Why Lisa McPherson is Dead

When you are a scientologist, you believe that good auditing always produces good results.  In fact, when someone has bad results from auditing, it is always because there is something wrong with that person, or the auditing was not done properly.  That’s right.   Let review:

1. If auditing goes well, it is due to brilliance of L. Ron Hubbard.

2. If auditing goes poorly, the person receiving the auditing must have something wrong with them.  This could be a variety of things, but most commonly it’s their evil purposes, hidden crimes or knowing connection to someone who isn’t fully on board with operation “Clear the Planet”.

3. Or, if auditing goes poorly, the auditing was not done properly.  Technically, if the auditor failed to detect the problem with the person being audited, that was imperfect auditing, so in the case of number 2 above, it’s actually the auditor’s fault as well.

NEVER could it possibly be that auditing does not always produce 100% positive results.  NEVER, if auditing resulted in something not 100% positive, a psychotic episode for example, could this possibly be because auditing doesn’t uniformly produce 100% positive results.

Auditing produces 100% positive results.  Got it?  Good.

In Transcendental Meditation, people reportedly can have some really negative results from prolonged meditation.  I’m talking severe muscle spasms, a spaced-out feeling that persists indefinitely, and other things one wouldn’t want.  To an objective observer, it’s obvious that these people need a break from meditating for hours per day.  Let’s cut it back, right?  Wrong!  These people are instead encouraged to continue.  They are told it’s a good thing that these things are happening and that by continuing, they will make progress.  “Something good is happening!” they cheerfully opine while the poor guy winces in pain.

Similarly, in scientology, when something isn’t going right, it is said that something has “turned on” and the only thing that will turn it off is to continue.

It’s interesting to read about how L. Ron dealt with some of this madness in the early days.  Here’s an excerpt from a book he wrote in the early 50’s:

“It is not uncommon to find the preclear (who is the thetan) quite raving mad under the false ‘veneer’ of social and educational stimulus-response training. And… that the preclear, while behaving quite normally in the Body-Plus-Thetan state, becomes irrational in the course of auditing. But despite this, the preclear is actually being far more sane and rational than ever before. And the moment he discovers himself as himself, as the source of energy and personality and beingness of a body, he becomes physically and mentally better. Thus an auditor must not be dismayed at the course of tone, but should simply perservere until he has the thetan up into rational range. A raving mad thetan is far more sane than a normal human being. But then, as you audit, observe it for yourself.”

— LRH, Scientology: 8-80, page 94

This type of encouragement to continue despite what one is seeing in the person you are trying to help, to continue confidently trusting that the techniques you’ve been trained in work all the time, this is what killed Lisa McPherson.  It’s not that the people didn’t care, it’s that they believed.  And when things got so bad that their belief was shaken, they were quite fearful of suggesting that it wasn’t working.  In fact, she had to be unresponsive and seemingly dying for some time (approximately 3 days) before finally someone said “this isn’t working!” and tried to get her help.

Too late for Lisa.  Not too late for you or your loved ones.  If you haven’t yet, maybe it’s time to stand up and say “This isn’t working!”

Scientology Ethics – The Overt Act-Motivator Sequence

Many things I encountered in Scientology were very easy for me to agree with and adopt as doctrine for myself.  For example, the idea that if you commit an overt (harmful act) against another and keep that hidden within yourself, there are consequences.  It’s not true that what you don’t know can’t hurt you, and if someone has done something to you that you don’t know about, and they are feeling bad about doing it, your relationship with that person will be adversely affected unless you manage to get them to confess.   I had experienced that first hand prior to being in Scientology.

I could give many other examples of common sense advice I found in Scientology and adopted as doctrine.  I think these “common sense” principles you find in your introduction to Scientology represent the first part of a careful gradient.  First, you are given things which are easy to accept.  After a while, you are accepting every word LRH ever said or wrote as a higher truth than what you can find anywhere else.

