What Happened to the Sea Org? Chapter Five | Print |
Sunday, 06 December 2009 09:13

The "New L. Ron Hubbard"

Interviewer: We're back for our fifth segment of this interview with Nomad. Good day Sir.

Nomad: Nice to be back.

Interviewer: I have some personal questions for you before we go on with the next segment you wish to cover, if you don't mind?

Nomad: Go ahead.

Interviewer: To date, you've given us some excellent insight into the operation of the Sea Org, the machinations of its leader, David Miscavige, and some of the experiences you have endured and others as well. I am curious, I have heard this term "Suppressive Person Declare" - what is that and are you one of those?

Nomad: Scientology has a code of ethics - a sort of penal code which lists the rules of engagement from small infractions, which are misdemeanors, all the way up to the high crimes. If a person breaks certain of those codes, particularly in the zone of crimes or high crimes, they can be declared a Suppressive Person - meaning someone, in the eyes of the Church judicial or executive bodies - who is considered anti-social and more destructive to Scientology than they are constructive. I was never declared. My wife and I endured six months of privation and being treated like criminals, under watch, living apart, so that we could walk out without any false labels appended to us. I wanted my friends, of which I still have many within the Sea Org, to know that we were walking tall - we weren't slinking out the back door and we weren't going to empower the criminal element of Church hierarchy with the means of defaming our names any more than they already had done.

Interviewer: I see.

Nomad: I could engage this particular subject for hours. Believe me. I watched in agony and horror as friends and associates of mine, long term contributing Sea Org members, had their reputations destroyed and then they were discarded from the Sea Org like worthless trash with a brand on their forehead as Suppressive Persons. Truly, the number of actual SPs that make their way into Scientology and the Sea Org are so small as a percentage as to be hardly worth mentioning. The Suppressive Person declare today is abused and is a long stick used by David Miscavige and his regime to defame and depower people whom he considers are threats.

Interviewer: That seems to resonate some other historical moments and organizations who used similar tactics.

Nomad: (Smiles) Indeed.

Interviewer: I have heard that Scientology counselling, or auditing as it is called, addresses past lives. Is that true?

Nomad: Yes.

Interviewer: Have you contacted a past life in such counselling?

Nomad: Many times.

Interviewer: Would you care to elucidate one such instance?

Nomad: Past lives is not as unusual or esoteric a subject as you may think. Scientology doesn't hold a monopoly on it. The fact of the matter is that the Scientology auditing or counselling technique just happens to be the most effective and systematic way of contacting one's past lives - at least that I am aware of. I just read a story on YouTube last night in fact of a young boy, not more than 8 or 9 years old, who, from the age of 3 or 4, was drawing intensely graphic and detailed pictures of World War II American fighter planes dropping bombs on ships. The parents started questioning him and he openly admitted that he had been a pilot in WW II. He knew his name back then, he knew the aircraft carrier he had been on and he knew the details of how his plane was shot down and where he died in a bay near Tokyo. They contacted someone who was on that aircraft carrier in WW II and he remembered that pilot and described exactly the same scenario. In fact, the parents took their son to meet this war veteran and he recognized the old man. But what's going to really light up your smoke here is that they found his sister, an 80 plus year old woman and the young boy, without prompting, knew that she had a painting of her, done by her mother, and only two people in the world ever knew about that painting, him and his other sister, now dead. Past lives is very real.

Interviewer: Fascinating.

