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Scientology

Not sure how much of it to believe, but that interview with Hubbard Jr. is certainly frightening :eek:
 
I read bits of the site and I read a definition of 'dianetics'.

What a load of tosh.

I can easily see though, how people who read science fiction and wished some of the stuff they read is true would be sucked in though.

For example, the belief that man is immortal and that his existance spreads far beyond his current life span (physical and non physical) is clearly praying on two things - our awareness of the reality that one day we will die and that we do not want to.

For science fiction readers, the idea of reincarnation or of stasis or of spiritual transformation or of subliming is an attractive one, and links up with the other Scientology tosh that humans are potentially much more than they are today.

As a reader of science fiction, I would love it if it were true, I would love to be able to think better; speed read, have photographic memory, a superb and genius mind etc. I would love it if I could fly, or teleport or lift great weights or create wonderful and inspirational things.

None of this will happen without me putting in the effort to do that.

The idea that they can unlock bits of my unused 90% of brain to do this or whatever by asking me questions to get rid of unwanted stuff is very basic and simplistic.

Not just that though, they seem to assume that they can clean out my brain by asking me questions and monitoring my reactions until they get what they want right?

That is very very very basic psychiatry in my book - yet they slag off psychiatry, even though their religion is based on a very small part of it that has clearly been taken out of context.

If Mr Hubbard had only finished his psychiatry degree (if he started one) and listened to all of the stuff said and then made his decision about what he thought of it - then his conclusions would probably have been a little more measured and less childish.

As for his prescence, that is just his own determination and fear.

Determination to make sure you do not expose him to be not only a fraud, but wrong about what he has bet his life on, and fear that you will prove him wrong.

This determination and fear is inherent in many people from many religions, question them even on a conversational and innocent level and they will be automatically defensive and angry with you.

I hate religion sometimes, I hate what it does to people.

:evil:
 
http://hailxenu.net/

XENU IS COMING...

Over at OT we have raised over $4,000 which is being used to fly a banner over Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood today where Tom Cruise will be for the premiere of Mission Impossible 3. The banner will say “Hail Xenu LOL <8 OT” and "The baby is Xenu's". The planes are lifting off from an undisclosed airport 30 miles away at 5:05pm. It's a 45minutes maritime flight there. They will circle until 7:30pm and fly back to the airport apparently its 35min maritime back to the airport. You should see the planes flying around LA and Hollywood around 5pm and they should be in the circling pattern around the theater around 5:50pm.
Click to expand...
 
Now this is more like it:

Scientology nearly ready to unveil Super Power

In the works for decades, the closely guarded spiritual training program will be revealed in Clearwater.

By ROBERT FARLEY, Times Staff Writer
Published May 6, 2006

CLEARWATER - Matt Feshbach believes he has super powers. He senses danger faster than most people. He appreciates beauty more deeply than he used to. He says he outperforms his peers in the money management industry.

He heightened his powers of perception in 1995 when he went to Los Angeles and became the first and so far only "public" Scientologist to take a highly classified Scientology program called Super Power.

Where in L.A. did he do this?

"Just in Los Angeles," is all Feshbach will say. Super Power is that secret.

Under wraps for decades, Super Power now is being prepped for its eventual rollout in Scientology's massive building in downtown Clearwater. That will be the only place worldwide where the program, much anticipated by Scientologists, will be offered.

A key aim of Super Power is to enhance one's perceptions - and not just the five senses we all know - hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell.

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard taught that people have 57 "perceptics." They include an ability to discern relative sizes, blood circulation, balance, compass direction, temperature, gravity and an "awareness of importance, unimportance."

Church officials won't discuss specifics of Super Power. But Feshbach and another prominent Clearwater Scientologist who, like Feshbach, is a major donor to Super Power's building fund, provided some details in interviews with the St. Petersburg Times. A group of former Scientologists who worked for the church on a campus in California where the program was in development also described elements of it.

Super Power uses machines, apparatus and specially designed rooms to exercise and enhance a person's so-called perceptics. Those machines include an antigravity simulator and a gyroscope-like apparatus that spins a person around while blindfolded to improve perception of compass direction, said the former Scientologists.

