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ENQUIRY INTO THE PRACTICE AND EFFECTS OF SCIENTOLOGY

CHAPTER 6: The Effects of Scientology on its Followers

"A principal contribution of Scientology is the technology necessary to change people so that they progress into higher states of ability when processed on the exact processes required by an auditor qualified by training to apply the processes expertly.

It is not only general ability that increases, but I.Q., renewed livingness and the skill and ability to better self and conditions." (145)

"Scientology is not political. When the fires of ideology threaten to consume us all, it is time to forget politics and seek reason.

"The mission of Scientology is not conquest - it is civilization. It is a war upon stupidity, the stupidity which leads us toward the Last War of All." (146)

"Those who strike at this work out of some black well of ideological mis-orientation, some anti-social cravenness, strike at the heart of Man - for Man has been a long time on the track to reason, and Scientology can take him there." (147)

"There is not much Earth time in which to distribute this knowledge. This is the solution to our barbarism out of which we would lose all. Scientology works. We must work, all of us - not to harangue Man toward impossible freedoms, but to make Man civilized enough to be worthy of his freedom." (148)

"Scientology, used by the trained and untrained person, improves the health, intelligence, ability, behaviour, skill and appearance of people. It is a precise and exact science, designed for an age of exact sciences." (149)

"Tens of thousands of case histories (reports on persons who have been processed, individual records) all sworn to (attested before public officials), are in the possession of the organizations of Scientology. No other subject on earth except physics and chemistry has had such gruelling testing (proofs, exact findings). Scientology in the hands of an expert (Auditor) can restore man's ability to handle any and all of his problems. Scientology is used by some of the largest companies (business organizations) on Earth. It is valid. It has been tested. It is the only thoroughly tested system of improving human relations, intelligence and character, and is the only one which does." (150)

"Dianetics works. None who have spent any time around the Foundation can double that. It even works in relatively unskilled hands. Daily, it does its miracles. And this is not very strange, for Dianetics is root knowledge of human activity." (15l)

"Man has known many portions of Dianetics in the past thousands of years, but not until now has this data been organised into a body of precision knowledge. Dianetics, as a master science, embraces psychology, psychometry, psychiatry, psycho-analysis, and any other field of mental healing or evaluation but goes on, more importantly, to predict human behaviour precisely and to delineate the causes of that behaviour, to enhance the field of politics and to enlarge all other activities of man. Despite this scope, Dianetics is simple enough to be easily understood by the intelligent layman, and after a study of this volume many of its lesser techniques can be employed by the layman to better and increase the life potential of individuals with whom he associates." (152)

"Arthritis, dermatitis, allergies, asthma, some coronary difficulties, eye trouble, bursitis, ulcers, sinusitis, etc. form a very small section of the psycho-somatic catalogue. Bizarre aches and pains in various portions of the body are generally psycho-somatic. Migraine headaches are psycho-somatic and, with the others, are uniformly cured by dianetic therapy. (And the word cured is used in its fullest sense.)

Just how many physical errors are psycho-somatic depends upon how many conditions the body can generate out of the factors in the engrams. For example, the common cold has been found to be psycho-somatic. Clears do not get colds. Just what, if any, part the virus plays in the common cold is not known, but it is known that when engrams about colds are lifted, no further colds appear - which is a laboratory fact not so far contradicted by 270 cases. The common cold comes about, usually, from an engram which suggests it and which is confirmed by actual mucus present in another engram. A number of germ diseases are predisposed and perpetuated by engrams. Tuberculosis is one." (153)

"How do you know you haven't lived before?

Dianetic techniques indicate that you have. And Dianetics, which has revealed so much to the Western World, comes up now with this strange data. You are you. But you may have lived elsewhere under another name without even suspecting it yourself.

Curious, isn't it, that a top flight science would tell you, Mr. And Mrs. Modern, that not all the answers to everything were yet known.

