They STILL don’t have 50,000 completions on the Basics?
OMG.
You realize this is not “Full Basics Completions” — there are only a handful of those. No, this is the total number of BOOKS and LECTURE SERIES that have been read by ALL SCIENTOLOGISTS over 10 YEARS, in the biggest “push” in scientology’s history. Every single scientologist they could get their hands on has been ordered, cajoled, pressured, threatened, begged and bribed to “get through the Basics”…
This includes all staff and Sea Org members.
Remember, the “Basics” is 15 books and 10 lecture series, any one of which counts as a “completion.”
If just 100 scientologists completed all 25 books and lecture series each year that would be 25,000 in 10 years. If only 1000 scientologists completed per year, it would be 250,000 by now.
5,000 completions a YEAR is pathetic, even if they only completed a SINGLE book or lecture series per year it would mean there are less than 5,000 active scientologists on earth. And the level of commitment to scientology is seriously lukewarm at best. After all, as Dear Leader has instructed them over and over, these are the fundamentals of the religion, and without a thorough study and understanding of these materials one cannot call oneself a real scientologist.
So, here is another measure of the number of “real” scientologists on earth. It’s not millions. Not hundreds of thousands. Not even tens of thousands.
No wonder the largest concentration of scientologists on earth cannot even fill the Shrine auditorium….
And, just as a final note — this is really the best success story they could come up with? Wow….
That’s one of the most generic success stories I have ever read. I question if it is even true or if the person who wrote it wrote with clenched teeth and worry that their needle might not float unless they faked it. Either way, THIS is Scientology.
As a follow up, Dave should perform a ‘semi-colonoscopy’ on all those who haven’t completed their Basics. Instead of just kicking ass, he’ll be able to get more up close and personal with his inspections.
And while everyone was on course trying to get through the basics – which a lot of people had great difficulty doing for one reason or another so it turned out be a long, long runway – no one, NO ONE, was studying to be an auditor. Or anything else for that matter.
Even today, in order to do ANY course, one has to study at least the books. This is probably the single most destructive exercise (excluding the shocking shutdown of the prosperous, successful mission network ordered by Hubbard and executed by Miscavige and thugs) ever carried out.
It’s stopped scn in its tracks. Not that I’m sorry about it, I hasten to add.
Personally, I completed all the books and lectures by Dec 2009. This is not usual, of course. I was once proud of this feat but now I couldn’t care less.
@tidalwave, yes, I long ago stopped telling people what class auditor or OT level I am, it is now a at best a yawner and at worst an embarrasment.
David Miscavige, keep on doing what you are doing.
I am so happy that the church of scientology is in your capable hands.
You are obviously doing a great job at steering this organization into the future.
I am so, SO, happy to see the destination of your organization with you at the helm. What a brilliant leader you turned out to be.
Ha Ha, keep it up, ‘ya douchebag.
Lol, WhatAreYourCrimes! I know it’s not meant to be funny…
I absolutely am as happy as you are about it.
SORRY….I have to ask….how MANY kids showed up for the CO$ Easter Egg Hunt and how many CO$ supplied Easter Eggs did they REALLY find…….anyone know?>
Well if you ask Gemma, John Alex Wood’s fiancé, she will no doubt claim that there were hundreds of children at St Hill
Gemma must do nothing all day long except try to convince people on Twitter that St. Hill is booming and Scientology is expanding
It’s quite sad this young woman has allowed herself to be used in this way
Chee…None are so blind as those who will NOT see (what’s truly going on) Even if she had to pick up all the Easter Eggs by herself, well…you know the rest….
Many of the commentators today are speculating about why Dave Miscavige came up with the “Basics”.
I can’t honestly say I can see inside the mind of Dave, but here are some points to ponder.
All through the late 80s and 90s there were releases of various tape series on cassette. Some, like the “Whole Track Series” were fairly inexpensive and actually sold well. Others like “The Power of Source” were produced in mass quantities and just rotted away in the warehouse at Gold. In those days the lecture series were marketed with no reference to the chronology or history of the material. The names were made up in Marketing. Each one was supposed to be the Next Big Thing that would get the public excited about going to the Freewinds to listen to them. Each one failed miserably. We had huge warehouses full of unsold cassette binders and transcripts with fanciful names like “Route to Infinity”.
What was going on at Gold was lecture mixing and editing at a glacially slow pace. Each lecture had to be copied at Archives (the CST location where Shelley now hangs out), sent to Gold, painstakingly mixed and restored, edited to remove suppressive persons and coughs, and mastered for cassette. At each step along the way the product had to be approved by Dave.
Finally some time in the late 90s Dave decided to bring Scientology up to the early 80s by delivering lectures on CD instead of cassette. A brilliant and effective Pope of Scientology might have just embraced the real world and released all that audio on iTunes, skipping all the expense. But this never seems to have occurred to Dave. So now he had a big problem. How to get folks to buy enough CDs to pay for all that expensive CD manufacturing hardware?
You see how this works – the goal is to release the whole L Ron Hubbard library of lectures. There is really no good reason to do this. In fact, once the works of L Ron Hubbard are widely known they tend to get a reputation for mindlessness, horrific gaffs and insanely garbled messages. Just listen to some of this stuff in the Youtube videos. But once Dave gets an idea in his head, it echoes around in the echo chamber of his sycophants and returns to life even when it should have died an unremarkable death long ago. Dave gives an order or suggestion, it gets recorded and archived, his followers follow up on it, some people try to do it and fail, they get disciplined and others try and fail, on and on. No one tells Dave he is wrong and gets away with it.
