What is a Hard Stop

Unpacking Scientology Jargon

This post is in response to the September 19, 2024 poll results. Be sure to get your vote in before 2pm today.

What is a hard stop? In the real world, we call them appointments or deadlines. In Scientology, they are hard stops. And, like all else Scientology, they carry oh so much more weight.

How can a deadline or appointment be more important in Scientology? Because Scientology says it is, that’s why. Well, that’s the simple explanation. But the truth is, in a high control group, people do not have the same choices you and I do.

Scientologists are faced with hard stops on a daily basis. They do not get to decide where and when they do things. They are told what is best for them. They are informed what they need to do. And yet, the entire Scientology enslavement journey is called “The Bridge to Total Freedom.”

So, how does a hard stop work then? Let’s start with the low hanging fruit. Scientology week end. Scientology’s week ends at 2:00 pm Thursday. Every Thursday at 2:00 p.m. in every Scientology organization everywhere. No exceptions. Which means the inevitable pre-2 pm rush every week.

It is imperative to finish by 2. Be all the way done. If you are reading something, read faster. Get it done. If there are 3 sentences left, you do not get that stat for that type of reading for that week. Yes, even a student on course had to keep their stats up. No one in Scientology is immune from stats. The more important you are in the hierarchy, the more controlled you actually are.

That insanity happens every week because no matter how hard you work, next week has to be better. At 2:00 p.m. every Thursday afternoon, every Scientologist has to stop what they are doing. Hard Stop. No excuses. Time to calculate stats. How amazingly inefficient. Then get right back to production. Chop chop.

But 2:00 p.m. Thursday where? Oh, let’s make this really confusing. 2:00 p.m. wherever you are. Here is an example of how Scientology orgs play with the time difference and stats.

Fred is in Los Angeles. He is on the phone with the registrar in New York. He is trying to get his funds on account there transferred to his account in LA. At 2:01 pm New York time, the reg releases the funds off the books in New York. They have counted it for their week. Then it goes to Fred’s account in LA. Boom! It arrives on LA’s books before 2pm LA time. So two organizations got to count Fred’s money. The same money. No real money in in either org.

But the most important thing you learn very early on in Scientology is that statistics are more important than truth.

Let’s add more pressure to this pressure cooker. More hard stops. Musters. These are not for rank and file Scientologists, only for staff and Sea Org members. But, by the time a person reaches Sea Org, musters are a fact of life. Musters plural. Daily musters. But not just daily. Several times daily.

That is correct. Several times a day, Sea Org members are required to drop everything they are doing and report for muster. Do not be late. That is why they call it a hard stop. There are not excuses in Scientology. No matter your position, you will be at the required place when a hard stop is called. You will not be late. If late, you will be punished.

If everything is going well, there are three required daily musters. If you are on the day staff, these are around meal breaks. They will be the morning, midday and evening musters. There is a roll call and then usually an update or a Chinese School (see glossary)

When I was in, this type of hard stop looked like this:

Get to the galley in the morning in the hour when breakfast was served. We waited in line for our meal (and I use the term meal loosely) to be slopped on our trays. We shoveled it down, then raced to be line up for the half hour muster. If given a choice between muster and food, muster had better win. You’d be in big trouble if you were not there. It was a hard stop. Required appearance. On time. No excuses.

Lunch meant racing from wherever you were posted to eat then race to muster. Dinner, same thing. Why muster was not held before meal in the evening—when we would then be off work and could actually eat—was not questioned.

The worse the staff is doing, the more frequently they are required to do hard stops. Yes, you read that correctly. When a person in Scientology, the elite upper echelons, is trying to fix things, they are required to drop everything multiple times and be somewhere else.

As with all else in Scientology, it’s a trap. The worse you do, the worse they hurt you until you believe you owe them. The world will not end if I don’t drop everything Thursday at 2 to update my poll. Most people won’t even notice. The same is true of what happens in Scientology. Those people running on a hamster wheel towards their hard stop are headed nowhere.

If you are in Scientology still, remember this. Even if the stats are up today, it just starts over the minute you report them. No hard stop will save the planet. No statistic you report will create a sane planet. Take a breath. Maybe even take a hard stop and meet reality. It’s nice out here.