Filling in some of the earlier history, before Bruce was there - when I arrived as an RPF member in 1983 we lived at the same location, then called Happy Valley. Happy, as in the Funny Farm, from the famous song "They're coming to take me away, ha ha!" A reference to the practice of sequestering people there who needed to be isolated from the general population of Sea Org. Imagine being too nuts for the Int Base!
At that time there were the ruins of the earlier uses of the valley, some old movie sets and a ramshackle old house. There was a library, still stocked with shelves and books. In back was a swimming pool, that was never filled with water. They put bunks in the library and that was my first home at the Int Base. Heaven for me, with my head next to my beloved books. It was the Biography section. I rocked out with the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini using my flashlight.
The RPF at that time was a little odd, even for the Sea Org. It is literally impossible to escape the RPF legally unless you are allowed study time. Even by Sea Org standards it is considered cruel to disallow study time, during which one confesses all one's crimes and becomes sincerely repentant. But the Int Base RPF was purely a work force to get the base ready for Hubbard's return, working almost 24/7. There were course rooms and student graphs, but nobody ever used them. We spent weeks at a time never even seeing our bunks, catching catnaps in the Monotherm insulation in the attic or in a random closet.
There is a Hubbard dictum, called an "Advice", about the Int Base. One of the statements in it is something like "There is no RPF there". Hence the move to Happy Valley. Busses brought us in through the Soboba Indian Reservation, who viewed us with understandable suspicion. Especially after one of their children was killed by a bus.
But even the need to build houses, music and film studios, audio and film production lines was not enough to justify a purely slave work force forever. Finally they allowed some of us to accept the 1983 amnesty and become staff of a sort. Called the Gold Construction Team or GCT, we were sort of staff members so no need to give us five hours of study time. Same schedule, same living quarters, but sometimes a day off! It was Gary Wiese, as Chief Officer Gold, who asked us in a big meeting in the Garage about what we would call ourselves. We came up with the name.
After that, time went on and more staff were assigned to the RPF. So it was a mixed bag at Happy Valley, some GCT and some RPF. Then somebody got bent out of shape about the two groups living together and moved some of us to the Base. The Library became the courseroom for the RPF. It was too hot to close the doors and windows, no AC, so often tarantulas would wander in to join us.
Bruce didn't mention the rattlesnakes. A $5 bonus to kill one, though really they were here before we were.
After Hubbard died the thrill kind of went out of the idea of getting the Base ready for his return, but lots of staff still worked on the strange projects of the Gold Base. Making movies that no-one will see, people writing songs that voices never shared - no one dared - disturb the sounds - of Silence (Sorry Paul Simon),
Mostly vanity projects for Dave, and as an excuse for not doing his main job. He was the one who was supposed to achieve the "All Clear", the legal handling for Hubbard's issues so he could come out of hiding. As long as that was hopelessly bugged, he could still hide behind the notion that the "base is not ready". Like the famous Winchester Mystery House, construction could go on endlessly to prevent anyone from turning an accusing gaze on Dave himself.
Just an example - Hubbard said he would need to produce ten music albums. One for each of the volumes of his science fiction epic, "Mission Earth". So, of course, we needed a real Music Studio. Four floating slabs on vibration isolators, a mix board by the famous George Massenburg, echo chambers, all kinds of expensive vintage equipment, enough to make any modern-day musician laugh their heads off as they cut tracks in their converted bedrooms.
Hundreds of people worked thousands of hours to make this happen. One of the Mission Earth albums was produced. It is a total joke, despite the excellent performances of Edgar Winter and so on. As we say in the electronics design field, it was a Dumb Idea in the First Place.
In the 90s the story of Happy Valley continues on as Bruce laid out. Never a truly happy place, but at least today no slaves or children.
All this went on while us clueless “public” Blithely took our courses, got our auditing and attended events where we were fed propaganda and bought it all. And the Sea Org is still preying upon young adults who were raised in Scientology.
