Ensifer

I just wanted an excuse to use the image above in my blog. And what better excuse than to have a blog entry about fun in Scientology as opposed to the standard fare of anger, depression, failed purposes, dead OT’s, scheming private eyes, refund cycles and bickering over whether there really is such a thing as a spirit or if the whole subject is just a money-making scheme gone crazy.

So how about I talk about what made being a part of Scientology fun? Up until it wasn’t fun anymore.

From my earliest experiences at the Dallas Center, being a part of a Scientology group was exciting due to the fact that my mother and Red Shea, along with all the adults in the group, loved to party. When I stayed with her (usually holidays and the summer break) it seemed like every week-end was a party week-end. Back yard BBQ parties, indoor parties, costume parties – which they named “Come as your favorite valence” parties – or just hip get-togethers where we all listened to Dave Brubeck on Norm Mehr’s awesome hi-fi set-up and smoked and everyone talked about thetans and implants and intoxicating subjects like out-of-body traveling or what 8-C really meant.

Red Shea in his pirate "valence" at a Dallas Scientology party. Probably about 1962 or so.

That picture there on the left is a fine example of why a young kid might want to hang out with a bunch of crazy weirdos like Scientologists. How cool is that? A pirate! Forget for a moment that pirates didn’t actually wear flip-flops or nice wristwatches… Red looked the part. And he was, after all, a Chief Engineer and certified Master of all Seas who made his real money running massive oil tankers from the Arabian oil fields to the USA.

It’s as if the fun never stopped when you became a part of the Scientology groups I was familiar with. Whether in Dallas or during my time in St. Louis or over at Saint Hill, back in Boston, out in Los Angeles at ASHO, there always seemed to be something happening where people got together… usually involving beer, wine, whiskey and the outside chance of some late night interlude with a comely Scientology lass.

My apologies to anyone offended by me mentioning that in the “Old Scientology” people actually got laid without some humorless ethics officer getting involved. To be really honest… in the Scientology of the 60’s and 70’s we all fucked like rabbits. Which may, in part, explain why so many kids are in the Sea Org… the spawn of the 70s’, so to speak.

Reading about how things are now it appears that sex outside of marriage is either frowned upon or heavily policed by Scientology salespeople and FSM’s to ensure that money that ought to be going to the church isn’t being spent on off-purpose things… like dinner and drinks, or lingerie.

So back to the parties and fun part of being a Scientologist.  I don’t want to give the impression that getting together to drink, smoke, dance and do crazy stuff was the main attraction of Scientology for those of us in the “Baby Boomer” generation. But think about it… Scientology exploded in that 1968-1975 era and the main components were young people in their late teens and early 20’s. Thousands of us. And we actually liked the generation that preceded us into the fray. We enjoyed their company. Another example of old people partying? Here ya go –

Dallas Scientology BBQ. Dolores (my gorgeous mother), Nick Nichols and his then-wife Edie Nichols. Laughing, smoking and having a cold one in the Texas twilight.

I have no idea who the guy in the shirt with the billowy sleeves is, but does it look to you like he has a scarf in his mouth? What’s that all about?

Over in England, at Saint Hill, there was a party every week-end. Actually, there were so many that you had to choose. I went to parties in 300 year-old houses that were haunted or parties where really shitty bands played shitty music in a truly shitty fashion. But it was fun and we smoked and drank warm beer and saw ghosts flitting around in the trees. Then out in Los Angeles it was truly crazy fun. Beach parties, parties in the Hollywood Hills or the old-style Scientology events that didn’t involve a bunch of stone-faced staff members and Sea Org people hell-bent on keeping the riff-raff out while simultaneously ensuring that nobody left without writing a check.

And what about the original Celebrity Center? Any of you people remember that one? It was in a crumbling brick building down on 8th street in LA. Party central! Whether it was Chick Corea or Stanley Clarke performing or everyone chatting up John Travolta – who was just getting known as Vinny Barbarino from his hit TV show – anyone could just walk in, start dancing or talking, hitting on girls (or guys, if you were a girl… or a guy who leaned that way) and just enjoying the hell out of being a part of something as cool as Scientology.

In fact, thinking about Celebrity Center, one of the most memorable performances I have ever been privileged to see was at that old building. One night Heber Jentzsch performed and even though it was 40 years ago I can still see and hear his magnificent performance. For those who never actually met Heber, or didn’t know him before his rise to fame and then ultimate disappearance, Heber has a powerful, powerful voice. As I recall he was one of several Scientologists around LA in that period who had acted in the movie ‘Paint Your Wagon’ and I think he can be seen singing in that movie. So anyway, Heber apparently was a lover of American Traditional songs from the turn of the century…. not this century, the last one. He sung one song that I knew from growing up and he did the best rendition I have ever heard. Even now, writing this, I can hear his incredible voice hitting the plaintive wail of a backwoods hick lamenting the passing of his Ol’ Dog Blue.

Man. Why is that guy not enjoying his life, grand kids on his knee and passing along the richness of his experience to them? Where the hell is Heber?

