Danny Masterson's Scientology Success

Danny Masterson's Scientology Success

Danny Masterson

Danny Masterson's Scientology Success

I have been writing about Scientology since leaving Scientology in 2014 after being in the cult since 1989.

I have to admit that I used to dislike the celebrity stories regarding Scientology and saw them as mostly salacious and inaccurate gossip, especially if the majority of media companies did the stories. There are a number of people who as journalists and authors have done superb work on the topic but for the twenty or so people who have done a great job we unfortunately have the rest of the media that mostly did an uneven job at best and a terrible job at worst.

I know these stories get the most attention from the media and general public but I was opposed to them in general for a variety of reasons and found them exasperating and saw them as mostly harmful. I found them harmful because in my opinion they don't represent the majority of experiences in Scientology and the majority of effects created by Scientology.

You can't inform the public if you tell them inaccurate things and things that you don't find the context for. Scientology has beautiful buildings in Clearwater, Florida and Los Angeles, California and thousands of people in both areas. 

But the details of the lives of these people involve coercive control and covert mind control efforts so insidious they are intended to traumatize, confuse, and mentally enslave people without their knowledge or consent.  That's relevant.

The people in Scientology are pressured to get heavy indoctrination in Scientology doctrine. They are also heavily pressured to follow the doctrine in a very rigid and fundamentalist manner. You have to get with the program in Scientology regarding your behavior or you will be be encouraged more and more harshly until you are excommunicated and have to disconnect from everyone you know in Scientology. 

If you don't want this outcome you have to disconnect from everyone you know who is not in good standing in Scientology. At first this may seem ambiguous but in practice it's not. In practice thousands and thousands of people are encouraged to disconnect from everyone who doesn't join Scientology and remain in good standing. If like myself you have a wife and two children who are introduced to Scientology and decide they don't want to be Scientologists it is routine to be pressured over and over again to leave your family. Yep. 

Scientology which promotes itself as building strong families in reality has torn apart many, many thousands, probably tens of thousands, of families over seventy plus years. 

I met several hundred people in Scientology in my twenty five years. I was involved mostly in the Buffalo New York organization and briefly was at the organizations in New York City and Los Angeles, at The Excalibur Building in New York and as part of the KTL/LOC evolution in LA respectively. I spent a couple of months at each of those places.

I have interacted with far more ex Scientologists after leaving than I did while in the organization and I have read numerous biographies and accounts by ex members since leaving Scientology.

Scientology probably had a peak membership of around a hundred thousand active members perhaps in the eighties or nineties and has been dwindling in the following years and today is likely at twenty thousand or so members max. Perhaps it's even significantly smaller. 

For many years after leaving Scientology I spent hundreds of hours examining literature and videos on cults and Scientology and its true history to understand what actually happened to me and what I was a part of. 

I saw that the media on rare occasions does good or great work regarding Scientology but it is generally not as good as I wish regarding accuracy and depth. 

I have seen more and more higher profile stories of Scientology emerge in the last few years and I have seen the rise of people who describe Scientology and cults in the areas of the internet and YouTube. The fact is that now a number of people have reached a larger and larger portion of the population. The fact is that these media are different from television shows and magazine and newspaper articles.

You can write extensive and detailed information in a blog. You can dig deep into the language and doctrine of Scientology in numerous YouTube videos and you can be simply self taught or an ex cult member and not a journalist.

The fact is that you can go into far more detail in these areas. 

The rise of the popularity of the subject and the publication of more and more books on Scientology and cults combined with the more in depth and in many cases more accurate media available have created an environment more conducive to education regarding cults. 

Plainly if the public is "cult curious" or "Scientology watching" they have a great chance to get good and accurate information where this was a less likely outcome just a few years ago. 

They can read any number of books now or start reading The Underground Bunker blog by Tony Ortega or watch the YouTube videos of Scientology experts such as Jon Atack or Chris Shelton and get a really good understanding of Scientology. 

Recently the ex Scientologists making YouTube channels and videos of their own has exploded and as of this writing is north of thirty. And I am just including the ones I know of that regularly create content. 

And there are even more people who in my opinion are creating good content regarding cults and Scientology who were never in the cult such as Steve Hassan, Janja Lalich, Daniel Shaw, Rachel Bernstein, and several others.

So, this has created the pleasant surprise of an environment where people in the media are better informed about Scientology and cults quite often than they would have been before and they in turn are doing a far better job of informing and educating the public. And because of the more interactive experience you have with social media and YouTubers this creates a sort of a feedback loop in which the public corrects and informs the media.

Thirty years ago an inaccurate story didn't get a bunch of immediate responses by people who have a list of quotes and court rulings and citations to back up their claims, now it often does. 

If you have a YouTube channel or blog or you post on Twitter if you are completely off base you are almost guaranteed to get information to enlighten you. You have to either adapt or get burned. 

The fact is now in my opinion thanks to the hard work of Jon Atack, Tony Ortega, Mike Rinder, Leah Remini, Chris Shelton and a lot of other people the truth is both more accessible and more accessed regarding Scientology than ever before by a tremendous degree. 

The public certainly deserves credit for listening and reading and opening their minds to the information but they have a far greater opportunity. Someone once said you can't know what you can't learn and you can't learn information if you don't have it available for your examination. 

In the past you had to make a huge investment in time and effort to even discover who to ask for accurate information and you had to personally look up records and study psychology and hypnosis and the occult and on and on to investigate Scientology. And you had to be able to somehow even know the subjects that Scientology is related to or derived from to start on your way. 

But the situation is increasingly improving and likely to only get better as the thirty plus Scientology YouTubers create content.

The current environment is one in which numerous other people are doing stories on Scientology and they are all kinds of people who have all kinds of channels. I see people who cover a variety of topics and people who cover law and ex cons and people who review books and other content creators who have been making videos on Scientology.

Of course the documentaries and high profile books by people like Mike Rinder and Leah Remini and their award winning series Scientology and The Aftermath have helped tremendously.

Now both YouTubers and traditional media outlets are not approaching things as they used to. Now they are coming to the story better informed. They are beginning to say, "In Scientology there is the practice of disconnection and thousands and thousands of families are broken up, I read your book and I saw the families telling their stories in interviews!" And they are beginning to say, "I read the Scientology policies that forbid reporting Scientologists to the police and understand this is a high crime in Scientology, which results in a suppressive person declare and excommunication from Scientology which includes disconnection from your family." 

People are telling these crucial truths so much that they are being accepted as established facts, which is good because they happen to be the truth. 

