1. Not that it says much about Scientology and its validity (being ad hominem and all), but here's some info on its founder, The Great and Mighty Hubbard.
His followers assert that he is not only the reincarnation of Buddha but also Maitreya, who according to Buddhist legend will lead the world to enlightenment.
I thought all religions and philosophies (except Scientology, of course) are false images implanted into Body Thetans during Incident II? Presumably, the followers mentioned above hadn't reached OT III and gotten access to that information yet.
Many outlandish claims were made by Hubbard about his achievements while in the U.S. Navy. For instance, he bragged that he had been the first returned casualty from the Far east. In fact, he was shipped to Australia in December 1941, and he sufficiently antagonised his superiors to be returned to the U.S. after only a few months.
That's one way to get out of military service, I suppose. Annoy your superiors into submission.
Hubbard managed to involve a number of craft in a 55-hour battle against what he believed to be two Japanese submarines. The incident was reviewed by Admiral Fletcher who pronounced "an analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area ...The Commanding Officers of all ships except the PC-815 (commanded by Hubbard) state they had no evidence of a submarine and do not think a submarine was in the area."
Hubbard completed this "shakedown cruise" by firing on a fortunately uninhabited Mexican island.
Ha. Awesome. He just wanted to play cowboys and Indians. Come on.
In October 1947, when according to later accounts he had "cured" himself through Dianetics, Hubbard admitted to suicidal tendencies and begged for psychiatric help in a letter to the Veterans Administration.
Heh. Perhaps his bad experience here led to his later hatred of all things psychiatric?
Hubbard continued to perform black magic rituals and started to use self hypnosis, confiding to his notebook such hypnotic affirmations as "all men are my slaves".
Useful preparation for auditing, I'd say.
Hubbard was already addicted to the barbiturate drugs originally prescribed for his ulcer. His drug use continued during his Scientology career, even though he was to sponsor the Scientology anti-drug group Narconon. Although Dianetics claims to overcome compulsions with ease, Hubbard was unable to kick the tobacco habit, and chain-smoked over 80 cigarettes a day.
Do what The Hubbard preaches, not what He practices.
Marrying hypnotic technique to research long abandoned by Freud, Hubbard came up with Dianetics.
Interesting. Dianetics is a Freudian tribute band.
Hubbard redefined the existing term "engram" as a label for traumatic incidents where the individual has lost consciousness. Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health proclaims that by "erasing" the engrams, the individual is freed from compulsions, obsessions, neuroses, and such conditions as heart trouble, poor eyesight, asthma, colour blindness, allergies, stuttering, poor hearing, sinusitis, high blood pressure, dermatitis, migraine, ulcers, arthritis, morning sickness, the common cold, conjunctivitis, alcoholism and tuberculosis. Hubbard soon claimed cures for cancer and leukaemia.
What, no athlete's foot or hemorrhoids?
Hubbard's following diminished as people realised that his claims were grossly exaggerated, and with the collapse of the first Dianetic Foundations and Hubbard's second marriage. Sara Hubbard charged that her husband had tortured her with sleep deprivation, drugs and physical attacks. She claimed that he had once strangled her until the eustachian tube to her left ear ruptured, leaving her hearing inpaired. Hubbard fled to Cuba, after seizing their baby daughter, in what proved to be a successful attempt to silence Sara.
It just gets better and better.
It was only in the late 1960s, with increasing criticism of its methods by western governments, that Scientology retreated behind the trappings of religion.
Of course.
The first stage of recruitment is to focus the person's attention on the most distressing areas of his or her life (the "ruin"). [...] Any intense emotion tends to overwhelm critical thinking. [...] he recruiter then plays upon the person's fear that the condition will worsen. Then the "solution" of Scientology is offered.
...
Scientology indoctrination usually begins with the Communication Course Training Routines or `"TRs". These are supposed to enhance the ability to communicate, but have been called by one expert "the most overt form of hypnosis used by any destructive cult".