Scientific experiments undertaken in the past few months strongly indicate that birth was no beginning. Seventy persons, wholly without hypnotism, were tested and

SEVENTY OUT OF SEVENTY SHOWED EVIDENCE OF HAVING LIVED BEFORE." (154)

"No civilization can progress to the stability of continuous survival without certain and sure command of knowledge such as that contained in Dianetics. For Dianetics, skilfully used, can do exactly what it claims. It can, in the realm of the individual, prevent or alleviate insanity, neurosis, compulsions and obsessions and it can bring about physical well being, removing the basic cause of some seventy per cent of Man's illnesses. It can, in the field of the family, bring about better accord and harmony. It can, in the field of nations or smaller groups such as those of industry, improve management to a point when these pitifully inadequate ideologies for which men fight and die with such frightening earnestness, can be laid aside in favour of a workable technology." (155)

164. These documents testified largely to the benefits which their writers had received from undergoing Scientology processing. Over three quarters of them included the statement "Scientology is my religion" and expanded this assertion in a fairly standardised paragraph of which the following is typical: -

"Scientology is my religion. It has made me aware of myself as a spiritual being. It has helped me to handle life better. I now understand my self and other people, and why I and they react as we do, so I get on better with people. In understanding myself better, I can apply myself to work and study more easily than before. Knowing that I am a spiritual being, and as such indestructible, life holds no fears for me. I feel free."

165. The great majority of the writers claimed to have benefited personally from their experience of Scientology, either in increased ability (a higher I.Q. was a very common claim), better powers of communication and better personal relationships, or (in a smaller number of cases) improved health.

166. Many of these testimonials arrived in one or more batches from the same place (especially from Los Angeles, which furnished the largest single number), sometimes followed by a few more in separate envelopes posted a little later. The bulk arrived before the middle of March 1969, and only very few were received, singly and sporadically, after that date.

167. Taken at their highest - and without seeing the writers examined and cross-examined on oath I cannot take them otherwise - these letters provide evidence in support of the proposition that many people have found Scientology helpful to them, however subjectively. I am unable to judge how sane or balanced the writers were before they took up Scientology; evidently they must have had problems, else they would have experienced no need for help. But we all have problems of one sort or another, and that alone is no reason to consider ourselves sick or unbalanced. Certainly none of the testimonials bore any signs of mental disturbance in the writer.

168. It is a frequent complaint of the Scientology leadership that those who have reported adversely upon Scientology in the past leave out of account the evident sincerity of Scientologists' dedication to their cause, its beliefs and its practices. Lest I be accused of the same omission, let me make it plain that I am quite satisfied that the great majority of the followers of Scientology are wholly sincere in their beliefs, show single-minded dedication to the subject, spend a great deal of money on it and are deeply convinced that it has proved of great benefit to them. But it is only fair also to make the obvious point that none of this furnishes evidence of the sincerity of the Scientology leadership, whose financial interests are the exact opposite of those of their followers.

169. This is perhaps the appropriate place to quote the only comment favourable to Scientology which I have been able to find in any of the reports of the various independent enquiries into the subject. It comes from Professor Lee's Study, prepared for the Ontario Committee on the Healing Arts: -

"... those who survive Scientology's rigorous training manifest a most impressive self-assurance, poise and ability to communicate effectively with others. They appear to appreciate the environment of Scientology groups, so much preferring it to be world of "wogs" that most remain on Scientology staff. This could be interpreted also as an effect of training, in unfitting Scientology members for normal social relationships. The doctrine of Suppressive Persons, the special in-group terminology, and the dedication to "help Ron clear the planet" also disable Scientology graduates in normal social intercourse, even while Scientology claims to "make the able more able" (156)

171. In thus ignoring complaints about Scientology, I am following a precedent set by Mr. Hubbard himself. Since it may have some bearing both on the sincerity of the Scientology leadership, and on the extent to which they take a dispassionate scientific view of the effects of Scientology processing, it is worth quoting at length the following passages from an HCO Policy letter dated June 7th 1965: -

"ENTHETA LETTERS
and the DEAD FILE, Handling of

DEFINITIONS

AN ENTHETA LETTER = is a letter containing insult, discourtesy, chop or nastiness about an org, its personnel. Scientology or the principal figures in Scientology. En = Enturbulated; theta = Greek for thought or life. An Entheta Letter is nastiness is aimed at the org, its personnel, Scientology or the principal figures of Scientology. It is different from an Ethics Report (below). It is routed only as given in this Policy Letter.

