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What kept me in Scientology and what got me out

wogwog

Patron
This is not the story of how I was raised in Scientology and ultimately got out, but this broadly sums up many of my beliefs and experiences along the way. Reading ex-Scientologist messages boards like this helped me start to break my mental bonds, and I felt it was about time I contributed something that would have helped me when I was finally brave enough to see what people were saying online.

[format=h2]What kept me in[/format]
  • The fear of losing my Scientology friends and family to disconnection
  • The love I felt for the good people I know in Scientology
  • The fear of losing my job at a Scientologist owned company
  • The fear of Ethics coming down on me with interrogations, intimidation tactics, sec checks, lower conditions, non-enturb orders, comm evs, SP declares, etc.
  • The fear of being “dead agented” to my friends and family by my former church if I spoke out
  • Fearing how everyone I knew will regard me with disgust as a DB living a "wog life" if I leave Scientology
  • The fear of “But what if I’m wrong and Scientology is right?”
  • The fear of “losing my eternity” if I accept that this may just be the one life I get
  • The pain of losing the money spent on courses and auditing
  • The pain of admitting to all the time and energy wasted in Scientology
  • The pain of failing to get a real education because I gave it up to pursue Scientology
  • Wanting to help others and the world at large and believing Scientology gave me the tools to do that
  • Being taught Scientology by my parents and others who I love and trust had only good intentions for me
  • Being hung up on the “wins” I had in Scientology or working with Scientologists
  • Being attacked by people who did not understand my beliefs and wanting to double down to prove them wrong
  • The decades of being indoctrinated to only think in Scientology terms and filter the world through a lens of Scientology beliefs
  • That Scientology can all seem to "work" as long as you do not try too hard to see behind the curtain
  • The times “tech” worked that I could not explain any other way
  • The times the tech did not work but I was told I was doing it wrong
  • The phobia of “entheta” and “SPs” saying anything critical about Scientology
  • Being discouraged from reading news, following politics, or caring about the "wog world"
  • The belief all “Church attackers” were in an evil conspiracy to suppress mankind
  • The idea that critics and squirrels only get louder when we are “winning”
  • The mental trap that the only reason for leaving or criticizing is one’s own “crimes”
  • The fear that sharing my doubts with anyone would get me reported
  • The thought stopping I did to try to keep these dangerous ideas out of my mind
  • Believing I could "create my emotions" and that I should will myself to be "up tone" when I had doubts or problems
  • The self-doubt of how I be could right that Scientology is bad when I know so many smart Scientologists
  • Not knowing so many had already gotten out and were living good, happy lives
  • The desperate need to feel that sense of certainty and purpose Scientology can give
  • The disdain for the “wog world” I was taught to hold for everyday people and their goals
  • The distrust in governments, colleges, scientists, doctors, therapists, etc. that was instilled in me that kept me from being exposed to information that would crack my belief system
  • Not wanting to feel like you could be so stupid as to believe in all this nonsense
  • Not believing LRH could produce such as sheer mass of writings and lectures and develop so many processes and organizations without it holding some truth or value
  • Not seeing a small truth can be used to build a bigger lie that traps you
  • Not understanding how many relatively harmless beliefs could add up to a destructive system of mind control
  • Not understanding how good people can believe they are doing the right thing but be trapped in a system that makes them abuse others and even themselves
  • Believing that LRH was a good man who discovered a way to help all of us
[format=h2]What got me out[/format]
  • Realizing that doubt is not bad, and that it can lead to seeking truth, even when that means discarding closely held beliefs along the way
  • That if I really believe Scientology gives me the ability to discern truth from lies, confront what I fear, and freely communicate about anything, that includes hearing what critics and ex-members have to say without prejudicing myself to assume they are lying criminals
  • Reading and listening to the stories of ex-Scientologists who were not the frothing mad SPs I was told to fear, but that were clearly good people who had been abused
  • Seeing that critics often had an even greater understanding of Scientology's beliefs than I did, and could explain its pitfalls and mental traps
  • Coming to believe that a good religion cannot be based on lies and dominate its followers with fear
