A Blast From The Past: Martin Hunt on Scientology

[ Ed. note Martin Hunt is a former scientologist from Canada who spent approximately two
years in the organization and completed 500 hours as an auditor. He later went on to be a vocal
critic, prolific writer and expert on the subject of Scientologys beliefs, practices and abuses.
Although no longer active in the cause of exposing the truth about Scientology, his writings are
still relevant today. Since many of his Scientology-based websites have fallen by the wayside in
recent years, this document is a tribute to a few of his greatest hits that are no longer readily
available. The editorial notes prefacing each section have been refactored from his original
notations to provide a modernized context. The original essays are mirrored exactly as they were
posted on the www.ncf.carleton.ca archive with the exception of indentation of quotes for the
sake of readability, a few bits of long-winded commentary being replaced with an ellipsis in the
final essay. Additionally, a few hyperlinks have been incorporated into various essays for
additional references, while annotated proper nouns that appear in brackets where acronyms or
slang phrases were originally used. ]

Table of Contents
Who is Martin Hunt? An Interview from 1996 ........................................................................2
What is Scientology ................................................................................................................9
What is the difference between a cult and a religion?.............................................................13
Why do they Join?.................................................................................................................15
Thought Structures ................................................................................................................25
Hubbard's profits and auditing costs ......................................................................................29
Essays on Words ...................................................................................................................31
1: Critical Thought ............................................................................................................31
2: Raw Meat Preclear ........................................................................................................31
3: Ninth Dynamic ..............................................................................................................32
4: Megalomania.................................................................................................................32
5: Cleared Cannibal ...........................................................................................................32
6: Black Dianetics .............................................................................................................33
7: Clay Table IQ Processing ..............................................................................................33
8: Bubble Gum Incident, Technical Term ..........................................................................34
9: Humor, Glee..................................................................................................................34
10: Hard Way TRs, Blinkless TR 0....................................................................................35
11: Force ...........................................................................................................................37
12: Mystery .......................................................................................................................38
13: Theetie-Weetie, Theetie-Weetie Case, Sweetness and Light ........................................38
14: OCA Graph .................................................................................................................39
15: No Case Gain, No-Gain-case .......................................................................................41
16: Having, Own ...............................................................................................................42
17: One-shot clear, GUK bomb, Dianazene .......................................................................43
18: Clear, Clear Thinking ..................................................................................................46
19: Certainty, Certainty processing, Knowingness, Knowledge, Datum .............................49
20: Scientology..................................................................................................................51
21: Black Field Case, Black Five .......................................................................................57

Who is Martin Hunt? An Interview from 1996

Mirrored from the wayback machine to preserve for future generations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817040736/http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~av282/essays.htm#9

[ Ed. note this an e-mail interview Mr. Hunt did with a purported journalist at the beginning of
1996. He prefaces this with an explanation that there had been a few of these exchanges
following his skeptical look into the cult of Scientology on the alt.religion.scientology Usenet
(ars), which were seemingly time-wasters and he posted this one posterity once he decided to
do no more. ]

Q: I'm trying to do a feature story on Scientology. I downloaded your critique of Scientology on

the Internet and I was wondering if you would agree to be interviewed, even via e-mail if you
like.
A: Sure; I was in Scientology for about two years in the late 80's. I was lied to by being told that
Scientology was an effective form of psychotherapy and that Scientology's purpose was to build
a better world free of insanity and safe from war. The cold war and the threat of nuclear
devastation was still sending chills down many people's spines at the time, and Scientology
offered itself as a means to combat the possibility of a nuclear exchange through making people
more rational, or so it claimed.
A: It was some time later I discovered that Scientology's true goals were making money for the
people at the top and exacting a rather fascistic level of control over its victims through
moderately effective and quite sophisticated psychological manipulation.
Q: After leaving Scientology, you mentioned that you were angry, particularly over the lies you
were told. What are some of these?
A: That Scientology was an effective form of therapy, that it was out to save the world from war,
poverty, mental illness, etc. The big lie was that Scientology was a great movement, with the
main goal of helping mankind...this just isn't true. Also, numerous lies were told about the
Founder, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. He was said to be a nuclear physicist, while he actually
failed his schooling and garnered four "Fs", just as an example. Hubbard was virtually a
pathological liar all his life, and that trait passed on to his followers.
Q: Who had originally interested you in Scientology as a form of psychotherapy? Is this a
common belief?
A: A cousin had the _Dianetics_ book, and had mailed off a coupon and received a letter from
the Scientology letter registrar in Vancouver. With the letter was a coupon for two hours of free
"auditing" therapy; I read the book and went to take the auditing. The book actually made sense
to me at the time, which goes to show I didn't have very good critical reading skills, as I can see

now it is chock full of logical flaws and other giveaways that something is wrong here, that this
is just pseudoscience masquerading as the real thing.
Q: You mentioned the Dianetics book is "chock full of logical flaws". What are some examples?
A: Hubbard claims that zygotes in the womb the day after conception car hear sounds and
remember them...despite the fact that these zygotes are just a cell or two and don't have ears or
brains to record the sounds.
A: Hubbard claims that it is quite normal for a child in the womb to go through 160 attempted
abortions before being born.
A: Hubbard claims that all events are recorded with perfect accuracy down to the tiniest detail
throughout life, despite what is known of the unreliability of memory over time and how normal
people remember the same event in different ways.
A: There's many more; take a flip thought the book and see how many you can spot. It's
pseudoscience at its bragging, hyperbolic, "proven fact", best; in between the budding
neologisms Hubbard even had the gall to lie that Dianetic auditing is all based on "scientific
research studies".
Q: Could you describe the auditing process?
A: The process used in Scientology involves two people; one, the "auditor", operates an E-Meter,
a crude lie detector/ohmmeter based on the Wheatstone bridge circuit, and takes notes while
asking the PC, the person receiving the supposed "therapy", questions from a list.
A: The other person is the PC, Pre-Clear, although they may in fact be beyond clear on the steps
of the quack therapy bridge. The PC holds the electrodes of the E-Meter (soup cans with the
labels washed off) and answers questions.
A: There's a lot more to it than this, but this is the basic idea. I should point out that the E-Meter
would cost roughly $50 to build (I'm a technician) while it sells in Scientology for over $3,000,
thus being a good money-maker for the cult.
Q: What did you first think of the religion when you first joined? Did anything in particular
strike you as strange?
A: I didn't agree with it being a religion, as I was an atheist. The original attraction was the
auditing therapy, which appeared to work. The sensations I felt during the auditing that I
attributed to its effectiveness were more likely the result of a pretty young auditor gazing directly
into my eyes, followed by light hypnosis and what's known as the "placebo effect", but any kind
of talk therapy like this does produce some results, just not the results they claim such as
alleviation of cancer, all psychosomatic ills, fantastically boosted IQ, 20/20 vision, and so forth.
A: The people on staff seemed very normal; they were a friendly lot, well-educated, welldressed, polite and fluent. I didn't know at the time nor did I suspect that they were all lying to

me about what Scientology really was, and, in truth, they very likely believed the lies themselves
about the "technology", as it's called. Hubbard claimed it was "science", that he had conducted
extensive research, and that was a lie, as was almost everything he said about himself, his
history, his Naval career, his education, etc. Staff are in fact drilled to treat newcomers with
"ARC", a variation on the "love-bombing" seen in other cults; that friendly appearance was a
complete put-on, as I found out at the higher levels where everything is about production, ie,
making money, and people are unfriendly indeed.
Q: When did you finally realize that their true goals were making money?
A: Not really until after I left. When I left, I felt as though my eternal future had been lost, and it
was painful, but this was after two years of intense thought-reform. I slowly came out of the
daze, and the first thing I wanted to do was read. I used to be an avid reader, and I took to
reading everything, and watching the news to catch up on world events that had passed me by.
The cult shuts one off from the outside world. I read many critical books and books on cults in
general. The best was "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steve Hassan; a very good reference
on cults, what they do to the minds of their victims and how they use them to make money and
garner power for the leader at the top.
A: After a few months, I began to fell very angry at what had been done to me. Partly, this was
anger at how I could have been so stupid as to get involved in something like this, which was an
internalization of the "blame the victim" response many people have to cult victims, rape
victims, etc. Partly the anger was over the numerous lies I had been told about Scientology, L.
Ron Hubbard, the purpose of the organization, the purported research, the organization's goals,
etc.
Q: You mentioned that Scientology is "fascist". How so?
A: It is at certain levels. Scientology has a stratification of commitment and involvement; at the
higher levels, you hear of things like locking people up in basements, chucking people into the
sea from shipboard, throwing small children in ship chain lockers, etc. These actions, quite well
documented in the literature, are fascistic, but the cult does not appear so at the local "Mission"
level. This doesn't mean the "Class V Org" in Vancouver is better than the world headquarters in
Los Angels, but it is milder. On a scale of one to ten, the levels of totalitarianism or cultishness
might look like this:

1. Public, low level, Dianetic audited at a local org. (mildest)

2. Public up to clear at a Class V.
3. Mission staff.
4. Class V staff.
5. OT at Flag.
6. Saint Hill org staff.
7. Sea Org member at Flag, Gold, other class XII orgs
8. Shipboard Sea Org Staff.
9. RPF'er.
10. Happy Valley, RPF's RPF, Introspection Rundown. (most severe)

A: I progressed from 1 to a 4, then ended up in LA somewhere around 6, then back to 4. I was

lucky; I had signed a contract with Gold, but it didn't go ahead. If it had, I would have got
straight to 7, with a probable end at point 9 or 10. (whew!)
Q: How does one climb up the hierarchical structure of Scientology? what does this involve? Do
you have to contribute money?
A: One goes up by producing more money, it's as simple as that. Those who are upstat get
rewarded, those who are "downstat" are punished by ethics action (made to scrub floors for 16
hours a day for a week or two, e.g.)
A: Money contributed is an option; those who have when they walk in the door are "regged" out
of it as quickly as possible using high-pressure sales techniques. The book used as reference in
Scientology is Les Dane's "Big League Sales Closing Techniques". Registrars or regges are
trained and drilled to spot someone's "ruin" and show them how Scientology can help them with
that and sell them some services. The total bridge is estimated to cost over $300,000 to OT 8.
A: For people who don't have the cash and are physically capable of working the long hours
required, a staff contract is "sold" to them using the very same techniques. Money or work,
Scientology doesn't really care as long as people have some resource that can be exploited.
Scientology is a parasitical and exploitative system.
A: Those with no money, poor health, the elderly, the insane, etc. Scientology ushers out the
door because they have nothing to offer, nothing to exploit. When I was "body routing" (bringing
in new people) I was told to avoid "street bums" (the homeless), "hookers", drug users and
pushers, and other assorted "degraded beings" like people who didn't look good or dress well,
etc. White, middle-class, young, healthy people were specifically targeted.
Q: How did you leave Scientology? Did you experience any difficulty in doing this?
A: I was not doing well; the fabric of the mind control was wearing thin. In particular, I didn't
agree that I was in a religion, I saw things that shouldn't happen, the ethics was just too harsh (I
did a two weeks amends project scrubbing and cleaning for 16 hours a day, then had to collect 50
signatures that I had done enough, although in my mind I had committed no crime), and the OTs
were decidedly un-OT. At one point, I had directly challenged an OT to display some of his
supposed powers that he was bragging about, and he not only failed to do that, but kind of fell
apart in front of my eyes, his face going red and his eyes ending up on the floor. That spoke to
me that Scientology was a hoax; he knew it, he knew he was a fraud as an "OT", I knew it. That
was a turning point for me. There was another supposed OT 7 who wore thick glasses and had
arthritis; I wasn't impressed with the new gods. You could say I was the boy pointing out that the
OT emperors were strutting about in the nude.
A: I was taken off post as a supervisor, and sent out to distribute promo just before I "blew". My
"case", as they say, was not doing well, and I told my senior not to send me out, as I might blow.
He sent me anyway, and after being ridiculed by strangers on the streets for trying to hand out
these fliers with movie tickets to some corny Scientology flick they were showing inside the org,
I stopped and had an ice-cream cone, which was forbidden as it was "out-ethics" to waste time

while on an "ethics cycle" like this, and I phoned my girlfriend, told her to pack (I was living in a
cult house), I took the bus, took my girlfriend with me, left the city, and that was that. We were
indoctrinated to believe that we would die if we left, and I wasn't quite sure if that meant a
Scientology hit squad would come after me a kill me, or if I would just "pull it in", but I was
convinced I would die, and that's why I left the city completely.
A: Other things had an influence on my leaving the cult. My best friend had come over to check
it out, and hadn't seen the point in it all, and didn't join Scientology, which was a big failing for
me. Also, I trusted his opinion; and while I was trying to get him to join, I asked him if he didn't
see the great changes and improvements in me. He told me, while handily beating me at several
games of chess while he was very drunk, that the only change he saw in me was that I was
"slightly less logical" than I used to be! That was a shock to my system; I had thought that with
all the "training" I had done, some 18 courses in Scientology indoctrination, that I was obviously
better off, some kind of superior being.
A: Also, my girlfriend played a role, as well as our relationship. She had been a student of mine,
and this was "out-ethics". It was wrong to have any sex in the cult really, but sex with a student
while you are their supervisor was very bad. I knew I would not be allowed to continue the
relationship, and I couldn't bear that.
Q: What was living in the cult house like? Is this common? Do most Scientologists live in houses
such as this one?
A: In LA, I shared a two bedroom cockroach-infested apartment with one tiny bathroom with 13
other Scientologists; we were packed like cordwood on the livingroom floor with a one tiny
secondhand mattress each. This low standard of living is very common at the higher levels of
involvement, and can get even worse. Much of the 'Cedars complex in LA is Sea Org berthing,
but that was all full which is why I lived in the apartment off base.
A: At lower levels, such as when I was back in Vancouver after my "training" was completed,
Scientologists generally live in shared houses under better conditions. I had a modest room in an
apartment on Main Street with two other Scientologists, but the pay was too low to allow me to
pay the modest $135 rent for the room. We were told to go on welfare to pay for our living
expenses, and many staff were on welfare in Vancouver.
A: For public or non-staff, most live in their own homes or apartments.
Q: Is your girlfriend still a Scientologist or did you both leave the religion?
A: I married my girlfriend six years ago this month, and we've never looked back at our time
involved in Scientology. (which neither of us consider a religion.)
A: Actually, I never did consider Scientology a religion, even in the deepest throes of its mind
control. I was an atheist when I was recruited, and I was told that "what's true for you is true for
you", and that "Scientology doesn't discuss god", and that it was non-denominational and you
could be a member of any religion and still be a Scientologist, so obviously I could be a member
of no religion and still be a Scientologist. Scientology acts far more like a psychotherapy cult

group than a religion, and Hubbard has been quoted as saying it isn't a religion. He has also been
quoted as saying that the "religious angle" was to be used as a tax dodge, which I understood
shortly after I was recruited. I mean, it made sense that we could use this to avoid paying taxes
and so we'd have more money to take over the world, a stated goal in the cult, to "clear the
planet".
Q: How popular is Scientology in BC? Were there a lot of followers?
A: The Vancouver center on West Hastings had about 40 staff divided into "Day" and
"Foundation", 25 academy students, and 5 people in the "guidance center", where the public
receive their "therapy." The most we ever had at an event was no more than 200 people; I doubt
there's more than 300 Scientologists of any kind in the whole of BC, almost all being in
Vancouver. There's two centers in Vancouver, the Class V Org and a small mission or franchise.
There's also a tiny mission in Victoria, and no other presence in the province at all that I'm aware
of.
Q: Have you managed to cut all ties with Scientology or do you find that they are trying to draw
you back in or harm you in any way?
A: I have cut all ties, and am now considered to be a major suppressive person. I'm an enemy,
supposedly, of the organization. They have declared me to be an SP, an anti-Scientologist, in a
Flag Order, and thus no one in the organization (theoretically) is allowed to talk to me.
A: There has been some effort to get me back in, such as telephone calls from friends who are
still in trying to persuade me to come in to see visiting Sea Org missionaires who would then
have done "sec checks" on me to determine why I blew. There's been mail, too, but no efforts to
get me back in the past five years that I'm aware of, apart from some email and such on the net.
A: in terms of harm, there's been some harassment since I've been on the net, but nothing I can't
handle. Harassment is par for the course for [ex-scientologists] who speak out against the cult,
and that can take many forms. Some things tend to happen and there's little proof that can tie it to
Scientology, so I don't mention those in public. Harassment that can be proved involves such
things as the Vancouver DSA sending forged posts to the police in Victoria with the "good bits"
highlighted, libel which got the police interested enough to pay me a visit, which I put to good
effect by informing the police about the true nature of the cult. I've had posts cancelled or
censored, death threats in my email, I had my account hacked into and my password changed
with forged email sent out to friends in my name, threatening letters from one of the cult's
lawyers, stuff like that, nothing too serious compared to what others have gone through.
Q: You called yourself a "major suppressive person". Why do you say that?
A: I am included on a Flag Order list of Suppressive Persons that Scientology considers to be its
main enemies; in addition, I'm in frequent contact with David Mayo, Dennis Erlich, Monica
Pignotti, and many others who are Scientology's main "enemies." The cult uses this sort of black
and white thinking to help in the process of isolating its members and keeping them in. If the
outside world is filled with these evil "suppressives", then it has to be avoided.

