Ok, here's a criticism

[Voltaire's Child]

It is my opinion that the problems in CofS originated with Hubbard and that it started to go downhill as soon as he made the "postulate" or decision that the organization was more important than the individual. This became an "always" type thing, not just for emergencies, it became a WAY more important than the individual type thing and it led to end justifying the means type stuff that we hear so much about and which some of us have experienced and/or witnessed.

If that thought had not come up and been implemented, it wouldn't be going on today.

I think that almost everything CofS does nowadays re its students, pcs, staff, etc can be traced to this thought.

Organizations - particularly self help, religious, philosophical- are created so that the PEOPLE can get this stuff, these ideas, these methods. CofS lost sight of that a long long time ago, long before Hubbard died.

So it seems to me.

 

[LordXenuCruise]

"The greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics" Those few words give the cult all the power they need and all the justification for anything that they do.

"The greatest number of dynamics" is pure horse dumplings. The Co$ is not the greatest number, the Wogs have them out numbered thousands to one.

It is just a hubbardian way of saying that no one and nothing else matters except for the cult which is pretty much the same premise that the Nazi Party used. I am fairly certain that if someone took the time to draw parallels between the two they would have a lot more in common than there are differences.

 

[Voltaire's Child]

Oh, hey, LXC. Nice to see you here.

I do think it's USED that way in CofS, in fact I've personally seen staff members act exactly as you describe.

BUT...(you knew I have to debate/argue about SOMETHING, right? ) the actual concept greatest good, yadda yadda actually goes like this:

Greatest good for THAT PERSON'S number of dynamics.

Like if someone were thinking of relocating to take a job. They'd look at how does it affect his or her 1st Dynamic (self) 2nd (family) 3rd (groups, church, cult, work, social organizations, clubs) 4th (mankind) 5th (animals, plant life- that'd be the person's pets) and so on.

So then the person is not only taking him or herself into account, but also spouse, kids, partner/lover, doggie, etc.

Now is it generally implemented that way in CofS?

No.

It's like when one first gets into CofS. They're told it's to enhance his or her life. Not give one's entire life over to the cult. So, then when one learns the greatest good principle/theory, the written theory is as I describe above and it sounds pretty good.

Later, though, while being bled dry, it gets employed differently.

But as an heretical non CofS lemme-just-rock-on-with-da-Hubbardite-jazz-on-my-own type person, I will say that if one just goes by the written theory as set forth by da big guy himself, then it's all for that person's life and that of those around him.

 

[jodie]

Onto something

I think you may be onto something there - the turning point being when that Thought took precedence - that the organization is more important than anything else. That is intrinsically a marxist totalitarian tenet - the group/party/organization is sacred above all else. China. North Korea. Stalinist Russia. And so on.

It is, of course, diametrically opposite to the dictum of "Be true to yourself".

Unless of course, one subsumes oneself body, mind and doul, in the organization. Then the self IS the organization.

Any idea at what stage in the development of Scn that Thought took precedence?

- jodie

 

[Voltaire's Child]

I think the early 60s or so. I think that by the time Hubbard created the SO which I think was mid or late 60s, this thought was in full bloom.

I went to an event one time back when I was in CofS- where this lady talked about working with Hubbard when he created and set up the Sea Org.

She was putting a positive spin on it but even then, even though I'm sure what she was saying was heavily edited and even changed, it sounded despotic and capricious.

Like "He considered a million year contract. No, he said, that's not enough, let's see some real dedication. We'll make it a billion years."

(not a direct quote but pretty much what she said)

I remember thinking "WTF??"

 

[Tachikoma]

I think the early 60s or so. I think that by the time Hubbard created the SO which I think was mid or late 60s, this thought was in full bloom.

I went to an event one time back when I was in CofS- where this lady talked about working with Hubbard when he created and set up the Sea Org.

She was putting a positive spin on it but even then, even though I'm sure what she was saying was heavily edited and even changed, it sounded despotic and capricious.

Like "He considered a million year contract. No, he said, that's not enough, let's see some real dedication. We'll make it a billion years."

(not a direct quote but pretty much what she said)

I remember thinking "WTF??"

You know, it seems that there was so much that was decided on a whim or for a lark even. "Heavy Ethics" was a come and go thing, according to what I have read. The original Sea Org voyages aboard the Royal Scotsman and Apollo seem to have had a "come and go" approach to this. It would depend on if the "Old Man" was having a bad day or not. I do not know about you, but I do not know of any serious religion, well established or no, that bases "scriptures" or tenets on a "my day is bad, so yours will be worse" basis.

Oh, and the Sea Org officially launched in 1967. Oddly enough, it was called the "Summer of Love"... :rolleyes:

 

[martinjr]

scientology went downhill quickly after the ehtics and ethics conditions were introduced along with "ethic's officers" and the like.

Before then scientology was a fun place with fun people and I really enjoyed it.

I should write more of this when I get time.

 

[Voltaire's Child]

So you were there early on, then? That's interesting. I'd love to hear more.

 

[martinjr]

Hello Fluffy One!

We have talked at length over on ars. I was hiding behind "rockyslammer", which change to mr epiphany in the new year (I felt like a change) and I'm here under my real name.

I'm the one featured in the New Zealand 60 Minute documentary which is archived on Mark's site.

I like the 60 Minute show as it is very well balanced between cof$ and the "other" side. Very good for showing people who insist on a "fair" debate. They took all the sexual connotations out regarding JT & TC so it can be seen by kids. My 10 year old thought I must have been nuts to get involved in scientology.

People don't realise today what it was like in the 60's. New Age everything!!

Scientology became my new "family". All the bullshit was kept firmly away from us and we were all true believers. In fact I was a young zealot!

As I mentioned earlier it was the introduction of ethics conditions which was the beginning of the end for me. I could write reams on the nonsense that happened after this.

If hubbard had not gone over the edge and say kept on John McMaster he would have got a lot more mileage out of scientology. Anyway he sowed the seeds of his own destruction at that point.

He made Jane Kember head of the GO then and she was the zealot's zealot! A scary lady indeed - but we know what happened to her don't we?

Of course it would have collapsed anyway as from the Clearing Course onward it was all nonsense.

I know there are those who say otherwise and we should debate this at another time.

My own personal point of view that hubbard wasn't a con artist - he firmly believed his "technology" - or most of it.

However he was a lier and a cheat and not a very outstanding person. A lot of what he did he did for greed and power.

A deluded criminal but with charisma and an insight and an amazing capacity for hard work. The effort he put into scientology is unbelievable. He truly was a man possessed.

Scientology today is not a bridge but a roundabout - every time you go past "go" you pay $10,000! However you always end up where you started.

Regards
Martin

 

[Voltaire's Child]

Hi, how are you??

Nice to see you here.

I also think Hubbard got waaay too into the power. And the money.

I think starting the SO was a big mistake.

 

[martinjr]

Hi, how are you??


I think starting the SO was a big mistake.

I'm well than you.

Well hubbard was about to be kicked out of the UK (they weren't going to renew his visa) and he had just been booted out of Rhodesia. I guess the paranoia started to creep in.

Yes the Sea Org was a huge mistake but so is/was a lot of scientology. When you have a flake at the top you don't expect reason.

In common with a lot of people with forceful characters and charisma hubbard didn't listen to anyone around him and he just flitted off into a trip into his very own personal universe.

However when he pulled that universe out and expected everyone to run it as their own case - well then it was doomed to failure. Talk about not evaluating for the preclear/ot!!

Have you found any purple people eaters yet?

regards
Martin

 

[Nullportal]

It is my opinion that the problems in CofS originated with Hubbard and that it started to go downhill as soon as he made the "postulate" or decision that the organization was more important than the individual.

I've often arrived at the same conclusion. Unfortunately I have a mania about comparative reasoning, and I resume doubting this conclusion because I'm not sure just what to compare Scientology's shift over to an organization-centric community, or just how truly individual-focused it was previously.

Its true that I could take as a comparative an imagined Scientology community which lacked an Admin/Ethics/Org tech as the center of values, but comparing historical reality to an imagined one never satisfies me.

I could compare a previous version of Scientology to the later one, post Admin/Ethics/Org tech uber alles, but the problem is that different challenges faced Scientology in the different eras. In some ways the Admin/Ethics/Org centered era was a necessary evolution to deal with governments trying to simply outlaw or otherwise crush Scientology, actually going so far as to do it in one of the Australian states. Is it a good comparison, from one era in which attempts to crush Scientology were presented but not heavy, to an era of very heavy attempts to crush it - give it the final knock-out blow for once and for all?

(There are even times when I say to myself why don't I mentally get off my knees and clearly denounce bastards who did this to my community? True Hubbard had his faults as did the church organization - but what about the role of malicious parties holding governmental power who tried to crush, destroy, for all time wipe out my community? Why aren't I giving THEM the blame for much of what was wrong with the organization? Were they really of no importance in why Scientology became distorted? Why do I so readily absolve them in my own mind for the malicious acts of destruction they were waging on my church???)

Then of course trying to compare Scientology organizationally to any simultaneously existing organization or movement has its own apples and oranges problem.

I guess I've settled on the comparative method of looking at Scientology through the onion layer model. Bent Corydon introduced this idea, with the outer rim of public and mission circles and the innermost core with Hubbard and his personal staff. Using this comparative, it seems things go on a lot better on the outer rim than in the middle. But then the outer rim wasn't really the heart of the war room either. It still might be the best comparative set to use.

I do often struggle over this though. Scientology was made problematic in the rise to supremacy of the Admin/Ethics/Org tech .... but compared to what?

 

[Romuva]

Nullportal,it was interesting to read your experience and opinions


When you look at alot of Scientology's history and see that certain governments and organizations did try to stop Scientology or banned
them ect.You definitely come to some conclusions ,no doubt.


I always wondered whether this was in part of the cold war and governments
were just reactionary anyway because of weariness of some of these
organizations.When scientology made statements about physchiatry and
the mental health there had to of been some reactionary panick and
attempts to stop the organization.One could argue equally that some
organizations had a forceful agenda of their own.

but it's strange some radical organizations were left alone and some targeted.

 

[lionheart]

You can even use Scientology tech to analyse this. Per Scn, solutions to problems become the problem. Fixed ideas are used to handle prior confusions.

In the sixties, Hubbard was having trouble with governments like Rhodesia, UK and Australia. His solution to this was to put himself outside the law by establishing the Sea Org. This then gave him licence to break humane or natural laws of how to treat people, which caused him so many difficulties later (and still causes Scn difficulties e.g. the RPF)

But there were prior problems and confusions going all the way back to the fifties. Each time, Hubbard instituted solutions with policies and Tech. Instead of confronting and as-ising problems, he solidified himself and the organisation with more solutions (rules) which caused further problems.

Every difficulty in the sixties can be traced to Hubbard's own earlier solutions. Governments simply reacted, they did not cause the problems. Any problem an individual or organisation is having is caused by themselves. That is the simple Grade I explanation.

Back in the fifties he dissolved organisations or split from them because he had a problem with individuals within them that were causing him difficulties. He created new organisations and created technology (either ethics, admin or tech) to avoid it happening again, instead of looking to himself to spot and as-is what he was doing to create the difficulty.

Read Science of Survival from 1951 and you'll see the whole covert hostility 1.1 personality technology is Hubbard's explanation as to why former wives and colleagues caused him trouble. If you read his description afresh, you will see that it is biased and full of vitriole. It is not clinically and impartially researched. Look at the problems that the anti-social personality theory caused Scn and still causes it. Today the CofS is still, unknowingly fighting LRH's battle with his former wives, every time it takes on a supposed suppressive personality!

DMSMH took on psychiatrists head-on. Why? What problem of Hubbard's was his opinion of psychiatry a solution to? What would have happened if Dianetics had not made psychiatry into an enemy? Who knows what Hubbard's problem was with psychs? But we do know he was assessed during and after the war as to his fitness for duty. We do know that the mysterious "Snake" Thompson "taught" the young LRH "all there was to know" about Freudian analysis. I think in these incidents lies the source of Hubbard's hatred of psychs.

All the CofS's problems stem from LRH's solutions to his own. Of course using Grade I tech is only one way to analyse it. You could apply any Grade 0 to IV data to see where the subject went wrong, right from the start.

You could also use (if you think Scn theories are rubbish) any other religion or theories of human behaviour to see how he went wrong. But Scn is what most of us know here, so we may as well use it.

LRH was doomed to ultimately fail and create the monster we have today, right from pre-dianetics days. His failure to look to himself for causation was his undoing.

There were definitely times when real progress was made and the technology somehow managed to swing in the direction of self-causation, but Hubbard's personality and inclination always swayed back to blaming others over the years (psychs, parents, SPs, Governments, Bankers, Marcabians, Xenu, Body Thetans) hence the paranoia that riddles the monsterous "Church" he created.

 

[Alan]

People don't realise today what it was like in the 60's. New Age everything!!

Scientology became my new "family". All the bullshit was kept firmly away from us and we were all true believers. In fact I was a young zealot!

As I mentioned earlier it was the introduction of ethics conditions which was the beginning of the end for me. I could write reams on the nonsense that happened after this.

If hubbard had not gone over the edge and say kept on John McMaster he would have got a lot more mileage out of scientology. Anyway he sowed the seeds of his own destruction at that point.

He made Jane Kember head of the GO then and she was the zealot's zealot! A scary lady indeed - but we know what happened to her don't we?

Of course it would have collapsed anyway as from the Clearing Course onward it was all nonsense.

Martin

Welcome Martin.....it is good to meet a fellow traveller who knew what Scio was like prior to the introduction of ethics.

To me the deadly change point was when LRH wrote, KSSW. - he declared himself to be "the only one." (KSSW: Keeping Scientology and Scientologists Wanking!)

Alan
________

 

[Alan]

You can even use Scientology tech to analyse this. Per Scn, solutions to problems become the problem. Fixed ideas are used to handle prior confusions.

Behind the confusion is the Overt(s).

Great write up lionheart!

Alan
________

 

[lionheart]

Thanks Alan. It's good to meet you on this board!

So what we actually have is the CofS unknowingly dramatising LRHs case. That's why, despite the individuals it hooks in, it will not actually succeed. It will never "clear the planet".

Just as LRH died more or less alone and a failure as a man and religious leader, so too will the CofS end friendless and a failure. It can't help itself, because it, by policy, dramatises LRH's psychosis. And "being LRH" the organisation can't see any of their faults, just as LRH was unable to see or admit to any faults in himself.

I agree KSW was a definte change for the worse. Interestingly if you ever see early tech issues (which I'm sure you did) they were often written by others than LRH or sometimes written by "LRH assisted by person x"

These people almost always got booted out. LRH just simply rewrote Scn history when he said no developments by others were significant and he had to "eat crow" and take the credit himself!

I believe much of the best technology was developed by others and not LRH. There is a schizophrenic thread through the tech:

• DMSMH - the person is in no way responsible for his case

• The mid-fifties definition of clear - the person creates his own aberrations

• 1967 OT3 - BTs are responsible for the person's case

• 1981 HRD - the person is responsible for his creation of case

• 1981 NOTs - BTs are responsible for the person's case

I'm sure there are many other contradictions, but these show how the Grade chart became a sort of flip-flop of causation, where higher levels invalidated the person's realisations, made them the effect of hidden "other" influences and caved in their cases, making them dependent again on Scn services.

