Tom Cruise, Scientology and Suppressive Persons

On Friday Presbyweb was linked to this story, Tom Cruise's scary movie. The article is by Neely Tucker, a staff writer for the Washington Post, and is about Tom Cruise and his video about Scientology which I haven't and don't intend to watch. However, Tucker, whose article is a funny jab at Cruise, writes this:

"He starts talking about "suppressive persons!" That's "SPs" in Scientology terminology. These are people who attack or don't like Scientology. Boy, he really doesn't like them.

"They don't come up to me and do that. They won't do it to me. Not to my face. Not anywhere in my vicinity . . . where they feel they can be . . . confronted. They're just not doing it."
But doing what?

We just don't know."

At least a year ago I took my article on Scientology off of my Web Site Naming the Grace.

It was written over twenty years ago when I had access to the Scientology Managerial books written by L. Ron Hubbard. But my article certainly explains how Scientologists feel about "SPs" And it is not funny, so, since it is a small article I am going to post the article here.

Just remember as you read this, it was written over twenty years ago, just as what was then called the Human Potential Movement was in full bloom.

Grabbing The Tiger By The Tail

By Viola Larson

"Get clever, auditor, Thetans are basically good, Them that Scientology doesn't change are good but down underneath a pile of crimes you couldn't get into a confession story magazine.1"

These are the words of L. Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology in a policy letter from a Church of Scientology publication. Thetans, the life force, spirit, or incarnated gods are "basically good says Hubbard, but he still has to deal with evil, “a pile of crimes" on top of the good.

L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer, began Dianetics in 1950 with the publishing of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Dianetics began as a private therapeutic technique, but expanded into Scientology with the founder's other writings. Trying to explain evil propelled the movement into a complex religious system. The system supports a massive business that sells books, tapes, counseling aids, courses, and franchises.

Don Pearson, a Scientologist in Sacramento, California "says he has friends who have spent $25,000 - $30,000 for courses and counseling - about the same amount, he says, he and his wife have spent over a dozen years of church study. He said most parishioners would not spend that much - closer to $2,000 for Scientology basic courses."2 The idea of dealing with evil from a materialistic and, supposedly, scientific viewpoint is very attractive to contemporary humanity.

The relativism of modern ethics is one foundation stone of what some have labeled the Human Potential Movement. The devotees of this movement seek within themselves an image; sometimes calling it good, sometimes god, but never evil. Each person creates his own personal truth and reality, which excludes a fallen condition: the continual escalating of evil is not dealt with on a personal level.

The Search for Utopia

The Romantic period of Blake found God in nature and either denied evil or glorified it as Edgar Allen Poe did. Early in the twentieth century a majority of humanity was convinced that people were inherently good; yet, without an explanation of surmounting evil. The foundation was laid for the scapegoat philosophy of Nazism; The Jew and non-Aryan became the sub-human or unacceptable creatures of society. According to this philosophy they were the cause of evil; without them society would reach its greatest potential. Remove the troublemakers and civilization would experience a golden age for a thousand years. Before the ashes of the Third Reich have quite blown away, the emerging Human Potential Movement has begun to hint at a new class of unacceptable people. Friends with negative thoughts, students who make bad grades and traditionalist with old ways of thinking and acting are blocking the personal and social advances of other people. It is becoming important to be surrounded with high achievers in order to realize your own potential.

Scientology' s Answer

Scientology, called by Spiritual Counterfeits, the "bellwether of the Human Potential Movement",3 developed within its system a new category of anti- social people. L. Ron Hubbard built an empire on the promise of freeing mankind of evil including such problems as sickness, crime, and mental illness. These problems, according to Hubbard, are caused by something he called an “engram.” The engram is the single and sole source of aberration and psychosomatic illness."4 An engram is received when a person experiences physical or emotional pain, which causes even a small amount of unconsciousness.

Scientologists believe that everyone has engrams in their reactive mind (somewhat like the unconscious) that causes erroneous or harmful actions and need to be removed. Removal is done by "auditing" which the Scientology mission (called an "ORG") provides. The preclear (the person who needs to be audited) pays for the auditing, which is much like counseling, done by using an electropsychometer or "E meter" and a counselor called an auditor. The auditor gives commands and asks questions; he has the preclear talk about a past experience as though it is a present time experience and continues going over it until the supposed engram is removed.