So, the stories that used to be celebrity gossip and often inaccurate now have the truth bleeding into them. It's not true every time anyone does a story, but it's increasingly the case that the truth about disconnection and the truth about hiding crimes and the truth about other things is more and more becoming a necessary component to do a Scientology story. 

If you don't have these facts, the public rips into you. So, you feel compelled to say them unequivocally, whereas before they were either not mentioned or were stated as unproven or with ambiguous language. That's no longer the case more often than not. 

So, now the story of Danny Masterson has put the practice of hiding crimes in Scientology by prominent people (especially wealthy celebrities) front and center and done the same thing regarding the practices of disconnection and fair game. 

You can't accurately tell the story of the case and the history of the events and charges without explaining that the women were told they were forbidden from reporting their rapes to the police. You can't tell the story of the case and the many years after the rapes before the trial without explaining how Scientology reframed the rapes by Danny Masterson as the fault of the victims and gaslighted them for daring to acknowledge being raped by a rich and famous Scientologist. You can't tell the story of the case without telling how David Miscavige directed the fair game practices to utterly ruin anyone who could harm the reputation of Scientology and this includes women who are raped by Danny Masterson, so David Miscavige directed the fair game campaigns against these women and their families. (David Miscavige Scientology leader pictured below)

So, as a result of the combination of his fame, wealth, a far better environment for telling accurate and complex stories about Scientology and people doing a much better job in both providing and consuming content regarding Scientology an almost miraculous transformation has occurred.

Now, the story of Danny Masterson is in my opinion being presented in a far better way than past stories of this kind would have been and is being understood by the public far better, in my opinion they are understanding the details about Scientology practices and doctrine far, far better than they would have before and this includes the reprehensible conduct by David Miscavige and people following his orders and the explicit policy of Scientology and the actions of all the people involved from Danny Masterson himself to his victims to the Scientology staff and Sea Org members and the people in their lives who discouraged the victims from seeking justice, often including their own families.

This simply wouldn't have happened a few years ago. 

The better informed media are doing a better job and the new media are doing a more in depth and comprehensive job, making this possible.

I think Danny Masterson said he wished people knew what Scientology was really like years ago. 

I am optimistic in my surprise that I think to a far greater degree a far greater portion of the public is getting the truth about Scientology now and understanding it far better.

Danny Masterson has a great "success" for Scientology. He has shown millions that Scientology will protect a serial rapist in himself if it will protect the public relations image of Scientology. He has shown Scientology will humiliate and blame victims and destroy their families and threaten them with fair game campaigns and then carry them out if they speak the truth. He has shown clearly that David Miscavige is directing these efforts. He has shown clearly that David Miscavige is willing to lie, lie, and lie about the practices and doctrine of Scientology over and over. You don't have to spend twenty five years in Scientology and the better part of a decade studying the true history of the group like I have to see it. The abundant evidence is on blogs and in the court record. 

Danny Masterson has shown who he is, who David Miscavige is and what the Scientology organization is and does.

He has succeeded in what he wished for - we now have millions of people who have the truth about Scientology and his actions were a catalyst for that happening.

Ultimately I am not ecstatic about this, even though I believe it is cathartic for many people who were in Scientology or other cults or abusive relationships and feel vindicated or finally heard or understood because of this.

I know at least five women testified bravely about the terrible crimes Danny Masterson committed against them and there are many more accusations that have not resulted in charges whether it is because of the statute of limitations or the place the rapes occurred or other reasons. By no means do I believe Danny Masterson only committed two or three or even five rapes. I am not saying that at all.

If I had the option to either have the status quo remain or to magically make the rapes disappear and never have happened, I would change the past and take away his terrible crimes.

Maybe Danny Masterson magically gets a conscience that he lacks in the past or just knows he would get caught if he rapes someone and restrains himself out of self interest (retroactively) and we never get the story and trials. 

I hope I would have the past changed because those women matter, their lives matter, their happiness and peace of mind matter. And I am not so callous as to want them to suffer to gain the benefits of the media attention that came as a result of their suffering. It's too high a cost, by orders of magnitude.

But in reality I know that I have no way to make that bargain for the survivors, though I wish somehow I could, because they matter far more than the story.

But I have to deal with reality, not my preference. The survivors certainly have to deal with reality.

I don't expect the verdict or sentence to take away their pain or remove the trauma inflicted on them. I hope the verdict, the sentence, the fact that they stood up and persisted and the fact that they are being seen and in my opinion believed in a way they would not have been in the past gives them some degree of peace and even hopefully a chance to move forward. 

I have had more than a little experience with trauma and think we often don't leave it behind or completely heal from trauma quite often, especially severe trauma, but we can hopefully move forward sometimes and carry it with us. 

My deepest wish is for the survivors to get the greatest relief possible and to have the fullest recovery possible and I think that should temper any joy we have regarding the truth increasingly coming out more fully and accurately to more and more people. For the truth about Scientology and the horrific crimes tied to Scientology to come out, tragically the crimes had to exist. 

I have over six hundred posts on Scientology at Mockingbird's Nest blog on Scientology. Most of them are listed with descriptions of categories at my blog archive by category.

• Blog Archive by Topic

Danny Masterson's Scientology Success

The Big Empty part 6 Deconstruction

 The Big Empty

This is the sixth post in a series on the state a person may find themselves in after leaving a cult. It's in part my own personal experience and in part the result of reading several books on cults and seeing the biographies of ex cult members and their remarks about life after the cult. I recommend that all the posts in this series be read in order from first to last as several build on points made in the earlier posts.

Note: here is a link to my blog archive by topic which has almost all my older posts at the blog sorted into categories for your convenience.

• Blog Archive by Topic

Part of the mindset and transformation that many long term and heavily indoctrinated cult members go through is worth examining. This can help to illustrate how devastating the eventual rejection of cult doctrine and the cult founder and leadership is. It's not a minor setback.

Quite often cults have a few features in common. As I have pointed out in earlier posts the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton describes this quite well as do several books I have referred to. 

There are many useful experts and models regarding describing the changes a cult member goes through and I have referenced many earlier such as Robert Jay Lifton and his eight criteria for thought reform, Margaret Singer and her book Cults In Our Midst, Daniel Shaw and his book Traumatic Narcissism, Alexandra Stein and her book Terror, Love and Brainwashing, Steve Hassan and his BITE MODEL, Jon Atack and his numerous books and articles.

All of these in my opinion are bona fide experts on the subject with a good understanding of the topic and a very useful unique contribution to the subject that has helped me personally. I think you are on the right track if you examine the work of these experts.

