The weekly show where I answer viewer questions left in the comment section of my Q&A videos or sent to me by email at AskChrisShelton@gmail.com. This week, the questions I answer are:
(1) Who ACTUALLY has the power in the “church” to declare someone an SP? Do they all come direct from Miscavige? If they don’t, does he need to approve all of them? Or is it something lower ranking executives at Org levels have the power to issue without higher approval?
(2) I’m interested in the beaching policy. Could you explain the offenses that would result in beaching and does beaching automatically declare you or does it mean you go public or make amends? I would love to hear an interview of a former Sea Org member who was beached.
(3) So Scientology all begins with potentially a body router gets you to come into an Org & you fill out the questionnaire and probably whatever you write the rep is undoubtedly going to say…”we can help you with that” and so it begins. So now you begin your arduous and expensive journey up the Bridge to Total Freedom. Then as you continue to rise, you will experience some basic gains such as the Communications Course and then you come across other issues on things that don’t make as much sense as the earlier courses but you think that as you have spent all this money maybe it’s just you since other people around you seem to be doing well. Maybe the next level will clarify things. And so it keeps going but then once you have read OT 3 and accepted what it says, the next levels makes no sense to me.
From what I understand is that you now pay an increasingly large amount of money and audit yourself which is called I believe solo auditing. You are identifying where all of your body thetans are located and removing them one by one. Correct me if I’m wrong here but isn’t that like for example wanting to learn French and you pay a large amount of money and are given a book and told read it and that will be $50K. Anyway assuming this unbelievably is still making sense to you, you then continue on up to OT 7 & then finally to OT 8.
I have many books by all of the major critics and I listen to as many You Tube shows and podcasts on this subject as possible. I am almost addicted to this subject as it’s so damn interesting but in the same way a car crash is. It’s hard not to look as most of the stories are amazing and what’s more they are real. So what I really want to know is whether I’m correct in my assertion that the main benefit of paying all that money and the hours of studying is so that when you die you now have the ability to choose a body and return to Earth with full memory of your past life and be a full OT 8 Scientologist. Do I have this right? What is the point of doing this as the big prize at the top of The Bridge is basically unattainable to the rank-and-file Scientologist. Please help me to understand.
(4) Has Scientology historically favored a particular political party or are they just opportunists who seek to corrupt any government officials that further their goals, regardless of affiliation?
(5) You once told me that it has been a long long time since Miscavige was in session. If he were to get hurt (ex: break a leg skiing), would he also go through PTS Handling, or would he just go to one of his secluded mansions and stay out of site until he was feeling better? Or would he just pick some Sea Org person on his staff, and say they are the PTS and tell his subordinates to “…sec check the bleep out of that person…” i.e. skip any formal PTS process? I’m guessing he must have caught a cold, or gotten hurt sometime in the last few years.
(6) What remake/reboot/sequel are you most looking forward to in 2019?
(7) How similar is Scientology to black magic, which Hubbard studied? Does black magic work?
(8) I think you mentioned somewhere that even people who trained with L. Ron Hubbard himself had to re-do their training. How could they justify that?
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I saw your interview of Bree Mood. First an observation. When someone joins a Catholic religious order there is a period of discernment where you decide if this is right for you and the order decides if you are right for them. One of the definite signs that you don’t belong there is if you are miserable. If you are miserable that would be taken as a sign from God that you were not called to this way of life, or at least to this particular religious order and that you should move on.
Now the questions.
Is there a greater drop out rate from the Sea Org of 1st gen Scientologists vs. 2nd and 3rd gen Scientologists? I’m making the assumption that 1st gen Scientologists have outside world experience and are more likely to say, “I’m not happy. I’m leaving.” vs. 2nd and 3rd gen Scientologists who grew up with Scientology expectations.
Bree talked about forging her stats. From all I’ve seen and read very few people are joining Scientology and Scientology is building empty buildings. So what is a typical Sea Org day? And is it inevitable that sooner or later everyone has to forge their stats?
Comparing Scientology to other religions and non-profits:
* Getting money from donors: The more donors, the more money. As donors decline, the more the remaining donors have to give. Sooner or later, if the well doesn’t run dry, it begins to produce a trickle, and that shows up in the stats.
* Selling and providing more services: Seems you’d run into the same problem as when getting donations, declining membership means selling less services, and that shows up in the stats.
* Recruitment: The only stat I see going up is if a Sea Org member reported the number of people he/she talked to about Scientology. But then that would have to be compared to how many of those people then said yes to Scientology.
* Day to day operations: This is what it takes just to keep everything going. Overtime one would expect the stats on this not to change too much overtime. After all, the effort to keep everything going next week should be the same as last week, no matter what upper management might say.
* Building buildings and media: It appears that Scientology is good at building buildings, making videos, and producing magazines. This appears to be another set of stats that one can expect to go up. But even here, given the number of people in the Sea Org, there is a limited amount of buildings that can be built, and videos and magazines produced. One would expect stats to go up then level off.
The only way to keep stats up is to be part of a growing organization. When stats have leveled off or declining, in a normal organization, staff members will ask, “What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? What can we do different?” Are Sea Org members at any level even allowed to ask these questions?
Finally, the two of you talked about when Sea Org members start becoming disenchanted, they are sent to a “Rah-rah” meeting to get them excited again. In the business world that’s akin to sending your sales team to a “rah-rah” meeting to get them all excited to go out and sell. When you are selling a good product or service, then a sale can lift your spirits and keep you going. On the other hand, if the product or service just doesn’t sell, then no amount of “rah-rah” meetings will help. If Sea Org members are miserable, how long before they are permanently disenchanted? What percent leave, and what percent decide this is just how life is and stay?