DEATH OF A SCIENTOLOGIST

by Tori Marlan
Chicago READER * August, 2002

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

PART 7

PART 8

PART 9

PART 10

PART 11

PART 12

Tigger, WOW! This is quite a story. I stand by my earlier post of reasons why a person might commit suicide, and to that I add "blame, shame and regret".

As far as "Who done it?"

Read this 12 part article from the Chicago Reader and find out.

Upper level Scientology processing is worst case scenario flat out poisonous to persons predisposed to psychosis/paranoia.

Of for that matter any Magick practices. They walk down the
path of imagination and just never return.

Much of OT levels are repackaged exorcism rituals.
This was not a "Con" as Lerma and others would have you believe. This was serious business as Hubbards own pathology
shows his sincere belief that spirits from outer space haunted him beginning sometime in the mid 1960's. Accounts reveal that he in fact died shouting at these imaginary beings.

This is called Paranoid Schizo-affective disorder.

(Message edited by umike on April 25, 2005)

I recall listening to a classified tape a long time ago. Hubbard was talking about the 5 world bankers who were all out to get him and how he was planning to get back at them...the US govt. was involved bla bla bla....

It wasn't a professional tape at all. He was dictating from the deck of the Apollo-you could hear the wind blowing.
He explained how urgent it was that we all knew about the plotters and that he had a plan to strike back so we could all be free and clear the planet.

This was the watergate era-everyone belived him. In many ways criticism literally drove him crazy I think.

No doubt Greg Bashaw bought into all this dogma as well.

What sort of motive would accompany Hubbard's pathology?

Pathologies such as Hubbard's together with the organizational mindset he "created" (to put it politely) and the subsequent institutionalization of his core delusions resulted in demanding every last Thin Dime from followers' pocketbooks, (not to mention the flagrant abuses personally ordered and witnessed by Hubbard), and bear no resemblance to ordinary wog definitions of sincerity. 'Sincerity' is the wrong word in any case if you wanted to suggest there's anything remotely redemptive about Hubbard and his highly calculated commercial enterprise.

If one believes spirits from outer space are the basis for Hubbard's... shall we say, 'demise', we're talking about a person who, as the history of the "church" of scientology has shown, required his sheep to embrace and share what haunted him in order to be "free" (of what haunted him).

Which served him well, as well he knew, just like slavery served the slave masters' (pocketbooks), thus the 'con' reading.

Indeed! an affective disorder.

Don't tell me he's going to get off in any way on a simple insanity plea.

Criticism doesn't drive normal, ethical (and ideally peer-reviewed) people crazy. Someone with a serious affective disorder it could.

Umike, you are correct. Commonly called split personality disorder, schizo-affective disorder or paranoid schizophrenia definetly explains alot about LRH. It can be inhereted, or occur idiopathically, usually in young men in their late teens or early 20s. It can also be induced, by drugs, trauma or psychological abuse, PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) can also be an underlying factor. Any of these factors could apply to LRH, as he seemed to be a very bright functional boy according to his history. IMO, he was probably also bipolar (manic depressive) and it is not unusual for these disorders to co-occur.

I imagine he studied everything he could get his hands on to try to figure out what was wrong with himself. It is known he was treated in a psychiatric hospital, and I am sure he was very angry they couldn't "fix" him. Maybe that is when he turned his considerable intellect and manic energy to studying, on his own, different religions and practices, including Satanism. When none of it gave him the answers he was looking for (and who among us didn't spend their youth and young adulthood looking for answers?) he decided to make up his own. So he "thought for himself" and made up a "workable technology" that explained everything he wanted to know.

Being an imaginative and energetic writer, he wrote up what he had learned, and people bought it! So he wrote some more, and they bought that too! He was really on to something! But being still a paranoid, he could not tolerate criticism or failure of any kind or the depression would kick in. Thus the focus on secrecy and security and undercover ops that eventually became a monster. He needed constant attention and admiration to keep away his demons, so he used his knowledge of black magic, psychology, hypnotism etc. to create traps to keep people from leaving him. Thus the Sea Org was born. However, he remained paranoid, always watching for the least sign of disaffection. Daring to question or critisize or anything less than complete adoration drove him into a frenzy, and he could not tolerate it. Thus the RPF was born. Also SPs and Declares and Disconnection.

I beleive he used "rum and pink and greys" and massive amounts of other drugs and alcohol to self medicate in an attempt to keep his demons at bay. His high tolerance is not unusual in manics or schizophrenics, and is of course exacerbated by long term abuse of these substances.

The bigger his creation got, the more out of his control it seemed, and the more he tried to control it. Thus began the dwindling spiral, for LRH and for his "religion".

The logical end result of my theory would be that LRH would descend into complete madness and die screaming about the body thetans infesting him. They were his own creation. So I believe that story, too.

I think that is why you do see some workable technology at the beginning of the bridge, and it gradually, on a gradient scale, leads you up the bridge to madness.

Saying things like "I will only use what works for me" is like saying "I will only use enough methamphetimine to lose a little weight". You will soon want more and more. And justify why it is really the right thing to do. It is a very slippery slope, and it is much wiser to go play somewhere else rather than at the edge of the abyss.

Greg Bashaw fell into the abyss. So did I and many others. Some make it out, but it is not easy. Many die along the way, and Greg was one of the unfortunate victims.

