------------------------------------------------------------------- F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Incorporated) a non-profit computer bulletin board and electronic library 601 16th St. #C-217 Golden, Colorado 80401 USA BBS 303 530-1942 FAX 303 530-2950 Office 303 473-0111 This document is part of an electronic lending library and preservational electronic archive. F.A.C.T.Net does not sell documents, it only lends them according to the terms of your library cardholder agreement with F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. ===================================================================== A Very Brief Overview of Scientology by Richard J. Ofshe, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley Scientology markets itself to the general public as a psychotherapy program utilizing the book Dianetics (by L. Ron Hubbard) as propaganda for the treatment method. Once someone has become involved with Scientology they learn that the organization delivers an "applied religious technology" that will confer on individuals supernatural mental powers including the ability to travel through the universe at will, materialize physical objects and other extraordinary abilities. A person who advances in the program is supposed to progressively gain power over Matter, Energy, Space and Time (m.e.s.t.). Full realization of these powers comes with completion of the program. Completion of the program, however, never comes. Influence Tactics The belief that auditing produces cures for emotional disorders, promotes unlimited success in life and leads to para-normal abilities is produced through a complex system of social influence. The system depends upon several factors. It works by involving a person in a group in which these ideas are treated as true; reinforcing agreement with the ideas; explaining away doubt as a sign of personal illness or the work of hostile persons in the person's environment and/or essentially demonic forces; preventing the person from learning about and/or accepting external criticism of Scientology and using hypnosis during "auditing" (the name for Scientology therapy sessions) as an influence tactic. Although control of a person's interpersonal world and sources of information is vital to successfully leading an individual to accept Scientology's authority over their decision making, the auditing process is the core of Scientology's influence system. At the heart of the auditing procedure is the use of hypnosis. Hypnosis is important because it is used within Scientology to deceive clients and cause them to believe that they are able to accomplish para-normal feats and regain memories of past life experiences. Typically, a person's confidence in the Scientology theory of reality and their acceptance of Scientology's authority in their lives is based on the mistaken belief that they hypnotically induced fantasies they experience during auditing are valid evidence of the truth of Scientology's claims. It is probable that the individuals most likely to accept Scientology influence over their lives are persons who are good hypnotic subjects. For such individuals, the auditing procedure seems to allow them to do wondrous things. They can leave their bodies and travel to any point in the universe, vividly re-live emotionally important events in their lives and experience with seemingly equal clarity events from their numerous "past lives." The fantasies that are induced through hypnosis have the quality of seeming more real than most memories. Under hypnosis one can be made to go far beyond the mere recall of events that actually occurred. The experience can be one of reliving actual events and seeming to re-live that are merely the suggestions of the person controlling the hypnotic session. For the subject, a vividly re- experienced memory of a real event can be indistinguishable from a fantasy dreamed up in response to a suggestion. If someone has reason to believe that the created fantasy is in fact the memory of a real event, it is likely that they will accept the fantasy as an actual memory. Scientology provides people with reasons to treat fantasies as if they were memories of real events. The early training of a Scientology client is a tour de force of hypnosis training. By the time a person has engaged in auditing for any length of time they are likely to be quite skilled at entering trance. The term for this in Scientology vocabulary is "going exterior." Once an auditing session begins, a customer is led through a series of suggestions that move him or her towards recalling events that are of emotional significance. The person re-lives meaningful exchanges with parents, traumatic life events, events involving loved ones, events involving fears, happiness, etc., etc. Once clients have learned to "go past life" they follow the suggestions of the auditor and imagine events of a dramatic character from one or more of their past lives. This supposed past life history can be traced back for 76 million years. The theory underlying these procedures is that once a person has fully experienced all of the emotions associated with "engrams," (i.e., traces of emotionally powerful or painful past events) they will be freed of the debilities caused by these damaging events. Once freed of these debilitations the individual will gain access to superhuman powers. The auditing theory, if applied only to events from this lifetime and viewed in its most reasonable form, is not terribly different from Freud's idea of beneficial abreactive reactions under hypnosis. The idea was to use hypnosis to get patients to recall and express feelings about important events that had been repressed. Freud and other practitioners of hypnosis quickly learned that the technique could be used to generate strong emotional responses (catharsis) in patients. Freud abandoned this technique early in his career. He realized that all it did was generate strong emotional reactions and produced no lasting beneficial effect. Hubbard drew on Freud, but used this very predictable effect of hypnosis to build an influence system designed to convince people that they were being cured of their problems and gaining para-normal abilities. The particulars of the auditing procedures, combined with the well understood (in