Part 5: NXIVM Is Scientology Repackaged: EMs; E-Meters and Low or No Pay
By Jeffrey Jay, AKA Mockingbird
This is the fourth in a series that examines the similarities of NXIVM and Scientoloy. We are using the excellent book Scarred: The True Story Of How I Escaped The Cult That Bound My Life by Sarah Edmondson to illustrate our points.
Sarah Edmondson has a book about her experiences in NXIVM, a podcast, and she starred in the HBO docuseries, The Vow – which was the story of her role as a whistleblower in NXIVM.
I recommend reading these posts sequentially.
Part 1 NXIVM Is Scientology Repackaged;
Part 2: NXIVM Is Scientology Repackaged; 12 Point Mission Statement
Part 3: NXIVM is Scientology Repackaged – by Mockingbird
PART 4: NXIVM is Scientology Repackaged: Truth Rundown & Ethical Breaches’ Collateral & Auditing
Sarah Edmondson has a book about her experiences in NXIVM, a podcast, and she starred in the HBO docuseries, The Vow – which was the story of her role as a whistleblower in NXIVM.
On page 19 of Scarred, Sarah Edmondson introduces her readers to the term “EM aka Exploration of Meaning”.
This is a technique I never saw in Scientology, at least not with that name.
Scientology uses a device called an e-meter to assist in their auditing.
In Scientology and Dianetics’ auditing, many techniques are similar enough to the EM used in NXIVM that it’s worth noting.
Both have methods that involve guiding questions and recalling past events to resolve underlying trauma, or at least CLAIM to do so.
In Scientology, these “answers” often include submission to Scientology procedures and the belief that the procedures are beneficial and that Scientology doctrine is correct.
I suspect that EMs also have this quality.
“Nancy’s own specialty was neurolinguistic programming (NLP), …” (Scarred page 21)
Sarah Edmondson warmed many whom she recruited to escape from NXIVM
Sarah Edmondson
Sarah Edmondson describes some claims for NLP, and I won’t waste your time with them, because many examinations of NLP have found it a harmful fraud and a method that unscrupulous people use to try and control others.
NLP did not use scientific research to develop its practices. It doesn’t stand up to scientific examination.
I recommend you run, not walk, away from any person or group that uses NLP.
Nancy Salzman just prior to sentencing.
Nancy Salzman
Nancy Salzman reportedly still believes in the methods used in NXIVM, and that’s unfortunate for anyone she spreads them to and possibly tragic for her mental well-being.
I suggest that NXIVM members or ex-members who still believe in the techniques look long and hard at the criticism of these techniques and actual scientific research on them and their effects.
I have a similar suggestion for Scientologists and ex-Scientologists regarding the methods used in Scientology.
The Stripe Path allowed NXIVM members to have ranks based on colored sashes and the number of stripes on each.
Clare Bronfman with her Nxivm orange sash.
Lauren Salzman with her green sash.
Lauren Salzman with her green sash with white stripes.On page 22 of Scarred, Sarah Edmondson introduces the “stripe path” in NXIVM.
Many cults have a variation on a gradual hierarchy that usually elevates very few members to the top levels, and most people never make it past the lower levels.
In Scientology, the cult has numerous ways to be elite.
You have a training path for auditing and a path as a person who gets auditing, a path for administrative training, and a path for money donated to any one of several causes within the organization, including the International Association of Scientologists, the Super Power project and numerous other projects for which Scientology solicits donations.
The Sea Organization is a Scientology organization, which the Church of Scientology describes as a "fraternal religious order, comprising the church's most dedicated members". All Scientology management organizations are controlled exclusively by members of the Sea Org
Within the organization, staff members are in their hierarchy groups. Sea Org members often see themselves as above ALL other people.
In the Sea Org. various branches see themselves as higher or lower than other branches. I have known Sea Org members to feud over who is higher in the hierarchy or whose branch has more authority than the other.
In Scientology, many staff members see the public members as “namby-pamby,” “wishy-washy,” and “dilettantes.”
Likewise, many Sea Org members see the public AND staff as inferiors!
In fact, within Scientology, there’s a poster for the Sea Org with a statement I will paraphrase: “For every Sea Org member working to make things right on planet earth, there are a million people who don’t even know what right is!”
