Recommended Reading

LIFE IS SO GOOD by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman

Dawson was 101 years old when he worked with author Glaubman to chronicle his life which touched on three centuries.  Dawson had become somewhat famous after having checked into Elementary school at 98 years old to learn to read.

This book will be of particular interest to those who bought into Dianetics or Scientology out of concerns for health and longevity – two things the subjects have consistently promised to better.  In a way the book validates the core reasons the subjects posit as the primary causation of ill health and early expiration.  On the other hand, it might help free one from the misconceptions the Corporate Scientology culture hammers into one about the alleged importance of becoming superman and lording over people and things.

It is a wonderful exercise in ‘problems of comparable magnitude’ (a Scientology concept that if you view a problem you are having against ones of greater magnitude than your own, your problem won’t look so nasty any more).  Worried about starting a new life outside of the cult in your forties, fifties, sixties or seventies?  Read George Dawson’s story.

In either event, it is a simple, enjoyable, and educational read.   It is a view of the 2oth Century from eyes that simply observed with no jaundice, no agenda, no disappointment, no justifying.

It also a great study in the Tao. Though Dawson never references it and presumably was never aware of the writing Tao Te Ching, he certainly understood and lived in accordance with the Tao.

The Sociopath next door by Martha Stout

Over the past three decades David Miscavige has done his best to reverse the practice of Scientology. That is, the further one moves up the Bridge in the church of Scientology the more zealous, tractable, solid, narrow-minded, and in most cases miserable one becomes.  That is not to say that people cannot attain higher Grades and Levels of spiritual state and understanding. It means that those gains are manipulated by deceit and conditioning and stress toward molding a person into a conscienceless, deployable agent for an ill-intentioned cult leader.  Being the consummate covertly hostile suppressive person, Miscavige has managed to do so while stage managing a false identity to his public that he is L Ron Hubbard’s guy.

Miscavige is very well described in the Science of Survival and in PTS/SP technical bulletins, policy letters and lectures.  In fact, the reason why Miscavige could manage his complete reversal of the subject of Scientology with the willing help of thousands of staff members and thousands of once-well-heeled public Scientologists is all explained rather neatly in these Hubbard materials.

Becoming disaffected with the “church” and Miscavige, leaving one’s life works in the “church” behind,  some people have tended to leave behind some of what they learned too.  Most commonly, first and foremost they leave behind PTS/SP technology.  It makes sense.  After all, it is the technology that protects good people against people who intend harm to others.   And so many good people’s experience within the church proved to them that PTS/SP technology is faulty, does not work, or in many cases is the cause of their own travails.

Most people I have encountered who have left the church went through decompression periods of their own. That is, a length of time to destimulate (settle spiritually) from the collective, suppressive acts that finally prompted them to cut ties with the cult while trying to put those experiences into some kind of perspective against their new experiences in the outside world.  The lengths of those periods have varied from months to years to decades.

During my own decompression period I did not want to read or hear anything about Scientology.  That included reading Hubbard books or listening to his lectures.  While I never doubted any gains I had achieved and used my training in living life, delving back into the subject brought about depressing emotions with the recognition that the entity that “owned” the technology was for all intents and purposes destroying it.  I have found that many people shared that resistance during their decompressions.

But I never lost the love of reading and learning and devoured many books on other subjects that interested me at any given time.  Some of them helped immensely in giving perspective in evaluating my life, including my then twenty seven year experience in and with Scientology.  Some books validated and enhanced understandings I had attained from studying Hubbard. I have shared some of those books in the Recommended Reading section of this blog – see the subject bar on the home page of Moving On Up A Little Higher.

I am adding to that list a remarkable book that I just finished, The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.  I am adding it because I think it might do quite a lot of good for a lot of people who left the church of Scientology.  Not only for those not wanting to review any Scientology material, but for anyone who has encountered David Miscavige or his minions dutifully carrying out his directives.

Stout is a clinical psychologist who specialized for twenty-five years in helping the victims of sociopaths.   The first half of her book shares her real life observations about sociopaths and the effects they have upon social personalities.  Her observations are remarkably parallel to Hubbard’s description of the Suppressive Person.   Note, modern accepted characteristics of the sociopath very closely align with Hubbard’s descriptions of the emotional tone level of Covert Hostility and of the Suppressive Person.  This is so much the case that I have taken to using the terms “suppressive person” and “sociopath” interchangeably.

But, Stout’s first and foremost marker for the sociopath is more complementary of Hubbard’s work than it is duplicative.  Per Stout, the sociopath first and foremost lacks conscience.  It is a very useful and workable observation she shares.

Stout’s second chapter, ice people: the sociopaths, provides an actual case history that, but for career choice and resulting milieu of operation, could serve as the biography of David Miscavige.

Later in the book Stout gives another common denominator of sociopaths that again insightfully adds to one’s arsenal against being ruined by one, the pity play:

The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.

