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Scientology’s FAQ: What was the Guardian’s Office and does it still exist?

Q What was the Guardian’s Office and does it still exist?1

A The Guardian’s Office, known as the GO, was initially created in 1966 as a unit to deal with the Church’s legal and external affairs. It no longer exists. It was permanently disbanded in the early 1980s by current Church management.

The GO had been infiltrated and set up to fail in its mission to protect the Church. It was influenced to abandon its original mandate and established itself as an independent, autonomous unit, answerable to nobody. It was isolated not only from the mainstream activity and management of the Church, but even from the Founder of the religion. Some GO executives actually tried to gain exclusive control over Church corporate and financial affairs.

The first warning that all was not well with the Guardian’s Office came in the late 1970s. Representatives of Church management realized that the GO no longer had the best interests of the Church and its Founder at heart. The GO’s management of the Church’s external affairs was notably deficient and many parishioners and staff began to suspect that matters for which the GO was responsible were not being dealt with in accordance with the teachings of Mr. Hubbard. In fact, by this time, the Guardian’s Office had abandoned any pretense of following the principles described in Mr. Hubbard’s writings.

It subsequently came to light that a handful of GO staff members had been influenced to adopt an “anything goes” approach in dealing with government discrimination against the Church. These dupes infiltrated and burglarized several U.S. government offices to obtain copies of files maintained and circulated about the Church. Obviously such activity was illegal and directly violated Mr. Hubbard’s policies.

However, while such illegal conduct was afoot, the GO managed to keep its operations secret from Church management, staff and membership. Its autonomy shielded it from accountability. Most Scientologists were altogether unaware of GO clandestine activities.

Even the government prosecutor in the later criminal case that arose from this illegal conduct testified that only a handful of people in the GO had engaged in or even knew about these illegal acts. The rest, including thousands of staff and millions of parishioners, had no involvement or knowledge of such unlawful activities.

When the GO’s criminal activities were discovered by those who today form the core of the Church’s leadership, the GO was disbanded, no small feat since it was the GO officials who held corporate control. Its functions were completely reorganized and brought under the control of the Church’s ecclesiastical management officers. Many of the GO staff were not involved in any of the unlawful activities and, wanting to conduct their affairs in accordance with the Founder’s teachings, abandoned their former GO leaders. They then gave their full support to Church management in the clean out and disbanding of the GO. Those who participated in or knew of the GO’s illegal conduct in any way were removed from Church staff and forever banned from future Church employment.

Sadly, there were also some people in the Church, but outside of the GO itself, who sympathized with the GO because of their own agendas to achieve autonomy and gain control of the Church’s finances. In some cases, it was the Scriptures themselves they wanted to pervert for their own ends. Given these people had proven themselves to be avowed enemies of L. Ron Hubbard and the religion, they were excommunicated.

Today, some of these same people, no longer part of the Church, are loudly and bitterly critical of the Church’s current management. It is these few apostates who are most often the ones who spread vitriol in the media about Scientology and Church leaders. When they make allegations of wrongdoing, they are referring to the acts of the GO, of which many of them were either a part or in sympathy with. They fail to mention their involvement or the fact that they were kicked out of the Church because of their GO involvement—or the fact that the very people they now try to tarnish with their allegations are the very people who permanently rid the Church of those who committed or supported such misdeeds.

This cleanup of the GO was led by Mr. David Miscavige, who removed all corporate control from the hands of the GO and dismissed all personnel who had been involved in illegalities or attempts to alter Mr. Hubbard’s technologies. Mr. Miscavige and a team of Church executives then set up an entirely new corporate and administrative structure for the Scientology religion which has since served to keep the religion pure and in accordance with the teachings laid out by its Founder.

Outsiders familiar with these events leading to, and culminating in, the disbanding of the GO, have often commented on the decisive and thorough manner in which the entire situation was managed. Relations with the U.S. government have been restored and the Church has obtained from the Internal Revenue Service full recognition and tax-exemption as an exclusively charitable, religious endeavor.

Virtually all major religions have gone through periods of trial and upheaval, especially during their formative years. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, underwent numerous schisms which splintered the faith. Sometimes history lingers. It took its leaders hundreds of years to come to terms with and acknowledge that the Inquisition was wrong.

One of the steps taken to ensure that nothing like the GO could ever occur within Scientology again was the formation of Religious Technology Center (RTC). RTC is responsible for ensuring the purity of the religion and the Scientology Scriptures, and provides a policing mechanism for the Church.