The Re-defining of Persons

L. Ron Hubbard provided a scale for the auditor to use while auditing. It is called the tone scale, and the auditor uses it to find the survival potential of the person he is working with. He tries to find where the preclear lies on the tone scale using such clues as emotion and speech. Hubbard wrote, "If you can locate two or three characteristics and find the level . . . wherever it is, simply look at all the columns opposite the number you found and you will see the remaining characteristics."5

While the engram is the thing that causes the aberrant person, the tone scale provides a description of the person considered the cause of ruin to society. These people, according to Hubbard, are found on the tone scale at 1.1. Hubbard's description of 1.1 people can be found in his book Science of Survival. “Around 1.1 we reach the level of covert hostility. Here the hatred of the individual has been socially and individually censored to a point where it has been suppressed, and the individual no longer dares demonstrate hate as such . . . the person may claim to love others and to have the good of others as his foremost interest; yet, at the same moment, he works unconsciously or otherwise, to injure or destroy the lives and reputation of people and also to destroy property. "6

In this book Hubbard offers a solution for society to survive this personality. "No social order which desires to survive dares overlook its stratum of 1.1's. No social order will survive which does not remove these people from its midst.”7He continues:

"Such people should be taken from the society as rapidly as possible and uniformly institutionalized; for here is the level of the contagion of immorality, and the destruction of ethics . . . one of the most effective measures of security that a nation threatened by war could take would be rounding up and placing in containment, away from society, any 1.1 individual who might be connected with government, the military, or essential industry; since here are people who, regardless of any record of their family's loyalty, are potential traitors.8"

The Final Act

In his book, The Science of Survival, L. Ron Hubbard leads one to believe that a person on the 1.1 level of the tone scale is anti-social because he has committed or will commit such crimes as murder, political subversion, or stealing; however, in other books by L. Ron Hubbard the anti-social person is called suppressive and his list of crimes are quite different. Hubbard writes:

"Such acts include disavowal of Scientology or Scientologists in good standing with Scientology organizations; public statements against Scientology or Scientologist... advertising or voting for legislation or ordinances, rules or laws directed toward the suppression of Scientology . . . bringing civil suit against any Scientology organization or Scientologist including the non-payment of bills or failure to refund without first calling the matter to the attention of the Chairman at Saint Hill . . . writing anti-Scientology letters to the press or giving anti-Scientologist evidence to press; testifying as a hostile witness against Scientology in public;...failure to handle or disavow and disconnect from a person demonstrably guilty of suppressive ACTS.9"

It is quite clear from these descriptions that all people who agree and support Scientology are the good citizens of L. Ron Hubbard's world, but anyone who is in disagreement with him and expresses that disagreement becomes an enemy not only of Scientology but also of the state and world in general. Hubbard’s solutions for humanity are really only those of destruction. His advice, "Life bleeds. It suffers. It hungers and it has to have the right to shoot its enemies until such time as comes a golden age.”10 Scientology is a religion that wants to change people, not into caring individuals that want to reach out to a hurting humanity, but into tigers that can overcome their enemies by force. L. Ron Hubbard's promise is, “We’ll survive because we are tough and are dedicated. When we do instruct somebody properly he becomes more and more tiger.”11


1 L. Ron Hubbard, New Word Clearing Co-Audit Course Pack 2.
2 Sacramento Bee- Sat. July 23, 1983.
3 Brooks, Alexander, SCP Journal, “Scientology: Human Potential Bellwether”, 27.
4 L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. 79.
5 L. Ron Hubbard, Self-Analysis, 39.
6 L. Ron Hubbard, Science of Survival, book one 89,90
7 Ibid., 90.
8 Ibid.
9 L. Ron Hubbard, The Organization Executive Course, Vol. 1, 553.
10 Hubbard, Executive Course, Vol. 7, 355.
11 L. Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Standard Dianetic Course, HCO Policy Letter of Feb. 7, reissued June 15, 1970 (corrected per Flag issue 28.1.73)