Essay: Scientology: Soul Hackers

As a former auditor of the upper levels of Scientology, my exit (Caroline's exit) brought with it an attempt to find a technical explanation for the subjective effects that Scientology creates in a person. How does Scientology control its members? Why do Scientologists find it so hard to leave? Psychologically and spiritually battered, they persist in their bewildering allegiance to their founder and the organization. Why would that be? These effects are laid in at every level of Scientology. They are laid in deliberately and with malice aforethought. This essay is about how Scientology hacks your soul.

The reader may be relieved to learn that I am not a nuclear physicist ¹, mathematician², war hero³, engineer⁴ or “Doctor of Divinity”⁵ (all claimed by Hubbard). I am not advocating psychotherapy; nor have I received psychotherapeutic advice or treatment following my departure from Scientology. This essay and my opinions are based upon my experiences relating to Scientology, and come from my attempt to understand the trauma I experience and observe in others. Even after leaving Scientology, it was extremely difficult to overcome my aversion to reading psychology material. And yet that is where my research led.

In 1950, Hubbard ® knew of an unconscious mental phenomenon that ties the patient to the practitioner. He wrote about it in Dianetics ® The Modern Science of Mental Health⁶:

Hubbard desired to capitalize on transference <emphasis added>. He stated in a lecture given on 12 June 1950, called The Conduct of an Auditor—Part 1⁸:
Every human being is susceptible to transference. It is emphatically not the sole domain of the psychotic or mentally unstable. What is not normal is the intentional manipulation of transference phenomena to profit and enslave.

Transference in Psychology

Obviously, Scientology did not originate the transference idea. This psychic phenomenon was well known by Freud, Jung and other psychiatrists and psychologists. They did and still do consider transference to be a very important subject, something which requires the utmost care and attention in therapy.


In Freudian analysis, the patient’s underlying complex, previously associated with someone in the patient’s life transfers to the analyst. When that occurs, it is addressed in psychoanalysis to resolve the complex.

Transference does not only occur in therapy. This naturally occurring phenomenon can easily be found in life, although very often it is not understood. An extreme example would be that of a battered wife, compelled to return home to her husband. Even if the woman were told that her husband would harm her again if she returned to him, she would have no defense against that unconscious content, unless the transference issue was properly addressed. Careful analysis would reveal that there is unconscious psychic content that associates the husband—not as a wife beater, but as someone with whom she cannot live without.

A newborn child depends utterly upon his mother for his survival and care. She takes care of him and nurtures him—a completely natural and desired condition. Ideally, the child grows up and matures into an independent young man, fully ready to take care of himself and a family of his own. Unfortunately, this does not always occur. Perhaps the mother is domineering, or for some reason cannot let go of her child. The young man, who should have gained his independence at a reasonable age, is still attached to his mother. An emotionally charged, unconscious factor, called a complex, will continue to associate “mother” with “nurturing and care”. The young man eventually does leave home and marries a young woman. Everything is fine, until one day the new husband has an incident that seems to require his mother’s nurturing. She is not around; his wife is the closest thing to “mother”. The complex, which was previously associated with the mother now transfers, to the wife. He unconsciously feels his wife should perform the same nurturing role as his mother did. However, the wife does not fulfill this role for the husband, and trouble ensues.

A Sea Org member stays in the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), though he is treated more cruelly than any kidnapper could treat his victim. He is deprived of sleep, food, and the comfort of his family. He is thoroughly introverted into believing some Authority, who has convicted him of evils so deeply entrenched that he cannot be trusted with his liberty. He “knows” that this Authority, whom he trusts with his very eternity, will cure him, and that he must disclose his private criticisms that point to the evils that must be ripped out of his being. And so day after day he cleans the dumpsters, he submits to endless interrogations, and he runs around a pole to cure himself of those nameless evils.

Then one day he escapes, still “knowing” that it is the evil within is telling him to run. He makes his escape anyway. He somehow finds a way to start a new life, though he is depressed and lonely and feels degraded. He eventually finds the courage to talk about the atrocities he experienced. He goes to the courts. And he sees the disbelief in the jury’s eyes: even if he was telling the truth about the RPF, why in God’s name did he submit to it in the first place? But he doesn’t know. He can only point to the atrocities. The jury is fed at every turn with lies about the Sea Org member’s past, and lies about their own crimes. Scientology points to their happy membership and twists the minds of the jury with convolutions that would make any sane man’s head spin. Scientology’s defense depends utterly upon continuing to hide their secret weapon. That weapon is transference.

Hubbard knew about transference from the very beginning. He used it with full knowledge and with a diabolical malevolence that only God can forgive. Transference itself has been carefully hidden from every Scientologist, so he would never know. And Scientology uses it relentlessly on every enemy that could possibly find them out. I am reminded of an affirmation made by Hubbard:


The terrible thing is that transference in Scientology has been hidden in broad daylight. Every Scientologist reads it. And passes it by. That too is explained by transference and will be covered in this essay. But once you can see it for what it is, there will be no question about how Hubbard enslaved you, about how he built his empire, and about how Scientology continues to exist, despite the atrocities and because of the atrocities that they inflict on every soul they touch.

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Scientology and Psychology

In 1952 Hubbard acknowledged Scientology’s indebtedness to the work of Sigmund Freud. His alleged tutoring in Freudian analysis came to him via afternoon conversations with a Commander Thompson in 1924, when Hubbard was all of thirteen years old.¹³

In June 1959, Hubbard credited psychology as developed by Wundt, psychoanalysis (Freud) and psychiatry as developed in the 19th century in Russia as those bodies of work that “provided data which permitted Scientology to begin”.¹⁴ This cleverly worded 1959 acknowledgement of Pavlov¹⁵ leads immediately to the question: Why were dog experiments useful in the formation of Scientology?

There is documented evidence throughout the materials of Scientology that Hubbard quickly came to view psychiatry and psychology as the ultimate enemy of mankind.¹⁶ I am certainly not condoning psychiatric abuse, but doesn’t it seem odd that the very things psychiatry is accused of in Scientology are being perpetrated on a daily basis by Scientology? Why would Hubbard have considered himself exempt from his own pronouncements given in The Criminal Mind?¹⁷

Scientology continues to perpetrate psychological crime in the ill-begotten name of religion. Is there anyone in Scientology who really knows about this evil? If so, how can they continue to perpetrate these crimes for profit or for whatever contagion they hold dearer than life?

Scientology and Transference Abuse

Unlike Scientology, certified psychotherapists are instructed to educate their patients on transference. Depending on the type of therapy, the patient and therapist consciously use the mechanism of transference to resolve the patient’s difficulties. Both therapist and patient are aware of the various patterns of transference. The following patterns represent a few ways in which transference can be identified in psychotherapy:
The patient develops new relationship issues by reason of entering into therapy. The therapist instructs the patient regarding the specific use of transference in therapy.¹⁹ (Referenced URL gives an account of a patient’s perspective.)

Psychologists are enjoined under their ethics code so as to not abuse the phenomenon of transference to further their own ends. The following few excerpts are taken from the American Psychological Association’s ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGISTS AND CODE OF CONDUCT:

The entire APA’s code will inform the reader as to standards of professional conduct, which can be compared against Scientology’s conduct in corresponding matters. The above represents only a few such points.²¹

Scientology does not inform their members of the unconscious hold they have on them. They do everything in their power to create in their members’ minds a complete dependence upon Scientology for answers to every aspect of their lives. And they do this while misrepresenting to the new Scientologist: that with each course and with each auditing session, he is becoming more independent and more “himself.”

Scientology uses their religious façade to avoid legal issues relating to transference abuse. In every single technical, administrative, and ethics training course Hubbard teaches specialized applications of control that exactly match the transference. Every staff member has been trained to control the public using these specialized functions of his post. Every staff member is taught that he is doing the very best for the new person, and that by simply doing his job as instructed, he is helping the person.

The Scientologist is trained within the context of Hubbard’s “superior” control methods necessary to help his fellow and save him from the reactive bank. He believes that Hubbard, through thirty-five years of qualified scientific research knows better than he how to help humanity. He may even believe that there is some divine reason for Hubbard’s ability to plumb the depths of the mind.

The incontrovertible evidence presented in excellently documented works shows that Hubbard was not qualified, as he had us believe.²² What he did manage to grasp before the release of Dianetics was the theory of transference. He used that theory to formulate his “science” and his “religion” as a control vehicle to enslave you. And he taught it seamlessly throughout his written and spoken words.