Indeed, the reorganization of the Church in the wake of the GO debacle marked the beginning of a new era. The Scientology religion not only successfully weathered the storm; it emerged even stronger, more stable, larger and more influential than before. In 1980 there were 328 churches, missions and groups around the world. Today, more than 3,000 churches, missions, related organizations and groups minister the religion to parishioners in more than 130 countries. Dianetics and Scientology books are on bestseller lists all over the world, with Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health having sold four times as many copies since 1980 as it did the whole of the prior 30 years.

Notes

  1. Authentic Information & Answers to Questions About Scientology: What was the Guardian’s Office and does it still exist? (n.d.). authenticscientology.org. Retrieved 18 May 2010 from http://www.authenticscientology.org/page31.htm ↩

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Scientology’s FAQ: Why has the German government tried to portray Scientology as controversial?

Q Why has the German government tried to portray Scientology as controversial?1

A Germany and, indeed, much of Central Europe, has a long and bitter history of religious intolerance and persecution, a trend which has continued into the present. Many religious and ethnic minorities have become the targets of escalating incidents of violence, xenophobia and religious discrimination.

Unfortunately, many government officials in Germany continue to fuel the intolerance. The Kohl government left a dismal legacy as far as human and civil rights are concerned. Muslims, Charismatic Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hindus, Scientologists and in some cases even Jews are among those who have been denied fundamental rights because of their race or religion. In recent years, the German government has been strongly criticized in more than 25 reports from international human rights bodies including the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Helsinki Commission, the United States State Department, and a British Ad-Hoc Human Rights Committee composed of Lords and scholars.

In 1997, a study by the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex, England, found that, “In Germany, democracy is used as an ideology to impose conformity. It has been dismaying to discover that the state, and some of its politicians and people, are using what are known from the past to be well-worn paths of discrimination and intolerance.” The U.S. State Reporter has criticized the German government for the “clearly discriminatory practice” of “prevent[ing] a person from practicing his or her profession of participating in public or private fora solely based on that person’s religion or belief.”

Germany is generally regarded as the birthplace of institutional psychiatry which spawned the theory of eugenics, created the first death camps and instigated the wholesale slaughter of millions. As in the United States in the early 1950s, the Church of Scientology traced the source of false reports and government attacks in Germany to psychiatric vested interests seeking to protect a multibillion dollar mental health monopoly. Operating without popular support but with taxpayer funds, psychiatric special interests regard as a threat any religion that provides man with genuine freedom without the use of mind altering drugs or similar unscientific “therapies.”

Unfortunately, some priests from the predominant Catholic and Lutheran churches in Germany have encouraged government persecution of Scientology and other new religions. Although supported through parishioner-paid government “church taxes,” the membership of these churches has been declining dramatically and so have their revenues. Rather than looking within their own organizations to find and cure the causes of declining membership, they have wrongly blamed Scientology, which continues to grow.

Fortunately, those who are upset by seeing man improve are small in number compared to the many who have followed Scientology’s invitation to “think for yourselves” and who consequently, have embraced Scientology and its efforts to create a harmonious and peaceful civilization and more freedom for the individual.

Notes

  1.  Authentic Information & Answers to Questions About Scientology: Why has the German government tried to portray Scientology as controversial? (n.d.). authenticscientology.org. Retrieved 18 May 2010 from http://www.authenticscientology.org/page30a.htm ↩

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Scientology’s FAQ: What does the term “fair game” refer to?

Q What does the term “fair game” refer to?1

A “Fair game” is a term which is often intentionally misinterpreted and used by apostate Scientologists and other critics to unfairly tarnish the Church.

“Fair game” was canceled in 1968, more than 30 years ago, expressly because it was susceptible to misinterpretation and misuse. The term meant that apostate members could not seek protection or refuge under the Church’s internal ethics or justice codes. It had been intentionally and grossly misinterpreted by apostates, when all it meant was that those expelled from the Church could no longer take advantage of the internal ecclesiastical support and justice procedures churches of Scientology provide to resolve disputes and upsets among parishioners. They would have to make their own way, unaided, with the justice procedures of the society as their only recourse.

This concept is as old as religion itself. Many faiths reserve the right to expel or excommunicate members who refuse to abide by the moral and ecclesiastical codes of the group.

