From: Bob Minton <bobminton@lisatrust.net>
Scientology: Soul Hackers
Psychologically and spiritually battered, they persist in their bewildering
allegiance to their founder and the organization. Why would that be? These
effects are laid in at every level of Scientology. They are laid in
deliberately and with malice aforethought. This essay is about how
Scientology hacks your soul.
In 1950, Hubbard knew of an unconscious mental phenomenon that ties the
patient to the practitioner. He wrote about it in Dianetics The Modern
Science of Mental Health 1:
"The phenomenon of "transference," where the patient simply transfers his
griefs to the practitioner, is not the mechanism here at work; transference
is a different thing, bred of a thirst for attention and a feeling of needed
support in the world. Transference can be expected to keep up forever if
permitted; the patient of a doctor, for instance, may go on and on having
illnesses just to keep the doctor around. Transference may occur in Dianetic
therapy, the patient may lean on the auditor solidly, beg the auditor for
advice, appear to hold out engrams in an effort to keep the auditor working
hard and available and interested; all this is the result of a sympathy
computation and is aberrated conduct." 2
Hubbard desired to capitalize on transference. He stated in a lecture given
on 12 June 1950, called The Conduct of an Auditor-Part 1 3:
"And he can be made to lean upon the auditor heavier and heavier until a
condition of dependence is created.
Unfortunately the condition of dependence, no matter what you do, is not
going to stay created very long in Dianetics. What they call "transference"
and so forth in psychoanalysis you'll find in Dianetics." 4
Every human being is susceptible to transference. It is emphatically not the
sole domain of the psychotic or mentally unstable. What is not normal is the
intentional manipulation of transference phenomena to profit and enslave.
Obviously, Scientology did not originate the transference idea. This psychic
phenomenon was well known by Freud, Jung and other psychiatrists and
psychologists. They did and still do consider transference to be a very
important subject, something which requires the utmost care and attention in
therapy.
"The enormous importance that Freud attached to the transference phenomenon
became clear to me at our first personal meeting in 1907. After a
conversation lasting many hours, there came a pause. Suddenly he asked me
out of the blue, "And what do you think about the transference?" I replied
with the deepest conviction that it was the alpha and omega of the analytical
method, whereupon he said, "Then you have grasped the main thing." 5 - Carl
G. Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy
In Freudian analysis, the patient's underlying complex, previously associated
with someone in the patient's life transfers to the analyst. When that
occurs, it is addressed in psychoanalysis to resolve the complex.
Transference does not only occur in therapy. This naturally occurring
phenomenon can easily be found in life, although very often it is not
understood. An extreme example would be that of a battered wife, compelled
to return home to her husband. Even if the woman were told that her husband
would harm her again if she returned to him, she would have no defense
against that unconscious content, unless the transference issue was properly
addressed. Careful analysis would reveal that there is unconscious psychic
content that associates the husband-not as a wife beater, but as someone
without whom she cannot live.
A newborn child depends utterly upon his mother for his survival and care.
She takes care of him and nurtures him-a completely natural and desired
condition. Ideally, the child grows up and matures into an independent young
man, fully ready to take care of himself and a family of his own.
Unfortunately, this does not always occur. Perhaps the mother is
domineering, or for some reason cannot let go of her child. The young man,
who should have gained his independence at a reasonable age, is still
attached to his mother. An emotionally charged, unconscious factor, called a
complex, will continue to associate "mother" with "nurturing and care". The
young man eventually does leave home and marries a young woman. Everything
is fine, until one day the new husband has an incident that seems to require
his mother's nurturing. She is not around; his wife is the closest thing to
"mother". The complex, which was previously associated with the mother now
transfers, to the wife. He unconsciously feels his wife should perform the
same nurturing role as his mother did. However, the wife does not fulfill
this role for the husband, and trouble ensues.
A Sea Org member stays in the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), though he
is treated more cruelly than any kidnapper could treat his victim. He is
deprived of sleep, food, and the comfort of his family. He is thoroughly
introverted into believing some Authority, who has convicted him of evils so
deeply entrenched that he cannot be trusted with his liberty. He "knows"
that this Authority, whom he trusts with his very eternity, will cure him,
and that he must disclose his private criticisms that point to the evils that
must be ripped out of his being. And so day after day he cleans the
dumpsters, he submits to endless interrogations, and he runs around a pole to
cure himself of those nameless evils. Then one day he escapes, still
"knowing" that it is the evil within is telling him to run. He makes his
escape anyway. He somehow finds a way to start a new life, though he is
depressed and lonely and feels degraded. He eventually finds the courage to
talk about the atrocities he experienced. He goes to the courts. And he
sees the disbelief in the jury's eyes: even if he was telling the truth
about the RPF, why in God's name did he submit to it in the first place? But
he doesn't know. He can only point to the atrocities. The jury is fed at
every turn with lies about the Sea Org member's past, and lies about their
own crimes. Scientology points to their happy membership and twists the
minds of the jury with convolutions that would make any sane man's head spin.
Scientology's defense depends utterly upon continuing to hide their secret
weapon. That weapon is transference.
Hubbard knew about transference from the very beginning. He used it with full
knowledge and with a diabolical malevolence that only God can forgive.
Transference itself has been carefully hidden from every Scientologist, so he
would never know. And Scientology uses it relentlessly on every enemy that
could possibly find them out. One is reminded of an affirmation made by
Hubbard:
"You use the minds of men. They do not use your mind or affect it in any
way. You have a sacred spiritual mind, too strong, too sacred to be touched.
Your league with Higher Beings, your mighty Guardian and the All Powerful,
renders you beyond all criticism." 6 "All men shall be my slaves! All
women shall succumb to my charms! All mankind shall grovel at my feet and
not know why!" 7
The terrible thing is that transference in Scientology has been hidden in
broad daylight. Every Scientologist reads it. And passes it by. That too
is explained by transference and will be covered in this essay. But once one
can see it for what it is, there will be no question about how Hubbard
enslaved his adherents, about how he built his empire, and about how
Scientology continues to exist, despite and because of the atrocities that it
inflicts on every soul it touches.
In 1952 Hubbard acknowledged Scientology's indebtedness to the work of
Sigmund Freud. His alleged tutoring in Freudian analysis came to him via
afternoon conversations with a Commander Thompson in 1924, when Hubbard was
all of thirteen years old.
http://www.whatisscientology.org/Html/Part01/Chp03/pg0090.html
In June 1959, Hubbard credited psychology as developed by Wundt,
psychoanalysis (Freud) and psychiatry as developed in the 19th century in
Russia as those bodies of work that "provided data which permitted
Scientology to begin". 8 This cleverly worded 1959 acknowledgement of
Pavlov 9 leads immediately to the question: Why were dog experiments
useful in the formation of Scientology?
Yet there is documented evidence throughout the materials of Scientology that
Hubbard gradually came to view psychiatry and psychology, as the ultimate
enemy of mankind. 10 I am certainly not condoning psychiatric abuse, but
doesn't it seem odd that the very things psychiatry is accused of in
Scientology are being perpetrated on a daily basis by Scientology? Why would
Hubbard have considered himself exempt from his own pronouncements given in
"The Criminal Mind "? 11
Scientology continues to perpetrate psychological crime in the ill-begotten
name of religion. Is there anyone in Scientology who really knows about this
evil? If so, how can they continue to perpetrate these crimes for profit or
for whatever it is that they hold dearer than life?
Anyone coming into Scientology enters with the idea that there is something
in his or her life that Scientology can help resolve or make better. Anyone
without such hopes is summarily dismissed with a label of PTS (Potential
Trouble Source). 12 In other words, dismissal occurs when the Scientologist
handler fails to activate a complex. Hubbard's policy clearly states:
"DISSEM[MINATE] TO THE INDIVIDUAL WITH PROBLEMS, NOT THE
GROUP OR INDIVIDUAL WHO HAVE SOLUTIONS." 13 (There will be further
discussion on PTS phenomena a little later in this essay.)
Hubbard concluded that a non-Scientologist is very far from accepting the
concept that he "is" a thetan. He determined that the person on the street
must be addressed at his own level, that of "raw meat". Hubbard felt that
the individual coming into Scientology was simply an unconscious biological
robot, thoroughly controlled by his reactive mind. He masterminded The
Dissemination Drill 14 as a means to get the "overwhelmed thetan" to
conceive of some small thing about his life that was ruining him. As
"nothing in this life aberrates the being" 15, Scientology "knows" this small
thing is not important; what is important is that the person admits to an
unwanted condition. The Scientologist then convinces the person that this
"ruin" is something Scientology can handle for him. The Dissemination drill
generates psychic tension between the subjective "ruin" and the objective
organization. When that occurs, money flows to the coffers automatically and
outside of the person's own free will.
