There are odd things that happen in the world of Scientology. One of them I experienced way back in 1975. While it isn’t an example of abuse or injustice characteristic of that cult, I like to make written records of such experiences, publicly accessible, so that in the future historians or others can learn something about the day-to-day life of Scientologists. How did they live and view the world as part of a group that has caused so much harm.
I was in Copenhagen at the time. I was taking courses at the Advanced Organization & Saint Hill Europe (AOSH EU), which is located there. In the byzantine organizational structure of Scientology there are ‘missions’ (the lowest echelon, allowed to sell introductory courses and low-level auditing), local ‘orgs’ (allowed to sell and deliver low-level auditor training and auditing), and ‘continental service orgs’ (such as the one in Copenhagen, allowed to sell and deliver higher-level auditor training and auditing, including the ‘operating thetan’ levels).
I had gotten out of the army a couple of months earlier, joined staff in a Scientology mission in Heilbronn, Germany, and got sent to Copenhagen for training for my post. At the time I was only the third staff member in that mission. It was wanted that I would become the head of Division 1 of the mission, and so, in their lingo, I would ‘establish’ the place and make it grow.
In the Scientology system of management, Division 1 has some similarities to human resources in a business in the real world. That part of the organization is supposed to recruit new staff members, get them trained to do their jobs, run a communication system within the organization, and discipline the staff members, including monitoring their productivity on a weekly basis.
My training included a course on how to operate a ‘Hubbard Electrometer’ (E-meter), another course on how one should deal with suppressive persons and potential trouble sources (PTS/SP Course), a course on the basics of the Scientology ‘management technology’, and the ‘full hat’ of the person in charge of Division 1 at AOSH EU. A full hat is a course which supposedly includes studying all the ‘policy letters’ and ‘bulletins’ applicable to a particular post in the organization, plus drills on how to perform certain actions. I was 23 years old and all of that was new to me at the time.
To a Scientologist, and particularly to someone who has been on staff in any Scientology organization, the paragraphs above are common knowledge. I have attempted to limit the myriad terms and acronyms that have special meaning in that alternate universe.
After I had completed the aforementioned courses, the final step was an apprenticeship where I worked in the actual Division 1 of AOSH EU. That was a bit strange, as all of the staff in that org were also members of the Sea Organization, and I was just a trainee from a small mission in Germany. I was performing actions as a staff member of Division 1, with all the authority that went with it.
Anyway, the guy who was the head of Division 1 (the HCO Area Secretary, which terminology I won’t try to explain) was an American, a somewhat goofy guy who was trying to act like an executive. His wife, also American, was his direct senior, holding the post of ‘Supercargo’ (now that’s a weird title). She sometimes would walk into the office where we were working chanting, “rapidity of particle flow!” That sounds like a sensible thing to do, right? Those words are part of a well-known quote from Mr. Hubbard about how to be powerful. Well, that’s an oversimplification, as the word ‘power’ in Scientology has all kinds of significance beyond what garden-variety humanoids know. Hubbard seemed somewhat obsessed with it.
All of the above is just to provide context for the odd thing I experienced. One day I was walking down the stairs with the head of Division 1 going to lunch. Coming up the stairs was a young woman carrying a new-born baby. The guy I was with stopped and began talking to the baby. While shaking the baby’s hand, he was saying something like, “Hi! How are you doing? It is so good to see you again!” I wasn’t sure what was going on.
I came to learn that there had been another Sea Org member in Copenhagen who was posted in the publications organization there (similar to Bridge Publications in Los Angeles, except for Europe). There is also a continental management organization in Copenhagen. That Sea Org member was a woman who had unfortunately become terminally ill. I think she got some kind of cancer. She knew the other woman with the baby, also in the Sea Org, whom we had met on the stairs. When the one woman was pregnant, the other woman was nearing the end of her life. The prognosis from some doctor was that she would be dying soon. She decided that she would be reincarnated as the other woman’s baby when it was born.
A key belief in Scientology is that a person, any person, has lived, and will live in the future, many, many lifetimes. What might be regarded as one’s self in the regular world, in Scientology is a spiritual being called a thetan. This entity lives in or around the body and is the actual awareness and intelligence of the person. It is believed that the thetan potentially can regain the ability to move outside of the body and still perceive and think. At death, the thetan of necessity has to leave that body. Sometimes Scientologist use the expression ‘dropping the body’ for dying. The belief is that the thetan will then ‘pick up’ another body in order to live their next lifetime.
The lady with the cancer decided she was going to be proactive about it. In general, in the teachings of Scientology, most people have no memory of leaving their old body and taking over a new one. There are anecdotal accounts of people supposedly remembering past lives (like in the Bridey Murphy story). One of the goals of Scientology is for an individual to achieve the ability to recall earlier existences and have control over future ones. So the woman who knew her illness would soon be fatal wrote her will. In it she left her belongings, or at least the ones important to her, to the soon-to-be-born baby. Then as a spirit she would become that baby and still have her belongings. It wasn’t much, as most Sea Org members have very little in terms of money and possessions. But it was the idea of it that mattered.
I have known many Scientologists who believed that in earlier lifetimes they were Jesus or Julius Caesar or a farmer in medieval England or the captain of a spaceship or a soldier fighting Xenu’s forces or countless other identities. After all, we have all been around for at least 4 quadrillion years, right? I even knew a young woman who thought she had been one of Hubbard’s body thetans.
Among the Sea Org members in Copenhagen word got around that the baby was the woman they had known and who had recently passed away. Hence, the bizarre greeting from the Division 1 guy upon seeing the new-born baby for the first time.
In retrospect, I cringe at how awful it would be for a young child growing up to be treated in that way. Imagine from a young age people treating you and talking to you as if you had some fixed identity, that you were actually some person from the past, and not allowed to develop into your own self. OK, so I take back what I said at the beginning of this piece. That is a form of Scientology abuse.
— Bruce Hines
Moorpark scores!
Here’s an update from the Moorpark mission, which is making gains from its new slogan!
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That really is a form of abuse. From birth, a child is raised to act in certain ways. If they are told they absolutely have to be a certain thing when they grow up, like, say, the leader of Scientology instead of a pilot like Quentin,or even the monarch of a country, like the royal family, it would not be good for their mental health.
On a lighter note, there is a typo in the Moorpark promo, that should read Matt Plesch…resignededly signs his mission staff contract.
Bruce Hines understands the $cieno practice of predestination. As for all of those past lives, I call total bovine excrement on that meme. Just tell someone they have past lives and introduce some device to push that thought and see what comes out.
Be it a crystal ball or an e-meter, the swami of stupidication can get a few of the marks to jump into that boat. All of $cientology is based on getting those few who can be guided into the $cieno mind set into the Clampire. Be it for money or fealty, the end product is a programmed minion who tries to sell the Hubster's scam to others.