I won’t tell the whole long sad tale of all the folks who crashed and burned trying to create “The Basics”. Folks from CST, the translators, all kinds of people at Gold, the list is endless. All the original mix team ended up in the Hole or at the PAC Mill. At one point the entire Base, even RTC, were crammed into the huge open area in the Castle stuffing CDs into binders long into their sleep time every day. At another point dozens of people were spending days on end removing labels from binders using toluene and other harsh chemicals because they weren’t quite straight.
That was the scene up to 2004, later they built huge production lines in LA to do all that and I am guessing it finally got into production. By 2007. More than a decade after the idea was conceived.
But that does not cover the books.
All through the late 90s and into the 2000s Dave was trying to get the final edits done on the books. At first he used L Ron Hubbard Compilations (R Comps), the unit that under Ken Delderfield (Deld) had created the Org Executive Course volumes and the Technical Bulletin Volumes along with dozens of other books and issues. But Deld was in bad odor by that time, demoted to delivery driver. Dave gave up on R Comps and tried various other units and groups, all of which failed. When I left in 2004, Deld’s non-native-English speaking former wife and some others were starting up on it. And they were hinting that I, the technician, should get involved. I know enough about editing books to wet the bottom of a very tiny teacup, and I knew it was a death sentence, so that is one of the reasons I cut and ran.
Eventually Dave himself apparently did battle with the semi-colons and won! I am sure there is more to the story but I was not around to tell it.
So all this monkey motion was done with no slightest thought about who would want such a thing, how it would sell or what people might be willing to pay for it. But huge resources were poured into the production. All along Dave was telling us that the sales would make a huge profit for Gold, that we could afford toilet paper and real food if we got it done. And if you just go by the numbers with no regard to demand by the public this is so. Dave says produce 100 items, Dave tells the public to buy 100 items, the sheeple buy on demand, at production cost of x you make y dollars.
It all fell apart when the public failed to bleat like proper sheeple and the new releases did not sell. But at this point the sunk cost is literally in the millions. Did Dave lower prices, offer incentives, change advertising plans, offer real bulk discounts, find distribution avenues, put the junk on overstock.com? No of course not. That would be like saying Hubbard doesn’t sell! No, Dave resorted to heavy handed totalitarian methods to clear the stock. High powered reges and regular staff were told nobody sleeps until sales are made. Sales were made to place the Basics in libraries. Sales were made to fill up garages and storage units with additional copies.
I think Dave really thought that Scientologists in general were not progressing because they really did not understand Scientology. He kept repeating that old line that all the tech was “in our earliest books”. So he really did want to force people to study all the old junk hoping that some part of it would “turn that wandering doubt in their eyes to a fixed dedicated glare”.
But also the project had a life of its own. Once you have started processing through all the books and lectures of Hubbard, it makes no sense to stop until you have done them all (if you can’t tell the difference from one to another). Once you have done them all you naturally want to get some cash out of all that work so you try to sell them somehow. It is exactly backwards from the usual successful business model of finding a need and filling it.
Bruce, that was absolutely fascinating! So well written, enlightening and entertaining to boot. Thanks so much for sharing this. It was like stumbling across a golden Easter egg.
Thanks for the post, Bruce.
I’ll never forget buying a tape series on the Freewinds for $750. That was a lot of money in 1988 and Dave did not even thank me when I met him. I always wondered why Dave looked so confused on the upper deck. He was really struggling. Those tapes were my first real exposure to the Occult aspect of Scientology. It took me years to put it all together. Hubbard was borrowing from a lot of 19th century sources and just dishing it all out disguised by his cover. His life on Venus statements gave me the most laughs. At one time I thought that it would take a lifetime to listen to his lectures and understand them. But as the Hub would say once you get the common denominator the substance vanishes – and so go his lectures up in smoke.
Thanks for sharing that, Bruce. It’s always so fascinating — and historically valuable — to hear first hand anecdotes.
I’d love to see a recurring series of guest articles from exes recounting their personal experiences, as a kind of “You Are There” for Scientology. But then, I always have enjoyed reading memoirs. 🙂
Bruce, thanks for that thorough overview of the history, which sheds a lot of light on the organizational dynamics.
From my perspective, the key to the whole dynamic is, as you said, “Each one was supposed to be the Next Big Thing.” Hubbard kept up interest in Scientology – and distracted from his continual failures to deliver was previously promised – with a long series of Next Big Things. Miscavige needs to keep that dynamic of hype going, but has neither the authority nor the ability to create brand new material, and so is left to just try to recycle Hubbard material in various ways.
Yes, Peacemaker, and the pattern goes all the way back to the 50s. Somewhere Nibs, son of Hubbard and one-time designated heir to the throne, said that Hubbard would schedule a big “Congress” (like a convention) whenever the coffers were getting low. And at these Congresses something new and big was always released, a new book or new techniques or something. Clearing was announced several times as “now we have Clearing, for realz this time!”