 If you have followed this blog for long, you will know that I have several times wrote of Miscavige’s unnatural ability to paint himself as a victim.  As Stout notes, when a true sociopath is about to get caught out, he or she can very convincingly garner sympathy to divert attention from self.   Miscavige’s ability on that score has become institutionalized.  Virtually all International Association of Scientologist promo and briefings over the past two decades are outright fraudulent, falsely painting pictures of persecution against the cult.  Another example, the folks who have used 24/7/365 surveillance on my wife and me, who have overtly harassed us for 180 odd days running, with straight faces convince a clueless magistrate they must arrest me to protect them. 

Stout recognizes the potential for suppressive/sociopathic groups, particularly “religious” ones.  Her description of one “church” sounds hauntingly like what has become of the conscienceless radical corporate church of Scientology:

As an illustration, one can cite the Creativity Movement, a militantly anti-Semitic and anti-Christian group formerly known as the World Church of the Creator, which is a religion founded on the love of the “White Race” and the prescribed hatred of everyone else. Within this doctrine, everyone who is not “White” is by definition a member of one of the “mud races.”  The central moral precept of the Creativity Movement is expressed as follows: “What is good for the White Race is the highest virtue; what is bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin.”   Unsurprisingly, the long-term goal of the Creativity Movement is to organize the “White Race” to achieve world domination.

The conscienceless organization, justifying any means by its alleged assistance toward an end, committing any crime against another person without remorse as long as it can be rationalized as forwarding the group’s power.

Perhaps most importantly, Stout describes how good, intelligent people wind up doing the bidding of a sociopath.

Excerpt:

Why are conscience-bound human beings so blind? And why are they so hesitant to defend themselves, and the ideals and people they care about, from the minority of human beings who possess no conscience at all?  A large part of the answer has to do with the emotion and thought processes that occur in us when we are confronted with sociopathy.  We are afraid, and our sense of reality suffers.  We think we are imagining things, or exaggerating, or that we ourselves are somehow responsible for the sociopath’s behavior.

It goes deeper when it comes to an organization emphasizing the importance of hierarchy and authority. Along the way she gives probably the best sum up and analysis I have read of the Stanley Milgram experiments on how authority can trump conscience.

While the last 1/3 or so of Stout’s book meanders down a sometimes painful path of speculations about possible genetic sources for sociopathy, it still manages to impart useful observations.   It was useful for me in this respect, I was able to recognize that despite Stout’s wonderful contributions (and clearly unintended validation of Hubbard’s work) modern mental health practitioners, regardless of their evolutionary progress over the past four decades, are still shackled by their inability to perceive or unwillingness to credit the spirit or soul.

Just because one is out from under the influence of the cult run by the sociopath/suppressive person of all sociopaths/suppressive persons is no reason not to read this book and hopefully recount, and maybe even re-study your Science of Survival and PTS/SP pack.  Stout, as Hubbard did forty-five years ago, recognizes that our inability to properly identify sociopaths and prevent the havoc they wreak is one of the greatest threats to humankind.

Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl

Viktor Fankl survived several Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

Only one out of twenty-eight so imprisoned survived the ordeal.  Frankl closely observed for the common denominator of those few who did survive. He did not find a single physical, physiological, cultural, or religious factor in common.

Instead, he discovered that those with a strong enough purpose (he calls it a meaning) to carry out were the ones who made it.  There was no common purpose shared among them all.  There was not even a  predominant commonality of purpose.  Some simply  had a purpose to see a loved one again.  Some felt work they had begun prior to incarceration was so important they found a way to endure what for others was certain death.  Frankl himself fell into the latter category, and it so happened that the work he wanted to complete paralleled the observations he wrote about.

I recommend the book for former SO members who survived long-term oppressive conditions; or those wanting to understand what they were subjected to.

Anyone who survived the Hole and other similar Miscavige tortures will appreciate this short passage demonstrating the sadistic Nazi concentration camp guard menality, and its effects:

Beatings occurred on the slightest provocation, sometimes for no reason at all…

…The most painful part of beatings is the insult which they imply…

…Then he began: “You pig, I have been watching you the whole time! I’ll teach you to work, yet! Wait till you dig dirt with your teeth — you’ll die like an animal!  In two days I’ll finish you off!  You’ve never done a stroke of work in your life. What were you, swine? A businessman?”  I was past caring. But I had to take his threat of killing me seriously, so I straightened up and looked him directly in the eye. “I was a doctor — a specialist.” 

“What?  A doctor?  I bet you got a lot of money out of people.”

“As it happens, I did most of my work for no money at all, in clinics for the poor.”  But, now I had said too much.  He threw himself on me and knocked me down, shouting like a madman. I can no longer remember  what he shouted.

Frankl even aptly answers the oft-repeated questions we hear about former senior executives, such as “why don’t they arise and revolt?”

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future — his future — was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.