I want to focus on a particular part of the cult indoctrination process to highlight how it changes one so they end up in the position I described that some ex cult members find themselves in if they eventually reject the cult and the doctrine totally.

A quote from Wikipedia on the book Combating Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan gives a useful bit to examine:

Three Steps of Mind Control

Hassan claims there are three steps to gaining control of someone's mind: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. Unfreezing means "breaking a person down," changing is when indoctrination is introduced, and refreezing means building someone's new artificial cult identity.

Unfreezing can be induced physically, by depriving someone of sleep or food, by changing their diet, or by overloading their senses; mentally, such as by being intentionally confusing and contradictory; or emotionally, by making people feel like they are not the best judges of their own needs or that by leaving the group, they are giving up on an opportunity to change their lives. Hassan notes that unfreezing is best done in private, such as on the three-day weekend trip he took to the Unification Church commune, but can be done in more public spaces. However, it is generally important not to allow people alone time to think and reflect. As such, unfreezing is often done in groups.

During the change phase, the cult doles out the new identity. They do this through repetitive motions or lectures and seminars focused on the same topic, such as how bad the world is and how only the enlightened can fix it. Other cult members play an important role in identity indoctrination by creating a sense of community. These communities can then enforce behaviors using praise and shunning. When he was with the Moonies, Hassan describes how they separated recruits into sheep and goats, sectioning the goats off into their own group or asking them to leave lest they dissuade the sheep from joining.

According to Hassan, the most important part of refreezing is the denigration of the past self. Cult members must not want to return to their old lives and old identity. This may include giving up on their old hobbies, friends and family, often in a public setting, and confessing their sins to the group. Members may have distorted memories during this phase. Cults often pair new recruits with more seasoned members, instructing the new ones to imitate the older ones in all things. In this phase, cults may use outside cues like a new name, clothes, or language to cement the new identity. New members are also quickly converted into recruiters, as convincing people to believe something actually cements one's own belief in the same thing.

The entire cycle of indoctrination may be repeated over several years. End quote Wikipedia

The idea of the three steps was credited to Kurt Lewin for some time, but now its origins are disputed. 

I want to focus on certain aspects of the changes that cult members undergo to demonstrate clearly the effects they have and how one gets to the final result they arrive at when they eventually reject the cult.

Hassan's quote above included the following: "Unfreezing can be induced physically, by depriving someone of sleep or food, by changing their diet, or by overloading their senses; mentally, such as by being intentionally confusing and contradictory" 

I have previously described how Scientology indoctrination is intentionally confusing and contradictory and the techniques can overload the senses.

Hassan went on: "During the change phase, the cult doles out the new identity. They do this through repetitive motions or lectures and seminars focused on the same topic, such as how bad the world is and how only the enlightened can fix it."

Obviously Scientology is jam packed with repetitive motions in the indoctrination in both the courses and auditing. There are literally thousands and thousands of taped lectures that focus on how bad the world is and how only the Scientologist by studying Scientology can fix it. And in looking at how bad the world is in Scientology doctrine one develops an interesting habit quite often.

One becomes practiced at finding flaws and inconsistencies in the world and people and practices around them that are not part of Scientology.

The website TV Tropes has the category "Deconstruction." It has the following description "Deconstruction" literally means "to take something apart". 

Cult members take apart the methods and ideas of outside society. In Scientology the government is criticized, religion, other subjects and systems. Hardly anything is left untouched. 

Whatever values and beliefs one had prior to joining a cult get devalued and discarded as part of this process. As your old life and identity is rejected and cast off belief in the old self and old ideas and ways of doing things are degraded and broken down and reframed as no good. 

Often cult members have criticized the systems and values of the outside world to a point of habitual deconstruction and it becomes first nature and a hard habit to break.

Regarding anything that is not "of the cult", being cynical and disdainful is so deeply ingrained that a condescendingly arrogant attitude is often not even noticed by a cult member in themselves, despite being constantly present. 

So, when a person has rejected Scientology and the doctrine and technology of Scientology completely this leaves them in a difficult position.

If they were recruited as a teenager or adult they may have old ideas and values to consider, but these might be so thoroughly invalidated and devalued, torn down and deconstructed so thoroughly they have no cohesion in the mind of the ex cult member at this point. 

For those raised in Scientology there may be no other foundation to even consider. This brings a whole group of additional challenges for an ex cult member.

You can end up in a sort of no man's land philosophically, not believing in Scientology anymore or much of anything else either and not open to embracing anything else either.

You can be put off your old values and beliefs and not enthusiastic about returning to them and not open to other things that you know of, as you developed the habit of tearing them down and rejecting them as a defensive and reflexive action. 

The comfort and certainty and sense of superiority that Scientology gave you is now gone, so you are just, well, empty.

Whereas in the past you might have had some confidence and what Robert Jay Lifton called a "reasonable balance between worth and humility", you now through being torn down in the cult, often through excessive confession (which Lifton's eight criteria for thought reform described) have lost your sense of worth.

You may feel worthless. You see no value in your past life. You can realize the cult was a fraud and not the salvation that you relied on it for. You can see your time in the cult as a waste and depending on several factors you may see the cult and your participation in it as evil. This can vary tremendously and is not meant to evaluate what happened or what you did or should feel. It is a very different thing from person to person. 

Robert Jay Lifton has remarked that Vietnam veterans often had to separate their own actions and the actions done by others to make sense of their experiences. Some soldiers were victims and they did not commit any crimes. Others have done things they had to face that they were not proud of. 

Similarly, some ex cult members have been both victim and offender or abuser in different turns. Some were not abusers at all but victimized by others.

An ex cult member can feel deep profound shame and loss for both. 

Ultimately I wanted to paint a clear picture of the dreadful state of mortification and near total collapse a person may attain when they realize their whole belief system, in this case Scientology, is a pack of harmful lies, their actions were not justified or beneficial, their claims were false, their promises were empty, the good ends they thought were justifying their means were not even true and the dreams they devoted their lives to were neither their own or real.

The moment of losing all faith in the techniques and philosophy and doctrine and ideology of Scientology in full, is absolutely crushing emotionally, mentally, and psychologically. This can't be overstated.

One can feel as Daniel Shaw described an inescapable shame and feeling of wrongness, a feeling of profound vulnerability and worthlessness, a feeling of being useless and not good enough for anything. 

And this can be the trigger for the counter feeling of being undeserving of the love and compassion and safety and acceptance you so desperately need in this moment. The feeling of being disgusted that you are vulnerable and therefore completely undeserving of any love or acceptance or help can trigger a fierce sense of independence and refusal to be vulnerable or allow yourself to get any help or support.

