Documentary on Scientology airing March 29

HBO (Home Box Office cable television network) is airing a highly-acclaimed documentary on Scientology tomorrow night, Sunday, March 29, at 8 pm.  I am posting this information on TMFree because one of the interviewees, Paul Haggis, a former high-level Scientologist, talks about mind-control and high-demand organizations with such brilliance and insight that readers who have been in TM may feel a shock of recognition at his words. 

 The documentary is entitled "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Faith."  Haggis here responds to attack pieces that Scientology has already produced in advance of the HBO airing:

"...Despite what is being said in their rather pathetic attack pieces on me, I was very involved in Scientology for most of my adult life. While I thought the OT levels ["Operating Thetan" - somewhat parallel to TM's "enlightenment" or "cosmic consciousness"- Laurie's editorial note] madness, I used many Scientology precepts in my daily life — so much so that it took several years after leaving to actually question the many “self-help” concepts that I had learned and used.  The slow indoctrination process is as subtle as it is dangerous — largely because you truly believe that you are thinking for yourself, when in fact you are discouraged to do anything of the sort.
 
Paradoxically, there is great pride in belonging to a stigmatized group. It’s like being in love with a narcissist. All your friends will warn you that you are just being used. You understand why they think what they think, but you believe in your heart that they just don’t see what you see. You just tune them out. 

For that reason, when I did discover what many outside the church [of Scientology] knew, I was truly shocked. While some of the information had been out there for many years, like all Scientologists, I refused to look. Yes, I was told not to, but I didn’t have to be [obedient].  This was my group and I knew there to be many people in the world who were bigoted and close-minded; and when I was told that we were “under attack” in Germany or France or wherever, instead of looking for the reasons, I assumed this to be the case — and donated many thousands of dollars toward our “defense.” Yes, there was considerable duress involved in those “donations,” but if I didn’t honestly believe what I was being told I would not have handed over such large sums.  It makes little or no sense in retrospect, and it’s very hard to understand unless you’ve been a part of a marginalized group. 

While I was a constant thorn in the side of the [Scientology] executives, questioning practices I thought unjust, it never crossed my mind to voice my concerns outside the organization. In fact, even after I sent my letter of resignation, I maintained a great fondness for “The Old Man."  [L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology.]  Yes, he was a rogue, and he might have gone insane later in life, I thought, but I still believed he had put together a pretty workable system for steering through life. Even then, I might have been outraged by injustices I witnessed or heard about, but I dropped the blame at the doorstep of David Miscavige and company [Scientology's leaders.]  

Miscavige, I later discovered to my amusement, never liked or trusted me — in his eyes I was a bad Scientologist — which I admit myself. I was told he was angered that I wasn’t “deferential enough,” and that I asked too many questions, even if internally.  

Too many, and as it turned out, not near enough.
 
It took years after leaving to understand that these practices I railed against had always been at the core of Scientology — that Miscavige was just very faithfully, if cynically, following L. Ron Hubbard’s cruel playbook. The reason this was hard to believe is exactly because of the duplicitous nature of Hubbard’s writing. He wrote tomes on the practice and necessity of critical thought; how nothing should be accepted at face value. His “ethics formulas” stress that when making a difficult decision you have to push aside all personal bias and truly look at what people are doing, not just what they are saying. “Look, don’t listen” is oft repeated advice — but it is advice given to the blind. All these high-minded teachings are useless when you factor in the thing you are never allowed to question — Scientology, its teachings, practices and leadership.
 
Somehow Scientologists are able to accept those incongruous and contradictory thoughts.  For example, they truly believe that only Scientology can save the world, and that they are making major strides in this direction every year. They hold onto this belief despite the fact that there isn’t even a modicum of evidence that they are having even the tiniest impact on any problem in any part of the globe.  Scientologists simply accept the assurances of the church leaders that it is so. To the contrary, volumes of compelling evidence from unimpeachable sources that the... organization has done and is doing serious damage to thousands of people is dismissed before it is ever inspected.

That’s what will happen to "Going Clear." At least that’s what the church hopes happens. Without even watching it, my former friends will condemn it as lies. You see it happening already. Understand that many of these Scientologists are damn smart people; many of them truly lovely and caring. But they are the same people who will not hesitate to cut their closest friend or family member out of their lives if they commit the ultimate crime of criticizing the church. You could do anything else and they would stand by you; commit any crime and they would be there to defend you. But not this.
 
