Altered texts in Scientology doctrine
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In the Church of Scientology, it has long been considered essential that the word of founder L. Ron Hubbard is incontrovertible, and that his works must be preserved unaltered. To this end, Scientology's enormous underground Trementina Base maintains a scriptural archiving project to preserve his writings, films and recordings for future generations.
However, since Hubbard's death and his replacement by successor David Miscavige, there have been many subtle and not-so-subtle alterations and omissions from Hubbard's texts and even recordings. These alterations to the "Standard Tech" have caused controversy both inside and outside the Church, especially among Free Zone practitioners. [1]
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health has also been extensively and repeatedly rewritten by the Church, along with 913 other titles listed in the Library of Congress records. [2] Scientology's Church of Spiritual Technology is the owner of the copyrights.
Whether these changes represent a major degradation of Hubbard's original writings, or merely minor edits and improvements that do not change the fundamental thrust of his message, is a matter hotly debated among some Scientologists. Some Scientologists say that they were retaliated against by the Church for informing others that technical alterations have occurred. [1]
In 2005 Miscavige announced that the Church has entered what he calls the "Golden Age of Knowledge", during which he intends to make publicly available every word ever written or recorded by Hubbard. It remains to be seen if this includes the content that has already been redacted.
Contents |
[edit] Examples of altered texts
[edit] Advanced Procedures and Axioms
Original Version: "Logic 4 - A datum is a facsimile of states of being, states of not being, actions or inactions, conclusions, or suppositions in the physical or any other universe." (1st edition)
New Version: "Logic 4 - A datum is a symbol of matter, energy, space or time, or any combination thereof, in any universe, or the matter, energy, space or time itself, or any combination thereof, in any universe." (current edition)
(The same alterations to The Logics have been made in other books where they appear, such as later editions of What is Scientology? and Scientology 0-8: The Book of Basics).
[edit] Scientology: A New Slant on Life
This book is filled with small contextual alterations, such as:
Original Version: "Actually a little child derives all of his "how" of life from the grace he puts upon life." (1965 edition)
New Version: "Actually, a little child derives all of his pleasure in life from the grace he puts upon life." (1997 edition)
Furthermore, there are eight chapters that were in the original edition which have been completely expunged from the current edition, and twelve new chapters that were not in the original. [3]
[edit] Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought
Original Version: "Scientology is that branch of psychology which treats of (embraces) human ability. It is an extension of DIANETICS which is in itself an extension of old-time faculty-psychology of 400 years ago." (1973 edition)
New Version: "Scientology is an applied religious philosophy." "Scientology is further defined as the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, universes and other life." "Any comparison between Scientology and the subject known as Psychology is nonsense." (1997 edition)
[edit] The second Dynamic
Original Version (before 2003): "The second dynamic is the urge toward existence as a future generation. It has two components: sex and the family unit, including the raising of children." [4]
New Version (after 2003): "The second dynamic is creativity. Creativity is making things for the future and the second dynamic includes any creativity. The second dynamic contains the family unit and the rearing of children as well as anything that can be categorized as a family activity. It incidentally includes sex as a mechanism to compel future survival." [5]
[edit] Examples of altered recordings
[edit] Philadelphia Doctorate Course
Original Version: "It's a very simple remedy. And that's– just make sure that the remedy is passed along. That's all. Don't hoard it, don't hold it; and if you ever do use any Black Dianetics, use it on the guy who pulled Scientology out of sight and made it so it wasn't available. Because he's the boy who would be electing himself 'The New Order.' And we don't need any more new orders. All those orders, as far as I am concerned, have been filled." (1982 edition, tape 20)
New Version: "It's a very simple remedy. And that's-just make sure that the remedy is passed along. That's all. Don't hoard it, don't hold it." The remaining sentences have been edited out. (1991 edition, tape 20)
Tape 18 of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures of 1952 has Hubbard mentioning my very good friend Aleister Crowley. However, in at least two later publications ("Advance!" issue 46, copyright 1977, page 4 and "OT News" issue 3, copyright 1983, page 1), the part with Crowley has been removed. (Source: Helle Meldgaard, Zu den wahren Wurzeln von Scientology, Berliner Dialog 4/1996 [6], also published in the article "Scientology's Religious Roots" in Studia Missionalia, Vol. 41-1992, "Religious Sects and Movements", pp. 169 - 185.)