But really he had nothing new to offer, it was all rehashed old stuff or some kind of wacky twist. They finally quit with the Congresses when Hubbard went into hiding on the high seas in the Sea Org, but the tradition of “new releases” that are just recycled old stuff carried on.
When Dave took over, for a while it was rediscovered old stuff that was “mis-transcribed” or “altered” but finally he came out with new old stuff, the Golden Age of this-and-that, the Golden Age of Knowledge, the Mecca of Scientology, Superpower, all old stuff that was made to look new.
Every year Dave does many events, and every one has to have new releases. New old iDeal org openings, new films, whatever it takes. Something. Anything.
The one thing we never see is anything truly new. If the higher OT levels could be released, that would make a big splash. But he has no one under him who could invent a convincing OT level. All the great ones are gone. David Mayo and so on. Ray Mithoff is still around but he is not in good shape. And whatever they may have of the “last auditing sessions of Hubbard” to draw from are worse than useless. Who wants to end up like Hubbard in his last days?
Bruce, you need to write this story in total. Maybe submit your story to Mike for this blog. Or write it up and give us a link to it.
You have an important perspective.
“And whatever they may have of the “last auditing sessions of Hubbard” to draw from are worse than useless. Who wants to end up like Hubbard in his last days?”
This to me is the zenith of Scientology cognitive dissonance. Here we have a teacher, L Ron Hubbard, who says he knows the road to freedom.
Says that his philosophy and techniques of looking within to resolve issues are the best the world has known. Like no other. Intelligent, scientific and accurate.
But at the end of his life two things happen that cause Ron apologists to have violent brain convulsions in order to deny these points:
1) L RON HUBBARD NEEDED THE PSYCH DRUG VISTIRIL INJECTED AT THE END OF LIFE
2) L RON HUBBARD WISHED TO END HIS LIFE BY ELECTRO SHOCK TO KILL BTs AND HIS OWN BODY
This is the ultimate irony.
Ron warred against psych drugs and electroshock his whole life. Yet Ron wished for the very thing he crusaded against.
These now known facts ARE the truth.
But Ron apologists cannot let this information into their cognitive faculties lest their self constructed unique messiah image of Ron comes crashing down in burning ashes.
Thes facts are cryptonite to superman, water on the bad witch, silver stake in the heart of Dracula.
We were all scammed. And we payed to be scammed. We gave up family to be scammed. We gave up material goals to be scammed.
We were a source of cash for a congenital liar and megalomaniac who did not mind destroying people to protect his cash flow..
Ron apologists need our patience. They are still under the spell of believe in Ron’s unique messiaship.
Bruce, thanks for that. You have helped to educate me about the internal workings of a broken organization with one fool at the helm, David Miscavige. He really comes across as a blustering idiot.
Well, thank heavens somebody so incompetent as Miscavige is at the head of this silly bunch of nincompoops. I shudder to think about what might have been if somebody competent and intelligent had been at the head of such an evil organization.
Keep up the good work, lil’ Dave.
Your insider back story goes a long way toward explaining how the whole Basic Books debacle came to be. Thanks for giving us your first-hand account!
Beside being one of the biggest ever fails for lil davey, the paltry course completion rate that Mike has pointed out demonstrates how few active $cilons remain in the cult.
That was very interesting. Did he actually say they could afford toilet paper if the project worked? They was no toilet paper at all there?
Toilet paper, apparently, is way too costly to keep around. Must be the gold flakes woven into the toilet paper…
Tom C;s net worth is stated to be somewhere around $480 to $550 Million and Travolta’s around $165 to $170 million yet not ONE of them will send in a truckload of toilet paper…..not even from the dollar store…..so much for the other “celebs” who let every underling that’s waiting on them hand and foot walk around with dirty behinds.
He actually did not mention toilet paper specifically, but the idea was that we would get huge profits by doing the CD binders with slave labor (us) and selling at high prices. I am sure he was thinking fresh shrimp flown in on ice by messengers, or beef cordon bleu, but we were hearing “more than $12 per person per week for food! Money to cover cancer treatments for the oldsters or even the occasional yearly checkup for everybody! Full $50 pay for more than three weeks in a row! TOILET PAPER!”
I am sure it never happened and we know he eventually pulled all the CD production out of Gold and put it in the big warehouse in LA.
In most Sea Org installations toilet paper, food, uniforms etc. depend on how much money the organization makes any given week. There is never a support payment from management or anything like that, every organization sinks or swims on its own and sends money UP to management. No money trickles back down. If Gold doesn’t sell any products that week there’s no dough, Joe, rice and beans and old newspapers will have to make do.
Bruce, I believe you are partially correct. Mechanically correct. However I think that the UNDERLYING reason to all of this crap is that there were no L Con OT level after 8. L. Con had lied about their existence and then management had forwarded that lie. In other words he had to dance and keep the clams distracted while sucking as much money as he could from them.
I’m not saying he did that in the best way possible. I’m just saying it was a problem he was trying to solve.
Excellent summary, Bruce. One point that could be mentioned is that just as the world was about to go digital, Russ Bellin, CO CST, sold DM on building a massive CD production plant on the base. This bought Russ mucho brownie points, until it didn’t. I’d heard something about the copyrights for the books about to run out and could only be renewed if a certain amount of the manuscript was changed/updated/squirrelled. Another point of trivia: the people who worked out most everything for the entire Basics and GAK were Jeff Hawkins, Carrie Cook and me and we were all long gone by 2007. Dave issued our Materials Guide Chart exactly as I remembered it from 2003.