...
the recruit might well go on to the "Hubbard Key to Life Course" (at a cost of[[sterling]]4,000 or $8,000). This supposedly undercuts all previous education by returning the individual to the basics of literacy. Factually, because it treats all clients as pre-school children, it tends to cause age regression, making people yet more susceptible to Scientology.
...
In 1959, Hubbard introduced "security checking", where Scientologists are interrogated, having to answer long, prepared lists of questions about their moral transgressions. The E-meter is used as a lie detector throughout these "sessions". A careful record is kept of all confessions, and this has proved to be a highly effective means of silencing dissidents.
...
Re: OT III and the Incident II story:
Anyone hearing of this material will supposedly become ill and die within days. However, towards the end of his life, Hubbard wanted to release the story (certainly one of his best) as a movie, to be called "Revolt in the Stars".
I somehow missed the part about making a movie. Imagine if every major religion made a movie version of itself....
"Disconnection" is virtually identical to the "shunning" practised by certain extreme fundamentalist groups.
And how is Scientology not an "extreme fundamentalist group"?
The RPF is still in use in Scientology organizations throughout the world. Those who fail to comply with orders, make mistakes or simply fall short of their production quotas are put onto the RPF. RPFers can only speak when spoken to, they are meant to eat table scraps, sleep even shorter hours than other staff, and comply immediately and unquestioningly with any order. They work a full day, doing physical labour, and are then expected to spend five hours confessing and hearing the confession of their RPF partner.
Only when they completely accept the authority of their superiors are they allowed to leave the RPF. Taming an individual in this way can take up to two years.
...
Speaking of a hypothetical splinter group in 1955, Hubbard wrote, "if you discovered that some group calling itself `precept processing' had set up ... in your area, you would do all you could to make things interesting for them ... The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment ... will generally be sufficient to cause his [sic] professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly."
What a charming man.
For eight years, from 1967 to 1975, Hubbard and his retinue (numbering several hundred) plied the Mediterranean and the Atlantic in a flotilla of unseaworthy vessels. The incompetence of the crews led to many accidents.
This would make a great sitcom. At least a made-for-TV movie.
Hubbard dismissed Buddhism through his statement that "No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring ones, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being."
Where does Scientology affirm or even discuss a Supreme Being? OT VIII and beyond? You're only allowed to know about the Supreme Being after paying around $400k?
Also, Hubbard needed to read some basic cultural anthropology.
Scientology contradicts the teachings of all of the major religions by propounding that great wealth is a virtue, a measure of spiritual success.
That doesn't contradict some versions of Evangelical Christianity nowadays....
As Hubbard put it, "When you let a person give nothing for something you are factually encouraging crime".
Heh. How precisely does one encourage factually?
Explanation of Hubbard's work is forbidden; the materials must be quoted exactly.
...
failure to achieve spectacular success (i.e., euphoric states) is always considered to be the fault of either the auditor or the preclear, never of the techniques.
...
"Advanced Courses [in Scientology) are the most valuable service on the planet. Life insurance, houses, cars, stocks, bonds, college savings, all are transitory and impermanent ... There is nothing to compare with Advanced Courses. They are infinitely valuable and transcend time itself." -L. Ron Hubbard speaking of his "Operating Thetan Courses" Flag Mission Order 375.
...
Scientologists speak and think in an elaborate language created by Hubbard (Scientology dictionaries run to over 1,000 pages of definitions).
Well, it's not a language. It's a lexicon. But close enough.
2. SECURITY CHECK CHILDREN
HCO WW Security Form 8
...
1. WHAT HAS SOMEBODY TOLD YOU NOT TO TELL?
...
15. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN MEAN OR CRUEL TO AN ANIMAL, BIRD OR FISH?
16. HAVE YOU EVER FORGOTTEN TO GIVE FOOD OR WATER TO A PET ENTRUSTED TO YOUR CARE?
...
19. DO YOU HAVE A SECRET?
...
