scientology & celebrities

This New Year email was sent by a career exec in the church, and holds its current practices up against quotes from Hubbard himself. From, what I've read, some of e other high-level folks who have left since credit her letter as a catalyst to their keaving. This blog from the church's former #2 is also gets to the heart of whether the religion can be practiced without the church.

Oh, I read about her last night! There are definitely some people who believe in the basic principles but think the org itself is fucked up and problematic but it seemed like most of ex folks think it's just bs through and through at this point.

sorta hilarious that people wonder if you can practice veneration of a hierarchy without a hierarchy

like let's have a cult of personality with no personality! okay

the voice strongly suggests that rathbun is a halfway house between institutional scientology + no scientology (the space inbetween being non-institutional scientology)

http://i46.tinypic.com/34zk085.jpg

when clicking on this thread a few moments ago

just sayin'...

jack parsons was right!

also, non-institutional scientologists aren't jettisoning hubbard (and see rathbun's critique of the voice's #1 biggest threat to scientology list for example of how they reconcile well-documented hubbardisms w/ loving him)

Ok so a good friend of mine recently confessed that she was deeply involved in sci for a really long time - maybe 15-20yrs?. She was really scared to tell me bc she thought I wouldn't want to be her friend anymore.

She grew up in la, and was introduced to it (more like, seduced into it) via her older brothers friend, who is the nephew of a v v famous sci member. She was only about 12 at the time, and they totally brainwashed her.

She's had a pretty crazy life and is writing a memoir, which will also be partly a tell-all about the sci church. She worked as a counselor in their celebrity center at one point, and she told me that the celeb sci clients get a whole different thing - none of the alien stuff, and I think none of the ” difficult” or more fucked up stuff. They are the cash cows, so they get v special treatment.

She was also (I think still is?) v close to one of lrh's sons.

I wish I could remember some of the more crazy stories she told me.

i don't believe brainwashing is real. i think it's a story ppl tell to let themselves off the hook for believing + doing stupid things.

nb i think persuasion and convincing is obv real, but there isn't like something special about the way scientology recruits that is distinguishable from the way numerous other organizations, legit + otherwise, convince ppl to follow their mission and get onboard. whether it's a political party, an environmental organization, an established religious one, a fraternal or communal org, etc.

aside from the nipple clamps

Well she was 12 and already v emotionally fragile/vulnerable sure to a totally fucked and abusive childhood, and had some mental problems. These older guys had her convinced of aliens and afraid for her life.

my neighbors across the street are getting stalked by a trio of twentysomething scientology drones who are stopping by in the middle of the day, peeping in their windows, mona lisa smiles on their faces, like not trying to be furtive at all, just looking smug and creepy and leaving notes under their door.

well that's not at all bizarre and creepy

that is bizarre + creepy! also i was under the impression that scientology doesn't really target individuals for recruitment unless they were already involved. like why would they stalk some randomers out of nowhere? seems like a really ineffective tactic tbh!

i can't quite put my finger on it but it's like watching college students in a senior film project trying to act at being mafia gangsters, it's kind of comical. except it's creepy.

scientology is well known to harass folks who have left the church under less than amicable terms or are critical of the church.

re: the split - pretty much every religion/denomination/cult/sect whatever has these schisms where, as the main "church" (for lack of a better word) changes over time, a percentage of the believers want to return to core beliefs, so they split off and start their own thing

basically doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me - pretty sure it's happened a bunch of times already in scientology iirc

http://i45.tinypic.com/2jbga0.jpg

are there really people out there who don't know enough about scientology to actually be bamboozled into joining it? my sense is that they start with the most banal new-agey bromides and only commence unloading the weirder stuff once they've got you invested financially and otherwise.

it's my understanding that initially you learn to do things like stare into someone's eyes for an indefinite period of time w/o blinking or to self-induce OBE's. so you can imagine how stuff like that might be seductive to some ppl. it's sort of low-level occultic techniques that probably engender a sense of power over other ppl which is doubtlessly reinforced by the whole scientology framework of us against them + being part of this rarefied elite of ppl saving the world in the foreground of this grand cosmic scenario. plus as just1n3 mentions i guess as a celeb you get treated accordingly

w/o blinking

is this true? i know of other 'being with' exercises done in other contemporaneous encounter groups, but had nothing to do w/ not blinking. it was about looking into someone's eyes for extended period w/out having normal social mediation stuff going on. kinda like two-person meditation.

disenchantment with a church's leadership/organization while still believing in its core tenets/beliefs is common across all religions too

basically doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me - pretty sure it's happened a bunch of times already in scientology iirc

Sit back and watch the perfect storm of 2012...