The Scientology Symbol ®

The one thing that each and every Scientologist knows and operates with in Scientology is the ARC triangle. It is the most basic of basic fundamentals in Scientology. In any introductory lecture, the attendee is told that understanding is composed of Affinity, Reality and Communication. Sounds pretty good, and anyone can apply that, right?

Hubbard knew that the underlying common denominator for any complex was in the affinity that the person has for another. He knew this from studying the work of Wundt, one of the psychotherapists he credits with the foundation of Scientology. Wundt found that empathy was the coalescing factor in the process he termed as assimilation.²³

The upper triangle is the KRC triangle, which represents Knowledge, Responsibility and Control. This too makes sense on the surface. If you know about something, can take responsibility for it and direct it according to the knowledge you apply, you can causatively control that factor of your life.

Hubbard knew from his studies of the complex and transference that the more influence a person could exert against the patient, the stronger would be the underlying unconscious bond. He knew with the right “knowledge” he could control people. His “knowledge” was the subject of transference; the mechanism of that knowledge is hidden from conscious view.

Hubbard’s definition of responsibility includes:


Hubbard’s brand of responsibility involved conferring on Scientologists the authority to control everything and everyone in his environment:

Obviously, the more “OT® ” Scientologists become, the greater control Hubbard himself could exert into the environment via those Scientologists. The degree that Scientology controls the environment depends upon the strength of the transference Hubbard creates in its members.

The Scientology symbol represents the exact structure of the Bridge. It is not the result of Hubbard’s discoveries of the human mind. Hubbard constructed the Bridge to precisely mimic the development of the complex and its transference. It is Hubbard’s symbol for the control and enslavement of mankind.

The Scientology Organization

Hubbard created Scientology as a literal extension of his own self. His organization is a vertical hierarchy wherein command intention descends and compliance ascends.²⁶ Hubbard fully intended Scientologists to administer their personal lives using the same policies and militaristic principles as those governing Scientology’s “church” organizations.

As an example, on the entry-level “Hubbard Life Orientation ® Course” or “LOC”, the student learns about Hubbard’s “organizational structure, called an “org board”. This org board is a structure that facilitates the militaristic and hierarchal arrangement for every Scientology organization. The LOC student fits the functions of his personal life into the same template. He then applies Hubbard’s ethics conditions and administrative policies to his personal “departments.”

Every Scientologist, from an administrative standpoint, is a satellite Scientology organization.

He is simply a lower echelon of the “Church of Scientology”, whether or not he is contracted as a staff member. Hubbard expects every Scientologist to apply Hubbard’s ethics formulas and administrative policy to his personal life, his family and his business.

Every Scientologist is strongly encouraged to become a “field staff member” or FSM. He learns to use Hubbard’s dissemination techniques on his friends and associates; the Scientology organization pays commissions to the FSM for this.
There is no question as to what constitutes Hubbard’s “Command Intention.” It is contained in his policies, which govern every organization and individual. Every Scientologist knows who his Authority is and what compliance is expected for every aspect of his life. There is also no question as to Hubbard’s “Command Intention” for his empire:
Hubbard’s administrative system manipulates the transference to control every echelon, from the individual Scientologist to the upper reaches of Scientology’s International Management. The transference that is manipulated by Scientology’s “spiritual technology” is not only facilitated in the individual through administrative measures—the administrative measures themselves intrinsically manipulate transference on a group level.

Scientology and the New Scientologist

Anyone coming into Scientology enters with the idea that there is something in his life that Scientology can help him resolve or make better. Anyone without such hopes is summarily dismissed with a label of PTS (Potential Trouble Source).²⁹ In other words, dismissal occurs when the Scientologist handler fails to activate a complex. Hubbard’s policy clearly states:
(There will be further discussion on PTS phenomena a little later in this essay.)

Hubbard concluded that a non-Scientologist is very far from accepting the concept that he “is” a thetan. He determined that the person on the street must be addressed at his own level, that of “raw meat”. Hubbard felt that the individual coming into Scientology was simply an unconscious biological robot, thoroughly controlled by his reactive mind.³¹ He masterminded The Dissemination Drill as a means to get the “overwhelmed thetan” to conceive of some small thing about his life that was ruining him. As “nothing in this life aberrates the being”, the trained Scientologist “knows” this small thing is not important; what is important is that the person admits to an unwanted condition.³² The Scientologist then convinces the person that this “ruin” is something Scientology can handle for him. The Dissemination drill generates psychic tension between the subjective “ruin” and the objective organization. When that occurs, money flows to the coffers automatically and outside of the person’s own free will.

That “small thing”, the complex, is intentionally activated in the person’s unconscious by the Dissemination Drill, and by any Scientology training or auditing. It is not necessary for a dissemination drill to be run on a person; the psychological basis for the drill is duplicated throughout Scientology. The transference itself probably crystallizes at the moment the individual begins to think of himself as a Scientologist, or when he becomes convinced that Scientology will help or has helped him.

By reason of his “raw meat” human condition, the new Scientologist is considered to not be in control of his body, his environment or his life. To be called a human is derogatory and an insult in Scientology. It is not until he has attested to the state of Clear that he can consider himself officially “Homo Novis”, or “new man”. ³³ The new Scientologist is considered to be under the control of his reactive mind and must not under any circumstance be allowed to control himself or make his own judgments. The reasoning is that the reactive mind will do everything possible to obstruct the pitifully overwhelmed thetan from going free.

Hubbard categorically revokes any rights the person has to his own privacy, and specifically revokes the right of any person to his own thoughts.³⁴ Unfortunately, this right is never returned to the Scientologist; it is considered an index of the case’s progress where he no longer has concern about what might be private. ³⁵ Since the Scientologist entrusts the organization to help him address the underlying causes of his difficulty, it would be both logical and necessary that he would trust the organization with access to his private thoughts. Conversely, any “secrecy aberration” is immediate cause for suspicion of hidden crimes against Scientology.³⁶ The Scientologist sacrifices his own constitutional right to privacy, due to transference and the unconscious loyalty it imparts to Hubbard and the organization. Scientology tricks the person into believing that Scientology alone can help him; he has nowhere else to turn.

Scientology is a monopoly; Hubbard saw it as such as early as December 1952.
Anyone who criticizes Scientology is considered an enemy of Scientology.³⁸ When a Scientologist is the unwitting effect of transference, and when that transference takes place across enough complexes, is it any wonder how the Scientologist’s loyalty would be impervious against the actions and reason of Scientology’s “enemies”?

Scientology and Ethics
In these statements Hubbard plainly expressed what he intended to do to “clear the planet”.

Hubbard labeled anyone not agreeing with him to be an enemy and a criminal.⁴¹ In his extreme paranoia, Hubbard literally saw the world outside of Scientology as an enemy, either potential or actual. He used ethics as the membrane to separate that which he could usurp and that which he could not. Anything that could be brought within his control was “good”. Anything outside of his sphere of control was “evil”. Hubbard did not intend to better man’s condition; he sought rather to replace humanity with his own twisted ideal. He used a specialized aspect of transference to do it with.

Negative transference is a known phenomenon in psychological texts. Instead of the transference resulting in an affinity with or dependence upon the object, negative transference results in an antipathy toward the object. Hubbard and Scientology intentionally invoke and manipulate a negative transference to viciously attack any person or organization it considers to be an enemy. Whether that enemy is the concerned family member of the Scientologist, the critic of Scientology, the American Psychiatric Association, the FDA, or the IRS, there is no hand raised against Scientology that does not feel the pain of its venomous bite.

The Potential Trouble Source

When a Scientologist routes onto a course or onto auditing, he is checked for any “PTS situation” such as family members who may not be agreeable to his participation in Scientology. The person will be seen to “roller coaster” and he will “lose his gains” in Scientology. The reason given for this is that he is in the psychological grip of someone who is counter-intending his spiritual enhancement in Scientology. I have witnessed this situation many times as an auditor. The person does appear to roller coaster in the presence of family members who are not in complete agreement with Scientology. And I have observed that the technology does not seem to “work” in the presence of this condition.

However, what is at work here is an aberration of the transference factor. Family members do often represent psychological difficulties, referred to above in terms of complexes. But Scientology has already disrupted the original psychological situation by reason of transference. The Scientologist has switched his dependence on the family member over to a dependence on Scientology. The Scientologist’s allegiance wavers between the family and Scientology. The “roller coaster” effect is an incomplete or unstable transference. It is now up to the ethics officer to effectively complete the Scientologist’s incomplete allegiance.

