Comments from Scientologists
Date: Sun, 17 May 1997 OPINIONS FROM A SCIENTOLOGIST by The Pilot Yes I am a Scientologist. I believe that L. Ron Hubbard was a brilliant man who made important discoveries about the mind and spirit. I do consider Scientology to be a religion because it treats the person as an immortal spirit who reincarnates down through the ages. This did not come about through some devine revelation but instead resulted from the simple and practical matter that the use of Dianetic incident running to relieve traumatic experiences continually lead to uncovering past life incidents. This was contrary to the theories presented in "Dianetics The Modern Science Of Mental Health" and was the original breakthrough which changed the subject from a therapy into what might better be described as an advanced form of metaphysics and practical philosophy. Unfortunately, the management of the Church of Scientology has chosen to persue various policies which I believe to be harmful and distructive. The backlash against these harmful acts may result in their eventual demise and bring about the loss of what I consider to be the most important of all subjects, namely the study of man as an immortal spirit rather than as a meat body wallowing in the mud. On this basis, I am a reformer rather than a loyalist within the ranks. There are many who share my views. But one of the harmful policies that I wish to see changed forbids any attempt at reforming the subject. For this reason, you will see little talk of reform within Scientology because any member who proposes it is immediately excommunicated. This is the reason that I must post this and any other honest discussion in an anonymous manner. To identify myself would result in my being declared a "Suppressive Person" and would cause friends and family to "disconnect" from me. If that did happen, the only way I could continue to practice my religion would be to join the "Freezone" which consists of disbarred Scientologists who practice without sanction from the Church. Unfortunately, Scientology management attacks these independents with a visciousness that defies description. This is another point where serious reform is needed. It has been said that Scientology, which claims a membership of 8 million world wide, actually only has about 50 thousand members. This is incorrect. The true membership (not counting the people who only did a beginners course which is where the inflated figure of 8 million comes from) is probably around 1 or 2 million. But the critics are right in observing that the active membership is around 50 thousand. 95 percent of the Scientologists are currently inactive and standing on the sidelines thanks to the misguided management that is currently in effect. Currently there is a great controversy about material that the Church has labled "confidential materials". These are secret scriptures which management has made a big deal out of and for which they charge excessively high prices. Of these, the most secret are the NOTS materials. They deal with techniques for the handling of "entities" (which are referred to as "body thetans" or BTs in the materials). These form the tiniest percentage of the Scientology materials. When this material was originally researched in the 1952-3 time period, it was recognized to be a minor factor. It was not at that time considered to be dangerous or labled confidential and was only discussed in about two dozen out of the 600 or so lectures given by Ron during that period of early research into what is known as "OT" or Operating Thetan. "Thetan" is the Scientology word for spirit, meaning the person himself rather than his body and an OT is a being who has regained his ability to operate as a spirit rather than just as a body. Considering that there are over 3000 hours of taped lectures by Ron and many tens of thousands of pages of written materials, this business of handling entities is only a drop in the bucket and is not truely representative of the subject. But Scientology management has made a grave mistake in attaching fantastic importance to this minor aspect and has gone lawsuit crazy on the subject of keeping these materials hidden. They do this because "confidential levels" are imagined to be big money makers. They have followed the same path as did Christianity in the middle ages, placing money ahead of truth, but Christianity has mostly overcome this (with a few exceptions) and so can Scientology. The presence of greed in the upper ranks neither validates nor invalidates the religion itself, it is simply an unfortunate fact of human nature that sometimes gains the upper hand. But not only are these money making ideas morally wrong, they are also quite stupid. Really big income comes from high volume and low prices rather than trying to gorge the rich for some exclusive service. The backlash to this lawsuit madness has been to make people so mad at the Church that great efforts and risks are undertaken to present these confidential materials to the public. As of this writing, a copy of the NOTS auditors pack is available at Andreas' web site. I personally do not have any objection to your downloading it (but I am in total disagreement with Scientology management in this regards). I don't think it will harm you to read it and you might even find the techniques useful on some rare occasion. But please realize that this is only one out of many dozens of areas addressed by Scientology. It would be far more useful to most people to get copies of the Scientology materials on handling things like problems or upsets. I have run the NOTS materials myself with benifit (and the NOTS pack I have seen on the internet does match the one used by the Church) but it would not have been of great interest to me or been very useful until after I had worked over the more important areas (such as communication, problems, guilt, etc.) extensively. The internet is also carrying a good bit of what Scientoligists call "whole track" material. By whole track, we mean the whole time track of a beings existance rather than the current lifetime. Again this only represents a small percentage (perhaps a hundred taped lectures) of a vast body of work. It is slightly speculative and is labled "para-Scientology". These things are primarily based on data accumlated from running past life incidents that took place in earlier space travelling civilizations. As such, they suffer from the vaguries of individual recall. A number of the sessions where these kind of things came up are recorded among the numerous taped lectures and it is left up to the membership to judge these things for themselves. It is an adventure of exploration rather than an accurate and confirmed history. You don't have to believe these things to practice the subject. Modern Dianetic practictioners are expected to let the PC (preclear - the person being helped) run past life incidents but they are expressly forbidden to suggest or evaluate what is to be found in these earlier lives. It is an individual matter. Scientology management currently finds itself in the hypocritical