Bruce, I’m glad your son got out. There are many ways to heal from the traumatic experiences. I’m still doing that regarding my own progress. At this time minus my son and daughter who disconnected from me six years ago. And the beat goes on.
I worked in the FLO. This base had its own school for the families that worked there. The lengths management (aka David Miscavige) went to to prevent parents from seeing their kids was unreal. People would get punished for trying to use the designated family time (Sunday AM, as Bruce said) and if they didn't receive punishment, they were at least held in contempt and accused of being off-purpose.
I know one of the more prominent execs at the FLO who never went to see her kids, even when she was allowed to. She was often promoted, I don't know if it was correlated.
Some of the worst situations I saw were when one parent left the SO, there was only one on base and the child was traumatized. No one explained what happened to Mom, Dad was not allowed to call and the ill-equipped nannies had to shoulder all the child-rearing. Same with the RPF where the parent is suddenly separated from the child for years, no communication allowed, and no handling or help for the child.
Church management also went to great lengths to break those parent/child bonds by canceling Christmas, SO Day, and other days designed to be family days.
I supervised the Purification RD and often had these kids on the program. They would turn in daily reports. These were 11.12-year-old kids who could not write, spell, or print legibly. Apparently, someone found an advice from LRH saying cursive writing should not be taught so no penmanship was. The rest of the program was similarly substandard.
And...... this was touted as THE WAY to raise your child. Foster their independence, etc. Sea Org parents bought into this and only discovered too late what kind of education/child-rearing their child was getting.
I could go on and on but I don't understand how it was decided that not communicating with your child was pro-survival. It goes against all the basic tenets of SCN, ARC being the first.
Thank you for another good article, Bruce. Hopefully someday, this will pay off.
The "bases" for Sea Org organizations needed to be full fledged like Military bases, with all needs better taken care of. Single "soldiers", families, housing, entertainment, food, education, all these things would force Sea Org to downsize into more central "bases" around the world.
Schedules have to be like on military bases for all concerned.
But Scientology is just too small time, not enough people capable enough to run like a full fledged Military Base.
Scheduling is the worst entrenched problem.
And if the Sea Org staffers given enough free time discover how awful their conditions and their beliefs (Xenu and body-thetans exorcism being OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 which all the lower Scientologists never even know the "secret" "upper" stuff is just exorcism of invisible souls that supposedly infest our human bodies) an operation with these types of beliefs just are NOT sustainable in large groups like exist.
It's an impossible setup, there will always be quitters to their "billion year contracts" dedication.
Lifer Sea Org members will just always, and have always, quit this setup. It's inhumanely stupidly wrong to think this is right, and all because Hubbard didn't sort this whole "third dynamic" running of Scientology out. The problems were too hard for Hubbard to figure out, and the core deepest problem is NOT telling the newbies non initiated about Xenu and body-thetans and that the Sea Org's "Advanced Organizations" are where the first steps of exorcising the body-thetans is done.
Knowing Scientology's results over the decades at exorcising all these Xenu body-thetans has produced NO great supernaturally improved members, is grounds to never join Sea Org and continue this scam.
It's just a seriously messed up losing proposition.
When Hubbard told Sarge he failed, he truly was right. There is no making Scientology quack pseudo-therapy and exorcism "work".
I've urged, years ago, for the 2000s era religious tamer academics to study the Free Zone, and specifically the Ron's Org groups, to see how they work. The "Missions" era of Scientology, is about the highest degree of organization.
The late Alan Walter even said, like many who lived through the 1960s, that the Sea Org was a bad mistake.
Sea Org is unsustainable. Scientology ought recede back to "Mission" and maybe how Mary Sue let the Guardian's Office run, with evenings off and weekends off, for staff.
And Hubbard never let the Sea Org nor guided the Sea Org to then go full blown Military Base organizationally.
There is just NOT the draw into Sea Org and into Scientology, to sustain the half assed Sea Org setup.
