A Scientologist's View of Life

I know nothing of this apparently fictitious character, and have never heard of it, despite extensive study of Scientology. The only mention I’ve seen of this is on pretty questionable anti-Scientology websites that are clearly biased and prone to invent and embellish upon material to smear Scientology and LRH. The fact is that it appears nowhere in the extensive basic materials of Scientology. This post, by a fellow Scientologist, does a pretty good job of summing it up.

The bottom line is that this is clearly an effort to misdirect attention away from the real fundamentals of Scientology, which are sound and workable (and can be found here and here), and make it appear that the subject is some sort of UFO cult. Anyone with a little common sense can look a little further into the extensive and freely available fundamentals of Scientology and find for themselves that it is a simple, workable subject for use in improving everyday life.

You are really pushing it here. Some of your questions are extremely disrespectful by their nature. I have a strong inclination to simply ignore your insulting questions, but I feel it’s worthwhile to answer some of these, so I will respond. However, let’s get something straight: The covert, ad hominem attacks so typical of your type (“science fiction author,” “Slappy Miscavige”) are not appropriate here. If you ever ask a question with such barbs again, it will be ignored.

That said, here are your answers:

Scientology is a path, a road. It is not a system of beliefs. No one is asked to simply “believe” anything. One follows the path of Scientology and finds out for oneself. If something is not true for you, we don’t ask you to take it on faith. That would defeat the basic purpose of our movement—to increase personal awareness and understanding. Trying to progress in Scientology in the wrong order fails uniformly. This is why it is done step by step. More information about why a small portion of the materials is confidential can be found here:

First of all, almost all Scientology scriptures are public. If we say “confidential material” this refers to less than 1%, or some dozen pages out of thousands. Those are confidential in a sense that only Scientologists who reached a certain grade (called OT level) can study them.

Confidentiality of certain religious scriptures is not unique to just Scientology. Many other religions do the same. Judaism, Christianity, Tantric Buddhism, and gurus and swamis in India all have kept certain scriptures confidential. Rev. Dean Kelley of the National Council of Churches cited biblical injunctions that advanced spiritual knowledge be kept from adherents who are not ready for it.

Professor Darroll Bryant of the University of Waterloo said:

“The distinction between ‘esoteric knowledge’ available only to initiates and ‘exoteric knowledge’ available to all has long been part of the religious life of mankind.”

So, confidentiality regarding certain scriptures has been practiced by religions all over the world for a very, very long time.

And as for this Xenu character you seem to have such an attachment to, I can neither confirm nor deny its existence. But even if it does exist, it is completely irrelevant to a study of the fundamentals of Scientology, all of which are freely available. Your attempts to “expose” confidential materials are merely attempts to undermine and subvert the effectiveness of Scientology. Such materials belong in their place and only there. The only materials that are confidential are those that might be damaging to a person if studied without a proper spiritual grounding. Studying advanced Scientology materials before studying the basic materials that underlie them is like trying to study quantum mechanics and string theory without every studying Newtonian physics—except that in the case of Scientology, we are dealing with the mind and the stuff of life, which can be dangerous if not handled properly.

More information on the OT levels and other confidential scriptures can be found here:

Operating Thetan (OT) is a spiritual state of being above Clear. By Operating is meant “able to act and handle things” and by Thetan is meant “the spiritual being that is the basic self.” An Operating Thetan, then, is one who can handle things without having to use a body of physical means. 

Basically, one is oneself, can handle things and exist without physical support or assistance. It doesn’t mean one becomes God. It means one becomes wholly oneself.

Basic levels of Scientology help a person deal with his personal relationships and day-to-day problems, to free his attention to address higher aspects of existence. At the level of Operating Thetan, one deals with his own immortality as a spiritual being.

Like any other spiritual level in Scientology, the state of OT is attained by proceeding through a series of gradient steps, each one slightly more advanced than the last and each with its own ability gained. The precise sequence is firmly established and variations from that sequence are unproductive. Thus, it would be fruitless to try to move somebody onto the OT levels before he is ready for them. One might as well demand that a baby run before learning to crawl and learning to walk. Similarly, in Scientology individuals can only receive the benefits of the counseling that brings one to OT after completion of more basic steps.