I actually went and tried to find a version of the song that Heber sung that night that came close to his performance. Even with YouTube and millions upon millions of people singing and videoing and uploading, none of them are within 100 miles of his talent. Well, maybe this recording from about 80 years ago is close, but as the line goes in the song ” Ol’ Blue’s voice was big and round”… it was Heber who had the ‘big and round’ voice. Listen, if you have 3 minutes, to this classic version –

When I finally decided to quit working for other people and open my own Scientology Center the tradition of fun continued. We had plenty of party events at the Center in Fresno, and not just holiday parties. Although we put those on as well. Sure, we were in the business of selling Scientology training, auditing and books, that’s a given. But it’s not as if we were only servicing an emotionally depressed clientele who just wanted to come in and find a way to claw themselves up out of some overwhelming suicidal hole they were dug into. I think one of the reasons we did so well and made good money and produced those all-important ‘stats’ was that we were having a great time. And not just the staff either. Everyone was invited to join in the fun.

So we did our own ‘come as your favorite valence’ parties where people wore costumes, booze was served and prizes awarded for best valence. I never won, being the owner and all, but I do want to share one of my best valences with you:

A typical 70's Mission Holder and his main squeeze.

In addition to seamy costume parties we did talent shows –

That's Bill Wadhams there on the left belting out a Rock n' Roll song. You may remember him from his 80's band 'Animotion', they had a huge MTV hit called "Obsession".

Why should you care one way or the other about fun when there are more important things Scientology is supposed to be doing? Well, because it seems to me there aren’t many things more important  than having fun. I asked at the beginning of this entry ‘why so serious?’… and I really believe that’s a critical question. Sure, some of you out there actually believe that you are engaged in an eternal struggle with evil SP’s and a menacing, destructive, shadowy mind-thing that “keys you in” whenever some random set of events sparks it into gear. And others of you might be all serious and concerned that unless you get to whatever End Phenomena you so urgently believe you need before your “meat body” dies, that you’ll be doomed to starting over again from scratch next lifetime.

Yeah… well… sure. That’s important… -ish. But does it all have to happen like right now? How about the concept that finding a group of people who share your love of exploring the mind but don’t demand that you pony up all your free money, turn your kids over to a maniacal guy in a sailor suit for a billion years and don’t require you to spend endless hours and dollars revealing all the terrible things you’ve done? Which, by the way, they write down and keep in a locked room.

So here’s my question – are you having fun in Scientology? Not the forced fun of going to events and giving standing ovations to the Chairman of the Board while cheering gleefully. But, you know… fun? The rough, sometimes dirty, often ridiculous fun of youth and wildness. More and more…. during my final few years being a professional Scientologist I saw an increasing level of disapproval from the management hierarchy when it came to fun. Whether it was silly orders to not go see ‘The Exorcist”   because you might get keyed in (yes, that really happened in LA) or the assertion that if your kids (or you) played Dungeons & Dragons you could restimulate some of the hidden horrors lurking in your Reactive Mind… waiting to lay you low and hinder your progress up the Bridge. And now ‘good Scientologists’ don’t surf the net without some nanny-bot program protecting you from all the fun that anonymous protesters are having.

Do they let Scientologists surf for porn? Good God! If that had been available in my era I’d probably have had to restrict access for 90% of my staff. Not for me… of course. I have self-control.

I don’t really have a message today for current and ex-Scientologists, just a reminder. If it isn’t easy, if it isn’t fun, then it’s probably not going to end well. That’s true about love. That’s true about finding your vocation. That’s true about friendship. Those things always feel easy… feel light… make you smile from the joy of exerting and building. And if trying to bring those people and moments of value into your life is a grim chore – then you might just be a little too damned serious about the process of being alive.

Have fun.

Now there’s a question that has been being asked for 50 years or so.  And while there are no easy answers to the question there are technical answers. Technically, in the eyes of the IRS here in America, Scientology is a church.  It’s been that way for about 40 years now. And if you look at all the stationary, the corporate filings, the ministerial garb and promotional materials it appears, on the surface, to function much like what we here in the Western World imagine a church functions like.

Yet if you look at how the organizations operate on a day-to-day basis Scientology is a church only in the loosest sense.

For those of us who were around prior to the official proclamation by L. Ron Hubbard that Scientology would now put on church clothes and start acting like a church the idea of being religious, for us,  had always been an ill-fitting suit. I’m not religious. And for the most part almost none of the thousands of Scientologists I have been acquainted with or the hundreds I have had friendships or working relationships with were religious either. We didn’t pray. We didn’t submit to any God. We didn’t take vows of poverty (unless we joined Org staff or the Sea Org), our functions as staff or Scientologists weren’t reverent or ritualized in the sense that we ever felt the source of our salvation or potential spiritual freedom was bestowed by a supreme being. And so we didn’t honor or bow down to a deity.

But we had to become a church for the simple reason that being anything else would mean the end of Scientology. And the end of auditing.

So Hubbard morphed us.  Arnie Lerma has one of the better web sites out there among the array of anti or ex web sites. His struggle against the RTC version of Scientology is both ethical and emotional. All you have to do is read his story, particularly the bit about how he was treated when it was discovered, via confidential session reports, that he was mere days away from marrying one of Hubbard’s daughters. Here’s Arnie’s location in electronic space:

Lerma’s Net Home

Having been around for a while, Arnie’s site is extensive. There are gems and veins of gold hidden away in the various pages and links he provides. And while it’s not updated daily (or even weekly sometimes), it’s probably the best place to go on the internet for references and exposès on the more nefarious goings ons over the years. He documents clearly the events, years apart, that set the path and then cast it into concrete that Scientology had to be a church rather than a business. Here’s an interesting one, direct from Hubbard’s prolific pen:

Realize that Hubbard wrote these words in 1954,  the same year he incorporated the Church of Scientology of California and one year after he founded the Church of Scientology in New Jersey.

