http://web.archive.org/web/20030624004458/www.caic.org.au/psyther/sci/cp-scn.htm
COERCIVE PERSUASION AND SCIENTOLOGY
Scientology's auditing is inherently a coercive persuasion technique. Auditing is a standardized process which is designed to induce trance states and increased suggestibility in its recipients. This deceptive undue influence tactic is then used by Scientology for its direct profit.
Auditing is the central practice of Scientology and can be accurately thought of as a psuedo scientific psychotherapy which has been cloaked in deliberate layers of counterfeit religiosity which is meant to resemble traditional religious terminology and trappings.
On June 14, 1985 Eric Lieberman the head attorney for Scientology stated:
". . .The Supreme Court has emphasized that the courts may not engage in "an evaluation of religious practice," that is in the Walz case, or inquire into matters of ecclesiastical customs or laws. And the resounding words of the Supreme Court over a century ago, this is in the Walz case, which governs this issue, the court said the judiciary cannot penetrate the veil of the church for the forbidden purpose of vindicating the alleged wrongs of excised members. When they became members they did so upon the conditions of continuing or not as they in their churches might determine. And they thereby submit to the ecclesiastical power and cannot now invoke the supervisory power of the civil tribunals. . ." R.T. Page 17 (A165)
100 years ago there was no coercive persuasion technology. 100 years ago the Walz case was an appropriate precedent for the time and technology it inhabited.
That is simply no longer the case. With this new technology, imprisonment, pain, physical torture, and threat of physical pain are no longer needed, and in many cases are not nearly as effective as a comprehensively applied program of coercive persuasion. Often misunderstood, the reason for this is in the situation of physical detention, pain, or threat such as in a POW camp you know who your enemy is. Your ego guard and defences are up. With coercive persuasion this is not the case, it is far more devastating and effective when your apparent "friends" or organizational allies are surreptitiously applying coercive persuasion techniques to gain control of an individuals behavior and independent decision making abilities. You have no or few ego defences up for which pain or torture would be needed to breakdown.
Coercive persuasion is not a religious practice it is a control technology. It is antiethical to the First Amendment AND free will in a bonafide religion. It is the unfair manipulation of biological and psychological weaknesses and susceptibilities. It is a technology not of free society but a criminal or totalitarian society.
Coercive persuasion is also antiethical to sincerity and good faith. Any organization using coercive persuasion as a central practice that also claims to be a religion is a contradiction of terms.
Scientology's head attorney Eric Lieberman implies we dare not push back the threshold and examine his clients behavior because it is protected by legal "paradoxes" or by the smoke he creates surrounding the new technology advances in coercive persuasion.
". . .The Katz court went on to note that what really happens when you engage in an examination as to whether these nonphysical coercive processes amount to mind manipulation or faith, that you are inviting courts and juries to make an ultimate determination as to the value and truth of the religious practice.
As the court said rhetorically, when the court is asked to determine whether a change of lifestyle was induced by faith or by coercive persuasion, is it not in turn investigating and questioning the validity of that faith~ And on that basis, on the basis that the court cannot do that the court struck down that statute. . ." R.T. June 14, 1985, Page 20 (A168)
". . .And in striking the Statute down as unconstitutional the court of appeals stated in an age of subliminal advertising, television exposure and psychological salesmanship in which everyone is exposed tv artful and designing persons at even turn, it is impossible to measure the degree or likelihood that some will succumb in the field of beliefs. And, particularly, religious beliefs. It is difficult, if not impossible, to establish a universal truth against which the deceit and imposition can be measured. . ."R.T. June 14, 1985, Page 20 (A-168)
Well, Mr. Lieberman has probably avoided, for his clients survival sake, reading much, if anything, about coercive persuasion. If he had he could not in good faith compare it to such benign peaceful persuasion practices as salesmanship or general non-coercive persuasion using psychological "edges". He would have clearly seen there are technological procedures that can locate the imposition of coercive persuasion technologies applied against individuals. What is being located are processes not beliefs or ideologies. These PROCESSES can be examined completely separate from and idea or belief content as simply as separating the process of hypnotic induction from the hypnotic suggestion.
These are simply technological processes not ideas or beliefs. No ideas or beliefs have to be examined as to their truth or falsity to determine if an individual was unfairly subjected to coercive persuasion processes.
When one realizes the before mentioned about coercive persuasion and Scientology's auditing procedures one begins to see that Scientology's auditing originally was and really is a "religiously" cloaked form of a highly profitable psuedo psychotherapy. So structured, liability insurance claims and financial damages can be almost totally illuminated. Even lawsuits of undue influence over the patients assets can be cloaked behind the paradoxical use of the First Amendment protections.
But the real paradox is that due to Scientology's central use of coercive persuasion practices in the form of auditing, Scientology is not using its religious immunities to settle or protect RELIGIOUS ISSUES, BELIEFS OR PRACTICES but to protect a reprehensible new technology of human manipulation and its commercial and political "edge". What you really have concerning Scientology's central practice called auditing is an ethics and new technology issue not a religious issue.
What you also have is totalitarian and despotic thought manipulation technology creeping in the back door of our great free country via a counterfeit and bogus "religious" group.