The ethics officer’s first concern is to head off any attacks by those critical of Scientology.⁴² The Scientologist poses a problem for the ethics officer and to the organization by reason of his connection to a potential enemy. The solution to all this is a matter of Scientology policy: Handle or disconnect. The ethics officer must reinforce the Scientology transference. To accomplish this he coaches the person to say and do things to the family member to bring him to “cause”. Hubbard technology is used to placate the family member, and to get the Scientologist to deactivate the family member’s own complexes.

What occurred here, in the mind of the Scientologist, is that his transference has stabilized in Scientology. If the Scientologist cannot deactivate the family member’s complex, he must disconnect from that family member. He cannot receive training or auditing until the disconnection is accomplished. Scientology extorts cooperation of the “PTS” Scientologist through the threat of his spiritual freedom. In other words, Scientology manipulates the Scientologist’s transference.

This obviously ensures for the organization that it is not being infiltrated with family members who are concerned with their children or relatives; this is the ethics officer’s first priority. Secondly, in the event of a “successful” handling with the family member, the non-member is not usually aware that he is being manipulated by Scientology via his own child. If the family member has complexes connected with the Scientologist, any projections upon the child must be withdrawn, at least to the degree that the Scientologist can proceed without interference. In this way also, any natural protective mechanisms the parent may have for his family member are rendered ineffective. That the Scientologist’s natural affinity and respect for his family has been eroded or destroyed is in itself of no concern to Scientology. Family matters are very “human” in nature.

In addition to the type of PTS described above, Hubbard devised several categories of “PTS” to encompass a wide variety of transference anomalies. In all cases, the Scientologist is made to read a list of characteristics that any human being could be found to manifest, either negatively or positively.⁴³ The Scientologist, already in the grip of a stressful transference situation, sits in front of an ethics officer and is made to judge that other potential enemy against this list of “suppressive characteristics”. What is he going to decide? Is that other person actually an enemy? If the Scientologist can’t make up his mind, the ethics officer will label the Scientologist any number of sub-categories of PTS; the list includes: PTSness arising out of the person’s own degraded state, and PTSness due to the Scientologist’s own “hidden evil intentions.” What would you decide?

Once an unstable transference has been established and labeled as a PTS situation, there are no holds barred against this imagined danger to the organization. Scientology employs aggressively coercive methods to stabilize the Scientologist’s allegiance.

Conditions Formulas

Scientology ethics formulas can easily be seen as steps to manipulate transference and allegiance. As one example, the Liability formula states that the person has taken on the color of the enemy. ⁴⁴ Completion of the formula requires that one:
Here we can see that:

1. The Scientologist must first identify the correct object of the transference.

2. He must employ negative transference to harm the other side. The personal danger is a necessary component; it uses the person’s own fear to accomplish negative transference.

3. In making up the damage beyond the ordinary demands of a group member, he is simply controlled in a Pavlovian way to teach him that disloyalty carries punishment.

4. The last step accomplishes a couple of things. First, the Scientologist doing the conditions is coercively made to disclose his “crimes”, that he is being judged by his peers-as-gods. Secondly, the person’s formula write-up reinforces to the group what constitutes improper transference and what actions will result in punishment.

The Scientologist believes that he is doing the ethics formulas on his own determinism. This is simply not the case. A person only passes on ethics when the conclusions he reaches meet with the approval of the ethics officer and are in close alignment with Scientology’s mores.

Ethics System

The Scientology ethics reporting system serves to maintain the integrity of the transference to Hubbard and his organization. By strenuously enforced policy, Scientologists are required to report to ethics any infractions or policy violations by their fellow members, their families and their marriage partners. ⁴⁶ The Scientology report system reinforces the idea that the only appropriate transference is to the organization. Any allegiances to members, family, etc., can be cancelled, no matter who the offending party is. The Scientologist “learns” that his only safety is through a completely transparent and blind trust of those in control and that the only valid receiver of his trust is the hierarchy of the organization itself.

Failure to report an “ethics” situation to Ethics is not viewed lightly, and for “good reason.”⁴⁷

Hubbard had a real taste of the power and ramifications of transference in 1964:
Overts and Withholds: O/W Write-ups

There are specific and complex technical issues on the overall subject of confession as it relates to transference. Generally speaking, however, when a person writes up his sins (called overts and withholds, or O/Ws), he examines his transgressions against the benchmark of Scientology moral codes. For example, a person would not have sinned if he infiltrated the IRS, despite current PR to the contrary. However, if he had a critical suspicion of Hubbard’s personal involvement in that infiltration, he would have underlying sins against Hubbard. The O/W write-up reinforces what the person must or must not transfer his allegiance to; by exposing the objects of his own negative transferences to a judgmental ethics officer, he “sets himself straight” regarding his positive allegiance to Scientology. Confessing one’s sins never resolves the transference itself. It “relieves” negative transference that Scientology does not want him to have.

Scientology distorts and erodes the traditional religious practice of confession. Throughout religious history, mankind turns to God for forgiveness of his sins, and reinforces his allegiance to his Creator. In the Scientology confessional however, God’s job is given to the auditor, who forgives the person “on behalf of Scientologists”.⁴⁹

Scientology Justice

None.

Hubbard Redefines Transference

Hubbard was completely aware of transference and its specific and far-reaching effects in 1950. He built his whole moneymaking operation around transference. And then suddenly, in 1956, with a undeniably intentional twist of his pen, redefined transference and took the subject underground. He did not resolve transference; he simply found a more profitable way to control humanity by corrupting its meaning.
Hubbard curiously credited his childhood tutoring experience with Commander Joseph “Snake” Thompson, as the basis for this definition. Within the same time period, he was making plans for a Scientology doctorate course to include a “fast review of Freudian psychoanalysis to the end of obtaining a fast and certain command of diagnosis and definition as outlined by Sigmund Freud.”⁵¹ We also know that he was watching Freud and his book sales very closely, and we know of Hubbard’s clear intention to monopolize psychotherapy.⁵² By July 1953, he was busy “writing up a book on the subject of Freudian self-analysis.”⁵³ And within a month, the book Self-Analysis⁵⁴ was revised reissued and included as part of standard procedure in processing.⁵⁵

Hubbard completely redefined transference as the patient taking on the identity of the practitioner. This was not a one-time error; Hubbard repeated his new definition for transference in the Saint Hill ® Special Briefing Course Lecture numbered SH Spec 6507C27 ⁵⁶, as well as in Certainty Vol. 9 No. 7.⁵⁷ Hubbard hid his crime in broad daylight; to this day, glossaries in tape transcripts and newer versions of basic books provide the correct definition of transference. Hubbard knew he could not resolve the subject of transference—his entire empire was built around it!

In every Scientologist he maliciously created a monumental negative transference against psychotherapy and psychoanalysis so that they would never turn to a psychiatric text for any authority on the human mind. And his research continued in the direction of how to abuse transference by obscuring its effects. I will point out a couple of technical examples of this a little later.

Transference vs. Valence

Very briefly, in transference, one is dealing with a relationship issue. If one addresses valence, however, one is not dealing with a relationship—he is dealing with a psychological identity. Treating a valence does nothing to address the transference. As an example, say the person has a “mother” complex. The psychoanalyst would not address the identity of the patient-as-mother. The patient isn’t being mother! The patient’s identity is a completely wrong target. To address the individual’s identity directly would introvert him totally and bury the complex even further.

It gets much worse. Not only did Hubbard manage to bury the complex and obscure the transference, he developed technology that would literally replace the person’s identity, while making him feel completely extroverted. I will discuss some examples of this under later headings.

Lower Bridge

One can easily see that the lower Bridge comprises copious permutations of Freudian-based free association exercises. Within the context of proper therapy, they would probably be relatively innocuous. Hubbard used the psychoanalytic techniques of free association to make the Scientologist feel that he was getting somewhere. He justified this under the heading of “getting charge off the case”. People do experience temporary releases and relief at the lower levels. This is not because of Scientology; it is because of “squirrel” psychotherapy called Scientology.

It is even conceivable that some Scientologists may experience some accidental resolution of transference in various areas of their lives. This would be permitted only if that resolution does not disturb the Scientologist’s dependence on Scientology. As an example of this: a person has a session and discovers he can now paint. (These things do occur in auditing from time to time. As above, it is not Scientology—it is what Scientology has stolen from psychology.) Now our painter decides to quit his job and stop making his Bridge payments, or leave his course so he can explore his new ability. Forget it! Unless his contributions and time on course remains undisturbed, he would be “out-ethics” by making these life changes. He is told gently or not so gently by the ethics officer that he has “stopped to smell the roses”, when what he really needs to do is pay for his next Scientology service, and “go OT. “Positive effects” that the Scientologist experiences along the way are important to the degree that they give the Scientologist something to point to as “progress” up the Bridge.

