Mental Training Workgroup

 Meeting Ken Ogger - The Story Of A Recovery

 © 2007 by Heidrun Beer (hbeer@sgmt.at)

Note: This article has been written for an audience familiar with Scientology terms. Please look up any unfamiliar words in a Scientology glossary, or contact me for a definition.

I met Ken Ogger only once, in early 2000. My new husband Paul, whom I had married in 1998, and I talked about his situation and decided together that I had to fly from my home country Austria to LA on the other side of the globe and at least try to help Ken out of the black hole into which he had fallen. I couldn’t stay longer than a weekend, but I was deeply touched by what I saw.

I think the whole freezone was concerned about Ken’s then recent postings, in which he disclosed alarming details about his case and his health - about his overwhelming sexual cravings, how his teeth were falling out, and how he was thinking about suicide. Originally when “The Pilot” (his pen name) sent out his posts, we were used to see a brilliant analysis of LRH technology and how the church failed to apply it. Or something like the “Selfclearing” manual that would allow people to work around the copyright problems with LRH materials. Or a clever debate – all posts emanating mental strength and emotional stability.

And now this breakdown. The recent posts seemed to scream “unresolved case”, but only a writer can understand what actually happened to Ken. Writers live in a different universe while they are working on a project, they don't notice how time is passing in the real world, they would starve if nobody reminds them to eat! Ken's recent posts showed all signs of a total burnout (not a Scientology word but well known in the rest of the world). For several years, he had invested every bit of his energy into his writings and had received nothing in return.

Worse, he seemed to have completely forgotten to take care of himself. Everything was happening in his mind, and he thought he could handle everything in session, but he had a physical existence as well, and it was about to collapse. Smoking and an insufficient diet (American mainstream) didn’t make things better.

A Spouse's Betrayal

He had warned me that we couldn’t meet in his house, so he had booked space in a motel, but I didn’t need to see the house in order to understand what was going on. He had lost what the esoteric literature calls “grounding”, he wasn’t connected to Earth anymore, living in a mental universe while the physical side of his life, following the law of entropy, deteriorated into chaos.  

Ken was expecting a lady’s visit (mine), but his car was a garbage can on wheels. The Yeti-like photo of him that the Church of Scientology published on a hate website – face totally hidden behind a wild beard and long Einstein-style hair - was really how he looked at the time. The clothes were OK and he must have had a shower, but he hadn’t trimmed his nails - I did that for him.

Such were my first few impressions. Later I was allowed to visit the house (I even saw the now famous swimming pool), and I learned the following: Ken’s wife Ann, the same who betrayed his identity as “The Pilot” to the church, having no children, had developed an affinity to stray cats. Every now and then she had taken in one more stray cat, with the intention to find new homes for them.

I found that very caring of her, only she overdid it a tiny little bit. There were 50 cats living in the house at the time where I visited it. The cats inhabited every corner of the house, cat litter and cat food was everywhere, the stink was beyond description. The piano, the couch, the book shelves were just abandoned, dropped in horror by their former owner – literally everything was dirty, broken, worn out, a nightmare. When I asked Ken about a cleaning lady, he said that they used to have one, but now the space was too run down and they were afraid of getting trouble.

I suddenly had second thoughts about why Ken would go into a kind of “inner exile” and start to live in a world of bookwriting and solo sessions. Ann had first taken over and then wrecked his physical space, and he didn’t have a way of claiming it back.

Visitor From Another World

Another man, or even I, would have screamed and jumped up and down and maybe smashed a few dishes or kicked a few cats until she got the message that a space shared by two doesn’t mean that one can completely destroy it.

But ordinary human behaviour was not Ken’s thing. He was not adjusted to life on a hellhole like Earth. As long as I knew him, he couldn’t agree with Earth behaviour patterns and Earth traditions. Many of his writings demonstrate that. His vision of how people should treat each other was unconditional love, or in Scientology terms, unlimited granting of beingness – he appeared to me as a visitor from the spirit world, unprepared to be thrown into an environment so irrational, so cold and hostile that it made him cringe with pain.

