scientology & celebrities

Alternately, http://www.xenu.net

Tom Cruise: 124 - 50 = 74
Jenna Elfman: 135 - 50 = 85
Kirstie Alley: 104 - 50 = 54 (which explains a lot, really)
and so on

Is this a central plank of Scientology or just the thing that appeals to celebrities?

OTM. That's all you need to know, really.

scientology:today::christian science:1930s

ginger rogers was the most prominent/vocal of hollywood celebrities who "went over" to christian science

from what i remember it didn't make a lick of sense.

after reading the beck thread, and then some of the stuff on the web, im rather fascinated by it all. the very idea that something like that could just *spring* out of nowhere.

so, it seems, basically what happens is, they reel people in with the self improvement/taking control angle, and then gradually introduced the spacealien stuff through these courses as you get more entrenched in it? presumably if they come at you with the alien stuff they wouldnt make much progress with even the most vulnerable people. but as you rise through the levels you become more receptive to it, as they take control?

is this why they dont want that stuff leaking out onto the web, and sue everyone the whole time? its obvious they dont want the contents of 20k courses leaking out, but i guess its also because if the more, lets say, outre, contents of the course come out, their credibility is hampered to new recruits (raw meat, is that what they call them?), and that stuff should only come out when their recruits have been, lets say, adequately prepared?

now, what i dont get, is, half the time their people seem to be talking about it (i mean, everyone knows travolta and cruise are ones, right?), and the other half clamming up about it? are they supposed to prostheltyze or not?

oh yeah, also there are a lot of people who would prefer to keep it under the table that they were in narconon.

If you go up to them, fold your hands in the shape of a clam and open them up while going "CLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!" they'll freak out and pause for a moment and recall their past lives as a clam. I almost had the chance to do this in front of a Scientology church...my do I ever want to!

Scientology was started as a bet, right?

From Saturday Evening Wings (The New Age Satire Magazine)
On Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard:

Harlan Ellison: Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ Sakes!

I was sitting in a room with L. Ron Hubbard and a bunch of other science fiction writers. L. Ron Hubbard was famous among science fiction writers because he was the first one to have an electric typewriter.

Saturday Evening Wings: He claimed to have written Dianetics in a weekend, and nobody can deny it.

Ellison: That's true. He wrote Dianetics in one weekend, and you know how he used to write? He used to take a roll of white paper, like paper you wrap fish in. He had it on the wall, and he would roll it into the typewriter and he would begin typing. When he was done, he would tear it off and leave it as one whole long novel.

We were sitting around one night... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester Del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich".

Wings: He is also supposed to have said on that same night: "The question is not how to make a million dollars, but how to keep it."

Ellison: Right. And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it." Sat down, stole a little bit from Freud, stolee a little bit from Jung, a little bit from Alder, a little bit of encounter therapy, pre-Janov Primal Screaming, took all that bullshit, threw it all together, invented a few new words, because he was a science fiction writer, you know, "engrams" and "regression", all that bullshit. And then he conned John Campbell, who was crazy as a thousand battlefields. I mean, he believed any goddamned thing. He really believed blacks were inferior. I mean he really believed that. He was also very nervous when I was in his office because I was a Jew. You know, he was afraid maybe I would spring horns or something.

Anyhow, the way he conned John was that he had J. A. Winter, who was a doctor, who was a close friend of John's, and he got him to run this article on Dianetics, the new science of mental health.

Wings: Dianometry was the first article, I believe.

Ellison: Right. And science fiction fans will go for any goddamm thing. They'll believe anything, man, they will believe in the abominable snowman and the Bermuda Triangle, in Pyramid Power, in EST, in Scientology, in the Second Coming, they'll believe in any goddamm thing, they don't give a shit. They go to see Star Wars; they think it is for real!

So science fiction fans picked it up, they began proselytizing, he started making money, when he had made enough money he was able to spread out a little more, then he got more cuckoos, you know, pre-Charlie Manson assholes that had no place else to go, and he began talking to these loons as if Dianetics really meant something. Then he wanted to get tax-exempt status, so he called it "The Church of Scientology".