And this can bring on the intense and unrelenting impulse to be self destructive and to condemn oneself ruthlessly and ceaselessly, after all, if being weak and vulnerable was your failure, you don't want to keep doing that!

And finally we have the combination of factors that add up to "the big empty", one is trapped in the seemingly inescapable double bind that Daniel Shaw described in his book and articles, the state of needing the acceptance and love and support of others but needing also to be independent to be free from the vulnerability and deep shame this can trigger. The shame can be so deep one resolves to never be vulnerable to anyone. This is a trap that has no apparent resolution. 

A state of constant alertness and distrust to remain safe, safe from vulnerability to others and the betrayal of oneself that can come by trusting someone who violates you and your trust, can exist.

But it is hard to survive as such an isolated cynic. The desperate desire to be loved, to be part of something more, whether a family or community or friendship is not easy to completely deny oneself, especially if it is eating away at you.

And with a potential lack of beliefs and foundation to work with this is made more difficult. You don't even necessarily have principles to guide you. 

You may have developed the bad habit of finding flaws and things to tear apart in, well, everything and everyone, all ideas and philosophies and groups.

This is the big empty - it's the dreaded state one might end up in if they reject a cult, in my case Scientology, completely.

It is not universal and identical by any means, but I have tried to find the words and a bit of cult literature to explain or support my description. 

If you were never in a cult I hope this gives you a good description of one possible outcome. If you were in a cult just consider this my description for me and in no way a description of your own situation, unless you find it accurate and if you do then it's only accurate to the degree it is and no more. You don't have to be the same as me. 

The Big Empty

The Big Empty part 5 The Broken Pieces

 The Big Empty

This is the fifth post in a series on the state a person may find themselves in after leaving a cult. It's in part my own personal experience and in part the result of reading several books on cults and seeing the biographies of ex cult members and their remarks about life after the cult. I recommend that all the posts in this series be read in order from first to last as several build on points made in the earlier posts.

Note: here is a link to my blog archive by topic which has almost all my older posts at the blog sorted into categories for your convenience.

• Blog Archive by Topic

There is an obvious question for one after they realized that Scientology is a harmful fraud. If this occurred after having been manipulated and indoctrinated deep into Scientology, so deep that one was made into a mental pseudoclone of Ronald Hubbard and a fanatical zealot whose beliefs and identity are shaped by Scientology you went through a thorough process.

Hubbard wrote, "We may err, for we build a world with broken straws." In The Aims of Scientology, 1965

In the gamesmaker tape, the 39th taped lecture from the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures given in 1952, Hubbard described how he intended to make his game of Scientology and that his pieces and broken pieces aka his broken straws, would be made in a very specific way. A way that would require making a game and hiding the rules from the people he intended to make into pieces and ultimately he had to "break" these pieces to get his broken pieces.

I did a breakdown of that taped lecture in a blog post.

• Scientology Was Ron Hubbard's Private Game

Hubbard made his intentions quite clear as I have described at length in earlier posts in this series.

So, the big question is what is the state that you are left in after you have realized Scientology is a pack of lies and a fraud? 

I want to give a description of that. Remember, you have rejected your deepest beliefs and most certain underlying assumptions about everything. You had been tied up with contradictions and the feeling that the only way to resolve cognitive dissonance, particularly dissonances caused by contradictions regarding Scientology and the behavior you should have and the beliefs and even feelings you should have was to set aside the dissonances and submit to the authority of Hubbard and the infallibility of his ideas. You just gave up yourself, your independence, your judgement, ultimately your identity as an individual to Hubbard.

And then, after decades, you can't do this anymore because you finally, somehow, some way realized Hubbard was full of bullshit.

You arrive at a place where the mechanism you used to avoid mental and emotional discomfort is gone. It's destroyed. 

But the feelings of being wrong if you did one thing or an alternative to that and being wrong either way are not gone. 

The feelings may have been denied and dissociated from hundreds and thousands of times. You can have immense dissonance buried under years of trance logic that come forth, perhaps in an unbearable and overwhelming way, as you break the Scientology trance. 

The feelings may be of worthlessness, failure, uselessness, and a deep all encompassing shame. A shame that is that of a desperate, confused, and scared child that is hurt and desperately needs love and compassion but simultaneously feels disgust for himself or herself and unworthy of the love and compassion that is needed. This can trigger a deep, even destructive, hatred of self and cold and ruthless treatment of oneself.

It is a terrible trap. The feelings of being hurt, and lost, and betrayed even can bring forth a deep and persistent blame. This can be a blame that Daniel Shaw described in his book Traumatic Narcissism. He described this:

"This is of course a perfect double bind (Bateson et al., 1956). Unable to be anything but dependant, yet still attempting independence, the child of the traumatizing narcissist parent is condemned either way. She comes to associate dependency with shame and humiliation, and independence with rejection and abandonment. Unless she can adopt the counter-dependent, shameless stance of the traumatizing narcissist, she lives instead in a post-traumatic state in which her sense of inescapable badness is cemented."

Daniel Shaw Traumatic Narcissism page 35

Shaw described how both children who experienced sexual abuse and ex cult members have this deep, seemingly unresolvable shame in common. 

They both can feel the combination of deep shame that needs understanding, acceptance, safety and security from others, and simultaneously feel that this need is an unacceptable weakness, a weakness that is intolerably mortifying. 

Mortifying as Shaw uses it describes a fear that is so terrible that death is preferable. In fact the history of cults includes several leaders who have committed suicide rather than face the reality that they failed and could not maintain an illusion of being absolutely superior to humans and infallible. 

Rather than face their flaws and failures many cult leaders choose death. And the horror of being wrong, only human, and vulnerable can make a cult member shudder in terror. 

When I was deeply indoctrinated in Scientology I was certain my knowledge of Scientology made me superior and would have preferred death to losing that status in my mind. 

If being sexually abused as a child or a cult member teaches you anything it is that you can't control the behavior or character of others, but you can hate yourself for making yourself emotionally vulnerable, for having trusted people who would violate you, trusting someone who would abuse and degrade you, trusting someone who would deceive and exploit you callously, cruelly. 

They can teach you that being vulnerable to others is the betrayal of self, but without the effort to be understood, to be loved and have compassion how can the need for compassion and empathy from others be fulfilled? 

This leads to the unresolvable problem of shame that never is alleviated. 

And that is where a long term, heavily, deeply indoctrinated Scientologist may end up.

Shaw described this and how the relational system of the traumatizing narcissist as he described them and their victims works in extreme detail in his book Traumatic Narcissism. I highly recommend it for anyone who want to understand abusive relationships and cults. It covers aspects of the subject nothing else I have seen describes, and it does it very well.