Today I believe that this vision may not have been a vision at all, but rather memories from the spirit world – or better, as it is said to have no time, reflections of a higher dimension – the dimension where he is now. For a consciousness like Ken’s, life on Earth, where consciousness is in such an early and turbulent stage of evolution, is plain torture. And he certainly didn’t have the mental equipment to win a territorial fight with his own spouse.

If You Have Friends...

I discussed ethics conditions with Ken. Doingness. I tried to convey to him as gently as possible that his physical appearance needed some changes if he wanted to be liked by the female half of the population, as only few women can see beyond the body and perceive the spiritual being. We discussed smoking and diet and had hours of talks about the aberrations in the sexual arena that are established as “traditions” on Earth. It was a moment of big relief for him to find in me someone from his own corner of the universe, a sister, a member of the same spiritual family, who shared his viewpoint in these things, a viewpoint that was unusual even in the Scientology world but that we considered sane - someone who could really duplicate him.

We also discussed possible solutions for the house. Ann was on her way out of Ken’s life, and her cats would soon follow. After my return to Austria, Ken’s mother and some  friends coached Ken through the conditions regarding his teeth, his physical appearance, and his social skills with women. The house was cleaned and repaired – something that is written down quickly but required months of tedious work.

Smashed by Fate

When all seemed to go up the tonescale, we were again struck by the news about Ken’s life threatening colon abscess, the following months of coma and years of medical rehabilitation. Spooky - he had resisted the impulse to kill himself, and now nature seemed to do the job for him! But again he worked himself out of the pit. With the help of his mother who nursed him back to health, he was ready to receive his colostomy reversal. He had gotten a colostomy, had to live with an artificial exit for a year and a half, but it was successfully reversed and he was finally a healthy man.

The months in the hospital had cost him his job, but he found another one. During the coma in 2001 he had stopped smoking. His looks had changed so much that his old friend Maurice wrote to me: “I'm amazed at the physical transformation, based on the photos, in just a few years. At the end, he looked very much like the Ken I knew back in the 60's, 70's and 80's.”

A New Start

In 2001, the chain of rejections by the female half of humanity came to an end. Between January and June, three women contacted Ken and he began relationships with all three. They all knew of each other. By pioneering this unconventional but thoroughly thought out form of a family, he implemented to the letter his own personal ideas about the ideal network of intimate relations that he had detailed in a visionary internet post.

With that, the deepest of all his pains should have dissipated, and as an accomplished solo auditor, he could have easily handled what was left. On the 20^th of May 2007, he returned to the newsgroups and announced that he would resume his activities as “The Pilot” and be available for discussions again. He posted a batch of texts, one of them an older, most brilliant writing about the principles of existence, another exposed some Church of Scientology torture methods, and yet another told the shocking story of how the Church of Scientology had attacked his private life in the last months and years.

Nine days later his body was found dead in his swimming pool. Both ankles and the left wrist were tied with electrical wire and attached to a heavy concrete weight. Although the coroner ruled it a suicide, some friends could not believe that. At a moment where he seemed to have turned every single one of his difficulties into a personal victory, suicide didn't make sense to me either. - Nearly two months after Ken's death I received information that he had financial trouble much more serious than he allowed his mother or any of his friends to know. He kept these problems entirely to himself. Exactly how much of the earlier "good news" about new job opportunities and other income were just a facade we will probably never know.

Ken Ogger, it seems, had completely lost his willingness to interact with the physical universe. He let go of the body when he couldn't keep up the illusion of a successful human being anymore. Distant friends had to rescue his devastated mother - who had no more place to live - from her hopeless situation. I am at a loss of words about the magnitude of this disaster. 

One hint to a different explanation remains: the analysis of his computer revealed that thousands of files have been deleted from his harddrive, among them the most recent version of his "Self Clearing" manual... 

Ken Ogger - The Pilot's Page

Ken Ogger - Christmas Message 2004

This message was sent by Ken Ogger to some of his friends at Christmas 2004. It shows how he starts to look beyond Scientology and see the bigger picture of spiritual existence. He further develops his vision of it here:

Ken Ogger - Principles of Existance

See also these articles by Heidrun Beer: God -- Object Oriented Programming Principles in the Mind

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This page last changed on: 30. Mar 13