One thing I tucked away in my mind and chose to ignore was The Overt-Motivator Sequence.  It was never real to me, so I decided to look for it, but not dwell on it too much.   Once I examined the evidence, presented so clearly by the New Yorker, that LRH had completely fabricated his “heroism” in World War II, I was looking at things with different eyes.  Re-reading about The Overt-Motivator Sequence, I realized how far gone I was by the time I first read it.  It’s pure fantasy.

Here’s what it says in Introduction to Scientology Ethics, 1998 edition, page 32:

Overt Act -Motivator Sequence – when a person commits an overt, he will then believe he’s got to have a motivator or that he has had a motivator.  For instance, if he hits somebody, he will tell you immediately that he has been hit by the person, even when he has not been.

Or when one has a motivator, he is liable to hang himself by committing an overt.

If Joe hits Bill, he now believes he should be hit by Bill.  More importantly, he will actually get a somatic to prove he has been hit by Bill, even though Bill hasn’t hit him.  He will make this law true regardless of the actual circumstances.  And people go around all the time justifying, saying how they’ve been “hit by Bill, hit by Bill, hit by Bill.”

As someone who has witnessed a number of physical fights, including ones where it was completely one-sided, this is just not the case.  If Joe hits Bill and Bill is out cold on the floor, Joe celebrates.  Joe does a little dance.  Joe brags that Bill didn’t put a scratch on him.  Joe knows he’s committed an overt against Bill, but he’s happy about it.

To extend this lunacy, let’s look at what is in the Scientology Handbook under this same heading:

For example, if you hear a wife saying how the husband beats her every day, look under her pillow for the bat that she uses because sure as the devil, if she is saying that the yellow ball has hit the red ball, notice that the red ball had to hit the yellow ball first.

Wow, how far gone did I have to be to read that and not say to myself: “No, don’t look under her pillow. Call the authorities!”

The Overt-Act Motivator Sequence, just like most everything else you find in Scientology Ethics, is about control.  If you can make an individual believe that their criticism of the church, LRH or the Tech, is due to their overts, then you can cave them in and get them to renounce their own feelings and “knowingness” about this subject.  You can stop them from thinking critically about the subject in the first place (squash those thoughts – they indicate you have overts!  You’ve been spending too much time with the kids and not enough volunteering!).  You can more easily convince those around the critical person that their criticism is delusional.  Yes, that’s the easiest way to not hear the critical voice, to just say “they have overts” and keep the blinders on.  That makes it so easy to justify not employing one’s own powers of thinking to the substance of their complaints.

Scientology Ethics – They Work!

It’s fantastic to regain your powers of critical thinking and revisit the wonderful world of Scientology Ethics, minus the Kool-aid.  Let’s take the Suppressive Person as an example.

First, the definition itself was created to obscure and remove curiosity about another term from our minds.  Let’s see, isn’t there already a term that the “Wog” world uses for someone who is really evil?  Yes, it’s sociopath.  I found a nice profile for the sociopath on this page.    You’ll find the section below on that page if you visit.

Other Related Qualities:

1. Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
2. Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
3. Authoritarian
4. Secretive
5. Paranoid
6. Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
7. Conventional appearance
8. Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
9. Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim’s life
10. Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim’s affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
11. Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
12. Incapable of real human attachment to another
13. Unable to feel remorse or guilt
14. Extreme narcissism and grandiose
15. May state readily that their goal is to rule the world

Read a book or two about L. Ron Hubbard, study Scientology, the Sea Org and “The Church”, and you’ll find evidence that Hubbard had all of these qualities.

So, let’s say you are a sociopath, and so you have no conscience and you want to get people under your control.  Let’s say also that you read a lot of psychology books (LRH had a lot of psychology books, lest anyone forget the wheelbarrow full of them his son rolled out onto the stage during th Clearing Congress lectures) and you know that your condition is well known to people in that field.  You wouldn’t want people reading about that, would you?  I can tell you that in all my years in Scientology, having never read what a sociopath was, I thought that the definition of a Suppressive Person certainly covered it.  In that way, just creating the definition and having that definition occupy the space in my mind for “how to tell if someone is evil”, acted as a powerful control mechanism.