remember that she was one of LRH's mini skirted nymphets and came from an age when Scientology and sex appeal were not mutually exclusive.

I was told that I was to be placed under guard 24 hours a day until such time as I could be sec checked. to find my crimes. This, actually was exactly what I needed. I needed to sit and think my own thoughts without being told what these were (Scientology is very evaluative.) My diet improved a little and I was given the chance to catch up with my sleep.

This was followed by another equally odd episode. I was sent to the RPF for three or four days. This seems to have been Jan Nortons idea who seems to have genuinely believed it was for my benefit. I was very aware of the fact that I had just thrown away an opportunity that most Sea Org members dream of and I was also worried that I was causing the security guards to work longer hours than are humane. I mentioned this and was told she would find a way 'not to make me a criminal'.

The really strange thing was that I was sent to the RPF without being told that the RPF existed! First I was told they had work for me 'to pay for the auditing'. and then I was told I had to wear the RPF overalls 'because of the dusty conditions'.

The work consisted of writing ARC letters to random public. This seems strange work to entrust to 'evil' people. I did not meet the TTC ic while I was there.

After a few days of this an auditor was found for me. I found myself looking forward to my interrogation. I am told that most prisoners do.

I found myself in a cubicle being asked questions about my past misdeeds.

Actually I was surprised how little came up. Then I began to have some fun.

It occurred to me that I knew a great a great many women they would disapprove of. The moment this occurred to me it began to read on the meter- it was rather like having a juicy piece of gossip that wanted to be told!

Many people have wild fantasies that they would never dream of carrying out. In my experience the most imaginative fantasists are conservative women. These women have a deep need to have their fantasies validated by another person without being condemned for having them.

This stuff kept reading! Every time I thought of someone the Sea Org would disapprove of the needle went 'ping'.

'Oh, and one girl had this fantasy.'

'Oh and you never guess what this one wanted!'

I discovered that Sea Org girls blush easily. My intention was not to embarrass her but I think it was educational.

For some reason women enjoy telling me their fantasies and sexual history. I think they feel safe with me but I give out such a comforting 'big brother' vibe that they rarely direct their sexuality at me. This even occurred twice while I was at St Hill but fortunately it did not come up in auditing.

Do you want to know about the Scientology Sex sirens?

Siren One.

TTC student. I sit with her holding the cans and decide to carry out an experiment. Could I make a sexual fantasy register like an engram? Sexual fantasies are just like memories in that they contain pictures and sounds. Furthermore they have emotional content. I manage to generate a small tick and tell her this in triumph.

She smiles in a slightly superior way and picks up the cans herself. She generates a five dial drop, a simply GIGANTIC read. I then ask her what she was thinking of and she says 'Guys with girls with long hair. A group.'

Siren Two.

I will be a little vague here. One Scientologist (not TTC) tells me she enjoys having a sack placed over her head during sex. She also has an on/off boyfriend who canes her breasts.

Neither of these incidents came up in the sec check and the identities of the women are safe.

How Scientology Works 196: The Dedicated Glare.

2009-11-22T13:55:00.000Z

LRH valued dedicated glare in his followers. In fact most cults seem to cultivate it. You sometimes even see it in Amway distributors.

This is an interesting turnaround from his position in the early days while writing Dianetics. In this book he talked of the 'too often hypnotised stare' and saw it as evidence of the degraded state of man.

Who knows... maybe this observation has been 'corrected' in the latest edition.

The simple answer is to say that LRH was right the first time and the fixed stare is evidence of hypnotism, but let us look a little deeper and consider how one gets that way.

I once had that stare. It frightened my non Scientology friends and I was proud to do so. I hardly noticed that they began to avoid me and my strange new behaviours. I am sure I was behaving strangely on many levels.

This means I am able to tell you how the stare feels from the inside- and it is not a pleasant sensation. The best I can do is describe it as intensity plus deadness.

INTENSITY.

Hypnotism can be defined as the progressive narrowing of attention. The will is focused like a laser beam and is aware of nothing but the target at which it is aimed. It is easy to manipulate people when one is in this state because ones TR's are automatically in place. I felt superior to the 'wogs' (non Scientologists) who I met because I could control them so very easily. Simply thrusting a leaflet at a 'wog' with the force of intention could make them take it from me against their own will.

First I would thrust it at them with a smile. I would notice a slight hesitation or even a shake of the head but I would ignore this and continue as before. Almost everyone would take the leaflet from me as an automatic reflex despite not intending to do so.

I was beginning to learn the pleasure of overwhelming others with the power of my will. For a few hours a day I could feel powerful even though I was slowly starving to death.

There is really no difference between controlling people in this way and running a TR routine.

Example A

"Do fish swim?"

"Errr...well do bears shit in the woods?"

"I will repeat the auditing question. Do fish swim?"

Example B

I thrust a leaflet at the public.

Public rejects leaflet.

I ignore this response and continue to hold the leaflet out.

Public takes leaflet.

You see the similarity? Both examples show the Scientologist overcoming the will of another person by being more focused upon the objective and blanking their communication.

Mastery of this technique makes one a master manipulator but carries a terrible price.

DEADNESS.

I found that the better I became at manipulating others the more dead to the world I became. Nothing was quite real to me and I had the sensation I was watching the world through a pane of glass. I suffered a peculiar dislocation by which I both knew and did not know that Scientology was a crock of shit. I fantasied about being kidnapped and forcefully deprogrammed because I lacked the strength to walk away.

I found this emotional deadness lead to a sort of physical deadness. I had the peculiar sensation that my face were merely a piece of dead meat stuck to the front of some other hidden face. Sometimes I would cut myself shaving because this 'dead' face was physically numb- as were the tips of my fingers.

I also became aware that I would obey orders automatically without intending to do so. This was actually a pleasant discovery as I could take a rest while my body followed the orders of other people on some auto pilot mechanism.

I became a fanatic- and yet at the same time I knew that I were in the grip of something evil that was draining me of all physical and mental life.