AN ETHICS REPORT = is a report to Ethics (or by error, to the org) concerning the misuse or abuse of technology or the misconduct of a Scientologist. This is routed directly to the Ethics Section and becomes a subject for investigation. Such a report is not Dead Filed (as will be explained) but may become a Dead File.

A MIXED LETTER = is a letter which is an entheta letter (couched in nasty terms to the org or its personnel) which also contains a report pretending to be an Ethics Report. "You awful people have an awful auditor in the field.". A Mixed Letter is always routed to Dead Files as given in this Policy Letter. It is simply routed like any Dead File letter. However no names mentioned in it are Dead Filed only because they occur in the letter.

A PETITION = is a polite request to have something handled by the office of LRH or the Org. If it is not polite it is not a petition and is not covered by the Petition Policy Letters. An impolite " Petition " is handled as an Entheta letter always.

IMPORTANT = It is important not to Dead File a Scientologist for reporting a bad breach of Ethics. This should be encouraged. However, people on our side make such reports without accusing us. When such reports ale also accusative of us they are Dead Filed.

HISTORICAL

Every movement amongst Man runs into the phenomena that when you try to help some people - or help them - they react like mad dogs. Trying to assist them is like trying to give a mad dog medicine. You are liable to be bitten.

The more successful a movement is, the more violent this phenomena becomes.

Such people are Suppressives or belong to Suppressive Groups. Things that make people better put them in terror as to them it means that if others around them were stronger these would devour the person. This is highly irrational. It is a dramatisation of an engram the person is defending himself in. People when processed grow stronger but also more rational and less destructive.

Such people number about 20 per cent but make such a fuss they seem like 110 per cent and thus seek to deny the decent 80 per cent service.

This 20 per cent can be processed and can recover only on the Power Processes administered by a Class VII auditor working in an environment well under Ethics control. But even so, this Policy Letter still applies as I doubt they deserve the reward and remember, we don't owe the human race a thing. Handling them even under optimum conditions is rough and hard on an org. I prefer to leave them until later. There is nothing reasonable about their attitude from our point of view. We do our best in a very enturbulated world.

ADMINISTRATION

Efforts to handle the 20 per cent are time consuming.

They take up vast amounts of time. They are not worth it.

When they get too bad we act, using Suppressive Person declarations and Potential Trouble Source declarations.

The fast thing to do is get them off our lines and out of the teeth of staff members and deny them information and communication such as mailings or letters without troubling to consume even Ethics time on them.

If they still get into the cog wheels we act more energetically.

The fast way to handle we call the DEAD FILE SYSTEM which is described herein.

The bulk of the public is quite decent. They are polite and appreciative. The bulk of our results are excellent and the 80 per cent majority is pleased with us. That 80 per cent must be served.

The 20 per cent who are mad dogs also have a place to go - the Ethics Section. It is important not to let them into the Admin flow lines. It is important to box them into Ethics. Otherwise they mess up the flow badly.

In the old days when a squawk came through org personnel rushed it to the head of the line, or to the Registrar or anywhere in the org. This gave a weird view. The head of the org or the Registrar or executives began to think it was all mad dog. They only had the 20 per cent. Nobody showed them the 80 per cent. Because the 20 per cent required "special action" and consumed time Registrars would soon believe the Academy and HGC contained only mobs of dissatisfied people. Heads of orgs would begin to believe the public was sour on them. They'd react accordingly. They never went down to CF and really looked. So they got a twisted idea of the state of the org, the workability of tech. They let down. They tended to stop trying, convinced by the minority 20 per cent it was not working.

