The Road to Hell is Hard to Escape - Cult Recovery

 I just finished watching The Sensibly Speaking Podcast Episode # 363 The Occult Foundation of Scientology. (available on YouTube for anyone who may not know where to find it, highly recommend)

It made me realize that a quote by Ronald Hubbard is true in a way he would never want anyone to see. He wrote that if you start on the road to truth you need to go all the way.

I remember this from many years ago in Scientology. And if you want to understand Scientology or any cult or most vitally recover from the harm a cult can cause you have to in my opinion quite often go very far in studying the way that cults create the effects they create and further understand the way you were changed by the experiences you had. 

It is not enough to know a cult leader is bad or lied. It's not enough to know an organization promised results it can't deliver and defrauded people. You have to get to the root of the matter and find out what methods the cult used and ultimately why these methods produce the results they do, so you are not stuck in a mystery, left in wonder of if the methods and group or leader are good or if you yourself somehow are flawed. 

Many, possibly most, ex cult members simply don't get enough education on cults and many related topics to fully escape the web of lies that a cult uses to ensnare the members. And it's tragic. 

The interview by Chris Shelton of Jon Atack in my opinion is an example of showing the rock bottom basis of Scientology in its occult origins and that Hubbard took harmful techniques knowingly to mentally enslave people and these techniques whether used in the Scientology organization or not, are harmful by their very nature. 

The episode is two hours of exposure by Chris Shelton and Jon Atack. They expose the origins of Scientology including the techniques of abreactive therapy by Freud and others and the hypnotic techniques used in Dianetics and Scientology by Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard and the fact that Hubbard alternated in his lectures and writings between admitting the hypnotic techniques and denying them in turns over and over and over, perhaps hundreds of times. 

They go further and examine how Hubbard actually  plagiarized ideas from Crowley and several occultists of different kinds. 

They finally plumb the depths and get to several vital points in my opinion.

There's a section of the material that covers the true intentions behind Scientology and the true origins and effects of the techniques used in Dianetics and Scientology.

It's often the hardest part of the journey out of Scientology and often takes the most emotionally uncomfortable facing of truth.

There are a few things that make this difficult.

One is that the ideas are so outrageous or absurd, especially when you are admiring the leader of Scientology and the methods used. The truth is unbelievable. It's quite difficult to believe when you don't have a positive view of Ronald Hubbard or Scientology. 

Ronald Hubbard

“Incredulity of our data and validity. This is our finest asset and gives us more protection than any other single thing. If certain parties thought we were real we would have infinitely more trouble. There’s actual terror in the breast of a guilty person at the thought of OT, and without a public incredulity we never would have gotten as far as we have. And now it’s too late to be stopped. This protection was accidental but it serves us very well indeed. Remember that the next time the ignorant scoff.”– L. Ron Hubbard, “Scientology Review”, HCO Bulletin of 29 July 1963

In examining the origins of Scientology one inevitably should arrive at the affirmations of Ronald Hubbard as the Rosetta Stone of Scientology, along with the Skipper letter, the games maker tape from The Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures the 39th lecture on the series, the letter from Ronald Hubbard to Forrest Ackerman dated January 13th 1949 and a different set of references on the hypnotic origin and techniques in Scientology. I have written numerous articles about these as has Jon Atack. 

There's another reason it's difficult to believe.

The techniques used by Ronald Hubbard (as the techniques used by other cult leaders) are intended to do what the very first Dianetic techniques did - give patients a euphoric experience that could be used to inspire awe or in the rhetoric Hubbard studied act as sublime influence creating ecstasy a trance state and the result is a covert hypnotic method intended to make patients suggestible and dependent on Hubbard's expertise. 

The fact is cult leaders seek out and to the degree they understand the methods meant to confuse people and resolve the confusion by having the cult leader, the cult doctrine, the group norms established and controlled by the cult leader as easing the chaos and establishing order. 

Cult expert Rick Alan Ross has been interviewed and described Scientology as a machine that produces abuse. The techniques themselves, regardless of who is the leader are designed to make people progressively more dependent on the people at the top and even if they seem beneficial or neutral they are actually not helpful and in fact harmful.

The realization that the same methods that one thought were giving them enlightenment and profound wisdom when they used them were actually leading them into a state of greater and greater delusion and a greater divorce from reality is horrifying.

 They reduce independent and critical thinking in subjects and increase dependence on authority and increase suggestibility to the statements from that same authority. 

Getting to the bottom of this includes quite often realizing that you yourself were falling for a pile of lies. You realize that when you were certain you were helping people and doing great things you in fact were harming them, destroying families, helping an organization that defrauded them and did far more harm to society than anything else.

It's akin to a Nazi or KKK member suddenly realizing all the anti-Semitic and racist and homophobic ideas they hold are false and all these people are not what they were told and in fact all their negative prejudices aren't supported by evidence.

Imagine if you were such a person and realized you spent decades as a villain with total certainty, fanatical certainty, knew you were a hero to only realize that you were in fact a villain. It's crushing. 

Such a realization is so unpleasant that people would rather die than face it, often literally. 

The long term Scientologist has to face this. Ex members of other cults have to face this too.

The techniques that cult leaders use don't deliver miracles, enlightenment, transcend human limitations, or anything else of the sort. They simply don't.

These techniques are sought and used by cult leaders to get their subjects to become their slaves and they involve deception and exploitation.

 They to varying degrees make use of awe, the methods of rhetoric, hypnosis, the techniques described by various cult experts such as the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton, the six conditions for thought reform by Margaret Singer, the BITE model by Steve Hassan.

These are well complimented by the descriptions given by Daniel Shaw in his book Traumatic Narcissism and the book Terror Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. 

I have read many books on cults and the comparison of the descriptions given in detail by Lifton and others against the customs and doctrine of a particular cult give understanding how they can be implemented. 

By examining many groups against the one that a particular person is focusing on (either just as a subject to study in its own right or because one is a member or ex member seeking understanding) a person can see the parallel between the different groups. One may induce confusion by one method while another may have a slight variation.

Many groups, for example use two to a half dozen trance inducing methods (hypnotic techniques) to influence members, Scientology because of Ronald Hubbard's long study of hypnosis has a covert effort to integrate hundreds of methods of hypnosis into Dianetics and Scientology and this makes it extremely difficult to unravel and recover from for many ex members.

Scientology also has two large dictionaries that have twelve hundred pages of loaded language to untangle from. Many groups have some degree of loaded language but this goes far, far beyond the norm. 

The techniques in Scientology and the immense amount of doctrine and the mountains of both contradictions and loaded language and the intense control of members may make Scientology especially difficult to sort out but it is not entirely different from other cultic groups.

The sad fact is a member of any cult really isn't out of the hold of the cult if they don't see the methods of the cult as harmful. They might not be free from the lies and influence of the cult and they might still perpetuate the methods used in the cult and this can harm others in the future.