I believe this is because somewhere in the back of their heads they know, as I did, that the very act of questioning could bring down their entire belief system. They have been slowly but surely trained to believe that if you don’t agree with something that [Hubbard] wrote, you just don’t understand it. Questioning anything means questioning everything. Even the slightest crack in that belief system could spread into a fissure. They cannot afford or allow the smallest doubt, because if it took root, their perfect world — a world where there is an answer to every one of life’s questions — could fall apart around them, and they would be left, like the rest of us, searching in the dark for their own answers in an uncertain world. Which brings to mind something a true genius wrote: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” For the sake of my former friends, many of whom I loved, I hope that "Going Clear" is the first crack, that they will watch it, and the light will slip in."

 — Paul Haggis

TM Town Struggles into 21st Century

TM Town Struggles into 21st Century: Mental Health Problems lead Fairfield to Re-Evaluate Core Doctrines


As you probably know, the beloved actor/comedian Robin Williams, who suffered from depression, committed suicide on August 11, 2014.

In the weeks following Williams' suicide, residents of Fairfield, Iowa, USA, home to Maharishi University of Management and to several thousand TMers, have been inching suicide out of the closet.  Researchers noticed that Iowa has a higher rate of suicide than the national average.  And Fairfield has a higher rate of suicide than the average Iowa city.

Fairfield residents have been dragging their feet around suicide prevention for years.  This is due not only to the American stigma around mental illness.  It is also exacerbated by TM official and unofficial doctrine.  Just a few of them are:

- Maharishi disapproved of Western psychotherapy.
- If you saw a psychotherapist, you could be disqualified from attending a TM course.
- TM is supposed to make you emotionally healthy, therefore if you report emotional problems, you are making TM look bad.
- People with emotional problems have been advised to do more asanas or learn the TM-Sidhis, rather than to seek professional help.
- People with emotional problems have been told they are "unstressing" rather than being advised to seek professional help.
- When people have had emotional problems (including hospitalizations and suicides), the TM organization has tended to hide the information or blame the person for being too emotionally unstable to begin with.
- People with emotional problems have been misdiagnosed by TMers as being in higher states of consciousness.

A fascinating report on the blossoming of open discussion on mental health problems in Fairfield is found here:

http://littlevillagemag.com/suicide-in-fairfield-iowa-town-struggles-with-mental-health-awareness/

 "Fairfield Cares," a grassroots organization helping to increase honest conversation about mental health problems of TMers holds meetings and lectures.  And Maharishi University of Management, after 40 years of denying counseling  to their students, are adding counseling to their health services.  However, they state that it is offered as an "adjunct" to TM, since, according to TM doctrine, scientific research shows that TM improves mental health, making people happy and stable.  

The TM organization (TMO) doesn't publicize any of the research which shows that sometimes TM causes or exacerbates mental illness.  Until I discovered TM-Free Blog, I believed what the TMO taught - that every research study ever done on TM showed that TM produces only benefits.  You can find many articles on TM-FreeBlog about emotional problems that some people have experienced due to T.M.  You can find information on the suppressed research on the far-right column of TM-Free Blog's home page.  

What have been your experiences with the TMO and mental health?

A weird thought about Armageddon

The battle of all battles between the forces of good and the forces of evil is supposed to take place at har Magiddo; at least that's the x-ian fantasy that fuels much of the fundamentalist and militant rhetoric of the reactionary right. Nothing like a bit of fear-mongering to generate some control, eh?

And this has what to do with TM?, you might inquire.

Well, as John has reminded me, we lived with the threat of WWIII all though the "cold" war period. And as John also reminded me, it is important, too, that we keep in mind that Mahesh was no slouch when it came to using fear-mongering to get more and more people to buy into his delusional reality/fantasy that TM and his 'sidhi' bollocks was going to make the world safe from disaster!

