This week, I offer a description of the True Believer mindset, PTSD and cult recovery, odd Scientology practices and a lot more. Enjoy!
(1) Question regarding Grant Cardone: He is allegedly a scammer/swindler, very rich, and very ostentatious. Why would such an arrogant man part with any money to benefit the IAS? An ego that big would say “F**k charity!!” (not that $cientology is an actual charity.) Recordings from auditing? Is it a tax thing?
(2) I was listening/watching one of your latest Critical Q&A. You were flipping through one of the workbooks (is that what they are called?) and you said it brings back some memories. I was wondering if you deal with PTSD from your time in Scientology? I can’t imagine the process that would be required to recover (fully or in part) from this time of your life.
(3) Aside from having to clean windows with old newspapers, were there other odd practices wholly unrelated to Scientology or its organization which nevertheless had to be followed due to it being ordered or endorsed by Hubbard at some stage?
(4) In a lecture “Prerequisites to Auditing” (1958) LRH talked about “birth engrams” (which are apparently terrible) and “overt act motivation sequence”. Can you elaborate on those terms?
(5) I have a possible source for Scientology’s body thetans (BTs) from American inventor Thomas Edison, who was also an early member of Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. Usually people trace the exorcizing of BTs to the occult practice of exorcizing demons. However, given that Hubbard was well read, embraced pseudo-scientific ideas, and liked electrical gadgets, I think there may be an even closer inspiration where Thomas Edison wrote of swarms of highly charged and infinitesimally small entities, of extraterrestrial origin which inhabit one’s cells.
Edison said: “No one understands that man is not a unit of life. The unit of life is composed of swarms of billions of highly charged entities which live in the cells. I believe that when a man dies, this swarm deserts the body and goes out into space, but keeps on and enters another cycle of life and is immortal.”
Twenty years later, he wrote “I cannot believe for a moment that life in the first instance originated on this insignificant little ball which we call the earth. The particles which combined to evolve living creatures on this planet of ours probably came from some other body elsewhere in the universe. I don’t believe for a moment that one life makes another life. Take our own bodies. I believe they are composed of myriads and myriads of infinitesimally small individuals, each in itself a unit of life, and that these units work in squads — or swarms as I prefer to call them — and that these infinitesimally small units live forever. When we “die” these swarms of units, like a swarm of bees, so to speak, betake themselves elsewhere, and go on functioning in some other form or environment.”
This sure sounds a lot like BTs to me. Given that Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, dealt with electricity, it might explain why in Hubbard’s final days he wanted to use electricity in a last desperate attempt to exorcize his own BTs. What do you think?
(6) Hey Chris do you know if there’s any evidence of Ron being injured from doing the OT3 research as he claimed? I think he mentioned in Ron’s Journal 67 that he broke both his arm and his back….or did he just make all that up too?
(7) What are the symptoms that a Scientology process has been overrun?
(8) As a parent of young kids I heard many influencers/youtubers advertise ABC Mouse; many of these influencers are active Mormons. I was surprised to learn that ABC Mouse had a connection with Scientology. As far as I can tell it’s mostly financial connections. It would be interesting for you, or someone you know from an ex-Scientologist network, to look at whether this app managed by a Scientologist is secular or not.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS