Topic: Religion and Government
Scientology: What is the RPF? A lot of things have been said about the Rehabiliation Project Force of the Church of Scientology. Most of it by people who have no personal knowledge. This article deals with a study done on the RPF and interviews with participants of the program.by Louanne Lee
(centrist libertarian)
Thursday, September 11, 2008
To be perfectly honest, I am not even sure where these many false claims against the RPF are coming from. The Rehabilitation Project Force is only for members of the Sea Organization under clearly defined circumstances.
The Sea Organization is the religious order of Scientology.
About the RPF, here is an extensive independent study undertaken by Juha Pentikäinen (Chair of the Department of the Study of Religions, University of Helsinki, Finland), Jurgen F.K. Redhardt, and Michael York (Bath Spa University College).
The study - a link to the full text is below - says about the RPF:
"The Rehabilitation Project Force came into being on the 7th of January 1974. It was formed aboard ship, after Hubbard discovered that either due to negligence, incompetence or for other reasons, some staff seemed consistently unable to carry out their duties fully and responsibly. During our visits, it was explained that the program was created to offer those staff the opportunity to address and resolve the source of their problem if they wished to remain members of the Sea Org.
Transgressions that might render a Sea Organization member eligible for the program would be of the following nature:
serious violation of the Church's ethical standards (such as adultery or theft of magnitude or of long duration) or
consistently committed serious mistakes or detrimental actions in violation of their staff member responsibilities and of the trust placed in them, despite previous efforts by ministerial staff of the Sea Organization to help them to overcome these shortcomings.
The theoretical basis of the RPF program is that staff members who commit transgressions of this character may have a chance to redeem themselves by addressing the source of their ethical problem, resolving it to their satisfaction and that of the Sea Organization, and thereby attain spiritual betterment and improved competence and ability.
In the written issue, known as a "Flag Order", that established the RPF, Hubbard wrote: "Like industry or any organization or ship before that date, when a crew member stole or embezzled or refused to work he was simply fired and offloaded. Scientology crew members objected to this. They demanded that provisions be made to rehabilitate the person. They had the idea that a person should be given a choice of being off-loaded or rehabilitated…In the RPF the person receives counseling and does work on a team basis. The largest percent of persons assigned to an RPF graduate successfully and rejoin the crew. The majority of these give rave success stories. No other management organization undertakes such a function. They just fire people." ...
Two central elements of the RPF program that deserve definition are the study of the works of L. Ron Hubbard that make up the scriptural materials of Scientology and the process of counseling, unique to Scientology, known as "auditing". Auditing forms the primary religious practice of Scientology. It may manifest in several variants, but the most typical consists in an interchange between an "auditor" and the person being counseled. The book What Is Scientology?, published by the Church, describes auditing as "processes - exact sets of questions asked or directions given by an auditor to help a person locate areas of spiritual distress, find out things about himself and improve his condition."
The RPF program incorporates auditing and study as part of a regimen that is clearly demanding. It consists of five hours of study and/or auditing a day and eight hours of work, with a minimum of seven hours sleep. The remaining four hours are taken up with eating, personal cleanliness, travel etc. The five hours of study/auditing and the seven hours sleep are mandatory.
"Members of the RPF may not be put on a work schedule which does not allow for 5 hours of study and co-auditing and 7 hours actual sleep time to be sessionable and studentable. Anyone in or outside the RPF issuing orders which cut across the RPF program by blocking or reducing enhancement may be called before a Committee of Evidence". ...
A "Committee of Evidence" is a fact-finding body composed of impartial persons properly convened by a convening authority which hears evidence from persons it calls before it, arrives at a finding and makes a full report and recommendation to its convening authority for his or her action. It is appointed and empowered to impartially investigate and recommend upon Scientology matters of a fairly severe ethical nature. ...
There are two ways an individual may embark on the RPF program A person may either request admission, or he may be assigned to the program for severe violation of the theological and ethical tenets held sacred by the Church."
The views expressed in this
article are those of Louanne Lee only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Louanne Lee is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
I think that it's common knowledge by now that RPF is only for Sea Org. I would imagine that the stories come from people that have been there and left the CoS. I would imagine that their testimonies are more reliable than those still in, as they have nothing to lose by telling certain truths...
video media: EX-SCIENTOLOGY SEA ORG, MARC HEADLEY, GIVES A SPEECH AT THE HAMBURG CONFERENCE (Sept. 2008). HE TALKS ABOUT THE RPF AND HIS MISTREATMENT IN SCIENTOLOGY AND THE SEA ORG GULAG AT GILMAN HOT SPRINGS, Nr.HEMET, CALIFORNIA......[link edited for length]
Those who read the study as I just did will see only members of scientology were interviewed for this study. There needs to be a indepentent sorce for anyone to belive it.
Posted By: Peter Schilte
Date: 2008-09-11 22:34:40
Lou, you asked the wrong persons. Had you asked the people who were in the RPF, and now left the cult, you would have known what the RPF is really about. Because these victims of the cult's inhumane abuses are now free to talk. You wouldn't ask the Nazi's about the concentration and destruction camps either but would ask the victims, now would you?
To understand what people say about the RPF, you would ask people who have done the RPF. But the only people critics include are those who have quit the Church. A few of those have done some RPF, therefore critics have one side of the story -- from those who quit. The two remaining questions, to understand the RPF are:
What do people who do RPF and continue in the Church say about the RPF ?
What percent of RPFers quit and what percent continue in the Church?
Then you would understand what people say about the RPF. Until then you have a but a small population of answers and all of those come from quitters. I've observed it to be a good program. But opinions other than mine are on the internet, too.
Posted By: William Johnson
Date: 2008-11-13 12:52:29
RE: the RPF:
"stumbled into the RPF's RPF one time in the tunnels below the Cedars complex in L.A. There w[ere] about a dozen people who apparently had been sleeping in these tiny rooms. (There were a couple of blankets on the floor.) Both men and women [were down there]. A man was cutting a woman's pant leg with a knife while she was wearing the pants, and he had sliced her foot. Blood was running down her ankle onto her foot and was puddling on the floor. She looked up at me and gave me... what I would consider to be an insane smile and said, 'I caused my foot to be in the way of his knife.' Two or three of the people who were crouching and laying about on the floor looked up at me as if it were some kind of wonderful joke. I backed out the way I came in. One of Scientology's big promotion schemes is to tell people that they need to be 'at cause.' These people weren't at cause over anything[. T]hey had degenerated back to the Middle Ages.
That's what I knew about the RPF when the Scientology ethics officer told me to report down there for indefinite duty. I told her [that] they could get me down there, but I'd put several of them in the hospital first, and reminded her that I was a Viet Nam veteran. I was one of the few Sea Org members who had managed to hang onto [his or her] car, and I left that night (Cisar, 1997: 3)."
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