There is, however, a dangerous aspect of Freudian analysis and free association. Free association is known in psychoanalysis to activate complexes. Every answer to a repetitive question in Scientology auditing is contained within the complex that the question itself evokes. By the specially trained-in impingement of the auditor upon the person’s unconscious, and by the authority of the auditor, the complex is activated. The preclear continues to find new answers to the same question repeated by the auditor; the process is complete when the preclear voices a new realization about the content of the complex, and when a particular needle response is seen on the e-meter.

In Scientology, it is held that nothing in the person’s current life is really aberrative; that the source of his troubles lays much further back in time. The only “purpose” for addressing a case at lower levels is to release enough attention and affect so that the Scientologist can make contact with and address the things that Hubbard professed to lay at the bottom of every being’s difficulty.⁵⁸

Scientologists do not realize that with every session, despite whatever else “positive” that happens, their unconscious allegiance to Scientology gets strengthened. Every complex that is touched on in a session has psychic energy connected with it. The auditing process provides the conduit for that psychic energy to be redirected to a Scientology complex.

Hubbard constructed the sequence of the Bridge to exactly mimic the formulation of the complex and its transference. With the Freudian free association processes, existing complexes are rearranged and the energy contained in those complexes is utilized to create a growing complex and transference to Hubbard and Scientology. Every auditing process is constructed and ordered into a grade that accomplishes a phases of the transference. The Bridge is the sequence of those grades.

The Scientologist thinks that he is there of his own will. He is not. It is not possible to be operating under one’s own free will while being manipulated by a massive, growing transference that grips every facet of his life. Scientology points to the “releases” that their brand of psychotherapy brings, and holds it up as the only thing that is going on. Behind the scenes however, Scientology actually replaces the identity of the person with Hubbard’s own version of who he “should be”. The person thinks he is getting closer to his own basic personality. He thinks differently about his life, and about his purposes. He feels simpler. He feels “clearer”. He is not. He is selling his soul, piece by piece, and he is replacing it with a grotesque caricature, called Hubbard.

What happens when a person leaves Scientology or is excommunicated? Very often he will feel a terrible loss, a terrible loneliness, guilt, or depression. Scientologists would look at this and say he feels that way because he betrayed Scientology. No. Any bad psychological effect from leaving Scientology is because of the unconscious transference that Scientology worked so hard to build up. That transference is not healed simply by the action of leaving Scientology.

Some unconscious process in the apologetic may convert that transference to a negative transference against Scientology. And that is the point where Scientology employs their “Fair Game” policy against the apologetic. If they cannot maintain a positive transference and control of a Scientologist, Scientology will label him a “suppressive person”, and do everything in their power to destroy their new enemy. They will use the apologetic’s own prior confessions from his auditing. They will lie in court and they will use their transference technology on judges, on political figures and on IRS agents; they will use it on anyone they must manipulate to further their own ends. They will do everything that an insane criminal would do. Their secret transference weapons are specialized according to the function of the job for which the Scientologist gets trained. And they are particularly vicious in the arena of their external intelligence operations.

Scientology uses the lower Bridge to strengthen transference, to extort money and to ensure that the person remains trapped for as long as he has money to pay. This is so true that the Scientologist’s friends will start to disassociate with the person if he has been off the Bridge for too long. The peer pressure is subtle, but it carries tremendous power. The penniless Scientologist has not lost his transference to Scientology. He will go to any lengths to get back on the Bridge so he can regain his status with Scientology. It is the power of the unconscious transference that is at work, not some superhuman OT phenomenon that keeps a person on the Bridge.

Certain psychic phenomena occur in Scientology auditing, which the preclear would have no way of interpreting, except as contained in Scientology “scriptures”. For example, preclears quite often make contact with images of famous personalities and deities and believe that they are addressing their own personal experience as those identities. The auditor has been trained to view such contact as a manifestation of a delusory case condition; it is viewed that the preclear was overwhelmed in that time by the identity he now considers himself to be. He is further admonished to take the preclear through the incident as it is perceived by the preclear.⁵⁹

Any auditor will eventually run across any number of archaic celebrities in the mind of his preclear: Buddhas, Jesus Christs, Napoleons, etc.

This is not to be construed as any effort to make less of the individual being audited, or of the psychic reality of such images. However, it is my strong opinion that the automatic interpretation the preclear is expected to make is not properly construed, taught or acted upon in Scientology. Further, the identification with such images can have tremendously disastrous psychological effects in the person’s concept of himself and of his relationship to his life. The person’s own religious ideas are manipulated, using psychological measures of a very sinister and dangerous nature.

Endless End of Endless Interiorization Rundowns

Hubbard continued his “research” in the 1950’s, on the basis of his convoluted identification of transference with valences. He theorized in History of Man about the underlying causes and factors relating to transference, whereby the thetan “transfers” into the body, has difficulty getting out of the body, and so on.⁶⁰ Hubbard reworked transference to include not only the valence, but also “exteriorization” itself.

Very often the soul or “thetan” seems to leave the body during TRs or other drills or auditing, with or without perception of having a different vantage point. This is considered a milestone in one’s spiritual development in Scientology—it is called “going exterior.” In training, “exteriorization” is classified as a “major stable win.” Hubbard’s opinion of this state is discussed at length throughout the writings of Scientology. He felt that
Euphoria, disorientation, changes in visual perception of his environment, and a marked decrease in ability to conduct simple body functions such as walking or talking often accompany “exteriorization”. There is no question but that this would be considered a profoundly spiritual experience, intimately and inextricably connected with the Scientology drill or auditing process that precipitated it.

While I do have opinions and theories regarding the phenomena of “exteriorization” itself, it is not my focus here to emphatically assert scientific facts or theological conclusions. It is my opinion based on many, many instances of observing this phenomenon in myself and in those I personally audited in Scientology, that exteriorization was perceived as an actual psychic occurrence, and that the associated phenomena and change of view with respect to identity went along with it. I will state my conviction: spiritual freedom is very much more elusive at the top of the Bridge than it is at the bottom.

Indeed, the ultimate freedom in Scientology for which the entire Bridge was constructed was an effort to get the person into a position where he would be stably operating outside of and independent of his body, free from all the traps of a physical existence and also oriented and in control of all the strange things that go on in the universe of spirits. The advanced levels were perceived as those final secrets that make the person an Operating Thetan, someone who can operate stably exterior, at cause over matter, energy, space and time. The Bridge itself has been revised and reworked several times since the beginning of Scientology, all in favor of undercutting the steps to this mysterious and elusive state. Of course, with every “undercut”, Hubbard increased his bank account. And every undercut was an effort to build a stronger and more complete allegiance to Hubbard and to Scientology.

Exteriorization at lower levels is temporary in all cases, lasting for seconds, hours or sometimes days. The exterior condition generally ends with complaints of severe headaches, bodily discomforts of various kinds, efforts to leave physically, and environmental pressures. This sometimes very uncomfortable situation is explained as being the result of the person not having the benefit of the rest of the Bridge. The liability of exteriorization is so common and serious in Scientology that every canned correction list in auditing includes questions about exteriorization and exact measures to deal with it.⁶² It is more often the case than not that repeated “corrections” must be made in auditing to relieve the person of the bad effects of this condition. The title of this section is meant as a special tribute for repeat offenders of exteriorization.

As stated earlier, the Scientologist already has been indoctrinated as to Scientology’s premise that he is an immortal being, timeless and deathless. When he exteriorizes, he is congratulated and sent to the examiner to write his affirmation success story. It confirms his god status and acts as an interpretation of the occurrence itself. The Scientologist attributes his lofty state to the works of Scientology and Hubbard; the transference is yet again confirmed and reinforced.

The Scientologist is indoctrinated that his big problem in life is his body.⁶³ The current given purpose of Dianetics is to eliminate body-related case factors that cause him to lose power, or keep him from recapturing his full potential as a thetan. Dianetics however was not originally conceived as having anything to do with the soul.