Q: How did Scientology manage to shut off the outside world from its followers?
A: In several ways. In the Sea Org, Hubbard ran a small flotilla of ships where he had total
control over the unlucky Scientologist's lives. At present in Sea Org land bases like Flag in
Clearwater Florida and the huge blue Cedars of Lebanon complex in LA, Scientologists are not
permitted to watch TV or read magazines and newspapers.
A: Another way of shutting out the outside world involves labelling it the "wog world", and
raising the specter of losses in "case gain" or benefit from Scientology auditing "therapy" when
Scientologists go out into normal society. "Homo Sap" is seen as an inferior race, to be avoided;
all social activity revolves around Scientology, the only people Scientologists talk to are other
Scientologists, and most of them live in Scientology group housing (called berthing in the Sea
Org land bases.) This phobia indoctrination extends to the extreme of implanting the idea that if
[scientologists] leave, they will die.
A: One more way of isolating people is the infamous practice of "disconnection", in which
Scientologists are made to cease all contact of any kind with family members and friends outside
the cult, a direct violation of the idea of freedom of association mentioned in some countries'
constitutions.
Q: Do you know of any other people in Canada I could speak to about Scientology?
A: Yes; a few of the ars regulars are Canadian. Also, there's some Canadian cult education
organizations:
[ Ed. note- a list of now defunct cult education groups deleted. ]
Q: Finally, why are you now speaking out against Scientology? Have you ever been threatened
by the Church to not speak out? Has anyone you know been threatened?
A: I speak out because I have a sincere desire to help other people avoid the pain and suffering I
went through in Scientology. I receive many letters with heart-rending stories of lost children,
loved ones, family members and friends who want to know what they can do to help. These
people have been "disconnected", which means the loved one cannot contact them in any way,
and has disappeared from their lives as if they were dead.
A: Yes, I have experienced some harassment, including letters from the cult's lawyers, a false
report filed with the local police, and other incidents. I have been luckier than most people in my
position; many have gone through quite arduous harassment.

What is Scientology
By Martin Hunt, May 1994
Mirrored from the wayback machine to preserve for future generations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817040736/http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~av282/essays.htm#3

[ Ed. note This was Mr. Hunts first post to the alt.religion.scientology Usenet (ars), and it
attracted considerable attention. He prefaces it with a note that this post was a small shock to
the system for the newsgroup, which at that time was a sleepy little backwater that was rather illinformed about Scientology, as it did not have any ex-members who knew the inside story. Ars
was mainly involved in small side issues rather than the central fact of the cult's global criminal
activities back then, and what knowledgeable said about it was not always believed to be more
than somewhat paranoid exaggeration. The views expressed in this post are rather strong, so be
warned; at one point he even called this article yellow, unfactual, and tending toward hyperbole,
yet it was influential in the sense that it made people angry with a slap-in-the-face appeal to
emotion, which Mr. Hunt admits was partly his intent. Most of his other posts at the time were
calm affairs, often using quotes from Scientology propaganda, offering explanations of certain
terms or policies, or giving examples of what life was really like in the cult. This article was
expanded over time, as well as being translated into German and Russian. ]

Scientology is a dangerous, mindbending cult that was established in the 1950's by Lafayette
Ronald Hubbard and presents a grave threat to the concepts and tenets of freedom and
democracy. Scientology has, as its basic purpose, the destruction of freedom and the erosion of
human rights on the way to making money; it uses any means possible to achieve this end,
including legal harassment, verbal and physical threats, hiding under the cover of "religion", and
thought reform so complete that to talk to anyone brainwashed by the cult is to talk to little more
than the mouthed platitudes of mechanical zombies.
Scientology has evolved its own language that is meaningless, incomprehensible ravings to
rational, educated minds. This newspeak is a form of semantic control, used by the church to
extract profit, either in money or personnel resources from its hapless, brainwashed victims and
to serve PR functions to fool the public. Scientology is a totalitarian and fascist system that sees
freedom of speech as an arch enemy, and freedom of thought as a personal attack, deserving of
every means to stop it dead, sometimes literally. An example of this newspeak is the unfounded
claim by the cult to be a "church"; Scientology is a cult, not a church.
Based on science fiction and fantasy, the cult's teachings are little more than a thinly concealed
attempt at making huge sums of money for the people at the top of the cult. Near the end of his
life, Ronald Hubbard was reported to be making as much as one million dollars per week.
Hubbard is documented as having said that the best way to get a lot of money is to invent a
religion, and that is exactly what he did with the cult of Scientology.
A mainstay of the cult's writings are based upon a kind of pseudoscience that gives one the clear
impression that it is the 1930's. Many of these writings talk down to their audience as if they

were wholly ignorant of basic facts about geology, biology, medicine, and other branches of
general knowledge and science. The lamentable truth is that the cult's brainwashed victims are
actually willing to defend these bits of fantasy as established scientific fact, against all reason
and logic; one such delusion is "auditing".
Scientology charges huge amounts of money to hook the indoctrinees up to a crude resistorbased bridge ohmmeter and ask bizarre questions about what supposedly happened to them
millions, billions or even trillions of years ago on this and other planets. This "treatment" (called
"auditing" by the cult) is supposed to cure all manner of ailments, both physical and
psychological, for astronomical prices. The total cost of going from "raw meat", as the cult
disparagingly calls the public, to "OT-8" is estimated to cost over 250,000.00$ US. The cult also
uses another form of this "auditing" process, called "security-checking" to obtain very personal
information about the follower's sex lives and criminal history (if any), which is then used for
security purposes as potential blackmail to keep people quiet about the illegal activities of the
cult should they ever escape its semantic entrapment long enough to resume their former lives.
The litigious nature of the controversial cult of Scientology is well known and reported in the
literature on this dangerous cultic phenomenon. Scientologists have, as one of their basic
policies, the destruction of anyone who is perceived by this paranoid schizophrenic organization
as being an "enemy", and baseless lawsuits, sometimes involving frames, are used for this
purpose. An enemy is anyone who, in the eyes of the cult, denigrates the cult in any way; thus
critics are subject to multitudes of frivolous lawsuits, threats, strong-arm tactics, and outright
physical attacks. For this reason, suggestions have been put forward to ban Scientology from the
courts for barratrous abuses.
Scientology, while trying desperately to maintain a PR facade of sweetness and light, in reality
call their public by such derogatory names as "raw meat", "bodies", and "WOGs"; these same
people are thought to be so inconsequential to the cult that they are "body routed" into the
organization, as they are thought to have no self determination or free will whatsoever, and thus
no rights. The "raw meat" are fit for little more than indoctrination using simple hand motions
like the children's game of pat-a-cake, according to the cult, as they are too far down the cult's
"tone scale", a list of all the emotional states a person is capable of, to be treated as human
beings. Interestingly, this "tone scale" of all human states and emotions fails to contain either
happiness or freedom --- the stated goals of Hubbard's so-called "religion".
The charade of hiding behind a religious cover even goes as far as installing pews and an altar in
most of its buildings; however, these are seldom actually used until an investigation by a taxation
branch brings down the order from above to "make this place look churchy" by using the pews
and dressing up a cult indoctrinator as a "minister". Pretending to be a religion serves two
purposes within the cult; escaping the charge of medical malpractice and avoiding legitimate
taxation within the host country the cult has infiltrated. The hope for the future is that more
countries will stand up to this tactic with protective legislation.
Scientology hides behind the facade of a "religion", yet to the cult indoctrinees and those "in the
know", this is merely seen as a way to avoid taxation and hassles over using the "auditing"
techniques for stated medical purposes. The medical community has long been trying to curtail
this cult's dangerous pseudo-medical practices, such as the "purification rundown" and the use of

the "e-meter" for healing everything from backaches to bad eyesight. For this reason, the cult
perceives a need to hide under the cover of religion, while at the same time calling itself a
"science of mind" to gain credence on the coattails of legitimate medicine. In addition, the cult
has a policy of discrediting, attacking, and suing the medical and psychiatric communities, as
they were perceived as enemies by the paranoid Hubbard; he was at one time declared mentally
unstable by a psychiatrist, and thus he conceived a hatred for the healing professions.
Although the cult of Scientology often makes irrational and unscientific claims for medical
treatment and healing, the reality is that these "effects" can all be easily explained by the placebo
effect and by the crushing effects of complete thought reform, sleep deprivation, dietary control,
semantic disturbances, and milieu control exacted by the cult on its victims. These brainwashing
techniques lead the victim to "attest" to all forms of miraculous "cures"; if written "attests" are
not made, then the poor "preclear" is sent off to "ethics" --- an action that every Scientologist
fears. In fact, Scientology has a specific policy on people who do not "improve". They are seen
as being evil, suppressive, or a source of trouble; thus if the cult's efforts fail, the "preclear" is
held entirely responsible in a kind of catch-22 situation, and made even more of a victim.
There are two faces to Scientology; one for public consumption, and an entirely different one,
hidden from public view, for those "in the know". The public is told that Hubbard is "just a
human", and that the cult does not treat of religion; but the fact is that Hubbard is known to be
God once one has been brainwashed into the "upper levels". The public is given a PR story that
the cult is a "religion", all the teaching are "belief", and all gains are "spiritual" in nature.
Nevertheless, the indoctrinated know, or rather are brainwashed into believing, that Scientology
is a workable method for treating human ailments, both medical and psychiatric, and every word
of Hubbard's science-fictionlike scribblings, no matter how ludicrous, are "scientifically proven
facts" referred to as "source" or, more significantly, "Source", and thoroughly researched. This
"research" in fact involved Hubbard sitting down at a typewriter and writing whatever came to
mind, a skill he developed while writing pulp science fiction.
Scientology is well known for publishing various "codes" and "creeds" of a lofty and
humanitarian nature, but the cult does not adhere to these altruistic statements in the smallest
degree; they are just more PR material to make the cult look good in the eyes of a sceptical and
increasingly hostile public.
As time goes on, and more people lose their children, relatives, and friends to this dangerous,
lawless, immoral, and litigious cult, legislation will surely be enacted in the free democratic
countries of the world to limit its pernicious effect upon our society. Every time a brainwashed
cultist wakes up to wonder what happened to the last few years of his or her life, and steps out of
the shadows into the bracing sunlight of freedom of speech and thought, another nail is
hammered into the coffin of this ugly phenomenon. The Scientology cult itself admits this; it
says it has a problem with its "field" (the public) being "muddy" (hard to expand into). One can
only hope that as time goes by, the cult will grow more distant from the paranoid and
schizophrenic man who created it; already the cult has gone through its reformation, of sorts, as
slightly more liberal minded groups have split off from the cult and set up their own operations.
Former members of this cult are requested to speak out against it; tell the world the dark secrets
of the "SO" and the "RPF". The SO is the Sea Org; a heavily controlled slave-like segment of the

cult that signs billion year service contracts for wages lower than the average income of thirdworld countries. The RPF is the deceptively named Rehabilitation Project Force, a dark, secret,
and hidden section of the cult used for punishing "downstat" members. Every recruit is
irrationally expected to increase their production every week or they become "downstat", having
falling statistics for production. The RPF is similar to a concentration camp; some of the
unfortunate wights who end up here do not see the light of day for years. The RPFers for the Los
Angeles Cedars of Lebanon Centre are imprisoned in cavern-like tunnels extending under the
streets of Los Angeles, fed on a starvation diet of beans and rice, forced to work up to 125 hours
a week, are not allowed to speak, and are dressed in filthy grey rags. There is an even darker and
more secret organization for punishing "downstat" members called the "RRPF", or Ron's RPF; if
anyone out there has experiences to relate of this cruel section of the cult, they are encouraged to
speak out against this flagrant abuse of basic human rights.
If you, the gentle reader have information of torture, inhumane treatment, murder, or other
nefarious behavior by this cult, then let the world know --- don't let what happened to you or
people who were in the cult with you happen to another person out of ignorance of just how evil
this cult really is. Fear not reprisals; people who have escaped the cult number in the hundreds of
thousands! It has been estimated that there are several times more "disaffected" Scientologists
than there are in the cult at present.
The author of this FAQ shall, in all likelihood, be attacked by the cult for writing this, but this
tactic will not serve. For the author believes so strongly in the truth that nothing shall swerve him
from this path. In this world, we must fight for what we believe in; for if we turn a blind eye to
the dictator or to those who would limit our freedoms, then we shall be forever on the retreat, and
we shall end up having a life not worth living. Let this be a call to arms, "for we have nothing to
fear but fear itself".

What is the difference between a cult and a religion?

By Martin Hunt
Mirrored from the wayback machine to preserve for future generations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817040736/http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~av282/essays.htm#4

[ Ed. note this article came about after Mr. Hunt witnessed several debates the
alt.religion.scientology Usenet (ars) over whether Scientology was a religion or a cult, and
what the term "cult" meant. He prefaces this post with an explanation that in the early days of
ars, the term cult was simply not used and that had a lot to do with an earlier overly liberal and
chiefly American attitude toward the so-called "new religions." Hunt notes that this attitude was
so permissive that it effectively gave the cults carte blanche to rapidly expand their circle of
influence, abuse more people, infiltrate and corrupt society's institutions and democratic
governments, and otherwise act like lawless rebels thumbing their collectives noses at both
human rights and the criminal code. At the time of this writing, Mr. Hunt felt that this attitude
had now, near the end of the millennium, been abandoned in favor of a more pragmatic
approach that places limits on Scientology and other cults, forcing them to start obeying the law
and acting as participants in society rather than the parasites they have been up to now. In that
context, he provided a few distinguishing characteristics that help to separate the cults from the
legitimate religions in society. Over a decade has passed, and these points still ring true. ]

Although dictionaries variously define cult to mean a sect or a system of religious belief, there
has come into common usage an entirely different meaning that is much more sinister in intent.
Dictionaries, in this regard, often take a few years to catch up with common usage. Although
there are several criteria upon which to base the cult epithet, the underlying points have to do
with how the individual is treated as regards his or her money and time, with one further criteria
being undesirable personality changes.
In the realm of religion, money is usually a secondary item to be dealt with after spirituality.
Typically, religions require some money to survive, to pay the priest or minister, and to cover the
cost of church buildings. This money is raised through church tithes, collection plates, etc. and
are voluntary in nature. The amounts involved are quite modest; a sum of five or ten dollars per
week perhaps. This contrasts sharply with many cults, which charge huge amounts for services.
For example, the cult of Scientology may charge as much as a quarter of a million dollars for its
services, and these amounts are fixed. When the plate is passed around in the local religious
churches, it is a given that the poor need not pays; it is each according to his or her means. But
money is not always charged by cults; there is also a question of human resources.
"Time is Money", the saying goes, and such is often the case in life. As crass as one may
perceive money to be, it is really just a form of time in terms of people's sweat and labour.
Religions often ask for work to be done on the part of the parishioners; this may take the form of
bake sales, helping with the hungry and homeless, or other community based volunteerism. This
work is not mandatory, and is often done on the parishioner's own terms; in addition, this labour
of love does not take more than a few hours of the church member's time. This is in stark

contrast to cults, where people are used as virtual slaves to build up the resources and wealth of
the cult's founder, or the structure of the cult as a whole. As an example, people in the cult of
Scientology are paid as little as a few dollars per week for their labour, and this labour does not
involve the community at large, but merely serves to promulgate the cult itself and expand it
forcibly into the community, often against the community's express wishes on this point. The
cult thus creates its stark-eyed and brainwashed following from feeding on society.
The last criteria upon which to evaluate the difference between cults and religions is the
phenomena known as snapping, or radical personality change. Religions often create a general
feeling of euphoria or thanksgiving in their members, but in cults this is taken to an extreme.
Young people who are drawn into cults are often put through such rigors and controls that family
members no longer know who they are. Cults often inculcate a dislike or outright hatred of
family, parents, and friends in the young devotee. In addition to this unpleasant and unnatural
change, cults may indoctrinate the member into paranoid ideals. This is seen in Scientology,
where members are taught, for example, to irrationally hate psychiatrists and the APA. These
personality changes are fortunately not usually permanent, and when the cult member regains his
or her freedom they often evaporate. When this happens, the member is again accepted back into
the family and resumes their former lives, albeit very suspicious of cults and "inoculated", as it
were, against further involvement in them.
Thus there are at least these three ways of discerning the difference between cults and legitimate
religions. Certainly money, time involvement, and undesirable personality changes are not the
only criteria upon which to establish a fundamental distinction; there are many more which are
not touched upon here, but these three are enough of a yardstick to at least measure a popular
youth movement against to determine its authenticity. If a son or daughter were to get involved
in a questionable organization, responsible parents should be alarmed and seek counseling on
what to do if they cannot see them, if a lot of time or money is involved, and if a radical shift in
personality is detected. Do not swallow the organization's propaganda to the effect of their being
a religion; many cults hide behind the skirts of legitimate religions.

Why do they Join?

By Martin Hunt, February 1996
Mirrored from the wayback machine to preserve for future generations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817040736/http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~av282/essays.htm#10

[ Ed. note Why and how do people get into Scientology? What type of person is vulnerable to
becoming a cult victim? This essay attempts to answer these questions, and dispel some common
myths about the so-called "seekers" and "joiners" that get into Scientology. This was based on a
lengthy exchange of posts with a critic on the alt.religion.scientology Usenet (ars), then
extensively re-written into essay format one year later and re-posted. I had originally dug up Mr.
Hunts archived writings for a knowledgeable source to reference (see Essay on Words) for
further reading on my Scientology Technical Dictionary comparative analysis project. But it was
this fine essay that made me realize there was a great deal of wisdom lost when some of the
Martin Hunt critical websites from yesteryear went dark that deserved to be recovered. ]
Scientology accepts everyone; old, young, rich, poor, drug users, business executives,
psychiatrists, the well educated and the illiterate; anyone - provided they can find a use for you,
some way to exploit you. If you're well-off, they'll sell you the Bridge. If you're poor, they'll put
you to work. If you're smart and well educated, maybe they'll make you into a supervisor to teach
the "tech" to others. If you're good at selling, you become a registrar, selling cult services. I
know a woman who was specifically targeted because she was very beautiful; they wanted to hat
her as a receptionist. Everyone is grist for the mill.
It isn't just "searchers" who get involved in cults; it's anyone. Often just normal, everyday,
middle-class people with no particular problems, as Margaret Singer says in her _Cults in Our
Midst_, "the majority of adolescents and adults in cults come from middle-class backgrounds,
are fairly well educated, and are not seriously disturbed prior to joining." - page 17. I'll be
referring to this excellent book several times in this essay. I highly recommend reading Singer's
work to gain insight into cults. Margaret Singer is probably the pre-eminent cult expert in the
world today. Note the Scientology D/A material on her, which speaks volumes about how much
Singer threatens them. Singer goes on to make many important points about the "blame the
victim" phenomena; very interesting. I also recommend Steve Hassan's _Combatting Cult Mind
Control_. What puzzles me about it is that surely everyone at some time in their life has been
ripped off somehow, somewhere by someone. The situation almost reminds me of high-school
cliques where all the virgins engage in voluminous virgin-bashing, etc. You would think the
sheer irony of blaming others for being ensnared while turning a blind eye to our own similar
binds getting conned by one thing or another as we all have at one time in our lives would make
us laugh when we engage in such behavior, but that's not the case. I've had the pleasure of seeing
a hundred people's first post to the ars newsgroup begin with "well, Scientologists deserve to get
ripped off for being so stupid as to join to such a nutty cult." The world is far from ideal;
however, that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for a better world. I think one of the best ways of
getting there is giving everyone a shot of information disease vaccine about the cult scams out
there.