That "small thing", the complex, is intentionally activated in the person's
unconscious by the Dissemination Drill, and by any Scientology training or
auditing. It is not necessary for a dissemination drill to be run on a
person; the psychological basis for the drill is duplicated throughout
Scientology. The transference itself probably crystallizes at the moment the
individual begins to think of himself as a Scientologist, or when he becomes
convinced that Scientology will help or has helped him. Recruitment
techniques in this way exactly match the transference. Scientology intends
to be considered the sole solution for the person's troubles, no matter what
those troubles may be.
By reason of his "raw meat" human condition, the new Scientologist is
considered not to be in control of his body, his environment or his life. To
be called a human is derogatory and an insult in Scientology. It is not
until he has attested to the state of Clear 16 that he can consider himself
officially "Homo Novis", or "new man". The new Scientologist is considered to
be under the control of his reactive mind and must not under any circumstance
be allowed to control himself or make his own judgments. The reasoning is
that the reactive mind will do everything possible to obstruct the pitifully
overwhelmed thetan from going free.
Hubbard categorically revokes any rights the person has to his own privacy,
and specifically revokes the right of any person to his own thoughts. 17
Unfortunately, this right is never returned to the Scientologist; it is
considered an index of the case's progress where he no longer has concern
about what might be private. 18 Since the Scientologist entrusts the
organization to help him address the underlying causes of his difficulty, it
would be both logical and necessary that he would trust the organization with
access to his private thoughts. Conversely, any "secrecy aberration" is
immediate cause for suspicion of hidden crimes against Scientology. 19 The
Scientologist sacrifices his own constitutional right to privacy, due to
transference and the unconscious loyalty it imparts to Hubbard and the
organization. The person becomes tricked into believing that Scientology
alone can help him; he has nowhere else to turn.
Scientology is a monopoly; Hubbard saw it as such as early as December 1952.
20 Anyone who is a critic of Scientology is considered an enemy of
Scientology. When a Scientologist is the unwitting effect of transference,
and when that transference takes place across enough complexes, is it any
wonder how the Scientologist's loyalty would be impervious against the
actions and reason of Scientology's "enemies"?
"The whole purpose of ethics [is] to get tech in." 21
"The purpose of Ethics is
"TO REMOVE COUNTER-INTENTIONS FROM THE ENVIRONMENT. 22
"And having accomplished that the purpose becomes
"TO REMOVE OTHER-INTENTIONEDNESS FROM THE ENVIRONMENT.
"Thus progress can be made by all."
In these statements Hubbard clearly expressed what he intended to do to
"clear the planet".
Hubbard labeled anyone not agreeing with him to be an enemy and a criminal.
23 In his extreme paranoia, Hubbard literally saw the world outside of
Scientology as an enemy, either potential or actual. He used ethics as the
membrane to separate that which he could usurp and that which he could not.
Anything that could be brought within his control was "good". Anything
outside of his sphere of control was "evil". Hubbard did not intend to
better man's condition; he sought rather to replace humanity with his own
twisted ideal. He used a specialized aspect of transference to do it.
Negative transference is a known phenomenon in psychological texts. Instead
of the transference resulting in an affinity with or dependence upon the
object, negative transference results in an antipathy toward the object.
Hubbard and Scientology intentionally invoke and manipulate a negative
transference to attack viciously any person or organization it considers to
be an enemy. Whether that enemy is the concerned family member of the
Scientologist, the critic of Scientology, the American Psychiatric
Association, the FDA, or the IRS, there is no hand raised against Scientology
that does not feel its sting.
When a Scientologist routes onto a course or onto auditing, he is checked for
any "PTS situation" such as family members who may not be agreeable to his
participation in Scientology. The person will be seen to "roller coaster"
and he will "lose his gains" in Scientology. The reason given for this is
that he is in the psychological grip of someone who is counter-intending his
spiritual enhancement in Scientology. I have witnessed this situation many
times as an auditor. The person does appear to roller coaster in the
presence of family members who are not in complete agreement with
Scientology. And I have observed that the technology does not seem to "work"
in the presence of this condition.
However, what is at work here is an aberration of the transference factor.
Family members do often represent psychological difficulties, referred to
above in terms of "complexes". But Scientology has already disrupted the
original psychological situation by reason of transference. The
Scientologist has switched his dependence on the family member over to a
dependence on Scientology. The Scientologist's allegiance wavers between the
family and Scientology. The "roller coaster" effect is an incomplete or
unstable transference. It is now up to the ethics officer to effectively
complete the Scientologist's incomplete allegiance.
The ethics officer's first concern is to head off any attacks by those
critical of Scientology. 24 The Scientologist poses a problem for the ethics
officer and to the organization by reason of his connection to a potential
enemy. The solution to all this is a matter of Scientology policy: Handle
or disconnect. The ethics officer must reinforce the Scientology
transference. To accomplish this he coaches the person to say and do things
to the family member to bring him to "cause". Hubbard technology is used to
placate the family member, and to get the Scientologist to deactivate the
family member's own complexes.
What occurred here, in the mind of the Scientologist, is that his
transference has stabilized in Scientology. If the Scientologist cannot
deactivate the family member's complex, he must disconnect from that family
member. He cannot receive training or auditing until the disconnection is
accomplished. Scientology extorts cooperation of the "PTS" Scientologist
through the threat of his spiritual freedom. In other words, Scientology
manipulates the Scientologist's transference.
This obviously ensures for the organization that it is not being infiltrated
with family members who are concerned with their children or relatives; this
is the ethics officer's first priority. Secondly, in the event of a
"successful" handling with the family member, the non-member is not usually
aware that he is being manipulated by Scientology via his own child. If the
family member has complexes connected with the Scientologist, any projections
upon the child must be withdrawn, at least to the degree that the
Scientologist can proceed without interference. In this way also, any
natural protective mechanisms the parent may have for his family member are
rendered ineffective. That the Scientologist's natural affinity and respect
for his family has been eroded or destroyed is in itself of no concern to
Scientology. Family matters are very "human" in nature.
In addition to the type of PTS described above, Hubbard devised several
categories of "PTS" to encompass a wide variety of transference anomalies.
In all cases, the Scientologist is made to read a list of characteristics
that any human being could be found to manifest either negatively or
positively. 25 The Scientologist, already in the grip of a stressful
transference situation, sits in front of an ethics officer and is made to
judge that other potential enemy against this list of "suppressive
characteristics". What is he going to decide? Is that other person actually
an enemy? If the Scientologist can't make up his mind, the ethics officer
will label the Scientologist any number of sub-categories of PTS; the list
includes: PTSness arising out of the person's own degraded state, and PTSness
due to the Scientologist's own "hidden evil intentions." What would you
decide?
Once an unstable transference has been established and labeled as a PTS
situation, there are no holds barred against this imagined danger to the
organization. Scientology employs aggressively coercive methods to
stabilize the Scientologist's allegiance.
Scientology ethics formulas can easily be seen as steps to manipulate
transference and allegiance. As one example, the Liability formula 26 states
that the person has taken on the color of the enemy. Completion of the
formula requires that one:
"1. Decide who are one's friends.
2. Deliver an effective blow to the enemies of the group one has been
pretending to be part of despite personal danger.
3. Make up the damage one has done by personal contribution far beyond the
ordinary demands of a group member.
4. Apply for reentry to the group by asking the permission of each member
to rejoin and rejoining only by majority permission, and if
refused, repeating (2) and (3) and (4) until one is allowed to be
a group member again." 27
Here we can see that:
1. The Scientologist must first identify the correct object of the
transference.
2. He must employ negative transference to harm the other side. The
personal danger is a necessary component; it uses the person's own fear
to accomplish negative transference.
3. In making up the damage beyond the ordinary demands of a group member,
he is simply controlled in a Pavlovian way to teach him that disloyalty
carries punishment.
4. The last step accomplishes a couple of things. First, the
Scientologist doing the conditions is coercively made to disclose his
"crimes", that he is being judged by his peers-as-gods. Secondly, the
person's formula write-up reinforces to the group what constitutes
improper transference and what actions will result in punishment.
The Scientologist believes that he is doing the ethics formulas on his own
determinism. This is simply not the case. Further, a person only passes on
ethics when the conclusions he reaches meet with the approval of the ethics
officer and are in close alignment with Scientology's mores.