At the level of OT, Scientologists study the very advanced materials of L. Ron Hubbard’s research. According to those who have achieved OT, the spiritual benefits obtained surpass description.

Your barbed statement that the scriptures of Scientology were written by a “science fiction author” is an ad hominem fallacy and a half-truth. LRH did write some science fiction, but he also wrote in many, many other genres—non-fiction, poetry, satire, western, action, adventure, mystery, suspense, fantasy and others. In fact, the vast bulk of his work was not even in fiction, but in technical writing—the scriptures of Scientology.

As for the thoroughly defunct and utterly misinterpreted “Fair Game” policy, the truth is covered here:

There is a rumor around that a former member of Scientology could be declared “Fair Game,” meaning that illegal actions could be taken against this person with Church officials closing both eyes. This is nonsense and has no evidence at all.

A policy of “Fair Game” does not exist within the Church. There was an early policy called “Fair Game” that was cancelled in 1968. The purpose of that policy was to make it known that a person who has left the Church was no longer entitled to the privileges of membership. L. Ron Hubbard himself testified on this in 1976 (here), making clear that nothing of this meant to violate the law. And that did not happen either.

Scientology critics sometime interpret any lawful action the Church takes to defend itself against their claims or treatment as “harassment” and “Fair Game.” The Church does use the same legal tools that anybody else can use, such as lawful information gathering and evidence collection, to defend themselves from unfounded suits, to enforce a legal right or to guard against infiltration and sabotage. This is so common amongst religious organizations as to be routine.

The Church is also within its rights to question the motives of people who would seek to destroy it and to defend itself with lawful means. Other religions also question the motives of those who would seek to destroy them, as well as taking lawful measures to protect themselves, as these examples illustrate.

Basically, Scientology defends itself from attack, by legal means. Just like any other religion would do.

And the misinterpreted policy of “Fair Game”? It is used as an attack method by apostates and hatemongers. It is not a policy used by the Church, it was cancelled 40 years ago. And when it was used, it was not used as is alleged.

Event adamant critics of the Church of Scientology have testified to that. For example, in a most interesting set of declarations an ex-Scientologist said:

“…it has become a routine practice of litigants to make accusations against the Church, including even false allegations of threats of murder, which would be summarily thrown out of court as unsupported and scandalous in other litigation. They do it because it works, and they do it by deliberately mischaracterizing the term ‘Fair Game.’ They do it as an intentional means to destroy the reputation of the Church in the context of litigation so that they can win money or force the Church to settle.”

and

“The term ‘fair game’ has become a catch phrase for those who attack the Church. When I was in the Church I never heard it referred to as a policy to be used, the only time it was discussed was in reference to litigation in which it was being alleged by Church adversaries. When I was in the Church, I knew that litigants opposing the Church were constantly making fair game allegations against us and that those allegations were nonsense. I also know the frustration those allegations caused because of the willingness of courts and juries to embrace them. From my experience in litigating against the Church, I can see that nothing has changed in this regard. I also know from my experiences in suing the Church and from my association with other litigation adversaries of the Church that they know that “Fair Game” as they portray it is not Church policy. “Fair Game” exists only as a litigation tactic employed against the Church.”

(Source: Declarations of V. Azanaran, 19th May 1994)

Finally, I will address your covert attack on David Miscavige: Mr. Miscavige is an incredible leader. He has taken Scientology to new heights and expanded it many times beyond its size when he came to his position of leadership. He has been successful in keeping Scientology intact and working, not a mean feat given the constant attacks from those who do not want their fellow man to improve. More data on his contributions and credentials can be found here and here.

As for your implication that Mr. Miscavige has abused his staff, there is absolutely no grounds for such allegations, which were made by a psychotic and his minions in an effort to subvert the Church after having covertly sabotaged Scientology’s activities for years and then been removed from the organization. Such allegations have been shown quite thoroughly to be utterly without merit, and their originators have been shown to be quite vicious and insane. Even the apostates who are making the allegations have attested to Mr. Miscavige’s greatness. (Of course, given the nature of the allegations, it’s practically impossible to prove them either way—a typical intelligence trick in a smear campaign. Attacks of this nature have been occurring for decades, and in every case they are eventually disproved and the record set straight.)

