RoseMarie, I assume you are referring to people just generally feeling better, rather than gaining any particularly abilities, and certainly not exceptional ones like ability to leave the body, or even having full mastery over the reactive mind.

It’s interesting that after a decade of work inside Scientology, you recognize that what was going on was basically just at the level of placebo effect. Thanks for sharing your insight.

Jim, I’ve heard stories from the boomer youth generation heyday, of org “body routers” who couldn’t keep up with all the “seekers” who could be lured in off the streets just with the promises of Scientology – not to mention the possibility of getting a draft deferment as a “minister.” There may have been times and places that 1 in 10, or even more, stayed for at least a while after the initial pitch, though I think a lot of what they often did was co-auditing and other things that were social and may have seemed beneficial.

The way I look at it, if they had say 25,000 people a year joining and staying an average of 2 years at their heyday, that easily makes a organization of 50,000 average size without much need to work to keep people in, a formula that worked for a few years for other groups like the Moonies (think mass weddings in Madison Square Garden) and the Jesus Freaks (long forgotten, but estimated to have once had 100,000 members and 175 communal houses across North America). But once that influx of credulous young people dried up in what was called the “baby bust” of the 1970s – and the smaller cohort that succeeded them, was more jaded and materialistic – all of a sudden the math got turned upside down, and instead the CofS only survived (while other groups vanished) by hanging on to a smaller number of people tenaciously, and extracting larger amounts of money from those who they could recruit or retain.

When I first encountered Scientology in the early to mid 1980s, they seemed much more desperate to try to get people in, using mass efforts like flyering cars that probably yielded few prospects, and then being more aggressive and high-pressure in their pitch and techniques (remember, “big league sales” was a 1970s introduction). But I never saw enough to be able to put numbers to it.

RoseMarie, 30% of “clears” did NOT get the results Hubtard stated. Not even 1% did. 30% of Grade 1 completions did NOT have the ability to make the sources of their problems disappear. Etc., etc. THAT is what would be listed as results. ANYTHING not the E.P. would NOT be considered “results”.

When the stated result of some treatment is the ability to fly in the air even placebo effect isn’t enough to deliver. 😉

So Peacmaker,

I would guesstimate in 1970, the turnover was like; 1 in 100 made it past the intro meetings; 1 in 1000 made it to grade 4; 1 in 10,000 made it to class 4; and 1 in 14,000 made personal enlightenment. Give or take a factor of 10.

Your thoughts?

jere yes, however I’m talking about when an objectively measurable change in the business could be detected. In this case the membership influx reversed. If looking at management changes it would probably date to 1967 at the inception of the S.O.

Hubtard was NEVER about helping people and ONLY about making himself personally wealthy. If you believe otherwise you are still brainwashed and have ignored the concrete evidence.

Peace maker. Exactly like that.
The continued obsessive eager haste to produce statistics instead of actual products leads to not stabilizing or correcting what you have there.
They are like a swarm of locusts.

Or maybe LRH let them down.

How do they ever think they will turn that scientology leaking boat around now?