The Scientology ethics reporting system serves to maintain the integrity of
the transference to Hubbard and his organization. By strenuously enforced
policy, Scientologists are required to report to ethics any infractions or
policy violations by their fellow members, their families and their marriage
partners. 28 The Scientology report system reinforces the idea that the only
appropriate transference is to the organization. Any allegiances to members,
family, etc., can be cancelled, no matter who the offending party is. The
Scientologist "learns" that his only safety is through a completely
transparent and blind trust of those in control and that the only valid
receiver of his trust is the hierarchy of the organization itself.
Failure to report an "ethics" situation to Ethics is not viewed lightly, and
for "good reason." 29 Hubbard had a real taste of the power and
ramifications of transference in 1964:
"…Washington D.C. either did not know or did not follow the explicit policy
concerning receiving favors from preclears but only half-heartedly reported
them to an uninformed HCO which didn't know or didn't follow the full intent
and spirit of the policy and never told me as was implied in the original
policy letter. The wife of that person giving the favors brought on the
whole FDA mess that cost us tens of thousands of dollars and two years of
grief and almost knocked out Scientology in the U.S." 30
There are specific and complex technical issues on the overall subject of
confession as it relates to transference. Generally speaking, however, when
a person writes up his sins (called overts and withholds, or O/Ws), he
examines his transgressions against the benchmark of Scientology moral codes.
For example, a person would not have sinned if he infiltrated the IRS,
despite current PR to the contrary. However, if he had a critical suspicion
of Hubbard's personal involvement in that infiltration, he would have
underlying sins against Hubbard. The O/W write-up reinforces what the person
must or must not transfer his allegiance to; by exposing the objects of his
own negative transferences to a judgmental ethics officer, he "sets himself
straight" regarding his positive allegiance to Scientology. Confessing one's
sins never resolves the transference itself. It "relieves" negative
transference that Scientology does not want him to have.
Scientology distorts and erodes the traditional religious practice of
confession. Throughout religious history, mankind turns to God for
forgiveness of his sins, and reinforces his allegiance to his Creator. In
the Scientology confessional however, God's job is given to the auditor, who
forgives the person "on behalf of Scientologists". 31
Hubbard was completely aware of transference and its specific and
far-reaching effects as early as 1950. He built his whole moneymaking
operation around transference. And then suddenly, in 1956, with an
undeniably intentional twist of his pen, he redefined transference and took
the subject underground. He did not resolve transference; he simply found a
more profitable way to control humanity by corrupting its meaning.
"... We find another error in psychoanalysis under the heading of
"transference." The actual definition of "transference" in psychoanalysis is
sufficiently unstable to bring about considerable argument as to what is
meant by transference. In fact, in Dianetics, we had to reestablish an
entirely different condition which we called "valences" to denote the shift
from one's own personality into that of another.
Transference in psychoanalysis was used to denote the transference of the
patient into the valence of the practitioner. This was the way which
Commander Thompson described the phenomenon to me and nothing has been learnt
from later analysts to disprove this basic definition of Freud's." 32
(Hubbard curiously credited his childhood tutoring experience with Commander
Joseph "Snake" Thompson, as the basis for this definition. Within the same
time period, he was making plans for a Scientology doctorate course to
include a "fast review of Freudian psychoanalysis to the end of obtaining a
fast and certain command of diagnosis and definition as outlined by Sigmund
Freud." 33 We also know that he was watching Freud and his book sales very
closely, and we know of Hubbard's clear intention to monopolize psychotherapy
34 . By July 1953, he was busy "writing up a book on the subject of Freudian
self-analysis." 35 And within a month, the book Self-Analysis 36 was revised
reissued and included as part of standard procedure in processing. 37 )
Hubbard completely redefined transference as the patient taking on the
identity of the practitioner. This was not a one-time error; Hubbard repeated
his new definition for transference in the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course
Lecture numbered SH Spec 6507C27, 38 as well as in Certainty Vol. 9 No. 7.
39 Hubbard hid his crime in broad daylight; to this day, glossaries in tape
transcripts and newer versions of basic books provide the correct definition
of transference. Hubbard knew he could not resolve the subject of
transference-his entire empire was built around it!
In every Scientologist he maliciously created a monumental negative
transference against psychotherapy and psychoanalysis so that they would
never turn to a psychiatric text for any authority on the human mind. And
his research continued in the direction of how to abuse transference by
obscuring its effects. I will point out a couple of technical examples of
this a little later.
Very briefly, in transference, one is dealing with a relationship issue. If
one addresses valence, however, one is not dealing with a relationship-he is
dealing with a psychological identity. Treating a valence does nothing to
address the transference. As an example, say the person has a "mother"
complex. The psychoanalyst would not address the identity of the
patient-as-mother. The patient isn't being mother! The patient's identity
is the wrong subject altogether. To address the individual's identity
directly would introvert him totally and bury the complex even further. It
gets much worse. Not only did Hubbard manage to bury the complex and obscure
the transference, he developed technology that would literally replace the
person's identity, while making him feel completely extroverted. I will
discuss some examples of this under later headings.
The one thing that each and every Scientologist knows and operates with in
Scientology is the ARC triangle. It is the most basic of basic fundamentals
in Scientology. In any introductory lecture, the attendee is told that
understanding is composed of Affinity, Reality and Communication. Sounds
pretty good, and anyone can apply that, right?
Hubbard knew that the underlying common denominator for any complex was in
the affinity that the person has for another. He knew this from studying the
work of Wundt, one of the psychotherapists he credits with the foundation of
Scientology. Wundt found that empathy was the coalescing factor in the
process he termed as "assimilation". 40 When agreement (reality) is
established through communication, an understanding bond is achieved between
the two parties. This represents the upper triangle in the Scientology
symbol.
The lower triangle is the KRC triangle, which represents Knowledge,
Responsibility and Control. This too makes sense on the surface. If you
know about something, can take responsibility for it and direct it according
to the knowledge you apply, you have control. Hubbard also knew from his
studies of the complex and transference that the more influence a person
could exert against the patient, the stronger would be the underlying
unconscious bond. He knew with the right "knowledge" he could control
people. His brand of responsibility depended upon the utter control of
everything and everyone in the vicinity of his OT . 41
I submit that the Scientology symbol represents the exact structure of the
Bridge. It is not the result of Hubbard's discoveries of the human mind.
Hubbard constructed the Bridge to exactly mimic the natural development of
the complex and its transference. It is Hubbard's symbol for the control and
enslavement of mankind.
One can easily see that the lower Bridge comprises copious permutations of
Freudian-based free association exercises. Within the context of proper
therapy, they would probably be relatively innocuous. Hubbard intended to
use the psychoanalytic techniques of free association to make the
Scientologist feel that he was getting somewhere. He justified this under
the heading of "getting charge off the case". People do experience temporary
releases and relief at the lower levels. This is not because of Scientology;
it is because of "squirrel" psychotherapy called Scientology.
It is even conceivable that some Scientologists may experience some
accidental resolution of transference in various areas of their lives. This
would be permitted only if that resolution does not disturb the
Scientologist's dependence on Scientology. As an example of this: a person
has a session and discovers he can now paint. (These things do occur in
auditing from time to time. As above, it is not Scientology-it is what
Scientology has stolen from psychology.) Now our painter decides to quit his
job and stop making his Bridge payments, or leave his course so he can
explore his new ability. Forget it! Unless his contributions and time on
course remains undisturbed, he would be "out-ethics" by making these life
changes. He is told gently or not so gently by the ethics officer that he
has "stopped to smell the roses", when what he really needs to do is pay for
his next Scientology service, and "go OT."
There is, however, a dangerous aspect of Freudian analysis and free
association. Free association is known in psychoanalysis to activate
complexes. Every answer to a repetitive question in Scientology auditing is
contained within the complex that the question itself evokes. By the
specially trained-in impingement of the auditor upon the person's
unconscious, and by the authority of the auditor, the complex is activated.
The preclear continues to find new answers to the same question repeated by
the auditor; the process is complete when the preclear voices a new
realization about the content of the complex, and when a particular needle
response is seen on the e-meter.
In Scientology, it is held that nothing in the person's current life is
really aberrative; that the source and root of his troubles lie much further
back in time. The only "purpose" for addressing a case at lower levels is to
release enough attention and affect so that the Scientologist can make
contact with and address the things that Hubbard professed to lie at the
bottom of every being's difficulty. 42
Scientologists do not realize that with every session, despite whatever else
"positive" that happens, their unconscious allegiance to Scientology gets
strengthened. Every complex that is touched on in a session has psychic
energy connected with it. The auditing process provides the conduit for that
psychic energy to be redirected to Scientology.