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THE DEAD FILE

Ethics Files shall include a DEAD FILE.

This File includes all persons who write nasty or choppy letters to an org or its personnel.

Rather than go to the trouble of issuing a Suppressive Person order or even investigating we assign writers of choppy letters to the DEAD FILE. When their area is enturbulated we want to locate a suppressive we can always consult our DEAD FILE for possible candidates and then investigate and issue an order.

The DEAD FILE is by sections of the Area or the World, and alphabetical in those sections.

The actual action is simply to cut comm. You can always let entheta lines drop. Entheta means En = Enturbulated; theta = thought or life.

About 20 per cent of the human race is inclined to natter. About 2½ per cent at a guess are suppressive. Under our fast flow system of management we can't be ourselves up with 20 per cent of the correspondence. All the decent peop1e, all the service and help should go to the 80 per cent. This is also financially sound. The 20 per cent lose us money. An insolvent org is entirely involved with the 20 per cent and is neglecting the 80 per cent.

We just don't comm with the entheta line. I can show you many instances of where we were seriously at fault to do so as later years proved.

DEAD FILE NON CO-OP

We used to have an HCO category known as " Non-Co-op " meaning no co-operation from US. People who demanded 90 per cent of our time comprised only a small per cent of our people. Such we put on a private non-co-operate list. We just didn't do anything for them. When they called and demanded action we'd say "uh-huh" and forget it. After a while they'd wander off our lines and we'd be free of them.

Dead File is actually only an extension of " non-co-op ".

It was we who didn't co-operate.

WHAT IT DOESN'T COVER

Dead File does not cover business firms demanding bills, government squawks or dangerous suits or situations. It covers only entheta pub1ic letters received on any line including 86inf.

ROUTING

HCO personnel or the Letter Registrar or any part of the org receiving an entheta letter routes it as follows:

(1) Receiver stamps it with a big rubber stamp

"ENTHETA
To Central Files
To Address then
To ETHICS DEAD FILES"

(2) Central Files Receives it, draws a pencil through "To Central Files" and looks in the files. If the person has a folder CF picks up the folder and stamps it with a big rubber stamp

"ENTHETA
TO Central Files
TO Address
TO ETHICS DEAD FILES "

crosses off "To Central Files" and hands the letter and folder to Address.

If the person has no folder in CF, CF makes a mustard-coloured dummy, puts the person's name in it and stamps the dummy

"ENTHETA
TO Central Files
TO Address TO ETHICS DEAD FILES"

and also the letter.

If the person has a CF DEAD FILE dummy already the letter is similarly forwarded to Address.

The dummy of course is kept in CF in the regular files. (CF has no Dead File as such.)

(3) Address, on receiving a folder marked DEAD FILE ETHICS, crosses out "To Address" on the stamping pulls the person's Address plate from the regular address plate file and puts it in a separate plate drawer marked DEAD FILE PLATES and forwards the folder to Ethics by leaving the "To Ethics" reading on the stamp.

If Address receives a letter marked with the stamp as above it crosses off "To Address" looks in the regular plate files to be sure the person's name has not crept in and if so moves it to the DEAD FILE plate drawer. If not in the regular file Address looks in the DEAD FILE plate drawer and makes a plate or changes any address needful in the DEAD FILE plate and sends the letter to Ethics

(4) Ethics on receiving a folder marked with the stamp simply files it in the DEAD FILES.

If a letter so marked is received by Ethics from Address it is fied in the person's folder in the DEAD FILE.

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 ETHICS ACTION

Ethics does not even bother to read the letter or examine the folder on receiving a DEAD FILE folder or letter.

This is after all, a fast flow system of management. With the DEAD FILE system one just parks the name in a folder in the DEAD FILES as inactive until there is a reason to do otherwise.