position of suppressing free speach and open communication while worshipping a founder who's most famous quote is "When in doubt, communciate". And its not just the external critics that they suppress. They also suppress the communications of their own membership. Isn't it amazing that there isn't an army of enthusiastic individual Scientologists honestly communicating about the subject on the internet? You many not know it, but most Scientoligists have a fantastically high communication level. They have it on any subject except Scientology itself. And they have it there too as long as they are not talking publicly. But any public communication requires getting "Issue Authority". Any openly critical remark will land them in Ethics. And even a lighthearted joke could get them in trouble because of the "Jokers and Degraders" policy. They are literally scared to say anything publicly about Scientology. And its Scientology management that enforces this and keeps them afraid. This is why I am a reformer within Scientology, and will continue to be one as long as I remain anonymous. And when I can no longer remain anonymous, I will continue to be a reformer. Unfortunately, at that point I will be a reformer on the outside since attempting to reform the subject is one of the many acts listed as "High Crimes" which will cause one to be thrown out and excommunicated. There are many of us within the subject. We begin with veiled remarks to feel each other out. Gradually, free communication begins to develope. Eventually you discover that only a small percentage believe in Int (International) Management. Most dislike prices, registrars, ethics, and the various high pressure tactics empolyed by the Sea Org. Most of the membership remains in because they believe in the tech and in the expressed goals of the subject. This is why I have stayed in for so long. My opinions do not reflect those of Scientology management. They do, however, reflect the opinions of many Scientologists, most of whom are afraid or unwilling to speak publicly. Many of those who do disagree with management will not say so publicly because they are afraid that the subject will be distroyed if they give any support to the critics. Management encourages this. They might even be encouraging some of the attacks on Scientology. Any attack that does not publish confidential data (because that is a money maker) works to their benifite because it supports their contention that there is a war on between Scientology and the "evil suppressives" (or psychs or squirrels or wogs or whatever). In peacetime, many citizens consider it their right and duty to criticize the government. But if a country is at war, such criticism can be labled as treason. The same goes for Scientology. If they can promote a war zone mentality, they can lable any internal critic as a suppressive person and toss him out. I sincerly believe that Scientology is critical to the future of this planet. I also believe that the current management is stearing the religion stright towards distruction. Their rabid attacks create enemies where there were none. Their suppression of communications violates every basic principle of Scientology auditing. Their exploitation of their own staff members drains the backbone of the organization and leaves them ever weak and endangered. And their endless "stops" on the lines prevent the membership from learning and using the tech of Scientology, which was the purpose of the whole thing in the first place. These stops not only include the super high prices but also endless unnecessary security checks, ethics stops, confidentiality, and a dread fear of anybody actually using the subject who is not totally under the control of the Sea Organization. Who is "they" you might ask? Well that's a little hard to determine. There is the "Watchdog Committee" ("Who are these dogs?" another Scientologist in good standing once said to me), and there is the RTC, and there is the Board of Directors, and there is Author Services, and lots of other stuff. It is very unclear who is really running things and who is just a figurehead like Heber. Rumor has it that Miscavige is calling the shots, but that is not stated clearly to the membership. The membership is asked to put their trust in Flag and Int. Management and to believe that LRH (L. Ron Hubbard) set things up to leave the subject in the best of hands. But I would point out that everybody who Ron ever gave serious power to was subsequently declared suppressive. This includes Reg Sharp, Otto Roos, Ron Shafron, Bill Franks, and David Mayo just to name a few. Either he had extrodinarily bad judgement or something else was going on out of sight. I will not even guess at the reason. All I can say for sure is that whoever he left in control has long since passed the point where he would have been declared suppressive if Ron were still around. This is a call to all Scientologists to actively push for reform. I know it is dangerous. It is also necessary. I urge you to study the actual LRH tech, especially the materials of the 1950s, and to ignore the dictates of management and the Sea Org. ------ Here are some quotes from LRH tapes of the 1950s. "We in Scientology could put together a group strong enough to run over everything it came to. But then someday, when I and others are gone, it would have to be overthrown and the cry will be 'Auditors of the World Unite, you have nothing to loose but your certs'". - From LRH Tape lecture 15 of the "Anatomy of the Spirit of Man Congress" titled "What Scientology is doing" given on June 6, 1955. "Security is the answer and solution for the fact that nobody in government can communicate"... "An organization takes on a life of its own" ... "The head of something shouldn't tell people what to do, his job is just making sure that the lines and terminals are in place". - from LRH Tape lecture number 18 of the "London Congress on Human Problems", titled "Today's Battle of Britain" given on Oct 8, 1956. ------- For those of you who are reading this who are not Scientologists, please realize that the organization and the subject are two different things. And please recognize that we are currently going through the equivallent of the Spanish Inquisition in Christian History. Just as you would not damn all Christians for the actions of the Lord High Inquisitor, you should not damn all Scientologists for the current atrocious behaviour of their Church. ------- I have anonymously posted a great deal of material to the internet using the pen name of "The Pilot". Get the Pilot materials (the 32 part SUPER SCIO book) at: ftp://wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/pub/ss/index.html or pick up the ss## files from Homer's archive at lightlink.com. Subsequent follow-ups, arguments for reform, defenses, criticisms, occasional jokes, and even more tech can be found by searching dejanews http://www.dejanews.com/ either for "Super Scio" or for all pilot postings to ARS by using the following search string: ~a (The Pilot) & ~g (alt.religion.scientology) ------------------ Working to create a sane CofS, The Pilot