HBO Doc Going Clear and Tom Cruise

Many people who work in book shops have reported copies of various Hubbard books, SF but especially Dianetics, arriving in boxes already bearing sales stickers, as if they had been purchased, then returned to the publisher, specifically to keep him on the charts.

 

I'm not surprised. When I worked for B. Dalton, Hubbard's books were whole copy return only. Many of you may not know this, but publishers don't really want paperbacks that don't sell returned. Instead stores are directed to remove the front cover of the book, destroy the book itself and return the covers for credit on your next order from that publisher. We never stripped any copies of Dianetics or any of Hubbard's books, and sometimes we'd get books that were obviously old as the paper had yellowed.

 

I watched the documentary yesterday and thought it was interesting. I also found it disturbing, but I didn't realize how disturbing it was until I went to sleep and had a nightmare related to it -- and I'm someone who seldom has nightmares.

My only first-hand Scientology experience occurred in the late '70s or early '80s. A friend of mine who was interested in religion asked me to go into the Scientology office in Ann Arbor to check it out. Being skeptical to begin with, I could hardly contain my derision when the Scientologist showed us their e-meter, which was some cheap looking meter with alligator clips attached to soup cans that had had their labels removed. He explained that their "real" sensors were being repaired but that this one worked the same way. Even my gullible friend wasn't drawn in by their nonsense.

 

I'm holding out for one started by a failed farmer.

 

The insinuation is not that the IRS allowed itself to be pushed around. It's that, essentially, some kind of dirt was dug up that allowed them to blackmail the head of the IRS to make the change.

 

I do have one factual question about the HBO documentary. Maybe those who read the book can explain. In the documentary, in the section on Hubbard on his rusty ship, there is a mention of how auditors who made mistakes were thrown overboard as their punishment. Were they rescued from the ocean shortly after being thrown overboard, after the point was made, or were they allowed to drown in the ocean for their rather minor errors?

 

Apparently they were thrown overboard while the ship was at dock so I don't think anyone drowned.

 

I'm sure the CoS did everything they could. There was more than a billion dollars on the line, from what I understand, and they always set private investigators on their "enemies".

Some people might discount the CoS as "that wacky religion that Travolta and Cruise are in", but they are so much more than that. Here's the introduction to the Wikipedia article on Operation Snow White, conducted while Hubbard was still alive and the reason he went on the run:

Operation Snow White was the Church of Scientology's internal name for a major criminal conspiracy during the 1970s to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard. This project included a series of infiltrations and thefts from 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations critical of Scientology, carried out by Church members, in more than 30 countries. It was the single largest infiltration of the United States government in history with up to 5,000 covert agents. This operation also exposed the Scientology plot 'Operation Freakout', because Operation Snow White was the case that initiated the US government investigation of the Church.

Under this program, Scientology operatives committed infiltration, wiretapping, and theft of documents in government offices, most notably those of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Eleven highly placed Church executives, including Mary Sue Hubbard (wife of founder L. Ron Hubbard and second-in-command of the organization), pleaded guilty or were convicted in federal court of obstructing justice, burglary of government offices, and theft of documents and government property.
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If you read nothing else about them, read those two paragraphs. This is not a bunch of feckless bozos, this is an organization that has engaged in level of criminal activity that the Mafia never even attempted. And he let his own wife take the rap, which is a whole other level of craven cowardice.

 

They were pulled back out of the water. I'm sure they would have been keel-hauled if they'd had the rope.

 

One of my oldest friends has been a fervent Scientology member for 30+ years. I asked him early on what he thought he would gain from Scientology. He said that once he made it to the highest levels he would be able to write his own ticket in his life, reap incredible monetary rewards and do/become anything he wanted. Currently he's living in a one bedroom walkup in an "ethnic" part of LA, doing odd jobs and basically living hand to mouth. But he's still a dedicated Scientologist.

Now I've never called him on this little reality disconnect of his, mostly because he gave up trying to convert me years ago and we barely touch on the subject during our telephone conversations. Also, I would rather not lose him as a friend (being labeled an SP) so I've kept my opinions on this matter to myself. But it's obvious that most of his money has gone to never ending Church classes. He's a true believer and nothing I can do or say will change that.

So I've done a lot of research into Scientology and read Going Clear, etc. They appealed to his intellectual vanity from the start (he always felt he was 'smarter than the average bear') Still, it's distressing to me that he's been ensnared in this bogus belief system. Also, I know no one around here who has the slightest idea what Scientology is. I'm waiting to watch Going Clear with my wife when we get the time.

Such a shame, really.

 

I saw this last night. Probably one of the most horrifying films I've seen in a long time. Many of the issues presented could also apply to other organized religions.