Huh?

Whatever you, as a past or present Scientologist, may believe about the churchiness of Scientology, it’s plain to see that the founder of  Scientology did not see it as a church. Becoming a church was the solution to two problems:

1. Taxes

2. Auditing

Taxes because, like all businesspeople, Hubbard wanted to keep more of the money his business made for himself. I’m no different. Well, except I never named my retail store or my restaurant a church in order to scam my nation. The auditing thing is a little more subtle. In fact, except for myself and maybe one or two people I’ve known over the years I’ve never had a conversation about how Hubbard used the false identity as a church to retain the right for his students and staff to audit.

Auditing was at risk because even the casual student of the history of Scientology knows that Hubbard’s first pitched battle for legitimacy was with the AMA and the APA. The doctors because, well, because they’re doctors and concerned. The psychiatrists because they took a look at what Hubbard was doing and determined that it was either a scam or not safe in the hands of untrained therapists. The move was on in the early 50’s to shut down Dianetics and require that anyone doing Dianetic therapy had to have a license. Which meant they had to go to college and get a degree. Which meant that the control over whether Dianetics or Scientology could legally be delivered would rest in the hands of the very groups who felt it was either a scam or a threat.

So Hubbard solved it by creating this  →

Alan Walters and Dean Stokes. Holy practitioners of the scriptures of Scientology.

Every time I see that picture of Alan and Dean I crack up. Neither of these two could have been in any way mistaken for actual Men of The Cloth. Yet, according to the C of S, they were. Thinking back to the 70’s, when this photo was taken, we all knew the whole church thing was a load of crap. Alan laughed about it and carried on with his plans of world domination and amassing of money and Dean… well… Dean is just Dean. I never really had a sense of what Dean was all about except that he smoked a whole lot more than I did.

I bought a clerical shirt and white collar and wore it exactly once. When my best friend died and the memorial was held at Celebrity Center in Hollywood I wore the damned thing. I felt like an impostor. And I was.  The whole church-thing was – and is today – a big circus. It’s a show. It’s deceptive. I know it. You do too. You may not admit it, but you know damned well that churches don’t do the things Scientology does. And those that do conduct themselves in the manner the Church of Scientology has eventually end up in the news… and in criminal court.

Hubbard was a smart guy though. He knew a real church had to have a spiritual leader… or recognizable master. And Hubbard was, if anything, not lacking in the ego department. Think about this if you will… why else would there be busts and huge wall-sized pictures of Hubbard in every Org and Mission on the planet? Why is it so, so important that Ron be treated… even in death… like a savior? The only possible reason for building an image of Hubbard as not only the “Source” of Scientology, but as the spiritual deity of it is to create a atmosphere of blind acceptance of anything attributed to him.

Blind obedience.

And now, since the guy has been dead for 25 or so years it’s just a matter of editing his books, changing a few things here and there to suit modern times and much larger financial goals…  and what we have is a written and spoken Bible of Scientology comprised of a score of books and several thousand hours of taped lectures. So we have a bible and we have a cross.

The cross, by the way, has been around since the 50’s and while I do think it’s little more than pretty imagery, Hubbard actually attached some decent significance to it in the description of how it represents the 8 Dynamics of Scientology. The story goes that he was excavating some ruins in Arizona … Spanish I imagine… and discovered the cross in the sandstone.

Yeah. Right. If you’ve ever read Mission into Time then you might just be a wee bit skeptical about this story.  I’m more inclined to go along with the story that credits the cross to the Ordo Templi Orientis. Crowley was a seriously occult dude and Hubbard did, after all, marry the sister-in-law of his American Pope –  Jack Parsons.

None of this stuff… not the lies, not the purposeful creation of a Godlike status for L. Ron Hubbard, not the tax scams or uncomfortable clothes means that practicing Scientology is without merit. Like anything that is unprovable and entirely subjective, Scientology auditing has value that is determined solely by the person willing to pay the money and hold the cans.

What the deception does though is it creates a facade of religious legitimacy that is a very effective shield in modern society. It also spreads the “ether” through malleable groups of people faster than the Bird Flu can rip through a chicken farm.

HOW THE MISSIONS DEALT WITH THE UNCOMFORTABLE IDEA WE WERE A CHURCH

For the most part, Missions prior to 1982 ignored the whole church facade unless we needed it. So we, as Mission Holders, were effectively… in on the sham. For a couple hundred bucks we filed the non-profit corporate papers with the state. Then we added the cool-looking cross to some stationary… I had regular stationary that said something like ‘Scientology of Fresno” and then official stationary that said “Church of Scientology of Fresno”. The latter I used when corresponding to anyone who gave a shit about appearances in the Orgs and to the State Tax board, the former we used for everything else. We had Sunday Services… sort of. When I knew there was a Sea Org mission coming or we had a wedding scheduled or something we put a Sunday Service on the calendar.

Other than that, we operated as an efficient training and counseling business with the added bonus of not having to mess with taxes. Just write a weekly check to the Mission Office for 10% of the gross income and carry on as if we weren’t actually a church. Which we weren’t… actually a church, I mean. It was deceptive.

Oh, and it also made getting married a lot easier and kept me and my crew of staff and public from feeling out of place in real churches. When I got married in 1977… uh, wait… 1978 (sorry Cindy)… it was easy. I called my friend Allen Kapular who was a fake minister of the fake Church of Scientology, he drove over to my place with his multiple cartons of filtered cigarettes and his portable oxygen tank (I shit you not) and we all went outside and he hitched us up. Didn’t cost me a dime. Except the extra booze I had to buy  for Allen.