Now, they've gotten so big that they own property all over the country, and it is impossible to stop it. They infiltrated the FBI, they infiltrated the tax department, ... the funny thing is, Ron Hubbard and I still occasionally communicate with each other. Every once in a while, a couple or three times a year, we exchange letters. And I write to him, you know, and I say, "Hey Ron, when is this bullshit going to cease? These cuckoos are really driving me crazy! They come around the house with pamphlets!" And he writes me back, and he says, "It's the good work, it's the good work."

It's all very funny stuff. He was going to write a new story for me for the last Dangerous Visions, but I guess he got too busy counting his money. I don't know.

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/faq-you/celeb.txt

and what point did it move from being a charismatic leader based cult, to an organization. ie, when did it become bigger than hubbard himself? when did he no longer really matter?

"The first Body Thetan (BT) level, where one is auditing other beings in one's space. Prior to NOTs, also the last BT level. In this, one runs body thetans through two incidents. Incident 2 involved being captured 75 million years ago, frozen, shipped to Earth, taken to a volcano where one was nuked, then captured in a field, implanted with all sorts of horrid goals for 36 days and packaged up as body thetans and clusters (groups of body thetans). These were then given to folks like you and me in gobs. Incident 1 involves a multi-media show with chariots, angels, waves of light and then blackness."

this is so disgusting/reactivity rather than creativity/To foster passivity in people/ To say it's a good thing to be Owned in an unlimited fashion/To foster capitulation, conformity, resignation/To turn backbone into wishbone or worse/Undercut protest, resilience, assertiveness; replacing these with docility, apathy, sheepishness/

walk through the port authority subway station sometime, then.

They do market to normal schlubs, too. There's a big center across the main drag at UT-Austin offering personality tests and stuff. I almost took one before someone let me know who they were.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0718127641/qid=1113152889/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-8026674-7307068?v=glance&s=books

apparently laura prepon is too.

walk through the port authority subway station sometime, then.

oh, every kind of religious nut you can imagine is in that station!

(notice i use the word "market" and not "proselytize" - and not just because i can't spell the latter)

Jason Dohring who played Logan on Veronica Mars. Hmmmmmmm. Crush has just been halved by Xenu.

He was born into it, though. Small comfort.

Apparently his father had Neopets. Whatever that is.

The idea that Scientology has been around long enough to breed a second generation SCARES ME SHITLESS. Argh. That is all.

Maybe I could save him from the evil clutches of Scientology. (Cue crush swells to gigantic proportion again.)

But, yes, you are right, second gen scientologist. Freaky.

lolz

hooooolleeeeeee shiiiiiiiiiittttt

I wish I could romp and play :(

where's the nicole kidman thing in the ama? i couldn't find it.

kudos to leah remini btw - courageous.

the thing i feel about scientology which i think she kind of gets at, is that it suits the religion for it to be like a "laughing stock" or "lol scientology" - and most people, even left-leaning people who'd see themselves as smart, seem to reach the crazy sci-fi part, lol, and leave it at that. the sinister abuses, the money, the subjugation, the harassment and destruction of families, all of that is often ignored in favour of pointing and laughing at the thetan crap.

tbf it is really funny

idk they could hand-wave it as allegorical within a generation and be not much sillier than waving your arms to part the seas, or gods with elephant heads

no, those are age-old traditions and stories predating most recorded history. scientology is closer to 70s self help manual.

that's why you need the aliens

otm

I was following someone on twitter for a while for complex work reasons who is a Scientologist and who also went full-on Never Hillary during the election and is a proper stan for sleazy Assange. Anyway, she is currently laying hard into Remini saying that she has left Scientology because she couldn't handle the regime or keep to the rules. It is genuinely mind-blowing to me that she can be so open to every Clinton conspiracy - she was even into that weird satanist pizza thing - but seemingly have absolutely no curiosity re: the weird dark and fucked-up shit of her own cult/religion.