I became both master and slave- able to control others but no longer in control of my own body and mind.

A very strange sensation.

How Scientology Works 197: The Evil Ideology.

2009-11-21T16:16:00.000Z

Evil ideology can take many forms. It may be from the right or the left. It may offer salvation in the afterlife or 'equality'.

Trying claim that only leftists or rightists are capable of evil is actually part of the problem. This does not mean that we must surrender to a wishy washy 'everyone is equally bad' cop out. This is obviously untrue and closes the door on intelligent judgement.

There is one characteristic that is true of all evil ideologies- they all HATE THE SINNER NOT THE SIN.

Some examples.

Stalinist Marxists claim to be opposed to economic exploitation but can see evil only in capitalists. Stalinist have been willing to starve and enslave large numbers of their own people provided that this serves the revolution. This means that they throw the baby out with the bathwater and become worse than those they claim to oppose.

Some extreme animal rights groups seem to dislike humanity and talk of ecological catastrophe with a sort of glee. Humanity is only getting what it deserves!

A second characteristic is that evil ideologies believe in a ZERO SUM GAME.

This means that the evil ideology believes that everything that is good for others is harmful to itself.

The Nazi party took this to the ultimate extreme by exterminating the Jews. Any misfortune for the Jews was seen as an automatic victory for the German Volk.

We also see this in the spiteful and petty attitudes of many feminists towards those who appear happier and more successful than they are. They are more interested in bringing others down than improving their own lives.

According to these criteria Scientology is certainly an evil ideology.

Criteria 1- Hating the sinner not the sin.

Scientology claims to be opposed to the ways in which mentally ill people are treated. Unfortunately it makes no effort to invent better treatments and even excludes people with mental illness from its own treatments. All Scientologies efforts are directed at demonising individual psychiatrists.

Criteria 2- Zero Sum game.

Scientology has created a paranoid world in which psychiatrists continually plot against it. This means that every defeat for the psyciatrists is a victory for Scientology.

Sexual shame.

2009-11-21T11:08:00.003Z

All high control groups instill sexual shame upon their members.

The most common variant upon this is to make sexual desire dirty and displeasing to some higher authority- be this God or the organization itself.

Human sexuality, unlike that of most animals, is a means to cement relationships. Most animals mate only when the female is capable of conceiving. Human beings are quite different in the the female remains to some extent 'on heat' even when unable to conceive.

Most animals are capable of producing a litter of young that are able to look after themselves within a year or so- sometimes within weeks.

Humans have uniquely helpless young who are not only physically helpless for many years but need to undergo education.

Natures solution is to find ways to bind couples together so that both the mother and the father continue to invest in the family for many years. One of these is the use of sex as a bonding mechanism.

The cult leader must therefore destroy this bonding mechanism so that his male and female followers can bond fully to him. The love and care that nature intended for the creation of a new generation can therefore be lavished upon the cult and the leaders of the cult.

This usually involves filling the membership with a shame and disgust of sex (the Sea Org approach) or it may involves group sex involving only cult members (such as the Children of God). These seemingly opposite approaches have the same effect. They bond the member to the cult and separate him form all outside influence.

You do not even need to be a member of a cult in order to be subjected to this sort of thing. If you have ever met a self hating feminist man who worries about 'objectifying' women you will realise that he has been subjected to the same process.

http://www.youtube.com/aaronsaxton1

How Scientology Works 199- The double bind.

2009-11-21T10:41:00.000Z

The double bind is a dishonest debating technique by which one person places another in a situation by which they can say nothing without being wrong. It is everything about winning and nothing about finding the truth.

The first thing they will do is ask how you were involved in Scientology.

If you are a formenr Scientologist they will tell you that you never understood the doctrine or you left because of some crime on your own part. This is soemwhat ironic because Scientologists actually know very little about Scientology! They are rather like the blind man trying to describe an elephant. One blind man holds the trunk ans says that an elephant is a kind of snake. The other holds an ear and believes it to be a large bat and so on.

Each blind man is an expert on a small area of elephant but none know the shape of the whole animal. This is what happens if you try to learn about Scientology by taking courses- you become an expert on very small things but understand nothing.

If you were never a Scientologist you will be told you know nothing.

This is rather like saying you need to be a heroin addict to know that addiction is a bad idea. It is possible to know that Scientology is evil simply by seeing what it does to people. There is no need to join the madness.

How Scientology Works 198- Study Tech

2009-11-20T05:58:00.000Z

Study Tech is like so much of Scientology.

One part obvious truism.

One part inflated ego.

One part pure gobbledygook.

Study tech is also like other parts of Scientology in that it seeks to solve problems that Scientology has itself created. LRH knew that every Scientologist must be presented with their ruin every day. If they ever consider themselves cured they will leave and get on with life.

According to LRH there are three main reasons a student does not understand something.

1. Lack of mass.

This is series of physical and mental sensations caused by studying something that is not solid or real. Students of Scientology frequently suffer from this due to the evasive and hypnotic language LRH frequently uses and because the concepts are often gaseous or even meaningless.

The student will feel like leaving Scientology and becoming involved with something real instead. To prevent this LRH suggested touching an object repeatedly until one feels better.

Strangely- this does work- but it is a nonsensical solution to a nonsensical problem. It would be better to take this 'lack of mass' as a warning that the subject is not related to real life.

2. Too steep a gradient.

This states that if a student becomes bogged down on chapter two of a book they should make sure they fully understand chapter one.

This is not more than common sense- and something we all do naturally. Unfortunately it is also a way of battering down critical thinking. Students will often read the ramblings of LRH and wonder if they mean anything at all. If it were not for study tech they would probably eventually leave the cult altogether.

Once the student has been convinced that it is HIS FAULT that LRH sounds like a bullshitting windbag he will suspend disbelief in order to escape from it. The student may also be punished for independent thought by being forced to re study old materials if they ask questions that are too hard to answer.