  • Seeing how "certainty" is a dangerous drug that can give you complete conviction even when you are wrong
  • Even truth as an ideal is dangerous to claim ownership of, since we can arrive at what feels like truth through faulty logic, unconscious biases, and nonsense beliefs
  • Seeing the contradiction between being taught to follow Personal Integrity and only believe in truths I have observed as true, but also that any time you disagree with LRH you are wrong and the thumb screws will be tightened until you agree with the tech
  • That not everything in life has been figured out, and what LRH says is certainly not the only way, and in fact many others have recommended even better solutions
  • That people can and should leave when they are being abused and tricked, and they are not “blowing” because of “crimes.”
  • Joining the Sea Org and seeing firsthand how "the tech" creates organizational insanity and a culture of fear, paranoia, and brutality
  • That I cannot follow a religion that cares about its PR more than higher ideals like truth, justice, and compassion
  • Discovering that LRH had wives and children he abused and neglected that were omitted from his life story
  • Discovering that LRH lied about his military record and his war injuries which form the basis of the Dianetics story
  • Reading a real LRH biography and learning the truth about the countless other lies he told about his life
  • Feeling that what LRH said often lacked a timeless quality I would expect of a true religion, such as his fear of communism, homosexuals, taxes, etc.
  • That I was trying to force facts to fit into Scientology’s framework, instead of seeing if Scientology lined up with the facts
  • Wondering why the states of Clear and OT are defined as so amazing with beyond super human powers, but downplayed whenever I met a Clear or OT who did not live up to those claims
  • Wondering why no one with supposed whole track recall of advanced galactic civilizations has ever recreated any of that technology and made a fortune on it
  • That LRH is not right when he contradicts science just because he dismisses all other “authorities” and “experts” without much more than a hand wave
  • Learning about how other cults and pseudosciences work and being forced to resolve the cognitive dissonance of seeing their parallels in Scientology
  • Learning about skepticism and critical thinking, but being confused to see Scientology and Dianetics listed as quackery alongside 100 other things I agreed were nonsense
  • Specifically, reading Carl Sagan, James Randi, and Michael Shermer and seeing that even though they criticized Scientology, they did not meet any of the supposed antisocial personality traits
  • Learning about cognitive dissonance, the sunk cost fallacy, and other ways we trick ourselves
  • That science and technology has advanced in ways LRH never predicted and that contradict his claims about the universe
  • Finding that many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people doing valuable work that respects the autonomy and spirituality of the people they treat
  • That statistics have nothing to do with personal ethics, and that stats cannot go up forever
  • Admitting that not everything in Scientology is harmful, but most of the good comes from the kind people who got into it because they wanted to make a better world
  • Realizing that the "wins" you have in Scientology do not excuse its many abuses and lies
  • Further, that many "wins" are not what you are lead to believe, but rather states of hypnotic euphoria or simply being happy someone took the time to talk about your problems with you and help you think about things in a new way
  • Finding out that most of Scientology is copied from other religions and philosophers, but usually altered or corrupted
  • Seeing “wog” people and organizations succeeding despite applying zero LRH tech or even doing the complete opposite
  • Discovering how OSA attacks perceived enemies and former Scientologists, especially the use of pc folders in blackmail and smear campaigns
  • Seeing evidence OSA did this to people I knew who had left Scientology
  • Admitting that, while the outside world is not perfect, it has a lot of good in it too
  • Seeing that what is wrong with the world is not being fixed by Scientologists
  • Learning that all cults try to replace their members’ true identities with a cult identity that is modeled on the founder (though this is often a fabrication itself)
  • That the quirks in Scientology beliefs are there because they are an institutionalized expressions of LRH’s personal idiosyncrasies, fears, insecurities, desires, etc., not some deeper spiritual truth
  • Meeting non-Scientologists who were supposedly boogeymen like atheists, LGBT, psychs, etc. and finding they were good and smart people too, not the 1.1 DB SP rock slammers I was told to expect
I have left out the specifics of my story, but I hope these points express some of the process I went through as I deconstructed my mental prison.