A video screen that moves forward and backward while flashing images is used to hone a viewer's ability to identify subliminal messages, they said.

Hubbard promised Super Power would improve perceptions and "put the person into a new realm of ability." He believed it would unlock abilities needed to spread Scientology across the planet.

For Feshbach it's like nothing he has ever done in Scientology.

"I got it. I loved it," he gushed.

Feshbach, 52, and his two brothers became famous in investment circles during the 1980s as the kings of short selling stocks - essentially betting which stocks will tank. At one point, the California-based Feshbach Bros. managed $1-billion for clients.

Feshbach now lives in Belleair, where his wife, Kathy, runs a Scientology mission. Because he donated millions to the Super Power building fund, he was invited to undergo the program.

It's geared toward creating a "more competent spiritual being," he said. "I'm not dependant on my physical body to perceive things."

He offered this anecdote:

He had just finished his perceptics training and was at the Los Angeles airport, preparing to fly home to the Tampa Bay area. He stood at a crosswalk with perhaps 20 others, including a woman and her son, an antsy boy 6 or 7 years old.

As the light turned green, the boy bolted into the street, ahead of his mother. Feshbach perceived a pickup bearing down on the boy, driven by a young woman.

He yelled and saved the boy's life by a quarter of an inch, he said.

Coincidence? Feshbach doesn't think so. No one else saw the pickup, he says. He believes that, through the Super Power program, he elevated his perceptive abilities beyond those of the others at that crosswalk. His enhanced perceptions have played out numerous times since, he said.

Super Power takes "weeks, not months" to complete, said Feshbach. He would not discuss the specific machines and drills that former Scientologists said are used to enhance perceptions.

The perceptics portion of Super Power is one of 12 "rundowns" in the full program, Feshbach said. But it clearly is a key aspect.

Details of Super Power training have been kept secret even from church members. Like much of Scientology training, details aren't revealed until one pays to take the course.

Asked about Super Power, church spokesman Ben Shaw provided a written statement: "Super Power is a series of spiritual counseling processes designed to give a person back his own viewpoint, increase his perception, exercise his power of choice, and greatly enhance other spiritual abilities."

Shaw would not say how much the program will cost. Upper levels of Scientology training can run tens of thousands of dollars.

He declined to provide further insight into Super Power. "It's not something I'm willing to provide to you in any manner," Shaw said.

Scientologist Ron Pollack, who donated $5-million to the Super Power fund after making millions in hedge funds in the 1990s, said he got a sneak peek. The head of fundraising for the project showed him a photo of "some high-tech thing" developed by engineers in Southern California that offers different aromas on demand. It's for a drill to enhance one's sense of smell, he said.

Pollack said he has no idea how Super Power will be set up, but is excited about the parts on ethics and perceptics, which he likened to a "trip to Disney."

Former Scientologists Bruce Hines and Chuck Beatty, once staffers at the church's international base in Hemet, Calif., said that while on punishment detail, they made chairs of various sizes - ones big enough for a giant, others too small even for a child - that were set up in a room designed to hone one's sense of relative sizes.

Hines also said the Super Power program, which Hubbard wanted rolled out in 1978, met with delays during the 20-plus years that it was being piloted on church staffers.

One setback occurred when the church checked back on the staffers who had been through Super Power. It turned out, Hines said, many had left the church - hardly the expected outcome.

"The fact that it was around in 1978 and it's still not worked out 28 years later, that's pretty significant," Hines said.

Hines, who said he once performed Scientology's core practice of auditing on celebrity Scientologists Kirstie Allie, Anne Archer and Nicole Kidman (she no longer is a Scientologist), worked at the California facility until 1993 and left the church staff in 2003. He and other ex-Scientology staffers are convinced that church brass delayed completion of the big building in Clearwater because the Super Power program was not finished. The exterior was completed three years ago, then construction stopped.

"The building was getting done faster than the tech program itself," said Karen Pressley, a former church staffer at the same California campus, who left the church in 1998.

"This is a flap of magnitude in Scientology management," Pressley said.

Shaw said those ex-members are just wrong.

"These people know absolutely nothing" about the Super Power pilot, he said.