3. The misunderstood word (MU).

This is yet another way to transfer blaime upon the student. LRH frequently misunderstood basic words such as 'science' and 'ethics'. This results in confusion and disaffection on the part of the student. To overcome this LRH sought to install his own definitions of certain words in his followers. This makes it hard for the student to understand anything outside of Scientology- which is probably its main intention.

Do not underestimate Study Tech. It is quite evil.

How Scientology Works 200: A house full of spiders.

2009-11-20T05:02:00.000Z

While I was on the Technical Training Corps at St Hill I was billeted on a local Scientologist. One day she told me something quite profound.

"An SP always seems like your best friend. If they know you are scared of spiders they take them away- but all the time your house is filling up with spiders."

She was referring to the way in which evil minded people bind you to them by making the world a frightening place so that they are dependent upon you.

This is very true- and a perfect description of Scientology.

Most people join because they want to become more involved with the world. They sense that they are capable of great things and want to leave their past behind them.

Five years on they find themselves in a darkened hotel room muttering about an imaginary past of volcanoes and space aliens. They have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with their lives and no longer have any plans to do so.

Scientology has simply replaces some small spiders (engrams) with some big hary horrors.

Leading and Lagging indicators.

2009-11-08T12:27:00.000Z

When predicting the future price movements of a stock or other economic factor, analysts talk of Leading and Lagging indicators.

A leading indicator is one that precedes the event under discussion, while the lagging indicator follows it.

We can apply the same reasoning to the decline of Scientology.

LEADING INDICATORS

Decline in book sales. (Early 90's)
Decline in clear completions. (Early 90's but slightly later)

LATE LEADING INDICATORS

Defections and entheta.(current)

LAGGING INDICATORS

Sale of real estate.
Police raids
Splits and coups.
Decline in OT completions.

Each of these indicators follows on from the next. The decline in book sales directly led to the decline in Clear completions but has not yet resulted in a reduction in OT completions. This is because it takes at least twenty years to get to OT8. We can therefore expect to see a gradual decline in OT completions starting in a few years.

The establishment will only begin to lay the boot in once Scientology is in decline. This has started in France and Belgum but has a long way to go.

Which is most fun?

2009-09-08T10:36:00.001+01:00

Which is most fun to believe in?

a) THE SCIENTOLOGY VERSION? Scientology is a religion like any other. There are no space aliens, superpowers or bat shit crazy doctrines. They will not tell you what the church really believes of course- but you are expected to believe it is rather dull and worthy.

b) THE CRITICAL VIEW? Scientology is a dangerous terrorist and secretive cult with multiple hidden agendas. These involve wacky right wing conspiracy theorys, space aliens and plans to take over the world.

Which is most FUN to believe in?

The answer is b). This is why they are finished in the long run.

Let us assume it is all true.

2009-09-07T15:57:00.000+01:00

Let us assume that all of the Scientology Superpowers are true.

Let us assume that Tom Cruse CAN fly.

That OT VIII are really transparent like ghosts...

That OT's have ESP and can move objects with their minds. Let us assume it is all true. What then?

Well, they would be pretty neat tricks- but less and less useful by the day.

I can also fly- at far lower cost than anything Tom Cruse has to offer. All I need to do is buy an airline ticket over the Internet.

I can know a persons thoughts the other side of the world. All I need to do is pick up the phone.

The point of being semi transparent eludes me.

In fact Scientology would be pretty much a waste of time EVEN IF ALL ITS CLAIMS WERE TRUE.

Scientology: Cult of Abuse- Part I

2009-09-06T21:16:00.002+01:00

Part II

2009-09-06T21:14:00.002+01:00

Slappys Dream

2009-09-06T20:49:00.001+01:00

Can Slappy see his future?

2009-09-06T20:45:00.002+01:00

Downfall of Scientology

2009-09-06T20:37:00.001+01:00

Scientology Gullibility Test

2009-09-06T20:31:00.002+01:00

Quite brilliant

2009-09-05T18:32:00.002+01:00

How Scientology Works 21- Am I happy?

2009-09-05T17:03:00.056+01:00

Scientologists are discouraged from asking the one question that everyone should ask. Are they happy?

Scientologists are directed to the Tone Scale where they are asked to mesure themselves against a list of temporary states (such as anger or covert hostility). This gets the individual nice and introverted so that he is constantly looking at his mental state rather than considering the larger questions.

The moment a person asks themselves if they are happy, they begin to consider their life as a whole. There is no way to tell where such an enquiry may lead. A person may start by realising that they are unhappy- and then go on to question their entire belief system- maybe even leaving the cult.

It is far better (from their point of view) to keep a person distracted with their ever changing moods. There is even a drill by which a person is asked to assume a position on the tone scale at will. The PC is asked to assume a tone of cheerfulness (for example) and they do so.

This (sort of) works. The PC often beleves that he is learning a useful skill and will no longer be beaten down by life.

In reality he is simply disconnecting with his true nature and feelings. He becomes so used to pretending that he no longer knows what he truely thinks or feels about anything. A sense of desperation, phonyness and emptyness develops and hollows out the personality. This is actually a form of depression but it is usually covered up by a brittle and slightly hysterical show of certanty.

A person (not only Scientologists) may seem quite happy. They may be a dutiful father, mother, employee and citisen. They have a good word for everyone and then one morning they blow their brains out. It is only then that most people realise they never really knew them. The real problem was not sorrow but inauthenticity. The person was living a lie and no longer even knew who they were.

The suicide rate among Scientologists seems to be quite high. One reason may be the lack of authenticity within the group. Many Scientologists act the role of Scientologists as if they were trying to obliterate themselves.

The first step towards freedom and integrity is to ask meaningful questions.

The real question is not 'which Scientology certificates do I hold?'

The real question is 'am I happy?

How Scientology Works 22- Contempt for outsiders

2009-09-05T16:57:00.005+01:00

Every cult, be it political or religious has a contempt for the outside world.

They claim to be saving the world but dislike it so much that it is difficult to believe they mean it. Every disaster and failure of outside society is met with a show of glee.

