Comments from Scientologists
To: heldal@online.no Date: 27.07.2003 Subject: My comment as a Scientologist [Please remove my e-mail address and header name - thank you] Dear Andreas, Thank you for your invitation to hear my side. It is admirable that you are willing to do so. I am an OTIII and Class VII Auditor currently in the Church of Scientology. Firstly, I would like to thank you very much for giving people the choice of free will and outside knowledge. While I am a commited member of the Church because I get great gains from the tech, the administrative and human rights aspect of many of the facets of the Church is shameful to me, as a committed, honest Scientologist. Free will should be a right of all people, what ever their religion or inclination, and you have done what many people (including myself) would be too scared to do because of the Church's resources and influence. Your efforts to expose the full horrors of many of the aspects of the Church also may go a long way to perhaps nudging a certain amount of reform within lower orgs of the church. However, I am upset about your consistent claims that the tech is "..harmful", "brainwashing" and "...erodes the critical thinking faculties...", and that most Scientologists go "..mad, if they have not already done so". I hope that from this e-mail you may be able to deduce that I have not received, given nor possess such attributes. I have audited preclears and pre-OTs through many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours, and not a single case among them developed or has recently developed, to my knowledge, the attributes you described. While I do admit that a few cases did not experience gains, I have never witnessed a case develop into the manner you describe. If I had, I would seriously reconsider my role as an auditor. You must understand that the structure of the Church and the technology *are* separable, despite their appearance. The church's substitute for errors in technology, "ethics", does however cause the attributes you described, which I have witnessed myself. But the tech does not. You claimed in the response to the hypothetical question "How do you know that Scientology doesn't work if you haven't tried it" that Scientology technology is comparable to street drugs. This is highly offensive to me as a student of Scientology auditing procedures to effectively be labelled a drug dealer - one of the types of personality honest Scientologists are firmly against. We as a religion take a drug-free stance (although I do admit, before you use it as a riposte to my argument, that L. Ron Hubbard himself took drugs to aid with his research). The tech is not dangerous - at the most it produces great gains, at the least it produces no change. The only time when danger occurs to the preclear is when the tech is incorrectly applied. From my analysis, you have less evidence than I do; I have hundreds of happy, enhanced preclears who I have helped lead a better life, and you have a couple of points of anecdotal evidence. I observe that you maintain a link to FreeZone America - thank you for doing that. Why don't you try out one of the non- practitioner Scientology-based clearing methods such as the Pilot's Self Clearing book, which you can download there and do yourself. As a Scientology practitioner I can vouch, contrary to the Church, that this method is entirely technically correct. In the spirit of experimentation, try one of these clearing techniques and produce a report on it on your website. I am certain you will experience significant gains. Thank you for listening to this (albeit long) argument, and I hope you may see my side better now. Yours sincerely, "N"