Scientology processes are technical and cannot be understood out of context, Shaw said. "If someone is interested in Scientology, they should read a book and find out for themselves what Scientology is and thus begin their own spiritual journey," Shaw said.

Super Power is ready, he said, and 300 staff members are being trained to deliver it.

Construction delays in Clearwater, Shaw said, are due to a recent explosion of church expansion worldwide. The church has spent hundreds of millions to purchase and renovate properties. Last year, it purchased nearly 1-million square feet of buildings in 18 cities around the world.

That expansion, by far the largest in church history, diverted the church's attention, he said. Plus, he said, Scientology leaders have been compelled to redesign the building's interior repeatedly to make it a crown jewel.

The Super Power program will be ready to go the moment the new building is completed, he said. Scientology officials promise that will be 2007.

-----------------
Scientology's 57 senses

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's list of 57 perceptics. Words in parentheses are his:

Timen Sight

Tasten Colorn Depth

Solidity (barriers)

Relative sizes (external)

Sound

Pitch

Tone

Volume

Rhythm

Smell

Touch (pressure, friction, heat or cold and oiliness)

Personal emotion

Endocrine states

Awareness of awareness

Personal size

Organic sensation (including hunger)

Heartbeat

Blood circulation

Cellular and bacterial position

Gravitic (self and other weights)

Motion of self

Motion (exterior)

Body position

Joint position

Internal temperature

External temperature

Balance

Muscular tension

Saline content of self (body)

Fields/magnetic

Time track motion

Physical energy (personal weariness, etc.)

Self-determinism

Moisture (self)

Sound direction

Emotional state of other organs

Personal position on the tone scale*

Affinity (self and others)

Communication (self and others)

Reality (self and others)

Emotional state of groups

Compass direction

Level of consciousness

Pain

Perception of conclusions (past and present)

Perception of computation (past and present)

Perception of imagination (past and present)

Perception of having perceived (past and present)

Awareness of not knowing

Awareness of importance, unimportance

Awareness of others

Awareness of location and placement (masses, spaces and location itself)

Perception of appetite

Kinesthesia

*Scientology's tone scale, as defined in The Scientology Handbook: A scale which shows the successive emotional tones a person can experience.Source: Scientology 0-8, The Book of Basics, by L. Ron Hubbard.

----------
[Last modified May 6, 2006, 06:56:00]
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www.sptimes.com/2006/05/06/Tampabay/Sci ... _re.shtml/

It does cast some light on the more occult aspects as I mention here.
 
my god...... you mean if i dont join scientology i will never be aware of sound, smell, pain, or personal emotion? ill never be aware that im aware? no!!!! must... sign... up.....

ive just spent the last three days, off and on, reading through this thread, and i think i may have tweaked my brain meats a bit....

the real tragedy for me, as a huge fan, is that neil gaiman is one of these people. dont know what his level of involvement is now, but apparently he was a auditor in the 80s. why, neil? why?
 
fnordish said:
the real tragedy for me, as a huge fan, is that neil gaiman is one of these people. dont know what his level of involvement is now, but apparently he was a auditor in the 80s. why, neil? why?
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Yeah I read that the other day. The discussion on his Wikipedia entry adds more info than the entry itself which is carefully worded.

Seems his dad is high up in the Church or that the whole thing is a rumour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman

Then again wouldn't he address the rumours on his site?
 
One setback occurred when the church checked back on the staffers who had been through Super Power. It turned out, Hines said, many had left the church - hardly the expected outcome.

"The fact that it was around in 1978 and it's still not worked out 28 years later, that's pretty significant," Hines said.
Click to expand...
It looks like their perception was improved to the point where they finally saw what a pile of crap Scientology really is!
 
MaxMolyneux said:
Man female members of Scientology must be mad to agree not to make noise of being in pain when having a Baby though! :shock:
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I've spent the last half hour deliberating over whether to write this or not as it's quite personal, I feel (regarding the birth of our baby).

My wife didn't make a noise when she gave birth to our baby, and we're not scientologists. Hurt like hell, duh, but she said the reason she kept so quiet was simple. She didn't want to distress the baby.

Next door however ... full scale opera singer ... HUGE racket. We thought Freddy, Jason and Leathemask were the midwives in there, the screaming that was going on.
 
