Originally posted December 26, 2013 on Mike Rinder’s blog (here), under the pseudonym “Galactic Patrol”.
The two greatest crimes that can be committed with Scientology technology are the two “shuns” – evaluation and invalidation. In numerous references, LRH explicitly details the destructive effects of evaluating for a person (telling him what to think about his case) or invalidating a person’s case or gains.
In fact, invalidation is so powerful that in HCO PL 25 June 72, RECOVERING STUDENTS AND PCs, LRH states that “invalidation of case or gains” is one of only four things that will cause a preclear to blow Scientology entirely. I am quite sure that if you are reading this, you have witnessed at least one example of someone leaving Scientology over this kind of invalidation.
Scientology sets itself apart from psychology and psychiatry specifically over these two “shuns.” Nothing is more reviled in an auditor than to tell a preclear what is wrong with him or to tell him that he hasn’t had a win or gain when he has indeed had it. Yet if you look just beyond the auditing room, isn’t that exactly what is occurring right now internationally in the Church of Scientology?
I am writing this post because I want to document in crystal clear terms that the invalidation of your case going on in Scientology is not an accident, nor is it something new.
Since May 1996, invalidation of technical gains and skills has been the defining characteristic of David Miscavige’s technical “breakthroughs.” In case this is not clear, let me walk you through a brief time track of Miscavige’s “discoveries” and “breakthroughs” so you have the fuller picture of what has been going on:
In 1996, with the release of the Golden Age of Tech, we were told by Miscavige that auditors were not perfect and LRH wanted nothing less than perfect auditors. The references backing up this assertion were taken out of context from Class VIII training materials. Of course by the time a person has achieved Class VIII status, the standard for their auditing is perfection. But you are never going to make a Class 0 auditor that way. LRH himself explained this in detail in HCO PL 24 Sept 64, INSTRUCTION AND EXAMINATION: RAISING THE STANDARD OF.
Despite this direct contradiction of LRH, Scientologists the world over went along with Miscavige’s explanations and so were made to re-do their training starting all the way at the bottom of the Grade Chart with the “Study Certainty Course” (a Student Hat retread) and going up from there. Of course, most people bogged horribly at the Pro Metering Course and never got any further. So much for perfect auditors.
In fact, so much for making any auditors anywhere. It’s been 17 years since David Miscavige stated that we would have an army of perfect auditors, trained more rapidly than ever before. Yet to this day, auditors still are not being made in any org Academy. Any Scientologist who is on course in any org in the world knows this is true. The simple reason for this is that Miscavige dreamed up a wrong Why and enforced this on the international training scene. When the Why was proven by stats to be unworkable, rather than revise or correct it, he just pushed it in even harder.
The next step was “Arbitraries Removed” in 1998. This time, Miscavige “discovered” that somehow the Solo NOTs auditing procedures had been cut down by some 90% and therefore the level was not being done right by anyone anywhere. This after the level was being delivered for over 20 years! Every person who ever touched Solo NOTs materials was called back to Flag, made to read the special IG Network Bulletin (not LRH HCOBs) concerning this “discovery” and then put back onto Solo NOTs after retraining. And make no mistake, they were charged for this retraining and additional auditing. These “discoveries” were turning out to be big money makers for the Church.
Having now already ravaged the entire training side of the Bridge and the upper OT bands, Miscavige moved further down the processing side in 2003. It came to light after “RTC investigation” that almost everybody who had ever attested to the state of Clear was not, in fact, actually Clear. They were all just Releases, meaning that the case gains they’d achieved (and attested to) were now stated to be only temporary and didn’t really mean anything. Again, this came from David Miscavige, who is not even trained as a Case Supervisor nor is he trained on the Clear Certainty Rundown materials. And because he said it, every RTC Representative across the planet enforced it in each Advanced Org and Saint Hill.
It is a crime in Scientology to denigrate the state of Clear. Yet here was probably the greatest single invalidation of case or gains ever carried out. On the direct orders of RTC Representatives, AO and SH staff called in Clears and told them in no uncertain terms that they were not Clear. They were given an “ARC break session” to “handle the loss” and then immediately routed to the Reg to pay for the intensives of auditing they were now going to need in order to get back to the place they thought they already were. For some, this meant re-doing their entire lower Bridge, at a new cost of tens of thousands of dollars.
Then in 2006 came The Basics. David Miscavige stated that no one ever understood any of the books L. Ron Hubbard had written because they had been so altered by editors and transcriptionists and so on that they were literally beyond comprehension. This was truly the most blatant and widespread invalidation of all training yet attempted, striking directly at LRH’s most fundamental work. But he succeeded. After three hours of grimly detailing every transcriptionist error and missing semicolon, Miscavige convinced every Scientologist that they had never truly understood what the word “Scientology” even meant.
