Scientology Reflections (15) 10 Years After Leaving-Ends and Means

 Scientology Reflections (15) 10 Years After Leaving-Ends and Means

This is the fifteenth post in a series that I am publishing in 2024. The series is on the journey I have been on AFTER leaving Scientology and Dianetics and what my experiences were, and mistakes I made, and things that I learned, some shortly after leaving Scientology and others further along the way, even up to the present day. Some of this involves Scientology and Dianetics. Some involves the process of leaving a cult. Some is just knowledge that I could have benefited from knowing sooner, that may even be unrelated to the cultic topic entirely. 

For anyone who is unaware, I was in Scientology for twenty five years, between 1989 and 2014. I left in 2014 and discovered that Scientology is a harmful fraud and jam packed with lies and further it is composed of techniques plagiarized from other practices and sources. Ronald Hubbard had the ability to take a practice, file off the serial numbers and repackage it as his own in first Dianetics and later Scientology. 

 Ronald Hubbard. 

I have recently seen some Scientology critics state that they will use the tactics of Scientology to fight Scientology. They are going to fight fire with fire, they have said. 

OK. That's an option. 

I want to examine this a bit. 

Scientology organizations are allowed to do quite a few things to people.

To understand the excuses Hubbard laid out for the tragi-comic policies he issued you need to, in my opinion, understand some basic Scientology doctrine. In the Way To Happiness Hubbard said not to tell HARMFUL lies, just as he in policy encouraged acceptable truths.

“Do not tell harmful lies.”

Ron Hubbard, The Way to Happiness”

"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

“Purpose: To train the student to give a false statement with good TR-1. To train the student to outflow false data effectively. … The student should be coached on a gradient until he/she can lie facilely.”

Ron Hubbard, Intelligence Specialist Training Routine—Lying (TR-L)

“Handling truth is a touchy business also. You don’t have to tell everything you know — that would jam the comm line too. Tell an acceptable truth. … So PR becomes the technique of communicating an acceptable truth — and which will attain the desirable result.”

Ron Hubbard, HCOPL 13 August 1970 Issue II PR Series 2, in the Volunteer Minister’s Handbook

“Purpose: To train a PRO to give a ‘no answer’ to questions he has no wish to answer directly. …The trick is to appear to answer the question by giving generalized statements in simple terms so that the reporter doesn’t realize his question hasn’t been answered. … “Purpose: To train a PRO to be able to establish Ethics presence over an SP reporter if the occasion arises, by such things as shouting, banging, pointing, swearing. To do this completely causatively until the poor reporter is ‘caved in’. … “Purpose: To train the PRO to handle an SP reporter by word alone without the use of force as in (a). He uses the word as a rapier and plunges it at the reporter, so that the reporter introverts and drops the question.”

Ron Hubbard, HCOB 10 December 1969,Training Routines”

“Now you say you have to be absolutely truthful. Sincerity is the main thing, and truthfulness is the main thing and don’t lie to anybody …and you’ll get ahead. Brother you sure will. You’ll get ahead right on that cycle of action, right toward zero! It’s a trap not being able to prevaricate … This makes life more colorful!”

Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course, lecture “How to Talk to friends about Scientology.”

So, if one were to adopt Scientology's own tactics that would include lying! This could make being believed hard! If you say you are adopting Scientology's tactics and you have been saying the Scientology tactics include lying then you have opened up yourself to being considered a liar! Remember this when you have legitimate issues regarding Scientology. They are free to say that you are simply lying and you have put yourself into that category.

The same is true regarding Scientology critics who you criticize! They are free to say that you may be lying, just as Scientology organizations lie. You may be manufacturing evidence, using unethical lawyers, and dirty private investigators to try to frame your opponents. You may be using dishonest police officers and politicians. 

"ENEMY SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."

Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 18 October 1967

[SP = Suppressive Person a.k.a.critic of Scientology]

"The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This P/L does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP."

Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 21 October 1968, "Cancellation of Fair Game"

"A truly Suppressive Person or group has no rights of any kind and actions taken against them are not punishable." 

Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 1 March 1965, HCO (Division 1)

"Ethics, Suppressive Acts, Suppression of Scientology and

Scientologists"

"In any event, any person from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale should not have, in any thinking society, any civil rights of any kind, because by abusing those rights he brings into being arduous and strenuous laws which are oppressive to those who need no such restraints."

Ron Hubbard, SCIENCE OFSURVIVAL, 1989 Ed., p. 145 [The "Tone Scale" is Scientology’s measure of mental and spiritual health.]

"There are only two answers for the handling of people from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale, neither one of which has anything to do with reasoning with them or listening to their justification of their acts. The first is to raise them on the Tone Scale by un-enturbulating some of their theta by any one of the three valid processes. The other is to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow."

Ron Hubbard, SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL, p. 170

"The sudden and abrupt deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the Tone Scale from the social order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered."

Ron Hubbard, SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL, p. 170

"A Venezuelan dictator once decided to stop leprosy. He saw that most lepers in his country were also beggars. By the simple expedient of collecting and destroying all the beggars in Venezuela an end was put to leprosy in that country."

Ron Hubbard, SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL, p. 171

"Unfortunately, it is all too often true that suppressors to a creative action must be removed before construction and creation takes place. Any person very high on the Tone Scale may level destruction toward a suppressor."

Ron Hubbard, SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL, p. 159

So, within Hubbard's framework Scientology should decide what is legal, Scientology can remove quietly and without sorrow anyone that criticizes it, or Hubbard. Scientology can lie at anytime to control people and his enemies have no rights whatsoever.

 So, of course as they have no rights and asking for a refund is seen as suppressive, they have no rights to receive any refund. But it is fair in Scientology to deny rights to and lie to a person with no rights ! Simple really.

So, if you declare that you are using Scientology tactics it's something you are perfectly free to do, I think that you need to understand the full meaning of that statement. You are declaring yourself ruthless, dishonest, unethical and willing to lie, cheat, steal, break the law and dispose of your enemies quietly and without sorrow. 

You should expect people to treat you as if you are a Scientology organization or operative, because you have declared that you will use their means to achieve your ends. 

If you are lying to, cheating, robbing or destroying people then what difference should they see between you and Scientology? 

And why should they ever trust you?

A lot of Scientology critics say they don't care what people think. OK. If you adopt this position of using Scientology tactics then people won't believe you are honest or trustworthy and you are likely to want people to believe you at some point, whether it's when you make YouTube videos or go to the press or police or when Scientology complains about you to the police.

What can a critic who no one trusts or believes accomplish? 

I guess you can have a public image as good as the one Scientology has.

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Scientology Reflections (15) 10 Years After Leaving-Ends and Means