Addition to Chapter 20

Domination by Nullification

From print pg. 189

I HAD BEEN AT THE INT BASE a little more than a year when it became clear to me that numerous people here—from David Miscavige to Jennifer de Mers—regularly treated others with “domination by nullification.” I had done the PTS/SP course early on, and had read and continued to study Science of Survival. This book was full of answers when it came to identifying people’s behavior and correlating that with a tone level. Knowing how to do this enables you to be able to at least somewhat predict what the person you are analyzing is going to do next.

In Chapter 8, “Pleasure Moments,” Hubbard writes, “Individuals above 2.0 on the Tone Scale are uniformly lucky. There is something more to theta than quite meets the eye. Here are the men on whom God smiles.” SOS makes it clear that creative, high-toned people become targets for low-toned people who love to nullify others because it builds their power over others. The low-toned leader plays to lose for everyone around him and the future. The high-toned artist finds himself the target of low-toned behavior such as nullification. The efforts to nullify higher-toned people are well veiled and carefully calculated to annoy. The higher-toned target fails when continually subjected to nullification. The low-toned person does everything possible to reduce and nullify the high-toned artist, to the end of either total nullification or destruction occurs in the high-toned artist. In this low-toned band, we see efforts to dominate through physical force, threats, anger, and various forms of vengeance; with painstaking efforts to “help people” by showing them their faults. A leader in this tone has the complete belief in his or her superiority, which is a justification for using the methods he uses. People in this tone “fasten themselves on strong personalities well up the Tone Scale” and then continue to assert their superiority, without ever demonstrating that the superiority actually exists. At this level we have erosion and even death of individuals and the culture, and the actions are masked with voluminous “reasoning” (p. 198).

When I think about Peter and me before we were recruited into the Sea Org—and I categorize ourselves as high-toned artists at 3.5 or above—and then read how the low-toned leader seeks high-toned people for the sake of nullifying them, this actually turns my stomach. It explained why Peter was constantly getting into trouble for not writing “good enough” music and his submissions were getting rejected. It explained why Cine crew, who worked hard to produce good shots, were always criticized for producing really bad work. I had made many good contributions at CC, and even in my new role here. I was enthusiastic, energetic and creative, and tenacious in my own right. I guess this made me a target for someone who enjoyed nullification. 

To the truly low-toned person, emergencies are more important that constructive planning. Hmm. We were constantly faced with “drop what you are doing” on our post to go and handle some situation that Miscavige said was more important. For the nullifier, compliance is commanded and lack of compliance draws punishment or destruction. In a culture ruled by this type of leader, we see indigence in the population to make it easier to control, with most of the constructive people removed. Hmmm. That probably explains why so many great people had been busted off higher posts and thrown into the dredges.

Domination by nullification fit David Miscavige to a T.  I was new to the base and far newer to Scientology than most of the Int base staff, so I couldn’t understand why our crew didn’t apply simple Scientology to our Int base conditions. Maybe it was because they have lived with it for so long, they could no longer see it? Maybe they just didn’t know the tech. Maybe many people had gone PTS to David Miscavige and couldn’t see any of this or couldn’t bring themselves to think that he was an SP, minimally a low-toned individual. Miscavige had just seized control of the church and moved to the Int base a few years prior to my arrival. Most of the people at the Int base had been in the Sea Org since the 1960s and 1970s, many who worked with LRH on the ship or in other locations such as Saint Hill or La Quinta. Their Achilles heel could be that they knew no other way of life. Maybe they were just too afraid of him, his power, and any consequences they would experience if they stood up to him.

I was driving myself crazy, vacillating between hyperventilating and feeling suffocated. I couldn’t keep living like this; this wasn’t living. This was madness. My heart pounded through the night, syncopating with imagined scenes of escaping. Escaping would become a matter of courage and survival, not cowardice.