What's True For You

Image by mandiberg via Flickr

The Twitter account @scientology is currently posting through links to the Scientology.org site. Interestingly the website is being more open about some of their more fringey beliefs, such as an affirmative response to "Does Scientology believe in mind over matter." The site also places on each page the following quote from L Ron Hubbard:

"What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that, you have lost everything." 

It's a troubling quote because it ultimately puts personal truth above objective truth. This is not some accident of Hubbard's. The pursuit of personal truth at the expense of reality underlines many aspects of tech, from touch assists (which you're supposed to do until they work) to... well... mind over matter. Scientology takes this so seriously that they view anyone trying to "put in data" where it isn't wanted as an act of violence. This is somewhat ironic considering the amount of time they spend trying to put in their own data where it, too, isn't wanted.

But Scientology is supposed to be "the science of knowingness". What the above quote basically implies, is that Scientologists should avoid data that contradicts their own beliefs. In other words, if someone tries homeopathy and gets better, they should avoid trying to confirm their belief that the homeopathy cured them. This is not the science of knowningess, but the very opposite. It is a formalised turning away from reality. There is nothing to be lost by taking in more data, other than one's errors and delusions.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Scientology's Abusive Treatment Of Children (camelswithhammers.com)
• Read all about it: My Scientology experience (seattlepi.com)

Tommy Davis on Religious Freedom

"Scientologists as a general rule are opposed to any human rights violation, anything that violates an individual’s right to choose, anything that would reduce a person’s freedom, individuality and ability to think for themselves."

However...

“One can’t be a Scientologist and not be part of the church.”

The Trouble with OTIII

30 Second Skinny The scriptures for Operating Thetan 3 serve as a kind of shibboleth for the Church of Scientology. The Church flatly denies (often without lying outright) that the scriptures in the public domain are the genuine ones, so should someone reach and pay for the OT3 they are in a position where they are already deeply embedded in church life and must make the difficult choice of swallowing the story so often denied, or walking away from a sizeable part of their life. Should they stay in the church, it is likely that the church realise more and more courses and auditing can be pushed onto them.

Coercion and Extortion? In *My* Religion?

Tommy "Foot Bullet" Davis has been at it again. In case you've not heard, Larry Anderson, star of the Church of Scientology's Orientation video, has woken up and walked, claiming that he no longer believes Scientology can deliver what it promises (freedom from "the trap"). He also blames what he regards as corruption in the upper levels of management, citing the fact that the Church, for a period of about two years, was quite happily selling books it knew were no good, while those titles were being revised for re-release. This mis-selling is the sort of brazen nasty that we like to report on at The Beacon because it is irrefutable. The "wrong" books were sold right up to the day before the release of the "corrected" versions. It's so irrefutably wrong of the Church that they haven't even sought to apply any spin on it.

But anyhew. It's what happened next where it gets really interesting. Reports are widespread of the lengths that the Church will go to to retain parishioners it believes are valuable to the church or best kept silent. After making his intentions clear Anderson agreed to meet and discuss with Davis the return of money the actor had on account with the Church for services he had not yet received. Anderson had the foresight to record the "brief meeting" that became a ninety-minute conversation, with the full consent of Davis. Excerpts from the tape are now available online.

Knowing that the conversation is being taped, Davis nevertheless tries on various tactics to ensure Anderson, at the very least, remains quiet about the Church on his departure and does not receive any refunds. He waves the IRS at Anderson, discusses Anderson's impending disconnection (with some wonderful double speak; he says it does and doesn't happen in the same breath), tries to make Anderson feel guilty and/or pay(!) for the projected $2 million reshoot of Orientation and makes veiled threats concerning those Anderson will leave behind in the Church. One can only wonder how differently the conversation would have run had it not been taped!

Davis seems to be making a habit of saying things he oughtn't on tape. Last year saw him reveal that he was passing on former-Scientologists auditing files, collations of things admitted to while undergoing auditing, in the hopes that he could make some kind of ad hominem attack and damage testimonies regarding David Miscavige's violence and brutality. Naturally enough the provision of firm evidence that the Church does exactly what it says it doesn't do did not do much to dissuade the reporters from pressing ahead with their story. One wonders how long Davis can keep hold of his job; his continued ineptitude in handling these situations suggests that Miscavige has no-one with which to replace him. By sticking to CoS procedure, Davis only ever seems to galvanise departing parishioners into the new role of vocal criticism of the Church, its management and its policies. Scientology seems unique as a religion that makes enemies of its footstools.

The Trouble with TRs

The 30 Second Skinny Scientology's Training Routines often involve pattern spotting. Psychology suggests that is possible that by training someone to be a more adept pattern spotter they may in turn become more superstitious, or in other words come to recognise patterns that aren't really there. This could well be a consequence, intended or otherwise, of the TRs.

The Trouble with Engrams

The 30 Second Skinny Engrams are memories containing emotional charge. Thei removal of that charge is at the heart of both Dianetics and Scientology, but they were only ever a theoretical object in Hubbard's original hypothesis. Evidence has shown that they don't fit in with his original description for them, nor with our growing understanding of the way the human mind works.

Scientology is a Leaking Vessel

For a while now, the PR arm of the Church of Scientology has abandoned attempts to convince the world at large that it means well. Apart from those admittedly delicious lookin TV spots earlier in the year, all energy seems to be directed towards not losing yet more members. The much-quoted expansion figures, previously dismantled on the Beacon and elsewhere, came not from a widely picked up press release, but from an internal magazine. CoS was not attempting to dissuade the world that Scientology is dwindling, it was attempting to paint a rosier picture for those left behind who were perhaps wondering why their org is so quiet.

Now, with legal cases in France, Australia and Belgium, continuing allegations about the violence at the heart of the church, a parade of high-ranking whistle-blowers, and the church's public exposure of parishioners personal files, members might be beginning to wonder exactly what kind of beast it is that they've signed up for. Grahame has posted a shocking link to a story about what Volunteer Ministers are doing in Samoa. We've heard stories before of how the VMs will visit disaster-struck countries in order to help with the relief effort; handing out Um Bongo to fire-fighters, that sort of thing. Some will even discuss VMs training medical professionals in their own brand of hands on healing "touch assists".

It seems that their usual level of reserve, however, has been abandoned. Now VMs are openly admitting that they find people who have been traumatised by disaster and teach them Dianetics. In an attempt to quell the criticism being levelled at the Church in Australia, they believe that demonstrating how they target people in crisis in order to promote their religion is something worth shouting about. So do we! This is not something that is going to win support from outside the Church, if anything it confirms what people may hitherto only suspect; the only benefit is to repair some of the damage the brand has sustained in the eyes of scientologists, and allow the Church to keep its hooks in its existing parishioners.

Mark Fisher has suggested that Miscavige has set up a task force to re-recruit departed members, which also makes it plain that the Church is struggling to maintain its paying customers. In the past, apostates would be disconnected, written off as lost causes, something the Church could afford to do because there was always fresh meat to be had. With over a year of Anonymous protests, the worst press the Church has had in decades, high profile defections, unwitting admissions of dodgy practices, and more, the "bodies" are now more innoculated against Hubbard's trap than they have ever been, and it is the best that Miscavige can do to stop the bubble bursting.

The French Verdict

The 30 Second Skinny Staff members of the Church of Scientology in France have been found guilty of fraud and fined €600,000. The fraudulent activities in question are not the peculiar acts of a a few bad apples but the same kind of behaviour that is routinely expected of staff members. The situation is similar to that of Operation Snow White in which a number of high-ranking staff members were convicted of breaking into Governtment buildings in America. The individuals were supposed to have been expelled from the church but it seems they never were.

Read A Book!

The 30 Second Skinny The Church of Scientology raises funds within its members in order to send books out to libraries. These books are likely bought for retail price, meaning a portion of the funds raised is paid to the Religious Technology Centre. Also it seems unclear whether the books genuinely go out, and if they do, that they reach the shelves of public libraries. Most public libraries seem not to own copies of Hubbard's work, despite the campaign being heralded as a success.

Will Scientology Survive?

Image via Wikipedia

Someone found the Beacon recently by using "will Scientology survive" as a search term. It's an interesting question because it gets to the heart of the problem with much of the criticism of Scientology. Let's have a quick run through the state of the church at present.