The idea is that a few thousand Sea Org members are trying to save Earth, while billions of people are so far beneath Sea Org members in knowledge and awareness that to Sea Org members, we are like mindless drones sleepwalking through our lives and utterly oblivious to reality!
A similar trait that Sarah Edmondson brought up was how she worked on the stripe path for years before making money for her labor and did thousands of tasks for which NXIVM did not compensate her. Additionally, Keith Raniere had many people do unpaid work for him and the organization in exchange for courses.
In Scientology, during my 25 years of experience, I met hundreds of staff members, a hundred or two Sea Org members, and met people from organizations worldwide. I spent most of my time at a small local organization, a few months at a large organization in Los Angeles, and a couple of months at a large organization in New York City.
Most Sceintologists are not glamorous stars.
Most people in Scientology are poor. Many staff members and Sea Org members go months or years without pay. That’s right. They go for months or years with zero pay!
Scientology seeks out and targets and exploits the rich and famous, but just as only one percent of people are wealthy, only a tiny fraction of Scientology cult members are wealthy!
Many people who are not wealthy join Scientology staff or the Sea Org, and devote their lives to the group.
They discover that the Sea Org often provides no pay or pennies per hour when and if it pays anything.
As a legally recognized “religion” in the United States, Scientology is exempt from minimum wage laws regarding “volunteers,” and all staff and Sea Org members are volunteers. (There are exceptions in rare cases where the law requires workers to be treated as regular workers. This is a tiny fraction of Scientology)
Sea Org members routinely work hundred-plus hour weeks. Although the Sea Org often provides cramped communal housing and barely sufficient food, it often provides no medical insurance, no retirement, pays nothing into social security, and doesn’t pay members enough for things like feminine hygiene products, birth control, soap, and laundry detergent.
The staff is always waiting for the promise of expansion to get to the point of consistent and decent pay.
Most Scientology staff made little to nothing most of the time. Over eighty percent of staff make nothing for years at a time. The other 20 percent make a few hundred dollars PER YEAR!
There have been rare exceptions of staff making several hundred dollars per week, but the odds of that consistently happening are extremely low.
Many Scientology staff survive by working a full-time job and working full-time for nothing in Scientology, and others have a spouse or family members that support them while they are on staff.
The fact that NXIVM and Scientology both provide a facade of extremely wealthy and successful people financially while relying on a hidden foundation of people who are either unpaid or paid well below minimum wage, is a trait found in many cults.
Cult expert Margaret Singer interviewed over 4000 ex-cult members in her decades of research.
She said a cult leader must have two traits: Willing to lie to and exploit people.
I believe these traits were present in NXIVM leader Keith Raniere, in the founder of Scientology, Ronald Hubbard, and his successor or supplanter, David Miscavige.
Stay tuned for part 6
For more of the author’s work, see https://mbnest.blogspot.com/
L.Ron was much given to dressing up as a natty yachtsman. He fancied himself Admiral of the Ocean Sea. How anyone could become a follower of this ridiculous fool baffles me.
I like the promotional picture of the nerd with the hat, uniform and sword. Playing dress-up like some pathetic Trekkie. Imagine seeing that image and saying, Wow, I want to be just like that guy (or girl, it’s hard to tell).
Still, despite looking like a recruiting poster for a clown school, there’s something disturbingly fascistic about that image. Paramilitary and threatening.
L. Ron’s opera-buffa relation with the sea traces back to his spectacular failure as a junior naval officer. Repeatedly relieved of command for incompetence, he was bounced from assignment to assignment, every one of his superiors looking to fob him off somewhere else. As one example of his many failures, he once mis-navigated into Mexico’s territorial waters and exercised gunnery practice on an inhabited island. Oops, wrong island. Oops, wrong country!
Here’s one of L.Ron’s performance reviews:
“This officer is not satisfactory for independent duty assignment. He is garrulous and tries to give impressions of his importance. He also seems to think he has unusual ability in most lines. These characteristics indicate that he will require close supervision for satisfactory performance…”
Yeah, like Raniere he was garrulous and liked to “give impressions of his importance”. A legend in his own mind. Boastful liars.
Only a fool would listen to either one of them.