I find it telling that you are only “interested” in scandal and gossip. However, in the off chance that you might actually read it (not likely from the bigotry expressed here and on your blog), here are your answers:

Xenu: I believe this adequately answers your question. To quote:

In Scientology, basic beliefs of the Scientology religion are publicly available to anyone, in any one of the eighteen basic books of Dianetics and Scientology and the 280 lectures going along with them, in every Church and Mission of Scientology worldwide. Also in public libraries, internationally. This material is so easy to get, read and listen to, it hurts. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in his books and spoke in his lectures about the origins of the Universe, the questions of Man’s relation to a Supreme Being and the Creation theory (called “The Factors”) of the Scientology religion. No secrets, nothing. Just plain, public books and lectures. Xenu, Xemu or Zenu are not mentioned, part of or hidden in the core beliefs of Scientology. Nope. Also, Scientologists do not pray to or worship somebody called Xenu, Xemu or Zenu. This is a myth.

A note for the sceptic:

Scientology is done step by step. You are not given all the scriptures in one fell swoop and told to read them. You learn basics, then you learn more intermediate data, then there is more advanced information. This is not unique to Scientology, see the Scriptures Chapter. It is a central belief of all Scientologists that people must be properly prepared—spiritually and ethically—to receive these materials and that premature exposure would impede the spiritual development of individuals so exposed, an outcome that is inimical to the goal of Scientology—the achievement of spiritual freedom for everyone living on this planet.

There are not many such scriptures. A number of years ago some confidential Scientology materials were stolen, altered and released by admitted enemies of the Church. There is no complete “OT” or “OT Level” information available on the internet but only altered and perverted data.

As Scientology is done on a gradient, and OT Levels are considered to be upper level, and confidential, a great many (close to 95%) of Scientologists have never read this information. The confidentiality is because this information, gotten into the wrong hands and perverted (as has happened) can cause a great deal of upset and misunderstanding. Scientologists do not discuss this information as they have been asked not to.

BUT—all this nonsense that this upper level material would contain a “Creation Myth” or something is. not. true. These scriptures do not contain core beliefs of Scientology. Those are—as I said before—openly available.

Operation Freakout: This covers the matter quite well. To quote:

Operation Freakout was the name of a program thought up by members of the Guardian’s Office in 1976 with the goal to get Paulette Cooper—that time a psychologist who (in her own words) had infiltrated Scientology for a scandal book—to stop spreading derogatory information about the Church of Scientology.

Since the beginning of the 1970s the relation between the Guardian’s Office and Paulette Cooper had escalated to million-dollar damage claims and harassment.

Operation Freakout however was never executed and got shelved before it even reached the attention of Church officials. The story however made its way to the media and is one of those half-truths you read about when looking at biased anti-Scientology websites. Aside from loads of dramatized stories I only found a few sources which could be called “cool, calm, collected,” and eye opening. One of them is here.

The “Snow White” Program (what you mistakenly call “Operation Snow White”) is covered here:

The “Snow White Program” refers to a program written by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard in 1973. The purpose of this program was to legally correct a number of false governmental reports about the Church of Scientology, its leaders and members. The program is sometimes falsely called “Operation Snow White.” Such an operation did not exist.

This program intentionally gets mixed up by critics of the Church of Scientology with illegal activities of certain members of the Guardian’s Office, an autonomous organization within the Church in the 1970’s that was disbanded in 1983. More about that is in on the page about the Guardian’s Office.

Snow White: Background

At the time L. Ron Hubbard wrote the Snow White Program the Church of Scientology’s management bodies were on a ship with the name Apollo. As a result of false reports concerning the Church, mainly coming from England and Germany, the Apollo was meeting hostilities in certain European harbors, even though no direct contact with some of those countries and Scientology had ever taken place. It did not make sense and the hostile behavior of some authorities directly traced back to false information in their files (which they believed as true but that were not). The purpose of the Snow White Program was described as follows:

“To engage in various litigation in all countries affected so as to expose to view all such derogatory and false reports, to engage in further litigation in the countries originating such reports, to exhaust recourse in these countries and then finally to take the matter to the United Nations (that now being possible for an individual and a group) and to the European Commission on Human Rights, meanwhile uprooting and canceling all such files and reports wherever found.”