I wrote a couple blog posts on the book that elaborate on these points in finer detail.

• Traumatic Narcissism: part 1 Scientology and Hubbard
• Traumatic Narcissism part 2: The Relationships in ...

Shaw also elaborated in an article that I have posted on this site as well. This goes into extreme details on the subject and has a wealth of information that supports my own opinion.

• Traumatic Abuse in Cults: An Exploration of an Unf...

It's not an exaggeration to say that for some ex cult members (but certainly not all) the overwhelming and persistent shame that is held in place by the double bind of not feeling worthy of any help that could resolve the shame can define the life of the ex cult member. They can feel that nothing they do is of any use. They can feel, for example, like they are no good and never do anything good at all. They can feel like crawling under the ground and hiding forever and never participating in life at all. They may feel like the world would be better off if they never existed. They can feel that the only positive contribution they can make to the world and humanity is to leave them. 

I am not a doctor or scholar or expert on mental health but it's easily observable that some ex cult members have serious mental and emotional issues and problems for years after leaving a cult.

Some, but again not all, experience depression and anhedonia, some experience suicidal ideation. Some have persistent and frequent negative thoughts. It is hard to describe to people the phenomena of a person thinking negative thoughts about themselves hundreds and hundreds of times each day. 

Sometimes these may to a greater or lesser degree resemble ideas or statements from the cult doctrine or something else the person heard or said. They may not. 

It's worth noting that many children of Sea Org members have sadly been mistreated, some physically, many neglected and tragically reports of sexual abuse by caretakers have been presented enough to warrant serious inquiry and concern. 

The sad reality is many second and third generation Scientologists had childhoods that involved reports of abuse, neglect, mistreatment, and it's resulted in the fact that numerous people ended up being abandoned or homeless or addicted to drugs or in some cases suicides.

The frequency of this is reportedly a part of the reason that the Sea Org no longer allows parents of young children to remain in the Sea Org. The horrible reality that the children of the people who are supposed to be saving the world are actually abused, neglected, mistreated and often cast aside like garbage and end up frequently, perhaps routinely, in situations of homelessness, poverty, prostitution, depression, or suicide is not the image Scientology wants the public to see. 

David Miscavige wants that reality hidden. But the accounts of hundreds of ex Scientologists and their family members unfortunately are telling that story over and over. 

I believe the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein also offers unique insights into the cultic relationship between followers and leaders and followers and each other that is a great compliment to the work of Shaw and a vital piece of the puzzle.

I wrote a series of blog posts analyzing her book.

• How Cults Work 1 - A New Look
• How Cults Work 2 - First Things First
• How Cults Work 3 - Totalist Group Structure
• How Cults Work 4 - The Brainwashing Process and O...
• How Cults Work 5 - Attachment Theory
• How Cults Work 6 - Forms Of Attachment
• How Cults Work 7 - Disorganized Attachment and Dis...

• How Cults Work 8 - Recruitment
• How Cults Work 9 - Undue Influence In Recruitment
• How Cults Work 10 - Totalist Indoctrination

• How Cults Work 11 - Fright Without Solution

I hope that this series helps to give my impression of the state that an ex cult member may end up in. Now I must emphasize this is just one possible example that occurs and not every single ex cult member will go this route or experience this exact outcome. But some definitely will. 

The Big Empty

The Big Empty part 4 Losing My Religion

 The Big Empty

This is the fourth post in a series on the state a person may find themselves in after leaving a cult. It's in part my own personal experience and in part the result of reading several books on cults and seeing the biographies of ex cult members and their remarks about life after the cult. I recommend that all the posts in this series be read in order from first to last as several build on points made in the earlier posts.

Note: here is a link to my blog archive by topic which has almost all my older posts at the blog sorted into categories for your convenience.

• Blog Archive by Topic

So, I hope in the earlier posts in this series I established that Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard intentionally and knowingly set out to mentally enslave people. He tried to use a combination of new terms and contradictions to overwhelm people. He was convinced that if he could present himself as an unequaled authority and expert on the mind, spirit, and a number of other things that his statements would be accepted as hypnotic commands. 

These commands (he hoped) would go in the minds of his followers below the conscious level of awareness and escape any independent or critical thinking. In other words they would go in unopposed and uninspected and just become the beliefs of his followers. He called such commands implants and went to great efforts to do two things. 

He wanted to put them in the minds of his followers as the solution to an ever more confusing set of beliefs they were to hold that would result in them becoming more and more submissively dependent on his increasing authority.

Additionally, he wanted the effects to be sustained by the thoughts, words, feelings, and actions of his followers. He wanted them to act as their own enslavers and to never be aware of it. 

So, the guiding principles they ended up adopting after all this are the ideas Hubbard presented and most of all his authority, the correctness and infallibility of his doctrine and the idea that he himself always knew the best and correct way to deal with any situation. 

Okay, now this explains to some degree the mindset of a long term Scientologist who has experienced a lot of indoctrination and been strongly influenced by it. 

Now, the big question that inevitably must arrive is, if a Scientologist who has gone far into being controlled by the influence of Hubbard and submitted thoroughly to his authority for months or even years or decades stops believing in Hubbard and his technology, then where are they left?

Picture a lifetime of having hundreds and hundreds of times that you as a Scientologist are not sure if one thing is right or a different thing is.  They are not compatible and you set aside your own awareness of the issues and your own desires and best judgment and values.  You just try to see it as Hubbard would and do what he wants. 

This could be for a decision morally. This could be regarding joining staff or the Sea Org. It could be regarding giving a donation to Scientology. 

You develop a lot of bad habits this way, frankly. You justify a lot of being cruel and hurtful to people in all likelihood. You have a lot of questionable decisions that you don't really take responsibility for and justify to whatever degree you do by seeing the judgement of Hubbard as guiding you or as it being infallible so you don't reflect on the actions of your self in situations where you should. 

You bury a lot of conflict in your self and confusion or discomfort and don't face the discomfort and confusion and they can build up. 

So, if you, like a hundred thousand or so others before you, eventually leave Scientology you discover something. This can happen whether it is very gradual and over decades or relatively quick and over months or even weeks. You go through a process in which you reject the character of Hubbard and the technology of Dianetics and Scientology -  it is quite stunning. It can be crushing and utterly devastating. 

Now, every person is different, and may have a different set of experiences and a different perspective, so this may to a greater or lesser degree not apply to a particular individual, so if you know it's not your experience then you know, or if you know an ex Scientologist don't automatically assume my description, my speculation on this, is accurate for every specific individual. 

