An open letter to Mark "Marty" Rathbun

 Dear Mark:

I hope this finds you, Monique and your kid well. To introduce myself, I've been a watcher of the wacky world of Scientology since the early 1990s; on one hand I found some of the ideas plausible enough at one stage to dabble with a "Free Zone" group at one stage, but on the other hand I was very active in the initial phase of Project Chanology in 2008/9 and I've never had any illusions that the Church itself is a totalitarian organisation which is either an oversized abusive relationship or a mini-North Korea.

I've watched your progress with interest since 2009 since you emerged from your career as "enforcer" for Scientology's dictator David Miscavige, to your career as a spokesperson for the "Independent Scientology" movement, to your eventual break with the Indie community. I must say I have not been 100% sure what to make of your current phase of seeking to transcend the Scio/anti-Scio fight altogether. However, I must say that anyone who is extremely surprised by your family's decision to exit your lawsuit against Miscavige, or your critical reviews of Ron Miscavige and Louis Theroux's recent anti-Scientology works, has clearly not been paying attention to your regular blog posts over the last few years where you ponder the futility of getting involved in an endless fight with something (example). Very Zen, quite convincing. I totally understand why you are doing your best to end your involvement with the whole subject.

In this regard, I have been most distressed by some of the wild abuse recently thrown at you by anti-Scientology activists (let's say "Scientology critics" to be polite); not just the "TRAITOR, WHORE, JUDAS" stuff from the lunatic fringe, but the slightly more sophisticated stuff which suggests that, when you criticise Ron's book or Theroux's film for distorting the facts in the service of a good story, you are now "agreeing with David Miscavige" and are therefore no doubt in his pay once more.

There's another movement where telling the truth as one sees it gets a wave of abuse for "forwarding enemy lines" or accusations of being in the pay of the bad guys. It's called the Church of Scientology. In fact, it's a major hallmark of any toxic group that sticking with the group's story is more important than the truth. The story of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby clearly shows that "you are attached to what you attack"; or, as Nietzsche would have put it, if you battle monsters you risk becoming one yourself.

I think that Tony Ortega's "Underground Bunker" has done good service over the years exposing Scientology abuses, and I read it every day (not the comments, though...). But I've always thought he has an issue with you personally, for some reason, even at the time when you were working closely together. Now, it seems, he seems relieved to be able to "release the hounds" in your direction. One thing I find extremely interesting was that when he reviewed your book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, his main criticism was that you were "self-alibi'ing", to some degree - refusing to admit your share of moral responsibility for the abuses conducted by the Church while you were its enforcer. Now, at the end of your review of the Theroux movie, you note that the movie's depiction of Miscavige's abusive behaviour is actually closer to your own of the time. Ortega's response? "Good on Marty for 'fessing up"? No, you are now chided for agreeing with Miscavige, "forwarding enemy lines"! You really are damned if you do and damned if you don't.

(Interesting, parenthetically, that you criticise Ron Miscavige for trying to whitewash his own responsibilities for his son's development and behaviour in his memoir - which, in turn, is taken by the Bunkeroos as proof that you are now a traitor-judas-whore in the pay of Darth Midget. The acceptability of the argument seems to be based on whether the person making it is on the "good guys" or "bad guys" list at the time - a sure sign of toxic mob mentality.)

However, Ortega's insinuations and apparent interest in putting you down personally are nothing compared to the mob mentality whipped up in his comments section. Let me emphasise that honestly I don't blame Tony for this. This is a pretty standard feature of all groups or communities which band together against a common enemy. Groupthink and mob mentality are occupational hazards.

The Sci-critical satirist Jeffrey Augustine rightly compares the Church to the Stalinist USSR and North Korea. In the 1930s, the followers of Leon Trotsky were expelled from the global Communist movement for opposing Stalin's increasing tyranny. But sadly, history shows that the various Trotskyist movements globally often ended up becoming just as internally oppressive as the official Communist Parties they were supposed to oppose. The British "post-Trotskyist" radical Tony Cliff explained it like this: "if a man is locked in a room fighting a mad dog for long enough, eventually you won't be able to tell the difference".