I know that. but the core tenet/belief of this church is ... belief in the leadership/organization.

er xp

You're right that it wouldn't matter much if the practices didn't involve child labor, torturous detention, etc.

tell it to martin luther, shakey

can we get to heaven/clear w/o giving all our money to rome/int base?

mordy, yeah, every account i've read of the initial courses involves a thing where you have to look into someone's eyes for a given time (i think it's an hour??) w/o blinking. you have to start over anytime your trainer person catches you blinking. eventually most people end up having an out-of-body experience ("exteriorizing" in scientology jargon) while trying to do this

there's a good breakfast spot nearby where the view is the back of a large scientology building and there's all these weird identically dressed scientologists scurrying around wearing black dress pants and gray t-shirts. looks like a really boring ikea or something.

can we get to heaven/clear w/o giving all our money to rome/int base?

That's exactly what the Sea Org captain's email that started this schism is about, quoting Hubbard's own words against any kind of lavish construction or hi dues.

like why would they stalk some randomers out of nowhere? seems like a really ineffective tactic tbh!

LOL. Like ring at your door and try to make you believe there's a god.

i kinda think scientology is gonna be over within the next 50 years -- i wonder if similar religious organizations can possibly survive w/ the sort of media attention + fact checking u can do in 2012. like in 0BC, Jesus rose from the dead which is insane but in 2012 what kind of definitive proof can u give one way or another, esp if you want to believe (and double especially if your family has believed for the past 50 generations or whatever). but in 1940 or whatever Hubbard lied about getting a medal and everyone knows. it might just not be feasible.

i do think that in like 100 or 200 years scientology is going to be a super interesting case study for some enterprising graduate student. the rise and fall of an american religious cult in the 21st century. i would read it.

most similar organization I can think of is the Mormon Church. which is clearly not going anywhere but also started under different circumstances, OWNS A STATE etc.

yeah i think at first its more like amway/dale carnegie how to be a better you dianetics be fabulous and get what you want out of life (like EST) and then whammo! before you know it ten hour grillings and alien lore.

if it weren't for the fact that they're legit just evil fucking scumbags, i'd have nothing but affection for a group of cultists who believe that exorcising alien thetans from your body is the way to achieve success in the world. it's the super-evil, even by contemporary religious standards, that makes me root for their utter collapse.

Vicisti, Seaorgaee

yeah i said that upthread. i am totally for a sci-fi religion. i would even go their churches if it were just cosmik majik and cool imagery and aliens. sadly, its just a con. and a nasty one at that.

i kinda think scientology is gonna be over within the next 50 years

wow, you are being generous. i'm not sure i can even give it five

I can't even tell you how many dvds and books Scientology sends the library every year that I end up throwing away. They must have money to burn.

there isn't like something special about the way scientology recruits that is distinguishable from the way numerous other organizations, legit + otherwise, convince ppl to follow their mission and get onboard. whether it's a political party, an environmental organization, an established religious one, a fraternal or communal org, etc.

you're right but at the same time i do think there's something unique about "brainwashing"--obviously any ideology or belief system is gonna try to immunize itself against others but "brainwashing" is like an extra level of paranoia and isolation. so it's not "look how dumb and evil those Others are" but "dont even speak to or think about those Others." for that reason it's probably especially fragile too.

like it's less about convincing and persuasion as removing itself from those domains entirely.

are republicans brainwashed? like, where do you draw the line between being convinced of your opinion and unwilling to listen to alternatives and being brainwashed? i'm just skeptical of the term 'brainwashed' in general bc it assumes certain things about malleability of human mind, and mind control, and power + stuff that i think is a) not scientifically proven, b) kinda philosophically mindless, and c) better explained by other terms we already use all the time to describe the same thing. it's just that brainwashed has a special cache bc i think parents who have kids in cults like to believe that there's some kind of mind control at work, as opposed to normal human stupidity, vapidness, already existing susceptibility to terrible things, etc.

Well I don’t know if it’s brainwashing but in reality tv for example there’s something to the notion of the reality bubble, people who are cut off from everyone they know and everything else and they lose a proper perspective on things, which is why you get a dozen people freaking out over and investing a lot into some dude on ‘the bachelor’ or some girl on ‘the bachelorette’ after knowing them for two weeks. It definitely occurs and it seems scientology uses similar “tactics” for lack of a better term. It seems like it might be something they intentionally do rather than collateral damage from the very manner in which people enter into the church.

most churches brainwash people, don't they? or most religions.

well... no

i agree with you Mordy, i guess i just want to keep the term around as the extreme end of things. it's an especially powerful hermetic and self-confirming logic. Like, even rush limbaugh will play clips of an Obama speech to filter it through his worldview but i dont know if a brainwashed person even bothers to do that much. scientology doesn't seem to go out and defend itself so much as want to keep everything secret and "apart" from that media environment. maybe im talking in circles here, though.

they do if the word brainwash just means allowing yourself to be convinced of things you may have previously not believed. if you take the word at face value tho - that your brain is being washed by a second party - then no. no one has ever been brainwashed imho ever (except maybe through the use of drugs, torture, idk, but certainly not otherwise w/out participation of the washed). xxp

i guess i mean that rather than try to go out and convince and persuade the wider world, the cultish "brainwashing" stuff seeks to separate off from the wider world.