Ambassadors Of Misinformation

I wanted to expose an unfortunate and unintended group of people that I have seen quite often give incorrect, incomplete and sometimes outright false information about Dianetics, Scientology and Ron Hubbard: ex Scientologists and critics.

I know your first impulse if you are an ex or critic may be to be defensive and start counterarguing ( thinking internally of reasons to not listen to me ). That is a natural reaction, but cuts off any ability to critically analyze what I am about to say. So please hear me out, and don't just look for reasons to not listen.

The Scientology cult despite claiming tens of millions of members has perhaps tens of thousands worldwide. And perhaps seven thousand or so are largely isolated from mainstream society as staff and Sea Org members.

So if you are a critic or ex you are often to the world an ambassador or expert on Scientology, whether qualified or not. Like it or not.

Now, I have found most people try to honestly explain Scientology, but often unknowingly are forwarding inaccuracies, even the information Hubbard himself had put out. So they serve unintentionally to forward the cult even while opposing it.

I recently saw an excellent interview with an ex who described touch assists as faith healing. It would have been more accurate in my opinion if he had studied the actual origins of Scientology and known Hubbard read and recommended the book Hypnotism Comes of Age which described Mesmer's research on hypnotism and the exact same actions and commands in the assists are Mesmer's hypnotic commands. So the truth that Hubbard plagiarized and incorporated thousands of hypnotic techniques is not expressed.

So there two fundamental lies are repeated. The lie that Dianetics and Scientology are not hypnotic. They most certainly are. And the lie that Hubbard didn't plagiarize Dianetics and Scientology. He certainly did. The work of Arnie Lerma and Jon Atack exposes this and I myself believe Hubbard used a foundation with Crowley's occult practices and Hitler's Nazism along with hundreds of hypnotic practices and a foundation of projecting Hubbard's crimes onto anyone who does or could expose his crimes, with an accompanying facade of pathological lying claiming Hubbard was infallible and Godlike, really uniquely superior, even above God. When in fact he always knew he was running a con.

Additionally Hubbard loved the propaganda techniques of reversals of meaning and loaded language. He used new false terms to constrict thinking and allow only his false reality. He called his mentally enslaving indoctrination that through cognitive restructuring (reshaping what and how people think) obliterates the capacity for independent, critical, linear, rational and analytical thinking study technology - when it destroys your actual ability to study. He calls adding hypnotic commands auditing and adding a hypnotic identity clearing, acting like it removes content when in fact it adds it. He has a poisoning program he calls purification. It goes on and on , he calls permanent slavery total freedom. He habitually did this knowing it confused his victims, making them more suggestible in a very difficult to detect manner. Many are rendered utterly confused by this, even decades after leaving the cult.

Frequently  after leaving exes and critics say "Hubbard believed" when "Hubbard said" would be far more accurate. Hubbard pathologically lied, so saying he believed what he said is problematic at best. Don't assume he believed any of Dianetics or Scientology, that's what got Scientologists in trouble in the first place. That is a very frequent error in my opinion.

Another error in my opinion is claiming Hubbard found a basic helpful therapy, but the organization is cultic in other areas. Well, it misleads people and doesn't critically analyze who Hubbard was, what he did and why he chose to plagiarize the methods he did. Starting with Dianetics he plagiarized failed abreactive therapy aka catharsis therapy which Freud and others researched. They found it didn't help patients but did create tremendous dependence on the therapist through a hypnotic method. It made the patients highly suggestible and vulnerable to manipulation by the therapist.

So Hubbard had practiced hypnotism for over a decade before plagiarizing Dianetics from earlier abandoned harmful practices. Some already had the term engram, the concepts of earlier similar incidents, chains of incidents and so on. It was all old hat, and selected to seem like a scientific therapy, while really being a delivery mechanism for hypnosis and covertly repackaged Nazism, or at least a Nazism knock off.

Sometimes people say the therapy works, without understanding a couple of  important ideas. First off hypnotic trances can feel pleasant, so Scientologists think they got gains, but a temporary trance isn't real improvement in my opinion. Second, a false relationship can feel authentic if you don't understand you are being lied to and exploited. In abusive relationships there is often a seduction phase in which an abuser lies about themself and promises a false future, they cannot and do not intend to deliver.

Cults are abusive relationships spread out over groups and mirror them perfectly. Sadly in an abusive relationship you can feel great and fall in love with a lie. It can feel great, and if you discover the truth and the true nature of an abuser you can realize all those feelings were for a person who never was. Similarly in a cult you can feel great chasing rainbows with no chance of ever catching them.

There has never been any scientific validation of any Dianetics or Scientology method, and furthermore to my knowledge no scientific validation of the plagiarized methods in their earlier forms ! They were failed hypnotic techniques ! Tried and failed. Sometimes Hubbard dishonestly combined and repackaged them but zero percent were proven.

That is a big misconception. And people don't understand any beneficial therapy is worth pursuing, as they are so hard to find. So claiming any beneficial therapy in Scientology is too much, by far. There simply isn't any.

Thinking " Well, there had to be some good in Scientology, since we did so much for so long". Anecdotes and personal incredulity don't mean you should take the middle ground between the "Scientology works" claim and the counterclaim "Scientology isn't beneficial".

It's as logical as saying "well some people pray to a blue jellybean and believe it can work miracles" but others say "the blue jellybean isn't real". I guess the logical answer is "SOMETIMES the blue jellybean works miracles".

That's not really a great way to reason.

But if Scientology can get the ex or critic to forward ANY of their lies unchallenged they clamp down on it.

Scientology is a cult and in my opinion should always be described as such. Calling it a church confuses people and helps to hide a fraud, an intentionally designed fraud and thought reform program, as a religion.

There are many times in watching interviews where critics are doing great and just forward a lie from Hubbard and I kind of wince. Because I know the information may be spread and carried out. Sometimes this happens on TV interviews seen by millions of people. And I of course am powerless to correct it.

Just ask yourself if you are saying something online or on a YouTube video or documentary "Am I sure this is right" or "Is this something I know, or held onto from when I was a Scientologist ?".

None of us are perfect ( me included ) , but we can try to be accurate and honest as ambassadors of Scientology. Hubbard and the cult certainly won't do it.