If you want me to go in depth on any of these points, or would like to read what others have written about them, just let me know and I would be happy to share what I can.
 
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Out Effix

Out Ethics Ex Ethics Officer
What got me in?

Born In and breast fed the propaganda.

What got me out?

Scientology destroyed my life.

I witnessed many criminal activities and justified them for years.

"We are dealing with broken pieces"

"People make mistakes"

I eventually realized after obnosing so much destruction with the members...Divorces, Bankruptcies, Foreclosures, shattered lives and shattered minds.... that Scientology was a horrible hoax designed to get me to work for free as a staff slave, not go to college, marry another Scientologist who was sent to Flag for most of our married life so being a male having normal human hormones....I went out 2-D and lost everything.

I now know that I was not a horrible person - I was normal.

It was the CULT that was cruel and inhumane to separate spouses.

The internet freed me. I found the TRUTH. The TRUTH set me free.

Scientology does not work to help man improve.

Scientology destroys, kills and maims.

I hate Scientology.
 

Type4_PTS

Diamond Invictus SP
Great post wogwog. :thumbsup:

When I get a chance I'll write my version. Some of the items you listed were major factors for me as well.
 

wogwog

Patron
A few more thoughts to add to the list:

Feeling I was being dishonest when I repeated the "acceptable truths" that I was trained to say to non-Scientologists when they asked questions. In the SO, having to tell "shore stories" to public Scientologists to maintain "good PR" but knowing they were lies. "Truth" becomes whatever serves Scientology, even when it's lies. I realize now from reading Steven Hassan's books on cults that this is outside vs inside doctrine, where the "truth" changes depending on how deep into the group you go.

For claiming to be the universe's best communicators, Scientology does so much to control, limit, and squash what you can communicate about. No natter, no J&D, no HE&R, no "case on post," no enturbulation, no black PR, no verbal tech, no third party, no justifications, no dev-t, no backflash, no ser fac, no "make wrong," no entheta, no Q&A. Write it up to the proper terminal. Save it for session. It doesn't matter if it's true and it doesn't matter if the "proper terminals" don't care. Again, Hassan would explain this as BITE -- behavior, information, thought, and emotion control.
 
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TheOriginalBigBlue

Gold Meritorious Patron
A few more thoughts to add to the list:

Feeling I was being dishonest when I repeated the "acceptable truths" that I was trained to say to non-Scientologists when they asked questions. In the SO, having to tell "shore stories" to public Scientologists to maintain "good PR" but knowing they were lies. "Truth" becomes whatever serves Scientology, even when it's lies. I realize now from reading Steven Hassan's books on cults that this is outside vs inside doctrine, where the "truth" changes depending on how deep into the group you go.

For claiming to be the universe's best communicators, Scientology does so much to control, limit, and squash what you can communicate about. No natter, no J&D, no HE&R, no "case on post," no enturbulation, no black PR, no verbal tech, no third party, no justifications, no dev-t, no backflash, no ser fac, no "make wrong," no entheta, no Q&A. Write it up to the proper terminal. Save it for session. It doesn't matter if it's true and it doesn't matter if the "proper terminals" don't care. Again, Hassan would explain this as BITE -- behavior, information, thought, and emotion control.
Great post! I'd also add that in the SO one of the many kinds of status that Sea Org members strive for is access to confidential lines and material. We see this seeping into the public Scientologist field in the form of "Confidential Briefings", etc. You are special and part of the chosen elite to be so trusted with confidential stuff. Imagine the NSA approaching you to help them save the world, and we need you to sign this non-disclosure agreement. Now you are part of the club and betraying our trust would be very very bad. Congrats, you've just entered the paranoid world of LRH and suddenly everyone else becomes the subject of deception and misdirection.

In Scientology it is a badge of honor. Now all those communication drills have real world application. You can skillfully start, change and stop any conversation in order to promote and protect Scientology.
 

wogwog

Patron
In Scientology it is a badge of honor. Now all those communication drills have real world application. You can skillfully start, change and stop any conversation in order to promote and protect Scientology.
That's a good point about people loving to be in on the "secret" so they can feel superior to the yokels. You also got me thinking about how in Scientology communication is so often inauthentic and forced, which is such an irony for a group that claims to be able to solve all problems using ARC.

As my mind started to disconnect from the Scientology reality around me, I began seeing how when TR's "go in" and "Tone 40" turns on, authentic communication stops. People stop talking to each other naturally and compassion vanishes. Person-to-person interactions become mechanical as the "comm formula" is more strictly obeyed, and more often than not "Tone 40 intention" comes to means "ruthless, uncaring, robotic, and unrelenting" or "throwing a tantrum, screaming threats and insults." More so in the orgs, especially the SO, but also between public.

I can see some utility of bottling up your emotions when you are in a stressful situation and need to be in control and direct others to do what needs to get done. I still naturally get into that mode during emergencies -- "I'll save emotions about this for later, let's just make sure this is fixed first."