The term does not appear in the scriptures of Scientology and has not existed since 1968. In fact, its only use since then is not by the Church at all, but by a handful of anti-Scientology apostates and their attorneys who have exploited it in efforts to generate anti-Scientology prejudice in the media or courtroom.

The truth is that Church management never has and never would tolerate illegal or unethical actions to be committed in the Church’s name. The scriptures of Scientology are replete with admonitions to its adherents to build their lives on foundations of honesty and integrity. The commission of dishonesties or harmful acts against another is the road to personal misery and destruction of positive interpersonal relationships.

Notes

  1. Authentic Information & Answers to Questions About Scientology: What does the term “fair game” refer to? (n.d.). authenticscientology.org. Retrieved 18 May 2010 from http://www.authenticscientology.org/page38b.htm ↩

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HCOPL: Policy on Psychiatric and Medical Failures

 

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex
HCO POLICY LETTER OF 29 JUNE 1971R1
Issue I
REVISED 24 JUNE 1988

Remimeo

POLICY ON PSYCHIATRIC AND MEDICAL FAILURES

Ref:
HCO PL 29 June 71 II PUBLIC WARNING ON PSYCHIATRY

POLICY IS THAT WE ASSIGN ANY CASE OF UPSET IN SCIENTOLOGY TO PAST DAMAGE AND INTERFERENCE WITH THE PERSON BY MEDICINE OR PSYCHIATRY. THEY WERE SENT TO US AFTER MEDICINE OR PSYCHIATRY HAD ALREADY DESTROYED THEM. WE CANNOT BE BLAMED FOR PSYCHIATRIC OR MEDICAL FAILURES.

By continually repeating this, make the AMA, the National Association of Mental Health, etc., very wary of using our name on these psychiatric and medical failures. Both subjects are guilty and the statement is demonstrably true. Use it often. Make it known to the enemy that this is our policy as a restraint on their fetid imaginations. Or an “Every time you attack us we will disclose more records of your failures.”

We will also run this policy in The Auditor and on other channels. Psychiatry and medicine began this existing death and drug scene and it’s time somebody began to say so. It is the true reason for any failure we have ever had. All such records show it.

They’re just trying to cover up their crimes by saying somebody else is to blame.

All psychotics do that, especially psychiatrists.

We may as well begin to publicize the correct cause for any cultural decay in both the East and West.

A weird society really, in which any liar can spread unbelievable nonsense and authorities act on it. If those in charge in the US and England are this irresponsible (and they are) then they are fitting companions for dishonest and degraded “social scientists.”

I wouldn’t trust any of these guys with the garbage.

Strangely enough little countries have maintained much greater integrity than the “leading nations.” And boy do these little countries get lied about and pushed around!

This was a fairly happy planet before the coming of the psychiatrist and psychologist.

In spite of any accidents or opposition, we can do our share in making it one again.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder

Revision assisted by
LRH Technical Research
and Compilations

Notes

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Article: The Future of Scientology

RONS JOURNAL 34

BPI

Birthday March 13, 19821;2

THE FUTURE OF SCIENTOLOGY

There comes a time in all the great movements of mankind when they get attacked.

When one reviews the history of religious wars which laid the bulk of Europe in ruins time after time across the centuries, one gets some idea of the passions of man.

The primary passions are twofold: one stems from the decent impulses of man, the effort to do and be something good, to accomplish a resurgence and reforms that are worthwhile; the other is the evil hatred of the status quo who, in their violence oppose all who would question their right to oppress and maim and kill.

The first impulse comes from the very heavens, the second is born in the depths of hell.

All things worthwhile have to be fought for: every decent impulse in man’s history has been opposed.

The fate of the entire civilization is decided on the issue of which one wins.

No single human being can stand aside from the fray, a spectator wondering who is going to win. It is his OWN fate that is being decided: will he in the future have a decent life or will he be crushed down into the mud? Will the decent impulses of the civilization triumph or, in defeat at the hands of evil, have to wait again for another chance, another time?

The travails of the religion of Scientology may seem great but, frankly, they do not compare to those other faiths have gone through.

Time and again since 1950, the vested interests which pretend to run the world (for their own appetites and profit) have mounted full-scale attacks. With a running dog press and slavish government agencies the forces of evil have launched their lies and sought, by whatever twisted means, to check and destroy Scientology.

What is being decided in this arena is whether mankind has a chance to go free or be smashed and tortured as an abject subject of the power elite.