Hubbard constructed the sequence of the Bridge to exactly mimic the
formulation of the complex and its transference. The brevity of this essay
does not permit a detailed comparison. Along with the Freudian free
association processes, existing complexes are rearranged and the energy
contained in those complexes is transferred over to Hubbard and the
organization, all under the heading of transference.
The Scientologist thinks that he is there of his own will. He is not. It is
not possible to be operating under one's own free will while in the grip of a
massive, growing transference that grips every facet of his life.
Scientology points to the "releases" that its brand of psychotherapy brings,
and holds it up as the only thing that is going on. Behind the scenes
however, Scientology actually replaces the identity of the person with
Hubbard's own version of who he "should be". The person thinks he is getting
closer to his own basic personality. He thinks differently about his life,
and about his purposes. He feels simpler. He feels "clearer". He is not.
He is selling his soul, piece by piece, and he is replacing it with a
grotesque caricature, called Hubbard.
What happens when a person leaves Scientology or is excommunicated? Very
often he will feel a terrible loss, a terrible loneliness, guilt, or
depression. Scientologists would look at this and say he feels that way
because he betrayed Scientology. No. Any bad psychological effect from
leaving Scientology is because of the unconscious transference that
Scientology worked so hard to build up. That transference is not healed by
the action of leaving Scientology.
Some unconscious process in the former adherent may convert that transference
to a negative transference against Scientology. And that is the point where
Scientology employs its "Fair Game" policy against the former adherent. If
it cannot maintain a positive transference and control of a Scientologist,
Scientology will label him a "suppressive person", and do everything in its
power to destroy its new enemy. It will use the former adherent's own prior
confessions from his auditing. Scientology will lie in court and use its
transference technology on judges, on political figures and on IRS agents;
Scientology will use it on anyone it must manipulate to further its own ends.
It will do everything that an insane criminal would do. A Scientologist's
secret transference weapons are specialized according to the function of the
job for which the Scientologist gets trained.
Scientology uses the lower Bridge to strengthen transference, to extort money
and to ensure that the person remains trapped for as long as he has money to
pay. This is so true that the Scientologist's friends will start to
disassociate with the person if he has been off the Bridge for too long. The
peer pressure is subtle, but it carries tremendous power. The penniless
Scientologist has not lost his transference to Scientology. He will go to
any lengths to get back on the Bridge so he can regain his status with
Scientology. It is the power of the unconscious transference that is at
work, not some superhuman OT phenomenon that keeps a person on the Bridge.
Certain psychic phenomena occur in Scientology auditing, which the preclear
would have no way of interpreting, except as contained in Scientology
"scriptures". For example, preclears quite often make contact with images of
famous personalities and deities and believe that they are addressing their
own personal experience as those identities. The auditor has been trained to
view such contact as a manifestation of a delusory case condition; it is
viewed that the preclear was overwhelmed in that time by the identity he now
considers himself to be. He is further admonished to take the preclear
through the incident as it is perceived by the preclear. 43 Any auditor
will eventually run across any number of archaic celebrities in the mind of
his preclear: Buddha, Jesus Christ, Napoleon, etc.
This is not to be construed as any effort to make less of the individual
being audited, or of the psychic reality of such images. However, it is my
strong opinion that the automatic interpretation the preclear is expected to
make is not properly construed, taught or acted upon in Scientology. Further,
the identification with such images can have tremendously disastrous
psychological effects in the person's concept of himself and of his
relationship to his life. The person's own religious freedom is manipulated
using psychological measures of a very sinister and dangerous nature.
Hubbard continued his "research" in the 1950's, on the basis of his
convoluted identification of transference with valences. He theorized in
History of Man 44 about the underlying causes and factors relating to
transference, whereby the thetan "transfers" into the body, has difficulty
getting out of the body, and so on. Hubbard reworked transference to include
not only the valence, but also "exteriorization" itself.
Very often the soul or "thetan" seems to leave the body during TRs or other
drills or auditing, with or without perception of having a different vantage
point. This is considered a milestone in one's spiritual development in
Scientology-it is called "going exterior." In training, "exteriorization" is
classified as a "major stable win." Hubbard's opinion of this state is
discussed at length throughout the writings of Scientology. He felt that
"…the thetan should feel at least a little remote and detached as though he
weren't quite present. This detachment will increase as auditing continues
to the great benefit of the intelligence and ability." 45
Euphoria, disorientation, changes in visual perception of his environment,
and a marked decrease in ability to conduct simple body functions such as
walking or talking often accompany "exteriorization". There is no question
but that this would be considered a profoundly spiritual experience,
intimately and inextricably connected with the Scientology drill or auditing
process that precipitated it.
While I do have opinions and theories regarding the phenomena of
"exteriorization" itself, it is not my focus here to emphatically assert
scientific facts or theological conclusions. It is my opinion based on many,
many instances of observing this phenomenon in myself and in those I
personally audited in Scientology, that exteriorization was perceived as an
actual psychic occurrence, and that the associated phenomena and change of
view with respect to identity went along with it. I will state my
conviction: spiritual freedom is very much more elusive at the top of the
Bridge than it is at the bottom.
Indeed, the ultimate freedom in Scientology for which the entire Bridge was
constructed was an effort to get the person into a position where he would be
stably operating outside of and independent of his body, free from all the
traps of a physical existence and also oriented and in control of all the
strange things that go on in the universe of spirits. The advanced levels
were perceived as those final secrets that make the person an Operating
Thetan, someone who can operate stably exterior, at cause over matter,
energy, space and time. The Bridge itself has been revised and reworked
several times since the beginning of Scientology, all in favor of
undercutting the steps to this mysterious and elusive state. Of course, with
every "undercut", Hubbard increased his bank account. And every undercut was
an effort to build a stronger and more complete allegiance to Hubbard and to
Scientology.
Exteriorization at lower levels is temporary in all cases, lasting for
seconds, hours or sometimes days. The exterior condition generally ends with
complaints of severe headaches, bodily discomforts of various kinds, efforts
to leave physically, and environmental pressures. This sometimes very
uncomfortable situation is explained as being the result of the person not
having the benefit of the rest of the Bridge. The liability of
exteriorization is so common and serious in Scientology that every canned
correction list in auditing includes questions about exteriorization and
exact measures to deal with it. 46 It is more often the case than not that
repeated "corrections" must be made in auditing to relieve the person of the
bad effects of this condition. The title of this section is meant as a
special tribute for repeat offenders of exteriorization.
As stated earlier, the Scientologist already has been indoctrinated as to
Scientology's premise that he is an immortal being, timeless and deathless.
When he exteriorizes, he is congratulated and sent to the examiner to write
his affirmation success story. It confirms his god status and acts as an
interpretation of the occurrence itself. The Scientologist attributes his
lofty state to the works of Scientology and Hubbard; the transference is yet
again confirmed and reinforced. The Scientologist is indoctrinated that his
big problem in life is his body. 47 The current given purpose of Dianetics
is to eliminate body-related case factors that cause him to lose power, or
keep him from recapturing his full potential as a thetan. Dianetics,
however, was not originally conceived as having anything to do with the soul.
There are relentless efforts in Scientology to get the person to disassociate
from the body; these efforts can be observed in social concourse, in ethics
measures which denigrate any "undue" concern about one's physical condition,
and in examples of gross negligence in getting proper medical attention where
necessary. (Witness Lisa McPherson.) The body's only valid purpose in
auditing is something by which the e-meter electrodes can be held while the
thetan "goes free." Hubbard states that an aberrated person would think of
himself as "body plus thetan", whereas the ideal would be "thetan only". 48
Every time a person "exteriorizes", it enforces the idea that he is not his
body but a spiritual entity. What better way to justify sleep deprivation,
terrible living conditions for staff members, and the Rehabilitation Project
Force? "You cannot hurt a thetan."
A thetan in Scientology is defined in various ways as "nothingness" with a
quality of awareness that is not of this universe. The Scientologist is led
to believe that it is this elusive godlike quality contained in the
nothingness that he must strive for. Little does he realize that Hubbard
thought of him as a literal unit of nothingness. Nothingness, not of some
indescribable and unapproachable universe, but a nothingness of this
universe, of this planet and of this "religion."
"You have only one stable datum. IF IT ISN'T WORKING, IT IS BEING VARIED."
49
Training personnel, called "course supervisors", operate under severe threat
of ethics penalties. They are held responsible for ensuring that every
student perfectly duplicates the materials in Hubbard's courses. They are
themselves rigorously trained to deal with any situation in which the student
does not agree with or completely duplicate Hubbard. The inventory of tools
used by these personnel is extensive, beyond the scope of this brief essay.