The victims of Scientology are not necessarily "seekers"; this misses the mark, as the cult
actively pursues people. The cult has a role to play here. It trains "registrars", "body routers",
"FSM's" and others to actively go after people, and, whether they know it or not, these registrars
present a very inaccurate picture of what Scientology is and does. Scientologists go out on the
street and grab people; they write letters to people, the "letter registrars"; they go into malls and
act as FSMs, field staff members, and recruit people, often in very unobtrusive and subtle ways.
When I ran courserooms in Los Angeles, some of the classes of latino students thought they were
in some kind of college learning English! Then there's the children in the cult; surely no one
would try to pin the "seeker" label on them. It's hardly their fault their parents got involved in
some scam and put them into it as well.
Being a sceptic is no shield to cult involvement, but it may help. I know it didn't help in my own
case; I prided myself on my scepticism and atheism. I didn't believe in anything before I got
involved, least of all religions. Astrology was a scam, and I knew it. I openly admired James
Randi, a fellow Canadian. But I was lied to; I was told that it was "science", that there was
"research" to back everything up, "studies had been done", I was assured. Looking back on it
now, I can see that I obviously wasn't sceptical enough - yet I was the most sceptical person I
knew, not buying into any of the pseudoscience I saw around me, everything from past lives to
Lysenkoism to Bates and his nutty ideas about improving eyesight. I should have been more
sceptical, obviously, and I could have used more critical reading skills and formal logic, both of
which might have helped, and also if I had heard of Hubbard or his Scientology before, which I
had not. I mean, I would have run from the Moonies, as I had heard of them and knew to avoid
them, but not Scientology. Scientology's ploy to keep themselves out of the media had worked
well up to that time; they simply sued the crap out of anyone who ran a story on them, and this
libel chill, as it's called, worked to keep them from public consciousness. This has broken down
in the past year or two, and now Scientology has become a household name - a name
synonymous with scams and cults.
I was sceptical; in fact, my family and friends openly called me sceptical. I was well-read. Plato,
Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, you name it. I easily qualified for Mensa, and that didn't help
either. There were people smarter than me in Scientology; they were the ones who attracted me
to the idea that they may just be on to something here. A psychiatrist with a PhD sat next to me
on course; a college graduate was the first person I contacted in Scientology. They were literate,
well-spoken people who talked a lot about evidence, science, and logic for the most part. Here's
what my sister said when she heard I was in Scientology: "He won't get into any trouble with it;
he's too smart." But they had, and used, techniques of control that I did not have and did not
know about. For example, the TRs are training routines, but who are they training? I would say
they train the pc as much as the auditor. Raw Meat pcs are notoriously hard to "run" on a
process, while properly "trained" pcs who have done their pro-TRs run smooth and quickly
without case hangups. Hubbard mentions that the training side of the bridge is another way up to
the top, ie, that training does as much good as the "therapy", the auditing and processing side of
things.
Intelligence does not protect one against information disease. If that were so, Einstein would
never have said "I refuse to believe God plays dice with the universe", and he would have been
an atheist. But cults don't hit one on a purely intellectual level. It's easy to sit back away from the
highly coordinated influence mechanisms that work on a largely emotional and psychological

basis and say that Scientology is irrational and only gullible people would ever buy into it, but I
should be clear that isn't how it operates. Information is one thing, a pretty girl asking you to
come into a room, offering a chair to you politely, and earnestly looking straight into your eyes
for the next two hours and gently getting you to reveal your deepest secrets in an artificial
intimacy ploy that plays on the structure of human love is another matter entirely. Cults aren't
about information; they don't seduce people intellectually. Perhaps more emotional intelligence,
a common term nowadays, could help keep people out of cults, but I do know one things that is
certainly effective: specific knowledge. If someone knows what [Scientology] is all about, what
kind of man Hubbard was, what kind of "research" backs up the so-called "technology", what the
cult does to people who criticize it or oppose it, and the kinds of crimes the organization is
responsible for, they won't be very likely to get involved. Indeed, I don't know many people who
got involved in Scientology after reaching that level of knowledge about them, but I do know at
least two. One read the critical books, books by Bent Corydon, Jon Atack and Russell Miller, and
then got involved. Another was in the cult for a few years, blew, read all this material and
become very critical of it, then went back into the cult after a hiatus of a few years. These two
were not stupid people; I considered them both my peers, certainly.
Suspicious, sceptical, and intelligent people are no more proof against conditioning and influence
than others, just like big strong people are not proof against heart-attacks. We all have brains,
which operate on an electrochemical basis in much the same way as everyone else's brain. Cult's
work on that level, on the level of brain chemistry, I believe. I hope one day studies are done to
determine what exactly happens at the biochemical level of cult victim's brains. Until then, I'm
convinced that it is absurd to bleat out the common myths about the people who get into
Scientology or any of the other thousands of cults, that "people who seek out and join cults are
stupid and gullible", or that it's a "god-given right for people to do stupid things and get ripped
off". If that were really true, we wouldn't have any recourse when we bought that lemon from the
used-car dealer, or a house with lead paint on the walls, or a million other consumer scams from
telemarketing fraud to con games. Fraud is illegal, and Scientology has been found guilty of it a
number of times by courts throughout the world, including the US Supreme Court. Who's to
blame when a con game is successful, the victim of the scam or the con artist?
The people in the Vancouver org were intelligent, attractive, apparently very happy, welladjusted, well-dressed, and well-educated. My recruiter was a 3rd year psychology student in
university when she dropped out to join Scientology. Of course, readers of
alt.religion.scientology will be quick to point out that the "clams" who appear there are
seemingly far from intelligent, for the most part. I do not know why this is so, but I do know they
appear very different from the staff members in Vancouver in that sense. Perhaps it is because
they are all (supposedly; according to a brief from one Elaine Seigel) OT V or above, which
means they have been brainwashed far longer. Certainly, time spent in Scientology is just not
good for people's minds; I can attest to that. Another factor is that Canada is not America, and
most of the Scientologist posters on ars are American. Vancouver is not much like a typical
American city; it is very unlike Los Angeles, the location of OSA, the Office of Special Affairs,
and its inhabitants just aren't the same. I didn't meet anyone like Koos or Homer or Andrew
Milne or Cory Brennan in Vancouver; if I had, I would have run from that place. Keith Little,
maybe; despite the constant ridicule, he can be quite intelligent if he wants to be, and he does
work in a technical field, if his webpage is to be believed.

The simple fact is that cults attract everyone. Perfectly normal people like you and me. I wish it
weren't so, but it is; I've seen it with my own eyes, and so have the serious investigators of the
subject. One of our big hauls in Vancouver one week was an executive from a large public
corporation here in BC. Next week, a 45 year-old accountant signed up after the manipulation
got its hooks into him. He was very successful. He came in with his wife and two children and
bought the whole "Bridge". These weren't exceptions to the rule by any means. Singer:
"Who Joins Cults? "When we hear of cults, scams, and individuals being controlled and
influenced by others, we instinctively try to separate ourselves from those persons. It seems a
point of valor and self-esteem to insist that "no one could get me to do such things" when hearing
about situations of intense influence. Just as most soldiers believe bullets will hit only others,
most people tend to believe that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. "Other
people can be manipulated, but not me" they declare." - ibid, page 15.
A vital tool in the cult's chest of manipulation weapons is control, a part of the common
symbology in the form of triangles. The top triangle in the familiar Scientology symbol is for
knowledge, responsibility, and control. Control is stressed throughout Scientology. An auditor
who cannot control his or her pc, cannot keep them "in session" is corrected with drills that teach
control until they can confront the pc and get the job done. One must not get the idea that the
brainwashing in Scientology is done by higher-ups; it is done continually by the Scientologists
themselves to each other. It is a whole system of control and manipulation; it isn't really being do
to them, but rather by them. Another quote from Singer:
"The "Not Me" Myth. People like to think that their opinions, values, and ideas are inviolate and
totally self-regulated. They may grudgingly admit that they're influenced by advertising. Beyond
that, they want to preserve the myth that other people are weak-minded and easily influenced
while they are strong-minded. Even though we all know human minds are open to influence whether or not that is a comfortable thought - most of us defensively and haughtily proclaim,
"Only crazy, stupid, needy people join cults. No one could ever get me to commit suicide or beat
my kids or give my wife over to a cult leader. No one could ever talk me into anything like that.
As I hear people say that, I silently ask, "you want to bet?" - ibid, page 15.
Brainwashing is physical, I'm sure; chemical, if one was to look closely enough at the
phenomenon. It feels like taking a drug. The auditing is addictive; rich people get quite hooked
spending vast sums on it for the temporary rush it gives. If the "gains" don't stick, a person is
said to be PTS; that is, if the rush doesn't last long enough. I've witnessed people selling their
cars to buy more. There's reports in the media of people selling their houses; one woman's
husband spent the money reserved for his children's college education on it - people act just like
drug addicts. Family, friends, and children mean nothing compared to getting the next fix of
Scientology auditing, and, like cocaine, no one is rich enough to afford the habit.
I was independent and resistant to any form of authority when I became involved in Scientology.
As far as I can tell there's no distinguishing who will get involved in it and who won't. I believe
that there are physical differences in some people's brains which may make them more resistant
to cult involvement, but that's hardly something people should pride themselves on in that case.
It takes a low sort to crow to cult victims: "You were weak; that is why you got sucked in. I am
just too smart to get involved in something that stupid." But people do, thereby manifesting not

only their own ignorance, but their silly egos out in the sunshine for all to see. It's an all-toohuman weakness that can be seen in other situations as well, such as the battered housewife
whom people blandly say of "why doesn't she just leave him?" Actually, there's a great deal in
common between battered women and cult victims; both are in an abusive relationship that they
cannot easily get themselves out of, and both are stigmatized by society through a lack of
understanding of the mechanisms of control. I have experienced discrimination because of my
status as an ex-Scientologist. In one case, a very ignorant man I've known most of my life
refused to hire me for a job explicitly because I was an ex-Scientologist...but he was the
exception. The reactions I'm most used to are surprise, sometimes disinterest, curiosity, and
anger (this last mostly from family members) when I inform people about my former
involvement.
Cult leaders are like abusive men, but instead of just being control freaks to their wives and
children, they extend it to cover large groups of people, like the brutal dictators of small thirdworld nations, or figures like Stalin, Hitler, or Mao Tse-tung. This thread of maniacal control can
be easily seen in cult leaders like L. Ron Hubbard, Sun Myung Moon, and many others. At the
top of Scientology's bridge lies a mimicry of Hubbard's personality; he is the Father in the cult,
he is the Big Being to duplicate and imitate, and the top of the bridge is a duplication of his
paranoia, his schizophrenia, his madness. That's all Scientologists are really learning to be: LRH
himself.
People do not understand cults, generally; that's an accurate assessment of today's public's
understanding of the cult phenomena. Statements like "It's their choice to join" and "they must
have been gullible" show a stark resemblance to quips like "She asked for it" and "why did she
wear those clothes?" of rape victims. Interestingly, a poster came on the ars newsgroup who
talked about this very subject. She had been both raped at one time in her life and victimized by
Scientology at another, and she saw the situations (situations she was uniquely qualified to
discuss) as very comparable. This might seem insulting to outsiders or rape victims who haven't
been trapped in brainwashing cults like Scientology or the Moonies, but the only person I knew
who could compare the two based on personal experience with both saw them as equally
devastating.
A big ego is no help in avoiding cults; neither is cocky self-assurance or self-confidence. One
thing that does help is very specific information about particular cults, sceptical thinking skills,
critical reading skills, and a general knowledge of cult recruiting and brainwashing techniques.
Readers of the ars newsgroup, for example, are very likely more resistant to Scientology than
even a very emotionally stable, intelligent, well-read, middle-class, educated, and happy
individual because of their specific knowledge about the cult. Psychotherapists who work with
cult victims are less likely to be drawn into cults themselves because of their general knowledge
of recruiting techniques and thought reform. It's also possible that a scientific sceptic who has the
ability to read critically and has explored others scams and various cons perpetrated on the public
could have a higher resistance to Scientology and other cults, although I had some ability in that
area and it didn't stop me from getting conned out of thousands of dollars and losing two years of
my life in the cult.
The painful fact is that ordinary, intelligent, college-educated, middle-class people get caught up
in Scientology. Why? They don't apply to your reason; they find a way to get to you, and a lot of

people can be gotten to under the right circumstances. There's no simple explanation for it. The
cults have stumbled onto something that I feel is still only poorly understood. I'm not giving
Scientology credit for creating their powerful and subtle techniques of manipulation; I believe
they merely stumbled upon them more or less by chance. Out of the thousands of little cults that
spring up, one would have to develop these techniques by mere random chance, and then, like a
social evolution, the cults with weaker techniques, memes, or information disease die out, and
ones like Scientology grow based on the strength of their control over their members. Perhaps
the victims could be more street-wise, but that is no reason to blame them for someone else's
crimes and deception. Kudos to the media in these situations, handing out warnings of such
things helps protect everyone against further abuse, and after a few programs like Donahue, Hard
Copy, Inside Edition and Sixty Minutes have done critical shows on Scientology, that sets a
thought in the back of millions of people's heads that may just be enough to make them step
away from that free personality test that is used as a recruiting tool into a very bizarre and
destructive cult life. What kind of world do we want? One where being trusting is a crime, or one
where ripping people off is condemned? Blaming the victim is an all-too-common response to
these situations, but I see it as massive consumer fraud. People are lied to when they are told
Hubbard was highly educated, Dianetics was thoroughly researched, and the whole thing is
"scientific" and uniformly produces results. Margaret Singer has this to say on this topic:
"Blaming victims is an almost universal response to misfortune happening to others. Women
who get raped are often blamed. People will say that the rape victim was wearing a short dress,
was out after 10 P.M., or was in a neighborhood where she should not have been. Therefore the
rape is her fault.
"Similarly, when somebody goes into a cult, the tendency is for the society to say that there must
be something wrong with that person. There must be some personal defect, otherwise he or she
would not have joined such a group. Since the public continues to regard cult members as stupid,
crazy, and weak-minded, the near-universal public response is: "It's his fault. He went looking
for what he got." In our society, there is a strong taboo on being victimized through scams,
influence, and deceptions, and breaking this taboo makes the cult victim even more scorned." ibid, page 26.
Cults today do not just focus on the youth. Perhaps earlier on in the modern cult bloom this was
true; in the 60's, most cults, including Scientology, targeted the young. However, they shifted to
a more mainstream membership in the 80's, and now Scientology's new members may be of any
age or socio-economic class, although there is an effort to recruit those with money, looks,
education or some other asset that the cult can exploit. Generally, certain people are targeted for
more regging than others. People with looks, money, brains...some usable commodity. Some
people walk away because they are let go, because they don't offer what the cult needs, and that
can include sceptical and critical people. The recruiting isn't just a broad-based appeal to
everyone; it's directed at certain people while others are let go. The ones who are let go aren't
necessarily in a position to say that they were too smart to get sucked in, as the cult may have
dropped them based on signals they were giving off, such as if they said critical things about
Scientology. That might be because it would be more work to indoctrinate these people into the
cult's weltanschauung, so it wouldn't make economic sense, or, in the evolutionary theory, it
would take up more resources better spent on getting others in than focusing on that one hard
target.