34. WHO HAVE YOU MADE GUILTY?
Gee. That question isn't leading at all....
35. HAVE YOU EVER DONE SOMETHING YOU SHOULDN'T WHEN YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE IN BED OR ASLEEP?
Oy.
Relatedly, I wonder what Hubbard decided Scientology's views on sex were?
Since children are regarded as an unnecessary overhead in the Sea Org, young women who get pregnant are usually pressured into aborting their unborn children.
I presume, then, that birth control wasn't/isn't frowned upon.
70. HAVE YOU EVER CRIED WHEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE?
It's like he designed the questions specifically to make children insecure and psychologically unstable. And if they become more docile and suggestible as a result, that's just an unexpected bonus, sure....
3. An English translation of the OT III material.
Anyone who encounters this material without having undertaken Scientology courses up to OT 2 will supposedly die from pneumonia.
You've been warned.
Hubbard was taking barbiturates and drinking heavily when he wrote this material, according to letters he wrote at the time which are kept from scientologists by the management of Scientology.
Why didn't Hubbard just hold himself up as an example of how drugs are bad?
OT III glossary for those who have the original materials but cannot make head nor tail of them:
...
cognite - realize.
comm laggy - (comm - communication) hesitant.
I'm going to incorporate the word "laggy" into my daily vocabulary.
Interiorization processes - designed to return an "exterior" being into his body.
I assume this isn't a process anyone would want inflicted upon them?
R6 - the "reactive mind", supposedly created by the "OT 3 implant" or "incident 2".
I still haven't figured out what the number 6 has to do with anything.
theta bop - E-meter reaction, supposed to indicate that the thetan or spirit is going in and out of the body.
A dance?
TR - training routine. Role play drill (which can be practiced to hypnotic excess, leading hallucination, euphoria, heightening of colour and sound and a feeling of floating). The most famous of these is TR 8 where scientologists shout "stand up" and "sit down" at an ashtray.
Hee. What would happen if someone did that in a public place?
4. Going more deeply into the E-meter and its uses.
5. Sad!
His followers assert that he is not only the reincarnation of Buddha but also Maitreya, who according to Buddhist legend will lead the world to enlightenment.
I thought all religions and philosophies (except Scientology, of course) are false images implanted into Body Thetans during Incident II? Presumably, the followers mentioned above hadn't reached OT III and gotten access to that information yet.
Many outlandish claims were made by Hubbard about his achievements while in the U.S. Navy. For instance, he bragged that he had been the first returned casualty from the Far east. In fact, he was shipped to Australia in December 1941, and he sufficiently antagonised his superiors to be returned to the U.S. after only a few months.
That's one way to get out of military service, I suppose. Annoy your superiors into submission.
Hubbard managed to involve a number of craft in a 55-hour battle against what he believed to be two Japanese submarines. The incident was reviewed by Admiral Fletcher who pronounced "an analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area ...The Commanding Officers of all ships except the PC-815 (commanded by Hubbard) state they had no evidence of a submarine and do not think a submarine was in the area."
Hubbard completed this "shakedown cruise" by firing on a fortunately uninhabited Mexican island.
Ha. Awesome. He just wanted to play cowboys and Indians. Come on.
In October 1947, when according to later accounts he had "cured" himself through Dianetics, Hubbard admitted to suicidal tendencies and begged for psychiatric help in a letter to the Veterans Administration.
Heh. Perhaps his bad experience here led to his later hatred of all things psychiatric?
Hubbard continued to perform black magic rituals and started to use self hypnosis, confiding to his notebook such hypnotic affirmations as "all men are my slaves".
Useful preparation for auditing, I'd say.
Hubbard was already addicted to the barbiturate drugs originally prescribed for his ulcer. His drug use continued during his Scientology career, even though he was to sponsor the Scientology anti-drug group Narconon. Although Dianetics claims to overcome compulsions with ease, Hubbard was unable to kick the tobacco habit, and chain-smoked over 80 cigarettes a day.