This is true of all cults. Marxists rub their hands together over the banking crisis while (some) Christians look forward to Armageddon. There are also some green activists who actively dislike the human race and who salivate at the thought of humanity being wiped out.

Scientology is similar in this regard. They do not even consider outsiders full human beings and dehumanise us by using the word 'wog'.

The main difference between Scientology and other cults is that the other cults delegate the destruction of humanity to other forces. Marxists look forward to the collapse of Capitalism through an overproduction crisis, Greens predict an ecological disaster and so on.

Scientology sees ITSELF as the agent of humanities destruction. LRH would always talk of the day when the OT's decide the fate of the uncleared. Would they enslave and degrade humanity further? Would they apply a final solution? He left the answer open but it is clear that he enjoyed considering the possibilities.

NOTE: The fact that some green activists have a cult mentaliy does not mean that concern for the environment is suspect. The same applies to Marxism and Christianity. I do not subcribe to either viewpoint and recognise both exist in cultic and non cultic versions.

How Scientology Works 23- Hypnotism

2009-09-05T16:52:00.001+01:00

No person reading a modern book on hypnotism can fail to realise that Dianetics is a version of hypnotism.

Most modern hypnotism (particularly the NLP variety) is carried out without unconsciousness. NLP holds that we all slip in and out of hypnotic states all of the time and that most advertising is designed to do this.

L Ron Hubbard disguised the hypnotism within Dianetics and the TR routines by hiding behind a Hollywood notion of hypnotism. It is not clear if he subscribed to this himself but he was surely aware of it.

Hypnotism probably had a more sinister reputation in 1950 than it does now. It was seen (particularly by Sci Fi readers) as a means of controlling people against their will. In order to get people to submit to hypnotism he first had to convince them that Dianetics was not hypnotism at all. This was done by equating hypnotism with unconsciousness.

Hypnotism does NOT always involve unconsciousness and does NOT mean that a person becomes a robotic slave while under the influence.

Hypnotism is simply the narrowing of attention and the bypassing of the logical mind- both of which are found in Scientology and Dianetics.

By these means it is possible to enslave a person by degrees. Irrational notions and loyalties may be installed by creating a hypnotic atmosphere and separating the victim from normal reality. In order to do this the victim must first be lulled into a false sense of security- which is easily achieved once the victim equates hypnotism with unconsciousness.

LRH knew this well as he was something of a stage hypnotist himself.

How Scientology Works 24- Blame the Victim

2009-09-05T16:46:00.001+01:00

Scientology has a nice line in blame reversal that can totally destroy a person.

First, they make him economically helpless. This usually involves getting him to join staff and then not paying him as promised. This means that he is soon at risk of losing his home and his family.

They then accuse him of being a victim and the effect of other people. This is rather like mugging a person and then criticising them for allowing themselves to be mugged.

In fact there is a small grain of truth in the criticism. The Scientologist HAS been the effect of other people and he DID create the situation himself. He did this the moment he decided to trust Scientology.

Many people collapse in upon themselves when treated in this way. If they leave staff they are out ethics and a failure. If they continue to allow Scientology to victimise them and run their lives they are exactly the same.

In this way the cult trap people into no win situations so that the only way to escape is to kill themselves.

How Scientology Works 97- No resolution

2009-09-05T16:41:00.001+01:00

Scientology ethics is run according to two hidden principles.

1. All blame shall be diverted downwards and outwards.

2. Nothing shall ever be resolved.

The first principle is easy to grasp. The guys at the top are never to blame for anything. You find this in all organizations to an extent.

The second principle is harder to explain. Why should the church seek to drag out ethics cycles indefinitely?

All organizations tend to create work for themselves. This is one reason government has grown over the years. Nobody is starving, cholera has been cured and yet government continues to grow as we become more wealthy. nobody dies of starvation any more. This is because organizations have a tendency to grow over time. This is certainly true of Scientology ethics.

At least government has grown with the permission of the electorate. The endless ethics cycles we see within Scientology are driven by megalomania, internal politics and empire building.

Scientologists are supposed to be the most ethical people on the planet. This should logically mean that they should be left alone but we see the opposite.

Ethics are the only area of Scientology that is growing.

Work expands to fill the time available to do it. Once an ethics officer has been appointed he will find work for himself. Almost anything can be made into an ethics offence if you frame it the right way.

Ethics cycles tend to grow longer and longer because nobody has the courage to say 'stop'.

And so it goes on... without resolution.

'This is Scientology'

2009-09-05T16:17:00.005+01:00

Some time ago Scientology ran what it called a 'religious freedom' campaign. This campaign had nothing to do with freedom (or even religion). It was designed to get tax exemption from the UK authorities.

The church stood to gain a great deal of money by achiving this but it nevertheless decided that the public would pay for the campaign. The Church raised considerable sums and spent this on bus advertisements.

These advertisements were predicated upon a false premise. The advertising was designed to look as if it were aimed at the general public. Only one single bus route was selected. This ran past all of the main ministries in London in the hope that people in authority would look out of their windows, see the rather bland advertising and assume that the Church of Scientology was a mainstream organization.

Phase two of the campaign involved hiring some large and expensive rooms within the Selfidges Hotel on Oxford Street in London. In order to do this they made the false claim that they were there to offer an exhibition for invited guests. This promoted a blandly inoffensive view of what Scientology was all about. The idea was probably that government contacts would be invited to this showcase and kept well away from the orgs or genuine members of the public.

Much effort and brouhaha was expended in filling this hall with interested looking 'normal' members of the public who were really committed Scientologists.

After a few hours the organisers realised that none of their target audience were likely to turn up- and they were running out of fake visitors as well. They then began to body route members of the public into the exhibition- contrary to the promises to the hotel.

I decided to allow myself to be body routed. The aim was simply to have a look around, introduce myself as one who is sceptical and then leave immediately afterwards. The aim was to prove to the guys working there that SP's do not have two heads and that it is possible to talk to them.