Thanks Bruce. Very enlightening comment…..and humorous at that. I especially liked this part:
“Finally some time in the late 90s Dave decided to bring Scientology up to the early 80s by delivering lectures on CD instead of cassette.”
Thanks again for your insight.
My daughter just read where Tom Cruise and Kirstie Alley have been working to launch a 24 hour channel to promote the church. The reason: they are tired of Leah Remini and Mike Rinder and the show from last season exposing the church through the members that have left for one reason or another. So, I ask you Mike, what is your take on this?
Dave,
Has Lou helped you pick out a new thong for the upcoming summer season of mud wrestling on A&E?
He don’t need no stinkin’ thong. He wrestles au natural. The cacophony of noise coming from the crowd is overwhelming…
My educated guess would be that if they engage in a media attack on Mike and Leah, they will continue shouting themselves in the foot.
The only tools these Scientologists have as communication skills is that any critic is a criminal. They believe this in their atoms. They sound and act foolish because of the “applied philosophy.”
This utter foolish, well trained behavior, of the Scientologist, is transparent to society at large.
So the more they “be there and communicate”, the more the public goes…….WTF?
Here’s an offer for them if they do:
Invite both Cruise and the rest of the sainted actors to come on A&E to have a dialog. Tell them A&E will hireprofessional arbiters; the best in the biz.
They will refuse and look bad. Or they will come on the show and look bad. Either way it does not bode well for the sainted thespians.
“…shouting themselves in the foot.” Is this a new rundown?
FOOT! STAND UP! THANK YOU! FOOT! SIT DOWN! THANK YOU!
I think I’d rather shoot myself in the foot rather than do the rundown.
I is a notoreeus non edidor. 🙂
Your daughter, or you?
Sorry, I don’t want to be in attack mode. Where did your daughter “just read” this.
TC and KA know their shows will not only attract the remaining scientologists who can have their allegiances bolstered (will literally be dictated as “Must-See TV”) but also the only remaining able, big beings on the planet who they can then bring into the fold.
The rest of the low-life riff raff (millions) will watch Leah’s Aftermath.
As I always point out when this subject comes up — Tom Cruise has a job already (movie star), and it’s the best job in the world, or perhaps 2nd best (to rock star). He will never take an active role in Scientology beyond his own personal adherence and worship. It’s absurd to think otherwise. Kirstie doesn’t have much of a show business career and is quite loopy, but even she wouldn’t put her foot forward in such a way.
Now, I also said that Donald Trump would never, ever run for president, and you know how that turned out.
It’s worse. There are actually 18 books and 14 lecture series.
Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!! I feel my mind slipping away…
So, its been ten years now since the Basics Revolution started. Has anyone actually figured out what the purpose behind the whole Basics push was? Blatant money grab, yes. Make-work for their “state of the art” publishing white elephant at Gold, yes. But what was the real reason why? We know the results: people regged to death for Basics sets, staff and Sea Org worked for unconscionable hours without sleep or food until they “made quota”, parishioners’ credit cards soaked often without their authorization so that those quotas could be made, and loads of people blowing so fast it might even move the Toxic Dwarf’s hair. But why did all of that happen? Did it have to happen?
I think there’s only one root cause: this was a gigantic loyalty test of everyone involved. Davey needed to know, without a doubt, who was on “his side”. What better way, after years of crush reg conditioning, than to sell the Holy of Holies, the written and spoken word of L. Fraud, to the sheeple, in new “improved” editions? He’d know which public were gullible enough to keep throwing good money after bad. He’d know which staff and Sea Org were truly dedicated. He needed to get rid of those who weren’t, so they could be pushed out and believe that it was THEIR decision to leave. No, it was Davey’s, and those who left fell for it. It was separating the wheat from the chaff, and it worked.
Look at the results. Those who were suckered into buying the Basics were then on the hook to do Basics courses (although we could see from this promo that that didn’t work). It kept the public silent as the crush regging continued for the Stupid Power building (yeah, the regging for that was bad, but it sure wasn’t as bad as the Basics push, right?). The push even provided a Survival Of The Fittest for the staff and Sea Org. He got a complacent staff and a complacent public out of it, with no threats out there to him from inside. He got a leaner, meaner, absolutely loyal cult.
The Basics was Bolivar times a thousand.
In addition to, this makes DM, invaluable to the sheeple. So they feel ,yes LRH is God, but the great COB, saved the tech, correcting all of the basic books written by LRH. Because, Dave put the semi colons in the correct place. ” Now because of COB, we can really duplicate LRH, and thereby save the planet “
Great post Mick…..in regard to “the guy is either extremely delusional, completely indoctrinated, or fully complicit.”. IMO DM is ALL THREE.
At the Ruth Eckeref Hall, LRH Birthday Event,for the past 10 years they set would up a huge tent for the overflow of people. I personally chose to sit in the tent. This past event, they no longer have the tent. No overflow ???
No overflow? How can that be since they have 8,000,000 members? What…are they hiding them?
Once every org on the planet is Ideal, the 8,000,000 will materialize. Dave’s got it all worked out, you just have to trust him. In the meantime, how about a donation for a couple sets of basics for our library in Bulawayo?