The Church is currently using its reserves to pay for new buildings, advertising, legal representation and other PR efforts, but that not very much of this is translating into "raw meat". Added to that, it seems that many people are fleeing the church not out of a rejection of Scientology beliefs but because they have issues with the way their church is being managed, be it the allegations about slappy Miscavige or resentment at the fact that having spent a small fortune on Hubbard books and courses they are being told that these courses and books were wrong, and that they would have to pay out another small fortune again to replace them. Public scientologists appear to be becoming more outspoken from individual perspectives; the level of control that once existed in the church is weakening as Scientologists embrace the internet not to, for example, deny the existence of the OT3 mythology in the scriptures, but to defend the existence of the mythology. We can only assume that this is because, for all of Miscavige's posturing, he is no longer able to command respect, obedience and "duplication" from his parishioners. Scientology is an unlocked cage, and it appears that more and more people are trying the door out for size.

But this is not Scientology, this is the Church of Scientology. Most hardened, long-term critics, despite believing that much of Scientology's belief system is nonsense, even dangerous nonsense, nevertheless realise that people are free to believe what they want. Occasionally these beliefs will spill over into behaviours that are dangerous or threatening, but that is a discussion for a different day. What is crucial here is that the problems Scientology currently have stem from the church and not the belief system. Admittedly, due to Hubbard and Miscavige's micromanagement, the line between the church and the religion is uncommonly slight, but most Scientologists will recognise that undergoing auditing is a religious observance of a different quality to cleaning windows with newspapers or forgoing air freshener.

The problems stem from the church, but they also belong to the church. The church here is the ongoing concern, which is an interesting difference that Scientology has to a lot of other religions. Anyone can pick up a bible and become a Christian. It's independent of any kind of organisation. Christian churches obviously help, by offering community, confirmation and religious services, but none of these are integral to a belief in Christianity. And as much as the Church of Scientology would have you think otherwise, the religion of Scientology can exist independently.

This is what makes such an irony of the Church's bleating about religious persecution when society makes attempts to curtail its less ethical behaviour. The legal case in France, for instance, is about fraud, not about belief. The ISPN numbers that have been banned from editing Wikipedia were banned not because of belief but because of a group of people breaking the rules governing the editing of Wikipedia pages. Believe what you like, but the same rules apply to you as apply to everybody else. It really is that simple.

That's why one of the most fruitful things you can do when confronted with Scientologists waving about their freedom of religion is to ask them where they stand on the Freezone. The Church of Scientology has, without the authority to do so, placed itself in a position where it and only it can declare who is and isn't a Scientologist. It's for the individual to claim that, not the church. That's the true spirit and meaning of religious freedom, but the Church does a great deal to prevent people outside the church from pursuing that religion. They talk the talk of religious freedom but they certainly don't walk the walk.

You would assume that any Church would welcome believers, whether or not that belief is expressed within its organisation. It's certainly true that believers of whatever faith seem to get along better than believers and non-believers. So why does the Church of Scientology differ? It's because the belief system of Scientology within the church is not based on "free faith". People do not come to Scientology and develop a deep-rooted belief in its view of the universe without a great deal of pressure and control. These are, and lets be candid, cult mechanics. These mechanics are embedded in the workings of the Orgs. If you take Scientology out of the Orgs then, although it is not completely free of manipulative tricks, it will need to be a much more robust philosophy if it is to survive. More to the point, if you take Scientology out of the Orgs then suddenly the RTC has been divorced of a source of revenue.

But it is the money stream and the control that is at the heart of all the trouble that the Church is currently up against. The thing that is an attempt to keep the Church going is the same thing that is seeing its membership dwindle and its coffers run dry. Unless it reforms, it will fail.

But the existence of the Freezone, and the fact that a fair few (but not, I suspect the majority) of those who leave the Church still class themselves as Scientologists suggests that, although it won't necessarily be in rude health, the religion itself will survive the organisation that invented it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Lawyer for Scientology France Rails Against Injustice: Le Monde of France (themoderatevoice.com)
• Wikipedia blocks Scientology from altering entries (canada.com)

The Expanding Bubble

Scientology Today recently ran the 2009 expansion figures. Naturally when presented with figures from the organisation that claimed for years it had millions and millions of followers when it was plain judging by census figures and other sources that they did not need to be taken with a grain or two of salt. That said I don't want to discuss the figures themselves too much, merely note what they say about the organisation as it currently stands.

Given that these figures are intended in part to promote the Church, I'm sure they won't mind me pasting them up here.

The Church’s property holdings internationally have more than doubled in the last 5 years. The combined size of Church premises increased from 5.6 million square feet in 2004 to 11 million square feet in 2009.

The Church has acquired 66 buildings since 2004 in major population centers around the world.

The Church has completed 401,003 square feet of construction of new premises in the last 5 months. It currently has under construction another 475,887 square feet, including Churches in Washington D.C., Las Vegas, Quebec, Mexico City, Brussels, Rome and Tel Aviv.

So the leading three statistics are all about their building-buying project. If we assume for a moment that we're placing our most important achievements first, then here we have a reflection of the Church's current priorities which are all about property. If you want to know the marketing vision of David Miscavige it is, more or less, this: "If you build it, they will come."

It's also interesting to note that they're talking up the growth. If 5.6 million square feet has increased to 11 million square feet, it hasn't doubled, it has less than doubled. This is a minor quibble, but it's worth noting, simply because it demonstrates that these statistics are being talked up and massaged. It also speaks of the level of critical thought the Church are expecting these figures to meet with from the blog's target audience, Scientologists.

There are 8,071 Scientology Churches, Missions and groups in 165 nations, double the number five years ago.

I love this one. By lumping together churches with missions and groups, but not really defining what they mean by missions or groups, we end up with a figure that is impossible to extract into anything meaningful. I also suspect that the term "group" subsumes many of the front groups that, at any other time, are separate entities to the Church of Scientology.

80 million L. Ron Hubbard books and lectures on Dianetics and Scientology have been sold in the last decade, compared to 5.6 million in the prior decade, and 60 of that 80 million have been sold in the last two years-more than during the first 50 years of Dianetics and Scientology combined.

This, of course, covers both the "selling to base" of the squirrelled Basics books and the charity drives where books are bought by parishioners and sent unsolicited to libraries. These libraries tend to either return them, junk them, or sell them on ebay. If a public Scientologist is reading this and doubts it to be true, go to some local libraries and try and find copies of Hubbard's texts. The Church will often claim that you can walk into any library and find these books, but in truth, you can't. Added to that is the point that we're talking about books that are only available through Church of Scientology orgs, not mainstream bookshops, which, along with the low ebay prices, demonstrates clearly the market for Hubbard's writing.

The number of individuals completing auditing and training has doubled since 2007.

At last we have a statistic that actually relates to people, rather than property. And how does it differ from the property stats? We're not given any figures. Here we have what ought to be the most meaningful piece of information about the number of active Scientologists in the world today, but it's a piece of information that they just don't want people to know. Also, it's worth noting the use of the word "completing" because its meaning here is unclear. Is this bridge progression? It doesn't appear to be, because it would certainly be phrased as such. In that case it can only mean "getting to the end of the auditing session".

For many years the "practicing Scientologists" figure was based exclusively on the number of people that had had any kind of interaction with the Church. That means it would include people who, after their first auditing session, made up their mind that Scientology wasn't for them and moved swiftly on. Judging by the wording of this stat, their methodology hasn't changed much.

Since the Church undertook to publish and reproduce its scriptural materials in-house in 2007, the average price of Mr. Hubbard’s books and lectures sold has decreased dramatically.

I need to look into this further, but I find the use of the word "average" interesting. This certainly means that the prices haven't fallen across the board, that they are using an average to offset price increases somewhere on the range of Hubbard texts.

There were 12.4 million visitors to the Scientology website in the last year alone coming from 234 countries, with 23 million video views.

Without the actual figures and methodology of the "doubled" auditing figure, this, again, is pretty much meaningless; merely a symptom of their increased advertising spend. It's a shame because if we knew what that spend was, and how many people were now genuine active Scientologists, we'd know how much each of those Scientologists cost. This would tell us a great deal about the reality of the oft-touted "people find it work, people pass it along to others, it grows" mantra. It also would demonstrate how much "people pass it along" requires the assistance of glossily produced TV ads.

4.5 million pages of L. Ron Hubbard’s writings have been translated in the last 10 years alone compared to a total of 359,459 for the prior 50 years, making him the most translated author in history-according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Leaving aside the inherent problem with taking something so allegedly precise as Hubbard's use of English and translating it into other tongues without any loss of meaning, this is an internal claim. It says no more about the growth of the church than the purchase of largely empty church buildings. It is how many translations they have commissioned.

