Ensifer

What this site is all about

If you have followed any of the popular web sites and blogs concerning Scientology you’ll have noticed that most of them deal specifically with events that have transpired since 1982. More specifically, the main subjects of discussion center around David Miscavige, the Sea Org and how people manage to escape from the clutches of the much-reviled Billion Year Contracts.

There is also considerable information and opinion regarding L. Ron Hubbard, the nebulous events surrounding his death and the disposition of his estate. Tom Cruise and other celebrities are featured on most sites and almost nobody among the legions of ex-Scientology and ex-Sea org populace has anything positive to report on Scientology’s love affair with celebrity.

I don’t want to seem overly critical… but… my level of sympathy for what this Sea Org member or that Sea Org member went through is pretty low. Except for the kids that is. Those who were raised by parents who were also in the Sea Org. Those people didn’t actually have a real choice in how they were raised. Realize though, Miscavige himself was one of those Sea Org kids. While that doesn’t excuse any of his actions as an adult, it does explain some of how he used the tools and environment that he lived in to create an ideal scene for himself.

My goal is to tell a story about the 20 or so years leading up to the formation of the Religious Technology Corporation and the take-over of the Church of Scientology by Miscavige and his henchmen. I also grew up as a Scientologist, albeit a Scientologist from an entirely different and probably decidedly foreign Scientology that most bloggers write about on the Net. The Scientology I was a part began when Hubbard’s aim of making a Clear hadn’t been realized. Nor were there any OT Levels or a Sea Org. It was a different world than the one ruled by the Sea Org, Flag, FSM multi-level marketing schemes and mass revisions of Hubbard’s writings and intentions. Well, my view of what I imagined Hubbard’s intentions were.

A couple of things –

I left active participation in Scientology in 1982. I was one of the attendees at the infamous San Francisco Mission Holders meeting where Miscavige, Leserve and his crew of thugs took over Scientology and obliterated the Field. So far I haven’t found a detailed report on what transpired at that event and I intend to write one during the course of telling this story.

One of the blogs I came across had a short contribution from a gent by the name of John McMasters. John is a South African who was very close to Hubbard in the 60’s. Whether by design – because of his distinguished appearance and obvious skill at speaking coherently and with intelligence – or just happenstance, John was the official Clear #1 back in the late 1960’s. As I recall it was around 1967.  Anyway, in John’s article he stated that it seemed to him that Scientology changed course and became something entirely different when Hubbard changed the mission statement of his organization. Scientology used to be all about this – “Making the able more able”.

John MacMasters. He's the one standing. Duh. That's my mother Dolores on the left. The other lady I know but can't recall her name. This is at St. Hill in the mid 60's.

As John related, Hubbard himself had written that a cleared cannibal was merely a cleared cannibal. Removing or de-stimulating what hinders a person mentally or emotionally is no guarantee you’ll end up with a different person. Actually, it’s pretty much a guarantee you’ll get a person who is better at being whatever he or she was before they were “cleared”. As John said, it was when the mission statement was changed to “clearing the planet” that the whole nature of what we, as a group, had wrought with this collection of writings, interpretations and pronouncements that Hubbard produced. I agree. I never felt any sense of connection to the concept of clearing the planet. Besides being idiotic, it’s naive and unattainable.

In fact, it’s arrogant and detestable. Sorry folks, it is. If you have even passing knowledge of religion in the 20th and 21st Centuries you’ll know about the Mormons baptizing dead people. If not, I’ll give you the short version. In the Mormon church it’s vital that any spirit – alive, dead or unborn – be baptized into the LDS church. Failure to do so will leave them to Satan. The LDS (Mormons) are similar to Scientology in that they are stat-keepers as well.  One of the stats they are concerned with are how many of these souls-in-transition are baptized. So in order to get their stats up they started baptizing dead people. Jews, Catholics, whoever.

There was an uproar.  I found it amusing. And I found the arrogance and determination of the Sea Org and it’s goal of ‘clearing the planet’ amusing as well. Any of you reading this who were once a Sea Org or staff member who actually voiced that goal… I have news for you. You were rendered temporarily stupid by a purpose that is not only deranged, but all but impossible.

In the era of my Scientology we were concerned with doing the business of enhancing the abilities, perceptions and energy of people on Earth who are already “able”. It was beautiful. Sort of like playing a pick-up game of softball for money except you get to bring in a bunch of major league players on winter break. A whole team of ringers. Scientology was an assortment of communications skills, techniques for drawing out painful and destructive memories and eradicating their effects, common sense study and organizational tactics and a series of honest, effective tools for maintaining relationships with family, friends and associates. All nicely packaged with a Code that left each individual the responsible party for their own decisions.

Good stuff.