What’s Wrong with Scientology, Part 3

Hubbard’s Way or the Highway

L. Ron Hubbard is the founder of Dianetics and Scientology. There is something very important and very basic to Scientology’s core operation. It’s the principle that everything Hubbard ever wrote in his books or said in a lecture is absolute fact and is to be followed exactly.

The most senior policy in Scientology is titled “Keeping Scientology Working.” It was written on February 7, 1965 and its first line is

“We have sometime since passed the point of achieving uniformly workable technology.”

Hubbard then goes on to describe in some detail how Scientology is a methodology that produces results 100% of the time on 100% of the people to whom it is applied. In fact, he takes great pains in a number of places to stress how Scientology cannot fail to work on anyone.

Now this is not just in reference to the therapy that Scientology offers – what they call “auditing”. This also has to do with their unique administrative system. In addition to the policy called Keeping Scientology Working, he also wrote another policy called Keeping Admin Working where he made the same claims about his administrative system.

In fact, in a lecture he gave, he said that he had evolved the most advanced organizational system in the history of the entire universe, something he said he worked out based on his recall of an old galactic civilization that lasted for 80 trillion years. Yes, he really did say that.

He refers here to what they call an organizing board in Scientology, which is their version of a command chart. He said

“This board…has a lot of back history, and it is a refined board. And I may as well tell you the truth here amongst us girls. This is a refined board that I spoke to you about in an earlier lecture of an old galactic civilization. And you say what’s that doing amongst us? Well, we applied Scientology to it, and found out why the civilization eventually failed. They lacked a couple of departments and that was enough to mess it all up. And they only lasted eighty trillion. We’ll be going a lot longer than that, so we want to get something substantial.”

Now when it comes to changing or evolving Scientology, Hubbard says this:

“Our technology has not been discovered by a group. True, if the group had not supported me in many ways I could not have discovered it either. But it remains that if in its formative stages it was not discovered by a group, then group efforts, one can safely assume, will not add to it or successfully alter it in the future.”

In other words, don’t mess with it. It works and it works all the time and it always will work, so no one can change anything!

And when I tell you that they can’t change anything, I mean literally anything. Like back in the 60s when they first setup communication systems between management and the local churches, they used an old wire communication system called telexes. And guess what? They still do!

Even though the rest of the world moved on after the 60s and developed email, wireless communications and all the rest, Scientology management still sends “telexes” to its churches around the world to give them orders. Why? Because that’s what Hubbard said to use. And no one can change the old man’s orders!

Now outdated lingo and archaic management systems are one thing, but this picture gets a little darker when we look at this claim of 100% workable mental and spiritual technology.

Basically, it’s an absurd claim, because it is easily proven false by reports from people all around the world of Scientology not able to do what it says it will do. It doesn’t matter who is doing it or under what conditions. There is simply no record of 100% uniform workability.

Now I’m not saying that Scientology never works or that it never helped anyone. But if Scientology could actually do everything it claims it could do, there would be tidal waves of people knocking down the Church’s doors every day.

Cure cancer? Heal the invalid? Restore sight to the blind? All of these are amongst the claims made by Hubbard in his recorded lectures and in his books. I don’t have to make up any of these claims because Hubbard already did.

But here’s the thing: Hubbard actually did realize that it wasn’t always going to work on everyone. So he came up with a solution to explain its failures while still claiming 100% workability. What I’m talking about here is the entire justification behind all of the dirty tricks and brutally unfair treatment that Scientology dishes out to those it no longer favors or who dare to speak out against it.

Just two months after writing the Keeping Scientology Working policy, Hubbard quietly backpedaled and wrote some more policies. Rather than admit that Scientology might not be for everyone, or that some people are just not going to respond to his brand of psychotherapy, instead he came up with a new concept, a Scientology Bad Guy who would be the perfect explanation for every failure. He invented the “suppressive person”.

A suppressive person is defined as “a person who seeks to suppress, or squash, any betterment activity or group. A suppressive person suppresses other people in his vicinity. This is the person whose behavior is calculated to be disastrous.”

Now here is how Hubbard introduced this idea of a Suppressive Person to Scientologists and how he used it to explain Scientology’s failure to work. He wrote

“The suppressive person can’t stand the idea of Scientology. If people become better, the suppressive person would have lost.…

“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 [Scientology therapy].

“Since such a person has withholds, he or she can’t communicate freely to as-is [get rid of] the block on the track that keeps them in some yesterday. Hence, a “no-gain case.”