The student very quickly learns that if he has a disagreement, he will find
no listening ear in his course supervisor. The supervisor's entire focus is
to get him back to the Hubbard viewpoint. This is absolute.
The student is taught in his "student hat" materials how to rectify any
"disagreement defects" in his study process, despite being taught within the
study procedure that he must not accept any materials that he himself does
not find to be true. This latter admonishment simply obscures the actual
phenomenon in play: the student's critical process is eroded continuously by
transference and by forcefully coercive measures by the supervisor. Nothing
is ever wrong with Hubbard's material; it is always the student who is
defective. The supervisor is a representative of Hubbard and acts as an
authority figure on Hubbard's behalf. Transference is always deepened to the
degree that the object of transference exerts influence and control on the
person.
If a student is to proceed with his course, he has no choice but to shift his
attention to examine how his internal thought processes are defective, and to
find some means by which to rectify his imperfect understanding of Hubbard.
Through an extensive repertoire of exacting measures, the student begins to
think with the words and concepts Hubbard uses in his written and taped
material. The student learns an intricate study process with which to
rationalize the contrary and paradoxical teachings of Hubbard. He learns to
identify with Hubbard's humor and attitudes, and he begins to edit out his
own thinking processes in life in favor of Hubbard's hopelessly twisted
"logic" and "philosophy."
Scientology materials deal with a very wide range of mental and emotional
issues, social issues, familial issues, world and cosmic views. The rigors
of study will constellate more and more complexes in the student. Certain
"training routines" (TRs) are part of every technical and administrative
course. TRs are done repeatedly; they get the student to blank out of and
bypass his own "mental machinery". It is doubtful whether TRs overcome the
transference itself; I believe that the complexes are only repressed more
completely with TRs, and that the training system forces the transference
deeper into the unconscious.
The student learns that his disagreeable "machinery" is part of his reactive
mind, and that the only correct and permanent resolution is by way of
auditing. In the meantime, his learning process is directed unremittingly
with coercive force and time-tested policies to 100% duplication of the
materials. In short, the student learns like a Pavlovian dog that his only
focus is to duplicate the materials exactly.
With each course he takes, the student actually replaces his personal
thoughts, feelings, ideas and mental phenomena in favor of those represented
by Hubbard. In training, any random patterns are edited out thoroughly. It
is literally impossible to otherwise attest positively to 100% duplication.
Any nagging questions and any criticisms that the student may have are weeded
out and eliminated.
Ironically, Hubbard's own version of "transference" is also accomplished
here. In other words, the Scientologist through training comes to identify
himself with Hubbard. Given an ever-increasing constellation of complexes,
which are repressed coercively at every turn, and with the force and rigors
in duplicating the thoughts and philosophy of Hubbard, the only perceived
avenue of mental escape comes down to thinking and being "as though he was
Hubbard". He is constantly and repeatedly told that through Scientology he
is becoming more himself. He is told at every turn that he is "totally
responsible for the condition he is in". He understands that his path to
total freedom lies entirely in his ability to follow the directions and in
the footsteps of Hubbard. The only way out of any dilemma is however through
learning exactly "What would LRH do?" When Hubbard said in KSW #1, (the first
policy studied on every course in Scientology) "We'd rather have you dead
than incapable", the reader will get the idea of the coercive force which is
applied against any recalcitrant.
I want to emphasize that what happens to the student is not intellectually
conscious. It is laid in with exact training measures, with coercion and
with the energies of the person's own unconscious. Scientology hacks the
soul. I can think of no better way to summarize what occurs.
Every Scientologist does TRs as an early step on the Bridge. He learns about
the "thetan" and about "present time", etc., and then he starts his drills.
These TRs are repeated and refreshed throughout Scientology. The TRs
themselves appear to have been adapted from age-old meditation techniques.
OT TRO, TR 0 and TRO Bullbait are souped up versions of "meditation without
seed", where the person concentrates on blanking out all noise and
distraction and arrives at a point where he is simply "being there", as
determined by his coach and by his supervisor.
The precursor to these TRs was the 1953 process:
"…Take Ten Minutes of Nothing. This technique means oh, so literally what it
says. It isn't ten minutes of "relaxation", or "relief" or "rest". It isn't
ten minutes of you, a body. It isn't ten minutes of somatics. It means ten
minutes of no body, no engrams, no walls, no MEST universe, no sound, no
thought, really nothing. All one's life he is trying to get, to work, to be,
to perceive SOMETHING. Now for ten minutes let us have utterly NOTHING. The
gettingness of something makes for a one-way flow. Also the dwindling
spiral. Also, the one thing the analytical mind can't be, it thinks, yet all
it is is nothing, is in MEST terms: nothing. Mind you, fear of NOTHING is
enough to make one's stomach curl for nothing is death itself. This is
unlimited in running time. It always improves a case in the long run if not
instantly, as it often does. The preclear discovers sooner or later he CAN
be nothing, that he doesn't have to strive to be. What a relief! Lao-Tse
was so right about striving." 50
TRs 1 and 2 begin to fill in the blankness that he has experienced with the
earlier TRs; they can be considered as programming templates, likened to
installing a new operating system onto a freshly formatted hard drive. The
use of nonsense phrases from Alice in Wonderland conditions the student
auditor to be willing to spout off and receive unusual or nonsensical
communication in sessions and in his life. TRs 3 and 4 expand upon this
concept and further train the student to interject limited computational
skills that are in accordance with and within the limits of Hubbard's rules.
Some courses also include the use of mood drills 51 where the student's mood
is found to color the session. Hubbard found that students are not in
control of their emotions, that emotions are "automatic." The drills were
conceived to edit out of the student those chronic or fixed moods or
emotions, so that exactly and only the prescribed tone is applied to the
preclear in session. It is taught that "TRs are a matter of sound (emphasis
added), not the way the person feels." 52 By these communication skills,
the student relearns how to process both incoming and outgoing messages
according to Hubbard's idea of what constitutes vanilla communication-without
additive flavor or random personality coloration.
A Scientologist is indoctrinated that man's troubles lie in the past, out of
present time. He learns that the reactive mind itself contains all moments
of his tortured past. When a person is "out of present time", he is acting
irrationally, based on the unknown effects of his reactive mind. The
Scientologist is taught that the "thetan" is not in the physical universe,
but that he manipulates his physical experience from a perspective outside
the dictates of time. The thetan's difficulties in operating in a time-based
physical environment theoretically stem from the aberrations contained in his
reactive mind. TRs are given as drills to accomplish a present time
viewpoint, regardless of his progress in his auditing. The student is taught
to separate himself from his past-to experience the present from a thetan's
viewpoint, in other words, from a viewpoint superior to the physical. This
enables the Scientologist to study, to audit and to "truly relate" to his
fellow man in life.
One begins to see how the person's critical thinking process is being
manipulated through TRs. The student is drilled out of his own "inferior"
frame of reference, the reactive mind. He will have only Hubbard's frame of
reference with which to analyze Hubbard's material; he will have only
Hubbard's frame of reference with which to audit and conduct himself in life!
As discussed earlier, Scientologists' most basic and fundamental tool in life
is the ARC triangle. TRs bypass the Scientologists' natural affinity and
replace it with a studied duplicate of Hubbard. The reality being agreed upon
is Hubbard's reality. And this is communicated with Hubbard's model. TRs
made it possible for Hubbard to inject his "knowledge" that you are
"nothingness", and that you cannot be trusted with your own mind. He taught
you that as a godlike creature you are "responsible" only when you were in
his brand of "present time", and he taught you how to control yourself and
others through the TRs and the godlike condition they impart. Knowledge,
responsibility and control. Sound familiar?
At some point early on in the person's training, he trains on the technology
and applications of Hubbard's emotional tone scale. Like the TRs, tone scale
material is basic Scientology, and is taught and applied thereafter
throughout Scientology, at every technical, administrative and organizational
level.
The tone scale is a list of emotions arranged in what seems to be a
descending order of positivity. Each emotion listed is given an arbitrary
number that represents the quantity of mental mass supposedly activated at
the moment the emotion is experienced. The abridged version of the tone
scale represents the scale of emotions a Dianetics auditor would encounter in
a "human being": a degraded thetan who is now being carted around by a body.
53 The expanded tone scale 54 is used in Scientology to staticize the
emotions of the thetan direct; without a body the thetan is supposedly
capable of a much wider range of emotions.