Me, the incredibly patient and beautiful Cindy and Allen. The portable oxygen tank was just out of camera range.

Take a look at that picture above. What kind of church has ministers who chain smoke so much that they can’t even put their cigarette down for the freaking wedding photos!!!! And yes, Allen died of lung cancer. But he had a damned good time up to that point.

Your opinion, of course, may differ from mine about whether Scientology is deceiving anyone by pretending to be something it isn’t. In fact, you might be right and I might be wrong. I mean, how many decades does a group of people who think they are a church have to think they are a church until they actually are a church? It’s like acting isn’t it? A good actor “thinks” like the character he or she is portraying. They get into the role. They imagine they are a sniper or a cop or a betrayed wife, a cuckolded husband or a scheming cattle rancher and they soon begin to do less acting and more of the natural things their character would do.  Right?

It makes for great theater.

Over the last couple of months the opportunity has arisen for some lengthy conversations with a few Old Time Scientologists from my past.  Hmmm, I guess if you look at it from their perspective I’m from their past. Either way, they are people who I “knew” very well. That makes them both friends and people whose opinions I value. And, seeing as how two of them are currently either on staff or receiving services I’ll restrict my comments to the two who have left the Church of Scientology.

One of my friends is not a trained auditor. The other is a Class VIII and has a similar history in the Mission network to mine. Each had very different points of view regarding how they felt about the current CofS. But before I get into that I want to mention something that struck me as important from another, much more popular blog by an ex-Scientologist. The post was by a guy named Glenn Samuels and it was on Marty Rathbun’s Moving on Up a Little Higher blog.

I always think of that old TV show The Jeffersons when I see the title of Marty’s blog… you know… “to a deluxe apartment in the sky… moving on up…da-da-da-da… “. Okay, got sidetracked there. Back to the business of no longer being a Scientologist.

So what Glenn discussed in his lengthy entry on the blog were all the instances of out-tech being criminally perpetrated by the current regime running Scientology. I reread the post twice because it’s a little “dense”. Not dumb dense… dense in the sense that there is a lot of information to digest in order to get the gist of what he is saying in his evaluation of the current practices of Scientology.  I kept coming back here, to his number one observation in his bulleted list of outpoints:

1. Thought stopping and filtering what one says due to fear of punishment from session data. Not being able to talk freely, cutting their own communication to the auditor which obliterates the basic reason auditing works.

I gave that item some consideration and eventually concluded that this complaint, while perfectly valid, is not a creation of the David Miscavige and his RTC regime. In fact, as far back as I can recall there have been very clear and precisely defined aspects of Scientology, the “tech”, the organization, the history of L. Ron Hubbard, the Sea Org and more that Scientologists wouldn’t freely talk about.

For example – Did Hubbard actually discover Scientology?

Or how about all the articles and investigative journalism about Hubbard’s fabrications of his military and other history? Or the matter of how exactly it is that Dianetics morphed in Scientology and then morphed into the Church of Scientology.  And why were so many Clears observably not Clear at all. At least in their actions, displays of “case”, wild 2D indiscretions, financial woes, fistfights and tendency to need tons of additional review and rudiment auditing? I haven’t even started on the questions that had to be lingering, unspoken, in the minds of thousands of Scientologists from my era when they met actual OT completions who, for all intents and purposes, were no different than a non-Scientologist who is jacked up on life and feeling good about things in general.

What happened to, you know… THE POWER OF OT’s!!!!!!!!

I’ll guarantee you that if you were on the Class VI course at ASHO in 1969 and you openly questioned the myth of Hubbard’s naval service or mentioned in public that you didn’t quite understand why so many Clears you knew were casey and routinely demonstrated “bank”, you’d have been sent to the MAA for PTS handling.  And even questioning the Church aspect meant you were further indoctrinated into the script about why it’s really a church. Really, really a real church, not just a tax dodge. The script for the addition of “church” in front of Scientology was that we were spiritual counselors and therefore equal to any organized religion. We even have ministers with collars, Sunday Services and can perform legal marriages and the like. Just no praying, God or free tithing. We were the church with a price list and teams of hunter-killer salespeople who could sniff out a structured settlement faster than a squad of J.G. Wenthworth reps, expedite the sale of a house, do laser surgery on a credit application and sense an unmolested 401K in the middle of a financial meltdown.

About the only difference I see between ‘then’ and ‘now’ is that Scientology has existed an additional 30 years or so. Which means there has been the opportunity for thousands of more people to leave it when they came to the end of their money, patience or willingness to keep quiet about their doubts. And now that I’ve used the word “doubt”… go reread the Doubt Formula and see if it’s not really designed to quell curiosity and the questioning of absolute authority.

Okay. So now my two old friends. One left when I did, back in the early 80’s. The other more recently. The difference between the two when I have a conversation with them about Scientology is remarkable. The person who left in the 80’s… the trained auditor… is point blank in stating very clearly that the vast majority of what was accepted then as truth and fact… is pretty much bullshit. The recent blowee (nice word, huh?) is still somewhat under the ether when it comes to Hubbard, the evilness of Miscavige, the idea of a regimented, standard Scientological technical path to whatever the ultimate goal of a thetan is;  total freedom, immortality, reversing the advancement of aging, etc., etc. etc.

