Mockingbird's Nest: (10) Scientology and NXIVM

Scientology and NXIVM - Parallels and Plagiarism

Influences on NXIVM beliefs and practices, sourced from Natalie et al (2019), rendered in the mode of W.S. Bainbridge, e.g. Bainbridge 1978. |NXIVM teachings drew upon diverse influences, including Ayn Rand ("parasites"), L. Ron Hubbard ("suppressives"), Milton Erickson's hypnosis, Isaac Asimov's science fiction, Rudolf Steiner, Tony Robbins, and neuro-linguistic programming. NXIVM incorporated elements of multi-level marketing and practices from judo, with colored cloth for rank and bowing.

This is the tenth post in a series that examines the book Scarred: The True Story Of How I Escaped The Cult That Bound My Life by Sarah Edmondson.

I recommend reading these posts in sequential order and have listed them in order to make reading them in order easy.

Unless noted otherwise, all quotes used in this series are from that book.

"Nancy explained that the point of the Five-Day was to create an ethical framework of understanding by establishing a working definition for basic concepts, like good and bad, right and wrong, honesty and disclosure. This would make our belief systems ethical and consistent." (Scarred page 38)

Scientology similarly has a system of ethics described in numerous policies and the Introduction to Scientology Ethics book and course. Almost all public Scientologists are indoctrinated in these policies if they are in the group and advance in training beyond the very first courses and all staff members and Sea Org members are required to undergo indoctrination in the ethics material.

Scientology ethics material has many policies and describing them in full would take hundreds or thousands of pages. It's noteworthy that they have an initial appearance of encouraging honest and law abiding behavior but in reality if one looks closely at them they actually encourage blindly seeing EVERYTHING done by the Scientology organization and Ronald Hubbard as good, no matter what it is, and EVERYTHING done that is in opposition to or at all critical of the organization, senior Scientologists or the upper echelon of the group or Ronald Hubbard as evil.

Ronald Hubbard, Scientology founder

I wrote the three part series of posts entitled Why Lying And Murder Are Justified In Scientology parts 1, 2, and 3 describing this in detail.

NXIVM and Scientology both have the practice of labeling all critics and dissidents as suppressive persons and requiring all members in good standing to completely shun them and disregard any criticism of the group by them.

Both groups consider all ideas and practices they use their exclusive "tech" and have members agree that they will not use or disseminate the methods used to outsiders without permission from the organization. Scientology has an extensive series of contracts that members must sign over and over as they do services in Scientology.

"In the video, she explained that as we moved through the material, we might find ourselves feeling something she referred to as " the urge to bolt,"and if we do, that's just our internal indication that we were doing it right. Discomfort was an indication that you were "hitting on an issue," so if you bolted, you would never work beyond that limiting belief." (Scarred page 38)

This is entirely reminiscent of the doctrine in Scientology I have already quoted in the fourth post in this very series.

I will repeat a small part of the post here for comparison.

In leaving Scientology and studying cults I realized that Scientology has seemingly "magic doorways"!

If you want to leave while in the course room then "misunderstood words" are blamed!

If you want to leave auditing or don't enjoy an auditing action then it means "the auditing is working and must be continued"!

If you want to simply leave the organization altogether and you don't want to work there anymore you "must have been doing something evil and hiding it"!

It's so strange that depending on which room you were in when you decided to leave it decides the reason!

And you notice leaving is NEVER considered a morally acceptable option!

Scientology also has the "what turns it on turns it off" concept which similarly asserts that the uncomfortable feelings one has in auditing both prove that the auditing is effective and that continuing auditing is required to resolve the cause of the discomfort.

Notably, no flaw in the method is considered possible or any alternative to continuing the practice is seen as suitable for both groups.

A key trait of cults is the doctrine, leader, practices and the group is considered flawless and infallible but the members who wish to leave or stop doing the practices are always discouraged from doing either and any discomfort is interpreted as proof the practice is valid and that the members must use the practice more!

"Then she reviewed some of the community's common terms, which to me sounded like overly cerebral, scientific words, in the same ways you'd develop a secret code language with your best friend in grade school." (Scarred page 38)

This obviously is the loaded language that Scientology also has which I examined in the third post in the series. I must emphasize that Scientology has thousands and thousands of new terms and abbreviations and redefenitions of existing terms that have each other in their definitions leading to never-ending chains of hazy ideas that never get fully and clearly explained.

Now that it's clear that both NXIVM and Scientology have their own extensive loaded language I want to focus on the topic a bit more.

Keith Raniere, NXIVM leader

I think the best model to start with when examining cultic influence is the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton. I have them in the unabridged form as Dr. Robert J. Lifton's Criteria For Thought Reform at Mockingbird's Nest blog on Scientology.

First I will give you an abridged description.

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 highly recommend reading the unabridged version and comparing each of the criteria to any group that you wish to examine or any group you participate in to evaluate the degree of cultic relationship the group may have within it.

Many thousands of people have found it deeply profound and that it describes their own group or even relationships and helps them to untangle from the indoctrination they underwent.

It has the unique quality of being both easily understood by people who have little or no education regarding psychology but also explaining quite well and precisely what the cult and cultic relationship does to the members and how this is truly accomplished in contrast to what the cult doctrine claims.

It's likely the most effective means of both education regarding cults and the most effective tool for recovery from cults.

I think now is the right time to give the unabridged original description of loading the language since we have just found that NXIVM and Scientology both have this practice to a significant degree:

"Loading the Language

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.