I think the beliefs and practices are the core repellant problem to why Scientology is a failure.
Who wants to do all that exorcism on OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, and not get any supernatural powers after that. There simply aren't enough Xenu/body-thetans exorcism practitioners and even believers, and no one becomes a super soul powered person, to sustainably man up the Sea Org organizations.
Hubbard was right, he failed. Scientology is a failure. It's beliefs and lack of results and the half assed setups that are not sustained with money and schedules which are humane, it's always going to be a failure.
Housing, medical, entertainment. Scheduling and money allocation to sustainably keep all the necessary parts of a "base" humanely running. It comes down to time and money, and Scientology won't put out their money to upkeeping their setup, so people will righty quit, and they should quit.
The beliefs are relevant always to mention, because those beliefs and practices are NOT resulting in supernaturally improvement as Hubbard falsely claimed. Scam problem is thus always real and will always be real.
Hubbard indeed failure and pushed off his failure setup on the world to lumber along, with staff rightly quitting for the most part.
In the clampire, you are a small cog in a badly designed machine that is focused on making the bosses look good and either make money or constantly prove your fealty. You, as an individual never count for much of anything. Lroon's take on child education is down right wrong. US public schools may not be the best, but they do try to educate everyone to a standard. $cientology has no standards beyond how many rocks did you carry and how many PC folders did you 'fix'.
Stark contrast to Riley Keough’s description of an idyllic Ojai that her mother loved. Riley makes it sound like it was her mother’s fault she left Ojai, a personality defect in Lisa. The stark truth as described by Bruce is something I hope Lisa herself would have told had she lived.
Thanks, Bruce for telling us how uneducated Scientology schooling leaves you.
Bruce, what a heart-wrenching story and I'm typing this through tears pouring from my eyes and heart. Please let us know how you and your son are fairing now. I feel it's such a crime for SCN to continue to exist, though I was never part of it. Much love. 💟
Filling in some of the earlier history, before Bruce was there - when I arrived as an RPF member in 1983 we lived at the same location, then called Happy Valley. Happy, as in the Funny Farm, from the famous song "They're coming to take me away, ha ha!" A reference to the practice of sequestering people there who needed to be isolated from the general population of Sea Org. Imagine being too nuts for the Int Base!
At that time there were the ruins of the earlier uses of the valley, some old movie sets and a ramshackle old house. There was a library, still stocked with shelves and books. In back was a swimming pool, that was never filled with water. They put bunks in the library and that was my first home at the Int Base. Heaven for me, with my head next to my beloved books. It was the Biography section. I rocked out with the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini using my flashlight.
The RPF at that time was a little odd, even for the Sea Org. It is literally impossible to escape the RPF legally unless you are allowed study time. Even by Sea Org standards it is considered cruel to disallow study time, during which one confesses all one's crimes and becomes sincerely repentant. But the Int Base RPF was purely a work force to get the base ready for Hubbard's return, working almost 24/7. There were course rooms and student graphs, but nobody ever used them. We spent weeks at a time never even seeing our bunks, catching catnaps in the Monotherm insulation in the attic or in a random closet.
There is a Hubbard dictum, called an "Advice", about the Int Base. One of the statements in it is something like "There is no RPF there". Hence the move to Happy Valley. Busses brought us in through the Soboba Indian Reservation, who viewed us with understandable suspicion. Especially after one of their children was killed by a bus.
But even the need to build houses, music and film studios, audio and film production lines was not enough to justify a purely slave work force forever. Finally they allowed some of us to accept the 1983 amnesty and become staff of a sort. Called the Gold Construction Team or GCT, we were sort of staff members so no need to give us five hours of study time. Same schedule, same living quarters, but sometimes a day off! It was Gary Wiese, as Chief Officer Gold, who asked us in a big meeting in the Garage about what we would call ourselves. We came up with the name.