One of the countries where the Apollo met hostilities was Portugal. Here, between 1969 and the first half of 1974, the Apollo frequently visited ports without problems. Then, in July 1973, a rumor was heard that the Apollo would be a “CIA ship.” This same rumor had been heard earlier at ports in Spain in 1972. On October 3, 1974, when the Apollo was docked at the port of Funchal on the island of Madeira, Portugal, the ship and its crew and passengers were attacked by a large crowd throwing rocks, shouting: “CIA ship.” The local police and army stood by and watched, doing nothing to hold the crowd back. As a result, some Church staff aboard the ship were injured and property was damaged or destroyed. Cars and motorcycles belonging to the Church and Church staff were thrown off the dock into the bay. The ship crew had to fight off the attackers with fire hoses while the ship made an emergency departure to escape the violence, without being able to take on food, fuel or water. The Apollo and her crew were forced to wait miles offshore for over a day while order was restored so she could return to load fuel, food and water and sail to a safe country.

Documents obtained from the U.S. State Department through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as part of the Snow White Program traced the “CIA ship” rumor to a State Department telex in April of 1972 which was sent to various European countries and that contained numerous false reports. Following the Snow White Program procedure of locating and expunging false reports and seeking redress for religious persecution, the company that owned the Apollo, Operation Transport Corporation (“OTC”), filed suit in Lisbon against the government of Portugal seeking damages as a result of this riot. In June of 1985, the Administrative Court of Lisbon awarded damages to OTC, finding that the riot in October of 1974 had been sparked by the CIA ship rumor and that this rumor was false. These damages were upheld on appeal in 1987.

Based on decisions as above, and the Church’s efforts to correct the false information in government files originally generated by the U.S. government, the Minister of Justice in Portugal officially authorized the registration of the Church of Scientology as a religious organization in Portugal in 1988, accomplishing the Snow White Program’s objective for that country.

Similar activities took place in other European countries, to the effect that false information in government files was located and corrected.

The United States Snow White Program

The activities in the United States under the Snow White Program were to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with all Federal governmental agencies and public record requests at the state and local level, getting into litigation to enforce disclosure of records which were withheld, and the filing and prosecution of a large lawsuit in 1978 against a number of federal government agencies for the purpose of bringing to view and correcting all false reports on the Church and L. Ron Hubbard contained in their files.

As a result of these FOIA requests filed pursuant to the Snow White Program, the Church of Scientology obtained hundreds of thousands of pages of records from the files of government agencies concerning the Scientology religion, the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology leaders and members. These records, which were full of false information show evidence that the concerns that led Hubbard to write the Snow White Program were completely justified. In later Congressional Oversight Hearings in the United States it was confirmed that Mr. Hubbard, the Church of Scientology and Scientology leaders were targeted for discriminatory treatment.

The Church has also used the FOIA to expose covert government programs that targeted citizens and communities for harmful biological and chemical testing.

The Washington Post reported about one of those scandals on March 11, 1980:

“Using documents made public under the Freedom of Information Act, primarily CIA financial records, the Scientologists said receipts for repairs and replacement parts indicated…[a] machine was steadily used for 13 years and may have produced hundreds of pounds of various biological agents and microorganisms…. Citing one invoice from the early 1960s, the Scientologists said there was evidence that at least two disease-causing agents, one that could touch off undulant fever and another that could bring on tularemia, were mass-produced.”

In 1984 the Church found out that the U.S. Army had secretly sprayed potentially harmful bacteria in open-air tests in Washington, D.C.’s National Airport and in bus terminals in Washington, Chicago and San Francisco in 1964 and 1965. From the information found through FOIA these covert government actions were undertaken as part of a biological warfare experiment. The germ used to spray hundreds of unsuspecting American citizens has been found to cause symptoms of respiratory infections, blood poisoning and food poisoning.

In acknowledgement of these efforts, Quinlan J. Shea Jr., Director of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Privacy and Information Appeals under Presidents Ford and Carter, credited the Church of Scientology, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Society of Professional Journalists, with having “endeavored to shine more light on government. They—and others—have issued publications on how to use the FOIA, have litigated in the courts and have testified before numerous congressional hearings calling for more openness.”

Current affairs

The Snow White Program is not being executed today. It was a very specific program for a special state of affairs at the time it was written. The Church of Scientology however continues to use Freedom of Information Acts and similar laws all over the world to defend its right of non-discrimination and freedom for all