As has been repeatedly demonstrated this year, a pathological lack of self-reflection is a necessary criterion in subscribing to an extremist ideology.

she was even into that weird satanist pizza thing

so she's pretty much exclusively into dark messed-up shit that has no independent evidence

"It is genuinely mind-blowing to me that she can be so open to every Clinton conspiracy - she was even into that weird satanist pizza thing - but seemingly have absolutely no curiosity re: the weird dark and fucked-up shit of her own cult/religion."

welcome to christianity.

come to think of it, they certainly ACT like a major religion. maybe we've been giving them a bum rap.

hiding gayness. using celebrities for their money. torture. brainwashing. abuse. it's just catholicism with aliens! might even be an improvement.

If I want Catholicism with aliens I'll watch God Told Me To.

its like religion + north korean governing principles

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/scientology-in-taiwan/493493/

interesting

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Monday, 1 August 2016 04:54 (four months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

steve cannane's book indicates numbers in australia are so dead they're having to recruit staff members from taiwan. now i'm a bit scared to mention it in front of my taiwanese friends in case that's why they're here.

Astonishing that there's something so dumb our fellow Australians WON'T fall for it

The Remini show is pretty good. And by good I mean horrifying. It's like watching Going Clear outtakes. Brava to her and everyone else involved.

Are y'all watching this thing? It's fucking killing me. This show's anecdotal focus on the ways in which Scientology methodically and intentionally rips people's lives and families apart is crucial. I really hope Remini keeps up this crusade and that more people break off from the church and join the fight.

Beyond all of that, though, lots of revelations I hadn't heard about before. Like the fact that many of the fancy Scientology centers they build wind up being pretty much unused, and that many of the people in the audience at their massive rallies are paid extras. Such a massive scam all the way down.

my husband is obsessed with this show and it's destroying me. so hard to watch.

i miss leah remini, though. i always get the urge to binge watch the season of saved by the bell she was on while he's watching it.

She was great as Carla's daughter in Cheers.

scientology is the north korea of religions and it blows my mind that anyone would subscribe to it

just heard that greta van susteren is off fox news. it kind of weirds me out when scientologists have opinions on anything beyond psychiatry being a conspiracy or w/e.

she starts on msnbc next week

Just as an aside, the Oh No, Ross & Carrie podcast finally got around to their scientology episode. There's eight parts and it's basically the Citizen Kane of cult investigation - it starts with them taking the personality tests and loops up into the crazy auditing, constant pressure to take classes, the big parties, fear, insanity, and Xemu. The series ends when scientology finally figures out who they are and throws them out - on direct orders from Miscavige himself.

It starts here: http://ohnopodcast.com/investigations/2016/2/1/ross-and-carrie-audit-scientology-part-1-going-preclear

watched the first 45 minutes of the Leah Remini thing, felt very light on interesting stuff and very heavy on segments where Leah states the importance of what they are doing. like, I'm already watching this show, you don't have to convince me. show, not tell. half the special was just promoting its own existence.

it's probably interesting for people really into the celebrity scientology thing but w only a casual interest in the subject i was super bored

Most interesting thing Will Smith has done in 25 years:

http://www.showbiz411.com/2017/01/17/exclusive-will-smith-and-jada-pinkett-150000-nation-of-islam-2015-donation-verified

xpost Bruh, I think you watched the wrap-up thing. There was a whole Remini series, not just a special.

Louis Theroux’s Scientology Movie is on BBC2 tonight.

So that dude from That 70s Show was a real wrong 'un, then.

needs more classes

Thetan trouble.

Louis' Scientology movie sucks. Not even worth watching.

Yeah, I was really disappointed by it, think it might be the worst thing he's ever done.

thirded, total trash

huge misfire.

it just regurgitates info that's already out there for anyone who's watched/read going clear or any of the other many articles/docs about what they do.

the only good bit was the weird paz de la huerta cameo.