There are relentless efforts in Scientology to get the person to disassociate from the body; these efforts can be observed in social concourse, in ethics measures which denigrate any “undue” concern about one’s physical condition, and in examples of gross negligence in getting proper medical attention where necessary. (Witness Lisa McPherson.) The body’s only valid purpose in auditing is something by which the e-meter electrodes can be held while the thetan “goes free.” Hubbard states that an aberrated person would think of himself as “body plus thetan”, whereas the ideal would be “thetan only”.⁶⁴

Every time a person “exteriorizes”, it enforces the idea that he is not his body but a spiritual entity. What better way to justify sleep deprivation, terrible living conditions for staff members, and the Rehabilitation Project Force? “You cannot hurt a thetan.”

A thetan in Scientology is defined in various ways as ”nothingness” with a quality of awareness that is not of this universe. The Scientologist is led to believe that it is this elusive godlike quality contained in the nothingness that he must strive for. Little does he realize that Hubbard thought of him as a literal unit of nothingness. Nothingness, not of some indescribable and unapproachable universe, but a nothingness of this universe, of this planet and of this “religion.”

Transference in Training

Training personnel, called course supervisors operate under severe threat of ethics penalties. They are held responsible for ensuring that every student perfectly duplicates the materials in Hubbard’s courses. They are themselves rigorously trained to deal with any situation in which the student does not agree with or completely duplicate Hubbard. The inventory of tools used by these personnel is extensive, beyond the scope of this brief essay. The student very quickly learns that if he has a disagreement, he will find no listening ear in his course supervisor. The supervisor’s entire focus is to get him back to the Hubbard viewpoint. This is absolute.

The student is taught in his “student hat” materials how to rectify any “disagreement defects” in his study process, despite being taught within the study procedure that he must not accept any materials that he himself does not find to be true. This latter admonishment simply obscures the actual phenomenon in play: the student’s critical process is eroded continuously by forcefully coercive measures by the supervisor. Nothing is ever wrong with Hubbard’s material; it is always the student who is defective. The supervisor is a representative of Hubbard and acts as an authority figure on Hubbard’s behalf. Transference is always deepened to the degree that the object of transference exerts influence and control on the person.

If a student is to proceed with his course, he has no choice but to shift his attention to examine how his internal thought processes are defective, and to find some means by which to rectify his imperfect understanding of Hubbard. Through an extensive repertoire of exacting measures, the student begins to think with the words and concepts Hubbard uses in his written and taped material. The student learns an intricate study process with which to rationalize the contrary and paradoxical teachings of Hubbard. He learns to identify with Hubbard’s humor and attitudes, and he begins to edit out his own thinking processes in life in favor of Hubbard’s hopelessly twisted “logic” and “philosophy.”

Scientology materials deal with a very wide range of mental and emotional issues, social issues, familial issues, world and cosmic views. The rigors of study will constellate more and more complexes in the student. Certain training routines (TRs) are part of every technical and administrative course. TRs are done repeatedly; they get the student to blank out of and bypass his own “mental machinery”. It is doubtful whether TRs overcome the transference itself; I believe TRs only repress the complexes more completely, and that the training system forces the transference deeper into the unconscious.

That complexes are repressed does not mean that the energy contained within them lies dormant. On the contrary, the energy will be unconsciously projected outward into the person’s environment. Where before the person may have known that his unwanted feelings were his own, he begins to see those negative aspects as belonging to others in his environment. The repression of complexes actually provides motivation for the Scientologist: once his own complexes are repressed, he will “see” the negative psychic phenomena in others around him, and he will feel a stronger urge to fix those other people by using Scientology on them.

The student learns that his disagreeable “machinery” is part of his reactive mind, and that the only correct and permanent resolution is by way of auditing. In the meantime, his learning process is directed unremittingly with coercive force and time-tested policies to 100% duplication of the materials. In short, the student learns like a Pavlovian dog that his only focus is to duplicate the materials exactly.

With each course he takes, the student actually replaces his personal thoughts, feelings, ideas and mental phenomena in favor of those represented by Hubbard. In training, any random patterns are edited out thoroughly—it is literally impossible to otherwise attest positively to 100% duplication. Any nagging questions and any criticisms that the student may have are weeded out and eliminated.

Ironically, Hubbard’s own version of transference is also accomplished here. In other words, the Scientologist through training comes to identify himself with Hubbard. Given an ever-increasing constellation of complexes, which are repressed coercively at every turn, and with the force and rigors in duplicating the thoughts and philosophy of Hubbard, the only perceived avenue of mental escape comes down to thinking and being as though he was Hubbard. He is constantly and repeatedly told that through Scientology he is becoming more himself. He is told at every turn that he is “totally responsible for the condition he is in”. He understands that his path to total freedom lies entirely in his ability to follow the directions and in the footsteps of Hubbard. The only way out of any dilemma is however through learning exactly “What would LRH do?” When Hubbard said in KSW #1, (the first policy studied on every course in Scientology) “We’d rather have you dead than incapable”, the reader will get the idea of the coercive force which is applied against any recalcitrant.

I want to emphasize that what happens to the student is not intellectually conscious. It is laid in with exact training measures, with coercion and with the energies of the person’s own unconscious. Scientology hacks the soul. I can think of no better way to summarize what occurs.

Training Routines (TRs)

Every Scientologist does TRs as an early step on the Bridge. He learns about the thetan and about “present time”, etc., and then he starts his drills. These TRs are repeated and refreshed throughout Scientology. The TRs themselves appear to have been adapted from age-old meditation techniques. OT TRO, TR 0 and TRO Bullbait are souped up versions of “meditation without seed”, where the person concentrates on blanking out all noise and distraction and arrives at a point where he is simply “being there”, as determined by his coach and by his supervisor.

The precursor to these TRs was the 1953 process:
TRs 1 and 2 begin to fill in the blankness that he has experienced with the earlier TRs; they can be considered as programming templates, likened to installing a new operating system onto a freshly formatted hard drive. The use of nonsense phrases from Alice in Wonderland conditions the student auditor to be willing to spout off and receive unusual or nonsensical communication in sessions and in his life. TRs 3 and 4 expand upon this concept and further train the student to interject limited computational skills that are in accordance with and within the limits of Hubbard’s rules.

The Upper Indoc TRs are aggressive training measures that teach the student to assert authoritative physical and mental control of another; they are taught to use “intention without reservation” to effect compliance in others.⁶⁷
The Upper Indocs are part of every auditor-training program and are included in most administrative training courses as well. Every executive and staff member in Scientology uses the principles of these drills to obtain compliance in their orders. These TRs justify, train and give license for “proper” manhandling.

Some courses also include the use of mood drills where the student’s mood is found to color the session.⁶⁹ Hubbard found that students are not in control of their emotions, that emotions are “automatic.” The drills were conceived to edit out of the student those chronic or fixed moods or emotions, so that exactly and only the prescribed tone is applied to the preclear in session. It is taught that “TRs are a matter of sound (emphasis added), not the way the person feels.”⁷⁰ By these communication skills, the student relearns how to process both incoming and outgoing messages according to Hubbard’s idea of what constitutes vanilla communication—without additive flavor or random personality coloration.

A Scientologist is indoctrinated that the sources of man’s troubles are repressed and lay way back in the past. He learns that the reactive mind itself contains all moments of his tortured past and that only Scientology and Dianetics auditing are capable of recovering these reactive components. When a person is “out of present time”, he is said to be acting irrationally, because of his reactive mind.

The Scientologist is taught that the thetan is not in the physical universe, but that he manipulates his physical experience from a perspective outside the dictates of time. The thetan’s difficulties in operating in a time-based physical environment theoretically stem from the aberrations contained in his reactive mind. TRs are given as drills to accomplish a present time viewpoint, regardless of his progress in his auditing. The student is taught to separate himself from his past—to experience the present from a thetan’s viewpoint, in other words, from a viewpoint superior to the physical. This supposedly enables the Scientologist to study, to audit and to “truly relate” to his fellow man in life.

One begins to see how the person’s critical thinking process is being manipulated through TRs. The student is drilled out of his own “inferior” frame of reference, the reactive mind. He will have only Hubbard’s frame of reference with which to analyze Hubbard’s material; he will have only Hubbard’s frame of reference with which to audit and conduct himself in life!

As discussed earlier, Scientologists’ most basic and fundamental tool in life is the ARC triangle. TRs bypass the Scientologists’ natural affinity and replace it with a studied duplicate of Hubbard. The reality being agreed upon is Hubbard’s reality. And this is communicated with Hubbard’s model. TRs made it possible for Hubbard to inject his “knowledge” that you are” nothingness”, and that you cannot be trusted with your own mind. He taught you that as a godlike creature you are “responsible” only when you were in his brand of “present time”, and he taught you how to control yourself and others through the TRs and the godlike condition they impart. Knowledge, responsibility and control. Sound familiar?

