This week it’s answers about Sea Org sleep schedules, changes to Scientology texts, why OT 3 is where it’s at and what it accomplished and a lot more. Enjoy!
(1) The Sea Org being paramilitary, people are expected to be out of bed at a certain time in the morning. It would seem “the morning people” have an easier time adapting to the daily routine in the Sea Org. At the same time, all-nighters are common, and that plays in favor of “the night owls”. What category were you before you joined? Did the Sea Org life change how your biological clock works? What happened to your daily routine when you got out?
(2) I was wondering how much we know about the changes made to Scientology texts in 2007 that accompanied David Miscavige’s event “The Golden Age of Knowledge for Eternity: The Basics”. Which books were affected, and what was the nature of the changes? My guess is that the updates were fairly minor, and the main impetus for re-issuing these books was a cash grab. Were there significant doctrinal changes? Were there embarrassing passages that were scrubbed? Were there other motives? Do we know who made the edits? Do we know what Scientology did with the recalled books? I’d love to know more about this interesting moment in Scientology history. One of my show’s listeners sent me to the site ScientologyAudit.com, which in turn led me to TrueLRH.com. There was some interesting info there, but none of the comparisons seemed too dramatic, and I wasn’t really sure of the author’s perspective. I thought you might have a clearer [ahem] understanding of the overall picture.
(3) Why did LRH design Scientology in such a way that you don’t figure out about OT3 until you’re so far in? Did he add and tack these beliefs on later? And why do they seem so out of place with the rest of Scientology? Did he create them when he was going nuts and did he actually believe it?
(4) How would a Scientology org react if a post-op transgender person came in and wanted to become a Scientologist? Would she be allowed to progress up the Bridge to Total Freedom? Would she be allowed to join the Sea Org?
Would the Church of Scientology try to make a transgender peron de-transition, even if they’ve already had MtF or FtM surgery, which is irreversible?
Also, I know the Church of Scientology publicly claims to welcome gay people, and then privately they have to stick with Hubbard’s early 1900s views on sexuality, which harshly condemn homosexuality. I know they tell gay people that their sexual orientation is a perversion that needs to be fixed through $200/hour Scientology auditing sessions. With that in mind, if a trans woman dated a cis-man, would Scientology consider her to be straight, thereby agreeing that she is a woman? Or would they reject her gender identity and say that she needs to date women, even though this would be a lesbian relationship, which the church considers to be low on the tone scale?
I am not sure if L. Ron Hubbard ever wrote anything about whether being transgender is acceptable, but I am sure that he would oppose it based on his other views.
(5) I was on the Scientology subreddit recently and somebody made a post about Ron’s Org in Switzerland. I was most amused to then discover that the group has officially declared Xenu an SP! However, how do independent Scientologists reconcile publicly declaring Xenu like this with the idea that anyone who finds out about OT III too early will die? Surely by putting that declare in the public domain, by their own logic they run the risk of killing thousands of people who have now read about OT III ahead of time!
(6) Are you familiar with a character named Xemnu in Marvel Comics created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby? He first appeared in an issue of Journey into Mystery, a Marvel issue from 1960. He’s basically a giant hairy alien who was banished from his home planet and sent to the prison planet earth. Do you think it’s likely at all that Hubbard took this Marvel character and adapted him into his 0T3 material. I had heard another story about Hubbard being influenced by Star Wars to some degree and wondered if there was any legitimacy to that?