All tapped out.
Yes, in a photoshop file.
In org where I used to be a good little Scientologyst basic book and lectures were mostly for 3 types of public.
1. Folks with ethics problems who we sent to study this books and lectures during their cycle.
2. Stuff-members who were sent to study this because some bone have to be thrown to them according to “12 hours a week of Scientology learning and training”
3. Poor public who don’t actually have any money for auditing or training, but regges still have some hope and org still in need of body’s, so they were sent to study basic books.
Seriously nobody in the org pay any serious attention to the basics.
This sounds like a very telling statistic. I wonder if Miscavige, as a narcissist, even realizes how little traction his message is gaining to the outside world (and even to many UTR’s on the inside). Is he just another one of those glass-eyed, true believers? Or is he fully aware that he’s just selling an oversized truckload of depraved horse-shit and just wants to keep his golden goose producing in order to support his own personal lavish lifestyle?
Narcissists tend to have the inability to recognize when someone isn’t buying their BS. They usually convince themselves that every single person in the room believes everything they’re saying…..although to be fair, his subordinates and parishioners substantially contribute to that mentality because no one dares question him (after all, in addition to sounding like a complete narcissist, he also sounds like the textbook definition of a total psychopath).
However, he has no legitimate excuse to be just another “uninformed victim” of this so-called “church”. He has access to the internal numbers. He has access to the Internet and therefore, to external information. He also likely has access to confidential information that has yet to be made public. In other words, he has full access to the actual truth.
Is he truly incapable of recognizing how precarious of a position his church is currently in? Does he truly believe that what he’s doing is in the best interest of everyone on this planet and is the only hope for mankind’s salvation? Or does he actually know exactly what he’s doing with his perpetration of the Church of Scientology scam…..and is just trying to keep it all going for as long as possible so he can continue living the Life of Riley, regardless of the devastation it can bring to the lives of other individuals?
In my opinion, the guy is either extremely delusional, completely indoctrinated, or fully complicit.
IMO he is all three, i.e. extremely delusional, completely indoctrinated, or fully complicit.
Also drunk at night.
Dave’s completed his own SRD – The Scotch Rundown. It’s one of those unlimited processes that can be done forever.
Drunk at night?? What’s wrong with that?
Well, ummmmm…..I mean, ahhhhhhhh…
You’re right, I Yawn! Just let me find my bottle of Jack!
Miscavige might be living in a fantasy world where he is a god. One might almost feel sorry for him.
Many people in asylums believe they are Napoleon. What does Miscavige really think about himself? That would be a fun case study in scientology’s loathed science of psychiatry.
Mick, that’s a nice analysis of some of the factors at work, particularly with regard to sociopaths.
I think that the comparison of the operators of Ponzi schemes provide an apt example for some of the dynamics you refer to – it’s a phenomenon to which I have paid a lot of attention, because of other real-world interests. Typically, the operators, just like out-and-out gamblers, seem to come to believe that they are going to have some turn of luck that will reverse their losses and allow them to make good on all their obligations (to investors, in the case of a Ponzi scheme). They are often even outright resentful when authorities shut down their schemes, claiming those actions are responsible for leaving investors with losses that they are certain
My best guess, is that whatever else he does or doesn’t believe in, Miscavige expects that some combination of extraordinary efforts and a turn of events, will reverse Scientology’s flagging fortunes and bring in large numbers of new members if not even masses. I’m not sure about Miscavige himself, but there are specific reports that suggest that some of the old guard international management staff around him are such true believers, that they expect that Hubbard will reincarnate and return as he promised, and that indeed may be the thing that will save Scientology – so to some extent, management may be literally sort of treading water, trying to do enough to keep up interest and hold things together until Hubbard comes back to make it all right again. And in typical end-justifies-the-means type Hubbardian scientological thinking, they could rationalize all sorts of odd or even awful things on that basis, including telling “acceptable truths” to their own membership. Such underlying beliefs are also probably a good part of the reason why the high-up old timers put up with Miscavige’s abusive leadership, and stay in Scientology rather than blowing – besides “losing their eternity,” I suspect that they fear being on the outside and having proven themselves disloyal when their revered leader finally returns.
Such a misnomer – Scientology Basics. It should be called Miscavigism.
Hubbard was in his late 60’s when the heat turned on.
It would have been a great time to come clean and spill out his inner self.
But NO, he had to dream hmself as Lucfer, the light bearer.
He did reveal his limited knowledge of religion, however. He also did
write Battlefield Earth so you could see his fiction was his religion.
So Battlefield Earth should be the Basics in Scientology, Dave.
It’s like the elephant in the room George.
I sometimes think the outrageousness of the Lucifer thing is so extreme that it simply does not register with some folks.
The other one is his desire for suicide by electro-shock!! EŁECTRO SHOCK!!
The dastardly procedure of those perfume welding demons from hell; the psyches. The ones he waged war ago. His whole life. A procedure he waged war on his whole life.
Does anyone not see the irony?
I believe some of this data just bounces off the biased mind, and those pointing it out become the criminal critics to be squashed.
Happy Easter George!?
Dave,
You are now face to face with your own fake targets.
MIke, it’s not like you need help putting together the next ‘Season’ of ‘$cientology, Aftermath’, but I have an idea.
