Tag scientology gains

Thanks to Scientology

Geir Isene 37 Comments

I would like to express my gratitude to Scientology and what I have learned from my 25 years as a Scientologist. Since it is now 9 years since I left the organization and 12 years since I completed the highest Scientology level, OT 8, I can calmly reflect on what gains I got from it. There are many years since I stopped considering myself a Scientologist. I am of no religion, of no particular faith. I am somewhat anarchistic at heart, not believing in any set methods and always trying to look at simpler truths. The scientific method is perhaps the most successful of human methodology, but even that has its limitations.

Lighthouse: Dedicated to my mother, Turid Isene

Some Scientology gains are short, fleeting, impermanent. Some are more lasting, and some have grown stronger over the years. The short-lived gains are uninteresting. The lasting gains have helped me throughout my life.

Perhaps my most fundamental gain from Scientology is leaving Scientology. Graduating with a sense of simplicity and on a quest for ever more simple solutions. It has taught me to trust my own senses, to reflect on my own actions and personality and to self-correct. A self-scepticism based on a healthy doubt and interest in finding out deeper truths. I am calmer from Scientology and much better at not giving a fuck about stuff that really doesn’t matter. Life is less serious.

An interesting tidbit is that I used to have nightmares. Several times per month I would wake up from one sweating. During just a few days, when I did OT 8 back in 2006, they completely disappeared and for 12 years I’ve had none. Given that I would have no nightmares only 1 out of ten months before, the probability that it is pure luck that I didn’t have one since is less than picking out one particular particle of matter in the whole observable universe. So I can with confidence say that this was a gain specifically from OT 8.

I am currently learning how to “Lose without a loss” – to be able to lose in a situation and not carry on a loss afterwards. And I’m getting quite good at it. It’s incidentally an exercise that will ultimately help me when I die, as that is the ultimate loss in life.

Scientology is a polarizing subject. Most people who care to discuss the subject view it as a black-or-white proposition. It quickly degenerates into a good vs bad, either-or, Republicans vs Democrats, Cowboys vs Indians or US/them discussion (pun intended). I view it differently. There are good and bad in everything, and while the Church of Scientology is a fascistic cult, I have gotten invaluable gains from my years studying and applying the subject. Maybe I could have gotten the same or even better elsewhere. I wouldn’t know. I only know what I did get, and I’m grateful for that.

Why this blog is suppressive

Geir Isene 511 Comments

In Scientology, suppression is defined as:

“A harmful intention or action against which one cannot fight back.”

A Suppressive Person (SP) is defined as:

“one that actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology or a Scientologist by suppressive acts.”

and

“A person with certain behavior characteristics and who suppresses other people in his vicinity and those other people when he suppresses them become PTS or Potential Trouble Sources.”

And as you can see, a person affected negatively by suppression is termed a Potential Trouble Source (PTS):

“it means someone connected to a person or group opposed to Scientology. It results in illness and roller-coaster and is the cause of illness and roller-coaster.”

and

“a person […] who “roller-coasters,” i.e., gets better, then worse. This occurs only when his connection to a suppressive person or group is unhandled and he must, in order to make his gains from Scientology permanent, receive processing intended to handle such.”

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So, working backward, a person that is involved in Scientology and experiences impermanent gains from it, is connected to a Suppressive person or group. This is somewhat peculiar to Scientology in that the gains are not really permanent, like with physical or other mental training. It’s not like you would expect a person to lose his ability to multiply, to do trigonometry or to ski if he were to be connected to someone opposing those activities in his life. Sure, he could lose motivation and momentum and drop out from his training, and then the skills would corrode. But to suddenly lose his ability to communicate or his ability to recognize the source of problems in life? A person who has audited out all his BTs and then becomes the target of suppression… does the BTs return? Now that is odd.

Could it be that the gains in Scientology actually comes from skillful application of the placebo effect? That the gains are to be had because one really belives one deserve them? And that deep inside we all carry the ability to change our lives if we really can muster the motivation and belief that we can? And that this motivation comes about only when we feel we deserve it?

Is Scientology gains dependent upon the person’s belief, conviction or “inner knowingness”? It would surely answer the conundrum of why one can so easily “lose gains” in Scientology.