In [Chinese Communist] thought reform, for instance, the phrase "bourgeois mentality" is used to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome concerns like the quest for individual expression, the exploration of alternative ideas, and the search for perspective and balance in political judgments.

And in addition to their function as interpretive shortcuts, these cliches become what Richard Weaver has called "ultimate terms" : either "god terms," representative of ultimate good; or "devil terms," representative of ultimate evil. In [Chinese Communist] thought reform, "progress," "progressive," "liberation," "proletarian standpoints" and "the dialectic of history" fall into the former category; "capitalist," "imperialist," "exploiting classes," and "bourgeois" (mentality, liberalism, morality, superstition, greed) of course fall into the latter.

Totalist language then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling's phrase, "the language of nonthought."

To be sure, this kind of language exists to some degree within any cultural or organizational group, and all systems of belief depend upon it. It is in part an expression of unity and exclusiveness: as Edward Sapir put it, "'He talks like us' is equivalent to saying 'He is one of us.'"

The loading is much more extreme in ideological totalism, however, since the jargon expresses the claimed certitudes of the sacred science. Also involved is an underlying assumption that language - like all other human products - can be owned and operated by the Movement. No compunctions are felt about manipulating or loading it in any fashion; the only consideration is its usefulness to the cause.

For an individual person, the effect of the language of ideological totalism can be summed up in one word: constriction.

He is, so to speak, linguistically deprived; and since language is so central to all human experience, his capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed. This is what Hu meant when he said, "using the same pattern of words for so long…you feel chained." Actually, not everyone exposed feels chained, but in effect everyone is profoundly confined by these verbal fetters. As in other aspects of totalism, this loading may provide an initial sense of insight and security, eventually followed by uneasiness.

This uneasiness may result in a retreat into a rigid orthodoxy in which an individual shouts the ideological jargon all the louder in order to demonstrate his conformity, hide his own dilemma and his despair, and protect himself from the fear and guilt he would feel should he attempt to use words and phrases other than the correct ones.

Or else he may adapt a complex pattern of inner division, and dutifully produce the expected cliché's in public performances while in his private moments he searches for more meaningful avenues of expression.

Either way, his imagination becomes increasingly dissociated from his actual life experiences and may tend to atrophy from disuse." (Robert Jay Lifton, eight criteria for thought reform from Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism)

I found this description fit my experience in Scientology exactly.

After spending twenty-five years in Scientology using the loaded language I found my critical and independent thinking abilities severely diminished and went through a long and literally painful process of redevelopment of those aptitudes. I had to relearn how to read and think for myself. It took a lot of time and effort.

I had spent twenty five years interpreting everything I read and heard against the Scientology doctrine I was indoctrinated with and had to redevelop the ability to form my own opinion.

I started reading books and in pain set about making notes. I would take two pages from a notebook and read and put on one page the ideas from the book I agreed with and on the opposite side the ideas I disagreed with and it was as if a fog lifted gradually off my mind over weeks and months. I ended up labeling many ideas as unknown as ones that I don't have enough education regarding to form a definitive or educated opinion.

This is in extreme contrast to the usually binary view of Scientology. If Hubbard agreed with an idea then an idea is correct and if Hubbard disagreed with an idea then an idea is thrown away as trash in Scientology.

It takes a lot of work to think for yourself after decades of letting someone else do ALL of your thinking for you.

"Then she reviewed some of the community's common terms, which to me sounded like overly cerebral, scientific words, in the same way you'd develop a secret code language with your best friend in grade school." (Scarred page 38)

I also want to point out this quote again from Scarred because it reminds me of one I have pointed out in an earlier post from Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard because it's just so similar:

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.” (Ronald Hubbard, Research & Discovery, volume 4, p.324)12 source Jon Atack

Young Ronald Hubbard

Hubbard of course described "someone" using this technique when he himself practiced it! Quite diabolical in my opinion!

That's why I entitled my initial analysis of Scientology indoctrination "Insidious Enslavement: Study Technology."

Even the term "Scientology" fits the descriptions of being "some subject that is far more complex than it should be" from Hubbard and "overly cerebral, scientific words" from NXIVM!

It sounds like a combination of science and technology as if it is somehow doubly scientific!

Regarding the true meaning and origin of the term Scientology I believe like with so many, many, many other ideas Hubbard did not create it but claimed to.

I am going to quote the top living Scientology expert and historian in my opinion cult expert Jon Atack from his article

Possible origins for Dianetics and Scientology

(available free online)

""SCIENTOLOGY"

The name Scientology is borrowed. It was first used by philologist Allen Upward in The New World (which was published in 1910 in the U.S.). Upward used the word to mean "pseudo-science". Nordenholz, an Aryan race theorist, adopted the word "Scientologie" as the title of a 1934 book. Nordenholz's book was translated into English and published in the 1960s by former Scientologist Woodward McPheeters, who claimed many parallels between Nordenholz's work and that of Hubbard. Nordenholz used the word "Scientologie" to mean "the science of the constitution and usefulness of knowledge and knowing" or the "science of consciousness".

Hubbard claimed both to have coined the term himself prior to the inception of Dianetics (in 1950) ("In 1938 I codified certain axioms and phenomena into what I called SCIENTOLOGY"), yet also claimed that Mary Sue Hubbard had coined it . He did not meet Mary Sue until 1951." (Jon Atack)

Jon Atack

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Scientology and NXIVM - Parallels and Plagiarism

Thursday, December 29, 2022

(10) Scientology and NXIVM - Parallels and Plagiarism

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