NarCONon deserves a 60 Minutes treatment. Someone should channel the ghost of Mike Wallace and drop the hammer on that scam. Leah and Mike can do so much good by outing NarCONon. I do hope that their producers and A & E have the courage to do that. It will take courage, the Clampire would really like to sue someone for anything to prove that their clamicales are big and brassy. And they can run the fund raising scam too.
Happy Easter to all and yes, t do bite the ears off the bunny first.
Hi Leah.
The sects hires druggies who are now drug free and therefore qualify as drug counselors?
There are agencies that hire “support personnel” who WERE former drug abusers and use them as “counselors”. They go into prisons and speak to the inmates about what the use of drugs had them do in their lives and how drugs was one of the reasons they ended up in prison.
Its’ the same with AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), many who speak out on or counsel others are still in and will forever be in recovery mode.
For some folks, seeing in someone else what drug or alcohol abuse has done to OTHERS, is a true wake up call to themselves…others will never learn that lesson.
I heartily agree re: Narconon, AND bunny ears.
Yo Dave,
Have you started putting together your list of 500 Cultologists in good standing to submit to Da Judge good buddy? How many will be staff Dave and how many public. I can only imagine your pain Dave. How in the hell can you possibly come up with that many members who you can be sure are not under your radar for the judge to pick from? And how many are full basics completions?
I guess you could start with Heber, Shelley, Diana, Guillaume, Marion, Karen, Mike and there you have it Dave,……..you’re already up to seven and if you through yourself on the sword as well you have ate!
Now for the other four hundred and ninety two ……..and remember Dave, the judge gets to pick. Have a really great week Dave.
May accept Da Judge’s invitation, just for the double middle finger opportunity, and to get the avalanche started.
Wait….WTF??? A DB (degraded being) penned a success story? Now that’s desperation beyond desperation! What’s next? A declared SP writing a success story? It just keeps getting curiouser & curiouser. Excuse me while I slip down the rabbit hole…
Like a North Korean missile, Dave has been hacked.
That’s why he acts so strange? Hmmmmm….I always thought it was because he was always constipated.
North Korea and scientology… the comparison keeps coming up, again and again. How on earth can the celebrities like Travolta, Kirstie Allie, Cruise, Elfman, and Bart Simpson keep defending this evil, EVIL, life-destroying organization called scientology.
These celebrity scientologists can no longer hide behind the facade that they don’t know what is going on. They are complicit and accessories to crimes against humanity, and I am not exaggerating.
This is why small fry Dave’s days are numbered. Anyone claiming to know the territory and then give Dave a free pass for the next 20 or 30 years needs to give up the philosophy and study some factual information about critical thought, the Scientific Method, etc. Same for the numbers crunchers and divers. Too much cognitive dissonance of any brand will do that; but the fat boy goes first.
Thank you Mike. I agree that success story is diluted down to total bs. Those long long long gone days when Asho D & F were booming and a success story was written in ones own hand in ones own words, I am glad those days are gone because the cult of Scientology is harsh, cruel & out of control in the worship of the dollar bill above all. ????
I quickly discovered The Basics
Were just a concoction of David
His great Golden Age
Keeps you trapped in a cage
While Hubbard’s becoming archaic
The Basics! Biggest group masturbation effort ever attempted. It must rate a special mention in the Guinness Book of Records somewhere… surely?
For you see, in Scientology it is a sec checkable offence to masturbate, hence it always results in an amends, usually an insistence that money be handled over to the Cof$ for being such a degraded being and a promise you won’t do it again – hence all Scientologists are ordered to do it. So there, think about it, simple Scientology Logic applied. To the purest you really can’t blame Hubbard for this one, but he did offer the SHSBC, a similar length objective. But who cares, being a wanker is a prerequisite of being a card carrying member of the Cof$. Every which way but loose you WILL be punished in Scientology!
I heard that masturbation stunts your growth.
Any comment on that, David Miscavige? (He might even have hair on his palms, the little puke of humanity.)
(Man, I hope the sensitive little twerp lurks on sites like these, that would just make me so happy!)
(I know I am mean and insensitive to Miscavige and his dwindling group of celebrity scientologists, but I know what they are, and if they can’t handle “Fair Game” then screw ’em.)
Humpty Dumpty – the Scientologist – paid for the Bridge
Humpty Dumpty – the Scientologist – regraded the Bridge
All the mind control, hypnosis and propaganda that Scientology spewed out
Kept the Scientologist so confused and busy – he never noticed the Bridge had been OUT
Humpty had a real problem with walls. Scientology could have fixed that with a bit more book & bottle. Such a sad story really.
Humpty Dumpty had unflat OT 3, aka The Wall of Fire. He fell because he was PTS. To top it off, he never completed his Basics, much less become a Patron, which proves Scientology works.
Gee, I didn’t know Humpty was on OT3. Maybe he fell off a volcano and the event at the wall is just a shore story. Sneaky devils those Scios!
Hard to read the books when they are all still in their wrappers in the garage.
Scientology gave me X-Ray vision. Those puny wrappers can’t block my Super Powers. Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha…..
OSD….a simple fix would be if the super powers made you a mind reader…..you could read the mind of someone who has already read all this crap and save yourself the trouble of reading it yourself. Just sayin’
Can you imagine the sheer volume of unopened, shrink-wrapped scientology shit-lit that is currently on the planet earth?