I gained admittance and spent a moment talking to some Sea Org member before saying (pleasantly enough) that I was one of the 'other guys'.

This caused a predictable explosion (they cannot even remain in the same room as an SP without panicking) and I was told to leave- which I readily agreed to do. No sooner had I turned to leave than I was grabbed and prevented from doing so. The doors were then shut and somebody started to call the police.

I could see it all going very badly so I began to scream for help at the top of my voice- and they then let me go.

I then did a little picketing and leafleting outside and was approached by two other Sea Org members. They were smiling their usual covertly hostile smiles and I knew there would be further trouble. One of them walked past me 'accidentally' bumping into me and stabbing me covertly with a ballpoint pen as he did so. His friend approached from the other side and it seemed for a moment that they intended to throw me into the traffic.

I shouted to passers by that I had just been assaulted but nobody wanted to get involved. I decided to try another tactic and started telling them the OT III story. They retreated, first at a walking pace and then a run as I continued with my space opera. Everybody was looking at us by this time so I finished by pointing at their fleeing backs and shouting 'This is Scientology!'

Somebody in the crowd then applauded.

How Scientology Works 27- No Friendship

2009-09-05T15:51:00.001+01:00

A friend is someone you can talk to without fear of judgement or having your words twisted and used against you.

There are no real friendships in Scientology. This is because is is impossible to talk about anything more meaningful than the weather.

Let us look at what is off limits.

1) Talk of friends or anything resembling gossip. This is always regarded as suppressive no matter how harmless.

2) Bad news of any kind. This may include problems with other people or it may involve problems with life in general. The answer is always the same. The scientologist should not be discussing it with their friend but should look up the references instead. Anything else is verbal tech.

3) Politics, economics or most technology. These issues have already been decided by LRH.

4) Personal feelings.

5) Personal thoughts or observations. This is verbal tech.

6) Money.

7) Love and sex (no, no, no)

They CANNOT discuss their personal lives. Anything they say may become a big issue for some Scientologist further up the bridge. They may discuss petty likes and dislikes such as favorite foods but nothing more. Admitting that we are attracted to another person would almost always be an ethics offence.

They CANNOT discuss their plans except for their plans to take more courses. This is because all such talk must be done in the framework of admin scales and ethics conditions. Use these terms and your talk becomes meaningless. i.e 'I must get out of Danger on the First Dynamic'.

They cannot discuss other people. They cannot discuss things that go wrong or the past. This would amount to discussing ones case. They cannot even discuss Scientology- this would be verbal tech.

They cannot discuss much at all. Scientology not only isolates the individual from the outside world- it also isolates him within Scientology. This makes it far easier to control people.

No Sleep

2009-09-05T15:28:00.002+01:00

All intelligent animals need sleep.

When a human being is denied sleep he rapidly loses his reasoning abilities and becomes careless. He may have fits of rage or even violence. If the deprivation continues he or she may become paranoid and delusional. After 36 hours without sleep most people will begin to hallucinate. This seems to be some sort of substitute dreaming and may be quite mild at first. The deprived person may see something flit about in the corner of his eye- or he may find himself using dream logic in waking life.

If this experiment is continued it will eventually lead to psychosis and then death.

Let us look at these symptoms again.

Rage and violence.

Paranoia.

Hallucinations and delusional thinking.

Do these symptoms sound a little like Scientology? Is it so very strange that David Miscavige is said to seldom sleep?

No Questions

2009-09-05T15:13:00.003+01:00

There are only so many questions the human mind can deal with at any one time.

If you bombard a person with unanswered questions they will stack up in his mind so that he has to do something with them before his head explodes!

The sensation is rather like the way I imagine my computer feels when too many programmes are competing for too little memory. Work slows to a crawl and the system becomes prone to crashes.

The solution is to close some of the open programmes and the mind works in a similar way. It will put certain questions aside for a while hoping to pick up on them later and come to a conclusion.

Unfortunately this is not what happens in a cultic environment. The cult deliberately creates confusion and overload in the new recruit.

The new belief will be filed away in the mind as true even though it has not been examined.

The recruit probably intends to return and consider the matter at a later date but can easily forget to do so- particularly if kept very busy.

How do cults (and Scientology in particular) do this?

Christian cults will often ask the recruit to pray about an issue rather than think about it. This bypasses the logical part of their brain and ensures that the recruit makes their decision on emotions alone.

Scientology has two very effective ways to achieve the same effect.

Firstly the recruit may be asked to 'think with it'. This involves forming thoughts as if the doctrine were true. This causes the doctrine to enter the mind through the back door- without logical examination.

Secondly the recruit can be made bad for even raising a question. They may be word cleared until the admit that they 'duplicate' (a weasel word that means both 'understand' and 'agree'. This means that the PC has no legitimate way to get his questions answered. Whatever objections he comes up with will be treated as some fault of his own.

Scientology has many ways to punish individuals who do not 'duplicate'. These punishments are carried out under the guise of 'help' and indicates that the official Church of Scientology is 1.1 on the Tone scale.

PUNISHMENT ONE. The PC is asked to word clear whatever they have doubts about. This is time consuming and invalidating. It is also irrelevant as word clearing a nonsensical sentence or an incorrect statement can never make it true. If I were to tell you that the moon were made from cheese, you might object and tell me that moon rock is not cheese like at all. I can word clear you until the end of time without making the moon any more cheese-like.

PUNISHMENT TWO. If you continue to doubt the moon is made of cheese I could then insist that you carry out extra study as you have clearly not understood something. The only purpose of this punishment is to make you doubt yourself and your own perceptions.

PUNISHMENT THREE. If you STILL continue with your legitimate question I could then send you to ethics and pretend that you have committed some crime involving cheese or moons!

The Church will make not attempt to reason with the student or present evidence. In effect the student is being treated as an enemy of Scientology even though they are a paying student. "Always attack, never defend" is the slogan when dealing with suppressive people outside of the Church. It is also the way they deal with the simplest of questions from the students. They will not 'defend' by making any sort of reasoned argument. They always attack by making the student personally wrong in some way.

