Extraordinary Scientology Expansion Happening Right Now!

08 Jul 2001

Noumenon<noumenon@freedom.net>

I'll tell you what, Mr. TravisSargent. I’ve seen this same message passed on over and over throughout the scientology community via email, etc. recently You do a good job of cut-and-paste. And for people like me, who’ve been intimately involved with the subject for many years, maybe you and others don’t realize how tired and old this all sounds year after year. Doesn’t DM or anyone else in management realize there comes a point when maybe even the most ardent supporters just don’t listen anymore?

I don’t even know why I’m still around anymore myself except for amusement. I mean the smirks on some faces *within* scientology when they see something like what you wrote is quite telling about how this PR job just isn’t working anymore. My personal experience is that only those who are blindly willing to believe anything they are told buy into your story. And it’s *these* people that have actually abandoned even Hubbard’s own writing on personal integrity.

"Nothing is true for you unless you have observed it yourself." Well, that isn’t necessarily what is practiced by most of our finest, loyal followers, now is it?! It’s not really what management wants either.

I can tell you for a fact that there are *not* 1,613 new missions worldwide. There aren’t even close to that many *total* missions worldwide. Want to see the mission birthday game weekly newsletter? How about the recent Centre magazine from SMI?

And I always love how there are never any real numbers and facts on all the "new expansion." More people have started ot1 since May than all of last year? Come on, man, use some logic and actual observation here. Just consider that last year could have been a dumper of a year for that stat. Maybe it doesn’t take much to beat last year. And have you been in to AOLA lately? Hey, they got some people there on course, but the best ever? I don’t think so.

And are all sea org orgs continuing to *maintain* saint hill size? Or is it like orgs I know that make it there for a week, a month or whatever through inflated brief efforts to "get the stat" and then it slips back down to normal lower levels?! But, now they can be called saint hill size. It’s kind of commonplace for this sort of stat-us push for the pure sake of status. (I know of WISE companies that pushed their stats to make "model of admin know-how" award status - they met all the criteria for the week or month, and then never again after that. But, *now* they tout themselves as model winners to new employees and their fellow scientologists, etc. to impress.)

"Buying buildings" is probably the most observably true stat for scientology, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on that as a literal and true sign of "unprecedented expansion across the globe."

Okay, I'm getting off the point. My main point is this. How many years, time after time, event after event, have you heard these two following statements? "The upper end of the bridge is opened up like never before." -and- "With a recent discovery, all stops have been removed."

It might work for the newer kids on the block, but I’ve seen ot7 completions coming and going for what seems decades now. I’ve seen the top of the bridge opened up before - too many times to count. How many versions of ot7 has there been since I became a scientologist in 1972 - three, four, five? Who keeps count? And we’ve had ot8 released a long time ago (opened up the iron curtain if you believe some people’s wild accounts). What do we have now - "new new really new ot7?" Or "ot8a?" Can we call it "like totally new ot8 this time really" for this most recent work they do on that level?

Every year or, in some cases, every few months there is a new discovery and therefore a new solution for "removing all the stops." You know this to be true and it is easily provable. These pat little statements of the stops have been removed and the top of the bridge is *now* opened up are heard every year for literally decades. You want me to pull out some magazine issues from earlier years that tout service being speeded up and streamlined? Doesn’t anyone that writes this stuff even have a brain to wonder if their audience might just be thinking "hey, wait a minute, I thought it was already speeded up and streamlined! That’s what I was told six years ago. Wassup with that?!"

Management doesn’t realize they create more questions with their same old tired lines of promotion. Is it an ongoing admission of incompetence and knowing that it’s slow and complicated? And that we say we keep fixing it and then we announce yet again that we fixed it again because we didn’t really fix it before? Remember this is true administrative *technology* on a par with the total freedom technology, right!

Yep, once again we have discovered the stops and removed them. Once again we have opened the top of the bridge. Once *again* we have ot7 completions. Big yawn.

My personal opinion after so many years of still being "in" the church - very closely working in it - is summed up this way. There *are* some self-help concepts that have worked for people in scientology. These self-help concepts are not altogether unique to scientology and not unheard of outside of the subject in one form or another.

(Reminds me of the uneducated argument someone made here once about how Hubbard *began* the self-help movement, which is nowhere close to the truth. For time’s sake, I’ll just give one example. Florence Scovell Shinn was just one of a much earlier group of people who wrote on the topic of self-help. Among other titles, she wrote a book in 1925 called "The Game of Life and How to Play It." No guys, "life is a game" isn’t unique to Hubbard/scientology, though it reads that way in his books, doesn’t it.)

So, there's some self-help and some good that *could* come from the more basic and normally used concepts. Where it goes off the rails is when we get to the part about "total freedom" and the absolute technology to achieve such a thing. This isn’t about "belief" - it very clearly states and is sold as an exact, researched, step-by-step *technology* for personal total freedom. That promise, and the fact that a *lot* of money is charged for it, is where it all goes wrong. And yet no otness anywhere as defined in the materials themselves. You do the math.

I know many people who are still "believing" that there will be total freedom - who have "faith" that there is total freedom available in the orgs. But, that’s not what Hubbard says. He and the staff state that it’s not about belief. It’s a fact and it’s technology. I’ve used and seen that line used for years and years. "We don’t want you to believe. We want you to exercise personal integrity and what is true for you is what you yourself observe. And results and workability is all that matters."

Well, too many folks are observing that there’s not a *technology* for "total freedom" or anything close. Hubbard lived and died as any other man. People in scientology live and die as everyone else in the world. Same problems, same successes, same good or bad health, and on and on. So, stop carrying on the lie. If you say that personal integrity is paramount, then *really* use it for *all* you see and hear in scientology - even from the top management yourself. No one said you have to believe what they say. Hubbard himself said so.

And you can’t tell me to go read a book or that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve spent nearly my entire adult life in this subject, read every book and am much higher "trained" than most. I am speaking from actual experience and truly from my heart on this matter. I’m surprised I still have such a big sense of humor! But, I think I do because I am truthful with myself and don’t take myself so seriously. And that’s the real problem - too many scientologists I know (such as your own writings) take themselves way, way too seriously. Self-importance is dangerous and blinds one from observing. You (we) are *not* better than everyone else and just maybe we *don’t* have it all figured out. Ever even consider that??

Damn! I don’t post here often and when I do, I tend to carry on forever! LOL! Sorry and thanks for listening. I just get going when I see such crap as this PR line from you, TravisSargent. And I know the truth because I’m still there. And I don’t know what’s worse - playing these lines on the people inside hoping they’re gullible enough to believe yet another year, or playing these lines on the rest of the world hoping they’ll buy it. In both cases, observable truths work much, much better.

Alfred E. Noumenon

"The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action." - Albert Einstein