I recommend the book to anyone feeling he or she lacks a driving, meaningful purpose in life.

Frankl recommends that everyone find their own meaning.  It is a life giving process that rises folk above the dwindling sprial of do-nothing boredom, monotony, and the deathly lower harmonic of apathy.   Frankl stresses that the meaning-finding process can be assisted, but not directed.  Every individual must find for himself or herself that activity which fullfills his or her destiny.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, tht would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge there is a meaning in one’s life.  There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.‘

I could not help noting the parallels between Frankl’s observations and some fundamental prinicples L Ron Hubbard wrote of.   So much so that I would suggest any highly trained auditor could easily come to the conclusion Hubbard had to have read and incorporated Frankl, particularly when one considers Frankl’s book was  first published in 1946.

 

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

Frederick Douglass was considered by many to be American history’s most effective advocate for the abolition of slavery. Having been raised a slave and having discovered for himself as a child and young adult the very mechanics by which slave-holders were able to hold others in bondage Douglass imparts an important message. For those who have worked under Miscavige the relevance is quite obvious.

“It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion, — a mistake, accident, or want of power, — are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for it. Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of doing things from that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him.”

Those who have received or witnessed Miscavige’s serial beatings and physical and mental hazings will recognize that his tortures are prompted by precisely the same uppity types of conduct Douglass witnessed the slaveholders similarly reacting to.

But Douglass goes further. He figured out why slaveholders must treat their slaves in such fashion. And why, like Miscavige, slaveholders must also commit such atrocities in the presence of the friends and co-workers of slaves, why slaveholders must continually threaten and execute the dividing of families of slaves, and finally, why slaveholders must severely limit the slaves’ access to information, particularly information that might empower one to think and act for his or her self.

The complete mechanics of how slavery is accomplished and perpetuated can have a remarkably powerful and liberating effect on those once subjected to slavery.

The Autobiography of MALCOLM X

What has Malcolm X got to do with Scientology?   Here is a man’s brutally honest moral and intellectual struggle as he comes to grips with abuses in a religious movement that he continued to credit with converting himself from a thug to a religious scholar and human rights leader.  The account is candid and personal.  Malcolm and Alex Haley detail his criminal young adulthood, his self education in prison, his conversion to Islam and personal reform, his years as Nation of Islam’s greatest proponent and defender, the betrayal at the hands of an egostical, unethical religious leader, and his search for the true meaning of Islam.  His evolution from a divisive figure  in an aggressive and intmidating group to a dedicated practitioner of a religion he found his own  meaning for can provide one with guidance on how to learn to be  true to oneself.

The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine

Abraham Lincoln has been quoted as saying “I never tire of reading Tom Paine.”

Neither do I. Paine’s The Age of Reason was of tremendous help to me in moving beyond fixed, negative patterns of thought instilled by the church of Scientology (Miscavology).

I believe the following passage from Age of Reason describes the mindset that is leading church followers down the dwindling moral spiral:

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists of professing to believe what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this?

Here is another passage that exposes the dark historical precedence for practices Miscavige has institutionalized in order to capitalize on people’s consciences (realize, this was written more than 200 years ago):

The Idea, always dangerous to Society as it is derogatory to the Almighty,–that priests could forgive sins,– though it seemed to exist no longer, had blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the commission of all crimes.

Paine describes four tricks traditionally used by organized religion in order to control and corrupt people – Mystery, Miracle, Prophecy, and Revelation.  I’ll open for discussion how revelation has been used to herd Scientologists in a later post. But, I’ll complete this book recommendation with a passage on the initial three.  I think you might recognize these devices continually employed in the church of Scientology – most particularly and directly by Miscavige during the events that most occupy his time, public events.

Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by which so many Lo heres! And Lo theres! have been spread about the world and religion been made into a trade. The success of one imposter gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse.

Tao Te Ching

I have added the Tao Te Ching to the “recommended reading” section of this blog.

There is a particularly good translation by Stephen Mitchell currently on the market and available at major bookstores or on Amazon.

It is a book one can read over and over and get something new and useful from each time.  It is a pleasant read.  In a simple and poetic manner it captures the fundamental truths upon which Scientology is based.  The Factors and Axioms and basic truths of Scientology stem from the Tao.  LRH made that clear in the “Scientology, Its General Background” lectures – part of the Phoenix lectures series. He said there, ”…who knows but what if we took the Tao just as written and knowing what we know already about Scientology, we simply set out to practice the Tao, I don’t know but what we wouldn’t get a Theta Clear.”

I believe that statement is true.  That organizationally things did not go in that direction does not make the statement untrue. How Scientology diverted from the Tao is a major theme of a long-term investigation of mine; the results of which I’ll share when I’m there.

One thing I believe the Tao can do for you is to help distinguish the positive you may have gotten out of Scientology from the negative.  It might help you to validate and reinforce the positive, while jettisoning the negative.