And just to make sure that he really drove the point home, Hubbard goes on to say:

“That alone is the way to locate a suppressive person. By viewing the case. Never judge a person by their conduct. That is too difficult. Judge by no case gains. Don’t even use tests.

“One asks these questions:

“1. Will the person permit auditing at all? or

“2. Does their history of routine auditing reveal any gains?”

The policy I’m quoting is titled “Handling the Suppressive Person – The Basis of Insanity” written on April 5, 1965. And yes, the insinuation in that title is very purposeful – suppressive people are supposed to be insane.

So, it’s simple. If Dianetics or Scientology aren’t working on you, or if you don’t want Scientology to be practiced on you, the reason why is because YOU are a Suppressive Person and are insane!

Hubbard wrote a lot more about Suppressive People. He basically described them as evil psychopaths who commit criminal activities on an almost daily basis.

When you are connected to someone who is an SP, in Scientology they call you a Potential Trouble Source, meaning you now have a label that you are potential trouble to the church.

Hubbard also came up with 10 other classifications of trouble sources, such as people who have family who don’t want them doing Scientology or a person who approaches Scientology with an open mind and isn’t sure if he’s going to get better or not. In other words, if you aren’t convinced before you start that it’s going to work, they don’t want you.

Now think about all of that for a second.

Look at all the ramifications of these policies.

Look at what it says about people who try Scientology and reject it, who decide “Well, it’s just not for me.”

You see where this goes?

It’s black and white thinking. You are either with them or you are a degraded, horrible criminal or you are on the side of a degraded, horrible criminal. The Scientology policies don’t give any other real choice in the matter.

This makes it easy to understand why Scientology executives have little to no compassion or understanding for anyone who would dare question it. This is why no effort is made to change or adjust Scientology procedures if someone is dissatisfied with its results.

It also makes it easy to see why getting a refund of services or membership fees is all but impossible. Those who have asked for refunds and jumped through the bureaucratic hoops which Scientology makes you jump through to get them, have compared their experience to being treated like a criminal.

Now you know why.

These policies are the perfect justification for this organization’s every failure. And not only that, but it also gives the Scientologists every reason to hate and despise anyone who disagrees with them. Because who would want to be friends with a psychopath?

Scientology executives will never contemplate the idea that they, or their organization, could be doing something wrong and will therefore never seek to make operational changes.

These policies I’ve cited here are destroying Scientology but they are so fundamental to its operation, that they really can’t be changed. Nor do the leaders of the Church want to change them. It works to their advantage to be able to ostracize certain members when they get out of line and make everyone believe that those dissidents are crazy nut jobs who were never with the program in the first place.

But there is one last thing I’d like to bring up on this.

The Sea Org and the staff are supposed to forward these policies without question. But deep down, many of them actually do know that it doesn’t work this way. They recognize Scientology’s shortcomings and they have no explanation for them and no way to do anything about it. Oh sure, they can write up reports to their heart’s content but they know those reports aren’t going anywhere. The internal correction lines within Scientology stopped working years ago.

So the solution now is to just not talk about it. They try to cover up or ignore or forget about all those times when it didn’t work.

Hubbard stated as one of the most fundamental rules of existence that

“absolutes are unobtainable.”

Yet he wrote policies that demand absolute thinking. Keeping Scientology Working is one of those policies. It simply does not allow for any failures. So all of the Scientologists have to walk around lying to themselves 24/7.

And that is truly a fate worse than death. To claim that you are living with the truth, that you are achieving total spiritual freedom and rightness, and yet have to cover up the most blatant and obvious wrongs just so you can sleep at night. What a life.

These guys can only keep up appearances for so long. It’s wearing thin and that is one reason you see so many leaving in droves now. Whether they are leaving openly or simply not showing up anymore – it doesn’t matter. The fact that they are leaving and that the membership is dwindling is an irrefutable fact. Just go look in one of their Ideal Orgs on any night of the week. You’ll see far more empty chairs and even empty rooms than you will people.

History has already proven that any group which cannot change or improve itself is a group that is not long for this world. And we know what has happened to every dictator and power-monger who ever sought to oppress freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

And so we see Scientology, which says that it must never change, must never evolve and must never ever be questioned.

Nature has a way of sifting and culling out species that have outlived their usefulnesss and can’t evolve further.

Scientology is going the way of the dodo bird.

So the question now is, is that really such a bad thing?

Thank you for watching.