Do what The Hubbard preaches, not what He practices.
Marrying hypnotic technique to research long abandoned by Freud, Hubbard came up with Dianetics.
Interesting. Dianetics is a Freudian tribute band.
Hubbard redefined the existing term "engram" as a label for traumatic incidents where the individual has lost consciousness. Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health proclaims that by "erasing" the engrams, the individual is freed from compulsions, obsessions, neuroses, and such conditions as heart trouble, poor eyesight, asthma, colour blindness, allergies, stuttering, poor hearing, sinusitis, high blood pressure, dermatitis, migraine, ulcers, arthritis, morning sickness, the common cold, conjunctivitis, alcoholism and tuberculosis. Hubbard soon claimed cures for cancer and leukaemia.
What, no athlete's foot or hemorrhoids?
Hubbard's following diminished as people realised that his claims were grossly exaggerated, and with the collapse of the first Dianetic Foundations and Hubbard's second marriage. Sara Hubbard charged that her husband had tortured her with sleep deprivation, drugs and physical attacks. She claimed that he had once strangled her until the eustachian tube to her left ear ruptured, leaving her hearing inpaired. Hubbard fled to Cuba, after seizing their baby daughter, in what proved to be a successful attempt to silence Sara.
It just gets better and better.
It was only in the late 1960s, with increasing criticism of its methods by western governments, that Scientology retreated behind the trappings of religion.
Of course.
The first stage of recruitment is to focus the person's attention on the most distressing areas of his or her life (the "ruin"). [...] Any intense emotion tends to overwhelm critical thinking. [...] he recruiter then plays upon the person's fear that the condition will worsen. Then the "solution" of Scientology is offered.
...
Scientology indoctrination usually begins with the Communication Course Training Routines or `"TRs". These are supposed to enhance the ability to communicate, but have been called by one expert "the most overt form of hypnosis used by any destructive cult".
...
the recruit might well go on to the "Hubbard Key to Life Course" (at a cost of[[sterling]]4,000 or $8,000). This supposedly undercuts all previous education by returning the individual to the basics of literacy. Factually, because it treats all clients as pre-school children, it tends to cause age regression, making people yet more susceptible to Scientology.
...
In 1959, Hubbard introduced "security checking", where Scientologists are interrogated, having to answer long, prepared lists of questions about their moral transgressions. The E-meter is used as a lie detector throughout these "sessions". A careful record is kept of all confessions, and this has proved to be a highly effective means of silencing dissidents.
...
Re: OT III and the Incident II story:
Anyone hearing of this material will supposedly become ill and die within days. However, towards the end of his life, Hubbard wanted to release the story (certainly one of his best) as a movie, to be called "Revolt in the Stars".
I somehow missed the part about making a movie. Imagine if every major religion made a movie version of itself....
"Disconnection" is virtually identical to the "shunning" practised by certain extreme fundamentalist groups.
And how is Scientology not an "extreme fundamentalist group"?
The RPF is still in use in Scientology organizations throughout the world. Those who fail to comply with orders, make mistakes or simply fall short of their production quotas are put onto the RPF. RPFers can only speak when spoken to, they are meant to eat table scraps, sleep even shorter hours than other staff, and comply immediately and unquestioningly with any order. They work a full day, doing physical labour, and are then expected to spend five hours confessing and hearing the confession of their RPF partner.
Only when they completely accept the authority of their superiors are they allowed to leave the RPF. Taming an individual in this way can take up to two years.
...
Speaking of a hypothetical splinter group in 1955, Hubbard wrote, "if you discovered that some group calling itself `precept processing' had set up ... in your area, you would do all you could to make things interesting for them ... The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment ... will generally be sufficient to cause his [sic] professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly."
What a charming man.
For eight years, from 1967 to 1975, Hubbard and his retinue (numbering several hundred) plied the Mediterranean and the Atlantic in a flotilla of unseaworthy vessels. The incompetence of the crews led to many accidents.