After that, time went on and more staff were assigned to the RPF. So it was a mixed bag at Happy Valley, some GCT and some RPF. Then somebody got bent out of shape about the two groups living together and moved some of us to the Base. The Library became the courseroom for the RPF. It was too hot to close the doors and windows, no AC, so often tarantulas would wander in to join us.
Bruce didn't mention the rattlesnakes. A $5 bonus to kill one, though really they were here before we were.
After Hubbard died the thrill kind of went out of the idea of getting the Base ready for his return, but lots of staff still worked on the strange projects of the Gold Base. Making movies that no-one will see, people writing songs that voices never shared - no one dared - disturb the sounds - of Silence (Sorry Paul Simon),
Mostly vanity projects for Dave, and as an excuse for not doing his main job. He was the one who was supposed to achieve the "All Clear", the legal handling for Hubbard's issues so he could come out of hiding. As long as that was hopelessly bugged, he could still hide behind the notion that the "base is not ready". Like the famous Winchester Mystery House, construction could go on endlessly to prevent anyone from turning an accusing gaze on Dave himself.
Just an example - Hubbard said he would need to produce ten music albums. One for each of the volumes of his science fiction epic, "Mission Earth". So, of course, we needed a real Music Studio. Four floating slabs on vibration isolators, a mix board by the famous George Massenburg, echo chambers, all kinds of expensive vintage equipment, enough to make any modern-day musician laugh their heads off as they cut tracks in their converted bedrooms.
Hundreds of people worked thousands of hours to make this happen. One of the Mission Earth albums was produced. It is a total joke, despite the excellent performances of Edgar Winter and so on. As we say in the electronics design field, it was a Dumb Idea in the First Place.
In the 90s the story of Happy Valley continues on as Bruce laid out. Never a truly happy place, but at least today no slaves or children.
All this went on while us clueless “public” Blithely took our courses, got our auditing and attended events where we were fed propaganda and bought it all. And the Sea Org is still preying upon young adults who were raised in Scientology.
Bruce, I’m glad your son got out. There are many ways to heal from the traumatic experiences. I’m still doing that regarding my own progress. At this time minus my son and daughter who disconnected from me six years ago. And the beat goes on.
This is a heartbreaking story.
I worked in the FLO. This base had its own school for the families that worked there. The lengths management (aka David Miscavige) went to to prevent parents from seeing their kids was unreal. People would get punished for trying to use the designated family time (Sunday AM, as Bruce said) and if they didn't receive punishment, they were at least held in contempt and accused of being off-purpose.
I know one of the more prominent execs at the FLO who never went to see her kids, even when she was allowed to. She was often promoted, I don't know if it was correlated.
Some of the worst situations I saw were when one parent left the SO, there was only one on base and the child was traumatized. No one explained what happened to Mom, Dad was not allowed to call and the ill-equipped nannies had to shoulder all the child-rearing. Same with the RPF where the parent is suddenly separated from the child for years, no communication allowed, and no handling or help for the child.
Church management also went to great lengths to break those parent/child bonds by canceling Christmas, SO Day, and other days designed to be family days.
I supervised the Purification RD and often had these kids on the program. They would turn in daily reports. These were 11.12-year-old kids who could not write, spell, or print legibly. Apparently, someone found an advice from LRH saying cursive writing should not be taught so no penmanship was. The rest of the program was similarly substandard.
And...... this was touted as THE WAY to raise your child. Foster their independence, etc. Sea Org parents bought into this and only discovered too late what kind of education/child-rearing their child was getting.
I could go on and on but I don't understand how it was decided that not communicating with your child was pro-survival. It goes against all the basic tenets of SCN, ARC being the first.
Thank you for another good article, Bruce. Hopefully someday, this will pay off.
The "bases" for Sea Org organizations needed to be full fledged like Military bases, with all needs better taken care of. Single "soldiers", families, housing, entertainment, food, education, all these things would force Sea Org to downsize into more central "bases" around the world.
Schedules have to be like on military bases for all concerned.