But the problem became that my "nothing is affecting me" attitude, as developed by TRs like bullbait, made me seem emotionally distant and disconnected in personal relationships. Going robotic and "acking" with "OK, Got it, Thank you, I understand, etc." is not natural when someone is sharing a vulnerable part of themselves with you and hoping for compassion and connectiuon. My "Scientology valence" prevented me from truly connecting with others when they needed it most, and from sharing myself because I was always expected to "save it for session" and "not be down tone."

Maybe someone with better TRs training than me would say I was being "out TRs" because "real" TRs are natural and conversational, but that was not how it was trained in to me, starting in childhood. Some of those Success Through Communication drills are more relaxed like practicing ending a conversation smoothly or not answering a question directly (which again, are using communication as a tool to control others).

Even the times a Scientologist shows emotions, they are often inauthentic, since we were trained to control them as a tool to manipulate others. For example, judging strangers by their supposed tone level and interacting with them per rules for how they are supposed to handle ARC and truth as a substitute to really getting to know them. Conversations for their own sake are rare at orgs because there's always something to sell, sign ups to get, commissions to earn, recruitment to do, handle a PR flap, etc. Some of the weirdest conversations of my life took place during course breaks.

As a kid, I remember going to events with my dad, and after all the hours of clapping and standing ovations were finished, we needed to make it past the throngs of staff stationed at every exit ready to pounce on us to sell whatever the new release or donation drive was. My dad taught me to go "tone 40," make no eye contact, walk fast, and do not interact with anyone so we could cut through the crowd and make it out to the parking lot. I later learned the same tactic for walking down the street in a sketchy neighborhood where you don't want to get harassed. I think most veteran Scientologists develop these tactics to save themselves from the "death by a thousand reg cycles."
 
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TheOriginalBigBlue

Gold Meritorious Patron
For example, full acknowledgments are used to make people feel like they are being heard and appreciated or to terminate communication in order to get people to leave and half-acknowledgments are used to keep people talking so you can draw them out and to keep them from leaving.

Using the Tone Scale to manipulate people was an integral part of Scientology communication technique. People should know that when they are being approached to do the Personality Test or Stress Test that they are being sized up. If they think you are bored they will mock up mild or strong interest right above that emotional level to try to bring you up to a more responsive tone. If they perceive you as an enemy and you are in anger then they will mock up covert hostility, fear or apathy to try to drive you into a lower more manageable tone. Lots of people still hang onto the Tone Scale concepts long after leaving official Scientology but I find the principle of categorizing people this way to be extremely dangerous because it justifies treating them in mechanical authoritarian ways.

Scientologists are taught not to Invalidate or Evaluate the preclear in session but they don't know where this behavior is appropriate or not and they shut down honest expression in day to day relationships. "You're beautiful" becomes an evaluation and if the person next to them isn't then it's an invalidation. Better to just not say anything.

Get it wrong and you are written up to Ethics or Qual. Ethics gets your head straight around Scientology with discipline, Qual does it with training but both can be expensive, burdensome and humiliating.

Maybe some of these things can be helpful in a natural setting but Scientology is fundamentalism by any other name and by definition there is an element of stress, coercion and force in everything. The deeper you go, the more fundamentalist it becomes. Fundamentalism is a kind of distillation process becoming more undiluted with natural human behavior over time. Apparently, I stopped going to events before they implemented the regging blockade strategy, or it just wasn't being done where I was. Maybe not enough Sea Org members to pull it off. But hearing about it doesn't surprise me at all. That public Scientologists telegraphed to the Church that they were ready for it or ready to not resist doesn't surprise me either because they had given a broad pass to Lisa McPherson's death. By putting up with the RPF for 30+ years staff had telegraphed to DM that they were ready for The Hole.

Everything you describe has led Scientology to where it is today and it was all right there in the very first introductory courses that so many people like to say had some real value.
 

SHUKex

Patron
This is not the story of how I was raised in Scientology and ultimately got out, but this broadly sums up many of my beliefs and experiences along the way. Reading ex-Scientologist messages boards like this helped me start to break my mental bonds, and I felt it was about time I contributed something that would have helped me when I was finally brave enough to see what people were saying online.