But here's something that I found to be true in my own case. After the ideas and feelings and actions that Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard intentionally provided as the guiding and unexamined foundation of a life and the justification for the way that life was lived were both thrown into doubt, then examined and questioned and probed and carefully looked over with decreasing preference and bias for them, they were cast aside as false. 

Over a process of weeks then months I carefully looked at various ideas that are the foundation of Dianetics and Scientology and realized they are in all probability far more likely false than true and not supported by sound scientific evidence and in many cases a wealth of evidence is available to debunk or refute them. 

I won't go over everything but I rapidly realized that the Sea Org is not a bunch of superhuman beings that have mental and spiritual powers as is promised in Scientology. And if they don't have the promised powers then the most reasonable explanation is they never had them.

 After all, if Hubbard had created an army (or navy) of thousands of immortal geniuses, with telepathy, precognition, telekinesis and a vast array of other abilities in the nineteen fifties through nineteen seventies and set them up with advanced organizations and technology for running groups and advanced technology for surviving they should not be reduced to a bunch of bumbling idiots that no one can organize by the year 2010 or so.  (This refers to The Posse of Lunatics story published by Scientology in their Freedom magazine which described a half dozen or so alleged incompetent Sea Org members who in the story stumbled and bumbled through decades in the Sea Org including at the highest levels, unhandled for decades!)

So, I realized the OT powers promised in Scientology never arrived. Then I realized if there are no OTs and never were any it's also extremely likely that the state of clear doesn't exist and was also never achieved. 

Then I realized that auditing doesn't produce the miracles promised but convinces some people temporarily that it does. I looked closer at auditing and hypnosis and saw that auditing is hypnosis. If you examine hypnotic techniques and the signs a person has been hypnotised a tremendous overlap between auditing and hypnosis becomes obvious. 

Some auditing commands and techniques come right out of books on hypnosis. In several old lectures Hubbard admits auditing came from hypnosis and that auditors lay in hypnotic commands, whether they intend to or not. (Jon Atack described this brilliantly in his article Never Believe A Hypnotist)

In The Saint Hill Special Briefing Course lectures and several lectures from the early fifties he makes it quite clear. 

Then I realized that the indoctrination technique I was exposed to the most in Scientology itself was also a hypnotic technique: study technology.

Hubbard took an idea from a book he had recommended on hypnosis. I read the book and realized what Hubbard had done. I had to read several books on hypnosis and watch lots of videos describing hypnosis at a very granular level, so I got what very technical ideas and terms in the subject mean.

I also had to get a very detailed description of the original study techniques that Hubbard took to see that he changed the methods in very significant ways to create his final very different product he called study technology. There was a very good reason for these tremendous alterations and additional material. 

The book was Hypnotism Comes of Age by Wolfe, Bernard and Raymond Rosenthal.

The book described the combination of hypnosis and psychoanalysis to create hypnoanalysis. Hubbard combined the study techniques that others presented to him with his own knowledge of hypnosis and loaded language to create a synthesis of the two which used a facade of education over a framework of covert hypnosis to practice a form of insidious enslavement. 

When I realized this the last bit of Scientology technology that I thought was legitimate was revealed to be a harmful fraud, a covert method of hypnotic influence and not at all the path to wisdom and profound enlightenment I had thought it was for decades. And all the information that I was indoctrinated in was revealed to be given under false pretenses and meant to simply be accepted with no critical thinking allowed, no power of choice on my part meant to exist. 

So, I over time worked out that there are huge flaws in the arguments and evidence for the various ideas Hubbard presented over time. Sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually, sometimes using long periods to reflect and analyze the ideas and with other ideas quickly seeing they are not supported by any good evidence, with others I had to learn about entire subjects that may have been plagiarized from to create ideas in Scientology or sometimes I had to learn about subjects to understand what Hubbard was really doing like hypnosis and rhetoric and propaganda analysis. Sometimes I had to read lots of books on psychology and cults to see what was actually happening in Scientology.

So, the obvious thing that comes up after this is where is one at when they see that their entire belief system was a pack of lies and a fraud?

And to be clear, Scientology for the heavily indoctrinated and thoroughly fanatical zealot IS the entirety or near entirety of their beliefs. It's a combination religion, philosophy, science, ethics, morals, and just about everything else that's the foundation of the identity and beliefs a person can have by that point. 

You might have the tiniest bit of individuality left, like preference for chocolate over vanilla or something like that, but everything important and that strongly determines your values and priorities has long since been determined by Hubbard's doctrine and nothing else. 

So, the place you are at when you realize that it is all a fraud is empty. You are drained of the ideas you relied on, in my case for decades, ideas that were uninspected assumptions or deeply held values I could think and say with extreme certainty they were true, they had to be true. The alternative to that was unthinkable.

And you have to accept the unacceptable, you must bear the unbearable. It's not an exaggeration to say that many Scientologists tell each other they would rather die than stop believing in Scientology. When they hear about people leaving Scientology and completely rejecting it they can't fathom why.

But when you are lucky enough to realize the horrible, crushing truth, that Scientology is a harmful fraud that has no profound wisdom or enlightenment or miracles to offer and is a pack of lies you somehow have to live with everything you have held onto to provide stability and guidance stripped away. The whole house of cards crumbles and you have to try to pick up the pieces. 

The Big Empty

The Big Empty part 3 Resolving Conficts

 The Big Empty

This is the third post in a series on the state a person may find themselves in after leaving a cult. It's in part my own personal experience and in part the result of reading several books on cults and seeing the biographies of ex cult members and their remarks about life after the cult. I recommend that all the posts in this series be read in order from first to last as several build on points made in the earlier posts.

Note: here is a link to my blog archive by topic which has almost all my older posts at the blog sorted into categories for your convenience.

• Blog Archive by Topic

Given the fact that in earlier posts on The Big Empty I have attempted to establish that Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard intentionally created Scientology doctrine and indoctrination jam packed with irreconcilable differences in it, I want to explore further the effects of this indoctrination here.

 These came in the form of contradictions in his writing and taped material. They were presented intentionally. This was done so that the only option that his followers would have would be to submit to his authority to resolve the unfathomable nature of Scientology (if you try to see it as a coherent subject that doesn't disagree with itself).

Hubbard made it clear that he tried to use confusion to overwhelm his followers. Further, he tried to present himself as a great authority with such altitude that his followers would be highly suggestible from their confusion and respond to his statements as commands from an infallible authority, in fact a hypnotic authority. 

I made it quite clear in the first installment in this series that that was Hubbard's intention.