This can also cause some personality types to cave in and accept a belief without evidence. People have a strong need to fit in.

In short- if you ever find yourself in an environment where questions are not welcome- run, don't walk!

How Scientology Works 31- Obnosis

2009-09-05T14:53:00.002+01:00

One of the first things a Scientologist learns is Obnosis.

This claims to be the skill of seeing what is under ones nose- the obvious in other words.

It would seem to be a useful skill to have. Very often the hardest things to see are the things directly under ones nose.

Unfortunately there must be something very wrong with this technique because this is the very thing that Scientologists are unable to do. These guys spend years studying a subject in order to acquire super abilities- and then somehow fail to notice they do not have them!

Learning Obnosis involves looking at someone and describing the obvious 'he has a nose!' and so on.

This is supposed to help us notice the obvious but it is really quite absurd. I have never met a person who was unaware that people had noses. There must be some other purpose to the drill.

Put yourself in the place of the person doing the drill. What is he really learning? Is he learning to see the obvious? No. In reality he is learning NOT TO THINK!

In order to pass the drill it is necessary to relate only what you see and avoid thinking about it at all. The Scientologist is actually learning to become an unthinking zombie!

Now THAT is a skill that Scientologists have mastered well!

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

How Scientology Works 32- The stream of life

2009-09-05T14:45:00.002+01:00

Scientologists have difficulty in entering the spirit of life. They tend to stand on the sidelines filtering everything that happens through Scientology.

They probably joined because they wanted to live more fully but generally end up viewing life through a sort of theoretical window.

This is also true of recovering Scientologists. Your typical recovering Scientologist spends a great deal of time trying to extract a few pearls from the gallons of horseshit. Generally, they only begin to live fully when they reject the entire subject and move on.

This may seem odd as I am in the middle of making one hundred posts in about ten days- which is pretty obsessive.

The difference is that when I have finished I will walk away and do something else. The Scientologist can never do this. In fact many of them are unable to work even once they leave the cult because they are glued to a computer screen all day and basically uninterested in reality.

Careful observation of Scientologists, past and present will tell you all you need to know about the subject.

It is not a way to 'handle' life but to avoid it.

How Scientology Works 20- The worship of bullies.

2009-09-05T14:31:00.046+01:00

Many people can become bullies and tyrants. It depends on the environment that formed them and on what was rewarded..

Even quite decent people will bully others if it means they do not become a target themselves. Some environments also encourage bullying by rewarding it.

Scientology ethics tends to turn people into bullies because it asks people to identify with bullies.

I will give you an example. Let us assume that a Scientologist is being picked upon by ethics. Who is he supposed to identify with? A Scientologist is forbidden from rewarding downstats- and what could be more downstat than a broken man with a rag around his arm?

The Scientologist is expected to ask why the victim 'pulled it in'. In other words it is the VICTIM who is worthy of punishment and not the bully!

Think about that for a moment!

It would logically mean that the Jews killed by Hitler must have been dreadful unethical people- why else would they pull in the Holocaust? It is sad... but they must have deserved it in some way!!!

The same applies to people without food or shelter. They must have pulled it in.

This is why the Church of Scientology never sends food or shelter to the needy. It sends copies of 'The Way to Happiness' which is a guide to ethical behaviour.

This turns all 'good' Scientologists into bullies to some extent. They hear of distant wars and famines and feel no desire to help. Their first instinct is to bomb and punish rather than send food aid.

Where is charity on the tone scale? There is no such heading but we DO have something called Pity at -0.1. This is below body death so it is actually better (according to Hubbard) to be dead than to feel pity for a hungry person and send them food.

It is impossible to imagine a greater perversion of ethics than this!

Powerful bullies are worshiped as being 'upstat' while the victims are condemned as being worthy of punishment.

Let us look at the Tone Scale.

Where is the bully on the Tone Scale?

+40 Tone 40

The Ethics bully is as high as it is possible to go on the Tone scale! The Tone 40 person has no counter intention. He imposes his will on others and shouts a lot! He is a sort of Superman with the Will to Power. Adolph Hitler was Tone 40 while David Miscavige aspires to it.

Where is charity and decency towards the weak?

-0.1 Pity

This is why Scientology breeds sociopaths and bullies. Everything in the tech leads there.

Listen carefully! Can Scientology beat this?

2009-08-31T23:11:00.002+01:00

What I want to know is this... is the FSM our beloved Xenu returned?

The Flying Spaghetti Monster 1957

2009-08-31T05:59:00.000+01:00

How Scientology Works 19- Poor TR's

2009-08-31T05:55:00.007+01:00

One of the most interesting discoveries to be made on pickets is just how bad Scientologists are at their TR's.

There was a time when trusted Scientologists would be allowed out of the orgs to 'confront and shatter suppression'.

This was a complete debacle. The Scientologists were completely unable to keep their cool and ran about like small yapping dogs accusing everyone of being Psychiatrists, Nazis, Jews or all three. Any neutral observer would have realised there was something deeply wrong with Scientology simply by looking at them.

The really interesting thing about Scientology is that it keeps on failing at the things it should be good at.

For example..

Tommy Davis- Scientology spokesperson- cannot maintain his TR's and is prone to nasty paranoid rants.

David Miscavige- supposedly an advanced spiritual being- cannot stop hitting his own followers.

Even Tom Cruse- actor- cannot impersonate a mentally balanced human being in public.

This would (just possibly) be understandable if Scientology valued authentic emotion and being oneself. In fact the opposite is true. Scientology has arduous drills prevent such outbursts- which fail in real life.

I once asked a Scientologist why this way. Can you guess his response?

That is right. Hysterical screaming and ranting. Flunk! (Again.)

No confront

2009-08-31T05:44:00.002+01:00

Scientology talks always of confronting things. Much of the Bridge is also about increasing the ability of the Thetan to confront things. Yet... the Church of Scientology can confront nothing and no-one.