[format=h2]What kept me in[/format]
  • The fear of losing my Scientology friends and family to disconnection
  • The love I felt for the good people I know in Scientology
  • The fear of losing my job at a Scientologist owned company
  • The fear of Ethics coming down on me with interrogations, intimidation tactics, sec checks, lower conditions, non-enturb orders, comm evs, SP declares, etc.
  • The fear of being “dead agented” to my friends and family by my former church if I spoke out
  • Fearing how everyone I knew will regard me with disgust as a DB living a "wog life" if I leave Scientology
  • The fear of “But what if I’m wrong and Scientology is right?”
  • The fear of “losing my eternity” if I accept that this may just be the one life I get
  • The pain of losing the money spent on courses and auditing
  • The pain of admitting to all the time and energy wasted in Scientology
  • The pain of failing to get a real education because I gave it up to pursue Scientology
  • Wanting to help others and the world at large and believing Scientology gave me the tools to do that
  • Being taught Scientology by my parents and others who I love and trust had only good intentions for me
  • Being hung up on the “wins” I had in Scientology or working with Scientologists
  • Being attacked by people who did not understand my beliefs and wanting to double down to prove them wrong
  • The decades of being indoctrinated to only think in Scientology terms and filter the world through a lens of Scientology beliefs
  • That Scientology can all seem to "work" as long as you do not try too hard to see behind the curtain
  • The times “tech” worked that I could not explain any other way
  • The times the tech did not work but I was told I was doing it wrong
  • The phobia of “entheta” and “SPs” saying anything critical about Scientology
  • Being discouraged from reading news, following politics, or caring about the "wog world"
  • The belief all “Church attackers” were in an evil conspiracy to suppress mankind
  • The idea that critics and squirrels only get louder when we are “winning”
  • The mental trap that the only reason for leaving or criticizing is one’s own “crimes”
  • The fear that sharing my doubts with anyone would get me reported
  • The thought stopping I did to try to keep these dangerous ideas out of my mind
  • Believing I could "create my emotions" and that I should will myself to be "up tone" when I had doubts or problems
  • The self-doubt of how I be could right that Scientology is bad when I know so many smart Scientologists
  • Not knowing so many had already gotten out and were living good, happy lives
  • The desperate need to feel that sense of certainty and purpose Scientology can give
  • The disdain for the “wog world” I was taught to hold for everyday people and their goals
  • The distrust in governments, colleges, scientists, doctors, therapists, etc. that was instilled in me that kept me from being exposed to information that would crack my belief system
  • Not wanting to feel like you could be so stupid as to believe in all this nonsense
  • Not believing LRH could produce such as sheer mass of writings and lectures and develop so many processes and organizations without it holding some truth or value
  • Not seeing a small truth can be used to build a bigger lie that traps you
  • Not understanding how many relatively harmless beliefs could add up to a destructive system of mind control
  • Not understanding how good people can believe they are doing the right thing but be trapped in a system that makes them abuse others and even themselves
  • Believing that LRH was a good man who discovered a way to help all of us
[format=h2]What got me out[/format]
  • Realizing that doubt is not bad, and that it can lead to seeking truth, even when that means discarding closely held beliefs along the way
  • That if I really believe Scientology gives me the ability to discern truth from lies, confront what I fear, and freely communicate about anything, that includes hearing what critics and ex-members have to say without prejudicing myself to assume they are lying criminals
  • Reading and listening to the stories of ex-Scientologists who were not the frothing mad SPs I was told to fear, but that were clearly good people who had been abused
  • Seeing that critics often had an even greater understanding of Scientology's beliefs than I did, and could explain its pitfalls and mental traps
  • Coming to believe that a good religion cannot be based on lies and dominate its followers with fear
  • Seeing how "certainty" is a dangerous drug that can give you complete conviction even when you are wrong
  • Even truth as an ideal is dangerous to claim ownership of, since we can arrive at what feels like truth through faulty logic, unconscious biases, and nonsense beliefs
  • Seeing the contradiction between being taught to follow Personal Integrity and only believe in truths I have observed as true, but also that any time you disagree with LRH you are wrong and the thumb screws will be tightened until you agree with the tech
  • That not everything in life has been figured out, and what LRH says is certainly not the only way, and in fact many others have recommended even better solutions
  • That people can and should leave when they are being abused and tricked, and they are not “blowing” because of “crimes.”
  • Joining the Sea Org and seeing firsthand how "the tech" creates organizational insanity and a culture of fear, paranoia, and brutality
  • That I cannot follow a religion that cares about its PR more than higher ideals like truth, justice, and compassion
  • Discovering that LRH had wives and children he abused and neglected that were omitted from his life story
  • Discovering that LRH lied about his military record and his war injuries which form the basis of the Dianetics story
  • Reading a real LRH biography and learning the truth about the countless other lies he told about his life
  • Feeling that what LRH said often lacked a timeless quality I would expect of a true religion, such as his fear of communism, homosexuals, taxes, etc.
  • That I was trying to force facts to fit into Scientology’s framework, instead of seeing if Scientology lined up with the facts
  • Wondering why the states of Clear and OT are defined as so amazing with beyond super human powers, but downplayed whenever I met a Clear or OT who did not live up to those claims
  • Wondering why no one with supposed whole track recall of advanced galactic civilizations has ever recreated any of that technology and made a fortune on it
  • That LRH is not right when he contradicts science just because he dismisses all other “authorities” and “experts” without much more than a hand wave
  • Learning about how other cults and pseudosciences work and being forced to resolve the cognitive dissonance of seeing their parallels in Scientology
  • Learning about skepticism and critical thinking, but being confused to see Scientology and Dianetics listed as quackery alongside 100 other things I agreed were nonsense
  • Specifically, reading Carl Sagan, James Randi, and Michael Shermer and seeing that even though they criticized Scientology, they did not meet any of the supposed antisocial personality traits
  • Learning about cognitive dissonance, the sunk cost fallacy, and other ways we trick ourselves
  • That science and technology has advanced in ways LRH never predicted and that contradict his claims about the universe
  • Finding that many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people doing valuable work that respects the autonomy and spirituality of the people they treat
  • That statistics have nothing to do with personal ethics, and that stats cannot go up forever
  • Admitting that not everything in Scientology is harmful, but most of the good comes from the kind people who got into it because they wanted to make a better world
  • Realizing that the "wins" you have in Scientology do not excuse its many abuses and lies
  • Further, that many "wins" are not what you are lead to believe, but rather states of hypnotic euphoria or simply being happy someone took the time to talk about your problems with you and help you think about things in a new way
  • Finding out that most of Scientology is copied from other religions and philosophers, but usually altered or corrupted
  • Seeing “wog” people and organizations succeeding despite applying zero LRH tech or even doing the complete opposite
  • Discovering how OSA attacks perceived enemies and former Scientologists, especially the use of pc folders in blackmail and smear campaigns
  • Seeing evidence OSA did this to people I knew who had left Scientology
  • Admitting that, while the outside world is not perfect, it has a lot of good in it too
  • Seeing that what is wrong with the world is not being fixed by Scientologists
  • Learning that all cults try to replace their members’ true identities with a cult identity that is modeled on the founder (though this is often a fabrication itself)
  • That the quirks in Scientology beliefs are there because they are an institutionalized expressions of LRH’s personal idiosyncrasies, fears, insecurities, desires, etc., not some deeper spiritual truth
  • Meeting non-Scientologists who were supposedly boogeymen like atheists, LGBT, psychs, etc. and finding they were good and smart people too, not the 1.1 DB SP rock slammers I was told to expect
I have left out the specifics of my story, but I hope these points express some of the process I went through as I deconstructed my mental prison.