Today there are 196,000 Scientology Volunteer Ministers worldwide-there were 45,000 in 2004. Volunteer Ministers helped over 1.4 million people in the last year alone, a 300% increase over the 2004 figure of 550,000 people helped.

It would be cheap and easy of me to want to compare the number of Volunteer Ministers to the likely number of active Scientologists worldwide, so I won't. I'll also not point out that three times 550,000 is 1.65 million, not 1.4 million. Again I suspect that anyone who has ever donned a yellow or red t-shirt has been factored into this number for however slight a reason.

I believe that what these figures show, and what they do not show, offers an insight into the current state of the church, that their buying up of buildings, and translations and advertising spots masks a lack of grass roots growth. That fewer and fewer people are crossing the thresholds of the orgs.

St Petersburg Times - Readers Write

I've nothing much to add to the St Petersburg Times reports on the allegations of Miscavige's violence towards his employees, except to say that we at the Beacon can't quite fathom how the Church can play its "you should have spoken to us" card when, in fact, the newspaper did speak to them, and put the Church's side of the story across too.

Do pay close attention to the Tommy Davis interviews. Along with continuing the performance many of us first witnessed on the Panorama documentary, Davis also offers up further examples of his "almost lying". He describes the accusations as being "increasingly bizarre" in the same way that he said that the OT3 mythology, too, sounded pretty weird, as if the oddness in some way negated the possibility of the existence of either Miscavige's behaviour or the belief in you-know-who. Of the alleged victims, Tommy does not say that they weren't beaten by Miscavige, only that Tommy has spoken to them, and they will say they were not beaten by Miscavige. There's a choice moment where he starts to say "factually..." and then quickly changes tack to the less certain "I have signed affidavits from these people". He also tries to have his cake and eat it. His sorry show of denial begins by declaring that the Sea Org is a highly disciplined religious order, that they are "tough sons of bitches". It's as if he's saying "these guys shouldn't complain, because it's what they signed up for".

Much has been made of Rathbun and Rinder being "ex-scientologists" as if leaving the church instantly invalidates whatever they may say about their experience (for what it's worth I suspect they both class themselves very much as practicing Scientologists, and they have every right to). The Church has suggested that they have both talked up their position in the church, but their positions were well-known. The Church has suggested that they were incompetent, and were fired from the church, rather than left of their own volition. Rinder, according to Davis, is psychotic. So we have high-up members of the church who, according to the church itself, were incompetent and mentally ill. How could this have happened under the watchful eye of Miscavige with all his micromanagement and sec checks? How does someone with as much auditing therapy under his belt as Rinder end up so mentally ill that the Church's own spokesperson declares him psychotic? To suggest that Miscavige was blind to this incompetence and sickness seems as unlikely as L Ron Hubbard himself failing to ensure that the books he was slaving over were being edited out of all functional use prior to being published.

The article has led to a number of responses, mainly from scientologists complaining that the paper is biased in its reporting, and that they should run articles about all the good the church is doing. Well, we know why they don't. The rest have been from individuals writing to thank the paper for such focused and unflinching reporing. This letter in particular stood out, because it concisely makes very clear the "big picture" problem that people have with the Church of Scientology and what it does to people.

Irrational movement
Thank you for your excellent, thorough expose of Scientology. It makes for absorbing reading and, appalling as the Lisa McPherson pictures are, one sees evidence of careful research and the  professional restraint from any sensationalism.
Religion, cult, whatever one calls it, this description — its history and its astonishing growth and power — is a remarkable case history of the power of man's imagination and his infinite cunning. For here is a vivid picture of what happens when men and women deliberately turn away from reason. Here we see the scope of human gullibility and of human greed.
Scientology's goal is "to create a world without war, insanity and criminality." It opposes itself to psychiatry, whose goals are dismally opposite, seeking to make men and women "drugged or robotized" so they can be controlled. The result is vividly presented in the St. Petersburg Times account.
Lisa McPherson, terribly ill, was certainly "drugged and robotized" and deprived of proper care. Stripped of her money to pay for what care the organization gives her, and for any education in its tenets, she stands as a tragic symbol of what a determined, irrational, emotional movement can do to human beings.
Abigail Ann Martin, Brandon

CoS and the Limits of Religious Freedom

I was reminded, watching the full Tommy Davis KESQ interview, of a certain peculiarity of the Church of Scientology. It will be the first to stand up for religious freedom inasmuch as it so often paints itself the victim of oppression at the hands of its critics, but rarely is it forced to confront its own limits on that religious freedom.

Jonathan Barbera began a thread recently on ARS claiming he was being denied, notionally at least, his religion by the critics. I, perhaps glibly, responded that, as a critic, I did not seek to deny him his religion, but that the Church of Scientology did. Glib that response may have been, but truthful and honest too. At the heart of practiced Scientology lies the document Keeping Scientology Working. Hubbard, throughout his life, revised and updated policies, but naturally enough once the man had died, such revisions stopped and his words were etched in titanium. Whereas it was fine for Hubbard to revise his work, if anyone else did it, this would be considered treason. That's why whenever David Miscavige revises the scriptures he needs to frame it within the idea that he is correcting what had already been "squirreled" by those people working with Hubbard on the original texts who somehow managed to get their suppressive personalities past the sec checks. The reason given for such stern protection of the Church's copyrighted materials is supposedly to ensure that the texts are not altered in any way - as long as the church owns and controls the writings, then the religion too can be controlled; its policies suspended in amber from the mid-eighties on.

But here's the thing. In the world at large we have figures like Barbera and Schwarz who, while still true believers in their religion, were ousted by the Church they loved. In the eyes of the Church of Scientology they are not, and have never been, Scientologists. Yet Barbera states, as well he might, that he is "more of a Scientologist now than [he] was when [he] was in the church". So what happens now? People can practice their religion outside of the church, despite the church's insistence on its own monopoly. The faithful Scientologists of the Free Zone, many of whom believe not only that they count as proper Scientologists, but that the religion's texts should be freely available, clearly have as much right to their religion as do the "pay and obey" brigade.

This is why it's so vital, when COS is allying itself alongside conventional religions and claiming victimhood to such horrific crimes as having its logical inconsistencies and pseudoscience pointed out in public, when it is waving the religious freedom flag, one must look it straight in the eye and ask "does the same go for the Free Zone?"

The comedian Stewart Lee once said, in response to criticism of the religious content of Jerry Springer: the Opera, that Christians had to understand that they didn't own their stories. I think that in order for CoS to be taken seriously, it has to learn that lesson too. It cannot go on claiming religious persecution yet at the same time chooses to persecute, notionally or otherwise, Scientologists who have, following their own reasoning and believing what they have observed themselves, made the decision that their bridge to total freedom lies away from the Orgs.

Ethics and Apostasy

Following on from the spiritualism post and, for that matter, the atheist bus post, I've been pondering the nature of apostasy; the ethics that surrounds the acceptance or otherwise of someone's intention to leave their religion. Many religions stigmatise such a move, and from their "we're right, everyone else is wrong" perspective that's understandable, if not always appropriate. An individual who waves the banner for their particular faith or creed, demanding universal respect will not necessarily hold back in criticising those who, for reasons however valid, realise that the religion is no longer something that they can feign or sustain a belief in.
It's a curious discrepancy; it's not just that people demand a freedom of religion for themselves, they will happily allied themselves with members of other religions in their fight against what they perceive as secular encroachment. But the idea of converting from one religion to another remains an act whose severity shows the loose foundations on which such alliances are built. Unless of course it's someone converting in.

Here, as I see it, is the problem. You're dealing with salvation. Whichever religion you pursue, you own a dream ticket, be it to heaven, a higher vibration, valhalla or whatever. Your friends and family have the same ticket, and the importance of the ticket goes above and beyond any earthly concerns. If someone turns their back on their religon then, to the faithful, they are not only insulting their godhead or prophet, but are selling themselves down the proverbial, condemning themselves to damnation of one flavour or another. So it's understandable from the perspective of the faithful, for such a departure to be heavily criticised; criticised more than pretty much any sin going. Thus we get religious shunning, and in less progressive regimes, execution.

What we have here are two conflicting pressures - the faithful generally recognise that other religions exist, and have a right to exist. Some may even acknowledge that atheism and secularism does too. But they also "know" that their religion is right; that the other paths have a right to exist, but are nevertheless wrong. So when someone of their flock decides that Jehovah, or Allah, is not for them, then that decision tends to lead to a fair amount of conflict. The question we must ask ourselves is, where do we draw the line - when do we view someone's decision as valid. It's an awkward question, because it can't be imposed without placing a judgement on someone else's values, thinking and beliefs. We can't even draw the line, even in the sand, without falling foul of the conflict we're attempting to avoid.