They cannot confront their critics or their own murky past. They react to both with lies and denials.

Scientology was right about only one thing. The alternative to confronting is retreat.

FIRST They try to stop discussion.

NEXT They try to drown it out.

FINALLY They retreat.

Anyone would think they have something to hide.

How Scientology Works 18- Those Pesky Sociopaths.

2009-08-31T05:38:00.001+01:00

Scientology seems to have an answer to everything. Staff beatings? Well.. surely Scientology is not in favour of this, is it?

In a sense it is not. LRH spoke a great deal about suppressive persons (sociopaths) and the harm they do.

It all sounds rather convincing. Until you realise LRH was throwing children in chain lockers at the time.

In fact Scientology has a long history of finding sociopaths or creating them.

There is something about scientology that makes them comfortable.

Actually, Marxism had a similar problem. It talked of great ideals and yet the bodies kept on piling up.

Those pesky sociopaths just kept getting in the way.

In the end people just decided that there was something inherently sociopathic about Marxism for this to keep on happening- so they got rid of Marxism.

The same will happen to Scientology.

David Miscavige is a Sociopath- but he is neither the first nor the last. Getting rid of him will change nothing. Getting rid of the structure and philosophy will change everything.

What is it about Scientology that produces such monsters?

How Scientology Works 16- The Momentum of Failure

2009-08-31T05:30:00.001+01:00

One of my hobbies is financial trading- and I have been highly successful at this.

Most traders use a system called Technical Analysis. This is a sort of Obnosis for the finance world. It looks at what happens rather than why.

One thing that tends to happen is that trends continue unless there is some really big reason why they should reverse. The trend will continue at the same rate over time and becomes more powerful the longer it continues.

This is why we have such crazy bull and bear markets. People just follow one another. There is often no real 'reason'.

Scientology has been in a down trend for over ten years. The trend has been startlingly consistent and smooth and would cause financial traders to sell Scientology if it were a stock.

Long trends do not reverse on their own. Every day the cult becomes a little weaker. More people defect. Fewer books are sold. This means that the cult has fewer resourses to threaten critics.

How Scientology Works 14- The Advantage of Evil

2009-08-31T05:27:00.001+01:00

Evil always has an initial advantage over good. This is because no normal decent person can ever really comprehend evil. It takes us by surprise.

This is why the 9-11 attacks were not countered more effectively. We can look back at the various warnings and previous attacks and wonder why nobody took them more seriously. This ignores human nature. The average person cannot imagine anything very different from what they already know. It is very, very difficult to imagine that a madman sitting in a cave could be planning such an audacious act. Some people still cannot do this.

We find the same thing on a smaller scale. We sometimes read of a 'harmless' old couple who have the bodies of a dozen children under their floor. Once the police have come and gone, everybody claims to have known this all along- but this is an illusion. No normal person would suspect such a thing because they simply do not think in these terms.

The same applies to Scientology. The true story of Scientology is so evil and so strange that the average person cannot grasp it. This is the initial advantage of evil.

We must remember that we are asking people to believe a great deal.

Prison camps and torture at the RPF.

A hostile intelligence agency (OSA) operating in the heart of the USA.

A Church that engages in terrorism and frames other people for terrorist offences.

A LOT of proof is needed to prove such a thing. However, once this is done evil loses its advantage.

It is happening now.

How Scientology Works 15- The Science Paradox

2009-08-31T05:07:00.001+01:00

Let us assume that in 1955 Dianetics really was the best there was.

Furthermore let us assume that it was truly scientific.

Would this mean that Dianetics was still worth studying?

Not necessarily. There were many scientific books published in 1955 that are now completely worthless. This is not because the books were flawed- but because science moves on.

If we believe Dianetics is a science then we must accept it will one day become worthless. This is the nature of science itself.

Now the interesting this is that no scientologist will ever accept this. They talk as if the book were somehow above scientific criticism.

They use the work 'Science' but do not know what the word means. Bizarre.

How Scientology Works 13- Reputation

2009-08-31T05:06:00.001+01:00

In movies we sometimes hear gangsters talk of the need for a 'reputation'.

They are not talking about becoming Fairtrade gangsters or using free range horses heads. They are talking about acquiring a reputation for brutality.

The strange thing about this sort of 'reputation' is that it is spread just as eagerly by friend and foe.

Opponents of crime will magnify the brutality of the gangsters while the gangsters themselves are doing the same thing.

This can create absurd paradoxes. I once saw a BBC documentary about Uganda in the time of General Amin. One of the things that Amin was notorious for was eating his enemies. These stories would be smuggled out of the country by groups opposed to the regime and then picked up by the BBC. Only then would the mass of the native population truly believe them.

Years later a BBC reporter was travelling through the country and meeting the major players of the time. Most of these people seem to have returned to their villages and lived entirely normal lives. The reporter was able to to locate one of the people who Amin was alleged to have eaten. This man had become quite resigned to the stories circulating about him and had met people who refused to believe he was genuine.

This is not to say that Amin was not a brutal dictator- or even that he was not a cannibal (he almost certainly was). It simply illustrates the fact that monsters are often rather pleased to be monsters and are quite happy to be advertised as such. General Amin never explicitly denied being a cannibal and OSA constantly give the impression that they control the US government by covert means.

OSA are clearly capable of great evil. Their ideology gives them the right to dispose of those they disapprove of 'quietly and without sorrow'. The real question is- how capable are they of carrying out their threats?

They are growing weaker- and they will soon face their greatest fear- loss of reputation.

Every tyrant fears the day people no longer fear him. The tyrant does not fear those who hate him, provided they also fear him.

The fear is ebbing away.

How Scientology Works 12- OT Credulity

2009-08-31T05:02:00.001+01:00

In order to become an OT one must have a degree of intelligence and drive. This is because the road is rocky and very expensive.

A pre-OT must also be good with money or he would never pay for the endless ethics handling along the way. Yet something very interesting happens when they reach this state. Many of them lose all judgement and become victims of one financial fraud after another- the Slatkin Fraud is only one example.