Nomad: I'm telling you this so that you don't label it as mystical or incredulous - when you contact a handful of these in Scientology counselling it becomes routine - because believe me - we've been around a long time. As to my case, I was born in the mid 50s, this time around. During the course of one of my counselling sessions I discovered with clarity the life that I had lived just before this one. I was an American agent with the CIA. In 1939, somewhere in my late twenties or early thirties, I joined the OSS - the Over Seas Service - the forerunner to the CIA. I was one of their first batch of recruits. I was sent overseas to spy on the Germans and Nazis and recalled with some vividness some of my adventures of killing German military people during my stay there. When I returned to the states I was used for many operative engagements in America and South America. In 1954, when the cold war, anti-Communist sentiment and Communist witch hunts were boiling over in America, I was informed by my superiors that L Ron Hubbard, "cult" leader of Dianetics and Scientology was on the suspect list of men considered a threat to America. Surprisingly, I was assigned to observe him and to infiltrate his establishment. Now here's where it really gets wierd - I did in fact attend one of his lectures in Phoenix Arizona, called the Phoenix Lectures later. I sat through many of his lectures and I was enthralled. I remembered thinking to myself, if this guy is a threat to America then I am working for the wrong people, and sure enough, as time progressed and my superiors pressed me for more invasive tactics, I hedged and they saw that I had been compromised and acted. The rest of the story has its own intrigue and wasn't pretty - but suffice to say - when I first came across Hubbard at a center some 35 years ago, I was stunned. I was walking out of the center, having just been introduced to Scientology, and they were playing a film of one of his lectures from the late 50s. I heard his voice, turned and watched the film, and thought to myself - "I know that guy". Naturally I discounted it at the time and it wasn't until years later when I contacted the past life incident that I came to understand the connection.

Interviewer: Quite a story.

Nomad: It sounds dramatic, but don't let it get out of context. If you consider that we're spiritual in nature, and that life is just a continuum - a stream of existence - from one body to the next - then it makes sense. But that is something you'll have to determine for yourself. If you're willing to find out about it, it's all there. If you're not, become a "believer" and take the 'safe route'.

Interviewer: My last question for you, on a personal note, before we go on further, is why did you leave the Sea Org and would you consider yourself damaged goods as a result?

Nomad: (Looks off in the distance for a while). I left for several reasons. First of all, the people there became abusive to my wife, mentally, spiritually and physically. She was treated inhumanely. They destroyed her name and reputation over false and trumped up circumstances, and they gave her a choice of taking the most menial job possible - or going to the RPF. Call it my male ego or just my old school idea that a man should stand up for his wife and his friends - but I stepped forward at that point and informed them that they could kindly shove all of it up their asses and we proceeded to leave. Secondly, I had lost myself. I felt like I was floating in a vast ocean without any anchors. On the one hand, I had gained so much insight into life and myself through my counselling and training, and yet on the other hand, as covered in our earlier article on the Marginalized Mind - I was constantly at battle with the forces outside of me which degraded and alloyed my ideals and my concept of what was right. It is like living in a den of criminals - anyone who is NOT criminal would simply walk out. But you're not allowed to do that in the Sea Org - not without forsaking your goals, your life, your friends and your vision. It becomes a war inside of you and it literally tears you apart. It had become so bad for me in the last ten years that I was becoming physically affected. I developed kidney problems and two years later nearly died on an operating table - not just because of the physical aspects but because I was spiritually beaten down. Lastly - I hit a flashpoint in the Sea Org. I saw what they were doing. I saw how Scientology was being destroyed and how they were using "black" Scientology to destroy others. It was time to leave. We needed to get out, get our lives together again, regain our own integrity and causation, and then take the fight back to them on our terms - not theirs.

Interviewer: Your story sounds so much like others I have read, in a different setting, different historical times.

Nomad: The circumstances of organizational oppression, the enslavement of people, the defamation and destruction of people's names and reputation - this is old school stuff. It's been with us since man has existed. The problem of course is that when you are speaking about a religious and philosophical application such as Scientology - no one expects it to happen in that domain. But it did, and it does and now we have two choices - let it run its course and hope for the best - or do something about it.

Interviewer: I'm sorry that we tied up so much time on these other questions but I felt that some insight into you at this point would be valuable.

Nomad: It's ok. Before we end I'd like to touch on one other aspect of how David Miscavige has manipulated Scientology and Scientology. In our earlier interview I showed how up to the end of the 1980s he had a dictatorial death grip on organizations, already then. But here's a short summary of the things he did which effectively made him the new "L Ron Hubbard" because in fact, he set himself up as the new authority in Scientology.

