Mockingbird's Nest: (12) 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 twelfth 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.

"The pamphlet called other success principles "useless" and promoted the Ethos program as something that could help one "make the leap from knowing about success... to actually having success. And they hit you: "We are an ongoing program that helps you develop the necessary inner strength to achieve success. It's a team effort with team support." (Scarred page 39)

Cults, like abusers in abusive relationships, often proclaim that only they have a method to deal with a problem. Many abusers tell their victims that "only I can save you" or "no one will understand you like I will" or "no one else really loves you like I do."

Cults often proclaim exclusive knowledge and ability to help members and Scientology and NXIVM certainly share this trait.

“In all the broad Universe there is no other hope for Man than ourselves.”

(Ronald Hubbard, “Ron’s Journal” 1967)

Ronald Hubbard, Scientology founder

“We’re not playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t cute or something to do for lack of something better.

The whole agonized future of the planet, every man, woman and child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology.

This is a deadly serious activity. And if we miss getting out of the trap now, we may never again have another chance.

Remember, this is our first chance to do so in all the endless trillions of years of the past.”

(Ronald Hubbard HCO PL 7 February 1965 Keeping Scientology Working Series1)

Something else that is noteworthy is that NXIVM is an ongoing effort and Scientology has activities that members are encouraged to participate in for the rest of their lives.

Many non-cult groups that offer training have definite programs and courses that have fixed lengths and duration.

If you go to a college or trade school or any of many other types of schooling or training the activity has a defined cost and it's clear how long you are expected to attend and that when you are finished with the program if you meet the requirements you graduate from it and are done. But cults quite often have the odd trait of endless training or counseling that have no actual measurable or definite goals and they don't end. Or the group or leader keeps coming up with new "discoveries" or "revelations" to make the members keep giving more money, time, labor, and attention.

NXIVM and Scientology certainly share this trait. NXIVM seemed to always have more ideas from Keith Raniere to make more curriculum for members and Scientology had decades of Hubbard making more technology (he actually plagiarized it, but did so seemingly endlessly.)

NXIVM is noteworthy for pressuring members at an intermediate level of involvement to constantly either be buying more training or devoting more time and labor to the group and the inner circle of the group, which was likely almost exclusively a cult of personality for Keith Raniere, like most cults required ever increasing degrees of devotion to the group and treated anything less than permanent and unwavering service to the group as unethical.

Hubbard actually holds several records for the millions and millions of words of doctrine he produced. It is quite likely that he was the only person who heard everything he had recorded as he was nearly constantly making taped lectures for decades.

I have written on the plagiarism he committed and recommend the work of Jon Atack on this topic. I personally am convinced that Hubbard studied hypnosis extensively and tried to covertly incorporate literally hundreds of techniques from hypnosis throughout Dianetics and Scientology and this included auditing and indoctrination and many activities in Scientology.

Cult expert Steve Hassan has commented that Hubbard read books on hypnosis from the twenties and thirties and used the techniques. Arnie Lerma at his Lermanet website listed many examples of both Hubbard's own words from Scientology doctrine demonstrating his knowledge regarding hypnosis and Arnie Lerma also found quotes from references on hypnosis to compare side by side with methods used in Scientology to show Hubbard plagiarized the methods and sometimes Hubbard didn't change the commands or procedures at all, sometimes he barely altered the wording at all.

Hubbard additionally plagiarized many ideas from Aleister Crowley and mentioned this in his taped lectures.

Hubbard, in the Philadelphia Doctorate Course, 1952:

“Now, he could simply say, “I have action.” A magician – the magic cults of the eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth centuries in the Middle East were fascinating. The only modern work that has anything to do with them is a trifle wild in spots, but it’s fascinating work in itself, and that’s work written by Aleister Crowley, the late Aleister Crowley, my very good friend. And he did himself a splendid piece of aesthetics built around those magic cults. It’s very interesting reading to get hold of a copy of a book, quite rare, but it can be obtained. the Master Therion, T-h-e-r-i-o-n, The Master Therion by Aleister Crowley. He signs himself “The Beast”; “The Mark of the Beast, 666.” Very, very something or other.”

(Ronald Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures, 1952)

Incidentally, when I was first leaving Scientology I had trouble understanding his affirmations (private self hypnosis commands he used on himself, possibly for decades) and the claim that Scientology ultimately had origins in hypnosis and the occult.

So, I studied hypnosis at length and looked at the basic techniques of confusion (aka paradox aka contradiction), repetition, repetition-with-variation, guided imagery, attention fixation and mimicry. I also looked at the effects of hypnosis including trance logic, euphoric trance states, dissociation, postural slump, eye lid flutter and numerous others which were essential to my education on the subject as well.