So, as one goes along in Scientology indoctrination to the degree it is successful as a hypnotic technique, one is controlled covertly by Hubbard. 

So, it presents an interesting conundrum. What do you do to make decisions when your mind is confused, overwhelmed, and you think it's because you can't understand the unparalleled genius of Hubbard? You do your best to obey him of course!

You assume a child like state and completely trust Hubbard, like a small child with a parent, and like a small child you trust that Hubbard knows best, so if Hubbard tells you to do something and you don't know how it's a good idea or if it will be beneficial, you obey because you have been obeying Hubbard's words over and over and over for years and thousands and thousands of times set aside your own doubts and worries and your own good judgment, because you have resolved the confusion in your mind many thousands of times by just obeying Hubbard.

There's even a saying in Scientology, "What would Ron do?"

It becomes first nature to obey Hubbard and you see his ideas as superior to your own. If you disagree with Hubbard you know instictively that he's right and you are wrong! This has been a guiding principle for many years and it is a foundation of your life.

This process of indoctrination was described perhaps best by Robert Jay Lifton in his eight criteria for thought reform.

Robert J. Lifton

Dr. Robert J. Lifton's Eight Criteria for Thought Reform

1. Milieu Control.  This involves the control of information and communication both within the environment and, ultimately, within the individual, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from society at large.
2. Mystical Manipulation.  There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes. 
3. Demand for Purity.  The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection.  The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here. 
4. Confession.  Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group.  There is no confidentiality; members' "sins," "attitudes," and "faults" are discussed and exploited by the leaders. 
5. Sacred Science.  The group's doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute.  Truth is not to be found outside the group.  The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism. 
6. Loading the Language.  The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand.  This jargon consists of thought-terminating cliches, which serve to alter members' thought processes to conform to the group's way of thinking. 
7. Doctrine over person.  Member's personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group. 
8. Dispensing of existence.  The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not.  This is usually not literal but means that those in the outside world are not saved, unenlightened, unconscious and they must be converted to the group's ideology.  If they do not join the group or are critical of the group, then they must be rejected by the  members.  Thus, the outside world loses all credibility.  In conjunction, should any member leave the group, he or she must be rejected also.  (Lifton, 1989)

I want to focus on how the mindset of seeing Hubbard's ideas in Dianetics and Scientology as both scientific and spiritual sets one up to see the only valid truth in your mind is  in these subjects.

1. Sacred Science.  The group's doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute.  Truth is not to be found outside the group.  The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism. 

One can also see how the indoctrination is used to have the loaded language of Scientology stifle the mind, inhibit independent and critical thinking, effectively reducing it or shutting it down regarding Scientology.

1. Loading the Language.  The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand.  This jargon consists of thought-terminating cliches, which serve to alter members' thought processes to conform to the group's way of thinking. 

Finally the doctrine over person describes how the cult members see the ideas of Hubbard as more valid than their own, effectively imprisoning themselves within the Scientology framework of the world, as doubt is seen as automatically a personal failure and disagreeing is seen as an error by the individual cult members themselves, effectively making them their own jailers within their minds. 

1. Doctrine over person.  Member's personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group. 

Robert Jay Lifton gave a more extensive description of his eight criteria for thought reform which he has posted online that I posted on my blog and recommended for anyone who wants to understand cults. To me it's the gold standard in models on cults because it's simple to understand and has helped many thousands of people to reframe their experiences and recover to some degree. 

• Eight Criteria for Thought Reform by Robert Jay Li...

Hubbard made his intentions clear and I will briefly repost a few quotes on this:

Quotes from  Ron Hubbard on the Confusion Technique:
[Quote]
Now, if it comes to a pass where it's very important whether or not this person acts or inacts as you wish, in interpersonal relations one of the dirtier tricks is to hang the person up on a maybe and create a confusion. And then create the confusion to the degree that your decision actually is implanted hypnotically.
The way you do this is very simple. When the person advances an argument against your decision, you never confront his argument but confront the premise on which his argument is based. That is the rule. He says, "But my professor always said that water boiled at 212 degrees."
You say, "Your professor of what?"
"My professor of physics."
"What school? How did he know?" Completely off track! You're no longer arguing about whether or not water boils at 212 degrees, but you're arguing about professors. And he will become very annoyed, but he won't know quite what he is annoyed about. You can do this so adroitly and so artfully that you can actually produce a confusion of the depth of hypnosis. The person simply goes down tone scale to a point where they're not sure of their own name.
And at that point you say, "Now, you do agree to go out and draw the water out of the well, don't you?"
"Yes-anything!" And he'll go out and draw the water out of the well.
[End Quote]
 Ron Hubbard Lecture, 20 May 1952 "Decision."
source Lermanet.com

Also, even earlier, in 1950:
[Quote]
One error, however, must be remarked upon. The examination system employed is not much different from a certain hypnotic technique. One induces a state of confusion in the subject by raising his anxieties of what may happen if he does not pass. One then "teaches" at a mind which is anxious and confused. That mind does not then rationalize, it merely records and makes a pattern. If the pattern is sufficiently strong to be regurgitated verbatim on an examination paper, the student is then given a good grade and passed.
[End Quote]
 Ron Hubbard lecture 29 August 1950, "Educational Dianetics."
 source Lermanet.com

He also knew that when one is confused they can feel relief (i.e. brighter TEMPORARILY) when they get an "answer", even if it doesn't address the confusion!

Scientology uses confusion to control people. Scientology is intentionally designed to use confusion for this purpose.

Scientology techniques are extremely confusing and if you are able to find the right references from Hubbard and look at the techniques with an understanding of the methods he based them on then his intentions are clear.

let's look at some of the things Hubbard said:

"If you can produce enough chaos — it says in a textbook on this subject — if you can produce enough chaos you can assume the total management of a psyche — if you can produce enough chaos.

The way you hypnotize people is to misalign them in their own control and realign them under your control, which necessitates a certain amount of chaos, don’t you see?

Now, the way to win through all of this is simply to let the guy have his stable data, if they are stable data and if they aren’t, let him have some more that are stable data and he’ll win and you’ll win.

In other words, you can take any sphere — any sphere which is relatively chaotic and throw almost any stable datum into it with enough of a statement and you will get an alignment of data on that stable datum. You see this clearly?

The whole society is liable to seize upon some stupid stable datum and thereafter this becomes a custom of some sort and you have the whole field of morals and mores and so forth stretching out before your view."

Hubbard, L. R. (1955, 23 August). Axiom 53: The Axiom Of The Stable Datum. Academy Lecture Series/Conquest of Chaos,   (CofC-2). Lecture conducted from Washington, DC.