In 1989 - he had RTC issue something called THE RTC MINIMUM STANDARDS. These were the postings or positions in every organization on the planet that had to be filled for RTC to consider an organization worthy of being called one. The postings were artbitrary. It set a bar for Churches which was not based on EACH church's needes, but was a blanket assignment of importances. I was in those churches through to 1990 when this program was being run and it was categorically insane. Church members were going crazy, trying to fill up these postings or positions while they had more pressing matters to engage, but the driving force of management demanded that they do those postings as senior or "command intention". Realize, in so doing, David Miscavige had already elevated HIS orders as senior to every policy letter and program already extant and issued by L Ron Hubbard.

In 1990 - David Miscavige announced a new course called THE KEY TO LIFE. It was a glorified grammar and literacy course, designed to bring about improved reading and communication skills. He mandated that ALL Sea Org members and staff were do this course and he began a campaign to get all Scientology parishioners onto that course. In effect what this accomplished was to have cut a wide valley or chasm in what is called THE BRIDGE. Traditionally, and time-proven too, new people coming into Scientology would follow certain proven paths of instruction and counselling to move them up through higher and higher levels. It's called THE BRIDGE. By introducing his mandate that everyone was to do KEY TO LIFE, he cut the spans of that bridge. He introduced something that diverted thousands and thousands of people away from auditing and training, the making of new counsellors (Auditors) and he started the organizations on a long term downtrend, one that they have never recovered from. 1990 marked the decline of Scientology expansion.

In 1996 - David Miscavige introduces the "GOLDEN AGE OF TECH". It sounds great - and really - everyone was quite electrified - but the undercurrent to that campaign was that HE had discovered all these things wrong with the training of auditors - once again subtly - or not so subtly - alluding to his superiority over L Ron Hubbard who of course had missed all of this in his 36 years of heading up and developing Scientology. David Miscavige introduced a training machine, a simulator, which "standardized" the means of interpreting the E-Meter, and he later even gave a new spin to the definition of Floating Needles - one of the key criteria in determining whether auditing was accomplishing its goal. From 1996 onward, the training of auditors, which he claimed would be FASTER and EASIER actually became extended by months or years. It was agonizing to watch, and what's worse, the ONLY people that could pass on anyone's ability to read a meter was David Miscavige's own personal staff at the Int base. He had in effect taken the training of auditors away from organizations and landed it in his office in Hemet California.

In 2003 - and I am jumping huge gaps here and leaving out a lot more information - he introduced THE BUFFALO STRATEGY. A series of steps - not more than a page long - of the things to be done with EVERY Scientology organization (Church) on the planet. In effect, he had redefined the policy and criteria for an organization, in lieu of thousands of pages of policies and criteria already set by L Ron Hubbard, on what an organization was to be and how to manage them. From 2003 onward, and as of when we left a few years back, you could not, as a management level personnel, get out an order or direction to a lower level organization without somehow referring to or aligning to David Miscaviges "Buffalo Strategy" - and even if you referred to or predicated your orders on policies and evaluations by Mr Hubbard, chances were that they would be rejected as not aligned to COMMAND INTENTION - or rather - DAVID MISCAVIGE. Of course, he made it seem like he was aligned to Mr Hubbard by telling us all that we MUST learn standard management procedures and use them, but the bottom line was that ONLY his orders really counted.

Interviewer: So he really had become the new Messiah?

Nomad: You could say that.

Interviewer: Is this destroying Scientology? Are we going to see an eventual crumbling of the pillars of that religion.

Nomad: Not in an absolute sense. The truths and principles of Scientology are much too pervasive and powerful to be obliterated from this earth. But he will, and is, seriously hampering its growth and the viability of its centers, and more to the point, he is infecting it with another zeitgeist that has nothing to do with Scientology, one that will ultimately have to be weeded out to get it back to some form of purity.

Interviewer: Once again Sir - your candidness and willingness to speak up on this matter is appreciated. Until the next interview - good day.

Nomad: As usual - it's a pleasure.

Written by Outside the Box