Scientology's
Rejection of the Family
By Stacy Brooks
August
13, 2000
|
|
|
Recently
at the Lisa McPherson Trust, we helped a woman get out of
Scientology. She took her child with her, a child who
at a very young age had already been recruited into the Sea
Org.
The woman's mother has been in the Sea Org for a long time.
She came to the woman's house, extremely upset that the woman
had left but particularly upset that she had taken her child
out of the Sea Org. The mother brought a sheet of paper with
the tape excerpt below. She frantically told the woman that
she was throwing away her future and urged her not to let
considerations about her family stand in the way of her freedom
and that of her child.
The woman told her mother that she didn't want to be in Scientology
any more. Then the woman's mother pulled the child aside and
in all seriousness urged the child to file for legal emancipation
from the parents so that the child, who is underage, could
go back into the Sea Org.
The child was very upset but, according to the woman, is beginning
to enjoy interacting with other family members and friends.
I asked the woman to fax me a copy of the tape excerpt her
mother had given her. When I read the excerpt, it sickened
me. I have never seen this excerpt before. I have never seen
a quote from LRH in which he so clearly urges his followers
to turn away from their families.
Here is the text of the excerpt:
"THE GE IS A FAMILY MAN
The GE is a family man; the GE is lost without a family. It's
very strange, but Homo sap is a family unit. The GE is built
on that basis. It's fascinating, fascinating. It's not important
to know it but a lot of your urges toward families and so
forth are not thetan urges at all, they're the GE. The GE
can't survive at all without a family unit. He's just as dead
as a mackerel if he isn't a family unit, whereas your thetan
is just dead as a mackerel if he gets too mixed up in family
units.
You can't talk to GEs; they're kind of psycho. And by the
way, you can fall into this dreadful trap with a GE. You see,
he uses the MEST universe with which to build. He's gotten
very, very bad off and he has to use MEST materials all the
time.
So, you get this situation here with the GE, and your GE is
busy: build, build, build, build, build. And, of course he's
got to have a family to build with.
You get this terrific family thirst. And you get your GE surviving
best and being loused up the most because of interfamily relationships.
And your thetan, by the way, can much more easily go into
a group. Families are not good groups; they're bad groups."
LRH, From the taped lecture
"Flows: Patterns of Interaction"
10 December 1952
For you to understand why this quote affected me so strongly,
I have to translate LRH's Scientology-speak into plain language.
First of all, the GE is the Genetic Entity. The Scientology
Tech Dictionary defines it this way:
GENETIC ENTITY, 1. that beingness not dissimilar to the thetan
which has carried forward and developed the body from its
earliest moments along the evolutionary line on earth and
which, through experience, necessity and natural selection,
has employed the counter-efforts of the environment to fashion
an organism of the type best fitted for survival, limited
only by the abilities of the genetic entity. The goal
of the genetic entity is survival on a much grosser plane
of materiality. (Scn 8-8008, p. 8) 2. formerly referred
to as the somatic mind. It has no real personality,
it is not the "I" of the body. This is the "mind"
of an animal, a dog or a cat or a cow. (HOM [History of Man],
pp. 13-14) 3. that entity which is carrying along through
time, that is making the body through the time stream, through
the action of sex and so forth. (5410C10D) Abbr. GE
Now let me tell you how I understood it when I was in Scientology.
I want to try to give you a window into how Scientologists
think. I want you to understand how it could possibly be that
Scientologists turn against their own families and see it
as an ethical thing to do; how Scientologists can see their
feelings of love and loyalty to their families as something
psychotic, something they need to do away with in order to
be good Scientologists.
This is how Scientologists are taught to think: The Genetic
Entity is the part of a person that is still tied to the universe
of Matter, Energy, Space and Time - known as the MEST Universe
in Scientology -- that we will leave behind when we are able
to become stably exterior with full perceptics. This is the
real goal of a Scientologist - to be free of the MEST Universe,
to be able to discard the body and be completely free of the
limitations of MEST. When enough Scientologists reach that
goal (a goal which no one to my knowledge has yet attained)
and Planet Earth has been cleared, they will be able to travel
at will anywhere in the galaxy to clear other planets and,
eventually, the entire MEST Universe. They will do this without
the encumbrance of their bodies, of course. They will be free
of their bodies. They will just pick up new bodies on whatever
planet they go to. They might be meat bodies like the ones
on Earth, or they might be doll bodies, or any of a variety
of other kinds of bodies thetans use throughout the MEST Universe.
