Just came upon this thread many months later. No change to any of my preceding comments, but one observation from news today of Danny Masterson’s conviction for rape and his looking at a prison sentence of 30+ years. I can’t say that much interests me, except that the women who accused him are now headed for civil court to sue him for monetary damages plus sue the C of S, which they claim forced them (as they were members of the church) to not take Masterson to court but use internal justice procedures. They eventually reported him to police, anyway, but the judge did not permit them to introduce evidence of the Church’s blocking them from reporting Masterson as prosecutorial evidence of rape. However, now that the legal case is settled, the Church is hugely exposed to monetary damages in civil court from its insistence on these women using internal ethics lines and deferring their legal claims while that avenue was being used. I bet a jury awards them gazillions – and the church might take them back if they were to buy services with that money.

Copy that (all you say).

Yes, I think the church is headed to oblivion. I don’t so much mind that as I do that I continue to think that the philosophy and its applications are sound, certainly needed in today’s world, and have no real organization to promulgate them. The “Independent Field” is mostly a scattered collection of, frankly, squirrels, for lack of a better term to describe individuals who went by innumerable M/U’s in attempting to study and understand Scn., and who also probably had many W/H’s they never could communicate for the most basic reason of all – the only crime in the universe being to communicate – and so they blew eventually and now miraculously “discover new tech”. Of course, that behavior was given plenty of motivation by – as you put it, merciless bullying by egoistic org terminals who (just a hunch here) could be nothing but abject failures outside an accepting and empowering group, be that group the church or Hells Angels or Nazi SS or Trump’s base.

Very interesting story, Bob, including you took ASHO to Small Claims Court when they disappeared the Briefing Course. Yet still C of S won. Makes me think of a casino where the motto commonly is, “The house always wins.” So sad and bizarre, how in the end NOT ethical this is. Well, it keeps catching up with C of S. The group is living its consequences.

Good points. Though I got a lot out of Scn., I suffered and caused others to suffer from my crazy monomania while “on lines” at the San Francisco org. I had recently gotten married and had my first two daughters and was working in SF. I was on a “Foundation Schedule” so M-F 7-10 and often also Sat and Sun all day. This worked a lot of hardship on my wife who was left with the young kids while I pursued my “eternity”. Such crap. And the registrars. We had one bull reg in SF in particular who would call to me just as I was about to exit after class (sending a chill up my spine) and pitch me my next service and I would more often than not dutifully pull out a credit card and run it up some more. Adding to my wife’s concerns was this financial burden and we had to declare bankruptcy 10 years into our marriage, with now 3 daughters and a home. Finally, I finished the last training I could do at the SF org and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I walked out that door for the last time. Perhaps needless to say, despite her almost limitless patience, my wife and I eventually divorced – and who could blame her for wanting to leave? I had paid for the SHSBC some years prior. I did honestly want to do that action, and even bought the 400 lectures and listened to them multiple times. However, when I finally retired from my job and could do the BC, poof, it was gone. I asked for my money back and was refused. I then actually sued ASHO in Small Claims Court in LA and their atty. convinced the judge that I had waived my right for a refund based upon some really fine print at the bottom of one receipt I had signed for something at ASHO that said by signing I was waiving any future claim on the CoS. Tricked even at the end. Too bad the Church got so corrupt – as stupid as some of LRH’s policies turned out to be, maybe had they been implemented by ethical people, they might have worked, but in the hands of borderline criminals, they were weaponized to extort.

To Bob Gokay, I am right there with you: I enjoyed every service I ever did. I was only ever a public. I did Levels training up through Level IV, and received auditing up to Clear, including Super Power and all 3 L’s plus some other Flag rundowns. I genuinely enjoyed each service and consider that I have walked away with lasting knowledge and stability.

I still have many years of debt to address. I left because I could not stand the rising tide of bullying (even for a person who is so-called “upstat”) and, of course, ridiculous demand for a person to keep going into gargantuan amounts of debt they will struggle mightily to pay off. Also, agree to go into debt for others, even though that is “off-Policy.” At one point, I had a handful of complete strangers (Flag public) across credit cards of mine, absorbing many hours each month to track down, negotiate how to keep their payments coming in, tabulating, and communicating their interest and principal amounts to them.

It’s a real tangled mess and, to me, such a shame because there are highly useful things there, which do transfer to other areas of life, such as being able to duplicate someone. I improved my capacity to listen to and duplicate others. I quickened my mental ability to come up with solutions. Those things help me in both personal and business activities.

While in, I wrote many reports. My gosh, if that was a salaried job, I’d be a millionaire. The time and care I put into writing reports—noting which reference, by page and sentence, was being violated. Only a few times did a report I wrote affect a change; mostly no change. That, too, got me to see this group, particularly on the fundraising and rege-ing, is firm and fixed. Bizarrely, all that disastrous unhappy behavior is by design and BY DIRECT ORDER. It is written into the principles and policies by founder Hubbard himself. This to me is confounding.

When we leave, to one degree or another, that is what I find a person needs to recover from. I call this “twisted pretzel logic.” You are convinced you are becoming “more able,” but you can’t really afford to eat well or visit a dentist or keep your home or car in good repair, because (instead) your debts are so mountainous and you are a slave to these, if not outright ending up in court with bill collectors or declaring bankruptcy. Moreover—which is not the result of a sane group— the volume of your debts correlates NOT to your earning capacity or what can be achieved in your current profession. Instead, it’s all speculative, to take on all this debt with the hope such behaviors (because it is in the name of Scientology) will “open up your flows.”

This reality is devastating and deeply humiliating. Yet when you next show up at your org, there are registrars or an IAS or ideal fundraiser lined up to do it all again. It is financial rape. You are studied, targeted, strategized, stalked, and completely overwhelmed in a way that is, in my opinion, criminal.

So sad how much these sordid practices, and their devastating outcomes, eclipse the gems that are there.

To each his own. I got a lot out of basic Scientology courses like the Comm course and student hat and had some amazing experiences and gains on very basic auditing still think the basic spiritual philosophy is valid. Obviously, you did not have the same experience. I eventually ran afoul of some bad terminals – enough of them to leave the CoS, but still value the religious philosophy of Scn and its applications.

Trotsky, like Hubbard, was an authoritarian who had no problem being ruthless and persecuting his enemies in pursuit of his theories and ideals, believing that the ends justify the means. Both set the stage for successors to take it to the next extreme.

Dave is just doing what Stalin did in the USSR after he expelled Leon Trotsky. He took Lenin’s ideas and twisted them into his own delusional version of them(yes, Ken Delusion, I called them DELUSIONAL!).
This is all that the toxic dwarf is doing with Scientology.