The issues are extremely clear-cut, there is no argument there.

But what is the result to date of enemy action?

Hah!

Honestly, my friends, a review of these battles over the past thirty-two years moves one to contemptuous laughter. The enemy, perched in their trees or swinging by their tails, have been about as effective as one of their psychologist’s monkeys peeling a policeman’s club thinking it is a banana and then throwing it only to hit the chief ape in the face.

Oh, the furor has been very loud. The AMA, pouring lies into the press through gnashing teeth persevered for years—and then went bankrupt. The psychiatrist, riding high in 1959, hoping to place one of his ilk in a blackmail position behind every head of state, hoping to consign any citizen at his whim to a psychiatric Siberia, trying to preserve his right to kill and maim as a profession above the law, is today a butt of comic strips. And what of the FDA that for fifteen years snarled and snapped about the E-Meter? One hardly hears of them today. And what of the mighty Interpol, that tool of CIA? It was found to be a nest of war criminals hiding out from the law itself.

Oh, one could go on but in each case the enemy has gone down to defeat in the end. You do not hear much about this from the running dog press because, of course, they were the tool of the enemy in the first place.

They lose because they traffic in lies. But, because they told their lies so broadly, even when they were disproven, they still tend to hang around and make one feel there is—there isn’t—an adverse public opinion. The enemy and their press are not the public: you could ask yourself why, year after year, fewer and fewer people buy and read newspapers: people don’t believe them anymore.

I once checked, in the 50s the effect on org stats of howling bombasts of a running dog magazine called TIME. Its owner, a man named Luce, was said to be an LSD addict, both he and his wife carefully controlled by his psychiatrist. Of course he published blasts against anything which would expose his rotten condition. What I found was that not one of those lying bombasts had had the slightest effect upon org stats. Luce is dead now, a good testimony to his drugs and the psychiatrists. There are a dozen orgs today for every one that existed in Luce’s time.

And so it goes with these attacks.

Oh, yes, we’ve had some casualties. Oh, yes, we’ve had some trouble. But that is the way with wars: not only combatants but innocent bystanders can get wounded. That’s this universe: we didn’t make it that way but that’s no reason we cannot, bit by bit, correct it. Certainly, for mankind, there’s no escaping it and if there is a battle, there is more to do than simply duck one’s head: the bombs are no respecters of uniforms or identities.

It may appear that the enemy suffers no casualties for they hush them up. With no great pleasure, I used to keep a roster of them. Through no will or fault of ours, many of them are dead. Some died from things that we have

tech to help: it is rather poetic in justice that they were fighting what they themselves could have used. Many others, when the battle cleared, lost their jobs: and that is a precious thing to a suppressive, his garnered rights to do others in: it is sad to say there are many in governments who are there just so they can have this right: so when one gets fired for failing in his attacks on us, that’s very close to the end of his life. They do not care if you hurt the government or their association or their publication: threats against those things are part of their own plans to cause trouble—typical of the insane. Where they can be hurt and practically the only place, is losing their job or position. And their casualties in this respect would fill some very long bread lines: when they fail, their mentors fire them.

They have lost power.

They have been hurt.

And in any contemporary attack, no matter how violent it may seem, the result predictably will be the same: failures and casualties in enemy ranks. Not because we harm or touch them—we wouldn’t. They are mad monkeys and they blame and shoot each other.

Now when you hear of some new attack or an old one, you could get the idea that we’re losing and are likely to winnow away and vanish. The enemy keeps saying that. But just remember a maxim: if the papers say it, it isn’t true.

Hearing such things, one may think that, as a Scientologist, it doesn’t matter what you do: it doesn’t make any difference now since all is lost. That’s silly.

In or out of Scientology, one is on these firing lines. The crime-ridden, drug-crazed, misgoverned mess out there which they call civilization is no place at all to escape to. That’s surrender.

And it DOES matter what one does on post, particularly when the shots are flying hottest. If you think it’s bad in a Scientology area, look at Ulster or Detroit! And those poor guys are just innocent bystanders being mowed down. At least the Scientologists are DOING something about it. They’re handling people, they’re making inroads on crime, they’re salvaging addicts, they’re even quoted, often unknowingly, by beleaguered business.

All you have to do is look at where Scientology was in terms of numbers of orgs and missions even a few years back and where it is now to know. All you have to do is count the additional countries using it year by year. All you have to do is count the memberships of the Churches. And you know conclusively that while the enemy goes down, whatever the bombast, Scientology is going UP.