But the point is that they will be able to mock them up at
will, because they will be totally at cause over MEST.
Obviously, for someone who has it in their head that they
are trying to leave the MEST Universe behind, the Genetic
Entity - and everything connected to it -- is something from
which one would have to distance oneself. In fact, there is
an insulting slang term in Scientology for someone who is
too much into their body, or too much into their family -
meaning their husband or wife, their children, their parents,
brothers, sisters, grandparents. A person like that is considered
to be "stuck in the GE." That's a very bad thing
in Scientology. Very out-ethics. Psychotic, in fact.
When LRH said in the tape excerpt that "your urges toward
family are not thetan urges at all, they're the GE,"
what he was saying was that anyone who puts any importance
on the family is going in a direction toward MEST, not Theta.
That is an out-ethics thing to do. It is putting counter-intention
on the forward motion of Scientology. It is holding back the
entire group.
When he said that "Homo sap is a family unit," he
was denigrating Homo sapiens for caring about family.
He was saying that Homo sapiens, the evolutionary phase of
the human race before Scientology came along, is a terribly
primitive creature. Homo novis, the superman that Scientology
has made possible, is the next evolutionary step, the superior
being. Homo novis isn't interested in families. Homo novis
is at cause over Matter, Energy, Space and Time. Who needs
a family when you can exteriorize at will? Who needs to procreate?
Who would want to hold onto any connection to the MEST Universe
once you realized that those connections are doing nothing
but holding back the forward progress of the entire human
race?
It is Homo sapiens - "Homo sap," as he says in the
tape - who needs a family. It is Homo sap who still has a
connection to the GE. But you see how LRH lets you know what
a degraded being - what a Homo sap - you are if you care about
your family. Listen to what he says: "the GE is as dead
as a mackerel without the family unit, but the thetan [that's
Homo novis, which is only possible to attain through Scientology]
is as dead as a mackerel if he gets mixed up with a family
unit." So you are actually putting up a roadblock to
Mankind's forward progress by clinging to old, primitive notions
such as family.
The message here is clear. If you're an ethical Scientologist
you are not going to hold onto MEST relationships like your
family. You are going to be much more interested in theta
relationships like your fellow Scientologists - people who
have risen above MEST-oriented relationships and are interested
only in theta-based relationships - those that will further
Scientology's aims. An ethical Scientologist only wants to
associate with others who are also striving for the enlightened
state of Homo novis.
I no longer adhere to this belief system. I am no longer a
Scientologist. But for fifteen years I distanced myself from
my family and the friends I had had before I got into Scientology
for this very reason - I did not want to contaminate myself
by associating with unenlightened people. In Scientology this
is called contagion of aberration; you don't want to be around
people who are stuck in MEST because it might rub off on you.
You don't want to do anything that will slow you down from
becoming an enlightened Theta Clear.
For those of you who are familiar with the term Suppressive
Person, or SP, and Potential Trouble Source, or PTS, it is
upon this fundamental concept that these terms are based.
An SP is someone who is so stuck in the MEST Universe (so
solid) that they can't bear to have anyone around them who
is moving in the direction of theta (the opposite of solid).
A PTS is someone who has allowed themselves to become vulnerable
to an SP's influence and is therefore getting more solid -
less theta.
This is why Scientologists distance themselves from the rest
of society. It is why the Sea Org members in Clearwater refuse
to make eye contact with the citizens of Clearwater when they
walk down the street. It is why the Scientologist son of a
dear friend of mine has refused to speak to his mother for
thirty years.
Recently a woman contacted the LMT for help. She had been
happily married for nearly twenty years. She and her husband
had two beautiful teenage children. They had a beautiful house
and a wonderful life. She considered herself the luckiest
woman on Earth because she had such a happy family. Then her
husband got into Scientology. By the time she spoke to me,
her husband had gotten them nearly $100,000 in debt. He wanted
a divorce because she didn't want to be a Scientologist. He
refused to speak to either of his children because they didn't
want to be Scientologists. When she begged him to speak to
someone with a different point of view about Scientology he
told her he would disappear and never contact her again if
she ever tried to put him in contact with someone critical
of Scientology. She and her children are heartbroken over
the loss of a man who was once a wonderful husband and father.
He, on the other hand, is convinced that she is an SP - that
she is trying to keep him from moving toward the enlightened
state of theta clear.
Another woman contacted the LMT recently about her sister,
who has just joined the Sea Org. The sister has two children.