"Another way to hypnotize somebody would be to put him in the middle of chaos, everything going in all directions, everybody shooting at him and suddenly throw him a stable datum, and make it a successful stable datum so that it’s all called off once — the moment he grabs this. And this gives you the entire formula of brainwashing: interrogate, question, lights, pain, upset, accusation, duress, fear, privation and we throw him the stable datum. We say, “If you’ll just adopt ‘Ughism’ which is the most wonderful thing in the world, all this will cease,” and finally the fellow says, “All right, I’m an ‘Ugh.’ ” Immediately you stop torturing him and pat him on the head and he’s all set.Ever after he would believe that the moment he deserted “Ughism,” he would be drowned in chaos and that “Ughism” alone was the thing which kept the world stable; and he would sell his life or his grandmother to keep “Ughism” going. And there we have to do with the whole subject of loyalty, except — except that we haven’t dealt with loyalty at all on an analytical level but the whole subject of loyalty is a reactive subject we have dealt with. "

Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1955, 21 September, 1955, 21 September
Document title: Postulates 1,2,3,4 In Processing - New Understanding of Axiom 36, Postulates 1,2,3,4 In Processing - New Understanding of Axiom 36

“A confusion can be defined as any set of factors or circumstances which do not seem to have any immediate solution. More broadly, a confusion is random motion.”
“Until one selects one datum, one factor, one particular in a confusion of particles, the confusion continues. The one thing selected and used becomes the stable datum for the remainder.
“Any body of knowledge, more particularly and exactly, is built from one datum. That is its stable datum. Invalidate it and the entire body of knowledge falls apart. A stable datum does not have to be the correct one. It is simply the one that keeps things from being in a confusion and on which others are aligned.” – Ron Hubbard [ref]

“Any time anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude…if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject…he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as a hypnotic suggestion….With parity, such as occurs between acquaintances, friends, fellow students and so on, there is no hypnotic suggestion” (Education and Dianetics, 11 November 1950, Research and Discovery, volume 4).  Source Jon Atack 

Here's a longer excerpt:

ALTITUDE INSTRUCTION

“In altitude teaching, somebody is a ‘great authority.’ He is probably teaching some subject that is far more complex than it should be. He has become defensive down through the years, and this is a sort of protective coating that he puts up, along with the idea that the subject will always be a little better known by him than by anybody else and that there are things to know in this subject which he really wouldn’t let anybody else in on. This is altitude instruction … It keeps people in a state of confusion, and when their minds are slightly confused they are in a hypnotic trance. Anytime anybody gets enough altitude he can be called a hypnotic operator, and what he says will act as hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotism is a difference in levels of altitude. There are ways to create and lower the altitude of the subject, but if the operator can heighten his own altitude with regard to the subject the same way, he doesn’t have to put the subject to sleep. What he says will still react as hypnotic suggestion.” (Hubbard, Research & Discovery, volume 4, p.324)12 source Jon Atack

And the icing on the cake for me is of course the affirmations.

Hubbard made statements in his affirmations (private self-hypnosis commands intended for himself and no one else)  that I call the Rosetta Stone of Scientology because they help ex Scientologists decipher the information in Scientology.

I have them posted at Mockingbird's Nest as 

A Psychiatric View With Comments On The Admissions By Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1947)

I will put a few excerpts here to highlight Hubbard's intention regarding hypnosis and in general. To understand Scientology I absolutely recommend reading the post in full. These excerpts are just for this post on his intentions.

LRH is obviously L Ron Hubbard

LRH:Your psychology is good. You worked to darken your own children. This failure, with them, was only apparent. The evident lack of effectiveness was "ordered." The same psychology works perfectly on everyone else. You use it with great confidence. 

LRH: Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light in the darkness, beauty in all. 

LRH : Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people. It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler. 

LRH: No matter what lies you may tell others they have no physical effect on you of any kind.

LRH: Lord help women when you begin to fondle them. You are master of their bodies, master of their souls as you may consciously wish. You have no karma to pay for these acts. 

LRH: You can tell all the romantic tales you wish. You will remember them, you do remember them. But you know which ones were lies. You are so logical you will tell nothing which cannot be believed. 

LRH: You use the minds of men. They do not use your mind or affect it in any way. 

So, Hubbard in his private affirmations clearly described his "psychology" as such that it "hypnotizes" people and that men are his slaves and regarding women that he was master of their bodies and souls. He described himself as being able to lie and be both believed and he was immune to physical effects from his lies. He described himself as the ruler of people who uses the minds of men but they do not use or affect his mind. 

Imagine having these goals and using self-hypnosis commands repeatedly for years to bring these things into your mind. 

I reposted these so you can see the material in two situations, first as I made my case for one idea: that Hubbard intended to confuse and overwhelm people with contradictions to establish hypnotic control over them.

And I also added them again so I could show that the control involves a series of changes in the follower, the follower to whatever degree the hypnotically technique succeeded, ended up with the awful condition of fulfilling the three criteria for thought reform referenced above. 

They have seen Scientology as a sacred science, they speak and most importantly think in the loaded language of Scientology and they accept the doctrine over person, seeing the ideas in Scientology as more valid than their own. 

They have immense cognitive dissonance over the contradictions which are plentiful in Scientology but by adopting a child like state known as trance logic (which occurs in hypnotic submission if deep enough) they can bury the unpleasant mental feelings of dissonance in the subconscious, in theory, and not face them consciously. Trance logic is noted for having the following differences between it and normal consciousness, one is more accepting of contradictions and magical thinking. 

But, this has the tendency to demand more and more trance logic to avoid dissonance and awareness of flaws or problems with Scientology. One submits more and more to the authority of Hubbard over time. One accepts the loaded language and thinks in it more and more over time and with less independent and critical thinking. One sees the doctrine as more authoritative and correct than oneself over time. It becomes reflexive to see the doctrine as infallible more and more, so doubts become less frequent and they can become even disorienting and painful. 

So, as you progress in your Scientology indoctrination,  you have resolved the conflict and confusion by your submission to the sacred science and adoption of the trance logic state as a hypnotic slave (to whatever degree the technique worked, obviously this can vary from not at all to slightly to significantly to tremendously, each person is a different case).

I have written on the methods and nature of hypnosis as used in Scientology extensively.

Here is a collection of posts on the topic.

• Insidious Enslavement : Study Technology
• Basic Introduction to Hypnosis in Scientology
• Pissed It's Not Your Fault !!!
• The Offensive Defensive Technique
• The Critical Factor
• The Secret Of Scientology Part 1 Control Via Cont...

The Big Empty