The proper analogy to the Trotskyists, of course, would not be Ortega's bunker (who might be more like anti-Commie witchhunters) but the Independent Scientology movement, who of course cast you out a few years ago once you noticed that they were in fact building their own little scale-model replicas of the official Church's oppressive apparatus. And not just the fanatical "Milestone Two" mob, either. The critic who goes by the name "Alanzo" suggests that Mike Rinder and Karen de la Carriere - two ex-Scientologists whom I have the utmost respect for - ran something of an informal "Indie OSA" back in the day. I really crave to hear more details about this.

I certainly don't begrudge Tony Ortega of making a living by being a professional Scientology critic. That organisation needs to have its shenanigans dragged into daylight at all times and - despite my distress at his animus towards you - he does that job well. But I also suspect he rather likes being the Fearless Leader of an angry mob and has no not much interest in curbing some of the negative tendencies in his fan club. (ETA: apparently Ortega read the Riot Act on some Bunker denizens' more heated personal attacks on Rathbun - good on him.) Mentioning Alanzo above reminds me that, when he spoke out against some of the Bunker's more heated speculations about why you and Monique dropped the lawsuit, some people actually suggested he was an imposter sent by OSA. That is not a healthy way to approach difference of opinion.

The Bunker and the rest of the Scientology-critic community really has to check itself before it wrecks itself. We should all take a good look at ourselves and be honest if we see ourselves starting to act like OSA agents or Squirrel Busters. There is no need for paid Scientology agents infiltrating and destroying Scientology-critical movements when the natural process of groupthink/mob mentality will often lead to critics taking on those roles themselves, free of charge.

Once again, Mark, good luck to you and your family in whatever you choose to do in the future. Sufi masters say that the true sign of a beloved of God is that 1000 trustworthy witnesses will all declare him to be a lost heretic, so being "shot at by all sides" is probably a sign that you're on the right path.

Doloras LaPicho

"And some there were who tore the whole thing up and watched it fall away..."

‘I can accept a certain level of harassment. I was part of the church for 35 years and to an extent I believe you reap what you sow, but they have targeted Monique for years now and we need to do something about it...'

Even after leaving Scientology, Marty still upheld certain aspects of its teachings and tried to defend it. But now he has completely given up.

He said: ‘I spent three years methodically out lining what was good about Scientology, but how it was corrupted. I tried to differentiate between some of the core beliefs and the ends justifies the means, us versus them mentality, but I came to the conclusion that they are so
interwoven, you can’t separate them....

'I was trying to justify all that time I had dedicated to Scientology because I couldn’t admit to myself that it had been wasted. But I am done with it now.'

The full interview with Marty Rathbun - Scientology's Emmanuel Goldstein and formerly its Martin Luther/Leon Trotsky - is at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2526525/Squirrel-Busters-sex-toys-sent-office-secret-cameras-trained-home-Ex-Scientology-leader-wife-reveal-five-year-living-hell-crossing-powerful-church.html (I won't put an active link to the Daily Heil on principle.)

This is the point which many come to coming out of a cultish organisation. If you find yourself reproducing the cult patterns of behaviour in your post-cult organisations - like the "Independent Scientologists" have - then probably the basic doctrine is unsound. The question is on what basis we can build a revolutionary Marxist organisation which doesn't turn into an obedience cult - because if we can't, the flaw may be in Marxism.

A materialist enlightenment...

... is nothing more than reflexivity, the vision beholding itself, the "one I clapping". In other words: the psyche divides itself into ego, id and super-ego. The ego's job is to live in the World-That-Is, the Matrix, the "Real" World of Horrible Jobs. The ego gives you good reasons to do the things that the id wants to do but the super-ego finds shameful - and the id takes the blame. We could say that, in the older Judaic conceptions such as those found in the Book of Job, Satan is YHWH's id - as an angel he doesn't have free will, he's just a reflection/refraction of YHWH's attributes, but he's propped up for the rubes to blame as the guy who does the "dirty work" of the heavenly host.

