references:

Real Emotions

Emotions II: Play Acting Scientologists

Emotions III: The Tone Scale

Some Scientologists unaffiliated with the church clearly believe Ron Hubbard had everything completely taped with no need and no room for additional thought or discussion. They certainly have a First Amendment right to assert their firmly held religious beliefs concerning the only way to proceed along the only road to total freedom; provided they do not commit civil or criminal wrongs while doing so. By the same guaranteed freedom, I can continue to attempt to free captive minds caught in suspended cognitive dissonance.

Some have posited that the Tone Scale in Full referred to in the posts here about emotions refers to ‘tones’ which don’t qualify as emotions because they occur only with spirits who have transcended bodies, or are experienced by spirits independent of any other physiological phenomena connected with emotions as understood by the rest of the civilized world. By the way, that assertion is made notwithstanding the fact Hubbard’s last words on the subject were those written in his Tone Scale film script. In that work he had actors, in bodies, depict (with their bodies) all of those vaunted alleged out-of-body tones. In either event, these states are normally associated with the highest levels of consciousness attainment in Scientology.

As religion is religion because it deals with, among other perhaps less important matters, life and death and ultimate concerns, should not the life and death of the author of whose words may not be discussed or questioned be of some relevance? Scientology demands as much by clothing itself with scientifically guaranteed claims, while adhering to institutional policy that requires the personal destruction of anyone who might attempt to objectively discuss or weigh those claims. By his own firm policy, which has resulted in the destruction of scores of relationships and careers of the curious over decades, Ron demands that the only proofs of Scientology be purely subjective. That leaves the only available objective measure of workability to be the examination of the lives and conduct of those making subjective claims about the product of the subject.

I am interested in hearing from adherents their take, particularly as it relates to the application of the Tone Scale and emotion as they interpret it, to the ultimate emotional state or tone or consciousness state of Ron. I have included a passage of a discussion I had with Steve ‘Sarge’ Pfauth – a very dear and loyal friend to L. Ron Hubbard to this day – about Ron’s ultimate states of emotion or tone or consciousness. I have fully discussed – in an in-depth context – my views about it in my book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior. Let’s hear yours.

From Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior:

Sarge (Steve Pfauth): So, anyway, he (L. Ron Hubbard) wanted to see me. So I went into the Bluebird and sat down. And he sat across from me and he said, “Sarge,”…boy I wish I had written it all down because I don’t want to goof it up, because this is kind of important. Basically he said, “Sarge, I need you to do something.” He wanted me to build him a machine that would get rid of the bts [body thetans] and kill the body.

Mark (“Marty” Rathbun): Wow.

Sarge: Yeah. It’s kind of heavy. It struck me real hard. He told me a few things. He said, “Yeah, I’ve done all I can do here and I’m just… I’m not coming back. I’m leaving and I am not coming back.” He wanted to die, basically. You know, his body was going to hell and all that stuff. He was having trouble with bts.

Mark: And you say that was in late ʼ85?

Sarge: Yeah. Fall of ʼ85. Yeah, it was right around October.

Mark: Like three months before he died.

Sarge: Yeah, like three or four months. So, I didn’t want to do it. But I didn’t tell him that. And I was hoping I could talk to Pat because Annie insisted that I build the machine. And I said, “Annie, I don’t know that much about building machines that fry people, you know what I mean?”

Mark: Well, did he describe how it should be done?

Sarge: Basically, he wanted to hook it up to the e-meter. And he wanted enough voltage in there that it would get rid of the bts. And I asked him about voltages and I asked him some questions…it was so long ago. And, uh, well, I gotta tell ya, it upset me a lot.

Mark: I bet. So, the idea was that you’d be holding the cans…

Sarge: Turn the thing on and then, in other words, he was gonna audit the bts away and the body was gonna die.

Mark: Right. So there would be enough voltage to kill the body?

Sarge: To do it all. How he figured I was going to figure that out, I have no idea…

… Sarge: Yeah. Earlier on I cooked for LRH. He thought I was a good cook. And then he got sick. Anyway, what happened was I was very upset. So I got pissy-ass drunk and Annie found me about four o’clock in the morning with beer cans all over the green truck, out at the racetrack. I had passed out on the seat. And she was screaming at me, “Oh, you son of a bitch!” Oh man, she laid into me. And I said, “All right, Annie,” and my head was hurting. But I was upset, I was very upset. I was crying and everything. That was a rough time. Very rough. Uh, so anyway, then days went by, okay? And Annie kept saying, “He wants to know about the machine, he wants to know about the machine. What are you doing on the machine?” Annie says, “If you don’t do anything on this Sarge, he’s going to get the local electrician to build one for him.” Can you picture that?

Mark: Wow. That would have been a…

Sarge: I said “No way, man.” So I had to show some progress. So I went to an electronics place in San Luis Obispo and I bought some Tesla coils and some up-transformer things and I got all sorts of things. I basically built him a battery-operated automotive coil type thing. This is my reasoning now, Marty. If he gets zapped by that sucker, it’s gonna shock him but it ain’t gonna kill him. Okay?

Mark: Okay.

Sarge: It’ll shock him but it ain’t gonna kill him. It’ll scare him and he won’t want to do it again.

Mark: These are like 12-volt batteries?

Sarge: Yeah. But the voltage is going to go way up on a transformer. It’s like an automotive coil sort of thing.

Mark: So your thought, what you understand is that he is not going to get…

Sarge: I’m not frying him!

Mark: Exactly. I gotcha.

Sarge: I didn’t want anything that is going to plug into the wall. I didn’t want to fry him, but I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t want to fry him. You know what I mean?

Mark: Yeah, I think about what you are saying right now, and I try to put myself into your position and I…

Sarge: It was very difficult. I didn’t want to kill the old man. So anyway, he used the thing and he fried up my Mark VI [e-meter]. I had a Mark VI that got fried.

Mark: He used it?

Sarge: Yeah.

Mark: LRH actually used it?

Sarge: Yeah, it was my Mark VI, yeah. And it fried the Mark VI. I knew that was going to happen. Fried it.

Mark: You mean he actually tried…

Sarge: Oh, yeah. It had burn marks on it and everything.

Mark: He didn’t get burnt?

Sarge: He may have. But after that there was no more mention of any machines. And that was my intention. That was my intention.

Mark: He probably got a good, hard jolt.

Sarge: I think it scared him, or something.

Mark: And it burned the plastic?

Sarge: It was burnt. It was fried. The insides were gone. Because, you know, those things are like a computer. You can’t put that much power into them without zapping them…I do think people need to know. I just wish at the time when I first blew that I would have written it all down. But I carried it because I had no terminals [people to talk to].