Why Bother Dissecting Scientology ? 2

 

 



 

Someone said something to me that got me to unleash a long explanation why a person that wants to understand Scientology needs to study hypnosis, even if they don't believe in hypnosis.

Here it is.

Hubbard had Scientologists and Dianeticists bring him ideas and books and courses and if he felt they fit his thought reform program and helped to confuse, enslave and swindle people he took them and claimed them as his own creations. He even took terms like study technology and applied it to a method of authoritarian submission that knocks out critical and independent thinking so thoroughly it eradicates the capacity to study.

He plagiarized from the old sources like Crowley and the new like Scientologists under his command. He had no shame or loyalty.

Some of the independent Scientologists get an odd way of looking at things. They have online groups and look for a way to decode Scientology by digging through tapes and books by Hubbard for hours. Day after day.

They learn Hubbard lied, which is easy to see if you learn any of his true biography, but they know SOMETHING happens in auditing and on course, so they accept Scientology as miracles without an easy to read instruction manual or an incomplete road to godhood.

They often are still under his influence to the degree they believe in his authority, wisdom or even the technology itself.

They talk of ethical lapses on Hubbard's part, but don't realize there were no periods of honesty or decency between the lapses. It was always a con.

They see the pleasant experiences and strong vivid impressions created in auditing and indoctrination as proof Scientology found transcendent technology. But sadly they don't realize ALL the effects created in Scientology are easily explained by looking to the hypnosis Hubbard clearly studied for many years. His words on tape show a strong familiarity and even education with the subject.

That doesn't mean hypnosis is a perfect and proven subject. It means Hubbard knew it, practiced it and tried to make it the foundation of Dianetics auditing and Scientology auditing and indoctrination covertly.

For the skeptic regarding hypnosis who is unwilling to even learn it at all but wants to understand Scientology or Hubbard I have a parallel.

If a scientist or engineer made many creations and they enthralled people around the world and affected thousands of families it would be worthwhile to understand what the scientist THOUGHT they were doing AND the methods they followed, even if their theories were imperfect.

Say someone created the pyramids and we found a detailed plan and record of construction that we could easily and accurately translate. If a modern scientist got a copy of a translation and saw the designer followed - as an example that might not be historically accurate but easy to understand - a version of Newtonian physics and gravity.

Now Newtonian physics has the idea that objects have mass and the mass attracts other mass a certain way that is diminished in effect by distance. Big things like stars and large planets have enough mass that they pull each other a lot when they are really close but if they are really far the effects of the pull drop down to virtually nothing.

And Newton worked out formulas to show this and exactly how strong the pull between objects would be if they are various masses and distances apart.

For us on earth the planet is very, very, very close and immensely massive so it pulls us toward it. Other far more massive objects like the sun and Jupiter and the galactic core and hundreds or even in the case of the center of the galaxy are millions or billions of times more massive than our sun. But they don't affect us as much because the sun is millions and millions of miles away. And the galactic core is many light years away and other galaxies are hundreds, thousands and billions of light years away. The tremendous distance results in a diminished pull.

Great, that's the layman's description of Newtonian gravity. It's brilliant. Newton was a genius. Maybe one in a million intellect.
It describes many things for engineering and science. We use it in physics every day.

One slight problem. It's wrong. And not a little bit.

When it's used with great precision or for great distances it fails. You can't make the formulas work no matter how you try.

For building a bridge or shed or even huge building the formulas work.

But for measuring and predicting the orbits of planets the formulas never work. Einstein figured out why. He somehow realized gravity is a distortion in space ITSELF and caused by mass being concentrated in an area. He saw a different relationship between matter, energy, space and even time.

He had some very unusual ideas he expressed on his theories of relativity and special relativity. But his whacky ideas work for explaining orbits and for the high precision calculations needed for satellite technology. GPS and our cell phones probably wouldn't exist without his work.

His work has also helped with space travel and been validated by experiments to see if his prediction of time being linked to mass and speed is true.

So, say you were a modern scientist and found the pyramid builders used the incorrect Newtonian physics ? Wouldn't you read their work and see what they THOUGHT they were doing AND use Einstein's ideas to see what they actually did and how the two differed ?

That's why people who take apart Scientology need to learn BOTH. You need to understand the language and concepts Hubbard had and thought reform as well. Neither alone is sufficient.

Hypnosis is an essential subject to learn. You don't have to believe every claim or idea. Hypnosis has contradictions in it and claims from different practitioners that contradict one another or ideas that are pseudoscience. Claims that can't be proven or disproven are obviously not scientific.

Anyone saying hypnosis never harms or always benefits as examples are easy. How could a hypnotist know about every time ? He can't.

To understand Scientology a good understanding of many concepts and methods from hypnosis is vital. As is understanding cognitive dissonance theory, abusive relationships, narcissists and sociopaths, rhetoric in the fullest sense, social psychology regarding influence, psychology regarding cults and denial, dissociation and lying.

There are many essential subjects - propaganda analysis, critical thinking, skepticism and scientific method. Aspects of real science like social psychology experiments and longitudinal studies.

The list goes on and on. Each subject makes the layers of fraud and deception in Scientology easier to see through. And it easier to see if you are or were a Scientologist when you are following Hubbard's decisions instead of your own. Understanding loaded language, thought stopping cliches and propaganda through redefinition and in particular reversals of truth can help you to understand double think in yourself and spot it in others. Other subjects help as well like neuroscience.

It's a tremendous undertaking but Scientology has a reported thirty five million words of doctrine. Literally millions of lies. It's usually put in a Scientologist through hundreds of hours of indoctrination and dozens of auditing, sometimes hundreds of hours of auditing and thousands of hours of indoctrination. And often years and years in the cult environment, thinking the doctrine and using the language.

For a Scientologist to work to understand that and try to undo it is a huge undertaking. And worth twenty or thirty hours reading initially to see if they want to start. If they proceed then a couple hundred hours studying may help them feel informed and possibly greatly freed from Hubbard's influence. It's worth it to me. It's not fair to have to work so hard to undo the damage he inflicted but at least you have a chance. Not everyone gets that. I recommend taking it.