"There is nothing more disillusioning as enlightenment", as Orton Nenslo put it. Brad Warner's description of an enlightenment experience in Hardcore Zen - a brief, beatific vision of identification with the Universe, as simply one of a countless number of moving viewpoints via which the totality explores itself through 4 dimensions - is materialistically identical with Jill Bolte Taylor's description of her cerebral infarct in My Stroke of Insight or Hazrat-e-Pir Javad Nurbakhsh's poetic formulation: "Say it plain, that God by God I see." It is the reflection on the individual level of Lukács' description of the proletariat recognising itself as the subject-object of history.

Adopting an ego means excluding the non-self, which means creating a "blind spot" or "censor barrier" through which the positionality of the ego can simply not be seen. The ego assumes a God's eye view and thus is God, in every meaningful way - as the hadith qudsi puts it, "He who knows himself knows his Lord". This is why Marxist praxis (theory mutually reinforcing practice) is necessary but not sufficient. The ego which evolved under capitalism will sabotage everything in order to keep up the barriers between "I" and "it" - it loves its own alienation because that gives it an excuse. It's so much easier to not be responsible. Watch how revolutionary groups and movements are destroyed by the reassertion of the leader-led dialectic of class society when things get tough - some people want an excuse to be Boss and order people around, and others want a Boss to take their responsibility away. Marty Rathbun is recently pointing out that too many of the "true believers" who have quit the increasingly insane $cientology cult have ended up starting their own cult, complete with all the "thought police" nonsense they were victimised by. It's all right for us to have a security-goon apparatus to protect ourselves, we're the good guys! Right? (For those not in the know, part of Hubbard technology is supposed to be making you able to confront everything - so exactly why do Scienos have to break off ties with friends who criticise the cult and aren't allowed to read teh intarwebz without a ent-nanny?) Marxists might recognize this as the "some of the biggest Stalinists are Trotskyists" syndrome, or noting that every split from Gerry Healey's cultish ICFI has kept all the cultist apparatus.

Jill Bolte Taylor saw her ego collapse - then put it back together, amazingly leaving out the bits she wasn't happy with - when a fuse blew in her left-brain hardware. This meant months in hospital and years of physical rehabilitation, of course, so I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. The more traditional way to go about it is a course of meditative practice, in which the mind is left "turning over in neutral" until the observing consciousness finds itself capable of confronting everything that it throws up, accepting but not reacting. That is the point of the (temporary) elimination of divisions between ego, id and super-ego; when restored, they can be edited, and recognized from personal experience as arbitrary. Caution: what you find out will disgust and disturb you, necessarily. It's coming to terms with everything that you hate, everything against which you found your very existence, and realising that THOU ART THAT. EGO ID SUM.

Double caution: Aleister Crowley calls this "crossing the abyss", and points out that getting all the way up to the dissolution of the ego and not going through with it turns you into a Black Brother, i.e. some monstrous thing. Brad Warner speculates that that's what happened to, for example, Aum Shinrikyo's leader (and I'd add Ron Hubbard to that) - you get to a certain level of insight, you get the realisation that YOU ARE IT, and the ego twists that into a self-preservation that becomes madness: "I [ego] am God and identical with the universe, which means I can do what I like! MWAHAHAHA!" Dr Nurbakhsh similarly likened the spiritual path to a game of snakes and ladders, where there's a great big snake going from square 99 all the way back to square 1.

(For those who've developed an unhealthy fan-boy attachment to the owner of this blog, a bit of personal information to solve that: my brief "enlightenment" experiences have pointed out to me that I deliberately make my life painful and difficult because I get a high from panic; that I toy with fantasies of cruelty to others; and that, despite everything I've written here, what I really want to do is switch off and go play video games all day long. I'm obsessed with making myself look good to others: the main real reason I write this blog is to make people think I'm cool, and the reason I write pseudonymously is just in case anyone doesn't like it. So, anything good you read here is despite me, not because of me.)