Yet, Mahesh was the disaster when it came to individual lives. TM and his cockamamy 'sidhi' conglomeration only made the delusional fantasy-world of Maheshism a nice place for Mahesh

It's just a thought, of course, but I was reminiscing about that moment when Mahesh handed me the piece of paper with the mantras (on that course, by age and gender). I knew at once, obviously, that there was no such thing as the mystical knowledge of assigning the right mantra and that Mahesh's so sweet and clever talk about choosing the right mantra was simply crap. The illusion and the delusion perished, much as that piece of paper would have had I taken a match to it. But, the human brain, even mine, does a lot of calculations almost instantaneously. It comes as no surprise, now, that there was more than that one illusion perishing. Other firmly held conceptualizations (since TM isn't a belief system «smirk», I can't say beliefs, now, can I?) were threatened, were teetering on the brink of distruction. The mind had to wonder, what other convictions (ok, beliefs) did I hold that I hadn't questioned?

Yes, and, well, you mentioned Armageddon???

Isn't this the real Armageddon, the mind itself, where the ultimate battle, the battle to end all battles takes place? and what battle is actually fought there?

One of the things that seems to me to be most responsible for keeping believers believing is the reluctance, the absolute dread and horror if we really must call a spade a spade, of questioning the unquestionable, thinking the unthinkable, speculating, wandering outside the safe boundaries the leader has established - for our own good, of course. Because the fear of straying is so adamentine in the doctrine (in this case, the dogmas of Maheshism), the fear of straying frequently outweighs the obvious conclusions any otherwise rational person might draw. It certainly kept me in line! At least for a little longer.

But the peculiar and unique thing about Maheshism and probably Scientology and the Rosicrucians and possibly those who follow Yogananda, is that there is something more being dangled in the not too distant, soon to come to fruition, future! The what if's set in!

I suspect that confusion of thought, that uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously, that inability to grasp how the magician does his tricks (and what if they aren't tricks but actually magic after all) that is the real Armageddon that most devout TMers are hiding from, buying all the TM stuff they can to buttress their mental fortifications against questioning their own beliefs and having to face that nasty business of one's own mental warfare! [horrors of horrors, what have I done?!?] Then you would have to actually question Mahesh, wouldn't you! Was he really what you imagined? What got you to imagine that in the first place? How did Mahesh manipulate you? Dare you look at what HE achieved, for himself, of course, by manipulating you?

I certainly didn't really question, even when Mahesh handed me that piece of paper. He was so diabolically clever, too. He had me recite those holy, sacred, immaculate, wonderful, special mantras, then he took the piece of paper, folded it, gave it to me and then held my hands in his (he had really huge hands), for several seconds that seemed almost eternal, as he gazed into my eyes and reminded me how important I was to him. (Daddy loves you best! «snork»)

Yet, the battle had started and the forces of Maheshism were already winning.

The real groundwork for that ultimate battle took place during those two years living with Mahesh and his travelling circus of TM courses from Mallorca to Fiuggi and then La Antilla, helping to make the SCI course (oh, why, oh, why, didn't we know about C.S.I.-type thinking then!!!), planning the placement of the microwave towers to broadcast SCI to the whole world and then trying for 9 months to teach it in India.

It's hard to just chuck it all, toss in the towel and walk away when you're on the other side of the planet from home and only have the little spending money Mahesh allowed. But those thoughts were beginning to gain the day.

I finally knew that the clash of mythos and reality was what was ringing the wake up! bell, causing all the racket that certainly wasn't musical. Something HAD to be done and I didn't know what and knew I was shrinking from facing the facts!

Now the forces of my own mind were beginning to see that there were more holes in Maheshism than in a block of Swiss Cheese!

Armageddon is very, very real. Cognitive dissonance is very, very real. The results are, to pull no punches, very difficult to manage, especially the internal, mental one I am talking about here. AND it's such a relief to have got on with it because now I can constantly question myself, my burgeoning beliefs and conceptualizations!

For example, Wow, this is a great book I'm reading, this is a great author! - really? and with whom are you comparing this author, what, I must constantly inquire, is the basis for the argument I am making in favour of gratifying my ego?

And, who knows, some day it may turn out that the right-wing reactionary fundys were right — although that kind of reasoning is like thinking that because you have been beating your head against the wall and finally it rained is a significant cause-effect relationship.

For more useful information relevant to getting free from the mental Armegaddon of TM vs Reality, click on the title at the top.