I dig both my friends. other than the fact they’re terrific people, they have a common, shared history that parallels mine and it makes for good conversations that are somehow more satisfying than the daily norm I go through. Yet I still believe that the recent blowee is suffering from years and years and years of deception. Not only incoming deception – where you are lied to by someone. But self-deception. And the more I think about it the less I am mystified about why on Earth anybody who reads the  descriptions of the EP’s of the upper levels would ever give another nickle to a Scientology organization.

Of course it’s easy for me to say. Now. I haven’t been a Scientologist for 28 years. The bloom is definitely off the rose in my case. But it took a while. During the beginning days of the world-wide explosion of the internet us ex and the current Scientologists along with all the Clambake folks and wild asses like Dennis Erlich and probably a respectable number of fat guys with computers sitting in their underwear… we all found each other on Usenet. The forum was alt.religion.scientology and it was extremely popular back in the early and mid 1990’s. I posted there frequently for a couple of years and looking back – because the internet never, ever goes away – it’s clear to me that even 10 years after leaving, I was still defending “the tech”.

Those of you who have extra time or are just morbidly curious can find my offerings under my fake name “wolf tripp”. I am both embarrassed by my unwillingness to just “let go” and at the same time, a little proud that I at least distilled the mesmerization with Hubbard as God away from what I saw as value in the training and auditing Scientology had to offer.

Still, the fact remains, from my several decades of watching Scientology and having family and friends who are active and vocal participants in it, pretty much the entire premise of Scientology being special, or a discovery or anything like a “path to total freedom”, is patent bullshit.  And I say that as a person who has done several thousand hours of auditing, started more than one successful Mission, trained hundreds upon hundreds of people, been directly responsible for a few thousand getting into Scientology and even being considered an Opinion Leader by enough people for me to feel uncomfortable because of the admiration.

Here’s the point where you might ask – if you were here – “David? What about all the case gain and wins I personally got? Are you trying to invalidate those very real effects that the tech had one me?”

And if you were here, I would answer – “Certainly not Bob (or whatever your name is). I got tons of gains and good stuff myself from the training and auditing.”

So what’s the point? Why the hell am I suggesting that Scientology is deceptive? The answer is – “Because it is deceptive.”

The premise, the root, the most foundational pillar that must be accepted in order for anyone to fully “be” a Scientologist is that Scientology is both unique and simultaneously a path towards some distant state of OT immortality that is not available elsewhere. The chances that you, the current or ex-Scientologist reading this blog either currently accepts that reality, or did accept it at one point is probably close to 100%.

Why else did you give those people $100,000? Or 10 or 20 years of your life? To imagine that anyone, me included, would fork over huge sums of money and giant, vital decades of our lives for something that we didn’t absolutely believe was the only thing available is…well… naive. And to just walk away and freely admit that you were not only clipped, but that you were a willing participant in your own clipping is more than even strong, independent egos can easily handle. It’s, as they say, way out-gradient.

But hey! You’re here, reading this. And that means you’re in the process of unbinding yourself from the deceptions that you willingly paid for and that you purposefully lied to yourself about.

THE TECH WORKS THOUGH

Yes. Yes it does. I know that as well as anyone because I committed many acts of tech over the years. Still do, in fact. Going back to that Glenn Samuels article I mentioned earlier, he tells a story about how Hubbard did plenty of auditing without an e-meter and so forth and so on. Which just tells me that often times when you’re involved in a discussion with an insightful and helpful person and when that person has a record of directing communication in certain patterns to achieve certain results (EP)… then you’re being audited. I’ve done it about a jillion times with my children. Or with employees, fellow workers, friends and family.

Good two-way communication that results in one or both people feeling relief and looking at life with a new-found excitement is NOT UNIQUE TO SCIENTOLOGY. Nor did L. Ron Hubbard discover how to communicate effectively. Nor will it make you immortal. And it won’t cause money or acting gigs to drop out of the sky or ancient memories of buried treasure to resurface. But it will give you enough clarity of mind to not miss good events when they appear. Of course it’s still up to you to act upon circumstances.

WHAT I LEARNED ON THE CLASS VI COURSE

If you have done any auditor training at all then you have listened to scores or even hundreds of hours of Hubbard lecturing. Through the training up to Class IV and then the SHSBC and then onto the Class VIII course what I remember the most is having those effing headphones on my ears for hundreds of hours. Taking notes, getting check sheets signed and then more and more and more and more taped lectures. That’s what Hubbard did. He talked about whatever direction his thoughts took him and then he wrote tech bulletins and policy letters based on the free association of the lecture.

And he was damned good at it as well. Not to mention, the guy wrote like a demon! The very definition of prolific.

So there I was, sitting in the classroom listening to one of the huge check list of SHSBC tapes and Hubbard started droning on about repetitive processing. It’s been over 40 years so how about I paraphrase what he said on this one tape? In essence he declared that anything done in a repetitive fashion that had some sort of orderly design to it is capable of producing a positive result on a preclear.

Anything? Well, that’s what he said. Anything. So, if for example, you were depressed and unhappy and couldn’t get laid and hated your job – I could, as an auditor – have you come over to my house every day for 2 hours. During that time we could walk through a park, a mall and then a quiet neighborhood and if I asked you at the beginning of the walk to tell me what was on your mind, and we did that every day for two weeks… you’d probably make case gain.