I read about cognitive dissonance theory and the momentary hesitation and mental blankness that accompanies this dissonance and realized that Hubbard intended to produce the confusion and dissonance and momentary blankness and then to "remedy" the confusion that was intentionally induced by providing an answer from Hubbard himself and having a member take in this as an implant hypnotically, in other words below a level of conscious awareness.

This is true in both auditing and particularly indoctrination in which moments of confusion or blankness are to be remedied by either taking in the thousands and thousands of loaded language definitions that Hubbard used to reframe reality itself and /or to also have Scientology doctrine also implanted as part of this process. In either case it was meant to reframe Hubbard himself as the only one who has answers that are reliable.

Additionally, I actually examined the occult to see if it was represented on Scientology. I read The Book of Law by Crowley and found that many dozens of ideas throughout Dianetics and Scientology are from Crowley and The Book of Law is so short it's practically a pamphlet.

I also read an analysis of the earlier insane cult book The OAHSPE and found extremely strong evidence that much of Scientology including the OT levels are plagiarized from that earlier cult doctrine, which was written in the 1800s.

I published an extensive analysis of the similarities between Scientology and The OAHSPE in: OT III And Beyond: Sources Plagiarized From Part 1, 2 and 3.

I have written numerous analyses of hypnosis in Scientology as well. Many posts on this are available at Mockingbird's Nest blog on Scientology.

One additional note I want to make on the plagiarism of Hubbard and Raniere is a similar story I have heard about both of them.

I heard that Ronald Hubbard had a habit of having an aide read a book on a subject such as psychology or a technique in talk therapy and then give Hubbard a twenty minute synopsis of the book. Hubbard would have the aide explain the concept and summarize it.

Then Hubbard quite often would give a lecture that night and steal the ideas from the book his aide just that day explained to him and incorporate the ideas into Hubbard's own scifi pseudoscience and claim it was from research or past life space opera and Hubbard would quite often combine hypnotic techniques with whatever ideas people presented him, whether they were originally part of a hypnotic technique or not.

Hubbard gave thousands and thousands of taped lectures which were most often given to a live audience that paid for the lectures.

He delivered over four hundred lectures on one course and had many other series of lectures that had dozens or more lectures delivered in one series and Hubbard made many, many series.

Scientology has claimed that Hubbard recorded over three thousand taped lectures and it claims he has produced over seventy five million words of Dianetics and Scientology doctrine.

It's extremely likely that other than Hubbard himself no human being has ever heard all his lectures or read all his writings.

Now, I have certainly not listened to all or most of the lectures but I have listened to several and read the transcripts and excerpts from several more.

The fact that Hubbard frequently came up with "new" material for his lectures and just churned them out routinely, sometimes for years, shows in my opinion that he used a combination of ideas plagiarized from the two subjects he put serious effort into studying, namely hypnosis and the occult (though he plagiarized from these subjects, just as he did with many others), and he took whatever ideas his aides could describe for him or other people in Scientology and Dianetics introduced him to and he just claimed all of these things as his own.

Hubbard in an early lecture recommended the book Hypnotism Comes of Age: Its Progress from Mesmer to Psychoanalysis by Bernard Wolfe and Raymond Rosenthal.

I read this book as part of my study of hypnosis and realized Hubbard embraced it. In particular he modeled much of Scientology after the method the book described. The book described the combination of hypnosis and psychoanalysis to create hypnoanalysis and Hubbard realized he could combine other practices with hypnosis and merely not tell both the patients and practitioners that his techniques rely on guiding imagination during suggestible trance states (hypnosis) to create entirely false memories of events that never occurred, particularly early childhood events and past life events.

I believe Hubbard took many other ideas including talk therapies and the basic ideas in his study tech from others and combined them with classic hypnotic techniques to covertly mentally enslave subjects.

By combining his actual study of hypnosis and the occult with the steady stream of synopses his aides would provide Hubbard made it look like he was a peerless genius who was constantly coming up with new breakthrough after new breakthrough and that he had an ability to see underlying truths and think at a level of awareness far beyond anyone else!

After all, it seemed like he was coming up with entirely new techniques and principles day after day that genuine research would take a lifetime to develop as quickly as a normal person could cook a meal or do an oil change.

If we understand the ideas are either entirely or almost entirely plagiarized then Hubbard giving hundreds of lectures over years is no longer impressive.

It is like watching a politician give great speeches and finding out his staff write every word and he just stands there and reads off a teleprompter and never comes up with the text himself.

I want to say that I heard something similar regarding Keith Raniere. I heard that he had others explain some ideas to him and then he would try to act as if he was an expert on the subject he just himself discovered.

Keith Raniere, NXIVM leader

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Scientology and NXIVM - Parallels and Plagiarism

Thursday, December 29, 2022

(12) Scientology and NXIVM - Parallels and Plagiarism

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