My Nine Lives in Scientology by M. Pignotti 4/10 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/pignotti/ When I got better, I moved into one of the houses where the staff members lived. Right from the start, I was difficult and argumentative. At first, I was shown to a small room where four people lived in bunk beds. I refused to stay there, so I was eventually given a larger room that I shared with just one other person. Refusing accomodations was not something that was normally done or accepted in the Sea Org, but I got away with it because of the clout I had as a highly trained auditor and OT. When a Scientologist who has not attained the state of Clear and OT is faced with an OT, they are usually in awe and go into a kind of trance state. At the time, I was not aware of this phenomenon on a conscious level, but, subconsciously, I picked it up and used it to get what I wanted. On Flag, however, this was not the case because there were so many clears and OTs and being around one didn't phase anyone. My job as a staff member at AOLA was to audit clears and OTs who needed additional auditing to supplement and repair the auditing that they had already received so they would be prepared to audit themselves on the advanced levels. One of the people that I audited was Anne Burgess, a top level person in the Guardian's Office, which was run by Mary Sue Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard's wife. Anne and I developed a very good rapport and she was very pleased with the auditing she received from me. Word of her auditing got back to Mary Sue, who personally invited me to come to Flag and to train as a Flag auditor. I considered it a great honor to be singled out by the wife of L. Ron Hubbard. Going to Flag to live on the ship with Hubbard and the elite of the Sea Org had been a dream of mine for two years -- a dream that I had worked very hard and had overcome many obstacles to realize. My dream was finally about to come true. The Flagship Apollo In May, 1973, I left for the Flagship Apollo, "the sanest place on the planet", I had been told many times. After getting inoculations for small pox and cholera, I flew to New York City where I was met by someone who told me what my destination was to be: Lisbon, Portugal. All this secrecy enhanced my sense of adventure and excitement. In Lisbon, I met someone else, who put me on a plane to Oporto, Portugal. I was told never to mention Scientology to anyone outside of the ship. We were to use the official "shore story", which was that we were company executives being trained by a management corporation, called Operation Transport Corp. ("OTC", which was a Panamanian Corporation), which offered business courses aboard the ship. I arrived in Oporto in the afternoon and was taken to the ship, which was at anchor at the time. Upon boarding the ship, someone took my passport away from me, which was to be locked up in a safe that I had no access to. I was so excited about being on Flag, I didn't even question this action, assuming there must have been a good reason. There was: taking our passports made it very hard for us to leave, but that was not a reason I thought of at the time. After a brief medical check, I was given linen and shown to my quarters, which was a dark, dingy room below decks with bunk beds stacked in three tiers. About 50 women lived in this dormitory, which was very stuffy. A similar men's dormitory was across the hall. By that time, I had been up for more than 24 hours and was fully feeling the effects of jet lag, as well as the Cholera shot I had received, so I was in somewhat of a daze. I vaguely remember asking someone if there were any better accomodations aboard, but of course, there weren't; not for me. On Flag I wasn't anyone special. I was an intern training to be a Flag auditor and there were many people aboard the ship who were as or more highly trained than I was. The only people on the ship who got private cabins were married couples and very high ranking officers, and even those quarters were very small and cramped, with barely enough room in most of them for a bed and a small sink. I resigned myself to the fact that the women's dorm is where I would be living, which was a very noisy place, with 50 people sharing the space. For some reason, the particular bunk I had was surrounded by wooden boards on three sides, making me feel as if I were enclosed in a coffin. I was exhausted and was allowed to sleep until noon the next day. When I awoke, I was very drowsy and disoriented. For a few horrifying moments, I couldn't find my way out of the bunk and felt as if I was trapped in a coffin. The dorm was pitch dark. Finally, I became more fully conscious and found my way out. In spite of the dingy living quarters, I was very excited to be on Flag. I was given a briefing in more detail on the shore story we were to tell outsiders. No one, not even other Scientologists outside of Flag, was to know the location of the ship. If