All I would have to do is understand that we needed to to the same thing every day – go the same route – and that I needed to merely prod you a bit when required, make subtle acknowledgments that I heard what you said, and not offer my opinion about anything you brought up. I once made a joke about this – admittedly in bad taste – that most preclears were so ready for change and wanting to get better that you could probably charge them $50 and hour and instruct them to stand on their head in the shower stall, turn the water on and masturbate… and most of them would float the needle at the examiner.

Yeah, ridiculous, I know. But Hubbard said as much. Okay, not the shower and uhhh… other part… but the principle is the same. What he apparently understood was that the words and patterns, while important, weren’t the real reason people seemed to become happier in Scientology. It was the fact that someone was paying attention to them and directing their words, patterns and attention. And the deception is that Scientology has the means to ascend to some exalted state of being that isn’t available elsewhere.

Speaking of exalted states…

WHY AREN’T OT’S DIFFERENT THAN NORMAL SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE?

Some years ago a reg from Flag was out here in Idaho beating the bush for money and he called me up. I cheerfully accepted his invitation for a lunch date and we spent a pleasant couple of hours together. He wanted to recover me. I was curious about what, if anything, had changed in the several years that Miscavige had been running the show. When he attempted to run a must/have – can’t/have on me regarding my immortal thetan and relative level of success or meaningful contribution to ‘the planet’ he brought up a bunch of celebrities and quite a few successful Scientologists that he knew I had associated with or knew.  These guys often do their homework.

The gist of his pitch was that the successful people I knew, who were still involved, were successful because they were Scientologists. Of course, that’s exactly what just about every Scientologist says… when they’re winning. Before they get pissed off and blow. Of course they attribute success to Scientology. That’s what they’re doing! What else would they attribute it to?

Well, if a person isn’t a Scientologist and is rich, successful, happy, contributing meaningful things to his or her fellow humans, creating beautiful art or music, winning awards, being admired and just living a dream… then how the hell does Scientology explain that? Or how does Christianity or Islam or any “faith” explain the simple, observable fact that plenty of folks do quite well and are happier than a pig in mud… and they aren’t being guilted into forking over massive amounts of cash.

How do you explain Bill Gates?

My Flag guy had no choice but to fall back on the same damned trick that the first shamans used to get out of real work and attain power over others… he assured me that immortality – the real kind, the OT kind – was just not available anywhere but in the Scientology Bridge. What he wanted me to believe, because he certainly did, was that we live in a world where despite clear evidence to the contrary, Scientology is the only subject capable of taking a spirit from degradation to immortal freedom. And to think… a mere twenty years before that day I probably would have accepted that deception. Because I wanted it to be so.

Now, in 2010, we know quite a bit about how deceptive Scientology has become. Also, if one is willing to confront it, how deception has always been the glue which sticks thetans to Scientology. So when Glenn Samuels, who I sort of know and respect, says that is one of the trademarks of the current out-tech regime… the hampering of free, unfettered communication… what he isn’t saying is that this has always been the case with Scientology. In fact, it’s pretty much always been the case with any organized religion. That’s how religion – and I still don’t accept that Scientology is a religion in the strict sense – has always controlled it’s flocks. Threat and deception. Take God’s name in vain? Extra tithe and some penance. How is that any different than being ordered to Review to get additional Sec Checks and then having to work your way through some laborious and Kafkaesque ethics cycle?

It isn’t any different. It’s all about controlling you and your communication and it always has been about that. Oh sure, back in the 60’s and 70’s things were new and fresh enough that the deception was more a background murmur. Whereas today the deception is overbearing and rigorously enforced and, if people like Marty Rathbun can be believed, it will be enforced by cadres of private eyes and undercover agents coming at you hammer & nail bent on squelching you and your right to communicate.

By the way… one of the friends I talked to recently called me from Flag. About a year or two back we had several lengthy conversations where he was definitely ‘on the edge’ regarding what Scientology had to offer him at this point. He’s a successful man who earns plenty and has an overall nice life and the undercurrent of his communication was that the direction of the current management of CofS was very, very troubling to him. But not now. He’s back on the path. I found it particularly meaningful that he specifically mentioned that he was doing great at Flag because he’d had a bunch of witholds pulled.

Ain’t that interesting? I’ll tell you all what I think of that in the future… after I do some posts about where Scientology actually came from and the real reason it’s a church.

Thanks for reading. Sorry about not adding any pictures. I’ll remedy that soon.

One of the curious side-effects of too much Scientology theory and not enough forward motion in life is the tendency for some Scientologists – not you, of course, I mean them – to just stop moving forward with time and get all hung up trying to figure out what caused some incidental phenomena. Deciding you are PTS, or a Potential Trouble Source as a cause for a temporary event like getting ill is a common way to freeze yourself in time while the rest of the world clips by you at freeway speeds.

Having just recovered from two days of bed time due to a 24 hour flu bug I thought I might share with you the first time this particular bug lodged in my gut and knocked me on my ass. And yeah, my 24 hour flu bugs often last for 48-72 hours. I need the extra sleep so I like to drag them out just a bit by playing the “I’m sick” card.

In early 1968 I finished up my R6 at St. Hill. We were told that in order to proceed to the Clearing Course we had to go to a secret location somewhere in the Mediterranean. Since this was over 40 years ago I have no idea where I came up with the money for the plane trip. Maybe someone lent it to me? More likely they just bought me a ticket because I was broke. Whatever the case, if you’re person who paid my way to Spain… thanks.