But anyway, YOU do not exist. You are in potential everyone and everything. You constructed yourself through a "blind watchmaker" process of blind selection. You will never transcend the circumstances of your arising until you "undo" youself altogether then put yourself together again; which presupposes the gradual building of a "will" capable of acting contrary to the super-ego's commands, the ego's plans and the id's drives.

Crimes, cults, karma

Foul Ole Ron said "the only way to control people is to lie to them", which is pretty much accurate. (Most of what he said in the 1950s was accurate in the sense of being a common-sense psychological or spiritual truism. He even warned his followers "if Scientology turns into a mind-control cult it could screw over the whole planet". The extent to which his practice degenerated to the point where he became what he warned against may be the subject of a later post.) But let's expand that to: the only way to enslave someone is to get them to commit crimes.

That's how cults work. The way you ensare someone is to take away their "self-determinism" - get them to violate their own principles, goals, values and ethical system, on the grounds that the greater glory of The Group justifies whatever means. And at that point they realise that if they ever leave the group, they will have to answer for their crimes in the real world, who will not take "we were only following orders" for an answer. Look at the way that Jack Barnes corrupted and destroyed Barry Sheppard by making him do his dirty work.

I've read an argument - I think it was by Alex Callinicos - that that was the real motivation of the Holocaust. The Nazis knew perfectly well that they were committing the worst crime against humanity ever. But that was how they were going to blackmail the German people into fighting to the bitter end. Note that the mass killings of Jews only happened after Stalingrad. Before then, the purpose of the concentration camps was to degrade the Jews to the point where they actually became the snivelling subhumans that Nazi ideology proclaimed them to be. But the murder machines started up, according to this analysis, so that then the Nazis could turn to their subject populations and say - in the immortal words of Bender B. Rodriguez - "Hey! Guess what you're accessories to!"

Law enforcement know this very well, which is why we have the concept of "turning states' evidence" - we will forgive your crimes if you strike a blow at your former group. But then law enforcement's goal is to shut down criminals and groups of criminals. When you're dealing with other groups of people who have a highly developed sense of "right and wrong", or are crusading against something as unreal as an idea, they will tend to turn on renegades from their enemy because at least that's something they can punish. As Marty Rathbun is sadly finding out. Anti-Scientologists are (a) disinclined to forgive him for the crimes he committed due to his former allegiance to a psychopathic leadership; (b) against the idea of Scientology rather than the crimes committed in its name.

Left hand, right hand, Aleister, Ron

This from the comments thread to this post by Village Voice editor Tony Ortega. For those not aware, Marty Rathbun was previously the 2nd-in-charge of the Church of Scientology, and he has since split from that organisation, denounced its leader David Miscavige betraying the legacy of its Founder and running slave-labour camps, and is attempting to start his own Scientologist International, with blackjack, and hookers, and e-meters. (So, these guys are to the Tom Cruise church what Protestants are to Catholics, or Trots are to orthodox Communists.)

I post this as a counterbalance to my recent positive-sounding ruminations on Rathbun's independent Scientology. I think perhaps my ego continues to have a sneaking regard for the subject because it would love to, as Scientology promises, be able to solve all its own problems using rationalism and without surrender. However, I am still intrigued by what seem surface similarities between Scientology and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - in that both claim to be able to "deprogramme" the subconscious mind by extracting, looking at and then "as-is"ing rules of behaviour and assumptions about reality. This "tech" doesn't require an empathic or transference relationship with a therapist, only someone to guide the patient/preclear's self-analysis, a job which can be equally well done by a computer.

Other points: given the points raised about Ron's insane bullshit auto-hagiography, others have pointed out that this is yet another link showing his debt to Crowley. Thelemites have often argued with me that Uncle Al did that deliberately - throwing insane grandiose lies into his writings just to see who'd be enlightened enough to realise they were bullshit. I don't credit Ron with that much self-insight. I also note the points made by other commenters on this thread that Rathbun seems much more interested salvaging those people damaged by the Miscavage/Cruise regime than repackinging "LRH tech" for the broad masses.