In my experience, there was little or no commonality between members. I did watch a few
hundred people come in the doors and join up. They ranged from 75 year old grandmothers to
middle-age executives to children as young as six whose parents were hooked by the scam. I
believe that it is a popular myth that large proportions of "joiners" have personality defects which
cause them to become cult members. I believe that saying a vast majority were "searchers"
distracts from the cult's activity and complicity in recruiting. Scientology actively seeks out and
recruits new members. It was not a case of me bringing the mountain towards myself. I was not a
searcher. I was originally contacted by a letter registrar and offered free auditing after reading the
Dianetics book. After that, I was extensively lied to by the recruiters, who may not even have
known that they were lying, such is the artfulness of the con. What I am at fault for is not being a
more critical reader, not having the skills necessary to pick apart the pseudoscience in
_Dianetics_ and realize that it was pure crap. Dianetics is just trash, and full of logical errors,
baldfaced claims, and unsubstantiated nonsense. Hubbard blandly lies about his "research" and
himself and puffs up his claims, and I didn't spot that. But then, considering the junk diet books
that are on the bestseller lists all over the Western world, I was not alone in such a deficit.
Indeed, Dianetics itself was a bestseller in the 1950's, and became something of a national craze
in the United States. I think there's a missing gap in Western education somewhere between
understanding science, being sceptical, learning critical reading and thinking skills, being able to
sort through all the misinformation out there to find the facts, and consumer awareness of
prevalent scams. Too many people are too uncritical of what they read and see, whether it's a
phony "doctor" in a labcoat on TV saying that their snake oil is better than their competitors, or
some quack pseudoscience guru selling a diet or Dianetics. Singer on the myth of the seeker:
"Another myth surrounding those who join cults is that these people go out looking for cults.
Cult apologists capitalize on this notion and claim people seek out the very group they end up in.
Some of these apologists are academicians who describe cult members as "seekers," because
these researchers only study members after they are already in the group...the apologists avoid
attributing any agency to the cult. Instead, they describe the cult as if it were the Washington
Monument, sitting still, waiting for tourists to visit...voluminous popular and academic literature
counters the seeker theory, calling attention to the active, sophisticated, and unrelenting
proselytizing engaged in by the majority of today's cults." - ibid, page 24.
People in my experience with Scientology were often scooped up off the street while they were
doing something else, like going to college or on their way to pick someone up or to an
appointment. Where they receptive? I don't think so; no more than the average person. Of course,
I freely admit that some people are most likely highly resistant to the cult's recruiting techniques,
but this may well reflect no more credit on these people than high resistance to disease; it may
well be something in the physical structure of their brains that makes them resist what others are
"sucked in" by. We don't blame people with poor immune systems, and so we shouldn't blame
them others for brains that provide poor resistance to memes.
The recruiting approach is targeted; sceptical people are treated differently. Scientologists are on
the lookout for "wogs" who are "SPs", and one of the ways of spotting this is people who are
very negative, "critical" or "sceptical", which I put in quotes because [Scientology] redefines
these terms and thus affects critical and sceptical thought in its members; it's not so much that
Scientologists were people who lack the ability to think critically, as it is the case that they have
lost any talent they may have had in this regard due to their involvement. It may well be that

everyone has a "ruin" that can be detected and exploited, however. They find that ruin whatever
it is. I should point out that I was not an expert in regging, as they call it; I was a supervisor,
[Scientologys] term for a teacher. However, the regs are extensively trained and drilled to do
their obnoxious jobs and rake people in, get "bodies in the shop", as they say. I remember one
book they used, "Big League Sale Closing Techniques" by Les Dane. If the person is very
"sceptical", then perhaps they are a rather nihilistic person. They may be unhappy about their
relationships or their job. Perhaps they are not as socially adept as someone who is less
"sceptical", and thus they may well be an easy mark. Perhaps silly, gullible, happy people are not
as easy to attract as suspicious people who have a lower self-esteem. Certainly, people who have
engaged in debate on the ars newsgroup are the least likely people to join Scientology, apart
from trained psychologists with cult experience, in my opinion. I'm not too sure about exScientologists; while I feel fairly sure I would never re-join, I do know a man who was as
sceptical as I am now and who read all the critical books, called it a cult and a scam, was out of
[Scientology] for six years, and then re-joined! He is still in as of 1997; he's been back in for ten
years now. This man was no fool; he was smart, well-educated, and from a happy home. He has
a great father who is very supportive but cannot stand Scientology, and he has a successful career
in the arts. He was a sceptic, too; he would laugh at the stupidity of astrology and the idiocy of
alien abductions with me, pointing out that it's a bit of a stretch to imagine that earth is the
crossroads of the galaxy, but there he is - in the cult up to his neck, a staff member and a "clear".
It bothers me to think about him; to think what kind of person I know him to be, so much like me
in so many ways, and yet still in Scientology.
To say that Scientologists are uncritical is to say that all the people of Germany were uncritical
before World War II. If millions can be persuaded wholesale by memes, what gives any of us
special protection? Without the specific skills I mentioned earlier, people who think they are
immune to cults are whistling past the graveyard, I'm afraid. Certainly education into cult
recruiting techniques gives one the ability to counter them, but how many people have this very
specific knowledge? That's our best hope of disemboweling the beast, at any rate: to raise the
general public awareness of what a scam Scientology is. But what good will this do in
combatting the general problem of a lack of specific skills in hundreds of millions of people?
These skills are vital. Reading Carl Sagan's _Demon Haunted World_, one is left with a sense of
urgency about the failures in modern public education to communicate what science is all about,
not some sterile system for inventing new widgets, but a deep philosophy that enables people to
combat all the bullshit out there floating around like germ spores on the wind, ready to infect a
new mind and fill another person with crazy ideas and superstitions from religion to consumer
frauds and fads to new age crap to cults. Everyone knows their astrological sign, but how many
know the four basic forces of nature or the other basic facts of science? And how many can think
in scientific terms and slice through the disease-like memes adrift in modern society? Great
cultures have arisen before, only to sink into the dust of history; if we don't keep apace of our
science and keep our minds free of the rampant superstitions of today, will we too fail as a
civilization and sink into a dark age where modern medical technology is replaced with crystal
healing energy, statistics with astrology, and science with pseudoscience or antiscience - and
perhaps psychology with dianetics and Scientology?
I do believe that certain people are more resistant to being suckered, and I do believe in the
adage once bitten, twice shy. But who has not been suckered at one time in their life? I don't
think the sophisticated techniques the cults use should be reduced to mere "suckering." I don't

believe that brainwashing is irresistible, but I do think that everyone with a brain is susceptible to
the techniques the cult use, some more, some less. I like to provide an example from everyday
life; many people will pick their nose or scratch their balls when they're alone, but will they do it
at the dinner table with others present? Social control is everywhere; we don't see the wood for
the trees. Social cliques at high school; peer pressure; meeting your parents with a new
significant other. Scientology exploits these tendencies, as do telemarketers. How many people
find it hard to just hang up the phone when that call comes? It's rude, right? Scientology
deliberately exploits that sense of manners; it's rude to walk away from someone who is politely
talking to you, it's hard to handle a guy who walks up to you and puts his arm around your
shoulder and walks you into the org, it's impolite to interrupt when someone's talking. What I'm
not convinced of is that people who say they are completely immune to these techniques do not
know what they are talking about. After all, millions of people get caught up in cults. How many
of these by and large ordinary citizens thought, as I did, that they were immune to control? How
many of them thought they would never get sucked into such a thing? If someone had told me
that I would get sucked into a cult, I would have laughed, loudly, right to their face such was my
self-confidence in my ability to spot a con and not be duped like the suckers out there, the
gullible masses who would buy into anything. A sucker is born every minute, and none is so
stupid as those who believe they already know everything. That overconfidence will not help,
believe me; I've been there and done that.
Scientology delivers itself in easy to understand chunks; OT III isn't the first thing a person sees,
so it's specious to say that Scientologists are silly to believe in Xenu and the body thetans, as
most know nothing about it. I think that the main reason for confidentiality gradients is that new
people would be turned away by seeing the higher level crap. The tech gets increasingly stranger
and more distant from any kind of conventional therapy as it goes up the bridge of levels to OT.
It starts off with something that many people could buy into, no more difficult to believe than
Freud or B.F. Skinner. If people walked in the door and were exposed to this OT level junk right
away, they would leave. The cult would agree with this; they would say that the newcomer had
no "reality" on the tech, and wasn't prepared with a proper "gradient" approach to learning it.
Scientology is generally cut up into levels, and things vary from place to place. Flag in
Clearwater Florida is meant to be the "Mecca of technical perfection", but in fact it is no more
legitimate than the most "squirrely" outer org; it varies its interpretations of LRH's confusing and
contradictory "tech" in its own way, but there's no saying that one interpretation of utter
nonsense is more valid than another, so Flag's "technology" is no better than anyone else's in the
cult.
However, there's another strong reason to keep secrets like this, as mentioned by Jon Atack. As
Jon explains, this was coincidental with a major split in the cult, and Hubbard very likely wanted
to keep some things away from what was amounting to competition in the quack-therapy field: a
Scientology split-off called Amprinistics. If they got into a price-war, and if Amprinistics had a
better delivery without Ethics and other bits of the totalitarian nature of mainstream Scientology,
he would lose droves of customers. You can't sell people a bridge that they already have.
There's one more possible reason to keep secrets and hide the OT levels away. Gnosticism has
been around a long time, and one of the main pulls is good old human curiosity; we like to see
what's behind the green door. There's status in those who know, and those who aren't in on it are
insatiably curious to find out what the big secret is; it's part of our nature to be curious. Cows

aren't, but apes are. Set up a black box in a crowd and put a label on it "do not look inside", and
people will flock to it to take a peek. Some may even pay good money to learn the secrets of
AMORC or Freemasonry - or Scientology.
This makes one weapon in the critical arsenal particularly effective: exposing the upper level
"secrets" to the masses. For newbie Scientologists, this can be a big turn off, and no less so for
the general public who hear of Xenu, atom bombs, body thetans, aircraft door implants, implant
stations on Mars and Venus, and the Scientological fact that we descended from clams via
Piltdown Man. This can also have the effect of "ruining the pc's case", and can act as an
inoculation. Scientology will at times reject people who have been exposed to such confidential
material.
I hope I have answered some of why and how do people get into scientology and what type of
person is vulnerable to becoming a cult victim. This essay attempts to answer these questions,
and dispel some common myths about the so-called "seekers" and "joiners" who get into
Scientology and relate some of my personal experience with all this. This is a topic which has
not been discussed as much as I would like to see on the ars newsgroup, and I would like to add
more material to the ARS FAQ in the final sections about such aspects which touch on therapy
and related topics, and get some more suggestions or contributions. A great deal of emphasis has
been placed on exposing the cult's criminal actions, and that has certainly helped to educate a
great many people about Scientology, but such specific information about scientology alone will
not help people avoid the thousands of other cults out there, and all the other little pitfalls along
the road that seemingly perfectly rational people can get wrapped up in. It may well be
considered a matter of choice for people to get involved in such things, and I can see the near
necessity of that kind of thinking for democratic minds as a basis of free will, but there's still a
fraud being perpetrated on the public, and that's a consumer issue really. Caveat emptor, but only
if the consumer can get the information to make an informed choice. If they are lied to and the
product is misrepresented, as is the case with dianetics and Scientology, then that's fraud.

Thought Structures
By Martin Hunt
Mirrored from the wayback machine to preserve for future generations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817040736/http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~av282/essays.htm#5

[ Ed. note this article was written after the meme theory became au courant on the
alt.religion.scientology Usenet (ars). This was Mr. Hunts attempt at explaining why people
think so differently after being swallowed up in the cult of Scientology, and how these ideas
spread from one to another inside the system. ]

Scientologist's heads are filled with ideas about improving abilities, saving the planet, improving
communication, and many others. Scientologists claim that they have changed, bettered
themselves, improved. Yet, outsiders see little evidence of these benefits. What is the reason for
this?
Scientology is an overlay, a new thought structure placed over the societal norms and the preScientology personality of the individual members. This thought structure is foreign to the global
society, isolated like a desert island from the continents of science, education and democracy.
As an example of one piece of this thought structure, Scientologists may say that auditing is
helping them to be able to look at the world outside of themselves, to grow and feel more in tune
with life and livingness. Yet while they are saying this, the Scientologists are living in a
totalitarian system that shields them from the outside world. Indeed, they may be withdrawn
from life and the world to such an extent that they do not watch television, do not read books,
magazines or newspapers, have cut off contact with their families and friends, seldom go outside
the confines of their building, and do little other than work long very days, eat a bite and sleep a
few hours to wake up and repeat this cycle endlessly.
Yet the Scientologists involved in this system seem to be content to stay and push out of sight
any doubts or critical thoughts about what's really going on in Scientology. I am reminded of
prisoners who learn to love their walls after many years incarcerated in institutions, and who
cannot handle life on the outside. The abuse and neglect that Scientologists experience are
ignored and replaced with thought structures which answer almost every problem and address
almost every situation.
There are doubts, though, and these tend to spring from internal inconsistencies within
Scientology. Doubts may arise from such small concerns as a gap in the definitions of falls of the
needle on the E-meter, and such large matters as a collision between concepts about the bridge to
total freedom and confrontation with a skeletal RPFer subsisting on a starvation diet and living
so long out of the sunlight in underground tunnels that their skin has turned ashen.
Would Scientology be more effective in controlling its members if these inconsistencies were
removed? Or do the inconsistencies themselves and the resolution of them provide higher levels

of control somehow? What is known to some degree is the way these inconsistencies are
handled; they are, when raised or talked about, immediately and severely suppressed. The mere
mention of a doubt can lead to extreme anger on the part of course supervisors and ethics
officers, with demands to look up misunderstood words, get overts or sins off the chest by
writing them up, allegations of being an evil suppressive, anti-Scientologist, or squirrel bent on
ruining Scientology, the tech, or the bridge of salvation. The official line is that Scientology is
100% standard and thoroughly consistent and flawless and error-free, coming straight from its
only Source, Hubbard. An irony here is that there is inconsistency even here; Scientology is
often described as merely workable, and not a perfect technology as well as the line above.
How do Scientologists live with these discordant and clashing ideas? Well, they build a structure
of belief, yet call it fact. Bit by bit, pieces are fitted into the structure until it explains everything.
Much of a Scientologist's time is spent wrangling over these little details and sorting out their
thought structure. Perhaps a simpler, more consistent collection of ideas would not entrap people
as effectively, as they would not spend so much of their time mulling over it?
In the end, the thought structure becomes a huge monstrosity covering all aspects of life from
sex, marriage, relationships, communication, god, concepts of self to the meaning of life itself.
The structure has many vulnerable points, but one of the weakest links is in the benefits of
Scientology's auditing therapy.
Initially, the auditing of Dianetics in may cases works well on the newcomer in the sense that it
makes the recipient feel better, happier, elated, almost orgasmic in some cases. This may be due
to many factors, including large amounts of attention lavished on the newcomer by the group, the
individual attention and intimacy (verging on sexual intimacy) of the auditor in session, the
direct and piercing gaze of fellow Scientologists, the feelings of love and friendship, the wonder
at having someone willing to sit still and listen to everything said for hours without interrupting,
criticizing, or failing to pay attention.
However, this phase is all too brief, and is soon replaced with either strange processes that do
nothing and grow ever stranger gradually while giving the idea that it is the recipient's fault if the
therapy doesn't work and harsh demands for production on staff with abiding feelings of guilt for
not producing enough.
While it lasts, the euphoria the newcomer feels and attributes to the auditing processes is a
linchpin in the thought structures being built in the recipient's mind. The thought structure in
brief is that if the auditing works, then Scientology must be right. Scientology proves itself in
action, what's true for you is the truth, you can only know about it by experiencing it firsthand,
and the good feelings prove efficacy. If the auditing works, then the writer must be correct. The
writer says he thought up all these ideas himself, and is the one and only true source of them.
Also, the writer says he got ideas from Eastern religions, Freud, philosophers, jungle tribes, etc.,
and that is one of the first cases of inconsistency the newcomer must deal with. Both positions
are deemed acceptable, and either can be used depending on circumstance. Talking with fellow
Scientologists, the newcomer may comment on how brilliant Hubbard was to come up with the
route out or the therapy methodology and steps on his own as Source. Talking with a friend who
is interested in Buddhism and unfamiliar with Scientology, the newcomer may comment on how

Hubbard incorporated much of the Buddhist teachings into Scientology, and that there are many
path to enlightenment.
At this stage, and until the newcomer develops into a long-term Scientologist or blows the
organization due to growing discrepancies and inconsistencies in the thought structure, the
Scientologist actually knows very little about Hubbard, Scientology's sources, what Scientology
is, what the upper levels materials are all about, Hubbard's life, etc. It is with a rather blank and
limited vision of the subject that the Scientologist describes it to others in glowing terms.
When auditing fails to live up to expectations, that is when Scientologists become most
dissatisfied with the state they are in, and are most prone to leave the organization. The chinks in
the armor of belief masquerading as scientific fact develop around the auditing. The first such
chink may be the thought that none of the Scientology processes seem to work as well as the
Dianetic ones, and why are the Dianetic processes being ignored? Another may spring up around
the question of why so little auditing is done in Scientology; why isn't everyone going up the
bridge quickly instead of shuffling papers around? Another one comes from position in the org
while on staff; most people want to be auditors, both to go up the bridge quickly themselves, and
to help others to do so -- yet they end up being paper shufflers and bureaucrats in a massive
management structure.
Eventually, in most people who become involved in Scientology, the thought structure falls apart
and they leave. They may still be thinking that they left because of overts or sins causing
departure or blowing, but the holes were there eating into Scientology's overlay upon their mind.
Generally, many small discrepancies come accumulate until they cannot be ignored. Once the
Scientologist starts devoting time to thinking about these discrepancies, the holes widen into a
sudden gulf between expectations and reality. The Scientologist before leaving may ask an OT to
demonstrate their abilities, warn superiors not to send them out body routing or to put them into
an ethics cycle, use what they think of as confront to challenge authority, talk to family members
again, cease to worry about production and lose the associated pervasive feelings of guilt, and
display other such behaviors; these are the signs of the end of the active phase of involvement,
and are followed by walking out.
But that is not the end nor resolution to Scientology and its effects on the now ex-Scientologist;
much of the thought structure remains, and thoughts of suicide to drop this body and try again
are entertained, as are thoughts of the loss of their eternal future on the bridge of freedom. At this
time ex-Scientologists are vulnerable, as they are roundly criticized for their actions while they
were in Scientology such as shutting out family and friends and spending all their money. They
may by discriminated against and ridiculed, which only adds to their problems which may
include being filled with shame, deeply depressed, confused, unable to read, filled with strange
concepts like a burning hatred of psychiatrists, socially awkward, physically ill, in need of dental
work, not at their normal body weight, and filled with inner turmoil.
Recovery from the thought structure and the actions that follow from adherence to it may take
years. During this time of recovery, Scientologists may become involved in other cults, go back
to using the auditing therapy outside the cult structure, or even go right back into Scientology
itself. The sheer strangeness of Scientology's thought structure may well be its most harmful
after-effect; it is so different from everyday society that learning to fit in again can be very hard.

*since I've used the term thought structure so often in this essay, I will now try to define what
I'm talking about. We are what we are because of networks of neurons in our brains that lay
down our software or wetware personality. These neural nets are overlaid with ideas from the
society we are in, and form a basis for our core being in the connections laid down. A pattern or
collection of ideas forms a structure, which may be internally consistent to varying degrees.
Scientology lays down a new set of patterns as written and collected by Hubbard that is very
different from everyday society. This structure affects thinking, identity of self, and the very
stuff of consciousness, yet is not different physically from any other in its essentials; and this is a
physical thing, composed of neurons, chemicals and electrical connections. With a whole new
thought structure comes a new way of thinking, a new personality, a different person -sometimes radical change is evident in people involved in cults. The process is reversible,
though, and given enough time away from the cult most people will make a full recovery back to
their core being, albeit with a new collection of experiences from the process of recovery.