Blaming Greg for falling off a cliff by saying "well, he was weaker than me, or there must have been something wrong with him" is one of the traps of scientology. If anything bad happens it is because that person is out ethics or pts or has o/ws. That would never happen to you because you are upstat and good and honest.

Things happen in life and they aren't all good, but they aren't all your fault either. And you can't stop them from happening with all the imaginary OT powers in the world.

The psychological term for this is "Magical Thinking" and it is a normal stage that children go through. Do you remember feeling that something was all your fault? Maybe your parents divorced, or your dog died and you thought "If only I loved them enough or didn't think that bad thought this wouldn't have happened."?

Scientology makes you beleive that magical thinking you grew out of when your brain matured was really the truth! That being OT means you really can control everything with your thoughts alone. Thoughts are powerful, but that's another subject. OTs cannot stop tsunamis or hurricanes or "knock off hats at 50 yards..." (HOM). There is no such thing as an OT, it was just a figment of LRHs deluded imagination. If you believe it, you are a deluded adherent.

Greg Bashaw was a deluded adherent. I was too, and I understand what he did. It could have happened to me.

I was declared for objecting strenuously to some that I saw as so out tech, off policy, out KSW that it broke through the fog and I refused to go along with it. I "enturbulated" so many people I was declared despite the fact my Comm-Ev agreed with me. I enturbulated them too, I was told. I was shocked to find myself on the street with nothing. I begged to be allowed to do the RPF. It is a long story for another time, but for now, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen". After many appeals and reviews I devoloped some serious medical problems that I knew would prevent me from getting up the bridge or back in the Sea Org this life time.

Scientologists believe there is no such thing as death, you are a thetan occupying a meat body. I decided my only choice was to drop the body and pick up another one. I was not suicidal, it just seemed like the only logical thing to do. I didn't tell anyone. I decided to wait until my children ( who I had abandoned to my ex to join the SO years before) were grown and on their own, because we had become close and I knew it would hurt them to be abandoned again.

Meanwhile, I went back to finish my degree, and got on the internet. I found Clambake 1st, and couldn't stop reading. There were so many stories of people I knew!

So there you have it. Clambake and all the people who cared enough to tell their stories and make the truth about Scientology available on the Internet saved my life. Including the LMT! I hope I can return the favor.

This was hard for me to write, just as Greg's story was hard for me to read, so I am just going to post it as is. I will edit it later and send it to Arnie.

Thank You Tigger for starting this thread.

Umike, thanks for reading Greg's story. I think you owe Tory an apology.

Jim did a great job reporting this Tiggs-I recall it well. Crazy old coot. RIP Jim. Of course below we find the LMT link. Precisely where the professional referral wasn't made by the Vice President of the LMT. Thank you for this.

"Bob's attempts to get information about Greg's condition were futile.
Desperate, he visited the now defunct Lisa McPherson Trust. Not far from
Scientology's headquarters in Clearwater and staffed by high-level
defectors, the trust had been founded to expose the church's "abusive and
deceptive" practices and to provide support to ex-Scientologists attempting
to readjust to life outside the church. It put Bob in touch with former
Scientologists who'd reached the same level as Greg, OT7. One of them, Greg
Barnes, remembers receiving a desperate call from Bob: "He was a father who
was lost. A distressed man going, 'What do I do?' - reaching out to everyone
and anyone who could help his son."


Barnes spoke on the phone with Greg about seven times. They had much in
common. They were the same age, and each was married with one son. Each had
spent more than 20 years in Scientology and had become an IAS patron. Barnes
says he and his wife had left the church of their own volition a year
earlier, after deciding that it had altered Hubbard's teachings.

OOPS! I jumped the gun. Looks like umike DIDN"T
read the whole story, just cherry picked the part that he THINKS backs up his false assertions and took it out of context.

Come on, umike! Get Real!!

This is what SCIENTOLOGY does to people. Greg wanted only to get back on the COS bridge, he did what he thought he had to do, drop the body and pick up a new one, because he was out qualled this life time.

He did not want to ruin his chances for next lifetime or throw away his eternity by getting involved with a bunch of squirrels! That is suppresive you know, and you will get kicked out not only this lifetime but every lifetime after that and NEVER join LRH on Target 2. Or so says the church(spit) of scientology.

You missed the point by a lightyear, umike.
And just when I thought there was hope for you yet.

Ladybird

Thank you for the long and insightful post Ladybird.

Me too Ladybird. Loved your post!

Me, three, Ladybird. It's a good thing you figured this stuff out and are now here to help other people! It must have taken alot of strength to get yourself together after being dumped after all those years.
Kudos!

Ladybird, that was one of the clearest, most to-the-point verbal deconstructions of the phenomenon known as L Ron Hubbard I have ever read.

It may have been hard for you to write, but it was very much the right thing for you to do. Insights like yours need to be shared. Thank you.

Me four, Ladybird! Fantastic post...and I truly enjoyed your in put on all of it.

Please keep posting more....I learned quite a bit from what you wrote.

Also, I appreciate you~~:)

Best,

Tory/Magoo~~

Ladybird,

Your analysis is exactly my thinking on the subject of L. Ron Hubbard. In 20/20 hindsight, it really isn't all that hard to figure out. He pumped himself up with drugs (speed) and plagerism. He had even made remarks about this from time-to-time. But we weren't listening.