Subject: Re: Letter to D. Miscavige

On 21 Apr 1996 13:08:09 -0700, jimbo@sonic.net (Jim Bianchi) wrote:

>I think that (dealing with unscrupulous people) is exactly the kind
>of thing I'm worried about. Hey, the process of a 'sec check' is to find out
>the things a person has done in this and any 'past lives' that are suppres-
>sive, right? I see little difference between that and dealing with unscrup-
>ulous people.

I don't think that sec checks is the answer to unscrupulous people, because if it were so, the Church of Scientology wouldn't persist in such actions as dirty tricks and other things to get their way. Hubbard thought that sec checking would free people up from past moral codes. He felt that if a person has a withhold that it would stick him to that code, such as being a "Catholic". So, sometimes a sec check would go something like, "As a Catholic, did you ever lie during a confession?" Or just, "Did you ever lie to a priest?"

What auditing did was free people up from fixed ideas. But then Hubbard inserted a new belief system. Like, "all squirrels are bad so one must do whatever they can to stamp them out." Hubbard explained this by saying that altering the tech is bad, squirrels alter the tech, so squirrels are bad.

It all kind of makes sense, until you think about it. Hubbard didn't like squirrels because they were competition. Although he constantly changed the tech himself, he couldn't let others think it was OK for them to change the tech, because then he wouldn't be "source." If there was more than one source, he might not get all of the business (and the credit).

I know that I didn't think all these through when I was in Scientology, I just took what he said to be true. Squirrels weren't good because they altered the tech. OK. Sounds fair. I thought the tech was good, so squirrels were bad.

>Sorry, 'sec checks' always reminded me of the (in)famous McCarthy
>days -- loyalty oaths, 'are you now, or have you ever been...?' and so on.
>A person could be completely ruined, totally destroyed, merely by someone
>asking "gee, I wonder if so-and-so is a communist?" Or the Spanish Inquis-
>ition, when even hesitating when replying to the question "Is Jesus Christ
>God?" was seen as evidence you were a heretic and subject to being purified
>by burning at the stake -- for your own good, of course. As I said, any
>method or technology that CAN BE misused by unscrupulous people, WILL BE.
>Why give it a chance to be by instituting something as personally intrusive
>as 'sec checks?'
 

Well, knocking out sec checking was supposed to have been one of the big crimes of which David and I were guilty. I agree with you Jim. I think that sec checks are intrusive and I stopped doing them after I left the C of S. If a person feels comfortable with you and there is something that is bothering him, rest assured, given the opportunity, that person will tell you all about it. People usually don't need much encouragement to tell you what exactly is on their mind

>Lord Acton said: "Power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt
>absolutely." Seems to me the goal of a group truly acting to better the lot
>of humanity would be to diminish corruption by spreading any power around as
>much as possible.

Can you give me examples of this working in the past?

>I don't think the subjects of this procedure were officially told
>this before their 'trial,' but even if they were, I can't get it out of my
>head that such a process could so easily be abused and that, as we've seen
>in the history of scn, the so-called benefits are NOT worth the misery, ill >feelings, poverty, and general degredation resulting.

It is logical to think that a person would feel degraded after a sec check, but I don't know how many Scientologists would agree with you on this. If the auditor doesn't insist upon the pc answering things that "aren't charged"; meaning that aren't bothering the pc, the pc will generally feel better after a sec check. The times when a person feels worse is when an auditor insists that the person hasn't come clean when he really has come clean. Or, making the person tell embarrassing details about things which aren't bothering the person.

Another problem with auditing, and I'm not limiting it just to sec checks, is that a person tends to go out and make the same mistakes over again. This is a mixed blessing. A person can have a failure and then have a session to relieve the bad feelings. After the session, the person feels great, and goes out and does the same thing again. Well, there are times when this is appropriate and times when it isn't appropriate. If the person had a "cognition" in the session, he may have learned something and decided not to do it again. But the reason why the person had the failure in the first place could be that he didn't understand something or just plain didn't know how to do it or was following someone else's bad advice. So the person needs to learn more and not just go repeat the same thing.

I am not a psychologist, but I believe that person centered therapy runs into the same problems. It works to the degree that the person is intelligent and well-informed to start with.

But in the case of Scientology, the situation is worsened because "criticism" is pooh-poohed and so are "wog" ideas. The pc is cut off from outside influence or information, and he is just directed to Scientological principles, which may or may not be what is right for the situation. "That is just entheta." "Don't read ars because it is just entheta..." "Scientology is the only route to total freedom..." If you disagree with something, "What is your misunderstood word?"

>Many (if not most) of the terribly inhuman acts done throughout
>history have been done by people who thought they were "helping to save
>mankind by unburdening people's sins."
>

I couldn't agree with you more.

Julie Mayo