Sadly, though, these things aren't even thought through. The faithful will go with their gut instincts, their moral compass (ho ho) and act accordingly. It seems to me, from the security of my atheism, that the best someone can do is to let go but to keep the lines of communication open. Maybe the decision-making hasn't been done in earnest; perhaps it's just that there are a few border-line acceptable sins (homosexuality, shellfish, usury...) that the person wants to have a crack at. Maybe, though, the decision has been long thought about through agonised and sleepless nights. Maybe, and here is the sign of greatest courage, maybe they are right, and it is you who are wrong. To cast out one's apostates, to ignore them, runs the risk of missing the truth when it finally comes around.

Giving Up The Ghosts

Readers of this blog will not find it at all surprising that I don't envy Scientologists, be they public or staff. Between damaging practices such as auditing (which can lead to psychotic breaks) or the purification rundown (which involves dangerously high vitamin doses), practices such as disconnection, the harrassing marketing strategies, and the subtle threats and pressures that come about from the existence of case study files and the RPF, their lives can very easily stray from the "good roads, fair weather" front they are supposed to maintain. But that's not what this post is about. It's about something much much closer to home.

I recently had something of an awakening. It's not usual for me to post about myself, but in this instance, it's appropriate, and I hope you'll see why. I was raised in a spiritualist environment. This "raising" was by no means a harsh, controlling regime. It really just amounted to an active belief that the dead are with us still; trips to a church that followed fairly mainstream Christian dogma, but also involved a spot of platform mediumship at the end. My most vivid memory of this mediumship was of a woman who burst into tears on being told by a medium of the bizarre image of a "rhubarb sandwich". Even then I was aware of the ridiculousness of a medium asking a crowded room if anyone knew of a person in spirit called John. Here I had tangible evidence that mediumship was real - a stranger calling out an obscure snack that was such a potent image that it brought tears to the person for whom the message was received. This became something of a touchstone for me through my adult years; without having much in the way of encounters with the Spritualist church, whenever I caught myself doubting the existence of the afterlife, I would think to myself "ah, but what about the rhubarb sandwich", and my belief would remain intact.

Spiritualism, you see, prides itself on being evidence-based. Where other Christian faiths will talk about Heaven and immortality, Spiritualism serves it up at the end along with sweet tea and biscuits. What a draw!

A few years ago, however, I took up another childhood interest for a second time, that of conjury. As a result I read Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer. This charted the development of stage illusions, the eponymous effect being Houdini's vanish of an elephant on the stage of the Hippodrome. Wanting to learn more about Houdini I read a biography and learnt about the work he did to expose fraudulent mediums. I, with my spiritualist head on, thought this was no bad thing. I knew there was a difference between reproducing the appearance of a séance and disproving that genuine séances existed, but much of Houdini's exposure involved specific mediums who were, for one reason or another, clearly fakes. Perhaps it was the submergeance in biography and history, but I began to view the Spiritualist movement from a chronological perspective. I had revelled in the antics of the golden age mediums; those that could produce ectoplasmic entities and other more physical phenomena. This seemed a world away from the necromantic messaging service I had witnessed. But the trouble was, once a method of reproducing such effects was presented to the world, by Houdini or Robinson or whoever, although the mediums who practiced such arts objected, those particular phenomena died out. Rather than devising ever-more thorough tests that did away with fraudulent methods, the spirit activity was withdrawn.

And how did the Spiritualist movement get started in the first place? It emerged from the following of three girls, the Fox Sisters, who began to experience ghostly encounters in their Hydesville home. These encounters seemed to follow the girls around, and soon they were giving audiences with people determined to have answers, seemingly, from beyond the grave. From the Fox girls we get the rapping codes so popular with entertainment programs such as Most Haunted. In fact Most Haunted seems to present an interesting return to the older methods of fraudulent mediumship, with its focus on channelled voices, and its love affair with ideomotor driven phenomena such as table tipping and talking boards.

The trouble is that in 1888 Margaret Fox admitted that their mediumship was bogus. Reasons have been put forward for this; that she was impoverished by this point and had been offered a large sum of money to make a false confession. Such conspiratorial imaginings run riot to this day, with the notable disparity that whistleblowers always come from those practicing allegedly paranormal abilities, and never from conspirators debunking such powers. Spiritualism to me became a movement that was founded on a lie, was furthered by more lies, and as faiths went didn't have much in the way of a unique selling point as a result. Nevertheless I was still left with the miracle of the rhubarb sandwich to cling to in hope.

If this were a movie, we'd now be in a montage, where I would be flicking through books, looking at evocative woodcuts and doing my best "smell the fart" acting, before addressing a close personal friend with my discoveries; ferven whispering in medium close up. That is not how it happened at all. It was a slow and steady transformation in my thinking, and not a straight line. It was more like mulling over a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, and then suddenly realising that it had already been solved.

Platform mediumship is something like a comedy circuit. You get bookings from a number of churches up and down the country, but with the added benefit that congregations remain fairly stable. But your source of work isn't just at the platform. You also have private clients. You'll get many of these private clients directly from members of the congregation that you address, from people who either received messages, or were impressed by the messages others received (and felt a bit left out). So what happens is the touring medium will be in a position where she receives private clients who she performs one-to-one sessions with, and consciously or unconsciously cold reads them. When she does platform mediumship, she will (out of courtesy) let her private clients know when she has a demonstration in their area. The platform medium is playing to a congregation some of whom are her private clients...

Which means the rhubarb sandwich is a lie. It was too long ago for me to confirm it in this instance, sadly, but mediums know what buttons to push to get certain responses from people. They cold read the crowd, but should they need a "convincer", something that confounds our understanding of how cold reading works, will come out with a "bolt from the blue" piece of information that not only couldn't have been guessed at, but gets a strong emotional response from the person that understands what it means. That information comes from previous knowledge gleaned, sometimes quite openly, from private sittings.

There is also, I suspect, still in existence the "blue book" - a system of mutual assistance where clients details are shared amongst mediums. With the advent of social networking sites, too, the amount of information that can be gleaned from someone's Facebook or MySpace page far outweighs what can be read from them on that first or second sitting.

So bye bye, rhubarb sandwich. Bye bye evidence of an afterlife. I still hope it exists, but I relinquish anything approaching certainty that it does. This has been (and I'm tempted to say "literally") soul destroying. I've gone from being an immortal being to someone that has, at best an outside chance of a life everlasting, and that's not an easy thing for me to deal with. Tears have been shed; sleep has been lost. But I'm getting through all that. Along with the anxiety is an odd sense of freedom. I think of life as a search for some kind of deeper truth about the universe we live in, and I've now dispensed with some blind alleys; I've finished checking the attic. That can only be a good thing. Ironically, I feel more open minded now than I did before. If that sounds odd, I can understand. I want to believe; I want to know, but the evidence for the belief and knowledge I once had is lacking. My newfound openness is in the assessment of the evidence. An open mind, but open eyes too.

Dispensing with the afterlife does new and interesting things to your perspective, I have found. It makes life a thing to be more greatly valued. Picture, if you will, someone who is suffering from a brain tumour. It's inoperable, and the only hope he has is chemotherapy. But chemotherapy is no picnic, so does he go ahead with it, or does he let the tumour take him? Whatever your take on this question is, it seems clear that the belief in an afterlife has a huge effect on that person's decision, and in what way. I often find myself wondering if suicide is considered such a terrible act by some religions simply as a preventative, something to counter this effect belief in an afterlife can have.

But I digress. I in no way consider myself the victim of a cult, but I do find myself in a "floating" state. Along with notions of necromancy, I bought into various ideas about subjective reality and magical thinking. I'll sometimes catch myself, in a run of bad luck, wondering if some outside force or agency is at work. What's worse is, these thoughts feel safe and familiar; they feel like the embrace of an old friend. I recognise them as sirens.

To make things more awkward, my mother and my sister both work in the psychic industry, to a lesser or greater degree. They are firm in their beliefs, which makes some conversations and encounters very difficult, and my most morally sound path difficult to identify. People can believe what they like, but when those beliefs tip over into practices that are harmful, that needs to be addressed.