It DOES matter what you do on post or in the field or in the world. This scene called Scientology is not going to end. Time after time the enemy, in our blackest hours, has told itself, “We’ve got them now! We’ve stopped them! They’re through!” They were just praying past their own graveyard. Each time, there we were again, stronger, expanding, working better. And at this very moment of writing, that’s where we are at right now. The last enemy attack is winding down.

And there we still are all over the world, doing good, getting stronger, getting more numerous.

And in the coming decades so it will be again.

The guys in the white hats—with the S and Double Triangle—are winning. They are winning because they mean well. They do good. They know their business. And the enemy is losing and will lose because they mean bad. They do evil. They are incompetent.

Remember the principle of Flourish and Prosper. It works!

And the next time you see an attack, remember the old truth, “This too shall come to pass away.”

But not Scientology. We’re here and will be here for all the decades and centuries that this civilization has left to it. And right now I am working on plans so that it will be here even when the madmen, in some possible last convulsion of evil, have blown this civilization away.

We are saving beings, not men.

And the evil die within their own generation.

We don’t.

So the next time you feel blue, read this.

The enemy can’t even plan for tomorrow.

We work in eternity.

Love,
Ron

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes

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HCOB: The Criminal Mind

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 15 SEPTEMBER 19811; 2; 3; 4

Remimeo

THE CRIMINAL MIND

Definition: A criminal is one who is motivated by evil intentions and who has committed so many harmful overt acts that he considers such activities ordinary.

There is a datum of value in detecting overts and withholds in criminal individuals:

THE CRIMINAL ACCUSES OTHERS OF THINGS WHICH HE HIMSELF IS DOING.

As an example, the psychiatrist accuses others engaged in mental practice of harming others or worsening their condition, yet the majority of psychiatrists maim and kill their patients and by record, in all history, have only worsened mental conditions. After all, that’s what they seem to be paid to do by the government.

The psychologist accuses others of misrepresenting what they do and lobbies in legislature continually to outlaw others on the accusation of misrepresenting but there is no psychologist who doesn’t know that he himself is a fake, can accomplish nothing of value and that his certificates aren’t even worth the printing ink. The psychologist goes further: He educates little children in all the schools to believe all men are soulless animals and criminals so that when the possible day of reckoning comes and the psychologist is exposed for what he is, the population will not be the least bit surprised and will consider the psychologist is “normal.”

The psychologist accuses others of sexual irregularities when this is, actually, his entire profession.

Jack the Ripper of English fame who gruesomely murdered prostitutes now turns out to have been a medical doctor and was undoubtedly of enormous assistance to the police in pointing out “the real murderer.”

The FBI agent or executive accuses others of graft and even sets up “Abscams” to manufacture the crime. But an FBI agent regularly pockets money supposed to be paid to informers and then screams to protect informer sources that do not exist.

The FBI agent is terrified of being infiltrated and accuses others of it when, as standard practice, he infiltrates groups, manufactures evidence and then gets others charged for crimes his own plants have committed.

The FBI acts like a terrorist group posing as law enforcement officers. Their targets seem to be legislators and Congress and public individuals who might someday have power over public opinion, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.

From all this we get another datum: THE CRIMINAL MIND RELENTLESSLY SEEKS TO DESTROY ANYONE IT IMAGINES MIGHT EXPOSE IT.

You have to be very alert when criminals are around.

J. Edgar Hoover, who organized the present FBI and is still deified by it—they have his name in huge brass letters on Washington, DCs biggest thoroughfare—and that town doesn’t even have the names of former presidents up in lights—has been shown by subsequent records to have been a blackmailer and traitor to his country. He carefully, personally, sat on the information for four months that Pearl Harbor was going to happen. Right up to the US entrance into World War II he was autographing his photo for pals in the deadly German SS. He even sacked an FBI agent (Tureau) who dared to catch some German spies.

Doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and the government form a tight clique. Only the government would support such people as the public hates them.

From all this we get another datum:

INDIVIDUALS WITH CRIMINAL MINDS TEND TO BAND TOGETHER SINCE THE PRESENCE OF OTHER CRIMINALS ABOUT THEM TENDS TO PROVE THEIR OWN DISTORTED IDEAS OF MAN IN GENERAL.

