Is There Any Good in Scientology?

I’m an ex-Scientologist who spent 27 years as an active member of that group, most
of that time working at its highest levels in the Sea Organization. Yes, that is a
long time and I did learn and experience almost everything Scientology has to offer.

Since leaving it two years ago, I’ve learned a lot more about my old group and I’ve
made a lot of videos about it. I’ll probably be making quite a few more. Scientology
does seem to be the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to ridiculous claims,
harmful and destructive practices and laughably bad public relations. But I thought
it was time that I give a kind of final statement on the subject, something that
could be easily digested in just a couple of minutes and would be a sort of summary
of everything else that I have said before or will say in the future.

People have asked me many times about whether there is anything good in Scientology
or whether there was anything worthwhile I got out of it. My easy answer has been,
“Well of course there was good in it” because no one would stay involved in
something like that for that long if there wasn’t. But, the real answer isn’t quite
that simple.

You see, one of the biggest lies Hubbard perpetrated on his followers and gets away
with to this day, even in the ex-Scientology community, is that he was the single
source of Scientology. He drummed this in so hard that people in Scientology actualy
call him Source, saying this with a kind of worship and reverence that Hubbard
completely does not deserve.

It took me quite a while after I got out to realize that Hubbard was not only a
pathological liar about himself and his own life, but he also lied through his teeth
about having “discovered” Dianetics and Scientology. He used words like “research”
and “discover” to give himself a legitimacy that he did not earn through hard work
or real scientific research. Instead, he literally ripped off the work of others and
pretended that it had come from him, or he just made things up.

For anyone familiar with Dianetics and Scientology teachings, I’m not talking about
a few suggestions that people might have thrown Hubbard’s way over the years. I’m
talking about the very fundamental basics of the subject. Things such as Dianetics
procedure, which comes straight out of hypnotism and original Freudian practice. The
idea that the basic unit of the universe is two, not one, comes from Buckminster
Fuller, a contemporary of Hubbard who was cited by Hubbard in various places but
only credited once. The Study Technology was not Hubbard’s discovery – he flat out
lied about this in the mid-60s after two English teachers, who were also
Scientologists, presented it to him at Saint Hill in England. Then there’s the E-
meter, which Hubbard tried unsuccessfully to rip off from Volney Matheson in the
early 50s. When that didn’t work, Hubbard told Scientologists they were unnecessary
for auditing and there were no E-meters in use from 1954 to 1957 until another
Scientologist loyal to Hubbard figured out how to make them using transistors. Then
Hubbard slapped his name on them and suddenly they were his invention.

When you look at the stark truth of this, you start to see that a lot of the “good”
that Scientology provides is not really Scientology at all but is plagiarized work
from another source. So to answer the question of whether there is anything good to
be gotten from Scientology, you first have to look at whether you are actually doing
Scientology or you are doing something else entirely.

So what kind of things did Hubbard actually invent or “discover” himself? Well,
there’s the totalitarian ethics and justice system he developed in the mid-60s which
demands total compliance with Hubbard’s every word lest you be labeled a suppressive
person and cast out of the Church forever. There’s the whole system of
disconnection, one of the harshest forms of shunning that exists amongst any
religious group in the world. Families, friendships and whole businesses have been
torn apart through exact application of Hubbard’s directions.

And it doesn’t end there. Hubbard also developed the Guardian’s Office, which was
responsible for carrying out his orders to “ruin people utterly”, Scientologist or
not, if they dared to speak one critical word against him or Scientology. They call
this practice Fair Game because they think that anyone who speaks against the Church
basically deserves anything that comes at them and it’s the Scientologists’
responsibility to make sure that person suffers as much as possible.

This is so well documented, it’s not even a question that it happens nor that
Hubbard was directly responsible for ordering it in the first place. The Guardian’s
Office was caught breaking the law in one of the largest criminal conspiracies ever
documented against the US government. But did they learn their lesson and stop? No.
Hubbard simply morphed the Guardian’s Office into the Office of Special Affairs,
which continues to carry on the tradition of Fair Gaming with campaigns of hate and
harassment leveled against Scientology critics including the people featured in Alex
Gibney’s recent documentary, appropriately titled Going Clear: Scientology and the
Prison of Belief. Even Church leader David Miscavige’s own father is not exempt from
harassment and stalking after he left the Church’s employment a few years ago.

Any good that Scientology has managed to do over the 60 years of its existence has
been completely eclipsed by the lies, fraud and tangible harm it is brought to far
more people than it ever helped.

People are amazing and they are capable of helping their fellow man in the most
adverse of conditions, under the most distressing of circumstances. That people have
done that in Scientology is a testament to their greatness, not Scientology’s
workability. The help that came to people in Scientology was done despite
Scientology, not because of it.

In the end, Scientology has been and continues to be about one thing and one thing
only: making money for one man. At first that man was L. Ron Hubbard. Now it’s David
Miscavige. Everything else is window dressing, designed to entrap and ruin the very
people it is claiming to save. And THAT is Scientology.

Thank you for watching.