[edit] Flag Executive Briefing Course
Original Version: "The guy whose attention is out there and in there. The Guardian's Office for instance at this moment that I speak has heroically acceded to our pleas, so that we could teach an FEBC and hold the fort in, all over the world; and it's much broader than you imagine; has loaded onto itself a great many internal concerns. It's also trying to hold the fort externally. Well they can't do that very long, that's why you are getting pressure here, because the Guardian's Office will probably be holding the org, or the CLO out there will be holding the org, until trained personnel get back to that org. And it's not much mentioned to students, because it would harass them, and put them under a worry, and a stress. So I'm telling you, speed up."
"Actually, the Guardian's Office at this exact moment all over the world is holding its breath, waiting for the FEBCs to come back, because they're holding internal actions. Now they're an external group. It wasn't the Guardian's Office in this instance, but I'm just telling you the difference between external and internal. Their attention is out into the public. Their tech is with the ARC broken pc out there in the public, not in the org. So, the person I was speaking to had permitted,..." (7101C23 SO FEBC-05, "How to Post an Org", 1971 edition, tape 5)
New Version: "The guy whose attention is out there and in there. So, the person I was speaking to had permitted,..." Almost two paragraphs deleted. (2005 edition, side 5, omissions begin 36 minutes and 15 seconds into the lecture)
Original Version: "Actually, probably a great deal of percentage of her time was being occupied internally. Now in the... that's not the Guardian's Office, but in the Guardian's Office matter and so on, why the, Mary Sue is saying, "Where are the FEBCs? Where are the FEBCs? Where are they?" They're perfectly willing to handle this sort of a situation, but you've got policy knowledge and other actions of one kind or another in the Guardian's Office at this moment, holding posts of temporary executive director. USGO is holding a post, his communicator is holding a post in DC, or was 'til a very short time ago and so on. And they're spread thin. They're controlling all of Africa right now, and actually were telexing for help here within the last week or so. So this is an external/internal strain." (1971 edition, tape 5)
New Version: "Actually, probably a great deal of percentage of her time was being occupied internally. So this is an external/internal strain." Almost one paragraph deleted. (2005 version, side 5)
[edit] Establishment Officer Lectures
Original Version:"So it's all from what viewpoint one is operating. If I were to tell you that we have one of the hottest, smartest units in the world of its kind, you might or might now agree with me, but it's the Guardian's Office. Now, that is a hand-built organization and it was built for a certain definite policy and planning. They had a certain definite purpose. It is better, now hold your hat, it is better today than MI-6, CIA, DIN, State Intelligence or the Abwehr. The decline of psychiatry on the planet came about because they attacked the wrong target, us. There wasn't any unpopularity of psychiatry 'til we opened our mouths, and now it's generally thought to be the case that they're sort of a failed, half-baked, murderous sort of bunch of bums.
The World Federation of Mental Health has now just been transferred to the West Indies and put in the hands of an obscure psychiatrist nobody ever heard of in a back village of blacks. Now, it was the world's most powerful mental health organization, formed by the death-campers who escaped to England. Now, how did it ever get to Jamaica on a back street of a small village? Now, you get the idea? The Guardian's Office doesn't have huge sums of money, they don't have vast numbers of personnel, but they've got technology, they have got some of the hottest technology that anybody ever heard of.
One piece of that technology is over two thousand years old, it comes out of the "Art of War", it's called the "dead agent technique". But the Art of War doesn't state what the dead agent technique could be in full, it was developed within an inch of its life. A newspaper reporter today going into his own morgue files, in any paper anyplace, to get some material to write about Scientology, collides with how bad psychiatry is. Now, how did anybody ever manage that? The people who were running the psychiatric push are dead. Worried to death. Now, how did anybody do that? Psychiatry had a huge escalated program, escalated, climbed right up the escalator and upstairs, fast: To degrade the human race, to supersede all normal justice with psychiatric anything. They had this up to a point where they had legislatures all over the world, and parliaments and so on, were just passing seizure laws which were moving right straight forward which were opening the gate to a totalitarian state for this planet nobody ever heard of. And they made the mistake of attacking us and attracting our attention.