If you want me to go in depth on any of these points, or would like to read what others have written about them, just let me know and I would be happy to share what I can.
This is so clever and insightful. Clever you, to have been able to analyse is so succinctly. I was in for a very long time. I joined with the goal to help others. I later realized there are many different reasons people enter Sc - all valid for that individual. I got it when talking with an SO guy one day at S. Hill who told med he didn't come in to help. He came in to learn self discipline. We all seek different things on our path. We each gain what we need from every experience.

I agree pretty much with all you say - but it is only viewed from a 3D perspective. We are multi dimensional beings in a multi universe so there are many levels of truth. There is always a higher pictures to the apparency occurring in the limited third dimension. That won't make sense to everyone. But then how many times did we speak of Scientology concepts to others that didn't make sense to them. So, what else is new! I may make a post. It's just another viewpoint!
 

wogwog

Patron
How some people benefit from the use of the TRs, ARC, tone scale, etc. reminds me of guys I know who are into the Pick Up Artist "community" tricks and tactics. By teaching people systems of interacting with others, you can cover up for a lot of shyness, awkwardness, "what do I do with my hands?", and other social anxieties. Instead needing to figure out how to talk like a normal human being, you get into games where you manipulate and control them. Pick Up Artists are also about positive self talk, hyping yourself up, going out and taking what you want. The deeper you go into it, the more it turns into a self help movement with PUA gurus claiming it's not just about picking up girls but fulfilling your personal potential. Just a weird aside...
 

wogwog

Patron
When I talk to people about Scientology, inevitably someone will ask "So did L. Ron really believe this stuff?" They want to know if he was knowingly running a con all along or if he really believed he was helping people. That is a question I have struggled with answering for a long time.

