...
I paused just now to remember what this thread is about and quickly recalled the "I don't believe anything" lunacy of Rathbun when questioned about the BT-infested OT levels.
Again, that videotape of Marty/Mike fishing popped back into my mind where Marty sort of unexpectedly "flips" from being a good-ole-boy-fisherman to spewing his energized realization that COB is stuck in a particular wholetrack implant. It was an uncomfortable moment, even for Mike Rinder, who tried to ease the cringe by quickly saying "Whatever..." But the moment lingered on as testimony that Rathbun was fully caught up in Hubbard's unnervingly dorky cosmology.
In watching Rathbun so easily "go in session" and begin running his "itsa" to cog and VGI's--exactly as if he was in a session--the word LIAR did not seem to fit as well as it normally does when I hear a Scientologist launch into reciting scriptural revelations. Instead, a different word came to mind...
FILTERING.
As in, wearing sunglasses to filter out harsh rays of the sun.
It occurred to me that Marty Rathbun--or any other Scientologist for that matter--is indoctrinated by filters. At first Hubbard gives new Scientologists a pair of sunglasses that is barely tinted (or shall we say tainted) with Hubbard's view of the world. It colors the new Scientologists way of seeing the world, at first in a subtle and unimportant way. It might only have a shading index of 0.001 where the Scientologist sees the world as a place where the mind is viewed (Dianetics) as something that can cause unwanted physical sensations, emotions or content that holds an individual back from success and happiness.
Each day the Scientologist reports in, they are fitted with the next, almost indiscernibly darker shade of sunglasses. Another part of life is "filtered" out, rendering one more color to register as "neutral". Bright green becomes forest green becomes tea green....
Over time, the vibrancy of color is reduced and neutralized and the Scientologist's ideas about life very subtly evolve into a muted pattern of black and white.
Normal thinking gets filtered out and Hubbard "fills the vacuum" with his own thoughts.
A perfectly normal individual, over time, begins to talk about wholetrack implants as if it was as normal as shaking hands to greet someone.
And one day, that Scientologist opens their mouth and the most alarmingly bizarre things begin to pour out of it such as "
Who's Xenu? You must be confusing Ron's sci-fi writing with Scientology" and "
I don't believe anything!" and "
A person who doesn't believe in Christ can still be a Christian."
This method of indoctrination-by-gradual-erosion-of-normal-perception is another way of understanding the "hypnotic state" of mind that so many Scientologists arrive at. It's not so much "hypnotizing" a person as it is to give them a cool pair of sunglasses to wear that actually makes life less glary and harsh.
The proverbial rise-colored glasses. But the twist here is that Scientology doesn't just hand over a pair of obviously tinted shades, they do it very subtly over time. The process is not dissimilar to the eye's pupils dilating and adjusting to bright lights. The size of the pupil "stops down" until it is small and only lets a limited quantity of light through.
People who have been deprived of light over long periods of time actually are painfully blinded if they simply walk outdoors during daylight. Their system cannot tolerate even small intensities of light and they instinctively close & cover their eyes when "attacked" by normal illumination. So it is that Scientologists cover their eyes and perceive themselves as being "attacked" when a non-Scientologists tries to shed some light on the truth about Hubbard and Scientology.
Perhaps it is this knee-jerk reaction to shield all light that makes Scientologists answer questions about Xenu in such a "shady" way.