Hubbard's profits and auditing costs

By Martin Hunt
Mirrored from the wayback machine to preserve for future generations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817040736/http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~av282/essays.htm#14

[ Ed. note this essay was written to combat ideas prevalent in the Scientology cult that
promotes the concept that auditing "The Bridge to Total Freedom" is well worth the cost of
$300,000 or more. Moreover, that L. Ron Hubbard made all his money from selling his pulp
fiction. Nothing could be further from the truth in Mr. Hunts opinion, he felt strongly that the
Scientology bridge is worthless and Hubbard made millions from his make money fast
"religion. ]
Reportedly, Hubbard was making a million dollars a week from Scientology near the end of his
life. Yet Scientologists during this time received only a few dollars a week; next to nothing in
pay. Why did Hubbard pay his Scientologists so poorly? Assuming that he had roughly 10,000
people working as Scientologists under him, then paying them a mere one hundred dollars per
week would eliminate Hubbard's profits: 10,000 * $100 = $1,000,000 per week in pay. Hubbard
had to pay his Scientologists next to nothing to keep his profits at such a level.
Yet, it is noted, Scientology is so unprofitable that even had Hubbard given up all his income
from it, it would still not pay well. This is a basic flaw in Scientology. Its capital costs are too
high and its gross income is too low to be a truly profitable business. In fact, I suspect that if
Scientology were taxed at nominal rates, it would be losing money.
I remember the IAS being very worried in the late 80's about a back taxes bill in California that
approached one billion dollars. The IAS sent regs out to orgs to gather money for the war chest;
sums were drawn up on whiteboards, and regging lectures proceeded to extract money for all
present. Everyone was being encouraged to buy IAS lifetime memberships, and we were told the
money would help save Scientology. The IAS representatives seemed genuinely worried about
the financial situation.
Scientology appears to be a marginal business, and this may have influenced the IRS in its
decision to grant it tax-exempt status. Scientology would probably do better if it cut auditing and
training costs, paradoxical though that may seem. There's a specific price for goods and services
which reaps the greatest profits; Scientology's costs are far above this optimum level.
For example, costs for auditing the Ls, L-10, L-11, L-12 at Flag in Clearwater reportedly run
over one thousand dollars per hour. At this rate, only a very select few can afford to do them,
perhaps a few hundred people per year. The cost of delivery of this auditing is minimal;
materials only include paper and pens, and the E-meters used last for years. The auditing is done
in small rooms, and it is unlikely that rent or property tax is paid on the space. In addition, the
auditors are paid only a few dollars per week, and fed on cheap, mass produced cafeteria food.
(at ASHO in 1987 the food cards used to sell for $30 per week, and they made a profit on that.)

As prices drop, demand increases; thus, if auditing on the Ls were cheaper, more people would
be doing them. Let's assume that a thousand people a year take the Ls at Flag and that auditing
costs are perhaps $10 per hour. Let's further assume that most Scientologists have a strong desire
to do the Ls, and that perhaps 25,000 would do them if the cost were dropped to a more
reasonable $100 per hour. In the first scenario, the net profit is $1000 per hour for the Ls times
1000 people doing them per year minus the cost of delivery, and multiplied by one intensive per
customer, 12.5 hours. This is 12.375 million per year. In the second scenario with reduced prices
the net profit is 28.125 million per year, an increase of 15.75 million dollars --- which is no small
change.
Generally, the same methods can be applied to all of Scientology's therapy and training, resulting
in perhaps a doubling of GI internationally and a huge upsurge in the number of Scientologists
actively moving up the bridge, Scientology's stated goals.
Now, Hubbard may simply have been ignorant of basic economics, and that could explain the
reason for this stupid mistake in pricing. I wouldn't bet on it, though; he was sharper than that
with his money, and would have loved to see Scientology expand. What, then could be the
reason for this error? I propose it was deliberate; Hubbard either was so jealous of his money and
power that he dictated sharp rises in service charges in an effort to destroy Scientology so that no
one else could follow in his footsteps living the good life off it, or that he was smart enough to
realize that by making Scientology expand rapidly, it would both attract a great deal of attention
(mostly negative, in all probability), and become diluted with a huge influx of raw meat
customers.
There's one other possibility; Hubbard used the huge charges as a means to obtain more power.
By spending all their money on Scientology, a select group of individuals would become highly
dependent on Hubbard for their very food supply and living quarters. The goal may have been
simply higher levels of control over Scientologists through deprivation; the purpose of the
extreme charges being a complete turnover of all assets to Scientology. What does Scientology
cost in the final analysis? All your money.

Essays on Words
By Martin Hunt, June 1996
Mirrored from the wayback machine to preserve for future generations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817212348/http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~av282/words.htm

[ Ed. note this was a series of postings Mr. Hunt started for the sake of explaining certain
words taken from the tech dictionary in depth. Some kind soul was generous enough to send him
a first edition of "Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary" by L. Ron Hubbard dated
1975. Published by ASHO, printed by Kingsport Press Inc., typeset by Freedmen's Organization,
Los Angeles. That inspired him to start a series of daily word postings on the
alt.religion.scientology Usenet (ars) where he did an examination of the loaded language
within the world of Scientology that was eventually compiled into this article. ]

1: Critical Thought
CRITICAL THOUGHT, 1. a symptom of an overt act having been committed. (SH Spec
37, 6409C01) 2. a critical pc = a withhold from the auditor. (HCOB 23 Aug 71)
OK; what [L. Ron Hubbard is] saying is that critical thought is a bad thing. It indicates a hidden
criminal act. In reality, this redefinition makes criticizing the cult or [Hubbard] or anything
Scientological very hard for insiders, as it is reflected back on them as something they did
wrong. Critical thought is not the sort of thing any good little Scientologist should be engaged in.
The train of thought in the brainwashed person's head might go something like this: "I don't
know about putting all these people on rice and beans; that doesn't seem to meet adequate
nutritional standards. wait. I just had a critical thought; what have I done? I must make it stop; I
try and try, but these critical thoughts keep coming back. There must really be something wrong
with me. I wish I had a million dollars to go up the bridge and get this problem terminatedly
handled."

2: Raw Meat Preclear

RAW MEAT PRECLEAR, 1. one who has never had [Scientology] processing. (HCOB 16
Jan 68) 2. the guy thinks he's a brain. He doesn't know he's a thetan, he isn't up there and
he thinks he's deteriorated into a bit of matter, he thinks he's a body and so forth. Hence
this jocular term "raw meat." (SH Spec 43, 6410C20)
Here we have [Hubbard] setting up an "us vs them" situation; we're better than those "raw
meats"; we realize we're not just a brain! They must be very low on the tone scale to think that
they're only a brain, and therefore they don't deserve special treatment. Indeed, the best thing is
to body route them into the org, as they are far too low down and aberrated to realize Scientology
is the greatest thing in the world, the only hope for mankind. [Hubbard] calls it "jocular", but in

truth it is very disparaging and insulting, while being used to set Scientologist apart from the
wog society and so to fuse them members ever tighter to the cult and its ideals.

3: Ninth Dynamic
NINTH DYNAMIC, 1. "the buck." (5203CM05A) 2. aesthetics. (PDC 2)
Well, there's really not much to add, is there? Hubbard comes right out and says it: money is at
the top, what Scientology is really all about. He left these little clues scattered here and there in
his writings to point the way to what was really going on, and this one ranks right up there with
his mention of Aleister Crowley, and the quote about how Scientology could be used for
brainwashing or controlling people. Interesting he would equate it with aesthetics; he probably
forgot what he said on the tape in 1952 where he originally called the 9th Dynamic money, or he
really did see making money as an art.

4: Megalomania
MEGALOMANIA, a person who has delusions of grandeur, wealth, power, etc. (HCOB 11
May 65)
Well, this is an odd thing to find in Hubbard's tech dictionary. I'm reminded again of Brad Pitt's
line in "Seven" where he leans over and asks the maniac in the back of the cop car if crazies
*know* that they're insane. There's a picture in the Tech Dictionary to accompany this (show of
bravado?) of a drunk on the street dreaming of piles of money. Hmm; Hubbard drank heavily
and dreamed of money too...
But then, you could argue that Hubbard *wasn't* a megalomaniac by his own definition as he
didn't merely have *delusions* of wealth and power, he went out and *grabbed* wealth and
power using his personality cult as the vehicle! Still, there's that "delusions of grandeur" bit; I
have a picture in my mind of him running up to powerful leaders with a bottle of champagne
under his arm thinking he could waltz right in. Webster's has megalomania as "a mania for great
or grandiose performance" (I picture Hubbard on the stage shooting the podium to make a point;
also, his string of lies about his supposedly great and grandiose accomplishments in life.) "a
delusional mental disorder that is marked by infantile feelings of personal omnipotence and
grandeur." Feelings of personal omnipotence? Yup.

5: Cleared Cannibal
CLEARED CANNIBAL, the individual without engrams seeks survival along all of the
dynamics in accordance with his breadth of understanding. This does not mean that a Zulu
who has been cleared of all his engrams would not continue to eat missionaries if he were a
cannibal by education; but it does mean that he would be as rational as possible about

eating missionaries; further, it would be easier to re-educate him about eating missionaries
if he were a Clear. (SOS, p. 110)
LOL! "a cannibal by education", "as rational as possible about eating missionaries". Here was a
man who had a "breadth of understanding" of the cultures of this world unsurpassed by almost
no other pulp-fiction writer. ;-)

6: Black Dianetics
BLACK DIANETICS, 1. hypnotism. (5109C17A) 2. unscrupulous groups and individuals
have been practicing a form of Black Dianetics on their fellow man for centuries. They
have not called it that but the results have been and are the same. There are those who, to
control, resort to narcotics, suggestion, gossip, slander - the thousands of overt and covert
ways that can be classified as Black Dianetics. (Scn Jour Iss 3G)
Centuries, eh? Reminds me of that Far Side of Carl Sagan as a kid; Hubbard later progressed to
quadrillions of years. I'm glad Hubbard pointed out that they didn't call it dianetics way back
then; I never would have guessed. Perhaps there's some usefulness in restating the absurdly
obvious; we have to agree, and by agree with one thing, we're stampeded into a bit of a roll of
agreement with other things that aren't at all apparent. Ever play that game as a kid? "Is the sky
blue?", "Yes", "Is the sun hot?", "Yes", "Is Mount Everest High?" "Yes", "Is the Empire State
Building low?", "Yes", "Gottcha!"
Interesting what Hubbard lists as indicative of his invention, "Black Dianetics": narcotics
(Hubbard used them in accordance with Crowley's principles), suggestion, gossip and slander
(endless rants about "psychs" and other groups) all in an effort to control, and control is one of
the central themes of Scientology. Hubbard's dianetics was indeed black.

7: Clay Table IQ Processing

CLAY TABLE IQ PROCESSING, 1. trace back (with no meter) what *word* or term the
pc failed to grasp in the subject chosen. Get the pc to make up the mass represented by the
word in clay and any related masses. Get them all labeled and explained. I.Q. (intelligence
quotient or the relative brightness of the individual) can be rocketed out of sight with HGC
use of a clay table. (HCOB 17 Aug 64) 2. the original issue of "Clay Table Clearing" was
called "Clay Table I.Q. Processing." (HCOB 27 Sept 64)
Wow! What *science*!
What Hubbard is stating here with his usual bluster and braggadocio is that sitting down with a
person and making little figures out of Plasticine(tm) and sticking paper labels in them in the
HGC (Hubbard Guidance Center; the place were Scientology "therapy" is carried on) can "rocket
IQ out of sight".

If such ridiculous claims were true, why aren't Scientologists all screamingly intelligent? And
why is this process seldom, if ever, used? Let me guess why Scientologists aren't all sitting at
tables making little figures using this "processing"; Hubbard found exorcizing "body thetans" to
be a vastly more effective process, that doesn't merely rocket IQ out of sight, but sends it beyond
light speed to the farthest reaches of this or any other universe in a quadrillionth of a
nanosecond!

8: Bubble Gum Incident, Technical Term

BUBBLE GUM INCIDENT, 1. an incident on the track where you are hit with a motion
and finally develop an obsession about motion. (I wish you to carefully note these very
technical terms like *bubble gum*.) (5206CM23A) 2. the first incident on the track that has
any words in it and is usually the last incident on the track of any magnitude that has any
words in it for millions of years afterward. It sits there all by itself. It's a verbal implant, a
thought implant. (5206CM25B)
So, here we have the possible reason for John Travolta to need a bubble coach for a film; very
likely the Bubble Gum Incident was being restimulated in him, as blowing soap bubbles and
blowing gum bubbles are pretty similar!
Ron came up with a lot of these weird terms, and they aren't used much. Was he pulling his
followers' chains? Most Scientologists take what Ron says as very serious; I can't imagine a Sea
Org person laughing at a passage like the above, even though it may appear on the face of it as
nothing but humour, or at least humourous. No, when they read it, they are likely to take him at
his word that this is indeed a "technical term":
TECHNICAL TERM, it's something that has a specialized meaning in one subject which doesn't
have any broader meaning, but may *appear* in another subject meaning something *else*.
I can see an [Sea Org] person carefully reading out the definition of "Bubble Gum Incident", and
enunciating every syllable with a stern and serious look on their face like their eternal future for
the next billion years was on the line. We can look at these silly terms and laugh; they can't. That
would be suppressive. Joking and degrading.

9: Humor, Glee
HUMOR, humor is rejection. The ability to reject. The ability to throw something away.
That is humor. (8ACC-27, 5411CM05)
Hubbard had a bug up his ass about humor, as we can see in the Jokers and Degraders PL. This is
really one of the defining aspects of a scientologist, closely mimicking the great man's behavior
about humour. Humour is fine if it is directed at the psychs. Humour directed at scientology or
LRH is suppressive. It is rejection. Hubby must have felt the whip and sting of being laughed
at...possibly over his tall tales.

This is from Otto Roos, as quoted in Corydon's Madman or Messiah?, p 373:

"... He shouted that he had never had such reads. He screamed that I and the others had
'of course talked and laughed about it' among ourselves, and had 'undoubtedly told this all
over the ship.'"
It describes Hubbard's anger at having a few bad reads on the meter (rockslams?), but look at his
comment on laughter behind his back. This sort of thing pisses anyone off, of course, but perhaps
Hubby was unusually sensitive to being laughed at, and indeed felt it to be a rejection.
In the TRs during bullbaiting, the buttons of the student are found and flattened. Most of these
buttons are humour buttons; the student is flunked for laughing at a joke of some kind, a funny
face, a funny story.
Let's take another example. Most people think glee as cheerfulness, laughter, broad smiles, etc.
Here's how Hubbard defines glee for us:
GLEE, a kind of insanity. Glee is a special kind of embarrassed giggling. You'll know it when
you see it. When you see glee on some fellow on a post, realize it's because he doesn't
understand what he's doing. He's ignorant about something and above that is confusion and
above the confusion is glee. (HCOB 20 Sept 68)
"Insanity"? "Ignorant"? "Confusion"? Hubbard is trashing people who like to giggle, smirk,
laugh...be happy. Ever look on the tone scale for happiness? Significantly, it isn't there. This is
supposed to contain all human emotional states. Where's happiness?
There's little room in the deadly serious world of Scientology for a bit of humour on the way.
Read KSW-1 for the best look at Scientologists' lack of a funny bone:
"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 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.

10: Hard Way TRs, Blinkless TR 0

HARD WAY TRs, demand for a start, two hours of no twitch, no blink, no eye redness, no
unconscious, no wiggle TR Zero. Really real TRs beginning with Zero. Like the bulletin.
(LRH ED 143 INT)

The TRs are done at various levels in different places in the training, and at different locations
within Scientology. For example, the BSM (Basic Study Manual) and other low-level courses
have simplified TRs that are generally done to a "win", while the Pro-TRs, particularly when
done at a higher-level org, are often drilled for a week or more of long days.
There was some confusion about the TRs with regards to blinking at ASHO in 1988. It seems
there was an issue on blinkless TRs that was cancelled, and this led some supervisors to believe
it was OK to blink while doing them. On the other hand, the TRs themselves state that the
student is not supposed to blink, and so many students, myself included, were forced to do the
TRs without blinking, that is, to hold the eyes open for two hours at a stretch, which is, to say the
least, very hard on them. This mention in the TRs about not blinking was gotten around by later
students by using a definition of "blink" (which is really rather apparent in and of itself) that
meant to wince to flinch; thus, they believed, they could *blink* their eyes while doing them, but
they would flunk if they *winced* or *flinched.* Well, it all gets a bit absurd. To make things
worse, Hubbard himself seemed quite confused about the whole issue, to wit:
From HCOB TR0 - Notes on Blinking we have:
BLINKLESS TR 0, there is no such thing. Sitting with any attention on the body just isn't
confront - you aren't doing the drill right. If your body blinks then OK, but if you are
making it blink by having attention on the eyes then your TR 0 its out. (HCOB 8 Dec 74)
How can he say this with a straight face, when his TR issue clearly states the student is not meant
to blink? Also, how is the coach or the supervisor meant to know if the student is "making" his
body blink, or if his body is merely blinking by itself? I suppose id the coach is an OT-8 demigod, then they can perceive these fine distinctions. I sometimes wonder if Hubbard put these
little outpoints into his "tech" on purpose; there's quite a few of them lying around in it. Perhaps
it's a helpful tool to accentuate the cognitive dissonance of the mark; some kind of "make wrong"
to get the Scientologist worrying over a point like this, introverting them. Of course, he could
simply have been sloppy and careless.

This account is from Margery Wakefield's Road to Xenu:

"TR 0 Confronting," I read. "Purpose: To train student to confront a preclear with
auditing only or with nothing. Training Stress: Have student and coach sit facing each
other, neither making any conversation or effort to be interesting. Have them sit and look
at each other and say and do nothing for some hours. Student must not speak, fidget,
giggle or be embarrassed..." "All right," George looked at me pleasantly. "I'll be the
coach. We do this for two hours. Get comfortable."
I adjusted myself in the chair and put my hands on my lap.
"Ready?" George sat in a similar position directly across from me. Our knees were
almost touching.

