One thing I run into often when describing Scientology as a harmful fraud with no benefits or value is folks claiming "wins" and "gains". This post is to address how people experience this in an activity that I claim actually has no benefits. It certainly fails to produce clears and OTs as Ron Hubbard described them. Additionally it upon careful inspection really doesn't produce the releases and other states it claims. It doesn't erase the fictional fraud called the reactive mind.
So many of the remaining claims have been described as hypnosis in earlier posts describing exteriorization as dissociation from psychology, euphoric trances from Guided Image Therapy (another hypnotic technique plagiarized), feeling brighter is described in my post Insidious Enslavement: Study Technology as a deceptive mind control technique, and Hubbard used rhetoric and sublime writing to enthrall his victims. That means by writing in a manner that inspires positive emotions he mentally stimulated and enslaved his victims.
But that leaves another category of wins still to be accounted for: feeling listened to and accepted, perhaps even valued or loved in auditing, on course or even just in the orgs or cult environment.
To describe my opinion on the gains of feeling accepted or safe and acknowledged I want to refer to several ideas for comparison.
Recently on The Brain with David Eagleman (a 6-part PBS documentary series on the human brain) neuroscientist David Eagleman describes the way our minds process information in a hypothesis. He describes us as accessing memories from our current perspective to perceive the past, using current information to perceive the present and using information and imagination to make decisions on the future.
He describes a process I will paraphrase. Say you can go out for a walk, get ice cream or read a book. You imagine the result of each choice and based on that you pick the most desirable. Obviously you rejected other possibilities to even get there and have some concept of short term and long term consequences. You might feel the ice cream is most fun short term but your health would benefit more long term from the walk and your mind might benefit from the book. You in this hypothesis work all this out, perhaps below your conscious awareness, but you use the information you have to create ideas, behaviors and emotions related to decisions and their consequences.
Seems logical once it is spelled out. Like common sense really. Okay, what can be taken advantage of to influence you to be tripped up in making decisions this way to be exploited by another and act against your own interest ? How can this system be turned against the very mind it is meant to serve ?
It is so simple it evades the thinking of most people. In fact we naturally don't even consider it. While there is another category of people that do it as first nature.
The weak point is the information that is used to decide. If it is false you can be manipulated to make decisions that are against your interest and favor someone else's.
This devious method of information manipulation is lying. The type of people that live by lying are described as the cluster B personality disorders in some models. Along with Antisocial PD, Borderline PD, Histrionic PD, there is Narcissistic PD as cluster B personality disorders. In examining Scientology I have focused on Narcissistic PD, Malignant Narcissism and Antisocial PD as they are epitomized in the twisted mind of Ron Hubbard and through his doctrine and methods the minds of his victims and organizationally through the Scientology cult.
Hubbard described his feelings on lying very clearly:
"THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them."
- Ron Hubbard, "Off the Time Track," lecture of June 1952, excerpted in JOURNAL OF SCIENTOLOGY issue 18-G, reprinted in TECHNICAL VOLUMES OF DIANETICS & SCIENTOLOGY, vol. 1, p. 418
Hubbard mirrored a quote by a man he studied in depth and modeled much of his actions off of : Adolph Hitler.
"Great liars are also great magicians.” Adolph Hitler
I covered many similarities in Nazism and Scientology doctrine in my post Hubbard and Hitler.
But the point of showing the great value Hubbard and Hitler both placed on lying is showing that both black-hearted men were willing, even eager to manipulate the minds of men through using false information to lead them against their own interests.
Narcissists, Sociopaths and malignant narcissists are notorious for pathological lying. In fact they have a reputation for a particular brand in which they know they must claim their victims' virtues as their own while projecting their faults (crimes) on others ruthlessly.
For them this becomes first nature as a survival mechanism. They are like sharks that cannot survive out of the water of their deception. Others can live above water, but they cannot. The truth is death and the lie is life.
They create a lie of a life one hundred eighty degrees from the truth. I in great depth described how Hubbard did that in Scientology's Parallel In Nature: Malignant Narcissism and Hubbard's use of this in Propaganda By Reversal Of Meaning In Scientology.
The cluster B needs to pretend to be an entirely different person and knows it. They reinvent themselves to be accepted and admired. How ? They may utterly lack empathy, and if narcissists and malignant narcissists lack both empathy and humility but they learn a different skill. They absolutely need this to survive. Cold empathy.
Cold empathy has been described as the ability to predict and calculate the emotions and emotionally influenced behaviors of others while having no compassion or empathy emotionally yourself. It is a cruel mockery of real empathy and far inferior but for predators a vital skill for passing as a human with normal emotions.
Some of them know they aren't like others. Others think everyone is like them and all notions of empathy, compassion, honor or love are false. The ones who know they are different often feel they are a higher, better brand of human. Either way they instinctively hide their true nature and mimic normal people to pass as normal.
They see what is appropriate in sad situations for others and what makes normal people happy. They learn to predict human behavior. They then simulate the behaviors that will create the behaviors in others they desire.
Since they already are constantly lying to hide their crimes, discredit their enemies and to simply pass for normal just playing others for dupes is not much of an adjustment. Minor really.
So the question arises among people seeking recovery from abuse by sociopaths, narcissists and malignant narcissists - did you ever love the person that abused you ? Now every situation is not identical to be sure. But when you realize the person you loved, trusted, felt safe with, imagined a bright future with, and believed in is so vastly different from the person who didn't love you, betrayed and lied to you, endangered you, and used false futures to manipulate you while knowing they would never provide the character, feelings or future they promised with a web of lies it is fair to say you couldn't love the person - you never knew them. You loved a lie.
It felt real and true. It simulated a healthy relationship so it felt good like a healthy relationship. You certainly could have felt gains and wins from the relationship. The lie can feel good until it falls apart.
In Scientology auditing you think you are being encouraged to open up about yourself and share with a trustworthy person in a supportive environment. That naturally feels good.
But it is all a lie. The terms in auditing and Scientology indoctrination are lies in themselves. Thousands and thousands of terms that describe fictions for fraud. Engrams, time tracks, tone levels, the entire subjects of Scientology and Dianetics are mountains of words that describe entirely false subjects.
So vast and complex as to be incomprehensible to most people who don't lie pathologically. But first nature for a Hubbard.
Dianetics and Scientology are deception by design. Your Course Supervisor and auditor probably didn't know it but it is a lie from a harmful abuser nonetheless. Hubbard himself. He made a lie factory that fools its victims into fooling others. So well it feels like wins and gains. But are they real or a lie ?
