Category Scientology
What will the future bring for Scientology?
The latest blog post by Marty, “Standard Scientology“, was quite a bombshell judging by the fallout – 700 comments in three days. I usually only skim through Scientology related blogs. This one I both read and left a few comments. And in doing so, I came across a comment by the nick, “NolongercareaboutScn” that I found succinct and quite true:
Scientology cannot deliver on the major promises of the states of Clear and OT. Instead it DELIVERS some temporal life improvements (which are not without value) while continuing to SELL advanced states of being that it cannot and never has delivered.
If the written promises of the tech were more aligned with the results, or if the results of the application of the tech were more aligned with the written promises, then the entire subject would be more worthy of serious consideration.
As it stands today, Scientology as a subject is a hoax. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are charged for promised results that are not and never have been delivered, specifically the states of being described as Clear and OT.
In the business world, that is called fraud. Elsewhere it is sometimes called religion. What it looks like from here is a fraudulent business pretending to be a religion, regardless of the branding of those doing the delivery.
When I say “quite true”, it is because many of the gains I have gotten in Scientology have lasted for decades and may last until I die or longer. While there are temporal gains for sure, gains like recovering my creativity, improved communication skills and freedom from shame, blame and regret are so far permanent.
But the description that Scientology is a fraud is correct – because it has never delivered the states of Clear or OT while it continues to sell these states as real, attainable and delivered. In the business world, that is a felony.
I should add that I agree fully with Marty’s blog post. And it makes one ponder what the future will bring for Scientology.
If you have been tracking the Sciosphere – with the Church’s accelerating demise as passangers are vacating the Titanic, formerly Scientology friendly blogs turning critical and the independent field is marked by infights, fractioning and shrinkage – the future does look bleak.
In a year from now I doubt there will be many blogs or forums left promoting Scientology, except for perhaps the die-hard Milestone Two. The Church will be shrinking ever faster while battling mounting court cases.
But does it matter? Does it matter if Scientology fades further until it isn’t even a social joke?
Scientology Drama
The world is going down a “dwindling spiral”. Society is corrupt, immoral and irrational. Psychiatry is on its relentless quest to destroy civilization by drugging every adult and child to obedient zombies. Mankind needs to be saved, and the only hope is Scientology. The whole agonized future of this 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.
This is the true Scientology attitude. And with this attitude, no wonder life gets serious, grim and tense. And no wonder there is so much drama among scientologists. Everything gets serious. To Kirsty Alley. To scientologists in the church as they disconnect from any and all that might, potentially criticize their strongly held beliefs and cognitive dissona.nce. It is deadly serious to scientologists who carry the torch outside the church.
I have experienced being in the crossfire of some silly drama on scientology-related forums and mailing lists. And recently in e-mail exchanges back-stage. The irony is that people armed with supposedly the best tools known to Man for handling social relations manage to entangle themselves in more drama than you can shake a stick at.
Scientologists need a new course – a requirement for practicing Scientology. The title of that course would be “Chillax – handling drama by not giving a flying shit”.
Or learn to practice hugology.
Invitation to critique my OT VIII success story
Just found the success story I wrote when I completed OT VIII in June 2006. Since then I have evolved and my viewpoints have changed considerably. It is interesting to look back at what I wrote at the time. I would like to invite the readers of this blog to comment on my views at the time. I will answer any questions you have. Let’s roll 🙂
I never imagined that there could be so much gain available in such a short amount of time. There are no words to describe the massive amount of gain on this level.
My viewpoint is dramatically different. Everything has shifted. People around me are brighter, the sky is clearer and the birds sing more in harmony.
Barriers are removed from me being Tone 40. My creative thrust and ability has increased immensely.
I am stripped of must-haves. I don’t need to be in action. I don’t need to be productive. This makes me free to be more in action and more productive. I do not need to perceive, neither do I need to know. I can simply and freely perceive and know.
I have never experienced such a boost on the tone scale, in awareness and in productivity.
I love life. My love for others is profound. My respect and admiration for other people is deep and sincere.
Let me share a secret with you: If you are not OT VIII; If you had just one minute of my existence, just one minute, you would spend every hour awake to get yourself to OT VIII.
To the crew of the Freewinds: You are an amazing team, spearheading existence itself by making sure the first OT level is available to all. The eligibility was the most thorough I have seen. Since withholds makes a being not have, it also makes him not have gains. The OT VIII eligibility is indeed needed to make it possible for me to have such massive gain.
To RTC: You set the standard for what a standard should be. By meticulously ensuring the tech is standard and applied to the letter, you safeguard the future for all.
To LRH: There are no words invented to describe the respect and admiration I have for you. This I will make up for in action. I will not let you down.
Update: See my current views on this success story.
Scientology: How delusional can you get?
This is sadly how off the rails one gets from remaining in the Truman Show.
First a definition; IAS = International Association of Scientologists, an organization created to facilitate donations from Scientologists for no service in return. Scientologists are required to donate huge chunks of money to remain in good standing with the church as they move on up the Scientology levels.
Here’s a quote from an e-mail intercepted by Mike Rinder:
…”what would the planet be like if there was no IAS?”. Great question, isn’t it? When you really take a look it does not take long to realize that without the IAS the world we live in would be way worse than what it is today, that probably the majority of the population would be on psych drugs and maybe worst of all, there would be no hope for the future.
When you start believing that Scientology in any context has a real impact on society outside of being a media joke, you are delusional.