So here I am, with little in the way of pointed indoctrination and control, struggling with my exit from a fairly simple and straightforward belief system. It's not an easy thing to do; it's genuinely transformational, has taken courage, has caused me pain. But it's nothing compared to what a someone in a cult is up against when they start mulling over their own jigsaw puzzle. They are often in an environment where the doubt itself, let alone the discussion of it, is utterly taboo. This is not a place where they can test their faith and have it grow stronger. I have awkward conversations with my family, but on leaving a cult, people will find they may have no conversation at all with the family and friends that remain behind. I'm not saying members of cults should stay where they are; leaving a cult is a way of embracing your own quest for truth, knowledge and wisdom. If I didn't think it was worth all the pain and heartache and regret in the world, then I'd be back chasing delusions at church in an instant. What I am saying is that critics need to keep in mind that it isn't an easy sacrifice. There are no ruby slippers.

There's a parrallel here, in a way, with drug addiction. Realising you have a problem is the "big step" but it's not the only step. Critics need to realise that barking out ridiculous bits of scripture, logical fallacies and factual inaccuracies may, on occasion, plant doubt in people's minds, but it's not the whole journey. A great deal of sensitivity and support and space (from the cult and the criticism alike) is also required.

Is Now a Good Time?

Just a few sketchy notes about the death of Jett. The internet is a hive of discussion about it all. This is just my two cents.

1) The press, and critics, claimed that the Church of Scientology is against psychiatry. Scientologists have claimed this is not the case, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Let's look at some of it briefly:

• CoS-founded and co-ordinated organisation the CCHR have a museum exhibit entitled Psychiatry: An Industry of Death
• Church leader David Miscavige (remember him?) discusses the "global obliteration" of psychiatry
• Lisa McPherson, clearly suffering from psychiatric problems, was retrieved from hospital into the care of CoS.
• The Introspection Release Form, which Scientolgists sign as part of the Introspection Rundown, states the following:

Scientology is unalterably opposed, as a matter of religious belief, to the
practice of psychiatry, and espouses as a religious belief that the study of the
mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from
religion or condoned in nonreligious fields.

Now it could be that this document is a forgery. If this is the case, then declare the opposite! Go one better and state that anyone who has seen and/or signed such a document has been duped and should feel free to disregard it. If CoS wants to claim this is misinformation, then they need to start handling the misinformation properly. I've never seen a court case for defamation. Seen a few for copyright violation, though...

It's been said elsewhere that Scientology is only worried about the abuses that sometimes take place in the psychiatric field. I hope the Church can see why people might assume that their criticism extends to the field as a whole.

2) Is autism, epilepsy, or any seizure-inducing disorder considered a psychiatric disorder? Virtually every bit of PR that CoS has put out over the last few days has focused not on the advice given or the position taken on these conditions. It has been only to state that the church advises its followers to seek medical help for medical problems. This is a grey area, and it needs addressing directly. Tory Christman states that she was advised to stop taking her anti-seizure medicine. Comments have been posted by Scientologists who know other Scientologists (they're from Canada; you don't know them) who take anti-seizure medicine with full approval of the church. This disparity could be because:

• One or other of the parties is lying,
• or there is some confusion within the church itself of the position it takes on seizure disorders.

Again, an explicit public statement would clear this up in an instant, so how about it?

And just for clarity, I'm not saying that CoS have to do this, just pointing out that by not doing it, not answering the questions that have been raised when their own set of beliefs are being so publicly scrutinised, they play into the stereotypes they are so often accused of being.

On the flipside:

Neither the Travoltas nor their lawyer have stated, at least in the last few days, that Jett suffered from seizures as a result of Kawasaki Syndrome. Kawasaki Syndrome is a self-limiting condition, so if he was diagnosed it at aged two, it is unlikely that he still had it aged 16.

An Open Letter to Scientologists

This letters was posted on the Operation Clambake Messageboard. I'm reposting it here in its entirety, because I feel the more people in who read this the better.

Dear fellow Scientologist,

I have been pretending to believe some things which I do not. I wish to clarify this. I am stating this now, carefully, and at length because I believe that this statement will cause me to be declared as a Suppressive Person and you may be ordered to not communicate with me. So this might be my last chance to say this directly. I had hoped to avoid this penalty by remaining silent about certain opinions, but this silence is ruining my life. It is now preferable to suffer the consequences of free speech.



I believe some data and laws are more important than other data and laws. Any law or guideline for behaviour is only a generality and must be used with judgement and the awareness of its importance and the fact that there may be an exception.

I believe that purpose is senior to policy. That is, the end result is more important than how you achieve it. And no, this is not a license to cause whatever damage to get what you want, because the damage is also part of the end result.



I believe it is not just the right of an individual to think and speak freely, it is a fact. People just do. But as a right, it is supreme.

I agree with United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, except where it contradicts itself. The main contradiction that comes to mind is the conflict between one's right to property and freedom versus another's right to receive various services. I tend to favor the property owner, except in cases of corruption or extreme need.



I agree with the precepts of The Way To Happiness, with a qualification ("Try to") on precept 9.

I agree with the Code of Honor, with the understanding that its guidelines are used on a self-determined basis and are not enforceable.

I agree with the Creed of the Church of Scientology, except for the last four words of point 10.



I reject The Way To Happiness precept 9 "Don't do anything illegal."

This statement is too absolute. However, we should try not to do anything illegal. I do try. The consequences of breaking the law include the penalties defined by law, the fear of being found out, and the degradation of the system of laws. Breaking the law is almost always incorrect. Almost.

The law is vast. You may be doing something illegal and never know it. Not even the most knowledgeable law expert could confirm that he spent a day without doing anything illegal.

Sometimes the law contradicts itself.

Sometimes you must choose between what is legal and what is right. It might be correct to flout the draft, to avoid fighting an unjust war.

I know I'm setting myself up. But I'm favoring accuracy over safety.



I reject Creed Of The Church, point 10, last four words, "That the study of the mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be ... condoned in non-religious fields;"

This contradicts the freedom to one's own life. I believe anyone may study the mind in any field whatsoever, so long as basic decency is observed.



I reject the strict prohibition of altering Scientology (squirreling).

KSW 1: "I once had the idea that a group could evolve truth. A third of a century has thoroughly disabused me of that idea. ... As we could have gotten along without suggestions, then, we had better steel ourselves to continue to do so now that we have made it. ... Squirreling (going off into weird practices or altering Scientology) only comes about from noncomprehension. ... If you can't graduate them with their good sense appealed to and their wisdom shining, graduate them in such a state of shock they'll have nightmares if they contemplate squirreling."

This contradicts one's right to one's own life.

This contradicts the recommendation to judge for oneself.

The intention of KSW is to keep Scientology working, that is, to keep producing good results - happier, more capable people. I agree that many Scientology processes and technologies do produce good results. I agree that altering a standard procedure often produces poor or bad results. I accept that squirreling has led to abuses. But these reasons and all the other reasons given are not nearly sufficient to prove the incapacity of man, of you and me, to propose new ideas, test new ideas in an ethical manner, and judge the result. If man cannot be trusted to judge truth, to judge a good result from a bad result, he cannot be trusted to perform a standard procedure.

I agree it is correct to follow standard procedure, normally. But when one sees an opportunity to improve a procedure, or make a new and better procedure, it is proper to pursue it. This is called research. It should be done with knowledge of existing procedures. It should be done carefully and ethically, with due regard for possible danger. Everyone involved should be properly informed that it is experimental, it is not standard, and should know the expected risks. It should be recorded accurately. But, it should be done. Research should not be prohibited.

The criteria of whether a procedure is valid is the result. That includes all the side effects. Harmful practices must be identified explicitly.

If an auditor has produced good results for many years, he knows how to get good results. This is true authority.



I reject the notion that students cannot/should not discuss the meanings of words. Sometimes it is difficult to guess the correct meaning of a word in a given context, even when looking in the dictionary. It is helpful to have the combined knowledge of others to help identify it. Furthermore, during a checkout, the student may flunk if he does not agree with the one giving the checkout. He may take it up with the supervisor, or even the D of T. But the whole matter depends on the opinion of just a few people, under pressure to make progress. There may be others who are well qualified to judge the meaning of this word in this context. But they are expressly prohibited from collaborating.



I reject, from Introduction To Scientology Ethics, "Such Suppressive Acts include: ... Unauthorized use of the materials of Dianetics and Scientology. "

This contradicts the freedom to one's own life.



I reject, from Introduction To Scientology Ethics, "Such Suppressive Acts include: ... Developing and/or using squirrel processes and checksheets. "

This contradicts the freedom to one's own life.