An interesting development for Tom Cruise:
Redstone Rocket Fired at Cruise Missile

In an action that seemed destined to send Tom Cruise scurrying back to Scientology's E-meters to discover the source of his recent tribulations, Paramount Pictures on Tuesday dropped him and his production company after an association of some 14 years. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone commented, "As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal. ... His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount." Redstone was presumably referring to Cruise's couch-jumping antics on Oprah Winfrey's talk show and his ballistic interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show about Scientology and psychotropic drugs. "We don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot," Redstone added. In an interview with today's (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times, Cruise's production partner, Paula Wagner, denounced Redstone's remarks. "It is graceless. It is undignified. It's not businesslike," she said. In a separate interview with Daily Variety, she pointed out that during the last six years, Cruise/Wagner movies have accounted for 32 percent of Paramount's theatrical revenue. The Times account further noted that Paramount and Cruise/Wagner had been negotiating a renewal deal that would have cut the studio's commitment to pay them $10 million in overhead and development costs. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said that Paramount had offered them $2 million a year plus a $500,000 discretionary fund for each of two years. When Cruise/Wagner turned down the deal, Paramount Chairman Brad Grey prepared to announce an amicable end to the relationship, the Times said, citing one source. Grey and Viacom CEO Tom Freston were reportedly upset by Redstone's comments and told the newspaper's sources that he had not discussed his views about Cruise during the negotiations.
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Seems like he could file a religious discrimination suit, the way this is worded...
 
He could if Scientology was a religion instead of a role playing game.
 
Scientological Super powers! Saving the world and personality testing...
 
As much pleasure as the whole Tom Cruise buisness gave me... effectuates?
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
As much pleasure as the whole Tom Cruise buisness gave me... effectuates?
Click to expand...
I was scared to query that word, in case it was one of those secret words that everyone except me knew, and I'd look daft. Again.

I feel a bit sorry for old Tom, actually, if he really has been dropped like a stone by his studio, as reports seem to suggest. I'm of the opinion that Scientology is stupid and pointless at best, and downright evil at worst, but TC comes across as a genuinely nice guy, with time for the fans, and I've never found it in me to hate any of his performances. And let's be honest, he's still a guaranteed money-spinner for the film industry.

Mind you, what should he care? He doesn't exactly need the money any more.
 
Peripart said:
I feel a bit sorry for old Tom, actually, if he really has been dropped like a stone by his studio, as reports seem to suggest. I'm of the opinion that Scientology is stupid and pointless at best, and downright evil at worst, but TC comes across as a genuinely nice guy, with time for the fans, and I've never found it in me to hate any of his performances. And let's be honest, he's still a guaranteed money-spinner for the film industry.
Click to expand...

I think the reason he was dropped was less to do with Scientology and weird behaviour and more to do with the way the biggest stars like Cruise are reportedly making bigger profits from their films than the studios that make them are. Follow the money.
 
While in Toronto recently, I took a few photos of the outside of the Scientology Centre there (from across the road, incase anyone was watching). After goin up the opposite side of Yonge St (where it is situated), we came back down the other and I got my Wife, Daughter and Mother-in-Law to stand outside the building while I took a few photos.

After a few minutes, a small balding chap with a moustache came out and stood beside them. I took no notice of him and he went back inside.

He just came out, stood there for a minute and went away again. I was hoping he'd say something, but he just stood there. And went away.

I can put the photos up online if anyone wants to see them.
 
57 senses, as in Heinz 57?!

Scientology nearly ready to unveil Super Power

In the works for decades, the closely guarded spiritual training program will be revealed in Clearwater.

By ROBERT FARLEY, Times Staff Writer
Published May 6, 2006

CLEARWATER - Matt Feshbach believes he has super powers. He senses danger faster than most people. He appreciates beauty more deeply than he used to. He says he outperforms his peers in the money management industry.

He heightened his powers of perception in 1995 when he went to Los Angeles and became the first and so far only "public" Scientologist to take a highly classified Scientology program called Super Power.

Where in L.A. did he do this?

"Just in Los Angeles," is all Feshbach will say. Super Power is that secret.