A cynic may say that Scientology simply attracts gullible people- but Scientology is expensive and gullible people usually have very little money.

It is certainly not true that Scientologists are weak people. Scientology is a harsh and demanding path. Only the strong can endure it.

Yet we see OT's falling for scam after scam.

I have a theory about this. I think that a belief in OT postulates makes one vulnerable to fraud. In order to fall for such a scheme it is necessary to believe that rewards can come without work. Most people have learned the hard way that this does not happen- but the OT is pre disposed to believe that it can. This is because he has been told he is at cause over MEST- he is a sort of minor god.

The OT is supposed to be able to order the physical universe according to his wishes. Most OT's are also deeply in debt (after paying for their course). The first OT postulate they make is probably to pay off this debt. Once the postulate has been made the OT will then sit back and wait for the universe to provide for him.

Is it any surprise that he falls for the first Ponzi scheme that comes his way? This (impossibly good) investment looks exactly like the answer to his postulate!

How Scientology Works 33- Nu Sugar

2009-08-31T04:44:00.001+01:00

I had a recurring nightmare while I was in Scientology. The dreams ended when I left.

I dreamt that a scientist had invented Nu Sugar. This was chemically identical to normal sugar but did not nourish cells. Apart from this they were identical.

Despite all assurances I discovered that the scientist was deliberately introducing Nu Sugar into to wild. I was injected with Nu Sugar myself and then released to die.

In the dream I was walking in a forest looking at the beauty of nature and knowing it was soon to die. The trees were turning the sunlight into real sugar and I could sense the life and beauty everywhere. I was filled with sadness.

Soon I notice a crack on one of the trees. I look closely and see that the crack was actually a maniacal grin. I could hear a sucking sound as the mouth devoured the air. It was eating life itself. This thing would eat the entire world and leave nothing left. The mouth spoke with the voice of LRH- 'It is a Scientology Universe'

I would then wake up screaming.

I think this dream was telling me that Scientology is a counterfeit life. It looks like life but actually it is an imitation of life that does not nourish.

Scientology comes to a person who is lacking something in his life and then gives him the illusion of having found it.

An illusion of purpose.

Fake friends.

Fake wisdom, fake education.

The problem with Scientology is that it fills the stomach without nourishing the soul. Once a person has accepted Scientology he is too busy to find what he was really seeking. In this way it is just like the Nu Sugar of the dream.

http://leavingscientology.blogspot.com/

How Scientology Works 28- No Love

2009-08-31T04:39:00.001+01:00

Scientology tends to recruit those who are bereft of authentic love.

Your typical recruit is a male traveller of 25 or so. He will be apart from his family and usually has no girlfriend. This is also true of most non Christian cults.

If you talk to a canvasser from the streets of London you will find that about 80% of them do not even speak English as their first language. This proportion falls rapidly as you move up within the organization. This may suggest either that the new recruits escape the organization or that they are posted to their home countries in some way.

Men find it more difficult than women to access love from other people. This is because male friendships do not discuss emotions in the way that women often do. In addition to this, women are taught to be suspicious of younger men who offer the hand of friendship. This means that it is easy for a man to become socially isolated without even realizing it.

The new recruit is offered a counterfeit of everything he is missing in his personal life.

He needs unconditional love but gets conditional approval

He needs true friendship and trust but gets Auditing.

He needs to find his true self but is provided with a bogus identity.

Once the recruit is in the grip of Scientology they will isolate him further.

Do you think a staff member would work for nothing if he had real love? There is no contest between unconditional love and approval based upon a production graph.

True love would bust him right out of Scientology. Maybe this is why they disconnect so many from their families.

Scientology relies upon the services of emotionally starved individuals and the Church will do all it can to create them.

How Scientology Works 34- Double Standards

2009-08-31T04:36:00.001+01:00

Scientology operates a double standard when dealing with psychiatry.

Every time the Church is accuses of some crime it will point to psychiatry and claim that this group has committed a similar crime.

'Oh! That is all right then,' we are supposed to think. 'Drive someone else to suicide.'

This tactic is dishonest for two reasons. First it is irrelevant. Even if psychiatrists were evil this would not make evil OK.

Second, it is a double standard.

Psychiatry treats sick and suicidal people. Most get better but sometimes they do not. This is true of all medicine.

Scientology recruits young, idealistic and healthy people. They will not take a mentally ill person under any circumstances. It is therefore a much more serious matter when one turns up dead.

Treating these two groups the same is actually a double standard.

How Scientology Works 9- The Hello Goodbye effect

2009-08-31T04:27:00.001+01:00

The first thing any novice councillor learns is the Hello Goodbye effect. This is the phenomena by which a new patient ill come to the councillor claiming to be suffering more than they are. This is so that the patient can justify being there and (possibly) to gain sympathy from them. Once the treatment is complete the effect is reversed. The patient will claim to be better than they are to make the councillor feel good and to justify the expense of the process to themselves.

Scientology deliberately encourages this effect by requiring PC's to write up success stories upon completion. This also sets in motion another effect known as Cognitive Dissonance. Basically- people like their words and their actions to agree. If you can get someone to say they like brand X ice cream then they ill tend to buy it. This is because most people believe themselves before they believe anyone else. Once they say they prefer brand X they will actually prefer it.

This is why sales people spend so much time prodding the prospect into saying particular things. A typical presentation is based around a list of admissions the customer must make before they will buy anything. The first is generally to admit they could afford it if they wished.

In fact it hardly matters what the salesperson says in the presentation. What matters is what the prospect says!

This is the secret of the 'success story' and why Scientologists believe they have been helped by Scientology when their lives are going nowhere.

The story takes a fleeting 'hello goodbye' and cements it into a fixed belief.

When a critic questions the value of Scientology he is unwittingly calling the Scientologist a liar. This is because the Scientologist has been maneuvered into writing about 'wins' that never occurred and then feels he must defend his position. This helps to explain why they take everything as an attack.