The Tone Scale

At some point early on in the person’s training, he trains on the technology and applications of Hubbard’s emotional tone scale. Like the TRs, tone scale material is basic Scientology, and is taught and applied thereafter throughout Scientology, at every technical, administrative and organizational level.

The tone scale is a list of emotions arranged in what is given as a descending order of positivity. Each emotion listed is given an arbitrary number that represents the quantity of mental mass supposedly activated at the moment the emotion is experienced. The abridged version of the tone scale represents the scale of emotions a Dianetics auditor would encounter in a “human being”: a degraded thetan who is now being carted around by a body.⁷¹ The expanded tone scale is used in Scientology to staticize the emotions of the thetan direct; without a body the thetan is supposedly capable of a much wider range of emotions.⁷²

At the top of the expanded tone scale one finds “Serenity of Beingness” at 40.0. “Body Death” lies at 0.0. At the bottom of the list, at –40.0, lies “Total Failure”. The student is coached to dramatize each emotion on this list, over and over; until his supervisor is satisfied he has edited out any emotion that appears to be fixed or “inappropriate.”

The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation and Dianetic Processing that accompanies the basic text on the subject includes forty-two category headings which correspond to the list of emotions. Headings include one’s medical condition, psychiatric condition, expected ethics range, sexual behavior, truth level, and so on. The student uses this chart extensively to evaluate his own and others’ psychological condition.

The student is taught that this chart is an exact plot for any human; that for example a person who is covertly hostile would invariably and without exception have corresponding characteristics such as:
The numerical designations of the emotions represent the relative degree of mass a person would be exhibiting. This underscores the idea that the more “massy” or “stuck to the physical” the person is, the closer he is to the evil that Scientology is designed to resolve.

The student is drilled to instantly plot anyone’s emotional tone. In doing so, he makes a blanket judgment of any subject, as delineated by the chart. With this “tool” under his belt, he knows who he can trust or not trust, who will answer a letter promptly, and whose politics would be Liberal or Fascistic, and so on. He learns by using this tool that a subject who is disgusted by sex will also have severe sporadic illnesses, and that the same subject will use responsibility to further his own ends.

The tone scale and its corresponding chart is the template with which the student observes and interacts with others in his environment; this is the bible he uses to monitor his own emotions and social responses. The tone scale is one of the most basic controlling tools used at all levels, used by the Scientologist in every area of his life.

Qualified independent professionals have never ratified the writings of Hubbard in general, and the tone scale and Chart of Attitudes in specific. Keep in mind that by the time the lay Scientology student begins to study the tone scale material, he has already likely been psychologically affected in ways that would alter his critical faculties and perceptions relative to the material.

Apart from the obvious ramifications this has on the Scientologist’s relationship with his family and other associates, the tone scale also works subjectively upon the Scientologist. The Scientologist is taught the exact pattern and range of acceptable emotional range at any time. He knows that if he exhibits an emotion below 2.0, “Antagonism”, his reactive mind has taken over control, and that anything he does or says at this tone level will be subject to scrutiny; other Scientologists will see him as being neurotic or psychotic. He learns that if he feels like crying, he is only exhibiting a hidden and disgusting effort to solicit sympathy from those in his environment. He will further learn that if he is feeling grief, nothing he thinks will have any validity connected with it, and that practically the exact opposite will be the truth. He is taught that he can and must create emotions at his own “will”, that any negative emotions stem from that part of him which is his ultimate enemy to him and to those around him—his reactive mind.⁷⁴ He discovers that he must only associate socially with those who conduct themselves within a certain emotional range, that at any time anyone could drop below 2.0 and betray him, lie to him and otherwise be unworthy of his association and trust. He even learns how to select his business partner and his wife (or her husband) by carefully plotting her on the tone scale.

But, above all else, he is taught that the only “safe” and appropriate place where he can feel negative emotions will be in his auditing sessions, and that only his auditor will be able to uncover for him what underlying unconscious factor is making him so anti-social and miserable. In short, he must repress his emotions and override his natural responses in favor of those emotions deemed acceptable and called for by Hubbard. The tone scale and its emotional manipulation serves to completely bypass the way the Scientologist actually feels. It closes the door and makes inaccessible to the Scientologist that part of the person who knows he is really not a robot, someone who cannot be trusted with feeling and experiencing on his own terms.

As discussed earlier, the energy from the repressed emotions is also utilized by Scientology. The Scientologist’s projections of his own repressed content onto incorrect outside sources externalizes his own unconscious mind out into the environment. Hubbard knew about this psychic phenomenon as well; it is contained in his "confessional technology.” If Scientology ethics deems the person has incorrectly projected his content, the Scientologist applies ethics formulas or receives auditing that addresses the Scientologist’s own “similar overts.” However, if the projection targets an approved enemy of Scientology, the Scientologist is encouraged to act upon his projection. An example of the latter would be the Scientologist projecting negative content onto psychiatry—he would be encouraged to contribute to Scientology’s own efforts against psychiatry.

The Scientologist desperately needs to be able to evaluate his environment with his own responses. But he has, in becoming a Scientologist, unwittingly sold and given over control of his soul to the “Church” of Scientology and to L Ron Hubbard. He thinks that he is his personality and that all else is invalid or on the negative side of the scale. He is “extroverted” to the degree that his unconscious content is repressed and projected out into the environment. He is no longer able to grant validity to any input from anyone outside Scientology except as through the artificial template personality that his training has erected around him. He “knows” that he is superior to a non-Scientologist, that non-members are to be pitied, they are to be recruited, they are to be controlled, and if they are critical about his “religion”, they must be excised from his life.

Auditing, Transference and Counter Transference

Hubbard developed specific policies to circumvent anomalies in the transference phenomena. He knew that when the preclear’s transference went to the auditor, they would give their auditor gifts or do favors for them:
Hubbard did not want preclears transferring their affections to their auditors. Transference is only valuable if it is directed to the organization or to Hubbard. He both profited by and punished the transference phenomena by forcing the preclear to pay preferential rates if he insisted on a specific auditor.

Hubbard was well aware of a phenomenon well known in psychology as counter-transference, where the practitioner’s own unconscious mind begins to experience emotional side effects by reason of the therapeutic process.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines counter transference as:
Certain aspects of auditing seem to inhibit counter transference in the auditing session. Firstly, the auditor by reason of his TRs and other drilling is rigorously trained to simply listen and compute. The attention required in a session of an auditor toward the preclear and the e-meter do not allow for any thoughts to enter in to the equation. It is a very mechanical and exacting procedure, and one in which any mental wandering of the auditor would be drilled out of him rather soon in his career.

The auditor abides by an auditor’s code, which extracts a promise that prohibits him from sympathizing with the preclear. ⁷⁶ In my opinion, the sympathy Hubbard was talking about is a close relation to Wundt’s empathy, discussed earlier in terms of a complex creating factor.

The auditor is factually an extension of Hubbard; this is a psychic fact for the auditor, as well as an objective fact—no coloration of the session is permitted. By the time a professional auditor has worked out all his “bugs”, nothing the preclear says or does in a session seems to have any effect on the auditor. If a counselor is to accomplish anything at all in therapy, there must be some soul, some human interface. Scientology applied to the letter of the word does not permit that interface. All is distilled down to the vanilla rendition of Hubbard’s own ideals. In that sense, the auditor’s soul seems nowhere to be found; the only thing present is his auditing procedure and an excellent sounding TR rendition of the auditing command. If and when counter transference occurs, it occurs on a level deeper in the unconscious than I can honestly assert or deny.

In the event of auditing failures, such as the preclear becoming ill after session, poor emotional tone between sessions, etc., the auditor would definitely take the heat for any bad effects created. This too is covered in policy. There is absolutely no room for any criticism of Hubbard’s technology or its results—only failures in application. And of course, the auditor’s only recourse and solution would lie in the direction of ever more closely duplicating Hubbard’s own intention and beingness.

Within the organization, the auditor is revered above all other personnel—this is the edict and position of Hubbard. Signs and promotional pieces abound: “Auditors are the most valuable beings on the planet.” As one can imagine, the degree of ego-inflation can be extreme, no matter how intense and deeply seated the original intention of the auditor is to help others. It seems that this very desire to help is most insidiously taken over and corrupted by Scientology. Auditors represent the most lucrative source of income for Scientology, and that fact is obscene beyond words.