I nodded.
"OK, start!" George commanded.
I looked into George's eyes, wondering what was going to happen. He looked back at me
with a flawless, unblinking stare. I blinked my eyes. "Flunk for blinking! Start!" George
said sternly.
"You mean I can't even blink?" I asked incredulously.
"Flunk for talking! Start!" George said, still maintaining his perfect stare into my eyes.
I tried to return the same perfect stare he was giving me. My mouth started to quiver.
"Flunk for moving your mouth. Start!" George was merciless. All right, I thought to
myself. This is serious. Then I thought of something.
"George," I interrupted. "Wait a minute. If I flunk, does that mean we have to start the
two hours over again?"
"That's it," he said, temporarily ending the drill. He smiled at me and said, "Right. The
two hours will start over again every time I say `Start.' When you can do TR 0 flawlessly
for two hours, then we are finished with the drill."
Before I could ask him anything else, he had resumed his staring and commanded, "Flunk
for talking! Start!" and we were off again. I tried as hard as I could not to blink. Soon I
could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. My eyes were burning from the salty liquid.
But I forced myself not to blink. George continued his seemingly effortless blinkless
stare.
As I stared into George's eyes, I began to see an aura of colors around his head. The
colors were flowing in streams around his head. Then the colors expanded into the whole
room. I watched with awe as the whole room became filled with flowing colors.
Meanwhile my pain was increasing. The tears started to run down my cheeks.

11: Force
FORCE, 1. random effort. (Scn 0-8, p. 75) 2. energy with some direction. (PDC 56) 3.
*force* of course is made up of time, matter, energy, flows, particles, masses, solids, liquids,
gasses, space and locations. (HCOB 16 Jun 70)
(That HCOB is C/S Series No. 6, What the C/S is doing.)
What was the grade Hubbard got in physics, again? Physics, electricity and magnetism - D; one
of his better grades. Still, this description of force approaches the nonsense level of blather. It

reminds me of a Far Side cartoon with a guy talking to a dog, and what the dog really hears; if
you make the guy Hubbard's Physics instructor at George Washington U., and Hubbard becomes
the dog, you get the picture.
His instructor probably said some thing like "Force is an agency that if applied to a free body
produces acceleration in the body equal to the force applied, and it may also produce a form of
elastic deformation and other effects; force is measured in dynes or newtons. Mr. Hubbard! Are
you looking out the window trying to determine the amount of force needed to move the
clouds?" (laughter) Instructor continues: "Mr. Hubbard, please come up to the board and work
this equation on force for the benefit of the class!"
BTW, WTF does force have to do with the C/S series, or C/Sing in general? HCOB What the
C/S is doing...applying force? :-)

12: Mystery
MYSTERY, 1. the anatomy of mystery is unprediction, confusion and then total blackout.
Mystery is the level of always pretending there's always something to know earlier that the
mystery. (PXL, p. 170) 2. oblivion of knowing. (COHA, p. 151) 3. the glue that sticks
thetans to things. (SH Spec 206, 6211C01)
Definition number three is the one that Hubbard used in creating scientology; by thetans, he
meant people - marks - suckers. By things, he meant his very expensive Bridge to Total
Freedom. It is gnosticism; the bridge is touted as this big secret full of pregnant promise of OT
powers, immortality, spiritual freedom. The OT levels are the one thing that all Scientologists
love and want to achieve. The Bridge is very special to them, and it is a mystery that only huge
amounts of money or a massive commitment to being on staff for many years can achieve.
Or, of course, they could get it free on the Internet.

13: Theetie-Weetie, Theetie-Weetie Case, Sweetness and Light

THEETIE-WEETIE, 1 Slang. it's from England, means "sweetness and light" (but they
can't face mest or any outness). Cannot go deeper into the bank than a thought. (LRH Def
Notes) 2. a person with a terribly high OCA who is absolutely for the birds. The Chart of
Human Evaluation will tell you the truth. (7203C30)
Oh; it's a "slang" term. And here I was thinking all of Hubbard's gibberish was anyway. When
raw-meat comes into the org, the first thing they do is an OCA test with about 200 questions, and
have their results graphed. The graph is used to show the mark what is wrong with him, and
marks without anything wrong with them are no good for the con. If the graph is low on a certain
point, then that can be pointed out to the mark as his or her "ruin", and Scientology (the con) is
offered as the remedy for whatever ails them. Now, what happens when the mark scores very
high on the test? Well, then s/he's in more need of help than ever as a theetie-weetie case! It's a
win-win situation...for the conman.

THEETIE-WEETIE CASE, 1. he operates in a totally psychotic way while being totally

serene. The valence is all the way up at tone 40 and the pc is all the way down at minus
eight. (SH Spec 2, 6105C12) 2. a "sweetness an light" case at the extreme top of the graph
who will go to graph bottom before the case starts up again as though the profile were a
cylinder which when it goes off the top, then appears on the bottom. People in "serene"
valences (meaning they are wholly overwhelmed as a thetan). (HCOB 5 Jun 61) 3. is high
on the OCA/APA yet makes no progress. This is because such cases believe you ought to
know what they are thinking about, so every moment around them you are missing
withholds. (BTB 12 Jul 62)
It all adds up to one thing: Hubbard just had to be on top. He had an inferiority complex behind
the megalomania; it must have really pained him to see someone who was smarter than him,
more educated, more together. No one could be as big a being as Source, damn it! (I wonder if
when the mark has been audited for ten years and finally gets to the top of the OCA, if s/he is
then merely a theetie-weetie case?)
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, a person who cannot conceive of ever having done anything
bad to anybody or anything. (HCOB 3 Sept 59)
(There's a picture of an angel in a T-shirt accompanying this definition.)
Akin to original sin, this idea of the original overt. We've all done something bad. After being in
[Scientology] for a few years, the mark imagines s/he laid waste to worlds and enslaved
populations. Oh, the terrible burden some of them bear; you can catch some people who've been
out of the cult for a long time with this attitude, often in the freezone. The weight of their
horrible sins weighs down their broad shoulders; they are proud of the weight, though. They
aren't a damn sweetness and light theetie-weetie case! If they get rough and angry and hostile
from time to time, well, it's to be expected. (due to their horrible burden.)

14: OCA Graph

OCA GRAPH, 1. personality graph. Oxford Capacity Analysis. (HCOB 7 Sept 71) 2. a
specially prepared graph which plots ten traits of a pc's personality from a personality test
taken by the pc. (BTB 5 Nov 72 IV)
The OCA (Oxford Capacity Analysis), variously called the U test, the free personality test, the
American Personality Test, the American Personality Analysis or the Lewis Test, is the cult's
prime recruiting tool. The mark answers 200 questions which are then graded and charted. The
chart is shown to the mark, and areas which are low on it are pointed out. Scientology is then
offered as the solution to the problem area, also called the "ruin".

The ten traits the test measures which are graphed, along with IQ, are:

Stable/Unstable Dispersed

Happy/Depressed
Composed/Nervous
Personable/Undependable
Active/Reactively Retarded
Capable/Inhibited
Responsible/Irresponsible
Logical Reasoning [Appreciation]/Capacity for error Hyper-critical
Appreciative/Lack of accord
COMM Level/Withdrawn

The first thing you notice is that the categories are illogical, as they are not uniformly set out in
opposites, even though they should be - as each of the ten traits has a single vertical axis on
which to grade. The first three make sense (although "Dispersed" is []Scientology jargon, in this
context), but Personable/Undependable are not opposites by any stretch of the imagination. Try
Reliable/Undependable or Personable/ Surly. And drop "Reactively Retarded" in favor of the
simple "Lazy", or a Latinate synonym, if you want to look impressive (as psychologists often
do.) Capable/Inhibited are not antonyms either, but Responsible/ Irresponsible is fine. The next
two are fuck-ups, and the last one only makes sense if you speak Scientologese.

Finally, here's some more information about the test's origins from Paulette Cooper's the Scandal
of Scientology:
"After the lecture and sales pitch, potential converts are shown an old film of Hubbard
and given the American Personality Test. This test was written by a Scientologist with a
B. Scn., D. Scn., and D.D. degrees. While someone looking at this quickly might think
she is well qualified to write such a test with a Bachelor of Science, a Doctor of Science
degrees, her degrees actually stand for Bachelor of *Scientology*, Doctor of
*Scientology*, and Doctor of Divinity - in the Church of Scientology only. The author
also has a B.A., but that does not necessarily have an academic counterpart in
Scientology either. One Scientologist admitted that her B.A. stood for "Basic
Administrator" and "Book Auditor." To become a "Book Auditor" she only had to buy
one of Hubbard's books, apply the principles to someone else, and send in for her
certificate.
"Sometimes the results of the personality test are presented to a person not so much to
enlighten him as to his difficulties and problems, as to enlighten him about what
Scientology can do for him. While analyzing the test, Hubbard told his followers to make
remarks such as "Scientology can influence this" or "auditing can remedy that," etc., and
added "We will take full advantage of the superstitions of people at the level of
prediction." Hubbard also told them that they should not precede a statement that a score
on a particular item was low with something like "don't worry" because "this cancels
impingement."
"In addition to "enlightening" people, the test has also been used to intimidate them into
joining Scientology. The Australian Inquiry reported that one boy who took the test

claims they told him he had a defective character, was mentally unstable, and would have
a mental breakdown unless he joined Scientology. (They also suggested that he had
homosexual tendencies.) When he refused to join nonetheless, people at the Org took
turns for a year writing him personal letters to remind him of his difficulties as reflected
on the test, and his need to join them to remedy it.
"After a person takes the test, he does not "sign up" for a course in Scientology - he
"joins," as author William Burroughs put it.
Yes; s/he joins. Hubbard posits that the test can be used to detect criminality in HCOPL 4 April
1972 ESTO Series 14, "Ethics", where he has this to say:
"Criminality" Unless we want to go on living in a far nowhere, some of the facts of
scenes have to be confronted.
"An inability to confront evil leads people into disregarding it or discounting it or not
seeing it at all.
"Reversely, there can be a type of person who, like an old-time preacher, sees nothing but
evil in everything and, possibly looking into his own heart for a model, believes all men
are evil.
"Man, however, (as you can read in HCOB 28 Nov. 70, C/C Series 22, PSYCHOSIS) is
basically good. When going on some evil course he attempts to restrain himself and caves
himself in.
"The Chart of Human Evaluation in *Science of Survival* was right enough. And such
people also can be found by the Oxford Capacity Analysis where the graph is low and
well below a center line on the right.

15: No Case Gain, No-Gain-case

NO CASE GAIN, 1. persons with heavy overts on Scn make no case progress. (HCOB 23
Nov 62) 2. no TA actions in auditing or "little TA" (less than ten divs per session). (HCO
PL 5 Apr 65) 3. no case-change despite good tries with the routine processes. (HCO PL 5
Apr 65 II)
Getting up the bridge in Scientology is touted as a 100% standard "science" of uniformly
workable technology, but what about the people who fail? Well, Hubbard was a clever bugger,
and he knew that many people would go nowhere by pretending to improve in his cultic milieu
and by the small changes brought about through witch-doctorish placebo effects. What to do
with the people who do not improve using Scientology's auditing "therapy"? Definition number
one gives the clue; put the damn blame on them! It's their fault for not improving with this
wonderful "technology".

NO-GAIN-CASE, 1. the suppressive person is a specialist in making others ARC break

with generalized entheta that is mostly lies. He or she is also a no-gain-case. So avid are
such for the smashing of others by covert or overt means that their case is bogged and
won't move under routine processing. (HCO PL 5 Apr 65), Handling the Suppressive
Person) 2. such a person has withholds, he or she can't communicate freely to as-is the
block on the track that keeps them in some yesterday. Hence, a "no-case-gain." (HCO PL 5
Apr 65, Handling the Suppressive Person) 3. this case performs continual calculating
covert hostile acts damaging to others. This case puts the enturbulence and upset into the
environment, breaks the chairs, messes up the rugs and spoils the traffic flow with "goofs"
done intentionally. (HCO PL 5 Apr 65, Handling the Suppressive Person) 4. the "withholdy
case that ARC breaks easily," "the blowy student" "unstable gain student." (HCO PL 5
Apr 65 II)
Here, Hubbard comes right out and puts the flesh on the bones of this idea; not only is it their
fault for not improving, damn them, but they are evil "suppressives" as well. There are very few
people in or formerly in Scientology who fit the description of a suppressive person; about the
only one who really fit the bill was Hubbard himself. He did not want anyone like himself there
in his cult. He wanted obedient slaves. Zombies. One thing is certain; people who did not
improve using the Scientology processing bullshit were not wanted in the cult. In any case, they
likely would have left of their own accord. The supposedly fantastic "gains" made through
auditing are one of the main hooks for keeping the mark in and buying.

16: Having, Own

HAVING, to be able to touch or permeate or to direct the disposition of. (PAB 83)
Oh, really? And I thought it was to own, to possess, to keep for ones own use. But then, I guess
the idea is not to get the scientologists too attached to things like money and cars and houses and
such; what you really want is for them to desire only the bridge...scientology auditing and
processing. No, you don't want them to get too materialistic. Better redefine what ownership is
all about.
OWN, to own is not to label or cart away. To own is to be able to see or touch or occupy.
(FOT, p. 33)
I guess this is very useful when regging the next level on the bridge to total freedom for the
mark; you can just whip out the tech dictionary and show them that by merely looking at their
house, they own it; they can safely sell it to pay for the Ls or their OT levels without actually
losing possession of it. Hell, every time they drive by - I mean take the bus by - they own their
house!
Three drawings accompany this redefinition of ownership. The first has a guy looking at a ship
out at sea with "Own see" as the caption. The second has an angry looking black cat with hackles
raised and slitted eyes being petted on its arched back (the thing looks ready to attack) with the
caption "touch". The last drawing has a dog sitting in an armchair with the caption "occupy". So,
if you look at something, you own it. If you touch something, you own it. And if you're a dog in

the cult's Sea Org, you own nothing.

17: One-shot clear, GUK bomb, Dianazene

ONE-SHOT CLEAR, 1. there was a great deal of discussion in the '50s concerning the fact
that there ought to be some chemical which one would load up into a syringe and the word
one-shot clear became current. But it is actually a sarcastic word. I can absolutely assure
you completely and 100 per cent that there is no magic single button. (Cl. VIII No. 9) 2. the
command "Be three feet back of your head." This is the one-shot clear. (5410CM10B) 3. by
one-shot clear we meant one phrase or one action given once or repeated, which would
bring into being the Clear as described in *Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental
Health*, Chapter II. (Dn 55!, p. 134)
So, when Hubbard said "one-shot" clear, he meant a shot from a needle. A "chemical" that would
produce a clear. Did he mean drugs? And why is he so sure that there is no magic single button?
Plenty of first-hand experience, the evidence suggests.
In "Dianetics", he says that "There are some drugs which assist reverie... Benzedrine and other
commercial stimulants have been used with some success, particularly on psychotic patients.
These bring the mind enough awake to permit it to overcome engramic commands." - page 444.
Again in "Dianetics", we have him saying that "Opium is less harmful [than alcohol], marijuana
is not only less physically harmful but also better in the action of keeping a neurotic producing,
phenobarbitol does not dull the sense nearly as much and produces less aftereffect, ammonium
chloride and a host of other stimulants are more productive of results and hardly less severe on
the anatomy..." - page 446.
He certainly seems to know his stuff about drugs. He also mentions strychnine, Benzedrine,
morphine, hyoscine, chloroform, and other drugs in "Dianetics". If he thought alcohol was so bad
- I'm not necessarily disagreeing with him - why did he drink like a fish on board the Apollo?
From Bent Corydon's "Messiah or Madman?" we have:
"In the late sixties, there were a number of parties aboard [the Apollo], with local
dignitaries in attendance.
HANA ELTRINGHAM:
LRH would attend these, and I watched him drink glass after large glass of rum and
Coke: three-quarters rum and one-quarter Coke; some seven or eight in an evening. Yet
he never slurred a word and never swayed or in any way acted the slightest bit
inebriated." - p. 39 in the paperback revised and updated edition, p. 33 in hardback.
Scientologists would ascribe the fact that he could drink the equivalent of 24 drinks and not be
affected to his "OT powers" as a "Big Being". Others might ascribe it to something a little more
prosaic: an intimate knowledge with alcohol.

What about other drugs? Ibid, page 59:

"Also, in the Armstrong trial where the "Affirmations" were introduced, a letter by
Hubbard to his first wife was revealed, the last sentence of which declared: "I do love
you, even if I used to be an opium addict."

GUK BOMB, I have found that 600 milligrams of Vitamin E (minimum) assists Scn
processing very markedly. It works by itself but is best taken with an old time "Guk
Bomb." The formula of the bomb is variable but is basically 100 mg. of Vitamin B1, 15 gr.
of calcium and 500 mg. of Vitamin C. (HCOB 27 Dec 65)
Did the "GUK bomb" also contain benzedrine? Russell Miller in Bare-Faced Messiah, page 173:
"One of the research projects about which Hubbard was very excited was the aptly named
`GUK' programme. `GUK' was a haphazard cocktail of benzedrine, vitamins and
glutamic acid which Hubbard believed facilitated auditing. `I recall Ron telling a meeting
about this great breakthrough in Dianetics,' said Forrest Ackerman. `He said he had
discovered a chemical way to audit yourself called GUK. It comprised huge qualities of
vitamins which you took every two hours for at least twenty-four hours. If you took
enough, he said, it would release the engrams within you without the need for a partner.
`The Foundation rented a huge complex on Rossmore near Beverly and loads of
Dianeticists were holed up there going through the GUK programme but it didn't last too
long - I think it was a dead end.'"
Perhaps the tech dictionary definition has been "cleaned up" a bit; it doesn't contain a mention of
benzedrine in it, despite its mention in "Dianetics" quoted above. The original HCOB the
definition was taken from before revisions would give a clue, but perhaps Hubbard had already
cleaned things up by then (1965), and wasn't eager to be associated with drugs any more.
This is an additional comment by Ralph Hilton, Mon Jul 1 1996 in a post to ars:
"yeah - its been changed a bit - from: "The Intensive Processing Procedure" November 1,
1950 "Benzedrine can be administered at the rate of 5mg per day given at the beginning
of each six hour session with the first dose of B1". It can be found in the red tech vols as
issued by the church."

DIANAZENE, a formula combined with vitamins and other minerals to make the intake of
nicotinic acid more effective. Dianazene runs out radiation - or what appears to be
radiation. It also proofs a person up against radiation in some degree. It also turns on and
runs out incipient cancer. (AAR, pp. 123-24)
"Vitamins and other minerals"? I wasn't aware that vitamins *were* minerals. Hubbard's
intimate knowledge of science coming to the fore, yet again.