This would make a great sitcom. At least a made-for-TV movie.
Hubbard dismissed Buddhism through his statement that "No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring ones, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being."
Where does Scientology affirm or even discuss a Supreme Being? OT VIII and beyond? You're only allowed to know about the Supreme Being after paying around $400k?
Also, Hubbard needed to read some basic cultural anthropology.
Scientology contradicts the teachings of all of the major religions by propounding that great wealth is a virtue, a measure of spiritual success.
That doesn't contradict some versions of Evangelical Christianity nowadays....
As Hubbard put it, "When you let a person give nothing for something you are factually encouraging crime".
Heh. How precisely does one encourage factually?
Explanation of Hubbard's work is forbidden; the materials must be quoted exactly.
...
failure to achieve spectacular success (i.e., euphoric states) is always considered to be the fault of either the auditor or the preclear, never of the techniques.
...
"Advanced Courses [in Scientology) are the most valuable service on the planet. Life insurance, houses, cars, stocks, bonds, college savings, all are transitory and impermanent ... There is nothing to compare with Advanced Courses. They are infinitely valuable and transcend time itself." -L. Ron Hubbard speaking of his "Operating Thetan Courses" Flag Mission Order 375.
...
Scientologists speak and think in an elaborate language created by Hubbard (Scientology dictionaries run to over 1,000 pages of definitions).
Well, it's not a language. It's a lexicon. But close enough.
2. SECURITY CHECK CHILDREN
HCO WW Security Form 8
...
1. WHAT HAS SOMEBODY TOLD YOU NOT TO TELL?
...
15. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN MEAN OR CRUEL TO AN ANIMAL, BIRD OR FISH?
16. HAVE YOU EVER FORGOTTEN TO GIVE FOOD OR WATER TO A PET ENTRUSTED TO YOUR CARE?
...
19. DO YOU HAVE A SECRET?
...
34. WHO HAVE YOU MADE GUILTY?
Gee. That question isn't leading at all....
35. HAVE YOU EVER DONE SOMETHING YOU SHOULDN'T WHEN YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE IN BED OR ASLEEP?
Oy.
Relatedly, I wonder what Hubbard decided Scientology's views on sex were?
Since children are regarded as an unnecessary overhead in the Sea Org, young women who get pregnant are usually pressured into aborting their unborn children.
I presume, then, that birth control wasn't/isn't frowned upon.
70. HAVE YOU EVER CRIED WHEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE?
It's like he designed the questions specifically to make children insecure and psychologically unstable. And if they become more docile and suggestible as a result, that's just an unexpected bonus, sure....
3. An English translation of the OT III material.
Anyone who encounters this material without having undertaken Scientology courses up to OT 2 will supposedly die from pneumonia.
You've been warned.
Hubbard was taking barbiturates and drinking heavily when he wrote this material, according to letters he wrote at the time which are kept from scientologists by the management of Scientology.
Why didn't Hubbard just hold himself up as an example of how drugs are bad?
OT III glossary for those who have the original materials but cannot make head nor tail of them:
...
cognite - realize.
comm laggy - (comm - communication) hesitant.
I'm going to incorporate the word "laggy" into my daily vocabulary.
Interiorization processes - designed to return an "exterior" being into his body.
I assume this isn't a process anyone would want inflicted upon them?
R6 - the "reactive mind", supposedly created by the "OT 3 implant" or "incident 2".
I still haven't figured out what the number 6 has to do with anything.
theta bop - E-meter reaction, supposed to indicate that the thetan or spirit is going in and out of the body.
A dance?
TR - training routine. Role play drill (which can be practiced to hypnotic excess, leading hallucination, euphoria, heightening of colour and sound and a feeling of floating). The most famous of these is TR 8 where scientologists shout "stand up" and "sit down" at an ashtray.
Hee. What would happen if someone did that in a public place?
4. Going more deeply into the E-meter and its uses.
5. Sad!
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