Six of us flew down to Valencia. Yeah, we knew were we were going, apparently it was tough keeping a secret location really and truly secret unless you were willing to pay for the airfare of the people who were headed to that secret place. We were told to buy tickets to Valencia and keep our destination a secret. I’ll tell you right now, I was looking forward to heading to Spain. The winter of 1967-68 in England was brutal. From what I overheard listening to actual English people talk was that it was the most brutal winter ever. Or at least for many decades. I was constantly cold and so any chance to head to a warmer clime was an added bonus for me.

So we left gray old England, rose above the clouds to the first sun I’d seen in a couple of months and then descended into the gray clouds covering the Spanish coast. Hooray.

My memory gets a bit sketchy here as well, but I seem to recall a couple of people in dusty naval uniforms with grayish-white blouses that had dirty collars meeting us at customs. They were in some sort of small vehicle and so instructed us to get a cab to the port. So we did. Then we walked for quite a ways and came upon a black and gray vessel that had the correct name: The Royal Scotsman.

Faces peered over the edge at us, we walked up the gangplank and went through lines. Again, everything was grayed out… at least that’s how I recall it. My personal stateroom wasn’t gray though. It was beige… with yellow tones. Not bad for a closet. I had to audit, sleep, brush teeth and change clothes in the tiny little space. There was a fold-down table top that dropped over the sink and the bed folded down from the outer bulkhead. A single light burned overhead and while it wasn’t emitting gray light, it was pretty dim… sort of beige-yellowy-gray. Here’s what we saw when we boarded:

The Royal Scotsman. Launched in 1936. The first Sea Org home.

I was on board for maybe two days when I got slammed by some sort of intestinal virus. When I say “slammed” I really, really mean slammed. Hit hard. Flattened. Run over. Creamed. Rendered unconscious. One minute I was fine, enjoying the view of gray ships in gray water with a low gray ceiling of threatening clouds and surrounded by gray-faced Sea org members scurrying around in what seemed to be endless gray circles… and the next minute I was sicker than a dog, moving in and out of consciousness and being sick from all orifices in a 4×6 closet. Thank God for portholes! I recall awakening several times and just pitching whatever foul things I was wearing or using out the porthole.

I was down for the count over a 2 day period. Then it took me a day to recover. Partly I spent my recovery day cleaning up my closet and slipping out to the common shower several times to douse myself in clean water. There was some rule about only 30 seconds of hot water for “guests”, but I said “Fuck ’em” and ran as much as I wanted. Sea Org people weren’t allowed any hot water anyway, so there was plenty for me.

So here’s the good part…

Not once did anyone ever ask where I was. Nobody knocked on my cabin door. I was officially on the Clearing Course and so was required to audit daily and then turn my folder in for C/S’ing every night.  None of which occurred. To this day I have no idea what the folks in charge were doing or thinking regarding my absence. To say that being on the Flagship in early ’68 was a bit creepy is somewhat of an understatement. It was real creepy. Somewhere during my stay LRH either left for or returned from the fabled Mission Into Time journey on that little sloop that was faithfully followed by the slightly larger trawler that carried whatever Hubbard felt he needed if he came across Xenu’s secret prison. Perhaps the reason I wasn’t missed is that more important events were transpiring that eclipsed something as mundane as a paying public doing the Clearing Course… which just happened to be the whole reason many of us were in Scientology to begin with.

The two other Sea org vessels. I bagged this from one of the CofS sites so it will remain until somebody threatens me. Then I suppose I'll start Googling in earnest and fine images they don't own.

What does all this have to do with being PTS, you ask?

Nothing really. In reality I hadn’t thought about being on the Flagship or my illness until I got sick the other day. The “bug” just reminded me of something… it had a particular harmonic to it that was similar to another point in my life and since I had nothing to do but sleep, turn up the electric blanket and introspect, I ran down the only other time such a feeling had knocked me flat.

I don’t recall any particular assignment of causation when a Scientologist got sick until sometime after the Sea Org was fully established as the dominant policy-making Org in Scientology. Before PTS=ill surfaced there was PTS as a condition that had distinct sources and a clear effect on an individual’s ability to make and retain case gain. People got colds, flu, head aches and other assorted things all the time and were never diagnosed one way or the other. hell, it’s possible that some CMO twerp came to my stateroom, opened the door, wrinkled their nose and then reported back to the C/S that “he’s sicker than a dog” and they just left me alone.

When I finally recovered I simply started auditing again and suffering through the unbelievably bad food the galley served to paying customers. And here I want to comment on one thing… where the hell did the idea for scrambling up some eggs with some tomato chunks and then baking them in a pie pan come from? What a godawful thing that was to both behold and consume. And I did consume the food. We were, after all, on a ship and it’s not as if I could just pop off and go to McDonald’s for something tasty and healthy.

When Fred Hare laughed at me for making faces about the food I asked him what was so funny. He pointed out that except for officers like him, the crew didn’t eat nearly as well as the Public did. Ouch. At that point I’d have felt sympathy for the Sea Org people except for the fact that I knew each of them had willingly signed up for the experience. The smart ones like Fred remained Officers or left the ship to do Sea Org business out in the field, where people still had a life and access to clean sheets and decent food. Alan Walters comes to mind as one of the folks who somehow remained a Sea Org member when it was convenient and a non-SO person when it suited him. I think it was really because he felt the uniform was stupid-looking.

Your opinion on that may differ from mine.