someone wanted to write to us, they had to write to the address of the liaison office, either in LA or New York and the letters were forwarded to us from these offices. This meant everyone, including parents. I'm sure my parents were frantic, not knowing where I was, but I didn't think about that at the time. My parents seemed very far away. I was taken on a brief tour of the ship. Directly above the dormitories, still below decks was a lounge called the aft lounge (being located in the aft part of the ship). It was fairly large and during mealtimes, makeshift tables were put between rows of chairs and the lounge was used as a dining room for some of the crew. I noticed teen-age girls ironing clothes. These girls would do nothing but iron and wash clothes all day. Later I found out that they were in training to be personal messengers to LRH. Once they made it to the position of LRH messenger, these girls were extremely cocky, drunk on the power that LRH gave them. Some of these girls are now in their late 20s and among the top executives in Scientology today. Just behind the aft lounge was a room where the chain locker was. The chain locker is the place where the chain to the anchor of the ship is kept when the ship if not at anchor, a very small dark place. Many times I saw people being locked up in the chain locker as punishment. I'll never forget the first time I saw this. Some messengers had locked up a terrified young teenage boy in the chain locker. His punishment was to spend the night there. I didn't know what he was being punished for, but the whole incident made my blood run cold. I'll never forget the terrified look in that boy's eyes. Whenever I think about the current leadership of the church, which consists mainly of people who were raised in such an atmosphere, I can only feel pity for these people, who are really just frightened children. As badly as I felt about what I witnessed, I shut it out of my mind, explaining it away by saying that LRH could not possibly have known about it. The Flag Auditor's Internship Shortly after my briefing, I was taken to the internship course room, where I was introduced to a supervisor, a stern, prim and proper woman in her mid-thirties with a serious pale freckled face and light brown hair that was tightly pulled back into a ponytail. She rarely smiled and I don't ever recall hearing her laugh. Life on Flag was a deadly serious affair. There were signs posted in the classroom saying something like (I don't recall the exact wording) "All I expect is perfection" and "The only exception to the rule that there are no absolutes is the Flag auditor", quotes from LRH. Our time was spent either studying materials, doing TRs or auditing preclears. There were about 10-15 interns on the ship who, like myself, had come from outer orgs to Flag for the purpose of being highly trained as Flag auditors and returning to our orgs. Our days were long, starting at 8:30 AM and ending at 10:30 PM. If our stats were up, meaning if we were doing well, we were allowed one day off every two weeks. Every morning, all of the interns and auditors would assemble for a muster and we would recite, in unison the points of "Keeping Scientology Working" from a policy letter by L. Ron Hubbard. Some of these points were: "Having the correct technology." "Applying the correct technology." "Hammering out of existence incorrect technology." "Closing the door on any possibility of incorrect technology." "Closing the door on incorrect applications." In the same policy letter, Hubbard had said, "It's a tough universe and only the tigers survive." Flag, I was to learn very quickly, was a tough universe indeed! Each day we were assigned PCs, usually staff members, to audit. Since I was OT III some of the people I audited were in high positions. One of the first people I audited was a kind, middle-aged woman who was head of a division and had been on the ship since the late 1960s. A PC's entire auditing history is recorded, session by session, and put into folders. My first task, when I was assigned a particular PC, was to study that person's auditing folders in order to familiarize myself with the case. This particular woman had been on the ship since the late 1960s when discipline was very harsh. At that time, any auditor who made a mistake was ordered by LRH to be thrown overboard into freezing cold water. This woman had been thrown overboard, an event that was recorded in her folder, since she had to deal with this humiliating trauma in her auditing sessions. Once again, deep down, I was appalled that LRH would order such a thing, but I didn't allow myself to think about it. Having a critical thought about LRH would be considered a crime of the highest magnitude. I was very glad, however, that the practice of overboarding had been discontinued due to the bad PR it created with the locals. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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