Now, one little handful of guys going in against a multi-billion dollar organization such as that, and messing it up and knocking it flat on its back, is quite a feat. And the whole organization was put together and made to run in a few months, and it did its job and accomplished its objectives within three years. Now that shows what can be done.
Have you ever received anything from the Guardian's Office? Have you ever received a letter or anything like that? You don't know too much about them, but have you ever received a note or a letter and so forth from Central Guardian's Offices and so on? They're always very neatly typed and they're usually put together well. Did you ever notice that? So their administrative procedures are in. They follow target policies religiously, they program everything. If some, if somebody is to go out and find out about somebody in some small town someplace or another, he's on fully programmed orders, fully targeted orders just exactly against the target series, but they carry it through to an enormous degree. Now, that's what can be done by establishment. Now that required then brilliant technology, small resources but very, very sound, hard organization and fantastically able management.
So don't for a moment underrate what you can do as an Establishing Officer if that job could be done." (ESTO Series lecture 1, 1972 version, 7203C01 ESTO-01 "Esto's Instant Hat - Part 1, transcript pages 9-10")
New Version:"So it's all from what viewpoint one is operating. So don't for a moment underrate what you can do as an Establishing Officer if that job could be done." The above five paragraphs are deleted.(ESTO Series lecture 1, 2005 version, omissions begin 44 minutes, 58 seconds into the lecture.)
Original Version:"...and the outgo is in the charge of the Establishment Officer. An organization that spends more than sixty percent of what it makes has got rocks in its head anyhow, regardless of who gets the other forty, regardless of the tax people, to hell with the tax people. The tax people will do you in anyhow, why worry about it? They've made themselves sufficiently obnoxious and sufficiently bonkers that you just take those steps necessary to obfuscate them.
It doesn't matter whether your tax, you submit honest taxes or dishonest taxes or correct taxes or anything else, they'll suddenly tell you, "Well, all of that that you say was expense is really income because a new rule says that the worth of an organization is its debts plus its assets, so therefore these are really assets, so therefore you owe the organization a hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars, and so on." The Guardian's Office will get very cross with you on its finance lines because it has to do tax things and figure it all out some other way and, and so so forth. But never let the fact that money will be taxed deter you from making a mint. That is not the right why.
If you have enough money and if you've made enough money, the only way Saint Hill has gotten by, you can afford to spend huge sums to protect the huger sums that you have made. The crime is not to have made money. So never fall for the fact that we must not make this money because it will be taxable. No, figure some way where it isn't and go right on making it. An organization has to be valuable enough to compensate management and pay for its management ..." (ESTO Series lecture 1, 1972 version, 7203C01 ESTO-01 "Esto's Instant Hat - Part 1, transcript pages 12-13)
New Version: "...and the outgo is in the charge of the Establishment Officer. An organization has to be valuable enough to compensate management and pay for its management ..." Almost three paragraphs missing. (ESTO Series lecture 1, 2005 version)
Original Version:"If they keep on rolling it and so forth, it'll handle. The Guardian's Office is probably the best hatted. You know that they, what they do in terms of hatting could be a great lesson to an Establishment Officer. They go to the wildest limits to hat people. They bring in somebody and the person is trained in the office there, and if the person doesn't make it they just offload and they get somebody else. And they work, and they work, and they work, and they work, and they work in order to make good personnel, and they get them. So the upshot of it is, is there is a very good example of hatting. And now they have taken care of the external perimeter that would take care of another push of this type.
