Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973
Hi FoTi - I just had a new awareness while reading the opening paragraphs of your above post. You say they called pretending an interest in your well being and how you were doing casewise but their real motive was to sell you books. This is all too typical of what they do!
C OF S IS TOO LINEAR
I am sure a term already exists for this but I am coining the word "linear" as a name for what they do.
CURRENT SCENE IN C OF S
1. Someone calls you pretending interest in how you are doing.
2. The conversation is quickly diverted into selling you something.
3. You resist, so they go into a "Hard Sell".
4. You still resist so they do a used car technique (a turnover) a change salesmen
5. Hard sell gets harder, you either buy or hang up on them, usually the latter.
What if they were more sincere in how you were doing, it could go like this.
SUGGESTED IMPROVED SCENE IN C OF S
1. Someone calls you ACTUALLY interested in how you are doing.
2. They listen to you as you tell them what is going on.
3. They listen some more. They acknowledge you
4. They mention that they have some new books which might help you.
5. They thank you for your time and tell you to call them back and give them an update.
A few days later, your problem area gets worse; you remember the great phone conversation you recently had with the person at C of S.
6. You call back that person, ask about the books and tell then that you have decided you want to buy them. You only have $1,000 available for the $3,000 package so the guy recommends the particular books which might help you the most and sells you those books for a bit under $1,000.
7. A couple of months later, you get in some more money and call them back and buy the rest of the package.
8. In the meantime, you have told several of your friends about this helpful man down at the Org and several of them have now called him and purchased books.
Things like this can happen. The Org starts and continues with an "outflow" instead of a "gimme". Per Hubbard's own "tech", this is the way to get more income. Outflow is continued in abundance. Outflow in the form of sincerely caring for the welfare of parishioners is continued. The Org is flooded with money and a good name in its community.
This scene has no chance of occuring in today's C of S. Anyone who championed the softer sales method called sincere caring and outflowing would quickly be sent to the RPF. The only form of persuasion which they do know is LINEAR - brute force in the form of "CRUSH REGGING".
Lakey
The dissem formula and Hard sell is the only thing, that I know of that is in policy, so they don't have much to work with. I don't have the policy, but what I remember of Hard Sell, because I was a letter reg, was using hard sell....caring enough about the person to get them to do their next service....thus "CRUSH REGGING". It's trained into the regges and the rest of the staff as well....they are forced into it. They are trained into pushing people into buying services and doing the bridge so that they will go free...and since they all believe that, they do it.
I remember years ago I got called into AOLA for an ARCX session. I really thought they were going to fly my ruds and I would feel better and want to continue. I went in session, but instead of flying my ruds and handling my ARCX, the auditor did a brief list, indicated to me that I was out int (which I wasn't), scolded me and shamed me into getting back on course with her hard sell....telling me ......this is your brief opportunity in time to go free and you are wasting it (I believed this, so she had an edge on me). I then thought I was wrong. She treated me like some kind of scum. I felt like shit and left the session (which wasn't really a session), with my tail between my legs I went and signed up for the mini Book I course to get back on lines so I wouldn't be considered out ethics.
Everytime I said....no...I'm not going to buy your books or I'm not coming back, to these guys at CLO who were trying to get me to buy the Basics over the phone, they went back to the "I care about you or we care about you" ..... I'd get more of that for a while and then to the close again, trying to get me to buy the books. They are so transparent. How can they even think that someone who was in Scientology for over 30 years would not know what they were doing? LOL
There was a feeling I had about Scientology....especially Flag...more so when I was at flag.... and a residual feeling after I left the CoS that I couldn't identify. It was a bad feeling. It just hung with me.
Last night I was reading the Clearbird books on Level 1 and Level 0. There was some discussion here on ESMB re Grade 1....problems. I never did the Grades and was curious what was in them. Just in reading some of the data in these two Clearbird books (which are online for free), I saw so many outpoints in my own auditing and what was happening with the staff. I blew off a bunch of grief.
I also had something happen in my life a couple of years ago that left me totally caved in and unable to function well in life and I couldn't seem to get out of it....I couldn't identify or as-is this sh*t so that I could get on with life. Well, after reading the stuff in the Clearbird books on those two grades, and seeing a lot of the outpoints in my own services in Scientology and what others were living under while working there.... I then twigged on what had been making me feel so awful for the last two years.....I had been duped.....physically, emotionally and spiritually raped.....and I hadn't been able to see what it was. That was it....it was rape. I don't mean forced sex, which seems to be the only definition I can find online for this, but I have The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition 1992 and definition #3 is "Abusive or improper treatment; violation: a rape of justice". I had been underhandedly raped. It helped me to see how rape could be done so covertly. I also think people sometimes do this without even knowing what they are doing. Blew some charge there.
Then I realized that is what the CoS does......financial, mental and spiritual rape and sometimes physical, done in such a way that one doesn't recognize what it reallly is. That was what that sh*tty feeling was that wouldn't go away. I had been raped by the CoS, and watched it happen to others, without seeing it for what it was. RAPE .... pure and simple.
Bate and switch.....taking advantage of people's lack of awareness ... leading them on like lambs to the slaughter = rape.
Even though I saw and experienced the bad stuff happening in the CoS, in reading the parts of the Clearbird materials that I read, I saw how Scientology should have been and that helped me to separate out the bad stuff, blow off the charge and come to the above conclusions. So I'm glad those materials are free on line for anyone who might want to read them and I thank whoever did all the work of putting those materials together and then put them online for anyone to see.
This stuff was really hard to see and sort out when I was in the middle of it.
I'm feeling better, a little more aware of this kind of thing going on in the world inside and outside of the CoS, a little less vulnerable to this kind of crap, a little happier and a bit wiser now. Whew!
, not book sales). She went on and raved about the way the books and tapes have all been organized now with ALL the data (at least until DM gets around to finding more and publishes a whole new set) and raved all about their beautiful new ideal orgs. Sounds like maybe they have become PTS to the middle class.....keeping up with the Joneses, showing off all their money. 