Anyway, I just want you to understand that many of you are obviously Suppressive Persons or you wouldn’t be reading this blog or any of the dozens of other suppressive blogs and web sites. And, since you are most likely suppressive, and we all know that SP’s make innocent people sick… I most likely got sick because I’m connected to you…even if it’s a tenuous, electronic connection.

But I got better. Despite your best efforts to suppress me. Thank you.

It’s possible I’m wrong… but… the general impression I have of what it’s like to be a Scientologist now is unlike what it was like to be a Scientologist before 1982. It’s simple stuff…

Everybody used to smile. All the time. No really, except for the times when smiling and laughing were inappropriate the one thing I saw most for 21 years was people in and around Missions and Orgs smiling. And if they weren’t smiling they were laughing. Or at least walking around with a look of contentment or perhaps expectation on their faces.

The other day I spent about an hour reminiscing on the phone with a fellow who I’ve known since about 1970. He pretty much followed the same path as I did professionally. Got trained. Became a Cl VIII, did a boatload of auditing, worked around the US at various Centers and such. Even became a Mission holder. The last time we physically saw each other was in October of 1982 at the San Francisco Hilton. He’s a smart guy because he took one look at the new regime and did what I did. Walked away.

So during the conversation he says to me – “If it isn’t fun, it isn’t Scientology.”

I’ll admit, I haven’t been in many Orgs or Missions since 1982. But, I have been around Scientologists and you know what? They are a pretty serious bunch of people. Forget the glossy magazines and pictures of beaming Public holding up OT certificates for the camera. I was the Div 6 boss at ASHO back in 1969 and I know what a success “stat” is. I also know that people completing something, a level or training cycle are generally happy. What I’m talking about is the general attitude or tone. Even those people who I’ve known for decades and are still on lines are more serious and concerned than they should be.

So it was pointed out to me that the whole “Clear The Planet” goal has fallen by the wayside and the current leadership has now morphed the goal into something a lot less distinct. I’ve looked over some of the magazines and promo pieces I get daily in the mail and I can see that. Is it now about buying buildings? Or fighting off government malice? Or suppressing evil on the internet? I’m confused. Maybe that’s why people on lines are so serious.  30 years ago you got into Scientology because you wanted to be a happier and more able person. You bought some time in the chair or a training course and, for the most part, you became more able and thus… happier.

Right?

People who can do shit and have a reasonable degree of personal ethics about the shit they do are generally happy and smiley. Whereas, if you are already reasonably affluent and your primary contact with Scientology is an endless procession of auditing cycles to repair, prepare or augment your “case” so you can do some freakish OT section without total theta death… then I can see why you might be a just a bit grim.

Add to that the constant and unrelenting demands that these barracuda SO teams have on your cash. You must pay for buildings and Ideal Orgs and the make-wrong that goes on in those reg sessions is not something that generates a beaming smile. I know what those teams (missions) are like. They came to my Mission in California frequently and they were not happy people. They had a stat to get and that stat was to leave with money I controlled and people I got into Scientology. That was it… they either got my money and my staff or public, or they failed. And the Sea Org has never been compassionate about it’s members failing.

If you worked for me, worked with me, were audited by me or just knew me then you probably understood that everything for me was about having a great time and winning. I believe most professional Scientologists back then had similar goals… to make a good living, get laid as often as possible, buy some decent things to wear, drive, eat and sleep in and spread as much of the joy of just “being there” as they could. Yeah, the whole Infinite Being thing was there, but it’s not as if that sells a lot of intensives or Comm Courses. People just wanted to feel better and live a less stressful life.

I had my own way of dealing with the relentless Sea Org missions that were fired off to get my cash. I typically had the receptionist bring them into my office when they first arrived. I set the tone of what their visit would be like. Here’s a picture of how I set the tone:

"Now then... what was it you boys wanted?"

The SO Reg Teams weren’t exactly my enemies… not on a personal level, but they were the foreshadowing of what Scientology was going to become in the 80’s and 90’s. They were serious people who had serious problems and they were going to be in serious trouble if they couldn’t get people like me to understand that all this fun we were having was contrary to LRH purpose lines and we’d better get serious ourselves out there in the field or some serious shit was going to happen that would have a serious impact on our lives, our futures and our immortal thetan-thingies.

Any of you guys reading this who were tasked with getting money from me can probably verify that the picture above is a fair representation of the tone I tried to set for your visits. But it was also fun for the staff and, for the most part, fun for the Sea Org flunkies. Along the way I was actually accused of having too much fun from time to time. As far back as when I was on the SHSBC the small percentage of  “serious Scientologists” – future Sea Org members – wrote a considerable number of Knowledge reports on me. Primarily for violating the “joking & degrading” clause of some HCO PL Hubbard penned. I read that PL and despite the fact that I admitted to being the guy who taped a sign on Joey Allessandrini’s back that said “I’m a Pud”… while we were on the Class VIII course… I still contend that having fun is not exactly the same as degrading someone or something. Joey smiled, and retaliated. Even the supervisor couldn’t keep a straight face.

It’s not as if getting better at stuff requires seriousness… does it?

I guess it does now. And despite all the pomp and circumstance, the gorgeous buildings, the imagery of the vastly competent saviors of humanity, led by David Miscavige, the one thing I do understand is that the whole thing has become way too serious to be effective. If it’s not fun, it’s not Scientology.

Oh, I almost forget. Recently a picture has surfaced of Miscavige taking over the Missions in 1982. I thought I’d pass it along to you all…

nshlas20q1