It boggles the mind how absurd it all is.
This organization called scientology thinks they can package up a turd sandwich like LRH’s musings, and they think the public will buy it? They think that their own members won’t recognize the fleecing?
IIRC, it’s possible to get credit for reading a Basics book at home with a correspondence course. I’ve seen such correspondence courses used by Scientologists to stay away from their Org in order to avoid the unrelenting sales pitches for IAS, Ideal Orgs, LRH Hall, Freewinds, Flag services, etc. Even so, the Co$ can’t get 50,000 completions.
Perhaps most parishioners have learned that there are no longer any effective evasion tactics, other than staying away and blocking calls from the Orgs.
The correspondence course was my ticket out. I had gotten so bad in debt that I couldn’t continue my academy levels because my finances were a “present time problem”. So, to stay “on lines”, I routed onto a correspondence course. I finished one then started another. While on the second one, the course supervisor had to leave for 2 weeks to go to the advanced org for training. She told me to send in my lessons when she returned. I never sent them in and never heard again from the course supe. I changed my phone number and never did another Scientology service again! After 8 years and $94,000 I was free. That was in 1992, not sure if that would work today with email, cell phone text, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
As Mike has previously posted, $cientology is effectively dead and has been for years. It’s just that a few true believers don’t realize it yet. This is simply more evidence.
On a related note – readers in Clearwater – is Flag even more empty than before? Even with minimal or no salaries, it costs $ to run a large cult compound like the Co$ Flag operations. Flag used to be the big money earner; I wonder how that is going with so few people visiting nowadays?
The itssay bitsay spider (the dwarf) climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came sun which dried up all rain. But some kid with a magnifying glass took care of that spider…
The ‘Basics’…a point in Scientology’s history when more Scientologists than ever before discovered that the church was basically bullshit, and left.
Nail on the head. I was about to post something similar. The advent of “the Basics” was when “real” Scientologists turned and left the CoS. It was the final proof of David’s unreaity
So true. When I was sent to do Basics and Congreses by the ethics officer it was the first time when I had an idea “what the **** is this??!! It’s a total silly folk art. I have a degree in physics why I have to learn this anti scientific crap??”
Ha ha ha, oh, man, Victor, you nailed it.
You know you are in a ridiculous comic-book version of Pol Pot’s Cambodia When a teen-aged SeaOrg minion is grilling an educated and accomplished middle-aged person in an ethics violation probe.
Jesus H Hubbard, to all you currently “in” scientology lurkers out there, please get out while the getting is good.
What amazed me was that we were getting sales calls for “The Basics” from people posted in the Continental Liason Office (CLO). Why were continent-level management staff making sales calls for books?!?!
Having a little knowledge about the Scientology organization boards (org boards), which very specifically lay out both command and communication channels, I knew something was very wrong when senior-level management posts were reduced to making sales calls at all hours of the day and night.
I did have the temerity to ask on of the CLO staff why Hubbard never noticed the errors in his own books. Needless to say, I am not one of the Basics reading completions.
“American Saint Hill Organization – Train where the PROS Train”
This leads one to believe there are Professional Scientologists out there.
“Hi, I’m Badafuco. I’m a professional Scientologist.”
I just don’t see or hear that anywhere.
I’m a professional apostate… does that qualify me for anything? A free soda pop maybe or how about a years subscription to the Anonymous Weekly ?
Hey! What a coincidence! I’m a professional apostate, too. Wanna open up a shop together? People need our help! Maybe call it. “The Dude Yawns,”. “Yawn & Dude.” “Old Surfer & Yawn.”
I like ’em all! Or “The Dude’s Yawn & Grill – I’m always hungry!
Once again…I stand humbled. The official name will be: The Dude’s Yawn & Grill. Only sleepy people can come in…
Well, it is official (from the Church of Scamology no less). There soes not exist, on the entire planet, 50,000 scamologists.
Oh, I refer to you all the time “There goes badafuco. He’s a professional Scientologist. Ask him anything.”
Haha! So THAT’S why I still get all their mail, flyers, IAS crap, Source and Celebrity rags.
Hey Budafuco! Paula wants to see you. It’s that same place in New Jersey. Don’t be late…
Wake up, little Sheeple, wake up
Wake up, little Sheeple, wake up
You’ve all been sound asleep
Wake up little Sheeple and weep
The movie’s over, Miscavige lied
And you’re in trouble deep
Wake up little Sheeple
Wake up little Sheeple
I love your work MM!! Thank you for your contribution – clever, witty, true and hysterical.
Thanks IM. I just can’t seem to resist finding humor in all that Scientology has become.
That’s because they’re the laughing stock of the cult world. Just say the word Scientology and you’ll hear: Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!!
Only the CofS would shoot themselves in the foot and then post it for the world to see.
Maybe their proud of their foot shooting. Probably the only thing going for them…
It takes years of training and all the money you’ve got and then some to learn how to shoot yourself in the foot, real accurate like, with a shotgun. If you try extra hard and really develop those coveted OT powers you can get to shoot someone in the foot – that ability they call FSM = Foot Shooting Master. Yes, Grasshopper, you can attain such abilities in Scientology!
In addition to foot bullets, you can also increase your gullibility and turn off your prefrontal cortex, thereby putting your foot in your mouth each time you speak of Scientology’s humanitarian programs.