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ETA: 

One thing that the Scientology Cult fears the most is that the common-sense parts of what is called "auditing" - which exclude trickery and coercion, and exclude subtle psychological manipulation and overwhelm, such as found in the Auditor-Code-violating "Implantology levels" - be recognized and used in a free fashion by independent counselors.
 

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Skydog 7 hours ago

I have to think Rathbun must be a little frustrated at his current predicament. He is trying to defend a subject which is indefensible. I do agree with his premise that Miscavige is doing all in his power to portray Hubbard as a fraud. Fortunately, I did not watch the entire three hour video extravaganza that is the 2012 birthday celebration. Three hours is a long time for decent movie and the thought of watching and listening to the dropout dwarf and mullet head for that time would no doubt lead me to at least suicide ideations, if not attempts.  

The words of LRH [L. Ron Hubbard] go beyond "tall tales" and amount to fraud. Recently, someone asked me why or how anyone would ever get involved in this cult? My response was simply ego. It is a religion marketed on the promise that their "tech" can solve each and every problem-emotional and physical-that plagues the initiate.  The promise of immortality and super powers are powerful motivators for the vainglorious with large amounts of disposable income. These dupes are secure in their belief that the large donations made by them will ultimately contribute to their further success and give the the "super power" that they know LRH possessed. Absent in this fraudulent conduct is any "science" to back up their ridiculous claims. When challenged on this point, they point to faith.

 

Damian DeWitt 7 hours ago in reply to Skydog

Well said. This is precisely why Scientology is not an authentic religion. Authentic spiritual practice is about getting free of your attachment to thousands of ego-desires, not the amassing of power to control everyone and everything to your liking.
This is authentic spiritual freedom and enlightenment that lies at the heart of the great spiritual traditions of the human race. It costs nothing.
True spiritual freedom cannot be bought and yet demands that you surrender everything as you burn up your ego-desires in prayer and meditation in the zendo, church, synagogue, mosque, or temple.

 

Llama 5 hours ago in reply to Damian DeWitt

Some of the very good research in this subject describe the effect of the great spiritual traditions as moving from a dualistic (egoistic) mindset to a nondualistic midset (no "I versus you" dichotomy). 
Part of this also involves moving to direct unqualified life experience as opposed judgmental qualified experience.  This has been described as presymbolic, or beyond vocabulary.
So Hubbard, by invented an entire new vocabulary and forcing his members to constantly look up words, he is pushing them back to a dualistic "pigeonholing" experience of life.  This is the opposite of what you're supposed to do.  I see no way around LRH's tech putting people at risk for insanity.
But that's what you get when you trust a charlatan with your soul.

 

grundoon 1 hour ago in reply to Llama

You are describing the "right-hand path." L. Ron Hubbard was a master of the "left-hand path." See http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1364&Itemid=92 and http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/02/scientology_and_4.php.
Most Scientologists don't see themselves as following a left-hand path, however. Letkeman explains: "For its members, Scientology does not qualify as a valid left-hand path.
Their members are lied to about the true sources of Scientology doctrine
and about the qualifications and true background of its founder.
...  A left-hand path designation can only be assigned to those members in Scientology who are fully cognizant of Hubbard’s sources and true intent. Scientology’s upper management is cognizant of the exact left-hand path that Hubbard left for them—it cannot be other than this. It is only these small few that can legitimately claim to be following a left-hand path."

Llama 35 minutes ago in reply to grundoon

I'm aware that Hubbard practiced black magic, although it is interesting that he wasn't trying to pass that "expertise" on to his followers; rather, he implemented mind control mechanisms. 
But what I was referring to is the research done on people who have had enlightenment experiences (and there are quite a few).  These were all on the "right hand" path of experience.  The descriptions of peaceful well being are fairly uniform.
I'm not aware of any research done on the success of "left hand" practitioners, other than the examples of people who seem to have gone insane from the practice, like Hubbard. But I'd be interested in any references:)  That Letkeman article was interesting.