Miller discusses this compound, Dianazene:

"Fortunately, however, no one needed to worry about radiation, since Hubbard had
devised a vitamin compound called 'Dianazene' (after his first child by Mary Sue?) which
provided protection: `Dianazene runs out radiation - or what appears to be radiation. It
also proofs a person against radiation to some degree. It also turns on and runs out
incipient cancer. I have seen it run out skin cancer. A man who didn't have much liability
to skin cancer (only had a few moles) took Dianazene. His whole jaw turned into a raw
mass of cancer. He kept on taking Dianazene and it disappeared after a while. I was
looking at a case of cancer that might have happened.'
The doctor, writing under the pseudonym Medicus, confirmed in his section of the book
that `some very recent work by L. Ron Hubbard and the Hubbard Scientology
Organization has indicated that a simple combination of vitamins in unusual doses can be
of value. Alleviation of the remote effects and increased tolerance of radiation have been
the apparent results...'
The Food and Drugs Administration in the United States was inclined, after studying a
copy of *All About Radiation*, to disagree. FDA agents swooped on the Distribution
Center Inc, a Scientology company in Washington, seized 21,000 Dianazene tablets and
destroyed them, alleging that they were falsely labelled as a preventative treatment for
`radiation sickness'." - page 227-228, Bare-Faced Messiah.
So, what was all the noise about the Purif? Perhaps it was, like much of Scientology and
dianetics before it, designed by an unbalanced man to help with his own problems.
Jon Atack mentions more about Benzedrine and other drugs:
"Campbell's resignation followed close on the heels of an investigation by the New Jersey
Medical Association, which filed a case against the Elizabeth Foundation for teaching
medicine without a license. Hubbard was not only claiming all sorts of cures, he was also
experimenting on "Preclears" with drugs, especially benzedrine. In a lecture in June 1950,
Hubbard had admitted to having been a phenobarbitol addict. He also spoke
knowledgeably about the effects of sodium amytal, ACTH (a hormone), opium,
marijuana and sodium pentathol. New directors were appointed in Elizabeth and fought a
losing battle to keep the Foundation solvent.
Sara, who despite her husband's reward was supposedly "Clear" already, brought a
divorce suit in Los Angeles. She was desperate for the return of her one-year-old
daughter. She alleged that Hubbard had subjected her to "scientific torture experiments,"
that her marriage was bigamous, that she had medical evidence that Hubbard was a
"paranoid schizophrenic," and that he had kidnapped their daughter.
Sara Northrup Hubbard's original complaint against her husband has mysteriously
disappeared from the microfilm records of the Los Angeles County Courthouse.
Fortunately, copies are still in existence. Among the alleged torture experiments was this:

Hubbard systematically prevented plaintiff from sleeping continuously for a period of

over four days, and then in her agony, furnished her with a supply of sleeping pills, all
resulting in a nearness to the shadow of death...plaintiff became numb and lost
consciousness, and was thereafter taken by said Hubbard to the Hollywood Leland
Hospital, where she was kept under a vigilant guard from friend and family, under an
assumed name for five days.
Sara claimed that such "experiments" were frequent during the course of their marriage.
She also claimed that Hubbard had many times physically abused her, once strangling her
so violently that the eustachian tube of her left ear had ruptured, impairing her hearing.
Hubbard had allegedly asked her to commit suicide "if she really loved him," because
although he wanted to leave her, he feared a divorce would damage his reputation." page 119, "A Piece of Blue Sky" by Jon Atack.
Shades of the Brainwashing Manual's methodology, "pain-drug hypnosis". There are numerous
other references to Hubbard's use of drugs, including his admiration for Crowley's Do What
Thou Wilt in the area of taking drugs; far too many to include here. It looks like his dream of
clearing himself and reaching a higher plane using drugs never materialized, but there's
convincing evidence Hubbard never gave up the "experiment", at least on himself. Many of his
early lectures were given while on cocaine, Ron Jr. is quoted as saying in Corydon's book; that
certainly makes sense when you listen to them. Later lectures tell a different story; he sounds
tired, slow and defensive...the high is gone, and the "chemicals" no longer produce the desired
effect of a "one-shot clear".

18: Clear, Clear Thinking

CLEAR, n. 1. a thetan who can be at cause knowingly and at will over mental matter,
energy, space and time as regards the first dynamic (survival for self). The state of Clear is
above the release grades (all of which are requisite to clearing) and is attained by
completion of the Clearing Course at an Advanced Organization. (Scn AD) 2. a Clear, in an
absolute sense, would be someone who could confront anything and everything in the past,
present and future. (Abil Mi 256) 3. a Clear is not an all-knowing being. A Clear is
somebody who has lost the mass, energy, space and time connected with the thing called
mind. (SH Spec 80, 6609C08) 4. a picture is completely unnecessary for any kind of a recall
at all which is probably about the only change there has been from the definition of a Book
One Clear. (SH Spec 59, 6504C27) 5. a Clear has no vicious reactive mind and operates at
total mental capacity just like the first book (DMSMH) said. In fact every early definition
of Clear is found to be correct. (HCOB 2 Apr 65) 6. the name of a button on an adding
machine. When you push it, all the hidden answers in the machine clear and the machine
can be used for a proper computation. So long as the button is not pressed the machine
adds all old answers to all new efforts to compute and wrong answers result. Really, that's
all a Clear is. Clears are beings who have been cleared of wrong answers or useless answers
which keep them from living or thinking. (Aud 4 UK) 7. a Clear has risen from the analogy
between the mind and the computing machine. Before a computer can be used to solve a
problem, it must be cleared of old problems, of old data and conclusions. Otherwise, it will
add all the old conclusions into the new one and produce an invalid answer. Processing

clears more and more of these problems from the computer. The completely cleared
individual would have all his self-determinism in present time and would be completely
self-determined. (Abil 114A) 8. a thetan cleared of enforced and unwanted behavior
patterns and discomforts. (HCOB 8 May 63) 9. simply an awareness of awareness unit
which knows it's an awareness of awareness unit, can create energy at will, and can handle
and control, erase or re-create an analytical mind or reactive mind. (Dn 55!, pp. 17-18) 10.
a person who can have or not have at will anything in the universe. (5412CM06) 11. an
unaberrated person. He is rational in that he forms the best possible solutions he can on the
data he has and from his viewpoint. He obtains the maximum pleasure for the organism,
present and future, as well as for the subjects along the other dynamics. The Clear has no
engrams which can be restimulated to throw out the correctness of computation by
entering hidden and false data in it. (DMSMH, p, 111) 12. one who has become the basic
individual through auditing. (DTOT, p. 33) -v. 1. to clear: to release all the physical pain
and painful emotion from the life of an individual. (DMSMH, p. 170)
Ah, the ever-changing state of clear. Definition 1 sounds a bit godlike; at cause and at will over
matter, energy, space and time. Sounds like a clear can do wondrous stunts like making objects
disappear, creating matter, sending a beam of light from their eyes across the room, make time
stand still or go back in time, and relocate their body in space to another point like the
transported on the good ship Enterprise.
Definition 2 seems far less grandiose; someone's clear if they can look at things, "confront"
them. We're all clears by that lame definition; there's no need for auditing at all.
[Definition] 3 is the one I would most closely agree with; a clear is someone who's lost their
mind. Right.
[Definition] 4 is a bit odd; Hubbard's saying that pictures are unnecessary for recall, but look at
this definition:
CLEAR THINKING, a Clear does not have any "mental voices." He does not think
vocally. He thinks without articulation of his thoughts and his thoughts are not in voice
terms. He thinks at such speed that the word stream of consciousness would be left at the
post. (DMSMH, p. 87)
So, which is it? Do clears use pictures or not?
[Definition] 5, well, we've seen plenty of that awesome mental capacity here on ars as so ably
demonstrated by active-phase Scientologists. Hubbard seems to be getting a bit defensive; here it
is, 15 years after Dianetics, and he hasn't produced his first clear yet...or rather, he's produced a
stream of clear failures. There was his wife Sara, proclaimed a clear in the early days of
dianetics, then Sonya Bianca and her very disappointing performance at the Shrine where she
couldn't remember a few formulas from a class she was taking, or the colour of Hubbard's tie
when he turned his back. In 1966, John McMaster was proclaimed the first real clear, later to be
labeled an SP. Hubbard just couldn't get his clears straight.
[Definition] 6, a cog in the machine - that makes sense.

[Definition] 7, self-determined? Who's he kidding? Scientology is all about other-determinism.

The body-router gets you in the org, the reg sells you the course, the sup tells you your hours, the
auditor tells you to sit down and be audited, Hubbard tells you what your case is, what your
implants are, which incidents to be audited, which questions to ask. It's other-determinism, bodyrouting, eval and inval all the way. By the time someone's clear, they have been through so much
of this handling and so many ethics cycles that they have *no* self-determinism left. All the
analogies to machines is spot-on, though; cranium-washed scientologists are rather robotic,
especially if they "have their TRs in".
[Definition] 9 gets a bit more godlike again. Creating energy at will sounds like it could make for
fun party tricks. Hubbard seems to have had some grave misunderstandings of the nature of
reality; his stellar grades in Physics, dynamics of sound and light E, Physics, electricity and
magnetism D, Nuclear Physics F are showing here.
[Definition] 10 doesn't mean anything if you use the Scientology definition of have, which is just
to see, touch or occupy. "Having" anything in the universe is then cheapened to mean just
looking at things again. If new people starting the bridge knew that all they had to do to become
clear was open their eyes and receive photons from their surroundings, perhaps they wouldn't be
willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for it.
[Definition] 11 dips into a bit of good old hedonism, something Hubbard knew a lot about. "He
obtains the maximum pleasure for the organism" indeed. Too bad it's not true; people expecting
to find sex, drugs and rock and roll in the Scientology cult are going to be sadly disappointed.
When I first arrived in LA, green as green can be, I was given a sec-check by Pedro Bosnio in
the small sup school courseroom (looking out over the parking in the ASHO org) in front of the
class. I was asked why I was there, along with the usual questions about the FBI, communism,
nattery or critical thoughts about MSH or LRH. I asked if I was meant to answer, as Pedro
seemed more interested in his meter than getting the questions answered. He said I could if I
wanted, but it was what the meter told him that was important. So, when he said "why are you
here?" I said "to get laid". That brought out quite a few laughs in the classroom! ;-)
The verb's good; to clear is to remove not only all pain, but the ability to even feel pain. Lamont
comes up with a pithy phrase for this exalted state of bridge-climbers in the cult: "... the fresh
young man from Scientology with his double-glazed eyes and cavity-foam insulated emotions,
identifies much more with the values of Western consumer society." - p 165, Religion Inc.
Cavity-foam insulated emotions; that is what a clear really achieves with all that auditing.
All these seem to fall short of the claims for helping people with mental problems in Dianetics,
though. Why weren't any of these mentioned in the tech dictionary definition, except in passing
as saying they are valid?
"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 psychosomatic ills. These tests confirm the clear to be entirely without such ills or
aberrations. Additional tests of his intelligence indicate it to be high above the current
norm. Observation of his activity demonstrates that he pursues existence with vigor and
satisfaction." - p 16, Dianetics

That's pretty clear.

"Further, these results can be obtained on a comparative basis. A neurotic individual,
possessed also of psychosomatic ills, can be tested for those aberrations and illnesses,
demonstrating that they exist. He can then be given Dianetic therapy to the end of
clearing these neuroses and ills. Finally, he can be examined, with the above results. This,
in passing, is an experiment which has been performed many times with invariable
results. It is a matter of laboratory test that all individuals who have organically complete
nervous systems respond in this fashion to Dianetic clearing." - p 16, Dianetics
Lab testing? Where was the lab? Who worked on the project? Where are the results published?
(laugh)
"Glasses are seen on the noses everywhere around, even on children. The majority of
these spectacles are perched on the face in an effort to correct a condition which the body
itself is fighting to uncorrect again. Eyesight, when the stage of glasses is entered (not
because of glasses), is deteriorating on the psychosomatic principle. And this observation
is about as irresponsible as a statement that when apples fall out of trees they usually
obey gravity. One of the incidental things which happen to a clear is that his eyesight, if it
had been bad as an aberree, generally improves markedly, and with some slight attention
will recover optimum perception in time. (Far from an opticians argument against
Dianetics, this assures rather good business, for clears have been known, at treatment's
end, to have to buy, in rapid succession, five pairs of glasses to compensate adjusting
eyesight; and many aberrees, cleared later in life, settle down ocularly at a maximum a
little under optimum.)" - p 19, Dianetics
Bullshit; I've seen OT7s with thick glasses, never mind clears. The clear I lived with in
Vancouver while I was on staff there as the director of public services after my "training" in LA
was a neurotic, sickly, balding, pathetic creature with thick glasses and baggy eyes; if she was
"clear", it certainly wasn't something I wanted. But there you go; she had the cert on the wall to
prove her status as being without a reactive mind. Of course, since the "reactive mind" is a
figment of L. Ron Hubbard's teeming imagination, we're all clears. Yes, we do indeed "mock up
our own reactive mind."

19: Certainty, Certainty processing, Knowingness, Knowledge, Datum

CERTAINTY, 1. the degree of willingness to accept the awareness of an is-ness. (SH Spec
84, 6612C13) 2. knowledge itself is certainty; knowledge is not data. Knowingness is
certainty. Sanity is certainty, providing only that that certainty does not fall beyond the
conviction of another when he views it. To obtain a certainty one must be able to observe.
(COHA, p. 187) 3. knowingness - knowing one knows - a state of beingness. (PAB 29) 4.
measurement of the effort and locations and distances necessary to make two points
coincide at a certain instant in time. And that is really a low level certainty. That is
certainty in terms of motion. (5311CM17A) 5. clarity of observation. (COHA, p. 190)

Scientology launches a steady, slow assault upon the language of reason over time. These are
some of the many examples of words that have a function in thinking being altered or invented to
change the course of that thinking. What does certainty have to do with willingness?
"Knowledge is not data"? To be certain, one has only to *look*? This redefinition of certainty
helps the mark along to swallow Scientology. Certainty is often used in win write-ups ("success
stories"); "this action really helped me to gain more certainty with using the tech", as if certainty
was a sliding scale rather than an absolute. But then, Hubbard says absolutes are unobtainable.
CERTAINTY PROCESSING, the processing of certainties. The anatomy of maybe consists
of uncertainties and is resolved by the processing of certainties. (Scn 8-8008, p. 126)
KNOWINGNESS, 1. being certainness. (PAB 1) 2. a capability for truth; it is not data.
(PDC 47) 3. knowingness would be self-determined knowledge. (5405C20)
This one is an invention, one of many of Hubbard's new words made by attaching the suffix
"ness". "Knowingness" is not data; it is a capability for swallowing the "truth" of Scientology.
There is no such thing as a cold, hard fact in this murky world.
KNOWLEDGE, 1. by knowledge we mean assured belief, that which is known information,
instruction; enlightenment, learning; practical skill. By knowledge we mean data, factors
and whatever can be thought about or perceived. (FOT, p. 76) 2. knowledge is more than
data; it is also the ability to draw conclusions. (DAB, Vol. II, p. 69) 3. a whole group or
subdivision of a group of data or speculations or conclusions on data or methods of gaining
data. (Scn 0-8, p. 67)
"Assured belief" is knowledge, rather than a memory of factual information. In 2, we have
drawing conclusions a part of knowledge. Scientology is "knowing how to know", as if to know
was not a ready human trait or in-born function. Definition three reminds me of Hubbard's
"methods of gaining data"; that is, thought-experiments. Hubbard could learn all about a subject
while sitting at his typewriter, apparently.
"Apart from what he considered to be inherent dangers in allowing anyone to audit anyone,
Winter had also begun to doubt whether the state of 'clear' was realistically obtainable. Finally,
he was frustrated by the fact that the Research Foundation was making absolutely no attempt to
conduct any serious scientific research, which was one of its avowed aims. He had voiced his
growing concern on several occasions, only to be airily dismissed by Hubbard. It became clear to
Winter that he had no alternative but to resign." p. 170, Russell Miller's "Bare-Faced Messiah."
That line gives the essence of Hubbard's "methods of gaining data": "...making absolutely no
attempt to conduct any serious scientific research".
Corydon interviewed Sara Elizabeth Northrup, "Betty", Hubbard's second (bigamously married)
wife in "Messiah or Madman?":
"SARA:

"Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health took some eighteen months to write.
The majority of it was written in Savannah, Georgia, then Bayhead and Elizabeth, New
Jersey.
"He was the happiest I'd ever seen him when he wrote. In Savannah, where he wrote part
of Dianetics, he was doing great. We had a wonderful time." - p 287.
No indication of any research done on over a thousand cases. This is another indicator of
Hubbard's "methods of gaining data", which seem to include little besides sitting at his
typewriter and slowly banging away at thunderous phrases, frowning polysyllables and rampant
neologisms.
DATUM, 1. a piece of knowledge, something known. Plural, data. (BTB 4 Mar 65) 2.
anything of which one could become aware, whether the thing existed or whether he
created it. (Scn 8-8008, p. 6) 3. an invented, not a true, knowingness. (COHA, p. 151) 4.
anything which proceeds from a postulate. (PDC 14) 5. a theta facsimile of physical action.
(Scn 0-8, p. 78) 6. a facsimile of states of being, states of not being, actions or inactions,
conclusions, or suppositions in the physical or any other universe. (Scn 0-8, p. 67)
Data can be created. Note that when a Scientologist reads this, the first definition is
automatically thrown out as being improperly sourced from a mere BTB. BTB's are not Source.
Pity; it's the only one which actually comes close to the meaning of the word. Hubbard
continues: data is invented, not true. The postulate comes first, then the data. Translation: makes
your facts fit your theory, not vice-versa.
Using these twisted words of learning and science, it makes sense that Hubbard could claim that
Scientology is "an organized body of scientific research knowledge concerning life, life sources
and the mind and includes practices that improve the intelligence, state and conduct of persons."
(HCOB 9 Jul 59) Given what Hubbard redefined "knowledge", and, indeed, many more of the
terms in that definition of his new "science" into, it actually makes sense. Hubbard could not get
a paper published in a scientific journal, so his solution was to redefine the nature of science,
data, and knowledge itself...and thus to alter the language at the basis of thinking in his
followers' minds.