The outpoints with The Basics are so great they almost cannot be enumerated, but there is one I would like to highlight. It is an easily provable fact that L. Ron Hubbard constantly reviewed the state of the materials of Dianetics and Scientology and personally stepped in whenever he found alterations or errors. The proof of this is contained on page one of HCO PL 7 Feb 65, KEEPING SCIENTOLOGY WORKING. This policy was first issued in 1965, then was re-issued in 1970 (after LRH personally found out about quickie Grades) and again in 1980 (again when LRH personally discovered more tech alterations). Another great example of this is HCOB 24 Jan 77, TECH CORRECTION ROUNDUP, in which LRH personally corrected numerous technical alterations and violations that had been dug-up across many areas of Scientology.
If there is nothing else you can say about LRH, you can certainly state that he was vigorous in demanding that Scientology be kept pure to his words and that no one alter or denigrate it. So do you really believe that in all these reviews over all the decades that Ron was directly on the lines, that he missed these gross alterations in the most fundamental materials he authored? That transcriptionist errors and editor alterations somehow slipped by his notice over and over again? I don’t believe that for a second and I don’t think you believe it either.
Shortly after the release of The Basics, it started coming out on rumor lines and in closed-door briefings that the Objective processes had been being done incorrectly for decades. Again, blatantly ignoring the existing and easily understood HCOBs and lectures on the subject, Miscavige asserted that because earlier objective processes were being found on previously unreleased lectures, everyone must have just quickied these processes. And on the strength of this rumor line, and a hidden data line at Flag, orgs everywhere started programming cases of all levels back down the Grade Chart to re-do Objectives.
Now there is the Golden Age of Tech Phase II. No longer satisfied with invalidating a single Grade Chart step or section of the Bridge, David Miscavige has now made it clear that the ENTIRE BRIDGE was in fact being done totally wrong and every gain anyone ever experienced in Scientology was only an accident, a slip up by squirrel auditors running squirrel processes on their quickied case.
And remember, this Phase II comes after 17 years of already invalidating and correcting the Bridge over and over again, as laid out above. So ironically, not only had LRH gotten in all wrong, but COB RTC basically admitted (without saying it outright) that he also had gotten it wrong every single time he had issued a correction from 1996 forward. But it’s all fixed now. At last, due only to Miscavige’s efforts, is real Scientology available for the first time. I can only cringe in horror at those words, as anyone who has read Keeping Scientology Working should do too. Because of course, what this is really saying is that L. Ron Hubbard himself never delivered “real Scientology.”
What used to be a Bridge that you could walk across, step by step, has morphed into an endless cycle of one step forward, two steps back, over and over and over again. There are many possible reasons for this, none of which really matter because those reasons don’t change what is actually going on. There are no signs that this invalidate-correct-invalidate-correct cycle is ever going to stop.
With GAT II he has achieved what appears to be the ultimate invalidation: all of Scientology was wrong. Nothing you ever did in Scientology was ever really “what LRH intended.” And the only solution now is for you to do it all over again, no matter where you are on The Bridge. And once again, pay for the privilege.
Let me say this to you, the reader, directly:
If you go into a Church of Scientology and claim that your case and gains are being invalidated by the Golden Age of Tech, the only option the org staff have is to “handle you” so you agree with David Miscavige. Despite what it says in LRH policy, your claims will be refuted and you will be targeted for being “CI” or “out-ethics.” What is certain is that no one will agree that you have fully achieved the states you have already attested to on the Grade Chart. They will insist that you did not achieve those states and they will insist that you must do those steps again, and that you must pay to do them. I’m sure you already know this to be true.
The good news is that if you want it, the Bridge is available to you without any invalidation or evaluation of your case or gains in the independent field. That is a very viable option for you, now more so than ever before. It is far less expensive, less time consuming and more satisfying than any experience in a modern Scientology org.
Another option is to simply walk away from the whole thing, knowing that you did get wins and gains and that no one in this universe has any right to take those away from you or denigrate them. They were YOUR gains and you are the only one who has any right to say whether they were real.
No matter which you choose, it is a certainty that running around endlessly in David Miscavige’s expensive hamster wheel is never going to get you where you want to go.
Scientologists are starting to see through Miscavige’s smoke and mirrors and are deciding that enough is enough. Just by the fact that you are here reading this, you are already well on your way to doing the same. So please continue, and break free from the evaluations and invalidations you never asked for and do not deserve. A much saner and stress-free life awaits.