Tag Bridge to Total Freedom

Scientology bait & switch

Geir Isene 350 Comments

The first part of Scientology’s Bridge to Total Freedom helps the person take responsibility for his own mind and his own issues.

From the bottom of the Bridge to OT 2, the person exercises his ability to take responsibility over his own mind matters.

From OT 3 and up to OT 8, the Bridge is all about blaming others for one’s issues. The person works on shifting blame to imaginary entities that he is told is stuck to his body. Hubbard calls these entities Body Thetans (BTs), remnants from a sci-fi catastrophe 75 million years ago. And every person on Earth presumably has thousands if not millions of these spiritual flees stuck to and around his body and pestering him. They are supposedly the source of odd sensations, pain and discomfort and can make him behave irrationally. Whatever mental issue the person has, it is the fault of these BTs.

The first part of the Bridge is the Bait. The second part is the Switch.

  • Why do OTs blindly follow the commands of the mad dictator, the pope of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige?
  • Why are there few if any OTs that make real positive impact in the world today? Or even in their own neighborhood?
  • Why can’t the OTs in the church stop their religion from sinking faster than the Titanic?

Could it be that their responsibility is driven down to the level of a lemming?

Could this also explain why Hubbard found so many enemies to blame – from the CIA, KGB, APA, psychologists, psychiatrists, the media, the bankers, SPs, anti-scientologists, Xenu, the Marcabians and BTs – lots and lots of BTs?

I have hardly seen a group with that many perceived enemies and where the blame-game is on such a high gear. The International Executives blames the lower rank Sea Org members (the super-clergy), the Sea Org blames the outer Organization Staff and the those Staff blames each other and the public. And everybody blames the Suppressive Persons (the SPs). The shifting of responsibilities is massive.

Personal freedom and harmony is possible, but the road to tranquility is certainly not paved with blame, but rather with love, forgiveness, giving, care and fun.

Update(2013-11-03): After discussing this in great length, I have come to the conclusion that the above is merely a special case of Bait and Switch in Scientology. It is known to relatively few people. What should be much broader known and what constitutes a much more fundamental Bait & Switch at the foundations of the Bridge is this: Hubbard promised a great many objective, real and testable gains from Scientology. These range from a stack of abilities that you would get when you become Clear (see Dianetics) as well as a range of special (OT) abilities higher on the Bridge. All testable and objective, such as Freedom From Overwhelm (OT 3) and Out-of-body experiences (OBEs). But, when you are to attest on the various levels you attain on The Bridge to Total Freedom, the vast majority (if not all) of the End Phenomenas (EPs/gains) are strictly subjective. Promising objective gains is the Bait, delivering subjective gains is the Switch. It’s like a school would promise that you will attain a certain level of math skills, but at the end of the year you would attest to “I feel good at math”. A classic Bait & Switch.

Scientology End Phenomena

Geir Isene 84 Comments

Scientology offers a huge breadth of tools, processes and levels aimed at increasing a person’s awareness of himself and his environment.

For every process or level, there is an “End Phenomena” (EP) that defines what that action is supposed to achieve.

The person (“pc” = “pre-clear” = a person on his way up the levels to “Clear”) will exhibit some evidence that the EP has been reached. This is accompanied by some specific reactions on the “E-meter” (the device used to measure the body’s electrical resistance).

END PHENOMENA is defined as “those indicators in the pc and meter which show that a chain or process is ended”.(L. Ron Hubbard)

Most of the EPs in Scientology is fairly easy, subjective and “feel-good”. Others are more “hard core” and objectively verifiable.

These “objective EPs” can be rather tough to verify. Some are plain impossible. Still we see people attest to having achieved these impossible EPs every day – even though the person must know they cannot have achieved such a state. One may wonder why, and this is up for discussion here.

Let us take but a few examples.

PTS Rundown: The EP is a PC who is getting and keeping case gains and never again rollercoasters.

“Case gains” means positive progress in Scientology. “Rollercoaster” means to vacillate in mood, being happy, then sad, etc for no obvious reason. If the above EP was in fact true, it would have cured mankind of one of the most common mental ills forever by the use of that small Scientology action (perhaps 10-50 hours of auditing/processing).

Or how about the EP of “Grade 0, “Communications release”:

Ability to communicate freely with anyone on any subject.

Or how about the professional communications course (the Pro TRs, “TRs” = “Training Routines”):

The PRIMARY VALUABLE FINAL PRODUCT of TRs is:
A Professional auditor who with comm handling alone can keep a pc interested in his own case and willing to talk to the auditor.

The SECONDARY VALUABLE FINAL PRODUCT of TRs is:
A person with the session and social presence of a professional auditor and that presence can be summed up as a being who can handle anyone with communication alone and whose communication can stand up faultlessly to any session or social situation no matter how rough.

The END PHENOMENON of TRs is:
A being who knows he can achieve both of the above flawlessly and from here on out.

I invite here to a discussion of the validity of the above End Phenomena, other similar objective claims in Scientology, and of why people would attest to something that is impossible to honestly claim to have achieved.