At the top of the expanded tone scale one finds "Serenity of Beingness" at
40.0. "Body Death" lies at 0.0. At the bottom of the list, at -40.0, lies
"Total Failure". The student is coached to dramatize each emotion on this
list, over and over; until his supervisor is satisfied he has edited out any
emotion that appears to be fixed or "inappropriate."
The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation and Dianetic Processing that
accompanies the basic text on the subject includes forty-two category
headings which correspond to the list of emotions. Headings include one's
medical condition, psychiatric condition, expected ethics range, sexual
behavior, truth level, and so on. The student uses this chart extensively to
evaluate his own and others' psychological condition.
The student is taught that this chart is an exact plot for any human; that
for example a person who is covertly hostile would invariably and without
exception have corresponding characteristics such as:
"…Psychotic Range: Psychotic
Sexual Behavior: Promiscuity, perversion, sadism, irregular practices
Method Used by Subject to Handle Others: Nullifies others to get them to the
level where they can be used. Devious and vicious means. Hypnotism, gossip.
Seeks hidden control." 55
The numerical designations of the emotions represent the relative degree of
mass a person would be exhibiting. This underscores the idea that the more
"massy" or "stuck to the physical" the person is, the closer he is to the
evil that Scientology is designed to resolve.
The student is drilled to instantly plot anyone's emotional tone. In doing
so, he makes a blanket judgment of any subject, as delineated by the chart.
With this "tool" under his belt, he knows who he can trust or not trust, who
will answer a letter promptly, and whose politics would be Liberal or
Fascistic, and so on. He learns by using this tool that a subject who is
disgusted by sex will also have severe sporadic illnesses, and that the same
subject will use responsibility to further his own ends.
The tone scale and its corresponding chart is the template with which the
student observes and interacts with others in his environment; this is the
bible he uses to monitor his own emotions and social responses. The tone
scale is one of the most basic controlling tools used at all levels, used by
the Scientologist in every area of his life.
Qualified independent professionals have never ratified the writings of
Hubbard in general, and the tone scale and Chart of Attitudes in specific.
Keep in mind that by the time the lay Scientology student begins to study the
tone scale material, he has already likely been psychologically affected in
ways that would alter his critical faculties and perceptions relative to the
material.
Apart from the obvious ramifications this has on the Scientologist's
relationship with his family and other associates, the tone scale works
subjectively upon the Scientologist as well. The Scientologist is taught the
exact pattern and range of acceptable emotional range at any time. He knows
that if he exhibits an emotion below 2.0, "Antagonism", his reactive mind has
taken over control, and that anything he does or says at this tone level will
be subject to scrutiny; other Scientologists will see him as being neurotic
or psychotic. He learns that if he feels like crying, he is only exhibiting a
hidden and disgusting effort to solicit sympathy from those in his
environment. He will further learn that if he is feeling grief, nothing he
thinks will have any validity connected with it, and that practically the
exact opposite will be the truth. He is taught that he can and must create
emotions at his own "will" 56, that any negative emotions stem from that part
of him which is his ultimate enemy to him and to those around him-his
reactive mind. He discovers that he must only associate socially with those
who conduct themselves within a certain emotional range, that at any time
anyone could drop below 2.0 and betray him, lie to him and otherwise be
unworthy of his association and trust. He even learns how to select his
business partner and his wife (or her husband) by carefully plotting her on
the tone scale.
But, above all else, he is taught that the only "safe" and appropriate place
where he can feel negative emotions will be in his auditing sessions, and
that only his auditor will be able to uncover for him what underlying
unconscious factor is making him so anti-social and miserable. In short, he
must repress his emotions and override his natural responses in favor of
those emotions deemed acceptable and called for by Hubbard. The tone scale
and its emotional manipulation serves to completely bypass the way the
Scientologist actually feels. It closes the door and makes inaccessible to
the Scientologist that part of the person who knows he is really not a robot,
someone who cannot be trusted with feeling and experiencing on his own terms.
The Scientologist desperately needs to be able to evaluate his environment
with his own responses. But he has, in becoming a Scientologist,
unwittingly sold and given over control of his soul to the "Church" of
Scientology and to L Ron Hubbard. He thinks that he is his personality and
that all else is invalid or on the negative side of the scale. He is no
longer able to grant validity to any input from anyone outside Scientology
except as through the artificial template personality that his training has
erected around him. He "knows" that he is superior to a non-Scientologist,
that non-members are to be pitied, they are to be recruited, they are to be
controlled, and if they are critical about his "religion", they must be
excised from his life.
Hubbard developed specific policies to circumvent anomalies in the
transference phenomena. He knew that when the preclear's transference went
to the auditor, they would give their auditor gifts or do favors for them:
"…Cases which are far down on the tone scale will, when they reach 1.0, quite
commonly offer the auditor presents and attempt to do things for him. A
crude description of this was once contained in the idea of transference." 57
Hubbard did not want preclears transferring their affections to their
auditors. Transference is only valuable if it is directed to the organization
or to Hubbard. He both profited by and punished the transference phenomena
by forcing the preclear to pay preferential rates if he insisted on a
specific auditor.
Hubbard was well aware of a phenomenon well known in psychology as
counter-transference, where the practitioner's own unconscious mind begins to
experience emotional side effects by reason of therapy.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines counter transference as:
The surfacing of a [psychotherapist's] own repressed feelings through
identification with the emotions, experiences, or problems of a person
undergoing treatment.
Certain aspects of auditing seem to inhibit counter transference in the
auditing session. Firstly, the auditor by reason of his TRs and other
drilling is rigorously trained to simply "listen and compute". The attention
required in a session of an auditor toward the preclear and the e-meter do
not allow for any thoughts to enter in to the equation. It is a very
mechanical and exacting procedure, and one in which any mental wandering of
the auditor would be drilled out of him rather soon in his career.
The auditor abides by an auditor's code, which extracts a promise that
prohibits him from sympathizing with the preclear. 58 In my opinion, the
sympathy Hubbard was talking about is a close relation to Wundt's "empathy",
discussed earlier in terms of a complex creating factor. The auditor is
factually an extension of Hubbard; this is a psychic fact for the auditor, as
well as an objective fact-no coloration of the session is permitted. By the
time a professional auditor has worked out all his "bugs", nothing the
preclear says or does in a session seems to have any effect on the auditor
personally. If a counselor is to accomplish anything at all in therapy,
there must be some soul, some human interface. Scientology applied to the
letter of the word does not permit that interface. All is distilled down to
the vanilla rendition of Hubbard's own ideals. In that sense, the auditor's
soul seems nowhere to be found; the only thing present is his auditing
procedure and an "excellent sounding" TR rendition of the auditing command.
If and when counter transference occurs, it occurs on a level deeper in the
unconscious than I can honestly assert or deny.
In the event of auditing failures, such as the preclear becoming ill after
session, poor emotional tone between sessions, etc., the auditor would
definitely take the heat for any bad effects created. This too is covered in
policy. There are no failed cases, only failed auditors. There are no "dog
pcs". There is absolutely no room for any criticism of Hubbard's technology
or its results-only failures in application. And of course, the auditor's
only recourse and solution would lie in the direction of ever more closely
duplicating Hubbard's own intention and beingness.
Within the organization, the auditor is revered above all other
personnel-this is the edict and position of Hubbard. Signs and promotional
pieces abound: "Auditors are the most valuable beings on the planet." As one
can imagine, the degree of ego-inflation can be extreme, no matter how
intense and deeply seated the original intention of the auditor is to help
others. It seems that this very desire to help is most insidiously taken over
and corrupted by Scientology. Auditors represent the most lucrative source
of income for Scientology, and that fact is obscene beyond words.
Hubbard held up his e-meter phenomenon as proof of his theories regarding the
unconscious. Just because something has read on the meter and the preclear
associates it with a particular phenomenon does not constitute evidence. The
preclear is pre-indoctrinated to some degree in Hubbard's own theories, and
he would interpret any psychic experience from within the parameters of his
indoctrination.
Hubbard developed the e-meter as an effort to resolve counter transference.
In Technique 88 59 he states:
"…The best auditing and the fastest by far is done with the E-meter. The
meter practically runs the case. And, most important, it spares the auditor
too close a concentration on the preclear, the only aberrative thing about
auditing." 60
Hubbard inaugurated the e-meter as an auditing tool prior to developing the
TRs. Apparently the lie detector didn't work by itself. Make no
mistake-along with Freudian free association techniques, the e-meter's
purpose was to solicit complete honesty and complete obedience in the
preclear. 61
Transference is sometimes viewed not as a negative thing, but as completely
positive. The Pope in the Roman Catholic Church would be an example of this.