I don't know that anyone can truly answer that, but here is what I've come to believe, summed up as simply as I can:
  • Ron was a pathological liar, a narcissist, a psychopath, and likely a temporal lobe epileptic.
  • He had a deeply damaged psyche and a fear of being forgotten and unloved that never left him.
  • He was a drug addict and an alcoholic, perhaps to self-medicate, but this exacerbated his mental problems.
  • His imagination was very vivid (as evidenced by his fiction writing), to the point of overpowering his perception of reality and his memories.
  • He had a compulsive need to lie, especially when inflating his accomplishments.
  • The "truth" was whatever served him best, moment to moment, regardless of the facts.
  • A lie became "true" if enough people believed it, especially if he gained power or money from it.
  • He could hold any number of contradictory "truths" in his mind, as long as they served his purposes.
  • He was willing to do anything he could get away with to satisfy his lust for power and money.
  • In the end, no matter how hard to tried fill the hole he felt inside himself, it was never enough.
That point about temporal lobe epilepsy may seem to come out of nowhere, but it really does explain so much of his behavior once you know the symptoms of the condition. Watch this to learn more:


Did Ron believe in Scientology? How could so many words pour out of one man on one subject without him believing in it? How else could keep writing and lecturing on very dry technical practices and expand the belief system for so many decades? Why would he bother to audit himself and worry about his BT infestation at the end of his life? It's hard to see how he could spend their life writing, lecturing, writing bulletins and policies, managing orgs, issues orders, sending telexes, etc. if he always was aware it was built on lies.

Ron was capable of believing many impossible ideas, especially ones he made them up, or stole and told us he did. Something became "true" the moment it made him money and gave him power over his followers. You would hope at some level he was aware he was lying and conning everyone, and sometimes this shows through, but he seems to have had an amazing ability to compartmentalize his mind.

Ron was a man with a very tenuous grasp on reality. He was a compulsive liar, but he doesn't always seem aware he is lying. When he does admit to lying, like when he reveals to David Mayo that people don't blow because of O/Ws but because of ARC breaks, you see he believes he is justified in lying if it means he remains in control. He was able to automatically reject facts, or as he would put it "not-is" them, when they did not serve his ego or his wallet.

Someone with a normal mind has a hard time seeing how anyone could lie to themselves so completely. Can you really not know you are lying? It wasn't until I met a compulsive, pathological liar that I understood what they are really like. They make up stories that gets them attention or sympathy, or even just as an excuse to talk. They just lie to lie, and they cannot control it. They believe they are telling the truth as the words pour out of their mouths. They do not know they are lying, and they will defend their lies with complete conviction. They don't even need a reason, and they are not aware they do it. The lies will morph in retelling, but they will think they are repeating the same story. They may not even remember the original lie when you ask them more about it later and tell you that now you're the one making things up.

Jon Atack told a story about hearing Ron say OTs could change your present, future and even the past. Jon always wondered what amazing OT power allowed you to change your past, until it occurred to him: that's called lying. That's how Ron did it, no OT abilities required.

Ron would hear someone else tell a story or make one up out of thin air, and he would tell it like it happened to him. If his audience responded favorably to it, he would keep telling it, building on it as he went, until he believed it too. The original source or truth of it did not matter, because if his followers believed it, especially if they handed over more cash, then reality would warp such that Ron was sure he was telling the truth.

Was Hubs aware he was a fraud? We have LRH's quotes about starting a religion to get rich by selling people a piece of blue sky. Some see that as him being cynically self-aware, but others interpret that as tongue-in-cheek and just his sense of humor. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle: he was never ashamed of making money and never hid the fact in his policies, and since his followers responded favorably to messing around hypnotizing each other, he thought "Hmm, maybe this does work." Then when money comes pouring in and he gains power over people, his doubts quickly disappear into the dark corners of his mind and he says "Yes, of course this works, like I've been saying all along!"