It is not true that where any person accuses another of a crime the accuser is always guilty of the crime or that type of crime. But it is true that when a criminal is doing the accusing it is more than probable that the criminal is disclosing his own type of crime.

Apparently they add it up this way: “If I accuse him of robbing, then it would be assumed by others that I have not robbed a bank.” By loudly voicing a condemnation of a crime, the criminal, with a crooked think, supposes people will now suppose he is above bank robbery and won’t suspect him.

Groups like psychologists who declare as fact that all men are criminals are of course just dramatizing their own inclinations.

People assume that others have their own case. The psychologist pushes his own case off on the whole world.

Anyone researching in the mind should be very aware of this point and be sure not to do it. Subjective reality seems to them to be the only reality there is, for such people are too introverted to really know the minds and motivations of others.

When working with the criminal, one can get a very good idea of that person’s own mental state by getting him to say what other people want and do or are guilty of.

It is inconceivable to the criminal that anyone could possibly be decent or honest or do a selfless act. It would do no good whatever to try to convince him for he knows all men are like himself.

Thus, one gets another datum of value:

THE CRIMINAL ONLY SEES OTHERS AS HE HIMSELF IS.

One of the reasons he does this, of course, is to justify injuring others. Because everyone else is useless, worthless, criminal, an animal and insane, why then, he reasons, it is perfectly all right to injure them.

Thus, we come to another datum:

THE CRIMINAL IS NOT MUCH BENEFITED BY THE GIVING OFF OF CURRENT WITHHOLDS AND IS NOT LIKELY TO REFORM BECAUSE OF THIS.

One, therefore, has to get down to the basic evil intentions as in Expanded Dianetics.

There is another approach in that same area of technology which is finding what act the person really can take responsibility for. It is a gradient approach.

The criminal is basically so subjective that an auditor will find, in the short run, that improving the reality of such a person is needful before any effective, overall improvement is obtained through pulling withholds.

Thus, TRs and 8-C and even ARC Straightwire are indicated as first steps. If these are done, and as responsibility rises, expect that overts could begin to pop up almost of their own accord.

It is interesting that if a criminal were to face up suddenly to the enormity of his crimes he would go into degradation and self-destruction. Thus a gradient scale is definitely indicated.

As the person has more R (reality), he can take more responsibility and only then with pulling withholds can he have any real benefit.

This HCOB is simply some data on the criminal mind that might help.

At the very least it should give some understanding of why some individuals insist with such apparent conviction that all men are evil, why all men are insane, why all men are criminals.

And it also tells you how silly it is to try to argue with them. Who’s there?

The criminal mind is a bitter and unsavory subject. The percentage of criminals is relatively small but the majority of grief and turmoil in the world caused by criminals is a majority percent. Thus, the criminal mind is a subject one cannot avoid in research as it is a major factor in the distortion of a culture.

It is a mind like any other mind but it has gone wrong. It is motivated by evil intentions which, even if idiotic, are greater than the possessor’s ability to reason. The criminal, even when he seems most clever, is really very, very stupid. The evil intentions get dramatized by senseless overt acts which are then withheld and the final result is a person who is more dead than alive and who faces a future so agonizing that any person would shudder at it. The criminal, in fact, has forfeited his life and any meaning to it even when he remains “uncaught” and “unpunished,” for in the long run, he has caught himself and punishes himself for all eternity. No common judge can give a sentence as stiff as that. They know down deep that this is true and that is why they scream with such ferocity that men have no souls. They can’t confront the smallest part of what awaits them.

When you understand what the criminal mind consists of you can also understand how ghastly must be the feelings or lack of them with which the criminal has to live within himself and for all his days forever. He is more to be pitied than punished. Neither bold nor brave, for all his pretense, he is really just a panicky, whimpering coward inside. When he bares his breast against the bullets, he does so with the actual hope that he will be killed. But of course that doesn’t save him. He’s got an eternity of it left to go. And his scoff of any such data hides the whimper, for he knows, deep down, it’s true.

Thus, we have another datum:

THE CRIMINAL, NO MATTER WHAT HARM HE IS DOING TO OTHERS, IS ALSO SEEKING TO DESTROY HIMSELF. HE IS IN PROTEST AGAINST HIS OWN SURVIVAL.

If you have to work with criminals in pastoring, recognize what you are working with. He can be helped—if he will let you near him.

Fortunately, there are still a lot of decent people left in the world.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes