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"

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