Under wraps for decades, Super Power now is being prepped for its eventual rollout in Scientology's massive building in downtown Clearwater. That will be the only place worldwide where the program, much anticipated by Scientologists, will be offered.

A key aim of Super Power is to enhance one's perceptions - and not just the five senses we all know - hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell.

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard taught that people have 57 "perceptics." They include an ability to discern relative sizes, blood circulation, balance, compass direction, temperature, gravity and an "awareness of importance, unimportance."

Church officials won't discuss specifics of Super Power. But Feshbach and another prominent Clearwater Scientologist who, like Feshbach, is a major donor to Super Power's building fund, provided some details in interviews with the St. Petersburg Times. A group of former Scientologists who worked for the church on a campus in California where the program was in development also described elements of it.

Super Power uses machines, apparatus and specially designed rooms to exercise and enhance a person's so-called perceptics. Those machines include an antigravity simulator and a gyroscope-like apparatus that spins a person around while blindfolded to improve perception of compass direction, said the former Scientologists.

A video screen that moves forward and backward while flashing images is used to hone a viewer's ability to identify subliminal messages, they said.

Hubbard promised Super Power would improve perceptions and "put the person into a new realm of ability." He believed it would unlock abilities needed to spread Scientology across the planet.

For Feshbach it's like nothing he has ever done in Scientology.

"I got it. I loved it," he gushed.

Feshbach, 52, and his two brothers became famous in investment circles during the 1980s as the kings of short selling stocks - essentially betting which stocks will tank. At one point, the California-based Feshbach Bros. managed $1-billion for clients.

Feshbach now lives in Belleair, where his wife, Kathy, runs a Scientology mission. Because he donated millions to the Super Power building fund, he was invited to undergo the program.

It's geared toward creating a "more competent spiritual being," he said. "I'm not dependant on my physical body to perceive things."

He offered this anecdote:

He had just finished his perceptics training and was at the Los Angeles airport, preparing to fly home to the Tampa Bay area. He stood at a crosswalk with perhaps 20 others, including a woman and her son, an antsy boy 6 or 7 years old.

As the light turned green, the boy bolted into the street, ahead of his mother. Feshbach perceived a pickup bearing down on the boy, driven by a young woman.

He yelled and saved the boy's life by a quarter of an inch, he said.

Coincidence? Feshbach doesn't think so. No one else saw the pickup, he says. He believes that, through the Super Power program, he elevated his perceptive abilities beyond those of the others at that crosswalk. His enhanced perceptions have played out numerous times since, he said.

Super Power takes "weeks, not months" to complete, said Feshbach. He would not discuss the specific machines and drills that former Scientologists said are used to enhance perceptions.

The perceptics portion of Super Power is one of 12 "rundowns" in the full program, Feshbach said. But it clearly is a key aspect.

Details of Super Power training have been kept secret even from church members. Like much of Scientology training, details aren't revealed until one pays to take the course.

Asked about Super Power, church spokesman Ben Shaw provided a written statement: "Super Power is a series of spiritual counseling processes designed to give a person back his own viewpoint, increase his perception, exercise his power of choice, and greatly enhance other spiritual abilities."

Shaw would not say how much the program will cost. Upper levels of Scientology training can run tens of thousands of dollars.

He declined to provide further insight into Super Power. "It's not something I'm willing to provide to you in any manner," Shaw said.

Scientologist Ron Pollack, who donated $5-million to the Super Power fund after making millions in hedge funds in the 1990s, said he got a sneak peek. The head of fundraising for the project showed him a photo of "some high-tech thing" developed by engineers in Southern California that offers different aromas on demand. It's for a drill to enhance one's sense of smell, he said.

Pollack said he has no idea how Super Power will be set up, but is excited about the parts on ethics and perceptics, which he likened to a "trip to Disney."

Former Scientologists Bruce Hines and Chuck Beatty, once staffers at the church's international base in Hemet, Calif., said that while on punishment detail, they made chairs of various sizes - ones big enough for a giant, others too small even for a child - that were set up in a room designed to hone one's sense of relative sizes.

Hines also said the Super Power program, which Hubbard wanted rolled out in 1978, met with delays during the 20-plus years that it was being piloted on church staffers.