As the servant of servants, he acts as the ultimate mediator between the
parishioner and God; transference is carried to God via the Pope.
Hubbard capitalized on the phenomenon of the positive transference found in
any religion; he turned it into a black version for his own
self-aggrandizement. He knew that religion by its very nature is the perfect
feeding ground for the manipulation of transference; God cannot be proven,
nor can a belief system be explained in a logical way. Scientology hides
behind a pseudo-religious facade. That facade is a grotesque and hideous
expression of Hubbard's own criminal insanity and of his own insane
identification with the image of God.
In 1956, Hubbard stated,
However, in the 1998 version of Introduction to Scientology Ethics, the
definition is given as follows:
God is being written out of the picture these days. The current
powers-that-be are vigorously sanitizing Hubbard's own words in written and
taped material. Later versions of Scientology material only serve to further
obfuscate the criminal intentions of its Hubbard. But by his own policies
they may not be cancelled; they must be used to expose the fundamental basis
for Scientology.
In fine print at the front of Introduction to Scientology Ethics: 64
"Dianetics spiritual healing technology", distinctly implies a religious
doctrine. Yet, on close inspection of the current official website of
Scientology, one can find this quote:
The field of thought may be divided into two areas which have been classified
as the "knowable" and the "unknowable." We are here concerned only with the
"knowable." In the "unknowable" we place that data which we do not need to
know in order to solve the problem of improving or curing of aberrations of
the human mind. By thus splitting the broad field of thought, we need not now
concern ourselves with such indefinites as spiritualism, deism, telepathy,
clairvoyance or, for instance, the human soul." 66
How can a "Church of Scientology", sell and deliver a "spiritual healing
technology", a science that reports to not concern itself with the human
soul? How dare they try to hide the blatant claims of its author and shift
the responsibility for its effects to the "dedicated efforts of the reader?"
They dare, because they know without question that it is the dedicated
efforts of the reader that activate his complexes and ensure transference;
when that is accomplished, the reader will buy more Scientology.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines religion as:
a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as
creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief or worship.
In Scientology, one gradually comes to learn that instead of developing a
relationship with one's Creator, Hubbard promises to return the Scientologist
to his inherently native state as a god. Scientology postulates that the
basic life force of an individual has gone through a devolutionary process
through endless trillenia of mishaps; that when he arrives in Scientology he
is degraded to the point where he is mistakenly identifying himself as a
human being, stuck in a body. By way of addressing and eradicating the
experiences contained in his reactive mind, the Scientologist supposedly is
returned to his original condition. Upon attest to the state of Clear, he
believes that he has arrived at his basic personality. When he completes the
advanced levels, he attests to being a smarter god. 67 If a Scientologist
trains to become an auditor, he earns the distinction not only of being a god
himself, but he is now a maker of gods. 68 These facts are not presented to
a new Scientologist. It utterly eludes me how one could preserve his own
religious faith and still be a Scientologist. And yet that is what is
promised in Scientology. 69
It is obvious that this early theme in Scientology extends throughout its
"scriptures". When one enters Scientology he learns that he is a "thetan".
Hubbard combines the concepts of "soul" and "spirit" and teaches the student
that the person who looks in the mirror in the morning is the thetan and that
he is immortal. He specifically states that the thetan is the personality of
the person that transcends death. In Scientology, the personality of the
Scientologist is the thetan, right here and right now. The only thing wrong
with him is that he has mistakenly assumed false personalities that obscure
the real one. A thetan in good shape is supposedly able to drop dead, go to
the hospital of his choice, grab a baby's body like a new pair of pants, and
know who he was just before he died. In a mind-bending loop, Hubbard
considered any personality in the mirror is a false personality; that the
basic personality is "you before you mocked yourself up", and that only
through his technology could a man achieve this lofty state of godhead.
Granted, the definitions of soul and spirit are variously delimited in the
religions of the world; it is important to note again that a fundamental, if
not hidden reality in Scientology is that one does not develop a relationship
with a god-one is a god. This can be further emphasized with the Scientology
concept that as one goes up the Bridge to Total Freedom, one can be more and
more of each dynamic, which of course includes the God Dynamic.
In Scientology, Hubbard is Source, and there is no other Source. Whether he
felt he was The Supreme Being is frankly irrelevant. In Scientology there is
no room for another god or God, despite rhetoric to the contrary. He
effectively overthrew, in the collective opinion of Scientologists, all the
archetypal images of humanity's greatest spiritual leaders, including Dharma,
Krishna, Lao-Tse, Gautama Buddha, Moses, Christ and Mohammed-he colored the
banner black and he took it up himself. 70
It is not necessary to express the obvious hierarchal spiritual and religious
relationship the individual has with the organization of Scientology and with
Hubbard. That Hubbard is dead provides no relief from this spiritual
connection and hierarchy, as he too is "Immortal". His continued Scientology
research and involvement was announced at his memorial service.
This should also explain to the reader why it is that the myth of Hubbard is
so jealously and devotedly guarded and promoted, regardless of
incontrovertible evidence of the blatant lies contained within the official
version. The organization of Scientology knows it is absolutely critical for
its survival that Hubbard's myth be kept alive. If existing Scientologists
were somehow gotten into a psychological condition where they could be
enlightened about the full truth of Hubbard's life and death, they would be
permitted to come to terms with the spiritual fraud that has been inflicted
upon them and through them, and their departure would cause Scientology to
crumble. Scientology knows that as soon as the person no longer sees Hubbard
as a deity, as Source, Scientology will not "work" for that person.
For the Scientologist, Hubbard accepted the onus for their God-Image. No
matter what the person's original idea was about religion, he is constantly
herded into the viewpoint that Hubbard is the ultimate authority for their
spiritual freedom. The reader can fill in the rest of the blanks if he wishes
with the information contained in the alleged OT 8 materials. However, the
psychological premise of transference stands, with or without the Anti-Christ
argument. A human god does not need religion-he needs psychotherapy. What a
person gets in Scientology is Black Psychotherapy.
Hubbard himself was so wrapped up in his own psychotic inflation, that he
prescribed "Black Dianetics" to anyone who would try to destroy Scientology.
71 (Note: this reference will only be found in an early version of the PDC
lectures; later editions have been sanitized.) Through transference and
negative transference, the person is tricked into believing that it is
Scientology alone that can help him; he has nowhere else to turn. He "knows"
without question that anyone who tries to dissuade him from Scientology, that
person is an enemy, not only to him, but also to Scientology and to mankind.
Hubbard was on an endlessly looping search for his own nature. But he
believed he was himself a god or God. He believed that he was the Source and
Creator of a new civilization, a new man, a new type of god, and he projected
into every Scientologist his rendition of his own psychotic self. He was
perpetually stuck in the duality of Something/Nothing, and his message to the
world was that he had found Infinity, in the "Allness of the Nothingness" and
the "Nothingness of the Allness". His "Clear" was only an admission, a
statement of his own insane meanderings. "You are mocking it all up." He
took every Scientologist on a journey through his own sick mind.
The basis of Freud's theory was that aberration of a sexual nature was the
cause of mental illness. Therefore, a Freudian analyst would be concerned
with exploring sexual undercurrents in any patient. Why did Hubbard refer to
"Commander Thompson" for his transference theory when he had just completed a
thorough review of Freudian analysis? Was Commander "Snake" Thompson not
Hubbard's tutor, but his own therapist?
Or, could the Snake have been an inner therapist, yet another figment of
Hubbard's overactive imagination, a play on the archetypal image of the snake
we see in the "S" of the Scientology symbol? Or, God help him, could this
occult symbol for "gnosis" be the banner under which he intended to bring in
the new Aeon? 72
Hubbard makes no mention of any therapists with which he either trained or
consulted as a result of his research into Dianetics. Were the "later
analysts" he mentions in Pab 92 not analysts in general, but his own
therapists? Hubbard reportedly used hypnotism and narcosynthesis in his
Dianetics research days. Why is there no official Scientology documentation
regarding Hubbard's degrees in this area? Surely those certificates would
look impressive on his resume. Could it be that he was in fact the patient?
Affirmations admitted into evidence in the Armstrong trial that imply Hubbard
may have received some professional help for his masturbation problem from
the age of eleven. Hubbard's affirmations show that his mother was at least
somewhat familiar with psychology.
"Your mother's theories on psychology were wrong. They do not now affect
you." 73
Was she responsible for putting him in therapy? Certainly Hubbard's sexual
difficulties extended through to the 1940's, at the time of his notorious
affirmations . 74 Did not Hubbard also request psychiatric care of the VA in
1945?
Could it actually be that Hubbard, in his own deranged way, created
Scientology to pray for his own incessant suffering? Put into the framework
of transference, it appears to me at last: that within every bulletin he
wrote lurks an admission of his secret tool. Could it be that through
projection into Scientologists he desired to put a stop to that suffering for
himself? What a prayer that would be.
My experience in Scientology has taught me a few things about religion. Not
that it came in any session, or any bulletin, or any lecture. It taught me
the three things that it didn't want to teach me: I am not a god. I am a
human being. And Scientology is not a religion.
1) Hubbard, L. Ron Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health 1992 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
2) Ibid.
3) Hubbard, L. Ron Research and Discovery Series 1 1994 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
4) Ibid.
5) Jung, Carl G. The Practice of Psychotherapy 1954 Bollingen Foundation
Inc., New York, N.Y.
6) http://www.holysmoke.org/ga/admissions.pdf
7) Corydon, Bent L.Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? 1987, 1992 by Bent
Corydon
8) Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 23 June 1959 What is Scientology?
9) http://www.whatisscientology.org/Html/Part01/Chp02/pg0066.html 1996-2000
Church of Scientology International
10) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 5 June 1984R False Purpose Rundown 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 26 April 1982 The Criminal Mind and the Psychs 1991
L. Ron Hubbard Library
Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 6 May 1982 The Cause of Crime 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 15 September 1981 The Criminal Mind 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
11) Ibid.
12) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 27 October 1964 Policies on Physical Healing,
Insanity and Potential Trouble Sources 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
13) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 23 November 1969 Individuals vs. Groups 1991 L.
Ron Hubbard Library
14) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 23 October 1965 Dissemination Drill 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
15) Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 13 September 1967 Remedy B,
Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 12 May 1960, Help Processing 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
16) Hubbard, L. Ron Technical Bulletin of 22 July 1956 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
17) Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard Dissemination Course, Chapter 8C and Circuits
1986 Bridge Publications
18) Ibid.
19) Ibid
20) Hubbard, L. Ron PDC 20 Formative State of Scientology, Definition of
Logic 6 December 1952 1986 L. Ron Hubbard
21) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 16 May 1965 Issue II Indicators of Orgs 1991 L.
Ron Hubbard Library
22) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 18 June 1968 Ethics 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
23) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 5 November 1967 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
24) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 18 June 1968 Ethics 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library,
Hubbard, L. Ron Certainty Vol 7 No. 2 Why Some Fight Scientology 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
25) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 27 September 1966 The Anti-Social Personality The
Anti-Scientologist 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
26) Hubbard, L. Ron, Introduction to Scientology Ethics 1998 L Ron Hubbard
Library
27) Ibid.
28) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 22 July 1982 Knowledge Reports 1986 L. Ron Hubbard
Library,
Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 1 May 1965 Staff Member Reports 1986 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
29) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 29 March 1965 Staff Regulations 1986 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
30) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 17 November AD14 Offline and Offpolicy Your Full
In-Basket 1986 L. Ron Hubbard Library
31) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 10 November 1978RA Proclamation Power to Forgive
1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
32) Hubbard, L. Ron PAB 92 10 July 1956 A Critique of Psychoanalysis 1991 L.
Ron Hubbard Library
33) Hubbard, L. Ron Associate Newsletter #3, Mid-May 1953 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
34) Hubbard, L. Ron Associate Newsletter #3, Mid-May 1953 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
35) Hubbard, L. Ron Associate Newsletter #7, Late July 1953 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
36) Hubbard, L. Ron Self Analysis 1989 L. Ron Hubbard Library
37) Hubbard, L. Ron Pab 7 Mid-August, 1953 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
38) Hubbard, L. Ron Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary 1983 New
Era Publications
39) Ibid.
40) Jung, Carl G. Psychological Types 1971 Princeton University Press
41) Hubbard, L. Ron 10 August 1982 OT Maxims 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
42) Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 13 September 1967 Remedy B 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library, Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 12 May 1960 Help Processing 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
43) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 23 April 1969 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
44) Hubbard, L. Ron History of Man 1988 L. Ron Hubbard Library
45) Hubbard, L. Ron A Step by Step Breakdown of 88 ca July 1952 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
46) Hubbard, L. Ron Interiorization Rundown Series, Tech Subject Volume 3.
1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
47) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 22 April 1969 Somatics and OTs 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
48) Hubbard, L. Ron Scientology 8-80 Chapter 17 1989 L. Ron Hubbard Library,
Hubbard, L. Ron JOS Issue 17-G June 1952 The Limitations of Homo Novis 1991
L. Ron Hubbard Library
49) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 1 September 1991 Issue XII The Fundamentals of the
Grade Chart Saint Hill Special Briefing Course Level L Checksheet 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
50) Hubbard, L. Ron PAB 7 mid-August 1953 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
51) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 31 January 1979 Mood Drills 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
52) Ibid
53) Hubbard, L Ron Science of Survival The Church of Scientology of
California 1951 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
54) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 25 September 1971RB Tone Scale in Full 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
55) Hubbard, L Ron Science of Survival The Church of Scientology of
California 1951
56) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 25 August 1982 The Joy of Creating 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
57) Hubbard, L. Ron Science of Survival 1951 The Church of Scientology of
California Publications Organization, 1989 L. Ron Hubbard Library
58) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 14 October 1968RA The Auditor's Code 1991 L. Ron
Hubbard Library
59) Hubbard, L. Ron Scientology: 88 (Handwritten) 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
60) Ibid.
61) Hubbard, L. Ron JOS 1-G August 1952 Electronics Gives Life to Freud's
Theory 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
62) Hubbard, L. Ron Pab 83 8 May 1956 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
63) Hubbard, L. Ron, Introduction to Scientology Ethics 1998 L Ron Hubbard
Library
64) Ibid.
65) Ibid
66) http://www.ronthephilosopher.org/page20.htm 1996-2000 Church of
Scientology International
67) Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 4 June 1958 Running Valences 1991 L. Ron Hubbard
Library
68) Hubbard, L. Ron PDC Lecture 50 SOP: Spacation Step III, Flow Processing,
16 December 1952, Hubbard, L. Ron PDC Lecture 40 Games/Goals 12 December 1952
69) Hubbard, L. Ron Scientology 0-8 1988 L. Ron Hubbard Library
70) Hubbard, L. Ron Ability Minor 5 mid June 1955 The Hope of Man
71) Ibid
72) Carter, John 1999 John Carter and Feral House.
73) http://www.holysmoke.org/ga/admissions.pdf
74) Ibid.
Subject: LMT Literati Winner - Second Place: "Anti-Virus"
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 20:12:18 -0500
Organization: Lisa McPherson Trust, a Scientology watchdog group
Message-ID: <6j7g3tsjqg582mkafl9u7odt6nhn3431b4@4ax.com>
By Anti-Virus
As a former very high level auditor of the upper levels of Scientology, my
exit brought with it an attempt to find a technical explanation for the
subjective effects that Scientology creates in a person. How does Scientology
control its members? Why do Scientologists find it so hard to leave?
Transference in Psychology
Scientology and Psychology
Scientology and the New Scientologist
Scientology and Ethics
The Potential Trouble Source
Conditions Formulas
Ethics System
Overts and Withholds: O/W Write-ups
Hubbard Redefines Transference
Transference vs. Valence
The Scientology Symbol
Lower Bridge
Endless End of Endless Interiorization Rundowns
Transference in Training
Training Routines (TRs)
The Tone Scale
Auditing, Transference and Counter Transference
The E-Meter
Why Scientology Calls Itself a Religion
"THE EIGHTH DYNAMIC-is the urge toward existence as infinity. This is also
identified as the Supreme Being. It is carefully observed here that the
science of Scientology does not intrude into the dynamic of the Supreme
Being." 62
"The EIGHTH DYNAMIC is the urge toward existence as INFINITY. The eighth
dynamic is commonly supposed to be a Supreme Being or Creator. It is
correctly defined as infinity. It actually embraces the allness of all." 63
"This book is part of the works of L. Ron Hubbard, who developed Scientology
applied religious philosophy and Dianetics spiritual healing technology. It
is presented to the reader as a record of observations and research into the
nature of the human mind and spirit, and not as a statement of claims made by
the author. The benefits and goals of Dianetics and Scientology can be
attained only by the dedicated efforts of the reader." 65
"Dianetics is actually a family of sciences. It is here addressed in the form
of a science of thought applicable to psychosomatic ills and individual
aberrations.
Was Hubbard Scientology's First Illegal Preclear?
Summary
Footnotes: