||||| From: Reposter Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: Frauditing Date: 19 Feb 2002 22:36:48 -0800 Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://newsguy.com] Lines: 205 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: p-849.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: Direct Read News 2.91 Path: news2.lightlink.com!news.lightlink.com!gail.ripco.com!newspeer2.tds.net!nntp1.roc.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!upp1.onvoy!onvoy.com!pln-e!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!drn Xref: news2.lightlink.com alt.religion.scientology:1435417 Reposted: From: spurgeon@is2.nyu.edu (Keith Spurgeon) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: Frauditing Date: 3 Sep 1995 03:44:13 GMT Organization: New York University Lines: 193 NNTP-Posting-Host: is2.nyu.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] What follows is an essay written by an individual who has chosen to use the pseudonym "Dionysius." keith ================ SCIENTOLOGY "FRAUDITING" by Dionysius If Scientology is indeed a religion, the movement is unlike any religion we've ever known before. Few people, if any, turn to Scientology to pray, meditate, give devotion to a supreme being or steep themselves in a code of conduct and right living--unless it be the furtherance of the growth of Scientology! The Scientology organization's true purpose is the business of selling soul-fulfilment, or consciousness- raising techniques, and most Scientologists become involved with the movement mainly to buy access to L. Ron Hubbard's "technology," which is promised to solve their lives for them. Ron's "tech" is posited on his idea that there is a destructive part of the human mind, the "reactive mind" or "bank," composed of traumatic incidents in both present and "past" lives, harmful "pictures" and conflicting-command word phrases. Further, that the "bank" is methodically eliminated ("erased") through his method known as "auditing," "processing" or "counseling." Each stage in the auditing sequence is typified by a goal or result, the gaining or restoration of a member's particular ability or achievement (such as the ability to communicate or to solve problems; and on the higher stages, increasingly "superhuman" abilities). Each process is made up of a preplanned set of questions asked of the "auditee" (customer or member) by the "auditor" (practitioner). It follows, then, that Scientologists believe that a process, with its particular questions, is an effective, indeed, unprecedented, way to get them through to a point of completion, with attendant benefits. The heart of processing--and Ron's Tech--is an electrical device used by the auditor and attached to the auditee during the questioning. The "E-meter" tracks electrical resistance on skin surfaces of the auditee's hands during an auditing session. The readings of a needle on one of the E-meter's dials are supposed to give a running indication of the "restimulation" of the auditee's "bank" by the various questions, and the dispersal of this "charge" until enough of the bank is "erased" for the auditee to have gained another stage (Grade, Level, ability, achievement). As we can immediately observe, this is a closed system; that is, every facet of auditing relies on some other facet of Scientology-- nothing to do with the rest of the world. However, the E-meter does have a context in the world-outside-of-Scientology, and here we can make comparisons that show the fraud implicit in Hubbard's system. The E-meter is a biofeedback device, in principle no different from the assortment of biofeedback devices used outside Scientology to monitor physiologic functions such as brainwave frequency, pulse rate and finger temperature. The machines' indicators (dial needle, flashing light or humming tone) track moment-to-moment change in a favorable or unfavorable direction. (It is favorable, for instance, to lower pulse rate or brainwave activity to an alpha state, or raise finger temperature, which usually denotes a relaxed state.) Biofeedback training means an interaction between subject and machine which gives the subject an increasing "knack" for controlling his/her physiologic functions, hence more favorable biofeedback readings. The Scientologists do not call their use of the E-meter "biofeedback training." Quite the contrary: The meter readings, as I mentioned above, are purported to relate to the "bank", that is, to the building up and dispersal of "charge" from a fixed entity of the mind. Whereas in the non-Scientology biofeedback training, the reads relate solely to the subject's growing ability to control body-mind function. What helps the subject in biofeedback training is, obviously, incentive: a sense of positive purpose. Positive emotion causes better action on the machine, denoting deeper relaxation. Incentive is, of course, the major part of learning to pass a lie-detector test. The lie-detector is an array of biofeedback devices that supply simultaneous readings. Clearly, the very principle that makes biofeedback training possible, and useful, makes lie-detector test results of limited, if any, value as evidence in court proceedings: One may beat the machine. But this is precisely what the auditee learns to do through, and during, Scientology processing: beat the machine. Human emotion doesn't take a holiday during an auditing session. The auditee brings his hopes for a better life to the session. His prime incentive, then, for that time is to succeed at auditing. His/her motivation to get favorable readings is tremendous. With each "clear read" he is closer to his shining goal, reaching the top of the Scientology "ladder" and the resolution of his life. The auditee is unaware that he controls the meter. Well, he wouldn't even want to, for that would defeat the assumed very purpose of auditing. Here emerges the conflict in this whole setting: *The auditee, following his natural instincts once on the machine, controls it anyway--and neither he nor the auditor knows he's doing it. * In non-Scientology biofeedback training, the trainee has direct access to the sights or sounds produced by the equipment. Not so in Scientology, where only the auditor can see the dial needle. However, the auditee does have access to this biofeedback information through cues given him by his auditor. His intellect may not register this information, but his body does. He soon learns to identify a certain special feeling with the "clear read" that signifies the end of the process. His inner sense tells him how to produce this "clear needle." Also what doesn't produce it, for then the auditor merely acknowledges the auditee's response and repeats the process question. Thus, after very little auditing, the auditee acquires the "knack" of shutting off thought or whatever it takes to produce the "clean." However, this has nothing to do with any "destructive portion of the mind" being whittled away--just as there is nothing to equate temporary alpha state or biofeedback release with higher consciousness and knowledge of oneself as a spiritual being. (Indeed, there is a striking contradiction here: usage of a machine to gauge one's spiritual progress!) There is yet another contradiction. Hubbard's avowed focus in auditing is to increase the auditee's awareness and ability to confront. Yet the auditing setting conduces to non-confrontation. Avoiding any but the most cursory probing of real-life trouble spots is the auditee's most effective tactic to get him through the process to "success." Repression (what Ron Hubbard may have meant by "non-confront") is, of course, an unconscious mechanism. When a loaded area looms threateningly near, the auditee's inner antennae start to twitch (in psychotherapy called "defenses" or "resistance"). He may easily evade confrontation by a diversionary maneuver such as "going to an earlier incident," preferably a "past life," since this is an important aspect of Scientology dogma. Not only can the auditee easily evade; he is rewarded for the evasion. Auditing is so structured that any auditee response to a question-- whatever that response may be--is greeted by the auditor's "Fine" or "Thank you" (rather than the response being discussed or itself questioned, as in much of psychotherapy). This is a small reward. There is a large reward if the evasion comes towards the end of the process; when the auditee "cleans the needle," he achieves a new stage and another step up the ladder of higher achievement. He is roundly congratulated for getting through a process. And it is very likely that the auditee will "clean the needle." His defenses proved successful; his relief at manipulating the situation and the auditor is just the kind of emotion that produces a "clean." The machine is still God, and God is on his side. Human emotion blows off a ton of "charge" from the "reactive mind." The stylized auditing mode ensures that the auditee avoids confrontation, cuts corners and hastens through the process (he also saves big bucks if he hastens). The auditor has no way to test the auditee's inner decision to "clean the needle." The auditor cannot read minds--even with the E-meter!--and, according to Scientology protocol, must not "evaluate" or "invalidate" by asking, for instance,"Could that clean needle merely indicate your eagerness to pass the process?" Nothing, then, prevents the auditee from responding to questions, and "reading" and "cleaning," as his inner sense mandates--as long as he gets through the process, the be-all-and-end-all object of Scientology "tech," what he is paying for. He has the information, the opportunity and the incentive to rapidly ascend the various stages, methodically skirting pertinent inner data, while receiving plaudits for unearned abilities and achievements. This transaction, then, involves not the "bank" but the auditee's feelings about his situation, a situation that happens to include a presumed "bank." The "charge" dealt with is not bank but about the notion of bank. Auditing, then, is biofeedback training, but with a fraudulent pseudo- psychology and, in the higher stages, a demented cosmology added in. In legitimate biofeedback training, prompting favorable readings is regarded as a knack, not a science. The knack has been described as "letting go of thought and effort." This is precisely what the auditee does--but he is not aware of his skill or of its possible consequences as he advances up the Scientology belief system. Hubbard said: "The E-meter is never wrong. It sees all, knows all." In the real world, auditor and auditee sit to either side of the machine- -arbiter, overseer, dispenser of judgments and gifts--neither aware that the session phenomena and effects demonstrate not Scientology but human psychology, that Hubbard's truth is not the auditee's truth, and that they are playing a game of let's pretend--in Hubbard's own language, a "mockup"! There is nothing "scientific," then, in the way the E-meter, an otherwise innocent biofeedback device, is used in Scientology; for auditor and auditee it is tantamount to a masturbation toy. And there is nothing "scientific" about auditing as a whole; its results reported by deluded followers are nothing but faith-healing, its "abilities and achievements" a temporary fix, and its "spiritual revelation" a fraud and a sacrilege.