Jon Atack’s revealing book on Scientology, A Piece of Blue Sky, is at first an honest memoir of his own experiences. There is a section early on which describes one of the dozens of auditing rituals practiced by Scientologists. In this heartbreaking recollection, Atack first allows that he is at a point in his life where he is highly susceptible to indoctrination. Single, relatively directionless, and moderately depressed, he is fascinated by the urgency of the officers and clerics of Scientology. In one of his first auditing rituals, Atack explains how his auditor loses his composure:
…my first Auditor collapsed while giving me a session. He was asking me to touch objects in the room, one by one, and suddenly crumpled against the wall, sinking to the floor in uncontrollable laughter. The artificial atmosphere…was too much for him. I was unprepared for this, and felt dizzy and confused. (16)
This was not a matter of the artificial atmosphere. This was symptomatic of severe stress resultant from the rigorousness of the ritual. That is, this Auditor had a panic attack. Snapped out of the monotony of this dominance ritual, Atack remembers himself, though not without disorientation and dizziness. Such is the nature of dominance ritual in religion. The following is video footage of Scientologists recruiting following the nightmare at Virginia Tech. The Locational Assist:
This is brainwashing, programming, training the mind to expect simple verbal rewards for doing as it’s told, and these dominance rituals are rampant in all religions today. Each time the reporter agrees that he is looking at the object he has been ordered to observe, the inculcator responds with: “Good.” The reporter, rather incredulous, goes along with this seemingly harmless ritual. But when reading Atack’s book one finds that a sound bite on CNN does little justice to these rituals. In an auditing session, expect to perform a Locational Assist ritual for as long as two, three, even six hours. As you grow fatigued, weary, even hallucinatory, the auditor pushes you further and further, and eventually you are willing to do whatever or say whatever is necessary in order to smoothen the ritual. By the end, you may be humiliated, afraid, crying. But when this total submission occurs the auditor will claim that you have achieved a new level of clarity in your life. This is how cults work. This is how religion works. This is how indoctrination works, and this is how brainwashing works.
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We are looking now at Scientology, because I think it is easy for us to view scientology as atheists to their beliefs, (the Scientologists at VT were asked to move their tent off-campus, whereas other meetings of religion were condoned—strange) but I would encourage the idea of turning this on to our own chosen religions. In Alcoholics Anonymous, a religious institution that rarely helps its followers, asks its followers to cite the infamous 12 Steps before most meetings:
• We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
• Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
• Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
This is a dominance ritual meant to keep the susceptible in a place of total powerlessness, to label themselves powerless before an imaginary deity, or the administrative officers that hand down the supernatural orders from on high to keep the indoctrinated as powerless members of a faith which does nothing to help them with their severe mental and physical problems. This is as tragic as it is stupid, and these rituals are as meaningless as they are poisonous.
UPDATE: It is difficult to prove that Alcoholics Anonymous is completely unhelpful as a method for quitting drinking. Suffice it to say that some AA members, who claim that “it’s the only way”, are completely misguided. I, myself, would be misguided in ruling out in totality the usefulness of AA as a method of stopping drinking. On the other hand, I believe it IS a community based in the supernatural- and that agnostic and atheist groups within AA are much like agnostic and atheist groups within the Lutheran church. And do note: my goal is not to cast dispersions on the followers of these spiritual groups, but on the administrators- those who know they are shilling a sickness and benefitting from it.
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3 Comments
November 27, 2007 at 4:18 am
I disagree with your assessment of AA as a cult. According to your link “Three ideas seem essential to the concept of a cult. One is thinking in terms of us versus them with total alienation from ‘them.’ The second is the intense, though often subtle, indoctrination techniques used to recruit and hold members. The third is the charismatic cult leader.”
In my experience with AA, there was no central figurehead, no emphasis on alienation (although we were encouraged not to hang out with old drinking buddies in bars – duh), and apparently the indoctrination techniques weren’t too effective – I haven’t been to a meeting in years.
I expect there ARE AA groups that fit this description, and they should be driven before the whip as all cults should. But it is a disservice to drunks everywhere to so inappropriately describe AA in general.
December 6, 2007 at 4:58 am
[...] will November 27, 2007 at 4:18 am [...]
February 6, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Will- Yes, not ALL AA sects are cults. Not ALL scientology sects are cults, and not all Baptist sects are cults.
And yet, there is still this problem- where we are asked to declare our powerlessness, to submit to another’s direction for the purpose of taking orders.
I take issue with that.