A post great make you.

Peacemaker,

When I was in my org used this same dishonest ploy to get Ideal Org donations.

A fundraiser was held and a fly thru video was shown of a huge building.

Accompanying the fly thru video was the E/D’s narration of it which began with her grand announcement, “Are you ready? Are you SURE? Well, OK! THIS is our new building! Isn’t is GORGEOUS?”

We all oohed and ahhed, for real. It was a beautiful building with a unique facade. And huge.

“…and this will be Reception…Div 6 Courseroom …11 auditing rooms at least…on this floor will be the Academy…cafeteria…etc., etc…how do you like your new building?”

We all liked it, of course. We were all impressed. We all donated.
We needed 15 million dollars to “secure” it, which I took to mean that a down payment had been made and the org was regging to complete the funds.

A day or so later, purely by accident, I learned that not only had this building NOT been purchased by the Church of Scientology but that it wasn’t even for sale.

Oh, it was empty alright! But the family which owned the building together had been warring amongst themselves for a dozen years. One sale had NEARLY gone thru – get this – 10 years before! – but because of the owners’ legal infighting the title was clouded, and whatever their issue was would have to be resolved before the building could go back on the market!

All this I found out as I said, quite by accident. It was sheer coincidence because I hadn’t been CHECKING or verifying what we’d been told at the fundraiser. I hadn’t been in the least suspicious! The E/D had told us “Here is your new building!” I didn’t doubt it.

But now I was was shocked. The E/D had lied. LIED to us! She didn’t say, “Here is the kind of building we would LOVE to have…” or “Wouldn’t a building like this be terrific?”

No, she said, unequivocally, “THIS is your new building…this is your new Academy…etc., etc.” Declarative sentences, beginning with “This is..” No mistake. All lies.

And I had donated. We all had. My donation that night was not astronomical but not peanuts either. At least to me it wasn’t peanuts…$1500 as I recall.

So, yes, I was shocked to learn that I had been lied to like that! But at the same time I figured there had to be some explanation, some reasonable, understandable explanation…

Long story short, the next time I was in the org I shared what I’d learned with someone on the OT committee. A real old timer, an OT8. I asked him if he knew what was going on with supposed building sale. I shared with him how by sheer coincidence I’d found out the building was not only not for sale but could not be for sale to anyone, let alone the Church. I told him all of this.

He didn’t blink an eyelash.

He shrugged, and in a bored tone, said, “We HAVE to put a building up there. If we didn’t have a building to put up, if we didn’t have a building to show at one of these things, then no one would give us any money.”

That’s pretty much a direct quote.

No embarrassment, not a trace of shame.

Quite an eye-opener for me. I stopped going to Ideal Org fundraisers after that. I lost trust. They got money out of me by lying! I can laugh now but it was shocking to me back then, and a major nail in the coffin of my departure.

Jere, I’d say Scientology “boomed” again because of the wave of post-war babies who turned into young seekers – and draft avoiders – in the 1960s and into the 1970s. But that was yet another limited phenomenon.

As I’ve expressed elsewhere, I think Scientology’s doctrines and practices are now hopelessl dated and anachronistic, and that there’s nothing that could improve their prospects. Like other groups of their ilk they were already on the decline when the internet came along, though it’s certainly been the nail in the coffin.

Or, if a reg does call, tell THEM to “make it go right.” LOL

I find it particularly sad that members have even lost their own homes as part of fundraising pushes – sometimes for projects that have never even come to fruition, like St. Louis. And in cases like St. Louis, a lot of the money was then squandered paying expenses like property taxes on empty buildings purchased without a realistic plan for what to do with them.

With remaining active memberships that often seem to be down below 50, each members’ share of the the massive new projects is over 1,000 square feet. Much of that space is under-used or sits completely unused, while some members are left with less space than that to live in on a daily basis.

Some of those who were financially exploited have since left or been expelled, and will never enjoy any fruit of their donations. And some who are now out are even still paying down credit cards and loans taken out to give Scientology that money – that’s got to really be painful.

Right, Skyler! The Internet has closed the door firmly against scn ever experiencing a major resurgence, not that it had had one after the initial fad waned in 1950.

I saw a documentary on the Stasi — East Germany’s cold war secret police — the other day and they had NOTHING on the repression of the scientology organization; never call it a “church” nor capitalize the name. It doesn’t deserve any respect, particularly since the tiny fists of fury assumed “power” over it 3 decades ago.

YEs, Sea Org members who work at LA Org, ASHO, AOLA, Bridge, CLO WUS mostly.

Scientology is a bloody serious thing,
depending on every members hard-working.

The ones standing in the way
removes, but first in clay.

The time it takes to create enemies in clay is the time enemies get away.