SUCH LETTERS MUST NOT BE CIRCULATED ON THE LINES OTHER THAN AS ABOVE

Ethics makes sure all entheta letters (except business letters and goof letters) are so stamped by people receiving in the org and so routed AND NOT ANSWERED.

Ethics seeing somebody answer an entheta letter for SO//I or procurement or distribution or for any other reason, should order a hearing on the person.

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It is the full intention that:

(1) ALL choppy, nattery, rumour mongery letters dead and in the DEAD FILE.

(2) That no further magazines or procurement letters go to the person.

(3) That no staff personnel be enturbulated by the content of such letters.

(4) That the line be cut completely.

(5) That a record remain in Ethics.

LTR REG ANSWERING

When a Letter Reg in answering some letter calls for the folder and finds it is a mustard coloured DEAD FILE DUMMY, the letter to be answered is simply stamped with the above Entheta stamp no matter what it says, and is routed with the Dummy on through as though it were an Entheta letter regardless of what the new letter says. Short of Releasing and Clearing these mad dogs don't change their froth.

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 DEAD FILE USEFULNESS

The DEAD FILE is the best possible file for tracing trouble in an investigation.

Only when a hot investigation comes up is it looked at by Ethics. Then all names found in an area are cross referenced by making copies of the letters they contain, and filing those under the new names, and the Suppressive is located by the simple expedient of thus finding the fattest file and an order is issued.

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 PETITION

A petition is never a petition if it is discourteous and contains entheta. Don't attach a Petition Pol Ltr to it. Just stamp it ENTHETA and send it the route as contained herein.

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 RESULTS OF DEAD FILE

Being DEAD FILED does not result in action but neither does it debar further action.

DEAD FILE is the first place to look in cases of trouble. Further action may then be taken such as an Ethics Order.

By using the DEAD FILE system we keep our lines cleaner.

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 GETTING OUT OF DEAD FILE

How does a person ever get out of the Dead File?

One could somehow discover without our help he or she was in the Dead File (we never inform them). If so he or she could take it up with the Ethics Officer. But the probable outcome may just be more Dead File.

How do you resurrect the dead? Release and Clear of course. How can they get it then if turned off by Estimations? Well, a cleared cannibal is still only a cleared cannibal so who needs them?

I'd rather solve the problems of those who were decent to us. We didn't put them in the shape they're in. That's their problem."

172. Again, for the reasons given in Chapter 2 above, I have not pursued the factual question of whether Scientology estranges members of a family from each other. That such an effect is possible, or even likely, where a faithful follower of Scientology is ordered by the leadership to "disconnect" from his family seems obvious. But it also seems obvious - at all events to me - that the pre-existing emotional tension within the family must be substantial before such an order will be obeyed. The moral quality of such an order appears to me to be comparable to similar pressures applied by parents who seek to persuade their children to break up their marriages, people who seek to persuade their husbands or wives to break with their parents, and lovers and mistresses who urge divorce so that their own position may be legitimated. Perhaps it might be argued that an organisation which is not subject to the emotional pressures from which individuals may suffer in their private lives is even more to be blamed for such conduct, but I do not see it as any part of my task to pass judgment upon the moral status of matters of this kind. In any case, the Scientologists tell me that the practice "disconnection" has been abandoned since October 1968, and although have evidence of family estrangements persisting, or arising, since then, I have no evidence of any further formal "letters of disconnection".

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NOTES:

(145) HCO P/L of 5th May 1965, reissued 4th July 1970.

(146) Fundamentals of Thought, p. 7.

(147) ibid., p 8

(148) ibid., p 9

(149) ibid., p. 12.

(150) ibid., p. 14.

(151) Science of Survival, p. vii.

(152) ibid., p. x.

(153) Dianetics: MSMH (~96~), p. 92/3.

(154) Have You Lived Before This Life?, p. 13.

(155) Science of Survival, pp. v-vi.

(156) Lee, pp. 87/88.

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