Now that she is in the Sea Org, the children have been sent
to the Sea Org children's ranch north of Los Angeles. They
never get to see their mother. They have been sneaking phone
calls to their aunt, tearfully asking their aunt why their
mother doesn't love them any more. The mother, meanwhile,
fully believes that her children are a distraction from her
production and that it is necessary to separate from them
so that she can realize her full potential. She also believes
that if the children are ethical, they, too, will benefit
from severing their ties with her, since their relationship
is based on nothing more than the fact that she is their biological
mother, something which is meaningless in the new society
of Homo novis.
At the LMT we get these heartbreaking calls nearly every day.
Today,
I see the Genetic Entity, Homo novis, and the whole idea of
isolating oneself from the so-called MEST Universe and concentrating
on becoming Theta Clear as a delusion of grandeur which originated
in the unbalanced mind of L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard was unable
to have healthy relationships with his parents, his three
wives or any of his children. But instead of taking any responsibility
for these failed relationships, he blamed his family members.
Then he took it a step further. He created an entire cosmology
that would justify his inability to have successful personal
relationships. Families are bad, friendships are bad,
any close relationships are bad, because he was incapable
of having them. All he could conceive of was a world in which
there is no love, no compassion - nothing but impersonal,
cold-hearted relationships based on statistics and the "greatest
good for the greatest number of dynamics." What he said
in the tape transcript sums it up: "Families are not
good groups; they're bad groups."
I realize I risk incurring the wrath of dedicated Scientologists
by saying what I did in the above paragraph. But I think it
is extremely important for Scientologists to realize that
LRH does not have to have been a perfect man for there to
be any validity to the Tech. I speak to people nearly every
day who have had wins and gains from their auditing. I never
tell them their wins aren't valid. I never tell them the gains
aren't real. I'm happy if someone has had wins and gains.
The tech is not something I want for myself, but I don't think
everyone else has to feel the same way I do. I have no doubt
that many people have had wins and gains from the tech.
But this does not mean that LRH was perfect. I discovered
he wasn't perfect when I worked on the LRH biography research
while I was still a Sea Org member in good standing. This
discovery did not cause me to lose faith in the tech. All
it did was to make me realize that even though LRH developed
a technology that could help people, he was a human being
just like the rest of us, with blind spots and character flaws
the same as everybody else. The problem was that one of his
flaws was an utter inability to accept any criticism, and
as a result of this he tended to label anyone who did criticize
him as an enemy. This flaw has now been institutionalized
in the organization known as the Church of Scientology.
But criticism is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. If the
tech really works - and I know many people feel it does -
then it can bear critical scrutiny. Just because someone criticizes
something doesn't mean it isn't valid. It doesn't mean that
person is an enemy. Scientologists must learn to differentiate
between the parts of Scientology that are valid and those
parts of it which are not. LRH had a blind spot on the subject
of personal relationships and the flaws in his own thinking
have been inherited by the organization called the Church
of Scientology. It is crucial that Scientologists begin to
see that they have the right to accept those parts of Scientology
that work and to discard those parts that do not. LRH's view
of the family as a degraded, out moded form of human relationship
is terribly destructive and urgently needs to be recognized
by Scientologists as a harmful part of the Scientology world
view that should be discarded. This does not mean I am advocating
that the entirety of the tech should be discarded. It means
I think LRH had a blind spot on this subject because of his
own shortcomings, and I don't think his personal shortcomings
should be embraced by Scientologists so that they take on
his own blind spot as their own.
Until Scientologists become willing to differentiate the beneficial
from the harmful aspects of Scientology, the outside world
will continue to view it as a chillingly amoral belief system
and respond accordingly to it.
For the people on the outside, the question is how do we get
through to the people who have bought into this chillingly
amoral belief system? How do we help the thousands upon thousands
of families who have been torn apart by Scientology? My answer
is this: All we can do is continue to do everything we can
to get through to Scientologists at every opportunity. Thank
God for the internet. It is our best chance to communicate
to them. The most hopeful thing of all at the LMT is that
we are getting calls every day from Scientologists who are
making the decision to embrace their Constitutional rights
of freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of association.
They are going on the internet despite orders from the Organization
not to. They are learning for themselves about all sides of
Scientology. They are regaining their powers of critical thought
and deciding for themselves which parts of Scientology they
want to embrace. And they are beginning to rebuild their own
shattered lives and broken families.
Stacy Brooks
More
Essays from Stacy Brooks
|