But Scientology is just too small time, not enough people capable enough to run like a full fledged Military Base.
Scheduling is the worst entrenched problem.
And if the Sea Org staffers given enough free time discover how awful their conditions and their beliefs (Xenu and body-thetans exorcism being OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 which all the lower Scientologists never even know the "secret" "upper" stuff is just exorcism of invisible souls that supposedly infest our human bodies) an operation with these types of beliefs just are NOT sustainable in large groups like exist.
It's an impossible setup, there will always be quitters to their "billion year contracts" dedication.
Lifer Sea Org members will just always, and have always, quit this setup. It's inhumanely stupidly wrong to think this is right, and all because Hubbard didn't sort this whole "third dynamic" running of Scientology out. The problems were too hard for Hubbard to figure out, and the core deepest problem is NOT telling the newbies non initiated about Xenu and body-thetans and that the Sea Org's "Advanced Organizations" are where the first steps of exorcising the body-thetans is done.
Knowing Scientology's results over the decades at exorcising all these Xenu body-thetans has produced NO great supernaturally improved members, is grounds to never join Sea Org and continue this scam.
It's just a seriously messed up losing proposition.
When Hubbard told Sarge he failed, he truly was right. There is no making Scientology quack pseudo-therapy and exorcism "work".
I've urged, years ago, for the 2000s era religious tamer academics to study the Free Zone, and specifically the Ron's Org groups, to see how they work. The "Missions" era of Scientology, is about the highest degree of organization.
The late Alan Walter even said, like many who lived through the 1960s, that the Sea Org was a bad mistake.
Sea Org is unsustainable. Scientology ought recede back to "Mission" and maybe how Mary Sue let the Guardian's Office run, with evenings off and weekends off, for staff.
And Hubbard never let the Sea Org nor guided the Sea Org to then go full blown Military Base organizationally.
There is just NOT the draw into Sea Org and into Scientology, to sustain the half assed Sea Org setup.
I think the beliefs and practices are the core repellant problem to why Scientology is a failure.
Who wants to do all that exorcism on OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, and not get any supernatural powers after that. There simply aren't enough Xenu/body-thetans exorcism practitioners and even believers, and no one becomes a super soul powered person, to sustainably man up the Sea Org organizations.
Hubbard was right, he failed. Scientology is a failure. It's beliefs and lack of results and the half assed setups that are not sustained with money and schedules which are humane, it's always going to be a failure.
Housing, medical, entertainment. Scheduling and money allocation to sustainably keep all the necessary parts of a "base" humanely running. It comes down to time and money, and Scientology won't put out their money to upkeeping their setup, so people will righty quit, and they should quit.
The beliefs are relevant always to mention, because those beliefs and practices are NOT resulting in supernaturally improvement as Hubbard falsely claimed. Scam problem is thus always real and will always be real.
Hubbard indeed failure and pushed off his failure setup on the world to lumber along, with staff rightly quitting for the most part.
In the clampire, you are a small cog in a badly designed machine that is focused on making the bosses look good and either make money or constantly prove your fealty. You, as an individual never count for much of anything. Lroon's take on child education is down right wrong. US public schools may not be the best, but they do try to educate everyone to a standard. $cientology has no standards beyond how many rocks did you carry and how many PC folders did you 'fix'.
Stark contrast to Riley Keough’s description of an idyllic Ojai that her mother loved. Riley makes it sound like it was her mother’s fault she left Ojai, a personality defect in Lisa. The stark truth as described by Bruce is something I hope Lisa herself would have told had she lived.
Thanks, Bruce for telling us how uneducated Scientology schooling leaves you.
What a sad and unfortunate story. I hope that Bruce and his son continue to heal and can manage to get beyond the trauma inflicted by Scientology. :(
Bruce, what a heart-wrenching story and I'm typing this through tears pouring from my eyes and heart. Please let us know how you and your son are fairing now. I feel it's such a crime for SCN to continue to exist, though I was never part of it. Much love. 💟