I live near the Rosicrucian Fellowship International Headquarters in Oceanside, CA. They are still active.

Thanks!

The Rosicrucians.

That’s the “cream of the jest”, you might say.

Jefferson managed to send sales of the book into the skies, Hubbard told us “Books Make Booms”. It should, according to Hubbard’s internal fantasy, have been a volcano of exploding expansion for Scientology.

Sadly, or fortunately, the book only appeals to the hopelessly ignorant or venal among us. A tiny percentage go on to the real thing, and a tiny percentage of those last more than a few months.

As one of those who was trapped for 40 years in it, I can see the pull of the book. Not that it sounds like a happy journey, just that it offers that impossible hope. It says there is an easy answer to all the pain and suffering. A few weeks or maybe a month of hypnotic brain-bending and all the madness is over!

If it really worked, think of the future! No more war, no more insanity, no more pesky brother-in-law! Just one more iteration of that stupid utopian fantasy from the 18th century, but if you don’t know the signs you can easily be pulled in. As so many have.

Up on the third floor of Building 36, the Planetary Dissemination Organization, they even set up a sort of call center for those millions of happy Dianetics book readers. A few true believers manned the phones, all long gone now.

At least Jefferson managed to definitively prove that Dianetics is horse-shit. Even given the very best marketing, you can’t help a pig with cosmetics. Only the NOI has really fallen for it, and it is not clear what is actually happening there. Books may make Booms, but this one just makes Doom.

Dear Mike:

Thanks for posting this. Between that and Tony Ortega’s posting of the cherch of scientology’s Super Bowl ads from 2013 to 2022, I’m in Ex-Scientologist Heaven!

Those “Questions” ads he did in the 80’s were so effective! Especially the tag line “it’s the owner’s manual for the human mind”. It certainly worked on me — for a little while. I was a teenager in the late 80’s, and those ads would come on during late night television shows. I was fascinated by psychology from a young age, and the promise of an actual “manual” for the mind was very appealing. I was intrigued by the idea of a book that could offer straightforward answers to such questions. So I got a paperback copy of Dianetics, and immediately began looking up the page references mentioned in the ads.

Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed. It was immediately clear to me, even as a high school student, that there were no answers to be found, and the whole book was a bunch of nonsense mixed with pop psychology pablum. Talk about false advertising! LOL

Thats so warming, glad for you that you found your way out Mary. I’m sure hearing things like this from people like you helps jeff immensely in return x