The E-Meter ®

Hubbard held up his e-meter phenomenon as proof of his theories regarding the unconscious. Just because something has read on the meter and the preclear associates it with a particular phenomenon does not constitute evidence. The preclear is pre-indoctrinated to some degree in Hubbard’s own theories, and he would interpret any psychic experience from within the parameters of his indoctrination.

Hubbard developed the e-meter as an effort to resolve counter transference. In Technique 88⁷⁷ he states:
Hubbard inaugurated the e-meter as an auditing tool prior to developing the TRs. Apparently the lie detector didn’t work by itself. Make no mistake—along with Freudian free association techniques, the e-meter’s purpose was to solicit complete honesty and complete obedience in the preclear.⁷⁹

Why Scientology Calls Itself a Religion

Transference is sometimes viewed not as a negative thing, but as completely positive. The Pope in the Roman Catholic Church would be an example of this. As the servant of servants, he acts as the ultimate mediator between the parishioner and God; transference is carried to God via the Pope.

Hubbard capitalized on the phenomenon of the positive transference found in any religion; he turned it into a black version for his own self-aggrandizement. He knew that religion by its very nature would is the perfect breeding ground for the manipulation of transference; God cannot be scientifically proven, nor can a belief system be explained in a logical way. Scientology hides behind a pseudo-religious façade. That façade is a grotesque and hideous expression of Hubbard’s own criminal insanity and of his own psychotic identification with the image of God.

In 1956, Hubbard stated:
However, in the 1998 version of Introduction to Scientology Ethics, the definition is given as follows:
God is being written out of the picture these days. The current powers-that-be are vigorously sanitizing Hubbard’s own words in written and taped material. Later versions of Scientology material only serve to further obfuscate the criminal intentions of its Hubbard. But by his own policies they may not be cancelled; they must be used to expose the fundamental basis for Scientology.

In fine print at the front of Introduction to Scientology Ethics⁸²:
Dianetics spiritual healing technology distinctly implies a religious doctrine. Yet, on close inspection of the current official website of Scientology, one can find this quote:
How can a “Church of Scientology”, sell and deliver a “spiritual healing technology”, a science that reports to not concern itself with the human soul? How dare they try to hide the blatant claims of its author and shift the responsibility for its effects to the “dedicated efforts of the reader?” They dare, because they know without question that it is the dedicated efforts of the reader that activate his complexes and ensure transference; when that is accomplished, the reader will buy more Scientology.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines religion as:
In Scientology, one gradually comes to learn that instead of developing a relationship with one’s Creator, Hubbard promises to return the Scientologist to his inherently native state as a god. Scientology postulates that the basic life force of an individual has gone through a devolutionary process through endless trillenia of mishaps; that when he arrives in Scientology he is degraded to the point where he is mistakenly identifying himself as a human being, stuck in a body. By way of addressing and eradicating the experiences contained in his reactive mind, the Scientologist supposedly is returned to his original condition. Upon attest to the state of Clear, he believes that he has arrived at his basic personality. When he completes the more advanced levels, he attests to being a smarter god.⁸⁵

If a Scientologist trains to become an auditor, he earns the distinction not only of being a god himself, but he is now a maker of gods.
These facts are not presented to a new Scientologist. It utterly eludes me how one could preserve his own religious faith and still be a Scientologist. And yet that is what is promised in Scientology.⁸⁷

It is obvious that this early theme in Scientology extends throughout its “scriptures”. When one enters Scientology he learns that he is a thetan. Hubbard combines the concepts of “soul” and “spirit” and teaches the student that the person who looks in the mirror in the morning is the thetan and that he is immortal. He specifically states that the thetan is the personality of the person that transcends death. In Scientology, the personality of the Scientologist is the thetan, right here and right now. The only thing wrong with him is that he has mistakenly assumed false personalities that obscure the real one. A thetan in good shape is supposedly able to drop dead, go to the hospital of his choice, grab a baby’s body like a new pair of pants, and know who he was just before he died. In a mind-bending loop, Hubbard considered any personality in the mirror is a false personality; that the basic personality is “you before you mocked yourself up”, and that only through his technology could a man achieve this lofty state of godhead.

Hubbard was well aware of how his premise would be viewed. In his own words to doctorate course students in 1952:
Granted, the definitions of soul and spirit are variously delimited in the religions of the world; it is important to note again that a fundamental, if not hidden reality in Scientology is that one does not develop a relationship with a god—one is a god. This can be further emphasized with the Scientology concept that as one goes up the Bridge to Total Freedom, one can be more and more of each dynamic, which of course includes the God Dynamic.

In Scientology, Hubbard is Source, and there is no other Source. Whether he felt he was The Supreme Being is frankly irrelevant. In Scientology there is no room for another god or God, despite rhetoric to the contrary. He effectively overthrew, in the collective opinion of Scientologists, all the archetypal images of humanity’s greatest spiritual leaders, including Dharma <sic>, Krishna, Lao-Tse, Gautama Buddha, Moses, Christ and Mohammed—he colored the banner black and he took it up himself.⁸⁹

It is not necessary to express the obvious hierarchal spiritual and religious relationship the individual has with the organization of Scientology and with Hubbard. That Hubbard is dead provides no relief from this spiritual connection and hierarchy, as he too is “Immortal”. His continued Scientology research and involvement was announced at his memorial service.

This should also explain to the reader why it is that the myth of Hubbard is so jealously and devotedly guarded and promoted, regardless of incontrovertible evidence of the blatant lies contained within the official version. The organization of Scientology knows it is absolutely critical for its survival that Hubbard’s myth be kept alive. If existing Scientologists were somehow gotten into a psychological condition where they could be enlightened about the full truth of Hubbard’s life and death, they would be permitted to come to terms with the spiritual fraud that has been inflicted upon them and through them. Their departure would cause Scientology to crumble. Scientology knows that as soon as the person no longer sees Hubbard as a deity, as Source, Scientology will not “work” for that person.

For the Scientologist, Hubbard accepted the onus for their God-Image. No matter what the person’s original idea was about religion, he is constantly herded into the viewpoint that Hubbard is the ultimate authority for their spiritual freedom. The reader can fill in the rest of the blanks if he wishes with the information contained in the alleged OT 8 materials. However, the psychological premise of transference stands, with or without the Anti-Christ argument in the alleged OT 8 theory. A human god does not need religion—he needs psychotherapy. What a person gets in Scientology is black psychotherapy.

Hubbard himself was so wrapped up in his own psychotic inflation, that he prescribed “Black Dianetics”to anyone who would try to destroy Scientology.⁹⁰ (Note: this reference will only be found in an early version of the PDC lectures; later editions have been sanitized.) Through transference and negative transference, the person is tricked into believing that it is Scientology alone that can help him; he has nowhere else to turn. He “knows” without question that anyone who tries to dissuade him from Scientology, that person is an enemy, not only to him, but also to Scientology and to mankind.

Hubbard was on an endlessly looping search for his own nature. But he believed he was himself a god or God. He believed that he was the Source and Creator of a new civilization, a new man, a new type of god, and he projected into every Scientologist his rendition of his own psychotic self. He was perpetually stuck in the duality of Something/Nothing, and his message to the world was that he had found Infinity, in the “Allness of the Nothingness” and the “Nothingness of the Allness”. His “Clear” was only an admission, a statement of his own insane meanderings. “You are mocking it all up.” He took every Scientologist on a journey through his own sick mind.

Was Hubbard Scientology’s First Illegal Preclear?⁹¹

The basis of Freud’s theory was that aberration of a sexual nature was the cause of mental illness. Therefore, a Freudian analyst would be concerned with exploring sexual undercurrents in any patient. Why did Hubbard refer to “Commander Thompson” for his transference theory when he had just completed a thorough review of Freudian analysis? Was Commander “Snake” Thompson not Hubbard’s tutor, but his own therapist?

Or, could the Snake have been an inner therapist, yet another figment of Hubbard’s overactive imagination, a play on the archetypal image of the snake we see in the “S” of the Scientology symbol? Or, God help him, could this occult symbol for “gnosis” be the banner under which he intended to bring in the new Aeon?⁹²

Hubbard makes no mention of any therapists with which he either trained or consulted as a result of his research into Dianetics. Were the “later analysts” he mentions in Pab 92 not analysts in general, but his own therapists? Hubbard reportedly used hypnotism and narcosynthesis in his Dianetics research days. Yet, there is no official Scientology documentation regarding Hubbard’s degrees or qualifications in this area. Surely those certificates would look impressive on his resume. Could it be that he was applying his “thirty-five years of research into the mind” from his perspective as the patient?