Letting Scientology give meaning to your life
A brilliant comment by Rafael on my previous blog post deserves a blog post all on its own:
“When I was a Scientologist, I KNEW everything…… or, at least the IMPORTANT things in life.
I was CERTAIN, I had all the answers, where I came from, where I was going, why I was here, what I was, Who I was…….
Scientology gave meaning to my life. Rich, beautiful meaning.
Now that I’m not a Scientologist, I’m just an old sock who knows almost nothing and struggles to make ends meet.
My life might be insignificant in this enormous universe which I’m not saving anymore………
But now I am the one who is giving meaning to it.“
Scientology: The two primary motivations
- To help oneself
- To help others
These are the two primary motivations of a scientologist. Most scientologists are recruited via #1. Most scientologists stay because of #2.
Scientology may deliver excellent results to individuals, but it does not deliver what it promises (Clear, OT). Some cling to the hope that it may some day deliver on its promises, but most people get the drift and leave – though it may take a while due to family ties or difficult social situations.
The church knows that it cannot deliver on its promises. Thus the bait is switched into exploiting the motivation to help others. Utilizing whatever benefits the individual may have gotten in Scientology into hooking the person on the benefit it may have for others. The person may view himself as a difficult or different case and that others will understand and benefit better from Scientology.
Failing to help oneself via Scientology, scientologists may cling to the hope that the church will help others through its social betterment programs. These programs are far and away and only reported through over-the-top false PR during the international Scientology events. And the scientologist may continue to believe that his time and money is best donated to the church. And as the church harshly penalizes listening to any criticism of itself and decries any independent research, the parishioner is left clueless – continually bombarded by the internal church PR.
It amazes me that I often hear a person, after reading a critical book on Scientology, raising the question of why scientologists remain in the fold. It does put such books in a bad light as a book on Scientology surely should be able to answer such a basic question. The answer lies in the above.
Personality tests and recruitment
Personality tests are frequently used as a tool in recruitment. There are pros and cons to using such tests.
I was the CEO of U-MAN in Norway from 1990 till 2000. The company’s main product was selling the Oxford Capacity Analysis as a tool in recruitment for our clients. The OCA test is controversial because it is used by the Church of Scientology and licensed from the Church of Spiritual Technology and 6% of the income from test sales is funneled to the Church of Scientology conglomerate. U-MAN, a WISE company, has later changed its name to Performia. The company has moved its testing online like so many other companies selling personality tests, IQ tests etc.
While I go into greater details regarding both WISE, U-MAN and the OCA test in my book “Nittenåttifire“, I would like to accentuate a few points here.
The OCA test is originally a fork of the Johnson Temperament Analysis (now the T-JTA). Before 1954, Hubbard used many different personality tests to validate changes and progress people had with Scientology therapies. Julia Salmen, an employee of the Church of Scientology in LA was asked by L. Ron Hubbard to come up with a personality test that would be free for Scientology to use. She started out with the JTA and added one personality trait (Certain – Uncertain) – a smart improvement as it enhanced the value of the JTA by adding an internal consistency check of sorts. The OCA test has 10 personality traits with 20 questions determining each trait (the JTA has 180 questions and 9 traits). It may be doubtful that this change actually constitute enough “new work” to void any copyright claims of the JTA.
While the JTA (and OCA) was designed as a general personality test, such tests are also frequently used as a complimentary tool in job interviews. But there is a liability in such use. A similar liability is evident when the employer relies on school grades when recruiting for a position.
When an interviewer has a candidate in front of him, her grades from school and a personality test result with scores and a nice graph, he tends to overemphasize the grades and the test results. Because it has numeric values. The numbers tend to eclipse his own observations. The candidate fades to the background while the grades and scores grabs attention. I know this both from my own recruitment processes and from watching other interviewers. I did more than 6000 test evaluations/interviews, I supervised hundreds of interviews done by others. Whenever there is a test score on the table, it takes center stage.
The OCA test is a really good test. But personality is seldom the main factor in job performance. We would often be surprised when we tested a team of people only to find out that the top performer had the worst test for the job. He could be completely unstructured, irresponsible in life, a nervous wreck and even shy. Still he was the best sales person in the company. When we focused only on selling and evaluating OCA tests, we recommended the wrong candidate for the job maybe 20-30% of the time. As we improved our recruitment services, adding tests for competence, structured interviews, better reference checking, etc. we managed to get as high as 97,4% success rate (checked with the client 18 months after placement). But – and here comes the big BUT – I am sure we missed some fantastic candidates in the process. The most amazing people have quirks, eccentricities. Some are even raving mad by normal standards.
One should be cognizant of the tools one uses. One should master the tools and never let the tools take center stage. People should be the focus of attention.
For what it’s worth, I leave you with a book I wrote while I worked in U-MAN – The Evaluator’s Bible.
In the next blog post, I will relate a recent story of a very different interview I had with an amazing person.
This is where I am at
…or even letting go without any forgiveness at all.
Fair Game & forced Disconnection. So what?
The Church of Scientology is infamous for their Fair Game practice and their forced disconnection.
But so what? What’s the big deal?
I mean, this is nothing more than the daily routine in the US and most other countries in the world. With the immigration laws of countries like UK, Norway and the US, families are regularly torn apart. And citizens in scores of countries are fair gamed and worse for speaking their mind. And people go into fits about the Church of Scientology doing this on a much smaller scale and being much nicer about it. US is regularly going apeshit to “protect their rights” or freedom. Scientology is doing the same on a comparably microscopic scale. Put into this proportion, I can’t help wonder what all the fuss is about.
Geir Isene - uncut 