One setback occurred when the church checked back on the staffers who had been through Super Power. It turned out, Hines said, many had left the church - hardly the expected outcome.

"The fact that it was around in 1978 and it's still not worked out 28 years later, that's pretty significant," Hines said.

Hines, who said he once performed Scientology's core practice of auditing on celebrity Scientologists Kirstie Allie, Anne Archer and Nicole Kidman (she no longer is a Scientologist), worked at the California facility until 1993 and left the church staff in 2003. He and other ex-Scientology staffers are convinced that church brass delayed completion of the big building in Clearwater because the Super Power program was not finished. The exterior was completed three years ago, then construction stopped.

"The building was getting done faster than the tech program itself," said Karen Pressley, a former church staffer at the same California campus, who left the church in 1998.

"This is a flap of magnitude in Scientology management," Pressley said.

Shaw said those ex-members are just wrong.

"These people know absolutely nothing" about the Super Power pilot, he said.

Scientology processes are technical and cannot be understood out of context, Shaw said. "If someone is interested in Scientology, they should read a book and find out for themselves what Scientology is and thus begin their own spiritual journey," Shaw said.

Super Power is ready, he said, and 300 staff members are being trained to deliver it.

Construction delays in Clearwater, Shaw said, are due to a recent explosion of church expansion worldwide. The church has spent hundreds of millions to purchase and renovate properties. Last year, it purchased nearly 1-million square feet of buildings in 18 cities around the world.

That expansion, by far the largest in church history, diverted the church's attention, he said. Plus, he said, Scientology leaders have been compelled to redesign the building's interior repeatedly to make it a crown jewel.

The Super Power program will be ready to go the moment the new building is completed, he said. Scientology officials promise that will be 2007.
Scientology's 57 senses

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's list of 57 perceptics. Words in parentheses are his:

Timen Sight

Tasten Colorn Depth

Solidity (barriers)

Relative sizes (external)

Sound

Pitch

Tone

Volume

Rhythm

Smell

Touch (pressure, friction, heat or cold and oiliness)

Personal emotion

Endocrine states

Awareness of awareness

Personal size

Organic sensation (including hunger)

Heartbeat

Blood circulation

Cellular and bacterial position

Gravitic (self and other weights)

Motion of self

Motion (exterior)

Body position

Joint position

Internal temperature

External temperature

Balance

Muscular tension

Saline content of self (body)

Fields/magnetic

Time track motion

Physical energy (personal weariness, etc.)

Self-determinism

Moisture (self)

Sound direction

Emotional state of other organs

Personal position on the tone scale*

Affinity (self and others)

Communication (self and others)

Reality (self and others)

Emotional state of groups

Compass direction

Level of consciousness

Pain

Perception of conclusions (past and present)

Perception of computation (past and present)

Perception of imagination (past and present)

Perception of having perceived (past and present)

Awareness of not knowing

Awareness of importance, unimportance

Awareness of others

Awareness of location and placement (masses, spaces and location itself)

Perception of appetite

Kinesthesia

*Scientology's tone scale, as defined in The Scientology Handbook: A scale which shows the successive emotional tones a person can experience.Source: Scientology 0-8, The Book of Basics, by L. Ron Hubbard.
Click to expand...
 
Tonight on Channel 4 at 23.00:

The Beginner's Guide to L Ron Hubbard

Hardeep Singh Kohli

Comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli is consumed with curiosity about Scientology and its founder, L Ron Hubbard. But his quest requires dealing with rejection by the Church of Scientology and a lot of talking, reading and travelling.

Hardeep's parents instilled in him the Sikh perspective that there are many roads to God so, despite widespread criticisms of the Church of Scientology, he's happy to attempt to investigate its beliefs. Founded by sci fi writer L Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, Scientology has some high profile celebrity supporters but is extremely reluctant to share its secrets.

The Church of Scientology refuses to participate in Hardeep's programme. But he finds a way to learn some of its secrets through the Freezoners – defectors who say they practise the philosophy of L Ron Hubbard outside the church.