Affirmations admitted into evidence in the Armstrong trial that imply Hubbard may have received some professional help for his masturbation problem from the age of eleven. Hubbard’s affirmations show that his mother was at least somewhat familiar with psychology.

Was she responsible for putting him in therapy? Certainly Hubbard’s sexual difficulties extended through to the 1940’s, at the time of his infamous affirmations.⁹³ Did not Hubbard also request psychiatric care of the VA in 1945?

Could it actually be that Hubbard, in his own deranged way, created Scientology to pray for his own incessant suffering? Put into the framework of transference, it appears to me at last: that within every bulletin he wrote lurks an admission of his secret tool. Could it be that through projection into Scientologists he desired to put a stop to that suffering for himself? What a prayer that would be.

Summary

My experience in Scientology has taught me a few things. Not that these came in any session, or any bulletin, or any lecture. It taught me the three things that it didn’t want to teach me: I am not a god. I am a human being. And Scientology is not a religion.
__________

¹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 26 May 1959 Man Who Invented Scientology ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Hubbard, L. Ron PAB 32 Why Doctor of Divinity? ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶ Hubbard, L. Ron Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health © 1992 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Hubbard, L. Ron Research and Discovery Series 1 © 1994 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Jung, Carl G. The Practice of Psychotherapy © 1954 Bollingen Foundation Inc., New York, N.Y.

¹¹ http://www.holysmoke.org/ga/admissions.pdf

¹² Corydon, Bent L.Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? © 1987, 1992 by Bent Corydon

¹³ http://www.whatisscientology.org/Html/Part01/Chp03/pg0090.html

¹⁴ Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 23 June 1959 What is Scientology?

¹⁵ http://www.whatisscientology.org/Html/Part01/Chp02/pg0066.html © 1996-2000 Church of Scientology International

¹⁶ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 5 June 1984R False Purpose Rundown ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 26 April 1982 The Criminal Mind and the Psychs ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 6 May 1982 The Cause of Crime ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 15 September 1981 The Criminal Mind ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ http://earley.org/Patterns/transference_and_countertransfer.htm

¹⁹ http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/SupportSt/psychotherapyuk/trans/index.html

²⁰ http://www.apa.org/ethics/code.html

²¹ Ibid.

²² a) Corydon, Bent L.Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? © 1987, 1992 by Bent Corydon
b) Miller, Russell, Bare-faced Messiah < ©? >:
http://wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/~krasel/CoS/books/bfm/
c) Many other excellent Scientology critic web sites

²³ Jung, Carl G. Psychological Types © 1971 Princeton University Press

²⁴ Hubbard, L. Ron Modern Management Technology Defined (def. “responsibility”) ©1976 L. Ron Hubbard

²⁵ Hubbard, L. Ron 10 August 1982 OT Maxims ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

²⁶ Hubbard, L. Ron Modern Management Technology Defined (def. “command intention”) ©1976 L. Ron Hubbard

²⁷ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 26 March 1965 Field Staff Members © 1974 by L. Ron Hubbard

²⁸ Hubbard, L. Ron Modern Management Technology Defined (Definition of “Third Dynamic Triangle”) © 1976 by L. Ron Hubbard

²⁹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 27 October 1964 Policies on Physical Healing, Insanity and Potential Trouble Sources ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

³⁰ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 23 November 1969 Individuals vs. Groups ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

³¹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 23 October 1965 Dissemination Drill ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

³² Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 13 September 1967 Remedy B,

Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 12 May 1960, Help Processing ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

³³ Hubbard, L. Ron Technical Bulletin of 22 July 1956 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

³⁴ Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard Dissemination Course, Chapter 8C and Circuits ©1986 Bridge Publications

³⁵ Ibid.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Hubbard, L. Ron PDC 20 Formative State of Scientology, Definition of Logic 6 December 1952 ©1986 L. Ron Hubbard

³⁸ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 5 November 1967 Critics of Scientology ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

³⁹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 16 May 1965 Issue II Indicators of Orgs ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁴⁰ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 18 June 1968 Ethics ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁴¹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 5 November 1967 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁴² Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 18 June 1968 Ethics ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library,

Hubbard, L. Ron Certainty Vol 7 No. 2 Why Some Fight Scientology ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁴³ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 27 September 1966 The Anti-Social Personality The Anti-Scientologist ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁴⁴ Hubbard, L. Ron, Introduction to Scientology Ethics © 1998 L Ron Hubbard Library

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 22 July 1982 Knowledge Reports ©1986 L. Ron Hubbard Library,
Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 1 May 1965 Staff Member Reports ©1986 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁴⁷ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 29 March 1965 Staff Regulations ©1986 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁴⁸ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 17 November AD14 Offline and Offpolicy Your Full In-Basket ©1986 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁴⁹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 10 November 1978RA Proclamation Power to Forgive ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁵⁰ Hubbard, L. Ron Pab 92 10 July 1956 A Critique of Psychoanalysis ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁵¹ Hubbard, L. Ron Associate Newsletter #3, Mid-May 1953 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁵² Hubbard, L. Ron Associate Newsletter #3, Mid-May 1953 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁵³ Hubbard, L. Ron Associate Newsletter #7, Late July 1953 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁵⁴ Hubbard, L. Ron Self Analysis © 1989 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁵⁵ Hubbard, L. Ron Pab 7 Mid-August, 1953 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁵⁶ Hubbard, L. Ron Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary © 1983 New Era Publications

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 13 September 1967 Remedy B ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library,

Hubbard, L. Ron HCOB 12 May 1960 Help Processing ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁵⁹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 23 April 1969 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶⁰ Hubbard, L. Ron History of Man © 1988 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶¹ Hubbard, L. Ron A Step by Step Breakdown of 88 ca July 1952 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶² Hubbard, L. Ron Interiorization Rundown Series, Tech Subject Volume 3. ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶³ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 22 April 1969 Somatics and OTs ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶⁴ Hubbard, L. Ron Scientology 8-80 Chapter 17 ©1989 L. Ron Hubbard Library,

Hubbard, L. Ron JOS Issue 17-G June 1952 The Limitations of Homo Novis ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶⁵ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 1 September 1991 Issue XII The Fundamentals of the Grade Chart Saint Hill Special Briefing Course Level L Checksheet ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶⁶ Hubbard, L. Ron PAB 7 mid-August 1953 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶⁷ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 7 May 1968R Upper Indoc TRs ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 31 January 1979 Mood Drills ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁷⁰ Ibid

⁷¹ Hubbard, L Ron Science of Survival © The Church of Scientology of California 1951 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁷² Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 25 September 1971RB Tone Scale in Full ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁷³ Hubbard, L Ron Science of Survival © The Church of Scientology of California 1951

⁷⁴ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 25 August 1982 The Joy of Creating ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁷⁵ Hubbard, L. Ron Science of Survival © 1951 The Church of Scientology of California Publications Organization, © 1989 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁷⁶ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO PL 14 October 1968RA The Auditor’s Code ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁷⁷ Hubbard, L. Ron Scientology: 88 (Handwritten) ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Hubbard, L. Ron JOS 1-G August 1952 Electronics Gives Life to Freud’s Theory ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁸⁰ Hubbard, L. Ron Pab 83 8 May 1956 ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁸¹ Hubbard, L. Ron, Introduction to Scientology Ethics © 1998 L Ron Hubbard Library
⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ © 1996-2000 Church of Scientology International

⁸⁵ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 4 June 1958 Running Valences ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁸⁶ Hubbard, L. Ron PDC Lecture 40 Games/Goals 12 December 1952 © 1978, 1986 by L. Ron Hubbard

⁸⁷ Hubbard, L. Ron Scientology 0-8 © 1988 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁸⁸ Hubbard, L. Ron PDC Lecture 50 SOP: Spacation Step III, Flow Processing, 16 December 1952

⁸⁹ Hubbard, L. Ron Ability Minor 5 mid June 1955 The Hope of Man ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁹⁰ Hubbard, L. Ron PDC 20 Formative State of Scientology, Definition of Logic 6 December 1952 ©1986 L. Ron Hubbard

⁹¹ Hubbard, L. Ron HCO B 6 December 1976RB Illegal PCs, Acceptance Of High Crime PL ©1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library

⁹² Carter, John Sex and Rockets pg 106, 107 © 1999 John Carter and Feral House.

⁹³ http://www.holysmoke.org/ga/admissions.pdf <©? > Hubbard, L. Ron
http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=18&id=136&Itemid=174

⁹⁴ Ibid.

© 2001 Caroline Letkeman