His approach to the truth reminds me of a quote by Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

You can find countless examples of Ron bending his sense of reality to serve himself:

As he tells it, his first wife and family abandoned him for dead after his crippling war injuries. Never mind he abandoned them after years of abusing his first wife and their children. Or that he never saw combat and was never injured in WWII. Only stories that serve his will to dominate others gets the stamp of approval.

Per Ron, he was "only married twice" but also "never had a second wife." Sara was the love of his life, until she became a problem for him, at which point she was a Russian spy sent to sabotage him and he reported her to the FBI for being a Communist. He dedicated a book to their daughter, then denied her existence.

You have a true believer Gerry Armstrong starting the Sea Org's biography project (with LRH's permission) to defend LRH against the claims he was lying about his past and his credentials, only to find out that LRH's own records and personal documents confirm he was lying. When a confused Gerry ask Ron to explain how this could be, Ron tells him to "write up his O/W's." The lesson he teaches is "anyone who attacks me is an enemy, even if they are telling the truth, and enemies against me all have crimes." Like a true narcissist, it is always your fault, never theirs.

You see in his Affirmations how he wanted the power to believe his own lies and to dominate mankind through lies. Learning about these by listening to Lawrence Wright on Fresh Air was eye opening as that's the first time I heard about them.

Laffy was never satisfied with the facts of his life (which would have been interesting on their own), and felt the need to exaggerate them. He was driven by an urge deep inside him from a very young age to be larger than life and put a dent in history so he could never be forgotten or ignored.

What drove all this home and helped me really understand Ron was finding out he kept two childhood diaries: an original diary is presumably closer to the truth, and a second that rewrote the first to make it more fantastic and adventurous. This shows us a man who, from childhood, was never happy with who he really was, and who only had a tenuous grasp of the reality. Everything that followed was his desperate attempt to fill whatever bottomless hole he felt inside, and we all got dragged along in his insanity.
 

TheOriginalBigBlue

Gold Meritorious Patron
LRH was very aware that he was lying otherwise he wouldn't have invested so much energy and resources in creating an insulated bubble where he could not be challenged or critiqued.

We can see that his deceptive lifestyle made him a virtual prisoner, hiding from the IRS, FBI, news media and even his own devout followers. Little did we know that the secretive and romanticized Over the Rainbow would devolve from the seat of spiritual enlightenment in our minds into a Bluebird RV parked on a remote ranchette with a handful of trusted servants and grounds keepers all of whom would be betrayed, fair gamed, abandoned, come to a sorry end or turn against Scientology.

I think that he believed in some principle that by virtue of sheer volume of material he could assert his will. That somehow this served to negate any criticism. Unfortunately so much of it was off the cuff and duplicitous that it was inconsistent and constantly contradicts itself and now serves as a wealth of damning and disturbing diatribe for the whole world to see and openly debate on the internet. An internet that was never envisioned in any of the advanced intergalactic societies in his trillions of years of intricately detailed wholetrack recall.

I think LRH's personality type gravitated to the classic flimflammery of his youth and early adulthood where boisterous bullshittery to make yourself the center of attention at social events was popular and accepted entertainment but he had a major stable win doing this and never grew out of it.
 

wogwog

Patron
That's a good point. He needed to remain aware of the truth to know how to lie his way out of it. Like you said, why else would he go on the run end his life in hiding if he was not aware of what he was really doing.
 

phenomanon

Canyon
This is so clever and insightful. Clever you, to have been able to analyse is so succinctly. I was in for a very long time. I joined with the goal to help others. I later realized there are many different reasons people enter Sc - all valid for that individual. I got it when talking with an SO guy one day at S. Hill who told med he didn't come in to help. He came in to learn self discipline. We all seek different things on our path. We each gain what we need from every experience.

I agree pretty much with all you say - but it is only viewed from a 3D perspective. We are multi dimensional beings in a multi universe so there are many levels of truth. There is always a higher pictures to the apparency occurring in third dimension. That won't make sense to everyone. But then how many times did we speak of Scientology concepts to others that didn't make sense to them. So, what else is new! I may make a post. It's just another viewpoint!
Your viewpoint is not strange to me. I agree with much of what you have said re 3D perspective, multiple universes, and Akashic Record.
 
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