Thread: Do you ever feel troubled, down or anxious? Join Scientology!

Did you even watch that video Original Poster??
I sincerely hope not.
This is not leaked or bootlegged or whatever from a secret meeting - it is clearly directed at the general public and contains nothing whatsoever.

To read my spoiler would be a marvellous waste of time - but at least it'll be faster than watching 35 min. of triviality, bad acting and lack of anything more on topic than two creepy guys holding up audition charts, which you can't read.

Spoiler for documentation of wasted 35 min. of my life:

Starts out with showing how wealthy the religion is - how big the houses, how they have a cruise-ship retreat etc.
Then comes - religions have done good for man - materialism has lead to atom bombs and the like.
Then comes - Scientology is an officially recognized religion.
Then - Hubbard was a genius and what he all did from captaining ships to writing this marvellous entertainment fiction.
Even romance - and one book could contain even up to four stories!! WTF??
He was soo rich - and he donated it all to the church and the analysis of the mind - that's how much he cared..
Then - the government opposed him, because people could de-brainwash themselves with his teachings.
How very brave he was to keep writing anyway.
And how many people are buying his books - and proclaiming the truth is in them.
Then several books are held up to camera - recommend what to buy in books - you are at liberty to own any of the books!!
Then comes - we have these and those organizations having these and those buildings.

Now comes - you can rise in levels - without any further comments.

"How come you have such a wonderful office?" "Ah - see, this is a symbol that we are on source." I kid you not.

That would be more than half of all the video - completely devoid of anything in terms of content.
Oh - and he gave his writings to the church - so they stay genuine.

Finally - lets show Scientology in action - guy shuffling paper.

Now graphs are shown, where somebody did have a rise in supposedly positive characteristics, which are not specified, except a supposed rise in intelligence (how defined?) - and they say - psychology and psychiatry are stone age, they lie and have malicious intent - government-funded.

Help children learn and against drugs and crime, preserve happiness - such effects would prove, that it had to be the supernatural spirit profiting from the interventions..

Their idea of evidence are creepy guys holding charts up, that are not readable?

Minute 20: auditing - do we now maybe learn something?

Two people are shown at a desk - they say - oh well - you had to experience it yourself - but here in this book there are some pages, which describe it. WTF??
Who can enrol?
Everybody that can read and write!
"That gentlemen is being audited to blabla - that housewife wants to be more happy..."
You can marry - keep your original religion - look there stands somebody next to your sickbed...
American government has studied Scientology!! Isn't that just great - come to us, all you who watched this!

I might be able to find something actually interesting - but I am so fed up now by listening to those people - I doubt I'll invest one more minute.

At the side - I have direct personal experience with Scientology - but also over a renegade ex-member, supposedly constantly under threat and teaching in secret.
It is very easy to be impressed by their stuff - if you are a child, that is.
Can't remember now, what it was, that managed to surprise me and my gullible mother back then - they use psychological trickery and fascinating sounding promises to keep people coming for more.

My mother came off it quite fast and quit spending money - at least on this specific brand of bullshitters.

It's delivered to the general public, yes, but they only want it shown at their special orientation meetings for potential marks--er Scientologists.

I'm not a renegade ex-member. I'm a rogue Scientologist that wants to bring Hubbard's genius to the world for free. This is because it completely defies the whole idea of Scientology, the group hounds you for money on a near constant basis. There's a class of members called Registrars whose job it is to push donations on the members, and they will give you whatever lie is necessary to get you to donate money. They're all selling something: books, lectures, courses, everything, and it all works through high pressure sales tactics. You're already investing thousands of dollars to follow their bridge to happiness, and on top of that people are constantly calling you up and hounding you at their center, claiming that certain things they're selling are prerequisites for whatever your plan is on the bridge when its all just lies to make the sale. It's ridiculous. They'll go as far as straight up pushing you to empty your bank account, or getting a line of credit. And they have Scientologists that work at credit companies meant to pre-approve whatever amount of money is needed. They'll grab your social security number and surround you with people with ipads all entering your information to apply for credit and then spend every dollar of that credit on the church.

And if you don't donate, you get marked as a potential enemy of Scientology, and they'll interrogate you to see if you know anybody with anti-Scientology views.

They are a tax-free pyramid scheme. That's why I thought it'd be humorous to call myself a rogue Scientologist, a la Martin Luther vs Catholicism, because the entire religion was created as a business plan in the first place and if you're not a customer of the Church of Scientology, there's no point in believing in their crap in the first place. They're very popular in LA because of the potential the city has for people to strike rich and famous on their own. If they get a bunch of actors, models, musicians and other potential celebrities in their program, not only are these people very impressionable because they moved to LA to pursue their dream and will follow any lead to achieve their dream (they recruit members through fronts like affiliate acting courses or talent agencies), but a handful of them will succeed and then the "Church" can blame their success on Scientology.

I've never been a Scientologist, but I did once get into Primerica long enough to spend 100 dollars for a license to sell insurance. It's a nifty trick because right there they get you to invest a little before you get to learn enough about Primerica to see it for the Pyramid Scheme that it is. They work off using potential sales reps to hound their friends and families to buy insurance and then that rep's chain of supervisors make all the money from it. Pyramid schemes are sort of like religions (not all religions but I've noticed similarities). The major difference is the religion also asks you to turn your children into clients.

Well - yeah - that's how they got this rich - that is certainly true - and their pitch in that video keeps coming back and back to how beautiful their offices are and how big and how many buildings they own..
The question is - is there any wisdom in Hubbard's writings - or is there rather not?
I for one don't know - but doubt it.
If you can extract something useful - let us know!

No, I think it's all designed as a scam. And I'm one of those weirdos that think all religions have a grain of truth and a piece of the puzzle. But Scientology's only grain of truth is how to run a high pressure pyramid scheme. And recognizing this, one can recognized the means to control the masses inherent in modern religion in general. Each religion on earth has an enlightened branch, there are plenty of monastic Christians that don't fall into the bigotry of the religion but actually follow the Christ in pursuit of peace and loving kindness. Likewise, Islam has sufis and so forth. You can't use the extremists or the common followers to judge every practitioner. But Scientology has no enlightened branch, only the Church, only the positive feedback loop, and if it brings any truth to mankind it's that religion in the mainstream is often a positive feedback loop. Though Scientology is more pronounced, berating its followers on a constant basis for more and more money, pressuring them to spend every dime they have, making their followers go bankrupt, when the LDS church built a mall using the 10% required tariff it pushes on its followers, that's still just another business model. I think the LDS church is also a fake religion in that it holds no branch of monastics following the universal truth of love but rather only the positive feedback loop. Every people is going to have religion, they are a virus that proliferates through our ethos, but apart from the virus which contorts ethos of the general population, most older religions also still retain the spiritual philosophy from which the religion is truly rooted, or which split off early on so spiritually minded people had a stage upon which to seek universal truth. For the rest, the religion evolved to incorporate mega-churches and other high pressure sales tactics to get people to spend money. I forgot where I was headed and my brain is falling asleep so I'm going to edit and finish this post later.

There's a book called "Cults In Our Midst" that covers this sort of thing. It alludes to Scientology (but doesn't explicitly name the cult due to legal reasons) and goes over it's recruitment process. It's a fascinating book, you guys might want to give it a quick read.

I really do have too much time..

Very interesting videos, Universal Mind - thanks!
I remember, having been audited with these rolls as well - it was endless questions, readings and recordings - but it wasn't often enough, before we left - I made no connections to say something about it now directly.
There were exercises with two people sitting in front of each other, and there was a certain psychological task to silently do while looking at each other.
I remember strongly, that something happened, which had the effect to profoundly surprise me and my mother.
If only I knew, what it was exactly.
I also had an impressive episode in school the next day or so, where I looked out of the window, and it felt, like I see reality for the first time - some sort of mystical moment coming in late.

I was 12 and well versed in the esoteric realms - having been dragged about with my mother and diligently practised, whatever next thing, she had deemed worthy again.
And of course I had my moments - but this was something surprising and unusual - at least for the both of us back then. So this points into the direction of effective practices - at least effective as in impress people.


Anyways - how can it keep any members at all, if it does not indeed deliver in terms of bettering life for the believers and practitioners?
So I wonder, how this auditing works actually. Or whatever else is done exactly.
I suspect, it does work in some interesting ways and is worth studying critically - maybe it will.



A leaked video, not for general intro - watch this one from 5:40 min onwards - Cruise is mainly giving his ecstatic approval here and getting the medal plus far too much applause - but listen to church leader Miscavige:



There you have a mission statement - as aggressive as they come!


Following is Cruise on a leaked internal motivation video - if you need deterring - go watch - but it seems Scientologists love it - or at least did and had staff watch it uncountable times over and over.
There are several short versions, which take out of context some of the most crazy looking moments - but much more of it is actually hilarious and - not flattering - neither for him, nor his cult:



If they would loose their biggest asset - Miscavige called him the most important Scientologist he knows.
And there are some hints, Cruise is considering to leave - wanting back his wife and kids and reputation.
That would rip a huge hole, I suppose. He is a perfect projection figure for the American dream after all - or was.


It seems, Scientology looses power and people lately not least due to an independent scientologic movement - giving out the secrets for one - like the base theory of Xenu and the aliens - and doing people's beloved auditing and real life help outside of the organisation.
Like some of the people in the BBC documentary - still believers, but accusing the cult. Germany classifies it such - not a religion and no accompanying benefits.

Lengthy recent analysis - including juicy bits of info - like on Hubbard's claims that various high leaders - most of them Jewish - in banking and psychiatry would actually be (/have been) disguised aliens in the direct service of Xenu - out to harm humankind. Weell ..

I got audited once when I was homeless in Portland cause I used to get drunk and panhandle across the street from their center and did it as a joke. I think there's potential benefit to uncovering aspects of your life which may cause stress. Essentially, the auditor finds your loaded questions, and when you hit a loaded question, you know that's an issue for you. But then you have a spend a fortune just to find out that it's all a gimmick and they don't have any real methods of clearing away those issues.

But it is a nifty short cut to hook yourself up to a lie detector test ie stress measure because then you can cut through your denial a little bit--the meter doesn't lie.

But you're better off reading a book by Eckhart Tolle, to be honest. He teaches that by trying to change our problems, we are actually trying to dodge them or the stress they cause. There's similar language in the Four Agreements about how a wound hurts initially when you put your hand on it but subsides after a minute. Likewise, awareness itself is a transforming agent. Be present with the emotional pain, place your attention on it like a hand on a wound. That is your only duty, for all "you" are is attention in the first place when you think about it. You can't choose your thoughts, they arise. Your actions are reactions, the only control you have is where you put your attention. And when you learn to control your attention, and put it on things you try to avoid, that alone changes these things.