I reject, from Introduction To Scientology Ethics, "Such Suppressive Acts include: ... Public disavowal of Scientology or Scientologists in good standing with Scientology Organizations. "

This contradicts the freedom of speech.

This contradicts the right to choose one's own group.



I reject, from Introduction To Scientology Ethics, "Such Suppressive Acts include: ... Public statements against Scientology or Scientologists but not to Committees of Evidence, duly convened. "

This contradicts the freedom of speech.



I reject, from Introduction To Scientology Ethics, "Such Suppressive Acts include: ... Writing anti-Scientology letters to the press or giving anti-Scientologist data to the press."

This contradicts the freedom of speech.

This, as a measure to keep a good public image, is fully counter-productive. It's hard to think of a worse PR move than to blatantly prohibit statements against one's group. You might as well say, "don't trust us."

There is nothing wrong with telling the truth and stating one's opinions and observations, even when the truth is not pleasant. If one knows about an abuse occurring within a Scientology Organization, one should be free to speak of it. This would be considered anti-Scientology. In fact, it is not harmful at all, in the long run. Eventually, those who slander and maliciously twist the truth show themselves for what they are, as do those who are just telling it like it is. After a reported abuse is resolved, this resolution eventually becomes known as well. Allowing free communication speeds the whole process. Strict suppression of bad news causes anxiety, and produces a stilted, affected utopian image. It creates a withhold among Scientologists, cutting their communication with non-Scientologists.

Phillip Gale committed suicide (apparently) on L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, March 13, 1998. It happened. It's bad news. It's anti-Scientology news. Lisa McPherson died under the care of Scientologists, according to many sources. All is not well. It just makes it worse to try to suppress communication about such things. Though difficult, it is better to suffer the humiliation and deal with it as openly and straightforwardly as possible.



I reject from Introduction To Scientology Ethics, "Such Suppressive Acts include: ... Continued Membership in a divergent group."

This contradicts the right to choose or assist one's organizations.



I reject from Introduction To Scientology Ethics, "Such Suppressive Acts include: ... Continued adherence to a person or group pronounced a Suppressive Person or Group by HCO."

This contradicts the right to choose or assist one's organizations.



I reject from Introduction To Scientology Ethics, "Such Suppressive Acts include: ... Failure to handle or disavow and disconnect from a person demonstrably guilty of Suppressive Acts."

Besides being a needless interference in one's life, it is not consistently enforced. Pharmacists, hospital staff, and school nurses regularly dispense various harmful psychiatric drugs. Such drugging is one of the main suppressive acts against which Scientologists are rallied. But those people are not declared Suppressive. Any Scientologist can go to the hospital or talk to a pharmacist. This enforced cutting of communication is impractical. It's a double standard. It's cornball.



I reject unverified and unverifiable claims of superiority, such as "Scientologists are the most ethical", "Scientology is the fastest growing religion", "Scientology is the only hope for man", "Scientologists are the elite of planet Earth". For one thing, there should be some objective basis for making such claims. If you're going to make a ranking, then you'd have to be doing comparisons. If we're #1, then who are #2 and #3? Such comparisons are not only not scientifically done by the Church (as far as I know), the Scientologist is explicitly prohibited from engaging in "other practices" to find out for himself. Secondly, even if such claims could be proven, does it really help to state them? Finally, how can you say you are better than any other group because nobody else does what you do, and at the same time, attempt to enforce a monopoly, prohibiting anyone else from doing what you do?



I reject hard sell. High pressure sales make sense to me when 1) the situation is urgent and 2) the person being sold to is incapable of grasping the situation or too evil or stupid to take the right action. It could be argued that both of these are true in the case of a new Scientologist. I don't think so, but you could make the argument. But after twenty years in the group, why does he still need hard sell? The urgency becomes crying wolf. If the person is still not with the program well enough to just be presented with the facts and left on his own to decide, then he really is too stupid or evil. Or, you're selling him the wrong item. So I reject hard sell and all its variations, such as yelling orders to staff.



Withholds cause isolation and hurt relationships, right? What about the withholds a Scientologist builds up against non-Scientologists? That's enormous. Example withholds:
-- How much money you've paid to Scientology, and how much debt you've accumulated in the process.
-- Scientologists are subject to hard sell.
-- How often you are called by staff, harangued to help out or study, or pay, or go up the Bridge.
-- Policy on disconnection.
-- You or someone you know hasn't really achieved and maintained the ability promised for a given level.
-- You receive promotion with fantastic-sounding phrases, such as "Super Power" and "2 billion megawatt OT POWER NOW".
-- You have been trained to talk to new people in a certain way.
-- You are afraid to look at an internet site or TV show because you might be exposed to secret materials.
-- What became of certain leading Scientologists, such as Mary Sue Hubbard, Reg Sharpe, Mike Rinder, Ron Miscavige, Marty Rathbun, Jesse Prince, David Mayo, Martin Samuels, the first Clear, the first OT 7.
Do you feel free to say any of these things to non-Scientologists? To other Scientologists? Do you have to hide your mail? Are you withholding because you think it's right to not say, or because you are embarrassed? LRH said to answer people's questions. Can you freely answer people's questions? They want to know this stuff. Can you say it?

Why don't I disseminate Scientology? I talk about Ron Paul to anyone who wants to listen (and some who don't). I think he's the greatest patriot since Thomas Jefferson. I bought a hand tool called Root Jack for $120 that was more effective at pulling out small trees then a backhoe at $250/day. Ask me about Root Jack, and you'd think I was a Root Jack salesman, the way I go on about it. So why don't I talk with everyone about Scientology? Why don't I bring new people in? Don't I want others to have the same gains I have had? You bet I do. There are real gains available in Scientology. But I don't talk because I'm ashamed. I don't want others to be subject to hard sell, to censored communication, to authoritarian control.

To honestly disseminate, the conversation would go like this:
Me: "I think the Communication Course would help you. You can do it at the Church of Scientology."
Public: "Isn't Scientology a cult?"
Me: "Technically, any religion is a cult, so yes. Could you be more specific?"
Public: "Isn't it like the mafia?"
Me: "Well, Scientologists are put under extreme pressure to pay money and/or work long hours for almost nothing. And anyone criticizing Scientology or leaving Scientology is considered to be a Suppressive Person. Suppressive Persons used to be subject to various types of harassment. Some people say it still happens sometimes. But people who say that are also Suppressive Persons, and therefore not reliable, in the eyes of the Church. In any case, Scientologists are not supposed to have any contact with a declared Suppressive Person, even if they are family. This is ensured by required confessionals. I've never been in a mafia, but I suppose there are some similarities ... Wait! Where are you going?"
Public: (running) "Stay away from me."
Me: "The Comm Course is really a good course! I wasn't supposed to tell you that other stuff right away! I was just trying to answer your questions! Scientologists are great people!!"
Me: (to myself) "I liked doing the Comm Course, anyways."

That's how it would go, if I wanted to be fully straightforward. Seriously, when you are in doubt, you want to know the good and the bad. When you buy a house, you want to know if crime is high in the neighborhood. If you're hiring a babysitter, you want to know if she slaps kids and so forth. You want to know the bad stuff, as soon as possible. Don't you? What's wrong with being out front with this? No one would join, that's what.

So I reject the policies and practices that set up the Scientologist to needlessly withhold communication with non-Scientologists, in some misguided attempt at good PR. No. This hogties and introverts the Scientologist, alienates the other guy, and just plain stifles normal conversation. Thumbs down on that. No go.



How can I be responsible for the Church when I have little knowledge or control of its management? How can we correct a serious wrong if we can't talk to the only people who are talking about it?

How am I supposed to be responsible when someone asks me about Lisa McPherson? The Church provides me no details. Do I say that I don't know and I don't want to know? Is that responsibility? Do I say that it's all lies, an attack on the Church, totally fabricated by evil men? There is too much evidence that she died needlessly, in the care of the Church. Whatever lies added to that are relatively minor. Can I send my condolences to her family? No. It's a safe bet that her family is anti-Scientology, for obvious reasons. So to talk to them at all, would be to associate with "Suppressive Persons". Why is it that the only information I've gotten from the Church is that we've won a legal victory? The criminal case was dropped, the Church's image is much improved. Hip, hip, hurray! But, you know, she's still dead. This is not good PR. This is cold. Will there be no public apology? Will there be no public statement that the Church goofed, and has taken great measures to ensure it never happens again? How can I stand tall and say, "I am a Scientologist"? I consider the facts that 1) Lisa died, 2) we're only told about a legal victory, and 3) any Scientologist who seriously tries to investigate this, risks being declared Suppressive. The more I consider these, the more I have to say that something is very wrong. Something is NOT OK. It's irresponsible for me to do nothing about this. It's a cover-up, maybe not for the world, but it's out of the knowledge of Scientologists. Or, I don't have my facts straight at all, which is very possible. So I'm going to get my facts straight, which involves communication with "Suppressives". So be it.