My guess is that the others-are-responsible levels were developed by LRH and the self-is-responsible levels were developed by various people who ran Ron's tech division. Certainly, all through his life, Ron dramatised blaming others.

 

[Alan]

Thanks Alan. It's good to meet you on this board!

I believe much of the best technology was developed by others and not LRH.

There is a schizophrenic thread through the tech:

• DMSMH - the person is in no way responsible for his case

• The mid-fifties definition of clear - the person creates his own aberrations

• 1967 OT3 - BTs are responsible for the person's case

• 1981 HRD - the person is responsible for his creation of case

• 1981 NOTs - BTs are responsible for the person's case

I'm sure there are many other contradictions, but these show how the Grade chart became a sort of flip-flop of causation, where higher levels invalidated the person's realisations, made them the effect of hidden "other" influences and caved in their cases, making them dependent again on Scn services.

My guess is that the others-are-responsible levels were developed by LRH and the self-is-responsible levels were developed by various people who ran Ron's tech division. Certainly, all through his life, Ron dramatised blaming others.

Very insightful!!

LRH ordered the original sec checks to be done to find infiltrators and Goverment Agents.

It was Peter Green and Jack Parkhouse down in Joburg, Sth Africa in 1959-60 who found that if you processed people on the sec checks in a safe environment they made tremendous gains.

That was how the original Sec Checks became causative processes.

They were the ones who wrote the Joburg, The Childrens Sec Check....BTW it was to be done on adults......as it cleaned up their childhood.

That was the beginning of The Responsibility, O/W and Missed Withhold Tech.....

Thanks for directing me to that area lionheart!

Alan
________

 

[lionheart]

I was lucky

I was lucky in that I didn't do any upper level (Ron developed), you-are-not-at-cause actions!

I spent years auditing and supervising the lower bridge and completed all of it to Clear (on dianetics) and HRD.

I was lucky. Although flirting with the SO and feeling I "ought" to join it - I never did!

I always knew Ron was lying in KSW about others not developing the tech, because I saw the issues released by others, before Ron edited them out. And I did not forget.

I believe in the fifties (see the PABs which were written by Ron - I believe) Ron did get a glimpse of the clear concept: that an individual is responsible for abberating himself. And he certainly seemed to have that concept in the Briefing Course lectures.

But I believe he failed to get the auditing needed to move this from an intellectual concept to a self-realised truth. Then due to his own unhandled case (paranoia - frequently evident in his issues, inflated ego, can't be wrong) he flip-flopped the tech into upper level others-are-to-blame rundowns.

I observed, as a pretty sparkling lower-case completion, that those on the OT levels were much more "casey" than both myself and the PCs that I had completed, ready for their OT levels. This was a contradiction to me.

Then when Scn and I parted company in '82 I made it my business to solve the mystery of the OT levels, once I knew I would never do them. The contradiction between the lower bridge self-is-responsible and the upper bridge others-are-responsible was blindingly obvious to me! As a well trained lower tech person I could see how the ot levels were an invalidation of the PC and an evaluation of what needed to be run.

As such they were a gross auditors code violation.

Yes, many wonderful people helped Ron develop the lower bridge from Reg Sharpe to Jack Parkhouse. I think they all got busted by Ron.

Maybe we should list them on this board as a roll of honour. Who was it who developed the TRs, I did know their names, it was a married couple wasn't it? But their names escape me now. was it the Kemps?

So my point, generally, is that it was probably others who were mostly responsible for developing the best parts of the tech and Ron who invalidated both those people and their part in the development.

His power and force of personality seemed to create the environment where developments could be made but it was the same character traits that destroyed the developments and twisted them to his own warped, blaming personality.

 

[Emma]

Hi Lionheart,

I just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying your posts.

I hope you stick around and keep telling your stories.

Cheers!