the Scientology community) expectation that after a session a person will feel better combine to add up to a suggestion to feel better made under hypnosis. For many people the suggestion is likely to result in a short lived sense of well-being following a session. The experience of this real, albeit short lived, sense of well-being can be used to convince the person that Scientology technology works. Although the feeling of well-being is the result of a post- hypnotic suggestion, the person is told that it is proof that Scientology is curing his or her emotional problems. Impact: For individuals who are unaware that they are being hypnotized and that the experiences they are having are little more than stage hypnotist's tricks, these procedure can have substantial effects on a person's willingness to accept all of Scientology's claims. When combined with the effect of interacting with a group of people who believe, or at least appear to believe, that the Scientology theory is valid and working, the program in its entirety can produce very powerful influence in a person's life. For example, many people who become committed to Scientology are recruited into a sub-unit called the Sea Organization. These individuals sign a billion-year contract of service to Scientology. They are worked extremely hard and are paid a subsistence wage. They live under Spartan conditions in the larger Scientology facilities. They subordinate their families to the Scientology organization. Parents turn control of their children over to the organization. If a person's spouse becomes critical of the organization it is policy that the spouse be declared a "suppressive person." If this happens the individual will have to face a decision to either separate from the spouse or leave Scientology's service. Scientology personnel whose loyalty is suspect are sometimes sent to facilities that are little more than prisons. They may be subjected to months of punishment in the form of meaningless labor and made to live under abysmal conditions. One former Scientologist I interviewed was assigned to a prison ship that was anchored in the San Pedro harbor. Along with the other unfortunates sent to this punishment facility, he spent long hours cleaning and re-cleaning the same below- decks area. Although he detested the experience he felt he could not leave because if he defied the orders of his superiors he would be cut off from "auditing." If he were cut off from auditing, he would be unable to progress to the point at which his emotional problems would disappear and his spirit (thetan) would regain its true powers. The Career of a Scientology Client: Not surprisingly, no one has ever completed the program. The history of Scientology is one in which newly discovered courses and levels are constantly being marketed as people approach completion. Failure to gain the benefits advertised are explained as the result of failures to ferret out the deepest roots of problems or mistakes in the application of the "technology" (i.e. auditing procedures). Because Hubbard proclaimed that the procedures were perfect and invariably worked, the cause of any failure had to lie outside the technology. From a Scientological viewpoint, it is simply not possible for the technology to fail. As a person progresses up the course ladder, treatment becomes very much more expensive. Treatment to repair errors in previous applications of the technology or to reach the most advanced levels can cost $1,000 or more per hour. There are probably two principal motivations for continuing involvement as the prices rapidly rise. For some people, the reason is that they become convinced that the technology will eventually work. For others it is likely that the auditing causes or aggravates mental disorders. Committed Scientologists damaged by auditing are not likely to seek competent medical care. They have been propagandized to believe that at worst a repairable mistake was made in the application of the technology. They are also instructed that all forms of medical or psychological treatment for mental disorders are useless. Operating with these beliefs, persons will likely feel that they have no choice but to continue. The Mythology: The mythology of Scientology involves intergalactic warfare (in keeping with Hubbard's background as a science fiction writer) and tales of evil space-empire rulers and rebellious soldiers who were imprisoned on earth and destroyed by atomic devices 75 million years ago. The central character in Scientology mythology is the thetan. Thetans are, roughly speaking, a person's immortal spirit. They move from human body to body with death and birth. According to Scientology mythology, inhabiting the body of each person is a thetan whose powers are reawakened through the auditing procedures. In addition to the "spirit" or thetan inhabiting one's body the mythology also allows for creatures called "body thetans." These are entities composed of the recombined bits and pieces of the rebellious soldiers of 75 million years ago. These invisible creatures literally attach themselves to one's body and project evil or disturbing thoughts into one's mind. They are one of the sources of one's mental problems or evil intentions. According to Scientology mythology, body thetans can be audited away. Some of the advanced treatments one may purchase consist of engaging in a telepathic (mental) struggle with these creatures and causing them to leave one's body. Customers pay hundreds of dollars (perhaps as much as $1,000) per hour for knowledge of the verbal instructions and routines necessary to drive these invisible entities from their bodies. ================================================================= If this is a copyrighted work, you are acknowledging by receipt of this document from FACTNet that on the basis of reasonable investigation, you have not been to obtain a copy elsewhere at a fair price, and that you are and will abide by the following copyright warning. WARNING CONCERNING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS: The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photo copies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified by law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. 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