Learning opposing ideas, hearing critics, is only harmful to a person who cannot evaluate data. For a person who can evaluate data, who can observe whether some data is true, hearing false information causes only a temporary setback. Soon after the false data is recognized, the truth is strengthened, and the source of the false data loses credibility. To censor, to cut someone else's communication, is to imply that the listener has a weak ability to discern true and helpful information from false and harmful information. It is insulting and degrading. It is appropriate to censor information for young children. But, it sends the clear message, "you are no more intelligent than a child -- I am qualified to control what you can hear, you are not."

There is a story going around that Sea Org staff are not supposed to have children and SO women who do become pregnant are often pressured to abort their pregnancies. What a vicious rumor! Can you imagine being ordered to murder your healthy, wanted baby, your future family? This is unbelievable! Outrageous! Sounds like black PR. Who is saying this? Ex-SO staff are saying this. Here's a situation that needs to be stopped. Either all the stories are false and the stories need to stop, or the stories have some truth and the coercion needs to stop. It's not ok to ignore. But you, the Scientologist, are not permitted to communicate with those people telling these stories to get enough data to verify them. This is where censorship becomes evil.

So, again, I reject attempts to censor what I hear.



I reject the assumed authority of giving me permission to disagree. This is inherent in everyone and not for LRH to grant or deny. It's nice that such freedom of thought is stated many places in Scientology. But it's a mistake to say, "Hey, LRH says it's ok to disagree, therefore it's ok to disagree." No. Just say, "It's ok to disagree." And mean it.



The subject of secrets is tricky. It's pretty clear that sensitive personal information, given to another in confidence, should be kept secret. You might break the agreement for a greater good, such as exposing a severe crime. But keeping personal secrets is proper, in general.

There are other secrets which are appropriate. For example, I know the End Phenomena of some processes on the Key To Life Course. These are secret. But I also believe that the reason they are secret is so that someone doing the process wouldn't be tempted to fake it. I also know that it's not the end of the world if someone finds out too soon. It just means that he has to be more honest if he wants to reach the End Phenomena. And if it were appropriate to tell someone, I would. I have the judgement to go along with the secret.

But Scientology has needlessly multiplied the secrets to be kept, and set unjustifiable penalties for revealing them. Why is it a crime to feed someone the Clear cognition? I don't know what the Clear cognition is, but if I found out before I originated it myself, would I forever be damned? Clear is a state of being, not a cognition, right? It doesn't make sense that so much could be riding on a few words. If anyone is a Clear, there must be a more robust way to determine the fact and a more robust way of achieving it.

Also, I have been set up for failure because some secrets have become broad public knowledge. We can argue whether or not they should have been exposed. But they are out. And they are broadcast on TV, the radio, and the internet. I tried to avoid them at first, but I gave up. I don't think it's possible to close my ears and eyes at the appropriate times. It's absurd to try. It gives a tool to anyone who wants to introvert me.

I am reminded of the United States atomic bomb project during World War II. That seems like a technology you'd really want to protect. And Soviet spies were right in the middle of it. So much for secrecy. The exact people you don't want to find out, are some of the first people to find out. LRH should have known this. Secrets get out. You have to take this into consideration before producing something that the bad guys aren't supposed to know about.

Anyways, secrets are a hassle because you have to keep straight what you can say to whom. I really don't appreciate having to keep secrets needlessly. So, I reject the duty to keep secrets which are already public knowledge. And I reject penalties of revealing secrets that are out of proportion to the damage caused.



The following is a generality, but it's true. Some Scientologists consider that the fact that they will be sec-checked is a motivation for not committing overts. The main consideration is financial -- it costs too much to spend the extra time in session. At first, this seems like an advantage of sec-checking. The advantage is temporary. This is wrong motivation. This means that one's behaviour depends on who knows about what one is doing -- a very bad way to be trained. One should make decisions based on the greatest good, not based on who will find out.



The following is another generality, but still true. When one brings up a critical comment about Scientology, the response from a Scientologist would be to question the validity of the source of the comment. Similarly, the test of whether a datum is dependable is often totally settled once it can be found in an LRH bulletin or book. If Ron wrote it, then it's taken as true. If someone disagrees with it, it will be assumed that he has misunderstood words or some fixed false data preventing him from grasping the truth. Though this contradicts LRH essays on integrity, this is the principle in use. The fallacy of this is made more obvious considering the 2007 re-release of the basic Scientology books, and also considering the earlier/ongoing project to store Scientology materials in a durable form. This project involved creating stainless steel plates and books made of a special paper, then storing these in titanium vaults. The idea is that the materials will be preserved in case of catastrophe. But now, assuming the latest releases to be the best representation of LRH, the project would need to be re-done. And the existing materials would need to be destroyed, or somehow marked that they are the wrong version, etc. This leads me to several conclusions. One, storing the materials in a durable form is little guarantee that they will last, unless numerous people are doing so. Two, if RTC were really interested in preserving and disseminating pure LRH materials, it would also publish all the raw data, unedited. Three, we Scientologists cannot identify genuine LRH materials from altered materials. Four, anyone who did point out confusions in the books, would have been stopped and sent to find their misunderstood word, preventing correction of the material itself. So stifling argument in the effort to Keep Scientology Working resulted in keeping Scientology from working. Five, we should therefore de-emphasize the importance of the source of information, and emphasize more reliable methods of ascertaining truth, i.e., observation.



I reject "He pulled it in", when it means "He caused the abuse he got". If you realize you are being a victim or causing destruction, and you are therefore "pulling" bad things in, OK. You realize it, you take better control of your life, great. But for anyone else to proclaim that "you pulled it in" is just an opinion, and often not helpful in any way.



I reject fixing the price of services. I believe a free market is a better guarantee of quality. Furthermore, arbitrary (i.e., decided by someone other than the persons giving and receiving) fixed prices and commissions result in less services being done, just as income tax squashes trade and production.

I reject the authority of the Church to control me. I'm talking about situations where the C/S or Ethics Officer says I need to such-and-such action, regardless of my opinion or whether I can afford it. I'm talking about when I would like to get some time off course, and I have to get approval and "make up the time", as though I owed my time. I usually don't mind being controlled for a few hours, or maybe more sometimes. But it's totally my decision, and not a blank check from here on out.



I reject the notion that, though I have the ability to make money, I don't have the intelligence or can't be trusted to spend it exactly as I choose and find out how it is used.



I reject the concept of buying status.

I reject the concept of buying status at 20% off.

I reject the concept of buying status at 20% off until November 7, after which time, status will cost full price.

I reject the extension of the 20% discount on status until December 31. I'm beating a dead horse here. But seriously, I'm happy to contribute to worthy projects. But I try not to care about a status, a pin, a certificate, a plaque or a trophy that says I paid so much money? Who really cares about that stuff and why should we be encouraging such vanity?



I reject most required attestations to states of being and abilities. It's ok to gain abilities and achieve new states and attest that you've done so. But if it's a required step and the ability gained is very general, there's trouble. To make a TRs graduate attest to "ability to handle any situation in life with communication alone", is to set him up for failure. The next time he ends up in an overwhelming situation, say he gets mugged by a street gang, or even a gang of 2-year olds, and he can't handle it, he becomes a failure. He has to admit it and re-do the course. Or he has to bend his mind around and somehow qualify this ability he attested to and say, "well, there's no such thing as an absolute," and water it down in some way. In any case, from there on, it's tough to talk to others in a straightforward way about this, because he's supposed to have that broadly-worded ability and the course just doesn't produce it. It's less introverting to attest to something more specific and demonstrable, say "done: 2hrs flawless TR0; 1/2 hour each flawless TR1, TR2, TR3, TR4." In the case of professional auditing, there is the additional pressure of completing for financial reasons. Take a Grade I completion, who is supposed to be able to recognize the source of problems and make them vanish. This is great, until a problem comes along that won't vanish. It doesn't necessarily mean she needs to re-do Grade I. It means that the stated result of the process needs to be brought into alignment with what the process really does do. Another example, why would a flubless interned Class XII auditor ever need cramming? She's perfect, right? Wrong. Mistakes happen. She may be outstanding. She may be worth her weight in gold. But there's no need to label her "perfect" or "flubless." There should not be mismatch between what is advertised and what is actually delivered. And there should not be pressure on students and pcs to attest to the advertised state, thereby shifting the blame to them when they discover a difference.