Could it be that the scientific cloaking serves to enforce belief in its efficacy? Could the religious cloaking serve the same purpose to different target groups? The time spent surely would enforce one’s conviction that It Works. The same with all the money spent. How about the stringent management, the uniforms, the tough schedules, the bombast, the posh, celebrities and grand PR? And the guru worship? It really does seem like an impressive package that could make a believer out of most anyone. And if we do hold the powers to heal our mind and spirit, one could hardly blame the Scientology scheme for tricking the subjects into unleashing their inner powers.

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On this blog I challenge Scientology beliefs. I question everything myself, and I write about it as I go along. I challenge the practice, the philosophy, the gains, the OT levels, Clear and anything else that turns up as I turn every stone. Scientologists who read this may end up questioning their own beliefs and even lose some gains. And in that aspect, this blog can indeed be looked upon as suppressive. While blogging my Scientology journey has been a great process for me, a nagging doubt remains:

Is it right to challenge another’s belief with facts, if the belief they hold serves to make their life better?

It’s a complex question and I have many views on this. But I would like to hear what you think.

Scientology Bait & Switch, part II

Geir Isene 226 Comments

In the discussion on my first Bait & Switch post, a major reason for Scientology’s failure became apparent.

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L. Ron Hubbard, the founder, the sole Source, the only true originator of Scientology promoted that his religion will give you real, tangible and objective results. This is the Bait. But when you traverse his one-size-fits-all path to spiritual greatness, The Bridge to Total Freedom, gone are the objective, provable results. Instead you attest to subjective results. With very few exceptions, your gains are not measurable and does not compare to the promised objective gains. This is the switch.

This is a major trick, albeit insidious and difficult to catch as you can read from the discussion under the first Bait & Switch blog post.

Here are some examples of the claims Hubbard made for Scientology (the Bait):

  • Broken bones heal in two weeks instead of six (by X-ray evidence), withered limbs restore, burns vanish, swellings reduce visibly to nothing, lives wrecked by grief and loss recover, women lose their aging wrinkles, and sought after abilities return. (DnT)
  • Chronic, which is to say, long-term illnesses cease when audited by Dianetics and then medical treatment. (DnT)
  • The sickness and death rate of persons who are part of Dianetic groups is only a small fraction of that of other groups. (DnT)
  • Dianetics raises IQ in addition to usual auditing, at a rate of about one point of IQ per hour of processing. (DnT)
  • A Clear can control all his body fluids. (EoaS)
  • A Clear can be tested for any and all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions (all aberrations) and can be examined for any autogenic (self-generated) diseases referred to as psycho-somatic ills. These tests confirm the Clear to be entirely without such ills or aberrations. (DMSMH)
  • The common cold, for instance, if it is a virus or not, passes him (the Clear) by; chronic infections are absent. (DMSMH)
  • A clear, for instance, has complete recall of everything which has ever happened to him or anything he has ever studied. He does mental computations, such as those of chess, for example, which a normal would do in a half an hour, in ten or fifteen seconds. (DMSMH)
  • A Theta Clear is a person who operates exterior to a body without need of a body. (SH Spec 59)
  • The state of Operating Thetan is higher than Theta Clear and means that the person does not need a body to communicate or work. (CoHA)
  • A good thorough-going Operating Thetan should not take more than fifty hours of auditing. (Ass. Newsl. 1953-04-28)

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And here are some results that one actually attests to (the Switch):

  • Knows he/she won’t get any worse.
  • Relief from the hostilities and sufferings of life.
  • Freedom from the upsets of the past and ability to face the future.
  • Moving out of fixed conditions and gaining abilities to do new things.
  • Freedom from dramatization and return of powers to act on own determinism.
  • A Clear: A being who no longer has his reactive mind

While there is no excuse to not revise or apologize for the promised gains when it is not delivered, scientologists continue to justify and explain away this flagrant flaw.

Let’s face the facts; Less than 1% of those that invested time and effort in the subject stayed on in the hope of receiving the promised gain. The failure of Scientology as a subject is massive.

We often hear explanations for Scientology’s downfall like “Scientology is so good that vested interest attacked it from all directions”, “The society was in an dwindling spiral, so Hubbard worked so hard to undercut his method to accommodate for the increasing stupidity and irrationality of the population” or even “Hubbard ran Scientology just perfectly, it was only when David Miscavige took charge that it went south”.

But, applying Occam’s Razor, isn’t the simpler answer that Scientology simply does not deliver on its promises?

It doesn’t much matter that people like me got a lot out of the subject as long as it does not consistently deliver factual, measurable results.