 

Is that said explicitly in the book? Unless, I missed it, I don't remember that being said in the movie -- they essentially said the two parties reached a settlement to keep CoS from continuing to bombard the IRS with lawsuits.

 

I'm pretty sure that they didn't need to say it. It's pretty "clear" (ha ha) to me that the IRS would not have wanted many of its practices to come to light. Take from that what you may, but any self-respecting taxpayer should at least be slightly offended by all this nonsense.

 

I haven't read the book. But there was a long article about this in the Wall Street Journal (and probably other places) after the IRS had made its decision.

 

It was probably a mixture.

There was no way the IRS had the money to defend against 2500 individual lawsuits. No government agency has an unlimited budget, they have a set amount appropriated by Congress every year, so they would have to deal with this until the next budget, or try to get an emergency appropriation. Meanwhile, the CoS would be lobbying Congress.

But they also routinely set private investigators on their enemies, and they could well have discovered something to blackmail IRS officials.

The main point of the movie is "this is what they do to their own."

 

Funny but I've been to their facilities dozens of times and nobody ever came close to trying to recruit me. As many of you know, TC was one of my better clients in the 90s and 00s, and that led to much work for other church entities. In fact, the first work I did for him went through the church. It was them who paid me.

I guess part of my situation is that I was an outside contractor that they used because of my background in pro audio and electronics. Their recording studios and audio facilities were top notch and that is strictly why they hired me.

I am by no means a shill for Scientology, but a lot of what I saw was them being helpful to their minions. Yes, there are apparently a lot of well documented problems with this organization, but believe me, they do offer a lot of help to a lot of people.

Take Tom for example. He suffered from dyslexia and they helped him overcome that. They help many people overcome life problems. My own personal opinion is that most of the people that seek help from them are not able to help themselves with some of their problems for one reason or another.

There is no doubt that they offer a lot of courses for self improvement and many have been helped. OTOH there are obviously plenty of problems.

I would never be a candidate for Scientology or any of the other self help groups like EST and a variety of others. The reasons of course is that I'm pretty adept at solving my own problems. Basically what they hired me for was to solve problems that they couldn't and then teach them how to solve them. I ended up writing many procedures for them that they use to train their members.

I never pay much attention to any of my clients personal beliefs when they differ from mine, unless they are so reprehensible that I just couldn't to bear being around them. That was never the case for me with this organization. I was always treated like royalty by all the contacts I had, but there was one notable exception.

About 20 years ago, I got a questionnaire from the local Scientology field office. I figured, what the heck. I'll fill it out and see what they can come up with. It was a pretty comprehensive exam and they claimed that they could analyze my personality traits and come up with ways that they could improve my life.

Well I know that I"m in pretty good shape, mentally and spiritually. They really had to work to find something they thought was wrong with me and here is what they came up with. I have a hard time dealing with people who are irrational and lie. Well duh. Who doesn't.

The interesting thing is that they claimed if I took some of their courses they could help me overcome this problem. The problem is that IMO it is not a problem of mine. I know how to deal with these type of people, and it works well. My method is to never give them any power to hurt me by doing what they do. In other words, if I'm around a liar, just don't buy into anything they say and don't act on any of their lies. That way I can't get hurt. If I do, shame on me, because I should have known better.

I told them this, but they told me that was a flawed approach and that they could give me much better tools to deal with this.

OK, since I knew many of the higher ups in the organization, I figured I'd give it a shot. In my case it was a total waste of time. After being given a 3rd grade level book to read I had an church member come over to me to quiz me about what I read. I quickly got to the point where this guy didn't like my answers and started getting belligerent with me. He even insulted me, and made a racial comment telling me I was acting like a dumb ******. That got me, and I told him he was not going to get anywhere by that, and that his comment destroyed any credibility he may have had.

He even started poking me in the chest with his middle finger. I asked him is this was their normal practice and by that time he was extremely annoyed with me. I did tell him that I knew some of the top people in his organization but he apparently though I was making that up.

Finally, one of his higher ups noticed what was going on and this new guy came over and asked me to go with him to a private room. There he asked me some questions, and didn't like my answers. They hooked me up to their eMachine but I warned them that it most likely wouldn't work on me. They told me it worked on everybody. Well guess what? It didn't work on me. They brought their top guys at that facility in to try to figure out what was wrong with the machine. Uh, nothing was wrong. It worked on all of the other people they tried it on. I guess my free will and ability to control myself must have been too much for their testing. Finally, they gave up and asked me if they could do some research and get back to me.

OK. That was it for a while. I went home, and as fate would have it, one of my higher up contacts called me to ask me to do some work for them. I told her about my experience at the local office and asked her if that was typical of the type of treatment one might expect to receive after filling out one of their questionnaires? Of course she told me that that guy was totally out of line. She asked me his name, so she could reach out to punish him, but I refused to give it.

About 20 minutes later I got a phone call from that local guy that gave me the trouble. He called to apologize to me and offer me free courses. Obviously she had the ability to discover his identity without any further input from me. I told him I had no interest in any of that. He was almost crying while apologizing and apparently they sent him to some type of purgatory for his actions. I guess his biggest mistake was to not believe me when I told him of my connections.

I have one more fairly strange observation that I made. One time I was working on the roof of one of their LA buildings and they had a group of fresh recruits up there. I saw how they were treated and it was not pretty.

OTOH, I also did a show in the 70s at the Marine Corps Training Depot in Point Loma. They had recruits as stage hands to help set up our gear. Guess what? Those guys were treated almost exactly the same was the Scientology recruits were being treated. In fact, much of Scientology is patterned after the Navy, and many of them wear what look like Navy uniforms. So to criticize the things I saw the Scientology recruits being subject to, would seem to indicate that I should also criticize our military for how they treat recruits. Obviously studies have shown that that type of treatment brings the results they are after so who am I to complain.

I did get to talk to some of these people and for the most part they all seemed thrilled to be there.

I haven't done much work for them recently and may never again, but they still send me a nice holiday gift every year. Like Tom, they seemed to like to keep me happy just in case they ever need my services, and for the most part that worked with me.

Once again, I've never been approached by anybody at any of the facilities I worked at in any attempt to convert me. Not in the slightest. I think they were too afraid of alienating me and losing my services, but regardless that's how it was. I did talk to many of the members, while I was working, and did learn a lot about how they felt about the organization, and most were very happy with their decisions to become a member.

 

OUCH! Without intending to do so (I suspect), you may have injected some "ironic levity" here -- mostly about the cult of personality that is so prevalent in this country and about what the comparison to the military really implies.

 

I don't really have an opinion one way or the other. I see both good and bad, but I see that with a lot of things. For the most part it's personal thing. What is good for one person will not necessarily be good for another.

Ultimately I just lay out my observations and let others try to make sense out of them. I don't try to come up with any answers.

Gosh, sounds like how I treat listening to audio. I don't always have all the answers but I do make a lot of consistent observations.

 

Not laying it on you to find the solutions for all of the ills of the human race However, it should be obvious to you that guys like Cruise and Travolta are not treated to the "full on" Scientology experience. And why would they??? They're being used to present a "reality" which helps a business become more successful. As far as the military goes, in order to avoid violating forum rules, I'll just say that the whole mindset within is based on accepting a "truth" without question. A "truth" which, btw, strikes me as being just about as natural as grass growing in the winter time.

 

Well yes, that was part of the point I was making. As I mentioned I also get the extremely good treatment from them but for quite different reasons. Then again, they all knew that I was associated with Tom, so that would seem to indicate that they would treat me very well.

It's also why I contrasted my treatment with them as a client, as opposed to the treatment I got as a newcomer answering their questionnaire.

 

I understood that. However, you are falling just short of drawing the obvious conclusions (or maybe you see that as being too 'heavy-handed'?). My point is that the perceived "ills" here (whatever they may be, regardless of perspective) will NEVER change unless people speak up. Hopefully, this documentary serves the purpose of encouraging people to do that en masse. But, as I've been pointing out, there is one particular action which takes this cult down a peg or three immediately. without all this needless "messing about".

 

I think it's important to differentiate the "beliefs" part of it, which is no more wacky that any other religion, and the "business" part of it that acts as a giant Ponzi scheme to benefit the people only at the very top. It's important to have both, first to brainwash, and then to make money off it. The Catholic church of the middle ages was probably a good instruction manual.

 

What you say is at least partially true. However, in this case, the "beliefs" part should be considered at the core of the main question that should be considered when deciding on the issue of "tax-exempt" status. In other words, what exactly is the benefit to humanity that the CoS is providing? Also, with regards to Christianity, has Jesus ever been represented as a vengeful space alien who felt the need to "control" overpopulation by killing off the main beneficiaries of the intended benefit??? Like many, I have my own issues with organized religion. Despite that, even I can see the benefits to humanity of teaching love and compassion for others.

 

The benefit that people seem to get is a result of the self-reflection brought about by the auditing. Of course, you could probably get a similar benefit from going to a good therapist.

 

If you've done your research, you'd notice that the church's detractors claim that the "auditing" is extremely "heavy-handed" and is used as a form of mind control -- which makes it typically "cultish" and not at all "churchy". Anybody can "self-reflect" independently of outside help. The whole premise here actually seems to be that one NEEDS their help because they are enlightened and "above it all". These are some of the typically accepted types of "truths" that cults thrive on.