I reject the statement that Scientology works 100% of the time when applied 100% correctly. I've heard various versions of this many times. Anyone who claims this needs to define what phenomena is meant by "works", a detailed description of what is meant by correct application, and the records of a repeated experiment. And after that, it could only be claimed that it worked in 100% of the repetitions of that experiment. It is also important to test whether applying it differently produces a same, better, or worse result. But, with limited knowledge of everything in Scientology, having experienced success with what one has tried, to then extrapolate that all Scientology works 100% of the time for 100% of the people from here to eternity, is not justified. This in no way degrades your success. It just means don't be blinded by it.

The only times I hear this "100%" stuff is when a service is being advertised or when a less than ideal result is achieved. In the latter case, it is the trigger to investigate what was done non-standardly. Fair enough. But what about when a good result is achieved? You could still find something non-standard done. My opinion there.



I reject that Scientology is a science. It is a science in the sense that it is an organized body of knowledge. But in other subjects commonly known as sciences, such as chemistry or mathematics, the scientific method is continuously employed. This means posing new hypotheses and trying new experiments to more accurately confirm or deny the hypotheses. Testing and questioning is ongoing. No law is sacred. Anything is open for revision if new observation warrants it. In Scientology, this is not allowed. So it's misleading to call Scientology a science. If you corrupted a math book or a chemistry book that was in use, sooner or later, the corruption would lead to a failure in practice and the corruption would be traced down and corrected. And anyone competent in the field could do that. Applied mathematics and chemistry, by the way, can be very dangerous. But this does not warrant the existence of a central authority to keep math and chemistry pure, to own the trademarks on the square root symbol, the periodic table of the elements, "Mathematics(TM)", "Chemistry(TM)", or "Chemist(TM)".



In 1966, Tony Hitchman interviewed L. Ron Hubbard on Rhodesian television. This is available from the Church as a video entitled "An Introduction to Scientology". It is claimed to be the only filmed interview with Ron. This is false. There is another. Charlie Nairn with Granada Television produced a half-hour documentary on Scientology in 1967, as part of the World in Action series. Despite the mostly negative spin, this documentary has some favorable coverage of Saint Hill. "Saint Hill is a nice place. Scientologists are very friendly and honestly believe they can help whoever goes there. Usually, they can." In the documentary, Janet Lundy is announced as a Clear. She speaks briefly and really looks happy. It also includes an interview with Ron, but he doesn't come off altogether favorably. The interviewer asks Ron about his (three) wives. Smiling widely, Ron says his first wife is dead. Then Ron says he never had a second wife. Despite all of Scientology's truths, this documentary, and the Church's effective claim that it doesn't exist, is evidence that neither the Church nor Ron is 100% reliable. There is other evidence, but this is some of the most blatant.



Here are a few questions to consider.

What kind of friend would leave you because someone else told them they had to?

Why is there not an early-detection system for Suppressive Persons? Why does it take ten or twenty years sometimes to discover them?

Are your statistics more important than you? When you're upset, who is there for you, free of charge? When you succeed at something you really wanted to do yourself, who cares?

When watching a Scientology event video alone or in a small group, do you give a standing ovation? Do you clap? What about when watching the same video in a large group?

What are the local or international 1-, 5-, 10-, 20-year statistics for training and auditing completions? Do you care? Are you curious? Where can you find out? Is it ok to ask?

Who are the top executives? What do they do? Have you ever met with them in person? Have you met their families? Do they have individual hopes and dreams? Hobbies? Problems? Are they happy or frustrated? Where are they now? Who were the top executives the past 40 years? Is it ok to ask? Who records our Church history?

If all you cared about was doing the right thing, you didn't care who was looking, what would you be doing? How much of what you are doing is based on following orders or going with the flow, and how much is based on what you truly believe to be right? Why do you need so many orders?

How many bulk mail items do you receive? How many phone calls? How many e-mails? Do you want them?

How many HCOBs do you know of that you seriously doubt that LRH wrote? Did you verify he did? How did you verify it?

What are your crimes? Hmmmm? Think about it. What are your crimes, really? Ok, scratch that. Answer this. How do your crimes stack up against your contributions?

Suppose David Miscavige showed up at the New Years Event in a grey shirt. And what if his first words were, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I've been lying to you all, to you who've trusted me utterly. I truly thought I was doing the right thing, at first. ...", and he proceeded to tell the whole story? What would be your reaction? He's a person too, you know.



I am not attempting to harm Scientologists, the Sea Organization, or any Church official or staff. They are good people who sincerely wish to help, and do so regularly. I am formally stating my beliefs. I am criticizing and rejecting various practices: pompous haranguing, bulk mail blizzards, limited time special offers, micro-management, ignorance/hiding/non-confront of bad news within the Church, ignorance/hiding/non-confront of possibly good new ideas elsewhere, needless secrecy, out-of-proportion justice actions, interference in others' communications, etc. I consider these to be anti-Scientology. I am asking the obvious questions, obvious to anyone who dares to look. And I'm not buying any more nonsense.

Do you scorn me? Are you thinking I am a treasonous 1.1 goody-goody, now turning on my group? Then, realize what this means to me. I've been a Scientologist practically all my life. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of my own hard-earned money on Scientology. I've spent years studying Scientology courses. I'm risking losing many friends. I'm risking the Church ordering my own mother to never speak to me. Speaking out as I am is not a choice I made without much painful consideration. I'm putting my ass on the line, looking like a traitor to Scientologists and looking like a brainwashed fool to everyone else. So, don't lay the blame on me. I tried in earnest to get it right. I tried to help. I ain't the problem here. You'll know that when, after you've written me off, all the problems I mention will still be with you.

Suppressing one's own communication is often wrong, but is a personal choice. Suppressing others' communication is, for lack of a better word, suppressive.

What is Scientology?

I thought the top triangle of the Scientology symbol represented Affinity, Reality, and Communication. Affinity -- I like you. I don't like your money, your position, your impressive achievements, your statistics or certificates. I don't care about your public speech, your clever jokes. I might or might not like your intelligence, your ability, your body, or your beliefs. It's not your culture or your country. I like the person inside, the real you. I like being with you, no matter what anyone else thinks. Reality -- We agree on something. We're not just trying to impress someone. We don't reluctantly agree. We're not voting for the same lesser-of-two-evils. It's not a forced compromise. It's not a legal contract. We just happen to agree. And it's great to know someone that thinks like I do -- what a team! Communication -- I'm talking to you. I want you to know what I'm thinking. I'm the guy sending the message. It's coming from me. It's not coming through me. It's not paid for. It's not approved. And I'm sending the message to you. Though the whole room can hear me, it's for you. I want you to get it. You. Not him. Not her. You. Me to you. And if you want to reply, all the better.

I thought the lower triangle represented Knowledge, Responsibility, and Control. Knowledge -- You know something. You're not afraid of being proven wrong. You welcome criticism. You didn't just repeat "4x6=24" a hundred times. You made a rectangle out of 24 marbles. Your certainty does not decrease by hearing more opinions, because you can differentiate between your own observation and what someone tells you. You looked, you struggled through the confusion, you found out. You know. Responsibility -- You own something. It's your job, your area, your operation. You know what's yours and what's not yours and what you share with others. No one forced you into it. No one dumped it on you. You decided to put it on yourself to make it happen. You'll gladly take the credit for success, or suffer the consequences of failure. You don't let the ignorant make the rules. You care about the outcome. You care about the people. Control -- You control something. You're not on a power trip, impressed with your own status. You're not issuing impossible orders in a commanding voice. You're not freaking out, overworked, overwhelmed. Your credit is not maxed-out to the insane edge. You're not sloppy and lazy. You set the example. You lead from the front. You make steady, skilled motions. You're competent. You're in control.

I thought Scientology was for improving the ability and courage of the individual. I thought the idea was to increase survival and knowledge of self, family, groups, mankind, plants and animals, the physical universe, life, and God. A world where the able can prosper and where honest beings have rights. Freedom. That is the Scientology I was taught. That's what I thought it was all about. That's the Scientology we were promised. Remember?

Sincerely,



Mac Stevens