20: Scientology
SCIENTOLOGY, 1. it is formed from the Latin word scio, which means know or
distinguish, being related to the word scindo, which means cleave (Thus, the idea of
differentiation is strongly implied.) It is formed from the Greek word logos, which means
THE WORD, or OUTWARD FORM BY WHICH THE INWARD THOUGHT IS
EXPRESSED AND MADE KNOWN: also THE INWARD THOUGHT or REASON
ITSELF. Thus, SCIENTOLOGY means KNOWING ABOUT KNOWING, or SCIENCE
OF KNOWLEDGE. (Scn 8-80, p. 8) 2. Scientology addresses the thetan. Scientology is used
to increase spiritual freedom, intelligence, ability, and to produce immortality. (HCOB 22
Apr 69) 3. an organized body of scientific research knowledge concerning life, life sources
and the mind and includes practices that improve the intelligence, state and conduct of

persons. (HCOB 9 Jul 59) 4. a religious philosophy in its highest meaning as it brings man
to total freedom and truth. (HCOB 18 Apr 67) 5. the science of knowing how to know
answers. It is a wisdom in the tradition of ten thousand years of search in Asia and
Western civilization. It is the science of human affairs which treats the livingness and
beingness of man, and demonstrates to him a pathway to greater freedom. (COHA, p. 9) 6.
an organization of the pertinencies which are mutually held true by all men in all times,
and the development of technologies which demonstrate the existence of new phenomena
not hitherto known, which are useful in creating states of beingness considered more
desirable by man. (COHA, p. 9) 7. the science of knowing how to know. It is the science of
knowing sciences. It seeks to embrace the sciences and humanities as a clarification of
knowledge itself. Into all these things - biology, physics, psychology and life itself - the skills
of Scientology can bring order and simplification. (Scn 8-8008, p. 11) 8. the study of human
spirit in its relationship to the physical universe and its living forms. (Abil 146) 9. a science
of life. It is the one thing senior to life because it handles all the factors of life. It contains
the data necessary to live as a free being. A reality in Scientology is a reality on life. (Aud
27 UK) 10. a body of knowledge which, when properly used, gives freedom and truth to the
individual. (COHA, p. 251) 11. Scientology is an organized body of scientific research
knowledge concerning life, life sources and the mind and includes practices that improve
the intelligence, state and conduct of persons. (Abil Mi 104) 12. knowledge and its
application in the conquest of the material universe. (HCL 1, 5203CM03A) 13. an applied
philosophy designed and developed to make the able more able. In this sphere it is
tremendously successful. (HCO PL 27 Oct 64) 14. an applied religious philosophy dealing
with the study of knowledge, which through the application of its technology, can bring
about desirable changes in the conditions of life. (HCO PL 15 Apr 71R)
Whew! Let's break it down a bit, shall we?
SCIENTOLOGY, 1. it is formed from the Latin word scio, which means know or
distinguish, being related to the word scindo, which means cleave (Thus, the idea of
differentiation is strongly implied.) It is formed from the Greek word logos, which means
THE WORD, or OUTWARD FORM BY WHICH THE INWARD THOUGHT IS
EXPRESSED AND MADE KNOWN: also THE INWARD THOUGHT or REASON
ITSELF. Thus, SCIENTOLOGY means KNOWING ABOUT KNOWING, or SCIENCE
OF KNOWLEDGE. (Scn 8-80, p. 8)
Greek *legein* to gather, say, *logos* speech, word, reason.
Latin *scientia*, fr. *scient*-, *sciens* having knowledge, fr. prp. of *scire* to know; akin to L
*scindere* to cut, split, Gk *schizein* to split, which is, appropriately, the root of schism,
schizophrenia.
Not sure why Hubbard used the passive forms, scio/know rather than the active scire/to know
and logos rather than legein. As an amalgam of Latin and Greek, the etymon of Scientology
would seem to mean the science of speech or reason.
In 1934 a German, A. Nordenholz, published a book called Scientologie: Wissenschaft von der
Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens (The Science of the Constitution & Usefulness

of Knowledge and Knowing). The use of "Scientologie" in the title is more than coincidence;
Nordenholz uses axioms much like Hubbard, and also coined terms like "beingness", and other
words taken to be Hubbardisms. Although the book was not translated into English at the time,
Hubbard did take German at George Washington University. His grades were abysmal: 1930-31
1st semester First year German, E and 2nd semester First year German, F; however, he may have
picked up a smattering of German, perhaps just enough to have harvested some of the ideas in
the book.
2. Scientology addresses the thetan. Scientology is used to increase spiritual freedom,
intelligence, ability, and to produce immortality. (HCOB 22 Apr 69)
Producing immortality is a similar hook that many legitimate religions use to play on the
pervasive human fear of death. Sadly, the "spiritual freedom" in Scientology turns out to be a
grand spiritual rip-off and exploitation, far more akin to "spiritual slavery." There's no evidence
that Scientology raises intelligence or ability in any way. If anything, the semantic pounding that
Scientologists' minds go through hinders their functioning and impairs rational thought. I wish
there was more than anecdotal evidence to go on here from long experience with Scientology
and Scientologists; a study should be done on the effects of cults on the rational mind. It would
not surprise me for such a study to find that logical reasoning is impaired to some degree by long
exposure to scientology.
3. an organized body of scientific research knowledge concerning life, life sources and the
mind and includes practices that improve the intelligence, state and conduct of persons.
(HCOB 9 Jul 59)
"Scientific research knowledge"? Chapter 8 of Russell Miller's thorough treatment of
Scientology, "Bare-Faced Messiah", is entitled "The Mystery of the Missing Research". The
chapter title about sums it up; all of the time that Hubbard was supposedly working in
laboratories on 1000s of cases is accounted for being engaged in far less lofty activities. The only
"research" Hubbard ever engaged in was thought experiments while sitting at his typewriter.
There was no "scientific research" at all to found this body of "knowledge".
The comment on improving the conduct of persons in interesting; one has only to compare this
propaganda with what Scientologists actually do in cases like the operations mounted against
Clearwater Mayor Gabriel Cazares or author Paulette Cooper to see this for the lie it is.
Note the year Hubbard was claiming his cult to be a science: 1959. He was soon to stress the
religion angle more.
4. a religious philosophy in its highest meaning as it brings man to total freedom and truth.
(HCOB 18 Apr 67)
That "total freedom and truth" has an Orwellian newspeak ring about it for many exscientologists. Scientology is a Ministry of Truth, using propaganda like the above definition to
put out a false image of itself.

5. the science of knowing how to know answers. It is a wisdom in the tradition of ten
thousand years of search in Asia and Western civilization. It is the science of human affairs
which treats the livingness and beingness of man, and demonstrates to him a pathway to
greater freedom. (COHA, p. 9)
Hubbard had little regard for the wisdom of Asia; when he visited the East briefly as a youth, his
comments were both racist and unenlightened, ranging from comparisons between croaking
frogs and monks, and statements like "the trouble with China is there are too many Chinks."
But the part about knowing how to know answers is bang-on. All scientologists are taught to
parrot PR lines and propaganda lies. They are taught everything they need...even how to think
and what opinions are correct.
6. an organization of the pertinencies which are mutually held true by all men in all times,
and the development of technologies which demonstrate the existence of new phenomena
not hitherto known, which are useful in creating states of beingness considered more
desirable by man. (COHA, p. 9)
COHA is Hubbard's book, the Creation of Human Ability; much of Hubbard's writing is filled
full of empty bluster like the above containing sweeping generalizations like "all men in all
times", and constant references to "technology" couched in quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo that
also drops in terms like "phenomena", "experiment", "research", "data", etc. for sheer effect. This
was probably a habit he picked up while writing god-awful pulp science fiction as a young man.
7. the science of knowing how to know. It is the science of knowing sciences. It seeks to
embrace the sciences and humanities as a clarification of knowledge itself. Into all these
things - biology, physics, psychology and life itself - the skills of Scientology can bring order
and simplification. (Scn 8-8008, p. 11)
And it succeeded in this grandiose scheme about as well as Hubbard succeeded in his own higher
education at George Washington. Scientology flunks out as anything more than a cash cow for
Hubbard that incidentally screws up people's lives. Hubbard was here trying to establish
scientology as the mother of science, ahead of the scientific world *and* the humanities. If
nothing else, Scientology is above all other subjects and all other religions in what is left of the
minds of its sadly deluded followers.
Interesting that Hubbard included psychology in there; he had a paranoid hatred of the subject,
calling psychologist and psychiatrists alike by what has become a derogatory term in
Scientology: psychs.
8. the study of human spirit in its relationship to the physical universe and its living forms.
(Abil 146)
What happened to the "scientific research" in this definition? It seems to have been forgotten in
the mad rush to tax-exemption using the vehicle of religion. Hubbard didn't just want it both
ways, he wanted it every way. He wanted to bash psychs, use them as a source, be a religion,
make Scientology a science, a philosophy, bash science, bash religion, and so many other things.

It's as if he wanted to not only have his cake and eat it too, but he wanted to bake it, have others
bake it for him, have it half eaten, give it away and keep it.
9. a science of life. It is the one thing senior to life because it handles all the factors of life. It
contains the data necessary to live as a free being. A reality in Scientology is a reality on
life. (Aud 27 UK)
Senior to life. And if Hubbard was senior to Scientology, then Hubbard was senior to everything.
No wonder they have his picture up everywhere, and clap loud and long to the icon of their dead
God. Except, they don't call "Ron" God; but they do capitalize his title as "Source". Only Gods
get a capital letter. Only Gods are infallible. "LRH" is the God of the Scientology cult in all but
name.
10. a body of knowledge which, when properly used, gives freedom and truth to the
individual. (COHA, p. 251)
"A body of knowledge" that Ron claims he produced virtually alone:
"In all the years I have been engaged in research I have kept my comm lines wide open for
research data. I once had the idea that a group could evolve truth. A third of a century has
thoroughly disabused me of that idea. Willing as I was to accept suggestions and data, only a
handful of suggestions (less than twenty) had long-run value and none were major or basic; and
when I did accept major or basic suggestions and used them, we went astray and I repented and
eventually had to "eat crow."
"On the other hand there have been thousands and thousands of suggestions and writings which,
if accepted and acted upon, would have resulted in the complete destruction of all our work as
well as the sanity of pcs. So I know what a group of people will do and how insane they will go
in accepting unworkable "technology." By actual record the percentages are about twenty to
100,000 that a group of human beings will dream up bad technology to destroy good technology.
As we could have gotten along without suggestions, then, we had better steel ourselves to
continue to do so now that we have made it. This point will, of course, be attacked as
"unpopular," "egotistical" and "undemocratic." It very well may be. But it is also a survival point
and I don't see that popular measures, self-abnegation and democracy have done anything for
Man but push him further into the mud. Currently, popularity endorses degraded novels, selfabnegation has filled the Southeast Asian jungles with stone idols and corpses, and democracy
has given us inflation and income tax. - HCOPL 7 February 1965, Keeping Scientology Working
Series 1
Look at the humility in that line about having to eat crow because he was forced to admit he was
infallible and superior to everyone else. Oh, the humanity, the humanity. The Greatness of Ron.
Of course, these two paragraphs from the cult's KSW-1, a policy included as the first issue in
every Scientology course it is considered so important, are simply bald-faced lies. Hubbard was
nothing if not a plagiarist. >From the very words of his "sciences": dianetics, engrams,
Scientology, to the underlying thoughts from sources too numerous to mention, Hubbard was a
magpie for other people's ideas. The TRs weren't his idea; repetitive questioning; the E-meter;
past lives; and on and on.

Hubbard's snipe at the Southeast Asian jungles gives a revealing glimpse into what he *really*
thought about the "yellow man", as he called Asians. The quip about income tax is revealing,
too; there's little evidence he paid much in his life, despite using Scientology as a cash cow to
rake in a fortune of many millions of dollars. People in the cult are told Hubbard made his
fortune from selling science fiction. That lie is science fiction; he only made a penny a word by
his own admission. He could barely afford to eat on the income he was making from sales of his
terrible pulp fiction as a young man.
11. Scientology is an organized body of scientific research knowledge concerning life, life
sources and the mind and includes practices that improve the intelligence, state and
conduct of persons. (Abil Mi 104)
Ho! Again his fantasy runs to "scientific research knowledge"! Well, if that's doesn't sound *so*
peechy-keen "scientific"! So much of Hubbard's writings remind me of Star-Trek scripts calling
for the actors to make up a bit of "techo-babble" on the spot. "Well, sir, it's a problem with the
plasma conduits and the relay circuits; the matrix is phase-shifting the inductors" being quite
comparable to: "Well, sir, it's a problem with the implant stations; the engrams and the body
thetans are causing an automaticity which is restimulating the preclear and leading to a run-on
case."
Again, the bit about improving intelligence in this definition. That's not a hard thing to prove.
Take 2,000 people, measure their IQs, put them through an intensive of Scientology auditing
"therapy", measure their IQs again. The amount Scientology spends for lawyers each *week*
ought to be enough to fund the study. David Miscavige and the rest of scientology international
management, are you listening? Let's rock.
12. knowledge and its application in the conquest of the material universe. (HCL 1,
5203CM03A)
Yes, this one I can understand. Hubbard applied Scientology to conquer the material (financial)
universe. Yes, he was very materialistic.
13. an applied philosophy designed and developed to make the able more able. In this
sphere it is tremendously successful. (HCO PL 27 Oct 64)
Yes, but the able don't need as much help as the disabled; what does scientology propose to do
with them? Given Hubbard's, and by extension scientology's, ideas on the tone level of people
who need help, I guess the answer's pretty obvious. The brutal thing about Scientology, if you
take it at face value as the only route out, the path to total freedom, mankind's only hope, is that
Hubbard says that he has the tech to help the less than able, but he refuses to do so. Then, to
make matters worse, Hubbard refuses to allow psychiatry and psychology to help the
unfortunates, too. He probably did so for economic reasons; there's more money in helping the
able to be more able than helping the less than able. Thus, the bridge costs over $300,000 US,
and is only a dream for the rich and famous. John Travolta and Tom Cruise can buy the bridge,
but for the rest of us, thankfully, it is out of reach. The last thing an anti-scientologist would want
to see is a price drop in Scientology's ridiculously expensive price lists. That would only lead to
more people getting into the cult. As it is, it's rather exclusive, and that is just as well.

14. an applied religious philosophy dealing with the study of knowledge, which through the
application of its technology, can bring about desirable changes in the conditions of life.
(HCO PL 15 Apr 71R)
This is one definition that is used a lot in low-level PR. The skirting around being a religion,
which could turn a lot of potential recruits off because they are either non-religious (as I was), or
they already have a perfectly good religion, being Jewish, Catholic, Christian, etc. So, stress the
"applied" and the "philosophy", and lie to the marks that they can be both an Islamic
Fundamentalist or a Baptist *and* a scientologist at the same time.
I'm going to end this off with a good definition of Scientology from Chambers 20th Century
Dictionary:
"Scientology, a cult claimed by its promoters to bring about improved conditions of mental and
physical life for any individual who follows a course of study laid down by them."
Just so no one gets hung up on the term "cult", here's how Chambers describes it:
"Cult, an unorthodox or false religion: a great, often excessive, admiration for a person or idea."
The idea is the bridge to total freedom which goes nowhere, and the person is Lafayette Ronald
Hubbard. If standing and clapping and cheering "hip hip, hooray! hip hip, hooray! hip hip,
hooray!" every day to a picture of Source on the wall isn't excessive admiration, what is? If Body
Thetans, Xenu, Genetic entities, Gorilla Goals, and the idea of humans being descendants of both
Piltdown Man and clams at the same evolutionary point in time as the birds which were attacking
us is not unorthodox, what is? If a guiding policy of make money, make more money, make
other people produce so as to make money, along with a pathological liar for a Founder does not
make scientology a false religion, what does?

21: Black Field Case, Black Five

BLACK FIELD CASE, a case that could not run engrams because he could not see them.
(HCOB 14 Jan 60)
(By "case" is meant the whole sum of past upsets and engrams; the patient's or preclear's
problems that auditing "therapy" is meant to get rid of.)
There's this subtle one-upmanship in Scientology with a basis in who has the easiest-running,
fastest-auditing, smoothest "case". Sometimes, this is taken the whole way to "clear", with
people who have had very little auditing pronouncing themselves "natural clears." New
Scientologists who have read Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health, and are
conditioned with responses from having read the book. They know the auditing commands, and
are ready to jump in feet-first. They can often contact the birth or conception engrams in their
first session, and become releases or dianetic clears straight off. Then, there's the baddies; the
people whose cases don't fly along:

BLACK FIVE, 1. a heavily occluded case characterized by mental pictures consisting of

masses of blackness. This is a "step V" in early procedures such as Standard Operating
Procedure 8. (PXL, p. 141) 2. a level of nonperception, whether the person is seeing
blackness or invisibility. (SH Spec 271, 6305C20) 3. a no-responsibility case. (COHA, p.
161)
No one wants to be a heavily occluded black five case with no responsibility. No, the emphasis is
on running well, winning, going up the bridge fast. If you don't, well, it's not scientology's fault.
See daily word #15 for more on the no case gain case, where the blame for improvement is
firmly pinned on the pc getting the "therapy", not the auditor doing the therapy, not the author of
the therapy, L. Ron Hubbard. One might say that Hubbard was a no-responsibility case himself
for wanting to claim self-perfection and making other people to blame for his mistakes.
Definition number three of Suppressive Person is also applicable to this: "3. a person who doesn't
get case gain because of continuing overts." So, on the one hand there's a bit of ego-tripping on
who has the best case and encouragement to proceed rapidly. On the other, people who do not
progress in their cases are suspect. These two factors have a lot to do with the supposed gains
written up in success-story testimonials in dianetics and Scientology. Sometimes, the preclears
may look around and see that the emperor of auditing is wearing no clothes, but they don't want
to admit it. They don't want to be labeled a Suppressive person who isn't improving or an
occluded black five/field case.