I thought the Miscavige guy was a real find

The whole thing of them trying to cast people to recreate the information films is so pointless. It goes on for ages and doesn't illuminate anything.

i think they were hoping for a scientologist infiltrator but it didn't happen

well, louis got absolutely no access, so had to build the film from nothing.
and at times it really felt like it.
you knew things were desperate when he made such a big point over the fact that he could not stand on the road that the church folks insisted was theirs, and it wasn't (as per the last credit in the film).
i have seen more interesting stuff happen between neighbours in my little town.

The music in the "Going Clear" film is... not good. "I didn't realise it but I was severly depressed!" *sad theremin*

I've been watching the Leah Remini Scientology series (which is now on Netflix). Scientology is such a distillation of everything wrong with America. The overly-legalistic justifications for their behavior. The ludicrous billion-year contracts. The pyramid scheme bullshit going on at every level - buying and then being forced to hawk the stupid books and DVDs in order to progress. The easily-unverified grandiose claims. You get a reminder of those at every commercial break as they show the ridiculous legal disclaimers ("The Church Of Scientology disputes the credibility of those appearing on the program") that I assume Scientology forced them to display.

On Sunday we posted a document from a source who claimed it was proof that in recent years #Scientology ran a widespread scam to bury members in credit card debt, calling it the 'Chase Wave.' Now 2 recent defectors come forward, on the record, to confirm they were swept up in it.

— Tony Ortega (@TonyOrtega94) November 16, 2021

Who better to contribute to talk about the subject than a new king of sketchiness, mysteriously returned to Twitter after half a year away?

Here’s the intro to my piece about Scientology which comes out tomorrow.

If you want to read it first and support my work, click the link below to subscribe.https://t.co/BmSiwi9WTj pic.twitter.com/ZyzC62lUDm

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 27, 2022

So this is happening

https://www.insider.com/danny-mastersons-trial-in-one-of-biggest-in-scientology-history-2022-10

So weird

https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/shelly-miscavige-more-about-the-place

You need to be an LA Times subscriber to read it but none of this is surprising.

Submitted in a downtown Los Angeles court as part of a years-old civil lawsuit against Scientology, the document referenced a purported effort by the church to “derail” the criminal proceedings against Masterson.

“Defendants and their agents engaged in a campaign of harassment and intimidation directed at one of the prosecutors assigned to Defendant Masterson’s trial,” the declaration from civil attorney Simon Leen read. “That prosecutor’s home and car windows were broken, the prosecutor’s home electronics were tampered with, and Defendants’ agents surveilled the prosecutor....

But it was not the first time the church was quietly — and publicly — accused of attempting to interfere in Masterson’s years-long legal saga.

In a speech last fall, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Reinhold Mueller delivered remarks that contained allegations nearly identical to those from the lawsuit, according to a video reviewed by The Times.

In the speech, given after he received an award for his work on the Masterson case, Mueller told hundreds of colleagues, including former Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, about a pattern of disturbing incidents he allegedly experienced in late 2022, ahead of the sitcom star’s first trial.

Mueller said he was “run off the road” and that his home was vandalized, according to the video. He also said that cellular and internet service had been inexplicably knocked out at his residence.

LAPD detectives on the case were also “stalked,” Mueller said in the video, and had their “photographs taken while they were off-duty.”

at my former house, there was an unassuming-looking guy who lived across the street with his wife. my understanding is he was a former scientology member. this guy was just an HVAC repair guy, driving an old blue van, living in a very basic gray stucco duplex probably about 700 sq ft in size. he would have scientology foot soldiers coming by once per week, knocking on his door, peering in his windows, walking around the back trying to see if he was around. a couple times he answered the door and reluctantly (or so it appeared) let them in. they'd always show up in teams of two or three. it was one of those really creepy glimpses into their endeavors, like if they'd devote that much time to one random guy how much effort would they put into more important figures?

knowing what we know now, it's just insane to me that anyone would voluntarily join this 'church'