Another area that we depend on is the Port Captain's office, nowhere near as well as hatted as the Guardian's Office, they do pretty well, they do pretty well, but somebody's really got to roll up their sleaves in that area. So it all breaks down to personnel and the stability of that personnel and that is the test." (7203C05 ESTO-10, Revision of the Product/Org Officer System - Part 2, second page of transcript, 1972 version)
New Version:"If they keep on rolling it and so forth, it'll handle. So it all breaks down to personnel and the stability of that personnel and that is the test." Almost two paragraphs missing. (ESTO Series lecture 5, 2005 version, omissions begin 5 minutes 52 seconds into the lecture)
Original Version:"And they have trouble, they have trouble with the rest of the world. The African is a rather sweet guy, actually he's held up as being a terrible monster and all this sort of thing. But he has interpersonal problems, interracial problems, that sort of thing, which keeps him from communicating to all the people around him, and then he has a thetan interchange going all the time. Blacks, they want to be whites but they hate whites so they better pick up a white body so therefore they hate whites, therefore he whites like the blacks so they shouldn't pick them up so they do and then ,and so forth. I've said this to South Africans, this isn't anything new.
It is simply this fact, and this fact of interest....."(7203C06 ESTO-12 "F/Ning Staff Members - Part 2" ninth page of transcript, 1972 version)
New Version: "And they have trouble, they have trouble with the rest of the world. It is simply this fact, and this fact of interest ...." Almost the entire paragraph above has been deleted.(ESTO Series lecture 6 part 2, 2005 version, omission begins 41 minutes 11 seconds into the lecture)
Original Version: "A lot of people they call downstats would be perfectly valid good people, if anybody would find a job for them. In South Africa, in South Africa they object really to the heavy overpopulation that they've inherited. they, they've inherited about thirteen million I think it is, something like that, something on the order of oh, I don't know, upwards to a third or a half a million whites who are working like screaming mad to support. The welfare that is given to the Bantu would call into disgrace most of the tales told about the viciousness of the South African. If the South African's doing anything, he's trying to give the country back to the Bantu. There's more and more reserves being established, more and more land acquired for the Bantu, more and more money poured out on welfare for the Bantu. You get that? But the same time that's happening, the help button is domewhat resented. They resent this, they don't like that, so it makes some kind of a ridged up problem. But you are dealing with people now who are in..."(7203C06 ESTO-12 "F/Ning Staff Members - Part 2" tenth page of the transcript, 1972 version)
New Version:"A lot of people they call downstats would be perfectly valid good people, if anybody would find a job for them. But you are dealing with people now who are in..." Almost one paragraph deleted. (ESTO lecture 6, 2005 version)
[edit] Examples of altered policies
[edit] Suppressive Acts Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists
Original version: Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter 7 March 1965 Issue I, revised 23 December 1965 by L. Ron Hubbard.
New version: Revised on 8 January 1991. On page five of that policy letter this section is added;"Violation or neglect of the ten points of Keeping Scientology Working, as listed here:
One: Having the correct technology. Two: Knowing the technology. Three: Knowing it is correct. Four: Teaching correctly the correct technology. Five: Applying the technology. Six: Seeing that the technology is correctly applied. Seven: Hammering out of existence incorrect technology. Eight: Knocking out incorrect applications. Nine: Closing the door on any possibility of incorrect technology. Ten: Closing the door on incorrect application."
Note: Hubbard always noted revisions of a policy letter in script. This issue has no such indications and is signed, "Revision assisted by LRH Technical Research and Compilations".
[edit] Notes
- ^ Robert Farley. "The unperson", St. Petersburg Times, 2006-06-24, pp. 1A, 14A. Retrieved on 2006-08-15.
[edit] External links
[edit] Favourable analysis
- Snoeck, Michel. L. Ron Hubbard® vs Alterations (introduction) (personal site). How to deal with them if they happen to come your way.
[edit] Other analysis
- Gene Zimmer. Alteration of Scientology Materials Report (personal site). Alter-is of LRH Materials in Published Church Materials. Truthaboutscientology.com.
- Anastasius Nordenholz. Tech Alterations (personal site). List of tech alterations. scientologie.de.
- Alterations and Additives (personal site). Alterations of auditing technology. Dasdrittejahrtausend.de.
- Dam, Robert. About my time in Church of Scientology! (personal site). Observations about changes made by an old-timer and apostate.