He is told that the philosophy has many layers, that it's not easy to learn but is worth persevering with because it will improve his life but he is worried about rumours that Scientology and its offshoots use brainwashing. Hardeep finds a mentor to guide him through the principles of their religion, who takes him on a long train journey to a disused children's summer camp building hidden deep in snowy Russia, where the number of followers is growing. Here he will receive his basic training.

Hardeep reads and reads. The book is simple but bizarre. He understands each individual word, he says, but not what they mean all together. His mentor says he should keep reading. He is being prepared for 'auditing', a process of one-to-one questions and answers, while the person being 'audited' holds a device that, according to devotees, measures the body's stress.

As well as reading, he has to make models in plasticine to 'give physical form to mental force'. Hardeep makes a model of dogs having sex – he has a problem with authority! But he has to pass each stage before being allowed to move on the next.

He and his mentor also do role-plays of the one-to-one 'auditing' to see whether they can make the other person react emotionally. The questions and answers are repetitive, simple and, in this weird setting, isolated from his own world, it is starting to make sense.

The 'auditing' session arrives and Hardeep's fears of brainwashing return. Holding on to the 'e-meter', he talks about what he wants to change in his life, puts some of his fears into words, and emerges from the session feeling 'lightheaded'. Did Hardeep find God through the teachings of L Ron Hubbard. 'That would be a tall order in two weeks,' he says.
Click to expand...

www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/c ... guide.html
 
Did you watch it?

I am unsure what to make of it.

First thought are it was rubbish and shed very little light on things. He set off with little idea of what it was all about, read a book, talked to some Scientologists and though there might be something in it.

Mulling it over I do wonder if it was useful because it showed how you get sucked into such things. The meaningless tasks, the repetition, etc. one could imagine how it might start eroding the ego and/or giving you a side serving of Stockholm Syndrome.

I dunno it left me a little disatisfied.

Of course the time could have been used casting light on the madness but they'd spend the next hundred years employing lawyers to climb up your ass every time you bent over to tie your shoelaces.
 
jefflovestone said:
Philo_T said:
57 senses, as in Heinz 57?!

Scientology nearly ready to unveil Super Power ...snip!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

All those super-senses listed and not one mention of common-sense.
Click to expand...

I notice that:- super hearing, X-ray vision/laser beams (coming from the eyes), super strength aren't mentioned either :twisted:
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
Did you watch it?

I am unsure what to make of it.

First thought are it was rubbish and shed very little light on things. He set off with little idea of what it was all about, read a book, talked to some Scientologists and though there might be something in it.

Mulling it over I do wonder if it was useful because it showed how you get sucked into such things. The meaningless tasks, the repetition, etc. one could imagine how it might start eroding the ego and/or giving you a side serving of Stockholm Syndrome.

I dunno it left me a little disatisfied.

Of course the time could have been used casting light on the madness but they'd spend the next hundred years employing lawyers to climb up your ass every time you bent over to tie your shoelaces.
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He didn't go into much detail about what scientology was about, but it was very interesting seeing the auditing process, seeing the "drills" and so on. That was fascinating, and also seeing the scientologists themselves. His mentors had obviously done their bit to "improve their communication levels", and came off like smooth californian gurus.
 
He didn't seem to realise that the benefit he had gained would be the same as he would from a week-long, non-cult therapy session. I wish he'd pushed them further on the more ridiculous aspects, and the money grabbing side as well, although maybe that doesn't figure so much in the splinter groups. And what exactly is an "e-meter"? Is it like a lie detector?
 
I guessed it was a bit like a polygraph, but trapped up in scientology jargon.
 
This from the Guardian website - I've enboldened a remarkable statement from a senior London Police Official.

Let it rain: Scientology glitterati join followers to launch £24m centre in heart of the City
· Complex shows growing confidence of movement
· Top figures turn out but no sign of Cruise

Sandra Laville
Monday October 23, 2006

Guardian

The rain bounced off a podium fit for an Oscar ceremony, soaking the lavish red carpet, and pouring down the collars of celebrants sporting incongruous California tans and sunglasses. And still they smiled. Each wore a lapel badge marking them out as followers of one of the most controversial and fastest growing "religious" movements in the world, the Church of Scientology. For two hours yesterday Hollywood glitz supplanted British mundanity on the streets of London as the most senior figures within the movement joined 5,000 members from all over the world for the opening of their £24m "church" in the heart of the Square Mile.
City of London police closed roads and 10ft foot high screens either side of the building, a five-storey former bible centre on Queen Victoria Street, relayed proceedings to thousands of followers who stood beneath specially-designed Church of Scientology umbrellas to watch.

The opening of the vast complex, with its marble floors, stuccoed pillars and gold lettering, is testament to the growing financial strength of the Scientology movement which boasts 10 million members worldwide, including 123,000 in the UK.

Standing on the sidelines a handful of protesters chanting "Stop scientology ruining lives" were the only sign that not everyone welcomed the new and dominating presence in London of an association which has been investigated by the FBI since it was formed in the 1950s by the science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard and faces accusations that it is a modern-day cult. Statements by Hubbard adorn the inside walls of the London centre, although visitors yesterday were not enlightened by one of the often-quoted statements from the man they know as LRH: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."

One demonstrator, who gave his name only as Stefan, claimed that during his nine years in the association, which asks all followers to donate a minimum of $450 (£240) a year, he had lost his home.

His complaints remained unheard from the podium where Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley, the fourth most senior police officer in the City of London, welcomed the scientologists to their new home, just a stone's throw from St Paul's Cathedral. Mr Hurley said the scientologists were a "force for good" in London and were "raising the spiritual wealth of society", to applause and cheering from the gathered crowd. He paid tribute to the work of hundreds of the Scientology members in the aftermath of the July 7 attacks last year.

The standing ovation, however, was reserved for David Miscavige, chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Centre, the senior ecclesiastical structure which runs the religion. He promised scientology could "improve the grades of schoolchildren across the education system in one term, completely reverse 80-90% recidivist crime rates and cut drug addiction by 10-20% within a generation".

"This day will go down in history," said Mr Miscavige. "Of all the foreign lands where LRH lived and worked, he called England home. This is the city wherein he first defined the human spirit as an immortal being possessed of capabilities beyond anything predicted and so arrived at the axiomatic truths on which the whole of Scientology is founded."

Among the celebrity guests at the event yesterday were Anne Archer, who starred alongside Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction and Golden Globe nominee Jenna Elfman. There was no sign of the Hollywood actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, the most high profile Scientology members. But according to staff who worked at the event, Cruise attended a lavish dinner on Saturday night at the British headquarters of the Church of Scientology in East Sussex which was held to give awards to those followers, known as silver, gold and platinum members, who donate the largest sums of money to the movement. Insiders who were at the event said the 2,000 guests paid from £500 for ordinary tables to £1,500 for the seats nearest to Cruise's table, which was situated in a sealed-off VIP area. After a meal of fois gras, Aberdeen angus beef and a dessert of chocolate, passion fruit and papaya tart, which took two weeks to prepare, awards were presented to the many elite donors in the movement. A donation of $100,000 entitles the follower to the patron of honour medal, $10,000 qualifies the member for the crusader medal and a $10m donation to the church earns the follower the ultimate accolade, the Patron Laureate medal. A blurb in the programme explains the laureate award is "for members who have donated the amount ... (or its equivalent in other currencies) to the association". Several of the patrons were seated in the VIP section at yesterday's opening, while up to 5,000 ordinary followers stood to watch proceedings.

One man who remained behind closed doors throughout, was Alan Griffin, vicar of St Andrews by the Wardrobe church, which is next door to the new Church of Scientology Centre. Rev Griffin, whose congregation numbers 40, watched the thousands of followers from his flat within the church yesterday.

Asked if he was worried, he said: "Oh, I don't think they are going to put Christianity out of business, do you? I mean, almost anyone can get 5,000 people out to support them. Can't they?"

Backstory

The Church of Scientology was formed in England in 1954 and has grown into an international movement which last year opened 1,300 new missions around the world. Scientology means "the study of truth". Followers believe that we are all descended from immortal aliens called Thetans who were brought to Earth 75m years ago. Humans are seen as temporary vessels who can only become Operating Thetans by exorcising painful memories through intensive counselling, known as "auditing", and having their mental pain measured by an electropsychometer, a device invented by L Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986. Critics claim it is a modern-day cult.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Stor ... 56,00.html

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