"Mind control" is a phrase that's easy to throw around. Q: "She likes working there?" A: "Yeah, they're all about mind control." In other words, mind control has become synonymous with simply being lied to; but originally "mind control" described something far darker.

Films like Manchurian Candidate depict real "mind control." In short, an individual is drugged, put in pain (usually by electro-shocking them) and given commands. They are also told, "You will not be able to remember this!"

Such techniques are also known as "pain-drug-hypnosis" or "implanting" since it implants a hidden command within the victim's subconscious. Many conspiracy buffs have theorized that perhaps this was the technique used to create such assassins as Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and Mark Chapman. No one really knows.

What we do know is that implanting is vicious stuff. This is how someone with an electro-shock machine can disrupt someone's memory and seriously mess with their head. Intelligence agencies known all about it and have employed these methods for decades.

Where Scientologists are Right

Scientologists object strongly to anyone equating Scientology with "mind control" because they feel the two subjects are polar opposites. Scientology's counseling technique (called auditing) can undo the effects of real mind control by enabling someone to remember "what really happened." It doesn't always work because electro-shock can cause permanent brain damage. But in many cases auditing has alerted an individual to the fact that something did happen.

As an aside, this is a primary reason that psychiatrists went after Scientology in the 1950s. People were being electro-shocked. They were being lobotomized. Patients were being raped and commanded to "Forget!" Those who had committed such horrific crimes didn't want to be exposed. Just the fact that Scientology and Dianetics exist puts a restraint on the flagrant use of pain-drug-hypnosis since Hubbard's counseling techniques are the only known means that have successfully detected and remedied such abuses.

Where Scientologists are Wrong

However, as society has evolved the definition of "mind control" has broadened to include other means of coercion and control. It's similar to what constitutes sexual harassment. Only a few decades ago, the concept of "sexual harassment" might have basically included only the most aggressive act. Since then, the definition of what constitutes sexual harassment has broadened to include unwanted jokes, gestures, flirting, unwelcome comments, scratching or patting a coworker's back, touching or grabbing an employee around the waist.

Likewise, the definition of "mind control" has evolved to include lying to people and extortion. This is what some Scientologists don't get. So while no one in Scientology has ever been electro-shocked, Miscavige heavily uses other methods of coercion: freely lying, misleading and betraying staff and public as documented throughout this website.

Sure, "mind control" techniques employed by Miscavige are tame compared to getting your brain fried... but that doesn't make them any more acceptable. Misleading parishioners, taking their money, breaking up families, lying to staff, violence, physical and emotional abuse, incarcerating staff behind razor spikes, closing them off from the outside world... all of that is WRONG.

Written by Thoughtful