Wow. You & I Yawn must be, what, OT 15 now. Soon I will go from being Grasshopper to being a Foot Shooting Master! I can’t wait to shoot my first toe off! Oh, the excitement & the smell of gunpowder will be mine…
well, some are so anxious to cause an effect, they’ll celebrate the foot-bullets, the only effects they reliably create. They’ll explain it as a spin-off of “Any publicity is good publicity.”
In a way, it’s all a pretty sad story. Regardless of the lies and betrayals, many of us gave a great lot of years to Scientology. Many of us had fun, made some great friends (even terrific mates), actually got some personal gains. Watching it sink into the morass left by Hubbard and accelerated toward max internal and public destruction by the insane despot, Miscavige, is really quite depressing. It’s become abundantly clear that its end, no matter the time it takes, will be a welcomed event to many who have left. Like the Third Reich, it will leave many wounded and dead behind. Hopefully, it will leave less and less disaster behind than it has accomplished in the past.
Maybe they are going for quality not quantity?
They are doing it in better looking buildings and uniforms, at least.
Miscavige has taken the Hubbard “Professionalism” writing seriously.
Not enough squirreling is my analysis point.
Just which invidual(s) still in the scio system would know anything about quality? It’s only numbers which have any meaning. Always more than last week. And certainly Degraded Being Misk hasn’t a clue as to quality…other than paying for his own clothing, vacations, cars, food, lodgings, etc.
Well in my opinion those WalMart uniforms look nicer than the ghastly SeaOrg uniforms. And at least you get something in return for giving WalMart some money.
As long as the money keeps rolling in Miscavige could care less about the number of completions of anything.
Couldn’t care less.
His initials are DB, that’s hilarious. PG.
“The Basics” push was an era of extreme coercive tactics implemented by david miscavige on both staff and public, creating a mass exodus for both. One thing david miscavige has failed to realize is that people hate being pushed all the time to do or be or buy or donate – PUSH PUSH PUSH – right out the door.
I’d like to attest to being a PUSH COMPLETION. I’ve never been back. The wins are permanent! And yes, I would like others to have the knowledge I now have.
LRH said there was no “hidden data line” He was lying on that one too, I think the data line was Alan Watts LRH stole everything from him as he was speaking, listening to Alan Watts is like listening to LRH same jokes and entonation but without a political twist.
If you differentiate between what LRH said and what he did, you’ll find the true answer.
Any insight on what is happening in Clearwater now with regards to DM’s attempt to overpay for the Aquarium lands? It appears to me that it may signal a move and consolidation from Hemet. Could that be why SuMP was put in place, even though Golden Era productions is a state of the art facility. Could the thought be to turn Hemet into a ‘retreat’ center, so to establish a new income center for COS?
I know this is a lot of speculation, but it just appears that the limit of how much existing members can be tapped for dollars via Flag or Freewinds, and that a new program could be developed there. Thoughts?
At the Clearwater City Council Meeting on March 16, the vote was postponed to April 20th. VERY interesting to watch the Council Meeting video from the 16th. I highly recommend it if you have an interest. You can find it under ‘My Clearwater’ and just draw up the list of council meetings and agendas.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology/scientology-plans-control-of-downtown-clearwater-for-retail-makeover/2315501
Skeptic…..Maybe CO$ will RENT it out for semi mega bucks to some “Hollywood Mogul” for movie film productions. That would assure a steady flow of cash to line the pockets of….???????
I am a “never in” but it seems somewhat logical that they’d want to try to move the Hemet operation out to Clearwater and take over the ENTIRE town with an “ocean view” celeb center etc. Sounds like those in charge can’t make up their minds which side of the fence they want to sit on…..it’s all too sad.
I remember Clearwater decades ago as I had business meetings down there….it was once a lovely beautiful place to stay….or in THOSE days….live…..Hearing what’s been posted on this blog….it’s a head-spinner.
Skeptic, I think it’s very hard to read exactly what is going on in Clearwater. I get the impression that the public are very much against letting Scientology have the plot of land, and that the city council members were originally sympathetic to those concerns and might have a real price to pay for agreeing to anything else – but the CofS has brought its enormous persuasive power to bear, and has almost certainly engaged in machinations behind the scenes, so I think it is hard to know what will happen. I suspect that this will be a significant loss for Scientology, but either way there will be fallout, especially if there are revelations about what went on behind the scenes.
There has been some talk, I think from Mike, that Miscavige feels that the international management staff at Gold Base is essentially hopeless, and wants to give up on that function at the base. But I don’t think that Scientology allocates resources rationally, and so I don’t know that there is really strategic consolidation going on as much as what might be referred to, ironically (given the history of The Hole) as a sort of game of musical chairs. SuMP needn’t have a logical relationship to the studios at Gold, which were already duplicated in some significant ways when Mad Hatter was acquired; it’s just the latest, greatest thing for a particular purpose, that is yet another attempt to find a way to get new people to come to Scientology after the ideal org program failed.
I doubt that Gold Base outside Hemet is a planned location for new programs – there are no signs of anything being in the works, which would be extraordinary anyway, and if it were I would expect that they would host it on the underutilized Freewinds. I do think it likely that Gold is kept as a backup location, including possibly in case they for instance suddenly aren’t able to use the ship.